Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [Lords] Consideration of Lords
message Clause 7 Additional powers to approve technical education
qualifications 6.06pm The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State
for Education (Alex Burghart) I beg to move, That this House
disagrees with the Lords in their amendment 15B proposed instead of
the words left out of the Bill by its amendment 15. Madam Deputy
Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton) With this it will be...Request free trial
Skills and Post-16
Education Bill [Lords]
Consideration of Lords message
Clause 7
Additional powers to approve technical education
qualifications
6.06pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education ()
I beg to move,
That this House disagrees with the Lords in their amendment 15B
proposed instead of the words left out of the Bill by its
amendment 15.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
With this it will be convenient to discuss the Government motion
that this House agrees with the Lords in their amendments 17B and
17C.
I am delighted to be back in the House to discuss our landmark
Skills and Post-16 Education Bill. I am pleased the Bill has
progressed to this point, as it is a real opportunity for us to
create a chance for more people to develop the skills they need
to move into a job and support our economy. We have made the case
that this Bill and the work surrounding it will provide
qualifications that have been designed with employers to give
students the skills that the economy needs. That will help us to
boost productivity and level up our country.
Lords amendment 17B is a Government amendment on provider
encounters. I am delighted that we were able to make this
amendment, thanks to the tireless work of my right hon. Friend
the Member for Harlow (), the Chair of the Select
Committee on Education. His successful campaigning on this issue,
and on further education and skills more broadly, is testament to
his expertise, his persuasive powers and his dedication to his
constituents, who will be well served by this Bill.
This amendment represents a compromise that will require schools
to put on six provider encounters for pupils in years 8 to 13—two
in each key stage. This should help to ensure that young people
meet a greater breadth of providers and, crucially, it should
prevent schools from simply arranging one provider meeting and
turning down all other providers.
The underpinning statutory guidance will include details of the
full range of providers that we expect all pupils to have the
opportunity to meet during their time at secondary school. The
Government intend to consult on this statutory guidance to ensure
that the legislation works for schools, providers and, most
importantly, young people.
(Strangford) (DUP)
I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say. Does he
agree that defunding BTECs poses tangible risks to disadvantaged
students and that Lords amendment 17, which ensures that the
earliest qualifications can be defunded will now be 2025, gives
the necessary time for a good evaluation of T-levels and how they
work in this new landscape of qualifications? We should support
our colleges to allow every child to achieve their potential.
I am always anxious to hear what the hon. Gentleman has to say. I
believe his comment is a reference to amendment 15B, which I am
coming to in a moment, but I hope he will forgive me if I finish
talking about 17B first.
I hope this House will agree that we have reached a sensible
compromise position, with the help of my right hon. Friend the
Chair of the Education Committee. This middle ground of six
provider encounters will help to give every pupil information
about what further education colleges, independent training
providers, university technical colleges and other alternative
providers can offer.
Turning to Lords amendment 15B on the roll-out of our technical
education qualification reforms, I begin by reiterating the
announcement made in this House by my right hon. Friend the
Secretary of State on Second Reading. We are allowing an extra
year before public funding approval is withdrawn from
qualifications that overlap with T-levels and before reformed
qualifications are introduced that will sit alongside T-levels
and A-levels.
Our reform programme is rightly ambitious, but we understand that
it would be wrong to push too hard and risk compromising quality.
The additional year strikes the right balance, giving providers,
awarding organisations, students and other stakeholders enough
time to prepare while moving forward with these important
reforms. That is why we cannot accept the three-year delay that
the amendment proposes.
These changes are part of reforms to our technical education
system that have been over a decade in the making; they have
their origins in the Wolf review of 2011 and were taken further
by the Sainsbury review in 2016. Both those crucial pieces of
work showed that we must close the gap between what people study
and the skills employers need. As said:
“Whatever their background, individuals need access to a national
system of technical qualifications which is easy-to-understand,
has credibility with employers and remains stable over time.”
T-levels will deliver on that pledge. They are a critical step
change in the quality of the technical offer. They have been
co-designed with more than 250 leading employers and are based on
the best international examples of technical education. We have
already put in place significant investment and support to help
providers and employers to prepare for T-levels. By September
2023, all T-levels will be available to many thousands of young
people across the country. The change to our reform timetable
means that all schools and colleges will now be able to teach
T-levels for at least a year before overlapping qualifications
have their funding removed.
Last November, the Secretary of State also announced the removal
of the English and maths exit requirement for T-levels. That is
about making the landscape fairer so that talented students with
more diverse strengths are not prevented from accessing this
important offer. The change brings T-levels into line with other
level 3 study—notably A-levels, which do not have such an English
and maths exit requirement.
In addition, this amendment given to us by noble Lords would
require consultation and consent from employer representative
bodies before withdrawing funding approval from qualifications.
As hon. Members will be aware, we have twice consulted on our
intention to withdraw funding from qualifications that overlap
with T-levels. T-levels were designed with employers to give
young people the skills that they need to progress into skilled
employment, the skills that employers need and the skills that
our economy needs.
(Chesterfield) (Lab)
The Minister refers to the consultation that the Government did
on the defunding of BTECs and the twin-track approach. Am I right
in saying that 86% of respondents to the Government’s own
consultation said that the Government should keep the twin-track
approach? If so, why is the Minister highlighting that
consultation, which has come back to him telling him that the
approach he is taking is wrong, as a reason not to vote for the
amendment the Lords have proposed here?
Our consultation showed that there was widespread support for
having a system of technical qualifications that offered both
co-design with employers and entrenched, embedded work
experience. The choice before Parliament in debating this Bill is
whether we wish to push ahead, following the best international
examples, on technical qualifications that are designed with
employers and give students the best work experience
opportunities as part of that qualification. That is the choice.
We on the Government side know where we stand. We wish to have
gold-standard qualifications that rank among the best in the
world. I am afraid the Opposition do not seem to wish to follow
us on that journey.
The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education will
continue to involve employers actively when making decisions
about qualification approval, including through its route panels.
Those panels hold national sector expertise and expert knowledge
of occupational standards that have portability across employers.
Institute approval will be a mark of quality and currency with
business and industry, and will ensure that both employers and
employees have the knowledge, skills and behaviours they need.
The requirement for a public consultation and consent from
employer representative bodies would duplicate existing good
practice and introduce an unnecessary burden.
6.15pm
We have listened to the views expressed in the House and acted
upon them. The Secretary of State’s policy announcements of
significant changes acknowledge and satisfy the aims of the
amendments. To push the amendments would risk the whole reform
programme and risk letting down a generation of learners. I
therefore urge the House to reject the amendment from the other
place.
I am very pleased that we are starting to make real progress with
this legislation. Through our change to provider access
legislation, I believe we have made this Bill better, but now is
the time to crack on with delivering our important skills
reforms.
Mr Perkins
Last week’s spring statement showed that this Government have a
Chancellor ill-equipped to tackle the size of the cost of living
challenge in front of him. This week, the Skills and Post-16
Education Bill shows that, when it comes to addressing the key
skills challenges our growth-starved nation faces, we have a
Government ill-equipped for that challenge too.
We should remember that in the Chancellor’s statement last week
he referred to reviewing the apprenticeship levy and other taxes,
and by Friday he was forced to deny that there would be any
formal review of the levy or the system at all. What a mess. This
is a Government who spend the back-end of the week denying what
they said in the first part of it. No wonder the sector is
utterly disillusioned with their approach.
Let us stop for a minute and think how it could have been. A
skills Bill worthy of the name would have seized the challenge
posed by the huge reduction in apprenticeships since the
introduction of the levy and demanded a review that ensured that
small businesses were better served and that more level 2 and
level 3 apprenticeship opportunities were created, and sought to
return at least to the numbers we had before the levy was
introduced.
A transformative skills Bill would also have ensured that all the
relevant bodies were around the table directing local skills
funding. It would also have recognised that, if universal credit
is really going to be a bridge from the dole to a rewarding
career, people on universal credit must be able to afford to
invest in themselves in the way that the excellent Lords
amendment suggested.
One can only imagine what their noble Lordships made of the
Commons consideration of their amendments. A range of peers from
across the political spectrum had brought their considerable
knowledge and experience to bear to strengthen this “act of
educational vandalism”, as Lord Baker described it, and voted
through a series of amendments that a wide variety of
knowledgeable judges, including groups such as the Association of
Colleges, had described as strengthening the Bill.
Yet, one by one, the Government rejected those amendments,
meaning that they have failed to grasp the huge opportunity,
presented by the first skills Bill in their 12-year period in
office, to put England’s approach to skills on a comparable
footing with the best systems around the world. Their noble
lordships reluctantly agreed to place just two further amendments
in front of us today.
On amendment 15B, when this Bill was first debated nine months
ago we had the then Secretary of State and the skills Minister in
dismissive mood, decrying BTECs for all they were worth. Since
then, we have had the more ameliorative approach, which we
welcome, of the current Secretary of State first offering an
extension to funding for BTECs into the next Parliament, then
saying that the Government would conduct a qualifications review
and tell us which level 3 qualifications they consider not of
sufficient quality or duplicating T-levels.
All the while, however, the suspicion remains—reinforced by the
Minister’s speech a moment ago—that the Government believe that
only by discrediting or defunding BTECs will T-levels flourish. I
am confused about why they so lack confidence in this new
qualification. As my great friend said when moving amendment
15B last week, the Opposition have no hostility towards T-levels;
indeed, we believe they are of real value. Just two weeks ago, I
was at Barnsley College—a fine institution where I met several
good T-level students studying construction, digital production,
and health and care. They were hugely impressive, as were the
lecturers and the leadership team, and had a real vision for
where they might go following this qualification. I have no
problem with saying that I have seen good quality T-level
provision.
Nor should the Government refuse to recognise that BTECs, CACHE
diplomas and other level 3 qualifications have also been
transformational for so many students, and they should proceed
cautiously before abolishing them. If the qualification, in its
current form or in any future form, is a strong one, it will
prosper, without the need to try and kill other level 3
qualifications and leave tens of thousands of students without a
qualification to study. BTECs are widely respected by employers,
learners, universities, colleges, training providers and other
key stakeholders. When I asked the Minister about this earlier,
he refused to answer, but the DFE’s own figures showed that 86%
of respondents to its consultation urged it to continue the twin
track of T-levels and BTECs. The Minister referred to Labour
opposing T-levels. We are not opposing T-levels at all. In fact,
it was the Conservative-dominated House of Lords, with the
support of Conservative peers, that voted to place this amendment
back before us last week.
The Government have optimistically suggested that 100,000
students might be doing T-levels by 2024. Given that 230,000
students currently study for level-3 qualifications, the
Government need to come clean, when their review is published,
about their plan for those who do not move on to do T-levels. It
really is not good enough to continue dodging this question.
Institutions need to know, learners need to know, and employers
need to know. Do the Government expect that more students will
complete level 2 and then go into the world of work at the age of
17? Do they expect that anything like the missing 130,000 would
stay on alternative level 3 courses? If not, what is the plan?
The Government need to come clean.
On amendments 17B and 17C, while Labour Members would have
preferred that the Baker clause was adopted in its entirety, we
are prepared to accept this compromise as a way to move the issue
forward. It was interesting to hear the Minister talk about that
compromise. I still fail to see what it was about having more
than one intervention in a single school year that the Government
thought so radical an idea. Why is two in every two years
considered the very most that we can expect of our schools?
Notwithstanding that, given that at least 50% of pupils do not
progress on to an academic route, children and young people
should have as much support as possible to learn about the wide
range of opportunities open to them. It is welcome that the two
interactions must be separate and different from each other. I
would like to impress upon the Minister that these interactions
must be of high quality and must be impartial.
The Government need to acknowledge that the perspective on the
current operation of the Baker clause differs considerably
depending on whether you are a student or a provider. All too
often, apprentices I have met have told me that they were not
made aware of apprenticeships while at school. Just a few weeks
ago, I was at the Remit Training automotive apprenticeship
academy, where just five of the 25 students I met said that
apprenticeships had been discussed at school and that they had
received proper careers guidance. I suspect that if we spoke to
their school, we would have heard a different tale. Ensuring that
these interactions are done in a meaningful way that really opens
schoolchildren’s horizons is so important.
While it remains a regret that more of the Lords’ excellent
amendments were rejected by this House, it is our intention to
support their lordships’ two remaining amendments before us
tonight. Beyond that, we give notice that as this Government have
clearly run out of the ideas required to address the skills
shortage they have created, a future Labour Government will
tackle the systemic failure that has seen this country fail too
many students and leaves England’s employers consistently
complaining that under this Government too few young people leave
our schools ready to work. It will take a Labour Government to
drive the partnership and collaboration required to bring
Government, employers, metro Mayors, local authorities and others
together to reform what is not working and develop a skills
ecosystem fit for purpose that delivers the work-ready students
our employers demand, and our economy, and our country, so
desperately need.
(Harlow) (Con)
I am pleased to be called to speak today, and glad that this Bill
is reaching almost the end of its yellow brick road. Sometimes
the Government are like the Tin Man and need a bit of oil in
them. I pay tribute to the Secretary of State, the skills
Minister and the Minister for Higher and Further Education, as
well as the previous skills Minister, my hon. Friend the Member
for Chichester (), who first set the wheels
in motion for this legislation.
I have always passionately believed in the need to build an
apprenticeships and skills nation. I disagree with the Opposition
in that I think that the Bill is fundamentally important. The
lifetime skills guarantee and the lifelong learning entitlement
will transform lives for the better. It is backed by real funding
of an extra £3 billion announced in the autumn Budget. That will
do a lot to reverse the decades of neglect and snobbery that have
often surrounded the FE sector. Culture change must start at the
top. I am genuinely proud of the way that the Government have met
the challenge of skills. We will always need more to be done, but
this is a fundamental Bill and it should be recognised as such.
While I absolutely want to make sure that the core BTECs are kept
until the T-levels are rolled out, I would certainly not want a
delay in T-levels. If anything, I would be happy for the Minister
to introduce them even faster than their planned roll-out.
Culture change must also come from the bottom up. One of the
biggest obstacles to students undertaking more skills-based
courses is the fact that schools do not encourage students to do
apprenticeships or vocational learning in the same way that they
encourage progression to university. As I mentioned in relation
to amendments that came to the House a few weeks ago, my maiden
speech in 2010 was on this very subject, so the Minister will
understand why I care about it. Sadly, not a lot has changed
since 2010 in terms of encouraging students to do
apprenticeships. Many teachers have themselves qualified by going
to university, so their familiarity with this pathway has helped
to foster the age-old mantra of “university, university,
university”. I would like the Government to allow us to have not
just postgraduate teachers but teachers who have qualified
through a degree apprenticeship. We have policing and nursing
apprenticeships, so why not teaching apprenticeships and
undergraduates at higher apprentice level?
The way the inspection framework has been framed and the nature
of A-levels being seen as more academic has also contributed to
the focus on university as the gold-plated standard. I hope that
the roll-out of T-levels will help to ensure that the same
procedures apply to technical education and then divide between
academic and vocational learning. Personally speaking, I would be
delighted if students could mix their alphabet of learning and
take A-levels and T-levels together, which would essentially
establish an international baccalaureate-style system of the kind
that has benefited so many pupils from countries around the
world.
However, the most critical thing we can do is improve careers
guidance in schools. I am sure that my colleagues on the Front
Bench will have tinnitus from the amount of times that I have
gone on about this, but it is fundamental. The more encounters
that pupils have with further education providers, technical
colleges and university technical colleges, the more likely we
can demonstrate that there is another, and arguably better, path
forward. On one occasion, when I was lucky enough to have the
role of skills Minister that my hon. Friend the Member for
Brentwood and Ongar () performs with such
distinction, I went to visit an exhibition in Birmingham—a skills
show—and met a father and daughter who were in the process of
deciding whether she should go to university. I showed them what
was on offer—the high-quality skills courses and the jobs as
well. By the time we had finished, the father and the daughter
had absolutely decided that she would go and do a higher
apprenticeship. I thought to myself, “I’ve converted one person
to do this and I hope we convert many millions more of our young
people.” That is why these encounters are so important—because
without that skills show, that father and daughter would probably
have just taken the traditional academic route of her going to
university.
Last time I spoke on this Bill, I was addressing my new clause 3,
which would have provided for three careers guidance encounters
per pupil in each key year group. The Secretary of State said
that while he was unable to make an announcement at that time, he
would consider it further and move in due course and, as is so
often the case with him and his Ministers, they have kept their
commitment and their word, which is hugely appreciated. I am
delighted to speak in support of Government amendments 17B and
17C, which allow for two careers guidance meetings per pupil per
key year group, making a total of six such meetings, which is
double what is on offer today. That goes to show that if the
Secretary of State says he will do something, it will happen.
6.30pm
Colleagues across the House will remember that I tabled three
amendments to the Bill: one was to create apprenticeship routes
for prisoners, one was to increase the number of careers guidance
meetings for students, and one was to consider providing funding
to support level 2 qualifications for adults who demonstrated an
intent to progress to level 3 under the lifelong learning
entitlement. Mr Deputy Speaker, I hope you will not mind if I
take a leaf out of Meat Loaf’s book, as he said:
“Now don’t be sad, don’t be sad, ’cause two out of three ain’t
bad”.
That applies to two of the three encounters as well. The
Government accepted two of my amendments—the one on prison
apprenticeships in particular—and I greatly respect Ministers for
listening and working with me and colleagues to reach these
agreements.
A few months ago, I was honoured to be invited back to Exeter
University—my old university—to make a speech and present its
first cohort of degree apprenticeship students with their
degrees. I remember sitting in that same hall as a university
graduate in 1991, and I looked out at so many apprentices from
all walks of life who were proud of the work that they had
achieved. If a traditional academic university such as Exeter—one
of the best in the world—can do so much to change its culture and
promote degree apprenticeships, things must really be changing in
our country. I hope that the passing of this excellent Bill will
see many more schools and universities embrace vocational
education pathways, and I hope that my right hon. Friend will
continue to do more to banish once and for all the snobbery and
misunderstanding that has surrounded apprenticeships, skills and
technical education and to create a broader curriculum that
supports vocational learning to better prepare pupils and
students for the world of work.
(Kingswood) (Con)
I reiterate the general remarks of my right hon. Friend the
Member for Harlow () about how the Bill is
welcome overall. I will support the Government in their motions
to disagree with the Lords amendments, and I agree that it is
important that the Bill sees its final passage so that we can get
on with the important journey towards an integrated education
system. I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial
Interests as chair of the Lifelong Education Commission, which I
set up with ResPublica to look at the long-term structural issues
underpinning why the United Kingdom, and England in particular,
has had such a difficult, long tail of underachievement and the
need, as we look at the Government’s mission to level up for the
future, to place skills provision front and centre of the
agenda.
About six million people—the figure hovers around that
number—still have only qualifications at level 2, and there is a
desperate need to give more people an opportunity to enhance
their qualifications so that they can apply for the many jobs and
vacancies out there. People are not refusing to do those jobs. It
is partly that they do not have the skills and capabilities to
engage with the process, but they are desperate to do so, and
that it is why it is so vital to match their skills with their
ambitions.
The Bill begins the long process of moving from a top-heavy
system that focused unduly on universities and did not give the
further education sector the opportunity and investment that it
needed to progress. Hopefully, we will now focus on tertiary
education overall instead of pitching HE against FE. However, the
Bill must be just chapter one of that educational revolution. As
the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) mentioned, the Bill
goes only so far, and a number of caveats have yet to be
addressed, particularly on financing. I am particularly
interested in financing for lifelong education, as such learners
are not 18-year-olds who can access loan finance—and, even if
they could, they have families, and they have mortgages and other
debts to pay, so simply saying, “You can apply for an additional
loan” will not work. We need to look at grant financing and
understand the pressures placed on individuals and the barriers
that they will need to overcome to access lifelong learning.
I tabled nine amendments the other month, none of which was
accepted by the Government; nor, sadly, were they taken up by the
Lords. I will continue to press the Government on skills
provision, the lifelong loan entitlement and the lifetime skills
guarantee, which applies only to a small proportion of the
overall population. I wish it could be expanded, and I hope that
the Government recognise that that ambition should be realised,
particularly for individuals who have received qualifications at
levels 3 to 5—or even levels 6 or 7— and need to retrain. They
may have taken a degree 20 years ago, but they cannot access the
opportunities to do that retraining.
The opportunities for lifelong learning and skills provision need
to be more inclusive in the future. At the moment, the Bill
addresses only a small segment of society—it is a segment that
must be addressed and tackled—but let us look at chapters two,
three and four and begin the journey of levelling up for everyone
in this country, not just the immediate priority on which we are
focused today.
It is a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friends the Members for
Harlow () and for Kingswood (), who both have great
expertise in the field. On what my hon. Friend the Member for
Kingswood said, we are interested in building up the offer for
people already in the workplace. We see a great many people
taking apprenticeships to reboot their careers. The Prime
Minister’s lifetime skills guarantee is offering people who did
not get level 3 technical qualifications at school or college the
chance to do so later in life. Of course, we also have the LLE,
which is championed by the Minister for Higher and Further
Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham ().
We are about giving everyone, whatever stage they are at in life,
the chance to step forward and build their careers with new
opportunities. The Bill is central to that. I have heard the hon.
Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) criticise the Bill at
various stages for not mentioning apprenticeships. They are
obviously extraordinarily important to what we are doing, and I
am delighted to report that, in the first quarter of the academic
year, 164,000 people started apprenticeships, which is up 34%
from last year and—crucially—up 6% from the pre-pandemic period.
He often likes to quote figures of yesteryear, and I must remind
him—not for the first time—that the change in the number of
starts was not down to the creation of the apprenticeship levy
but because, in 2017, when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of
State was in a more junior job in the Department for Education,
he started to reform apprenticeships to ensure that our 640
standards reflected the needs of employers. That golden thread
has run through all our reforms over the past 10 years, building
from the report written by in 2011 through to the
Sainsbury review in 2016.
To hear those on the Opposition Benches say, “Slow down, you’re
going too fast” is somewhat reminiscent of the Locomotive Act
1865, which recommended that the speed limit in town should be 2
mph and that somebody with a red flag should walk ahead of the
vehicle as it made its progress. We have waited long enough and
students have waited long enough for high-quality technical
qualifications that are designed with employers to give the
economy the skills that it needs and to give students the skills
they need to prosper in that economy.
The hon. Member for Chesterfield also referred to the number of
people on BTEC courses and the number of people expected to do
T-levels. I remind him again that we are not in the process of
defunding all BTECs: BTECs will survive where they do not overlap
with T-levels. Just as now, there will be some people who do not
study level 3 at age 16 to 19, and those people will have an
enhanced offer at level 2, off the back of our level 2 reforms
that are currently out to consultation.
I was delighted that at the beginning of last week 69 T-level
providers from throughout the country—from north to south and
east to west—came to the Department for Education and talked to
us about their experiences in the first two years. A great many
students came with them, and the level of enthusiasm for the
qualifications and the level of excitement about the
opportunities that the reforms are going to provide for the next
generation was tangible. It therefore gives me great pleasure to
commend the Bill to the House and sit down.
Question put.
[Division 231
The House divided:
Ayes
280
Noes
152
Question accordingly agreed to.
Held on 28 March 2022 at
6.40pm](/Commons/2022-03-28/division/D64629E0-0BF1-403A-9062-E2758E05C278/CommonsChamber?outputType=Names)
Lords amendment 15B disagreed to.
Lords amendments 17B and 17C agreed to.
Ordered, That a Committee be appointed to draw up a Reason to be
assigned to the Lords for disagreeing to their amendment 15B;
That , , , , , and be members of the
Committee;
That be the Chair of the
Committee;
That three be the quorum of the Committee.
That the Committee do withdraw immediately.—(.)
Committee to withdraw immediately; reason to be reported and
communicated to the Lords
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