Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I am delighted to be able to respond and I hope to offer some reassurance, in particular to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, over her concerns about languages. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, that sixth forms are about a lot more than A-levels. The amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, puts forward the interesting idea of creating this requirement, but the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is right in his interpretation of the Bill. We consider that the duty of local authorities to provide suitable education would include access to this list of A-level subjects, which come in the top 10 favourite subjects that young people in this age group opt for. We agree on the importance of the A-level subjects set out in Amendment 95 being on offer to all young people, but making sure that these subjects are on offer to all young people is not the same as making sure that they are on offer in every single institution, as the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, expected me to say. That has never been the case, even before the increases in collaborative delivery. The more specific nature of the study that takes place post-16 has always led to pupils choosing to move between institutions. There has to be a balance. He makes the good point about not wanting to see young people engaged in excessive travel and, of course, local authorities have to take that into account. Amendment 95 would require all sixth forms to offer this selection of subjects. While this will be appropriate for many learners, we think that it is right that decisions about what courses are on offer in what institutions should be determined at a local level. The sixth forms that do not offer all these subjects may not be designated or designed to do so. They may play a different role, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, pointed, in providing diversity of what is available locally and they may do it very well. It is more important to look at whether young people are taking A-levels. The evidence from last summer shows that these subjects are doing very well. The five subjects that saw the biggest increase in entries included maths, English, history and biology. Between them, these four subjects saw increases of more than 11,000 entries—more than half the overall increase in A-level entries last year. Moreover, numbers taking these subjects in maintained schools and colleges continue to rise. I offer that as reassurance to noble Lords. We are not complacent at all about this. We recognise that there is a great deal of work to do. We started recording the type of exam centre in 2005—a very recent event—so we now have the data that allow us to have this debate. Since then, of the subjects listed in the amendment, only geography has seen a very small reduction in entries from maintained schools and colleges, but I reassure noble Lords that it remains in the list of top 10 subjects studied at A-level. Following the 2007 review by the late Lord Dearing, we put in place a range of measures to boost language learning in schools because we, like noble Lords, feel that it is an important area in which we need to do better. This included a £6 million communications campaign over three years to promote the importance of language learning to pupils, parents and the school workforce and reforming the secondary curriculum to make it more relevant and engaging for pupils. We expect that these measures will increase the likelihood that pupils will increase their take-up of GCSE languages, which will then lead, we hope, to a better take-up of language A-levels. We can take heart at this approach because it is the one that we have taken in science and mathematics, where we have seen an impact—increasing numbers of children and young people are opting, importantly, for mathematics. I hope that, with the reassurances that I have given, the noble Lord will consider withdrawing his amendment.