My Lords, Amendment 35 is in my name. I am pleased to bring this amendment to the House. The Government believe strongly that young people and adults, at all stages of their career, need to be equipped to make informed choices. They need to know about the range of qualifications and training available to them so that they can progress to their chosen field. I know that it is rightly a matter of great concern for this House that all young people are introduced to the benefits of technical education and apprenticeships, so that they can make informed decisions about the next step in their education or training.
In particular, I thank my noble friend Lord Baker for his tireless commitment and vision in focusing on this important issue and for his amendment to the Technical and Further Education Act 2017, which led to the commencement of the Baker clause. This means that schools have a statutory duty to provide opportunities for pupils to meet technical education or apprenticeship providers and learn about technical education options.
As part of the original Baker clause, the Government set out clear requirements and expectations in statutory guidance, and offered support through the Careers & Enterprise Company. Despite some examples of excellent practice, the Government are still seeing too many schools failing to comply with the duty. They have seen providers blocked from going into schools or schools limiting provider encounters to selected groups of pupils. In March 2021, the UCAS report Where Next? showed that almost one in three young people said that they did not receive any information about apprenticeships from their school.
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The Government originally set out our plans for how to strengthen the Baker clause in our Skills for Jobs White Paper. Thanks to engagement with your Lordships in this House, and especially with my noble friend Lord Baker, the Government now think that this is the right time to bring forward improvements to the legislation. It is time to strengthen the Baker clause
so that all young people can learn about the exciting high-quality opportunities that technical education and apprenticeships can offer. This will fulfil our commitment in the White Paper to introduce the new minimum requirement, covering who is to be given access to which pupils and when.
Our amendment builds on the current duty by specifying that schools must put on three encounters with providers of approved technical education qualifications or apprenticeships. All pupils must go to the first two encounters, in either year 8 or year 9, and again in either year 10 or year 11. The third encounter, in either year 12 or year 13, will be optional for pupils to attend. We have listened to my noble friend Lord Baker’s wish to specify in more detail the number or type of providers that every pupil must meet during their mandatory encounters.
This amendment will give the Secretary of State the power to set out further details in secondary legislation, if needed. For example, it could require pupils to meet a representative from an FE college or a UTC where there is one within reasonable travelling distance of the school. The school must give each provider a reasonable amount of time to meet pupils and must timetable these visits during normal school hours. They may of course supplement this with provider visits at other times, in addition.
The amendment will also help to safeguard quality by setting parameters for every provider encounter. The school must ask the provider to share information about both the provider and the provision that it offers, to explain what career routes those options could lead to, to provide insights into what it might be like to learn or train with that provider and to answer questions from pupils. We believe that this amendment strikes a careful balance between widening access for providers and managing the requirements on schools. It also offers flexibility to amend details further in response to future policy change.
We must also remember that providers are one important element within the wider careers framework, the Gatsby benchmarks of good careers guidance. We expect schools to provide a wide range of careers activities, including curriculum learning linked to careers, employer encounters, experiences of the workplace and personal guidance, to support pupils to make fully informed choices. I beg to move.