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The Lord Bishop of Ripon moved Amendments Nos. 163 and 164:
On Question, amendments agreed to.
[Amendments Nos. 164A to 165 not moved.]
Viscount Chelmsford moved Amendment No. 165A:
The noble Viscount said: I believe that there is a need for balance between those in training who have to do written examinations and those involved in NVQs. There is a fragile balance at this time. It is in the latter area that anxieties are being expressed currently.
I recollect that a year or two ago my own discipline, the insurance industry, was greatly alarmed when suggestions were made that qualifications could be
I am advised that the insurance industry training council and the Chartered Insurance Institute fully support the "employment" rather than the "academic" focus of career related qualifications. Also they have been pleased to see a growing recognition in the DfEE of the need for some sectors to have a heavier bias towards examined knowledge than others in the context of vocational qualifications.
So perhaps we can say that proponents of qualifications by written examinations are currently relaxed, but not so the proponents of competence based qualifications through NVQs. The CBI points out that NVQs are a much younger and less well established qualification: that they are a fundamental tool for the promotion of adult learning; and that they have not yet reached a critical mass and thus need a strong voice in order to remain closely related to employment needs. My own institute--I am president of IDPM, the institute for the management of information systems--supports this. So also, I am told, does the pharmaceutical and allied industries awarding body.
The first paragraph of my amendment calls for the establishment of an NVQ board to work within the framework of the new QCA to ensure that critical mass in adult learning through NVQs does in fact take place. When the discipline has matured, I suggest that such a board would no longer be necessary.
I am aware that Schedule 6 to the Bill allows the Secretary of State to direct the QCA to establish committees for specific purposes. I hope very much that he agrees with the current need to ensure NVQ maturity by retaining those best qualified to do so, as per the third paragraph of my amendment, and will be able to confirm that such a direction will be made.
My second paragraph responds to the fact that the Bill limits the activities of the QCA to the provision and dissemination of information. However, the role of the NCVQ included the requirement to market NVQs as per its 95/96 annual guidance document where it was emphasised that effective marketing was critical to take up. In effect this is also transitional but necessary in order to ensure NVQ maturity. I appreciate that the Minister may not think that the QCA or even a board set up below the QCA is the right place for marketing. But it is a job that needs to be done, and the Bill does not seem to cover it. If it is not to be covered here, who will have this responsibility once the NCVQ is no more? This is a probing amendment. I beg to move.
Lord Henley: I appreciate my noble friend's strong commitment to NVQ. It is a commitment that I share,
Sir Ron's vision, when he recommended setting up a single authority responsible for all qualifications, was to bring together the academic and vocational, and to tackle the divisions between education and training--rather along the lines of the spirit behind the merger that formed the Department for Education and Employment. I am therefore anxious not to enshrine that vision in a statutory constitution of the QCA by delegating the majority of the QCA's functions in respect of NVQs to some autonomous board that would be almost separate from the QCA. That would in effect mean that the QCA was responsible for academic matters with a separate body being responsible for NVQs. I hope my noble friend will accept that.
As to marketing, I do not consider that it would be appropriate for the QCA, or even one of its committees, to be involved in promoting one of the qualifications that it regulates. That could give rise to suspicions of conflict of interest. The QCA's function of publishing and disseminating information relating to external qualifications will help schools, colleges and employers to become aware of all the qualifications in the framework. That will include information on NVQs, including the advantages they can offer for individuals and companies.
My noble friend is right to point to the importance of promoting and marketing NVQs. One principal role should lie with the Government on the one hand, and with the industry representative bodies responsible for the development of qualifications on the other. However, I give my noble friend an assurance that, even if the Government play the lead role, there are many others involved in these matters--the CBI, the IoD, the Careers Service, further education colleges, the TEC network and individual firms, which have found NVQs such a powerful tool for improving skills and the motivation of their workforce. I hope that with those explanations my noble friend will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Viscount Chelmsford: I thank the Minister for his response. I do not intend to suggest that there should be an autonomous board, merely that I hope that he or his department might make a direction that a committee should, at least for a transitory period, give some protection to the NVQ side of training. I shall need to read the Minister's comments on marketing; however, I am grateful for them. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Whether Clause 40, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: The Committee will recall that the merging of the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA) and the National Council for Vocational Qualifications (NCVQ) was recommended by Sir Ron Dearing in his recent review of qualifications for the education of 14 to 19 year-olds. That proposal has been generally welcomed in relation to this age group and discussion of the Bill as a whole has concentrated on schooling and the education of young people. However, as the Bill is now drafted the functions of the proposed agency go far wider than this, and they will impact on the education and training of adults and their opportunities for lifelong learning. It is a matter which has barely been discussed.
Clause 40 of the Bill gives the new body functions in respect of "external qualifications", both academic and vocational. That is a very broad and very general description. Only exempted, as I said, are academic qualifications at first degree level or any comparable higher level. Clause 40 suggests that the agency will not only develop and publish criteria for the accreditation of vocational qualifications, of which there are thousands, but actually accredit them. There are already a large number--I think it is over 100 now--of independent awarding bodies, often charitable in structure, involved in this work.
Nowhere does the Bill take account of the differing needs of adults in respect of these qualifications. I think it is true to say that most adults study part time. Most adults fund their own studies; it is not easy for an adult to get himself or herself funded by some other body.
Increasingly, studies are modular. That is necessary. Many of us, especially people in higher education, have fought against this and regretted it because it imprisons the free spirit. One of the great virtues of the British university three-year undergraduate degree is that, on the whole, it does not work in these ridiculous modular structures which tell people what they have to do in sickening detail, following which they tick off the various answers to the questions produced when they take some sort of examination at the end of a term.
As I know from my work in my own subject, English literature, it is perfectly possible to have a module called "18th Century English Literature" which one can get through by reading three novels and six poems and knowing nothing whatever about anything else. But in this new form of higher and further education that we are moving into and shall have presumably throughout the next millennium, modular structures are the fashion--the norm--and we have to find ways of working with them.
Increasingly, studies are modular. Individual credits are accumulated over time to gain certification. Adults also have need of different types of certification mechanisms, such as the accreditation of prior learning, on which I place such a premium. Seventy per cent. of further education students, mostly studying vocational courses, are adults. Costs to learners are already high as few grants are available for part-time
For these reasons, among others which I do not doubt that the noble Lord, Lord Tope, will illustrate, we are not content that this clause should stand part of the Bill.
Page 34, line 23, leave out ("National").
Page 34, line 30, leave out ("National").
Page 34, line 49, at end insert--
("( ) The Authority shall establish a Board, to be known as the National Vocational Qualifications Board ("the Board") to which it shall delegate the functions falling within subsection (2) above where these relate specifically to National Vocational Qualifications.
( ) The Board shall have responsibility for the marketing of National Vocational Qualifications for such period as the Secretary of State shall direct but in no event for less than three years.
( ) The Board shall include a majority of members who have experience of, and have shown capacity in, industrial, commercial or financial matters.").
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