Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I apologise in advance for what will probably be quite a lengthy contribution, because I want to place on record a range of key principles that have been addressed by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and, to some extent, by other noble Lords. Although I echo the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, about the belated nature of the amendments, we welcome them because they give us an opportunity to air some important issues. Before I look in depth at the intention of the amendments, I reiterate why we are making these changes. They are driven by our desire to see a single, integrated service for children and young people from nought to 19—somebody from our group said "from cradle to college", which I thought was quite nice—to ensure that all young people get the best possible start in life and the best preparation to succeed and achieve as they get older. We are making sure that every young person will be entitled to a new curriculum and qualifications. We are making sure that even the most vulnerable of our young people have an offer of a suitable place in education and training, including provision for young offenders and effective progression into learning for ex-offenders, and that young people with learning difficulties or disabilities will have consistency of support from nought to 25. The historic step to raise the participation age to 17 by 2013 and to 18 by 2015 demonstrated how far this country’s sights have been raised. Through the Bill, we are making sure we have a system in place that achieves this aspiration and can continue to build on the highest-ever levels of participation that were seen for 16 and 17 year-olds this year. All these changes put the young learner at the heart of a system which must make sure that the learning offer across an area and throughout a region is well planned, of high quality and responsive to meeting the needs of all our young people, irrespective of their age, ability or location. By transferring the duty to secure such a system to local authorities, we will provide the framework and impetus for these changes. Young people will benefit from having a single body which will be responsible for securing sufficient provision alongside information, advice and guidance services, and youth services. These amendments seek reassurance, first, on the ability of local authorities to take on these new responsibilities, and secondly, that they will always commission provision in the best interests of the learner. I would like to address the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, about what he described as the dirigiste approach to FE colleges. This is not what we expect, nor, I must concur with the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, what we have experienced, but if the noble Lord provides examples, we will speak to the LGA and the REACH director to ensure that local authorities are clear that we expect them to show strategic leadership, enabling and building strong, collaborative partnerships with colleges. Let me look first at the ability and capacity of local authorities to carry out these new duties. Local authorities are uniquely well placed to take on the crucial leadership to continue and increase improvements in participation and achievement. They will have access to detailed intelligence about the needs and aspirations of their communities, through their responsibility for commissioning pre-16 education and through their ownership of Connexions. This intelligence will enable them to commission the 16 to 19 provision which their learners want and need. Local authorities will work together to plan and commission provision, including for our most vulnerable young people, in the full recognition, as noble Lords have already said, that many young people travel outside the local authority area in which they live to their local college or to their employer-based training place. Immediate capacity will be provided by the transfer of around 950 LSC staff to all 152 local authorities to ensure that they have staff with the appropriate skills. These will be spread proportionately, depending on the size of the local authority. They will be supported by the Young People’s Learning Agency which will use its resources to provide efficient and economic services to local authorities. I realise we will have to go a long way to reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, that this will be a light touch, rather than the firm smack of dictatorship. We share her view that the partnership between the YPLA and the local authorities should be supportive and collaborative. Services will include the provision of data analysis to support planning and commissioning, which means, crucially, that the college and school need provide information only once, to be used many times. The YPLA will also have powers to commission provision directly, which we expect to be used where it is sensible to do so, for example, where specialist provision should be commissioned nationally. There are some examples of where there are particular national requirements. I think there is one dealing with veterinary education. I may not have got that right, but there are examples of where we need national commissioning, such as where a local authority is struggling to take on its new role. Local authorities also have their own pre-existing expertise on which they will build. They have already shown that they can rise to the challenge of improving services for young people through developing their commissioning expertise and we have the success stories to show just how effective giving power to locally accountable councils can be. For example, Bournemouth, by reviewing its services for children in care, developing a planned commissioning approach and redeploying resources to more preventive services, has achieved a reduction in its number of looked-after children from 204 in 2003 to 150 in 2007 and a marked improvement in outcomes for children in care. The authority now scores in the top 25 per cent on indicators for stability of placements and educational outcomes. Surely that is a very welcome improvement and an example of the benefits of the greater involvement of local authorities. Our performance management structures for local authorities will ensure that we continue to see such improvements in commissioning. From April 2009, local authorities are being assessed and reported on through the new comprehensive area assessment—CAA—undertaken by six inspectorates including Ofsted. There will be an annual CAA report for each local authority area, in November each year. The report will include a rating by Ofsted of the local authority’s performance on children’s services. This will be a key driver for improvement at a local level, helping to develop high-quality services for children, young people and their families. At a local level, government offices will work with local authorities to improve their performance through identifying and sharing best practice, using knowledge and data to improve performance, negotiating and supporting the new statutory local area agreements and reviewing how local and national priorities, set out in the national indicator set, are being delivered. Nor are these changes imposed on unwilling local authorities. Local authorities have been involved in shaping the system, and are now all enthusiastic about the opportunities that this gives them to improve outcomes for young people in their area. As Anne Futcher, head of integrated services at Luton borough council, says: ""The transfer of both commissioning and funding provides a very real opportunity for continuity of support for learners with special needs, and it’s one we need to grasp. It will be the first time we have been able to plan for the needs of learners in the round, which can only be good for young people"." We are building on this existing expertise and enthusiasm as local authorities prepare for their new duties, and have invested in relevant support through both the React—Raising Expectations Action—programme, which has been developed with the Association of Directors of Children’s Services and the Local Government Association. Launched in September 2008, it provides a package of support for local authorities, including a specific strand focused on pre-19 commissioning. I turn to the vital matter of how the system will ensure that local authorities will always commission in the best interests of the learner, which is after all a shared objective of all of us. I sympathise with the noble Lord’s concerns, and agree that we must make sure that a young person can access the most suitable learning for them—a point that the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, focused on—no matter whether it lies within or outside a local authority boundary. We all know that young people will travel to learn, often across local authority boundaries, because it makes sense in their circumstances. We are making sure that young people will continue to access that same choice of learning. The Bill provides that local authorities must secure enough suitable education and training opportunities to meet the reasonable needs of young people and that they cannot constrain the choices of the learner. This will be achieved because the funding will follow the learner; the provider chosen by the young person will get the funding for that young person. I turn to the importance of the sub-regional group with regard to co-operation between authorities to enable some of this to take place. The sub-regional group will agree a lead commissioner for each institution, which will normally be the local authority in which the institution is based. The local authority will plan and commission provision from those providers in its own area. This commissioning will include provision for young people who travel into the local authority area to study. Each local authority will have an interest in other local authority plans to ensure that all its resident learners are being catered for. To ensure that this happens, local authorities will be required to co-operate with each other when carrying out their new functions. We will expect this duty to be fulfilled largely through coming together in sub-regional groups, which we know broadly reflect travel-to-learn patterns. Forty-three sub-regional groups have now come together and data show that around 90 per cent of learners within each grouping are likely to travel to local authorities within their sub-regional group to learn. I think that takes a lot of account of travel between local authority boundaries. The key role of sub-regional groups is for the local authorities to work together to build a picture of demand, including the flow of young people across the individual and sub-regional borders, and to make sure that the individual local authority commissioning plans are coherent with each other. I give an example in which the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, might have a particular interest. Greenhead sixth-form college is an excellent college, which in 2007-08 took 16 per cent of learners from outside its home local authority of Kirklees. Kirklees local authority will be expected to reflect this proportion of learners in its commissioning plan, as this is where the young people are choosing to study. If the figure changed substantially in future commissioning plans, the sub-regional group will challenge this decision, as will the college. In that respect, this is similar to the ability of colleges to challenge commissioning plans by the LSC. We know that sub-regional structures enable local authorities to work together to improve the outcomes for young people. For example, Devon, Cornwall and Torbay, by developing a sub-regional approach to the commissioning of residential placements for children in care, experienced a 450 per cent increase in placement choice as well as improvements in the quality of service received from providers. The sub-regional groupings will also serve to provide peer support and challenge. All local authorities within a sub-regional group will have an interest in ensuring commissioning is working in other local authorities in that group, and this will manifest itself in stronger collaboration. As I have touched upon, it is even more likely that learners who have learning difficulties or disabilities that require specialist support may need to attend provision that is outside their area. There are additional safeguards in place to ensure these needs are met, and we will go on to consider these in more detail in further amendments, but I wanted to cover them briefly as I know this group of learners is of particular concern to the noble Lord.