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Further and Higher Education (Employer Engagement)

What an immense pleasure it is, Mr. Amess, to contribute to a debate under your chairmanship, and how appropriate it is that a patriot like you should be sitting under a portrait of King Alfred. Whenever I think of King Alfred, I think of my constituency and the noble town of Crowland, the birthplace of Hereward the Wake, but that is a matter for another debate, another time. I have three things to discuss in the debate: engagement, appropriateness and effectiveness. We have already heard a good deal about those, by allusion. I want to end my remarks by speaking about a dream—not ““The Dream of Fair Women””, like that of Henry Williamson, although like you, no doubt, Mr. Amess, I have had many dreams of fair women—but a dream about a future that is skilled, in which we can deliver the parity of esteem that Governments of all political persuasions have sought over decades and perhaps a generation, but certainly during my lifetime. Engagement in education and training is a matter of profound concern, with which the Minister dealt at some length. My hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) also dealt with it. It is true that there is a high level of engagement in comparison with previous years and that 75 per cent. of 16 to 18-year-olds are in education or training. However, the Minister will be as concerned as I am about what are rather unfortunately described as NEETs—young people not in education, employment or training—and will, I hope, discuss them in his concluding remarks. The 10 per cent. figure masks those about whom we do not know—Connexions has no real record of them and is not certain where they are. To some degree, the figure also hides regional variations. In the north-east of England, for example, the number of those who are not engaged in education, employment or training rises to about 20 to 25 per cent. of the relevant young people. Engagement among young people is therefore vital. I have already mentioned engaging groups that are hard to get at. In an intervention on the Minister, I mentioned my concerns about older potential learners—those who perhaps do not have basic skills. The report from the Public Accounts Committee on those who are innumerate and illiterate, which we received last week, was shocking. It showed that tens of millions of our citizens are innumerate or illiterate, and that is a significant problem in my constituency. However, in addition to those people who need to re-engage to gain basic skills, there are others who need to be reskilled to meet the demands of a rapidly changing economy. As I said in my intervention, all political parties and all hon. Members present will be aware of those difficulties. I think that the Minister will also be aware of them, and he might want to say something more about the issue. Also on engagement, there is the matter of the completion of apprenticeships. The Minister said that apprenticeship numbers have risen, and they have. The Government are to be congratulated on that, but the problem of completions remains. It is, in part, a feature of the nature of the placements. In the retail sector, for example, completions are a bigger problem than in some of the more traditional skills areas, such as construction and engineering. The problem might also be a feature of the practical issues involved in people getting to where they need to be. In an area such as Lincolnshire, in a glorious place such as South Holland and the Deepings, even the delight of living in the fens is mitigated to some degree by the difficulty of getting about. Travelling 10, 15 or even 20 miles to engage in education or training can be a fairly arduous business for a young person. That makes it quite difficult to maintain engagement, particularly over a long time, and I am told by the experts in the field that that can affect completions on education courses and apprenticeships. I am not really surprised by that. There is also a difficulty—I sense that this is an aside, Mr. Amess, but it is relevant—in terms of vocational education for younger people. The Minister will know that, in the 14-plus, group the business of engagement between colleges and schools in rural areas of the kind I am thinking about is sometimes inhibited by the difficulty in getting young people to where they need to be. I shall talk, when I speak of my dream, about bringing learning to the learners. That is a critical challenge for all those of us who are interested in the subject. Yesterday I was speaking about such matters with the Minister's esteemed junior colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills, the hon. Member for Corby (Phil Hope) who is also enthusiastic about them. We were talking about construction industry skills and I was able, although not pleased, to point out to the statutory instrument Committee that, during the 1970s, 100,000 people were trained each year in a range of construction industry skills, but that, by 2004, the figure had declined to fewer than 40,000. The problems of engagement are a real issue in certain sectors. That is significant because of the need, for example, to build houses. As Kate Barker pointed out in her report on housing supply, one of the inhibitors of her plan to build many more houses, which the Government have, I think, largely welcomed, has been the lack of skills in that sector. We need to talk about engagement on a sector-by-sector, area-by-area basis and to consider what might act as disincentives to people engaging in and completing education and training. The second matter is appropriateness. The National Audit Office report has already been referred to and I do not want to be tedious in what has otherwise been a lively and interesting discussion. However, it is worth pointing out that the National Audit Office makes it absolutely clear that, from the employer's point of view, there are barriers to improving employer engagement in training that can be summarised pretty straightforwardly: employers want a simple way of getting the best advice on skills training for their staff; they want appropriate training that meets their needs; they want supply to be in close line with demand; they want more incentives to train their staff; and they want influence in skills training without getting weighed down by bureaucracy. The report states:"““Through its Agenda for Change, the Learning and Skills Council is seeking to enhance the reputation of colleges so that they are more often the partners of choice for employers looking to develop their workforce. A number of factors can, however, undermine the effectiveness of training in tackling skills shortages: for example, qualifications available may not necessarily directly meet employers' needs; in a particular geographic area there may be shortages of skilled trainers; and there may be a need to use expensive capital equipment for training which is not available.””" So, we know that the report deals with some of the issues of appropriateness that the Government need to tackle now and later in the implementation of their policies. The Foster report has also been mentioned and it deserves amplification. We have talked implicitly about the link between further education, higher education, other training providers and commerce and industry. The Foster report makes it clear that there are significant problems with further education both in the terms that I described earlier—the fact that FE colleges often try to do too much, and that is why I mentioned greater specialism—and in terms of FE's links with the world of work. Those links vary. We heard about some of the good colleges that have managed to develop effective links with the world of work—the businesses in their area—but the Foster report makes it clear that that effectiveness is patchy. We need to do much more work to ensure that what we do in the education system—not just colleges but also secondary education—is closely linked to the demands of the local employment base and the assumptions of local employers. I may talk later about how we might achieve that but it is certainly the imperative that seems to shout loudly from Sir Andrew Foster's observations about further education. It would be remiss of me not to say something about effectiveness. Hon. Members will worry about the barriers to engagement and completion in the difficult-to-get-at groups, and about the deficiencies in basic skills that were identified by several pieces of recent research. We anticipate that they will be addressed by the report on the Leitch review, which will be published later this year and to which we are all looking forward with bated breath. According to the Government's own Leitch review of skills, even if they meet their own target on skills by 2020:"““At least 4 million adults will still not have literacy skills expected of an 11 year old, at least 12 million will be without numeracy skills at this level (equivalent to three in ten adults) . . . 6.5 million adults will not have qualifications at the equivalent level to five good GCSEs. In comparative terms, the UK will continue to be an ‘average performer'.””" Those comments are shocking. The problem that we face is not simply that the lack of basic skills inhibits quality of life for the individuals concerned. It also has a collective effect on our competitiveness. We need skilled people to be effective economically and we need a skilled work force. I hinted in my earlier interventions that the problem is exacerbated by demographic factors. The population is ageing, and that is adding to the skills shortage. It is almost as though the Minister is desperately trying to pour more water into the tank while it is draining out at the other end because of the changing demographics. It might be draining out faster than he can refill it. I would not want him to end up with a dry tank in terms of skills. He needs a rich, full, bubbling tank of skills so that he can draw on it.