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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, Committee
Clerks
† attended the
Committee
Public Bill CommitteeTuesday 26 February 2008(Morning)[Hugh Bayley in the Chair]Education and Skills BillFurther written evidence to be reported to the HouseE&S 19
YWCA
Clause 54Support
services: provision by local education
authorities
10.30
am
Mr.
John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings)
(Con): I beg to move amendment No. 93, in
clause 54, page 29, line 13, leave
out ‘services’ and insert
‘information, advice and guidance about education and
career
choices’.
The
Chairman:
With this it will be convenient to discuss the
following amendments: No. 41, in
clause 54, page 29, line 15, at
end insert—
‘(1A) Such
services must include the provision
of—
(a) generic
information, advice and guidance,
and
(b) targeted support for
young people which takes into account their personal
circumstances.’.
No.
94, in
clause 54, page 29, line 35, at
end add—
‘(6) Services
provided under this section shall be known as
“Connexions”.’.
Mr.
Hayes:
It is good to see you back in the Chair,
Mr. Bayley, and it is good to be back in Committee. As you
can tell from my demeanour, I have been preparing carefully this
morning.
The gist of
the amendment is that if we are to guide young people in the right
direction, we must be explicit about the nature of that guidance. I
wonder whether, instead of the clause referring simply to
“services”, the nature of the new statutory obligations
should be made clearer. In that sense, this is a probing amendment to
test the Government’s commitment to and understanding of the
need to offer the right range of advice and guidance on what is
available to young
people.
I tabled the
amendment in the context that the Opposition continue to have profound
reservations about whether Connexions is the right vehicle to provide
the range of advice necessary to assist young people. I do not want to
undermine or demean Connexions. It does good work; however, it is asked
to do too much good work. An all-age careers service dedicated to
advising on “career choices”, as the amendment labels
them, that sat alongside Connexions
would be a much better vehicle to provide the advice and guidance that
is required. I have made that point before and make no apologies for
mentioning it again.
I
am sure that the Government are considering that point, because it has
been made not only by the Opposition, but by many agencies. I hope that
in responding to the amendment, the Minister will expound his thinking
on how he sees careers advice and guidance in the future. The demands
upon the service will be greater, given that it will be dealing with
the challenges of the statutory provisions at the heart of the
Bill.
An all-age
careers service is the vehicle used in other places to deliver such
advice and guidance—for example, Scotland has an all-age careers
service. Many people in the service believe that the problem with
Connexions is that it is a jack of all trades, giving advice on sexual
health, lifestyle issues and drug problems, rather than simply on
careers, training and related subjects. Careers guidance in other
European countries tends to be more systematic than in the UK. It tends
to begin much earlier and is geared towards providing detailed
information on the skills requirements for particular jobs or
professions.
In a
joint memorandum on the Bill, all the main organisations involved in
careers guidance, including the National Association of Connexions
Partners and the Institute of Career Guidance, expressed concern that
the new local authority duty under the Bill is “not specific
enough”. They go on to
say:
“Effective
participation requires assistance with choices. Such advice and
guidance must be about choices not merely of which learning option to
follow, but why—that is, with a clear view of progression beyond
18+ into employment (either directly or via further training or higher
education). The key is that choices about the relationship between
learning and work—i.e. about career—should drive
participation in
learning.”
The amendment
places a clear duty on local authorities to provide just such services
and to adopt just such an approach.
Although I started by saying
that the amendment is designed to probe the Minister and test the
Government’s thinking, it is also built on our considered and
profound doubts about whether the proposed arrangements are
sufficiently robust and appropriate to give life to the Bill. Those
doubts are supported by a number of the agencies that have given
evidence on the Bill. Given that critique, if the Minister resists
amendment, I hope that he will range widely in saying why he thinks the
amendment is not sufficient and not in line with orthodox thinking, and
why his dogmatic concentration on the existing structure is
right.
Stephen
Williams (Bristol, West) (LD): I assumed that the
Conservative spokesman would speak to the wider purposes of the clause,
which is primarily to do with young people, including young adults who
are in the care of local authorities. I thought that the amendment
might at least address that aspect. Such young people may, in fact, be
attending the National Star College in the Cotswolds, which I visited
last year, where many young adults with learning difficulties and other
disabilities attend on a residential basis, not only to be given formal
education that leads to qualifications but to be taught valuable life
skills.
I support the broad intention of
the amendment, which seeks to widen the scope of the clause by
replacing the
phrase
“such services as
it considers appropriate”,
with the more specific
“information, advice and guidance”. However, will the
Minister expand on what services he believes it would be considered
appropriate for the local authority to provide, so that we can see
whether the amendment is
relevant?
The
Minister for Schools and Learners (Jim Knight):
Good
morning, Mr. Bayley, it is a pleasure to see you back in the
Chair. We trust that you had a good week last week, when the Committee
was under the excellent stewardship of Mr.
Bercow.
Amendment No.
94 would specify that services provided under the clause should be
known as “Connexions”. In proposing to amend the clause
in that way, I thought that the Opposition were seeking to pay tribute
to the success of the Connexions service in winning young
people’s support and becoming so widely known. I thought that
they wanted to sustain a valued brand that is well known to young
people and keep the advantages to authorities of badging services
offering information, advice and guidance to young people with that
name. I then listened to the hon. Member for South Holland and The
Deepings and was saddened to learn that he does not hold Connexions in
such high regard, but wants to retain the brand anyway. I reassure him
and the Committee that we intend to use the power to direct in clause
55, which I am sure that we will come on to fairly soon, to require
authorities to do just
that.
To answer the
hon. Member for Bristol, West regarding the services we envisage being
delivered by what will continue to be known as Connexions, we expect it
to carry out the services that the current service does, but to do so
to the quality standards that we have
published.
Turning to
amendments Nos. 94 and 41, as the Committee will already be aware from
debate on earlier clauses, Connexions delivers generic information,
advice and guidance to young people, as well as more specific
information and advice on career choices. That will continue when the
responsibility is transferred to local authorities. The service
Connexions provides is supported by the new IAG quality standards,
which have been largely welcomed by local authorities and their
partners.
The hon.
Member for South Holland and The Deepings spoke of his desire for an
all-age careers service. He is worried that, given the breadth of the
advice that they are required to give, Connexions and its personal
advisers are jacks of all trades and masters of none. Obviously, we
have to strike a balance between genuine expertise and the ability to
offer a joined-up service that can look across the range of issues
affecting young people and advise them accordingly. Given the raising
of the status of the quality standards—we intend to make them
statutory guidance—we believe that we will get the best of both
worlds. It is not a question of either/or: we can have personal
advisers offering high-quality services and high-quality advice that
looks at the range of issues.
I would say to the hon.
Gentleman that there is a case for developing an all-age strategy,
particularly with the extension of the participation age to 18. The
Government are implementing the recommendation in the Leitch report to
create a new adult careers service from 2010, and work is in train to
development a coherent strategy for careers advice for all
ages.
We should not necessarily have
one service catering for all age groups, as different age groups have
different needs. The strategy will help to ensure that transitions
between services are managed effectively and that common issues such as
labour markets and occupational information, contracting and work force
development are looked at collectively, where possible. It will also
ensure that the responses acknowledge and respect the different
concerns and problems of adults and young
people.
Mr.
Hayes:
Will the Minister provide more detailed information
on the pilots now being rolled out for the new adult careers service,
as they are highly relevant to the issues implicit in the amendments?
Secondly, what are the objectives of the pilots? There is some concern
that the objectives are unclear and that the pilots are not being
tested against any thesis or assumptions. He might like to take this
opportunity to correct that misapprehension, if it is
such.
Jim
Knight:
I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for
giving me the opportunity to set out more details of the pilots. I fear
that I would try your patience, Mr. Bayley, if I were to get
too distracted at this point, but if I find an opportunity to address
that matter directly as we debate the transfer of Connexions to local
authorities, I will return to that issue to inform the Committee as
best I can.
Our
intention is to raise the status of the quality standards to that of
statutory guidance. I assure the hon. Gentleman that we are committed
to targeted youth support. We expect all authorities to deliver
targeted youth support throughout their areas by December this year.
That is a challenging but essential aim, and we are working with
Government offices, the Training and Development Agency for Schools and
local authorities to support that ambitious programme.
The provision of
information, advice and guidance and of targeted youth support will be
emphasised as a core function of Connexions through the directions that
we will issue under clause 55. We intend those directions to set out
that local authorities must ensure the provision of reasonable access
to a personal adviser for all 13 to 19-year-olds, and 20 to
24-year-olds with learning difficulties or disabilities, to provide
them with information, advice, guidance, advocacy and brokerage,
including brokering access to targeted youth support services. We
believe that those measures are suitable for ensuring a high-quality
and consistent approach, while providing councils with local
flexibility.
10.45
am
Mr.
Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con): I am
surprised that the Minister is resisting amendment No. 93, given that
the wording is lifted from the foreword to the “Quality
Standards for Young People’s Information, Advice and
Guidance” issued by his Department. His right hon. Friend the
Minister for Children, Young People and Families says in the first
paragraph of that
foreword:
“In a
complex and changing world all young people need access to good
quality, comprehensive and impartial Information, Advice and
Guidance...They need good IAG to help them make the right learning and
career
choices”.
I
changed “learning” to “education” in the
amendment. I am surprised that the Minister does not agree with his
right hon. Friend’s wording and accept our
amendment.
Jim
Knight:
I do not disagree with the wording or the
intention of the amendment. I regard it as unnecessary, because we are
going to give the guidance that he just referred to statutory status,
as I said twice in my comments. That will fulfil the purposes of the
amendments. On that basis, I hope that the amendment will be
withdrawn.
Mr.
Hayes:
The Minister has underestimated the significance of
this aspect of the Bill and, indeed, of this group of amendments. At
the end of the day, the success of efforts to increase participation
will be dependent—as we have argued repeatedly—on
inspiring young people with a new thirst for learning. I believe that
that learning must, at its heart, have a test of employability: whether
it will lead to greater employability for the young person concerned.
Much of that will depend on the learning being tailored to particular
outcomes, so advice and guidance are critical.
As I said when moving the
amendment, I do not want to demean the Connexions service; it does a
good job. However, I am not sure that creating extra demands on an
unreformed system is tenable. The clarity of what will be stated in the
Bill if the amendment is made will be highly significant in ensuring
that advice on careers and on the training related to careers is of a
sort that is likely to lead to the encouragement of that thirst for
learning and, thus, the greater participation that we all
seek.
One might ask
why I have reservations. Amendment No. 41, to which I did not speak at
length in my opening remarks and on which the Minister did not dwell,
either, makes provision for the existing dual-function Connexions
service to be separated so that the targeted support can be focused on
the young people who need it. The Connexions service cost £475
million in 2006-07, which is more than twice the cost of the careers
service in its last year of operation—£236 million in
2000-01. Yet according to Government figures, less than a quarter of
young people advised by Connexions actually require the kind of
integrated support that it was designed to
deliver.
The Minister
is right to say that we need to strike a balance between tailored
expertise on careers advice and the breadth of services, but I suspect
that that balance is not finely tuned at present. That minority of
young people who benefit from that range of
services—they are often quite challenged people—is
certainly getting a good deal out of the existing arrangements. They
have a one-stop shop for the range of skills and advice that is
necessary for them to prosper. However, I doubt that the generality of
young people benefits from the existing arrangements, thus my call for
a parallel all-age careers service, which could give the sort of
skilled and expert advice necessary for the Bill to have the best
effect. The clearer we are about that on the face of the Bill, the
better.
Nor
am I convinced that the Minister has dealt with the question of
capacity. By definition, there will be additional demand: we will draw
into the system young people who I suspect do not now seek anything
from Connexions, wither careers advice or advice on lifestyle issues.
One of the reasons why I asked him about the pilots of the adult
careers service was that if we are going to take an holistic approach
to the relationship between supply and demand, capacity issues and
weighting, we need to know what the Government’s medium-term
intentions are regarding the adult careers service. The Minister said
that the Government have responded to the Leitch report, but we do not
know much about the pilots. The message that I get from the sector is
that there are doubts about whether the pilots have been carefully
enough thought through and have been built around assumptions that can
be tested. Are the pilots aimed at establishing any clear
outcomes?
We need to
target our support more effectively. The aim of the Bill and of the
advice and guidance that is critical to its success is at least in part
to deal with the problem of young people not in education, employment
or training. It is a cause of immense shame that, according to official
figures issued on 16 January, the number of people aged 16 to 25 not in
employment, education or training has increased by 223,000 since 2002
to reach 1.24 million. The number of young people who are not in
education, employment or training has grown steadily since 1997 and is
now a shocking and unacceptable figure. It is inconceivable that the
quality of the advice and the nature of the guidance that young people
receive from school onwards do not have a role to play in dealing with
that.
That is why I
started my summation by saying that the Minister underestimates the
significance of this part of the Bill and the amendments. It would
perhaps not be an exaggeration to say that failure on NEETs is one of
the most damning indictments of the present Government. If I feel
strongly and state my case with some passion, it is because this a
matter of real important. On the basis of what we have heard from the
Minister, I am not inclined to press the amendment, but I hope that he
will reflect further on the points made. It is not acceptable not to
take this aspect of the Bill sufficiently seriously. I beg to ask leave
to withdraw the
amendment.
Amendment,
by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 54 ordered to stand
part of the
Bill.
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