Technical and Further Education Bill — House of Commons, 2016-11-14
Topic: Education
Gordon Marsden (Labour, Centre-left): I am afraid that I will not because I am short of time. [Interruption.] I am sorry, but it was indicated that I had 10 minutes The Government’s argument was, "You can trust us. You can leave it to us." However, the evidence is clear: we cannot leave it to them. The skills plan consistently talks about the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education being employer-led. That is precisely why FE colleges, other training providers and learners need to be an essential component of it The Government gave us a body that has had two shadow chief executives so far—one was a career civil servant who left fairly rapidly to become a university registrar, and the other was the head of the Education Funding Agency and the Skills Funding Agency, Peter Lauener, who was drafted in part time. That is very much of a piece with the "make it up as you go along" way in which the Government have proceeded so far. It is therefore right for us to ask how the new institute will co-operate with the Office for Students, given how inadequate the current arrangements are for involving learners and providers. Given the fiascos during the past 18 months—for example, the Apprenticeship Delivery Board, which is tasked with advising the Government, has, with the new Government, lost its tsar and now has only the previous private sector co-chair of the board as its sole chair—we are right to ask such questions. Six months after their introduction, we are no closer to finding out how the two bodies will interact with each other We have had no word about what capacity the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education will have, and many concerns have been expressed about that. My hon. Friend the Member for Hove did us all a service by putting that question to the Minister. We know that the body was originally going to involve only 40 employers; it is now suggested that there will be 100 employers. As the chief executive of the Association of Colleges has said, in neither case will it be adequate for the purpose The Government have shown little sense about how the institute will operate in the jungle of organisations that now exist. There is the EFA, the SFA, the National Apprenticeship Service and the Apprenticeship Delivery Board. How will their roles overlap? What role will Ofsted play in the process? What about Ofqual? At best, it is an alphabet soup. At worst, it could become a tug of war in Whitehall, with the interests of providers and apprentices pushed from pillar to post The Bill has more than 20 clauses on insolvency and administration, which shows the direction in which the Government think things are going in the next few years. We believe that the outcomes of the area reviews may entrench, rather than remove, such liability. The college insolvency regime is being introduced alongside the Treasury-controlled restructuring facility. We will want to look very closely in Committee at that process and at the consultation process. We will also want to make sure that public assets are not handed to private, for-profit companies if an insolvency process is taken forward. We agree with the Association of Colleges that the Government have missed an opportunity to introduce a legal scheme that would cover both FE and HE corporations. This means that a college might have an additional regulatory burden that will make it harder to secure finance The skills plan itself is not without criticisms—how strategic it will be post-Brexit, and on productivity, workplace training and adult training—and the Government will need to talk about such issues. The concerns about binary choices and standards, which my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central spoke about, have been echoed by me, the general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers and the University and College Union. We are also concerned about the potentially limiting scope of some of the routes. As Mark Dawe, the chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, has said, a large proportion of jobs in the economy will be outside the scope of the routes. As a Blackpool MP, with my local FE college, I believe it is crucial that the service sector, which will potentially provide huge numbers of apprenticeships and jobs, is not left out of the process There is no reference to the new institute having any responsibility to widen access, and nothing on a strategy to promote participation among care leavers, people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds or those with disabilities. We need that to be in the Bill. We agree with the excellent analysis of Shane Chowen, the head of policy at the Learning and Work Institute, on that point. We agree that the Bill ought to enshrine the recommendations of the Maynard review, to which we contributed. It suggested that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills revisit the recommendations of the Little report of 2012. The Bill needs to do more for looked-after children and care leavers Insolvency might force some students to travel longer distances, but the Bill makes no reference to how they might be compensated or how difficult it might be for suburban and rural colleges. All these points strengthen our argument for the return of the education maintenance allowance I spoke earlier this afternoon about the problems the Government have got themselves into over careers advice. If we are to make a success of the institute, it is crucial that young people are alerted early in their school life to the importance and attraction of technical routes, and we must maximise the opportunities for them to get work tasters that translate into real work experience I am glad that the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills has shown more enthusiasm for the progression from traineeships to apprenticeships than a couple of his predecessors. Traineeships are a key point of entry that can make more young people competitive. However, traineeships have to be progressive. If not, there is a danger that we will see some of the issues we saw in the 1980s Finally, I come to the issue of devo-max. In view of the potential for combined authorities to take on skills and education, why does the Bill not take more account of the potential for devolved skills policy? All it contains is a brief but important reference to the need for such authorities to report their statistics to preserve a national database. That is hardly an endorsement of the potential to drive apprenticeships and skills at a local level. We speak in this debate having seen two overviews from two key think-tanks, the Institute for Public Policy Research and Policy Exchange, cast doubt on the Government’s direction of travel. The Government need to think very hard about some of the issues raised, such as whether level 2 apprenticeships are too job specific and whether a significant proportion of the apprenticeship standards are inadequate and a cause for concern. We will give the Bill a fair hearing. We want the Bill to succeed, but if it is to succeed there needs to be more detail and we need to hear less self-congratulation from Ministers and more aspiration for the groups that they have signally not included in the Bill.