Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I have great sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Layard, is trying to achieve by this. When someone becomes an apprentice at 16, he should not be expected to spend his life just in the training part of it, acquiring the skills in engineering or the skills he would learn in apprenticeship in, say, the building trade. He must have a more rounded education, particularly in English and maths and, I would imagine, IT. For any young apprentice, whatever they are studying—and this comes back to the point about technical skills that the noble Baroness made—IT should be included. The dilemma that the noble Lord is trying to answer is the one at the heart of the Government’s policy of extending education to 18. What do you do with 14 to 18 year-olds? That is really the dilemma. I happen to be a very strong believer in the 14 to 19 curriculum—and I speak as one of the authors of the national curriculum. The Government were right to identify the 14 to 19 curriculum four or five years ago, with Sir Michael Tomlinson. It has taken a long time to get to it, but the instrument for delivering it will be the diplomas. The Government are starting out on that course this year. The problem is that a youngster who becomes an apprentice at 16 need not have any institutional framework at all; he leaves school and just becomes an apprentice. There is no institutional framework for him to go to, unless he happens to enrol himself at a local FE college or his employer says that he should. Therefore, to deliver the 14 to 19 curriculum and obtain to a large extent the ends sought by the noble Lord, Lord Layard, you need new institutions. You need 14 to 19 technical colleges. Before Lord Dearing died, he and I were pioneering those with the full support of the Government, I am glad to say. We got one off the ground, with a few more about to be announced, we hope. The idea is that youngsters can be recruited at 14 as young apprentices. Half the intake will be young apprentices. Because they are still at a school, the young apprentices will still do GCSEs in English, maths, science and IT, and possibly a diploma. They could do a mixture of English, maths and a diploma. The diploma counts as three GCSEs. The point is that even the young apprentices would get that rounded experience from 14 to 16. If they are still part of the institution, as they are expected to be at 16, they have an anchor—the institution—to come back to. As that institution is backed by a university or FE college, they also have its prestigious help and advice. My point is that by coming back to an institution—to a university technical college—they would have a framework around them to encourage them to have exactly the sort of rounded education that the noble Lord is talking about, with which we all agree. I hope that we will be able to establish more of these colleges. They are, of course, experimental, but it is the only way that 14 to 19 education can be delivered effectively. It is one of the best solutions for telling youngsters, "You are going to stay on at 16". The institutions will be technical and vocational, but youngsters will also take the subjects that the noble Lord, Lord Layard, mentioned. I have some sympathy with what the noble Baroness, Lady Wall, said about having half standards between NVQs. I was one of the Ministers who launched NVQs a generation ago. It has taken a bit of time to get them established over the years, but they are now and I would not bring in variations of halves and all the rest of it. I am not suggesting that the Government should commit themselves totally to what I have advocated for university technical colleges, but a solution along those lines will eventually emerge in English education and they would be very popular. Germany has had such colleges since 1945. Rab Butler left them. They were disbanded in the 1950s because they were infra dig, greasy rags, and everybody wanted to go to the school on the hill. But I submit to the Committee that a technical college from 14 to 19, with young apprentices and apprentices working alongside students towards foundation degrees, is the long-term solution.