Oral Answers to Questions
Robert Halfon Excerpts(6 months, 1 week ago)
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Luke Hall
We want all young people to have access to good, high-quality apprenticeships because they offer a valuable experience and an opportunity to upskill at the start of their career. We have seen a 4% increase in apprenticeship starts by young people under the age of 19 so far this year, and 57% of all starts have been by those aged under 25. Last year, we saw a 21% increase in apprenticeship achievements in the hon. Lady’s constituency. That is welcome news but, of course, there is always more to do. I am very happy to work with her on the issue.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
Is it not the case that apprenticeship achievements have gone up by 22% over the past year, that over 90% of apprentices who complete their apprenticeship get good jobs or good skills, and that starts are going up, too? Is it not also the case that we now have more than 690 quality apprenticeship standards in everything from aeronautics to zoology, and that any attempt to dilute the apprenticeship levy would not only destroy the number of starts but harm achievement? It is this side of the House that is building an apprenticeship and skills nation.
Education
Robert Halfon Excerpts(7 months, 1 week ago)
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Mr Perkins
…The Minister talks powerfully about apprenticeships, but why does he think that young people are now half as likely to be on an SME apprenticeship than they were when the levy was introduced?
Robert Halfon
I hugely respect the hon. Gentleman. I know he is a bruiser, but I had been looking forward to his question. I thought he would celebrate the 13,000 apprentices in Chesterfield since May 2010, the 11,270 apprentices at levels 2 and 3, or the £19.5 million investment in Chesterfield College.
[Official Report, 11 March 2024, Vol. 747, c. 10.]
Letter of correction from the Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education, the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon):
An error has been identified in the response given to the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins).
The correct response is:
Robert Halfon
I hugely respect the hon. Gentleman. I know he is a bruiser, but I had been looking forward to his question. I thought he would celebrate the 13,000 apprentices in Chesterfield since May 2010, the 11,720 apprentices at levels 2 and 3, or the £19.5 million investment in Chesterfield College.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
It is not just that level 2 and 3 apprenticeship starts have plummeted by over 50% since the levy was introduced, but that 16 to 18-year-old apprenticeship starts are down by 41%. Research by the Sutton Trust and the London School of Economics further shows that, by 2020, the proportion of apprenticeship starts by those from poorer backgrounds had dropped significantly. Opportunities for all our young people to earn and learn expanded every year under Labour. Is it not now painfully clear that the biggest barrier to opportunity is this Tory Government?
Robert Halfon
As always, Labour Front Benchers are obsessed with quantity over quality. We have transformed the quality of apprenticeships. Seventy per cent of occupations are covered by over 680 apprenticeship standards.
[Official Report, 11 March 2024, Vol. 747, c. 11.]
Letter of correction from the Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education, the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon):
An error has been identified in the response given to the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra).
The correct response is:
Robert Halfon
As always, Labour Front Benchers are obsessed with quantity over quality. We have transformed the quality of apprenticeships. Nearly 70% of occupations are covered by apprenticeships, and there are over 680 apprenticeship standards.
Jane Hunt
Homefield College, based in Mountsorrel and Sileby in my constituency, is a community-based independent specialist college that offers education, training and independent living skills for people with learning disabilities and communication difficulties. What steps are being taken by the Department to promote and support such excellent FE colleges, and to help create opportunities for work experience, life skills and development for students, so that they may go on to live happy and fulfilling lives as an integral part of their local community?
Robert Halfon
I was pleased to visit Loughborough not so long ago with my hon. Friend. She is passionate about FE and skills. I know Homefield College well; it is a brilliant college and I am glad it was recently allocated £95,000 for capital spend. We have the £80 million supported internship scheme for those with special educational needs; an FE bursary scheme for special needs teachers; specialist National Careers Service advice for young people; and the SEND code of practice to prepare young people for adulthood.
[Official Report, 11 March 2024, Vol. 747, c. 15.]
Letter of correction from the Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education, the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon):
An error has been identified in the response given to my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt).
The correct response is:
Robert Halfon
I was pleased to visit Loughborough not so long ago with my hon. Friend. She is passionate about FE and skills. I know Homefield College well; it is a brilliant college and I am glad it was recently allocated £95,000 for capital spend. We have the £80 million supported internship scheme for those with special educational needs; an FE bursary scheme for special needs teachers; National Careers Service advice for young people; and the SEND code of practice to prepare young people for adulthood.
Sir Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
At Cambridge University, a barbaric vandal wearing a £1,000 Mulberry backpack was so full of hate for Jews that she felt Lord Balfour’s letter of 1917 gave her the moral superiority to destroy a valuable and historic painting of him. This shines a light on the pernicious atmosphere faced by Jewish students at universities across the country, with calls for “Zionists off our campus” now shamefully normalised, and “Zionists” really meaning Jews. What steps does my right hon. Friend propose to take to convey to university heads that they have a legal and a moral obligation to stamp out antisemitism?
Robert Halfon
…We have announced a £7 million package to give to Jewish student groups, including the University Jewish Chaplaincy, to try to stop antisemitism on campus.
[Official Report, 11 March 2024, Vol. 747, c. 22.]
Letter of correction from the Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education, the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon):
An error has been identified in the response given to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton North (Sir Michael Ellis).
The correct response is:
Robert Halfon
…We have announced a £7 million package to give to student groups, such as the University Jewish Chaplaincy, to try to stop antisemitism on campus.
Oral Answers to Questions
Robert Halfon Excerpts(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)
The hon. Gentleman will know that higher education is a devolved matter and that each Administration are responsible for determining the student finance arrangements that apply to students eligible for funding.
Chris Stephens
New data reveals that in most areas of England, state school pupils who have received free school meals have less than a one in four chance of entering higher education. One reason for that is that poorer students decide not to pursue that path because of the prospect of being saddled with huge debt, which takes decades to clear. Do the Government believe that they should follow the Scottish Government’s example and abolish tuition fees, so that education can be made accessible to all?
Robert Halfon
This Government believe that we need to be fair not only to students but to taxpayers. It is worth noting that, in England, those from disadvantaged backgrounds are 74% more likely to go to university than they were in 2010. We have put together a substantial package to help students with the cost of living, including a £286 million welfare support fund, which we give to the Office for Students to ensure that students with difficulties are helped.
Robert Halfon
I am proud that we have a record number of students going to university. I have already mentioned the fact that the disadvantaged are 74% more likely to go to university than they were before. I will tell the hon. Gentleman what we are doing to help students: we have a £286 million welfare fund that we give to the OFS; we have increased loans by 2.8%; we have frozen tuition fees; families across the country have been given, on average, £3,700 to help with energy bills and other bills; we have given hundreds of millions of pounds to the household support fund to support all families; students know that they can have their loans reassessed if their family income falls by 15%; and finally, we have introduced degree apprenticeships so that students do not need to take out a loan but can earn while they learn and get a good, skilled job at the end.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)
Sixty-five per cent of all apprenticeship starts so far this year have been at levels 2 and 3, with level 3 remaining the most popular level, accounting for 43% of all starts. Over 360 apprenticeship standards are at levels 2 and 3, covering more than half of all apprenticeships.
Mr Perkins
I can understand why the Minister does not refer to the trends, because he knows that level 2 apprenticeships are way down. The Government’s reforms have seen level 2 apprenticeship starts fall by two thirds since 2012-13, and the number of people employed on an apprenticeship with a small and medium-sized enterprise has fallen by 49% since the levy’s introduction. The Minister talks powerfully about apprenticeships, but why does he think that young people are now half as likely to be on an SME apprenticeship than they were when the levy was introduced?
Robert Halfon
I hugely respect the hon. Gentleman. I know he is a bruiser, but I had been looking forward to his question. I thought he would celebrate the 13,000 apprentices in Chesterfield since May 2010, the 11,270 apprentices at levels 2 and 3, or the £19.5 million investment in Chesterfield College. If I were him, I would be urging his party to stop its plan to destroy the apprenticeship levy, which would halve the number of apprenticeship starts overall. It would be back to square one.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
It is not just that level 2 and 3 apprenticeship starts have plummeted by over 50% since the levy was introduced, but that 16 to 18-year-old apprenticeship starts are down by 41%. Research by the Sutton Trust and the London School of Economics further shows that, by 2020, the proportion of apprenticeship starts by those from poorer backgrounds had dropped significantly. Opportunities for all our young people to earn and learn expanded every year under Labour. Is it not now painfully clear that the biggest barrier to opportunity is this Tory Government?
Robert Halfon
As always, Labour Front Benchers are obsessed with quantity over quality. We have transformed the quality of apprenticeships. Seventy per cent of occupations are covered by over 680 apprenticeship standards. There has been a 6% increase since this time last year in the number of under-19 starts, and overall starts are up by 3% over the same period. The crucial thing is achievement, which is up by 22%. Female STEM starts are up by 7.5%, starts by people with disabilities are up by 6.3%, and starts by people from ethnic minorities are up by 15.4%, compared with 10.6% in 2010. Not only are we focusing on quality over quantity; we are improving the number of starts and achievements too.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)
I note that the Labour Front Benchers did not mention the 222,320 starts on degree apprenticeships since their introduction in 2014-15. There are now more than 170 employer-designed degree-level apprenticeships available, including in occupations such as doctor, space engineer and midwife. We are spending an additional £40 million in the next two years to support providers to promote degree apprenticeships.
Greg Smith
Businesses in my constituency regularly tell me that they much prefer apprentices and those who have taken degree-level apprenticeships to traditional graduates. That came up time and again in a recent engagement event I held with Buckinghamshire Business First at Ercol in Princes Risborough. Will my right hon. Friend tell me what more the Government are going to do to send a clear signal to all pupils across the whole country that degree-level apprenticeships are out there, they should sign up for them and they will have fantastic careers ahead of them?
Robert Halfon
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He is a champion of the automotive and motorsport industry in his constituency. He will be pleased to know that we now have UCAS for apprenticeships, which will transform the apprenticeship scheme when students apply for university or apprenticeships. The apprenticeship skills and knowledge network goes to thousands of schools, interacting with many hundreds of thousands of students. As I mentioned, we are spending £40 million to promote degree apprenticeships among providers. We have strengthened legislation to ensure that schools do more to promote apprenticeships and technical and vocational education.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)
My hon. Friend is a champion of FE and skills—he has asked a lot of questions about the subject over the past months. We want apprenticeships to be part of the careers conversations in every school. We have strengthened the law so that schools must offer pupils at least six education and training provider encounters. We have invested £3.2 million in the apprenticeship skills and knowledge network, which reached over 2,300 schools and colleges in 2022-23.
Andrew Selous
Vandyke Upper School in Leighton Buzzard, which I visited last week, tells every student about apprenticeships and has an excellent apprenticeships ambassador. As the Minister will know, sadly not every school does this. Most teachers have been to university and they may not know about apprenticeships, so what can we do to ensure that every school tells every student about apprenticeships, as Vandyke Upper School does, because they can be life-transforming for the right students?
Robert Halfon
My hon. Friend speaks a lot of wisdom. I congratulate Vandyke Upper School on its work. I have been to apprenticeship fairs and careers days at the Oasis Academy in Brislington. Huge amounts of work are going on with the careers enterprise company and the apprenticeship ambassador network, to ensure that there is a network member engaged at every secondary school and college. I have mentioned some of the other things we are doing to promote careers and apprenticeships in all our schools.
Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con)
The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)
We know that with the right preparation and support the overwhelming majority of young people with SEND are capable of sustained and paid employment. The National Careers Service offers young people with SEND aged 19 to 24 tailored support from careers advisers. We are investing £80 million until 2025 to build capacity and support an internship programme. We have also launched a mentoring pilot for disabled apprentices.
Jane Hunt
Homefield College, based in Mountsorrel and Sileby in my constituency, is a community-based independent specialist college that offers education, training and independent living skills for people with learning disabilities and communication difficulties. What steps are being taken by the Department to promote and support such excellent FE colleges, and to help create opportunities for work experience, life skills and development for students, so that they may go on to live happy and fulfilling lives as an integral part of their local community?
Robert Halfon
I was pleased to visit Loughborough not so long ago with my hon. Friend. She is passionate about FE and skills. I know Homefield College well; it is a brilliant college and I am glad it was recently allocated £95,000 for capital spend. We have the £80 million supported internship scheme for those with special educational needs; an FE bursary scheme for special needs teachers; specialist National Careers Service advice for young people; and the SEND code of practice to prepare young people for adulthood. We are doing everything possible to support FE for those with special educational needs, to ensure that they get on the ladder of opportunity.
Steve Tuckwell (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Con)
Mark Eastwood (Dewsbury) (Con)
The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)
I would be absolutely delighted to visit Kirklees College, and I congratulate my hon. Friend on his apprenticeship fair. I note that the college has a great record on apprenticeship achievements, and that 970 apprentices have started their future. Overall at Kirklees since 2010, there have been something like 12,300 apprenticeship starts in my hon. Friend’s constituency.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
Sir Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
At Cambridge University, a barbaric vandal wearing a £1,000 Mulberry backpack was so full of hate for Jews that she felt Lord Balfour’s letter of 1917 gave her the moral superiority to destroy a valuable and historic painting of him. This shines a light on the pernicious atmosphere faced by Jewish students at universities across the country, with calls for “Zionists off our campus” now shamefully normalised, and “Zionists” really meaning Jews. What steps does my right hon. Friend propose to take to convey to university heads that they have a legal and a moral obligation to stamp out antisemitism?
Robert Halfon
I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for his question. Arthur Balfour was a great man and identified the need for a homeland for British Jews. That is why antisemites do not like him and are slashing his picture. I and the Secretary of State are spending a lot of time with Jewish student groups. I have been to Leeds University to spend time with Jewish students, because the chaplain there was attacked, and we are working with Universities UK. We have announced a £7 million package to give to Jewish student groups, including the University Jewish Chaplaincy, to try to stop antisemitism on campus. We are also developing a quality seal that we will ask universities to adopt, so that they deal properly with antisemitic incidents. Last week, I and the Secretary of State had a meeting with the Office for Students, to make clear to the regulator that antisemitism across our universities is not acceptable.
T-Levels: Wave 4
Robert Halfon Excerpts(9 months, 1 week ago)
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The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)
As part of our delivery of wave 4 T-levels and our assessment of overlap between T-levels and technical qualifications we have been consulting with employers and representatives from many sectors.
After discussions with representatives of the hair and beauty sector, we have decided to separate our plans for a combined T-level in hair and beauty. The beauty sector has fed back that a good-quality level 3 classroom-based progression route is desirable. Therefore, this Government will explore introducing a T-level which focuses on the beauty sector, with the expectation that this could be introduced after 2025.
This differs from feedback we have had from representatives in the hair sector which has led us to conclude that the best route is for learners to progress into their industry through completion of an existing level 2 or level 3 apprenticeship or a level 2 classroom-based qualification. As such, we will no longer be introducing a combined T-level.
To support apprenticeships in the hair sector, we have increased funding for apprenticeships in these industries with funding uplifts of 57% for the level 2 hairdressing professional standard and 28% for the level 2 barbering apprenticeship.
T-levels remain our flagship technical qualification for 16 to 19-year-olds, with tens of thousands of students studying or having studied T-levels, and they will form the backbone of the advanced British standard. The Secretary of State made a statement on 9 March 2023 (HCWS619) on the future T-level roll out. I am pleased to announce that we are on track to deliver the T-levels in media, broadcast and production and craft and design for September 2024, alongside the animal care and management T-level, as well as the marketing T-level from September 2025. This will bring our portfolio of T-levels to 21 from September 2024, and 22 from September 2025.
With today’s announcement we are also publishing the provisional list of 71 technical qualifications that have been assessed to overlap with wave 4 T-levels rolled out in or before 2024, which can be found at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/wave-4-t-levels-overlapping-qualifications. These are agriculture, land management and production; animal care and management; craft and design; legal services; and media, broadcast and production. Subject to the outcomes of an appeal process which gives awarding organisations the opportunity to contest a qualification’s placement on the list, we will withdraw 16 to 19 public funding for new starts on these qualifications from 1 August 2025. 16 to 19-year-olds enrolled on these 71 qualifications accounted for around 1% of all total enrolments for 16 to 19-year-olds. Eleven of the qualifications had no enrolments and a further 23 had fewer than 100 enrolments in the 2021-22 academic year, highlighting the need to streamline the qualifications system. Removing funding from technical qualifications which overlap with T-levels will ensure young people can feel confident that they are studying technical qualifications which will prepare them for jobs in their chosen occupation.
This is the final part of phase 2 of our reforms removing qualifications that overlap with waves 1 to 4 T-levels.
[HCWS221]
Oral Answers to Questions
Robert Halfon Excerpts(9 months, 1 week ago)
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Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)
Our visa changes strike the right balance, ensuring we have a fair and robust migration policy but maintaining the UK’s place as a top destination for the best and brightest from around the world. The hon. and learned Lady will be pleased to know that we continue to attract the best scientists from across the world: we have over 46,000 postgraduate research students from overseas, 41% of the total, producing groundbreaking and collaborative research.
Joanna Cherry
I thank the Minister for his answer, but I am afraid the evidence does not entirely bear out what he is saying, because UCAS figures reveal a notable fall in accepted applications from international students. Both Heriot-Watt and Edinburgh Napier universities in my constituency of Edinburgh South West are highly sought after destinations for international PhD students. Both carry out vital scientific research, with strong links to commercial and industrial needs—not just in Scotland, but across the United Kingdom and, indeed, across Europe and the world—but the Government’s visa rules are making those universities far less attractive destinations for international students. Is the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman), the former science Minister, not right when he says that the UK
“will never be a science superpower behind a visa paywall”?
Robert Halfon
I know that the hon. and learned Lady is a stickler for data. Our target was for over 600,000 international students every year, and we are well over that target. As I say, our visa changes strike the right balance, being fair to the taxpayer while ensuring that we have good international students coming to our country.
Chris Stephens
The minimum salary requirement for a skilled worker visa is set to increase by 48%, from £26,200 to £38,700, jeopardising the prospects of early-career researchers and academics coming to the UK. Can the Minister answer the question from my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) that he did not answer: how will the UK be a science superpower behind that visa paywall?
Robert Halfon
I think I have set that out. We have 36% of university researchers coming from outside the UK, and over 46,000 postgraduate students from overseas—41% of the total. What I would say to the hon. Gentleman is that the real cost of the SNP’s tuition fee policy is that Scottish universities are unable to provide places for local students, who are 13% less likely to take a place at a university in Scotland than English students are to take a place in England.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Will the Minister be investigating the discovery, exposed by The Sunday Times yesterday, of Russell Group universities taking students with much lower academic qualifications for undergraduate degrees, and when he does so, will he check that the same is not happening in the postgraduate field, given the much higher fees that can be charged for overseas students?
Robert Halfon
I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. He will know that, while I am a strong supporter of international students, I am absolutely clear that I want a level playing field for all domestic students as well. I met vice-chancellors only yesterday afternoon, as soon I had seen the report in The Sunday Times, and I have asked the Department for Education to carry out an urgent investigation into bad practice by agents where it occurs, as I was very disturbed by what I saw. We want absolute fairness of entry for domestic students as much as for international students.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
I listened to the Minister’s response to the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), but in December I was also assured by the Minister that he was committed to the target of 600,000 international students. However, recent research from IDP has found 45% of its August and September applicants to study in the UK would consider changing their study destination if post-study work visa lengths are shortened. What is his assessment of the impact that any changes to the postgraduate work visa could have on the international education strategy and the sustainability of the sector?
Robert Halfon
The hon. Gentleman, the Opposition spokesman, knows that visa matters are for the Home Office. The Migration Advisory Committee is looking at the postgraduate international student visa route and will come to its conclusions. However, as I keep saying to him, our target was for over 600,000 international students a year, and we have well surpassed that.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)
Of course I agree that, on entry requirements, we should ensure that we are comparing like for like and being fair to our brilliant domestic students. I was appalled to see the reporting over the weekend, which clearly showed bad practice in the use of agents. That is not acceptable. As I have said, I met Universities UK and the vice-chancellors yesterday and we are going to sort this out. There is an investigation by the Department for Education.
Bridget Phillipson
“It’s not our fault” always seems to be this Government’s catchphrase, and now it applies to childcare too: it is not the Secretary of State’s fault but that of local authorities; it is not her responsibility to deliver on her Government’s own pledge. Even her own civil servants are saying that some parents just will not get their places. Does she agree with the Children’s Minister that no parents will lose out? Will she give that guarantee to the House today—yes or no?
Lia Nici (Great Grimsby) (Con)
Robert Halfon
I would be delighted to come to Grimsby. I congratulate my hon. Friend on becoming the apprenticeship diversity champion. She is a skills champion, and what she is doing on careers and mentoring in Grimsby is a model example of what should be done across the country.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
Robert Halfon
I have enormous respect for the hon. Gentleman, and I listen carefully to what he says. We are working to smooth out any issues with the Turing scheme. However, it is worth noting that we have increased the proportion of disadvantaged students taking part in it from 50% to 60%. I am proud that we are embedding social justice in the scheme.
Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con)
Will students affected by RAAC, such as those at Thornleigh Salesian College in Bolton, receive special dispensation in their GCSEs and A-levels? I recently met the college’s exceptional headteacher, Mrs O’Callaghan, and I take this opportunity to wish her all the best on her well deserved retirement at the end of the year.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
The changes in the visa rules for international students and their dependants are having a significant impact, not only on the number of students coming to universities such as the University of York, a Russell Group university, but on these universities’ finances. Universities will have to make significant cuts if this visa programme reaches fruition. Will the Minister meet vice-chancellors and the Home Office, together, to talk about the impact this is having?
Robert Halfon
We have regular conversations with vice-chancellors and the Home Office on this issue. However, as I say, our target has been more than 600,000 students and we have well surpassed that, and 36% of university researchers come from outside the UK. We have a proud record on international students and that will continue.
Simon Jupp (East Devon) (Con)
St Peter’s Church of England Primary School in Budleigh Salterton is an excellent school, but it is being let down by temporary classrooms that are way past their best. Temporary classrooms should be just that: temporary, not a permanent solution. Further to my letter, which is winding its way through the Department, will my right hon. Friend meet me to discuss this matter further?
Higher Education Student Support
Robert Halfon Excerpts(9 months, 1 week ago)
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The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)
I am announcing details of student fees and support arrangements for higher education students undertaking a course of study in the 2024-25 academic year starting on 1 August 2024, together with further help to address cost of living pressures in 2023-24. Also, I am confirming that eligibility for student finance is being extended to children granted indefinite leave to remain where their parent has been granted ILR as a victim of domestic abuse or as a bereaved partner.
The Government recognise the additional cost of living pressures that have arisen this year and that are impacting students. We have already made £276 million of student premium and mental health funding available for the 2023-24 academic year to support successful outcomes for students, including disadvantaged students.
We are now making a further £10 million of one-off support available to support student mental health and hardship funding. This funding will complement the help that universities are providing through their own bursary, scholarship and hardship support schemes.
In addition, we are investing hundreds of millions of pounds of additional funding over the three-year period from 2022-23 to 2024-25 to support high-quality teaching and facilities, including in science and engineering, subjects that support the NHS, and degree apprenticeships. This includes the largest increase in Government funding for the HE sector to support students and teaching in more than a decade.
I can confirm today that maximum tuition fees for undergraduate students for the 2024-25 academic year in England will be maintained at the levels that apply in the 2023-24 academic year. This is the seventh year in succession that fees have been frozen. This means that the maximum level of tuition fees for a standard full-time course will remain at £9,250 for the 2024-25 academic year, to deliver better value for students and to keep the cost of higher education down.
Thanks to the progress we have made on the Prime Minister’s five priorities, inflation has more than halved. Maximum undergraduate loans for living costs will be increased by forecast inflation, 2.5%, in 2024-25. The same increase will apply to the maximum disabled students’ allowance for students with disabilities undertaking full-time and part-time undergraduate courses in 2024-25. Maximum grants for students with child or adult dependants who are attending full-time undergraduate courses will also increase by 2.5% in 2024-25.
We are also increasing support for students undertaking postgraduate courses in 2024-25. Maximum loans for students starting master’s degree and doctoral degree courses from 1 August 2024 onwards will be increased by 2.5% in 2024-25. The same increase will apply to the maximum disabled students’ allowance for postgraduate students with disabilities in 2024-25.
The 2.5% increase follows standard procedure to base annual increases in support on forecasted inflation. We have continued to increase maximum loans and grants for living costs each year, with the most support for students from the lowest income families. Decisions on student finance have had to be taken to ensure that the system remains financially sustainable and the costs of higher education are shared fairly between students and taxpayers, not all of whom have benefited from going to university.
I am also announcing today a number of other changes to eligibility rules for student support and home fee status that will benefit certain vulnerable groups of students.
Students who have been granted indefinite leave to enter as a victim of domestic abuse, and their children who are granted ILE, will also qualify for student support and home fee status.
I am also confirming today that home fee status and tuition fee support is being extended to British citizens born in the Chagos islands, and their direct descendants who are also British citizens.
In addition, students who gain settled status part way through their course will qualify for student support and home fee status for the remainder of their course.
Looking forward to the 2025-26 academic year, the new lifelong learning entitlement will create a single funding system to help students to pay for college or university courses, and train, retrain and upskill flexibly over their working lives. In tandem, the Government will continue to recognise the importance of loans for living costs and targeted grants to support access and participation in higher education.
That is why, under the LLE, the Government will extend the scope of loans for living costs, and grants for students with adult and child dependants, making this support available for all designated full-time and part-time courses and modules that require in-person attendance. This will ensure that people will be able to develop new skills and gain new qualifications at a time that is right for them.
Further details of the student support package for 2024-25 are set out in the document available as an online attachment: https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2024-01-25/HCWS209
I am today laying regulations implementing changes to student finance support for undergraduates and post- graduates for 2024-25. These regulations will be subject to parliamentary procedure.
[HCWS209]
School Attendance
Robert Halfon Excerpts(9 months, 2 weeks ago)
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The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Twigg. Thank you for your kindness earlier. I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) for leaving slightly early to get to the vote, as I missed a little of his otherwise excellent speech.
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), my constituency neighbour in Essex—we have got Essex man and Essex woman here today—on securing this debate. She has championed this subject and is absolutely right to do so, because we know that regular school attendance is vital for children’s attainment, mental wellbeing and long-term development, and it is crucial that we have a support system in place to ensure that every child attends school every day, ready to learn and thrive.
My hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds talked about the damage of school closures. Wearing my previous hat as Chair of the Education Committee, I spent a huge amount of my time campaigning against school closures, as I thought that everything we are talking about today, both here and in the main Chamber, would come to pass. I have to say that I was opposed significantly by not everyone, but a lot of Members on the Opposition Benches, and of course some—not all, to be fair—of the unions. I thought, at the time, that it would cause significant damage.
The attendance challenge has grown since the start of the pandemic, not only in England but around the world. There is evidence that, post pandemic, some attitudes to absence have changed. There is a greater propensity to keep a child at home with a minor illness such as a cough or a cold, and we can understand why that has happened. We must at least try and recalibrate back to where we were pre-covid, when an attendance of 95% was achieved year after year.
Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)
I fully support the idea behind the Bill introduced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), and indeed the complementary Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond). Will the Minister find the time to meet me to discuss specifically home schooling and how it relates to absenteeism on the Isle of Wight, where we have over three times the national average of home-schooled kids? While I absolutely respect the rights of responsible parents, I worry that especially after covid, some of those home-schooled kids are simply absentee kids from school who are not learning, and who are drifting into isolation, mental health problems or criminality.
Robert Halfon
As always, my hon. Friend makes powerful points. I think he speaks not just for some—and I stress some—younger people in his constituency, but also for those across the country. I am not the Schools Minister or the Children’s Minister—I am standing in because of the debate in the main Chamber—but I will mention what my hon. Friend has requested, and I will ask for a meeting with the Schools Minister or the Children’s Minister to discuss the important issues that he has raised.
Contrary to what has been suggested by the shadow Minister, we have started to see some progress, although there is a long way to go. There were 380,000 fewer pupils persistently absent or not attending school in 2022-23 than in 2021-22. Overall absence for the autumn term that has just finished was 6.8%, down from 7.5% in Autumn 2022. That means that, on average, pupils in England are attending school for the equivalent of around a day and a half more across an academic year then they did last year.
It is difficult to make direct comparisons, but we know that absenteeism is a problem not just in the UK, but in other parts of the world too. However, there are signs that our approach is bearing fruit. I mentioned that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford is my constituency neighbour. Absence rates for Essex are very much in line with those of England as a whole, and they mirror the improvements seen nationally in the most recent terms.
We are committed to working with schools and local authorities to drive up attendance rates, and we have a six-point plan to deal with some of the problems. We have set out stronger expectations of the system, including requiring schools to have an attendance policy, appointing attendance champions and expecting local authorities to hold termly meetings with schools to agree individual plans for at-risk children.
We have established an alliance of national leaders from education, children’s social care and allied services to work together to raise school attendance and reduce persistent absence, and the Attendance Action Alliance has pledged to take a range of actions to remove barriers preventing children attending school. The attendance data tool allows early intervention to avoid absences becoming entrenched, and 88% of schools are already taking part in the daily data pilot. We are committed to requiring all schools to share their daily registers as part of the programme.
We have expanded our attendance hubs, which will see almost 2,000 schools supported to tackle persistent absence—reaching around 1 million pupils. We have also launched a campaign to re-emphasise the importance of every school day, not just for learning, but for wellbeing, experiences and friendships too. From September, our attendance mentor pilot will be extended to 10 new areas. Trained mentors will work with more than 10,000 persistently and severely absent children and their families to help them back to school.
Both the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) and the shadow Minister rightly talked about mental health and special educational needs. We are now spending £10.5 billion on special educational needs—that is a 60% increase since 2019. The Children’s Minister has a lot of work under way on this, including a plan for special educational needs which will standardise education, health and social care plans, so that we end the postcode lottery that my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds mentioned.
The hon. Member for City of Durham also asked several questions. As I understand it—I will ask the School Buildings Minister to discuss the issue that she raised—the Department for Education has contacted the Durham research team, offering to discuss the report and clarify areas of mission. We have worked closely with St Leonard’s to provide additional spaces for learning and to put extra education provisions in place. All pupils at St Leonard’s have been in face-to-face education since October and additional educational support is available for those pupils due to sit exams next year, with specialist facilities being sourced at other providers in the local area and transport being provided for pupils. Nevertheless, as I have already said, I will ask the School Buildings Minister to talk to her.
Mary Kelly Foy
We have had a number of meetings with Ministers. I had a meeting booked in last week with the Minister for Schools, the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), which he cancelled, and it was also cancelled today, so hopefully it will go ahead tomorrow. However, one of the big priorities for the school is that mitigation will be put in place for the education that has been lost. It is now 18 weeks that there have been issues and those pupils doing their exams have not yet had specialist equipment for any of their coursework, so I implore the Minister to impress that upon the Minister for Schools.
Robert Halfon
I will ensure that the Schools Minister, or the School Buildings Minister, hear what the hon. Lady says; I will pass on her remarks. And I am sure that that meeting will take place.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
Will my right hon. Friend the Minister give way?
Robert Halfon
I want to carry on, if I may, because I only have a few minutes in which to speak and I want to respond to some of the points that have already been made. However, if I do have time to take an intervention, I will give way a bit later, if my hon. Friend will be so kind.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford referred to the School Attendance (Duties of Local Authorities and Proprietors of Schools) Bill, which she herself presented before Christmas. As she has said, that Bill will introduce two new legal duties on schools and local authorities respectively. I am grateful for her work on the Bill and welcome her contribution to the debate. I and the Government look forward to the future stages of the Bill as it progresses through the House, which she will know about, because she will have had discussions with the relevant Ministers. Those stages include Second Reading next Friday.
We absolutely remain committed to making guidance on school attendance statutory, which has already been discussed this afternoon by my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds and my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford. We are exploring all avenues to do that. That is in recognition of the attendance challenge and to help ensure that local authorities and schools consistently meet the expectations made of them, under our “support first” approach.
There was also some discussion of mental health. All Members here today will be pleased to know that mental health support teams now cover almost 44% of pupils in schools and further education, and that percentage will increase to around 50% by March next year. We have also committed to offer all state schools and colleges a grant to train a senior mental health lead by 2025, which will make a huge difference. Over 14,400 schools and colleges have received a senior mental health lead training grant so far, including more than seven in 10 state-funded secondary schools in England.
As a Government, we also remain committed to introducing the statutory local authority registers for children not in school, as well as a duty for local authorities to provide support to home-educating families, which my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) mentioned in his intervention. That is to help ensure that all children receive a suitable education and are safe, regardless of where they are educated. That is the crucial point.
We warmly welcome the Children Not In School (Register) Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) and await its Second Reading on 15 March. I am also grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford for the dedication that she has shown. We will continue to work with local authorities to improve their existing non-statutory registers, and support them to ensure that all children in their area receive a suitable education. Also, the Department recently held a consultation on revised elective home education guidance for local authorities and parents, with the aim of improving consistency of practice across all local authorities. That consultation closed on 18 January and we are currently analysing the responses to it.
My hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds also mentioned attendance mentoring and I welcome his support for what the Government are doing. We are currently delivering support in Middlesbrough, Doncaster, Knowsley, Stoke and Salford, and will expand into 10 new areas later this year to reach 10,000 children who are severely absent. Having heard me say that, I hope he will see that a lot is going on to try to resolve this very difficult problem.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; I think he has time. Will he address the problem that I mentioned at the end of my speech, which was about the liaison between local education authorities and the Department of Health and Social Care, and mental health trusts in particular? In Gloucestershire, the waiting lists for children with mental health problems are extremely long. We really need to do better by our young people.
Derek Twigg (in the Chair)
I am sure the Minister is aware that he should leave a minute or two for the right hon. Member for Chelmsford to wind up.
Robert Halfon
Yes. I will finish in a couple of minutes. The “health” part of an education, health and care plan is fundamental. I absolutely agree that co-operation work needs to go on, and a lot of work is going on to ensure that the H part of an EHC plan does exactly as he describes.
The legacy of the pandemic means that absence levels are still too high. Improvements have been made, but there is a lot of work to do. Too many children are missing out on the opportunities that regular school attendance provides, but I reassure pupils, parents, teachers, local authorities, and health and other partners that we remain committed to working with them to tackle the issues through our “support first” approach, building on the strengths of the current system and the success that we achieved together prior to the pandemic.
Being in school has never been more valuable, with standards continuing to rise. I thank our brilliant teachers, heads and everyone who has worked with us—in Essex, in Chelmsford, in my own constituency of Harlow, in the Cotswolds, in Durham, in the Isle of Wight and in the other constituencies across the country—because the teachers and support staff are the people responsible who are doing so much to make sure that we make progress on this very difficult issue.
Education
Robert Halfon Excerpts(10 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Robert Halfon
Not content with being in the anti-apprenticeship party, given her plans to weaken the apprenticeship levy and halve the number of apprenticeships, the hon. Lady is also taking on the mantle of T-level denier. We have 18 T-levels; we have, as I mentioned, a 90.5% pass rate; we have 10,000 students doing our T-level programme; and we expect the data that we will release early next year to show that many thousands more students are doing the T-level programme.
[Official Report, 11 December 2023, Vol. 742, c. 597.]
Letter of correction from the Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education, the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon):
An error has been identified in the answer I gave to the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra). The correct answer should have been:
Robert Halfon
Not content with being in the anti-apprenticeship party, given her plans to weaken the apprenticeship levy and halve the number of apprenticeships, the hon. Lady is also taking on the mantle of T-level denier. We have 18 T-levels; we have, as I mentioned, a 90.5% pass rate; we have 10,000 students doing our T-level programme in the 2022 cohort; and we expect the data that we will release early next year to show that many thousands more students are doing the T-level programme.
After-school Childcare: Long-term Educational Outcomes
The following is an extract from Education questions on 11 December 2023.
David Johnston
In October, the Government announced the allocation of £289 million of start-up funding to local authorities for wraparound care, which we know supports parents to work, as well as having the potential to improve attainment, engagement and attendance.
[Official Report, 11 December 2023, Vol. 742, c. 597.]
Letter of correction from the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Wantage (David Johnston):
An error has been identified in the answer I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn). The correct answer should have been:
David Johnston
We are investing £2.6 billion in capital funding to transform the special educational needs and alternative provision system, and there is a 36% increase in revenue funding to Birmingham, where the timeliness of EHCPs has been getting better each year between 2020 and 2022.
Higher Education Institutions: International Students
The following are extracts from Education questions on 11 December 2023.
Robert Halfon
As I said to the hon. Lady, we have something like 689,000 international students and our target is 600,000 a year.
[Official Report, 11 December 2023, Vol. 742, c. 605.]
Letter of correction from the Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education, the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon):
An error has been identified in my answer to the hon. Member for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith). The correct answer should have been:
Robert Halfon
As I said to the hon. Lady, we have almost 680,000 international students and our target is 600,000 a year.
Robert Halfon
I am absolutely committed to the target of 600,000. As I said in response to the previous question, we have surpassed that, with well over 680,000 students.
[Official Report, 11 December 2023, Vol. 742, c. 606.]
Letter of correction from the Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education, the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon):
An error has been identified in my answer to the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western). The correct answer should have been:
Robert Halfon
I am absolutely committed to the target of 600,000. As I said in response to the previous question, we have surpassed that, with almost 680,000 students.
Oral Answers to Questions
Robert Halfon Excerpts(10 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)
I am very proud that more than 4,000 students now have T-levels on their CV. In the summer, 3,190 students completed their T-levels with a pass or above, meaning that we had a pass rate of 90.5% before factoring in remarking and retakes. We will publish a T-level action plan with more information early next year.
Janet Daby
In my constituency, Christ the King Emmanuel sixth form college does fantastically well in educating young people, but an Education Committee report stated that in the first year of the T-Level transition programme, just 14% of students went on to start the T-level. The Government have yet to publish the data for subsequent years. Can the Minister outline when the new data will be published and whether that progression rate has improved?
Robert Halfon
I am very glad that Christ the King Emmanuel sixth form college is offering T-levels, and that the hon. Lady has had 8,300 apprenticeship starts in her constituency since 2010. Our T-level transition year is a new thing that we have introduced—it is now called the foundation year—and very close to 50% of students go on to do a level 3. However, I said in my opening answer to her, we will have more information about these matters in the next year.
Bill Esterson
Welcome back, Mr Speaker.
According to Make UK, 36% of manufacturing vacancies are hard to fill because of a lack of skills. There are 170,000 fewer apprenticeship starts than in 2017. The Prime Minister cast doubt on the future of T-levels in his conference speech, when he said that he thought they should be scrapped. Just what is the Government’s plan, or will they leave it to my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) to address the chronic shortage of technical skills over which they have presided?
Robert Halfon
I would have thought that the hon. Gentleman would celebrate the 9,000-plus apprenticeship starts in his constituency since 2010. We have built our skills revolution in everything from apprenticeships and our T-level programme to our higher technical qualifications, free boot camps and free level 3 courses, and that is driving the increased skills uptake. It is worth noting that we have had 337,000 apprenticeship starts over the past year. He should welcome that.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
Shockingly, results last summer revealed that one in three students dropped out of their T-level course, which is higher than for earlier cohorts. Something is going very wrong. In April, the Education Committee raised major concerns about T-level roll-outs, regional variations and falling employer engagement. Access to opportunity really matters, so should the Minister not now pause and review the defunding of alternative qualifications, as Labour would, and urgently bring forward the 2023-24 T-level action plan in order to address concerns raised by the Select Committee and Ofsted and bring much-needed clarity and support for colleges, employers, parents and students?
Robert Halfon
Not content with being in the anti-apprenticeship party, given her plans to weaken the apprenticeship levy and halve the number of apprenticeships, the hon. Lady is also taking on the mantle of T-level denier. We have 18 T-levels; we have, as I mentioned, a 90.5% pass rate; we have 10,000 students doing our T-level programme; and we expect the data that we will release early next year to show that many thousands more students are doing the T-level programme. I am very proud of our T-level programme. I know that the hon. Lady will be eating mince pies at Christmas, but I suggest that early next year she may be eating humble pie, because our T-level programme is something to be proud of.
Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)
We are transforming skills through our local skills improvement plans, backed by £165 million and supported by business, further education and higher education, and though a £300 million investment in institutes of technology, which are collaborations between business, higher education and further education to revolutionise our tertiary education offering.
Jack Brereton
I thank my right hon. Friend for that response. Stoke-on-Trent College has recently launched its new “Skills Ready, Future Ready” strategy and has been working with a number of employers locally to fill skills shortages, and it is very welcome to see the local skills improvement fund investment of around £3 million for Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire, but given our industries locally and the skills shortages, we need to go further, so what will my right hon. Friend be doing to help fill some of those skills shortages—to support our industries to help people earn better wages and get skilled now?
Robert Halfon
My hon. Friend is a true champion of skills in Stoke-on-Trent and, as he mentioned, we strongly support the £3.2 million we are investing through the local skills improvement fund. That is underpinned by £3.8 billion of additional national investment and my hon. Friend will be pleased to know we will be opening the Stoke-on-Trent Staffordshire institute of technology in September 2024, with £13 million of capital funding as part of our revolution in tertiary education.
Greg Smith
My constituency is at the beating heart of motorsport valley and it is critical for motorsport’s future success that we get skills training and education right for young people who want to go into that sector. The Grand Prix Trust is supporting that effort, having launched a £100,000 annual bursary scheme to help disadvantaged college students become part of the dynamic British motorsport sector, a partnership with the National College for Motorsport and Silverstone University Technical College. Will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming this fantastic initiative, and tell me what more he can do to help promote this important work?
Robert Halfon
My hon. Friend highlights the skills revolution we are having in this country, and the initiatives he has mentioned increase the collaboration between business and skills providers to help disadvantaged students in his constituency to climb the ladder of opportunity in a high-profile industry. I extend my thanks to Pat Symonds, chief technical officer of Formula 1, and Martin Brundle, chairman of the GPT trustees. My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that the South Central Institute of Technology based in Milton Keynes is also exploring opportunities to work with motorsport in the area.
Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
Plymouth is home to world-class skills in marine and nuclear engineering. Demand for apprentices in our city is growing, especially with the construction of new berths and docks for nuclear submarines at Devonport dockyard. Does the Minister agree that skills training and apprenticeships are just as important as new cranes and new docks in making these projects a success and supporting our armed forces, and will he meet me, a delegation of Plymouth businesses, our city council and City College Plymouth to look at how we can turbocharge creating more apprenticeships in our city to deliver these exciting and innovative projects?
Robert Halfon
The hon. Gentleman will be pleased that his constituency has received over 14,910 apprenticeship starts since 2010, which is really good news, but he is absolutely right that our skills offering is the key for future employment and jobs and to ensure people climb the ladder of opportunity. We have the apprenticeships, the bootcamps, the higher technical qualification and the free level 3 courses, but I will look at what he says and would be happy to meet him and other Plymouth MPs to work through the important issues he mentions.
Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)
Tertiary education providers are themselves businesses that seek to meet local skills needs, and the University of Exeter is no different. It hosts international students who contribute £486 million to Devon’s economy. People in Devon do not think of these students as immigrants, given how this funding helps boost skills among local people, so will the Minister talk to his counterparts in the Home Office about taking students out of the net migration figures?
Robert Halfon
As a former Exeter University student myself, I know how brilliant it is, and it also has a huge and incredibly successful programme of degree apprenticeships. I am very supportive of international students; they bring a lot of income to our country. Visa matters are always matters for the Home Office but I am sure there will be discussions about the issues raised by the hon. Gentleman.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)
I am pleased that we have surpassed our target, with well over 600,000 international students. They remain an important source of income and a source of pride for our universities, and the total impact of international students was worth £37 billion across the duration of their studies.
Dame Nia Griffith
As the Minister has just mentioned, the economic benefit of overseas students is some £37.4 billion spread between universities and economies across the UK, but applications in this UCAS admissions round are down. With increasingly stiff competition from elsewhere, UK institutions cannot simply rely on their excellent reputations, so what more can the Minister do to ensure that the UK remains an attractive place for international students to study?
Robert Halfon
As I said to the hon. Lady, we have something like 689,000 international students and our target is 600,000 a year. We are working very closely with Sir Steve Smith. We want to diversify to a whole range of different countries to advertise ourselves to international students but, as I say, the trends are good. The hundreds of thousands of international students who are here benefit our economy and provide an important source of income for universities.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
It is great to see you, Mr Speaker.
As well as contributing to Britain’s world-leading research, the financial contribution of international students is vital to UK universities, particularly at a time of rising cost pressures and real-terms fee value erosion. Any sudden changes in the number of international students coming to the UK obviously puts the higher education sector at risk. The Minister speaks of his pride, but I would like to stress the point and ensure that he puts this on record. Can he absolutely give his assurance to the House that the Government remain robust in their ambition to continue to attract 600,000 international students a year, as laid out in the international education strategy?
Robert Halfon
I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s question. I am absolutely committed to the target of 600,000. As I said in response to the previous question, we have surpassed that, with well over 680,000 students. As I say, they are of benefit to our universities and our economy, and they are a very important source of income for all our higher education institutions.
Michael Shanks (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab)
The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)
My hon. Friend is a champion for UTCs and technical education. I am delighted that the Secretary of State recently approved two more UTCs. A couple of weeks ago I visited the brilliant Harlow BMAT STEM Academy, which is a UTC, and UTC Portsmouth. We will respond shortly to Lord Baker’s request for a UTC sleeve pilot, as she mentioned.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab)
Corpus Christi junior school on Brixton Hill has been closed since July due to RAAC. We now have tenders approved for the significant works that the Department for Education said were necessary and that it would pay for, but they must begin in January to ensure that they are completed in time. Could the Secretary of State explain why, despite repeated requests, her Department has still not approved the necessary funding? Any further delay could mean that my young constituents are left with further disruption and no building to learn in for the next academic year.
Apprenticeship Levy
Robert Halfon Excerpts(11 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
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This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)
It is an honour to serve under you in the Chair today, Dr Huq. I congratulate my hon. Friend from Woke-on-Trent North; I beg your pardon, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis)—slip of the tongue. He is a passionate advocate of apprenticeships and skills, and he made a very thoughtful speech, as did all my colleagues and everyone here today. I will try to respond to some of the points that hon. Members have raised, but where I do not I will write to them.
I have made it my political life’s mission to champion apprenticeships and skills. My hon. Friend said he employed apprentices, which is a wonderful thing. I was the first MP to employ apprentices in Parliament. I have had many, and one of them has gone on to be the leader of my local council—I think the youngest ever leader in history. That shows the power of apprenticeships.
Let me focus on a few of the things that my hon. Friend said. It is worth noting the increase in starts between 2021 and 2022. In 2022, there were 349,000 starts, which is 8.6% higher than in 2021. I am not saying that we do not have challenges when it comes to the number of starts—Members have spoken about starts—but we have to focus on quality, not just quantity. That has been a problem in the past, especially if I may say so with the party of the shadow spokesman, hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), although I greatly respect her. Her party had an obsession with 50% of people going to university. That was about quantity rather than quality, and we are trying to give people a choice between university and apprenticeships.
It is also worth knowing that 70% of apprenticeships are at levels 2 and 3, and more than 50% are done by young people. Both my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey)—who was a brilliant Secretary of State, who did a lot to protect the environment and who I massively respect—and my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North talked about modular apprenticeships. I am firm in the belief that we want quality apprenticeships. We want to move away from the pre-2010 past, when many apprenticeships were not seen as high quality. That is why we moved from frameworks to standards. I believe that apprenticeships should be for a minimum of a year, but of course many are over a year—two to three years. They have to be about quality. They are designed by employers. We now have over 680 apprenticeship standards, which are designed by employers with the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education. However, there are career starter apprenticeships and short skills courses—bootcamps. My right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal spoke about HGVs, and there are HGV bootcamps. Our multimillion-pound package on bootcamps has been a great success. They are 16 weeks, so people can do them and go on to an apprenticeship or get a job. Many people on bootcamps get good outcomes. They have been a huge success and are an example of the Government investing in skills.
I want to make a point about the levy budget. We have spent 98% of the apprenticeship budget given to us by the Treasury and we give hundreds of millions under the Barnett consequential formula. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—I am going to call him my hon. Friend because he is a very kind friend—rightly mentioned Barnett consequentials, as did the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden). We give hundreds of millions from the levy, but I recognise the points made about the devolved authorities. They decide their apprenticeship policies, but I am happy to work with officials to ensure that we work with Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales to support them in every possible way to make those policies a success.
My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) —the great FE champion in the House of Commons—asked about the minimum wage. This is really good news, and he is absolutely right. Last year, we increased it by 9%. I am pleased about today’s announcement that we will increase the apprenticeship minimum wage not by 9%, 10%, 11% or 15%, but by 21%, which will benefit an estimated 40,000 apprentices.
My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney talked about levels 4 and 5, as did my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal. It is worth remembering that we have introduced 106 higher technical qualifications at levels 4 and 5 with 140 providers. We are spending £300 million on 21 institutes of technology all over the country. We have a national strategy on apprenticeships and skills. We have the Unit for Future Skills for data. We have the local skills improvement plan, which identifies skills needs in local areas. Only a week or so ago, we announced £165 million to benefit 38 areas in the country. There were over 66,000 starts at levels 4 and 5, which is about 20% of total starts, and 151 standards approved for delivery at levels 4 and 5.
I am excited that we have introduced not only nursing apprenticeships but doctor apprenticeships. The workforce plan puts apprenticeships and skills at the heart of the NHS workforce strategy, with 22% of all training for clinical staff to be delivered through apprenticeship routes by 2031, up from 7% today. We expect that 20% of registered nurses will qualify through the apprenticeship routes by 2028-29 compared with 9% now.
I have been to see policing degree apprenticeships in Manchester and they are second to none, but I will look into what my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal said. I visited Staffordshire University, where many constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North go. It does a brilliant degree apprenticeship policing programme. I know that the quality is second to none, but I will look into the question raised by my right hon. Friend and write to her.
The shadow spokesperson, the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston, was incredibly kind to mention the extra £50 million that we announced today for a two-year pilot to boost high-value apprenticeships in priority growth sectors. The Chancellor mentioned engineering today, but we will set out further details. It is worth noting that we will spend more than £2.7 billion on apprenticeships by 2025. That is a huge whack of money, especially in the current difficult economic climate.
The other point I will make is very important. My right hon. and hon. Friends and Opposition Members talked about businesses not using their levy. When that happens, the levy is used to fund 95% of the training costs for small businesses, which is what my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North wants. We fund 95% of the training costs, and if a business has less than 50 employees and employs somebody aged 16 to 18, we fund all the training costs. That is where the money goes. When big business does not use its levy, we use it to fund training costs.
Given some of the things that have been raised today, it is also worth noting that we give £1,000 to every provider. We give £1,000 to every business that employs an apprentice to help them along the way, and we are trying to slash regulation. I have a phrase that I use in the Department: I call it Operation Machete. I do not like regulation, and there is too much of it. We are doing a huge amount of work in this area. We have significantly reduced regulation for small businesses when they start to employ apprentices. We have also removed the cap on the number of apprentices they can employ. There used to be a cap, which we have changed. I am absolutely determined to do everything we can, but it is important to remember that when big business does not use the levy, the money is used to fund smaller businesses’ training costs.
David Linden
I do not necessarily expect the Minister to answer this, but perhaps he could undertake to write to me. Those of us on the Work and Pension Committee are interested in things such as auto-enrolment. I ask the Minister to go away and have a look at why auto-enrolment does not kick in at age 16, when a lot of people are doing apprenticeships. That might be one of the areas where we could look at retention and how we help young people. It is not the Minister’s brief, but I would appreciate it if he could write to me about that.
Robert Halfon
I would be very happy to write to the hon. Gentleman, and I respect the thoughtful way he set out his remarks today.
The hon. Member for Feltham and Heston quoted organisations that do not like the levy. I have a whole list of businesses that do like the levy and use it brilliantly. Virgin Atlantic has used the levy extensively.
Seema Malhotra
It was a call for flexibility. It is not the case that they do not like the levy.
Robert Halfon
That is a fair point. I just want to point out that many businesses not only support the levy and have used it effectively, but recognise the flexibilities that we have introduced. For example, Virgin has created an apprenticeship programme that attracted 500 engineering apprenticeships alone. I think the apprenticeship levy is like the Ronseal advert, which is one of my favourites: it does what it says on the tin. As I said, 98% of the apprenticeship budget was spent in the last two years. It is clear that employers understand this message well.
I know the value of apprenticeships to young people and under-25s. As I say, they continue to make up over 50% of starts, and just under 70% of starts are at levels 2 and 3. It is important to mention that we are spending billions of pounds not just on the apprenticeship offering and the 680 apprenticeship standards, but on skills bootcamps, T-levels and higher technical qualifications—all Government investment in skills.
The hon. Member for Feltham and Heston spoke about careers. We have introduced the Baker clause to ensure that schools encourage students to do apprenticeships. The awareness of apprenticeships in schools has now rocketed up, although there is lots more work to do. We have the apprenticeship support and knowledge, or ASK, network, reaching 2,300 schools and something like 625,000 pupils, ensuring that they know about apprenticeships. I visited the Oasis Academy to see that. We have also worked with UCAS to introduce the UCAS apprenticeship scheme, which will bring a dramatic transformation in the take-up of apprenticeships, because people will be able to access them when they decide to go to university.
Hon. Members have also spoken about apprenticeship achievement volumes, which are substantially higher than they were the previous year—in 2022-23, they are up by 20%—so we are doing a lot to drive up the achievement rate, which I know my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal cares about. We also have £7.5 million of investment in professional development to support the workforce.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North talked about English and maths skills. He rightly challenged me, and if he does not mind I would like to challenge him back. I absolutely believe that people need basic English and maths if they are to do an apprenticeship. He wants that to happen in schools, and with the advanced British standard people will be learning English and maths till the age of 18, so we should have the same for apprenticeships. We should not say that one group of people does not have to do English and maths because it is too much of a burden, but that it should happen in schools, which my hon. Friend cares about. He will be pleased to know that we are increasing the English and maths funding rate for apprentices by 54% to match the adult education budget. That will kick in from January 2024.
I have talked about removing the regulation on small businesses. We have an expert provider pilot to allow the best providers to offer more support to SMEs. We have a transformation in degree apprenticeships. We created degree apprenticeships—those are my two favourite words in the English language. There have been 200,000 starts at levels 6 and 7 since 2014, and starts are almost 9% higher than last year. We are investing an additional £40 million to support more people to access degree apprenticeships.
The hon. Member for Feltham and Heston spoke about social justice, which is why I am such a passionate supporter of apprenticeships—it is what motivates me. We increased the apprenticeship care leavers bursary to £3,000 this August and, as I said, we give £1,000 to employers and providers who take up apprenticeships; that is very welcome.
I really hope the hon. Lady moves away from the policy that the Labour party announced on skills. As I said, you had a target of 50% of people going to university because Labour believed it to be the only route to success. That led to the growth of poor-quality university courses, although of course most of our universities provide excellent courses. That was all about quantity over quality. The DFE analysis has found that your apprenticeship policy would slash the number of apprenticeship starts.
Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)
Order. I am sure the Minister did this inadvertently, but we are always told to be very tough on people who keep saying “you”, as that is technically me. So just de-you it.
Robert Halfon
I beg your pardon, Dr Huq. I was talking about the Labour party, but I understand. I will follow your ruling.
Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)
Just call them the Labour party and depersonalise it.
Robert Halfon
DFE analysis has shown that the policy the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston is suggesting would reduce the number of apprenticeship starts by 140,000 per year, cutting them in half. The reality is that the moment the apprenticeship levy is diluted, there will be gaming of the system and much less spending on apprenticeships. The policy would undermine the apprenticeship starts that the hon. Lady says she is so keen to increase.
Seema Malhotra
I return to the quote I shared from the CEO of the Learning and Work Institute, who said that the Government’s analysis of our policy was pretty simplistic and that we need a bit more of a nuanced analysis. There is a long way to go before that analysis challenges our policy and the outcome it would achieve. We should remember that it is up to 50%. For those who spend their full apprenticeship levy, it does not say that they have to spend it any other way.
Robert Halfon
The reality is that if the levy is diluted and people are allowed to spend it on skills, there will be thousands and thousands fewer apprentices. As I say, I want the apprenticeship levy to do what it says on the tin: it should be a levy that supports the take-up of apprenticeships. I want to build an apprenticeship nation.
Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)
Order. Before we get into too much of a ding-dong, the Clerk is reminding me that the normal time has been exceeded. I know we are not up to the hour, but the Minister would usually be doing his conclusion by now.
Robert Halfon
The good news is that I will conclude.
I mentioned the advanced British standard, which will provide young people with knowledge and skills. That includes £600 million in investment over the next two years, much of which will go to support colleges.
In conclusion, these are exciting times for apprenticeships. Yes, we always have to look at our reforms and make sure things work, and I have listened to everything hon. Members have said in the Chamber today. However, it is vital that we give employers and providers the time and stability to deliver gold-standard apprenticeships across even more apprenticeships and that we offer a ladder of opportunity to every young person and to those who want to train and retrain throughout their lives.
Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)
I wanted to leave time for Jonathan Gullis—I will not repeat that joke for the third time—to conclude.