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Further Education and Training Bill [Lords]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins), who spoke with great passion and knowledge about the further education sector. I want to compliment him as profusely as possible because his mother lives in my constituency, and it is a very marginal seat. One never knows when one is going to need an extra vote—[Hon. Members: ““Shameless!””] That was shameless, yes. The hon. Gentleman reminded us that we sometimes forget how important the further education sector is to the success of the UK economy. The report on further education by the Education and Skills Committee, of which I am a member, described the sector as the ““neglected middle child”” of education, and I believe that all Governments would admit that they are equally guilty of neglecting that middle child. These debates offer a good opportunity to take stock and even to celebrate just how significant a part the further education sector plays in this country. Many people forget how significant a contribution it makes. Several hon. Members have already reminded the House of the highlights involved, and I would like to do so as well. There are 4 million students in further education colleges up and down the country, and there are more 16 to 18-year-olds in such colleges than in sixth forms—nearly twice as many, in fact. Further education colleges provide a massive 44 per cent. of the entrants into higher education, and deliver 800,000 vocational qualifications each year. Nearly 300,000 students in further education colleges are over the age of 60. That is impressive by any measure. Statistics such as those make all of us realise that further education should not be the ““neglected middle child”” and that it should perhaps take centre stage a little more often. The reason that it does not do so is that schools and higher education establishments are generally better understood and better supported. It is also true to say that further education is perceived—I emphasise that word—to be inferior in its importance and its overall contribution, even though that perception is far from the truth, as my hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) and the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Ms Smith) made quite clear. The further education sector has not been helped by the Government’s confusing array of stakeholders and strategies. We have had Success for All, the 14-to-19 strategy, the skills strategy, Skills for Life, and Agenda for Change—to name just a few—over the past few years. The hugely complex system of stakeholders is so confusing that the Education and Skills Committee had to call in the Audit Commission to make sense of it all. The Audit Commission produced a chart—I understand that it has not yet been released publicly—that looked a bit like the random scribble of a two-year-old. I can say that quite authoritatively because I have a two-year-old who produces plenty of random scribbles, and they look exactly the same as the chart produced by the Audit Commission. It is not the Audit Commission’s fault that it looks like that. How else does one show the incoherent and manifold interrelationships between 50-odd different organisations? Only the old Soviet Union could have devised something more bureaucratic and less coherent. The bloated spider at the centre of the web is the Learning and Skills Council. If one looks at the tangled web woven by the LSC and its various linked organisations, one realises it is little wonder that Leitch described the UK skills profile as"““unimpressive in comparison with other countries””." What he meant was that a significantly higher proportion of the UK adult population has low qualifications, compared with the adult population of competitor countries. The Select Committee on Education and Skills, in its report on further education last September, said:"““Further education has often been left to pick up the pieces of other parts of the education system, and has been beset by a lack of coherent strategic direction.””" I am not sure that the Bill has the answers to those criticisms. The report also stated that"““the present planning and funding mechanisms for skills training appear incoherent, over-complex, burdensome, and often act as a barrier to FE’s development rather than a support to it.””" I hope that the Bill will begin to address those ongoing concerns about the sector and the UK’s skills base. It is said that the Bill embeds diversity and choice in the FE sector, and that it will raise standards and improve skills. I hope that it does. I also hope that it will cut back the sheer unwieldiness of the Learning and Skills Council and its array of partners. We will soon find out. I am not entirely convinced, however, that it will do so. After all, as my hon. Friend the Member for Havant said, this is the fourth reorganisation in about four years. I wish to focus most of my comments, however, on the measures in the Bill that allow FE colleges foundation degree-awarding powers. FE colleges currently do not have the power to award major FE qualifications such as GCSEs or national vocational qualifications. All FE colleges have to be accredited by another institution or awarding body, such as City and Guilds, AQA or a higher education institution. What better way for the Government to reach their 50 per cent. target for participation in higher education than to change the rules? Will it work? I am not convinced that it will. Currently, what defines our universities is the fact that they can award degrees. UK degrees are highly respected internationally, as the numbers of foreign students who flock to the UK confirm. As I have indicated, further education colleges perform a very valuable role, but they are rightly distinct from universities in what they do and how they do it. They do not have the academic infrastructure that our universities can support, nor do they provide an environment in which teaching is supported by research and scholarship, which is a key part of what makes education at the ““higher”” level different from teaching in schools and colleges. As I said, FE colleges do not currently award their own qualifications at further education level, so the Government are about to create the rather odd situation in which the only qualification a college can award on its own behalf is a degree. That risks devaluing the currency of degrees and damaging the hard-won reputation of our universities.