Examination of Witnesses (Quesstion Numbers
200-221)
ALISON ASHWORTH-BROWN,
ANDY PALMER,
RICHARD WAINER
AND TOM
WILSON
8 FEBRUARY 2010
Q200 Chairman: Tom, has the
TUC done any work on—we're getting quite close: I asked
a question in the House only on Thursday; it's only three years—the
kids who are well into the system who are going to be part of
this raising participation age generation? We'll know some of
the things that are on offer to our 16 to 18-year-olds, but there's
certainly a class of NEETS-plus young people in work without training.
Has the TUC thought about the sort of programmes that would have
to come in at that stage, because that is compulsion, isn't it?
There's no alternative. You've got to do one of those things.
Tom Wilson: Well, we wouldn't
describe it as compulsion. We haven't done the research ourselves,
but we have relied—
Q201 Chairman: You're not
going to be able to get any benefit if you don't go on one.
Tom Wilson: It depends, if you
drill down into the depths of it. We haven't done the research
ourselves but other organisations—notably, NIACE—have
done, or have commissioned research in turn on the sorts of programmes
that might work. Even if you take the most intractable group of,
say, serial ex-offenders with all sorts of drug abuse problems
and family breakdown histories, there's always something you can
do to try to incentivise and motivate people like that. We're
convinced that, with the effort, you cannot take the easy route
of compulsion, and if you do you've failed, because you aren't
going to teach people through that route. It may be that the benefits
system has a part to play in strong encouragement and incentivisation
to help people through that. That's all to the good. We're strongly
in favour of linking together the benefits system and the education
system, and great strides are being made on that, which are long
overdue in our view. But that's the route. Yes, you're right:
more research would be useful, but a fair amount has been done.
Andy Palmer: Similarly, I believe
that if we get to the point of compulsion it would be a declaration
of failure in many ways. Certainly, before that point, I'd want
to see a significant effort made to raise aspiration and ambition
and give young people the option of choice. As long as that choice
can then be backed up by opportunity, following that choice, if
we try to exhaust that—
Q202 Mr Stuart: Have we not
done that? Is that not what we've been doing for the last 20 years?
Tom's been doing fantastic work for the last 13 years. There might
even be some credit for the Government before that to some extent.
There has been a regular effort—
Andy Palmer: A personal view is
that I still don't think we are doing enough to show people the
opportunity and the benefit personally that being at work and
being in education gives them, as opposed to taking what may be
seen as easier options. I think we still have a generation of
young people who hope to become famous or to take the easy route
and not realise that, actually, work gives them other benefits
and aspirations.
Chairman: Right, can we move on?
Q203 Annette Brooke: Actually,
I can't understand why we're not doing these things now. Can I
ask a more generic question of everybody. If you were writing
a report for the new incoming Government, however that turns out,
what would be your top priority policy areas to turn this situation
round?
Richard Wainer: I guess it depends
on whether you're talking about prevention or cure, really. Are
we talking about those within the NEETs group now or are we talking
about ensuring that we perhaps break the cycle and break that
stubbornly high level of NEETs we've got at the moment? In the
long term, we've got to look more at the cure side of things and
ensuring, as I said earlier, that we've got much stronger links
between education and employment. We must ensure that, at the
very least, all young people come out of the education system
functionally literate and numerate and have the broad base of
employability skills. That's got to be the No. 1 priority. Yes,
if you're looking at a cure, there can be much more done around
joining up services—whether education, careers, housing
or social care—to ensure that we're addressing the range
of problems that many of these young people have. But as I said,
the focus has got to be on preventing that from happening in the
first place.
Annette Brooke: Any additions?
Alison Ashworth-Brown: We have
to focus on it, as Richard said earlier on, so we need to do more
in schools. We need to stop being able to turn out of schools
some youngsters who can't read and write properly. We need to
pick that up much earlier and stop leaving it to the post-16 education
area. It needs to be a lot more joined-up. There needs to be better
careers advice and guidance and parity of esteem across all the
different areas—apprenticeships, university, college, those
types of things—so that youngsters can truly make an informed
choice of what is best for them at that point. We also need some
stability and simplicity in the system. We have had lots and lots
of change in the education system, in the qualifications system—in
everything that we do. So I think that a bit of stability and
a bit of simplicity would be useful for everybody, including the
young people.
Annette Brooke: Right. If we've reached
the end of the line on that one, I'll move on.
Tom Wilson: Just one more point:
the people who often learn most about the particular needs of
NEETs are the colleges. To some extent, schools learn but it is
often colleges—local big FE general colleges—because
they are the ones that, for years, have been providing the kind
of very basic level introduction or entry to employment skills.
If there was a system whereby some pot of money could be allocated
to colleges, tied to their success in lowering the NEET rate in
their locality, and leaving it to them to work out the best way
to do that, which would vary enormously by locality—by region
and all the rest of it—that might be worth trying.
Q204 Chairman: I want to come
back to Alison on the point that you made about the ability to
read and write. Does anyone know what percentage of NEETs just
do not have the facility to speak English? It came up in Holland,
very loud and clear, that there was a problem with new immigrants
not being able to speak Dutch, which was a tremendous barrier.
So the compulsion either to be in work, in education or in training
gave them a pretty good way of encouraging people to learn the
Dutch language. Does anyone know the figures for the UK? Has there
been any research on it? No?
Witnesses indicated dissent.
Chairman: Oh well, perhaps we'll ask
some of our other witnesses.
Q205 Annette Brooke: I wonder
if you could answer my next question fairly briefly. What contribution
do you think the new diplomas will make to some of the problems
that you have identified and have employers been sufficiently
involved in devising those courses?
Richard Wainer: From a broad employer
perspective, I think that diplomas in the sector-specific areas
that we were talking about—IT and areas like that—are
a positive development. They increase the range of options that
are open to young people. As Andy said, if it came to compulsion,
it probably would be a declaration of failure. We have got to
ensure that young people see value in staying on, and that means
catering for a wide range of needs and interests. I think that
if we can have high-quality diplomas that provide a different
type of learning opportunity for young people who will value that
sort of thing, then great. I think that lots of employers have
been involved. Andy, through e-skills, has been involved in the
IT diploma. There has been strong employer involvement in designing
those qualifications. I think that the issue arises regarding
delivery and how effective our schools, colleges and employers
are at working together to deliver the work experience elements
that are so vital to ensuring that the diploma is a success.
Q206 Annette Brooke: How far
have you got involved with the delivery, Andy?
Andy Palmer: With a significant
amount of diplomas, BT has been very involved with the initial
design of the curriculum for the diploma in IT and now going through
to delivery. I think that there will be a great opportunity for
people to mix both the academic and the vocational. I think that
part of the issue at the moment is that there is not the parity
of esteem between the diplomas and the more traditional route,
and young people who are viewed as being less academic are being
encouraged to undertake the diploma. Having said that, some of
the young people we meet who are undertaking the diploma are superb
young people. They are extremely talented and will be hugely beneficial
to the IT sector in the future. We have obviously been involved
in the development of the diploma and now, through provision of
work-based projects and engaging with the young people who are
undertaking the diploma, we want to support the delivery of the
diploma. The key for us is once again going back to the parents
and back to the teachers. For the parents, it must be an acceptable
programme for their children to undertake and for the teachers
they must not drive "less academic" people towards the
diploma.
Q207 Annette Brooke: Graham's
not here, so I can't wind him up about what appears in league
tables and what doesn't. I'll move on. There is a great deal of
concern from certain quarters that currently there are young people
who are in a job that isn't taking them anywhere other than having
a commitment to get up in the morning. How do you think the Government
could encourage you—perhaps excluding Tom from this, but
employers—to provide more training for 16 to 18-year-olds
in this bracket?
Richard Wainer: The last time
I think I looked at the figures, we have about 60,000 16 to 18-year-olds
who are in employment without recognised training. It doesn't
mean that they are in employment without training, but it means
that they are not working towards a nationally recognised qualification,
for example. Yes, in an ideal world, we would want those young
people to be working towards a high-quality qualification that
will be a good start to their career. But what we don't want to
do, with the legislation raising participation age coming in,
is to discourage employers from even providing those employment
opportunities in the first place through requiring them to put
their young employees through training programmes that might not
be particularly relevant to their business. What we certainly
encouraged the Government to do as they worked through their plans
to raise participation age was to ensure that apprenticeships
remain fit for purpose, that national vocational qualifications
fit what employers want and, where possible, that employers' existing
training programmes can be easily mapped across to recognised
qualifications. It is about ensuring the qualifications system
better maps on to what employers want and our delivery, rather
than the other way round.
Andy Palmer: For a number of small
and medium-sized enterprises, the idea of taking on a young person
and engaging them in a development programme—perhaps an
apprenticeship—is daunting. The Government's work to reduce
complexity of the system for SMEs that are engaging with apprenticeships
would be good alongside the bureaucracy and ensuring that employers
could be absolutely sure that the training provided by a training
provider was in line with the need, and not simply the easiest
thing that the provider was able to deliver, or what it has been
delivering for the last three years.
Q208 Chairman: Andy, couldn't
someone like BT do a tremendous job here just by looking down
your supply chain and saying, "We will not deal with people
who don't train."
Andy Palmer: We certainly encourage
our supply chain to train, and recently we've become involved
in group training associations. Over in the east of England, there
are a number of companies that fall within our supply chain around
our research path. We are part of a group training association
there, where small companies that have never—
Q209 Chairman: Where in the
east of England are you?
Andy Palmer: At Adastral Park
by Ipswich. Small companies that have never considered taking
on apprentices before are now taking them on, supported by BT,
which supports them in engaging with colleges and funding providers,
and giving the young people working in those companies the opportunity
to come to BT sites and experience what it is like to be an apprentice
in a large company. So we're giving them the complete, rounded
view of employment.
Q210 Annette Brooke: I'm still
a bit concerned about the young people who are not ready to go
on an apprenticeship—those without the basic skills. Is
there not more that we can do right across the board with employers?
They may employ young people who are lacking in literacy skills,
for example. Is there no more that we can do than we are doing
now to encourage that type of training?
Andy Palmer: It depends on whether
it is viewed as training. A number of employers have outreach
into local schools and colleges where volunteers are able to go
in and work with young people. I don't think it necessarily needs
to be through programmes that are specifically focused on basic
skills. I think there are other opportunities for employers to
engage in programmes that are taking place in schools, which build
basic skills at the same time as doing other things that are attractive
or interesting to young people. I think employers have a role
through volunteering to go in and work with the schools and colleges.
Q211 Chairman: Let Tom and
Alison come in. Some of the employers might well say to me, in
my constituency, "We want to train people. Why the hell should
we teach them literacy and numeracy skills?"
Tom Wilson: Well, I can see that.
On the other hand, these sorts of young people have had many,
many years of school and possibly college and it hasn't succeeded.
The notion that by just giving them a few more years they are
likely to somehow crack it is implausible. For those sorts of
young people, the status, regular occupation, peer group pressures
and all the things that go with employment are crucially important.
Typically, for example, these are the sort of young people who
in previous years went off and joined the Army. I am not suggesting
that the Army is the right route for every young person, but there
are lessons to be learned from the success that the Army has in
dealing with people who often lack the basic skills. A very high
proportion of the Army's recruits these days come into that category.
Within a short time, the Army is able to give them pretty good
skills. So there are issues, lessons and inferences that can be
learned from that for employers. But I take Barry's point: you
need to incentivise employers to do that and make sure that whatever
is being offered is appropriate to those young people. That is
why I come back to the notion of some kind of pre-apprenticeship
programme that gives a decent, structured framework within which
you can give them a meaningful, decent job with appropriate pay
and conditions, and the right skills.
Q212 Annette Brooke: So do
we need a subsidy for employers with a few strings attached to
take on young people?
Tom Wilson: Well, if we're offering
£2,500 to some employers to take on apprentices, why not
offer similar levels of subsidy for pre-apprenticeships?
Alison Ashworth-Brown: I take
the point about why employers would want to spend their time training
youngsters to read and write because, in most apprenticeships,
they are really looking for those kind of skills to start off
with—that they can read and write, get up and come to work
and things like that. You are really talking about a different
programme, like a pre-apprenticeship programme, which would have
to be done with employers as a separate programme and would have
to be incentivised, because you are putting a whole different
skill set in to train them to be able to read, write and come
to work on time, before moving on to do the next bit. The challenges
will be around the types of employers who are geared up to do
that kind of thing, if you want them to do it in-house. Very small
employers will struggle with being able to do that, so you are
then back to your training providers when actually you probably
need to make this an employment-type programme. As Tom said, you
need to give them that kind of experience of going to work.
Q213 Chairman: So in your
experience—you are very experienced in this—would
you trust the FE sector to do it or would you look to the big
private trainers such as BT, Capita and others who have given
evidence to the Committee?
Alison Ashworth-Brown: I know
who you mean.
Chairman: Are they good people? In the
past, they have gone into local authorities and turned them around.
Alison Ashworth-Brown: If I was
doing it for our company, I would probably treat it the same way
as our apprenticeship scheme, but do it in partnership with somebody
who was used to doing numeracy, literacy and things like that.
You can't farm it out completely to a training provider or college,
because you've got to have that employer input. It is really going
to be a partnership programme. It can't just be a matter of the
employers paying them and doing bits and pieces, and a training
provider coming in once a week. You need a much stronger programme
than that.
Q214 Chairman: What I am saying
is: who do you trust as a provider of those services?
Tom Wilson: As I said before,
I trust FE colleges because they have a long experience of doing
it.
Q215 Chairman: I had the Fairbridge
group giving evidence just now and I asked about its young people
who might want to train to be tube drivers. I think I heard on
Radio 4 that tube drivers earn £40,000 and have eight and
a half weeks' holiday. The person I was questioning said that
that was not an exciting enough job for the young people of between
16 to 25 with whom he is working. I cannot remember the expression
he used but, obviously, it was not a glamorous enough job. What
do we do about the people who want to be soccer players, film
stars or pop idols? I would have thought that for this category
of NEETs, £40,000 a year and eight weeks' holiday would be
a great incentive. Is that not the case, Tom?
Tom Wilson: If those figures are
true, but I am not entirely sure that they are.
Chairman: They were not corrected by
the trade union members of yours who appeared on the Radio 4 programme.
They seemed to be quite proud that they had built up their members
to that sort of level.
Tom Wilson: It must be true in
that case. There are plenty of young boys who imagine that somehow
they will be playing for Manchester United. The answer to that
is to take them to Manchester United, or the local team, show
them round, give them a flavour of what it really means—the
hard work, the graft and the skill that you need to get to the
level. For 99 out of 100, the scales will fall from their eyes
and they will begin to think a bit more practically and realistically.
Ditto with girls. Many of them want to be, say, a top hairdresser,
because it can be a pretty well paid job and it has a lot of style
and glamour about it. If you take them to the local hairdressing
salon and show them what they need to do to work their way up
inside that profession, they get a much more realistic image.
That is what you have to do, and it is what FE colleges are good
at. They do that, then build on that and find ways of using those
vehicles to teach the kids the skills that they need.
Q216 Paul Holmes: A couple
of weeks ago, we went to the Netherlands to look at NEETs, which
for them is 18 to 27. We saw a sort of one-stop shop, which comprised
Jobcentre Plus and a medical assessment there and then, within
half an hour—rather than people having to come back in four
or five weeks. There was also a direct line to housing; people
there said that they could get a young person into emergency housing
accommodation within 20 minutes. There was a training restaurant
in the basement. Richard, in the CBI report Towards a NEET
solution you said that what we need in this country is more
one-stop shops that offer health, housing and all sorts of advice.
Why do we not do that? If the Netherlands can do it, why don't
we?
Richard Wainer: We do it in pockets.
Since that report, we have published another one as well, which
I can circulate to Committee members. Organisations such A4e and
Working Links take an individual's budget and, working in consultation
with that young person, identify the services from a variety of
sources that they will need to get them back on track. Therefore,
it happens in pockets, but what we are calling for in our reports
is for more of that to happen, because those sorts of organisations
can demonstrate good success rates.
Andy Palmer: Obviously, from an
employer's point of view, a single point of co-ordination is probably
what we would be looking for. Our lives would be far easier if
we could have our engagement with a single point of contact that
could then draw on resources of a large organisation through that
single point. It will be much easier to engage with than the multiple
points that we currently have.
Q217 Paul Holmes: There are
lots of calls for employers to be more involved in schools and
for schools to be more relevant to employers. I thought that academies
and specialist schools were supposed to have solved all that.
Why are people saying that we need to do it?
Richard Wainer: I think that it
is improving, but it will not change overnight. We must recognise
that developing partnerships with schools is not a business's
core activity—I do not think that it is for the vast majority.
What we need to do is make a much better business case for them
to get involved. We in the CBI are certainly keen to do that and
to advocate much better partnerships with schools among our members,
which is based around the business benefit—that of developing
their staff and a good local and regional reputation. I do not
think that small employers recognise the business case for doing
that. We need to be articulating it much more effectively.
Alison Ashworth-Brown: It takes
a lot. We have a schools strategy with quite a lot of schools,
but it takes a lot of time, effort and money for a company to
do that. It takes people away from their core activity. You do
it because it helps to develop your staff. It helps if outside
networks develop young people, and you do it as part of your corporate
social responsibility as well. The small employers, however, do
not have that kind of time to call upon. If there are only two
or three of them, it is hard for them to do that kind of thing.
Richard Wainer: Unfortunately,
it has to be fairly easy for those sorts of employer. They do
not want to have to go into a school and develop a whole programme
themselves. Initiatives such as the Education and Employers Taskforce,
which I mentioned earlier, are helping to provide that advice
and guidance for companies and schools. This is a partnership.
Schools have to understand what businesses can offer and the employers'
perspective. It is about ensuring that there is support for employers
to do this because, as I said, it is not their core activity.
Q218 Chairman: Tom, do you
want to come in? What is the TUC doing? These are all possible
members of yours if you can get them interested in joining the
work force and getting the skills, aren't they? You had some innovative
programmes in the TUC. Are you doing anything new in this area?
Tom Wilson: Well, we'd like to
think we are. We are doing two things. The first is our network
of union learning reps, which now includes 24,000 in workplaces
up and down the country. Many of them, with their employers, have
developed pretty good links with their local schools and colleges.
Either they will go to the school or college, or, more often,
the young people will go to the workplace. That is much more effective
in our view. They are shown around and given an idea of what it's
like to work there. That is a very good way of opening up links,
and so on. Conversely, we have a new programme to go into schools
and, through the citizenship curriculum, teach young people about
trade unions. We have an interesting pack, which I am happy to
circulate to the Committee, which includes a range of materials
that people can use, whether they be tutors or teachers, with
children of all levels. Primary school kids can learn about the
Tolpuddle martyrs or there is much more advanced stuff about the
role of the unions in the Second World War. We find that that
is growing rapidly. Lots of teachers are seizing on it because
it is an interesting and effective way of ticking the citizenship
box on the curriculum. Also, because it is a bit novel and interesting
and it brings in people from the workplace, it works well with
the young people.
Andy Palmer: For employers to
engage with schools and the like, there is actually a requirement
that the employer voice is truly heard. The curriculum development
for the diploma is one of the first times that the employer voice
has really been heard and flowed through to the curriculum in
the school and college area. We certainly hope that we can have
a similar influence when it comes to the reform of the GCSE in
IT, for example. There is a constant battle for the employer voice.
It is not about a requirement for oven-baked young people, but
just about being very articulate about what the skills are that
we as employers are looking for from our young people. There is
a constant battle between that and the education profession. At
a local level, we can engage with schools. We can go in and support
extra-curricular and curriculum activities. It comes back to the
difficulty of the co-ordination at a regional level. Employers
at a regional level aren't co-ordinated to work with schools or
colleges.
Q219 Paul Holmes: Are British
employers up for being involved in training and education in the
way you often see in European countries? Over the years, the Committee
has been to Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands to look at colleges,
apprenticeships and NEETs. It has always struck me that in those
countries there is an expectation that employers will work with
schools and colleges, and that they will offer apprenticeships
and training places. That expectation is on a level that we don't
have in this country.
Richard Wainer: I was—
Chairman: Alison, go on.
Alison Ashworth-Brown: I think
that there are many employers who are up for working with schools
and colleges. You will find it is stronger where you have had
traditional apprenticeships, such as in our industry and in BT,
because we have been doing it for a long while. You have to start
bringing on board employers in newer industries to have that kind
of involvement.
Chairman: Anyone else?
Tom Wilson: Our answer in the
TUC would be no, absolutely not—there is nothing like the
same tradition in this country. There are some leading employers
that, as people have said, are good at leading the way. On the
whole, the average employer in this country does not do anything
like the level of engagement with the education system as those
in Europe, or indeed America. This is not a European thing. We
are almost unique in the OECD in this respect. Richard might say
that, actually, that is a bit unfair, and that compared with the
rest of the OECD, UK employers invest as much in training, if
not more, but we would say that that is often in very different
kinds of training, and that, even if they do, it is not necessarily
an indication of the extent to which they are engaged at all kinds
of other levels to do with curriculum, encouragement and so on.
I think that we have a long, long way to go on this.
Andy Palmer: Part of the issue
is this: I am not convinced that employers are aware of the alternatives
that are available to them when it comes to recruiting young people.
I don't think enough employers are aware of the benefit of recruiting,
for example, a higher apprentice who goes on to undertake a foundation
degree, as opposed to recruiting a graduate. I think that employers
need much greater awareness of the opportunities that apprenticeships
and vocational education can offer, as opposed to the traditional
routes that they follow at present.
Richard Wainer: Tom did a bit
of my job for me. Employers invest their time and £39 billion
a year in training, but only one third of that actually goes towards
recognised qualifications. If this is the kind of engagement that
we want, perhaps we have to look at the qualifications system.
If we want more of our young people to get high-quality, recognised
qualifications, we have to ensure that the qualification fits
with what employers want in terms of training and skills development,
rather than forcing them to take on an apprentice through a framework
that does not quite fit their business needs. We need to look
at the qualifications system and ensure that it reflects what
business and private sector employers want, rather than the other
way round.
Q220 Chairman: It is interesting
that most of you seem to be very much in favour of the carrot
rather than the stick, except, perhaps, Alison. I think you got
close to saying that some of these young people should be taught
a lesson about working, and that they should be pushed a bit with
a stick, rather than seduced with a carrot. Is that fair?
Alison Ashworth-Brown: I am not
in favour of complete compulsion, but I am in favour of dealing
with young people much earlier. They really need to understand
what work is all about.
Q221 Chairman: So you would
be pushing not at 14 to 19, but at 11 to 14.
Alison Ashworth-Brown: Yes, if
you've started to lose them at 11, once they go into secondary
education and are starting to truant and so on, you're not going
to get them back at 16.
Chairman: You can pretty much predict
whether children will become NEETs quite early on in their school
career.
Alison Ashworth-Brown: Unless
you can get them back on track, yes, they will end up at some
point either not in a job that you would want them to end up in,
in the NEETs group or disappearing.
Chairman: So the special attention and
extra resources are much better placed earlier, because it becomes
much more expensive later, doesn't it?
Alison Ashworth-Brown: It does.
Chairman: We've run out of time because
we had all kinds of interruptions today. This has been a very
good session and we've learned a lot. Will you please remain in
contact with the Committee? Normally, people say to us that they
get on the bus or the tube and think, "Why didn't I say that
to the Committee?" or, "Why didn't they ask us that?"
If you remained in contact, we would be most grateful. Thank you.
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