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2.43 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Dr. Kim Howells): I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Cryer) for bringing this matter to the attention of the House again. That is a long way to come from Pontypridd, as he knows, but it is worth it to hear him. He is a good advocate for further education and I am always glad to be here to try to answer some of his questions.
In answer to my hon. Friend, the Government take the funding of further education very seriously. That is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced just last week that a further £83 million is to be made available to further education. That is a lot of money in addition to the £3 billion that the sector receives year on year. We are keenly aware of many of the problems that my hon. Friend raised.
My hon. Friend will recall that the Prime Minister has already announced that there are to be 500,000 more students in further and higher education by the year 2002. That is a large expansion in students for the higher and further education sectors and we hope that FE will take a larger number of those. In turn, that will mean a good deal of buoyancy in that sector, in terms both of its academic and training function and of the energy that will be put in.
I urge my hon. Friend to realise that there is a great deal that management and staff of FE colleges can do. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced that between £100 million and £150 million in services will be part of the new deal--welfare to work--and both he and I hope that FE colleges will bid for it. They have a major role to play in this great crusade to get people off welfare and into work.
As I have travelled around the country, I have met principals and staff who have been gloomy about the present situation, but I have also met some superb principals and staff who tell me that the crisis is not one of funding but of management. I am glad to hear my hon. Friend raise that matter. All too often, the first priority for a minority of principals and senior staff at FE colleges has been to assert their authority rather than delivering the goods, in terms of education, to a particular area. My hon. Friend knows that I have never believed that we shall solve the problems of training and skills shortages and of opening up access to many more people to enjoy the benefits of further education simply by throwing money at those problems. On the contrary, we already spend a huge amount of money on further education. I want that money to be managed much better.
I am distressed that craft training units--for welders and engineers, for instance--are being closing down and business schools opened in their place. That is not a good thing for FE colleges to be doing, although I can understand why they are doing it. Under the old system, with the demand-led element, they were getting more students for those facilities and in view of the unit price it was cheaper to educate and train them.
As a result, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, Central (Mr. Jones), who is on the Front Bench beside me knows, in areas such as south-east Wales, which have a buoyant manufacturing economy--there are sectors of the economy that are very buoyant where my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch comes from--growth is being constrained by skills shortages. Further
education ought to be right at the heart of supplying those skills, and I want it to do so. In that respect, there has to be much more discussion and co-operation--among the FE sector, the training and enterprise councils, central Government, local employers and other partners--in terms of how to go about it.
The future of further education does not lie in straitjacketed arrangements, whereby students and trainees go to campuses to receive that sort of training and lecturers teach courses in a time-tested and inflexible fashion. On the contrary, it was a great pleasure last week to open an open learning centre in my own town, Pontypridd, which is run by the Pontypridd further education college, a big college, and one which is doing a superb job in reaching out to people beyond the campus. I want the best examples of such practice to be disseminated everywhere.
My hon. Friend drew attention to some important problems. Under the old silver book agreements, the maximum limits on lecturers' weekly and yearly teaching commitments are 21 hours and 756 hours respectively. The overall working week is set at no more than 30 hours, and the working year at 38 weeks. I have many friends who are FE lecturers, and I have great respect for them, but I have to say that those seem pretty good terms and conditions. I think that there is a balance to be struck here. For colleges to respond to new demands for learning and to give access to many more people who have not hitherto benefited from education, there will have to be a great deal more flexibility, including flexibility in the deployment of teaching staff.
It is not surprising that many college staff in the best colleges, without bullying or coercion, have been offered and have decided to accept new contracts with better pay enabling colleges to develop new learning programmes at dates and times that are convenient for many new adult learners. Of course, I would agree entirely with my hon. Friend in deprecating any harassment or victimisation of lecturers who wish to remain under the silver book contract.
As my hon. Friend knows, at present the Secretary of State has only limited powers to intervene in local matters, such as contractual arrangements, concerning further education institutions. The Secretary of State has certain statutory powers to intervene under section 496 of the Education Act 1996 when satisfied that the governing body is acting or proposing to act unreasonably, in the strict sense in which that word has been interpreted by the courts; or under section 57 of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, in the event of mismanagement or breach of duty by the governing body of an institution.
The Further Education Funding Council has a duty to take extremely seriously my hon. Friend's instances of abuses that have occurred; his examples are almost farcical in the injustices that they illustrate in the administration of colleges. We cannot officially become involved in the detail of particular local disputes, but the Government want to encourage a spirit of partnership between employers and employees in further education, as elsewhere. That can only be to the good of the colleges, the staff and students.
Casual contracts are a matter for concern. My hon. Friend deplored the use of agency lecturing staff in colleges. There are times when there is justification for using such staff, but not in the instances that he adduced.
As with staff contracts, it is a matter for colleges themselves; in appropriate numbers such staff can provide a valuable flexibility, but I recognise my hon. Friend's concern. There may be questions, for example, about the depth of the general involvement of casual staff in the life of the institution, and colleges should do what they can to overcome any problems.
My hon. Friend may receive some comfort from developments that are occurring on a broader front. I understand that officials at the Department of Trade and Industry--who have overall responsibility for industrial relations matters--are about to review the employment status of agency and other staff whose position is less than clear. In addition, the DTI is about to review the protection afforded under the Employment Agencies Act 1973, to ensure that it properly reflects the modern labour market.
My hon. Friend asked about Roger Ward of the Association of Colleges. I understand that the association's board met on Monday 10 November. The chairman and chief executive issued a press statement at the conference saying that even though the Association of Colleges had no evidence to support the allegations made in the articles to which my hon. Friend referred it had suggested that the specific points relating to two of the sector's service suppliers should be the subject of an independent report by McKeag and Co., a leading and independent company of solicitors, who are to prepare a full report which will be made public. We shall try to ensure that my hon. Friend gets a copy of the report as soon as possible. It is important that he, and we, should have it so that we can take full cognisance of it. Mr. Ward has announced that he fully supports the initiative and is more than happy to make his personal files available; I hope that he will.
It is for the Association of Colleges to respond to articles about the matter in newspapers. It is the Government's position that further education colleges are responsible for their own staffing decisions, and for deciding whether to employ staff through employment agencies and, if so, which agency to use. That does not mean that we are not aware of the allegations of abuse. There should be absolute clarity so that we can explain to the public and to the various public spending watchdog agencies such as the Public Accounts Committee that we are convinced of the probity of the use of public funds. We shall watch the matter carefully.
My hon. Friend should be under no illusions about the Government's attitude to further education. We know that it has long regarded itself as the Cinderella of the education system, but we want a flourishing sector. That is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced the allocation of £83 million for further education. That will help the sector to get through the next year. We realise that further education has, like no other sector, the potential to involve people for whom there is no other opportunity in education and training. In the university for industry and our whole strategy for lifelong learning, we want further education to play a much greater role than it has before.
Further education has avenues into some of the most disaffected sections of society. Where universities and
schools, for different reasons, cannot succeed, it can engage with perhaps 30 per cent. of the population for whom education means very little, people who left school with almost no qualifications and for whom education means something that they had to endure as school children. They have few skills, earn little money and have few prospects for furthering themselves or their careers.
We must turn our FE colleges out to meet their communities. I have seen the best--such as the Birmingham college of food, tourism and creative studies--do that. A couple of days ago, I visited Bristol college, which has opened a new engineering training centre to engage school children and local firms in a partnership approach to technical education. That is the way forward: good creative heads who involve staff in a democratic and creative way as part of the whole project.
In my constituency, principal Jeff Cox is beginning to open the college to the community. That process does two things--I will finish quickly because I am running out of time. Not only does it help the community, but it makes people employable, helps local firms to tap the expertise of trainers and staff inside colleges and makes the lecturers and staff in colleges realise that they have an important role to play in their community.
I hope that when our regional development agencies take off they will realise what enormous potential there is in further education and will ensure that never again will it lack funds or feel demoralised. It is as important as any other element in the education system and we want it to feel like that. We intend to ensure that it does, so that it can play that important role in shaping the future competitiveness of this country.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at one minute to Three o'clock.
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