Examination of Witnesses (Questions 860
- 879)
WEDNESDAY 21 APRIL 2004
MR DAVID
MILIBAND MP AND
MR IVAN
LEWIS MP
Q860 Helen Jones: What about the
capital funding? We have the 21st century schools programme, but
what steps is the Department taking to make sure that local authorities,
when they put bids in, have regard to the changes that are likely
to come into the education system so that we are not just building
better buildings than we have now but that we are building buildings
which are designed differently, designed to cope with the unified
system that we expect to bring into being with the right facilities?
Mr Miliband: I agree with you
100% that we have a historic opportunity through the Building
Schools for the Future programme to plan for education over the
next 30 or 40 years in an area, and the simple answer to your
question is that the criteria of the programme demand that local
partnerships involving the LEA and the LSC, involving schools
and colleges and employers, set out a vision that it will be able
to deliver. We have not mandated a unified system but it will
be able to deliver for the range of educational needs that exist,
and that puts a premium on flexibility and diversity in the local
plans, and I am very excited by the sort of flexibility I am seeing
built in by educationalists and by architects into the sort of
capital funding that we are talking about.
Q861 Chairman: Is there not a problem?
It is a wonderful programme, and I hope my own constituency will
benefit from it. The fact of the matter is that many people would
say there is all this money pouring into schools. At the same
time, the college sector is relatively neglected and under-funded,
and they are at the sharp end of delivering much of the policy
that you want to deliver. There is a general feeling out there,
and it is not just the AoC lobbying this Committee; it is a genuine
feeling from lots of witnesses that money is pouring into schools,
with much less resource pouring into the college system.
Mr Miliband: We have tried to
talk about Building Schools for the Future as providing funding
plans for the secondary estate in an area, and to take up Helen's
point, it is very much not about taking every school and rebuilding
it on its own site. It is about a model of a secondary estate
that includes engagement, and we have proposals for school/college
campuses, and we have proposals for employment centres being built.
Q862 Chairman: Who is "we"?
Mr Miliband: We have had proposals
from LEAs to the Building Schools for the Future team.
Q863 Chairman: What if you get plans
that are just rebuilding the schools and that are totally unimaginative?
Do you approve those?
Mr Miliband: We have only had
one wave of the Building Schools for the Future programme, and
the 10 winners and the four Pathfinders were chosen on the basis
of the impact on educational standards, broadly defined, that
the plans would have. So if an authority came to us and said "We
just want to do the same thing but in nicer buildings", that
would not score well compared to those who are saying "We
have got a new set of plans here of how we are going to meet the
participation and progression challenge", which I mentioned
at the beginning.
Q864 Mr Pollard: I was with Professor
David Gann of Imperial College on Monday at a conference and he
works in innovation. He says a step change every five years in
innovation would lead to new jobs and new skills. You said a short
while ago, Minister, that you are looking at a 20-year window
of opportunity. Are you not suggesting there might be a straitjacket
if innovation changed every five years? What you need is a flexible
system so that change can be incorporated in that and the new
skills can be ramped up fairly quickly.
Mr Lewis: Absolutely. What we
need is an education and training system that responds to the
realities of the global economy. That has a number of elements
to it. One is the need for constant innovation, the need for a
growing number of people qualified to an intermediate technician
level, but also leaders, whether it be of public services or whether
it be the private sector or the voluntary sector. We need more
people who can be sound and visionary leaders. We also need, in
terms of the new system, the capacity to be innovative. We also
need the capacity to respond to the fact that inter-generational
unemployment is on the wane, thankfully, and also the job for
life is dead. I have spoken a lot recently about one of the answers
to the question what the state can do in a world where the global
economy is constantly affecting people's lives and creating anxiety
and insecurity. One of the things the state can do more than anything
else is to support people, to replace the concept of job for life
with the principle of employability for life, so people have the
flexibility to change career, to move on, to retrain and re-skill
in their 40s and 50s, sometimes earlier. That is the kind of system
that we need to create. That is partially about the kind of 14-19
and higher education experience that we give to young people,
and it is also partially about—which I think the Chairman
and Committee will be looking at in greater detail as this inquiry
goes on—the work that we are doing in terms of adult skills
and adult learning, because life-long learning has to become a
reality rather than a catchphrase or a slogan if we are going
to respond to the innovation challenges that you have referred
to, but also to the impact of globalisation, the insecurity and
the anxiety that that brings. The other thing I would say to you
is that we are working far more closely with the DTI on issues
like innovation and science and skills, not divorcing those policy
areas, which has been the case historically, DfES looking at one,
DTI looking at the other. We are actually working both at ministerial
and official level far more closely, and basically it is about
saying what are the labour needs of this country if we are going
to continue to be economically successful in the future, and what
are the implications for the education and training system?
Q865 Mr Pollard: Could I talk about
Modern Apprenticeships now? I visited the Centrica training place
in Acton last week, and was very impressed with the training that
they were doing there. These were people being trained—one
of them was 42-years-old, and the average age of those I saw,
and I saw about 18, was 38. I was really impressed. These were
people who had done all sorts of jobs, postmen, etc, and had come
to this very specialised central heating, boiler installation,
etc and were really keen on doing it. That seems to me a model
of flexibility that we ought to encourage. Further on, on the
same tack of Modern Apprenticeships, there are people who will
be able to lay one brick on top of another but would never be
able to build the Sistine Chapel. Can we look at staggered apprenticeships,
where you would learn a bit and two years later come back and
do a bit more but still as part of a Modern Apprenticeship?
Mr Lewis: As I am 37, and you
referred to 38-year-olds retraining, I do not know whether that
is a message! I would also pay tribute to Sir Roy Gardner, who
is, of course, the Chairman of Centrica, for his work in leading
the Modern Apprenticeship Task Force. (I will not pay tribute
for his role as Chairman of Manchester United, as a Manchester
City supporter.) The point you make is twofold. First of all,
in the skills strategy, one of the exciting things about it is
the Government working with industry to create adult apprenticeships.
We are going to be announcing in the next few weeks, as I have
said, more details of how we propose, sector by sector, to develop
and roll out the principle of adult apprenticeship, which does
respond directly to the point that the job for life is dead and
people need to retrain and up skill. In terms of the opportunity
to do staggered apprenticeships, we are looking at that in terms
of the unitisation of modern apprenticeships as part of the reform
of vocational qualifications. QCA are looking at it at the moment.
Again, we will be making more announcements about that in the
next few weeks, about how we have more portability, more flexibility,
so you can start and then take whatever credits you accumulate
with you and continue.
Q866 Mr Pollard: One final question,
about the bottom quartile of students that David Miliband talked
about earlier on. Some people have difficulty achieving almost
anything really. The question I ask is about relevance. Many of
those do not see the relevance in learning Pythagoras, or any
of those other clever bits and pieces, to their everyday lives.
Relevance is the situation we have to consider. I visited Laing's
training place about a year ago, and they had young people there
who had been kicked out of school in Enfield, but when they got
to doing proper training they saw the relevance of that, and suddenly
they were enlivened and started paying attention to the academic
bits. How are we going to deal with that?
Mr Miliband: Pythagoras is quite
important if you are building a wall.
Mr Lewis: The whole point of saying
that we need to reshape, reconfigure our education system so we
have personalised learning is very much about this: every individual
from a different starting point, different motivation, different
strengths, different talents. We have to have bottom lines in
terms of rigour and standards, and it is absolutely true. The
argument that you get high-quality, high-status vocational qualifications
but you do not have basic literacy and numeracy skills, as some
employers seem to imply they want, is a complete nonsense. We
do need standards and we do need rigour, but of course you are
right about the personalisation of learning. I would draw your
attention to a programme which I would like you to look at at
some point called Entry to Employment. It is for those young people
who are not even ready to start a foundation Modern Apprenticeship.
They cannot be aiming for level two; they are struggling to get
to level one. The Entry to Employment programme now has 30,000
young people on it, moving to 50,000 in the next few months,[5]
and all the feedback from those practitioners on the ground is
that for the first time we have a post-16 offer which is getting
to those young people who are amongst the most disengaged and
the most challenging. Another area we need to use as an opportunity
is the fact that we are now committed to giving all permanently
excluded pupils access to a full-time education, and we have to
be far more imaginative and innovative about how we get those
young people back, motivated and in a position where we can re-integrate
them into mainstream education.
Q867 Mr Turner: When your party was
re-badged New Labour, that was quite a successful exercise, was
it not?
Mr Lewis: You are better placed
to answer that than others.
Q868 Mr Turner: When Royal Mail was
re-badged Consignia it was a disaster, and the reason I suspect—and
perhaps you will tell me if you agree—is that your party
did not throw out the baby with the bathwater; they kept the recognised
brand but threw away the old baggage, whereas Royal Mail threw
out what was recognised.
Mr Miliband: This could become
an extremely interesting session in political history. I do not
recognise the notion of re-badging. I think substance is what
counts, and form follows substance. If what you are saying there
is no point in changing names if you do not have integrity to
what the new name represents, then of course you are right. Is
that what you are asking?
Q869 Mr Turner: That is part of it,
but also, if you throw out a name that people recognise and respect,
it takes a long time to get on with the new name.
Mr Miliband: So if we had called
ourselves the New Party, it might have brought unhappy echoes
of an earlier time.
Q870 Mr Turner: Indeed. What we have
is Modern Apprenticeships, which are becoming recognised; GCSE,
which has built a reputation; and A-level, which is recognised
and respected, and some youngsters who are falling through the
gaps. Yet it seems to me that Tomlinson is talking about throwing
out all these recognised and respected names; in other words,
they are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Surely it is
people falling through the gaps, who cannot transfer from one
to another, who need the system to be resolved for; it is not
a need to get rid of the known brands.
Mr Miliband: I think there are
two important aspects to this. The weaknesses of the current system
are not only with those who are falling through the gap. Notwithstanding
the rightful credibility that A-levels have, I think you and I
would agree that the stretch that comes in the International
Baccalaureate from something like the 4,000-word essay or the
oral viva is important in and of itself and speaks to some of
the teamwork and other oral skills. You were nodding your head
when Ivan was speaking earlier about how a modern notion of skills
has to embrace that as well as basic literacy and numeracy. I
think there is room in the current system for improvement within
the A-level track as well as for those who are falling through
the net. Secondly, I think it is important to understand or to
see Tomlinson's argument, which is for building an advanced diploma,
for example, or an intermediate diploma around A-levels and around
GCSEs. The diploma does not replace A-levels. He is not suggesting
that if you were studying English and Maths A-level the results
in those subjects would not be clear. What he is saying is that
you would set minimum criteria for the number of GCSEs or A-levels
or their vocational equivalent to achieve the advanced diploma,
and that the advanced diploma could aid the participation and
progression drive by providing an incentive for young people.
I did not read his report as throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
There is then, I suppose, a third issue, which is about names
and where one ends up with the actual nomenclature, and I think
that is an open question, which, in a way, he has got to come
on to.
Q871 Mr Turner: In that case, moving
on to work-based learning, when I was speaking to an employer
last night, he described one aspect of work-based learning for
a student on a college course as students coming for a week, watching
what is done, asking him to sign something and the colleges getting
the money. He complained that he did not get the money. He described
the people who had been trained in a particular skill as people
who he then had to re-train. Why is there this dissatisfaction?
This was not any old employer; this was at the Chambers of Commerce
reception, so they were largely chairmen and chief executives
and so on of chambers of commerce. Why is there this dissatisfaction
with college-organised training, do you think?
Mr Lewis: Because some employers
have bad experiences is one answer. I think they do. There are
still too many institutions that do not perform to a high enough
level, although progress is being made and the Success for All
programme has been really important in trying to focus on quality,
but also responsiveness to employer need. I also think that if
you look at the ALI work in terms of inspecting work-based training,
it has shown that there is a steady improvement in quality as
a consequence of their inspections and rooting out some of the
worst provision, but there is still a long way to go. We also
know that, for example, the LSC has rooted out quite a significant
number of training providers who have simply not been up to scratch,
which has been quite controversial, but they have stopped contracting
with those training providers because they have not been delivering.
Q872 Chairman: You are talking about
private providers?
Mr Lewis: Yes, on the whole, because
they have not been up to scratch. The whole point about one of
the central focuses of Success for All as a process in terms of
reforming and investing in further education is standards and
quality, but it is also the incentivisation of colleges to be
responsive to employer need, and that really, uniquely, in terms
of public services, there is a relationship between the finance
that a college will get on an annual basis in terms of its budget,
and its performance, and a part of the way that colleges perform
is increasingly judged in terms of them meeting directly the needs
of the local economy and local employers. I have to say to you—and
I do not just say this because the AoC are represented in the
audience—there are many employers who will talk very positively
about their experience of engaging with their local college, and
obviously this person was not like that. What you often get is
national players who are employers who say colleges and the education
system are just hopeless in terms of meeting the needs of the
labour market, and it is usually a very general, very abstract
sort of statement, in the same way as some sectors say employers
do not want to invest in skills; we need to force them to. That
is another blanket, generalised, not always very fair statement.
Basically, there is a lot of room to improve, both in terms of
the quality of provision and education and training offer which
is more responsive to the needs of employers than has been the
case historically, but there is empirical, objective evidence
suggesting that things are improving.
Q873 Mr Turner: But what you have
said, I think, is that you need a greater buy-in from employers
to help focus that process, and what I am concerned about is how
effective, how easy it is for employers to get involved in the
process. Do you know what proportion of businesses in the UK employ
less than, say, five people?
Mr Lewis: It is a very high proportion.
It is very much the growing part of the economy.
Q874 Mr Turner: Indeed, and how many
people on, say, the Tomlinson Committee or each of the SSCs employ
less than five people? I do not suppose you do know.
Mr Miliband: On Tomlinson there
are two employer representatives, one of whom has built up from
employing a very small number to now employing about 180.
Mr Lewis: SME engagement is a
major problem, both in terms of SMEs making a contribution and
input to the design of education but also SME commitment to investing
in the skills of their people and seeing that as central to their
business development and business performance. That is why a lot
of SMEs go to the wall and do not do as well as they could in
the current competitive economy, because they do not see skills
as central to what they are trying to achieve. I have to say I
think there are some levers which are making a difference. I think
specialist status, for example, is engaging secondary schools
in a far more significant way with local employers than has been
the case in the past. There are the mentoring programmes that
I have mentioned to you, where lots of employers at a very local
level are sending mentors into the local schools, which is a very
positive step forward. We want to do more. We are introducing,
as you probably know, enterprise education into the curriculum
over the next couple of years. We are making work-related learning
a statutory part of the curriculum from next year rather than
not taking that seriously, but we do have a significant way to
go. Also, I have to be very frank; you talked about the complex
nature of the system. If you look at a piece of paper—the
Chairman has often made this point—which tries to explain
and articulate the training system, it is full of different organisations,
different shorthand terms, and it is very, very complex. My point
has always been that that is not important if those organisations
hide the architecture and hide the wiring. From the point of view
of the customer the complex nature of some of those systems should
not matter. They have not always been very good at doing that.
Q875 Mr Turner: I certainly agree
with you on both those points, but the problem for the very small
business is not only whether they are bedazzled by the architecture
but whether they actually have the time to engage, and it may
be a useful investment of time if they have the time available
but they do not have the time available if they are on a margin.
Mr Lewis: We have the employer
training pilots, which you may or may not be aware of, which are
basically the LSC providing funding to support small and medium
sized enterprises to encourage their staff to up-skill up to level
two qualifications, and it is very much a tailored, brokered response,
where a business advisor goes and sits with the employer, says
"What do you need? What do you want? We will deliver that
but you have to be prepared to do certain things. Training will
be free, it will be at the workplace and we will also give you
some level of compensation to release staff for training."
The employer training pilot has been singularly successful in
engaging with many of the businesses that you are describing because
it has been very customised, it has been very tailored to meet
the employers' needs, and it has been a very personal relationship
between the training system and the employer. It is also interesting
that there are 36,000 employers offering Modern Apprenticeships
and 67% of those employers are in the SME category, which is much
more encouraging than you might think. That is not necessarily
businesses of under five. This is another problem. We often talk
about SMEs in one bracket, when we all know that it is much more
complex than that. The final point I would make on the Sector
Skills Councils is that one of the things we have been quite clear
about before we have agreed to license some of these Sector Skills
Councils is that they have to demonstrate significant buy-in from
smaller businesses within their sectors, not just the same old
suspects. It will be for others to judge as that network rolls
out over the next few months. We will have about 80% of the UK
workforce covered by sector skills councils. It will be for others
to judge whether they have penetrated the smaller employers in
a way that their predecessor organisations had not, which is one
of the reasons why we got rid of national training organisations.
Q876 Mr Turner: That specifically
means micro-businesses?
Mr Lewis: Yes.
Q877 Mr Turner: Finally, would you
agree that one of the reasons why employers complain so much that
they do not invest in training is because the people they train
go off and work for someone else and they do not get the benefit?
Mr Lewis: Yes.
Q878 Mr Turner: Is there a legal
obstacle that prevents those employers hanging on to those employees?
Mr Lewis: I think there is. As
I understand it, in terms of constraint of trade and all of that,
it makes it very difficult to actually say "If we invest
in your training, you will have to stay with us for a minimum
period of time." As I understand it, the law makes that difficult,
if not impossible. I have to say to you, though, there are very
forceful employers who will sit in rooms with other employers
who make this argument who will shoot that down in flames and
will say that actually, in terms of business bottom line—and
I always try to speak to employers about training in the context
of business bottom line, not some altruistic contribution to a
socially just society—there are some very powerful and articulate
employers of the size that you describe who will talk far more
effectively than politicians or civil servants about how their
business performance has been transformed as a consequence of
taking the skills and the training of people both from the chief
executive and the senior management to the shop floor worker.
The other thing that I would say to you, Mr Turner, is that we
are doing a lot of work at the moment on leadership and management
in conjunction with the DTI because we believe that one of the
ways that we can influence most effectively micro-businesses is
if we can get the managing director and the chairman, who are
usually the same person, to see the value of all of this and to
be willing themselves to see, if they were willing to commit themselves
to self-development, how that could transform their capacity to
make their business successful. That inevitably creates a cadre
of micro-business leaders who see the benefits, who see the ease
of access to training and education if you have this brokered
approach, and will then see the benefits of that in terms of seeing
not only investment in the skills of their own people as being
essential but also the self-interest of engaging with local schools
and colleges in terms of what we are trying to do with young people.
Q879 Chairman: There was a stage
at which we had discussed in this inquiry looking at the complexity
of the skills industry in one region because many employers do
say to the Committee that it is the complexity of actually knowing
where to go to get help. These are reasonably sophisticated people,
not only the small end of SMEs, but some of the larger ones, who
just find it so complex by the time one has looked at the range
and variety not just of learning skills councils but what the
RDAs do, and what the regional assemblies now are doing in many
regions. It is very complex for most people who do not have an
awful lot of time to unravel it. It might be helpful if you could
write to us saying what you think are the main things going on
in a typical region. I am after a sort of organigram.
Mr Lewis: I would be absolutely
delighted to do that, because one of the things we did attempt
to do via the Skills Strategy is, from an "architecture"
and "wiring" point of view, to minimise that as an obstacle
for the customer, whether that customer be the employer or the
individual learner.[6]
I had a choice in terms of the Skills Strategy, and that was to
rip up all of the existing organisations and start massive structural
reform, which would have meant we would have spent the next three
years debating how we change the culture and bring the different
work forces together and restructure everything, or try and align
the existing organisations and, as I said, hide the architecture
and the wiring, and the judgment I made was that if we had had
another three or four years of ripping up the organisations, restructuring
everything, that would have been a disaster in terms of raising
our national skills performance.
5 Note by witness: E2E launched nationally
in August 2003: in the first six months over 32,000 young people
took part in it, more than 3,200 over profile. The LSC planning
assumption for E2E is that over 50,000 young people will access
the provision by August, 2004. Back
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