It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Murray. I congratulate the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) on securing the debate. He has a long track record of advocacy for the further education and skills sector, and he resolutely champions the cause of FE, often in a difficult environment, with great commitment.
I want to take this opportunity to apologise on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins), who was due to respond to the debate but is unfortunately unwell today. I know how disappointed my hon. Friend is to miss this important opportunity to speak up for the sector and outline Labour’s approach, but he feared that the entire room would end up with his very heavy cold if he were to turn up. However, I am delighted to have the opportunity afforded by my hon. Friend’s absence to celebrate the amazing work of colleges and I pay tribute to Lambeth College, Southwark College and Morley College, all of which provide a wealth of opportunities to learners from my constituency.
As has been said, last week was Love Our Colleges Week. Every one of us has an FE college serving our local areas, and they are incredibly important institutions, which Labour wants to see far better supported and utilised. We are hugely grateful to the Association of Colleges for all the work that it does all year round, and its Love Our Colleges Week celebrations continue to get better and better each year.
I thank everybody who has contributed to the debate. The hon. Member for Waveney clearly set out the breadth of provision in colleges across the country, from post-16 qualifications to higher education, and the vital role that colleges have in building the skills that our economy needs for growth. My right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) talked about the excellent work of Exeter College and the impact that it has on the economy of Exeter and the wider Devon area. I should also say that Exeter College has been fortunate to have my right hon. Friend as its champion for the past 25 years.
The hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) spoke of the terrible situation facing Malvern Hills College, and I wish her every success with her campaign to ensure that learners in Malvern and her wider constituency have access to the important opportunities that the college previously provided. The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) spoke compellingly of her experience of teaching in further education colleges and the role that colleges play in helping women returners. That was certainly the experience of my mother, who was able to gain her GCSEs and A-levels, and ultimately to graduate as an occupational therapist, in exactly the same years that I did those same qualifications, thanks to the provision that a local college provided in her place of work, which was our local hospital at the time. The hon. Lady also talked about the role that colleges play in retraining workers who have faced redundancy, which is important work.
Further education colleges perform amazing work across their communities. Often colleges are the most visible places in a town or city, and people go there if they want to learn, retrain or improve their skills. Colleges are the brokers of second chances—the repair shop that gets so many people on the path to a better future. They literally change the lives and prospects of learners in every community on every single day of the week, and the funding cuts that they have experienced over 12 years has been a national act of destruction. After another tough year for our colleges, the theme of Colleges Week—staff, students and skills—really says it all, because colleges are all about people, with learners and staff at their centre.
The greatest advocates for our colleges are the learners themselves. Regardless of whether they are heading towards university or the workplace, or returning to the labour market, learners speak volumes for the value of our FE colleges. The learners in our colleges are inspirational. Some have had poor experiences in formal education, others want to retrain and change career, and some simply want to pursue a vocational path that academia just cannot offer.
The staff in our colleges never fail to impress with their dedication, hard work and love of the work they do. They are all too aware of the role that they play in their local area to support learners to get on in life, to increase in confidence and to achieve their goals. Just this month, Labour’s shadow FE and HE Ministers, my hon. Friends the Members for Chesterfield and for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western), visited West Notts College and Nottingham Trent University to learn more about the exciting new collaborations between further and higher education institutions and how they can offer an holistic education experience to learners. Labour sees collaboration and working together as the right approach for the sector after years of market forces being allowed to dictate the direction. Neither FE nor HE should be placed as more important than the other. A Labour Government will facilitate partnerships that draw on the strengths of both sectors to improve learning opportunities in every community in the country.
Sadly, as we celebrate Colleges Week and the work of colleges, many institutions still face uncertainty about rising energy prices. It is vital that colleges are able to plan for the future, and I urge the Government to end the uncertainty with regard to spiralling energy costs.
Another issue that has faced our colleges this year has been the Government’s obsession with axing BTECs and stripping away level 2 and level 3 qualifications. It would be helpful to get an early steer from the new Government as to what their approach is to the question of level 3 qualifications, because the new Secretary of State for Education was pretty critical of BTECs when she held the skills brief.
Labour has been proud to back the Protect Student Choice campaign, which saw an impressive collaboration between the FE and skills sector, businesses, student groups, and others too numerous to mention, in their attempts to salvage BTECs, which are held in high regard by employers. We welcomed the Government’s U-turn on level 3 BTECs and would be grateful to know today what the approach of this Government will be. We also share the concerns of many in the sector regarding the axing of valuable level 2 courses. We would be glad to know whether that policy will be reviewed by the new Minister.
While we celebrate the achievements of colleges and their staff and learners during this debate, we should acknowledge that the best approach for the further education and skills sector is collaboration and proper funding, with a well resourced further education estate working hand in hand with employers, learners, higher education institutions and devolved authorities in order to deliver world-class skills. I hope that the new team at the Department for Education heed this call. I thank all hon. Members for their interest in this sector, and I thank every single person working in our colleges for the life-changing work that they do.
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