Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, I think that this is a great Bill for quite different reasons from the ones that have just been mentioned. It is incredibly important because for the first time it gives vocational education equal treatment with academic education. We have never done that before in this country. That is the central aspiration of the Bill. We have guaranteed academic education to people who want it for as long as I can remember, but for the first time we are guaranteeing an apprenticeship to people who prefer to learn that way—and there are many of them. I shall focus my remarks entirely on apprenticeships and on four major ways in which the Bill could be improved if it is to achieve its objectives: first, widening the entitlement; secondly, better information and guidance; thirdly, better content; and, fourthly, fairer financial treatment for apprenticeships. As regards entitlement, under the Bill people with level 1 qualifications are entitled to a level 2 apprenticeship. However, they are entitled to a level 2 apprenticeship only. Even if they successfully complete a level 2 apprenticeship before their 19th birthday, they are not entitled to go on to a level 3 apprenticeship. That is simply inadequate because a level 2 apprenticeship is quite a short affair—on average, it lasts one year for people aged 16 to 18—and is well below the standard of most apprenticeships in continental countries, which are much nearer to level 3. Essentially, the Bill is saying that if you want to study full time, you are entitled to progress from level 2 to level 3, but if you want to study part time via an apprenticeship, you are not. I call that a discriminatory situation. Of course, we know that finding places for apprentices will be challenging. However, we also have to remember that the Bill’s provisions for 18 year-olds will not come in for another six years. Surely we should aim to establish fair treatment for this group as compared with other groups. That means an entitlement to proceed to level 3—if you complete level 2—by the age of 19. Further, we should get the English in the Bill right as regards the entitlement. When the Government discuss their approach to apprenticeship policy for 16 to 18 year-olds they always use the word "entitlement". However, it does not appear in the Bill. Clause 90 says only that a suitably qualified person "may elect" for an apprenticeship. Surely it should say that a person is entitled to elect. We must include the word "entitlement" in the Bill. We should also drop the dreadful phrase "apprenticeship scheme". My God, what does that remind one of—20 years of unsatisfactory arrangements for this group of people? It implies something temporary rather than what we are doing; namely, building a new and permanent part of our education system. Please could we replace "apprenticeship scheme" with "apprenticeship entitlement"? As regards advice and guidance, as many people have said, it is important that young people are told about apprenticeships while they are still at school. However, Clause 35 leaves it to the school to decide whether it is appropriate to do that for any particular young person. Of course, we know that the school’s interest lies in keeping those young people in school. Surely Clause 35 should contain a simple duty for careers education to inform all young people about all the main options; that is, A-levels, diplomas and apprenticeships. As regards content, I want to discuss the underpinning knowledge that is acquired during an apprenticeship. The draft document on apprenticeship standards specifies 250 hours of guided learning a year away from the workstation in order to acquire the underpinning knowledge. That is really excellent; it is a commitment to excellence. However, the Government are under a lot of pressure to water it down. I think that only one concession could conceivably be made, which is to include in the 250 hours timetabled study of new material online at the apprentice’s own computer, but I earnestly hope that no other concessions will be made. A separate issue is the certification of the underpinning knowledge. The Cassels committee, of which I was a member and which reported in 2001, said that it should be certified through a separate technical certificate. This is currently the normal, though not universal, practice. The apprenticeship standards document seems to open up a bit of a can of worms by not saying that this should continue to be the normal arrangement. I earnestly hope that it will say that. As regards what used to be called the key skills—they are now called functional skills—of English and mathematics, it is proposed in the specification that in order to get a certificate it would be enough for a level 2 apprentice to achieve level 1 functional skills. But the remarkable thing is that that is actually an entry requirement to a level 2 apprenticeship. So you have the remarkable situation where in order to complete the apprenticeship you have to have the same level of functional skills as you have to have to enter it, which means, of course, that not much will be going on in between. That is very serious. If you look at the fundamental problems of the British non-graduate workforce, up to age 15 our schools score very well on the international tests, as I am sure noble Lords know. As regards 15 year-olds, we are not the horror story internationally that is usually assumed—we are doing as well as France, Germany and so on—but by the age of 20, our young people are way behind those of almost every continental country in their use of language and mathematics. The explanation is perfectly simple: so many of them have stopped progressing from the age of 16. We must take serious steps to embed some progress in the use of language and mathematics in the apprenticeship scheme. How can we do that? As other speakers have said, it would be very hard on many youngsters if we insisted that they get level 2 functional skills in order to get a level 2 apprenticeship certificate, because those level 2 functional skills are equivalent to good GCSEs. That is asking an awful lot. However, it is also absurd not to be asking for anything—as in the current proposals. Some intermediate level between level 1 and level 2 has to be developed. That should be a requirement if we are to get our apprentices to advance their functional skills, which is essential for them as individuals and for our national economy. All this talk of developing functional skills raises problems with many employers. They do not think that it is their job to let their young people go off to do something that should have happened in schools. However, it is crucial that they do, which brings me to my final topic: the financing of apprenticeships, which is closely related to the finding of places. The task facing the National Apprenticeship Service in delivering the entitlement is gigantic. By 2015, it will have had to have found nearly twice as many apprenticeship starts as exist today for 16 to 18 year-olds. It is a huge task, and one of the most important tasks for a Government to put their back behind if we want to have a more effective and equal society. In the past two years the number of 16 to 18 year-old apprenticeship starts has been falling, which tells you what a problem this is. I believe, as does the committee of the House of which I was a member and which reported on apprenticeships, that we will not get there unless we offer some financial incentive to employers, which is the custom in most countries on the continent. We must face up to this. One may ask, "Where is the money coming from?", but I should point out a few obvious facts. First, a young person on an apprenticeship gets less public funding than a young person in a sixth form. That in itself is unfair. But on top of that, an educational maintenance allowance—costing nearly £1 billion in total—is available to full-time students in sixth form or FE colleges but not to apprentices. One can see that there is an enormous imbalance of funding, which is completely typical of our education system. Fairness is not the only issue; there is also the issue of how to get the places. I maintain that we will not get the places—certainly not places of an adequate standard which involve serious day release—unless we can offer to employers on a totally non-bureaucratic basis a flat-rate, simply calculated sum which is understood to be there to compensate them for having to allow their young people to go off on day release to improve their general skills and gain the underpinning knowledge relevant to the job. Employers, who in many cases do not like subsidies, will like that; they will understand that that makes it reasonable for us to insist on these general knowledge requirements as well as the on-the-job training. I do not know whether that is a suggestion for the Bill or even to be dealt with in the specifications, as it is a financial matter, but in Committee we need to discuss whether there should be a general legal principle that a category of young person who is pursuing one type of education at a given age should have at least the same funding as another group. This is a very important Bill. It could be, and I hope it will be, a historic Bill. I also hope that we can make some of the changes that will do so much to make a difference.