House of Commons - Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform

Select Committee on Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Second Report

2 Education and Training

7. Our predecessors found that the causes of occupational segregation started with the assumptions made by families and in schools about the roles appropriate for girls and boys. Careers advice and work experience during the period of compulsory education far from challenging these assumptions, reinforced them: girls were offered work experience and were encouraged to consider jobs only in traditionally female-dominated sectors.[10] The EOC suggested to us that schools thought young people were more conservative than they actually were; but also that schools themselves did not have enough information about wider opportunities, or comparative pay rates, so found it difficult to encourage young people to think in terms of careers over a lifetime rather than just getting a job once they left full-time education.[11] The EOC and the YWCA told us that work experience was especially significant in informing the most disadvantaged young people —who often have limited sources of advice—of the variety of jobs available. Unfortunately, it was frequently these young people who were left to organise their own work experience placements, which meant they were dependent on family members and friends who placed them in stereotypical roles.[12] The EOC suggested that employers should be more active in encouraging people to apply for atypical jobs.[13]

8. The CBI and TUC agreed on the vital importance of improving careers advice and work experience.[14] While the EOC was of the view that there had been some progress in broadening careers advice, the YWCA was less convinced, and the TUC said that in too many schools the responsibility for giving careers advice was just added on to someone's full-time teaching job, and there was too little dedicated funding to develop the service in schools.[15] Baroness Prosser cited careers advice in schools as one of the few areas of the Women and Work Commission's recommendations where extra, rather than redirected, government funding was needed.[16] The YWCA also suggested that there should be national standards for the information, advice and guidance given to young people about careers.[17] ASDA told us that it had developed a short workshop giving guidance and advice to parents on how to help their children choose a career. It was using the workshop with its own staff, but thought other employers might also like to use it.[18]

9. Both the CBI and the TUC cited some good examples of useful work experience placements. However, the CBI pointed out that having work experience trainees working on the shop floor had health and safety implications, and these were often easier for large than for small companies to deal with.[19] The CBI cited research undertaken by City and Guilds which showed that one in four employers wanted to make work placements more effective. As well as calling for help with the costs of placements, employers would like a national structure to co-ordinate and support business-education partnerships and to provide better guidance on child protection and health and safety issues.[20] The CBI said that its members were also developing an 'employability framework', a standard document showing the types of generic skills being developed by those on work experience placements, which would be helpful to future potential employers in assessing skills and aptitudes.[21] From the point of view of the students, the YWCA argued that all disadvantaged young women should be given two work experience placements, offering a variety of work and non-stereotypical work, at least one of which had to be in a sector that would lead to well-paid employment.[22]

10. It is not yet clear how successful the attempts to spread best practice in relation to the careers advice and work experience placements arranged by schools have been. It will be some years before any improvements will feed through into the workforce. In the meantime, the Department for Children, Schools and Families must realise the importance of these apparently 'extra' duties of careers advice and work experience to achieving the Government's equality aims and must give more support and funding to the provision of those services in schools.

11. Furthermore, employers—especially smaller companies without HR departments—find it difficult to devote the time and resources needed first to set up good work experience placements and secondly to ensure that they have met all the safety requirements. There is clearly a role for Sector Skills Councils, Chambers of Commerce and trade organisations, as well as Learning and Skills Councils, in providing information and helping companies to forge stronger business-education partnerships at a local level.

Post-school training

CAREERS ADVICE AND SKILLS DEVELOPMENT FOR OLDER WOMEN

12. Inadequate though schools-based careers advice may be, at least it exists: until recently, little or no advice was available to older women who wanted to change the direction of their career or were returning to work after a break. The Government's one year on report emphasised recent developments such as the learndirect telephone and online advice service (open to all adults but prioritising those without a first full Level 2 qualification) and the face-to-face support from local 'nextstep' information and advice services. It noted that in January 2006 the then Department for Education and Skills had started a trial extending learndirect services to adults wanting to achieve a Level 3 qualification, which had had such positive results that the trial had been extended to March 2008.[23] The report also discussed skills coaching pilots in five cities, again focused on helping low-skilled women; the London Olympics-related Level 3 training pilot (specifically targeted at women returning to work after a break and those in areas of skill shortages where women are currently under-represented at Level 3—engineering, construction and transport and logistics); and the Women and Work Sector Pathways, under which Sector Skills Councils are developing a variety of projects to train women in the (Level 3 and beyond) skills and provide them with the mentoring and support they need to progress to higher-level jobs in their sectors.[24] The Government has provided an extra £10 million for the skills coaching pilots, £20 million in total for the Olympics-related pilot and £10 million in total, but match-funded by employers, for the Women and Work Sector Pathways. Baroness Prosser, the TUC and the CBI welcomed these measures, especially the Sector Pathways; and the CBI commented that in general its members were pleased with the Train to Gain-style approach, which linked training closely to real job opportunities and which had typically been of benefit to middle aged women working full-time in low-skilled occupations.[25]

13. While we welcome the initiatives to encourage women who wish to do so to train in non-traditional fields of work, we are pleased that some of the initiatives are focusing on encouraging women to take more senior and responsible positions in traditional sectors, such as the project by Improve (the Sector Skills Council for the food and drink industry) to give NVQ3 training to 300 women workers in food manufacturing to enable them to become supervisors or team leaders; and Asset Skill's programme to teach workers in the cleaning sector management skills.[26] Tackling 'horizontal segregation'—the dominance of managerial and professional jobs by men in sectors where the majority of the employees are women—is as important in opening up opportunities for women as ending 'vertical' or sectoral segregation.

14. We asked the Minister for Skills about progress with these pilots. He admitted that some had got off to a slower start than he had hoped—for example, to date 740 women were taking part in the London Level 3 pilot, while the aim was for there to be eventually 12,000—though he emphasised the benefits to the participants. He attributed the slow start to the delay in suitable employers coming forward because they were not aware of the new structure and the extra funding available. He also felt that, with the introduction of Train to Gain, there were a lot of almost simultaneous changes to training provision which made it difficult for employers to keep abreast of developments.[27] He listed what was being done by nine Sector Skills Councils under the Pathways project, together with the numbers of women involved.[28] Other advantages of this initiative were, he thought, the range of Sector Skills Councils taking part, the fact that it involved smaller as well as large employers, and the possible gains for those women wishing to return to work whose education between the ages of 16 and 20 had been interrupted by motherhood. The pilots were due to be evaluated in 2008-09, and he thought it was too early yet to say whether they represented good value for money.[29]

15. We were concerned about two aspects of the pilots, the first being why some Sector Skills Councils (SSCs) were not involved in them, and the second being whether the initiatives being developed could be sustained once the pilots had ended. The CBI commented that the SSCs varied greatly in standard. According to the CBI, the leaders in the area of tackling job segregation (e-skills, Construction Skills and SEMTA) were generally three of the best Sector Skills Councils. It noted that some companies outside these sectors were also responding imaginatively to the problem, but, without a good quality SSC, it was more difficult to publicise and spread the good practice they were pioneering.[30]The EOC expressed its fears that the initiatives launched as pilots would not be spread because of lack of money. It said this was a common experience with pilot schemes: when the 'pump-priming' finance ran out, especially if it ended suddenly rather than being tapered, and especially if the government department running the pilot simultaneously withdrew its support and advice, then those charged with continuing the schemes often found them too expensive and difficult to sustain, in particular if the costs were immediate and the benefits longer term. The EOC lamented: "Until we actually see some of these pilots becoming normal practice and we get away from this model of equality being always some add-on pilot that the enthusiasts do, we will not be satisfied that we have really made the progress we need." In the EOC's view, from the outset departments should plan how to sustain projects and spread what had been learned after the pilots finished.[31]

16. The various pilots launched by the Government are welcome. By definition, it is likely that some will be more successful than others. It would be a wasted opportunity if any good practice learned were left to die with the pilots themselves. We recommend that, before the pilots are evaluated, the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) plans carefully how to ensure the continuance and extension or roll-out of the successful initiatives.

17. Our predecessors were also concerned about the inflexibility of many traditional training courses from providers such as Colleges of Further Education. They advocated a more imaginative approach to the timing of courses to accommodate those unable to attend full-time, nine-to-five; and they asked for more provision of 'taster' placements, so that women could try out non-traditional jobs.[32] The EOC told us that training was still too inflexible, and in particular providers could make greater use of new technology to improve the accessibility of their courses.[33] The Minister did not assure us that training provision was more flexible, but he did say that it was now easier to find out about the full range of courses provided locally and to obtain advice about childcare and other help available. He added that an inquiry being undertaken by Ofsted into practice among adult education providers and the proposed issuance of new best practice guidance, together with the cross-government review of carers, should help.[34]

18. We heard anecdotal evidence that colleges were finding it more difficult to provide small diversity projects as the money they received was specifically linked to achieving the Government's Level 2 targets. The Minister denied that this was a problem, arguing that there were opportunities for 'tasters' in the form of taster apprenticeships, work placements, and programmes in schools such as the 'Computers for Girls' initiative by the e-skills Sector Skills Council. However, he acknowledged that some colleges had called for greater flexibility for them to allocate funding. He said he would consider this, but any change must not interfere with the Government's target that 80% of the population should have Level 2 skills.[35]

19. Helping with childcare, though welcome, is not the complete solution to the inaccessibility of some training courses to those unable to undertake them full-time in normal working hours. We are concerned that the Ofsted review of the flexibility of training by adult education providers has only recently been launched. We expect its findings as to best practice to be acted upon with more urgency than has been shown in relation to this problem so far.

20. We recognise that the Government needs to focus funding if it is to achieve its aim of ensuring that 80% of the population has Level 2 skills. However, it is a cause for regret if colleges are having to abandon useful courses or approaches to address under-representation of women in certain occupations. We recommend that, if colleges produce evidence that they are taking initiatives to deal with gender inequality, then the Minister should consider providing additional funding or at least allow them some discretion in the use of existing funding so that they can develop these initiatives. After all, this would also benefit those young people without Level 2 skills on whom the Government is currently concentrating.

APPRENTICESHIPS

21. The Minister for Skills stated that one of the DIUS's two main objectives from the Women and Work Commission's report was to increase the number of apprenticeships. He reported that £16.7 million was being spent on adult apprenticeships in 2007-08 as part of the programme to increase the number of apprenticeships from 250,000 to 500,000 across England and Wales, and he expected women to be major beneficiaries of the expansion as tackling gender disparities was one of the three stated priorities for adult apprenticeships, the others being ethnicity and disability.[36] We suggested, and the Minister accepted, that adult apprenticeships at the moment were concentrated on those aged between 19 and 25, with only a small number available for those over the age of 25, when women were more likely to have the confidence and ambition to seek training in non-traditional occupations.[37] The Minister said that, over the next three-year Comprehensive Spending Review period, the DIUS wanted the number of apprenticeships for those over 25 years to grow to 10,000 a year, a significant increase. We suggested that even with 10,000 places, given gender segregation, this could still mean very few places being available for women in non-traditional sectors. The Minister denied this—he thought that the example provided by the preparations for the Olympics showed that in the construction industry there was a will to change, and that there were now funds and projects available to help train and recruit women to the sector. He also noted that about half of those who contacted learndirect and needed training placements were women.[38] However, the Minister emphasised that the Government's main priority, its stated commitment, was to provide training for 16-18 year olds, and that meeting this obligation would absorb much of the money available for the overall apprenticeship expansion programme.[39]

22. One of the criticisms made by our predecessors was that the inflexibility of traditional apprenticeships made it difficult or impossible for people to combine caring responsibilities or existing part-time jobs with such training.[40] The Minister reported that apprenticeships had become much more flexible: it was possible to do a part-time apprenticeship, or train with more than one employer. However, it was taking time for employers to realise that this more flexible framework would attract more female employees.[41] We asked whether this flexibility had had any impact on completion rates. The Minister responded that completion rates were higher in 2006-07 than in 2005-06 and there was no difference between the genders.[42] However, as we anticipated, when the DIUS broke down the overall rates of apprenticeship completions by sector, there were wide variations between sectors, and in general women were slightly (occasionally significantly) less likely to complete apprenticeships in traditionally male-dominated sectors such as construction, engineering, ICT and science and mathematics.[43] The Minister said that the Government was considering setting targets for completion.[44]

23. The YWCA noted that 27% of those who failed to complete apprenticeships did so on the grounds that they were not paid enough. It quoted research showing that female apprentices were paid less than male. Not only were the average wages of apprentices in female-dominated areas like childcare and hairdressing below those in male-dominated areas, but even where the gender balance was more equal, such as in the hospitality sector, male apprentices were paid more than female.[45] While the wages of apprentices reflect those of the sector generally—so it is not surprising that those in female-dominated areas are lower—the finding that, within some sectors, male apprentices are paid more than female ones is more surprising. This may reflect the jobs they are training to do, but (not least because of the proposed increase in the number of apprenticeships) we believe that the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights should investigate the reasons for the gender pay gap among apprentices, and that the Low Pay Commission should be asked to consider practical ways of rectifying the situation.

24. Some companies have used comparatively simple methods to attract more female trainees. BT, for example, found that just advertising their apprenticeships as 'Career Starts' had encouraged more women to apply. This was because women were more likely than men to consider themselves unsuitable for certain jobs, so changing job titles or descriptions was an easy but effective way to encourage more female applicants.[46]

25. Simply increasing the number of apprenticeships will not, in itself, help women to better paid jobs if all that happens is they continue to choose traditional types of work. It is disappointing that women are less likely than men to complete apprenticeships in the traditionally male-dominated sectors. In the rush to increase the number of apprenticeships, the Government must not lose sight of the need to promote greater equality through this form of training.

Role of social enterprise

26. The Women and Work Commission recognised the role that social enterprises could play in developing training for and providing careers advice to women. It commended the work of organisations like 'Women Like Us', an enterprise set up initially in North London, but on a model that the Commission thought could be usefully tried elsewhere. We visited the offices of 'Women Like Us' to discover what it did. This enterprise provides a number of services, mainly to women returners (they recruit many of their clients at schools and via word of mouth), such as classes to boost the confidence and assess the skills of those who have spent some time out of the workforce; advice about the sort of jobs available; direct training or advice on other training providers; and placements with local employers, often on a part-time or flexible hours basis. They did not have information about jobs in, for example, the cleaning and catering sectors: many of the women they helped already had a skill that was in demand, but conventional approaches to job placement (Job Centres and commercial employment agencies) were unable to match these women's skills and the times they wished to work to, for example, the need of a small local business for the assistance of an accountant for a few hours each week. At the time of our visit, the enterprise was about to open a second office in London and was considering the potential for offices in five other areas of the country, with initial funding from the Regional Development Agencies. We were told that the enterprise was funded partly through fees from employers for recruitment activities, but mainly by local authority grants aimed at activities such as finding jobs for lone parents. A minority of their women clients paid small fees themselves for coaching or training.

27. The Minister for Skills said that he was aware of 'Women Like Us' and saw a role for social enterprise in helping women to overcome some of the barriers to finding training and quality part-time work; but he did not elaborate on this.[47]

28. Like the Women and Work Commission, we consider that 'Women Like Us' provides an interesting and potentially very useful model for involving social enterprise in giving careers support and guidance to women and placing them in good quality jobs with suitable hours. We support the Commission's recommendation for pilots in areas round the country and urge further action to promote such pilots, including through discussions with Regional Development Agencies and local authorities.

Conclusions

29. Since our predecessors reported, there appears to be wider recognition of the fact that there are insufficient training opportunities for women in non-traditional occupations, and measures are being taken to address this and to spread best practice. However, we are concerned that neither the need to tackle occupational segregation in general nor the specific problems faced by older women have been taken fully into account in the Government's priorities. The EOC emphasised the fact that because the Government's Skills Strategy focussed on those without basic qualifications, it excluded many women returners from support. Arguing that accessing ways back into work through advice and guidance, updating old skills or retraining in sectors where women have traditionally been under-represented was a major challenge, it alleged that this challenge was yet unmet through mainstream government programmes.[48] We agree. The drive for a large number of training places, focused particularly on the younger and less qualified, threatens to leave older and/or slightly better qualified women behind. This is both unfair and imprudent, given that most of those who will form the UK's 2020 workforce are already at work and that a significant proportion of these are women. We urge the Government to work with employers and trade unions to make better use of the experience and skills within the existing workforce by ensuring better training and development opportunities for women, whether they work full-time or part-time.

30. While our Report focuses on occupational segregation and ways to break down some of the traditional barriers, we regard it as equally important to encourage a better valuation of work traditionally carried out predominantly by women if there is to be progress in reducing the gender pay gap. In paragraph 13 above, we have welcomed initiatives to encourage women to take on more senior positions in traditional sectors. We note that the Secretary of State acknowledged the need to ensure that the work traditionally done by women, such as in the caring sector, was not undervalued, and that she also emphasised the role of quality part-time work in achieving an improvement to women's pay, using their skills and experience more fully and raising their status at work.[49]

10 Trade and Industry Committee, Sixteenth Report, paragraphs 7-9 and 12-19 Back

11 Q 69 Back

12 Qq 65 and 68 (EOC) and Ev 98 Back

13 Q 68 Back

14 Q 86 Back

15 Q 65 (EOC), Ev 98, Q 91 (TUC) Back

16 Q 20 Back

17 Ev 97 Back

18 Ev 55 Back

19 Q 105 Back

20 Ev 58 Back

21 Qq 99 and 100 See also Ev 58 Back