Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, I declare an interest as the vice-chancellor of the University of Greenwich. Like the right reverend Prelate, I generally welcome the Bill although I accept that it is a bit of a ragbag with 12 different parts on a whole variety of different aspects of the education system, many of them unrelated to each other. Before I go any further, I must remark on the amazing way in which the Liberal Democrat Benches appear to have divvied up every single area of the Bill. This is a degree of organisation that we on this side of the House did not know the Liberal Democrats were capable of. I want to concentrate my remarks on apprenticeships. Before doing so, I want to welcome a couple of other areas, one of which I suspect will not get very much attention today—that is the clause which gives sixth-form colleges a separate legal entity. For a long time I have been a huge admirer of what sixth-form colleges do. They are one of the most successful parts of our educational system, but they have hardly grown over the past 10 or 15 years. I suspect that one of the reasons for this is that they have been outside local education authorities’ general areas of responsibility. There has therefore never been any incentive for LEAs to reorganise their sixth-form provision, rationalising it so that you get larger numbers of young people coming together in good, well organised sixth-form colleges which are particularly geared to the needs of this age group, rather than them being distributed around often very small, and sometimes not very successful, sixth forms. I hope that the Minister will comment on whether the Bill will result in the expansion of sixth-form colleges. The second thing that I welcome is the split of the QCA. The regulation, testing, examinations and qualifications system and curriculum development never sat very comfortably together in a single body. It is very important that we get the structure and powers of Ofqual right. From my experience as a Minister with responsibility for all qualifications, this is a very difficult area. Therefore, I hope that in Committee we are able to come back to one or two of the details on this. I turn to what for me is the most important part of the Bill—apprenticeships. This section is essentially a follow-up to the legislation last year to extend education and training to all 16 to 18 year-olds on a compulsory basis. I said then that it was a historic moment; however, without the value or substance of a work-based education-and-training component available on a statutory basis, it would not be quite as historic. I am delighted that the Bill creates a statutory framework for apprenticeships, a national apprenticeship service and a guarantee that all suitably qualified young people may get an apprenticeship at level 1 by 2013. I say to the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, that it was a huge error to allow apprenticeships to more or less collapse in the 1980s and 1990s. We know that many young people become disenchanted with academic education, and they may even be completely turned off by school- or college-based vocational education. However, we also know that many of these young people can be motivated to learn in a working context where they can see a direct relationship between what they are learning and their job. I should be very interested to know whether the Conservative opposition spokesmen regret what happened prior to 1997. The noble Lord provided a lot of statistics about the failure of Labour to make as much progress as he believes we should have done. I accept that we should have made more progress, but after inheriting a situation whereby the collapse had reduced the number of people getting apprenticeships to about 60,000 to 70,000, increasing it to a quarter of a million is at least some progress. I am sure he would acknowledge that. I hope that a Conservative Government’s policy will be to expand apprenticeships and ensure that they are of high quality. I turn to the specific measures in the Bill on apprenticeships. It is important that we get this legislation right this time around, because only by doing so will some of the huge inequalities between the educational haves and have-nots start to be narrowed. I was a little surprised that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said that absolutely nothing in the Bill was being promoted to narrow inequalities. Perhaps her noble friend Lady Sharp will say otherwise about apprenticeships, because if we can provide an alternative work-based route of genuinely high quality and offer progression from this route back into vocational or academic further and higher education later, we will do quite a lot to address inequalities. The starting point must of course be what happens in secondary schools. All teachers at this level need to be aware that there are several mainstream routes at age 16. There is obviously the A-level and GCSE route, there is the diploma route, other vocational qualifications, and there will now be apprenticeships. They should not be perceived by teachers as a low-status solution for educational failures, but as a powerful, quality alternative for many young people from which they will be less likely to drop out than if they take another route. The noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, mentioned that it was important that this information and guidance should be provided, but he did not go on to say what I thought he might have done—that, I am afraid to say, Clause 35 on information and guidance is wholly inadequate. I say to my noble friend the Minister that I should like to come back to this in Committee. It really will not do just to say that schools, when giving careers advice, should consider whether it is in the best interests of a child to tell them about apprenticeships. All pupils should have the right to know the full range of options and their teachers should not prejudge their best interests. Teachers should advise youngsters that this is an option and not just decide not to tell them because they would rather the young people went down another route. That really must not happen. The next issue is how to make sure that an apprenticeship is a meaningful learning experience with some rigour and a clear structure. The young person needs to learn skills, and acquire some knowledge, which is equally important. That should be embodied in a technical certificate, awarded on completing the apprenticeship. To ensure that the certificate is of value and a basis for progressing, there need to be clear minimum standards of when and how it is expected that the apprentice will receive instruction. It is excellent that there now seems to be an agreement about basic provision of 250 hours of guided learning, and I hope that that will not be eroded. The guided learning should on the whole be away from the work station. I am, however, a little disappointed—the Minister can correct me if I am wrong—that the technical certificate will now no longer be required, as it has been until now. Surely it should be the normal expectation that every young apprentice coming through the system should get such a certificate. If that is not the case, I should like the Minister to explain why not. We should be as concerned about these sorts of issues as about quality of standards in GCSEs and A-levels, and the role of Ofqual in maintaining them. Another element of apprenticeships appears to be missing, which is basic skills training in numeracy and literacy, which is vital. The next issue I want to touch on is drop-out. This is a challenge, as it is in other parts of post-16 education, and in existing apprenticeships it has been much too high. It would help to put in place, as happens in some other countries, access to a named mentor for every young apprentice. Some of these young people are not terribly mature, and others will be quite vulnerable when they start, before reaching level 2 at 16 or 17. There is nothing to suggest in any of the guidance that that will happen. I move on to what will happen when level 2 has been completed. If young people are successful and are still under 19, should they not be entitled to go on to a level 3 apprenticeship if that is their choice? If a 17 year-old has five good GCSEs, he or she is entitled to pursue an A-level course, so why have a different system for apprenticeships? We sometimes neglect equity between different parts of the system. Again, I should appreciate the Minister’s response to that. Assuming that a young person has a level 3 apprenticeship, can we make sure that just as diplomas for 14 to 19 year-olds can and should be accepted as a route into further and higher education, so should a level 3 apprenticeship? Surmounting the barriers will help to widen participation in higher education in particular, and will serve to reduce those educational inequalities, which I am sure worry all of us in this House. It might encourage school teachers to view apprenticeships as a genuine choice that does not cut off access to a university education later. The articulation of apprenticeships with higher education will be taken up by my noble friend Lady Warwick later, so I shall not pre-empt what I am sure she will say. It is a complex area and we need to do some work to ensure progress. No progress at all will be made in the establishment of a proper system of apprenticeship without employers playing their part. They will be vital to this Bill when it is enacted. The new National Apprenticeship Service will have a huge challenge in securing the full engagement of employers and working with them to promote high standards. Doing that does not need to be bureaucratic in the way that the CBI seems to fear. I hope that the CBI will accept the need for basic minimum requirements. If they are put in place, the Bill will lead to the establishment of apprenticeships as a legitimate, mainstream, high quality alternative that can engage and motivate the young people who choose them.