Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I will move the amendment standing in my name and that of my noble friends Lady Blackstone and Lady Morris of Yardley. It concerns careers guidance, an extraordinarily important issue, which many Members of the Committee raised at Second Reading. It would help to set this in the wider context. From 2013, we will have compulsory participation in education or training up to 17 and up to 18 from 2015. That is a huge task. For that compulsion to work, it is essential that students receive good information and guidance so that they make choices which work for them, otherwise we will have a very bad situation. There is the danger that schools will try to keep the maximum number of young people in school. I have heard of one school—other noble Lords may have heard of others—that has already told parents that the law will say that children have to stay at school until they are 18. That would be the worst possible outcome—to have too many children staying on in school and then dropping out without having made sensible choices. We are all agreed that apprenticeship must be presented to all children as a real option to be considered. However, Clause 35 does not do that. I will remind noble Lords how it sounds. The clause states: ""Any consideration for the purposes of subsection (2B) of what advice would promote the best interests of the pupils concerned must include consideration of whether it would be in their best interests, or in the best interests of any of them, to receive advice which relates to apprenticeships"." The intention cannot have been to make it sound the way that I have made it sound—but if noble Lords read it, they will see that it does sound like that. I understand from the Bill team that the intention was totally different from the impression given. Existing laws establish the requirement for information to be given about all routes, and this clause is meant to reinforce the requirement to give advice about apprenticeships. However, that is not the impression that is given; the impression given is that advice about apprenticeships is required only if it is in the child’s best interests. I will give an example of what that can lead to. It is another extraordinary story that I heard the other day, which relates to the huge hostility in many schools towards apprenticeship. A careers service was producing documents called young person’s action plans, which included a description of available options from which the young person could make their plan. Two versions of the same document were produced by the careers service. One, which was given to the young person, mentioned apprenticeship. The other, which was given to the school, did not, because the careers service was so frightened that if it was seen by the school to mention apprenticeship, the school would physically not let the service into the building to meet the young people. That is the problem that we are up against. It is no good saying that the guidance is very clear if we then put into law a clause that gives such an unsatisfactory impression. I think that the department understands that this is not satisfactory, so I will not go on about it. However, if there is to be such a clause in the Bill, it should be self-standing; it cannot have a perhaps benevolent meaning that can be understood only by going back to something else. It must state that there should be a level playing field with regard to advice about all the possible avenues that a young person can take. I hope that the Minister will be willing to reconsider the existing clause. I beg to move.