Education and Skills Bill

My Lords, I am looking for advice from my colleagues, and they are shaking their heads. I hope that I will be able to convince the noble Baroness that we have a strong enough commitment. We see this as very important. It will become more important as our 14 to 19 reforms offer young people a wider choice of learning and increasing numbers stay on in education and training. Diplomas are delivered by partnerships of schools, further education colleges and other learning providers. To begin delivering diplomas, each consortium must demonstrate that it offers high-quality information, advice and guidance to young people. This is a key part of our strategy. My department is offering support to all consortia to ensure that the guidance they offer meets our national quality standards. Those standards, which were debated recently, focus on independent high-quality advice for young people. We are also working with the National College for School Leadership and the Learning and Skills Improvement Service to raise the profile of careers advice and to help school and FE leaders improve the quality of their provision. This is a challenging agenda, but we can also take time to celebrate success. The recent Ofsted review of 14 to 19 implementation found that the quality of information, advice and guidance was good or better in 12 of the 16 partnerships visited and at least satisfactory in three others. That is encouraging, but we need to continue to improve information, advice and guidance services. These reforms are important and I hope that they will be welcomed. We will put forward further proposals in the spring in support of provisions in the forthcoming apprenticeship Bill and the new education and skills Bill, in which we will cover the development of the adult advancement service. Officials met with the Equality and Human Rights Commission this week, and we are taking forward its concerns about the work-related learning guidance. I shall be very happy to talk to the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, about this at any stage should she wish to do so. I am also happy to write to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, about Criminal Records Bureau checks. That is another huge area of interest to me, but now is probably not the moment to go into it in detail.