Apprenticeships and Teacher Training

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mr Holden]

Thank you for your guidance, Sir George. I will just say that, when I was in the Department for Education, I visited South Devon College with the then Education Secretary’s special adviser, and I can definitely recommend that my hon. Friend the Minister does so too.

Far too often we hear stories of young people leaving our communities, particularly in constituencies such as North West Durham, to go away to university. They are out of the jobs market for three years and sometimes end up right back where they started, having accumulated student loans in the process. A three-year residential course is not the right route for everyone—actually, it probably is not the right route for the majority of people—but at the moment, in too many cases, it is the only option for those who want to be seen to get ahead. That is specifically the case for the teaching profession, where there is not currently an undergraduate apprenticeship, although there is a postgraduate one. I want to see young people become apprentices so they can earn a degree and valuable skills while earning a stable income right away, rather than continuing on the traditional university route first.

Despite the multifaceted benefits that apprenticeships can clearly provide, we could do more to encourage apprenticeships, particularly in constituencies such as mine, which have seen apprenticeship starts fall in recent years. That really concerns me. I want to see as many people as possible in North West Durham, and across the country, in apprenticeships. The fall in apprenticeship starts also demonstrates that the north has the most to gain by increasing apprenticeships, particularly in areas such as teaching, especially if people can do them through local universities and schools so they do not have move away. If we want to look at different ways to deliver on levelling up, then increasing apprenticeships is critical.

Clearly, an undergraduate apprenticeship route into teaching is a no-brainer. Currently, someone who wants to be a teacher must have a degree and either do a postgraduate apprenticeship or a postgraduate certificate in education. That may make sense for a group of people for whom a few drinks is the right option for their first year at university and who then finally settle down to study, but many of my constituents need to be earning from day one. For so many young people who go into certain FE courses—particularly young women in my constituency—it feels as if their choices are limited from that point, especially if they are interested in education, as they cannot take the final steps into the full teaching profession.

As I have said, the traditional route is not the right one to ensure that as many people as possible can access the profession. That means we are missing out on huge talent in vast swathes of the population, some of whom might be some of the best teachers from the earliest stage of their career. We need to unleash the potential in this broader base of the population. That will also help the sector with vacancies, particularly in certain subjects, possibly including some technical subjects. I do not see any reason why we could not have some of the important academic subject bases as part of that mix; it is about design.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman raises an innovative idea. Will he expand on it a little? Previously, when we were looking at maths teachers, people who had a maths degree would be seen as suitable to do the maths part but would have to go away to do a PGCE in order to learn the teaching part. How does he foresee that we would ensure that people who had not done a degree were capable of providing that technical knowledge?

[Mr Holden]

The hon. Gentleman rightly picks up an important point about subject specialism, which I will come to a little later. We want to ensure that the teaching profession is delivering the full knowledge all the way down. I do not think that is necessary in exactly the same way for pre-school or, perhaps, primary school teachers; while they have to have subject knowledge, it does not have to be to the depth of degree level. I think that knowledge could be gained, perhaps, as part of a four-year teaching apprenticeship. In a couple of years’ time, doctors will be able to do degree-level apprenticeships —that provision has already been made—so I do not see why we could not have the same provision for teachers, particularly those teaching early years and in primary schools.

I have visited so many schools in my constituency since I was elected—about half my primary schools and all my secondary schools—and I have noticed that a lot of them have an early years setting alongside them. I make the point to the Minister that an early years teaching apprenticeship could be a first look at this, perhaps as a pilot scheme. So many people go in, perhaps with a level 2 or level 3 qualification, but that is where their opportunity ends. It is a particular issue when someone with qualified teacher status can look after 13 four-year-olds, whereas someone without qualified teacher status can only look after eight. Some of those ratios are really difficult; they restrict the ability to pay more, when childcare costs are already so high, but they also put extra costs on families. Providing an early years apprenticeship route could be part of the answer to the issues around childcare, which everyone knows is a major issue in the country at the moment, particularly with respect to cost.

The broader point is that having a degree apprenticeship would bring teaching into line with other professions. With accountancy, someone can get an Association of Accounting Technicians qualification and then go on to the full accountancy course. It is the same with architecture and engineering. Someone can go into the legal profession right at the bottom end and work their way through to becoming a fully qualified solicitor. No one is suggesting that those other sectors have a prestige issue. People can do apprenticeships all the way through those professions, but they cannot do one in teaching. That is a particular issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George. I congratulate the hon. Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden) on securing a debate on this important matter. Apprenticeships are dear to many of our hearts. The pressure on teacher numbers is also an issue we are all very conscious of. I welcome the fact that the hon. Gentleman was able to secure this debate. It is a shame that the “back frack or sack” debate in the Chamber has overwhelmed many of us. As a result, there were rather more Labour Members there, and maybe some Conservative Members were hiding away in here. I cannot imagine that there is anyone here who does not want to let everyone know what they think about fracking, but we never know—it is possible.

The hon. Member for North West Durham raised some important points. I want to dwell on the importance of apprenticeships for learners from deprived communities. He is absolutely right that level 2 and 3 apprenticeships are incredibly important. There are real issues in the expansion of level 6 and 7 apprenticeships; there has been a huge middle-class grab of those. I welcome degree apprenticeships, but we need to be careful that we do not end up with a twin-tier system where level 2 apprenticeships are for working-class kids and level 6 and 7 apprenticeships are what someone does if their parents are ambitious. None the less, his central point about the value of apprenticeships is an important one.

The hon. Gentleman touched on the fact that apprenticeship numbers are falling. At our recent conference, the Labour party outlined new proposals on flexibility around apprenticeships. The apprenticeship levy is not working in its current format, and we want to see apprenticeship numbers driven up. He was right to say that.

I take this opportunity to welcome to his post the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis). I hope that he lasts rather longer than the Home Secretary, the right hon. and learned Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman), appears to have. I know he has great passion in this area, and we look forward to hearing his thoughts going forward.

The hon. Members for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon) spoke of their commitment to apprenticeships. I know that commitment is found across the House.

The hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) is a great example of someone who covets another job when in one; throughout the years I have known him, he seems to have been almost constantly campaigning for the next job. I know he would like to be my Mayor in Nottinghamshire in the future, and will no doubt have been hugely excited about Labour’s announcement of devolution of skills funding to Mayors at our recent conference. Whether he gets that opportunity, time will tell, but I know he has a genuine commitment to this area of policy, and it was good to hear his contribution.

The hon. Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) made a point about the retention of teachers, mentioning that the sharpest reduction in teacher training is in the north-east, and that there are often particular pressures on teacher recruitment in town communities and areas that are further away from universities. That is an issue of real importance. The hon. Member for North West Durham talked about the value of apprenticeships; I completely agree with what he said. Apprenticeships are a hugely important opportunity for people to work while they learn. Ensuring that both employers and learners get access to those opportunities will be a key priority for the Labour Government. A lot more can be done to ensure that all students coming out of school are aware of apprenticeship opportunities, which is a real passion of mine.

There is a particular missed opportunity for public sector apprenticeships. I asked a number of parliamentary questions to the Minister’s predecessor, the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince), about the amount of levy left unspent in the public sector. I was shocked to discover that the Government did not have those figures to hand. I had to try to establish them on an organisation-by-organisation basis. It should be a matter of strategic interest to the Government.

Our health sector trusts, which pay huge amounts of levy, also have a huge staffing crisis. How much do they have unspent every year in their apprenticeship levy pot? In that context, the hon. Member for North West Durham made an important and innovative suggestion for teacher training. We need to think a huge amount more about how to do it, but he has raised a topic of real importance. It is vital that we attract more people into the teaching profession, and such innovative solutions are definitely to be explored.

Over the past decade, the number of qualified teachers in state schools has fallen behind increasing pupil numbers. At one time, it was guaranteed that there would be no more than 30 pupils in a class, but that is now commonplace in schools that I visit. The rising teacher vacancy rate over that period has seen more and more schools struggling to recruit. I have met schools in my constituency that have advertised vacancies two or three times and not had a single application. We need to stop for a moment and consider why that is. Is it the workload, the burnout that teachers experience, the highly pressurised environment, or the extent to which schools have become extensions of social work services? Rising poverty means that schools are expected to feed as well as educate our children, which is a massive social problem. It no doubt has huge consequences for teacher retention.

We have a great generation of teachers, but never have the Government expected so much while offering so little. Many teachers in my constituency, knowing about this debate, wanted me to express the sense that they are drowning in work and facing unimaginable pressures, due to the crisis in children’s mental health, the cost of living issues, and the number of families struggling to feed themselves and afford the basics. Our teachers are very much on the frontline of that economic crisis. It is crucial that we recognise the vital role that teachers play in our communities and do more to address the poverty behind many of those issues. We need to recognise the shortage of teachers that we have.

The last large-scale survey of teachers, administered by the OECD in 2018, found that full-time secondary teachers in England reported working on average almost 50 hours a week. Full-time primary teachers reported working 52 hours a week—more than any other participating country except Japan. In our country, the amount of time that pupils spend in school is less than it is for many of our competitors, but the amount of time our teachers spend working is more. That is simply a recipe for failure.

Recent recruitment campaigns to the teaching profession have tended to target those already in work, but many of the desired recruits, as the hon. Member for North West Durham said, will already have family commitments and all the other expenditure that makes it difficult to get away from the world of work to pursue full-time education. I absolutely agree with the principle that non-possession of a degree should be a barrier only where there is a specific reason why a degree is needed. I am someone who never went to university, and yet, despite having been a senior manager in business, I know from subsequently attempting to get into the public sector that there were a number of jobs there that I did not even have a chance to apply for, regardless of my abilities, because I do not have a degree.

The Labour party views apprenticeships as the gold standard, so we want to see further investigation of these important ideas, but there is a number of considerations that will need to be made to make the idea work. In conclusion, we are broadly supportive of the suggestion of apprenticeships for teacher training and we look forward to exploring these ideas in future.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Jonathan Gullis)]

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George, and to make my first appearance as the Minister for School Standards. It could not have been sweeter that it was my next-door neighbour in the parliamentary offices, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden), who managed to get me at the Dispatch Box in Westminster Hall for the first time. I thank him and I thank his parents, who are obviously excellent teachers, for producing such a wonderful son. Most importantly, I thank all the teachers, teaching assistants and support staff who time and again go above and beyond in their incredible dedication to those amazing young people, who will be the future of our country and drive that economic growth that we are so keen to see.

This important debate has been secured by my hon. Friend, who is not just a great champion of his local schools, having visited 22 out of 40 in his constituency to date, but the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on apprenticeships. I was a member of that group for a period of time before starting in this role. I want to put on the record the fact that I am lucky, as the representative of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, to have my own apprentice in my parliamentary office. Jessica is on the verge of completing her qualification, and I felt that I could not preach about apprenticeships if I was not going to support one myself.

The debate is an important one, and my hon. Friend will know that there have been over 13,000 apprenticeship starts in his constituency since the beginning of 2010. They have provided fantastic opportunities for his constituents to enhance their careers and, as he says, earn while they learn. The Government are committed to providing world-class education and training for everyone, whatever their age or stage of life. Since 2015, we have transformed apprenticeships into a prestigious, sought-after option designed to meet the needs of employers and learners across the country, and we have seen over 2,600 starts on the level 6 teacher apprenticeship since its inception in 2017.

Thanks to our transformational reforms, millions of people in a wide range of sectors have benefited from these industry-led routes to earn and learn. In the last academic year, there were 37,000 new trainee teachers—10% more than the last pre-pandemic cycle in 2019-20. To support this, we recently announced a new package of financial incentives worth over £180 million for the 2023-24 academic year. That support for teacher training will include bursaries worth up to £27,000 and scholarships worth up to £29,000, and these incentives will encourage talented applicants to teach key subjects, such as chemistry, physics and mathematics. We are also offering a £25,000 bursary for geography and languages, a £20,000 bursary for biology and design technology, and a £15,000 bursary for English, all of which will be tax free.

I should declare an interest, having been a teacher myself and having got my postgraduate certificate in education at the Institute of Education only in 2011. Never in my wildest dreams—or theirs, probably—would I have thought that I would be standing here as the Minister for School Standards, and I am absolutely honoured to be guiding that next generation of young teachers on their journey, because they are so important.

I am very grateful for the time that my hon. Friend spent at the Department, meeting me and officials on 22 September. I heard and learned more about his idea and what could be done. I will set out the work that the Department has undertaken to date to consider that option. Between 2018 and 2020, a sector-led trailblazer group considered the viability of an apprenticeship with a pre-degree entry point leading to qualified teacher status. In 2020, after detailed consideration and wider stakeholder engagement with initial teacher training providers and schools, including a survey among headteachers, the group rejected the creation of an undergraduate teacher apprenticeship. That was due to its prohibitive costs, the duration required and insufficient demand from the sector.

The Department is always willing to listen to the sector, and as the Minister for School Standards I am absolutely putting teaching degree apprenticeships on the table. However, I need to ensure that there are benefits and take account of the wider views of schools, pupils and prospective teachers.

[Mr Perkins]

When the Minister says there was insufficient demand in the sector, does he mean there was insufficient demand from people wanting to study and pursue that route, or was there insufficient demand from schools to take on apprentices?

[Jonathan Gullis]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to clarify. From my understanding, it was headteachers who reported that there was not a massive desire—and nor did they believe that there would be—within the sector. The cost was definitely the main problem. A regular apprentice gets 20% of time off to undertake further learning, but that figure is 40% when applied to the school year, because there are 13 weeks when teachers are not physically in the classroom with their pupils. The cost to a school was felt to be too great to have someone off timetable for 40% of the time. However, allowing a teaching assistant to take a teaching qualification through a level 5 apprenticeship, which we are exploring, could be a way to deliver teachers through an apprenticeship scheme. We would be using people who are already in the school system—those 200,000-plus teaching assistants who do a fantastic job up and down our country.

Where there is employer demand for new apprenticeships in education, including a route to teaching for those without a degree, we will work with employers and the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education to consider how those proposals could be delivered. We are currently engaging in detailed work with a new trailblazer group to explore the viability of the new apprenticeship standard at level 5. That apprenticeship would enhance training opportunities for existing teaching assistants. It would also offer a route for high-potential individuals without an undergraduate degree, providing them with a career pathway to gain a qualification to train to teach.

I look forward to continuing discussions with school leaders, the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education and my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham on how best to support talented non-graduates to gain the necessary qualifications to train to teach.

I want to ensure that I address the points raised by hon. Members, because that is important. I thank my good friend, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for his kind words and his continued passion for state education, a sector that I am proud to have worked in for eight and a half years. To declare an interest, my partner is a member of that sector as well. It is a fantastic career. I hope that anyone watching today who is not yet a teacher will be able to understand what a great profession it is. Not only is the new starting salary for this academic year over £28,000, but I have supported the pledge in the 2019 Conservative manifesto to ensure that a £30,000 a year starting salary is enacted for the next academic year.

On top of that, there are bursaries. The levelling-up premium is available in education investment areas. That can give someone up to £3,000 tax free, on top of their salary, depending on the subject they teach. We should really promote that. I believe that take-up is really good so far, but we are checking those numbers. I want every Member in those education investment areas to drive those reforms by getting people to sign up as quickly as they can.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) is a fine champion for his local area, and I am glad to have been able to spend time with him to learn about the work he has been doing for education. We have no plans in place yet to look at what we are doing specifically for men. However, my team in the Department are looking at diversity, which is not just about ethnicity; it is about gender as well. It is about men getting into the profession, particularly in primary schools, as well as women getting into leadership roles in the sector. It is also about socioeconomic backgrounds and those white, working class, disadvantaged boys who we want to see representing the profession in schools, as well as people from other ethnic minority groups who, tragically, are falling out of the profession at a quicker rate than their white counterparts. We are going to do a big piece of work in that area. I look forward to visiting Lambeth Academy tomorrow to meet Leon, one of those inspirational headteachers, and understand what he has done throughout his career journey.

I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) was a teacher—