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Further Education and Training Bill [HL]

My Lords, I join noble Lords who have spoken in opposition to Clause 19, on foundation degrees. Others, such as the noble Baronesses, Lady Blackstone and Lady Warwick, have explained very well why this is a seriously wrong direction to take, so I shall not take up much time, but I hope the Government will think again. I want to concentrate on the serious problems regarding the basic skills of literacy and numeracy, for which further education colleges, and therefore the council, have major responsibility. One cannot remind oneself often enough that those are truly the basic skills on which everything else rests. I must declare a personal interest: for a number of years, ending in 2002, I was chairman of the Basic Skills Agency, which, under the innovative leadership of Alan Wells, made many telling contributions to improvements in basic skills. I realise that this has been a serious government priority from the beginning and that on the whole there has been good progress, especially in the primary sector. These educational issues figure frequently in your Lordships’ discussions, so I will not take up time on them, because more relevant to this debate is the area of adult basic skills. I mustdeclare another interest as former chairman of the committee, to which the Minister referred, set up by the Government some years ago to improve the basic skills of adults. Our report, A Fresh Start, appeared in 1999, again with the Basic Skills Agency as a critical partner. Most people knew that there was a problem, but most people, including the Government, were staggered by the horrifying situation whereby millions of adults were suffering from poor literacy and very poor numeracy. It is a complex picture, and I can refer only briefly to the findings. It is worth keeping in mind that our key criterion for what was called functional illiteracy and innumeracy was a level below what is expected of an average 11 year-old. On that basis, 7 million adults in England—one in five—were so affected, with more having poor numeracy. Clearly the country faced a massive problem. With millions of adults handicapped by their inability to read and write, and to deal with numbers, something had to be done. Our report made many recommendations, and it is good to think that the Government accepted most of them. It was realised and made very public that those who liked league tables had to realise that this was a league table in which England came second from the bottom in Europe. Only Poland fared worse. The report had an enormous public impact and led the Government, not least through the priority and personal commitment of the Prime Minister and the then Secretary of State, David Blunkett, to work fairly quickly with a number of our recommendations. In fact, the Prime Minister called it ““a crusade””. Among our most important recommendations was the role of the FE sector. I say all this, not just to remind us of those stark findings of some years ago, but because the evidence is clear that the situation today still poses a major challenge for the Government, the council and, above all, FE colleges. I realise that reducing the number of adults so affected has continued to be a government concern and that there has been serious progress, but I must note that the statement in recent years that our earlier targets have been not only reached but surpassed is statistically misleading. I refer particularly to the 750,000 learners who were to reach basic skills requirements by 2004. It was announced that that had been achieved. That is seriously misleading. In the Skills for Life strategy, the target audience has been enormously widened to include everyone who does not possess a GCSE grade A* to C in English or Maths, and so many, perhaps as many as half, of those who have reached the basic skills target are already way up the educational ladder and not part of the seriously disadvantaged group dealt with in our report, so that claim was misleading. Against that background, I turn to the current facts. David Sherlock, the chief inspector and chief executive of the Adult Learning Inspectorate, who has already been quoted, wrote recently that the Skills for Life strategy is intended to tackle the problem, but, "““Despite nearly £2 billion of additional funding, there has been slow progress in tackling shortfalls in adult numeracy and literacy””." He also says—and this is the key point—that the programme, "““is not yet meeting the needs of the most acutely disadvantaged adults it was designed to help””." Present figures, mentioned by the Minister, suggest that in 2006 some 5 million working-age people still lack functional literary skills, and nearly 7 million—which I believe to be a serious underestimate—lack functional numeracy skills. The Leitch report refers to those points and makes practical recommendations, some of which follow those in our report of years ago. I realise that this is not the occasion for reviewing the many policy areas which need now to contribute to solving the problem, ranging from issues grounded in social exclusion to all the years in school and, not least, in the work place. But they also mean a serious commitment from the further education sector as the key educational provider. Can the Minister reassure us that the ““crusade””—the Prime Minister’s term—has not lost its impetus, as I suspect it has? Is there still the public commitment that so encouraged us after our report a few years ago? Another reason I feel discouraged is that Alan Wells, a long-term leader in this field, was allowed to leave his post as director of the agency, and the Government have just announced their regrettable decision to stop funding the Basic Skills Agency. This is a backwards step, given the innovations and independent thinking of which it has been, and could remain, capable. I hope that, whatever the formal changes resulting from the Bill, basic skills will be given their necessary priority as the base of the pyramid—priority by the Government; by the council, with adequate resources; and, above all, by colleges. I would like to be reassured that the crusade remains in place and that this role of FE colleges will not be squeezed out by other new roles.