Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-07-06
Topic: Education
Claire Fox (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and I have argued over so many things over so many years that it is not true but, I must say, that was a bravura performance. He raised some very important issues, particularly in relation to whether we need this legislation or whether legislation is being used as a substitute for strategy. I note in particular his point about the lack of funding for FE and the fact that there is a danger that this legislation will simply be a way of signalling an approach but not helping in practical terms. I thought that he did an excellent job; it was like the emperor’s new clothes being exposed there. However, I want to correct him on one point. We have not left Europe; we have left the EU. As a Brexiteer, I am a great fan and advocate of German vocational education, as a matter of fact First, I apologise for not speaking at Second Reading. My IT skills rather failed me; I should probably go on a course. I thought that I had listed myself online, but I had failed to press the right button I support the aspirations of this Bill. It is close to my heart because, as a former further education lecturer—a sector that is too often treated as a Cinderella sector—I hope that further education will at last arrive at the ball. However, ironically, aspects of this Bill could limit opportunities, which is one reason why I am particularly sympathetic to Amendments 1, 2 and 6 in this group and the remarks initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas I want to avoid making a Second Reading speech. However, I want to make a broad point about a distinction that it is important to remember as we go through all the amendments on Report and which represents why I want the Bill to avoid being overly narrow or prescriptive about outcomes, as this can backfire and lead to unintended consequences. While we are focusing on the neglected areas of vocational qualifications, skills and training, one danger is that we assume that certain social groups of young people are just not cut out for academic education. In the skills and training discussion—that is, when we talk about how we can target people and help them with skills and training—it is too often assumed that we are talking about working-class youth. This is dangerously deterministic and has already put pressure on schools in certain social areas to see education as preparation for the labour market, which cuts against the principle of building a society or education based on merit To state it baldly, every child has a right to an academic education until the age of 16, in my opinion, and even if they choose not to pursue an academic route after that, they are entitled to be introduced to the best that is thought and known. This allows every young person, whether they end up as a plumber or a philosopher, access through schooling to a working knowledge of cultural capital, history, literature, the scientific method and so on. The trainee hairdressers and car mechanics to whom I taught literature were more than the jobs that they eventually acquired. We should be wary of a narrowly instrumental version of vocationalism, as it can limit opportunities and aspirations One concern that I have about the Bill is that it focuses too narrowly on the skills required by local employers; this has already been raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. I mean no disrespect to them, but local employers can be short-term and short-sighted and do not always see the long view. As these amendments—the ones that I am supporting—emphasise, local employers may not always be best placed to see the bigger picture. In turn, that can narrow the options for students For example, take a geographical area traditionally associated with the fishing industry—an area in which I would like to see more investment in terms of apprenticeships and so on. Are we to assume that the locality will only ever need skills related to fishing? Also, there may well be more future-oriented skills that are not needed as yet but could create new industries, such as marine biology Of course, it sounds positive when the DfE says that the Bill will meet "the need of local areas … so people no longer have to leave their home-towns to find great jobs." The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, made the point about place; I am very keen on remembering that. I like the soundbite about improving communities rather than just providing a ladder out of them, but it would also be wrong to confine people, or even trap them, into jobs related to the needs of the locality they live in. If you live in a largely agricultural area but aspire to be an engineer in car manufacturing, or to work in construction in the city, will you be able to access skills that allow you to move if we confine the skills available to those that only the local employers decide on? If you are an inner-city youth who dreams of working in farming, will you be able to access skills if local bosses cannot imagine ever needing or training someone to pursue such an agricultural career? Amendments 1 and 6 and their motivation by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, tackle these issues and the potentially limiting anomalies in the Bill More generally, one of the ironies of focusing on catering for local needs is that it limits who decides on local priorities just to local employers. It takes power away not only from students locally, as has been mentioned, but from local civic leaders—we have heard about mayors being excluded—and local further education college principals. Tom Bewick, chief executive of the Federation of Awarding Bodies, calls this a top-down power grab on qualifications. He says: "It is regrettable that the provisions in this Bill and the government’s wider qualifications review seeks to stifle investment, innovation and choice in the future by effectively nationalising technical qualifications via a Whitehall-driven, top-down, command and control approach." Certainly, as later amendments try to address, the Bill introduces new regulatory layers of approval which are politically controlled from the centre—for example, the need for the Secretary of State to approve the new statutory local skills improvement plans. The Bill claims to be local, but how local is it beyond the local employers? I am also sympathetic to Amendment 81, tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Whitaker and Lady Greengross, and others, which addresses the attainment gap. The Bill is limited in supporting those who have not attained grade 4 or above in English. Simon Parkinson, the chief executive of the Workers’ Educational Association, noted that the Bill is "quiet on support for any qualifications below Level 3", which "offer many adult learners key progression routes" I am sympathetic to thinking about broadening this out Many years ago—probably decades now—I launched a return to learning course for women who had no qualifications. They were often young women, and I taught them a broad liberal arts course. I agree with the WEA that it is worrying that the Bill does little to support "subjects outside a narrow band of technical disciplines" For the women who I taught, it was an introduction to literature, history and creative writing; no doubt local employers would think that a complete waste of time. But it actually allowed them to acquire confidence and skills—and ultimately, in some instances, a GCSE in English. It was a stepping stone to them taking training courses and reskilling, and many went on to be, for example, a nurse or a police officer. One did a course in animal husbandry. Another eventually ran a successful beauty business and earned a fortune My main takeaway from that is that we cannot be too prescriptive in what we want to achieve when we train people by narrowly saying that the only skills that matter are decided by local bosses. They might say "We’ll decide what skills we’ll need in this area into the future", but lack any imagination to think beyond that. Sometimes non-training and non-skills education can lead people into the world of training and skills, and we should not neglect that either.