| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mrs. May: I did not say that FE colleges provided less adequate pastoral support. I said that school sixth forms provide services and support different from those of FE colleges. School sixth forms offer education services such as sporting facilities and the opportunity to be involved in drama, which are not generally available in FE colleges. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept that there are circumstances in which pastoral support in FE colleges is different--
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I cannot allow the hon. Lady to make such a long intervention. Back Benchers are waiting to speak.
Mr. Foster: I would welcome it if the hon. Lady came with me to Worcester sixth form college, which has excellent sporting facilities and all the pastoral support that she would want it to have. Having taught at Worcester college of technology and provided pastoral care, I was extremely concerned that she should correct her comment about that provision.
On partnerships and collaboration, I should like lifelong learning to offer a seamless service for students. They should see no difference when they move from adult and community education to further education and then to higher education. With that in mind, I am concerned about potential problems in the collaboration between colleges and universities, and I want those problems minimised.
Locally, I am pleased to say that the relationship between Worcester college of technology and University college Worcester has improved enormously, but tensions can arise when they are competing for student market share. Will the Minister consider giving local learning and skills councils a statutory duty to consult local universities as a way of ensuring that there is collaboration?
On a positive note, learning partnerships seem to have captured the imagination of local stakeholders. A couple of weeks ago, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State attended the first lifelong learning conference for Worcestershire. More than 150 people attended that debate, and not all of them to hear my hon. Friend's speech. The meeting demonstrated the huge interest in and potential for getting things done at a local level. It
involved collaboration from all quarters. It was refreshing to be involved in such a positive meeting, and it augurs well for the future of lifelong learning in Worcestershire.
Mr. Gordon Marsden (Blackpool, South):
I support the Bill because I believe that it represents bold enterprise. It is a modernising measure that is in tune with what we are trying to do as a Government. I welcome it also because it is an ambitious first attempt to deal with diversity and to develop an integrated system in further education and other areas.
For me, the Bill has four key aspects. The new Learning and Skills Council and its 47 subsidiaries will support education and training. They are there to promote enterprise and employability. They will be in place to deliver skills to business and crucially to regenerate economies on a regional basis and deliver a lifelong learning framework.
It is highly appropriate that it should be a Labour Government who bring forward this comprehensive measure. The Labour party brought the country the Open university. It also brought forward the university for industry. Throughout the century of the Labour party's history, from Kier Hardy through to Neil Kinnock's great speech in the late 1980s and on to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister's own concentration today, it has been dominated by the vision of education its outreach to the many instead of the few.
The Bill is sorely needed because despite the advances in numbers that were made in further education under the previous Government, the Conservatives in that process veered between a sense of paternalism and having too much faith in what the market could provide. I exempt from that criticism the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell), who in his role as the Minister with responsibilities for further education was a significant supporter of that sector.
Overall, however, further education was like Topsy, it just growed. In the speech of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and in exchanges with the hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May), we heard about the patchy provision under the Conservatives. There was a tremendous amount of overlap. To have 250 individual bodies with three different systems is no way to run a railway.
The Bill and the new structure was needed because we had to address the weaknesses of the training and enterprise councils. I am not saying that all TECs failed; they did not. However, the staying-on rate was too low. There was poor co-ordination and poor coherence and clarity between FE sectors. There was duplication and layering. There was also, as many hon. Members have alluded to, unequal sixth form and FE college funding.
Mr. Boswell:
Is it not the case that historically British staying-on rates have been particularly low? There has
Mr. Marsden:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I agree with his strictures about the staying-on rate. My point is that we need a new integrated structure to improve the staying-on rate still further.
I see the Bill as ending the divorce between education and skills and training, treating vocational qualifications seriously and providing a new, integrated youth service basis. The Bill recognises the importance of further education. It is right that we should move away from an unregulated approach which demands unattainable efficiency savings.
The Government have delivered the largest rise in further education funding. In my part of the country, the north-west, that is crucial. There are 63 further education colleges in the north-west, and 670,00 students are dependent on that education.
Because the Bill strengthens the importance of NVQs, secures the entitlement of 16 to 19-year-olds to education, builds on the education maintenance allowances--I welcome the announcement in that regard by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State this afternoon--and recognises the growing importance of online distance learning, I agree with the chairman of the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, who said that it was a new dawn for further education.
The Bill emphasises partnership, and I shall deal with partnership in four areas. On partnership between the learning and skills councils and business, it is crucial that we attract and involve businesses actively and retain them in the new LSCs, but we do not want people who are professional committee-sitters. The Confederation of British Industry rightly asked for close links, and the Federation of Small Businesses and the Small Business Service stressed the need for close links with LSCs. Enterprise and economic development strategies through those organisations must be delivered by that close link.
I am peculiarly conscious of that in a town such as Blackpool, where we do not have many large employers. The mainstay of our prosperity is still tourism, which is a micro-business. That is why it is extremely important that I have a college, Blackpool and The Fylde college, which is a beacon FE college, where tourism and leisure management training can go on. Such training is desperately needed in a low-skill industry and provides labour-intensive output for the economy regionally.
On co-operation between learning and skills councils and the regional development agencies, the CBI has warned that that co-operation must be interlocking, not overlapping. I echo that concern. I am reassured by what was said in another place by my noble Friend Baroness Blackstone, and by the commitments that the Government have given today.
A positive way to go forward, about which I have written elsewhere, would be for the new LSCs to deliver future local service agreements that might be brokered by the RDAs. Those agreements could be formal and binding on further and higher education colleges over a five or
seven-year period, guaranteeing access to students without formal qualifications, in much the same say as the Open university does at present.
In addition, RDAs could have a role in supervising proper kite-marking schemes for access courses in particular, which currently operate with little regulation or input from the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education.
With regard to local education authorities and their involvement with learning and skills councils, partnership between them is crucial. The Government were right to reject a quota approach, but whether at officer level or at the level of concerned and significant local councillors, there must be such involvement. I welcome the assurances in that respect.
I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Foster) about the co-operation that will be necessary between the LSCs and the universities. Lifelong learning is a continuing process. As we continue to develop lifelong learning and the links between higher education and further education become more closely interwoven, the more important it is that the universities that are currently closely involved with further education, and the universities that have yet to take up their responsibilities, are properly involved in that process.
Baroness Warwick and Lord Dearing expressed concern about that on Second Reading in the Lords and were right to do so, but I am satisfied with the assurances given by Baroness Blackstone and such co-operation does not need to be dealt with in the Bill. However, it is extremely important that the example of Sunderland, Staffordshire, Lancaster and Portsmouth universities--all of which show a strong outreach commitment to the further education sector and to local schools--be encouraged and nourished under the new structures. If anyone doubts the need for that, I refer them to the Select Committee report on post-16 provision, over which the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North (Mr. Wicks), presided as Chairman.
ConneXions, the new integrated youth structure, has been mentioned by several hon. Members, but, because of the lack of time, I shall not dwell on it for too long. The advice in the social exclusion unit report, "Bridging the Gap", is crucial. Skill levels in Blackpool are low and a large number of younger people, particularly young families, who come from outside the town, feel socially excluded. The new service must deliver the support that is necessary, although I freely accept that there is a delicate balance to be struck between access for all and targeting the most needy. In targeting 13 to 19-year-olds, we must not neglect the needs of older lifelong learning students.
The Bill deals with the responsibilities for setting up and carrying through individual learning accounts. Many have rightly praised ILAs and the already significant take-up, and the new Learning and Skills Council should seize the opportunity presented by ownership to promote them further. They should be significantly expanded, as should corporate involvement in them, and existing Government contributions should be boosted considerably in the long term, perhaps to between £750 and £1,000. In line with the statements of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, the possibility of levering in more money from business, with the appropriate reliefs, should be
examined. It is vital that the new LSCs give employers and employees a stake in and ownership of continuous and lifelong learning.
The LSCs will be an important vehicle for boosting the life chances of the 20 per cent. of adults without basic employability skills. Updating skills in the work force is crucial to the role of the new Learning and Skills Council and there are two interesting and significant private lifelong learning initiatives in my area: British Aerospace's virtual university and, in my constituency, the online access provided by Horizon Biscuits. It is crucial to remember that more than 80 per cent. of FE students in the north-west are adults and a significant proportion learn and will continue to learn part-time. The LSCs will therefore have a crucial role in ensuring that there is quality learning for adults as well as for 13 to 19-year-olds.
My experience as a tutor with the Open university and the Workers Educational Association before being elected to the House convinces me that we cannot neglect that issue. More and more, further education is becoming a feeder for higher education. For example, as the young women in their 30s and 40s who live on the estates in my constituency go into further education and progress to higher education--not by going to a college three or four miles down the road, but by taking courses that come to them--the significance and relevance of that tie-up will become more apparent.
My hope for the second term of a Labour Government is that we will move towards universal free tuition to level 3 in education and training and further education. If that target seems too ambitious for the Government at the moment, I suggest that we employ that quintessential new Labour mechanism of pilot schemes in particular areas. Local learning and skills councils could usefully take up that torch.
The inspection regime must be vigorous and transparent. There are bad apples in further education, as in other sectors. Many hon. Members are aware of the problems. That underlines the need for rigorous inspection and expansion in this area. I support Ofsted's involvement. We must take stock of the excellent Select Committee report on Ofsted, under the chairmanship of the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North. Intervention in this area is a balancing act, and should be in inverse proportion to success.
I accept what has been said about the role of the adult learning inspectorate, and we should ensure that Ofsted and the ALI can work together harmoniously. I am reassured that my hon. Friend and the Association of Colleges believe that there is a role under the new structure for rigorous self-evaluation. We perhaps need to go beyond the provisions of the Bill and consider how we can more rigorously inspect facilities for adults along the lines of the measures for 16 to 19-year olds.
The passage of the Bill in the House of Lords was distracted by the noises off about section 28 and grammar schools. I do not want to say a great deal about that. The only comment I would make is that I welcome wholeheartedly the commitment by Baroness Blackstone and the Secretary of State to reversing what the Lords have done. I support wholeheartedly what the Prime Minister said yesterday about resisting the forces that promote the retention of section 28. I am only sorry that
some Conservative Members in this place have been associated with the bigotry and ayatollahdom coming out of the House of Lords on this issue.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |