Debate on the Address

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord James of Blackheath, and to congratulate him on his excellent and very stimulating maiden speech. The noble Lord has had a most distinguished career in the City of London and in that respect he will contribute greatly to the deliberations of this House. He is also well known for his restorative powers, not least to ailing institutions; the Millennium Dome can be mentioned in this respect. He has already shown us how his quick analytical powers can cut through the problems of the National Health Service. It is perhaps significant that he has arrived here at a time when the Government are of the view that the composition and functions of this House need a fundamental overhaul. I have to say that it was gratifying to hear that his initial reactions at least are that this House works efficiently and well. However, I am sure that in this and many other ways, he will make a very substantial contribution to the workings of the House and we look forward very much to hearing from him in the future. My contribution to this debate will concentrate mainly on education. Like my noble friend Lady Walmsley, I was somewhat depressed to see yet again in the gracious Speech that the programme of legislation was dominated by issues of law and order. The more repressive we are, the less we seem able to control the underlying problems of terrorism, crimes of violence, binge drinking, wanton vandalism and hooliganism. My noble friend quoted the soundbite on which this Government came to power: ““Education, education, education””. They also used another soundbite: ““Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime””. No one will deny that they have been tough on crime but many will feel that they have been rather light on the causes of crime. Certainly so far as education is concerned, they have not really hit on the causes of crime. As my noble friend indicated, the pattern is well known and well documented: those who fall behind in school find it difficult to catch up. Roughly one in eight children leaves primary school without an adequate grasp of reading or maths to cope with their secondary school education—that is three out of every class of 25. In secondary school, they fall further behind. Eventually, those three out of 25 are likely to truant and drop out of school completely. Then they join the 16 to 19 year-olds known as the NEET group—not in education, employment or training. There are 200,000 young people in the NEET group and it is an indictment of the education policies of this Government that in nine years they have failed to shift those numbers. Without a job, and without education or training to qualify for a job, it is all too easy for those young people, when they are desperate for money to buy themselves the toys that so many young people have, to fall into a life of trading drugs and crime. We know that this is the cause of much of our crime and the more we can do to prevent these failures, the more we can do to limit the new entrants into crime. My noble friend stressed the importance of trying to stamp this out at an early stage and she instanced a visit she paid this morning to the I CAN initiative. In a Question on 4 December, I shall bring to your Lordships’ House the ““Every Child a Reader”” initiative. I received a letter from the head teacher of a school where this initiative is being piloted. She said: "““In educational terms it’s an extremely expensive initiative—paying a highly trained teacher half-time costs around £20K a year—and only a handful of pupils benefit. But what you’ve got to look at is how much those pupils benefit, and also at what the cost would be to society, in the years ahead, if they hadn’t mastered literary skills at this stage””." We should remember that the cost of keeping one young person in a young offender institution is now approximately £60,000 a year, leaving aside any costs that they may have caused to society through vandalism, hooliganism, court procedures and so on. On this basis, saving one youngster from a life of crime is very much worth while, but that half-time teacher at £20,000 a year will save not only one young person but probably anything up to a dozen a year. Therefore it is eminently worth while. Sadly, with parliamentary terms averaging four years, taking account of the long term is not one of the strengths—indeed, it is one of the weaknesses—of our forms of government. The only mention of education in the gracious Speech related to the Further Education and Training Bill. It stated: "““A Bill will be introduced to reform the further education system so that it can better equip people with the skills that they and the economy need””." At this point I should declare an interest as a member of the Corporation of Guildford College. More specifically, the Bill will be concerned with the restructuring of the Learning and Skills Council, aligning it more closely with the regional development agencies and putting more emphasis on employer involvement and matching local training provision to local employer needs; it will give degree-awarding powers to some further education colleges to encourage the expansion of the two-year foundation degrees; and it will give the Learning and Skills Council powers to intervene to remove principals from failing colleges where their boards of governors fail to act. I do not want to say much about the first or the third issue. On the restructuring of the Learning and Skills Council, I point out that when the Learning and Skills Act 2000 was before this House, we on these Benches argued strongly in favour of aligning the operations of the 47 local learning and skills councils with the RDAs. That is, in effect, happening, and I am glad that the Government have finally learnt from the wisdom of our arguments. Nor do I wish to say much about the proposals for the dismissal of principals. As they stand, the proposals go well beyond the powers of intervention provided in the Education and Inspections Act 2006 for local education authorities to intervene and remove the head teachers in failing schools. The powers proposed for further education colleges are disproportionate; they are also unnecessary. There are many cases where governing bodies have dismissed principals or persuaded them to step down. In this respect, the proposals also undermine the independent status of these boards. This is hardly an encouragement to the industrialists to join the boards, yet given the need for colleges to get closer to employers, those are precisely the people we want to encourage to join the boards of further education colleges. Coming from a higher education background, I was initially somewhat unhappy at the proposition to extend degree-awarding powers to further education colleges. Many colleges already work closely with universities—in fact, 11 per cent of higher education is performed in further education. The collaborative links are already great, with the further education colleges being accredited by the universities. Equally, some of the large further education colleges are substantially bigger and more specialised than some of the smaller higher education institutions—the former teacher-training colleges—which now have degree-awarding powers. It will ultimately be for the Quality Assurance Agency and the Privy Council to decide who gets the degree. It is very important that the QAA maintain its rigorous accreditation procedures. We on these Benches have long argued that Britain badly needs a move towards a national system in which degrees are awarded on a modular basis, with credits acquired for work done, and are transferable from one institution to another. The former CNAA—the QAA’s predecessor—introduced a system on that basis. The Open University and many other modern universities work to the system of having 360 credits for a bachelor’s degree, but many older universities are holding out against it. Until all agree, the system will fail to gain general acceptance. Such a system lends itself to what the Government are hoping to introduce through the foundation degree—namely, what we would call a ““way stage”” qualification. One year’s credits lead to a certificate of higher education, two years to a diploma—equivalent to the old HND—three to a general degree and four to an honours degree. It makes a lot of sense at a time when we are trying to increase participation in higher education among those not traditionally attending university. You can offer the individual considerable flexibility: they can study part-time, put a toe in the water, get a feel for it and, if it works, they can continue and build up gradually. In this respect, the foundation degree moves in the right direction. We have two reservations about what is proposed. First, the system needs to encourage close collaboration between the university and college sectors. It is easy to envisage colleges, especially for part-timers, providing foundation courses for first or second-year degrees. But they could also mix and match so that for some courses you would attend your further education institution and for others you would go on to the local university—and do others still by distant learning. You could put the whole lot together. We are not sure that giving colleges degree-awarding powers does not encourage more fragmentation of the system rather than this clustering and collaboration that we hope to see. The other problem is that if one wants to encourage part-time study and to try to pull in some of those who have not traditionally participated in higher education, part-time is very important, yet the Government continue to discriminate against the part-time student. Although grants have improved over the past few years, part-time students still have no access to the loans now available to full-time students. They have to pay their fees up front; they have very limited access to grants for books or travel, let alone for maintenance, and the 16-hour rule means that if they lose their job and go on to benefits they can study for only 16 hours a week. Foundation degrees could be a very important way forward, but to date they have not proved very attractive to students. They were introduced five years ago, and we still have only 50,000 students signed up to them. My message to the Government is that if they want foundation degrees to be regarded as a mainstream route into higher education, they must give part-time study far more priority than they do at the moment.