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Further Education and Training Bill [Lords]

That is certainly worth revisiting. There have always been difficulties with it and with the 16-hour rule. No one is advancing unlimited resources tonight. As a general principle, we must promote people’s studies, not frustrate them in their pursuit of those studies. There are concerns across the piece—and they have surfaced a little today, particularly in relation to the controversial clauses on dismissal—about the quality of the delivery of further education. One would not be surprised if a sector involving 4 million students was subject to patchiness. One must recognise, too, that it is not simply the objective measurement of the grades attained by students taking A-levels in general FE colleges that is important, but the value added by a wide range of people, and not automatically the high flyers who are encouraged to stay on in school sixth forms, for example. A final problem in that area is the question of status. I had a telling exchange in my first two weeks in the Department of Education with a senior official, for whom I had the highest respect. A document came up saying, ““This will require two A-levels.”” I knew that I needed to put down a marker, so I said very firmly, and in public, ““Or, I take it, the equivalent vocational qualification.”” He turned round, with an angelic smile on his face, and said, ““That, of course, Minister, goes without saying.”” He could not have been more eloquent about the way in which we still default to the academic model. I therefore welcome the Bill’s practical focus on what further education does and how it works. At the same time, however, I celebrate FE’s role in what I used to call the Heineken effect of education—it reaches the parts that other measures cannot reach. I want to emphasise, too, its role in the midfield. I once delivered a lecture in Berlin on the British politician as a midfield player. I think that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will not wish me to go too far down that road, but I do see further education as the midfield, moving forward on its own account, delivering and receiving ball, and being able to meet all its objectives in a way that no other sector can. My reservation about the Bill is that it hardly exemplifies what an American President once described, rather inelegantly, as ““the vision thing””. I shall come back to that before I conclude, but I am surprised by its title. Perhaps another essay could be written about the escalation of Bill titles, but it is now extremely unfashionable to attach the phrase ““miscellaneous provisions”” to any measure. I think that this ought to be called the Further Education (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill. A more substantial response to Leitch may come along in the future, but this is a tidying-up exercise and not a major piece of legislation. I shall spare the Minister the inelegance of looking at the numerous speeches that I made during the passage of the Learning and Skills Act 2000. I said then that I did not like a structure that had a central point and 47 local delivery points in the same model. I must congratulate the Government on beginning—rather slowly and at some expense—to claw themselves back to the Conservative model of the 1990s, which involved a Further Education Funding Council and a modest representation in nine English regions. In my view, that representation was perhaps over modest, as there is a useful planning role to be fulfilled alongside the central model, but all the bureaucracy that we have had since then has not yet entirely disappeared. Even attenuated, the total cost of the LSC bureaucracy comes to £1.8 billion—a very heavy burden, and it comes out of what is available for front-line education. I wish the Government good luck with their proposed new regime incorporating the Mayor of London, but that will add another body. Characteristically, the only two bodies being removed by the Bill are the panels serving young and adult learners. The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, with which I am still involved, shares my concern about the position of adult learners. Most of the LSC’s expenditure has been concentrated on the cohort of young learners—that is, those at the 16 to 19 school-leaving age—but their numbers are about to decline. That means that the people who must be upskilled for employment will come from the existing adult labour force. We have somehow managed to reduce still further the direct representation of adult education interests in the LSC. That can be overcome, but I am serious when I say that we must strike a better balance. I share the two reservations about the Bill already expressed by various hon. Members. The first has to do with the ““sack the principals”” clause, which I find difficult in practice. It has been suggested that it might be useful in an emergency, but any hand-in-the-till problem can be overcome—or should be—by the governors. Typically, a much longer period of dysfunction will be involved: as I said in exchanges with the right hon. Member for Torfaen, it will be difficult to sack someone without a proper, in-depth investigation. After that, the matter can be brought to the governors, and they can assume their responsibility. My late father brought me up on the maxim of never hiring a dog and barking oneself. If we are prepared to give colleges and governors their freedom, they should be allowed to use it. The process will go wrong occasionally, and mechanisms—including financial sanctions—exist to rectify matters when that happens, but we must not work on the assumption that colleges and governors are always on sufferance, because they are not. My second difficulty has to do with the powers to award foundation degrees. Again, I have no objection in principle—indeed, as a strong supporter of further education, I rather welcome them. However, I can see all the difficulties that will be encountered with articulating them with progression, the interests of the modern universities, and the wider sector. Credit accumulation is one matter that has not been discussed so far. Can we be sure that a given institution will continue to exist? Another problem has to do with the ““Bologna”” process: I do not want a person from a less functional higher education system in another EU member state saying, ““Not only have we to swallow your three-year first degrees, but what about that further education college that is now issuing its own degrees?”” That is a real worry. A deeper worry is the relationship between an FE college and progression. I have heard various eloquent presentations about what is good in the Bill, but anything that causes a college to be isolated, with no reference to the schools with which it should be working in partnership as people arrive or to the higher education institutions to which they should progress naturally, would be a mistake. We need high standards, with FE colleges offering the maximum opportunity and progression. I said earlier that my concerns were about the Bill’s lack of forward vision. Getting the administration right is important, but the Leitch agenda is not really addressed. No doubt that will be the subject of debate in the future, but I believe that the Government may be placing too much emphasis on train to gain. It may be a good idea, but we need the maximum number of potential vehicles to attract people into further education. Individual accounts and the self-management of learning are part of that. The Bill is also silent about qualification issues. They may be nuts and bolts matters, but they are very important. My hon. Friend the Member for Havant spoke about getting the diplomas right, but it is also about getting the right context for academic qualifications and what employers are likely to specify. We must also ensure that the relationship with apprenticeships is appropriate: I am still not clear whether diplomas parallel apprenticeships, or are alternatives to them, or whether they offer a natural progression to higher education. All those relationships need careful attention.