Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, I have long been involved with issues of basic skills, and I was very disappointed, and rather surprised, that the Bill pays so little attention to this area. Basic skills are absolutely basic to all aspects of education, for all skills and for apprenticeships. I am referring, of course, to literacy and numeracy. I have a personal interest in focusing on this since the Government’s strategy on Skills for Life goes back explicitly to my committee’s report, A Fresh Start, which was published 10 years ago. It is worth recalling why that report, which dealt with adults, produced such public shock. We concluded that roughly 20 per cent of adults had more or less severe problems with what is generally called functional literacy and numeracy. Many adults, millions of them, could not look up items in the Yellow Pages or calculate how much change they would get after spending a couple of quid in a shop. There are many other examples from survey data. Obviously, there were arguments about definitions, but the seriousness of the situation was beyond doubt. At that time, 10 years ago, this country came lowest in Europe, apart from Poland. That kind of league table was not discussed a great deal. The Government had, at the beginning of their term, embarked on a major literacy strategy in schools, and our report showed how bad the situation was for millions of adults, so stringent action was promised by the Government. I want to leave no doubt that considerable progress has been made since the launch of the Skills for Life strategy in 2001. Vast sums have been spent, and it is estimated that the basic skills of some 2.25 million adults have been improved, a considerable improvement. That was the target set for 2010, and the claim is that it has been achieved two years early. The achievement belongs above all to the Learning and Skills Council as a centrepiece in the partnerships with the FE sector, so on basic skills alone I agree with the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Baker. However, in spite of this progress, which has to be acknowledged and admired, this is not the time for complacency, as the latest government report acknowledges, so let me give some of my reasons for not being complacent as far as basic skills are concerned. In the first place, it is not acceptable that in this rich country tens of thousands of children still leave school unable to read or write to any acceptable level or, above all, to cope with numbers. Inevitably, they embark on a spiral of disadvantage in adulthood. It is a shame that we have not solved this problem and that we are still mediocre at the school level, in spite of all that has been done. I turn to adults. In his introduction to the latest government report, John Denham, the Secretary of State, said that basic, ""skills underpin almost everything we do in our daily lives —at work and at home"." That puts the matter clearly. The Government’s targets are ambitious. My worry is not that they are not ambitious enough, but whether they are realistic. To be specific, the aim is now—these targets really stem from the Leitch report in 2006—that, by 2020, 95 per cent of adults should achieve fundamental literacy and fundamental numeracy. Those are considerable climbs from where we are now. There are no up-to-date figures, but the latest ones I can get hold are that for literacy there is a climb from 85 per cent to 95 per cent of the adult population, which may be achievable, and for numeracy it is up from 79 per cent or thereabouts to 95 per cent. Incidentally, the Government regard that 95 per cent as making this country a world leader. That is a little beyond reality because all it does is group us with the top 25 per cent of other countries. These targets include priorities for people not in employment or on benefit; those in low-skilled jobs; people in prison, crucially, of whom perhaps 50 to 60 per cent lack basic skills; and those known to be in areas or groups of social exclusion. Though I regard these targets as desirable, one has to accept that they need exceptional resources and more partnerships than I sense are in the plans so far. For example, I wonder—going back to the point of the noble Lord, Lord Baker—whether the further education sector, which in our report of 10 years ago was basic to these improvements, is still expected to play such a major part as we then proposed. If not, which bit of the education sector is going to fill in the gaps? What can be done to make employers more engaged in helping people with poor basic skills? Could the voluntary sector do more to help such people, especially those who are hard to reach? All these aims are part of government plans. My worry is simply whether the challenges are reachable, especially for numeracy, where far less progress has been made. There are still far too few numeracy teachers. People are frightened of numbers, as we all know, and they do not take up available courses, even in the business and employment sector. This has been extremely disappointing. In schools, where we all know the problems with mathematics teaching, it is not only in maths that numbers should be made more comfortable for pupils—it is in the whole range of subjects. That also is not happening. At one time we were promised—I think from the former Chancellor, Gordon Brown—a major government report and impetus on numeracy, because he certainly understood the priority. That report has not appeared. The recent report Skills for Life explicitly acknowledges that the country faces particular challenges with numeracy. Given our current crisis around finance, mortgages, borrowing and so forth, there has never been a more important time for every citizen to be comfortable with numbers, so it is an appropriate time for this to become a government priority. All I hope to do is to restore basic skills to a proper place in the Bill and in its vision, and I ask the Minister whether this is a realistic hope on my part.