Technical and Further Education Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Tracy Brabin and David Rutley

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

Q I applaud your desire to reach out to learners and have a conversation with them during the teething process. However, there does not seem to be a specific requirement in the Bill to have learners on the board, talking to you. They are going to be the guinea pigs. This will be up and running very soon; April seems five minutes away. Can you specify how learners are going to be connected to the board?

Peter Lauener: I cannot specify that in detail at the moment, because that is, properly, something that the board should discuss. With my deputy chief executive, Mike Keoghan, I am making a plan of board activities during January, February and March, to allow the board to focus on all the aspects of its remit and to think about the governance as well. I mentioned earlier that we expect to consult on a draft strategic plan for the institute for 2017-18, and I am sure that that will be an occasion to raise the question and get lots of views back. The board can then discuss it in the January to March period before coming out with its final plan, I hope right at the beginning of April, so that it is clear from the start of the institute’s operation exactly how it will operate across a broad range of activities, certainly including the one that you have mentioned.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

Q The Bill supports the occupational categories of quality apprenticeships set out in that excellent document, the “Post-16 Skills Plan”; they include construction, and engineering and manufacturing. That is fantastic and a real step forward. Do you both believe that the Bill provides an effective ability to redefine those categories as economic sectors evolve? Secondly, do you believe that the mechanisms are in place to enable businesses and employers to have a meaningful role in redefining those categories as things progress?

Lord Sainsbury: It comes back to the original question. You have to have a certain amount of flexibility. As far as I can make out, that flexibility is there, and it is important. Of course, it is also important that we do not let the system degenerate, whereby everyone goes back to saying, “I want something specifically for my business or a very small group of businesses.” It is very important that one keeps down the number of routes, but exactly what categories they include will have to be for the people running those routes to say. I think we have made quite a good stab at doing that, but there are one or two cases where you can certainly argue about whether we got the right job in the right route.

Peter Lauener: It is absolutely vital that the institute actively manages the system of apprenticeship standards. For the past couple of years, while new standards have been developed by trailblazer groups, we have not had that picture of what the overall system would look like. Lord Sainsbury’s report helps enormously with that. An early priority for the institute is to develop that map, communicate it, review it actively and spot areas that need updating. I imagine that one or two of the early standards will, with hindsight, look a little bit narrow, so they ought to be reviewed. Every standard has a review date anyway, but the institute, through its route committees, will need to actively manage that.

One of the great virtues of the German system is its absolute clarity about the number of apprenticeships, routes into apprenticeships and things like that. If you talk to people in Germany, they often say, “We’d like the system to be more flexible.” I think the institute has the opportunity from the start to build in that flexibility and responsiveness to the changing labour market.

Technical and Further Education Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Tracy Brabin and David Rutley

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Public Bill Committees

[David Rutley]

It is about whether the role would add anything.

Stephen Harris: From an insolvency practitioner’s perspective, it is worth standing back and recognising that insolvency practitioners are not train drivers, or people who spend their life in the railway or the London Underground, when it comes to a special administration regime, nor are they specialist property developers. They come to each situation afresh. One comforting thing that insolvency practitioners bring is recognising when they need to keep in place the existing management structure in a corporate sense, or the workforce in a pastoral sense, recognising that those people have skills and qualifications that they as an office holder do not necessarily have, and also recognising that they can bring outside specialist help to continuing the duties of education administrator, should the need arise. That is all part and parcel of any trading insolvency regime, and I would imagine that any office holder stepping into the role of an education administrator would have that at the forefront of their mind. I do not think it presents a unique challenge; it is very similar to all the other special administration roles. There is an extra dynamic—there is a pastoral element.

[Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

Q Thank you for your candour in your response to the Bill. What are the implications for the future willingness of creditors, given the reluctance you have mentioned of lenders such as yourselves to lend now to colleges? There is a lot of excitement around this Bill because there is an opportunity for money from big business to provide apprentice opportunities. Will that be held back by a reluctance from banks and so on to lend to this community?

Richard Robinson: For the moment, for most creditors, the status quo is the preferred position just because of our experience of what happens when things go wrong. That said, I think the Bill has been carefully considered and, apart from the two points I made before, I do not think this is a sector where you are going to see lenders just disappear altogether. But it is going to be harder to support in the same way that we used to. Banks used to be able to lend for a very long period of time—30 years on an unsecured basis—but that will change. I do not think that it will result in colleges not being able to get funding at all, but the terms and conditions will probably be different from what they were in the past.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tracy Brabin]

Yes—culture and design is one route.

Bev Robinson: Indeed. I was involved in the Lord Sainsbury panel that contributed to the report, so I feel like I have spent a lot of my time and life in looking at that. I feel that there are real opportunities for both. It has to be about career, because it is about a journey. It is really important that we give everyone the opportunity to develop skills, to help them to secure employment for themselves and their families to have strong and healthy lives.

Because the routes are mapped against what the economy needs, it helps with advice and guidance and helps a young person of whatever age to think, “Here’s an opportunity for me. I can see my path and how that fits.” You do not always make decisions and stick to them. It is important that there is enough in there that one can transition across different pathways as well, and this proposal allows for that.

This also goes up to levels 4 and 5—a real engine of the economy in high-value jobs, for want of a better term. We talk a lot about levels 2 and 3 in technical professional education, but we must remember to include levels 4 and 5. I would like to think that this is very much about a journey—a career that enables you to move and develop further as you desire.

Shane Chowen: I welcome that the Bill does not specify that there have to be 15 routes or what those routes are. It leaves that up to the Secretary of State to define the routes and the institute to define what occupations go into those routes. I think there is a clause that says that, if an occupation does not fit into one of the routes, the institute can pop it in somewhere that it sees fit.

I would add that it comes up against this parity with HE argument. In the 24-plus advanced learning loans system at the moment, where you can get funding to go on a course as an individual, in future you would only be able to get an advanced learner loan for a course that would fit in to one of those 15 routes. Most things probably will but the parity issue for me is as follows. No, I do not have a degree. No one will stop me going and doing my first degree in classics and I will get funding for that. If I wanted to do a course that was not within one of those 15 routes—at Bev’s college, for example—I could not get an advanced learner loan for that under the proposals. Sadly, that is the case at the moment—I am involved in the stakeholder group for the 24-plus loans. For me there is also a parity issue around access to funding for individuals. If we are saying in the loan system that the risk is on you—the loan is yours and you are responsible for paying it back—I do not think we can restrict people’s choices into those 15 routes, if there is a course that does not fit neatly within them.

Shakira Martin: The skills plan proposes 15 routes. I have been speaking to my membership already, and this goes back to the reason and importance of why we need them on the board. The 15 routes do not cover qualifications in the retail industry, for example.

My members feel extreme concerns for the arts courses as there is only a route that proposes for arts “Creative and Design”. Those do not cover courses such as performing arts. Learners are already recommending that this route be split into two: applied art and design and performing arts. Again, I would like to reiterate why that is so important. It is this type of stuff we can address if they are around the table in the first instance, instead of learning by trial and error within the sector.

I would also like to draw your attention to how the clause is written. It is under “occupational categories” which, if you are not involved in the sector, you will not understand. That is again another reason why somebody needs to be around the board. The Secretary of State would be given more power to change the routes without consulting students. I would like to put to the Committee that we have an amendment to say that before any of these changes take place, learners should be consulted, as well as information, advice and guidance being part of the process. I agree with what David Hughes said this morning that IAG should be going into key stage 4. I went to the Skills Show this week and that provides an excellent example of IAG in those four days. I strongly recommend you to look into the Skills Show.

Bev Robinson: May I clarify something, please? We are talking about technical professional education. There are other opportunities for learning—A-levels, applied general qualifications—that would cover retail and performing arts. The technical education was not meant to cover absolutely everything. It is meant to cover just technical and professional education, so this would not exclude a learning opportunity because that would be covered by applied general qualifications currently.

[David Rutley]

Q Thank you for your points. Like all of you, I believe this is very important to help people achieve their potential and to improve social mobility—no question. We are all saying this is a positive step forward. Obviously there is more to follow, but this in itself is a positive step forward. I am keen to focus on these categories for a moment. I know that you were involved with helping to create these, Bev. Obviously, they are important not just for learners but for businesses and employers as well. Does the panel believe that there is enough flexibility in that arrangement to have some defined pathways but to be able to evolve, given what will happen in the economy and in those sectors in future?

Shakira Martin: I believe that, with devolution, we do need to be working at a local level, working in partnership with local organisations, such as local enterprise partnerships, local businesses and small and medium-sized enterprises, to make sure that it is relevant to the needs of that community and that area, and to the needs to the students. This is also why it is vitally important that we are training and educating our students not just for a job in a specific area, but giving them transferable skills to enable them to move out of their area and up into a different industry.

Shane Chowen: Whatever the structures put in place within the institute around oversight of those routes, it is important that they have the necessary authority to make those kinds of recommendations, so if a route needs to be modified in any way, they have the authority to do that. The digital sector, for example, is probably one of the fastest moving of those 15 sectors. That will need to change all the time: the kind of occupations that are listed within those will need to be updated all the time. I would hope that the institute would have the flexibility to allow that to happen.

Bev Robinson: I completely agree: currency is king. We have seen some of the qualifications in the market become terribly out of date. The Bill does allow for flexibility because the institute will be responsible, with those panels, for making sure that it is kept up to date. I really do welcome that.