Examination of Witnesses (Questions 440
- 459)
WEDNESDAY 3 MARCH 2004
MR MIKE
TOMLINSON
Q440 Jonathan Shaw: So perhaps this
type of junior apprenticeship would be something that would inspire
young people and then they would realise, in the way that you
told the Committee, that they would also need mathematics in order
to do their accountancy and they would also need to understand
marketing, et cetera, so they would need IT skills.
Mr Tomlinson: Yes, I agree with
you entirely, as previously, that that sort of context for their
learning is hugely motivating for some young people. I think what
we have got to find is a balance between offering them that opportunity,
but not severely restricting their choices and their chance to
change their mind. It is really finding that balance that is crucially
important, but I do agree with you, and there is plenty of evidence
around, that young people who are motivated by their applied vocational
study, call it what you will, suddenly say, "Well, I can
see the reason for learning x and y", and are very encouraged
to do so, but it is finding that balance. Until I have got more
detail, I am not sure that I know exactly what is being proposed
as the junior apprenticeship.
Jeff Ennis: Can I begin by apologising
to Mr Tomlinson for not being here at the outset, but unfortunately
today's session clashed with a very important debate in Westminster
Hall on mineworkers' compensation claims, and seeing as I have
got the highest number of former miners of any constituency in
England, I hope you will understand why I was elsewhere, Mr Tomlinson.
Carrying on the theme of Modern Apprenticeships, the current experience
across the country of the existing Modern Apprenticeships can
best be described as very patchy. I know, for example, in one—
Chairman: Terry Patchett?
Jeff Ennis: No, very patchy! Terry Patchett
was my predecessor, Mr Tomlinson, so there is a bit of an in-joke
there from the Chairman!
Jonathan Shaw: Not much of a joke!
Chairman: A bit patchy!
Q441 Jeff Ennis: The experience across
the country is that Modern Apprenticeships are very patchy. The
experience in Barnsley has been very positive. Have you any views
as to why the existing Modern Apprenticeship scheme is so patchy
and what do we need to learn from the current experience in developing
the new, shall we say, Modern Apprenticeship?
Mr Tomlinson: Well, if by "patchy",
you are not thinking just geographically, but in terms of the
quality—
Q442 Jeff Ennis: Yes.
Mr Tomlinson: —I think there
is huge diversity, as you say, both in terms, for example, in
the number of hours that are involved and all the rest. Clearly
some of it is around the specification for them. There is a very
loose specification in effect. I think also that one of the difficulties
has been centred around the delivery of key skills as part of
them where employers have found this, or certainly the assessment
system associated with them, not to be one that they favour. The
other difficulty, and it goes back to earlier comment, is that
the evidence that the Adult Learning Inspectorate provided to
us made clear that their work showed that of the young people
doing the Advanced Modern Apprenticeship, 60% of them had the
language and numeracy skills at level 1 or below and that was
seriously limiting not only their capacity to progress through
the apprenticeship, but their capacity actually to meet the requirements
of fulfilling the apprenticeship, which in part explains the relatively
low levels of completion. Now, that in part is why my answer to
the junior one was saying that I need to know more detail because
if we were to have it, we must not fall into that particular trap,
so I think there is a whole set of reasons around it. I do understand
that there has been an end-to-end review of the Modern Apprenticeship
undertaken for the DfES and I am assuming that that will be available
soon and I think it will be a very important document to see.
Equally of course, Sir Roy Gardiner's group has been looking at
the take-up and how one better markets the Modern Apprenticeship
and I understand that they will be reporting soon as well. Does
that go some way towards answering you?
Q443 Jeff Ennis: Yes, that is fine.
There is press speculation that obviously the Government is looking
at extending the Modern Apprenticeship situation to a junior apprenticeship
to cover the 14-16-year-old age range, being a broad principle
which I support, to extend the curriculum at that particular age
range. However, if it does extend into that particular age range,
what would be the impact on the already established work experience
programmes that many schools run and once again I know the experience
of work experience—
Mr Tomlinson: It is very varied.
Q444 Jeff Ennis: —depends on
the placement that the student gets as to how much they get out
of the work placement?
Mr Tomlinson: I think it is a
fair question, as I said earlier. I think for me at the moment
I am personally not clear about how the requirement in the National
Curriculum for work-related learning for all 14-16-year-olds would
either link with, or by subsumed by, a vocational course or a
junior apprenticeship. I am not sure how those two ingredients
would link with work experience. There is a huge resource that
is currently contributed to by employers making places and people
available and the schools in making the time available and, from
my own view, I think it is not time in general that is as well
spent and as productive as it could be.
Q445 Jeff Ennis: So effectively then
this is still the missing link, shall we say?
Mr Tomlinson: I think what is
missing is some sense of cohesion and moving from what one might
call sort of work-related study to work-based study through to
occupationally specific study. That line is fractured at a number
of points at the present time. We do not have that clear progression
and transparency and I think we need it.
Chairman: I now want to look at the last
area we have before us and that is delivery.
Q446 Valerie Davey: We have talked
a little about implementation and I want to take it a stage further.
You will have seen, I am sure, in the TES, soon after the publication
of your Report, the FE section editorial was concerned at your
not including colleges sufficiently. Today you have certainly
recognised that they have in their profiling, in the work that
they do with students, something to offer. Would you like to reply
to the editorial section there?
Mr Tomlinson: Well, I would like
to reply to it in the sense of saying that it is not our intention
at all, far from it, to ignore the further education sector. It
actually makes up a significant part of the totality of the provision,
a majority of the provision that is made.
Q447 Valerie Davey: Indeed.
Mr Tomlinson: I think that our
work, our desire to involve the colleges is well exemplified by
our close links with the Association of Colleges and indeed NATFHE
as well, so if that is the impression it has created, then I take
full responsibility for creating the wrong impression.
Q448 Valerie Davey: The other body
that is reviewing part of this area of course is the LSC and given
their huge resource behind their 16-plus review, how does that
fit in because there has been very little reference to that today?
Mr Tomlinson: On the face of it,
it does not fit in very well at all and I think that it is operating
within the system that is here and now and I think there are a
number of areas where greater joined-up thinking and planning
is absolutely crucial if we are not to end up with institutions,
as they move through this, knocked from all sides by varying demands,
all or some of which are not consistent with the direction of
the policy and its development. I think that would really significantly
undermine those who will be charged with the main task of delivering,
the teachers, the lecturers, the trainers and those who support
them. That will undermine them very quickly.
Q449 Valerie Davey: Your emphasis
today has been on flexibility, on different levels of progress,
different timescales and yet, as you say, we have got schools,
colleges and sixth-form colleges. As you start implementing this,
how are we going to get amongst the organisers of those institutions
the flexibility which your Report demands?
Mr Tomlinson: First of all, let's
acknowledge that some of that collaboration and flexibility is
already beginning to shape in a number of areas, and I think we
need to learn from those examples exactly what is necessary to
make it work effectively and build on that, so we are not building
from zero, but from things which are already happening across
schools, colleges and training providers. Some of it is hugely
exciting in terms of what it is providing for the 14-year-old
and upwards, but that is not to kid ourselves that there are not
some very significant underlying issues, some of which I have
touched upon about funding, about differences between teachers
and lecturers and where they can operate and so on. Of course
in some areas of the country there is a simple geographical problem.
In rural areas the idea of collaboration is much more complex
and much more difficult than it is in the more urban environment,
so again it would not be a case of a one-size-fits-all model,
but it would have to be for local circumstances to sort out. We
have the institutions we have and we are not in a position simply
to wipe the slate clean, but my own feeling over recent months
is that there is a huge willingness on the part of everyone to
try and find ways of making this work. Last night I was in Haringey,
talking to the headteachers, the college people, the LEA, the
LSC and what struck me there was the enormous determination to
work together to try to make collaboration not must a mantra,
but a reality for the learner. I think that has to be applauded
and, more importantly, we have to build on it.
Q450 Valerie Davey: You have mentioned
that indeed no one institution is going to meet the needs of the
youngsters who start out in that particular school in particular.
Have you got any idea though for the development of the diploma
what might be, of necessity, the size of a particular school or
college or sixth-form?
Mr Tomlinson: No, we have not
and that will be one of the questions that we will want to have
a small number of schools and colleges answer for us from their
perspective, but we do not at the moment. What we are trying not
to do, which the document itself makes clear, is presuppose that
in general we will want more hours of taught time than we have
now, but that, nevertheless, does not answer the absolute question
that you are asking, but we need to get to some answers of a practicable
nature by the September report, otherwise the best ideas, if they
are not implementable, are really no more than good ideas.
Q451 Valerie Davey: Certainly the
fact that the capital funding lies at the moment with the LSC
is, I think, a huge issue. If they are going to be flexible in
the spending of that money for our future development, it has
to be in allowing for this, does it not, and the dialogue between
you and the LSC is crucial?
Mr Tomlinson: There are of course
two chunks of money. There is what the LSC has and there is also
Buildings Schools for the Future which is a huge investment by
the Government. My only hesitation is to say that we are building
schools for the future, but at this point we are not certain what
we want to do in them and that is, for me, quite a concern because
we will not get a second chance to spend that sort of money, we
will not get a second chance, and I think that is a big question.
Q452 Chairman: What is coming through
from the evidence you have given, Mr Tomlinson, has been really
that although you do want to phase this over and you realise it
will take some time to implement, it is a revolutionary idea and
a revolutionary way of reorganising our educational system which
will touch on everything. It will break down into much earlier
years and it will then process through the skills training and
life-long learning and so much else. Therefore, in a sense the
radical nature of these proposals cannot really be understated;
they are very radical indeed and this is what everyone who is
in the business, whether they are for them or against, they know
that this is a radical change and the educational system, if this
is accepted, will never be the same.
Mr Tomlinson: I think that is
absolutely right.
Q453 Chairman: This comes from a
radical discontent that you are expressing and that you have picked
up right across the educational sector.
Mr Tomlinson: I think it reflects
broad consensus that what we have now across this phase is not
what we need, not necessarily agreement in universal terms about,
"Therefore, what do we move to?", and there is debate
still to be had, but certainly a view that what we have now does
not best serve the needs of all our learners, nor in that sense,
therefore, does it serve the needs of our nation and economy and
society at large.
Q454 Chairman: There is no doubt
that this Committee's experience in New Zealand and elsewhere,
and our travels around this country to Birmingham, Slough and
Wakefield recently did show certainly to some members of this
Committee that there is out there a radical discontent with bodies
in terms of not delivering the real opportunities which allow
all the potential of our students to come through. Whether these
are the right proposals, the Committee will discuss.
Mr Tomlinson: Absolutely.
Q455 Mr Chaytor: If I could just
come in on one of the issues in the Report that is really very
low key and that is the question of advice and guidance because
underpinning all of these proposals is an assumption about a much
better and more intensive form of advice and guidance and personal
support to individual students than there has ever been before.
Now, accepting everything you have said about the need for collaboration
and the positive response to the need for collaboration from schools,
how can you build in objective advice and guidance to young people
while they are still students at one particular school because
the tendency will always be that the advice they get is to stay
as long as possible in that school?
Mr Tomlinson: I do agree with
you. Advice and guidance is an integral part of the core, it is
the fifth component of the core. It is very important and I think
that it is equally vital that we look at whether or not the systems
we have in place at the moment provide that level of objective,
impartial and up-to-date support and advice. It is not just the
careers teacher, but a lot of schools now have mentors where a
lot of individuals, pupils have a mentor. I think of course the
reason for keeping a young person in your own school is driven
by the way the funding is organised and there is a strong push
that funding gives to do that. We know the effects of funding.
For example, in key skills, further education was funded to deliver
and, therefore, it delivered, whereas schools were not and did
not in the main and the consequence of course was that HE did
not know which way to turn with that because they felt that they
would be in some way unfairly treating those from school as a
result of decisions not made by the students. Funding can drive
things one way or the other.
Q456 Mr Chaytor: But funding is not
mentioned in this document at all—
Mr Tomlinson: No.
Q457 Mr Chaytor: —either in
terms of the institutional base of funding at the moment and how
that might have to change in a more collaborative system or in
terms of the amounts of money which will be needed to deliver
the enhanced programme that you are describing. I suppose my question
is to ask at what point are you going to produce some estimates
of the kind of additional funding that will be needed to deliver
this kind of programme? Also what assessment are you going to
make as to the minimum size of institution or minimum size of
cohort that would enable a school to deliver this programme in
a viable way?
Mr Tomlinson: We will have to
produce some of that in September. At the end of the document
on page 68 where it sets out the recommendations and next steps,
one of those is a funding framework for 14-19 learning. Clearly
that has not been at the foremost of our thoughts because until
we know what it is we are trying to deliver and so on, it is difficult
to put any costings alongside it, but we will be looking at the
funding issue and what might need to be changed in order to work
with the grain of these propositions. As I said earlier, it may
be both in quantum terms overall, I do not know, it may be in
terms of the streams, it may be in terms of the levels of funding
which at the moment are different between schools and FE, for
example.
Q458 Chairman: Is that not the Government's
job?
Mr Tomlinson: It is the Government's
job to make those decisions.
Q459 Chairman: No, to assess the
cost. If they like the shape of your proposals, is it not the
Department's job?
Mr Tomlinson: Ultimately of course,
yes, but I think it is also part of our job at least not to ignore
this topic because if we ignore it, there is a whole body of people
out there, some of whom are behind me actually, who would regard
that as a failure to do the job properly. We are only making recommendations
and we are not capable of making executive decisions or we are
not making executive decisions.
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