Examination of Witnesses (Questions 880
- 899)
WEDNESDAY 21 APRIL 2004
MR DAVID
MILIBAND MP AND
MR IVAN
LEWIS MP
Q880 Chairman: One last point on
this section. No-one wants you to do that. We understand the impetus
behind 14-19 and all of that. Many of us on this Committee believe
that there are many young people in this country of ours who need
not only Modern Apprenticeships but qualifications through Modern
Apprenticeships, and they also should be protected from going
into the market, whether they work for SMEs or for larger companies,
with no skills or education or training at 16. That seems to be
the worst exploitation of children, and I have not really had
any answer from you yet whether you agree that it is exploitation
to turn a child into the workplace with no education and training.
Mr Lewis: I think it represents
a major failure of our society, and I think it should be the motivation
that drives us to go to work every morning in terms of our contribution
to the education system, to make sure that we minimise—I
will not say eliminate because utopia is sometimes difficult to
achieve, as we find out from time to time—the number of
young people who leave our education system before the age of
18 without any form of recognised, decent qualifications.
That should be our passion, it should drive us from a social justice
point of view, but it should equally drive us from an economic,
competitiveness and productivity point of view.
Q881 Mr Jackson: I want to ask a
general question about the extent to which the Department is looking
at international experience. I know the Minister of State referred
to the United States when answering my question about higher education,
50% from the vocational aspects of higher education. We have recently
been to Germany and to Denmark, and one of the things that we
noticed in Denmark was the employer levy system, which we used
to have and scrapped. At one point the Labour party was in favour
of restoring it. Would you like to say something in general about
international comparisons and the extent to which we are learning
from international experience, and perhaps particularly say something
about the point about training levies?
Mr Miliband: Can I say I think
there is a growing market across national education comparison
advice testing, etcetera, I think that is very helpful. The PISA
Study by the OECD is the leading example of that.
Q882 Chairman: And TIMMS. There are
others which we do not score so highly.
Mr Miliband: The PISA Study has
got 32 countries engaged in it and it is very, very rigorous.
I was at the OECD Ministers' meeting in Dublin where we were looking
at whether we can bring together a group of countries to do a
more in-depth study to get this sort of comparison. If you take
something like the Tomlinson Committee report, I do not know if
you remember but when the Government published the response to
the Green Paper that Ivan referred to earlier that launched the
Tomlinson Committee, an annex to that was on the foreign experience
of 14-19 education, deliberately drawing out the contrast between
foreign systems and our own. I am pleased that the Tomlinson Committee
have taken that cue and are really thinking hard about the foreign
comparisons in their deliberations. I think both from a school
standards point of view about what works and from a reform point
of view in relation to 14-19, we have got to be conscious that
there are different ways of doing things. It is worth saying that
I do not believe in the simple import/export model for policy
because you have got cultural, historical and other differences.
A final point: the UK does not have one system, different systems
exist within the UK and it is important to think about them as
well.
Mr Lewis: The Government position
on levies is we will facilitate through legislation levies where
both sides of industry can demonstrate that they want it. I will
give you two examples. The British film industry and the print
industry are both actively exploring the employers and the trade
unions as to whether that is desirable for their particular sectors.
So where both sides of industry can demonstrate objectively that
there is significant support, majority support, within those industries
then we will be happy to facilitate legislation to make that happen.
This is, again, something that has not generally been promoted.
The Sector Skills Councils are being given the opportunity to
put together sector agreements. What that means is that they define
very clearly what they assess the skills needs are of their particular
sector. They demonstrate also a significant level of employer
willingness to put some investment into making that plan happen,
and then the Government will reconfigure and flex some of the
money that we spend through the Learning and Skills Council to
directly respond to the needs that specific individual sectors
identify as being their priority. You could argue that that is
very similar without introducing the compulsion element, a more
voluntarist approach but very much the Government saying "If
you can be clear, if you can put some investment upfront, we will
ensure that an element of the public money we spend on education
and training is configured to meet directly the needs of specific
sectors where these sector agreements are brought forward".
The final point I would make, Mr Jackson, is that we have said
repeatedly, and since I have had this job I think it has been
confirmed for me, that we have a responsibility to create an education
and training system which is far more responsive to the needs
of employers and far more demand led than it has been to date
and we have not done that yet, we are in the process of doing
that. I believe that we are making significant inroads towards
achieving that. Having put in place an architecture, an infrastructure,
that does that in a far more significant way than in the past
I think it is reasonable to say to employers "You have to
come to the table now. You have to step up to the mark. You have
to make your contribution because" and this is something
that is very important and we need to have this debate with the
Committee at some point, "we will not raise our national
skills performance to the level that we need to if it is purely
about the state". There has to be a much clearer level of
responsibility from employers and, indeed, from individuals if
we are going to raise our national skills performance, both in
terms of young people but particularly in terms of adults, to
the level that we are going to need in terms of competitiveness
and productivity. One of the things that the Skills Strategy sought
to do, and seeks to do, is be much clearer about the respective
responsibilities financially and behaviourally of the state, of
employers and of individuals. I think that is a really important
step forward. We need a more demand-led system.
Q883 Mr Jackson: Can I just comment
on this idea of employers stepping up to the mark. We did have
an experiment in voluntarism that started in the early 1980s with
the scrapping of the levy system and I have to say that I do not
think the verdict would be that that experiment was very successful,
so getting the employers to step up to the mark is quite a big
task. On the point about investment, I absolutely agree about
both the importance and the difficulty of international comparisons
and learning from international experience. I wondered whether
the Ministers could say something about how we compare with the
other G8 countries in terms of the level of expenditure and funding
of our overall skills infrastructure?
Mr Miliband: What do you mean
by skills infrastructure?
Q884 Mr Jackson: Everything that
is connected with investment and training. I am talking in very
general terms, I agree, and it is difficult—
Mr Miliband: Everything with training
or education as well?
Q885 Mr Jackson: Specifically training
and the skills aspect of education. I do not know whether the
Ministers have got any figures on this. Are we towards the top
end of the scale, the middle of the scale?
Mr Miliband: Public or private
investment?
Q886 Mr Jackson: I think I am talking
both, public and private.
Mr Miliband: I think we should
write to you.
Mr Lewis: Yes, we need to write
to you about that issue.[7]
Can I respond to one other point that Mr Jackson has just made.
I think that there is an encouraging step forward in terms of
the relationship, for example, between the Government, the CBI
and the TUC. On this agenda at a national level we do now have,
the TUC likes to describe it as a social partnership on skills,
the CBI likes to describe it as an economic partnership, so we
all agreed to call it a social and economic partnership. This
is for the first time really at a national level the employers,
the unions and the Government signing up to try and drive this
agenda forward. I would also say to you on the question of voluntarism
that we are beyond the entirely voluntarist approach. I have described
the Sector Skills Agreements and also I talked earlier about employer
training pilots where we are giving wage compensation to employers
providing they are willing to release staff to train for a certain
period of time up to level two. We have always said that it is
our job to get the education and training system fit for purpose,
and it has not been in the past. I think we are getting to the
stage where it is much closer to fit for purpose. I make this
clear: it is at that point that we will be evaluating whether
employers are willing to make a significant enough contribution
to achieve our national skills goals, and if they are not we will
have to revisit that position. We are not persuaded that the old-fashioned
style levies are the route that will achieve that objective.
Mr Jackson: Chairman, could I just pick
up this point about the international comparisons. I think this
is actually quite important. I know we do not want to be dominated
by debates about inputs, outputs are really more important, but
I think it would be very helpful to have a letter from the Ministers
for our future thinking which analyses in a comparative way the
funding of skills training, specifically vocational education,
both public and private with the leading G8 competitors. I think
that would be very useful for us.
Chairman: If we can do that for the health
system, why can we not do it with the skills sector. One of the
things that we did pick up in Germany and in—
Jonathan Shaw: Denmark.
Chairman: Denmark, not Norway. Certainly
the feeling that I had, and some of my colleagues had, was that
it was a very good system for the 20th century but it was showing
a lot of creakiness about it for the 21st century. What they were
both finding was less involvement and willingness of the employers
to be engaged in training and to take on apprentices.
Mr Jackson: More in Germany than in Denmark.
Q887 Chairman: Much more in Germany.
Greater responsibility to keep those young people involved by
retaining them in colleges rather than having host employers.
It seemed to be more of a problem that certainly we were struck
by.
Mr Lewis: All I would say, Chairman,
is the state cannot achieve what we need to achieve in terms of
national skills performance alone. I think Mr Jackson asked a
very, very important question. We have to be better at being clearer
about what the state's contribution needs to be and what the employers'
contribution needs to be and also what we expect from individuals.
I know that Mr Jackson played a very honourable role in the recent
debate about higher education and, in a sense, central to that
was what were the respective responsibilities of the different
stakeholders in terms of delivering world class education.
Chairman: That might divide the Committee
a bit so we will not pursue that for a moment.
Q888 Mr Gibb: I just want to pick
up the point that the Chairman hinted at, the two international
surveys. The Minister is very fond of reciting the PISA comparison
where we come fourth in science and eighth in maths in the group
of countries, whereas in TIMSS, which the Minister is less keen
to cite, we come 20th out of 41 countries in maths and science.
Could you explain why there is a difference?
Mr Miliband: There is also the
Durham study, which is an internal study, and there are methodological
differences between them in that certainly the Durham study is
closer to an IQ test than an achievement test. I do not know how
many times I have cited PISA. There is another one coming out
in December so I might stop citing it, or I might cite it some
more, you never know. There is also PIRLS.
Q889 Mr Gibb: For reading.
Mr Miliband: For reading, which
is a study of 10-year-olds. There are different tests being organised.
Q890 Mr Jackson: Like opinion polls.
Mr Miliband: I hope it is not
like opinion polls.
Q891 Chairman: You just said you
would quote the one that agrees with you the most.
Mr Miliband: It depends who I
am talking to. In all seriousness I think that there is a maturing
international set of comparisons being developed. We have moved
from the era of defining equivalences of different systems to
having tests that are applied across but they are all part of
it.
Mr Lewis: It is the "Miliband
survey" that we are most interested in!
Q892 Valerie Davey: Can I come to
information, advice and guidance. You have mentioned complexity,
Minister, for the employer and I think for young people and their
parents it is particularly difficult. I am wondering whether you
are satisfied with the level of advice and guidance, or otherwise,
careers service, which young people are being given?
Mr Miliband: Let me just say a
word by way of introduction. The more complicated the system is,
the more advice and guidance you need. The more you can create
simplicity and transparency, the more young people can do their
own navigation. I think it is important to have that in mind.
In a way the demands on advice and guidance are partly a function
of how clear the system is. We have got the challenge that our
system is not as transparent and as clear as it should be. That
places big demands on our advice and guidance system, some of
which is very good, some of which is not. Ivan may want to say
a bit more about that.
Mr Lewis: I think it was mentioned
to the Committee recently that we are doing an end-to-end review
of the advice and guidance available to young people from 11-19
at the moment. David is absolutely right, the more complex the
system, the more this becomes important. The National Audit Office
report of last week on Connexions was on the whole very, very
positive indeed. I think we have made a mistake sometimes by imagining
that advice and guidance is all about a two hour interview in
some golden age we used to have with young people that made all
the difference and transformed their decisions about their careers,
which is a load of nonsense. We have to be more sophisticated
in the way that we look at advice and guidance that we offer to
young people, both in terms of their curriculum choices and in
terms of their labour market aspirations and that involves a number
of players. It involves the Connexions service, it involves the
careers infrastructures and teachers within schools, it involves
the relationship with employers in the local community outside
of schools, it involves the use of IT. There is a whole range:
the education of young people about labour market realities, earning
potential in different jobs, different sectors. There is a whole
variety of factors that contribute towards supporting young people
to make positive choices. Of course, long-term there is the need
to ensure that we do try to achieve a closer convergence of esteem
between the different ways that young people can progress and
develop and achieve through the education system.
Q893 Valerie Davey: What you are
actually saying is not only is the training base complex, but
the careers guidance is very complex as well, the whole range
of provision being made, so where does a young person and their
parents start? Before you come back, let me just say that one
of the brand names which is now getting credibility, certainly
in my area, in the West of England, is Connexions which has good
resonance. The idea now that we are going to have this end-to-end
survey, when, as you rightly say, the Audit Office has just come
out and said by November the target of 10% fewer young people
being left without training, education or employment is saving
the Government 180 million in the short-term and 1.4 billion in
the long-term, what are we doing? What are we saying to the parent
and the child, that we are not satisfied with the careers guidance
you are getting so we are going to review it all again? Why are
we doing that?
Mr Lewis: Absolutely not. There
are people who are going to make sweeping generalised statements
that careers advice is not very good in this country as though
it was good five years ago, ten years ago or 20 years ago. I would
argue it has never been great. The National Audit Office report
on Connexions is very positive indeed, very, very encouraging
for those of us who believe strongly in the Connexions service
and the work that it is doing. I know Ms Davey is a great supporter.
An end-to-end review is something that we ought to be doing as
a matter of good practice. We did that on apprenticeships recently,
we do it on a whole range of policy areas because that is the
appropriate thing to do if you want to build on success and improve
different parts of the Department. Just because we are doing an
end-to-end review of a particular policy should not cause alarm,
it should simply say that it is good practice to look within the
DfES and with our partners outside at how we can improve the different
policy areas for which we are responsible.
Q894 Valerie Davey: Minister, can
I just say that everything we do in this area depends on the staff
who deliver. Neither you nor I now teach in the classroom actually
delivering the careers service and those staff who are doing it
need to hear the message you have just given rather than "We
are going to have to cut 25 million for some tax problem, we are
going to have to do this, that and the other and we are doing
a big review". I think you need, please, to get your message
out. I am delighted you have made it to this Committee, I hope
the press and other people pick it up, that this is routine, that
we are building on success, not that, as you said earlier, we
are concerned about the careers service.
Mr Lewis: I think that is true,
Chairman, very briefly, but it is true, also, that we are looking
at all of the services, all of the interventions which affect
young people's lives outside of school, to bring those together,
to make them more coherent, to make sure they interact properly
with the school standards' agenda and the work that goes on directly
within the workforce employed in schools. It is absolutely right
that we try and bring some coherence to that, which is why the
Every Child Matters Green Paper was important, why the
Children's Bill will be important. It seems to me we cannot leave
out of that process the Connexions service, it is a very, very
important part of what we are seeking to do in terms of supporting
young people's progress and development through the system and
making sure they do not drop out without any form of education
or training at the age of 16.
Chairman: The reason I am looking to
you, Minister, is I want five minutes on school and college provision
and Jonathan has waited patiently, I really have to move on.
Q895 Jonathan Shaw: You will be aware
of complaints from colleges about the inequity of funding between
sixth forms in schools and the funding for those same pupils in
colleges. Obviously if we are going to get this fusion between
different institutions to provide different parts of the curriculum
for a young person they might be moving between different institutions
and it seems to me and the Committee that it does not cost any
more in a school than it does in a college. There is this funding
gap which has been around for years. Do you agree it is not defensible
and are you making any progress to reduce that gap?
Mr Miliband: I think the facts
and figures are that there is progress being made with a significant
infusion of funds into further education. I would just say two
things though. Of course the terms and conditions under which
teachers and lecturers operate are not the same, so it is not
only pay that is different, I think I am right in saying, and
secondly—
Q896 Jonathan Shaw: It is not the
pay, it is the funding, is it not, in terms of how much the LSC
gives the colleges and how much the LSC gives the schools.
Mr Miliband: Yes but it is often
framed in terms of pay.
Q897 Jonathan Shaw: I am aware of
that.
Mr Miliband: In terms of pay issues
for staff. Obviously there are a whole source of economies and
diseconomies of scale depending on the size of a plant or estate
which go well beyond the staffing. In relation to pay, what I
always look out for is, is there the evidence that lots of colleges
are losing staff into the school sector and when I have asked
about that I have not seen figures suggesting that there is that
sort of movement.
Q898 Jonathan Shaw: Would you be
alarmed if you saw those figures?
Mr Miliband: I would be alarmed
if colleges were saying they were unable to find the staff to
deliver the curriculum that they need to. I think that there are
pinch points in schools and in colleges, they are being addressed
in a number of ways. There is a significant investment going into
both the sectors. I think the college sector is rising to some
of the challenges of the successful document. I think it sees
the Government's commitment through its revenue investment as
well as some capital investment. I think we have got growth in
both sectors, if I can put it that way.
Q899 Chairman: We have had evidence
from colleges here, really refreshing, we had two colleges here,
Bury College and another, which both said "Look, we have
500/600 pupils in our FE college between 14 and 16 years of age,
and that indicates to us . . . " whichever programme it was
". . . a Pathfinder programme, increased flexibility programme,
whatever was happening, seemed to us to be very encouraging and
that we are getting that appropriate kind of mix of basic education
back at school, a day at work and two days in college." That
all seemed to us going along the right road but then there is
the subtext of people saying "It is only a short term funding,
it is going to stop. We are not going to be able to do it".
How do we commit staff and an institution to carry on when it
is all very short term?
Mr Miliband: Helen Gilchrist from
Bury College is on the Tomlinson Committee.
Mr Lewis: Bury Metropolitan College.
Mr Miliband: Excellent. I share
your enthusiasm for this. I would say two things about the funding
problem. One is it is very much my view that certainly for the
schooling system, for the whole of public service actually, the
move away from the annual budget round to a three year budget
year is absolutely essential, it really is. You cannot expect
people to make the sort of strategic decisions they need to about
staffing and other issues if they have not got that sort of timeframe.
You then have got the issue of when you are launching new things
like the increased flexibilities programme or the 39 Pathfinders
you need new money to start things off and people then say "Is
the money going to be there afterwards" and the answer to
that is "It depends on the success of the programme".
If the programme is as successful as you and I believe it to be,
I think any government of any kind would want to pile in behind
it. We are in the midst of a pilot phase and that does raise a
perfectly legitimate question about what happens beyond, how can
we sustain the funding. We have to respond to that. We have to
do justice, also, to the evidence based policy making that you
enjoin us to go in for and make sure this is value for money before
we say everyone should be doing it.
7 Ev 220 Back
| 
