Annette
Brooke: In the previous discussion on that point, it
occurred to me that in the past we had schemes in which positions were
taken by friends of the employer and sons and daughters of other
friends and that there was not necessarily any real training, although
I am recalling that from several years ago. If the Minister does not
accept this vital amendment, can he guarantee that it will be a genuine
position and not just an opportunity perhaps to take on board the
responsibilities but in reality do
nothing?
Jim
Knight: The hon. Lady makes an important point, and I want
to reassure her that it is not at all our intention that that would
offer people a way of avoiding proper training provisions as part of
apprenticeships. That is something that my hon. Friend and I have asked
officials to look at further in relation to the formulation in the Bill
and in another provision that we will debate later today. If necessary,
we will table an amendment on Report to tighten this up—we are
exploring that with
officials. 12
noon Amendment
215 to clause 41 would have the opposite effect to amendment 112. It
would remove the requirement on local authorities to encourage
employers to participate in apprenticeship agreements. Clause 41
requires local authorities to encourage employers to participate in the
provision of education and training for those young people and young
adults for whom they are responsible. That includes participating by
entering into apprenticeship agreements or any other contract of
employment in connection with which training is provided.
Amendment
215 might be a probing amendment, seeking further explanation of the
reason why we have made provisions for securing and encouraging
contracts of apprenticeship—I have just sought to address
that—or it might contend that we are giving local authorities
the role of the National Apprenticeship Service, which could be
construed as unnecessary duplication. That is not the case. As we have
explained, we see the delivery of apprenticeship opportunities as a
matter for co-operation. Local authorities should know their local
businesses and co-operate—many already do—with them in
identifying opportunities for work experience and work-based training
for young people in their area. It is important that local authorities
use that local knowledge to assist in the delivery of the
apprenticeship entitlement. I am sure that Conservative Members do not
want to limit opportunities or engagement and I hope that on the basis
of my explanation the hon. Gentleman is prepared not to press the
amendments.
Mr.
Hayes: The Minister has defended the existing
arrangements, but there has been no real defence against the criticisms
presented by the expert witnesses, who said that employers have
criticised the system as too complex, because it involves their dealing
with different agencies. In last week’s debate on
apprenticeships, which the Minister described as long and interesting,
the Under-Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills
made it clear that the Government had considered establishing the
National Apprenticeship Service as a discrete organisation, with the
competences that I advocate. The problem is that the Government have
ended up doing the opposite, creating a National Apprenticeship Service
with responsibilities that overlap with those of the Skills Funding
Agency. I have mentioned the problems of the definition of frameworks.
The Government have created circumstances in which employers will be
contacted by both the NAS and local authorities, and employer
representatives have already told us that local authorities have a
patchy track record in engaging
employers. I
did not say much about amendment 215 at the outset, but the Minister
has helpfully dealt with it. It seeks to establish a contract between
the NAS and employers. Rather than weakening employer engagement as the
Minister implied, it takes local authorities out of the frame and puts
the NAS into it in a way that the Bill does not
do.
Mr.
Stuart: I am sure that my hon. Friend knows that not just
employers but the 157 Group, which consists of 26 of the largest and
best further education colleges in the country, have questioned the
local authority role. The 157 Group stated in its written
evidence: “The
Local Authority is in some ways the least well set up to find these
places”. From
its excellent vantage position, it can see that the legislation has the
weakest possible agency for ensuring that the promise of apprenticeship
places for all can be
delivered.
Mr.
Hayes: I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for his
comments. In your wisdom, Mr. Chope, you shortened the
intervention in which I intended to make
that precise point on the back of my remarks about the Association of
Colleges. Contrary to the Minister’s assertions, the 157 Group
was critical, not supportive, of the changes. It said in its verbal
evidence: “We
feel, as I am sure most colleges feel, very involved in the local
community already, irrespective of the fact that we are not part of the
local authority structure.”——[Official
Report, Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Leaning Public Bill
Committee, 3 March 2009; c. 28,
Q76.] That
message is crystal clear. Local colleges are highly responsive to their
local communities and are engaged in their towns and cities. Frankly,
most of the college principals to whom I have spoken see local
authority involvement as a retrograde step. They look back with a
degree of horror to the pre-incorporation days when they were under
local authority control and they suspect that the Bill will return them
to that unhappy past.
Jim
Knight: Does the hon. Gentleman recall that when my hon.
Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and
Skills
asked: “But
is a single account structure for colleges a positive
thing?”——[Official Report,
Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Public Bill Committee,
3 March 2009; c. 31,
Q84.], Julian
Gravatt replied, “Yes it is”?
Mr.
Hayes: I have Julian Gravatt’s evidence in front of
me and he also said that it would have “made sense” for
the Government to have moved to a “streamlined
structure”, that colleges really wanted self-regulation and
that “a
key thing would be how these different agencies and the local
authorities behave in the future. We do not think that the argument is
lost but, in the short term, there will be a slightly more complex
structure that will be difficult to
navigate.” A
structure that is difficult to navigate is a mild way of saying what I
will put more bluntly: this system is going to be confusing and not
merely “difficult to navigate”, but likely to leave
people sinking. During the consideration of the Bill so far, the
Minister and his compatriot, the Under-Secretary, have not given me
comfort that those witnesses are wrong about the difficulties in
navigating this extremely complex structure. I fear not only for
employers but for learners and
providers. I
am afraid that the amendments do not go as far as I would like in order
to make things more straightforward, because that would involve
rewriting the whole Bill. However, they do go some way towards
achieving that end: by reducing the number of organisations that
employers are obliged to deal with; by changing the competences for
apprenticeships; and by creating a National Apprenticeship Service
which is just that—a national service with competence for the
whole subject—as well as obliging it to contract with employers
to ensure that teaching and testing meets employer need and economic
requirements The amendments are measured and modest, and seek to get
the Government out of the mire. I am surprised that the Minister does
not recognise that.
Jim
Knight: I shall have one final go. All that we are seeking
is co-operation between the local authorities and the National
Apprenticeship Service to match local knowledge with a national
service. Is that not a sensible approach? Far from getting us out of
the mire, the hon. Gentleman’s proposals would be a
rigid straightjacket landing us firmly in that mire with no way of
getting out.
Mr.
Hayes: The most flexible approach of all would be
deregulated further education colleges that respond to local
circumstances and which can innovate, and therefore excel, in a diverse
system, with a slim, streamlined funding agency—a kind of
Further Education Funding Council—providing the resources that
they need. Frankly, we would not need most of the proposals if we moved
to that model. It is precisely the one outlined by Andrew Foster, who,
by the way, is trying to sort out how the Government made such a mess
of capital funding in further education. We await, with great interest,
his report on that subject.
Jim
Knight: How does the hon. Gentleman’s model include
other post-16 providers, such as sixth forms, which we have just been
debating? The hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton wants to
impose ever more regulation on them.
Mr.
Hayes: It is not about imposing additional regulation; it
is about establishing a framework, which, of course, ensures both
quality and probity across all providers. However, in the end, it
relies on people’s competence to do their jobs. It is
extraordinary that we have accepted the argument in higher education,
and increasingly in schools, that deregulation, more independence, and
giving the leaders of those institutions more power and competences are
likely to drive up standards, yet in further education we take exactly
the opposite view.
Further
education is stuck in a kind of Stalinist world in which it dances to
the tune of Ministers. It is constricted and restricted in all it does.
Its competence is not something in which Ministers appear to have faith
and it now faces an ever more complicated system for management and
funding. Why can we simply not do what the Foster report advocated and
strip away some of the 17 regulatory bodies that so bedevil further
education colleges and their senior managers? Why can we not create a
more cost-effective system, rather than have countless overlapping
agencies with confused lines of accountability for different
Departments? Why can we not seize the nettle and follow through the
logic of what we have already concluded about higher education and
schools into further education?
We want an
employer-engaged and highly responsive system. We want a system where
what is taught and tested delivers real competency to individuals,
increasing their employability and matching economic need. We do not
think that the Bill, in its current form, satisfies any of those
requirements. That is why it is my intention to press amendment 213 to
a vote, so that we add some light to the darkness that is the
Minister’s perspective on how we should fund and manage
skills.
Question
put, That the amendment be
made. The
Committee divided: Ayes 5, Noes
10.
Division
No.
10]
Question
accordingly negatived.
Jim
Knight: I beg to move amendment 264, in
clause 40, page 24, leave out lines 31 to
37. This amendment is consequent on
amendment
282.
The
Chairman: With this we may discuss the following:
amendment 231, in
clause 40, page 24, line 37, at
end insert— ‘(9A) Every
local education authority shall record the number of learners with
learning difficulties in its area for whom suitable education has not
been provided and report this information annually to the Secretary of
State, who may require any local education authority to provide
information on the measures it is taking, if any, to ensure that the
number of learners in this situation reduces over
time.’. Government
amendments 265, 268, 269, 273, 281 to 284, 274 to 279 and
350.
Jim
Knight: Amendment 350 is a technical drafting amendment,
consequential on amendments to clause 47. Amendments 281 and
282 ensure that the general duty on local authorities in section 13 of
the Education Act 1996 Act applies to those young persons
subject to detention in relevant youth accommodation.
Amendment 282 also clarifies that young persons subject to a
detention order will be regarded as part of the population of the local
education authority area in which they are detained, for the purposes
of section 13 of the 1996 Act. Those amendments will move the
definition
of “subject
to a learning difficulty
assessment” from
proposed new section 15ZA to section 13 of the 1996 Act. The other
Government amendments in the group are consequential on that
change. 12.15
pm I
understand the intention behind amendment 231. I have placed on the
record our commitment to ensuring that the needs of all learners,
including those with learning difficulties and disabilities, are met by
local authorities. A range of measures is in place to ensure that the
needs of that group of learners and the provision provided to them are
tracked. The client case load information system that local authorities
maintain as part of Connexions enables local areas to track the
activity and offers made to young people in their area, including those
with learning difficulties and/or
disabilities. All
16 and 17-year-olds who wish to continue their learning are guaranteed
an offer by the end of September that meets their needs. Information is
collected by my Department on the number of suitable offers that are
made. We also collect information on the number of 16 and
17-year-olds not in education, employment or training, the number of
young people attaining level 2 by 16 and 18, and the number attaining
level 3 by 19. That supports the delivery of our public service
agreement targets. Public service agreement 16 is separate and focuses
on socially excluded groups and improving the employment rate for
people with moderate to severe learning difficulties.
National
PSAs are reflected in local areas as a series of local area agreements.
The structures are therefore already in place to ensure that local
authorities can be held to account for the delivery of their new duties
under the Bill. As local authorities assume the new duties, they will
become part of the existing outcomes-focused performance management
system supported by Government offices. They will be assessed and
inspected by Ofsted and other inspectorates to check on local authority
performance. Amendment
231 proposes that the Secretary of State requires local authorities to
set out and submit how they intend to reduce gaps in provision. As I
have said, that power is not necessary because local authorities
working within their children’s trust partnerships, which are
being strengthened by the Bill, already have a duty to publish a
children and young people’s plan. Subject to the successful
passage of the Bill, the plan will have to encompass the provision of
education and training to young people. On the basis of those
reassurances, I hope not only that the Committee will agree
to the Government amendments, but that amendment 231 will not be
pressed to a
vote.
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