Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, I, too, am delighted to participate in this debate, and I share the remarks that my noble friend made earlier in congratulating the Minister on her opening comments. The Minister has all my sympathy in trying to wind up the debate and address the many contributions made and the excitement and challenges expressed. I am particularly concerned to be involved in this debate because it taps into fundamental questions for the country. How do we ensure that we as a nation can meet the challenges of the new world that will emerge from the current economic situation? How can we make the skills and learning landscape fit for the future, a landscape which employers need and individuals want? How should the organisations in that landscape be constituted to make the system truly demand-led? The Bill contains extensive reform of structures and responsibilities which need to be managed carefully to safeguard consistency and quality during the transition period. The transformation of a body as large and influential as the LSC into new organisations which will provide funding for young people and adults is a seismic shift in approach. I shall not go into all the acronyms, as everyone else has enjoyed doing this afternoon. Employers are looking to the new structures to help them build the skills they need for their businesses for years to come. I shall concentrate, as other colleagues have, on the apprenticeships aspect of the Bill. Apprenticeships have for years been the jewel in the training crown of the engineering industry. Engineering apprenticeships have for many years been regarded as the gold standard and a watchword for quality. This is because employers in engineering demand such high standards from their trainees. They support them through programmes that combine learning on the job with vigorous and rigorous off-the-job qualifications, along with wider skills in numeracy and literacy. Despite the demands and the rigour of the framework, the completion rate for engineering apprenticeships has always been among the highest. This is a reflection of the quality of the young people undertaking them, the quality of the training providers and the support of the employers. Semta—the Sector Skills Council for Science, Engineering and Manufacturing Technologies, in which I declare an interest as I work with and support it in many areas—developed the engineering apprenticeship framework. Semta works continuously with employers and providers to make the programme both flexible and relevant to their needs while maintaining core quality and consistency. To give a quick example, the steel components company, Sheffield Forgemasters, is so convinced of the value of engineering apprenticeships to its business that almost 10 per cent of its workforce is on the programme. This very impressive organisation says that not only are its concerns about an ageing workforce reducing but that young people who have a lot of talent, which has often been latent for a long time, and who were not excited by school, are now fulfilling their potential. However, if apprenticeships are to grow at the rate to which the noble Lord, Lord Leitch, and the Government aspire, more of the same cannot be the only option. Further concerted efforts need to be made to raise employer demand for apprenticeship-level skills. If the apprenticeship guarantee is to be met, that is essential. The barriers to recruitment vary between sectors. For the engineering sector the barriers tend to be around the cost and time commitment required, which sees trainees studying for more than three years at advanced level. There can also be barriers around the lack of knowledge about the framework; the lack of in-house staff who are suitable to be mentors, an issue raised by other noble Lords in their contributions; and concerns about the cost of the programme. If we can address these barriers, the guarantee is a far more realistic prospect. How do we continue to ensure that apprenticeships meet employers’ needs? First, the apprenticeship framework needs to keep pace with the changing world. As a priority over the next year, Semta, along with others, will be undertaking research into emerging technologies and the skills requirements they will raise. Semta expects apprentices to play a significant part in meeting these needs and developing that programme. It will be using the outcomes of this research to help shape the future development of the organisation involved in the engineering apprenticeship framework. Secondly, as the new apprenticeship settlement approaches and the organisations that the Bill taxes with securing provision seek to boost their capacity, we must ensure that we do not lose sight of the importance of maintaining the quality of the work-based learning. We need to raise employers’ informed demands for apprenticeships in tandem with the introduction of the guarantee, but we need to do so in conjunction with increasing provider capacity and with much improved guidance, an issue to which I shall return and which other noble Lords have mentioned today. We need employers to look strategically at their businesses, to raise their aspirations and ambitions and to demand apprenticeship programmes that meet their ever-increasing needs. From this will come more and better apprenticeships that prepare young people for the industry of the future and for their lives. A balance needs continually to be struck between employer demands for training of their own staff and their expectations when recruiting adults into business. All the bodies involved in apprenticeship development and delivery proposed in the Bill will need to hold the employers’ views foremost in their minds. That means incorporating their specific training requirements into a framework and maintaining the quality of that framework. Through sector skills councils employers can influence the content of the framework. While SSCs should ensure that the overall quality is not reduced by employers, they must also make sure that employers do not attempt to force miscellaneous training courses into an apprenticeship, as that could devalue it. SSCs are always aware of that possibility and the need to ensure that it does not happen. It is important for the individual as well as the business to ensure that apprenticeships are viewed as being of comparable quality and value across the sector. The process of apprenticeship certification is paramount to the credibility of the framework. The Bill recommends specific content that should appear on the certificates. However, sector skills councils, which currently award the certificates, are curiously absent. Why not include at least the logo of the sector skills council which developed the framework as a guarantee of the quality of the certificate and an endorsement? That would give absolute credibility both to the employer and to the individual achieving it. Employers currently value the Semta logo on engineering apprenticeship certificates as a mark of quality, as do those who achieve them. I have witnessed many apprentices receiving and valuing their certificates. Sector skills councils must remain the organisations responsible for issuing apprenticeship frameworks. SSCs work with employers to ensure that frameworks meet their needs and frequently update frameworks to incorporate employer requests. While the Explanatory Notes to the Bill make it clear that the intention is to include SSCs, surely my noble friend will agree that it is worth reiterating that the important role that the SSCs play should remain with the employer-led bodies that, after all, were created by the Government to ensure that the standards and qualifications for their sector are fit for purpose. There has recently been some uncertainty regarding the apprenticeship contract, and I am sure that there will be lots of discussion in Committee about the employment tribunal cases. Some employers have been worried about the consequences of those but I shall not refer to the issue further today. I referred earlier to careers guidance. One of the biggest disappointments in the Bill is the lack of teeth in Clause 35, which relates to careers education in schools. A number of noble friends have already referred to the issue. Those of us who support the vocational and work-based route for students of all abilities have been dismayed by the mounting evidence that high achieving young people are simply not informed about their options at key points in their schooling. A five-minute conversation with an advanced apprentice in engineering is all it takes to realise that the rigour of the programme means that it is not for those who are not extremely academically able and sufficiently skilled to carry on the apprenticeship process. Apprenticeships are simply a different way of learning, but the learning is just as challenging and exciting. Rather than leaving to schools the judgment about a young person’s suitability to receive information on apprenticeships, will my noble friend consider whether it would not be better to ask schools to justify why they have not given this information to all their pupils of the right age? With increasing concern about student debts, what school would not want their highest achievers to hear about a route to higher education that will enable them to work, learn and earn?