Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-10-21
Topic: Education
Kenneth Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 35A, which is in my name and those of others. Before explaining its purpose, I say to the Minister that the whole House appreciates how difficult it is to take over a Bill three-quarters of the way through. This is a very complicated and difficult Bill that requires a great deal of educational knowledge, and she has measured up to that enormously—it must have taken a lot of midnight oil. I thank her very much The purpose of these two amendments is exactly the same: to make the Baker clause workable. I drafted the Baker clause four years ago in order to improve careers guidance because I wanted students to leave school at 18 knowing about apprenticeships and about what FE colleges, independent sixth form colleges, private providers and UTCs do. Quite frankly, heads do not tell their students very much, because, for every student who goes, they lose between £5,000 and £6,000. They even keep in their schools students whom they individually believe would be better in other education training. That is the position When John Nash, who was then a Minister, agreed it, I was told that he would tidy up my drafting, and I thanked him for that. I begged the department to make it a legal duty for schools to hold these meetings, because heads will not be keen to—they will try to avoid them. I was told that that would be met by ministerial guidance when the Bill was on the statute book. Ministerial guidance was issued, but it was largely ignored When we approached schools and UTCs locally—some of them never replied—we were told that they were too busy to do this and that they could not do it. They also fobbed it off and said, "You can have a meeting in late June or July, after the exams", when the schools are half empty. They did not even realise that, if you cannot have these meetings before 28 February each year, they are useless because, on that day, school lists close for the September of that year. So I was not very impressed with that As I said, when the Bill was enacted, the ministerial advice was totally ignored, so the Baker clause has not been operable for three years. The Government have now provided a way of making it operable. I do not think that this will be as effective as the new clause that I have written for two reasons. First, secondary legislation will delay the actual implementation, probably for weeks or months, quite frankly. They have to go through consultation. As we know, secondary legislation is, in many cases, never debated, but when it is, it cannot be amended. It is really a measure of government by decree rather than debate, and that is inappropriate. My proposed new clause would mean that this would come into effect on the day that the Bill receives its Third Reading in the House of Commons—much earlier than under the Government’s amendment The government amendment is quite defective when it says that there should be one meeting in the school. The point is that there will be three phases or times— 13 to 14, 15 to 16, and 18—when providers can go in to approach the children. But they say that there should be "at least one" meeting, which means that, if an FE school gets in first—say, on 30 November—the duty of one meeting has been met and all the others can be turned down. That is totally inappropriate. My amendment says that there should be up to three meetings—I do not think that we should disrupt schools more than that. They would not be for a full day; they would be for two or three hours each, and perhaps two or three providers could speak. That is basically what my amendment says The other deficiency in the Government’s amendment is that it does not mention, as my amendment does, the information which providers have to provide. That is in my proposed new subsection (2A)(b) and it includes "(i) information about the provider and the approved technical education qualifications or apprenticeships that the provider offers … (ii) information about the careers to which those technical education qualifications or apprenticeships might lead … (iii) a description of what learning or training with the provider is like, and … (iv) responses to questions from the pupils about the provider or technical education qualifications and apprenticeships" So my amendment sets out clearly what the providers have to do when they go in. I am afraid that the government amendment depends on secondary legislation, which, as I have said, cannot be debated or amended in this House, and it would delay the introduction of the Bill. My amendment is a much more effective way of doing it When I asked the department to say that UTCs would definitely be included among providers, it said, "Well, we cannot give you that complete guarantee." That is a great mistake, because UTCs have the best record in respect of students leaving who do not become unemployed. That is what we are very proud of. The average level of student leavers not in education, employment or training, or NEETs, is 9.3%; we are 3%. Last year, four university technical colleges had no NEETs at all: in Hull, Portsmouth, Aston in Birmingham and Sellafield’s UTC on the north-west coast. Students in schools should know that and know that they have very good career prospects by going to university technical colleges I have set out why I think my amendment is more effective. It would definitely come in earlier than the Government’s, probably by months, so I commend it to the House. When the time comes, I shall seek to test the opinion of the House.