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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 197-xi House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE EDUCATION AND SKILLS COMMITTEE
NATIONAL SKILLS STRATEGY: 14-19 EDUCATION
Monday 10 May 2004 MR MARTIN TEMPLE and MS JANET BERKMAN MR BRENDAN BARBER, MR IAIN MURRAY and MS CAROLINE SMITH Evidence heard in Public Questions 974 - 1064
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Education and Skills Committee on Monday 10 May 2004 Members present Mr Barry Sheerman, in the Chair Mr David Chaytor Valerie Davey Jeff Ennis Mr Nick Gibb Helen Jones Jonathan Shaw ________________ Memorandum submitted by the Engineering Employers' Federation (EEF) Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Mr Martin Temple, Director General, and Ms Janet Berkman, Head of Education and Skills, Engineering Employers' Federation, examined. Q974 Chairman: May I welcome Martin Temple and Janet Berkman to our proceedings? You will know that we have been conducting an investigation into the skills agenda, because there is, as you know, a working party on 14-19 education under Mike Tomlinson, a Government White Paper on skills, and we are very interested in taking some of those main themes in the skills area and developing them. It is very important to us to have the Engineering Employers' Federation coming to the Committee to answer some questions. You are, I always think, the authentic voice of the manufacturing sector in terms of employers and so it is very good for you to be here. Again, thank you. I wondered, Martin, if you wanted to say a few words about where you see skills heading at the moment from an engineering perspective or do you want to go straight into questions? The option is yours. Mr Temple: Good afternoon. We would certainly welcome the opportunity to express some views and thoughts on the issues for 14-19 year olds. I could make one or two points. The whole education and skills agenda has really come to the forefront now as an issue for manufacturing companies. When you talk to our members, of whom there are over 6,000 and we are dealing perhaps with 10,000 companies in terms of the other part of our business, it does not take very long for the whole education and skills agenda to come up in the conversation as one of the key areas. At the heart of this is the issue of competitiveness in a very tough global economy. One can look at all sorts of things but the one theme that comes out is that it is the education and the skills of our people that actually will deliver or not a competitive business. Therefore, it is fundamentally important to us. Perhaps beyond that statement, one could probably get into it and draft the other issues that we would like to make in this area. Q975 Chairman: What sort of sector do we have these days? Is engineering in steady decline or has it stabilised? What are we talking about in terms of the vigour of the engineering sector at the moment? Mr Temple: That is a remarkably tough question in that we still have in the UK a very good manufacturing sector but it is changing dramatically. For example, whilst companies will still make products, building a business round those products in some form of service is becoming as much a part of adding value as making the product itself. There is a real metamorphosis taking place in manufacturing, which sometimes makes people lose sight of the fact that apparently service companies are very often at the heart of making something as well. We are seeing a changing world. There is, however, truth in the fact that it is under tremendous pressure. We are losing jobs to overseas countries; we are importing a lot of products. There are some real issues which relate to the degree to which our manufacturing sector can thrive in the future and the jobs it can sustain. I would like to think that it is still good and strong and worth pursuing and supporting, but it would be silly to ignore the fact that there are some very big issues. Q976 Chairman: It is a very diverse industry, is it not, in terms of size and the different sectors? It covers a multitude of production companies and units and so on. By and large, deviating for a moment from British engineering skills, do you think employers in the engineering sector have been proactive enough in looking at future skills needs and going out there in partnership or on their own and training for the competitive conditions that you described? Mr Temple: As usual, the answer is both yes and no. We have a very large number of companies which I think totally appreciate the need to develop the skills of their people and, frankly, not surprisingly, those are typically the most successful companies. The evidence shows that to be so. Regrettably, there are companies that still do not fully appreciate and value the benefits of good training, development of skills - ongoing development of skills - and their own involvement, not only in their workforce but in the community around them. These could contribute a lot to the way in which skills, for example, and FE colleges as well as group training organisations, can work. They probably do not contribute enough to that. Hence, you can see that those companies are probably going to be struggling in terms of getting the quality of workforce they need to innovate and thrive in the future. The answer is: there are a lot of very good ones but, unfortunately, there are also too many that are not good enough. Q977 Chairman: The statistics that I was given recently on employment in the engineering sector showed, and correct me if this is wrong but I would like to get it on the record correctly, that by 1970 there were 3.4 million people working in the sector; by 1980, that had halved to 1.7 million, but that it had stabilised around that figure, and so we still have about 1.7 million people working in the engineering sector. Is that right? Mr Temple: That is right. I would have put the figure at nearer 1.8 million. You are absolutely in the right proportion there. Manufacturing is still a bigger figure. It is just below 4 million, about 3.8 million being the figure for manufacturing broadly. You find with most manufacturing that engineering in its broadest definition tends to be at the heart of that. It is still a very big sector. If you look at manufacturing overall, it is still accounting for something like 60 per cent of UK exports, and so it is a very important part of our economy. Q978 Chairman: Is it right that below that there are far more smaller and medium-sized companies in that overall total than there used to be as a proportion? Mr Temple: Yes, I think that is so. I cannot actually give you the statistics in my mind now but we do have that sort of information, should you require it. Essentially, that is so. You are getting some very big critical mass companies, and then you have the tail. The real problem that we have had - and you talked earlier about the health of the industry - is that there are the big OEMs and then the real danger area has been the loss of the tier ones and the tier twos, which are the supply chain to these people. We have had a growth in component purchase over the last few years at tremendous rates. There have been good points about that, which have allowed these industries to be sustained in a very competitive world, but the bad thing is that it has lost some of those intermediate-sized companies. That does mean there are vacuums out there which are going to be difficult to fill if we ever need that. The question mark is over whether we will ever need to do that and can we still keep playing in a global context. Of course, most companies are building themselves in that way. Q979 Chairman: The size of the industry has stabilised in terms of 1.8 million over the sector, but it has changed; there are many more smalls and mediums with less ability to live off the high training performance of the bigger companies that fed down to the smaller fish. What, as the Engineering Employers' Federation, and indeed your training board which has remained almost inviolate over this period, have you been doing about getting the training right, or have you been fiddling while these dreadful things have happened? Mr Temple: That is a challenging question. You talked about the stability of the workforce. In fact, we would predict that by the year 2010 that workforce will probably drop in what you might call the formal definition, if you look at the standard SIC codes and the standard definitions of employment within those. We will probably see another 200,000 drop in employment. The really interesting point about that is that the skills requirements are consistently going up. Really, we are going to want people with NVQ3 and above and approaching 60 or 70 per cent of people are going to have those sorts of skills. Whilst the numbers might go down still further, the demands on those remaining people are going to be enormous. The point is that it is not going to stop there; they are going to have to keep learning and changing. It is going to be a very challenging area for those people. I have not ducked the question. I will come back to what we have been doing. We have been doing a lot. One of the key things is that ourselves and EMTA, the name at the time, now SEMTA as the Sector Skills Council, have had a strategic partnership over a number of years now and we consider it absolutely imperative that we work closely together on these issues. It was one of the stronger NTOs in the days of NTOs. I think that is because we have worked very carefully and closely together. We have had engineering apprentices, if you like, for many decades, in fact centuries I suppose I should say; it is part of the tradition. It is a fact of life that that is still one of the best areas for apprentices, recently modern apprentices but now no longer modern apprentices. This has still been a very strong area of definition as to what manufacturing industry wants. I think you also have to look inside what companies are doing. In those companies to which I referred earlier that are doing the right things in my view, you find tremendous in-house schemes underway to train people for new skills to enable them to take on new responsibilities. A lot has been going on. Today, though, in the changes taking place, which in the context of 14-19 we generally embrace, we are trying to bring back, if you like, more order and shape to a lot of those things in the modern context. I think that is a very good thing because a lot of what has been going on in companies has probably not been recognised in the outside world as transferable, or even recognised as being done at all. It is important that as people they exhibit transferable skills as a record to others of what they have been up to and why companies have been doing broadly the right things. Chairman: Thank you for that, Martin. We will be coming back to many of those points in more depth. Let us look at skills and productivity, the fact that our productivity record compared to many of our major competitors is of concern. Q980 Mr Gibb: Are skills shortages a cause of our poor productivity or are there other reasons? Mr Temple: We have done in-depth studies, and we have done a number comparing the United States and then France and Germany in particular, but we have looked at other countries as well. Basically, they are a very important facet of it. One of the key things we have always said about productivity is that it is not one single component, particularly if you are looking at it from the other end, not at the failure but at how you address the issues around productivity. That includes anything from the fact that you need to be innovative, to put in investment and to have a lot of work place initiatives and best practice in the way you deal with your people. Clearly a big point is the skills of the people in that. You cannot bring in many of those things that I spoke of, i.e. innovation, new processes, new products and R&D, when you reflect on it, and this is why I say companies come back to education and skills. You cannot bring new processes and products in. if the people are not capable of handling them. That is why, if you want to bring it down to the common denominator here, it is always down to your people and how much you have enabled them, both physically to be part of the process and by training and educating them. That is why this is so key. You cannot do all the other things unless the people are actually capable of doing them. Q981 Mr Gibb: Do you have a figure for how much your sector is spending on training and skills development? Mr Temple: I can give you a figure but I will have to send it to you. I do not have in my mind what it is because we have such a range as to how this would be applied. Therefore, it is not one I can immediately give you. Q982 Mr Gibb: We would be grateful if you could send that to us. Do you think you are spending enough? Do you think this problem is caused by the private sector not spending enough on training and skills? Mr Temple: I have to be careful about that in that it is one of these areas where you know you could always spend more. I have touched earlier on what has not been done properly, and that is that we have not added up all that has been done in the external, formal way of training and what has been done in-house. It is very difficult to define that figure. It is absolutely clear that in this country we still have significant skills shortages. Whether we have spent enough money or not, the key fact is that we still do not have enough of the right people with which really to drive our businesses. We have to address that either in organisational terms, in funding terms or both. Q983 Mr Gibb: Are you addressing it in the private sector? Mr Temple: Yes. There is no doubt about that. Because of what I have said earlier, it is seen as so key to changing our productivity in those areas where we need to get to world class standards and ahead. Q984 Mr Gibb: Can you handle that without a subsidy from the taxpayers of Bognor Regis? Should they be subsidising you in helping you develop our industry or can you do this without their help? Mr Temple: It depends which part of it you are talking about. You have to start off with basic good raw material. That is probably where the people of Bognor Regis come in; they have to be part of giving us basically well-educated people. That is where the Tomlinson debate comes in as to exactly what the output might be, but it is fundamental that we have good people coming through the education system. There is a point, though, where clearly business has to be part of this. They have to be part of it not only in their input as to what is required but in their spending of the money to release people to participate in training programmes as well as actually funding some of those programmes, which they do to a degree. The question mark is over how we get that balance right. It is a shared responsibility but there are two distinct areas of responsibility. Q985 Mr Gibb: Let us pursue that a bit further. You said in your written evidence to us: "Employers resent being required to compensate for the inadequacies of the current system which leaves a substantial number of young people unable to function effectively due to their lack of a minimum level of competency in the basic skills of literacy and numeracy." Could you say a bit more about that? Mr Temple: By and large, when people get to about 11 years old, and Janet may correct me on this, we see something like 25 per cent of youngsters still not showing the full level of literacy that we would like to see; 75 per cent do, if you like. By the time you get up to the 16-year level, that growth of learning development is tailing off. The figure drops to nearer 50 per cent. I think the figure is 47 per cent. People start lagging behind. A lot of those early people who did not have the very basic skills are not progressing either, so they are coming into the work place basically not able properly to read, write and add up. Those people are coming into the work place but they are going to be lost not only from us as employers but from society as well. It is very important that we really address that basic level and then address the next intermediate level between 11 and 16 to make sure we do not lose any more of those people. If they come out at 16, we will have to start with some elements of fundamental learning with those youngsters. You can guess, from the comments I made earlier, that business expects, and I think should be expected to do so by the taxpayer, to be taking these people much further. They should be developing many more skills because in this competitive world we are going to require them to do lots and lots of other things. They are going to have to have much more specific skills, but they also have to be changeable as well; they have to be able to adapt to a rapidly changing work environment. We have that ongoing developmental process. We really want to make sure we are getting good raw material. Q986 Mr Gibb: Beyond the good raw material and the basic skills, is not the development of technical skills your responsibility rather than that of the taxpayers of Bognor Regis? Would you support therefore some kind of employers' levy to fund this kind of training? If the companies themselves are not doing enough, should there not be a levy on employers to get over the free rider argument rather than on the taxpayer generally? Mr Temple: The point where I think we differ is that I think we have to have that good raw material coming out of the tax system, if you like. Thereafter, there will be elements of specialism. I think the individual has the right to expect that he or she is getting an education that not only gives a broad base but gives elements of work readiness in a chosen area. There is a point, yes, where business should take that over. We have seen previously that training levies did not work. Today we have a lot of training going on out there in work in the formal context, as I touched on earlier, but we need to make sure we add it all up correctly. This is where the Tomlinson proposals start becoming very sensible, and you can actually put a value on some of these components and start pulling it all together into some sort of meaningful aggregation. That is where we see some great benefits in the proposals from Tomlinson. Therefore, you have to take into account in the training levy the fact that employers will be spending very large amounts of money anyway in-house, by and large, on the sorts of things that really add to the individual in terms of being work ready and also particularly in the context of their business. That is what will keep driving them forward. If they do not do that, they will not be in business. They have to attract the right people. Q987 Mr Gibb: Do you think that the Government should be involved in work-based learning then? You talk about Tomlinson and recognising the qualifications, if you like, and what has been achieved, but should the Government be involved in actually placing people in work-based learning and in the actual learning process? Mr Temple: I think they have got to be in terms of the framework, if that is what is behind your question, because part of what we are talking about is making sure that the academic route and the vocational route have parity of esteem. There is a lot of debate about that. You have to recognise that it is an absolutely valid route for young people to take. A lot of that vocational route, of course, is not in school and much of it will be in a work environment. Therefore, you cannot actually have that sort of parity built in without taking account of what is going on in the work place environment. You have to understand it; you have to understand the rules and framework in which it is taking place. We also have to be careful that we do not get a system that is really burdened by the bureaucracy we saw in the older systems. Money was spent on the bureaucracy and the auditing of all the things that went on and it did not go into the delivery of training. It is really important that we get our companies to recognise what they have to do, that they set up the right framework and give appropriate recognition in the overall scheme of things. Let them pay the costs; let them fit it to their business and make sure that it then happens. Frankly, there is self-interest in it for companies, as well as a real value to the individual. There are much more efficient ways of doing it. I think we are on that track. The really sensible thing coming forward today is about putting it in a sensible, cohesive framework, which we have not had before. Since we stopped training levies, there has been a bit of a vacuum in pulling all this together into some sensible plot. Q988 Mr Gibb: My colleagues will pursue Tomlinson further. Finally, may I ask about the future of manufacturing in this country? We are constantly told that it is in decline, particularly with costs in the UK, wage costs in particular, being so much higher than in the Far East and the Near East and the eastern European countries as well. Do the figures we see published nationally include things like the UK ownership of these companies which are set up in the Far East? You often hear that Dyson, for example, is setting up a factory in China. You refer to the growth of imports of components. What proportion of those imports is actually coming from subsidiaries of UK companies where the profits will come back to the UK? As a country, is that in decline when you take in the overseas elements as well? Mr Temple: That is an interesting point. Again, I can send on to you the breakdown of the companies in manufacturing that are UK owned and those that are UK owned and have subsidiaries and production overseas. That will start to get to the heart of your question. There is no doubt that a significant proportion of the components come from multinational companies that are based here and doing things overseas as well. That is not uniquely so but there is a relationship there. We have had to recognise that in this very competitive world companies have to balance where they do things. It is important that they keep their core skills, core competences and core knowledge here, if they can, and then utilise the rest of the world for markets - it is just as important to manufacture close to a market - for raw materials and other types of skills, components and so on. We have to find the right balance. The real thing we have been concerned about in many of the reports we write, particularly in the area of productivity, lead manufacturing and performance improvements, is not to make what might be a popularist decision just to move abroad to a low-cost economy. There are a lot more things to your business than that. You can still keep a core business here if you address many of the issues. Bear in mind that with many products wages is one element but there are lots of other elements in the costs of the product. Manufacturers have to make sure that they analyse this in a much clearer way. That is what we try to help them to do so that if they do move part of their production overseas, that is done for a very sensible and laudable reason, which uses the world and all it has to offer rather than losing everything for the UK. We have started getting maturity into that debate, which I welcome. Q989 Helen Jones: On curriculum and qualifications, Mr Temple, you referred earlier to the duty of the education system to provide industry with well-educated people. Can you define for the Committee what you mean by that? What constitutes for you a well-educated person? Mr Temple: I am in great danger of handing this to my colleague to answer. We have seen in the Tomlinson proposals things that we feel are starting to home in. The very sensible things are: basic numeracy, being able to communicate well and being able to read. Therefore, we see those as relatively simple definitions of what we expect of people. Janet may want to put a more sensible description around that. Ms Berkman: There are various elements that we need to consider: certainly, the key skills as defined at Level 2 we would regard as fundamental (those are in numeracy and communication); obviously the understanding and application of ICT; also elements related to what we have often termed as employability skills; the ability to contribute to a team-based operation, to work within that group and to contribute to it; and to be willing to learn to apply and build on the basic skills they have and apply those in the work-based context, so that they are capable of development and have potential for development. Education does not stop at the end of formal education. We would like them to be capable of developing further in the workplace and grow and contribute as they do so. Q990 Helen Jones: May I take you on from there? I think we might quarrel about the definition of well-educated but, nevertheless, can you tell us what evidence you have of the level of skills of people coming into the industry? As a committee, we can trace back to the nineteenth century employers saying that the people coming out are just really not well educated and they are pretty useless. Can you give us some evidence, other than anecdotal, that relates to the level of skills of people coming into engineering and where the gaps are? Mr Temple: That is an interesting point. I sense that when you talk about going way back in terms of evidence about this, it probably will always be thus because to some extent businesses have to keep moving; they are moving very quickly. I have been involved in one or two things where people have said, "Start predicting what we will want in the workplace in 30 or 40 years' time". That is a very dangerous thing to do because we could be setting people off on absolutely crazy hunts. To some extent, the real problem is that it is only when it starts manifesting itself as a problem that you suddenly realise precisely what you need, and then of course, unfortunately, as we well know, it is too late. It takes a period of time before the system can react to this and then the pupils come through within the appropriate time. We are always going to be in this position to some degree. It is healthy but unhealthy. It is healthy that we are moving but it is unfortunate that we are not able to be better at predicting what we need. Q991 Helen Jones: That is very interesting but it was not quite what I was trying to get at. I would like you to tell the Committee what you think is lacking in the young people who are coming into the industry now and how you have measured that? Ms Berkman: One example I can give you is that there is a far higher proportion of young people coming into advanced modern apprenticeships within engineering than going into foundation years. For that we require a minimum level in maths of grade C at GCSE. We have difficulties in some situations recruiting those people because of course five A to Cs is a desirable baseline qualification for a lot of other sectors and to move into other forms of learning as well. We have difficulties with those. Similarly, we have difficulties on the fine-tuning of that qualification. A significant proportion of young people are put into the intermediate level of the maths qualification rather than the higher level, which means the maximum grade they can get is a C, and that is achieved of course by cutting down on the syllabus. That reduction in the syllabus causes us problems in terms of the baseline knowledge that they have to build on when doing the technical certificate, which is the essential component of the modern apprenticeship. Q992 Helen Jones: That is very useful. What about the skills you referred to earlier in reading and communication? What evidence can you give the Committee of any problems that your members have encountered in that area? Mr Temple: I do not want to come back to you with too many things. This varies geographically when people are looking to take on young apprentices. In some parts of the country it is said that there are enough youngsters but they cannot get enough placements and in other areas they cannot get enough youngsters of a good standard to pass many of these basic qualifications to which we referred. There are some statistics on that. I do not have them in mind. Those will probably give you some sense of analysis of what you are after, which is: of X percentage of kids coming forward to take this on, how many actually got through and what bits were missing? I do not know the extent to which we will be able to analyse exactly what is missing but I think we will be able to tell you those areas where they did not pass the basic criteria and roughly what percentage was being missed. Q993 Helen Jones: It would be very helpful if you could do that. Following on from that, Janet raised the problem with the maths syllabus. You think there is a problem with reading and communication. As an employers' organisation, what are you doing with schools and colleges to address those problems? What communications do you have with them for example on the maths syllabus? Mr Temple: Less so directly with schools and colleges as such, but we do work particularly with organisations like SEMTA to start addressing what we do want. That is a fairly full and deep programme on which we work with them. We tend not to work with specific schools and colleges in that way particularly in things like maths. We are the representatives or the people who set the agendas rather than directly working with the schools themselves. Janet will pick up one or two specific points. Ms Berkman: Whereas as an industry we do not have schemes that relate specifically to supporting maths fundamentally, a significant number of our employer members do, out of enlightened self-interest and corporate social responsibility, engage very closely with schools within their own environment in their hinterland. A lot of them have support programmes which take place. They send engineers into schools to support various project-based activities, which often include a component of maths, communication and team working aspects. They also support the Science and Engineering Ambassadors Programme. Very specifically, not especially on maths, EEF and SEMTA have been very active in supporting the development of the GCSE in Engineering as a qualification and as it goes into schools by providing packages of coursework materials that teachers can use as a resource and similarly in funding engineering specialist schools, which we have done directly, to enhance that teaching. Mr Temple: We have moved into that more rounded area of engineering rather than into some of the specific components. We also sponsor things like the Year in Industry, which is designed to take children who are leaving school and before they go to university to spend time in industry. They have a year in industry with employers doing active projects. Q994 Helen Jones: There is a pool of people out there who do get quite good qualifications on the whole whom you do not appear to be tapping into much at all, and they are the young women. Why do you think that is the case, since the girls are now doing better in most subjects? Why do you think they are not attracted to engineering? What are you doing to attract them into the industry? Mr Temple: That is a very important issue. I am also Chairman of WISE, so it is rather important to me specifically. An exaggerated version of what applies to boys as well is that we believe that education which leads to people taking engineering courses is an incredibly powerful set of qualifications for life, regardless of whether that person even goes into manufacturing or engineering; he or she can go anywhere. These are very important skills to have. The opportunities available to young people are extremely good. There is a really good story to tell. You can ask yourself why we have not got it through. Are we portraying the right image? Are we giving people the right idea about these opportunities? Regardless of whether the education system is putting good things out and whether we are doing good things, one thing we do see is a serious shortfall in careers advice to young people in the overall equation. Q995 Chairman: Martin, come on. You cannot shove it on to careers advice, surely? Mr Temple: Not totally, and I am not trying to do that, but it is part of the communication. One of the problems we have is that, even though we have a good story, even though there are good opportunities, somehow this message is not getting through. For example, and I will return to the question of women in this area, we did a survey of youngsters who had gone into apprenticeships. They were asked about the advice they had been given and 60 per cent said they were actually dissuaded from taking an apprenticeship, and those were the ones who did an apprenticeship" The point is that people are not fully au fait with what the opportunities are and what today's world in modern manufacturing is truly about. Collectively we have to get this message through. It happens with the boys, but it is even worse with the girls. Even though the opportunities for girls are just as good as they are for boys because of all the changes, there is still the traditional thought that people are trying to dissuade girls from going the science, engineering, technology route. Q996 Chairman: Are you not just deeply conservative in the way you approach this? You do not do very well with ethnic minorities either in engineering, do you? Mr Temple: That is another area we are trying to address. As an organisation, we produce lots of materials in different languages to try and encourage the ethnic minorities as well to come into engineering. We think we have real opportunities in those areas because some of the hang-ups there are less about the history of some of these things. We see this as a very important thing to address. The truth is that our story is not getting through. We have to analyse that. Q997 Helen Jones: I understand that. Would you accept that it is the duty of your industry and not of anyone else to get that message through? It is not the job of schools or anyone else to recruit for a particular profession, whatever it might be. Mr Temple: We see it as a very important part of what we as an organisation are trying to do and the ETB to encourage people to take the science/engineering/technology route. We see that as something we have got to address, but we realise that that message has to be passed on through the chain and people have to be trained to understand what we are saying as well. I do not think that is happening. Q998 Jonathan Shaw: Picking up your enthusiasm for Tomlinson's initial report, that is in contrast to the memorandum. When that first came out the EEF said: "Employers would need to be fully convinced of the advantages of any wholesale change if this meant the abandonment of well-known and hitherto respected qualifications such as the A Levels." The CBI went one stage further; they were completely opposed to GCSEs. With all the stuff we have seen and the good words about vocational qualifications, when push comes to shove, are not both of you very conservative? Mr Temple: We are naturally careful because this is such an important area. We have put down a lot of things that we want to see. We want to see people with good, core skills. We want to see flexibility in the way people take their education forward. We wanted to see parity of esteem between the vocational and academic route. We want to see not just a ladder that people could climb but a series of routes, and I stress with good careers advice along the way as to which is the best route. We think there are many in Tomlinson which start to try to address that. We are supportive of the shape of what he is putting out. The real problem will be how that will be manifest. How will it ultimately come out? There is a lot of detail in there, such as are there going to be gradings within the diplomas and, if so, what bits are going to be graded? How will you mark some of the projects to make sure that there is equal treatment of some of these things? There is lots of detail in that which you could not possibly put in all the headline stuff but it is really important in whether it will work or not. We know that employers want to keep in touch with the things they know and understand so that when they employ a young person they get what they expect and they know the capabilities and competence of these people. Therefore, we are just saying: let us work with it. We think we have to work with the review to make sure that it does deliver what we feel is right. Q999 Jonathan Shaw: What you are saying now is very reasonable and very welcome compared to the statements that your organisation made to the press at the time the initial report was published. Do you agree that if we are to get this change, it will be the first time in a generation and it would be better if you were to embrace the positive points rather than just saying, "We are not convinced; convince us"? Mr Temple: I think you are putting a more negative spin on it than I tried to convey at the time. Q1000 Jonathan Shaw: You state that you would need to be fully convinced if this meant the abandonment of a well-known and hitherto respected qualification such as "A" Levels. You do not want whole-scale change but you want all this; you want the vocational elements and the good skills. Mr Temple: We feel, quite sensibly, that Tomlinson is talking about quite a long period of time to make these changes. We would very much agree with that. The extent to which one can lose those things depends on the whole transition period. We think that is very sensible. Q1001 Jonathan Shaw: Do you have a view of the CBI's position? Mr Temple: I felt that ours was carefully supportive. I cannot comment on other people's views. We saw a lot of good things that potentially could come out of Tomlinson. Q1002 Valerie Davey: Did I hear you say that you are the Chair of WISE? Mr Temple: Yes. I am proud of it. Q1003 Valerie Davey: Initially I am inclined to say "brilliant". My daughter became involved with WISE 15 years ago when she got her motorbike, and then she went into law, which was a bit disappointing really. Are you saying, 15 years on, that you, as a man, are the Chair of WISE? Mr Temple: This is the perennial question! Q1004 Valerie Davey: Does that not just show the over-careful analysis of what has happened? Mr Temple: Very simplistically, it comes down to where the money comes from. The money comes from organisations that happen today to be headed up by people like myself. I think the sooner we can change that, the better. Q1005 Valerie Davey: What about Janet? Ms Berkman: I am on the National Coordinating Committee. Mr Temple: Frankly, the main strategies of WISE are driven by the National Coordinating Committee. The Board tends to control the money. What we do, what we say, where we put our initiatives, all comes from the National Coordinating Committee, which is substantially and heavily composed of women; there are men because it is important to have men on it as well. Valerie Davey: Just think in the future about the image that gives. Q1006 Jeff Ennis: I want to ask you some questions about Government initiatives. Are modern apprenticeships playing a role in improving the skills agenda in this country at the present time and how could they be improved? Mr Temple: They are very good. We believe those in engineering are extremely good. We feel they could be improved, particularly much more down towards levels of funding for 16-18 year olds and 18-24 year olds. It is encouraging that there is a real opportunity to bring the older people into the apprenticeship area. At the moment, support for them tails off, as you know, up to 24 and then disappears at that juncture. Therefore, the removal of the age cap would be a very positive and sensible thing. The experience of companies taking on older people is that it has been very beneficial. Thereafter, much of what is in the modern engineering apprenticeship tends to be more detailed stuff. There is an issue around key skills, for example, and in some cases you might be able to criticise employers but actually that is a separate thing. Sometimes, when a person has taken the equivalent of the BTEC and NVQ bit, he do not finish the key skills bit, which is unfortunate because then there is not a rounded completion of an apprenticeship. You really have to look at the way that works to make sure we finish it off properly. Q1007 Jeff Ennis: Are they flexible enough if an apprentice moves from one firm to another in terms of transferring training credits and stuff like that or does there need to be a bigger element of flexibility? Mr Temple: There are some issues round that. Ms Berkman: Inevitably, employers will want their apprentices to follow as closely as possible a range of modules that meets their own needs. I think those are reasonably clearly defined. The breadth of those will very much depend on what the employers' needs actually are. The fundamentals, the underpinning skills, will be there and will be transferable but some of the specifics may inevitably be lacking, depending on how close the receiving employer is to the one from whom they are departing. Q1008 Jeff Ennis: What do we need to do to make that more acceptable, Janet, in terms of being able to allow that transferability more widely? Ms Berkman: What the components are and what they mean in terms of what the individual can do needs to be clearly defined so that an employer can look at it in terms of the spec he needs and say, "Right, I will need to pick out those elements to complete this individual's competence for my role". Mr Temple: Little things are starting to be introduced as pilots. SEMTA have one in the West Midlands, which is where they, in effect, employ the apprentice in the first year. We are seeking to do one in the Sheffield area as well. That basically takes them through that very difficult first year; it gives them an employer; it allows them to get into it. For example, we have one big company with ten of their own apprentices and, as it happens, ten of SEMTA's apprentices, and that allows them to take more on than they probably would have done in their own right and they can have a balance. If people do not work out, you can move them to another company. It is interesting that those different flexibilities are also helping to make this work. As EEF and SEMTA, we are looking to see if we can do that in the Sheffield area. We are going to see if we can roll that out even further. Q1009 Jeff Ennis: That is obviously an issue on which we would like to be kept in touch in terms of how successful it has been because it sounds quite interesting. Mr Temple: It certainly gets over the point about not finding enough employers, for example. If we can get them ready, then it is a very useful way to start. Q1010 Jeff Ennis: When this Government came to power in 1997, it very quickly changed one of its main training vehicles from the training and enterprise councils to the learning and skills councils. Was that a move in the right direction? Are learning and skills councils now meeting the needs of local engineering employers more successfully than TECs or do we need to review the situation? Mr Temple: I certainly do not think you should review the situation and change it. It is something that has taken a bit longer to get settled than we would have expected. There have probably been areas of organisational responsibility: the RDAs and what they are doing and that sort of thing. Those things are now gradually settling down a bit and are starting to be built. We have to make sure there is the right representation on those to bring all the right views to bear and clear lines of responsibility must apply as well. Ms Berkman: There are some issues relating to the operation of the learning and skills councils that do concern our employers at a regional level, and that is where there is the potential for conflict between national targets and regional needs. In some cases, the funding will follow the national targets, and that may mean that, whereas there is a surplus need beyond the proportion of the national target that they are getting, that cannot be met so readily. That does create a problem. One thing that has been very positive recently is the regionalisation of the learning and skills councils' operations to align that more to the RDAs. I know one of our regional associations has been dealing with seven different learning and skills councils. Pulling that together is obviously important. Q1011 Jeff Ennis: Another recent Government initiative was to extend the specialist school areas to include an engineering specialism. I have one of the first in my constituency, Ridgewood School in Scawsby, Doncaster. I am pleased to say that has been very successful. Will that sort of initiative make a difference between the academic and vocational mix and the skills agenda in schools? Ms Berkman: I am delighted to say, of course, that we did part-fund and part-sponsor Ridgewood as part of our very positive support of that first cohort of engineering specialist schools. We are extremely keen on the development of the specialist schools because we believe that if they keep to their fundamental ethos of the specialism permeating the whole curriculum, then it gives people that first-hand experience of an interface with engineering, not only dealing with an engineering GCSE for instance as a subject but in theatre studies looking at the engineering side of a theatre. It can be applied to other elements of the curriculum. We see that as a very positive experience. It does particularly give us the opportunity to get around some of the negative feedback that is given to young people in terms of whether they should be going into engineering or not. Mr Temple: Another area, by the way, is the Science and Engineering Ambassadors Scheme that is giving very good messages in schools. Just going back to the girls, it is interesting that 40 per cent of those ambassadors are now women. That is really excellent news. Also, just a silly little thing, the Formula 1 in schools is a national initiative but another initiative trying to push the concept of design technology and engineering in several hundred schools now; 40 per cent of the people involved in this are girls and they are also winning the prizes. There is starting to be a change here in this gender balance, which we still have to drive home. Some of these areas that some might say are superficial are very important. These people are going in and spreading the word. If you can get that into a specialist engineering school as well, that is even better. Q1012 Jeff Ennis: The Government is currently looking to bring in the junior apprenticeship model for 14 to 16 year olds so that there will be better links between local industry and schools. Do you think your Federation would be willing to become participants in a scheme such as that or are there any pitfalls that might be attached to it in terms of health and safety and things like that? Ms Berkman: We think it is a good idea. We would certainly want to assist in trying to make that work. It is a good start and a good idea. It also provides one of those early links. We know that the younger we can encourage people to get into this the better. The area we are going to have to address is the sensible age that you can let people into some parts of the industrial environment. That does not mean to say it is a bad idea or that it excludes all of industry. There is a lot of industry to which we can still give people good exposure without putting them in danger. Clearly there are areas, particularly if people are too close to machinery, where care has to be taken about how well supervised that has to be and to what parts of the plant you allow them to go. I think those are issues to be addressed; they are not about saying it is a bad idea at all. Q1013 Chairman: We are coming to the end of our allotted time but, before we finish, I must ask you two questions. How good are you as a team player and who do you play with most successfully? How do you get on with the trade unions in your industry in terms of discussing training needs, pursuing training needs and pushing training needs up the list of priorities of individual companies? There are the unions, the learning and skills councils, the other government apparatus and your own training sector, SEMTA. How do you value those partnerships? Mr Temple: I think they are very important. Our Selsdon SEMTA used to have a meeting called JPC; it is now called ESSG. I forget what all the words mean but it is basically where we come together to look at all the issues around the footprint of engineering and manufacturing, which unions are involved in that, the providers, as well as small, medium and large companies. In that context, we try and embrace as many of the community as possible. In the workplace, whilst we would say you do not have to have unions in a bus to be able to do your business, that does not mean to say that employers are against unions either, per se. If you look at most of manufacturing, we have one way or the other to work closely with our workforce. You cannot do it any other way. If you are going to have part of that schools agenda that we spoke about earlier, we are pushing things like high performance workplaces. In a high performance workplace, you include everybody in that business in trying to deliver improvement and benefits to the company overall. That is at all levels. More and more we are having to train people to take on that responsibility and those roles. Therefore, you have to engage with your workforce. Clearly, about 20 per cent of the workforce are in unions. It is probably somewhat higher overall in manufacturing because of the historical links. It would be absolutely stupid for us not to engage with our workforce. Q1014 Chairman: What I am trying to drag out of you is, apart from this organisation the acronym of which you seem to have forgotten ---- Mr Temple: Education and Skills Strategy Group. Q1015 Chairman: Is that a regular meeting at the most senior level of employers and the trade unions in your sector? Mr Temple: There are representatives there but it is not a meeting, say, between ourselves and the TUC. Q1016 Chairman: No, but you have certain unions in your sector that are pretty high profile. Do you meet them at a senior level to discuss training needs on a regular basis? Mr Temple: In that forum, yes, but I think I have been misleading you. I think there are other fora that one might have with the trade unions about the broader education and skills needs, which we tend not to have. Q1017 Chairman: Is that because you have passed them off to SEMTA or because ----? Mr Temple: No. I just do not think it has developed in that way. In the workplace in companies, there is a lot of debate with the workforce about development of education and skills. In some cases of course more than others. It relates to the very start of this where some people do a lot more. They are much move involved in education and skills than others. Where it is good it is very good and it involves all the workforce and the unions. We do not say that you have as a prerequisite to involve the unions, as long as you involved the workforce, but in manufacturing it is more atypically with the unions because that is where there is a tradition of having trade unionism as well. Q1018 Chairman: What is your wish list for training in the industry? What are the three priorities that you would like to see? Your own organisation? Your own industry? Governments? Quangos? Any one? What do you want to see happening. You have described a very serious situation: lack of good, talented people coming into engineering and sticking with engineering. What is your wish list of what you would like? Mr Temple: We want to see a good overall framework. We think Tomlinson is heading in the right direction. We want to see money going into education and getting right the way through to the kids in the classroom. There is a lot of money going in and it does not always get there. We want to see the integration, but we do not want integration of apprenticeships that loses, if you like, the emphasis on the skills side. We do not want a quasi-academic thing, but we want to see modern apprenticeships encompassed in that framework in an equal way. Ultimately, we want to see something that is a system that is easily understood with the sort of flexibility that we need to allow people to be more work ready. Ultimately, we do a lot of training in companies which we also want to see being incorporated in that collective skills agenda. Q1019 Chairman: Thank you very much for your attendance today, Martin and Janet. If at any time over this next period while we are writing up our report you think of anything else that you want to say to the Committee that you did not say today, we would be grateful for your communication. Mr Temple: Thank you very much. We have a lot of statistics which I probably have not been able to articulate well to you. Should those be required, we are very happy to furnish those. Memorandum submitted by the TUC Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Mr Brendan Barber, General Secretary, Mr Iain Murray, Senior Policy Officer, and Ms Caroline Smith, Policy Officer, TUC, examined. Q1020 Chairman: Can we welcome all three of you to our deliberations? It is very good to have you here. One of the things you may have picked up on in that last session is that we are very interested in this look at the whole skills sector. This Committee has been away from skills for quite some years. With the 14-19 inquiry and the White Paper on skills, this is something that we have really turned our minds to and we are doing a very thorough inquiry starting with 14-19. Brendan, I know of your long interest in skills. When I was a shadow minister in employment and skills many years ago, we worked together on one or two things. That was one of your first jobs in the TUC, I think, on skills. Today's session is to find out about some important questions about where the TUC and the individual trade unions stand on the training needs of our country. Brendan, would you like to say something to get us kicked off? Mr Barber: Thank you for the opportunity to come along and give evidence to the Committee. The issue of training policy, learning and skills has very much been high up the TUC's agenda. It was on the agenda of our first congress in 1868 and I think ever since. It is important and has been recognised for two key reasons. One, because of its importance to our economic performance. I was listening with interest to Martin talking there at the end of his session on high performance workplaces. High performance workplaces certainly are those in which there is a high, sustained investment in skills. They are also workplaces, by and large, where the workforce is represented by a union and there is an active dialogue and consultation culture as well. It is very important in terms of our economic performance and very much recognised as such in the work we did jointly with the CBI a year or two back, looking at our productivity performance against our major competitors. It is also vitally important too because of the impact it has on people's life chances, on their employability, on their opportunities to progress, on the discretions that are available to them in the labour market. Skills empower people and are enormously important for that reason too. It is an area though where our performance has tended to lag behind our major industrial competitors. This has been very well documented. We have a major problem in terms of basic skills. There are around 3.5 million people with basic literacy and numeracy problems. We have a major problem too at the level of intermediate skills, with somewhere between seven and eight million people still not trained and competent up to NVQ level two standard. There is a major challenge in terms of the arrangements we make for young people coming into work. There is a long term problem of the difference in esteem that we accord academic routes for learning compared to vocational routes. We welcome the relaunch today of the apprenticeships programme as one element of the strategy to try to begin to turn that around. We have had a lot of debate in recent months over the 50 per cent target of young people we want to see going through higher education. We have to make sure there is not a forgotten 50 per cent, the other 50 per cent. They need investment in their opportunities too. We have supported broadly the new skills strategy that the government articulated in the White Paper. Important elements of that include the employer training pilot, though we would very much like to see that moved to become a fully national programme, with a clear entitlement for individuals to access opportunities to deliver at least up to level two. An important element of the strategy of course is the emphasis on work at sectoral level and the establishment of the new Sector Skills Councils and the intention to establish agreements, sector by sector, to really try to harness employer commitment in that form. This is not the first time that we have looked to win that kind of commitment from the employer community. As you said, I go back quite a way. I worked for an industrial training board before I joined the TUC. Q1021 Chairman: Ceramics, was it not? Mr Barber: It was indeed. Those were the mechanisms of that time back in the 1970s that were an attempt to bring employers together and really build a commitment. The new Sector Skills Councils are a very important part of the new arrangements. Whether they succeed or fail will be critical to the overall success of the strategy that the White Paper articulated. We looked with interest at the recent, very major survey that was conducted by the Learning and Skills Council, which came up with an estimate of something like £4.5 billion employer spend on direct training costs, but with some very worrying figures too about the extent to which employers simply do not invest. That survey showed something like 40 per cent of employers offering no training of any sort to their workforce and we have long had this problem that training is very unevenly made available. The level of investment in people at the top of organisations in their continued learning is very much greater than the level of investment available for people at the bottom who start with little or no qualifications base. Arguably, the order ought to be precisely the reverse of that. This is an area of work in which the trade union movement in recent years has really begun to develop its own work in rather exciting ways. We very much welcome the support that has been available from the Union Learning Fund, to support union initiatives. There have been something like 400-plus projects now that have been supported by the fund. Those projects have involved activities in over 3,000 workplaces, with almost 40,000 people completing courses of learning as a result just of those specific projects and something like 180 new workplace learning centres being established as a result of those projects. What all that experience has demonstrated very powerfully is that the union role can really make a rather unique contribution in helping to build that bridge between people and the learning system, particularly if you look at that issue of basic skills. Not exclusively, but many of these projects have involved work in the basic skills area. If the invitation is extended for people to come back into learning from their employer or simply from the local learning institution, their response will very often be rather apprehensive. Their experience of education may not have been too positive and it can look pretty daunting. When that invitation comes from a work mate, somebody who they trust in a rather different kind of way, the response can be very much more positive. This is an area of work where I hope, over the next period, to see us really expanding very significantly. There are something like 7,000 people now playing this new role of union learning representative. We expect to see that number increasing rapidly. We are looking very actively at whether there are some new institutional arrangements that could maximise the impact of the work that is being done right across the trade union movement and could communicate to members and potential members in a more powerful way the routes back into learning that the trade union movement can help to facilitate. It is a very lively, practical agenda for trade union work as well as our engagement in the broader policy aspects to the debate as well. Q1022 Chairman: In terms of where the union participation can really work, when we did our inquiry into individual learning accounts, we did find that where the unions were mediating individual learning accounts there was a very much higher success rate all round because people were confident in the courses they took and were supported. We noted that in that report. When you do it, it seems to me very successful, but there is a bit of a feeling around, is there not, that you are rather late converts? Here are jobs haemorrhaging abroad because people say that other competitive countries are better trained than our workforce so the TUC and trade unions are getting more interested in training. Some people would say perhaps you have not campaigned and put your head above the parapet enough for driving up skills in our country. Has the TUC at any time said it is wrong for a child at 16 to go into the workplace with no education and training? Is that something you would feel passionately about? Mr Barber: I think this is an area where our record has been pretty creditable. I would strongly assert that. It is difficult always to get the level of public interest, attention and media interest and so on in some other areas which seem to be more conducive to producing headlines. As ever, there is a grain of truth in your question. Of course there is more potentially that we could do but the work of the last four or five years in particular, the identification of this new, practical role in the workplace of union learning representative, is a very exciting development that has been well recognised right across the trade union movement. One of the positive byproducts of this work is the extent to which it has brought new people into taking on an active workplace role on behalf of their fellow workers. The profile of union learning representatives shows that many more women have come forward to take on that role than take on the traditional workplace shop steward role. There are lots of positive aspects to this work that I think have been strongly recognised round the trade union movement. It is an area that has very, very solid trade union commitment. Q1023 Chairman: Does the TUC or you personally have a view on 16 year olds going into work with no training and education, possibly for the rest of their lives? Mr Barber: We do not think they should. We have very strongly campaigned for the idea that everybody ought to have learning opportunities. People should not come into a workplace and be written off before they have eve started their working life with no training opportunities available to them. Q1024 Chairman: What about modern apprenticeships? I know you welcome the relaunch in a famous departmental store this morning. Are you content with modern apprenticeships which have such a high drop out rate and do not actually give you a qualification along the road, so if you drop out half way you have nothing? Mr Barber: We are not uncritical by any means. We have strong concerns about the drop out rate and whether the quality is high enough and consistent enough. We have strong concerns about the failure so far to break out of gender stereotyping, an issue that the EOC highlighted in a report within the last week or two. There are very important aspects of the new apprenticeships that we have concerns over, but they do represent in our judgment a serious attempt to try to tackle this longstanding problem of a lack of regard and esteem being attached to vocational learning routes and they do represent another serious attempt to engage the employer community in developing active learning strategies in their workplaces. The objectives are very much supported. Experience will demonstrate whether or not they deliver as much as we all would like to see. Q1025 Chairman: Some people have argued that embedded in OFR - it kicks off in terms of the review in June and then will very much make a most important contribution to the way companies account for themselves and their operations - is a real opportunity for trade unions to stimulate a much higher profile for training and what happens to individuals as they become employees and have a working life. Do you see that as an opportunity and what are you going to do about it? Mr Barber: We do see it as an opportunity. We have strongly urged that the new Operating and Financial Reviews ought to automatically include appropriate reference to the employment strategies of organisations and their strategies for investing in skills. This is an issue that we have not found common cause with the government on who have still left it that it is for directors themselves to determine what are the material factors on which they need to report. We would have thought strategies for people ought to automatically be recognised as issues central to the potential success of the organisation. Q1026 Chairman: The Kingsmill bit of accounting for people speaks directly to your ----? Mr Barber: It does and we welcome the work that was done through the Kingsmill review to put a sharp focus on this area. As you say, it provides new opportunities for the trade union movement to look at companies, to access fuller information about the strategic thinking at the heart of company strategies and new opportunities therefore to try and influence those. Q1027 Chairman: I was a bit astonished when we were pushing the Engineering Employers' Federation about how often they met with the unions at a high level to discuss training needs over time. I do not know if they know but they were reluctant to tell us whether they met regularly at a high enough level. In terms of this new opportunity, will you be meeting employers at the highest level to make common cause? Mr Barber: I certainly hope so. As part of the new arrangements since the White Paper was published, there is the new structures at national level that have been established, the Skills Alliance in which I take part. Digby Jones, on behalf of the CBI, takes part. I have hopes that the new Sector Skills bodies will provide a real a high level dialogue on a sustained basis between the leaders of major players within each sector and the relevant unions, because it is critical that it begins to deliver change at that practical level where strategies for each sector are going to be established. Q1028 Jonathan Shaw: You mentioned the Sector Skills Councils. A lot rides on those to ensure that we are successful in delivering a skills programme that is going to equip us to tackle all the issues about productivity etc., as well as provide opportunities for individuals. Do you have any concerns about the format of the Sector Skills Council? What are the government getting right with the Sector Skills Councils? What have you said to them? Mr Barber: It is very, very early days of course. The first four have been charged with looking to establish the first four sector agreements, so these are very much beginning to trial the new arrangements, in a sense. We have looked to ensure that there is an active trade union engagement with the new bodies and that has been coming along as the membership of the governing bodies has been established. Trade union involvement is being secured. We will want to ensure that that is not just token representation but that there is a very active dialogue with the relevant unions on the agreements that are going to be established in each sector. Mr Murray: We are undertaking a practical initiative around that at the moment. We are working with the Sector Skills Development Agency on a joint event in June which is going to be for the key trade union members of the four Sector Skills Councils taking forward the agreements with the key employers. The idea of that event is to get the key employers and key trade unionists round the table and to try to facilitate negotiation of the agreements and to try and get both sides engaged in that, away from the Sector Skills Councils themselves. Such an event is trying to promote the partnership between employers and trade unionists on these four key Sector Skills Councils. Q1029 Jonathan Shaw: How well does the TUC see the 14-19 year old agenda that we are talking about here linking with the skills strategy? Mr Murray: One of the key issues is about how, for example, modern apprenticeships work. The Sector Skills Councils have been given the remit for developing frameworks and that is going to be a key element on the government strategy for increasing the number of young people. There has to be a close tie in between the Sector Skills Councils and the 14-19 agenda. There are institutional arrangements where people from these different bodies are meeting, for example, on Regional Skills Partnerships. There are members of the Sector Skills Development Agency in these partnerships with people from the local LSCs etc. Ms Smith: One of the key issues that the skills strategy was looking at trying to address was gaps in the economy with skills and a couple of things that are seen as big problems are the basic skills gaps and literacy and numeracy; also, intermediate level skills. Looking at literacy, language, numeracy and computer skills, there are issues that need to be addressed for adults and there is a big issue with the existing workforce, but the 14-19 system needs to be set up in a way so that those issues are certainly addressed. The same certainly applies with intermediate skills gaps as well. Apprenticeships are a key vehicle for that. Positive steps are being taken with the 14-19 curriculum reform and also the review of financial support arrangements for young people. Q1030 Jonathan Shaw: What do you think about the idea of young people, 14 year olds, not being at school for a couple of days a week? Do we separate sheep and goats here? Ms Smith: The TUC has supported the young apprenticeship model that has been introduced. This particular approach is being taken initially with 1,000 young people in three sectors: engineering, media and creative arts, I think, so these are very well funded programmes. I hope there will be very careful monitoring of this particular programme. We would also comment that it is very important that these young people continue to get a broad education as well and are particularly able to receive education about their rights as workers. Q1031 Jonathan Shaw: And future union members. Ms Smith: These are an opportunity to challenge stereotyping on the basis of gender or ethnicity. That is something that ought to be actively built into these particular programmes. Q1032 Jonathan Shaw: Do you think the government should be getting involved in work based learning? In America, we would not see this occur. Productivity is better in America. In much of the rest of Europe, people may be required to have training levies or to be members of the Chamber of Commerce and we are a hybrid, somewhere in between the two. Do you think that is our problem: that we cannot make up our minds? Mr Barber: In some ways it is our problem. Essentially, we have been stuck with a voluntarist approach over a lot of years. We have not established the ready acceptance with the employer community that this is an area where part of the deal ought to be a sustained investment in the skills of their workforce. That is the cultural challenge that we have to try to overcome. Q1033 Jonathan Shaw: When you are talking to Patricia Hewitt, do you say, "We ought to have a training levy"? Mr Barber: We have argued for a long period that there ought to be clear obligations on employers. At sector level, potentially, a levy system could be the mechanism for looking to bind that in but simply relying on voluntary recognition of their self-interest is not delivering. I remember when the National Education and Training Targets were established in 1991 on the initiative of the CBI. At that time, there was an acceptance on the CBI's part that if those targets were not met by relying on exhortation and people realising the long term, economic case for making a step change in this area, some new mechanism, some new statutory framework, would be needed. We are still a long way from missing those targets. Mr Murray: At the sector level, the TUC's policy is we are very willing to give the new sector skills agreements a good run for their money. We are doing all the work in engaging unions on carrying forward the sector skills agreements, but at the end of the day if in certain sectors they do not establish sector skills agreements of high enough quality or if they do set them up and establish targets that are not subsequently met, we are saying to the government that if sector skills agreements are not set up in a sector, they should look at some kind of compulsory approach. We have heard the term "last chance saloon" a number of times over the last 20 years. If the sector skills agreements are not made to work, that poses some key questions about how you approach skills at the sector level. Q1034 Jonathan Shaw: You said at the beginning that it dated back to 1868 when you have been talking about skills. The Chancellor would say that this is the best growth for 200 years. We have had sustained growth in the economy. Perhaps the fact that we are a hybrid means that we are not doing badly. Mr Barber: Our productivity performance continues to lag behind our major competitors. One of the Chancellor's other central thrusts in terms of our economic wellbeing is we need to improve our productivity performance. We support that objective. We would suggest very strongly that the evidence is that you deliver the highest performance workplaces where there is sustained investment in skills. There are other dimensions to high performance workplaces as well but one of them is a clear, sustained commitment to skills. Q1035 Jonathan Shaw: Things could be even better? Mr Barber: Things could certainly be even better. It sounds like a song. Q1036 Chairman: Could I press you a little on 14-19 and Tomlinson? Were you disappointed when Digby Jones and the CBI came out, almost immediately the Tomlinson interim report came out, expressing severe reservations about change? Were you disappointed by the CBI's attitude? Mr Barber: Yes. We broadly supported the Tomlinson agenda. You asked a question earlier which I did not directly respond to about the level of contact and debate between the trade union movement and the major employer groups. The CBI recognises the importance of skills but they baulk on this central question that Jonathan was pursuing about the extent to which there ought to be some real levers that require employers to deliver. The CBI find themselves in a position of speaking up on behalf of the people who represent the worst practice, who put in the least investment, rather than positioning themselves in the argument as champions for the organisations that they also represent, some of whom match up to best practice anywhere in the world. Q1037 Chairman: Trade associations were ever thus and you were always looking for the lowest common denominator because all their members pay the membership fee. Are we right about this? Is there not a Danish model that we might learn from? When we went to Denmark, we saw a voluntary levy paid by employers. I have heard on the grapevine that one of the new Sector Skills Councils already had over 70 per cent of their members paying a levy. They are now going to Patricia Hewitt saying, "Can you make this mandatory for us?" That is an interesting alternative, is it not? If we can do that through Sector Skills Councils whereby who votes for it wants it and will deliver it, that is a lot healthier than some bureaucrat in Whitehall saying, "Thou shalt do it." Mr Barber: It is, but it depends how conditional it is and exactly what level of employer support has to be demonstrated before the government will be prepared to act. It seems to me that there are some sectors where there clearly is significant employer support for some collective funding mechanism to sustain the training arrangements, but if the government requires it to be 75 or 80 or 90 per cent speaking up you are not going to get that kind of move. The levy arrangements have continued in construction for all these years, with broad based employer support, notwithstanding the demise of the ITBs generally. Q1038 Chairman: You and I go back to the days of ITBs when there were a lot of Industrial Training Boards that saw their job as going round companies, showing them their accounts and how to pay the least amount towards training and to be eligible for the levy. That was the truth, was it not? A lot of ITBs were professional consultants on how to avoid or minimise your responsibilities. We do not want to get back in that ball game, do we? Mr Barber: The history of the ITBs has been written by the critics of the ITBs, conspicuously amongst them the Conservative politicians who ultimately gonged out the ITBs. While I do not think they were perfect, they put training on the agenda of a lot of companies who had not taken any serious interest in the issue. The levy grant mechanism and subsequently exemption mechanisms were rather crude and simple, I would say. I am not sure the ITBs always played their cards as well as they could have done. It could sometimes become a rather crude relationship: this is how you get your money back. I think some of those criticisms are valid, but they did get companies thinking. They did get a lot of small companies together in group training arrangements that, without the spur of an ITB there to gee people up, would never have engaged in any activity. The absence of any financial lever on influencing employer behaviour has resulted in the fact that we have still not made the kind of headway that we need to make. Q1039 Valerie Davey: You have reiterated again your general support for the Tomlinson Report and we have been told that this is a really radical change. It is going to provide the diploma encompassing all the qualifications which young people are acquiring at the moment. Do you think, first of all, that these are better skills which the employers will in fact welcome and, secondly, if they are, should we not be going rather faster down this route? It seems to be a radical move that we are evolving, rather than a radical move where there is some revolutionary action going on. Ms Smith: One of the key principles about Tomlinson is for there to be inclusive frameworks which will develop the potential of all young people. We have been very supportive of that principle and it can only be a positive thing for all involved. As part of that as well there is a strong shift towards boosting the status of the vocational route. That is a positive thing which will be welcomed. The current system is in many ways very good so it is no necessary that that needs to be thrown out tomorrow. Q1040 Valerie Davey: Could you expand that? I agree with you and I think you mentioned earlier that there would be a need for the basic skills and evolving some of these others. Which of the vocational skills which are on offer for young people at the moment are the ones you would not want to lose? What is good about the system as you are describing it, that you feel must not be thrown out with the bath water? Ms Smith: It is the vocational element that is probably the aspect that needs the most work. Q1041 Valerie Davey: Are there good ones now or are you saying we need to further develop vocational skills for the 14-19 age group? Ms Smith: I do not feel I can give specific examples. Anecdotally, there are some good examples out there but in general one of the opportunities within Tomlinson is to really develop that perspective and the vocational options. Q1042 Valerie Davey: Is the TUC able to do anything about keeping this parity of esteem, which is the phrase that we keep using, between those good vocational courses and the more academic, previously rather more valued courses? How are we going to get young people, who are going to be the 50 per cent who are not going to university, to have that quality and recognition, as we heard earlier from the engineering group, that will be valued in the workplace? Is the TUC able to contribute to that? Mr Barber: I think we can make a contribution but I think employers are critical here. An awful lot of this comes down to the judgment employers make and the value they place on vocational qualifications as compared to academic. Working through the new sector bodies, certainly the trade unions could play their part in looking to ensure that vocational routes are given proper recognition, do establish the kind of credibility that makes them powerful in the labour market, as a well recognised, well understood, high valued testimony to the skills and talents that people have demonstrated. Q1043 Valerie Davey: You mentioned "well understood" and I think that is a key phrase. Do you think we can make the diploma that Tomlinson is proposing well understood? Mr Barber: I would hope so. Mr Murray: One of the key aspects of Tomlinson is addressing the fact that the UK has one of the worst drop out rates amongst all the OECD countries. Only Mexico, Greece and one other country have a worse drop out rate. We are all right about getting the young people who do GCSEs and A levels to university, we are absolutely abysmal at the other 50 per cent. One of the key reasons the TUC supports a radical shake-up is that this sector of the school curriculum needs a radical shake-up if we are losing that number of young people from the education and training system every year. One of the other key elements of Tomlinson is it is going to be a foundation that all young people will be following. At the moment, we do have a bit of the sheep and goat: people doing GCSEs and A levels. Other people are doing some vocational qualifications. They do not have the status out there amongst employers. We have young people who are able to progress through the different levels of the diploma, selecting what is appropriate for their role. Some may pick and choose vocational elements here and there. It is a way of bonding together young people. They are all working through that diploma. There will be different elements and approaches to that but it does mean it will unify young people in schools. Q1044 Valerie Davey: I welcome that response. Given the range of achievements that potentially these young people can come out of school with, there is still that nagging doubt that somehow we are not producing young people who have sufficient numeracy, literacy, communication skills and IT base. Can you verify that? Is that true? We had the questioning earlier asking is it just anecdotal or are the demands that are being placed on young people higher and therefore we simply have to encourage young people to get those higher educational qualifications as well as the vocational ones? Mr Murray: 20 years ago, ICT was not on the radar screen in schools. Now ICT skills are obligatory if you are going to enter the world of work at whatever level. That is a key element of Tomlinson. We hear a lot about young people coming out of schools without the appropriate literacy and numeracy skills. I think Tomlinson does address that. There are some central skills that all young people should have whether they are going to enter the world of work or progress into higher or further education. Q1045 Helen Jones: We have taken a lot of evidence on whether or not people should be doing vocational courses at the age of 14 or whether we should be concentrating more on basic skills. From your point of view at the TUC, is it possible - I say this as somebody who is happy with the term "vocational" because I do not think it really describes what we are doing - to be training young people for particular jobs from the age of 14 on? Is it possible to predict the labour market that far in advance or do you believe that what we should be doing is perhaps giving them a range of practical skills and improving their basic skills through the practical work? Is the term "vocational" the right one in that context? Mr Murray: I think you can probably do both. The TUC would not be supporting the idea of putting young people at the age of 14 into occupational training and saying to them, "You have made a decision at the age of 14; you are going to have to stick with it now." As far as we see, that is not what Tomlinson is about and that is not what the government strategy is about. With Tomlinson you can address the fact that some young people want work experience from the age of 14 onwards, at the same time using that experience and their experience across the school curriculum to address key skills that are required as well. Q1046 Chairman: Do we get carried away with always looking at the hard skills? For those of us who have been to the United States recently and looked at their education system, the one area they seem to be much better at is the soft skills. Perhaps they are under-valued. The self-assurance and self-esteem they seem to have in many young people in the United States - does this all get missed out by always looking at examinations being passed? Do we miss on the quality of the overall education? Are not soft skills more and more important in a consumer driven society? Ms Smith: That is one element of Tomlinson that we support, the common skills aspect of that, where the idea is that the curriculum will cover the softer skills as well. Q1047 Mr Gibb: Do you think that over the last 20 years there has been a decline in literacy and numeracy amongst people coming out of school and going into the workplace? Mr Barber: I do not think the evidence suggests that there has been, although there has been this persistent anecdotal view from the employer community that there are still major problems with young people coming out of the school system in these areas. Whether that is objectively justifiable, I would have thought, is rather doubtful. Mr Murray: Maybe even 20 or 30 years ago it as not such a major problem if you had what we now call basic skills needs because the workplace was a very different place 20 to 30 years ago. Most of the report highlighted the extent of basic skills in the workplace and the key point is in a modern economy you cannot get away with a workforce where you have about a third that do not have level two. 20 or 30 years ago you could get away with it. Just because of the development of ITC skills and other necessary skills you no longer can. Q1048 Mr Chaytor: When the Committee visited Denmark and Germany recently, we saw some very high quality work based training. By contrast, in Britain, the last report of the Adult Learning Inspectorate as I recall was extremely damning of the quality of work based training in the United Kingdom. What is your general assessment of quality? Where are the biggest weaknesses, either sectors or types of company, and what is needed most of all to improve the quality across the board? Mr Barber: I think we would have significant concerns that there are still significant quality questions. In quite a number of areas - this goes back to the core issue about commitment to employer investment - there are significant problems, particularly in smaller companies. I think there is a major tale of under performance and lack of investment in the small company area and that is a drag on performance in quite a number of sectors. Mr Murray: The inspectors' report was referring to the quality of training providers and the figure was about 40 per cent where they were still inadequate, which is completely unacceptable. There has been quite a big improvement and the LSC has also undertaken a review of all the training providers running their programmes. The government and bodies like the LSC have to get tough with training providers. They are not really delivering the goods and if the inspectors are saying they are not adequate they should be given a certain period of time to shape up or to ship out. Q1049 Mr Chaytor: The issue is with the LSC being too lax in giving contracts to inadequate providers? Mr Murray: I would not say that because the LSC has to work with the training provider infrastructure that is out there. There are some very good training providers. The LSC deals with the infrastructure that is out there at the moment but the Learning Inspectorate itself has come up with some pretty damning reports on the quality of a lot of the training delivered by training providers, especially around modern apprenticeships. Q1050 Mr Chaytor: Your solution though is for the LSCs to be more rigorous in deciding who they contract with? Mr Murray: We would highly recommend that the LSC use the highest quality training providers but there is a special capacity issue around there. The LSC cannot say, "We are going to drop 40 per cent" because they have to deliver their programmes. Q1051 Mr Chaytor: I missed the relaunch this morning. How was the new relaunch to modern apprenticeships different from the old, un-relaunched modern apprenticeships? Were you consulted about the relaunch and did you make any recommendations for the relaunch? Ms Smith: On the issue of consultation, Francis O'Grady, the TUC deputy general secretary, is on the modern apprenticeships task force so representation by Francis and some of the task force's work is fed into some of the relaunch elements today. A stronger responsibility for the Sector Skills Councils is something that we welcome. We are looking towards that positively. We are supporting the idea at the sectoral level that apprenticeship frameworks are developed. Portability of apprenticeship status is new and something that we welcome very much. If an apprentice is in a situation where, for whatever reason, their job no longer holds, their status can go with them elsewhere. That is something that is very beneficial. Adult apprenticeships are also very welcome. The TUC called for these in its submission to the skills strategy and adult apprenticeships were flagged up in the skills strategy. We are pleased that that is going forward. Q1052 Mr Chaytor: Does the TUC see that there should be an age limit on the adult apprenticeships, because there was an age limit in the skills strategy? Mr Murray: That was just on an initial level, while they were implementing it. Initially, they were going to extend young people apprenticeships up to the age of 25 but I do not think that was a limit on ---- Q1053 Mr Chaytor: A limit at which you could start an apprenticeship? Mr Murray: I do not think they give an age limit for the adult apprenticeships. That age limit pertained to one of the first reforms to young apprenticeships. Instead of saying people had to finish by 25, they said immediately that young people would be able to enter the programme up to the age of 25. Q1054 Chairman: Is there any sense in having an age limit for modern apprenticeships? Mr Murray: I do not think there is. There are lots of regions of the United Kingdom where we have older men who are now on a range of benefits because they were thrown out of manufacturing either in the recession in the early 1980s or in the early 1990s, but there are now different types of manufacturing in many of these regions from those which they were originally employed in. If adequate training opportunities were made available through adult apprenticeships, some of these people would be welcomed back into the labour market. Q1055 Mr Chaytor: When the Chairman of the Tomlinson Committee was before our Committee, we asked why the proposal for junior apprenticeships was not included in his report when he learned about it. He said he learned about it in The Guardian the morning before, or words to that effect. He was not consulted about the launch of the junior apprenticeships concept. Was the TUC consulted about this and did you have a view on this? Now that it is a fait accomplish, what is your view on this? Mr Murray: We did know about it beforehand. Ivan Lewis had a breakfast meeting two or three weeks ago at the end of March with a number of the stakeholders. It was not a closed meeting. The TUC was one of up to about 30 different organisations represented there. Ivan Lewis set out in effect the main principles of what was going to be announced this morning. There was a fairly open discussion about it. We had been consulted, but just in the same way that other major stakeholders had been consulted. Q1056 Mr Chaytor: What are the main problems you see with this idea of 14 year olds having two days in the workplace? Mr Murray: There are some issues trade unions are always concerned about around health and safety, child protection and a number of issues that have to be addressed. We also have to look at the positive side. This is being piloted at the moment and it is showing, in some of these regions, they are allowing young people with certain controls to go into the workplace at the age of 14 onwards. It does appear to be having some impact on retention rates. That is not to say this is the only way of addressing drop out rate but the idea of engaging some young people in quality work experience whilst also ensuring that they receive a full range of other curriculum subjects in principle we are not against. Q1057 Mr Chaytor: Do you think there should be a full evaluation of the pilot before a decision is taken to extend it nationwide? Mr Murray: Absolutely. Ms Smith: That is certainly a key element. Another aspect of this particular programme as well is that it is being aimed at middle range ability students. I guess it comes back to the idea of stereotyping. Because of a young person's background, gender, race or whatever, they are immediately steered one way or the other. Q1058 Chairman: Did you hear some of the Engineering Employers' Federation evidence? It was very good evidence but they are bemoaning the fact they are not getting enough talented people coming in. There are hardly any women coming into engineering, let alone ethnic minorities. That is a serious problem for training in our country, is it not? Some jobs still seem to be flagged up as not open or attractive to women and ethnic minority. Do you have campaigns on that? Mr Barber: There was a major report from the ELC very recently that highlighted this issue very strongly. We very much supported the thrust of their concerns. Q1059 Chairman: I am conscious that we have had a good session with you so far but the one thing that has not been articulated at all, either in the questioning or the way you have answered us, is a vital sector in all this. That is the FE sector, the colleges. A lot of your members work in that sector. How do you rate that contribution? Are they part of the consultation procedure? Are they fully engaged? Is the government in a sense leading too heavily on Learning and Skills Councils and other quangos and not on what has been the mainstay of vocational education, which is our college system, especially FE? Mr Barber: I think there are major issues about resourcing. There are strong pressures to fund the schools more generously. There are the very strong pressures that we have seen made evident to support higher education and so on, but the FE sector has long been recognised by an awful lot of people as having been under-funded over a very long period. If we are serious about asserting the importance of vocational routes and so on, recognising that in the support that is given to FE seems to me to be critical. If at any stage NATFE do appear before you, they will make some of these points more eloquently than I can, but there are major issues. We have talked about parity of esteem but there are major issues about the esteem given to the people who deliver through our FE system. There is a whole set of issues about the pay and employment conditions, contracts and casualisation of lecturing services in FE and so on that is an important constraint on what their fee system can deliver. Q1060 Jeff Ennis: Brendan said he was very supportive, quite rightly in my opinion, of the effect of the success that we have had with ULRs since they started. One of the problems we still have to overcome, in my opinion, is the fact that a lot of the ULRs have been based in public sector organisations and not so many in the private sector. There are obvious reasons for this, as I am sure everybody is aware. How do we overcome this standing back from the private sector in terms of promoting ULRs to the same extent as in the public sector? What do we need to do? Mr Barber: There is a basic, background factor which is that the level of trade union membership and density is very much higher in the public sector than in the private sector. Having acknowledged that, there are some very positive success stories in the private sector that we are very anxious to get greater visibility for. I think it would be desperately negative if there was any suggestion that this was just a kind of idea for the public sector, not for the private sector. Mr Murray: A week ago we published a fairly detailed survey about union learning representatives which was undertaken last year, which had a lot of statistical information. It does show us 50/50 between the public sector and the private sector. We do have about 47 per cent of union learning representatives on the private sector. Union learning representatives have now been around since the late 1990s. One of the things we are looking at is how do we push forward and build the capacity of union learning representatives in workplaces. One of the key trends at the moment is an increasingly collective approach by union learning representatives in workplaces. That has generally been highlighted by the development of what I call learning agreements in workplaces like union learning representatives are now working collectively with management or with the HR department. Around 50 per cent of union learning representatives surveyed said that there was some form of learning agreement in their workplace. At the moment, the TUC is undertaking a major piece of research, conducting detailed case studies of workplaces where we think union learning representatives are developing this approach. For the private sector, the benefits are about the bottom line really. When you get union learning representatives and the HR department working strategically together, looking at workforce development across the piece, it has huge benefits for the business. We also published another report last week with the CIPD, which is a guide by CIPD to the role of union learning representatives and how they can work with personnel and HR employees. They also highlight the impact of learning agreements. They highlighted a case study when they gave their evidence of a company, an example of where union learning representatives are working strategically. We have just been working on a case study of VT Shipbuilding in Portsmouth which has a number of learning agreements now in place, one for modern apprenticeships, one for level three skills, but it also has a life long learning agreement which grew out of a union learning fund project. It is having a major impact on VT Shipbuilding. I think there was an interview with the chief executive in The Guardian a couple of weeks ago and he is very much giving her encouragement to this approach. VT Shipbuilding is one of the highest tech shipbuilding companies in Europe now. They have recently shown a 25 per cent increase in productivity over the last 12 months. On the union learning front and the fact that they are working closely with management, they have a workplace learning centre and they have about a third of the workforce going through training programmes at the moment around ICT and skills for life etc. We could certainly send the Committee the detail on that case study. Chairman: It would be useful. Q1061 Jeff Ennis: We have heard evidence from previous witnesses that the main area that ULRs have been successful in is basic skills training, in particular getting people who have no qualifications to take that first step into achieving some sort of level of qualification. Would you like to see ULRs becoming more involved in higher skills training programmes rather than the basic skills? Obviously, that is very important. It is doing a fantastic job in that regard but is that the next phase of development? Mr Barber: The basic skills work that has been done has in a sense received most attention, in part because the consequences of that can be so life transforming for the people who have benefited from it. It can be incredibly powerful, meeting people who for the first time for years have found new opportunities opening up and so on. It is clear that in the basic skills area there is still an awful lot to be done. There are still an awful lot of people we have not reached and who no-one else has reached either. The basic point behind your question is absolutely right. This is not an idea that is just relevant in terms of bringing people back into basic skills, although that produces some of the most emotional stories. It is about different kinds of workplace relationships, where the union is really able to provide a powerful role, acting as a pusher and a prodder to the employer and able to help broker a provision with local provider and to bring and encourage people into learning of all sorts. It is not just a mission for basic skills. Q1062 Chairman: You know all about power and you have a very powerful organisation. On the one hand, we have a seriously underskilled workforce in this country. What are the three levers that will be most useful over this next five or ten years to change the underskilled nation that we are into one of the greatest performers? Who is going to do it? Where is it going to come from, in your view? Mr Barber: There is no single, simple answer. It is all the things that we have been talking about. I do think at bottom there is a core issue which is about employer commitment. How can we win employer commitment? How can we grab employer commitment? That is the key test that the new structural arrangements need to be judged against, the Sector Skills Councils, the sector skills agreements and so on. Do they really engage employers to make that kind of commitment? Q1063 Chairman: How do you rate, in terms of that pivotal leverage, the Learning and Skills Councils? Mr Barber: That is clearly very important too, of course. It is responsible for a budget of something like £9 billion and that has a central role. I am reasonably confident that the LSC is clear about its purpose and what it is trying to do. It has the resource base. My bigger question mark is with the employers' side of the house. Q1064 Chairman: Who would you like to see as the new chair? What is your job spec? Do you want an industrialist? Do you want a trade unionist? Mr Barber: I do not think we have a candidate in the field at the moment. Chairman: Thank you very much for your attendance. It has been very useful for the work of the Committee. |