Clause
2
Duty
to participate in education or
training
Mr.
Gibb:
I beg to move amendment No. 4, in
clause 2, page 1, leave out line 12 and
insert—
‘(1) A local
authority in England shall enable and assist a person belonging to its
area to whom this Part applies
to—’.
The
Chairman:
With this it will be convenient to discuss
amendment No. 15, in clause 10, page 5, line 35, leave out from
‘applies’ to end of line
36.
Mr.
Gibb:
We seem to be rocketing through the
Bill—already on to clause 2 so early on in the proceedings.
However, this is the clause that actually imposes the
duty, whereas the previous clause defined to whom the duty will apply.
Clause 2 comprises the meat of the Bill.
Amendment No. 4 would take out
the opening line of the clause, which states:
“A person to whom this
Part applies
must—”
and replace
it with:
“A
local authority in England shall enable and assist a person belonging
to its area to whom this Part
applies”.
The
person would then be entitled to participate in appropriate full-time
education, to participate in training according to the contract of the
apprenticeship, or to be in full-time education and receive sufficient
training of 280 hours a year. The amendment would remove the compulsory
element of the Bill, but I shall not try the Committee’s
patience or yours, Mr. Bayley, by repeating the arguments
that I made this morning on clause 1. I shall instead advance some
other arguments about compulsion.
The new wording, “enable
and assist”, comes from the Children’s
Rights Alliance for England, which argues that although it supports
measures that positively encourage young people to engage in education,
it fundamentally opposes the creation of a duty of participation on
young people. It believes that compulsion would be counter-productive
and potentially damaging to the most vulnerable people in our society.
It also argues that as human rights legislation enshrines education as
a fundamental right, we should look to the UN committee on economic,
social and cultural rights, which says that the right to education
requires member states
“take positive measures that
enable and assist
individuals”
to
take up their right to education. Giving 16 and 17-year-olds a right to
education is different from imposing a duty on young people to
participate. Amendment No. 4, and amendment No. 15 to clause 10, would
change the approach, giving local authorities the duty to enable and
assist young people to participate in education or training.
In its briefing and in evidence
to us on Tuesday, the British Youth Council said that 46 per cent. of
people whom it surveyed did not agree with raising the compulsory
participation age to 18. It said that the focus should be on ensuring
that the education system is geared more to helping people and
preparing them for further education and
training.
3.33 pm
Sitting suspended for a
Division in the
House.
3.48
pm
On
resuming—
Mr.
Gibb:
The Children’s Rights Alliance, to which I
was referring before the Division, argues that 16 and 17-year-olds are
capable of making decisions about what is in their best interests. It
goes on to say in its briefing to
us:
“The
imposition of a duty runs counter to significant professional opinion
about the capacity of young people for independent decision-making and
the Government’s own policy of youth participation. At a time
when the Government is
considering proposals to give young people the vote, why does it seek to
remove responsibility from young people for decisions over their own
education? Young
people who leave education at 16 may do so because they have a history
of unsatisfactory experiences in the education system, or because they
have issues in their lives which make it difficult for them to
continue, such as homelessness or emotional problems. It is just such
young people—the most vulnerable—who may be unable or
unwilling to comply with such a duty. What is more, the creation of a
duty to participate in education will not guarantee educational success
for these young
people.”
The
amendment would impose a duty on local authorities to “enable
and assist” such young people, rather than imposing what the
alliance believes will be an unsuccessful and unenforceable
duty.
Jim
Knight:
It may be helpful at this point if I explain why
we think that the measure is not in contravention of article 2 of the
European convention on human rights. We believe that it is entirely
compatible with that article. The right simply sets out that no one
should be denied access to education, and the Bill does not do
that.
Mr.
Gibb:
I am grateful for the Minister’s
intervention, and I shall wait for his full
response.
The
Prince’s Trust believes that
“the priority should be for all 16
year olds to be encouraged and supported to achieve Level
2”
It goes on to
say
“that raising the
compulsory age to 18 will simply prolong the process and potentially
lower the aspirations of some
students.”
While
we are discussing the Prince’s Trust’s excellent work,
Martina Milburn said in her evidence on 22 January that it gets young
people into education, training and work, and did so with 40,000 young
people last year. Will the Minister confirm that a 16 or 17-year-old
participating full-time in a Prince’s Trust course or a
programme run by Fairbridge—another excellent
organisation—will be regarded as being in full-time educational
training for the purpose of clause
2(1)(a)?
Professor
Alison Wolf pointed out in her evidence that young people who are not
in employment, education or training already forgo weekly handouts from
education maintenance allowances of up to £30 a week, which they
could have received simply by turning up at a college. She said that
those people are not simply neutral and waiting for Government
direction; they are actively opposed to participation, so imposing a
duty on such people will have minimal
effect.
In “Diminished
Returns”, she pointed
out:
“A wealth
of psychological evidence demonstrates that human beings that human
beings do not learn unless they are motivated to do
so.”
Mr.
Heald:
Does my hon. Friend agree that one the beauties of
amendment No. 15 is that it imposes on the education authority a duty
to look at the interests of people generally in their area? On the
point that he has just made about motivation, is not the case that to
create a secure environment for other students in the college or
whatever, it is necessary for someone who is, say, a drug dealer to put
that life to one side, to become involved in education and to set
themselves straight. When he gave evidence, Mr. Head
mentioned the lad who turned up in the brand new BMW 3, and who was
obviously economically active. There are drug dealers in that age group,
and we do not really want them in college unless they are motivated to
learn rather than to act in a criminal
manner.
Mr.
Gibb:
My hon. Friend is exactly right, and I am
about to come on to that point. He may like to read the
book, “Wasted: Mark Johnson”, which is
recommended by the Prince’s Trust. I have met Mark Johnson, who
is a splendid man of 30 who has turned his life around. When he was 16,
the idea that he could have attended any sort of training course, given
the problems that he faced and the life that he led, was just not
credible.
Mr.
Heald:
Last night, the Prince’s Trust held an
excellent reception with Bill Gates, and many young entrepreneurs were
present. Several of them had been to prison, come out and, while still
young, had set up businesses with the support of the Prince’s
Trust. However, they had chosen a different lifestyle, and were
motivated to make a success of it. That is
important.
Mr.
Gibb:
My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and I agree
with him totally.
The
Local Government Association adopted a similar position to Alison Wolf,
and noted in its written evidence that it does not believe that
compulsion
“is the way to
engage with young people or to obtain their attendance for effective
learning.”
Indeed,
compulsory participation might not only result in unmotivated
youngsters learning very little: it could also damage the wider
atmosphere, undermining those young people who are ready and willing to
participate. As the hon. Member for Yeovil said, Professor Wolf raised
that concern in “Diminished Returns”, in which she stated
that it was “empirically demonstrable” that large
numbers
“of forced
participants will have a strong negative effect on the
environment”.
There is
therefore a real danger that compulsion will fail to ensure that
disaffected young people successfully participate in education.
Moreover, forcing unwilling youngsters into unwanted training may well
hamper the progress of those who are motivated to gain new
skills.
I noted
widespread concern among witnesses in our evidence sessions that
compulsion could have a severely detrimental effect
on the prospects of those marginalised young people who will invariably
bear the brunt of the new enforcement measures. The Association of
Learning Providers, for example, told the Committee that for a minority
of
youngsters,
“compulsion
will not have the desired effect and you will accentuate a problem we
have now.”——[Official Report, Education
and Skills Public Bill Committee, 24 January 2008; c. 123,
Q300.]
The ALP said that, as a
result, the problems afflicting the NEET group could become worse
rather than better. The Institute of Directors, in its response to the
consultation process, stated
that
“the only
sustainable and workable system is founded on a voluntary approach to
participation”,
and that
any measures resulting in young people entering the youth justice
system had to be regarded as a “terrible outcome.” The
National Association of Head Teachers wrote:
“Compulsion, because of
the negative impact which it will have both on the younger generation
and on schools, is emphatically not the route to
choose”.
The Association
of Teachers and Lecturers
wrote:
“The
case for compulsion has not been
made”.
Ministers
have insisted that enforcement will be treated as a
last resort. The Minister of State has implied that the number of
people involved is small, but he conceded in his evidence that the
number of people who would have attendance order notices issued against
them would be
6,000.
Jim
Knight:
I think that I made it perfectly clear in answer
to question 481, asked by the hon. Member for Yeovil, that I had
examined the figures closely because
they
“reflected a high
level of enforcement.”
I
said that they were
“at
the bleak end of the scale of
enforcement.”——[Official Report,
Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, Tuesday 29 January
2008; c. 208,
Q481.]
The
hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton said that I think there
will be 6,000, but that is simply not the case. That is the very top
end of the expectation, because we wanted to be generous in our
assumption of the cost so that we would not be criticised for
underestimating it. As ever, we are damned if we do and damned if we
don’t.
Mr.
Gibb:
I am grateful for that clarification, but the
Minister did
say:
“The
number of attendance notices is assumed to be
6,000”.——[Official Report, Education and Skills
Public Bill Committee, Tuesday 29 January 2008; c. 208,
Q481.]
I take his point; it was
assumed to be that number for the purpose of
assessing potential cost in the regulatory impact assessment. However,
the Minister will remember that in 2006, he announced plans to deal
with 13,000 pupils whom his Department identified as persistent
secondary school
truants.
Mr.
Laws:
The hon. Gentleman referred to the evidence that the
Minister gave on 29 January. Does he agree that it might be useful if
the Minister agreed to publish the assumptions behind the figures that
he gave? We would then be in a better position to judge whether they
were pessimistic or whether they might actually be considerably
exceeded.
Mr.
Gibb:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his
sensible suggestion, which I shall put to the Minister. If he could
publish those assumptions, and set out the parameters of the bleakest
figure, which he says is 6,000, as well as the most optimistic figure
and the most likely outcome, we could see the assumptions from which
those three figures derive. Given the very specific numbers that he
mentioned—278 youth court fines, 111 youth default orders and 33
breaches of parenting orders—I assume that there must be good
papers to back up those
numbers.
Jim
Knight:
I thought that John Coles gave a good explanation
of that. He said not only that the calculations
were
“intended to be on
the high side”
but
that
“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.”——[Official Report, Education and
Skills Public Bill Committee, Tuesday 29 January 2008; c. 208,
Q481.]
Mr.
Gibb:
That is very helpful. It would therefore be useful
if we had that data and the extrapolations referred to by Jon
Coles.
I return to
the point that I was making. In 2006, the Department
identified 13,000 secondary school persistent truants on whom it wanted
to focus. Given that there were 13,000 of them, it is most unlikely
that they will be rushing to participate in the duty that the Bill will
impose on them. One could argue that 6,000 is an underestimate, given
that the Minister has already identified 13,000. I do not know which
year they come from, but if one assumes that half of them would be
persistent non-attenders under the Bill, that would take us up to
6,000. I cited that figure originally to back up the
Government’s likely figure, but the Minister now claims that it
is a bleak outcome. I think that it is a much more likely
outcome.
Jim
Knight:
We have made it clear that if we raise the
participation age tomorrow such outcomes are
extremely logical. However, it is important that we make all the
changes that I set out earlier in the intervening period.
We need to address levels of persistent absence and make secondary
education more engaging than it is now, and then reduce the level of
enforcement
post-16.
Mr.
Gibb:
I am grateful to the Minister for that intervention.
It almost supports what I said in our earlier scrutiny sittings. We
need to sort out what is happening in our secondary and primary
schools; that would have a bigger effect on encouraging participation
than any duty.
Ministers also assert that a
legal obligation—and the enforcement that it entails—is a
uniquely crucial factor in ensuring a “cultural shift in
aspiration”, creating an expectation to participate among all
young people. However, the National Association of Schoolmasters Union
of Women Teachers—NASUWT—states the very opposite. It
argues that
“it is
unlikely that a change in the law will change the minds and attitudes
of youngsters who are disinclined to stay on
now.”
We
believe that compulsion is unlikely to succeed. We believe that it is
far better to use the carrot rather than the stick in such
circumstances, and that the duty should be on the education system to
enable and assist young people to take part in education. That is what
the amendments seek to do, and I hope that they will have the support
of the Committee.
Further consideration
adjourned.—[Mr. Michael
Foster.]
Adjourned
accordingly at two minutes past Four o'clock till Tuesday 5 February at
half-past 10
o'clock.
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