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Further Education and Training Bill [HL]

My Lords, the Further Education and Training Bill presents the first major opportunity in seven years to debate legislation that concentrates on learning and skills. It builds on the very welcome commitment that this Government have shown to our further education colleges and the work that they do. This commitment has been richly rewarded with overall success rates in colleges rising from 59 per cent to 72 per cent between 2001 and 2004. The most important proposal in the Bill is to allow colleges to award their own foundation degrees rather than having to do so via a university. I am delighted that the Government have decided to recognise the excellent work that colleges do in the provision of higher education. Let us face it—without colleges, the 50 per cent target for young people in higher education could not be achieved. I am sure the House will recognise that foundation degrees have been an excellent addition to the range of qualifications available. Most colleges are working extremely successfully with universities in providing foundation degrees and will probably have no desire to break away from those relationships. In fact, colleges have collaborated with schools, employers and universities for years and this will always remain their first instinct. For instance, the City of Wolverhampton College is working with the University of Wolverhampton to provide foundation degrees for 96 students this year. These cover six different areas, including community health and social care, engineering and broadcast journalism. The businesses they work with range across the public and private sectors to include Goodyear, Turner Powertrain, the Express & Star and Sandwell Hospital. The college is certain that foundation degrees have been a great success and envisage that the close working relationship with the university will continue as they seek to develop more foundation degrees. However, it is important that, where they need to, colleges, including the City of Wolverhampton College, are able to apply for their own right to award foundation degrees. I am delighted that this House agreed to what was Clause 19 without a vote on Report and that Peers agreed that the government amendments were helpful additions to the Bill. I am sure that there will be further discussions but the important principle should remain—that colleges with the necessary expertise and experience should be able to apply for foundation degree-awarding powers. With regard to another controversial aspect of this Bill on Report, the House took the decision to delete Clauses 17 and 18, which would have given the Learning and Skills Council and the Welsh Assembly Government power to dismiss senior postholders in colleges. I know that my noble friend the Minister will be disappointed with this decision, although I indicated the strength of concern about these proposals to my honourable friend the Further Education Minister in another place at a meeting of our All-Party Parliamentary Further Education Group before the Bill was introduced in this House. These arguments were well rehearsed in Grand Committee and on Report, but I add my own brief thoughts. The Secretary of State currently has the power to remove members of college governing bodies under the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. This Bill transfers these powers to the Learning and Skills Council but also adds to the powers by allowing the LSC to dismiss senior college postholders. The Government seem to have an enthusiasm for transferring their responsibilities to quangos such as the Learning and Skills Council. I ask this more in sorrow than in anger but why, when we campaigned so hard for so many years to get back into government, are we handing over so many responsibilities and key decisions to people with no democratic accountability? In saying this, however, I would not be completely enamoured with the idea of the Secretary of State having a power to dismiss a college principal or other senior postholder. Of course, he has a responsibility to ensure that taxpayers’ money is well spent, but a lot of money also goes into other areas of the public sector too. For example, should we expect a proposal for the Secretary of State to dismiss university vice-chancellors? I think not. A relevant paragraph of the further education White Paper has been quoted before in this House but it is worth quoting again: "““A college, led by its governing body, is responsible for determining its own mission, managing its own affairs, meeting its statutory responsibilities and managing its own performance””." I agree with that. If and when Ministers bring forward amendments to replace the clauses that this House deleted, I ask that they address the concerns that noble Lords have raised. In particular, we must avoid passing bad law which results in the only winners being lawyers. In conclusion, I ask noble Lords, if they have not already done so, to visit their local further education and sixth-form colleges to see their excellent and often unsung work. Colleges truly do change people’s lives. In Wolverhampton, I have seen lives literally transformed by the local college—mothers returning to work, youngsters who failed their GCSEs returning to education, adults achieving a lifetime ambition of running their own business, and more personal fulfilment than in any other area of our education system.