 House of Commons |
Session 2007 - 08 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates Education and Skills Bill |
Education and Skills Bill |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Nick
Walker, Tom Goldsmith, Celia Blacklock, Committee
Clerks
† attended the
Committee
WitnessesIoan
Morgan, Principal of Warwickshire
College
Ian Pryce, Principal and Chief
Executive of Bedford College
Paul Head,
Principal of College of North East
London
Mike Harris, Head of Education
and Skills Policy, Institute of
Directors
Alexander Ehmann, Head of
Regulation and Enterprise Policy, Institute of
Directors
Kieran Gordon, Chief
Executive, Connexions
Public Bill CommitteeTuesday 29 January 2008(Morning)[John Bercow in the Chair]Education and Skills BillFurther written evidence to be reported to the HouseE&S 09 National Association of
Connexions Partners
E&S 10
British Youth Council
E&S
11 Campaign for State Education
(CASE)
E&S 12 Zacchaeus
2000
Trust
10.30
am
The
Chairman:
I welcome all colleagues to this evidence-taking
session of the Public Bill Committee considering the Education and
Skills Bill. On behalf of all Members, I extend a particularly warm
welcome to the three wise men—the three college principals who
are our first witnesses this morning. I ask them to introduce
themselves briefly and formally before going straight into questioning.
Over to you.
Ioan
Morgan:
My name is Ioan Morgan. I
am principal at Warwickshire college and a recently appointed
commissioner in the Commission for Employment and Skills.
Ian
Pryce:
I am Ian Pryce. I am principal of Bedford
college, a general further education college with 4,000
students—3,500 16 to 18-year-olds and 700 14 to
16-year-olds.
Paul
Head:
My name is Paul Head. I am principal of the
college of North East London which is in Tottenham—David
Lammy’s constituency. I am also an adviser to the London Skills
and Employment Board.
The
Chairman:
Thank you. We have until no later than 11.30
am—there are very strict timelines—for your evidence,
which we look forward to hearing. I am going to start with the
Conservative Front-Bench spokesman, John
Hayes.
Q
344344
Mr.
John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con): The
Association of Colleges gave evidence to this Committee on 22 January,
as I am sure you know. I asked them what they felt about the new duty
placed on colleges to promote good attendance. Sue Dutton of the
association saw this duty as an extension to collect information on
education maintenance allowances. Her view was that:
“It is obviously
onerous on institutions to have to collect that level of
detail,”——
[Official Report, Education
and Skills Public Bill Committee, 22 January 2008; c. 28,
Q69.]
How do
you interpret the duty contained in the Bill to promote good
attendance? How will colleges work with
local education authorities to enforce these
arrangements —are you resourced, geared up and staffed
specifically to do this
job?
Ioan
Morgan:
I am happy to take that one. My college has
recently benefited from a full Ofsted inspection which finished last
Friday. One of the features of the outstanding grade that the college
got was its very high attendance rates—well into the 90s. That
is done through the fact that we offer very good teaching and an
appropriate product. If those two elements are in place, attendance is
something that follows. The element of compulsion is interesting, but I
think that the success or failure of the volume of attendance at a
college is about the issues and characteristics that I have
mentioned.
Colleges
are now very much measured on attendance performance. When inspectors
come into a college one of the first things they look for are measures
of attendance as an indicator of health. At Warwickshire college we
have many systems in place for monitoring attendance. We have at-risk
systems which flag up students who are not attending and so on. Working
with the local authority to co-ordinate and correlate that information
is something that we could do.
I would go further. One of the
issues for us is the compulsion element for students who would be on
work experience, working with employers, and the onerous duty that
employers would have. In our partnership work with companies, we try to
relieve companies of that burden now. Colleges could have a role in
helping companies, small and large, to look after the compulsion and
monitoring element within the Bill.
Q
345
Mr.
Hayes:
So what you are really saying is that the
Association of Colleges representatives are wrong and this provision is
not onerous? Perhaps you might comment further and say whether they are
right about the Connexions database, which they say is not fit for
purpose in these terms. I appreciate that your college is exceptional
in this regard—I have visited and it is a model of good
practice—but this duty is going to apply to all colleges. Is the
Association of Colleges wrong about the Connexions database not being
fit for purpose and about this duty being onerous? This is not about
promoting the best; it is about what you have to do in every
case.
Paul
Head:
I do not think it is onerous, because it is
exactly what a college should be doing. If you are a skills-based
college, preparing people for the world of work, the expectation of 100
per cent. attendance is what should be there. All the colleges that I
have visited have systems in place to monitor attendance and
punctuality. We already work with the local authority on the 14 and
15-year-olds who have not been successful in school and who attend our
institution full time—we have to do attendance reports on them.
We also have more than 300 14 and 15-year-olds doing tasters every
Wednesday and every Friday and we have to do attendance reports on
them. So we have to do it and good colleges will do it. The vast
majority of colleges will not see it as onerous but as part of their
key task.
My view on
the Connexions database is that it would be a mistake to take a
database that has been developed for one set of purposes and believe
that it can suddenly
fulfil another set of purposes. I do not know the detail of whether it
can be adapted or changed but, having worked in the sector for a number
of years, all my experience of IT systems suggests that you cannot take
one and make it do something else. The AOC is dead right to flag up a
concern now, when we have plenty of time to plan for implementation. It
is right to say, “If you are going to do this, look carefully at
what the Connexions database was designed to do and work out what you
want it to do now.” I suspect the transition from one to the
other will be quite
complicated.
Ian
Pryce:
Yes. We have similar systems to the two
colleges that have just reported. I do not see the reporting
requirements as a major issue. It is hard to talk about the Connexions
database because we do not come into contact with that. Our role is
more about providing information about our own students. I do not see
an
issue.
The
Government, as you will know, said in a document published yesterday,
that companies such as McDonald’s will be allowed to issue their
own qualifications. The Foster report of 2005 talked about a galaxy of
oversight bodies in the further education sector—17. Given the
new obligations in this Bill and the, hopefully, central role FE will
play in extending educational opportunity for people from 16 onwards,
do FE colleges have the autonomy they need to develop strong links with
business and their communities? Do you feel that the machinery of
government changes have been helpful in respect of funding in
particular? Would you like to see a move to greater
self-regulation?
Ioan
Morgan:
The opportunity for self-regulation that is
being extended to our sector by the present Government is something
that I welcome and I know that a significant number of my colleagues
feel the same way. It is an element of recognition of the trust in and
the maturity of the sector.
The Foster report, which I was
happy to contribute to, was an opportunity for the sector to focus on
what was important in terms of the skills agenda in this country. The
Foster report gave us the opportunity to concentrate and develop close,
meaningful links with companies. Some colleges were doing it before but
since the Foster report and that energy injection in to that agenda,
the majority of colleges have now formed very good links. That was
something commented on in a number of recent Ofsted
reports—really deep and meaningful links with companies, sharing
a vision of the future, picking up the skills agenda and helping
companies who want to inward invest in an area or indigenous companies
to grow and develop. Good-quality FE colleges are now among the first
ports of call to see what they can contribute to the skills agenda.
So my
response in terms of self-regulation is an
enthusiastic welcome. As for working with companies,
that absolutely central to the role of a college such
as
mine.
Ian
Pryce:
Autonomy has been very important for colleges
and it is one of the reasons why the sector has been very successful
over the past 15 years. It is important to have a good relationship
with the local authority, but as long as that autonomy is preserved we
will continue to be successful.
We would prefer a national
funding system, partly for administrative reasons. At Bedford college,
we draw students from more than 100 local authorities, so having a
relationship with that many bodies would be very difficult and might
deny people the opportunity to come for specialist subjects such as
sustainable technologies.
I welcome
the McDonald’s development. On balance, I come down in favour of
compulsion to stay on, with the necessary proviso that all employers
must be able to offer apprenticeships so they have to become more
flexible. We have to achieve an increased volume of apprenticeships,
and I see that development as part of the way of doing that—as
long as companies can offer high-quality programmes. Quality is clearly
an issue, but as long as there is high quality, then I have no problem
with that.
Paul
Head:
I agree completely with all
of that. I think we can only welcome that the big national companies
actually want to have nationally recognised qualifications for their
employees. Nobody has any problem with Microsoft-accredited IT
training, because that qualification has industry currency. So, it can
only be welcomed that big employers can become Qualifications and
Curriculum Authority-approved. And I think the big bit is that it is
QCA-approved—that there is quality control over those
qualifications. I think the same applies to the Bill’s clause
that gives colleges the ability to award qualifications. My own view
there was that, if they have local, regional and national currency, and
they meet a market demand, colleges should be able to do them. And that
is part of a strong self-regulated
sector.
On
the machinery of Government changes, I personally welcome the fact that
we have a Cabinet Minister sitting in Cabinet now. I hope that,
regardless of the nature or flavour of the Government, that will
continue in the future. That someone actually gets up in the morning
and is worried about Britain’s skills base, and is not just
dominated by schools and universities, is a really good thing. We have
to do some detailed working through on the relationship between the
Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills and the Department for
Children, Schools and Families.
I welcome the re-engagement of
local authorities in a leadership role through local area agreements,
multi-area agreements and all those kind of things, as that has to be
in the interest of children up to the age of 18 under Every Child
Matters, and so on. It is down to the Government, in the detailed
administration of colleges, to find ways of actually working together
in the interests of young people, so I think the machinery of
government changes have to be
welcomed.
To
be honest, people worry too much about galaxies of organisations
covering further education; I cannot get too upset about it. Everyone
creates new things; they come and they go. Our job is about delivering
high-quality education and training, and doing that in the most
cost-effective and efficient way possible. That is about having good
employer links, good links to local authorities, and, most of all, an
undying passion that what matters is student success rates, be it in
the workplace or your own institution. You ignore the noise that we all
have to live with—we are paid to deal with it—and focus
on the
learner.
Ioan
Morgan:
May I come back on that? I think one of the
areas I would flag as a potential danger, though, is that we have to
make sure that we distinguish between qualifications and skills. We
happen to measure lots of targets in terms of qualifications, but what
industry wants is skills. There is a difference. Qualifications are
often a convenient measurement, but we must not take our eye off the
fact that we have to look at real, hard-nosed skills that will make a
difference in the future—and they are
different.
Q
347
The
Minister for Schools and Learners (Jim Knight):
The AOC
has been quoted already this morning on a couple of occasions. They
said to us that colleges already concentrate on the hard to reach and
on widening participation by young people. I do not think that is
desperately controversial, but in the Bill we are chasing after perhaps
the last 10 per cent. who are not participating. How well placed do you
think colleges are to respond to that challenge to raise the
participation rate for that last 10 per cent., and to respond to the
adult skills elements of the
Bill?
Ioan
Morgan:
I think colleges are very successful where
they try to prevent young people getting to the stage where they are
not in education, employment or training. It is pre-NEET activity that
is important, and that is about partnership with schools. There are
some very effective examples in our sector, with intervention at 14. A
college like my own has nearly 1,000 14-year-olds attending two days a
week, and the transformation and our success in keeping them away from
entering that NEETs group is very significant. Further education is
doing a really powerful job in that
area.
Ian
Pryce:
The college environment is a good one for
disaffected pupils from school—e have proved that. The majority
of our students do not have five good GCSEs, and when they come to us
it is a fresh start. It is very much moulded around a culture of the
workplace rather than the school, and deliberately so. Of the 3,500 16
to 18-year-olds we have, we discipline about 150, and last year we
excluded two. We are expecting about another 300 to 600 students as a
result of the changes, but we think that we can cope with that. The
more practical issues are actually about buildings and accommodation
rather than the
behaviour.
Ian
Pryce:
Well, it is interesting because we as work, as
Ioan said, with the NEET group and we at Bedford have developed
something called an intensive care unit with the regional development
agency, so we can work specifically, on a different site, with some of
the most challenging pupils. That works, but it
costs.
Paul
Head:
The key element here is the partnership between
schools, training providers, employers and colleges working on that
final 10 per cent. It has to be
about partnership and college’s role within it. I think that we
are well placed to do that. I think colleges have responded well to
efforts to tackle those currently categorised as NEETs, and as Ioan
says, building up beforehand with 14 to 15 year-olds. The reason I
welcome compulsion is that it changes the nature of the terms of the
debate. You no longer ask, “How do we work our way up to 85 or
90 per cent.?” You actually start asking, “Why are we not
at 100 per cent.?” That is a mindset difference that schools,
colleges, local authorities, employers and private training providers
need to get their heads around. We have to do it for 100 per cent. For
me, it is an investment in 20 years down the line: if we can get it
right with this generation coming through, we will not have the skills
gaps identified by Leitch for
adults.
You mentioned
the adult element, which has to be welcomed, particularly the level 3
entitlement for the 19 to 25-year-olds. I did my stats before I came
and we have 250 19 to 25-year-olds doing full level 2 and 250 doing
full level 3 this year. There is real demand there, and I think
recognition for that entitlement has to be welcomed because what
frightens me is, we cannot afford to end up in 20 years’ time
having missed the opportunity to tackle a systemic problem. It will be
tough and it will sometimes be a bit more expensive to deal with them,
but my college is certainly well placed to work with the local
authority and schools to do that.
The part of
yesterday’s announcement that I really welcome was of more
flexibility on apprenticeships, which should enable us to bring on
board those employers that currently look at apprenticeships less
enthusiastically than the really big ones. We will be able to say to
them that the flexibility is there and if we work together, we can make
a real
difference.
Q
349
Jim
Knight:
Thank you. I noted what you said, Paul, that you
thought compulsion would make a mindset difference. I wonder whether
our other two witnesses agree on welcoming compulsion and why they have
formed the view that they have, whatever it
is.
Ian
Pryce:
I do, provided that there are enough
apprenticeship places, because for a lot of that 10 per cent., that
would be a good route. I do have one slight concern, which is about
culture. Now, if somebody does not attend the college, we tend to look
internally and ask what is wrong with us that is causing that
non-attendance, rather than look at that person as a truant. That might
be a subtle thing, but we still have to look to ourselves—to
ask, if people are not turning up, what we can do better to encourage
attendance, rather than immediately go down the support-penalty
route.
Ioan
Morgan:
I share that view. We would not want
indicators masked within the college that compulsion could mask. We
have to be careful about that. But certainly, to echo Sue
Dutton’s phrase, the proposal has galvanised people and will
help move the agenda
forward.
Q
350
Jim
Knight: I have a final question related to that, on information,
advice and guidance. I agree with you: we must make sure the culture
continues to be one of support rather than blame. What role do colleges
have in IAG for young people to fulfil the duty in future?
Specifically, do you think they should have a duty to provide impartial
careers education along the lines we have described?
Paul
Head:
We already do. We are quite proud of the fact
that we have a Matrix-accredited advice and guidance operation in the
college. We work very closely with Connexions within the institution,
picking up young people who are coming to us rather than going to
schools. Any college that aspires to be outstanding, or is outstanding,
would have an independent advice and guidance system, because you are
driven by making sure young people and indeed adults get on to the
right course for them rather than on to the course for your
finances.
It is a
leadership issue right at the top of
organisations—at head teacher level, principal level and
governance level. It is about saying that this is the expectation we
set on independent advice and guidance. It is about the culture we set
for the sector, and then rigorously using the mechanisms that we have
through inspection—through Ofsted for example—to double
check that those sorts of processes are taking place. I say yes to
independent advice and guidance for young people.
There is a slightly different
question about adults in the way that you deliver independent advice
and guidance, but I welcome the opportunity to sit down with my head
teacher colleagues locally and work out what genuine independent advice
and guidance is going to look like, because that debate is long
overdue.
Ian
Pryce:
If you are putting the learner first, you have
to have independent advice and guidance. That is a straightforward
requirement of all colleges. Like Paul, we have a strong Matrix
accreditation.
Q
351
Jim
Knight:
If you think that it is already vital and it is
already there, do you think that it is necessary to have a duty on
colleges to do it?
Ian
Pryce:
I am less concerned about
colleges, because it is generally in colleges’ interests to do
that. If I have any concerns, they are more about whether schools are
set up in such a way as to provide it. Our local evidence suggests that
the advice of parents, schools and colleges tends to be taken ahead of
the advice of Connexions locally; they have more influence on
choice.
Ioan
Morgan:
The debate is going on. I have been a
principal for 23 years and from the start we were concerned about
independent advice and guidance at school level. I still do not think
that that has been cracked. I think that it would be an enormous step
forward if we can take as given that people were coming with balanced
knowledge and that parents had a full idea about what the menu is at
the local college. It would contribute hugely. I am convinced that the
Government’s aim is to remove the vocational-academic divide,
and this is a big step in doing that.
Paul
Head:
The other thing that will help with this is the
new 14-to-19 diplomas. Our experience of being a lead for the
construction diploma, working with two local schools and a local
authorities, is that it is already making us rethink. You have to work
in partnership to deliver a 14-to-19 diploma; that is the only thing
that you can do to deliver it. Advice and guidance becomes absolutely
crucial as part of the debate. I think that it is a combination of the
duty—I do not mind it being a duty—on the one side to
provide independent advice and guidance, and then using curriculum
change through the new diplomas. That would be a twin-track approach
and it will change the culture.
The
Chairman:
Thank you. I now call David Laws, to be followed
by Sarah McCarthy-Fry, to be followed by Oliver Heald, and I have sight
of other Members as well.
Q
352
Mr.
David Laws (Yeovil) (LD): Perhaps I can tempt you into
upsetting Jim instead of pleasing him. Jim asked a question which led
to some discussion about capital bids and capital costs. Looking at the
Government’s assessment of what all this is going to cost, the
provision that has been made for additional capital costs for the
further education sector is quite modest. It is £5.3 million per
year or something like £90 million over 15 or 20 years. Does
that sound
realistic?
Ioan
Morgan:
We would look at that in the context of what
we have managed to do in terms of capital over the past few years. In
my view, there has been a significant injection of capital into the FE
sector, which puts us in a pretty good position to take on this
additional challenge. I think that to deliver on the exciting
agenda—perhaps I should say challenging, rather than
exciting—that we are presented with in the Bill, we will have to
work smart. It is not all about bringing people into colleges; it is
about working with employers on employers’ premises and about
partnership work in schools. To think that you actually have to build
new edifices to do the work probably is not smart
thinking.
Q
353
Mr.
Laws:
Obviously, the characteristics of the group of
youngsters who need to be included in employment, education and
training once the Bill has gone through are quite wide ranging, but a
lot of them have extremely high needs such as mental health needs,
special educational needs, and needs stemming from drug and alcohol
abuse. They may also be young parents and so forth. One suspects that a
lot of those youngsters will not end up in the employment environment
as a consequence of the Bill, but they will end up coming heavily
through your type of institution and others. Do you have any concerns
about coping with some of those youngsters? Do any of them have needs
such that they would be better coped with in a different way from that
set out in this
Bill?
Ioan
Morgan:
I keep coming back with this
mantra—and I apologise if it is getting boring—but good
colleges are coping with a huge range of problems experienced by young
people. It is an increasing agenda. Some of the students whom we
help—and I am sure that colleagues will echo this—have
immense physical, mental and educational problems with which we are
increasingly able to deal.
When I was in America, I heard
people say that further education is about turning tax eaters into tax
makers in the shortest possible time. FE is very good at that. It is
even good doing it at the extreme end of the spectrum. There is a
relatively small number of students for whom we have to turn to
partnerships to support, and we are doing so
increasingly.
Paul
Head:
To follow up that point, colleges play a key
role in their local communities by working in local strategic
partnerships with the health authority and the
local authority, and that is crucial in getting this
cocktail right. We are heavily involved in partnership work across the
piece, looking at what we need to do to support young people to
re-engage and stay engaged with education and training. We can do some
of it on our own. One decision we took was to employ our own full-time
mental health worker, because we recognised there were particular
mental health issues. We worked with the mental health authority to
make sure that person we employed worked with the mental health teams,
particularly to support young people in staying re-engaged.
We have, for example, nearly
70 young people under the age of 19 who are classified as having
special learning difficulties and disabilities. We are working with the
health authority and the local authority to make sure the package of
support keeps those young people on the programme. It is not just about
getting them into the college as somewhere warm to go, but about
getting them on to programmes where they make genuine progress. For
example, going to your question on capital, we have just won a capital
bid to run a virtual shop on site for SLDD students, so that they can
train to work in a shop. Just because you are SLDD does not mean you
cannot aspire to have some form of active engagement as a volunteer or
employee.
It is
about partnership as we deal more with this difficult set of groups.
Ours is not an alcohol and drugs specialist institution, but I know
four voluntary organisations that are specialists. Working together, we
have been successful with a small handful of students, removing them
from exclusion resulting from drug and alcohol abuse, and getting them
into education and training
programmes.
Q
354
Mr.
Laws:
I appreciate that you have a lot of experience of
working with youngsters with quite challenging needs.
Possibly—and one anticipates this will be the case—the
group of youngsters who will be swept into the education and training
system as a consequence of this Bill will take in even more challenging
youngsters. Can you think of any people who would need some other type
of setting initially to deal with their needs rather than an education
and training setting? In other words, would other problems, including
medical problems, need to be resolved first before it was accepted that
the college setting was the right one for
them?
Ian
Pryce:
That could be true but I imagine that to be a
fairly small group.
Going back to the overall
financial arrangements, our sense is that because we are talking about
a substantial new cohort, on average it will not be that much more
expensive. Generally, colleges can cope with that. We have a number of
programmes for very challenging young people at 14 who come to college
full-time, and we have found that we do not need to spend much more
than the average quantum of funding given to schools to provide that
service. It is slightly more, but not a huge amount more. The odd one
or two might be three or four times as
much.
Q
355
Mr.
Laws:
So you do not think that the unit costs of this
latest group of youngsters who will potentially be swept into colleges,
taking into account all their needs, will be higher than the existing
average of your students?
Ian
Pryce:
Not significantly, based on what we have done
locally because we already work with significant groups
pre-16.
Ioan
Morgan:
Further education is the sink for a lot of
this activity at the moment. The students whom we get in at 14 at
Warwickshire college range from the gifted and talented right through
to those with very extreme problems. It is a matter of training staff
and having the resources to cope. For example, at Warwickshire college,
we have a deaf centre and a centre for the visually impaired. We
specialise in trying to bring those students into the mainstream and
allowing them to benefit from as much mainstream activity as possible.
It is an integration model, but there are some people for whom you
cannot take that model forward. For example, we run a course for
acquired brain injury students, where success is measured not so much
by traditional success rates but by the ability to lift a
paintbrush—that is quite a success over 12 months if you have
suffered a brain injury. These are the types of extreme students with
whom further education is already dealing on a day-to-day basis. So we
do not have any fears about taking in further challenging cohorts
because we are equipped to respond—we have the experience to
respond with partnerships.
Q
356
Mr.
Laws:
I have one final, brief question, which comes back
to Mr. Hayes’s point about absenteeism. In year 11,
the persistent absenteeism figure is between 10 and 11 per cent., as
you know. For youngsters on school action plus across the system, it is
about 20 per cent. Are you as confident as you indicated earlier, that
you will not see a bit of a spike in absenteeism rates once people are
brought in on a compulsory basis, rather than through the current
system of
voluntarism?
The
Chairman:
I am sorry to interrupt, but we are now more
than halfway through the time allotted for questioning these witnesses.
That is fine—we have had some very good exchanges—but I
appeal to colleagues to ask pithy questions, and to witnesses to
provide extremely succinct answers, and only to provide answers when
they feel it is essential to do so, then everybody will get
in.
Ioan
Morgan:
I cannot be more succinct than to say that it
depends on how good a job I do.
Q
357
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry (Portsmouth, North) (Lab/Co-op): In my
constituency, one of the things that colleges and schools have noticed
is that the drop-out rate within the first six months, or even the
first year, is higher than they would like. Do you think that that is
because they are not getting the proper advice and guidance from the
schools—you hinted at this, saying that you think things will
improve with the duty on the schools to do that—or do you think
it is because they do not like the environment in college? At the
moment, if they choose to drop out, it is not really your
responsibility, although I am sure that many colleges try to encourage
students not to drop out. However,
when we bring compulsion into it, will you consider it more of a
responsibility than you already have, or do you think it goes back to
getting the right advice and guidance to make sure that the students
are on the right course in the first
place?
Ian
Pryce:
In Bedfordshire, the drop-out rate from
schools is higher than the drop-out rate from colleges. I do not know
if that is true elsewhere, but it is certainly true in Bedfordshire.
One of the reasons that get people drop out is because of the choices
that are made at 16, so we get a lot of people coming to us at 17.
There is a big issue about people dropping out of school at 17 in
Bedfordshire and again, I think that comes back to the initial advice
and guidance issues.
There are internal issues
about transferability—with the curriculum it is often quite
difficult to transfer someone who has changed their mind and wants to
transfer halfway through a course on to something else, rather than
wait until the following September. There are curriculum issues that we
need to deal with as well, but a large part of it is about advice and
guidance.
Paul
Head:
For me, the important part of the process is
getting students on to the right pathways and programmes initially.
Inevitably some students find that they are not succeeding on the
programme they are on, and they need to move on to something else. They
are then at risk of dropping out. I think the important bit is having
the right learner support environment surrounding young people in
particular. We do not have a sixth form centre separate from the rest
of the college, but we try to provide an experience where everybody has
a tutor and a learning mentor. At-risk students go on to the at-risk
process and we try to manage the drop-out process.
We have moved from saying,
“If they do leave, they’re no longer our problem”
to immediately getting in contact with Connexions if someone leaves,
saying, “This person has gone from us, where have they
gone?” We follow it through. Good colleges do that—I know
that it sounds a bit of a mantra from the three of us—and most
colleges will do so. I think it is a matter of having sufficient
resource as an institution to be able to provide the individualised,
personalised support. As my colleague was saying earlier, as you get
into the final 5 and 10 per cent., some of them drop out for reasons
other than their experience within the institution. Therefore, we need
to work with children’s services, the health service and the
criminal justice system to make sure that we can all identify why an
individual has disappeared, and who is responsible for seeking to get
them to re-engage.
Ioan
Morgan:
It is about personalised
care and individualisation, I think. The drop-out rate on our 14-to-16
programmes is very low, and I think that the comments from school
colleagues show that we have retained them in the system, whereas if
they stayed at school they would probably have been lost. It is about
the product. It is the way in which they are treated. If you are trying
to deal with a cohort that has had difficulty in school, and you throw
more classroom-based activity at them in college, they are going to run
away. You have to have a differentiated product that is
appropriate.
Q
358
Mr.
Oliver Heald (North-East Hertfordshire) (Con): That is
exactly where I want to come in. Many youngsters who do not learn to
read end up bunking
off. We know that 40,000 youngsters each year leave school unable to
read, write or add up properly, and we know that the persistent
truanting in year 11 is about 11 per cent.—that is more than
60,000 young people.
I am worried about forcing
youngsters who have not learned to read, write and add up, to stay on
at school, or go to college, or have some work-based training forced on
them, when really it is the system that has failed them. If you have
been in statutory education for 10 to 12 years and not been taught to
read, write and add up, assuming that you do not have special needs or
anything of that sort, it is just a huge failing. I worry about forcing
these people to go on and on, to nil effect. Would you like to comment
on
that?
Ioan
Morgan:
If you force them to have more of the same,
you have a problem. I think the success of further education, where it
is successful, is about a complete change. It is about valuing the
individual; it is about a more adult environment.
If I can take an anecdotal
approach, we have a number of campuses attached to our college,
including the state-of-the-art Trident technology and business centre,
which we built to celebrate our activity and links with major companies
such as Rolls-Royce, Aston Martin and so on. When it was built, it was
pristine and beautiful, and we had a long debate as to whether we would
expose 14-year-olds to that environment. We did so, and it was the best
thing we ever did, because they have responded to that environment.
They see that they are in a professional set-up; they see that we are
measuring things on a commercial and professional basis, and the
response has been enormous.
Paul
Head:
You can get them to read and write,
and—Ioan is dead right—it is about the nature of the
curriculum. So we do—and I am sure other colleges do so,
too—entry to employment work, in which we take youngsters who
have not had the best experience at school. It is important not to put
them back in the same environment. In our case, we have a focus on the
construction of the built environment, and they get working—by
the end of the second week they realise that, unless they have some
numeracy, they are not going to be a particularly good carpenter or
bricklayer.
Paul
Head:
Exactly. What happens is that those youngsters
suddenly become engaged—they can see the value of numeracy and
of literacy in a vocational context—and nine out of 10 fly
through that process, and get a literacy and numeracy qualification
alongside a practical skills-based qualification that gets them on to
the skills ladder. It is about doing that kind of work. Not every place
can do that, so it is about making sure that that is our specialist
contribution to the local environment. Up the road, however, the
horticulture college does an entry to employment programme for young
people, getting them into the horticulture industry. It is about making
sure you find the right curriculum mix for them: you do not, as Ioan
says, give them the same as before.
Q
361
Mr.
Heald:
I completely agree, but of course it is
voluntary—they want a job, they like the work environment, they
need that certificate to work, so it encourages them. Is compulsion the
answer?
Paul
Head:
I think it is—it sets
the framework in which we need to work. To return to what I said
earlier about setting the highest aspirations, it is for 100 per cent.
of young people. Frankly, it is pretty compulsory at the moment. You
are harassed by Connexions if you are not engaged in something. If you
want an education maintenance allowance, you have to be in full time
education, so compulsion is partly in place. If you talk to lots of
youngsters, you can see they have already made the mental trip, and
know that they have to do something at 16, 17 and 18. Compulsion is
about setting out the state’s expectations of the bits that it
pays for, and what they should be doing. If we do not do it, we are not
going to get ourselves in the right competitive position with our
international competitors.
Ian
Pryce:
It is unlikely that they will get those
skills, if we do not do something. As long as there
are sufficient alternatives—good alternatives—I have no
problem with compulsion. As Ioan said, we tell all our students that it
is a fresh start, and if we put them on course, we expect them to
succeed. If they do not succeed, that is our problem, not theirs, and
we offer a success guarantee. We turn it round, and it tends to
work.
Q
362
Nia
Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab): We talked about guidance, and
the prejudice in schools that results from the fact that the ordinary
teaching staff—not the professional careers staff—have
very little experience of anything outside the school, so the advice is
not very broad. I would like to look at the advice within the colleges
and ask about gender stereotyping. Do you think additional guidance is
needed to ensure that young women are given the full range of options
and not thought unsuitable for certain areas of training?
Paul
Head:
Absolutely, I think that it is essential that
traditional vocational subjects associated with men are challenged, for
example, by encouraging women into construction or men into
hairdressing. We have been involved in various programmes trying to
break down gender and, indeed, race stereotyping about what people do.
I think that you do that by engaging with employers and trying to get
the best people for their jobs. We recently undertook an event for
construction employers aimed both at ensuring that the
disproportionately high number of people from black and minority ethnic
communities who are unemployed in our area see construction as an
option, and at what employers need to do to attract such employees. So,
yes, I completely agree with you: there are ways of doing it through
the frameworks and the incentives in the system to make people think
differently about how they do it. Again, it is about partnerships and
working through things like the area-based grant, to ensure that we are
not using that money to spend on more of what we already have, but on
the excluded groups, where we want to use it most effectively. We are
about to begin a programme on the Broadwater Farm estate for women
returners to construction. Research has identified the fact that lots
of women want to get into “handy person” activities. That
idea is the direct result of work with local authority outreach
workers, and we want to try to achieve that.
Ian
Pryce:
That is very important, but it is also
important that it starts as early as possible; 16 is not a good time to
start trying to correct those things.
Ioan
Morgan:
Further education is uniquely placed for role
modelling. It is possible to have vocational role models that can
overcome the stereotyping. We found it is about environment, too. We
have a very clean engineering facility, which looks like a business
foyer until you go out the back to the workshops. There is no reason
why those buildings cannot be freshly painted, clean, tidy and
welcoming. I think that that helps to reshape the image of an
industry.
Q
363
Nia
Griffith:
On the issue of compulsion, I was very
interested to hear Paul Head’s comments about it being as much
about state recognition as about the practical implications, because
you are already doing so much. As teachers, college lecturers and, dare
I say it, politicians, we tend to bend over backwards to blame
ourselves and do everything that we possibly can. Do you accept that
there are some young people who are just so lazy that they will not get
out of bed and need the occasional kick? Having taken on the idea of
compulsion, how do we deal with sanctions? What should they be? How do
you see any part of the sanction process fitting into your
role?
Ioan
Morgan:
I come back to role modelling; often, young
people do not get out of bed, because they have never seen anybody get
out of bed. Further education can, and does, contribute hugely to
work-readiness skills: the ability to be there on time, appropriately
dressed and all the rest of it. I think that it a huge role for further
education. The softer side of employment skills is terribly
important.
Paul
Head:
Two years ago, we wrote to every single person
on the NEET register in north London, and invited them to the
institution. The most chilling remark that I received from one
youngster was that it was the first time that anyone had bothered to
make college feel like an option. I learned a big lesson by virtue of
the fact that we were trying to achieve something on the NEET
programme: do not make assumptions about people on the NEET register.
They want you to provide a supportive way into the process and so, when
it comes to sanctions, what about the one who does not get up in the
morning, or the one who turned up to our NEET event in a brand new BMW
series 3, who clearly was economically active, but perhaps not as we
would want him to be? What do you do about those people to get them to
engage? Ultimately, yes, we do need a sanction. I think it is like
interviewing people who are non-attending: we do all the bits about why
they are not attending, but it is important to follow through to the
ultimate sanction. The expectation is: we are making opportunities for
you, you will engage. I suspect that there will be a tiny number of
people who do not engage at the end of the day, but the big benefit
will be the change in the
culture.
Ian
Pryce:
And that will take time. It is very important
that we allow it to take
time.
Q
364
Angela
Watkinson (Upminster) (Con): The additional students who
will attend your colleges and are targeted by the legislation are the
ones least likely to stay on post-16 at the moment, so they will be
high-maintenance, perhaps with complex social backgrounds, special
needs, or learning difficulties. How do you envisage the impact on your
budgets of the additional teaching staff, learning spaces and
equipment?
Ioan
Morgan:
I come back to the point I made
before—I do not think this is necessarily about volumes of
students heading towards their local college. It is about partnership
work, and much of it will be work-based. I think, too, it is a matter
of working smart. The capacity issue you anticipate may not be a
problem to such an extent. As for care and support, I have always been
an advocate of larger colleges, which provide the ability to put in a
very sophisticated pastoral care environment. Our students and their
parents constantly comment on that environment, and it has contributed
in no small part to the success of my
college.
Paul
Head:
It has been a five-year journey with my
institution. Since I have been principal, we have gone from only six in
10 ten students getting a qualification to over nine getting a
qualification. It has been about learner support, as Ioan was saying,
and having those systems in place. The change process that has been
going on in the sector is massive: we are dealing with the presumption
of local sixth forms, and we have a new sixth form centre in our area.
There were certain people who traditionally came to FE colleges at 16
to 19, even when I started working in the sector six years ago, but the
position is very different now, so we have to shift the resources
around. There are challenges for work force development, and there will
be changes to the nature of teaching, learning and the curriculum we
have to deliver. However, the amount of public money that has gone into
education in the UK is at an historic high, and whenever my staff say,
“We can’t do this without more money”, I tell them
that we have an awful lot of resource—£30 million-odd a
year just in public money, and we have to bend it to the new
priorities.
That is
the challenge facing the sector. Yes, we can always argue for more, but
we have to make what we have work better. I passionately believe that,
because the only way you get more money is if you can make the case for
using the existing resource to its maximum benefit. Finally, let us not
assume that everything that DIUS or DCSF puts in is all the money we
need to be able to tackle this particular problem. The local authority,
through local area-based grants, also has a responsibility to put
resources into
this.
Q
365
Mrs.
Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab): I would like to take up
the issue of local and regional qualifications. How grave a risk do you
see in those being developed, and should there be something in the Bill
requiring qualifications to be widely available? I would also like to
ask about transition. We have done a lot of work, and recognised the
importance of the transition from primary to secondary school. A huge
amount of effort has gone in to making sure that that transition is
eased. Do we need to take into account the importance of the transition
for 14 to 19-year-olds to the adult world of work, adult
responsibilities and expectations? Is the unique thing that you offer
that 10 per cent.—and I am very impressed by your comments about
not giving up on students and the importance of
building aspiration—a crucial opportunity to ease the transition
into the adult world and adult responsibilities? Do you help them to
deal with those things, given that they have not had the role models
and the experience on their journey so
far?
Ian
Pryce:
Transition is very important. The pre-16 work
we have done for a decade demonstrates, as Ioan said earlier, that the
14 to 16-year-olds do better in school work because they suddenly get
it, and we get almost guaranteed progression and achievement post-16.
If you give us somebody at 14 we will give you a work-ready person at
18, almost 100 per cent of the time. That is very important. It is
obviously difficult where there are school sixth forms because not
everybody transits from one to the other.
On the subject of entitlement
qualifications, I am slightly sceptical of entitlement, because it may
have perverse consequences. If you require certain things to receive an
entitlement, the things that you do not require could get lost as an
unintended consequence. The wider you make entitlement to all sorts of
courses, the more difficult it is to plan, so I would am wary of that
proposal.
Ioan
Morgan:
May I add that a distinguished colleague,
Ruth Silver at Lewisham college, talks of readiness, and says that the
work of an FE college is about stages of readiness. For me, that starts
pre-college at the age of 14 when we are preparing people for the move
into the college environment and the adult environment that you
mentioned. It is about work-readiness and the readiness to progress to
higher courses—it is all about stages of readiness. In most
colleges, we recognise those stages and put resource into the total
package: it is not only about qualifications but about the person. It
is about the softer skills that are needed to ease that transition.
That is a very important part of what we
do.
Paul
Head:
The recognition and currency of qualifications
are crucial. The sector skills councils have a key role to play in
determining what employers say are the qualifications needed for a
particular sector. I have a concern that there are so many awarding
bodies that it is very difficult for an employer to make a choice.
There are certain qualifications that need to have currency. I have no
problem with McDonald’s. I can see how a McDonald’s award
qualification would have currency. I am more concerned about a small
place just doing it because that is what they want to do.
It
is about working with sector skills councils. The QCA’s role in
approving qualifications is crucial, and both employer and funder must
buy into the qualification that is being delivered. I agree with Ioan
that the skill level that is being delivered through an activity is
crucial, and it must be properly and rigorously inspected. We must
never forget that with self-regulation comes accountability, and
accountability has been well delivered through Ofsted. We must not lose
that accountability and self-regulated
structure.
Q
366
Mr.
Hayes:
I have met scores of college
principals—perhaps hundreds—since I have been doing this
job, and I have yet to meet one who thinks that the current funding and
management arrangements through the Learning and Skills Council is the
best way to do the job. Why do college principals tell me
that?
Paul
Head:
Any principal in the world will moan about the
Government intermediary body between them and the state. When I worked
in higher education, it was the Higher Education Funding Council for
England. Everybody loathed HEFCE. There is always going to be some form
of Government agency between public providers using public money and
the state. The LSC has strengths and weaknesses like all public
organisations. I could give you a list of weaknesses and a list of
strengths, the weaknesses probably outweighing the strengths. There has
to an intermediary body. It has to be appropriate to its mission, and
what the state wants to get out of it. It has to have a light-touch in
a self-regulating environment. It has to be consistent in its funding
methodology.
Paul
Head:
The current LSC was not set up to do those
things.
Paul
Head:
My experience in London is that it has become
more flexible and appropriate to London’s needs. I find it
difficult to comment on the rest of the
country.
Ian
Pryce:
The policy priorities sometimes turn
into overly complex mechanisms for determining the funding, so the
frustration is that you often find a surprise change in the funding too
late—that happened with some of the adult funding a few years
ago. Perhaps you cannot have a general conversation about the sum total
of your budget; you almost have to go for a bottom-up approach, which
is data driven. That tends to be the frustration—not with the
policy, but with the
practice.
Ioan
Morgan:
Going back to fundamentals, in 1993, when
colleges were given their independence from local authorities and were
incorporated, we hoped that that would allow us to make an appropriate
localised response to need. I take a good, healthy look at anybody who
comes between my customer and me. The LSC, in my experience, has some
able people who, when they are working at their best, are facilitating
matters. Occasionally, however, that has not made us flexible enough in
our local and perhaps regional responsiveness. That has been the only
issue for me. But I share the concern that, if the LSC disappears, I
will have nobody to
blame.
The
Chairman:
Thank you. There any no further questions, so I
should like warmly to thank Paul Head, Ian Pryce and Ioan Morgan for
sparing their time to give evidence this morning. We are very
grateful.
The
Chairman:
Yes, as I observed earlier. It is always good to
have one’s views endorsed by a Minister, even if it is from a
sedentary
position.
The
Chairman:
Indeed, two of the wise men were Welsh. That may
or may not be recorded for posterity. Thank you, Madeleine. Thank you,
colleagues.
I welcome
our next set of witnesses. Perhaps I can ask you to introduce
yourselves formally, and then we will move into the questioning
process.
Mike
Harris:
I am Mike Harris, head of education and
skills at the Institute of
Directors.
Alexander
Ehmann:
I am Alexander Ehmann, head of regulation and
enterprise policy at the Institute of
Directors.
The
Chairman:
Thank you. We start this session three minutes
early, which is good. We have until no later than 12.15 pm for your
evidence. I turn to Nick Gibb to open the
questioning.
Q
369
Mr.
Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)
(Con): Thank you for giving evidence, it is very much
appreciated. Your response to the question in the consultation document
asking whether you agreed that there was a case for introducing
compulsory participation, was a bold-typed “No”. Will you
expand on that opinion,
please?
Mike
Harris:
There is a general acceptance that we would
like to see a greater proportion continue in education and training,
but the root cause of that is a failure to inculcate a greater degree
of skills earlier in the piece. We felt that in throwing resources at
16 to 18-year-olds the problem was being tackled at the wrong age.
While not discounting the importance of intervening early, if extra
resources and support were being offered, they would be better targeted
at primary education. That was the fundamental
point.
We are also
concerned about the impact that this policy would have in its
implementation, not just on the young people we are specifically
targeting—we need to think about whether compulsion is the right
way to encourage them to participate—but on small employers.
That is why Alex is here
today.
Alexander
Ehmann:
All I would add at this point is that even
the present incarnation of the impact assessment that accompanied this
policy seems, to our mind, to have underestimated the costs that could
be imposed on business by anything up to eight
times.
Q
371
Mr.
Gibb:
Will you expand on that further? Alison Wolf, when
she gave evidence the other day, set out her analysis of how the
regulatory impact assessment was wrong. Do you have a similar analysis
that you can share with the
Committee?
Alexander
Ehmann:
I am happy to do so. The first point is that
if we accept provisionally that Alison Wolf’s document is
correct in suggesting that 20 per cent. rather than 10 per cent. of the
cohort would be in reach of the Bill, it would boost the cost of
employer checks from £8.4 million to £16.8 million. That
£16.8 million is based on an estimate from the Department that
suggests that a process of discussion, checking, any changes to rotas
and/or agreeing an employee’s needs will take a maximum of 10
minutes. Doing some
very rough work in the IOD before the meeting, we
think that that is a very conservative estimate. It is much more likely
to be something in the region of 20 minutes, so that doubles again the
figure up to £33.6 million.
Any understanding of the
guidance that would be necessary for employers about what they can and
cannot do or ask of their employees is also missing from the figure.
Conservatively, I assume 20 minutes to read any guidance; that is based
upon my reading of the document on the “Raising
Expectations” consultation last night, which took me 17 minutes.
So, that doubles the figure yet again, and we end up with a figure,
very roughly, of £67.2 million. The interesting thing is that if
it were imposed before 2010, it would eradicate all of the
Government’s efforts within the Department to remove the
administrative burdens of regulation. In fact, it would add 7 per cent.
to the current regulatory burden on business. So, we have some serious
concerns about the impact of the regulation.
Let me add that the upshot of
our argument is that the necessity to check the status of an
employee—if they have registered at a college—seems to us
an unnecessary process. I am happy to elaborate on that in some detail
later.
Q
372
Mr.
Gibb:
Thank you, I would like you to do that later, if we
can come back to you on that. Do you have an opinion about the youth
market, the employability of 16 and 17-year-olds and the impact the
legislation could have on that market?
Mike
Harris:
There is a risk of increasing unemployment in
that cohort, but it is impossible to predict to what extent. It was
picked up in the impact assessment itself produced by the Department,
which estimated something like 5,500 16 to 17-year-olds will be
displaced because of the lack of small employers’ ability to
respond flexibly to the requirements. They may replace those 16 to
17-year-olds with 18-year-olds. It is impossible for us to say whether
that is a valid figure, but it is a genuine risk and an example of how
you would end up with an unintended consequence of a well intentioned
proposal.
Alexander
Ehmann:
No, nothing to add except that that is a very
possible real consequence for many small employers. If you look at IOD
members, 75 per cent. of those with less with 50 employees have no
human resources support whatsoever. There is a very real possibility
that small businesses may choose to employ older members of the work
force.
Q
373
Jim
Knight:
I was a director of a small business, employing
roughly a couple of dozen staff, for a number of years before becoming
a Member of Parliament. When we took on new members of staff we would
always have a discussion with them as part of induction about what
their induction, support and training needs may be. Do you think that I
was unusual, or is that commonplace among
employers?
Mike
Harris:
Certainly among IOD members it would not be
unusual. To an extent, dealing with the sort of organisation that joins
the IOD, the British
Chambers of Commerce or the CBI is dealing in a
favoured universe. Such organisations tend to invest very heavily in
skills and training and take it particularly seriously; they tend to
have all of those sorts of processes and tend to be interested in that
aspect of developing young people. Generally speaking, however, among
small employers it is safe to assume that if there is a choice between
certainty and the unknown risks of doing the wrong
thing—completely unintentionally—some will opt for
certainty and employ 18-year-olds rather than 16 to
17-year-olds.
Q
374
Jim
Knight:
You are answering a slightly different question
about the effect on the youth labour market. I am asking whether there
are that many employers—and I would be interested in your source
if it is not from your members—who do not have some form of
induction when a new member of staff starts working for
them?
Mike
Harris:
I do not have a
figure.
Q
375
Jim
Knight:
Is it reasonable to suggest that, for those
employers who have a conversation when a member of the work force
starts work with them, as part of that conversation they could ask them
a couple of questions about how they are planning to fulfil their duty
to participate in education or training up to the age of 18?
Alexander
Ehmann:
That sounds a perfectly reasonable assertion.
There are clearly a number of discussions that take place—in
both the interview process and at the point of employment. A lot of the
assumptions within the impact assessment about this policy, where it is
assumed that the process of checking would take place on the first day
or first week of employment, seem to contradict that discursive
possibility of an employer engaging with potentially a young employee
about the nature of the course that they will undertake. I think that
those discussions certainly take place, and it is possible to do that,
but we are slightly sceptical about whether they are valuable in that
first week of employment.
Q
376
Jim
Knight:
But in terms of fulfilling the duty in the Bill,
they would be sufficient, would they
not?
Alexander
Ehmann:
In my understanding of the Bill, the
production of the piece of paper proving that the employee concerned
has enrolled with a college is the transaction that needs to take
place—the discussion is slightly deprioritised. The issue with
the piece of paper, as we see it, is that is has a potential for rather
large costs on a business associated with the administrative nature of
it and the guidance that one needs to read before doing so. Moreover,
there seems to be no protection, as there is no process suggested here
where the employer would be audited in any way in respect of the piece
of paper—indeed we would not suggest that this should take
place. It is an administrative process that exists within a vacuum and,
seemingly, without much purpose.
We also have some concerns
about how much flexibility an employer has within employment law and
age discrimination law to ask questions during interview about the age
of the person they are interviewing.
Q
377
Jim
Knight:
So if the guidance issued once the Bill was
enacted—should it be agreed by Parliament—made it clear
that the bureaucracy surrounding the piece of paper you talk about was
minimal, and if the guidance was clear about what kind of ongoing
burdens there were on employers to monitor that process and that they
would be kept to a minimum, could you then be sufficiently happy that
you could see the benefits of increasing the level of training and
skills in the work force? Would that change the balance of your
opinion?
Mike
Harris:
That is not the deal breaker. It is
unhelpful, but it is not the deal breaker.
Mike
Harris:
The principle of tackling that problem at
that age when really, we have to focus at a much earlier phase of
education.
Jim
Knight:
Finally, let me just turn to that question because
I am interested in the answer. Clearly, you think the priority of
resources should be pre-16 rather than post-16, which is not an
unreasonable position to take, but is it not reasonable to ask
Government to do both—to tackle pre-16 education and make sure
that we are ever improving the standards of literacy and numeracy and
work readiness of people when they get to the age of 16, and to try to
address their engagement and their level of skills
post-16?
Mike
Harris:
I think that is reasonable. Nobody is arguing
against the idea that what we want to see are better educated young
people—young people with better skills, who are better prepared
for the work place and for life generally. Put simply, the argument is
about what is the most effective mechanism for ensuring a greater
degree of post-16 participation. Is it support, which is very
important; or is it equipping people at 11, which enables them at 14
and then at 16 to have the skills they need to participate effectively
post-16?
Q
379
Mr.
Laws:
In your exchanges with Mr. Gibb, you were
talking about the risk to the work force and to the employment
prospects of 16 and 17-year-olds, and you talked about the regulatory
impact assessment. What would be the maximum impact in lost jobs for 16
or 17-year-olds, in terms of those who are presently not getting the
training that would meet the requirements of the
Bill?
Mike
Harris:
The figure I quoted was from the impact
assessment itself, which said 5,660 jobs. It is not something on which
we have any further estimates, or have done any work on. I think it is
a very difficult thing to
predict.
Q
380
Mr.
Laws:
In its paper on the Bill, which it sent us some time
ago, the CBI used a figure of about 65,000 as the total number in
employment but without certified training. Does that sound like the
right
number?
Mike
Harris:
No, I am afraid not—it is not
something we have done any work on
Q
381
Mr.
Laws:
In terms of the sectors where youngsters are likely
to be employed, but are not necessarily getting the training that they
need—we have had the publicity yesterday about certification
with McDonald’s and other employers—would it be possible
to provide qualifications and certify those in the workplace for many
of those youngsters and employers, or does the size or nature of the
employers mean that that would be extremely difficult or
impossible?
Mike
Harris:
I think the certification work is very
important. I know there was some negative reaction yesterday but I
think the principle is right, that you will be enabling employers to
accredit skills and achievement in the workplace and that may well, in
the longer-term, mitigate some of that risk of not employing 16 to
17-year-olds. But I think it is very much a long-term objective rather
than a short-term aim. That is especially true for smaller employers,
because the sort of employers that have the resources to do that tend
to be the blue chip companies and the big internationals.
In terms of the sort of
sectors, you would note from the figures that the most—about two
thirds—are in the restaurant, distribution and hotel sector. We
have no specific information on that sector. It happens to be a very
small part of the Institute of Directors’
membership—about 5 per cent. of our membership compared to the
economy at large—so I have no additional figures on
that.
Q
382
Mr.
Laws:
Do you think it would be difficult for that sector
to develop a means of training and certification that could be used
even by smaller
employers?
Mike
Harris:
I would have said that the distinction would
not be as much the different sector as the size of employer. I see no
particular reason why the restaurant trade would not be in a position
to develop something which was more job specific in due
course.
Alexander
Ehmann:
If I might add—from a small business
perspective, Mike is absolutely correct. It will be about the size of
the business—absolutely. It will also be about the number of 16
and 17-year-olds employed within a business of that size; it will not
necessarily be relevant to conduct those activities otherwise. So,
particularly in small—less so medium-sized—businesses, I
think there will be much less of a propensity to go down the
accreditation
route.
Q
383
Mr.
Laws:
If we do not persuade Jim that all of his big
proposals on compulsion and criminalisation are wrong, and he does not
change his mind, but you manage to strip out some of the policing
elements from the Bill that put duties on employers to regulate and
check up—elements that therefore present a risk to employers
that they will get it all wrong—what sort of amendments would
you want to see to those parts of the Bill? To what extent do you think
they would reduce the employment risk you talked about earlier? Or
would they be drowned out by the smaller employers not wanting to have
anything to do with the process of releasing people to do
qualifications, or of providing them in the
workplace?
Alexander
Ehmann:
I think very broadly that there seem to be
two duties on employers within the Bill. One is to check and the other
is to give access to the course— to allow the time off. Although
we are not in favour of the Bill, we are not disputing the fact that
access to that time off should be granted. What we are saying is that
the activity of transacting a piece of paper between the young person
and the business seems to sit in a vacuum, which—based upon the
reassurances we have had about the way in which this will be policed
and monitored—will actually have no purpose whatsoever. So, if
those costs could be as high—could be—as £67.2
million, and effectively invalidate all the work done over the next
four years by this Department to reduce administrative burdens on
business, it seems to be an unproductive
measure.
Q
384
Mr.
Laws:
So if we got rid of some of that obligation on
employers, it would considerably reduce your fears about employment
consequences.
Mike
Harris:
It would be a big help. The duty to do it
should be removed, but there are other things that could mitigate the
Bill’s impact. We should be talking about how the education
system responds to employers’ needs. There may be ways of
offering courses at different times of day and at weekends, so that
people could be employed for five days a week and the young person
could then attend their course either in the evenings or weekends. That
would be a help. We talked about the work in certifying
employers’ training, and that may also help. If we remove the
duty in that part of the Bill—the duty to check—that
would be a great help to small
businesses.
Q
385
Mr.
Gordon Marsden (Blackpool, South) (Lab): May I ask what
proportion of your membership are directors of small and medium-sized
enterprises?
Mike
Harris:
Seventy-one per
cent.
Q
386
Mr.
Marsden:
So it is about seven in 10, hence your focus. Is
not the challenge to strike a balance between what the Government or
other agencies do about skills and training for SMEs, and the practical
problems that you have touched on? Do you have any initial comments on
the new proposals that the Government brought forward yesterday to
support SMEs through the skills and training process, particularly the
proposals to provide some subsidy to employers who are prepared to go
down that
route?
Mike
Harris:
I have not had a chance to read them
thoroughly, but I understand that there will be some support for small
employers, particularly to offer apprenticeships, which is welcome.
There is clearly huge emphasis on apprenticeships as a scheme to fulfil
a duty to participate. That depends fundamentally on more SMEs offering
apprenticeship places.
We are supportive of
apprenticeships. About 13 per cent. of IOD members use them, and they
tend to reflect well. Our members think that they are good at
delivering the skills and training that young people need, but there
are specific problems for small employers in offering them. Any
measures that the Government introduce to help small employers and to
make that easier are welcome. For example, group training associations
help employers to pool
administrative resources are helpful. Having more flexibility about what
goes into apprenticeships is
helpful.
Q
387
Mr.
Marsden:
May I probe you a little on the
balance between what training employers can be
expected to deliver and what training or education must come from
elsewhere? Again, we saw in the media yesterday many comments in a
different context on building in-house training into broader
qualification frameworks. Is not that sort of in-house training
something that small and medium-sized enterprises can be expected to
do, particularly with the support that is being
offered?
Mike
Harris:
In broad principle terms, it is the
employer’s responsibility to train employees, whether they are
young or old, in the skills they need to do their job more effectively,
but we would argue that it is the Government’s or the
state’s job to educate them to the basic level that gives them
that platform to progress in employment and in life generally. It is
very much the minimum that, at 16, people should have a good grasp of
the basics, and preferably with a level 2 qualification as a basis for
progression from
there.
Q
388
Mr.
Marsden:
What about the employer’s responsibility
to allow time for or to structure the working day around agreed
training? You referred to problems with that, but is not it the case
that further education colleges and other specialist colleges are being
much more flexible about the hours when they deliver
training?
Mike
Harris:
You are correct, and it is positive story.
About half of IOD members use FE colleges to train some of their
employees, and the majority are satisfied with the quality of training.
That, to us, is not indicative of a sector that is unresponsive, so we
anticipate that the FE sector would be able to provide in great degree
the flexibility that would help employers to meet their
duties.
Alexander
Ehmann:
Even with that flexibility, the impact
assessment goes on to suggest that most of those young people will
change jobs 1.5 times a year on average, so an employer is likely to
have to accommodate more than one young person’s needs in a
given
year.
Q
389
Mr.
Marsden:
Is that not the case generally in patterns of
employment, not just with young
people?
Alexander
Ehmann:
Yes, it is. It is just the Bill will place an
obligation on the employer to agree the one day off a week that the
person would
need.
Q
390
Mr.
Marsden:
Indeed. I accept that point, but I put it to you
that it does not put a disproportionate burden on employers in respect
of young people compared with other age
groups.
Mike
Harris:
You will not find us arguing against the
importance of training. That is something in which IOD members believe
fundamentally, because almost all—97 per cent.—invest in
training. Beyond that, 70 per cent. invest in training that
leads to qualifications, because they believe that is important: it
delivers a better quality of training and increases employee motivation
and retention. On the principle that it is important for employers to
invest in training, we agree with you.
The
Chairman:
Several colleagues have indicated to me that
they want to ask questions. I shall go first to Charles Walker and then
to David Lammy, but I have sight of other colleagues who have indicated
their
interest.
Q
391
Mr.
Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con): What are the commercial
barriers that prevent more SMEs from offering apprenticeships to 16 and
17-year-olds?
Mike
Harris:
There are two things. There are general
procedural difficulties—the administration that is required.
When we talk about apprenticeships, we want to be clear that we want
high-quality work-based training, preferably backed by an older mentor
and underpinned by off-the-job training, with regular reviews and
appraisals and full employer involvement. Those are the apprenticeships
we want to see, but of course that is correspondingly more difficult in
many instances for small business to deliver. You can go so far in
helping small businesses to cope with that, particularly with the
administrative side, but sometimes they will simply have alternative
methods of meeting their training needs. It will not necessarily be an
apprenticeship. You can do so much, but businesses may have very valid
alternatives to
that.
Q
392
Mr.
Walker:
Small businesses are not social enterprises at the
end of the day; they have to turn a profit. Is there concern among
small businesses that offering apprenticeships would not be
cost-effective for them in the long
term?
Mike
Harris:
I do not know whether they would take that
specific a view of apprenticeships in particular. It would be a case of
whether they have the resources to offer an apprenticeship. I do not
think they would say that an apprenticeship in itself would be
economically not valuable, but they may not be able to provide the
access and the support that are so vital in an apprenticeship. That may
be addressed by collaborating with other smaller employers through
something like a group training
association.
Q
393
Mr.
Walker:
I am probing you on this issue because most people
who run small businesses are commercially rational; they make rational
decisions as far as their businesses are concerned. Surely if they felt
that apprenticeships would advance their profitability and enable them
to grow their business, they would be investing in them. It would seem
they are not investing in them because they are not convinced that
there is a commercial advantage to investing in them. We can beat
around the bush and dress this up as nicely as we like, but if
apprenticeships were more commercially viable, more businesses would be
offering
them.
Mike
Harris:
Or if they suited their particular training
needs. Then I would agree with you. Many do offer apprenticeships and
many are very enthusiastic about it, but it does not suit
everybody.
Q
394
Mr.
Walker:
Do you think offering some form of financial
incentive genuinely will increase the number of
apprenticeships?
Mike
Harris:
It might, but in the research that we have
done—this goes back a few years; we last did research on this in
2003—the reason was not
necessarily financial. People were saying, “We believe very
firmly in training and we invest in training, but we choose to do
something else.” It was not a negative view of apprenticeships
per se, or that there was a financial barrier or that they simply would
not offer it in their sector. People were saying, “We just have
a different way of meeting our training
need.”
Q
395
Mr.
Walker:
Do you think what a business tells you and what a
business thinks in private might be
different?
Mike
Harris:
I do not think
so.
Q
396
Mr.
Walker:
I think most businesses would say, “Yes, we
passionately believe in training. That is something we really value,
but we don’t do it, for these reasons.” Do you think they
genuinely believe in it or is that what they feel you want to
hear?
Mike
Harris:
I can speak only for IOD members of course,
and with the research that we do, as I said before, you are dealing
with a slightly favoured universe, because almost all of them invest in
training and spend quite significant sums doing that. They compete on
the basis of high skills and they value the skills of their employees,
so they are very much committed to that agenda, but they may not
necessarily use apprenticeships to meet those
needs.
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and
Skills (Mr. David Lammy):
Just for clarity,
when you say that they might not have the resources to invest in
apprenticeships, do you mean resources beyond just the financial ones
and including the means to deal with the administration and the
qualifications that come about as a result of
apprenticeships?
Mike
Harris:
Yes.
Q
397
Mr.
Lammy:
For that reason, although apprenticeships must of
course have a work-based element, do you have a view on whether the
contract should lie with the employer or with the training provider
that the employer is working with, or do you support the flexibility of
the current arrangement, under which it is up to the
employer?
Mike
Harris:
In an ideal world, there would be a much
greater degree of employer involvement and, in that sense, the contract
resting with the employer would seem to make sense. Of course, people
have asked questions in the past about the extent to which
apprenticeships have responded to employer demand, as opposed to the
Government pushing them as a supply-led process. There have been
indications that employers have been sidelined through that process.
However, we want them to be absolutely centre stage. The barriers to
that are on the administration and support side. If we can start to
tackle that more effectively, it may make sense to more SMEs, which are
crucial to delivering the numbers that we
need.
Q
398
Mr.
Lammy:
That is a bit surprising, because although you say
that you have members who might be concerned about the administration
that goes with apprenticeships, including members who are SMEs,
presumably you would favour their choosing to have
the apprentice working in their premises and so on, but with the
training provider dealing with some elements of the bureaucracy, and
all the rest of
it.
Mike
Harris:
We want to minimise bureaucracy, but we also
want employers centre stage, because you can characterise
a really effective apprenticeship as one where the
employer is fully involved in its delivery. The off-the-job training is
important and, if the training provider can take care of a lot of the
administrative burden that goes with that, that is all to the good. We
want to see mentors and regular reviews and appraisals. If an employer
has ownership of the apprenticeship in that sense, it is more likely to
deliver the completion rates and high quality that we want to
see.
Q
399
Mr.
Lammy:
Earlier, you talked about your members wanting to
see 16-year-olds with the appropriate literacy, numeracy and other
skills. Do you recognise that two thirds of the 2020 work force are
adults now and therefore would you support the aspects of the Bill that
support proper provision and a duty to provide facilities for
adults?
Mike
Harris:
I think that the adult skills provisions are
very useful. That is an important part of the whole package. Of course,
70 per cent. or 66 per cent. of the adult work force has already gone
through compulsory education, so we have to deal with the weaknesses in
the current work force. IOD members are already engaged in that
process. However, we also need a much greater flow of skills through
the education system into the work force, which is why these particular
measures for 16 to 18-year-olds are misplaced and should be introduced
earlier on in the education phase—but they are both
central.
Q
400
Mr.
Lammy:
I do not know the demography of your
membership, although it might be quite interesting to
find out. We have heard evidence from organisations including
Barnardo’s and the Prince’s Trust about some young people
in this country who are living chaotic lives—young people whose
parents have drug and addiction problems and young people in care. Do
you accept that there will always be a cohort of young
people—including those arriving in this country at 14 or 15 from
other countries, seeking asylum—whose needs can sometimes be met
in FE post-16 and who require some of the elements in the Bill? We do
not all live in a leafy shire where it is all wonderful at
16.
Mike
Harris:
No, of course not. I agree with you: some
young people face an incredible challenge—there is no question
about it—whether due to familial or personal problems. But the
real question is: what is the best way to encourage the motivation and
desire to engage? We must also ask whether that can be achieved
effectively through compulsion with attendant threat of sanction or
whether it is better to focus on the support side with that group of
young people. FE provides a second-chance option for so many, and it is
important that we recognise that, but the emphasise must be on support
rather than
compulsion.
Mike
Harris:
I do not support the status quo at all. It is
a matter of how you motivate these people to engage in education and
training. Do you force them to do it or do you support and enable
them?
Alexander
Ehmann:
May I add that Alison Wolf suggested that
there is some chance that this is a much tougher nut to crack than the
Government impact assessment has said. She suggested that, as I said
earlier, 20 per cent. of the cohort by the time this Bill is live and
running is much more likely than the 10 per cent. on which the
estimates are based. So there is an argument to say that it is a very
tough thing to break
through.
Q
402
Mrs.
Moon:
Could you clarify for me the
research you have done that leads you to say that investment in primary
education rather than where this Bill is taking us would make the
difference, so that by the time people came through primary education
and were coming up to 16, we would not have the problems that we have
now, with some young people who have disengaged or who lack the skills
and the capacity to engage in the world of work and who need the help
and support that this Bill gives them to make that transition into the
world of work? Is this based on gut reaction, or have you done some
research and what would you want to be changed in the primary
curriculum that you think would actually prepare people for that world
of
work?
Mike
Harris:
We have not done any specific survey on this
Bill, but the consistent theme that comes back from our research is
that the number one priority that employers have in the education
system is that people emerge at 16 or later with at least a firm grasp
of the basics. That is why we place that emphasis on the primary and
early secondary curriculum and this is why we are supporting diplomas.
We think securing a genuine diversity of choice in qualification and
curriculum is very important to engage young people. That is part of
the mix; the support is part of the mix; and careers advice and
guidance is part of the mix; but all these things must come together.
At the very basic level, employers need to see young people with a
grasp of the
basics.
Q
403
Mrs.
Moon:
You said that members of the institute were very
committed to training and you had some concerns about the amount of
time that smaller employers in particular might have to give to
supporting young people when they first come into their employment.
Would you not accept that one of the great comments that was made by
the college principals was about the importance of partnership and the
work that they as college principals had been doing with small
employers and with local authorities and their economic development
units to make sure that the advice and guidance that the smaller
employers you say are worried about is actually there, so the problems
you are anticipating in terms of time commitment should not arise? Is
it not about partnership—working together to make sure that
those skills and the support is there for young people—rather
than employers standing on their own and feeling they are isolated and
at
risk?
Mike
Harris:
Our concern about that duty to check is that
it was not necessarily a valuable thing from the employer’s
point of view, or added value to the checking process and that it could
be removed just to get rid of an unnecessary burden. I would not
disagree that it is about partnership. We know there is a very high
engagement between our members and the FE
sector, and 97 per cent. of our members invest in training. It is not a
question of whether training is valuable or whether young people or
older people should be training; it is how we best facilitate that. On
how we best get the outcome we want in terms of participation, we would
argue the emphasis should be on primary. On how we best get a
streamlined solution for businesses, we would suggest that removing
that duty to check would be a great
aid.
The
Chairman:
Thank you. At the moment I am aware of three
colleagues seeking to contribute and we have now a maximum of only 11
minutes before we have to finish this session. Oliver Heald, followed
by Sarah McCarthy-Fry, followed by Jim
Knight.
Q
404
Mr.
Heald:
The number of youngsters leaving school unable to
read and write properly is 40,000 and we are told that in
year 11 more than 60,000 are bunking off. What the
Government seems to be proposing is that FE colleges should try to
rescue these young people and teach them to read and write and add up
and that there should be work placements as part of the package. What
do you think about that
model?
Mike
Harris:
I am not sure I understand the
question.
Q
405
Mr.
Heald:
Do you think this particular idea is a
satisfactory, sustainable model for providing basic
skills?
Mike
Harris:
Do you mean tackling
post-16?
Mike
Harris:
Of course, with some you will have to. That
is just a fact of life, but we would say that we ought to be able to
get to a much better situation at 11, which is such a crucial stage. If
you do not get the basic skills at 11, it is unlikely you will get
there at 16. Then you are unlikely to get the five GCSEs including
English and
Maths.
Q
407
Mr.
Heald:
Yes. So, is it your view that the ones who are not
learning to read and write before the age of 11 are the ones who are
bunking off from school, leaving school unable to read and write, and
that many of them are
NEETs?
Mike
Harris:
That is a fact. If you do not have a mastery
of the basic skills, you are more likely to be in the group post-16 who
are not in education, employment or training. The FE sector will always
have a role in providing a second chance, that is true, but that is not
to say that our first emphasis ought to be to say as a first principle
we will try to get as many at that stage as possible at
16.
Q
408
Mr.
Heald:
Do you think it is the role of employers to
facilitate the learning of reading, writing and
adding-up?
Mike
Harris:
No. We believe that level of training ought
to be dealt with through the education system before they reach
employers.
Q
409
Mr.
Heald:
But they are basic skills which you need in order
to work. That is the argument. So should employers not be taking a role
in teaching them?
Mike
Harris:
I do not think they should
in literacy and numeracy. That is why schemes such as Train to Gain are
facilitated through the Government. Employers have a huge role to play
in skills development generally and—beyond literacy and
numeracy—in employability skills which they can inculcate in the
workplace. No one doubts employers’ role in delivering training.
The real question is, at what level should they deliver that
training?
Q
410
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry:
Our previous witnesses this morning, the
college heads, spoke about the soft skills, the employability skills,
that the FE colleges can help with. I know you said you have not had a
chance to look at the apprenticeship announcements made yesterday, but
I was particularly struck by the programme-led apprenticeships which
will focus on learning that develops generic employability skills. One
of the SMEs in my constituency was worried that they were taking on
apprentices who did not understand the rigours of employability, such
as the requirement to turn up on time. The world of work is very
different from the world of learning. Do you think SMEs are more likely
to take on apprentices who have been through this type of programme-led
pre-apprenticeship work, where the FE college takes on the training in
those general employability
skills?
Mike
Harris:
Those skills are very important. They are
increasingly important for employers. We did a survey at the end of
last year which emphasised this, not just at this age but also for
graduates. It was not just about literacy and numeracy; it was about
turning up, it was about reliability, punctuality, team working, and a
good work ethic. My only concern with the pre-apprenticeship programmes
is that, if these skills are inculcated, that is very useful, but we do
not want to develop the pre-apprenticeship programme in isolation from
the demand for employers for full apprenticeships. You do want to be
stacking up young people in a pre-apprenticeship when there is not an
apprenticeship place for them to go on to. The other feature of
apprenticeships is that we have seen a decline in level 3
apprenticeship as opposed to level 2. In the context of the Leitch
review and the need to shift that emphasis from level 2 to level 3
training, that would be another
worry.
Q
411
Jim
Knight:
It is possible to look at the level of prior
attainment and qualifications those currently not participating have
achieved. About 20 per cent. of 16-year-olds and around a quarter of
17-year-olds have reached level 2 on leaving school and are therefore
perfectly capable of going to do A-levels, for example. Would you agree
that there is therefore not an issue for them around the quality of
their pre-16 education? It is more a question of motivating them to
carry on learning. How do you suggest we achieve the culture shift that
is necessary to raise the expectation and aspiration of those young
people?
Mike
Harris:
That is not easy to answer. If the question
is that they have achieved level 2 at 16, so why are they not
continuing their training, and if the thrust of the answer is because
the opportunities are not there for employers, I can only say that
would not be supported by research we have done. How do you encourage
employers to offer more training
opportunities?
Q
412
Jim
Knight:
My question is more around how you shift the
culture of aspiration and ambition for those young people. I think you
agree that it is desirable both for those young people and the wider
economy for them to carry on learning beyond level 2 to get to level 3.
So my question is this: we are suggesting compulsion, but what are you
suggesting to help raise the culture of aspiration, so that those young
people who have the necessary prior attainment to carry on to do level
3 do so?
Mike
Harris:
I do not have a short answer about what would
be more effective to do currently within the education system that will
result in people being more motivated and more engaged. However, it is
absolutely crucial to motivate people, because unless you are motivated
to do it you will not be fully engaged in that learning process. You
have to want to learn.
How you achieve that
motivation of people, I simply do not know. I would have thought that
the primary responsibility is with schools and parents, but how you
effect a culture change of that nature I am really not sure, beyond
equipping people with a much firmer grasp of the basics, because that
is the majority of people that you are talking about. There will be
that minority who have obtained their level 2, and then it is a
question of how they progress to level 3. The real problem is the much
greater volume of people who do not have the basics and have not even
got level 2 at 16.
The
Chairman:
I simply say to the hon. Gentleman that he
should allow time for the replies and we only have four
minutes.
Q
413
Mr.
Hayes:
On apprenticeships, you will know that in the
latest figures level 2 and level 3 numbers are down for
apprenticeships. Why do you think that is? In particular, why do you
think that level 3 apprenticeship numbers have declined steadily for so
long?
Mike
Harris:
I do not know. We have only done a one-off
survey in 2003 on the volume of apprenticeships being delivered by
members of the Institute of Directors. We do not have a subsequent
track, so I cannot say if our experience is the same as the national
figures. It may simply be that people, particularly the small
employers, have alternatives of offering that level, as we suggested.
In particular, it is a concern that the level 3 number has declined,
because that was the reason for the introduction of the apprenticeship
programme back in 1995 and it is so crucial to meeting the aim of
shifting the emphasis from level 2 to level 3 in future. I do not know
why there has been that decline in apprenticeships in
particular.
Q
414
Mr.
Hayes:
Might it relate to the question that was asked
earlier by Mr. Lammy about employer engagement? You perhaps
might shed some light on this issue. The employers involved in
apprenticeships are sometimes training providers, whose only business
or whose principal business is to train rather than to do
anything else. Do you have any feel for the number of other types of
employers—one might say genuine employers—that are
involved in apprenticeships?
Mike
Harris:
No, I do not. I can only go from the research
evidence that we have, which would suggest that they are proper
employers and that they are delivering as part of their training
package, rather than that being their total
business.
It is a
problem. It is something that the Government are engaged on. e have had
taskforces, tweaks and reviews. I hope that we can get to a situation
where there is a greater degree of support for smaller businesses in
particular to operate apprenticeships. The feedback that we have from
our members is that those who use apprenticeships are very keen on
them. They examine the quality of training and find it to be very high.
However, that is not necessarily reflected across the economy, as we
know.
Q
415
Mr.
Hayes:
Would one of the ways of assisting that mission be
to make the system rather less opaque? If the funding was more
straightforward and the system less bureaucratic, would that attract
more employers to deal with apprenticeships?
Mike
Harris:
Yes, but I would suggest that the
administration side is just as important. The system can be
complicated. We want to see a greater degree of flexibility and
support, and I think that that would help
enormously.
Q
416
Mr.
Lammy:
When you say that your employers are very happy
with the apprenticeships that are being offered, presumably, they are
happy with level 2 and level 3 apprenticeships.
Mike
Harris:
The emphasis in our members’ companies
is on level 3 rather than level
2.
The
Chairman:
Colleagues, thank you very much indeed. There is
no time for any further questions. I think that we have explored the
issues very thoroughly and I would like to thank Mike Harris and
Alexander Ehmann very much for sharing their time and expertise with us
this morning.
We now
move on, as efficiently as we possibly can, to our final witness of
this morning’s evidence session, who represents the Connexions
service. Come in, Mr. Gordon; the water is warm. Welcome, my
name is John Bercow and I am chairing this Public Bill Committee. You
are the last witness this morning and we look forward to what you have
to say. Will you introduce yourself formally and then we will go
straight into
questions?
Kieran
Gordon:
My name is Kieran Gordon, I am the chief
executive of Connexions Greater Merseyside and in the immediate past I
was president of the Institute of Career
Guidance.
Q
417
Mr.
Hayes:
Hello, Kieran, it is nice to see you again. As you
will remember, when the National Audit Office reviewed the work of
Connexions Partnerships in 2004, it said that there
was
“a
lack of clarity regarding the respective role of schools and the
Connexions Service in providing careers advice to young
people.”
Will the Bill
provide additional clarity in respect of the role of schools and
Connexions? Can the Bill be amended to make more improvements in that
regard?
Kieran
Gordon:
I think that the Bill goes some way towards
addressing the points made in the National Audit Office report, but it
could go further; specifically, in the context of ensuring that, where
the Bill relates back to the Education Act 1997 and the duties on
schools and colleges to provide careers information and careers
education, the scope of those duties are extended beyond year 11, to
which they currently apply, to age 18 and 19. If we are raising, or
proposing to raise, the statutory leaving age, young people should have
a right to careers information, careers advice, careers education and
careers guidance up until the age of 18, which fits them for the
choices that they need to make from 18 and beyond, as well as the
respective choices that they make during the 14-to-19
pathway.
Q
418
Mr.
Hayes:
As you know, the Government are intent on
establishing an adult careers service and, I believe, are thinking of
10 pilots. Is there clarity of purpose about those pilots and if so,
what is
it?
Kieran
Gordon:
There is not great clarity. We are still
waiting to hear how those pilots are expected to
operate and through which means. I think that there is a key issue
relating to the Bill, particularly parts 1 and 2, which is that we need
to be preparing young people increasingly for decisions and transitions
that they make at age 19. If you look at the performance of young
people, particularly those who are NEET or who are at risk of becoming
NEET, you see that the older they are in the 16 to 19 age group, the
more likely they are to be NEET and, secondly, they are more likely to
be NEET who are not available to the labour market. We will miss a
great opportunity, if we do not address that.
There is a lost generation of
young people that a future adult careers and advancement service
probably would have to try and re-engage with and work with. If we
could provide some vertical integration of services, particularly
information, advice and guidance services for those young people, into
an adult careers and advancement service, I think that we would have a
much more efficient and effective working
system.
Q
419
Mr.
Hayes:
You have discussed with me and others in the past
the fact that Connexions clearly focuses on some of the most
challenging young people and, by the way, does an excellent job in that
respect. Is there not a case for having a parallel careers
service—an all-age careers service—sitting alongside
Connexions? As you know, it is done elsewhere with some success
elsewhere, and might be an appropriate way of bringing to light some of
the provisions in the Bill for the young people that you describe and
for older people in similar hopeless
circumstances.
Kieran
Gordon:
I believe that there is certainly a case for
an all-age careers service and I think that we could look in further
detail at how that is provided in the
context of Connexions services currently provided for young people. It
is true to say that Connexions has been very effective in reducing
NEETs, and particularly in targeting those young people who are the
most vulnerable in society. There is a strain, and the National Audit
Office to which you referred showed that strain in terms of providing
universal services for all young people to enable them to plan and make
transitions into adult and working life. We need a clearer statement on
that, and clearer ring-fencing of resources to ensure that that is not
lost in the Government’s concern for vulnerable
groups.
There should
be more attention to the career service element of Connexions services,
and I believe, as I said earlier, that an all-age approach to provide
links and transition points throughout life for young people and adults
is critical, particularly as the changing face of employment and skills
does not happen at specific points in a person’s life. People
need to be equipped throughout life to be able to go with those changes
as they
occur.
Q
420
Jim
Knight:
Welcome, Mr. Gordon. We shall debate
the transitional arrangements for local authorities
taking over Connexions, as well as some of the issues concerning data
and the information management systems that are used. It would be
helpful to the Committee if you could describe how Connexions currently
keeps track of which young people are participating in
education and training and supports those who are not, with particular
reference to the Connexions client information
system.
Kieran
Gordon:
Connexions engages with young people from the
age of 13, which is around the transition to key stage 4 or year 10 in
schools. Connexions normally makes contact with young people through
the school in the first instance, by providing support to careers
education and guidance programmes in schools. We therefore get a fair
bit of information on young people from local authorities and
individual schools. We use that to populate the database that is
aggregated at national level in the national connexions customer
information service
database.
From there,
once an engagement has been made with a young person, a client record
is effectively created on the system. That record is constantly and
continually updated, according to the various interventions that
Connexions personal advisers have with a young person throughout their
journey through to age 19, and beyond for young people with learning
difficulties.
It is
fair to say that the majority of young people and, happily, an
increasing proportion of them are staying in learning voluntarily and
participating and progressing. It is easier to maintain contact with
them because they are in some form of education—in school, in a
school sixth form, in a college or in a training establishment. But a
significant number of young people, as we know, do not participate or
progress in that way beyond 16. That is when the individual tracking of
young people becomes detailed and resource intensive, but very valuable
to the wider partnership.
A Connexions personal adviser
will work with a young person and record the intervention, the
progression routes and the steps that have been agreed
with that young person. The personal adviser will follow up that young
person and record at various points whether they become NEET, go into
learning or, as happens to a significant number of young people who are
NEET, churn in and out of learning. That is resource
intensive.
It is
interesting that tracking has improved markedly during the life of
Connexions. The percentage of young people who are not known has fallen
radically through better engagement with young people. Connexions does
not always have the right answers and offers for young people, which
may depend on what is available in their locality, but maintaining that
contact is
critical.
The
Chairman:
That was very comprehensive answer, for which we
are extremely grateful, but it was quite long and if you could give
pithy replies, we can get more people in. I am extremely grateful for
the information that you have
provided.
Q
421
Jim
Knight:
Particularly for NEETs and the more detailed and
difficult work that personal advisers carry out, I presume that there
is data sharing with other agencies. Is that done with the consent of
the young person?
Kieran
Gordon:
Yes, there is a data protection
agreement—an information-sharing agreement—between the
various partners and the young person must understand that the
information is shared. The only exception to that, of course, is where
we think that a young person may be at risk or if they are putting
somebody else at risk in the terms of the
law.
Q
422
Jim
Knight:
And all the arrangements that you have just
described would transfer to local authorities under these
proposals?
Kieran
Gordon:
Yes, and to whomever they commissioned to
provide
services.
Q
423
Jim
Knight:
Clearly, you and your advisors are working with
the target group that we are after in respect of raising the
participation age in this proposed legislation, so you have a good
understanding of their needs. What are the priorities for ensuring that
the right provision is in place to enable all young people to have
access to appropriate options by the time that the leaving age is
raised in
2013?
Kieran
Gordon:
We should bear in mind that those young
people who are less likely to participate and engage voluntarily are
likely to be more susceptible to becoming NEET. We can characterise
those young people in different ways, but essentially they are usually
looking for some form of employment or employment-related training. The
critical fact for them is that they should feel that they are on a
pathway to a job or in a job. We certainly need more employer-led
provision, whether in apprenticeships or through further education
collages.
In
the context of the welcome growth in apprenticeship
figures that has been announced, we need to ensure that that is
employer-led, not programme-led. The danger is that if people go into
programme-led provision, they might get a qualification at the end of
it, but if they do not have the essential on-site experience,
assessment and training, they are usually considered by employers
to be not fit for employment at age 18. Many of the young people that we
are talking about are more likely to drop out because a programme is
not serving their
needs.
Q
424
Stephen
Williams (Bristol, West) (LD): Can I ask about the
database that Connexions uses? When I asked the Local Government
Association last week about the duty that will be put on it to promote
participation, it said that it would rely heavily on the existing
Connexions database, yet the Association of Colleges said in its
evidence that it is seriously worried about whether that database is
fit for purpose. Do you accept that? If you do, what enhancements are
needed before
2013?
Kieran
Gordon:
I do not accept the view of the Association
of Colleges. It is the most robust database that we have on young
people and the most robust statistical evidence that we have about
their progression. It tracks every young person as an individual, apart
from those with whom we cannot maintain contact, and plots their route.
It is the most robust database that we have ever had and it is
reliable. It can be improved; I accept
that.
Would I be
right in assuming that the main focus of Connexions’ work at the
moment is with 16-year-olds and people who are about to leave current
compulsory education? Yet in future, particularly as diplomas are
rolled out, young people will have to make a critical decision,
probably at 13 and 14. Is that a group that the service is used to
working with or will there need to be developments in that area to
ensure that people make the right decision early on in their
lives?
Kieran
Gordon:
We in Connexions currently work with that
group, but you make a valid point: the focus of resources tends to be
on young people in transition at age 16—year 11 and sometimes in
year 10. The important thing is that, if we are preparing young people
to plan a pathway from 14, the intervention needs to be made earlier.
It is not purely Connexions or careers advisors that would do that,
although they are essential to that cause. Schools have an important
role to play in the planning and provision of careers education and
information. I would certainly welcome earlier intervention, but there
are resource implications arising from
that.
Q
426
Stephen
Williams:
What role do you think that the service
currently plays or will play in future in raising aspirations? I do not
mean just the aspiration to stay on, although the Government and we in
the Opposition wish people to stay on in education
and training. I am talking about the aspiration for people,
particularly those from disadvantaged groups, such as black and ethnic
minority boys or white working-class boys, to make career decisions
that will help them go into employment, and or the aspiration for young
women to go into employment patterns that offer higher future earning
potential. Quite often, we hear evidence that young people are guided
down a safe route by their teachers, rather than an aspirational
route.
Kieran
Gordon:
That is still a major challenge. It is
certainly something that Connexions partnerships have been addressing
in how they provide services, and in the information, advice and
guidance that they provide to individuals. Their aim is to be
impartial, independent and to be there for the young person and to rise
above the options that may be placed before them by certain providers.
But there is still a long way to
go.
The attitudes and
choices of young people are influenced by many things—not only
by their teachers, but by what they see in their home life and in
society in general. Far too many young men still prefer to go for a
manual, practical career and would not regard nursing or care-related
professions as appropriate to them. The opposite is true of young women
in technical areas of work. We need to do more to address that.
Certainly advice and guidance can help in supporting people, but it is
a wider education
matter.
Q
427
Phil
Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab): Are you confident that
the capacity exists within local authorities to take
on effectively the new responsibilities that they will be
facing?
Kieran
Gordon:
I am not confident that that is the case. I
can relate it to one clause in the Bill that considers the matter of
assessing young people with learning difficulties. The Bill proposes
enhancing the current power under the Learning and Skills Act 2000,
which is exercised by Connexions partnerships, so that over-16s who are
likely to leave education and go into some form of further education or
training would have right of access to assessment. It suggests,
therefore, that there would need to be more assessment of young people,
as currently specified in section 140 of the Learning and Skills Act.
There need to be more assessments in the future. If the volume
increases and local authorities only have the funds devolved to them
that are available currently, those may not be sufficient to ensure
that the services are provided and that existing services provision, in
terms of the universal service which is capable of being targeted, is
maintained.
Q
428
Phil
Wilson:
So, how would you remedy that? Is it simply a
matter of funding the new arrangements so that capacity can be
increased, or do other reforms need to take
place?
Kieran
Gordon:
I think that funding will be an issue and, in
my opinion, the Government would be well advised to look at what those
extra resource requirements might be for local authorities. If they are
required to implement the provisions under statute and no further
resources are given, they will have to find the resources from
elsewhere. That could denude other services that are equally valuable
to a wider group of young
people.
There is a
dividend, however, in the Government’s development of integrated
youth support services, in that we will bring the wider range of
agencies together and we will see efficiencies in the way that that is
done and in the way that that service is provided. Extra resources can
be found within that dynamic.
Q
429
Phil
Wilson:
What do you think Connexions will be doing
differently in the run-up to the raising of the leaving age? How will
you change the way that you
work?
Kieran
Gordon:
With the introduction of the Bill, raising
the statutory leaving age to 18 will obviously require Connexions
services to look at the role that they play and the way that they
commit resources to working with young people who have voluntarily
opted out of learning between the ages of 16 to 18. I sincerely hope
that we do not become a police force for young people who continue to
show signs of reluctance. To answer a previous question, with the
passage of the Bill, there is a progressive role for Connexions to do
more preventive and enabling work at an earlier stage in the
system.
Kieran
Gordon:
There needs to be an element of compulsion.
Yes, young people have rights, but they also have responsibilities. We
need to ensure that young people understand the benefits of staying in
learning longer and progressing. For some people you need to be more
challenging than simply explaining that to them. That said, compulsion
can only work if the right opportunities are there for the young
people. It is essential to that that we get the work-based route and
employer engagement
right.
Q
431
Angela
Watkinson:
The Bill requires education and training to be
suitable for the person. Do you think that the Bill is clear enough on
how that suitability should be assessed and defined, and who should be
responsible for that function, or would you wish to see the Bill
amended to clarify those
things?
Kieran
Gordon:
I would wish to see an
amendment—I do not think that the Bill is clear on the matter.
The Bill makes that statement. In written evidence from the guidance
sector, we picked up on that point. How would the applicability or
appropriateness of guidance be determined and who by? That is
important. Our view is that there would need to be a trusted worker who
has the right skills and a good knowledge of the range of learning and
employment opportunities that are available to young people. That
person would need to be not overly or unduly influenced by
providers’ interests—they would need to be enabled or
supported to provide independent advice and guidance.
The new standards for
information, advice and guidance that the Government have launched will
be valuable in ensuring a quality of service. However, for us, the key
issue is who will enforce and monitor those standards and who will
report on them. That is a big role—it is a big role for local
authorities—and the Bill could address the matter more
fully.
Q
432
Mr.
Marsden:
Mr. Gordon, I want to ask you about
the transfer process. An independent report by Professors Watts and
McGowan suggested that current provision arrangements were highly
variable across local education authorities, and that the transfer
process was unlikely to make any changes to that. In fact, Professor
Watts said:
“The next couple of
years are likely to see a growing diversity in local arrangements made
for careers services for young
people.”
Do you agree
with that analysis and, if so, are you concerned about
it?
Kieran
Gordon:
I agree with that analysis. Clearly, when you
move from an arrangement by which you have 47 providers of Connexions
services, as there were the year before last, to having 150 different
arrangements for ensuring provision, there is greater scope for
fragmentation of the service. That concerns me. The fragmentation will
affect who is chosen by local authorities to deliver the
service—I would hope that such decisions are taken on the basis
of ensuring future effectiveness, quality and value for
money—but there will also be a fragmentation of services between
providers. There is a danger that we could lose the national brand. I
am pleased to see that the brand is protected in the Bill and in
guidance from the Secretary of State to local authorities, but how long
will that continue?
Q
433
Mr.
Marsden:
You mentioned money. The money for the transfer
process is not ring-fenced. Are there aspects of the current provision
in Connexions that you feel will be squeezed or potentially put at risk
under the transfer
process?
Kieran
Gordon:
Yes, I think that the provision of a
universal entitlement for young people to impartial and independent
careers advice and guidance could be under threat. The Employment and
Training Act 1973, as amended in 1993, contains provision that local
authorities must take account of. There is no clear reference to that
in the Bill, so we urge that a clear reference to the provision is put
in the Bill, and that local authorities are made fully aware of their
duties.
There is a
lot of noise in the system about targeting vulnerable young
people—I fully understand and support targeting resources at
young people, but if that is at the expense of providing quality
services for all young people, we might be running an inefficient
system.
Q
434
Mr.
Marsden:
You mentioned vulnerable young people. I want to
ask you particularly about the provisions in clause 65, which relate to
children with special educational needs and learning difficulties. The
Bill places a duty on LEAs to assess the training and educational needs
of young people with special educational needs, but the number of young
people with statements is not entirely inclusive of the number of young
people with SENs. Do you think that the Bill will do enough to address
those issues?
Kieran
Gordon:
The Bill could make it clearer that this is
not just about young people with statements. As you say, a significant
number of young people with learning difficulties are not statemented.
Equally, assessment should apply to them. That could be made clearer in
the Bill.
Q
435
Mr.
Marsden:
You will be aware, perhaps, that the Education
and Skills Committee, in its 2006 report on special educational needs,
was particularly concerned about the availability and quality of
post-16 provision and said that there was a danger of children
with special educational needs and learning disabilities being let down
during that transitional phase. Do you think that the Bill will
strengthen post-16 provision, or does more need to be done for young
people with SEN?
Kieran
Gordon:
I welcome the extension or enhancement of the
availability of assessment for young people post-16, which means that
17 or 18-year-olds, who would have been assessed previously, can be
assessed further, and that consideration can be given to their needs,
which will change over time. That is a welcome enhancement to the Bill.
However, it could be strengthened by ensuring that both sides of the
assessment system work in tandem. In specifying the needs and how best
to address them, provision should be made available to address them at
the individual level, rather than just a global offer into which we try
to fit young people. Very often, those young people need bespoke
provision. There is an interesting issue for local authorities, which
in the future will be responsible for assessments, given the changes to
the Learning and Skills Council and the duties moving to local
authorities. However, on the other side of the fence they will be
making the provision available to young people. We must ensure against
undue
influence.
Q
436
Mr.
Marsden:
With your indulgence, Mr. Bercow, I
have a quick final question specifically on further education and
colleges, where, again, there has been some concern about delivery for
young people in those categories.
You will be aware that the
Government will introduce new regulations on colleges incumbent on the
implementation of powers under the Disability Discrimination Act 2005
in the summer. Do you have a view on whether those regulations have
begun to, or will, make a significant difference to the delivery in FE
for young people with special educational
needs?
Kieran
Gordon:
Personally, I have seen no evidence to
confirm that yet, but I think that they could do. For young people with
learning difficulties and special needs, particularly those with severe
difficulties, retention rates are often very good, and colleges do a
very good job in looking after such young people during further
education provision. For me the big issue is about what happens at the
end of that, because generally progression rates are very poor, which
colleges acknowledge as
well.
Q
437
Mr.
Heald:
On the subject of those who cannot read, write or
add up when they are 16—about 40,000 leave education each
year—is it right to say to them, “Well, look, you have
had 10 to 12 years in school, we have not managed to teach you to read,
write or add up, so we will force you to stay in education or
training.”? Is that not
presumptuous?
Kieran
Gordon:
I do not think that it is
presumptuous. We engage with those young people, and they will have
not-too-different aspirations to very well qualified young people. A
very high proportion of them will tell you that what they really want
is a job. They might have struggled with the education offer made
available to them—traditionally, an academic route—which
might not have been applicable or relevant to their needs as they see
it.
Q
438
Mr.
Heald:
This is my point. We know from talking to people
from colleges and representatives of employers that it is possible to
teach those young people to read, write and add up. Will we be
satisfied with a system that says, “Oh yes, you spend 10 to 12
years in school and then we rescue you and teach you to read and write
using these methods.”? Surely, that is a cock-eyed
system.
Kieran
Gordon:
The system is being revised with the
introduction of the new diplomas. I am hoping that we will see a more
applied route for those young people, because that is what is required.
We know that when you apply the concept of functional numeracy and
literacy, more of those young people can grasp it and achieve than
under the traditional GCSE English or maths offer. The hope is that the
new 14-to-19 diploma offer will provide the more applied route that
these young people can engage with and succeed through. For many of the
young people you referred to, it is a question not simply of a lack of
ability—in some cases, it is not a lack of ability at
all—but of a lack of engagement with the school system as it
currently stands. Some of those young people are very creative, and
that is usually proven in formal and informal ways, and you will see
that post-16 with young people. We have got to tap into
that.
Q
439
Mr.
Heald:
Do you have any information from talking to
16-year-olds about when they feel that they
cannot read and write and start to go off the rails? Is it seven or
eight? What sort of age is it? It is pretty clear that they start
truanting once they are in year 7.
Kieran
Gordon:
Yes. Certainly by the time we in the
Connexions service get them, some young people already have sporadic
attendance at school. That is often linked with poor levels of academic
attainment. That causes a problem for those young people. For some
young people, it becomes a spiralling problem, because if they do not
feel confident enough to present themselves and read a vacancy board in
a Connexions office, for example, they will rather absent themselves
than embarrass themselves. We have to tap into that. It is about
engaging with the individual, recognising problems early on and trying
to put things right.
The
Chairman:
Do other colleagues want to contribute? There is
a deathly hush. If there are no further questions, we can conclude this
sitting, which is the last of this morning’s evidence-taking
sessions. I thank Kieran Gordon on behalf of myself and all the members
of the Committee for his very clear and lucid evidence. We are grateful
for it and we have benefited from it.
Further consideration
adjourned.—[Mr. Michael
Foster.]
Adjourned
accordingly at thirteen minutes to One o’clock till this day at
Four
o’clock.
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 2008 | Prepared 30 January 2008 |
