Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, I, too, strongly support the amendment and I very much hope that the Government will feel able to support it. I have seen recently an excellent group discussion among a local authority, the principals of the colleges and the heads of secondary schools about a list of individuals who are exactly in the category of the more difficult young people, and it was a real discussion about where they would most appropriately be placed. For some young people, a college is not the right place; the atmosphere is not right and a school can cope better. It is at the level of the college and the school that the young person is known and that the offerings that can be made are best known, not at the local authority level. The local authority does not know on a day-to-day basis exactly what the needs of the young person are or about the precise nature of the different programmes that might or might not be appropriate for them. To leave it with the local authority is to make it arbitrary. It will inevitably be so, as the local authority is not composed of day-to-day educational providers. It is a bureaucratic organisation and it will properly, I suppose, wish to get young people put somewhere so that they can be taken off the books, so to speak; whereas at the level of the institutions concerned, a meaty discussion that meets the needs of the young person can take place. I very much hope that the Government will take this amendment away and think carefully about it. It seems like a small amendment, but it is quite a crucial issue for the institutions concerned. The Association of Colleges feels strongly about this, but so do many schools. There is a need to have some independence and some discussion at the institutional level about the best way to deal with very difficult young people.