Moved by Lord Lucas That the Bill be now read a second time. Lord
Lucas (Con) My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a
second time. In doing so, I pay tribute to my honourable friend
Mark Jenkinson, the MP for Workington, who had the sagacity to
choose a Bill that the Government will support—not an easy thing,
as various noble Lords have demonstrated—and which will make an
important and solid improvement for all our children. It is a
very...Request free trial
Moved by
That the Bill be now read a second time.
(Con)
My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
In doing so, I pay tribute to my honourable friend Mark
Jenkinson, the MP for Workington, who had the sagacity to choose
a Bill that the Government will support—not an easy thing, as
various noble Lords have demonstrated—and which will make an
important and solid improvement for all our children.
It is a very simple but effective Bill. Clause 1 amends the scope
of Section 42A of the Education Act 1997, which puts a statutory
duty on schools to secure independent careers guidance. The Bill
extends careers provision to all pupils in state secondary
education, bringing year 7 pupils into scope for the first time.
It also extends the duty to all academy schools and alternative
provision academies. Clause 2 revokes 2013 regulations that
extended the careers guidance obligations to pupils aged 13 to
18. These are no longer needed as this Bill extends to all
secondary-age pupils.
In practice, these clauses mean that all pupils in all types of
state-funded secondary schools in England will be legally
entitled to independent careers guidance throughout their
secondary education. They show a determination to achieve
guidance for every single child in every single state secondary
school in every single local authority, without exception. The
Bill will also establish consistency by applying the statutory
careers duty to all types of state school, bringing approximately
2,700 academy schools and 130 alternative provision academies
into scope.
By extending the lower age limit to year 7, the Bill also brings
the careers duty into line with the Government’s careers
framework for schools, the Gatsby benchmarks, which apply to
years 7 to 13. This will enable the Government to meet a
commitment they made in the Skills for Jobs White Paper and will
reach over 600,000 year 7 pupils each year. It will also mean
that we can give year 7 pupils early exposure to a range of local
employers so that they gain experience of the workplace, ask
questions and develop networks. They will begin to learn about
the local labour market, which is important because skills needs
around the country are very different.
Equally important—as my noble friend will no doubt expect me to
say, given my performance on the skills Bill—is exposure to
careers not available locally. That is important for both
students and communities. As regards students, somewhere in
Eastbourne, a town founded on hospitality, care and education, is
a future nuclear engineer, and somewhere in Workington, a town
founded on nuclear engineering, is a Michelin-starred chef. Those
young people must not be denied the breadth of possibility which
should be open to them. There are institutions in this country,
such as Education and Employers and Founders4Schools, which exist
to open those doors for pupils, and I really hope that my noble
friend the Minister will be able to commit to continued support
for bringing a breadth of opportunity to young people, wherever
they grow up.
It is also really important for communities. I was part of a
committee of this House that looked at seaside towns, and it was
clear that these towns had become narrow in the range of
opportunities they offered, and that the self-belief in their
ability to change had declined. Opening the eyes of children is
an important part of that. Getting children to have a breadth of
career aspirations then makes them available to new industries
coming in, and having a breadth of industry and activity in a
town makes it much more resilient to shocks such as Covid or
whatever else may come our way.
Early careers guidance can support important decisions that need
to be made from the age of 14—whether it is choosing between GCSE
subjects or making the decision to change schools to attend a
university technical college. We must ensure that our young
people are well informed in their opinions.
If the Bill is passed, I count on the Government to make it
easier for schools to understand the changes to the law and what
action they need to take, and to encourage or require Ofsted to
focus clearly and consistently on how every school is meeting its
statutory duty by providing independent careers guidance to every
pupil throughout their secondary education. I very much hope that
this additional requirement on schools will be matched when it
comes to deciding what their funding will be next year.
If I may add a request of my own to this estimable Bill, it is
that the Government stay the course and build on what has been
achieved over the last 10 years, thinking particularly of the
Careers & Enterprise Company and the careers hubs they have
created. It is terribly easy for a Government to think that they
might do better than that and to start again from the beginning.
In this sort of area, that is a really difficult and dangerous
thing to do. It takes ages to build up relationships with schools
and with businesses—the network of understanding, prestige and
respect that makes this sort of thing work well.
The Careers & Enterprise Company has done an excellent job,
though it does need help at this time. Changes elsewhere,
particularly with local enterprise partnerships, mean we have to
look again at how careers support in schools interfaces with
employers nationally and locally. I know that the Government are
doing some things in the skills Bill, but they need to connect
better with what they have already achieved in the Institute for
Apprenticeships in terms of relationships with employers and what
the levelling-up department will doubtless be doing. We need
something integrated—something that employers will respect and to
which they will commit really good people, so that the
information and expertise coming into the Government accurately
reflect what the people at the top of business want, not just a
box-ticking exercise from big companies.
It is always difficult to do these things—I understand why the
Government like to rein in these creatures that they do not
properly control and to make sure they are working with
government and not against it. But it is much better if we can
work—and build—on the achievements of the past, rather than throw
them out. I beg to move.
10.32am
(Lab)
My Lords, I very much welcome this Bill, which is a very good use
of a Private Member’s Bill, and I congratulate Mark Jenkinson on
introducing it and for the work he did in the House of Commons. I
also thank and congratulate the noble Lord, , on how he introduced it. I want
to broadly support it—there is absolutely nothing there with
which I disagree—but it gives us the opportunity to discuss a few
issues and that is what I want to do.
First, I probably ought to declare an interest. In my work with
the Birmingham Education Partnership, we have a contract with the
Careers & Enterprise Company. I wish that to be noted.
The noble Lord, , may be interested to know that
in Birmingham, it is the school-led Birmingham Education
Partnership that has the contract with the CEC, not the LEP. When
he is looking at future ways of delivering, he may wish to
reflect on that and I would be very happy to discuss it with
him—and, indeed, the Minister—if that was appropriate.
I want to talk about two areas. First, part of the legislation
includes academies—big congratulations to Mark Jenkinson on
achieving that. I cannot remember how many times I have tried to
include academies in other legislation. I was always told that it
was not needed because it was part of the funding agreement. I
see this not only as important in the light of the careers
education Bill, but—as far as I can remember—it is the first time
the Government have made the move and said yes, academies can be
affected and influenced by the legislation as well. I have never
quite understood why, if you are a child who goes to an academy,
you should be denied something that Parliament thinks is good to
teach children. This is a really good move and I welcome it.
The main point I wish to make concerns the substance of what
might happen now that we have got careers education and guidance
going into year 7, which is undoubtedly a good thing. This House
has a good record of discussing careers education. We have
discussed it in its own right and as part of legislation many
times. I worry about the same thing every time we discuss it and
that is what I want to address: we are at risk of seeing careers
education as merely providing information and widening the
horizons of young people. This is absolutely vital. You cannot
decide to be something if you do not know it exists. The more you
see it, the more you talk about it and the more you talk to
people who do that job, the more likely you are to be motivated
to try to achieve it. That is where our discussions tend to stop.
With respect, the noble Lord, , mentioned it and I do not
disagree at all, but my own experience as a teacher and a person
teaches me that it is not all that needs to happen if we are to
achieve what we want to achieve.
Really, there are three parts and we ignore the last two. First,
the children need the information. Secondly, they then need to
make a decision that it might be for them—and that is so
difficult. I look at my own life and there are lots of times when
I have had the information, but I have not been able to work out
the decision in a way that has been the right way forward. I
taught children like that; it was not that they lacked the
information, but they lacked the skills to align it to their
strengths and weaknesses and then make the decision. The third
part is that even if you make the decision that that is what you
want to do, taking that first step to do it is really tough. How
many times have we wanted to do something, known it is the right
thing, but not known how or not been confident enough to take
that first step along the road to achieving it? I think of
children who do not have a lot of support at home and come from
areas of significant deprivation: of course they need their
horizons broadening. But it is at those next two steps where they
often fall back. They have not got the skills, or they are not
helped to make an effective decision, and when they do make the
decision, they need someone by their side to give them the
confidence to start the journey to try to achieve their
dreams.
I am not for a minute saying that is not in the Bill, but I worry
that when we talk about this aspect of education, we concentrate
a lot on giving children the opportunity to see more people in
jobs they may want to do and then leave them floundering because
we do not help them with the skills to make the decision and the
confidence to move forward.
On the whole, however, I again congratulate Mark Jenkinson and
the noble Lord, , and I very much hope that this
will become a part of our national curriculum.
10.37am
(LD)
My Lords, I agree entirely with everything the noble Baroness,
Lady Morris, has said, particularly about one-to-one support for
young people at the right time in the careers guidance they get.
I welcome the Bill introduced by the noble Lord, , and I wish it swift
progress.
I had the privilege of chairing the Select Committee on Youth
Unemployment last year, which reported in November and to which
the government response is due very shortly. We received
substantial evidence on the need to extend and deepen careers
guidance in schools to broaden young people’s horizons, reduce
gender stereotypes and boost social mobility. The Bill fulfils a
small part of what we recommended by extending the duty to
provide independent careers guidance in schools to include year 7
pupils and to extend it to all academies. In those respects, it
represents an important step forward.
We reported that there was a lack of knowledge of occupations
among young people, plus a lack of knowledge of employment
requirements and opportunities—of apprenticeships, traineeships
and progression routes. The Baker clause that gives a range of
providers access to speak to pupils about technical routes and
apprenticeships has been patchily complied with by schools,
although there are signs that this may be improving. It is vital
that it does.
The committee—and we will have the opportunity to debate its
report on the Floor of the House soon I hope—concluded that
careers guidance should be extended to primary schools. That is
because children begin to think about their futures when they are
as young as five or six. By the age of seven, life-defining
decisions are being formed in their minds; by the age of 10, many
have already made career-limiting decisions; and by 14, those
decisions tend to be very firm. Children’s perceptions of what
they could do are often based on where they live, who they know
and what jobs those people do, the employment of their parents
and friends, and their own education. We concluded that their
education needs to become much more important as a factor.
At this stage, I draw attention to the North East Ambition career
benchmarks primary pilot, involving 70 primary schools across the
region, which has now reported on its second year. It was
established by the North East Local Enterprise Partnership and is
supported by the EY Foundation. There are eight benchmarks,
adapted from the Gatsby benchmarks to a primary setting,
incorporating curriculum learning linked to careers, visits and
visitors, encounters with FE and HE, and personal guidance. The
pilot has been successfully embedded. It has built capacity, is
being extended to more primary schools and has shown how it can
be replicated at scale right across the country, particularly in
disadvantaged areas. It should be part of the Government’s
levelling-up plans. If you level up people, you can level up
places.
The Bill’s sponsor in the House of Commons, , said on launching the
Bill:
“Good careers advice is important to all children … But it’s
really important that from as early an age as possible, we seek
to set out the options.”
I agree. We have this Bill, but we need to go further. We need a
framework for effective careers learning at primary level,
teachers recruited and trained to lead in schools and a specific
careers leader in every secondary school, as well as training for
all middle and senior leaders in those schools. Careers education
and guidance must not come too late to help a young person form
proper judgments. They should not, for example, be obliged to
choose their specialist subjects before they consider their hopes
for employment. Young people should leave school in a position to
succeed. That is what levelling up is about.
10.42am
(Con)
My Lords, I, too, congratulate my honourable friend Mark
Jenkinson and my noble friend on introducing this Bill. I also
congratulate the Minister and the Government for their welcome
support for it. I fully support the aim to provide independent
careers guidance and ensure that it is available throughout the
state-funded secondary school system in this country, including
in academies. It seems difficult, if not impossible, to justify
the exclusion so far of some secondary pupils from statutory
independent careers guidance, which pupils in other institutions
are automatically entitled to. Clearly, this is part of the
levelling-up agenda and will help to ensure wider opportunities
for all our school children.
Clause 1 ensures that careers education must start as soon as
possible after secondary education begins. That means that it
will become, for all Year 7s, a marker that they have reached a
new stage of life, rather than waiting until Year 8. It also
includes a duty to provide information about education
opportunities available after age 16, such as technical training,
apprenticeships or on-the-job training, to guide students into
other non-school or non-university paths. This is so important
for those who may not be suited to an academic university course
and will help to guide children who may not otherwise consider
them into practical courses for the start of a future working
life so they do not feel pressured to apply only to university,
which may not suit them.
Finally, as my noble friend said, as part of careers
education in 21st-century Britain, we must ensure that we include
access to information about not just the local employment
opportunities but national opportunities for careers that would
be available to pupils. Crucially, we also need to include a
recognition that our children should not necessarily expect, in
21st-century Britain, a career to last for the rest of their
life. We need to make clear that it is okay to change your mind,
too; if you think about something you definitely want to do in
Year 7, you may change your mind later. Throughout life, there
will be a need to move to different types of work, retrain and
reskill. I hope that our careers education will help students
recognise that, as they progress through life, their career can
mould to fit them and the needs of the local, national or even
global jobs market.
10.45am
(Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this Second Reading
debate. In doing so, I declare my interest as chancellor of BPP
University and as a trustee of the Burberry Foundation, which
does much work on careers levelling up in Yorkshire and
internationally. I add to the congratulations for my noble friend
and my honourable friend Mark
Jenkinson in another place. While congratulating noble friends,
it is right and proper to mention my noble friend Lord Baker. He
gave us Baker days and, lastly, the Baker clause. With UTCs and
his understanding of technical education, he has done as much as
anybody to ensure that the nation is in a better place for our
young people to come through, work and have fulfilling careers in
new technologies, with everything that is required to make a
success of the fourth industrial revolution. In many ways, when
it comes to technical education, he is the don.
This Bill does exactly what it says; it is simple and clear, and
I support it. It helps with levelling the playing field and,
through that, levelling up. But I ask my noble friend and the Minister: are we doing
enough to support young disabled people with careers advice? Do
careers advisers have the same aspirations and ambitions for
disabled young people as for non-disabled young people? I ask the
Minister particularly whether careers advisers are fully aware of
the support available to help disabled people succeed through
higher education and employment, including the disabled students’
allowance and the Access to Work programme. As a slight trailer,
I am bringing out a report on the disabled students’ allowance
next week. One of the recommendations is around exactly that and
the careers advice that young people can expect and hope to rely
on.
Can it be right that the progression rate for young people moving
from schools into higher education for non-disabled young people
is 47%, while for disabled students with SEN support it is just
20% and for those who have an education, health and care plan it
is just 8%? For higher tariff providers—Oxbridge and the Russell
group—the non-disabled progression rate is 12%, while for
students with SEN support it is 3% and for those with an EHCP it
is just 1%. This is quite simply a question of talent. How can
we, as a nation, afford to waste such talent purely because it is
born into young disabled people? Would my noble friend agree that
we currently face an unacceptable situation in this country in
that talent is everywhere but opportunity is not?
I say to all young people, particularly young disabled people:
whatever your ambition, aspiration or career thoughts, believe in
them. You can achieve. Use the careers service and careers
advisers to help—it is entirely possible. It has to be the case
that we address those numbers so that there truly is equality for
everybody across this country. This Bill goes some way towards
addressing the unacceptable reality that talent is everywhere but
opportunity is not and I wish it a safe, speedy passage on to the
statute book.
10.49am
(CB)
My Lords, I welcome this Bill and wish the noble Lord, , success in piloting it through
this House. I am delighted to hear that it has support from the
Government. I am grateful for the briefings I have received from
the Careers & Enterprise Company, the Careers Development
Institute and Teach First, all of which have played such an
important part in completing the careers education jigsaw that
has been taking encouraging shape in recent years.
As befits a Private Member’s Bill, this is a relatively modest
piece of the jigsaw. I entirely support its aim of extending the
duty to provide careers guidance to all students in state-funded
secondary education. Apart from that, I have little to add about
the Bill, as far as it goes, though I slightly regret that it
does not go a bit further. I will mention three missing pieces of
the jigsaw, which I hope the Minister will comment on in her
response.
First, I echo the argument from the noble Lord, , that careers guidance should
be extended even further to include primary education. So many of
children’s aspirations and attitudes are formed at primary school
age and it can only be beneficial for them to gain awareness of
the world of opportunities available to them, beyond what they
know from friends and family or see in films and television or on
social media. As the noble Lord said, this could be key to
increasing social mobility. Some 90% of primary teachers surveyed
in 2019 believed that career-related learning, supported by
employers, can challenge stereotypes about what subjects and jobs
boys and girls are interested in. I ask the Minister what
thinking there is in government about a possible framework for
careers learning in primary schools—possibly based on the
Birmingham example that the noble Lord mentioned—and how it might
be funded.
Secondly, I worry about the pipeline of highly qualified careers
professionals. How confident is the Minister that there will be
enough such professionals to meet the needs for independent,
high-quality careers information, advice and guidance, including
personal guidance, not least after the expansion that this Bill
would bring about? A recent CDI survey of careers professionals
found that over a quarter of respondents were likely to leave the
profession within two years, with poor pay and benefits being the
biggest driver and cited by 40%. Action may be needed to promote
the profession itself as a career opportunity, offering rewards
more commensurate with its importance.
Thirdly, more work is needed to embed careers education
throughout the school curriculum, across all subjects. The CEC
has a programme with Pinewood Studios and the Academies
Enterprise Trust developing resources and lesson plans to
demonstrate to students from years 7 to 10 how the maths that
they study relates to actual jobs in television, film, production
and management. More such programmes are needed, including
training and support for subject teachers themselves, with
careers awareness built into every stage of their professional
development, as promised in the Skills for Jobs White Paper. What
can the Minister tell us about plans in this area?
Many other pieces of the skills education jigsaw still need to be
put into place and I regret the lack of a refreshed careers
strategy outlining the overall picture. The strategy launched in
2017 provided much of the recent momentum and, without such a
strategy, there is a danger of numerous individual initiatives,
worthy in themselves, not forming a coherent whole. To cite one
example: we have a much-improved careers system and a focus on
apprenticeships, yet hardly any of the apprentices I meet heard
about their apprenticeship from their schools.
I wish this Bill well and look forward to hearing from the
Minister how she and her colleagues plan to fill remaining gaps
in the jigsaw so that the welcome progress made in careers
education over recent years is maintained. Nothing could be more
important, both for the nation and for our young people.
10.53am
(Con)
My Lords, I begin by congratulating Mark Jenkinson, the Member of
Parliament for Workington, for introducing this Bill. I know him
well because in his constituency there is a university technical
college on the north-west coast near Sellafield, which is now the
most successful school in Cumbria. It is probably the most
successful school in the north of England, as 70% of last year’s
school leavers became apprentices and the rest went on to
university or got a local job. The college has been outstanding.
He knows how important it is for children to be given an
alternative to the very narrow academic education, with the eight
academic subjects that they now have in schools. Children have to
be aware that there is another world out there with a lot of
opportunities.
I am afraid that this debate could not happen in Russia because
we have not come here as a servile body to lavish praise on the
Government and to say how wonderfully they have done on career
guidance over the last 10 years. The record has been dismal and
bleak. Why do I say that? It is not a casual, careless argument.
In 2010, when the Conservatives became responsible for education,
there were more than 100,000 apprentices aged under 19. In 2020,
it had fallen to just over 50,000. That is failure, not
success.
I draw the attention of the Minister to the excellent report from
the Select Committee on Youth Unemployment, chaired excellently
by the noble Lord, . Figure 21 in the report shows
the number of apprenticeships over the last 10 years; it shows
that, as I have just said, there were 100,000 apprenticeships
falling to lower than 50,000.
We were also very concerned in our report about how to improve
the information going to disadvantaged children. Children who
live in the leafy suburbs with grammars schools do not require
that sort of guidance but children who live in disadvantaged
areas and are now restricted by this very narrow academic
curriculum need advice, guidance and help.
We were very disturbed to find that in many disadvantaged areas
there were very high levels of youth unemployment. The general
level of youth unemployment among NEETs is about 9%. We analysed
youth unemployment in various boroughs in the West Midlands. I
refer the Minister to figure 22 in the report—not immediately,
but later. The general level of youth unemployment is 9%, but we
found that in Sandwell, it was 20%, in Wolverhampton it was 19%,
and in Stoke and Birmingham it was 18%. In those areas, knowledge
of alternative study and changes in career prospects are just not
getting through, quite frankly.
I now come to the Baker clause. I do not talk about a Baker
clause on the grounds of vanity or reputation. When you are 87,
vanity and reputation are really all in the past. I introduced
the Baker clause only in order to get a good message over to
youngsters in schools of the alternatives available to them apart
from eight narrow academic subjects. I persuaded the Government
three years ago. Unfortunately, they decided to do the drafting
themselves and did not make it workable.
I suggested that they ought to make a duty on schools to have a
meeting to explain—first to the 12 and 13 year-olds, then to the
14 and 16 year-olds and then to the 16 and 18 year-olds—all the
alternative provision that is available from, for example,
apprenticeship providers, FE colleges, independent sixth-form
colleges that have very practical A-levels and not the academic
ones, and university technical colleges.
They said that the Minister would issue advice and the schools
would follow. The Minister issued advice and nothing happened at
all. When we approached the schools they said that they were
sorry, they could not arrange the meeting, they were too busy or
could only have a meeting one Friday afternoon in July and things
like that. It has been completely inoperable for the last three
years. The Government have done nothing about it until now. They
said they were going to consult on it. You do not need to consult
on a really simple subject like that. You just have to make up
your mind and act.
When UTCs applied to schools to go in and talk to their students,
we were fobbed off. We were told not to appear. When we
complained to the Government, again they did nothing. They did
not approach the schools; they did not reproach the schools and
tell them anything—they did nothing. They said they would go out
to consultation. You do not need consultation on a simple subject
like this.
Now, we will have the debate on the Baker clause when the
amendment comes back in the next fortnight or so to this House.
Again, I suggest to the Government that they have got it wrong.
What they are saying now is that all the schools have to do is to
produce one meeting. I am conscious of the time, but time is not
a problem; people are not speaking and no one has spoken for five
minutes so far, so the Whip may relax.
The current clause says that only one meeting should take place
in each of the three years. On the evidence, I want three
meetings, but it is being said that everyone would have to have
nine meetings. That is completely wrong—it is false news. I want
three meetings, with 12 to 13 year-olds, 14 to 16 year-olds and
16 to 18 year-olds. We will debate that later.
I will briefly quote some things from our report. We listened and
talked to lots of unemployed people in the north-west, Nottingham
and London. A young person said,
“when I was in school in Year 11 apprenticeships were not really
spoken about, I didn’t know anything about them. Even now I don’t
really hear a lot about them. I only first heard about them at
the time I applied for one”.
This is the ignorance that children have when they leave school
today. It is very evident in our report.
We also recommend that Ofsted should not give “outstanding” to
any school that does not have a proper career advice policy and
implementation. These are the sorts of recommendations that I
hope the Minister will warmly support when she answers our
report, otherwise we will just sink backwards. We must make
progress in this area and not depend on the failure of the
past.
11.01am
(LD)
My Lords, it is rather daunting to follow the noble Lord, Lord
Baker, who has been described today as the don in this field of
career education by someone on his own side. I have not disagreed
with him much on this subject and I do not think I did at all
today. He says he does not care about reputation, at the age of
87; I think we will use his reputation when he reaches 88 and 89
to try to put some pressure on the Government on this.
The Bill is a good but small thing. It takes a step forward and
deals with some of the historical anomalies and oddities of
academies that we are constantly dealing with. The noble
Baroness, Lady Morris, is absolutely right about the attitude,
“We cannot do this because it is an academy”—but this is supposed
to be a universal education system. We go back and forth on this
all the time, and a Bill that at least sets that
precedent—regardless of its primary purpose—is taking a step
forward. Mark Jenkinson, who is watching us very astutely from
just outside the Bar, may have set a precedent he did not look to
set.
On making sure that there is more advice on careers guidance, I
am struck by one thing: you really cannot start talking about
this early enough. The term “careers guidance” might not be right
for primary schools—“lifestyle choices” might be better—but I am
reminded of what the noble Lord, , said about conservative
changes: if something is already there, at least people will have
a rough idea of what you are saying. We can spend our entire
lives reinventing the wheel; if we want to make some small
changes, we might get a term that we know and then slightly adapt
it. Stereotype-breaking is essential, to make sure that people
actually know what is going on.
This is a very odd time; now, we have to get people not just to
aspire higher but to think laterally. The level 4 and 5 executive
shortage in our country, which was probably done no favours by
saying that everybody should go to university to get to level 6,
so they then have to de-skill in certain subjects, has been going
on for decades and has been made slightly worse. We must think
differently. That means we need informed people not only giving
information but interpreting it. Those who made that point were
right—“Here is a list of facts; read down the list”, but what do
the facts mean? What are the options? What steps do I take, and
what support is there to enable me to take them?
I had a nagging suspicion that I would end up agreeing with
everybody; I discern that I will clearly have to read my noble
friend Lord Shipley’s report, and not just the executive summary.
I am not sure I should thank him for that.
(Con)
We have made it very simple to read by having lots of
illustrations. There are about 30 illustrations, which is very
unusual for a Select Committee report, because we thought that
now people—particularly with all the government press
conferences—look at charts and understand the issues very
quickly. It will not be too demanding for the noble Lord to look
at the pictures.
Noble Lords
Oh!
(LD)
I walked into that, didn’t I? I thank the noble Lord. I turn to
the next report I will have to read, from my friend the noble
Lord, Lord Holmes. Special educational needs are an area which
will put greater demand on staff. We are talking about 20% to 25%
of the population. If you have a problem accessing forms of
education because of special educational needs—an effect which I
think we can agree applies here—you will need to apply things
differently. I remind the House of my interests in this and as a
dyslexic who uses such things as voice operation, having gone
through how it applies; with every technological advance, you
will have to learn how to apply it.
I reiterate to the Government one more time: if they insist that
people have to pass English and maths in a written, pen-and-paper
test, they will effectively be countering their argument. The
recent announcements on access to higher education and other
things go counter to their own legislation. If the Government
have time, to get some idea while we are going through this about
how that guidance will appear would be really helpful—and how we
make sure it is coherent and holistic, transferring people to
better options and continuing to give them the basis to transfer
afterwards. I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, who
said that people will no longer be in the same job for life. We
must try to get that flexibility and knowledge built in.
This Bill is a good step forward. I encourage all noble Lords to
get behind it and make sure it gets on to the statute book, but
it is only part of the process. It sets the precedent for making
sure that all schools, regardless of how they were founded and
when and in which piece of ridiculous or great
legislation—depending on your point of view or how much it has
annoyed you recently—in our universal system have a universal
system of supply. It sets a precedent for making sure you know
that what happens both in your local environment and down the
road, even if it is a long road, is also available, and that you
might have to transfer between them. These are all important
things. We must make sure that it is coherent throughout.
I hope the Minister can also give a small assurance that we will
make sure that, when looking at all forms of providers throughout
this legislation, we apply with sanctions, for the reasons raised
earlier. It would be interesting to get a little nod towards
that.
Can the Minister give us a coherent assurance that we will make
sure that we invest in the people who deliver? Without that, this
legislation does not really matter. Will there be another series
of lists and another tier of teachers who have gone through the
A-level system giving advice about what could be done to get to
level 4 via a T-level—which, once again, we do not understand yet
properly? That will not help. We need people who are properly
trained, because training is the important bit. Unless it is of
high quality, we may as well give up and go home now.
11.09am
(Lab)
My Lords, as we heard from the noble Lord, , and others, this promising Bill
would extend the existing duty that some schools have to make
careers guidance available. It would mean that all secondary
school pupils in the state sector got access to independent
careers advice.
Labour supported this Bill in the Commons, and I am happy to
reaffirm this today. These measures are an important first step
in aligning the experience—and, ultimately, the life chances—of
state school pupils with their independently educated peers, who
we know in general have much greater access to information.
Indeed, as a former teacher in the state sector with 34 years’
experience, I can confirm that careers guidance was always a
moveable feast. However, in my former school, Hawthorn High
School in Pontypridd, we were fortunate to have the skills and
knowledge of one of the area’s outstanding careers teachers, as
noted by her regular grade 1 Estyn grading—my former colleague
Helen Lima. Every student deserves the opportunity to have such
support. As my noble friend Lady Morris said, young people lack
the skills to make the appropriate decisions—particularly
youngsters with greater socio-economic needs.
Careers education must be a crucial building block of the
Government’s schools policy—and their levelling up. I am glad to
see the levelling-up Minister here to listen. Labour stands ready
to help the Government in their aims on this wherever we can.
There is a serious gap of rigorous and dynamic careers guidance
in our schools. In the Skills for Jobs White Paper, the DfE
admits that
“there is no single place you can go to get government-backed,
comprehensive careers information.”
We have the opportunity to correct this, and we simply must
ensure that the provision put in place is evidence-based and
effective.
It is no use, for example, if pupils are encouraged into
contracting industries, or not informed about burgeoning ones,
especially in our dynamic area of future technologies. Indeed,
despite the admirable intent of the Baker clause—and boy, did I
like those Baker days from 1988 onwards; they were very useful—a
third of students say they have received no information about
apprenticeships. So I urge the Minister to consider monitoring
and evaluation when implementing these measures. What metrics
will the Government use to define success—user satisfaction or
employment outcomes? And, importantly, how will we change course
if the scheme is failing?
I pay tribute to the honourable Member for Workington, who is
sponsoring this Bill. In Committee in the other place, he pointed
out that only 45% of secondary schools and colleges are involved
in career hubs, the formal partnership between schools,
businesses and training providers. This seems like a lost
opportunity. I would argue that the Government could go further
and faster. Is their aim for the number to be 100%, and by
when?
Labour’s strongly held view is that every young person should be
able to expect quality work experience —an experience that opens
their horizons and is judged not on whether they are safe but on
whether it helps them to experience their future world of work.
Indeed, I am delighted that the leader of the Opposition in the
other place has announced an excellent offer that will be
introduced by the next Labour Government. It will include the
equivalent of two weeks-worth of compulsory work experience to
connect young people with local employers, build the skills for
work and ensure that every child and young person has access to
quality careers advice in their school by giving every school
access to a professional careers adviser once a week: a Helen
Lima for every school.
Until that day, however, I conclude by reaffirming our overall
support for the Bill and my gratitude to all those supporting it.
These are surely common-sense measures and a solid step on the
way to helping school pupils into meaningful employment and a
bright future.
11.14am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for
Education () (Con)
My Lords, I join your Lordships in thanking my noble friend
for bringing forward this Bill,
and I thank all noble Lords who have participated in this debate.
I am also grateful to my honourable friend the Member for
Workington for his work on this important Bill, and I
congratulate him on ensuring that it passed through the other
place.
High-quality careers guidance prepares young people for what
comes next. It connects young people from all backgrounds to
education and training opportunities that lead to great jobs—as
my noble friend Lady Altmann said, not just one great job but
several over a career. Furthermore, careers guidance is an
essential underpinning to the Government’s skills reform, and
that is why I am happy to lend my support, and that of the
Government, to this Bill.
The cross-party support apparent in the other place shows that
there is agreement in both Houses that careers guidance in
secondary schools is vital and, in particular, on the benefits of
inspiring our young people about a range of great careers,
raising aspirations and encouraging them to maximise their talent
and skills. The Government support the Bill because we want to
level up the country, give access to opportunity and allow talent
to flourish—as my noble friend said, whether that be in the
locality you grew up or outside it.
As we emerge from this pandemic, good-quality careers advice is
essential to build a workforce that is dynamic and flexible. It
is critical that young people are provided with guidance on
future labour market opportunities and growth sectors, so that
they can learn the skills they need to be successful in our
fast-paced and ever-evolving jobs market—a point that the noble
Baroness, Lady Wilcox, mentioned.
My noble friend challenged me on whether the Government would
stick with the programme, and I am pleased to reassure him that
in the Skills for Jobs White Paper, we committed to extending
careers hubs, career leader training, digital support and the
enterprise adviser networks—the employer volunteers—to all
secondary schools and colleges in England. Your Lordships will
remember that that recommendation was in the Augar review, and we
accepted it. My noble friend explained the Bill very ably. It is
a simple but effective Bill, and I will not repeat what it aims
to achieve, but I shall attempt to address some of the points
raised by your Lordships today.
I know that my noble friend Lord Baker and I do not agree on
absolutely every aspect of widening pupil access to alternative
providers, but we agree on the principle of it, and we agree that
there are still too many schools failing to comply with provider
access legislation. Your Lordships will be aware that, through
the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill, we aim to strengthen the
law so that all schools must offer at least three encounters with
providers of approved technical education qualifications and
apprenticeships for pupils in years 8 to 13. For the first time,
we will introduce parameters around the content of these
encounters to safeguard their quality.
The noble Lord, , and my noble friend Lord
Holmes raised the important issue of careers provision for those
students with special educational needs and disabilities. The
Bill extends careers provision to all pupils in state secondary
education, including those in mainstream schools with special
educational needs provision, and in special schools. The Careers
& Enterprise Company works with career leaders to design and
deliver career education programmes tailored to the needs of
young people with special educational needs and disabilities. All
mainstream and special schools have been invited to be involved
in the Careers & Enterprise Company’s inclusion community of
practice, which operates out of 32 career hubs and currently
reaches 628 educational establishments. This national community
of best practice sharing was established to enable young people
with special educational needs to be much better supported in
their careers education, and this will be rolled out to all
careers hubs in the next academic year.
I do not want to dwell on the minimum education requirements
raised by the noble Lord, , but I remind him that we
are consulting on them; this is not a decision.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Wilcox and Lady Morris of Yardley,
rightly talked about the importance of work experience. The
careers statutory guidance makes it clear that schools and
colleges should follow the Gatsby benchmarks. They are
evidence-based, as the noble Baroness opposite rightly
challenged, and offer both personal guidance and experience of
work as part of their career strategy for pupils.
The noble Lords, and , mentioned the value of
engaging children in primary schools. Of course, they are right
that this has the potential to broaden horizons and raise
aspirations. The Careers & Enterprise Company has produced a
suite of resources to support the delivery of these activities in
primary schools, and we support programmes such as Primary
Futures that help to broaden students’ aspirations at an earlier
stage.
The noble Lord, , asked for a clearer careers
strategy. He may be aware that the Government have appointed
Professor Sir John Holman as the independent strategic adviser on
careers guidance. He is currently advising us on greater local
and national alignment between the National Careers Service and
the Careers & Enterprise Company. He will also advise on the
development of a cohesive and coherent careers system for the
long term; we expect to receive his recommendations this
summer.
As we have heard from your Lordships, we cannot underestimate how
important careers advice is. The Bill will help to make sure that
every young person in a state secondary school, whatever their
background and wherever they live in the country, can get on in
life. I thank your Lordships for their contributions, which the
Government are pleased to support; I urge the House to do the
same.
(CB)
My Lords, the Minister has made no reference to my concern about
whether careers professionals will be available in sufficient
number and quality to deliver the ambitious plans that the
Government have outlined.
(Con)
We are confident. We are working in a number of ways, which I am
happy to set out for the noble Lord in writing.
11.22am
(Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken,
particularly my noble friend the Minister for that reply. I think
that, if today were a baking day for my noble friend Lord Baker,
he would have an oven full of hot cross buns. As ever, his was an
impressive speech and one that we should all listen to. I very
much look forward to the debates that we will have when this kill
Bill returns to this House. It is really important that something
we all agree should happen is framed in such a way that it does
happen.
I support what the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, said
about how difficult it is for people to realise that something
might be for them and then take the first step, and about the
efficacy of having someone by their side to help. I really hope
that we find the Government determined to move forward on careers
hubs and career leaders’ education, including working with
education employers; my noble friend the Minister mentioned the
work done by Primary Futures and other equivalent organisations
to produce people who can be by someone’s side when they are
looking at taking that first step.
The noble Lord, , focused on extending this to
primary. It is important. Children coming into secondary school
have a lot of their ideas formed by that stage; a narrowing has
taken place. It does not take much. I have been on several
Primary Future expeditions. At that age, children are so
uncritical. They open up to new ideas so easily. They love
sitting down next to a policeman or a nurse, or someone like
that, who can talk to them about what they do in a way they have
not had exposure to. It really works well as a formula.
As ever, my noble friend Lord Holmes waxed lyrical on disabled
people. I must say, I have found it astonishingly difficult to
employ disabled people. I have never found a structure, with
charities or the Government, that makes it easier for me to
communicate with and reach disabled people or understand how to
do that better. I hope that we will see some progress on that; we
need a structure that industry can relate to and which really
supports disabled people. It is not beyond human wit.
Thinking about my noble friend Lady Altmann’s speech, I am
reminded of Cisco’s pride that its champion apprentice was a
woman who was previously a hairdresser. It had changed its
advertising, so that the way it described its jobs appealed to
people like that. It is not hard, if you are given help or you
have the inspiration, to make changes, but it really helps if you
have a structure to work with in doing that.
I am extremely grateful to all who have spoken. I wish the Bill a
swift and untroubled passage through this House and very much
look forward to its implementation.
Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole
House.
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