Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
184-199)
ALISON ASHWORTH-BROWN,
ANDY PALMER,
RICHARD WAINER
AND TOM
WILSON
8 FEBRUARY 2010
Q184 Chairman: May I welcome
Richard Wainer, Alison Ashworth-Brown, Tom Wilson and Andy Palmer
to our deliberations. Sorry it was a late start today for all
sorts of reasons, such as votes in the House of Commons. I shall
start by saying that this is a very serious inquiry. It is a short,
sharp inquiry in the sense that there is an election coming and
we want to get the report out before the election arrives—it
is coming quite fast, as you know. I want to riff through the
four of you. If you could briefly introduce yourselves and say
how, if you were Secretary of State, you would solve the NEETS
problem. Let's start with Richard.
Richard Wainer: My name is Richard
Wainer. I head up the CBI's education and skills policy team.
We put out a five-point plan to tackle youth unemployment in the
summer, which focused on apprenticeships and providing incentives
to encourage employers to take more young people on. The plan
also focused on the provision of more work placements—there
is a real responsibility on the business community to provide
those opportunities for young people—and looked at minimum
wage rates for young people to ensure they are not priced out
of employment opportunities. In effect, we want to ensure that
young people have opportunities to develop employability skills
and experience the world of work. We put out a five-point plan
and we are pleased to see that the Department for Business, Innovation
and Skills took up one particular aspect around providing incentives,
particularly for small employers, to take on young apprentices.
Q185 Chairman: Alison, I know
your company well. I am a great admirer of its skills and apprenticeships
work and all that. I have met some of your senior management to
talk about that in the past. What are your solutions for this?
Alison Ashworth-Brown: We have
to stop treating the NEET group as one distinct group. It is currently
made up of three different groups. The first part of the group
includes youngsters who would not normally be there if it was
not for the economic climate. Those youngsters would normally
have gone into an apprenticeship or employment. However, given
the current economic state and the fact that apprenticeships were
probably down about 50% last year—I definitely know they
were in our sector, so they probably were in every other sector
and the situation will probably be the same this year—those
youngsters have gone into the NEET group through no fault of their
own. The quickest way of moving them out of the NEET group is
to get the economy and the contracts that are held up going again,
which is not as easy as it sounds. You cannot deal with the other
two groups in the NEET group with one solution. Youngsters in
that group who have probably been failed by the education system
are not ready for work and need something between that and employability.
They need employability skills and skills topping-up so that they
are ready for employment. The other group, which we could refer
to as disenfranchised or something similar, are probably capable
of going to work in some cases, but can't be bothered. Obviously
some of those youngsters are disenfranchised, but not capable.
Those are the hard-core NEETs we used to have when I worked for
a training enterprise council. They will be the most difficult
to shift. The other two groups can be moved by different sets
of things that Richard has talked about with the economy, but
the hard core will be the most difficult. There are several ways
of dealing with the hard core. You could make them go on a training
course and so on, but whether it would work is another matter.
Q186 Chairman: Thank you for
that. Tom, we in this Committee have heard some nice things about
unionlearn in the past. We have a long collective memory, and
when considering some of the best pathways to advice about what
training is good and so on, unionlearn often comes up trumps.
What is your view of the NEETs problem? What Alison said is interesting.
I am sure she is right about the economy booting up, but this
was a persistent problem even when the economy was at the top,
wasn't it? The percentage was about the same as now.
Tom Wilson: Roughly the same,
yes. I think what the recession has done is to displace many people
into the NEET group who might otherwise have had a chance of a
job. You are right that it is roughly 10%, and seems to have been
around that for some time, or even higher depending on how you
measure it. Where I might take issue slightly with Alison is on
apprenticeships because our reading of apprenticeships as a whole
is that it's true that in some sectors, including yours, Alison,
they have dropped a lot, but overall I think they have held up
not badly, certainly compared with previous recessions. I think
there is a slight increase overall and a slight dip in the number
of younger apprentices. That is interesting, because it shows
that they are finally beginning to take a bit of purchase and
a hold. They are a genuine route out of NEEThood, for which the
Government should take a lot of credit. They have managed to turn
around a failing educational vehicle that is now largely successful.
Having said that, our worry about apprenticeships is that there
is a large cohort of people for whom an apprenticeship is not
yet right, and they are often in the NEET group. For them you
might need something such as perhaps a pre-apprenticeship, or
some kind of recognised structured system of delivering a range
of skills that would equip them for an apprenticeship, and would
help to distinguish and protect the apprenticeship brand, which
otherwise might be at risk of being diluted a bit. That is the
first point. Otherwise, the TUC's view is that much of what the
Government are doing is broadly on the right lines. There is the
young person's guarantee and, as Richard said, we strongly supported
investment in young people. The sort of analysis that Professor
Blanchflower made of the long-term scarring effects of unemployment
on young people has been very persuasive and has had a lot of
influence. There is broad consensus that we need a big investment
programme for the NEET group to stop that happening. Something
that is distinctive about the UK, and shows why we have a particular
problem, is that when you compare us with the rest of the OECD
it is striking that we have a much larger cohort, which is endemic
over many decades. I think the TUC view is that it is partly down
to the lack of a social partnership approach to education, learning
and skills and the fact that we still have a rather fragmented,
individualised, short-term approach to skills so that group inevitably
loses out. It takes a sustained, long-term approach to turn that
round.
Q187 Chairman: Could it be
anything to do with the fact that we had a dramatic decline in
the manufacturing sector?
Tom Wilson: Enormously, yes. I
think that was a big source of potential Level 2-type apprenticeships,
particularly for a lot of young men. That has all gone now.
Q188 Chairman: Andy Palmer,
it is very good to have you here because we feel that we have
the complete set in front of the Committee. Perhaps I can make
amends because I had a long conversation with someone from BT,
only to realise after talking with him about skills for half an
hour that he was from VT, not BT. Perhaps I can compensate this
evening. What is your solution?
Andy Palmer: If I were Secretary
of State for a day, my first focus would be information for young
NEETs to ensure that they had a better awareness of the world
of work and, through that awareness, greater choice and aspiration
than they have now. I would expect employers to play a significant
role in awareness of the world of work through the provision of
work placements and information about what it is like to work
in specific organisations and sectors. I would also expect them
to use their strength and power to get into the NEET groups and
help people with CV writing, general employability and so on.
I would then take a close look at the curriculum young people
are following between the ages of 14 and 19. I would ensure that
that curriculum prepared people for whatever choice they decided
to make, whether it was to go into work or on to further and higher
education. Regardless of whether someone made an academic or vocational
choice, I would ensure that there was parity of esteem between
the two and that people had equal opportunities to follow those
routes. Before even starting on my first day, I would suggest
looking at the term NEET, which feels very passive. Instead of
talking about individuals who are not in employment, education
or training, we should talk about individuals who are seeking
employment, education or training. I would therefore change it
from NEET to SEET.
Q189 Mr Stuart: Except that
it doesn't describe a certain percentage of those who are in that
condition, who would fail immediately. We heard Tom talking about
the need for a social partnership model, and if only we had that,
we would be like the other OECD countries. Can you explain what
that means?
Tom Wilson: Broadly what it means
is that there is much more of a consensus between employers, unions
and the state about vocational learning for that group of 16 to
25-year-olds, to take a broad cohort. To see that in practice,
the apprenticeship programme in Germany has a much stronger link
between employers, colleges, schools and the careers advice system
so that people are channelled early on into an appropriate route
for them.
Q190 Mr Stuart: Isn't that
what Connexions was supposed to do?
Tom Wilson: If you compared Connexions
with the German equivalent, it would be instructive. As Andy says,
social partnership works in a deep and wide-ranging way because
it can influence the curriculum. It means that even at the age
of 14, when young people are beginning to make choices, they can
see that it is a route that has real content, meaning and status
because it carries a decent wage. The employers are clearly supportive.
It is strongly supported by community organisations. It works
on a number of levels. It is not simple and it would take a while
to turn things around. To their credit, this Government are beginning
to make some moves in that direction. Many leading employers would
strongly support that kind of approach.
Q191 Mr Stuart: But we're
13 years into this Government. I know the TUC is obviously the
chief cheerleader for them—in fact the final funder left—so
it is perhaps not surprising that you give such a benign view
of their failure to make any dent in NEET numbers in good times
or bad. A big question we are trying to understand is why from
1997 to 2007, when we were in benign economic circumstances, we
didn't make any progress. We have touched on deindustrialisation.
It has been said that the rate of loss of manufacturing under
this Government is three times what it was under Margaret Thatcher.
I do not know whether that is true, but we want to understand
why the progress we had expected on the surface headline figure
was not made during those 10 years. We have struggled so far to
get from academics and NGOs a real understanding of what matters.
Chairman: Richard will tell us.
Richard Wainer: Tom was talking
about much stronger partnerships between employers and the education
system. We at the CBI are big supporters of that. We are part
of the new Education and Employers Taskforce, which wants to develop
much more productive partnerships between schools and businesses.
There is a real opportunity for employers to raise attainment
and aspiration among young people and give them much better advice
and guidance about what is available. As Tom and Andy were saying,
we want curriculum development to ensure that they are developing
the skills and knowledge that will be valuable to them in the
labour market. We have seen some good developments over recent
years, such as the sector-specific diplomas, and some of the progress
around education and business partnerships, but there is still
a long way to go before we have the strong partnership between
the education system and the world of employment afterwards.
Q192 Mr Stuart: So you basically
agree with Tom that the problem is one of co-ordination between
different bodies—schools, FE and employers—and that
we have so far failed to achieve that linkage.
Richard Wainer: Stronger links
between the world of employment and the world of education have
to be a better thing in ensuring young people are much better
prepared and better able to succeed in work.
Q193 Mr Stuart: Is that the
answer to our question? Failure to get those links right is why
the 10 years from 1997 to 2007 did not seem to go anywhere—on
the surface.
Richard Wainer: Potentially. There
are other issues around being NEET—not a nice phrase. There
are a lot of reasons for it. It is not just about education, but
social, health and a multiplicity of issues. It is about how we
can better join up the services. Connexions has not delivered
particularly well, but how has it joined up with health, social
and housing services to ensure that we are addressing all the
sorts of problems experienced by young people who are out of education,
employment or training?
Q194 Mr Stuart: We have had
huge investment in all those areas, and we do not see any movement.
Perhaps Alison can give us a better understanding of where we
have gone wrong.
Alison Ashworth-Brown: One of
the great problems is with what we term as the hard-core NEETs,
which we have had since Training and Enterprise Councils have
been in operation. We are probably on the same figures. Trying
to pick them up once they have left school is probably not going
from a standing start. You really need to pick them up while they
are in school. If you think you can change them from what they
were like in school just because they are out of school, and get
them back into either education or training, you're probably on
a hiding to nothing. One of the missing links is that you have
to pick them up much earlier in school—you have to do something
about the hard-core disaffected youngsters there and carry on
with it when they leave school. Most of the group who don't like
school or don't go to school usually end up in the hard-core NEET
group. Telling them they have to go into education or training
will not really work 100%.
Q195 Mr Stuart: Thank you,
Alison. The only trouble I have with that is that if we were sitting
here 10 years ago—and other people probably were—we
would have had exactly the same answer. One of the troubles and
frustrations in this job is that we think we are getting better
now, but here we are five years on and the position is unmoved.
We are trying to work out what has gone wrong. I do not think
there has been a radical change. It is not as though what you
are saying now is different from what they were saying 10 or 15
years ago, yet we have not managed to make these things work properly.
Chairman: Tom wants to come in.
Tom Wilson: With respect, although
the overall headline figure might look not that different, the
composition of the NEET group is very different, as Alison was
saying. Credit where it is due, the Government have achieved a
great deal on apprenticeships. That money is working. The National
Apprenticeship Service is doing a pretty good job. The fact that
the overall number of apprenticeships is actually slightly up
in total, despite what has been an absolutely acute recession—unprecedented
in the history of recessions in this country—must show that
some of that investment is reaching that group. It gives us some
pointers as to what we can do. I am not saying that everything
has succeeded, but some things clearly have.
Q196 Mr Stuart: I'm sorry
for drilling away on the same point, but I'm just trying to understand
why that is, because genuine effort was made and there was political
will, money and co-operation, and there were people like you 10
or 15 years ago, yet it did not change. One of our responsibilities,
and yours too, jointly, is to make sure that we don't find ourselves
in that position in eight years' time, when we might all wisely
agree with each other in a common-sense way but won't actually
have changed anything. We have heard academics say, "We don't
understand the youth labour market the way we perhaps did 20 years
ago", so maybe the change is there. Until we understand what
the reality is and what the causes are, we are unlikely to get
the policy response correct.
Chairman: Andy wants to come in on that.
Andy Palmer: I'm interested in
the idea of partnerships that we talked about earlier. I certainly
think that over the past 10 to 15 years there have been significantly
better partnerships between employers and the various groups that
can make a difference here. The issue, as I see it, is that there
are various places that employers can make a difference, some
at a national level, and sometimes that isn't what gets the headlines.
What gets the headlines is when at a regional or a local level
there is a breakdown in the partnerships. Certainly, for a large
national employer the concept of working at a regional and local
level, with heavy regionalisation and things done differently
in the north-west than the north-east, for example, is a great
challenge. We can engage at a national level very easily in attempting
to address some of those issues. It is when it is taken to a local
and regional level that it becomes significantly more challenging
and the networks break down.
Q197 Mr Stuart: Okay. Is there
enough incentive and opportunity for young people transferring
on to the benefits system to enter suitable education and training?
We recently came back from the Netherlands, and they have far
better numbers than we do. The trigger there is that they froze
local authority funding for social security, so suddenly if it
went up they would have to pick up the tab, and suddenly Amsterdam
initiated compulsory educational training for anyone with benefits
up to the age of 27, and that has now gone national. Is there
a role for more compulsion to ensure that young people enter training
or education if those opportunities are provided for them?
Alison Ashworth-Brown: One of
the big problems with compulsion is that putting people in education
and training does not always make them learn. With young people
who are heading for the NEET group, you have to get in early.
We have done some work with schools that are local to our head
office, and they have taken the incentive and said to us, "Can
you come in and do some things around parts of the curriculum,
but showing the kind of things there would be in the world of
work." If we can get them interested, we can tag on other
things and say, "Well, you can only come in to do that kind
of job if you now start to re-engage with education." That's
worked fairly well, so in that kind of partnership with employers
we can say, "This is what you can do in schools." Where
there are good schools that want to do that kind of thing, that
works quite well. When you compel youngsters to do something,
it is like telling a teenager that they can't go out.
Q198 Mr Stuart: Do you oppose
compulsion then, because otherwise we have people sitting around
doing nothing useful at all?
Alison Ashworth-Brown: Well, I
can see why we use it. However, once they had been on the scheme
or whatever we put them on, would it actually make them employable,
or would they just fall back into the NEET group?
Q199 Mr Stuart: Perhaps Richard
can comment on that. I would like a quick answer from everyone
on compulsion—yea or nay?
Richard Wainer: I think that those
sort of requirements should go hand in hand with good advice and
guidance to ensure that those young people understand the sort
of courses they are on and ensure that those courses are developing
the sort of skills that will get them jobs in their region or
locality. Compulsion is fine, but only if you have that advice
and guidance alongside it.
Tom Wilson: The TUC is strongly
in favour of raising the participation age but strongly against
compulsion. In our view, it would be a mistake and a failure.
As Alison said, if you talk to lecturers who try to teach students
who are in a classroom because they are forced to be there, they
will tell you that they are impossible to teach, unsurprisingly.
You simply cannot have any kind of meaningful teaching experience
in that kind of relationship. However, it clearly makes absolutely
no sense at all to encourage a system in which people can basically
do nothing much with their lives. Our view is that the great strength
of the raising participation age approach is strong incentivisation.
If it's not working, find out why it's not working, rather than
just resort to compulsion.
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