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Further Education and Training Bill [HL]

My Lords, I agree with the implications of others that this is not the most inspiring legislation that the House has had to consider. It is a necessary one, however. There is a time to tidy up previous legislation; with one exception, the Bill certainly does that. I recognise the importance that the Government have given to the skills agenda and the great progress being made. Given the extent of the work, it is perhaps unsurprising that tidying-up legislation is needed. As noble Lords have said, the skills agendais attacking failed education and school systems of the past and meeting the new technological and employment needs of the present. It is trying to build new institutions to deliver that. I want to start on a positive note by congratulating the Minister and a number of government departments for placing skills, skilling people and giving opportunity at the centre of the political and economic agenda for the first time. Long may it be there. I suspect that a lot of us saw most of the Bill coming about three years ago. With the greatest respect to my noble friend Lady Blackstone, I must say that, although the LSC as set up was really good, the structural difficulties with having 47 councils and a fairly strong national council could be seen in those first 18 months. I am glad that we waited five years; it has given us time to reflect and ensure that we get it right this time. That is a tidying-up, and my only comment would be that I am still concerned about what is almost over-activity at regional level. We have seen lot of changes in what happens at regional level over the past five to 10 years. We now have powerful RDAs and will have powerful LSCs. We have, in many respects, more powerful government offices, especially with their directors of learning—I am not sure that that is the exact title. I say to the Minister that we need clarity at regional level, rather than too many bodies stepping on each other’s toes. I ask for assurances that the relationship of the new regional LSCs with the RDAs and government offices will be clearly marked out. I suspect, however, that Clause 19 will be the only really contentious part of the Bill, making it something other than a fairly boring piece of legislation. I, too, declare an interest, both as pro-vice chancellor of the University of Sunderland and a member of the governing council of Goldsmiths College in the University of London. I cannot think of too many new arguments to add to those thathave already been made. Given that there was solittle debate on the proposal before it came to your Lordships’ House, I hope that numbers might be counted up and a message sent back to the department that an awful lot of noble Lords felt that this was a great mistake. I therefore apologise if I am about to repeat some of the arguments, but they stand repeating to add weight to the numbers and the strength of feeling in the sector and the House about how wrong the Bill would be. Over the past 18 months at the University of Sunderland, I have had the pleasure of seeing the strength of the partnership between colleges and our university. One of my roles there is to build links with the community, colleges and schools. It works very well indeed, and we should celebrate the fact that universities have taken on the Government’s agenda of widening participation and building links with the wider learning and geographical communities. Thatis a mammoth change from the ivory towers of 15 or 20 years ago. The Government have asked them todo that, and building those relationships with the colleges has taken a lot of patient work, trust-building, resources, time and energy. It has meant that vice-chancellors and those in universities and colleges have had to prioritise that relationship. It has been done, and it has worked. Nothing the Minister has said calls that into doubt. I am convinced that that relationship would be jeopardised if colleges were given powers to make their own degrees. First, the incentive will go. Secondly, whether we like it or not, further and higher education would be moved into marketplace economics. That generosity of spirit, where peopledo something just because it is right, tends to get squeezed out in the marketplace. People will look carefully at where their money and time will be spent and conclude that this is risk investment for their own institutions. At every graduation ceremony at Sunderland, we have about 100 students walk across the platform to receive their foundation degrees. Because they have a degree from the University of Sunderland and walk across our platform at our graduation ceremony, it is so much easier for them to come the following year and—if you like—finish off their degree and get a BA. We know that the trick to widening participation is giving people confidence to enter new institutions and types of institutions. That is why the Government spend so much money getting universities to work with schools: people get nervous if they have never done it before. First, the Government have completely underestimated the power of the relationship between universities and colleges in making the move from foundation degree to college seamless. Secondly, as my noble friend Lady Blackstone said, foundation degrees are a success but are not really embedded in the educational landscape. To be honest, three years ago we were worrying about the numbers. People have had to work hard at making foundation degrees a success. Some things are wrong—people do not get a salary increase when they return to work; some employers do not value or pay for it—none of which will be solved by giving degree-making powers to colleges of further education. Do not rock the boat. Why change and give mixed messages to employers? We have just about got them to the point where we can say, ““Hang on, we can breathe a bit easier now””. They are not likely to go away, but they need bolstering, looking after, caring for and nurturing. I do not see why or how changing the institution that validates them will help at all. I worry that employers and students will make a quick judgment that the degrees are no longer validated by a university but by a college and are not as good as they were or that it is an admission that they are not proper degrees. Whatever the Minister says about that not being the intention, we are talking about non-academics who do not necessarily understand, or want to understand, the differences between universities and colleges. In our education system, universities validate degrees. That is simple to understand, and I do not know why we are muddying the waters. So I come to a question: what is it for? What problem is it solving? Where is the evidence that anything needs to be done? It will not help the student or the employer, and it certainly will not help the universities. So I have come to the conclusion that it helps colleges. If this is some sort of trade-off or offer to help colleges increase their status, I suggest to the Minister that we should not be doing that. We should tackle this from the skills agenda. Will it help improve skills? Will it help the status of foundation colleges? Will it mean more people go on foundation degree courses? Will it mean more progression to university? The answer is ““No””. Finally, there is no way at all that this can be contained by only a few colleges seeking permission for degree-making powers. It will become a badge of status. In his opening comments, the Minister said—the only thing he said on the issue—that not many would want it and it would be for high-performing colleges. Does any noble Lord know of a principal of a college of further education in this country who is not now incentivised to pursue it? Not to do so is to admit that theirs is not a high-performing college. Nobody will settle for less. It was the same with specialist schools and CoVEs and will be the same with double specialisms. Once you introduce the power as an incentive and a badge of good performance, you incentivise every institution in that sector to pursue it. That is the beauty of specialist schools. It is the beauty of CoVEs. They are incentivisers to high performance. The Minister has dropped in another incentiviser. To become a degree-awarding college will be an incentive that every principal worth his or her salt will pursue. It is a key decision. Once you open the door, you cannot close it to any college that reaches the standard. It cannot be number-limited; it has to be quality limited. There is no notion of how many may achieve that standard. We have muddied the relationship between universities and colleges. I have always thought that the big problem for colleges is the difficulty in clarifying their relationship with schools because of our muddle over 14 to 19 year-olds. The one relationship that was clear for colleges was the relationship with universities. The danger now is that we shall make that interface between universities and colleges as confusing and overcrowded as that which existed between colleges and schools. I differ from my noble friend Lady Warwick in only one respect. I do not think that at this stage we should offer conditions should the clause go through. If the situation is that serious, ill thought-out and potentially damaging, we should ask the Government to reconsider including it in the legislation rather than to mitigate it; otherwise, in five years’ time, this House will be considering again how legislation can sort out the mess that Clause 19 could bring.