 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, Mick Hillyard, Committee
Clerks
† attended the
Committee
WitnessesJames
Cathcart, Chief Executive Officer, British Youth
Council
Helen Deakin, Policy Officer,
British Youth Council
Nigel Haynes,
Chief Executive, Fairbridge
Jim Knight
MP, Minister for Schools and Learners, Department for Children, Schools
and Families
Jon Coles, Director, 14-19
Reform Group, Department for Children, Schools and
Families
Peter Houten, Director of
Academies and Capital, Department for Children, Schools and
Families
David Lammy MP, Parliamentary
Under-Secretary of State, Department for Innovation, Universities and
Skills
Stephen Hillier, Director,
Skills Directorate, Department for Innovation, Universities and
Skills
John Landeryou, Director,
Improvement Directorate, Department for Innovation, Universities and
Skills
Public Bill CommitteeTuesday 29 January 2008(Afternoon)[John Bercow in the Chair]Education and Skills Bill4.2
pm
The
Chairman:
Welcome to this, the last public evidence-taking
session on the Education and Skills Bill. My name is John Bercow and I
am co-chairing the Committee. I appreciate that a third witness has
been added at the last minute; you are very welcome too. I ask you to
introduce yourselves briefly and formally, then we will go straight on
to the process of question and answer.
Nigel
Haynes:
I am Nigel Haynes and I am the director of an
organisation called Fairbridge. We work with 4,000 young people out of
16 centres in a development programme, all with NEETs.
James
Cathcart:
My name is James Cathcart. I am the new
chief executive for the British Youth Council, where I have been for
two weeks. However, I was with the Prince’s Trust for 10
years.
Helen
Deakin:
My name is Helen Deakin. I am a policy
officer for the British Youth
Council.
Q
440440
Mr.
Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con): Thank
you for coming today, it is very much appreciated. My first question is
to the British Youth Council. Your briefing says that the
British Youth Council strongly opposes raising the participation age to
18 and the potential criminalisation of young people who choose not to
participate. Could you expand on those views
please?
James
Cathcart:
Yes, it is fair to say that there is a
principled opposition to the raising of the age as an approach to
engaging 17 and 18-year-olds in education and training, particularly
because of the consequences if you do not participate—being
taken through the sanctions that are outlined in the Bill. That is our
general position.
Q
441
Mr.
Gibb:
You did a survey of young people. Can you tell us
what the young people that you contacted said about this
proposal?
James
Cathcart:
Yes, 45 per cent. of young people disagreed
or strongly disagreed with the proposal for the participation age to be
raised. That was a survey that we conducted through our website; in
fact, it is ongoing—young people can continually contribute to
it and update it. It is something of a snapshot of their views, so it
caused us to look at other research that might support or back that up.
I refer you to the Learning and Skills Network research that took place
in March 2007, where as many as 71.3 per cent. were in favour of
retaining the right to choose to stay in education and training, as
opposed to not having the choice.
Q
442
Mr.
Gibb:
Can you account for the fact that the
Government’s consultation process seems to point to different
figures? Their survey says that 66 per cent. were in favour of
compulsion. Do you think this is because the Government conducted their
own research on their own proposals? Are you sure your surveys are
right?
James
Cathcart:
If you do surveys of different groups of
young people at different times, you might get a variety of opinions.
Of course, where you have a percentage who are in favour of something,
you will also have a minority against—there will always be two
sides to the argument. It would be interesting if we knew a bit more
about the young people who are replying to the surveys. We do not have
the resources to go into that depth, but if the majority of the young
people who are replying to the surveys are already in education or
training, they might have a different view from those who are perhaps
more on the margins—the 10 per cent. that we might want to
target and gauge. So I am not sure of the degree of sophistication of
the surveys that were done as part of the previous work on this
Bill.
Q
443
Mr.
Gibb:
Thank you. In your briefing about the youth market,
you say that it needs to be considered whether the proposals could lead
to more age discrimination and discourage employers from recruiting
young people. Could you say a bit more about that? Do you think the
Bill will damage the employability of 16 and
17-year-olds?
James
Cathcart:
I think it could discriminate against them.
I think it is an area where we can forecast or project that it could.
If employers, for example, feel obliged to recruit a particular age
group, there is a possibility that they will then just seek to recruit
people who are over 18 or 19, rather than take the risk of having
unwilling or unable young people who would have to be
released—whether it is one day a week—to take part in
that
training.
Q
444
The
Minister for Schools and Learners (Jim Knight):
Thank you
all for coming. The first question is informed by the British Youth
Council’s evidence but I think it will be a question to all
three of you. I agree with what is said in this evidence—that
choice is really important for young people, as is voice for young
people. Where I part company is in thinking that having the choice to
do nothing is a good choice. Could you comment on whether you think
young people should be allowed to choose to do
nothing?
James
Cathcart:
I think all of us have that choice at any
age. There may be circumstances in employment where, because of
bullying or mental health or whatever, we have the ability to hand our
notice in and leave our level of occupation. What is important is what
is done with the choice—if the choice is education, work plus
training or training. Is there a fourth choice? That does not
necessarily need to be nothing, but it might be an opportunity for
young people to do other constructive activities that have been so
stimulated—volunteering, for example. If the
choices are the first three or a sanction, I think that is where it
feels rather limiting. I know that, indeed, in a lot of the research
done prior to the Bill, many other options are explored and arguments
put on both side—indeed there are considerable measures to
stimulate young people to consider other alternatives. But it is the
net result of there only being four choices, and the fourth one
attracting a sanction, that rather prompts our opposition to
that.
Nigel
Haynes:
I think I have to set to set the scene by
predicating that we work with the NEET group at the farthest
end—we get referrals from the Prince’s Trust. So it is
those in deep need that we are working with, and across a whole
cross-section of issues, from crime, homelessness, drug addiction,
youth truancy—the lot. So our work spans those.
First, on choice, I think
choice has to have consequence, and as far as most of our young people
in the Green Paper surveys are concerned, they do believe that if there
is a degree of compulsion, for some that is going to be appropriate. I
think the important thing for the Committee to look at and understand
is that, if you have a number of choices, then they are
alternatives.
One of
the things we always ask is: what evidence is there that compulsion has
an effect? With the young people we deal with, the fact that they come
because they want to, and stay because they want to, is a stronger
motivation for change. When you look at the choices, particularly with
our group of young people, you have to think about what support
measures are required to get them to enter. A lot of them are not going
to go near it—they have walked away from institutionalised
provision and there is nothing to say, with what you have on the table,
that they are necessarily going to engage with this proposal.
You need to think, what are the
gateways that lead into this particular process? If you think about
that for the NEET group—for our lot—I think you will say,
OK, support is appropriate, some diagnostic systems are there, which
have been raised by other people before us, and therefore you need to
get local authorities to sort out how that is going to happen. One of
things missing from the Bill is that there is no compulsion, if that is
the right word, for local authorities to engage with the voluntary
sector. We are dealing with the hardest to reach in this
instance.
Q
446
Jim
Knight:
Thank you. James, you said there should be other
options such as volunteering and support. If those were
there—the Bill does not rule them out and indeed I have talked
about the importance of both those things—does that mean that
you would come closer to supporting a duty to
participate?
James
Cathcart:
The British Youth Council is a young
person-led organisation and we like to refer back to the young people
in developing our policies and views, but I know that the formation of
those views has been influenced by the tone or the general approach of
not having as many choices. If, in the procession of the Bill,
amendments were to come in that mitigated the circumstances and offered
alternatives, as indeed this process is designed to
do, we would be happy to engage in that way and reconsider our position.
However, I would be a little wary of making that commitment without
referring back to my constituency, as it
were.
Q
447
Jim
Knight:
A final supplementary, before I finish with Nigel,
is on the research. Clearly your research had a slightly different
answer from the Government’s research. Do you agree that it has
been quite difficult within the nature of the public debate to
differentiate a raising of the school leaving age, which a lot of the
media and some people believed we were proposing, and the reality of
what we are proposing around a duty to participate? Under our proposal,
leaving school at 16 and going to work, for example, as long as you do
280 hours of training, is one of the options that would be available to
young people. Do you think that might have corrected some confusion and
explained some of the difference
perhaps?
James
Cathcart:
It has been clear to me, in reading how the
Bill has been summarised and presented. I think that is how it has been
consequently presented through other avenues, and young people may have
got the wrong impression. In our processes we have been careful to
explain the distinction between the word “school” and
being in employment and coming back one day a week to train. The
principle of continuing to have education and training opportunities,
particularly in the early days of your working career, is not something
the British Youth Council is opposing. It is the nature and the context
in which it is being presented in this Bill. Perhaps others have
presented it in a way you would not have welcomed. There is a lot to be
done and my understanding is that the Bill is looking for a cultural
change in public attitudes, but I think the way to get a change in
public attitudes, especially among young people, is not to include the
sanction element. Perhaps that has been focused on in a way that does
not suit your ends and
desires.
Q
448
Jim
Knight:
Finally, Nigel, do Fairbridge have youth justice
referrals that they then work
with?
Nigel
Haynes:
Yes, we
do.
Jim
Knight:
We heard from Barnardo’s and the
Prince’s Trust that in their experience of people who are
compelled to do some form of training, it works out quite well for
them. Is that your
experience?
Nigel
Haynes:
I suppose we get round it in quite a subtle
way, in that there has to be some choice. If you are dealing with
post-sentencing commitment, and depending what the conviction is, a
young person coming to us through a YOT or from a YIP will have two or
three
choices.
Nigel
Haynes:
A youth offending team and a youth inclusion
project.
Such a young
person will have two or three choices on the menu. So the voluntary
nature of their commitment is taken a bit into account. That said, when
we get them—particularly with one or two of the projects in
high-density, high-crime areas—they have proved to be remarkably
effective in terms of the
move-on and progression for young people. However, I do not think that
they look at it as mandatory, compulsory attendance, because they know
that they can leave it at any time. Therefore, they do not have to stay
if they do not want to. The trick in the book with us is to engage the
want-to, and to get the commitment, and for them to realise that they
have to change. When that happens, then you get big
progressions.
Q
449
Mr.
David Laws (Yeovil) (LD): Starting with James, may I ask
you both a question focusing not on the principle of compulsion, but on
the practicalities of it for the hard-to-reach group of young people?
Can either of you think of hard-to-reach young people with severe
problems for whom what is in the Bill would be either unreasonable or
impractical?
James
Cathcart:
In terms of the compulsory element, I can
think of lots of young people over the years whose disappointment or
disengagement with the process of education, either through their
circumstances, unwillingness or inability, has led to them being
disengaged from society and the system, which means that another
sanction is not a deterrent to them not wanting to participate in the
first place. I know, having read the Bill, that it refers to the
sanctions and to compulsion being a last resort; there are lots of
measures and lots of other resources being put in there. But for some
young people—it may be a minority who are already on the margin,
and perhaps when we have got past the 90 per cent. that group may get
smaller and smaller—the deterrent principle will not have an
effect on them, perhaps in the same way that the criminal justice
system does not continue to have an impact.
To follow on from that, if they
then felt obliged to re-engage with the system, either because of the
deterrent or a fine or whatever, would they be willing and beneficial
participants in the education in which they subsequently felt obliged
to
engage?
Q
450
Mr.
Laws:
Nigel, from your experience of dealing with this
group, do you think that, with the right offer and encouragement, all
of that group can reasonably be expected to come forward, or do you
have reservations about that
expectation?
Nigel
Haynes:
I do not think that all of them will. Do not
forget that quite a lot of them have walked away from institutionalised
provisions in one way or another, and they really could not give a
damn. The secret is getting the commitment—the first step is to
get them to want to do it voluntarily—and then sustaining that
commitment by making them realise that there are options.
In the overall sense of the
Bill, there are options and pathways for them to take that I think are
opening up more than they were previously. It is how you get them to
that point that is important. A large number of those coming from pupil
referral units are long-term, persistent truants or absentees. The
majority of young men between the ages of 14 and 16 are not going to go
back into secondary education. What we have discovered really works is
that, if you can open an
interest, they will go into further education. There is a range of
courses could stimulate them to think about what they might want to
do—or could do.
If you have a cohort of young
people who have no qualifications and a long record, getting them back
to realise that they are of some value in the process is one of the
important parts of the process. If you can spin the wheel and get the
commitment to start, they will do it on their own; but you are not
going to get 100 per cent. with
that.
Q
451
Mr.
Laws:
James referred earlier—this question is to
both of you—to a fourth or a fifth option. The
Government’s option, as I understand it—we can test this
with Ministers later—is reasonably rigid. The expectation is
education and training. From your knowledge of this diverse group of
youngsters, some of whom obviously have severe needs, do you think that
it would be desirable to have a wider range of options for them, even
if those were pathways back into education and training, rather than
education and training themselves?
Nigel
Haynes:
I think that is it. From looking at what
there is on the book, I am not so sure that the range of options needs
to be increased. The question is what you do to support the pathways in
to get the commitment; then, you will not get the breaches. But if you
do not do something about those pathways and you do not have the
provision to build them, with our cohort, you will have a lot of
absentees or non-attenders.
James
Cathcart:
That is my view, based on my previous
experience in the Prince’s Trust and my knowledge of other
charities. There are steps, levels and ladders to help people to
re-engage, and those can prove successful if they are provided at older
ages for young people. The issue is not the extra number of choices and
the ladders, but the consequences if you do not participate. There are
lots of carrots, but the issue is the stick at the back when you are
leading the horse to water. If somebody is thirsty when they get there,
they will drink, and if you have lots of different ways to get there,
that is good. It is the stick at the back that is the
rub.
Q
453
Mr.
Laws:
Very briefly, what are the implications of having
the stick there? Is it just undesirable philosophically, or is it
positively damaging?
Nigel
Haynes:
I agree with the evidence given by the
Prince’s Trust, Barnado’s and the rest. You are in a
danger of isolating and criminalising a large number of people who do
not care anyway. All you will do is add to the bill back to the
Exchequer—the £156,000 it costs to deal with them. What
will you do? Eventually, you will lock them up, because they will not
pay.
James
Cathcart:
I think that there may even been some
research that has been undertaken in advance on the cost of the
administration of attendance panels and fines, which shows that there
is a cost already being planned in terms of the consequences for those
who do not participate. So we are expecting a number not to
participate.
Q
454
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry (Portsmouth, North) (Lab/Co-op): May I ask
the British Youth Council about the survey? You said that it was an
internet-led survey. Would you say that the people who responded to
your survey responded on the basis of the training opportunities that
are on offer today, or did your research open up the possibility of the
myriad types of training that might be offered in the future? Were
people answering, “No, we do not want to carry on with what is
there today,” but were they also asked, “Would you want
to carry on if such and such was on offer?”
James
Cathcart:
They would be informed of what they are
aware of today. It was an online survey—a snapshot—and I
would not call it research, because it was not done in the same
rigorous way as other pieces of work. However, some of the questions
were along the lines of, “The Government are planning to
introduce education, training and employment with training, but if
there is a sanction, what is your approach to that?” People
would be more in favour of the measures that are being introduced were
it not for the consequences of raising the age to 18 for
all.
Q
455
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry:
Both Barnado’s and the
Prince’s Trust said that they thought that young people would
benefit from the provisions, but they had a problem with the compulsion
element. Do you agree that all young people could benefit from this
extra two years of training and education?
Nigel
Haynes:
It certainly opens some opportunities that
were not there previously. The question is how you deal with the cases
of reasonable excuse. You have to think quite carefully about what
categories of people you will have to give more support to. If you look
at the number of mental health cases, you will see that we have
increased engagement with them by 35 per cent. over the last year.
Quite a few of those people will not be in a position to understand the
consequences of choice. What, therefore, is a reasonable excuse? Some
people have talked about carers, but there are other categories of
people, such as those coming out of drug dependency, where they are
still on methadone on scrip. That is one of the things that you will
need to look at very carefully. Are those people in a position to make
a choice and therefore to engage?
In answer to your question, I
believe that for the majority of people the Bill will open up a large
number of opportunities. What I am saying is that for some, you have to
get pretty good support and provision in place for it to
work.
James
Cathcart:
The target group that we are seeking to
engage might comprise a range of constituent parts that are broadly
those who are unable, so we can consider how to engage them, and those
who are unwilling. We might engage them partly through persuasion, but
at the end of the day some may still be unwilling. For the reasons that
have just been outlined, neither of those groups can engage in some of
the process.
A number
of other measures have been identified, to the credit of the Bill, but
even for the unwilling and the other categories of disengaged young
people, the preferred approach is “Inspire us, don’t
force us”. That is a catchphrase that young people we have been
working with have adopted as a banner.
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry:
I think so. I shall let other people come
in, and I may wish to come back later if
possible.
Q
456
Angela
Watkinson (Upminster) (Con): May I ask Nigel
Haynes—I apologise, I do not know anything about
Fairbridge—specifically what activities you undertake? I think
you said you deal with under-16s. Is there anything in your activities
that constitutes education, training or volunteering that could lead to
accreditation? If you have very difficult young people who may not be
ready to move on to another institution or whose confidence would be
set back if they had to do so, do you have the capacity to offer that
to any post-16 young people? If not, how do you envisage they will cope
with moving
on?
Nigel
Haynes:
I can briefly give you an overview. We do not
work exclusively with under-16s. We work with 13 to 25, and 16 in inner
cities. The process that we use is engagement through voluntary aspects
and then through an access process that gets people to understand the
frameworks, boundaries and disciplines within which we work. That
progresses to the follow-on aspect of the programme, which offers a
range of activities that they can select, in which we offer
qualifications that we deliver for the Financial Services Authority, in
how to deal with money. We look at basic skills in basic skills
programmes, and we offer City and Guilds and ASDAN, which is an
equivalent, nationally recognised qualification.
The programme is deliberately
split into the 16-minuses, for whom the primary aim is to get them back
into education, and the 16-pluses, for whom the primary aim has to be
to get them into employment. The fact that it is sometimes a long way
off means that sometimes more support and progression is needed.
Everybody has an individual action plan in which their goals are
identified towards their progression point, which is moving on into
employment or
education.
The
Chairman:
Several colleagues are seeking to get in with
questions. I have seen you all, I think, and I am going to go to Gordon
Marsden first and then to Stephen
Williams.
Q
457
Mr.
Gordon Marsden (Blackpool, South) (Lab): Perhaps I should
declare an interest as a former member of the British Youth Council
executive, although by now a pretty antique
one.
I
come first to you, James, with one or two questions about your
submission. My colleague, Sarah McCarthy-Fry, has touched on this
already. You put strong emphasis on the majority of young people not
wanting to have any form of compulsion. You
state:
“The
government wants young people to take part in education
voluntarily”.
Do
you not agree that by using that sort of terminology in the survey,
“education” is often seen as a cipher for
“school”, which is part of the problem that we have had
in attitudes towards the raising of the participation age?
James
Cathcart:
I would say that the aspiration of young
people to engage with education voluntarily reflects more what they get
out of the learning process if they are a willing participant and
stimulated by the learning process, rather than a silently compelled
person. It is more a reflection of that than the school
environment.
Q
458
Mr.
Marsden:
This is an open question. If it is not the case,
please let me know, but as far as I am aware, you have not asked any
specific questions about work-based training, or training outside
traditional educational
establishments.
James
Cathcart:
I would need to check on that. I cannot
answer that question at this
time.
Q
459
Mr.
Marsden:
To follow that up, in a previous session I asked
several questions about the position of young people with disabilities
under the Bill. Has any survey work been done among your membership or
organisations that are particularly concerned with the attitudes of
young people with
disabilities?
James
Cathcart:
No, I am not aware that we have done that
at that level of
detail.
Q
460
Mr.
Marsden:
Okay. May I come on to an interesting proposal in
your evidence? You suggested that there should be an amendment to the
Bill to make personal, social and health education mandatory in the
curriculum for key stages 3 and 4. That was interesting because
personal, social and health education has been discussed by several
Committees, including the Education and Skills Committee, which
reported a couple of years ago on citizenship education. By PSHE, do
you mean citizenship
education?
James
Cathcart:
Can I invite Helen to answer that
question?
Helen
Deakin:
We think that it would be great if both PSHE
and citizenship were
mandatory—
The
Chairman:
Sorry, Helen. The acoustics in the room are not
as good as they should be. Could you try to speak up a
bit?
Helen
Deakin:
We think that PSHE and citizenship allow
young people to make informed decisions about their life, so if we were
to improve pre-16 education by making those subjects mandatory, it
would enable young people to leave school, go on to work and be able to
make important decisions. That is why that we thought that the
Education and Skills Bill was a great opportunity for introducing our
amendment.
Q
461
Mr.
Marsden:
So that I am absolutely clear—again,
without getting sidetracked—there has been a great debate about
the distinction between citizenship education and PSHE. Are you
suggesting to the Committee that we should have separate amendments to
make PSHE and citizenship mandatory, or are you assuming that the two
are the same
thing?
Helen
Deakin:
No. We focused on PSHE for the
amendment.
Q
462
Stephen
Williams (Bristol, West) (LD): I would like to ask a
couple of questions of Mr. Haynes. I have worked quite
closely with Fairbridge in Bristol over the
past two and a half years, presenting certificates and being on the
ship. Some of the people in Bristol cooked lunch for me, so I am a
great admirer of what you
do.
I have met many of
the young people who have gone through the programme recently. Most are
in their late teens or early 20s and have chosen to be there. It
strikes me that, in order for them to stay there, there must be a great
deal of investment and incentivisation by outdoor pursuits courses and
others to make learning and training fun, so that they want to be
there. That clearly cannot happen across the NEET group, because it
would require a large amount of resources. Therefore, not everyone can
offer what Fairbridge offers at present, if it were compulsory for
NEETs to participate in training. Would you agree with
that?
Nigel
Haynes:
Yes and no. To a certain degree, you have to
start by looking at the NEETs base and coming up with a pretty good
definition of who is in the deep NEETs spectrum—the persistent
offender, the drug user and so on—and what you are going to do
about it. The guys you met, if you met them on the first day, will be
very different from the guys you met subsequently. You are right to say
that the programme is cost-intensive. We work on a one-to-four basis,
and keeping the participants interested and engaged is
important.
But I put
it to you, what are the options? If you make it compulsory, they will
not turn up anyway, so you will be dealing with a problem on the
street. The evidence from our group that compulsion works is not very
strong at present, but the evidence for getting them to want to
participate is very strong. This will not apply to everybody. As I
started, where I am coming from, are those in deep NEET—the
exclusion bracket for which you must make some provision. It will not
apply to everybody, and I think that compulsion works in the majority
of cases if there are interesting
courses.
May I say one
more thing? I totally agree with what Mr. Knight said about
the publicity surrounding the programme. A lot of it has been about
extended school, not extended opportunity for learning, or tracks into
employment. A bit has been missing in the communication, in the fact
that, for the majority of people—not all of them—you are
opening up something that has not existed before. We know that
16 to 18-year-olds have always been difficult because they are out of
education, not on benefits, and not into new deal. What are they
doing?
Q
463
Stephen
Williams:
Given that you also work with people up to the
age of 25, might not a better alternative to compulsion up to 18 be an
entitlement that people can access when they are ready for it, perhaps
after
18?
Nigel
Haynes:
I thought that that was what the entry level
diploma would be doing eventually, and that people could access in at
the level they can, so that there would never be a door shut. Our
survey with four teams for the Green Paper, for example, came up with
just that point: that the 20-pluses were saying, “If I had had
that opportunity earlier, I was not ready for it, but I am ready for it
now, and would like that opportunity that I have not had or taken
advantage of
previously.”
The
Chairman:
Thank you. We have less than 15 minutes, and
four colleagues want to ask questions, so we need pithy questions and
pithy answers.
Q
464
Ms
Celia Barlow (Hove) (Lab): Nigel, you spoke about pathways
in the Bill that will assist, but the problem is getting young people
to want to reach those pathways. Is there anything in the Bill that
would assist that, and, even more, is there anything that you would
like to assist those difficult young people that you deal
with?
Nigel
Haynes:
Yes, there is. Lobbing
responsibility—if I may put it crudely—at the local
education authority to get sorted is not necessarily the answer. You
must form proper partnerships at local level where there is a degree of
understanding of the need in the local area, and therefore a degree of
identification of the appropriate pathway. That is why the Bill needs
to include the partnership between local education and the voluntary
sector to make that happen. As other people have said, in some local
authorities it is going well; in others it is not. With the whole
business of children’s trust and trying to bring that together
with Connexions fading out—they were the signposts or the yellow
pages of direction—part of that is being missed. If we can
retain that diagnostic and data information centralisation, young
people will know where to go to get that
information.
Where
it has worked well with us, we have had Connexions personal assistants
actually working in our centres, so they meet young people, know what
is available in the pathways progressions and opportunities, and can
give advice. Young people can then move
on.
Q
465
Ms
Barlow:
Would you like a tie-in with the new deal? How do
you see young people progressing from your age group into the new
deal?
Nigel
Haynes:
That is the question: how does the whole lot
tie together? If you are talking about 18 or 19-year-olds, it is to do
with that vexed question of how extended education maintenance
allowances will work, and what the financial incentives are. We do not
use financial incentives. Many people have done, but we found that they
did not make much difference, except that we were tending to become a
click-in, click-out centre so that people could get their
ticket.
I cannot
really answer. It is a good question, and I think that we must address
how the new deal fits in and what are the gateway processes to
both.
Q
466
Ms
Barlow:
I have a brief question, probably to James.
Obviously, there are twice as many male NEETs as female. Do you believe
that there needs to be a different approach in terms of
gender?
James
Cathcart:
It is not something, if I am honest, to
which I have given detailed thought to enable me to give an informed
answer.
Nigel
Haynes:
It is an interesting one. The increase in the
number of females from when I started 15 years ago is now up to about
35 per cent. of the total that we are engaged with. The needs basis is
sometimes exactly the same across the issues, but we are finding that
we are getting a better response from female progressions after the
time of motivation than we are with males. One thing is stabilisation.
All the programmes need time for young people to stabilise their
chaotic life. In the main, of those that we are dealing with the lives
of males are more chaotic than females. If you do not stabilise, you do
not get progression or commitment moving
on.
Q
467
Mrs.
Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab): May I take you back to
the impact and consequences of compulsion? One of the interesting
things from this morning’s evidence from the principals of
colleges and last week from the Association of Directors of Social
Services, Barnardo’s and the Prince’s Trust, was that all
felt that compulsion had a place but that it was almost the thing you
kept in your back pocket and hoped never to need to use.
They felt that it is the nature
of the relationship and the conversation that you have with the young
person that is important; that dialogue and commitment, engagement
rather than compulsion, would lead to success. Each felt capable of
running projects that had that dialogue, had that adult relationship,
but also had the adult consequences of failing to meet expectations and
requirements. Can you see how that can work? Can you recognise their
perspective on why compulsion is a useful thing to have in your back
pocket?
James
Cathcart:
The model is more complex because the
people offering the opportunity are not necessarily the same as those
holding the stick. If you are obliged to attend a course because it is
part of a probation order then the compulsory element is through the
court system. The people providing the course come from a different
organisation, the voluntary sector offering something
beneficial.
If, in
this context, the education, training and employment are offered and
implemented by the local authority or government, who is offering the
degree of compulsion? We have to think of a parent and child. It may be
the parent who offers the opportunity but also has the potential
sanction. It is the same person. We need to look at the nature of who
is holding those two elements. That has an impact on the person on the
receiving end.
I
would move the debate towards wanting to engage with young people in a
different relationship, where they want to be inspired and engaged
without worrying about what is in the back
pocket.
Q
468
Mrs.
Moon:
It is interesting because this morning one of the
principals said that the question was always, “How did we fail
you?” rather than placing the responsibility on to the young
person who opts out. That is in the present system. They felt it
created a different relationship between the provider and the young
person who was engaged with the
course.
Nigel
Haynes:
Your point about a conversation is essential.
You also have to consider someone coming back from a long period of
exclusion, absenteeism or, indeed, a sentence. If you ask them to
attend a statutory number of hours a week you are not necessarily going
to get that conversation. If you offer them two days as a pathway into
the programme then you are more likely to be able to have the
conversation, which is one not just of obligation and compulsion but
one of personal need.
The sooner you can get a young
person to recognise that change is important and that it is for their
own benefit that they will gain education or experience and that they
can succeed, then you will move it away from a mark of failure. You do
not want marks of failure. I am talking about the cohort we work with.
You do not need to reinforce failure. Goodness me, they know that it is
there.
What you have to start doing is
building value and that value comes from choice and it comes from being
able to work in partnership with good choices and options and you will
get them to move
forward.
Q
469
Mrs.
Moon:
Part of the problem with young people who are
failing is that they are not very good at exercising choice and that,
when given choice, they will always take the line of least resistance
and least
engagement.
Nigel
Haynes:
Quite a lot of them do not believe they have
choice. Beginning to make people aware that they have choice, and also
making young people realise they have consequence to that choice, is an
important part of that conversation you were talking
about.
The
Chairman:
We have just over five minutes to go. Nick Gibb
is next and then I shall try to include Sarah McCarthy-Fry with a
supplementary, if she still wishes to ask
one.
Q
470
Mr.
Gibb:
Nigel, what your organisation does is fantastic,
looking at the website. If a 16 or 17-year-old is on your course and
participating in your programmes, will that constitute a fulfilment of
the duty in clause 2?
Nigel
Haynes:
I hope so, but again there will have to be
discretion in deciding, if you like, the kite markers and the
organisations that do fulfil that need. We would very much hope that
through an association with local authorities, approved provider status
will be recognised in the gateway process, which I have been on about
throughout the question session. To my mind, it is not clear, and it is
not clear to us in perspective. However, we hope that in positioning
terms, we will be recognised as part of the
provision.
Nigel
Haynes:
We do, if you accept ASDAN, the award scheme
and development accreditation network, but we will not if you say that
it has to be an NVQ. Again, you must look long term. You need a feeder
programme before you go into the main qualification programme,
particularly for our young people.
Q
472
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry:
Assuming that 100 per cent. of young people
is a long-term aim, although there are caveats, how far to that 100 per
cent. do you think we would get without compulsion, and how long do you
think it would take us to get there? I know it is, “How long is
a piece of string?”
but—
James
Cathcart:
I do not think that you will get 100 per
cent. How small the percentage will be, I would not like to guess, but
I would like to think that there will be an entitlement to 100 per
cent. and that young people will be aware of that pre-16, 17 and 18.
The issue is not about how we close the 90 to 100 per cent. gap, but
about whether young people, from 100 per cent. down, opt out from an
entitlement through behaviour or through choice. Perhaps I have used
your question to add that in the closing minutes.
Nigel
Haynes:
In our cohort, you have got to consider what
you mean by an outcome. If you can get away from throughput, statistics
and ticking the box, and consider an individual’s progression in
their own journey, you might be lucky to get about 60 per cent.
participation—you might be lucky. That is roughly what we get
voluntarily. The compulsion will not cut it; most of them will just
walk away anyway. We go back to the business of gateways and tracks
until you get people to want to, and until you do, you will not get
that participation. For the majority of people who are involved in the
programme, they will want to, because they will recognise the
value.
The
Chairman:
Helen Deakin, James Cathcart, Nigel Haynes,
thank you very much for your valuable contribution this afternoon to
our proceedings. In the case of the British Youth Council, thank you
also for your written submission. We will now have a comfort break of
just over 10 minutes, unless there is a public revolt against that
proposition, and at 5 o’clock we will reconvene for the next set
of witnesses, when the stars of the Department for Children, Schools
and Families will be on parade for members of the Committee and any
other interested observers to see and hear.
4.49 pm
Sitting
suspended.
5
pm
On
resuming—
The
Chairman:
Welcome, colleagues and interested observers, to
the last part of the evidence-taking procedure on the Education and
Skills Bill. We have two hours—injury time could extend that to
two and a quarter hours but absolutely no longer—for the
ministerial witnesses and their officials. The first to appear is the
Minister of State for Schools and Learners, Jim Knight, who is of
course a member of our Committee and with whom we are very familiar;
welcome, Jim, to your new seat. I wonder if your supporting officials
would briefly and formally identify themselves before we go into
questioning.
Jon
Coles:
I am Jon Coles. I am director of 14-19 reform
in the Department for Children, Schools and Families.
Peter
Houten:
I am Peter Houten, director of school
formation and investment.
The
Chairman:
Thank you very much indeed. We will go straight
into questions. In this evidence session, we have until six
o’clock. Then we will allow an equal allocation of time for
David Lammy and his supporting official.
Q
473
Mr.
Gibb:
Minister, may I ask you about the research that your
Department commissioned from the National Foundation for Educational
Research? Page 2 of the NFER report
says:
“The main
aim of this external review was to collect and analyse national and
international data relating to...the expected benefits of making
education or training compulsory to the age of
18”.
The report concluded:
“There was little or no
direct evidence of the likely impact of introducing a system of
compulsory education or training to the age of
18”.
Given that research,
why did you proceed with the proposals in the
Bill?
Jim
Knight:
Obviously we went through a process of
thinking through what we had to do to get beyond 90 per cent.
participation, which at the time was the extent of the
Government’s aspiration. We could see that the people who needed
to realise the benefits the most to improve their own life chances of
education and training were that last 10 per cent. excluded by our
achieving only 90 per cent. participation.
We looked at international and
national comparisons around the Bill. We also commissioned research on
the economic benefits, which showed some significant economic benefits
to the country and to learners who increased their level of
qualification and skill. We were also informed by the Leitch report,
which talked about the need for the nation to have a higher level of
skill than it has at the moment, as the quantity of low-level skill
jobs declines and the number of higher-level skill jobs
increases.
Jon
Coles:
To add something about the NFER report, it is
absolutely right that the NFER was unable to find direct evidence of
impact, particularly on attainment. One of the most important reasons
for that, of course, is that those countries that have introduced
something analogous to the proposals in the Bill have done so pretty
recently. We have therefore yet to see evidence of what that change
does to attainment and qualification
levels.
What the NFER
set out quite fully in its report was a set of pieces of indirect
evidence about places that had made changes that had certainly had a
big impact on participation, even if that impact is not yet visible in
attainment because it is too early to say. The report set out some
analogous situations in this country, and gave us some clear pointers
about the measures that have been effective and those that have been
less effective in other countries that have chosen to pursue a policy
of this sort. It was a piece of work in which some things were
impossible to tell, because it was too early, but there were also some
important pointers about how one might go about designing the policy
and implementing it effectively.
Q
474
Mr.
Gibb:
The analogous situations in this country were
about raising the school-leaving age, not the training leaving age.
Page 3 of the report says:
“The evidence suggests
vocational qualifications do not yield the same economic benefits as
academic qualifications...and that the benefits of some vocational
qualifications at Level 2 or below are negligible”.
The report goes on to
say:
“It is
worth noting that these studies do not show that participation alone
made young people more likely to be employed...especially
as”
the evidence that
they looked at related
to
“voluntary rather than
compulsory
participation.”
The
compulsory element is the key difference between us. We absolutely
share the aspiration of higher participation rates and of getting more
young people into work, training and vocational education, and to
reducing the number of NEETs, which has increased
quite a bit in recent years. We are absolutely with you on that. We are
just not convinced, and the evidence is not convincing, that compulsion
is the right approach. Your answer, Mr. Coles, does not move
away from that either.
Jon
Coles:
All the previous changes to participation in
education have been about the school leaving age, so, yes, this is
fundamentally a different proposition. I think that there are some
pretty clear reasons for saying that it should be different, given the
variety of routes that are, and should be, available post-16.
Therefore, there is not an absolutely direct read-across, and I think
that that is something that the NFER quite rightly points to. There are
some very interesting studies of the impact on attainment when changes
to participation have been made. The most recent was at the end of the
1990s, when the decision was made to stop allowing people to leave
before the end of the GCSE period. There is a very detailed and
thorough economic analysis of what happened to achievement rates as a
result, which shows a strongly positive correlation; those who stayed
on were indeed more likely to achieve as a result of doing
so.
I absolutely
accept that that is a different situation, but it is the best analogy
that we have available at the moment. On the rates of return to
qualifications, it is true that they vary greatly between
qualifications, but there are vocational qualifications with strongly
positive rates of return; RSA diplomas for women have a plus 17 per
cent. rate of return and BTEC qualifications for men over 20 per cent.
positive rate of return.
Jim
Knight:
I think that I read some of those figures out
in a question to Alison Wolf. I acknowledged then that our research
showed that some NVQs did not have a great rate of return, but there
are a range of them that do provide returns and which form the basis of
the economic benefit analysis that we
commissioned.
Q
475
Mr.
Gibb:
Moving on to subject of criminalisation, I
understand your arguments about compulsion, although I do not agree
with them. Even those witnesses who were in favour of compulsion were
worried about the criminalisation element and the penalties. The TUC
said that
“we are not in
favour of anything which criminalises young
people.”——[Official Report, Education and
Skills Public Bill Committee, 22 January 2008; c. 55,
Q139.]
Barnardo’s said
that young people should not be left with a criminal record, and the
Association of School and College Leaders and the Prince’s Trust
both said similar things. Why does the Bill use criminal sanctions, as
opposed to civil sanctions, as the ultimate
penalty?
Jim
Knight:
We thought this through. There are a series
of options. First, you can say, “We think it is desirable that
everyone should stay on in some form of education and training, so we
will just offer an entitlement”. We have already that, and we
think that it can get us to 90 per cent, but how do we go get beyond
that figure? We need to shift the culture, and we think that
introducing a duty to participate starts to do so. If we introduce a
duty to participate, but someone fails to deliver on that duty and
nothing happens, that does not bear scrutiny. There is some evidence
that creating such a duty has a negligible effect on participation, so
we have to introduce a sanction, and introduce enforcement on top of
compulsion.
We have therefore introduced a
civil procedure, which is set out in the Bill. If that procedure does
not work and someone is determined not to participate and not to pay
the fixed penalty following the civil procedure, do we just give up or
do we try a little harder to enforce it? That is why we have gone for
the criminalisation option as the end of the road, but we have made it
clear that we want to go through the youth court, using the new youth
referral orders for which Parliament is currently legislating. We have
said that we do not want a fine above
£200.
The
nature of the referral orders through the youth court means that any
criminal record will be wiped out, if people are under 18, two and a
half years after they have committed the offence, which is not a
recordable offence. If they apply for employment, the offence will not
be recorded on the national criminal database, and they do not have to
disclose it. The latest that someone would still have that on their
record would be at the age of 21. That is a reasonable approach that
shows the seriousness of the measure and provides some momentum, which
is important for young people. However, it is more important for those
of us who are making decisions and are responsible in the public sector
to ensure that the right support and the right choices are available
and that we engage young people so that they are not taken down the
enforcement route. As John Freeman from the Association of Directors of
Children’s Services told us last week, he has available to him a
range of enforcement options that he does not use, but the fact that he
has them changes the nature of the conversation. That is the sort of
outcome that we want from a raft of procedures along the continuum,
ending with criminalisation and a £200
fine.
Q
476
Mr.
Gibb:
Yes, and directors of children’s services
will probably get their way at all times when dealing with local
schools. But what proportion of the people we are talking about will
comply? Do you think you will reach 100 per
cent.?
Jim
Knight:
We do not quite reach 100 per cent. for
pre-16, because various circumstances have to be taken into
account—I am sure that Mr. Heald will want to trot
out his question about all of that at some point—and there are a
number of reasons why people of compulsory school age are absent from
school. There are reasonable excuses for people not participating. I do
not know exactly how the statisticians measure participation, but it is
always difficult to get 100 per
cent.
Q
477
Mr.
Gibb:
But beyond reasonable excuses, how many people do
you believe will not participate just because of sheer
wilfulness—or the lack of
it?
Jim
Knight:
I believe that we can effectively get to 100
per cent. With the right levels of support for informal and formal
learning, we can get to that point and achieve the cultural change that
we require, particularly given that these measures do not come into
effect until 2013 and
2015.
The
Chairman:
Thank you, both of you, for that illuminating
and important exchange. I am about to go to David Laws. I am keen to
protect the rights of Back-Bench Committee members, whose allocation of
time must be of adequate sufficiency.
Q
478
Mr.
Laws:
Quite right, Mr. Bercow: we should have
very brief answers. May I start with the impact assessment, Minister,
which I think has your squiggle at the bottom of
it?
Jim
Knight:
It has—just by the date, 27 November
2007.
Q
479
Mr.
Laws:
May I clarify something on page 23? All the costings
are based on the Government being successful, through voluntarism, in
getting up to 90 per cent., from 77 per cent. now. Is that
right?
Jim
Knight:
Yes, halfway down page 2, under the heading,
“Key Assumptions/Sensitivities/Risks”, the regulatory
impact assessment
says:
“Calculations
are based on achieving 100 per cent. participation, compared to the 90
per cent. aspiration
baseline.”
Q
480
Mr.
Laws:
So the cost figure of £774 million would be a
bit more than doubled if the Government are not successful in getting
to that starting point by
2013-15.
Jim
Knight:
If you are asking whether, given that we are
not at 90 per cent., there will be other costs to get us to 90 per
cent. that are not in this document, that is obviously the case.
Equally, there are benefits, which outweigh those other
costs.
Q
481
Mr.
Laws:
Given the time, I shall turn to page 23, and the
details about the costs of enforcement. You give an £8 million
cost of issuing attendance notices. There is 2 million for fixed
penalty notices and £2 million for prosecution after failing to
pay the fixed penalty notice. Could you, or one of the officials, tell
us on what assumptions about volumes of youngsters facing sanctions
those figures are based? If you have it, what level of compliance with
each of those sanctions, is assumed?
Jim
Knight:
If we do not have the figures with us, I am
happy to write to the Committee with the assumptions that we used. I
looked at them quite closely, because they reflected a high level of
enforcement. We wanted to ensure that we were at the bleak end of the
scale of enforcement. I have been given some figures—how
extraordinary that they have suddenly
arrived.
Jim
Knight:
The number of attendance notices is assumed
to be 6,000; the number of fixed penalty notices, 1,500; youth courts
fines, 278—a very precise figure; youth default orders, 111;
parenting orders, 667; and breaches of parenting orders,
33.
Jon
Coles:
These calculations, of course, are based on
projections and extrapolations and are intended to be on the high side.
In so far as it is possible to obtain analogies from existing systems
that work on similar bases for the level of default and so on, we have
used that as the basis. Yes, the numbers are very precise—in a
way, they are over-precise for extrapolations—but they are based
very precisely on the nearest equivalent we can find in the existing
system for the rates of default and so on.
Q
482
Mr.
Laws:
Thanks. I would like to switch to another area. When
local government colleagues gave us evidence, we asked them what would
constitute a reasonable excuse for not participating in education and
training. They set quite a high hurdle—they were talking about
people who were almost sectionable. Is that your view, too, Minister,
or do you have in mind a much larger group of people who would have a
reasonable
excuse?
Jim
Knight:
We have given thought to what a reasonable
excuse would mean in practice. We have deliberately not defined it in
legislation, because we think that local authorities should be able to
take into account individual circumstances: the more we define it in
the Bill, the less that will happen. However, we will issue guidance,
as we are wont to do, to local authorities on how to interpret the
provisions. Examples are: a young person who does not have a home; and
suitable provision for the young person not being available, such as
lack of entry to informal employment training appropriate for someone
who has received full-time provision; and long-term medical treatment
for a young person recovering from addictions. Those are examples of
what might constitute a reasonable excuse.
Q
483
Mr.
Laws:
That is very helpful. That seems a crucial issue in
assessing the worth of the Bill. Your definition is far more generous
than the definition we were given by some local authority colleagues.
Before we debate this in detail, is there any chance that you can
publish, or give us a bit more thinking behind that more expansive
description of
exemptions?
Jim
Knight:
I am sure it will be possible for us to write
to the Committee with “thinking”, to use your word. I
think this is the fourth piece of legislation for which I have been
responsible since becoming a Minister, and those who have worked with
me before know that I am not averse to circulating draft guidance. What
is difficult in this case is the fact that the provision does not come
into effect for some years. We would risk misleading people if we said,
“This is the guidance that we think we will introduce in five
years’ time”. Something that sets out our thinking on
reasonable excuse is safer for us than draft
guidance.
Q
484
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry:
We heard from many people who gave evidence
that they were nervous about compulsion, but recognised that it was the
only way to achieve what we were aiming to achieve. There were many
caveats about putting the support mechanisms in place before we went
down the sanction route. There was a suggestion from Barnardo’s
that if those support mechanisms were not in place, the duty to
participate should not apply. Would that fit into “reasonable
excuse”?
Jim
Knight:
If the local authority is failing in its
duties, as set out in the Bill, to provide suitable provision, we would
certainly not expect enforcement action to be taken, because it is not
a failure on the part of the young person to fulfil their duty; it is a
failure on the
part of the local authority to fulfil its duty. In effect, I am saying
yes, I think it would form a reasonable excuse. I would be nervous not
only about the burden attached to audit but about saying that we would
not bring these measures into effect until we had audited everybody and
got it all going, because we would have to wait until the very last
local authority had got its provision up to scratch before we could
bring in the benefits for everybody else. Our way round it—what
I have just said about a reasonable excuse and not taking enforcement
action until the right provision is in place—allows the local
authorities that are ahead of the game to get on with
it.
Q
485
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry:
These are new duties on local authorities.
What monitoring do you intend to put in place to ensure that there is
equality of provision? Will we take into account the fact that some
local authorities will have a much larger proportion of NEETs and
difficult and hard-to-reach people than others? How will we manage
that?
Jim
Knight:
Jon and Peter might want to come in on that.
We have regular conversations, both directly as Ministers but also
through officials, with local authorities about how they are doing and
performing in a range of duties that they have to fulfil in delivering
services for children. I am defining those aged up to 18 as children in
this context. It would be part of our performance management system for
local authorities, at the end of which—a bit like the fact that
at the end of the duty for young people to participate is
enforcement—we ultimately have the power to issue a notice and
withdraw the service from them, and put somebody else in to deliver the
service for them. We have not used that power very often, but that
intervention power is there and it helps us to have a
conversation.
Jon
Coles:
I do not need to add much at all. We have a
pretty detailed engagement with all local authorities, and where local
authorities give cause for concern, we have a range of measures
available to intervene, support and provide them with additional
resources where necessary. Ultimately, the Bill is construed as one
with other education Acts, which means that the powers in sections 496
and 497 of the Education Act 1996 give us the power to
intervene. Where a local authority fails to comply with a duty, it can
be directed by the Secretary of State. As the Minister said, there is
ultimately a fall-back, hard-edged power, but there is an awful lot
that we can do before that point to provide support and
assistance.
Jim
Knight:
On differential demand for services because
of different levels of need, if you look at the difference between the
funding that Worcestershire and Haringey receive, you see that it
reflects a fair assessment of the different levels of need in those two
local authority areas. I would imagine that the same sort of system
would continue in 2013 to
2015.
Q
486
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry:
Why 2013 to 2015? Is it convenient,
because people are going up to secondary school in September and it
seems right? Was a shorter or longer lead-in period
considered?
Jim
Knight:
You are partly right. This September, we hope
that we will have much greater certainty as to whether the measure will
come in, so that when people
start their secondary school journey and go through the transition from
primary to secondary, they will know that they are the first cohort to
which it will apply. That is quite important in the culture shift that
we are talking about. It will also be the first year when the new
secondary curriculum applies, so they will be the first cohort to gain
from the full entitlement to all the diplomas. They will be a cohort
that gains from the NEET strategy and the new information, advice and
guidance arrangements that we are putting in place. We are doing a raft
of things to assist that cohort and those who follow it to engage them
throughout their secondary school journey and on into post-16 education
and
training.
Q
487
Angela
Watkinson:
May I ask the Minister to reflect a bit more on
the practical side of enforcing the compulsory element of the
Bill’s provisions? Assuming that the extra 10 per cent. whom we
are trying to reach will have a range of problems that might not be
encountered in the average student, if a student came from a low-income
or workless household and incurred an attendance order that they then
breached, and then got a referral order and finally incurred a fine
that they had no means of paying, would you plan to annex repayments of
defaulted fines against their future earnings? If that is one of the
proposals, will it be a greater incentive to that category of
student?
Jim
Knight:
The attachment of earnings would ultimately
be one sanction available to the youth court when sentencing in respect
of a youth referral order, as I understand it. But, at every stage in
the process, there are opportunities for young people to choose to
participate. They will be squeezed all the way along the line, but also
offered support to get into an appropriate form of education or
training, which might include informal training or through some of the
excellent work that we have heard about from the likes of
Barnardo’s, Fairbridge and the Prince’s Trust, which has
worked well with those who have come out of the youth justice system,
for example. We need to ensure that we have a better range of choices
and engage the voluntary sector to offer such things to people,
particularly those from the type of workless family that you are
talking about, and start to show them that there is a future for them
in work that they might not have seen at
home.
Q
488
Angela
Watkinson:
If they know that a percentage of their future
earnings will be taken for the repayment of fines, what effect do you
think it will
have?
Jim
Knight:
If the maximum fine is £200, I think
the bigger sanction is the criminal record. I do not think that an
attachment of earnings order of £200 would put them off going
into
work.
Jon
Coles:
A full range of options will be open to the
court, and it will be for the courts to decide what happens in each
individual case. They could cancel the fine, if that was appropriate,
which it could be if the young person had subsequently got into
education and training, had sorted themselves out and was getting on
with it. They could make the parents pay if that was appropriate. They
could provide additional time to pay, straightforwardly. They could
make an attachment of earnings order, or they could say, “You
must pay by
instalments.” There would be a range of things that the court
could do at that point. It would depend very much on the circumstances
of the individual young person as to which of those choices the court
might make in that last
resort.
The
Chairman:
Thank you. I currently have on my list seven
colleagues wishing to contribute, only two of whom have spoken before.
They will, of course, be somewhat lower down the list. I call Gordon
Marsden.
Q
489
Mr.
Marsden:
Minister, pursuing the voluntary sector issues a
little more, I am very clear from what you have said—it is very
clear from clause 5—that the Government see the voluntary sector
as an important deliverer of the alternatives to school-based learning.
However, I am more concerned about the mechanisms whereby local
education authorities will seek pretty demanding targets as they might
not necessarily exercise the full range of options. Will you say a
little more about how that might work in terms of guidance?
Jim
Knight:
Clause 5 allows regulations to be made to
prescribe what counts as full-time education. The explanatory notes, I
hope, make clear that that could include voluntary work. Equally, it
could include work with the voluntary sector. We would use regulation
to help to define some of that, which would obviously have a lot of
power with the local authorities.
In the
meantime, however, we need to set out some of those progression
routes—from people being disengaged, to re-engaging them
generally with institutions, probably through the voluntary sector, and
then engaging them more formally in learning and accredited
qualifications. As long as someone is on one of those pathways,
enforcement is inappropriate. People should continue on those pathways.
Over the next five years, we have some work to do to build the capacity
of the voluntary sector to deliver some of those pathways, and some
work with local authorities to ensure that they use the capacity that
is open to them.
Q
490
Mr.
Marsden:
Mr. Coles, given your 14-to-19
responsibilities—you and I have had conversations about them in
other circumstances—I am particularly interested by the extent,
for pre-16s, to which we have the capacity under the Bill to engage the
very groups of young people who might be put off by traditional
participation. I wonder what thinking is going on in the Department and
in your group on how we engage young people who, as early as 11, 12 or
13, show clear signs of being switched off conventional academic
education.
Jon
Coles:
Yes, this is part of that important reasoning
for it being 2013 and not earlier. As the Minister said, those young
people—the children now in year 6 who will make a transition to
secondary education this autumn—will be the first to be taught
under the new secondary curriculum.
The point of the new secondary
curriculum is precisely to give schools more scope to tailor the
education that they offer to the specific needs of the young people in
front of them. For example, if they have disproportionately many young
people in their intake that fell behind at primary school, they have
more space to help those young people to catch up
during the course of key stage 3, particularly in the key subjects of
English and maths, and also to have a more flexible learning experience
in key stage 3.
Then, of
course, in key stage 4 and onwards, that group of young people will be
the first to have access to the full range of diplomas, which becomes a
national entitlement from 2013. They will therefore be given
opportunities to choose the new diplomas, and they will have
opportunities to choose GCSE. We are also developing the new foundation
learning tier, a more coherent body of qualifications and units
designed for young people who may have fallen behind and need a better
route to help them re-engage and catch up. If you take all those things
together—the greater flexibility in key stage 3 and the much
wider range of options in key stage 4—the Bill is trying to say
to the system, “Actually, you have got to serve 100 per cent. of
the young people in this group sufficiently well every single day
between now and 2013 so that on 1 September 2013, when they are
required to participate post-16, not only will they have the offer they
need on that day, but they will have been well enough engaged on every
day of their lives up until then so that they want to participate and
have had a better experience.” Those who do not have that now
will get it through this set of measures. That is the ambition of this
set of reforms.
Q
491
Mr.
Marsden:
That is laudable, but will it not inevitably
involve some flexibility in, and derogation from, the requirements of
the national curriculum?
Jon
Coles:
The new programmes of study, which will be
taught for the first time in September, will give schools that greater
flexibility. Instead of a long list of things that you must get through
and ploughing through the content in key stage 3, schools will have
much greater scope to shape the curriculum to the needs of the young
people in front of them. That is an important part of this change. Of
course, already, the requirements of the key stage 4 curriculum take up
only 50 per cent. of the time in key stage 4, so, taken together, that
gives schools much more flexibility.
Q
492
Mr.
Marsden:
Finally, I have a quick question for the Minister
on the evidence sessions with Ofsted and the Independent Schools
Council, which focused sharply on the reasonableness or otherwise of
the Government’s proposals. The ISC does not seem to have moved
its position at all, but based on its and Ofsted’s responses,
are you convinced that the requirements that the Bill places on
inspection for Ofsted and the ISC remain reasonable and
proportionate?
Jim
Knight:
Yes, I am. Since that evidence session, I
have had another look at the territory. The decisions were made by my
predecessor at a time when officials consulted the ISC, which was when
the ISC and the Independent Schools Inspectorate were part of the same
body. In answer to my question, Jonathan Shephard said that the two had
separated and were separate legal bodies, but the separation occurred
only on 1 January, so when the conversations took place, they were part
of the same body. The conversations with Ofsted also took place at that
point. Although the measure will make a negligible difference for
members of the ISC—the latest figures show that although that
number was about 50 per cent., it has just tipped over,
and now the majority are not members of the ISC and the independent
sector—for the others it can make a significant difference by
reducing regulation. For us, as a Department, it will save money, and
therefore save the taxpayer.
Q
493
Ms
Barlow:
How do you plan to ensure that young people do not
slip through the system? You have an awful lot of providers of
education, training and workplace learning, so how can you possibly
ensure that none of the people slips through?
Jim
Knight:
The crucial aspect will be the use of the
Connexions client information system, which the National Audit Office
and the Prime Minister’s delivery unit have recently assessed
and found to be robust. Obviously, we will need to make some changes
over the intervening five years, but, in essence, as we heard from
Connexions this morning, the system is sound. It is operated by the
40-odd sub-regional Connexions services, and it will be transferred to
the 150 local authorities, subject to the Bill going through. As we
heard this morning from Connexions, when learners reach the age of 13,
the very basic data are migrated from schools to the Connexions
database, and then every interaction that happens with schools,
colleges and training providers is recorded on the CCIS, which allows
that tracking to take place, and the local authority or the local
authority’s information advice and guidance contractor will be
able to do that
work.
We have a degree
of confidence that while, I agree, it would potentially be quite
difficult to keep track of all this provision, the use of that central
database will allow that to happen quite
effectively.
Ms
Barlow:
I would like to ask a supplementary on that, but I
have only got three questions, so on a separate
issue—
Q
494
Ms
Barlow:
OK. I realise this is more David Lammy’s
area, but will employers have access to that database? How will we
ensure that that database is secure, that young people’s
information is safe and will they be able to say they do not want their
information to be
shared?
Jim
Knight:
That is one of the reasons why I asked
Connexions this morning about young people’s consent. At the
point at which they go on to the database at 13, it is done on the
basis of presumed parental consent, so parents can not give consent for
it to happen, but that is just the very basic data. From then on in,
the young person has to give active consent for the data to be shared
with other agencies. That is what happens at the moment and when it
transfers we do not foresee that
changing.
Q
495
Ms
Barlow:
On a separate issue, would exclusion be a valid
reason for not attending full-time learning? Exclusion rates have gone
down, which is very laudable, but can you envisage a situation where
they would go up and what will happen in those cases, particularly in a
rural area, where there may only be one educational
institution?
Jim
Knight:
Jon will give the official answer in just a
second, because he is good at that, but my instinct would be to say
that if a young person is excluded from provision, it is then a duty on
the local authority, as set out, to provide some appropriate
alternative provision; and if the authority fails to do that, it would
clearly be inappropriate for any enforcement action to take
place.
Jon
Coles:
The official answer is very
simple—
Jim
Knight:
Hoorah!
Jon
Coles:
Yes, there would still be a requirement on all
the agencies to provide support to re-engage that young person in
education. There would still be a requirement—in this Bill, of
course, it is the Learning and Skills Council who would have the
responsibility, though we have announced that in future that
responsibility will transfer to local authorities—to make sure
there is suitable provision in place. The full range of opportunities
still needs to be provided to that young person. It would not be
possible, though, to enforce the duty—this is set out in the
provisions about initial steps—in clause 39 of the Bill. It is
not possible to go to an enforcement stage until the local authority is
satisfied that the full range of support has been provided. The
independent panel, in reviewing whether or not an attendance notice
could be issued, would have to review both whether a suitable place had
been offered to the young person and whether sufficient support had
been given to make sure that young person had appropriate opportunities
to re-engage. So the message of the Bill is that it is not good enough
for the system to simply give up on a young person who has been
excluded; the system still has to find a way of supporting that young
person back into learning and making sure they find opportunities to
attend and
participate.
Q
496
Ms
Barlow:
Have you done an impact assessment—I am
speaking as a former further education lecturer—on the impact on
other learners, including new learners, of a group of young people who
do not want to be there and who want to be thrown out? What kind of
effect might that have on the education of a whole cohort of young
people?
Jim
Knight:
I am not sure that I agree with the premise
of the question. It is important that young people have choice and that
when they are advised under the improved information advice and
guidance, measured on the new quality standard that we published in
October, they are offered some choice in respect of the range of
provision. Just as Nigel Haynes from Fairbridge was setting out earlier
on, there is compulsion for people to do something, but they have a
choice about what they do, so they will more actively want to be there.
That opposes the notion, which has been punted around the media, that
we will be chaining people to desks, whether in school or
college.
Q
497
Mr.
Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con): Minister, you are
embarking on a hugely ambitious programme and I sincerely hope that it
is a success. I am sure that it will be a success for the vast majority
of young people, but there is a hard core of 10 per cent. What
resources will you need to focus on that group of people to ensure that
they do not drift off into a life of casual crime and exclusion? I
think that it is fair to say
that many of them will, off their own bat, earn criminal records and
will not need your help to get one. How will you approach
them?
Jim
Knight:
Partly, it is to do with the pre-16 story,
which Jon set out in answer to an earlier question. A lot of resource
is going into that. We have hugely increased the amount of resource
that we put into the school system. There is also the resource that we
have already committed in respect of offering more engaging options
post-16, to get to our 90 per cent. target. There are also those
resources that we talked about in the exchange with David Laws, which
are specifically intended to get us from 90 per cent. to 100 per cent.
A great part of that process will be involved with building the
capacity of the voluntary sector and some of the entry to employment
and entry to learning-type schemes that we discussed in response to
Gordon Marsden’s
questions.
Q
498
Mr.
Walker:
You will need to have some incredibly special and
talented people to work with these youngsters. Do you think that there
is a willingness on the part of your Department to find and recruit
these people? Is there an understanding of the deep problems that you
will be dealing
with?
Jim
Knight:
In many ways, that goes right to the heart of
why we go for compulsion and enforcement. That is what creates the
driver for officials in our Department, officers in local authorities
and people who are working throughout the system to find the answers
for the young people who are the most difficult to engage. If we simply
left it as an entitlement, as some have argued we should, there would
not be the same sense of urgency over the next five years as we will
now have, because nobody who works in the system wants to see a single
young person criminalised. Everyone who is criminalised will, to some
extent, represent a failure on our part to engage
them.
Q
499
Mr.
Walker:
Finally, when you look in your crystal ball, are
you confident that, in 15 years’ time, the measures that you are
taking now will reduce social deprivation and crime and will improve
many communities, because young people will not have time on their
hands and will not be hanging around on street corners, but will be
engaged within the community and the work
place?
Jim
Knight:
We have not included that in the impact
assessment, because it is difficult to measure and to quantify it.
However, we have said that we think that there will be those benefits,
because the evidence is that where people are participating, they are
less likely to be involved in antisocial behaviour and crime, and so
on. We have not included such information because it is a much more
difficult argument to get into. However, I am delighted that you have
clocked that it is likely that there will be those benefits as
well.
Jim
Knight:
Absolutely.
Q
500
Sir
Peter Soulsby (Leicester, South) (Lab): Quite a number of
different bits of local authorities— not just one section or one
department—will be at the
forefront of delivering the measures in the Bill. I just wonder how you
envisage making sure that they deliver, and respond
appropriately.
Jim
Knight:
As someone with such a great record of
service in local government yourself, Peter, you will be familiar with
the relationship that local government has with central Government,
sometimes through regional offices, sometimes through
agencies—in our case, for example, the national strategies
team—sometimes through our non-departmental public bodies such
as the National College for School Leadership, the Training and
Development Agency for Schools or the Qualifications and Curriculum
Authority, and sometimes with the Department. As we have set out, we
have discussions ongoing. With my colleague, Beverley Hughes, I
regularly take part in sessions when the Department as a whole comes
together as appropriate to look at particular authorities that are
causing us concern on some aspect of delivery of children’s
services. This week, the leader, chief executive, lead cabinet member
and director of children’s services from an authority that we
are concerned about came to my office so that I could have a personal
conversation with them about some of our concerns. That was private, so
I shall not tell you who it was. Such conversations take place, and
ultimately we can intervene, as we have done in one or two cases, and
impose another contractor to deliver services if we are unhappy with
performance.
Q
501
Sir
Peter Soulsby:
Do you envisage aspects of the requirement
in the Bill being built into local area
agreements?
Jim
Knight:
Yes, it will be important that those who use
local area agreements and those who want to use multiple area
agreements look at how they can bring together a range of services and
configure them around being able to achieve their duties, and that
shift in the mindset that our friend the principal of the college in
Haringey talked about this
morning.
Q
502
Phil
Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab): Minister, do you think you will
have enough suitable people by 2013 and 2015 for all the young people
who will come on stream
then?
Jim
Knight:
Yes, we think we do. We have previously
worked on the basis of 90 per cent. participation by the time the
measure comes in. Getting to 100 per cent. averages out at about 100
learners per local authority, or about 50 per cohort. Obviously there
is a difference between Rutland and Kent, but that is an average. I do
not think that is an insurmountable number of learners to make
provision for—50 per cohort is manageable. The demography makes
it easier for us to implement, and that is another
reason—responding to Sarah McCarthy-Fry’s
question—why 2013 and 2015 are good timing. We will have a
reduction in the number of 16, 17 and 18-year-olds that period, so that
is a window of opportunity to bring in the policy at an easier time
than when the numbers are
increasing.
Q
503
Phil
Wilson:
To go back to what was mentioned earlier about
local authorities, they will have a great deal to do in implementing
the Bill. What will you do about any inconsistencies between local
authorities—how will you smooth out all the bumps? Obviously,
some will perform better than others.
Jim
Knight:
That is a perennial challenge for us across
the range of children’s services that are delivered by local
authorities. On the second floor of Sanctuary Buildings we have
something called the bridge, which at the end of last year won a civil
service award for best practice. It brings together an awful lot of
data and priorities, and it is at that point that we have our meetings
to look at local authority performance. Obviously, we use traffic light
indicators—red, amber, green—to provide a snapshot of how
authorities are doing, but we can drill right down to individual
schools and children’s centres, if necessary, to see how they
are doing, so that that can then inform the sort of conversations that
I was talking about in response to Peter Soulsby’s
questions.
Q
504
Phil
Wilson:
This is an important practical question for young
people who live in my constituency, which is rural. What provisions
will you make in the new scheme for transport? That is very important
in some
areas.
Jim
Knight:
It is important. It is as important in Dorset
as it is in County Durham. Although the impact assessment does not show
any extra cost attached to extending and improving transport provision,
our 14-to-19 reforms do acknowledge it. We give £912 million
annually to local authorities for their pre-16 transport duties.
Diploma funding is currently adding £1,000 per learner for those
on diplomas, and a £120 per learner sparsity factor is added for
rural areas. That recognises, among other things, the extra transport
costs that they
face.
We asked York
Consulting to conduct a review of 14-to-19 transport to identify the
challenges and potential solutions. As a former Rural Affairs Minister,
as well as somebody who has some rural parts in my constituency, I
completely recognise that there are challenges associated with offering
every young person in this country a proper range of choices for their
post-16
learning.
Jim
Knight:
Absolutely.
The
Chairman:
I must say to our witnesses that the truth of
the matter is that the Committee simply cannot get enough of you.
Because I am aware that there are four colleagues who still want to
come in at this stage —in one or two cases, again, and in at
least one case for the first time—I am willing to let this
session run slightly beyond 6, as discussed with the respective
Front-Bench spokesmen. There is not a formal knife, and if we have to
go a bit beyond, so be it. You should be proud of yourselves for
securing an encore.
Q
506
Mr.
Gibb:
May I ask about the information sharing provisions
of the Bill? In recent months, CDs with the records of 25 million
people were lost by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, there was
the Department for Transport fiasco, and the Army lost the details of
all the people who inquired about joining. The Bill has many clauses
requiring information to be
supplied. In particular, clause 16 states that all
the bodies listed can be asked to supply information about a young
person to the local authority. The list includes another local
authority, the Learning and Skills Council, a primary care trust, a
strategic health authority, a chief officer of police, a local
probation board and a youth offending team. Clause 15 deals with all
the social security information. Are you confident that none of that
data washing around the system will go
missing?
Jim
Knight:
As I recall, those clauses repeat what is
currently in the legislation in relation to Connexions. To that extent,
I am happy with the way they are framed, in that we have not recorded
any significant problems with data sharing between those bodies and
Connexions to date. The national data for Connexions are anonymised and
are there to give people like you in Parliament and others the
statistics that they want in order to see how well we are doing in
delivering on our
targets.
Obviously, in
common with the rest of the Government, we are going through a process
of double-checking how all the personalised data that we are most
concerned about are transferred. That work is going on now. If I need
to report further to the Committee on the outcome of it, I will.
However, in response to your question, given that such
information-sharing currently applies and we do not have any problem
with how it works, I have a good degree of confidence in
it.
Q
507
Mr.
Gibb:
Thank you. On the youth employment market, Alison
Wolf was worried about the effects that the legislation would have on
the ability of 16 and 17-year-olds to get work. She said that the
burdens were not confined just to a preliminary conversation. She said
it was also the case that one could be served with an enforcement or
penalty notice. The CBI is in favour of the proposals but is also
worried about them. It said that firms offering valuable work
opportunities will be discouraged by duties to police participation,
and by financial penalties for falling foul of the law. Giving
evidence, Susan Anderson said, very evocatively:
“Does the employer
really want to have the official responsible hanging around the factory
gate or invited in at lunch time?”——[Official
Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 22 January
2008; c. 41, Q102.]
At the top
of page 27 of the regulatory impact assessment, it assumes that half of
businesses are likely to start releasing 16 and 17-year-olds and
replacing them with 18-year-olds. We heard from the Institute of
Directors today that, based on Government figures, 5,660 places for 16
and 17-year-olds would be lost as a consequence.
Jim
Knight:
The top of page 27 talks about half of small
businesses?
Jim
Knight:
From my days of being director of a small
business, I do not think that we would have had any problem in
enforcing this, but, as ever, we need to make an extremely cautious
assumption that there may be some problems. In essence, I am happy
about the burdens on employers and have chosen not to agree with the
TUC on extending them hugely further.
I
do not believe that there is a duty to police participation. There is a
duty in respect of initial arrangements in clause 24, but that is
really about that initial conversation and being satisfied, as an
employer, that the young person is going to fulfil their duty. That
might involve producing a letter from a college to say that they are
enrolled on a course, for example; that duty is then fulfilled. Clause
25—the only other clause where enforcement can be taken
according to clause 27—concerns a situation where an employee
comes forward and says, “I’ve changed my arrangements
from those I initially set out when I commenced employment with
you.” That is a conversation about whether or not that
interferes unreasonably with the operation of the business, or whether
or not the business can accommodate it. Those are perfectly reasonable
employment practices, that even a small business can accommodate. As
ever, we have been cautious in our impact assessment and we have
allowed for that.
Q
508
Mr.
Gibb:
Finally, can I ask you why you are so determined to
move the regulation and registration of the Independent Schools Council
from the Department to Ofsted when all maintained schools, which
cover 93 per cent. of people under the age of 16, are staying
with the Department. Why are you so determined to move that small
function, which is conducted by 18 people in your Department, to
Ofsted?
Jim
Knight:
I want to give Peter a chance to answer this.
He has sat here patiently and has not really said much.
Peter
Houten:
There are two things to say. First, it is a
natural extension of where we have been going with the simplification
of inspection and reducing the burdens on institutions—85 per
cent. of institutions will benefit from these changes from not having
to deal with both Ofsted and the Department. But it is wrong to say
that we regulate maintained schools; local authorities regulate
maintained schools and the Education and Inspections Act 2006 gave
local authorities additional powers to manage that regulation, from
adding extra governors to taking back delegation and interim executive
boards. The Secretary of State has some reserve powers, but they are
used in very limited circumstances and substantiate the role of
authorities to regulate maintained
schools.
Q
509
Mr.
Gibb:
But I ask parliamentary questions about individual
schools and the Minister answers them. So in what sense are they just
reserve powers that are used in the Department?
Peter
Houten:
I think it is different when you are
answering questions about what is happening in individual schools, the
nature of what happens and who is responsible for individual decisions
about schools. The vast majority of decisions about individual schools
are taken by local authorities and it is only in relatively limited and
extreme circumstances that Ministers use those reserve
powers.
Jim
Knight:
It is perhaps the case that if you wrote to
the local authorities concerned you would get fuller, more complete
answers and I would strongly encourage you to do
so.
Q
510
Mr.
Gibb:
Undoubtedly, I am sure that is true. I have one
final question. Is this part of a process of the Department handing
over day-to-day decision-
making powers about education policy, just
maintaining a role as a strategic body and washing its hands of the
day-to-day running of our education
system?
Jim
Knight:
You are damned if you do and you are damned
if you do not, really. I am constantly being criticised—indeed,
by the current Opposition Front-Bench team—that we try and
micro-manage everything from Whitehall. In fact, yes, we should take a
strategic leap; we should set the strategic framework, local
authorities should commission the services, and schools and colleges
and training providers should deliver the services. That is basically
the model. And we are not as centralist as some people would like to
believe we
are.
Q
511
Nia
Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab): I would like to return to the
issue of employers and qualifications, which was touched upon this
morning. Quite clearly, there is a fabulous opportunity for young
people to take up the opportunities with employers and one would want
to see that used as much as possible to really broaden out the choice
that they have.
You can
understand that some of the national companies, with well known names,
can perhaps get economies of scale by providing national
qualifications, but some companies may take on somebody only once every
two or three years, in a particular interest maybe. Now, how are we
going to keep an eye on all of those qualifications and ensure that
they are
valid?
Jim
Knight:
It is important that we maximise the
opportunities for employers to accredit their training as part of the
options that are available to young people. The Qualifications and
Curriculum Authority is currently piloting a number of different ways
in which employers and providers can engage with the national
qualifications scheme system, and the reporting around
McDonald’s and Flybe and others yesterday reflects that. So,
employers could have their training recognised as vocational
qualifications; employers could have their training recognised as
individual units in vocational qualifications offered by awarding
bodies, rather than them being awarding bodies themselves—which
was the former option—or, for the last option, employers can
choose to be recognised as awarding bodies in order to accredit their
own training. Those are broadly the three options that we are looking
at.
I think the Bill
will simplify the process, particularly where an employer wishes to
become an awarding body—which works particularly well for the
larger ones. But I think their supply chain can also benefit from that.
In my constituency, for example, we have a number of engineering
companies that are part of the supply chain to AgustaWestland in David
Laws’ constituency. If they were to become their own awarding
body as a large company, and were able to offer qualifications to their
supply chain, so that their supply chain’s skills training is
improved, that is the kind of thing that I am sure companies such as
that would really value. For them, with very high-quality engineering
for the aerospace industry, skills are absolutely crucial. What they
are looking at down their supply chain, more than anything else, is the
quality of the work—certainly as much as
price.
Jon
Coles:
It is just worth adding that the changes to
the qualifications framework—and the introduction of
a new credit and qualifications framework—means that it will be
much more possible for a range of different awarding bodies to supply
recognised units and qualifications from a national framework. And if
they do that, there will be as much assurance about the quality of
those units, whether actually provided by an employer as an awarding
body, or whether the training is provided by the employer and
accredited by an external awarding body. That will have as much
validity in the national framework—and be just as transferable
between different employers and different circumstances, as would be
the case for any other
qualification.
Q
512
Nia
Griffith:
To wrap up very quickly, it was mentioned this
morning that we can sometimes confuse skills and qualifications. Will
there be a firm emphasis in these qualifications on the skills and
their
transferability?
Jim
Knight:
Yes—that is a point very well made. We
have said that there were some concerns about some of the NVQs when we
did the economic analysis, and clearly we are mindful of what people
like Alison Wolf have said about that. We do not agree with her on a
number of things, but we must make sure that the qualifications reflect
skills and that we value skills. That is precisely why we are
encouraging employers to have their own training accredited, because
employers know very well what skills they need. So, if we can accredit
the training that provides those skills, we are absolutely confident
that the qualifications will reflect those
skills.
The
Chairman:
Thank you. This part of our session is due to
close in less than five minutes. There are three colleagues who still
want to ask questions, so huge self-discipline is now required for
there to be succinct questions and succinct answers. Oliver Heald,
followed by Angela Watkinson and David
Laws.
Q
513
Mr.
Oliver Heald (North-East Hertfordshire) (Con): A lot of
people leave school unable to read and write, by which I mean that they
are functionally illiterate and innumerate. The TUC said that those
people feel very angry that the system has let them down and that they
have gone through 10 years of school and emerged unable to read and
write. Then, we hear
evidence—
Mr.
Heald:
I will be brief. Then we hear evidence that, with
the right kind of support, people come through that. My question is
this; should this not be something that the person who feels all this
anger does voluntarily rather than have the state trying to force them
to do it, which may be
counter-productive?
Jim
Knight:
First, regarding the figures, I would just
say to you, Mr. Heald, that 60,000 pupils did not achieve
level 1 in English and maths; that is 9.2 per cent. That is level 1 in
terms of an NVQ. However, you must look at what you can do below that
level anyway, so, look at 11-year-olds. 93 per cent. of 11-year-olds
achieved at least a level 3 in English and maths in 2007. That means
that they can read a range of texts
accurately and independently and that their writing is organised,
legible and clear. Level 1 is what Leitch said is required to enter the
world of work, so that is 60,000, or 9.2 per cent., who do not reach
that point.
Obviously, we must do better
for those young people and what this legislation will do is to create
the environment whereby they are given a second chance. We are creating
a better range of provisions to engage those young people to come back
and to ensure that they reach at least level 1 in their literacy and
numeracy. However, do not dismiss the achievement of those students who
just get to level 3, which is a national curriculum level, at the age
of
11.
Q
514
Mr.
Heald:
Have you, as the Minister responsible, taken steps
to meet some of these people, whom the TUC and others describe as angry
and really suffering from the stigma of not being able to read and
write? If so, have you made your own assessment, from meeting these
people, of how they are?
Jim
Knight:
Yes, I have met some of them. For example,
there is a young offenders institution at Portland in my constituency;
there are about 500 young men there, many of whom are not sufficiently
literate and numerate but who nevertheless engage with education. Some
of them are angry, but they engage with education in order to give
themselves a proper chance.
Q
515
Angela
Watkinson:
We have heard in this debate about
inconsistencies of performance from local authorities, but
there are, of course, huge inconsistencies in funding for local
authorities. One of my constituency neighbours, the London borough of
Newham, gets three and a half times as much money per head as the
London borough of Havering. That funding has a huge impact on how local
authorities provide their services. How will a Minister ensure
consistency in the provision of this new
service?
Jim
Knight:
I bet that Dorset and Worcestershire get less
money than the London borough of Havering.
Very soon, we will start the
process of consulting on a new funding formula for
schools—obviously up until the age at which compulsory schooling
ends. We will set out our intention there to explore 14-to-19 funding
as an option at that point. So we will set out the beginnings of a
process that will help us to arrive at a new system to start from
2011-12, when the current funding settlement completes. We accept that
the spend-plus methodology that we have used to date can be improved to
make it fairer. However, in the end we completely believe that it is
right to reflect need in our funding allocations, as well as the
ability to recruit where recruitment costs are greater and therefore
you have to pay people more money. It is a complicated issue, as
everyone here who is trying to understand it will appreciate, but we
are confident that what we have got is relatively fair. For the next
period, we want it to be even
fairer.
Q
516
Mr.
Laws:
Jim, is it really plausible to be able to pull 10
per cent. more of the cohort into education and training with no
increase in the transport
costs?
Jim
Knight:
Yes, I think it is. If you look at the
non-participants, one fifth of 16-year-olds and one quarter of the
17-year-olds have reached level 2 in
school, and a number have qualifications below level 2—20 per
cent. of 16-year-olds and 31 per cent. of 17-year-olds. It is a
cultural problem to re-engage them. In transport terms, because of what
are doing on 14 to 19, we will, by necessity, create the service that
is needed to get those young people to the provision or, in some cases,
get the provision to them—we are considering the use of
technology in certain circumstances. By and large, we have to get them
to a centre of learning where they can access the range of
choices.
Q
517
Mr.
Laws:
The very last question. You mentioned earlier that
you hope to cut the regulatory burden on independent schools, but
doesn’t the impact assessment show that the regulatory cost for
those schools is going up as a consequence of the
Bill?
Jim
Knight:
What the impact assessment shows is that the
better performing schools, which by and large will be those in the ISC,
will pay lower fees—they will not have to be regulated as much,
because they are performing better. The normally smaller schools that
are underperforming and not members of the ISC might have to pay higher
fees because they need more regulation. That is quite an incentive to
them to improve their act. The impact assessment also states that we
will allow them to spread their payments, which should make life a
little easier for them if they are not performing well enough and we
need to get actively involved in
them.
The
Chairman:
Jim, Jon and Peter, thank you very much indeed
for your evidence, and thank you to all colleagues for co-operating in
the wider interest. Let us have a speedy turnaround and have David
Lammy, with his officials Stephen Hillier and John
Landeryou.
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State responsible for skills requires
no introduction, because I have just provided it. Perhaps his officials
can briefly and formally introduce themselves, and then we will go into
questions.
Stephen
Hillier:
I am Stephen Hillier, and I am the director
of adult skills in the Department for Innovation, Universities and
Skills.
John
Landeryou:
I am John Landeryou, and I am director of
the improvement
directorate.
Q
518
Mr.
John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con): David,
you can relax now, you are among friends. I shall start with a
straightforward question. Why have level 3 apprenticeships declined in
every year since
1999?
David
Lammy:
You will recall, John, that when we came to
power, completion rates were at 25 per cent. There was no inspection
and a large number of employers and some training providers were a very
long way short of quality providers. We have sought to deal with that
problem, and when you look at level 3 apprenticeships, you see that the
completion rates have gone up in that
period.
The other
thing to say is that we introduced level 2 apprenticeships, and there
has been a good uptake of them. It is also right to say that, in
encouraging the momentum in what began as modern apprenticeships, a
whole different range of employers and sectors have come into the story
that is apprenticeships. In some of
the more traditional areas, such as engineering, there are a number of
advanced level 3 apprenticeships, but it is right to say that in newer
areas like retail, there are a large share of level 2 apprenticeships.
It is a journey, depending on where the young person starts, but it is
broadly for that reason that there has been a reduction in the last
period.
Q
519
Mr.
Hayes:
You say in your latest contribution to the debate,
in this new paper, that you want less level 2 and more level 3. You
said that the provision between level 2 and level 4 would be adjusted
to suit increased employer demand for advanced apprenticeships. We are
already travelling in one direction, but we are now going to travel in
another. May I take that on a little further, and ask how many of the
employers involved in apprenticeships are training providers—in
other words, their principal or sole business is the provision of
training?
Mr.
Lammy:
I have looked at this quite closely—I am
going to bring John in here, who has previous experience of inspecting
apprenticeships—but I am advised that it is a small proportion
of the employers; I think the number was around 1,000.
I indicated
this morning that the important thing that we are getting, and
certainly what you have been trying to get at in your penetrating
questions and scrutiny on apprenticeships, is of course that young
people must be engaged in work-based training. It has always been the
case that the employer is in partnership with a training provider.
Within that, a small proportion of training providers are offering
apprenticeships; and there will be programme apprenticeships in which
young people are largely engaged solely with a training
provider.
The
Committee has already taken evidence from the likes of the
Prince’s Trust, Barnardo’s and others, who see a real
need for programme-led apprenticeships for young people who are not
ready to take up an apprenticeship but who need to be on a journey to
get there. For those young people, training providers are providing
them with what are called programme-led apprenticeships.
We said in the review that we
want to look closely at the definition of an apprenticeship, and
clearly the definition of an apprenticeship we have indicated is about
being engaged with an employer. The contract may well be with the
training provider, because it is up to the employer, frankly, whether
he wants to be engaged in the administration of the
apprenticeship.
Indeed, I
know that you have also called for group associations; by definition
those group associations for smaller employers are in the business of
administration, and by definition many employers do not want to be in
that, as it is not the mainstay of their business. I am indicating that
we should not confuse programme-led apprenticeships with
apprenticeships per se.
John
Landeryou:
I simply add that many employers prefer to
work through an intermediary rather than contract directly with the
Learning and Skills Council. However, the choice of which intermediary
is used is entirely theirs; after all, the apprentice, who is an
employee, belongs to them. If they are not satisfied with the service
that they get from that intermediary, they can go elsewhere.
I suspect that what might be
behind the question is whether apprentices are employed by training
providers as proxies, rather than by normal enterprises functioning in
the economy. That, I assure you, is not the case. The training provider
acts as an intermediary only in the provision of training services.
They do not act as the employer of the apprentice in the sense in which
the system operates. As the Minister says, I have considerable
experience of looking at the system at first hand through various
inspection regimes over the last six or seven
years.
Q
520
Mr.
Hayes:
I am interested in that and now when I table
my written parliamentary question, again, about the number of
employers, no doubt they will answer it with alacrity. On the issue of
training providers and FE colleges and their capacity to deal with the
extra challenge of young people whom they will educate, you know that
in year 11 in schools, ONS statistics suggest that about 2.43 per cent.
of young people are absentees without authorisation. Have you modelled
what that number will be once the participation age is raised to 18?
What assessment have you made of it? I assume that you have made an
assessment of it. Do you expect it to be standard—that trend to
continue? Do you expect it to grow? What modelling have you
done?
David
Lammy:
We have worked closely with DCSF colleagues on
this, I have certainly worked closely with Jim Knight, and our
officials are in constant dialogue. First, Jim indicated that there is
a challenge to the use of those statistics, because in that number, it
is important not to include young people whose parents have taken them
out of school on holiday, and for a range of other reasons. They should
be in school, but they are not truants in the classic sense of the
word.
Secondly, on
capacity, we must acknowledge that there has been massive capital
investment in further education over the past decade, and all the
principals who were here and the associations have confirmed that
capital investment. When it was put to them, can we deal with this,
they all said yes, because they all said, “We are in the
business of doing this anyway, actually.” Compulsion is about
galvanising a response, but FE is already doing this anyway.
There is another part of the
narrative, which we should not miss out although it is not directly in
the Bill. It is Train to Gain, which is the story of upskilling our
adult population through employees already in companies, and
understanding that we are asking many FE colleges to engage in activity
beyond their institutions. That feature also came up when the
principals gave evidence, so there is capacity, largely because
institutions are going into the workplace to deliver services, not
delivering them in the classic classroom way that they have done in the
past.
Q
521
Stephen
Williams:
First, to the Minister, by 2013 when the first
stage of compulsion is introduced for 17-year-olds, the aspiration is
that the diplomas will be an entitlement nationally, but alongside
that, the Government have pledged that each 17-year-old, or younger,
who wants an apprenticeship will be entitled to that, too. Is that
deliverable? The state has a role in delivering diplomas, but employers
have a role in delivering apprenticeships, so you cannot necessarily
guarantee that employers will co-operate with that national
target.
David
Lammy:
Yes. We have made it clear that that is our
ambition and our goal. We have also made it clear, which is why we
published a review yesterday, that the employers must be there to offer
the apprenticeships. We want to reform the system to incentivise
employers further so that the apprenticeships are there. The programme
obviously has caveats, and we are not departing from the idea that an
apprenticeship is employer-led; in the end, this is to meet genuine
skills needs in the country.
By definition, we must be in
the business of ensuring that there is a service that employers want.
Yesterday, in essence, the report said that we need a national service
that is properly branded and identified, more flexibility on
frameworks, to consider direct payments to larger employers so that
they over-train and train more apprentices, group training
associations, differentials for women and ethnic minorities, and a
range of things, including the matching service, to ensure that
employers come forward and we can meet our ambition. However, if we are
to deliver that ambition, the Government must be in partnership with
our colleagues in the CBI and sector skills councils if we are to
deliver
that.
Q
522
Stephen
Williams:
It therefore seems that the Government have an
aspiration or goal for apprenticeships by 2013, at the same time that
they are going to introduce compulsion for
17-year-olds.
On a
practical point, suppose that a 17-year-old has achieved a level 2
apprenticeship with an employer who does not require level 3 and, to
meet the terms of the legislation, they will need to continue to level
3. What is that young person going to do before they reach 18? Are they
going to leave their job and go to another job that needs level 3, in
order to meet the requirements of the
legislation?
David
Lammy:
You misunderstand the requirements of the
legislation. The requirements are not prescriptive about level 3, but
about the young person remaining in education or training up to 18. The
legislation does not prescribe the level that the young person has
attained within the
system.
Q
523
Stephen
Williams:
But if they have reached level 2 by the age of
17, what are they expected to do before they are 18, in terms of
education and training, if it is not to be level
3?
David
Lammy:
Young people today sometimes complete
apprenticeships without a job being available for them, because the
employer decides not to take them on, and they are then in the system
looking for other employment. Some of them will get employment in their
area, some will acquire skills allowing them to go to different areas
and some will take further courses. That is the nature of the system
and it does not change as a result of the
legislation.
Q
524
Stephen
Williams:
I should like to clarify something. In one of
our earlier evidence-taking sessions Jim Knight replied to a question,
but I shall ask you about it. He suggested that employees could do
their compulsory training in the evenings or at
weekends, rather than doing it 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, in the
employer’s time. Is that what you would say as well? Should
there be compulsion in the evenings and at
weekends?
David
Lammy:
I cannot remember whether it was the
Association of Colleges that said it, but it was said in evidence that
further education providers are constantly providing evening courses.
As we speak, FE institutions are providing courses on evenings and on
Saturdays: that is their business. I visited one this
Saturday—
David
Lammy:
But to meet our other objectives in relation
to Train to Gain, for example, and depending on the nature of the
employment, of course people can train at evenings and at the weekends.
We want maximum flexibility. We have to meet the needs of business,
principally, if we want to skill up the
nation.
Q
526
Mrs.
Moon:
Listening to the CBI and the IOD, one could not help
feeling that there is a gap in respect of the sense of urgency
recognised by the Association of College Lecturers and the voluntary
sector people that we spoke to about engaging with that 10 per cent.
that is currently missing out on education and skills. How do you see
yourself engaging with those organisations in the intervening
years—you have until 2013—and opening a dialogue with the
education providers, the voluntary sector and, perhaps more
importantly, with the local authorities, which might have talked with
the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, but have not
engaged with the needs and experiences of the Department for Education
and Skills or the Department for Children, Schools and Families? How
will you get that sense of drive that Mr. Walker talked
about
earlier?
David
Lammy:
Can I talk about this in relation to
apprenticeships, which is the area in which I connect principally with
young people, working with colleagues in DCSF? We said yesterday in our
review that we recognise that we need a national agency, but that it
must have a field force in localities and regions. We recognise that
that element has, perhaps, been missing from how we have driven
apprenticeships in the
past.
You are
precisely right; if we are to get engagement at a local level and get
young people—sometimes vulnerable young people—to come
into that net, two things have to happen. We have to stand by our
sector-led approach, and obviously require different sectors, like
construction, to articulate how many apprenticeships they can offer in
London, how many of those can be for young women, and how can we
attract BME young people into those apprenticeships for, say, the
Olympics. That conversation with the regional skills boards, the Mayor
and local authorities has to be deep and meaningful, if we are going to
deliver. I was in Salford—a very deprived community—a few
months ago with the BBC and other media providers launching their new
set of apprenticeships, they were tying to reach out to young people
from non-traditional backgrounds. If you looked at the cohort of young
people coming into the BBC, there was a girl from Moss Side working on
“Panorama”, who had not been
to university and many young people from Salford who had not been to
university. It is a combination of the regional and the sector-led
approach that helps us meet
that.
Q
527
Mrs.
Moon:
I am concerned about local and regional
qualifications and their portability, and the issue of how we talk to
the sector skills councils and the manufacturing and employment
federations and associations to ensure that all qualifications have
portability. Are you going to be actively engaged in ensuring that no
one is forced to stay locally, but can move with their
qualification?
David
Lammy:
Absolutely, it is a fundamental point and
there are two bits of activity that are central. Behind the clauses in
the Bill are our 25 sector skills councils, and their work is relevant
to adult skills and apprenticeships. Each of those 25 sector skills
councils, which will be relicensed and refocused, is involved in the
business of articulating the necessary qualifications in their sector
and representing that sector in discussions with the QCA. That means
explaining what is no longer necessary and what has been duplicated,
but also what is absolutely necessary; that is the first tranche of
work.
The second
tranche is the work that we are doing with the qualifications and
curriculum framework. We are the piloting work on units and increased
modularity. We are also looking at accreditation and what employers are
doing—obviously you will have seen the headlines about
McDonald’s. That is about portability. I worked at
McDonald’s and KFC, so I feel strongly about this. Young people
who stay on in that sort of employment and make their way up should be
able to demonstrate the levels that they have acquired if they wish to
move on to other areas. Those are the two tranches of work that meet
that need. You can move from one region or area of the country to
another area and people will understand the level that you have
reached.
Q
528
Mrs.
Moon:
Will that include conversations with devolved
Administrations to ensure that there is portability across the whole of
the UK?
David
Lammy:
Absolutely. We are in conversation with the
devolved
Administrations.
Q
529
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry:
This morning, the Institute of Directors
told us that while it thought that the pre-apprenticeships—the
programmed learning—were the right route to get those soft
generic employability skills for the transition from learning to work,
it was concerned that we would have a backup of pre-apprenticeships and
there would not be enough proper apprenticeships for those people. What
are you going to do to counter
that?
David
Lammy:
We have to be as ambitious as possible about
driving up apprenticeships in this country. We are asking people to
come back to us and to tell us where they agree and disagree with the
document that we published yesterday. I hope that there is a
cross-party initiative to drive the figures up, which will be partly
achieved by the matching service that we have talked about. It is not
clear to young people where the particular apprenticeships are in their
local area and how they can access them. There are also
small and medium-sized businesses that are not aware of the
opportunities that apprenticeships could offer them. They are just not
on their radar. A new national service, with the advertising and the
regional field force that goes with that, is part of that
journey.
Sector skills
councils must articulate the growth in their sector and—I
suspect that the relicensing process will involve this—measure
it. Apprenticeships are an absolute priority for us, and we will
challenge the sector skills councils to come up with the
apprenticeships that are appropriate in their area. In addition,
training associations are important, as are further flexibility, direct
payment pilots where appropriate and the need to galvanise the country.
I hope that all the adverts about the value of skills will drive up
demand among employers. Young people must continue to come into contact
with work-based learning by, for example, acquiring the skills that are
required on programme apprenticeships.
We should not be worried about
young people in education who are on programme-led apprenticeships. It
is a good thing if they are on a journey to an apprenticeship, but they
may well be on a journey to a diploma or some other training, and going
off on different routes. I expect that that number will increase over
the next period. I see that not as a problem but as a good thing. The
alternative is the NEET problem, where young people are not engaged in
training at all. That cannot be
good.
Q
530
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry:
To follow that through, if we are to bring
in employers who have never had apprentices before, what should we do
to support those employers when they are training apprentices,
particularly the smaller businesses? They may not have the support
mechanisms within their own organisations because they do not have a
huge human resources department to support young apprentices. Will
there be some help for
them?
John
Landeryou:
Yes, that comes back to the point about
training providers: that is exactly the function that they have. They
have expertise in organising apprenticeships, and work with a wide
range of employers and, indeed, of young people. They employ staff who
have a skill set that enables them to work at both ends of that
equation. That is very much their role, and they will work well for
small employers. If larger employers want to get more involved in
apprenticeships, we see a role for the National Employer Service, which
already does that sort of work with blue chip companies. For large
regional employers that do not quite fit into that category, we
envisage that the national apprenticeship service will play a role in
helping employers to get themselves into a position where they are
confident about organising and running apprenticeships for themselves.
It will support them through that process until they feel they can cope
with it
independently.
Q
531
Mr.
Heald:
In part 3, the proposal seems to be that an effort
should be made to get people up to level 2 qualifications, with
councils having a duty to provide facilities for that. However, I could
not entirely follow what happens when a middle-aged person, has a
qualification that is out of date and is looking to reskill. Proposed
new section 4C(1)(b) states that
“despite not
having a specified qualification, a person is to be treated for any of
those purposes as having that
qualification.”
Could you
explain what that is all
about?
David
Lammy:
We are doing two things in part 3. First, we
are making it a requirement to provide proper provision for adults who
have do not have basic skills: that brings in the family of
qualifications within Skills for Life, which is a £1.5 billion
Government programme. For the first time, we are making that an
absolute priority, and it applies to adults of all ages, including the
people with whom you, Oliver, are preoccupied, and who left school
without numeracy or literacy, and are now adults. They left school
before we were in government, but we are taking care of them under the
auspices of the Bill. There is a requirement to give those people basic
literacy and numeracy level skills, and I hope that you will support us
in that.
Secondly,
there should be fee remission for 19 to 25-year-olds in relation to our
aspirations at levels 2 and 3. That is in line with what Lord Leitch
recommended, and it supports our other objectives that are being
piloted; we will come forward with further proposals in relation to
skills accounts and the new adult careers service. You are right: we
are not including a duty for people over 25 in relation to levels 2 and
3 in the Bill, because we believe that that provision is largely
catered for through the Train to Gain programme, under which adults and
employees can upskill through employment.
Stephen
Hillier:
I simply want to refer back to the
Government document of last summer, “World Class Skills”,
which said honestly and in the spirit of Lord Leitch’s report at
the end of 2006, that we have to prioritise. The Bill and the
Government’s adult skills policy build on the
Government’s £3.5 billion contribution to learning by
prioritising those who do not have skills. The nation needs to upskill
and reskill, but employers are spending £38 billion on that, and
other individuals are spending money, so everyone has to pull their
weight.
The
Chairman:
Thank you. Seven colleagues are seeking to catch
my eye. If my understanding is correct, and the Division in the House
is not until 7.15 pm, we can continue uninterrupted until then but not
a moment beyond. Again, a certain self-denying ordinance is required
both from members of the Committee and
witnesses.
Q
532
Nia
Griffith:
We have seen the increased completion rates for
apprenticeships, which are encouraging. What more can we do to increase
those rates still
further?
David
Lammy:
We will continue the drive in relation to
quality. The further work that we are doing comes down to sectors, and
there are still some sectors where performance is not as strong. It
comes down to individual FE providers; I have met some of them, and we
are continuing that dialogue. The Apprenticeship Ambassadors’
Network, our network of employers driving apprenticeships, is also
engaged with work in demonstrating quality so that we can continue to
get completion rates up.
Q
533
Nia
Griffith:
We have talked about the need to get young women
and certain ethnic minority groups to consider non-traditional sectors.
How are we to get employers to make workplaces welcoming for those
groups?
David
Lammy:
We deal with this at the end of our
apprenticeship review. We are recommending critical-mass pilots,
understanding that there are some areas of the economy in which a lone
woman going into a particular industry or a particular employer is kind
of scary. You have to get a cluster of apprenticeships. I hope, through
some of our direct payment pilots to larger employers, to bring on
groups of people such as women, so that we can make advances in that
regard.
We are also
introducing mentoring to support particular groups right the way
through. We already have sector pathways projects. I was with Care
Construction, looking at women particularly, in Islington. What is
clear to us is that the adult apprenticeship route, which has not come
up yet, is another huge opportunity for women in particular. By that I
mean that we know from evidence that young women at the age of 16 or 17
may simply lack the confidence to feel that there is a job in
construction for them. However, at 24, 25, 26 and beyond, they are far
more confident about knowing or feeling that they want to work in the
construction industry. So the adult apprenticeship route is also going
to be very important.
The
Chairman:
There is no absolute rule on this, and I have a
degree of discretion, but when this questioning process was
conceived—as everyone knows, it is in its infancy—the
idea really was that the 15 minutes extension would be injury time in
the event of a Division. It is not an absolute. I am happy to go very
slightly past 7 o’clock, but I would be reluctant for us to set
a precedent of sitting until quarter past 7, simply on the principle
that questions expand to fill the time available. So I will encourage
people to be very brief, including—I say this with the greatest
respect and admiration—the Minister and officials. Can you give
us much tighter answers, if you can, in the remaining period? You have
been extremely helpful so far, but we are under time
pressures.
Q
534
Mr.
Marsden:
The balance in this Bill between young people and
adult learners was always going to be a creative tension. What more can
you do in the Bill to address the issue of hard-to-reach learners? You
are putting responsibilities on the Learning and Skills Council in that
respect. How does that link in with what you are doing with the
informal learning
consultation?
David
Lammy:
The first thing is to say that, just as we
have talked about galvanising the system in relation to compulsion and
younger people, the adult skills clauses in the Bill are about
galvanising the LSC to ensure that there is proper provision and to
ensure that our priorities around adult skills are delivered. You heard
from the principals that they are up for that. Particularly in relation
to people who do not have a first full level 2 qualification, the Bill
is incredibly important in ensuring that there are
opportunities for them.
When people start to get their
skills accounts or go to the new adult universal careers service, and
we get that message across to them that there is money in their name,
they can go and claim it at the local college to get that first level 2
qualification. This issue goes way back to those days when we streamed
people off, with O-levels on one side and CSE qualifications on the
other. I am talking about all those people who did CSEs being able to
go now, because of this Bill, to get these
qualifications.
Q
535
Mr.
Marsden:
Finally, you have heard the concerns expressed by
a number of witnesses about how you turn aspiration into reality, in
terms of FE and the needs of young people with disabilities. Will you
look carefully at what the mechanisms can be to turn that aspiration
into reality, in the terms of clause
65?
David
Lammy:
I will continue to look at that clause, with
Jim Knight. I think that Jim is dealing with it. But yes, we must work
together.
Q
536
Ms
Barlow:
I would like to ask two questions. First, the
Hove-based provider of the new deal for Sussex and Hampshire has very
high retention rates within the equivalent of job placements.
Obviously, factors like personalities and personality clashes come into
play. Even if you have 60 or 70 per cent. rates, some apprenticeships
will break down. What happens to those people whose apprenticeships
break down? Is there a binding contract, like the old apprenticeships?
What kind of sanctions would be brought against them if the
apprenticeship breaks down?
John
Landeryou:
We started to cover that in the document
that we published yesterday. Apprentices have exactly the same legal
rights and responsibilities as other employees. If an employee breaks
the terms of their employment contract, they will be subject to
dismissal, or they may choose to leave employment. That is one legal
definition. However, it is plainly in no one’s interest if young
people who move from one post to another, particularly in the same
sector, when they are part way through an apprenticeship do not get it
picked up by their new employer so that they can continue. We see it as
the role of the Learning and Skills Council to try to ensure continuity
of training and to enable people to finish an apprenticeship. We
certainly see it as the responsibility of the National Apprenticeship
Service in future to ensure that that happens. After all, we have made
a part-investment in the first place, and it is logical to follow it
through.
David
Lammy:
Another stream of work
was indicated in Leitch about the obligation on the Government to be
more joined up between my Department and the Department for Work and
Pensions. That goes to the heart of the employability skills agenda. I
am sure that we all see people who are unemployed and who get a job for
a couple of months, but then go back into unemployment because they do
not have the skills to keep the employment and constantly to progress.
We must do more. Alongside the document that we published yesterday on
apprenticeships, there was much discussion about local employment
partnerships, the skills check, the work that we want to do with women
and lone parents coming back into employment, and the 16-hour rule. All
that effort is to ensure that we are more joined up in relation to
employment as well as
skills.
Q
538
Mr.
Walker:
The Government award some pretty chunky
contracts—for example, the Olympics and Crossrail are coming up.
What are they going to do to link successful bidders with their desire
to improve the number of apprenticeships? Is there a mechanism
for placing some sort of commercial pressure on successful contractors
to provide a set number of apprenticeships?
David
Lammy:
Yes. We say for the first time in the
document, “Ready to Work, Skilled for Work”, which was
published yesterday, that we will look at big strategic projects and
how procurement works within the context of those strategic
projects.
Q
539
Phil
Wilson:
I have two questions about employees. First, do
you think it will be difficult for small employees to get accreditation
to provide training and how will you go about helping them? Secondly,
if they could not provide that training, how would you go about finding
training places for their
employees?
David
Lammy:
The best example that I have seen was up in
Birmingham, when I looked at the group training association that
provides the lion’s share of Birmingham’s electricians.
That is a hub-and-spoke model with the group training provider at the
centre doing the work around accreditation and liaison with the
Learning And Skills Council and the awarding bodies, and then spoking
out into small electrical companies with perhaps no more than five or
six people. Ways can be found. It is already the case, of course, that
a professional electrician or plumber must have a qualification as a
certain standard. They ought then to be able to teach, mentor and
provide an apprenticeship. The only barriers to that are financial and
administrative. We want to articulate what we think the offer is. We
want to make the burden as flexible as possible and provide
opportunities for a business not to have to be too engaged in
it.
Q
540
Phil
Wilson:
There will obviously be a duty on employers to
release their young people for training. If they do not do that or
there is some problem, you can bring in sanctions, which I know you
want to use sparingly. In what circumstances would you apply and
enforce those
sanctions?
John
Landeryou:
Do you mean for
employers?
Phil
Wilson:
Yes. If an employer refuses or there is some
problem releasing young people for training, sanctions can be
applied.
David
Lammy:
Forgive me, Phil. I am dealing with the
clauses that relate to adult skills and apprenticeship, and in a sense
that question goes directly to some of the compulsion and training
issues that Jim was talking
about.
The
Chairman:
Thank you. I am going to take three final
questions, on the understanding that each hon. Member concerned asks
one short question.
Q
541
Mr.
Heald:
I think that we were at cross-purposes earlier.
Part 3 of the Bill does give a general right to over-19s to have a
level 2 qualification. I was asking whether, in mid-life, if you
already had a level 2—the provision on page 42 of the Bill, in
proposed section 4C—you could be
reskilled.
David
Lammy:
We may have been at cross-purposes. If it is a
first full-level qualification, you have the right. If it is not, you
do not.
Q
542
Mr.
Heald:
But does not proposed section 4C provide that in
certain circumstances you could have a second
go?
Stephen
Hillier:
Yes, but I come back to what I said earlier.
We have to prioritise carefully our £3 billion, compared with
the employers’ £38 billion. We have said plainly in
“World Class Skills” and other documents that we see
reskilling and upskilling as a priority for
employers.
Q
543
Mr.
Gibb:
I asked this question to Jim Knight, and my
colleague Mr. Hayes asked for your estimate of the notional
number of unauthorised absences among 16 to 18-year-olds once the legal
participation age has been raised to 18. It must have been modelled in
the Department, so can you try again to give us that estimate? If you
cannot give it now, perhaps you will commit to write to members of the
Committee with the figure—your notional estimate of the number
of
non-participants.
David
Lammy:
I will liaise with Jim, and write to the
Committee.
Q
544
Stephen
Williams:
Perhaps if this is the last question, I can ask
a macro-economic question of the Minister. What is the international
role model that you want Britain to aspire to if the Bill is
successful? The
only country in the OECD that has a compulsory education and training
age of 18 is Germany, but it has a highly regulated labour market. A
country such as South Korea, which is better than us on all economic
and educational indicators, has a compulsory education age of 15. Which
is the model that you aspire
to?
David
Lammy:
In relation to our aspirations on
apprenticeships, we have examined closely the model in Australia to
seek to understand the barriers to employers offering apprenticeships.
In relation to the age of 18, you had probably best direct that
question at Jim in
Committee.
The
Chairman:
Thank you. That concludes the questions and
answers. David, John, Stephen, thank you very much indeed. We are
extremely grateful.
That concludes the public
evidence-taking procedure for the Bill. We will reconvene on Thursday
morning at 9 o’clock, at which point the detailed
clause-by-clause, line-by-line consideration of the Bill will get under
way. I am grateful to
colleagues.
Further
consideration adjourned.—[Mr. Michael
Foster.]
Adjourned
accordingly at four minutes past Seven o’clock till Thursday 31
January at Nine
o’clock.
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