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Further Education and Training Bill [Lords]

I follow what I thought was an incredibly thoughtful and well-considered speech by the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell). I share his commitment to further education and I thought that I would start my speech by outlining my nigh-on 20-year involvement with further education. I was a full-time vocational student in an FE college from 16 to 18. I moved on to work full-time and became a part-time adult evening class student for three years at my local college, where I studied A-levels, taking a two-year course and then a one-year course. Not surprisingly, given what FE had done for me and the opportunities that it had given me, after university I ended up back in further education where I spent nine years as a tutor. I was also a governor at our local college—not the one I worked at, but a different one—and a cabinet member for education and training. So I have been involved in further education across the range: I have studied full-time and part-time and been an adult learner, a tutor, a governor and a strategic director involved in where the city of Sheffield was going in terms of its further education and post-16 provision. It is important to set out in some detail what is special about further education and to measure that against the proposals in the Bill. I want to talk first about the quality of the tuition that I received as a learner in further education, because, too often, it is assumed that the quality of that tuition is generally lower than the quality of that received in sixth forms or universities. I would contest that quite seriously because the tuition that I received—even at the vocational level as a 16-year-old girl—was excellent; it was stretching and tough and it delivered.