Clause
41
Attendance
notice: description of education or
training
Mr.
David Laws (Yeovil) (LD): I beg to move amendment No. 164,
in clause 41, page 22, line 33, after ‘person’,
insert:
‘having regard
to a person’s age, ability, aptitude and needs (if any) for
personalised support and personalised learning
opportunities’.
Good
morning, Mr. Bercow. What a pleasure it is to be here today
for part of the Committee’s proceedings. I start by apologising
to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West. I assured him that,
given the previous speed of the Committee’s proceedings, there
was little chance we would get past clauses 36 or 37 before I arrived
at 10 o’clock. I am somewhat concerned to discover that the
Committee has made such rapid progress in my
absence.
Jim
Knight:
I would be interested in whether the hon.
Gentleman thinks that there is a relationship between the speed with
which we are progressing and his attendance in the
Committee.
Mr.
Laws:
I will have to reflect during the course of my
speech on the clause on whether there is a direct causal link, or
whether hon. Members are trying to catch me offside by being briefer
than usual. I will leave that to the Minister to
decide.
Using the
well tested technique of the hon. Member for South Holland and The
Deepings, I will quote from the explanatory notes on the clause, which
state:
“Clause
41 provides that the education or training specified in the attendance
notice must be a course provided at a school, college or other
education establishment or a contract of apprenticeship, and be a way
of fulfilling the clause 2 duty. It
must be suitable to the person and the local education authority must
consult the provider of the education or
training.” Our amendment
deals with the matter of suitability and, in particular, with
subsection (5), which
states:
“The
education or training must be suitable for the
person.”
The amendment
is not only felt to be necessary by us, but was suggested to us by
various outside bodies and supported by others. In fact, the National
Union of Teachers first suggested to us the particular form of wording
to help to ensure that local authorities identify individual needs by
providing for an additional suitability test according to
need.
The amendment
adds to the existing subsection (5) requirements and insists that that
assessment of suitability must have regard to the person’s age,
ability and aptitude and, critically, their needs in terms of
personalised support and learning opportunities. That takes us back to
matters raised in a number of debates in the past few weeks and in the
oral evidence hearings before we started this part of
proceedings.
I am
grateful to the Minister, who undertook earlier in proceedings to write
a letter setting out the Government’s thinking on the vulnerable
groups of young people on whom the Bill will have an impact. We had in
mind some of those youngsters when we tabled the amendment. I do not
know whether anyone has referred this morning to his letter to me of 13
February, which I think has been copied to other members of the
Committee. It helpfully sets down the Government’s initial
thoughts on how enforcement will work in respect of those young people
who could not easily be in formal education or
training.
The letter
is oriented toward who might be given an exemption from the strictures
of the attendance panel. It is also directly relevant to the
personalised support we want to have in place, if this part of the Bill
to work fairly for the groups whose needs we are trying to meet. On the
second page of the letter, the Minister sets out a long list of the
groups of young people whom he
accepts—
It
being twenty-five minutes past Ten o’clock,
The
Chairman
adjourned the Committee without Question put,
pursuant to the Standing
Order.
Adjourned
till this day at One
o’clock.
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