| Previous Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |
At present, many young people in Britain lack these skills. Interestingly, at the age of 15 our young people now do as well in literacy and numeracy as young people in France and Germany, but by the time they
1 July 2008 : Column 183
Amendment No. 36 insists that, in the case of part-time education and training, the required number of guided learning hours take place away from the individual’s work station. It may be on the employer’s premises, around the corner; in many cases that is the best possible arrangement. It must be a place separate from where the individual does his job. It must be a place where he can concentrate on acquiring the underpinning knowledge, numeracy and literacy that develop through analysing problems. That is what the amendment proposes.
We know that many employers will not like this suggestion. They will argue, correctly, that on-the-job training is as valuable as off-the-job training. They may, incorrectly, argue that you can have one without the other, and that is enough. You need both. That is the point which everybody concerned with education inequality has always stressed. We need the off-the-job element to develop transferable skills. That is why this can claim to be an Education and Skills Bill, not just a skills Bill.
6.30 pm
We should reconsider the enforcement issues that we touched on previously. Enforcement is important. How could we know whether 280 hours of guided learning was being undertaken if some of the learning that could count was on the job? Simply by looking at somebody who was working at his work station with his supervisor near by, how could we know whether he was getting guided learning? One cannot enforce the provision of guided learning hours on the job. It seems to me that if we want the landmark Bill which the Government want, we have to tighten up the definition of guided learning to mean that which is carried out off the job. I suspect that the Minister will refer to Clause 6, which states:
- “‘relevant training or education’ means training or education towards an accredited qualification provided by a course or courses”.
He may try to argue that that somehow makes it off the job. If it does, let us call it off the job. If it does not, you can easily see how some qualifications, for example an NVQ which could be studied entirely on the job, could be redesignated as courses. The meaning of words can be changed. We do not want an Act in which the meaning of words can be changed in such a way that they completely alter its purpose.
In this connection I refer to some shocking statistics. Under the modern apprenticeship scheme, which the Government fund, the apprentice is meant to be studying not only for an NVQ but for a technical certificate, which allows, typically, a day a week off the job. Two
1 July 2008 : Column 184
Amendment No. 38 concerns the amount of education or training; that is, 280 hours of guided learning. However, Clause 8(2) contains a let-out because it states that the relevant person can be “completing” a course which would normally require those hours. I am not sure what “completing” means; it is a very peculiar word, but I assume that it means participation. Does this mean that you do not have to have 280 hours of guided learning; that you have to be involved in a designated course but do not have to do those hours? It is easy to see how a youngster could be signed up for a course that he finds so easy that he does not need to do all the hours that are normally assigned to it. What do we as education reformers think should happen? If a course is so easy that the relevant student can do it in less time than is allocated to it, he should do something more difficult or he should finish it off quickly and move on to something more difficult. This is about raising the population’s education aspirations, not getting a quick fix.
Many employers will approach the Bill in a spirit of devising what is the least they can get away with. When you read it—I am sure that the Minister and his officials read it this way—you should ask yourself how employers will try to get round its provisions. Many young people will also want to get round them. Tens of thousands of young people will collude with their employers to do the least that they can get away with rather than satisfy the Bill’s spirit, which is to extend the part-time or full-time education leaving age to 18. That is what the Bill is about. Amendment No. 38 would close that let-out. I hope that the Minister can see the risks involved in Clause 8(2). I have been told that the aim of the clause is simply to allow for occasions when the relevant person fails to complete the 280 hours due to sickness. If that is the case, let us call a spade a spade and say that rather than have the remarkable form of words to which I referred.
There is a lot at stake in both the issues raised in these amendments. We are looking to the Bill to set the parameters of the education system for the next quarter of a century. We should not be thinking about what we can get employers to accept next year. In fact, the Bill will not be fully enacted for seven years. We should be thinking reasonably ambitiously about an education system that is appropriate for this country for the next 25 years. I am sure that the Government want this to be a landmark Bill which will transform the life chances of at least a third of our young people, but it will not do that unless they make the changes which I have suggested. I beg to move.
1 July 2008 : Column 185
Baroness Walmsley: I have considerable sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Layard. Clearly, none of us wants to let anybody off the hook as regards doing the right thing for young people and enabling them to learn in a way that is appropriate for their age and abilities and improving their employability in the long run. I am very keen on calling a spade a spade, but parliamentary draftsmen are not very expert at doing so in language which most of us understand. Therefore, the Minister may explain that these words are required to call a spade a spade in the terms in which a Bill needs to be written and do not provide excuses to allow people to get round what they ought to be doing.
Noble Lords will be aware that we on these Benches are not happy about the compulsion element in the Bill. However, we certainly agree that it is highly desirable that young people are given every opportunity by their employers to improve their skills and expertise, and are entitled to time and input from them in order to do so. I shall listen to the Minister’s reply before I fully make up my mind on whether I think the words suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Layard, are needed to achieve his objective.
Baroness Morris of Yardley: I, too, am sympathetic to the sentiments behind the amendments of my noble friend Lord Layard, for two reasons. They inject aspiration into this part of the legislation. Although it was said in an earlier debate that we were talking about the 10 per cent who are not engaged in education, training or employment, we are talking about a framework for everyone in an age group. This measure would particularly affect 16 to 18 year-olds who are in employment but are not receiving education as well. It is directed not just at those who have chosen not to engage but at those who have engaged for whom we should be getting a better deal.
The amendments that we have discussed so far today have explored the parameters of education and training. We are trying to develop the concept of education and training further than we could in our Second Reading speeches. A lot of the earlier debates concerned accredited courses. I am very sympathetic to making progress, having accredited courses and gaining certificates. However, now we are talking about another very important element of education. If you are entitled to education, you need that time to reflect on your practice, which you cannot do unless you get some time away from it. That is just as important to me as having the right to follow a course that leads to accreditation or a certificate. Being away from the concentrated efforts of doing something and having time to reflect on your practice is education not training. I know that that was not always the case, having been head of a sixth form in a former life, but private study for sixth formers is an opportunity, if they take it, to reflect on what they have been doing in a more pressurised situation with teachers.
I have sympathy with the amendments, because they provide time to reflect, evaluate, set your next targets and work out whether you have been tough or soft on yourself. Such an opportunity away from the work station, with a teacher providing guided time—I am not in favour of non-guided time—would be an
1 July 2008 : Column 186
Baroness Howe of Idlicote: The words of the noble Lord, Lord Layard, certainly raised some queries that I had not previously thought about. The yearly hours are stated in the Bill, but it would be important to know how they are spread out week by week. The noble Lord’s statistic that apprenticeship time has fallen dramatically from five hours to three illustrates the problems that we will face. I am sure that the Minister can explain that the position is not what we might think and that it is all neatly taken care of, but we would like a little more explanation.
Lord Adonis: The Government are being pulled two ways on this issue. I spent time in previous debates replying on issues related to concerns about excessive regulation by requiring 280 guided learning hours or courses that have been determined as equivalents to 280 hours—as provided in Clause 8(2). We have also been criticised for requiring courses accompanying employment to be accredited. We have taken that step because we wish these courses to be genuine and we want the 280 hours to be for real.
However, my noble friend wants us to go further and to specify that the guided learning undertaken by young people in full-time work should always be away from their workstation. We are trying to hold a credible middle ground between those two positions. It is not because of an oversight that we have not specified in the Bill that guided learning must be undertaken away from the workstation. My noble friend knows better than anyone what the intentions are behind our legislation, since there is no one more assiduous in engaging with us on the plans as we draw them up. I think that my noble friend has met every Minister in the DCSF concerned with these issues apart from me; and I know that a meeting will be forthcoming after the reply I shall give him. He knows it is our policy that there should be flexibility in this regard. It is not our policy that learning should always—I stress, always—be away from the young person’s workstation. Of course, many young people will be released by their employer to undertake training somewhere else, such as a college, so all of their learning will necessarily be away from their workstation. Other young people will receive part-time training provided by their employer, perhaps at a private training provider, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, but perhaps in their workplace also. It is appropriate that there should be that flexibility for training to be provided in those ways.
6.45 pm
One of the principles behind the changes that we are making to the 14 to 19 curriculum and qualifications is that learning should be personalised and delivered in a way that engages the young person and suits their individual needs and interests. That theme has been raised repeatedly in our debates. Some young people learn best when they can see the immediate practical relevance and application of what they are learning, so
1 July 2008 : Column 187
However, we absolutely agree with him that the learning that young people undertake must be of high quality, that it must be actual, guided learning, and that young people must be learning new things, not simply doing their day-to-day jobs. That is why we were not sympathetic to earlier amendments under which informal, unaccredited, in-house training should count towards the 280 guided-learning hours requirement of Clause 8, or that simply being employed without training should count.
I hesitate to raise my next point, but I will do so and thereby guarantee a meeting with my noble friend afterwards. I am advised that recent research is equivocal on the benefits of training away from the workplace in all cases. A long research paper by researchers who are familiar to my noble friend—Andrew Jenkins, Charley Greenwood and Anna Vignoles—was published in September 2007 by the Centre for the Economics of Education, which has a relationship with the LSE: The Returns to Qualifications in England: Updating the Evidence Base on Level 2 and Level 3 Vocational Qualifications. The research concluded that for men, the wage returns to level 2 vocational qualifications are in fact strongest when those qualifications are acquired in work, as opposed to in college or other settings, which suggested that in those cases learning on the job can be the most effective way of learning. That was described on page 40 of the research paper, which I have here and will give to my noble friend afterwards, because I know that he will wish to engage with us more fully. That gives further support to our contention that there should be flexibility in how learning is provided and we should not impose a rigid straitjacket by saying that in all cases the part-time education or training should be away from the workplace.
I stress again that it is not sufficient for on-the-job training and education simply to comprise skill-accreditation NVQs. Clause 6(1) explicitly states that young people must be doing “a course or courses”, which means a series of classes or lessons on a particular subject. It is not a question of simply being signed up for a qualification that can be achieved without any additional learning. A course must be involved.
I hope that I have gone some way to reassure my noble friend of the seriousness with which we take the requirement that accredited courses should comprise the learning component of part-time education and training, although I fear that we cannot go the whole way with him and require that all such courses be provided away from the workstation.
Lord Layard: I am grateful to my noble friend for his thoughtful answer. I have a few reactions. It would be helpful for there to be a definition of “a course” in the Bill, otherwise someone else, outside the Bill, can change the definition of a course. That is one obvious point. As regards the time, I have never said that all the guided learning should be off the job; all I was saying was that there should be a minimum amount. It goes without saying that a lot of guided learning should be on the job, but it is impossible to imagine any outside authority being able to or wanting to
1 July 2008 : Column 188
I was keen to stress the difference between away from the workstation and away from the place of employment. It is very desirable that things happen on the employer’s premises. It makes for the best possible integration, where the off-the-job element is happening as well as the on-the-job element—both on the employer’s premises, but not in the same room. One has to be careful about that distinction. I am wondering whether the Minister could get at the presumption that there is a minimum of off-the-job learning. This could be driven through with a cart and horses unless, somehow, there is a presumption that there is an off-the-job minimum or a tight definition of the person’s course, which ensures a quite substantial off-the-job minimum element. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 37 to 44 not moved.]
Clause 9 [Assignment of numbers of hours of guided learning to external qualifications]:
[Amendments Nos. 45 to 48 not moved.]
Lord Layard moved Amendment No. 49:
(1) The part-time education and training, including apprenticeships under section 2(1)(b), of young persons aged 16 to 18 shall be subject to the same levels of funding per person as that provided in relation to young persons in appropriate full-time education or training.
The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 49 relates to the funding of the additional education that the Bill seeks to promote. The greater part of the extra education induced by the Bill will be the part-time education or training, which is why we are spending so much time discussing it. That is aimed at people who presently do not get it. The amendment seeks to ensure that the
1 July 2008 : Column 189
There are two arguments for the amendment, each in itself sufficient to justify it. The first is a practical one, the second a matter of principle and social justice. I shall start with the practical argument. There is really only one major problem with implementing the Bill—finding enough employer places to enable young people who do not want full-time education to have a part-time education. That is the only practical problem. If that can be satisfied, the problems of enforcement will not be a big deal because people on the whole will be quite happy to have a job with a wage. I estimate that the number of additional places, with training, to be provided by employers is of the order of a quarter of a million. This is a very serious challenge even though we have got some time. Unless we can find those places, the Bill means that we are forcing young people into full-time education who do not want it, which is a pretty explosive thing to be doing.
How are we going to find these places? It is quite clear that we will not find them unless we have a financial inducement that can be paid to employers who take on young people in a training capacity—like the payments made in many countries to employers who take on apprentices. Such payments would be entirely reasonable. I shall give a few broad facts. At present, a training provider who provides a modern apprenticeship—not normally the employer—is usually paid about the same amount as an FE college providing a full-time education to someone of the same age. So, there is parity, if you like, on the tuition payments. However, students in full-time education also attract EMAs, child tax credits and child benefit. That adds up to approximately £1.5 billion. If a student is in an apprenticeship, he does not need an EMA, a child tax credit or child benefit because he is getting a wage. However, he does need a place.
The main problem with the Bill concerns the finding of places that will give opportunities to young people. Therefore, it seems eminently reasonable to use money to provide employers with places for young people to get a part-time education, just as it is reasonable to provide EMAs to induce young people to take full-time education. These are both parallel and complementary policies for securing extra educational enrolments. That is the practical argument.
| Next Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |