Examination of Witnesses (Questions 600--619)
BILL RAMMELL
AND PHIL
HOPE
24 APRIL 2006
Q600 Chairman: It sounded like half-hearted
hope just now, though, Minister! Many of us understand why the
Government is flirting with using a quasi market system, and we
are not criticising that; but when you say "if they do not
get the money"—it is very different. If Jeff Ennis
was here from Barnsley, he would say it is very difficult to raise
that money in the social and economic environment of Barnsley,
compared with the social and economic environment of Kensington.
Are we not, surely, you and I and Labour Members of the Committee,
concerned that in some areas many of these broader courses will
perish because there will not be the market there and the ability
to pay? Is that not the case?
Phil Hope: I visited Barnsley
just recently and met a number of adult learners who were in a
school, taking part in an adult learning centre that had been
set up in the school. A very good learning network has been set
up across Barnsley. Initially, adults are brought in to do things
like first-aid courses and craft courses, but integrated into
their initial—"that is what got them there"—were
good life skills courses, literacy and numeracy; and they were
moving on from—and it was a "right from the start"
part of the process—doing those kinds of courses into doing
Level 1 and Level 2 qualifications. There were people who were
taking time off from work to go in, as well as people who were
unemployed, and mums and dads who were returning to the classroom.
Q601 Chairman: So you are not taking
the first stepping stone away.
Phil Hope: That was an excellent
example of stepping stone provision, where they really thought
through the point of how you do not just do a craft course—"thanks
very much, I am not back into learning"; you do a craft course
that is linked to other learning and progression into other forms
of literacy, numeracy, or other qualifications; and which would
indeed take you on to further qualifications. That is an excellent
example of what we were describing earlier about good-quality
stepping stones; and it has genuinely got a progression for the
individual which really does give added value to their experience.
Bill Rammell: Also, Chair, there
is an issue about priorities here. This is not a government that
has penny-pinched with regard to FE; we have seen a significant
expansion over the last nine years. However, if we are to spend
more on the really important priorities that we set out—and
when we came forward with the skills white papers and talked about
the National Employer Training Programme, nobody was saying, "that
is the wrong thing to do". If you were spending that much
more on those key priorities, there is not as much relatively
for those other issues, and we have to find different ways to
fund them. If you look at the international comparisons, then
the amount that an individual contributes towards their further
education in this country, compared to others, is less. I do think
that we need to have a better balance of contribution.
Q602 Chairman: If the stepping stone
is not LSC funded, the stepping stones will disappear: you have
said that in your evidence so far.
Bill Rammell: Which is why we
are establishing the foundation learning tier. At the moment there
is both good and bad inside and outside the national framework.
We have to get it right to demonstrate what really does lead to
progression; and then we are committed over time, as the money
is available, to create that as an entitlement. I think that will
be a very positive step forward and will tackle some of the criticisms
that are coming forward today which we pick up all the time as
we go up and down the country.
Q603 Helen Jones: Can I return to
this idea, because it is something that concerns the Committee
a lot. You have talked about the foundation tier. I think what
concerns us is that many of the courses that bring people back
into learning—exactly the things Bill was talking about
in Barnsley—are already going because of the funding decisions
that have been made. We understand the reasons for those funding
decisions, but the fact is that those courses are going, and the
people who are being hit hardest are not those who do leisure
learning, for which I have a great deal of respect, but those
who have had a bad experience in education in the past and want
to do the sort of courses that are not threatening, which do not
necessarily lead to a qualification immediately; but get them
back into enjoying learning. Many of the courses in my area, parents
access in schools. What are we going to do if those courses disappear,
because starting them up again is a mammoth task, is it not?
Phil Hope: I want to distinguish
between general adult learning and the PCDL funding. This is the
£210 million that we have ring-fenced and maintained to ensure
that those courses that are funded in that way are not—we
deal with the quality, but that there should be this kind of learning
that gets people back into learning for the first time who have
had a bad experience of education. Critically, those courses might
not lead to a qualification; those are the courses that will—
Q604 Helen Jones: Indeed, because
if they did it would put them off.
Phil Hope: I think it is both,
and not either/or here; in other words courses that are offered
through PCDL that will not necessarily lead to a qualification,
to get people back into learning, to do with active citizenship
and regeneration. Those kinds of activities are absolutely critical
to some of the poorest communities. What I do know about that
expenditure is that it is very patchy across the country, and
very different from one place to another. It has grown out of
particular enthusiasms by different authorities and different
individuals who champion these things in different ways. We would
like to see that delivered in a much more coherent way across
the country, so that it is meeting the needs of those people who
need it most, and so that it does capture not just that £210
million but also other resources that are providing this kind
of learning and capturing people back into learning for the first
time, delivered by the local authority, funded by the local authority,
funded by voluntary organisations, and indeed as I mentioned to
an earlier question, delivered by the Health Service, which can
see learning for better health behaviour as being partly what
they deliver at a local level. At the moment, all of that happens,
but it happens in a fairly unconnected, unco-ordinated way. That
is why we have asked the learning and skills councils to go out
and lead new partnerships at a local level, to ask: "What
can we get going on here? How can we make the most of this? How
can we ensure that there is not overlap between two courses being
provided in two different places but doing the same thing; that
others are being captured and others are not being lost?"
There is a whole positive strategy, which I am very enthusiastic
about, and which we need to drive forward to ensure that at local
level those courses do not get cut. I do want to distinguish between
that and courses outside of PCDL, which are adult learning courses
which are under pressure; perhaps they are courses that do not
lead to a qualification and do not lead to progression. If those
are to be funded, we need to get the fee level balance right so
that it can either be run through—these are not the courses
I know you are referring to, but if people are doing Spanish because
they want to go to their second home in Spain and they want to
take that course—and the Mori poll tells us and other people
tell us that it is reasonable to expect those individuals to pay
a higher contribution towards the costs of those courses, which
are not the courses that are concerning you at the moment.
Helen Jones: Two things arise from that.
My question was: if these courses disappear, as some of them are
doing, certainly in my area, are we not giving ourselves a mammoth
task in building them up again? The second point is about the
adult and community learning. I understand what you are saying
about people who are doing Spanish to go to their second home,
but the consequence of that in areas where there is a low-wage
economy is that it actually restricts the amount of learning available
to people, and therefore increases the social division in learning,
does it not? How are we going to tackle that? I pose the question
bluntly: why can our bin men not learn Spanish, if they want to,
for their holidays?
Chairman: Probably employed by a Spanish
company.
Q605 Helen Jones: If you would fund
someone to go to university to learn classical Greek, as we do—which
has many values but is not immediately skills for employment—what
is the philosophical distinction?
Phil Hope: I think the distinction
I would make would be that if the individual is going to go on
to getting a Level 2 qualification—if there was progression
for those individuals, if we could make a judgment that by taking
part in these courses it would help their employability either
to get into work or to be a more productive person in the workforce,
and from there lead on to other training and—
Q606 Chairman: Come on, Minister;
you and I know there is a certain sort of arrogance about this
in the sense that—how do you know and how do we know what
sparks—most of us round this Committee would say there are
many people in our constituencies who we would be delighted if
any course brought them through the door of somewhere where they
started learning. It is a certain sort of arrogance where we say,
"Oh, but not for that sort of course."
Phil Hope: I would argue, Chair,
that we do want people to be attracted into learning, but we want
them to be attracted into learning that takes them somewhere,
not learning that—
Chairman: That is the arrogance; knowing
when—
Helen Jones: Minister, we do not say
that in HE, do we?
Q607 Chairman: No.
Bill Rammell: But the individual
in HE does contribute significantly towards the cost of their
education, and that is part of the debate that we are having here.
Q608 Helen Jones: And earns more,
as you tell us!
Phil Hope: Yes, and indeed if
people did get a Level 2 qualification, we know that they will
earn more and they will have the potential of going on to Level
3 and indeed Level 4 qualifications in due course.
Q609 Chairman: In higher education,
Bill—surely, hearing you in a different circumstance you
argue passionately that what we are trying to do in HE is to make
those people from poorer backgrounds able to embark on any course
they like free—and indeed with bursaries.
Bill Rammell: Not free because
they will—
Q610 Chairman: Well, free in effect.
Bill Rammell: No, no.
Q611 Chairman: If they get a bursary
and they get all the backing! I have heard you say: "That
is what we want to do." Why do we not do it in FE?
Bill Rammell: Absolutely—sorry.
If we are drawing the analogy correctly, they will still be contributing
to the cost of their higher education and they will still be paying
it back post-graduation. This comes back to a debate about priorities.
I have some sympathy with the views that are being put forward,
but there is significant protection for the poorest people. Those
on means-tested benefits will be exempt from the fees approach.
Second, above and beyond that, through things like the Level 2
commitment—and we are now doing trials at Level 3 which
will move beyond that—we have just moved in terms of the
19-25 entitlement. We are doing what we can within the resources
that are available, which is significantly more resources than
were there in the past. But you cannot do all of it at all of
the time at the stage you would wish.
Q612 Helen Jones: Does that not still
leave us with a problem; that you can have exemptions for people
on means-tested benefits; you may increase fees for those who
are able to pay them; but people who are caught in the middle
of that are those that are employed but not on particularly high
wages. Have you done any profiling of people undertaking FE to
see exactly who is benefiting from it and who is missing out?
Bill Rammell: I can give you one
statistic, which I think is quite telling. From some research
we did in 2002 or 2003, 90% of people with incomes over £31,000
a year took part in learning at some stage within the previous
three years. For those with incomes of £10,000 or less, the
figure was around 50%. That was before any of this fee-charging
regime came in. The point I am making is that by directly targeting
those poorer members of the community—if you are a means-tested
benefit you are exempted, or through the entitlement—19-25
or the Level 2 entitlement—that is a very effective way
of ensuring that those people on lower incomes do get access to
further education.
Q613 Helen Jones: Can I look at the
adult and community learning? The Foster report recommended that
some adult and community learning would be dealt with through
local authorities or voluntary organisations. How do you envisage
that being funded? Are authorities going to get any more money
if they take on responsibility for organising and running such
courses, or will they be expected to do it out of their existing
education budgets?
Phil Hope: Different local authorities
have different track records about delivering adult and community
learning, as we know, and that is part of why I want us to roll
out new partnerships at a local level between the LSC, between
local authorities and indeed between others who have an interest
in providing this kind of work. There are a number of targeted
funds that the Government has had for communities that experience
most deprivation and that are most disadvantaged that also could
be better co-ordinated and captured at a local level to ensure
that we attract and engage with those learners, at whatever age,
in developing their personal and vocational skills, and that we
target it on the kinds of courses that deliver what we have just
been describing, genuine opportunities for progression. That is
the roll-out of the PCDL with local authorities at a local level.
That is a challenge over the next two or three years, and will
be happening in a way that we describe in the White Paper.
Q614 Helen Jones: I may be being
a bit dense this afternoon, but I am not sure whether that was
a "yes" or a "no".
Phil Hope: The answer is that
different local authorities spend different amounts on adult and
community learning because they are entitled to do so; it is their
decision about what they do with their resources. We would want
to encourage local authorities to see the value in investing in
adult learning, along with other partners like the LSC, like the
voluntary sector, like the health sector, in new partnerships
at a local level. If we take the total money available for all
the different agencies that are there to serve the needs of local
communities, how can we do that better and make sure that the
quality is good and leads to progression, so that everyone plays
their part so that individuals are not missed out in some way
and so that particular areas of learning are not missed out in
any way?
Q615 Helen Jones: A lot of this work
is to involve voluntary organisations and charities. How will
you ensure that the people delivering the learning are sufficiently
well-qualified to deliver it? Again, we could—I am not saying
we would—end up with poorer communities getting poorer quality
of learning unless we put the appropriate systems in place.
Phil Hope: You raise a very important
point about quality of delivery of courses, particularly in terms
of adult basic skills. This is something we have paid a lot of
attention to in the Skills for Life Strategy. We are now insisting
that those people delivering Skills for Life Strategies have a
minimum level of numeracy and literacy themselves, obviously,
but also up to a Level 4 qualification, to ensure that in the
delivery of, in this case numeracy and literacy courses, they
are suitably qualified so to do. From memory, from September 2002
we have insisted that the new trainees coming in must develop
their Level 4 qualification in order to deliver Skills for Life
courses. I think you have put your finger on an important point
about quality. By 2010 we would expect all the workforce delivering
Skills for Life courses to be properly qualified to be able to
deliver those courses.
Q616 Helen Jones: The Level 3 entitlement
for 19-25-year-olds—none of us are entirely sure whether
that allows you to achieve Level 3 in stages, or whether you have
to take all of it together. Can you enlighten us?
Phil Hope: We have not got to
a point yet—although we are trying to do so with the Framework
for Achievement—whereby individuals can take units of study
that accumulate up into a full Level 2 and Level 3 qualification.
At present we are describing the Level 3 entitlements to a full
Level 3 qualification, so individuals would need to join up to
and take part in a full qualification as part of their learning;
so it is the former, not the latter. We have an aspiration towards
the way you are describing it, because it suits learners' needs
as well as employers' needs to unitise learning in that way.
Q617 Helen Jones: That is exactly
the point; it is not the way most adults learn, is it? Do you
agree that we do need to allow them to learn in stages to fit
their learning around employment and so on?
Phil Hope: Yes, I do very much
agree about that. It is a challenge to deliver that, but that
is in essence where the Framework for Achievement task is taking
us so that we can have a clear framework with units where people
understand the value of the unit, the credits they need to accumulate
and then—
Q618 Chairman: Can you answer Helen's
question, to be clear? When will we know?
Phil Hope: We have pilots running
out at the moment, Chair, this year, to try and pilot the way
that the units might look. When we have done the learning from
those pilots—and I have a steering group looking at all
the very complicated issues between awarding bodies, the QCA,
providers and so on about what it might look like. I am hopeful
that next year, once the pilots have been trialled, we will be
in a better position to roll out the new framework for achievement
following that. I cannot give you exact dates until we see the
results of the trials and the pilots this year.
Q619 Mr Chaytor: The White Paper
states there are 44,000 19-25-year-olds carrying out a full Level
3 qualification now; but surely of that 44,000 the majority must
either be exempt from fees automatically because they are in receipt
of the relevant stage benefits; or their fees must be paid by
their employer; or they must be sufficiently comfortably off to
pay the fees themselves! How many new students would you expect
to be attracted by the Level 3 entitlement for the full course,
and who will they be; and why would their fees not already be
paid by their employer or their families or the state by exemption—
Phil Hope: The difficulty is that
most colleges taking on a 20-year-old will not charge them the
fee, even though they should be charging them a fee, which would
be 25 or 27.5%. It is because we are increasing the fee assumption
to 50% that we were very concerned that it would have a totally
unintended consequence of expecting 19-25-year-olds to pay 50%
of their fees and they would not take part in the learning if
they were asked to do that. This means that those colleges will
receive the full amount for the courses they are providing for
19-25-year-olds, when they should be collecting fees now; and
secondly it means employers will not have to pay a contribution
to their fees because they can claim their full Level 3 entitlement.
We reckon that around 45,000 students will qualify for the full—
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