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Further Education and Training Bill [Lords]

I could not agree more. The whole business of transition planning for all children, particularly those with special educational needs, is unsatisfactory and inadequate. We do not pay it enough attention—sometimes it is not even delivered to statutory levels—and we ought to pay it much more attention. The irony of the situation—I said that further education is defined by its not being something else—is that further education is the one sector of post-compulsory school life that is universal. One day, half our young people may well have some experience of higher education by the age of 30—incidentally, a great deal of that will be delivered in further education anyway, as has been said—but we must remember, too, that when many people graduate they are not job-ready or employable, and need to acquire further education skills, whether it is enhanced IT, languages and so on, so that they are fit for the specific job that they will do. Even if someone becomes a barrister, they have to do a vocational course. However that is expressed, and whatever the legal label, it is an act of continuing and further education. We should therefore not look at the subject as an easy progression ever upwards and onwards which culminates in some higher degree; we should look at what is necessary at the start of employment, going on to all the many changes that we anticipate in someone’s working life—perhaps they will have three changes of employment—in which they have to return all the time to acquire vocational skills, at whatever level is appropriate.