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Further Education and Training Bill [Lords]

The Bill is important for moving on the agenda for the FE sector that was outlined in the Foster report and the further education White Paper. In particular, it helps to provide that clear focus for the FE sector to concentrate on qualifications that are skills-based and relate to the needs of the economy. It also helps businesses and individuals to respond to those needs. The Bill looks ahead to the fact that our FE sector needs to respond to changing technological and social imperatives by changing the types of qualifications that are available. Critically, it encourages the FE sector to work in partnership with other providers and businesses, and to develop and attract dynamic leaders. I disagree with hon. Members who said that the Bill has no relevance for the Leitch review. One of the targets that Leitch set for us was for more than 40 per cent. of adults to be qualified at level 4 and above by 2020, and he emphasised that we needed to do that to remain internationally competitive. Foundation degrees are, of course, level 4 qualifications and will be critical in helping us to skill our work force for the future. As other hon. Members said, key features of the Bill relate to the new structure and role for the learning and skills councils, new powers for FE colleges to award foundation degrees, and granting LSCs the power to intervene in failing or coasting colleges. It is important that LSCs are structured with a key regional role for overseeing post-16 education. In a dynamic economy, like the one that we are in, it is essential that skills providers can respond flexibly to the changing demands at a regional as well as a national level. On Friday, I was at the launch of the regional economic strategy for the north-east in my constituency in Durham. It was clear from both the action plan and the response from people who attended that we need to be careful to ensure that we provide the skills at a regional level that are needed for businesses in that region and that we can attend to skills shortages in the region, because they are not the same in every area of the country. It is very important that we give the LSCs that regional focus, so that they can attend not only to skills for the future but to current skills shortages. The LSCs have been given the role of encouraging greater choice in the delivery of post-16 education and promoting the personalisation of learning. We often equate that with something that needs to happen to under-fives and, more recently, in the secondary and primary sector, but it also needs to happen in FE so that young people and adults can build on their previous experience and learning. In addition, there has to be a greater employer and student focus. We should recognise that focusing LSCs at a regional level is an important advance. Clause 17 allows the Privy Council to grant further education institutions powers to award their own foundation degrees. That is a critical element of the Bill. We heard that about 60,000 students are enrolled in foundation degree courses, which are delivered in about 80 universities. Just over 2,000 courses are being run at the moment, with about 750 in the pipeline. As hon. Members said, that points to a successful qualification. However, it does not mean that we should not examine the degrees and see whether things can be done better. Giving the power to FE colleges to award their own foundation degrees has proved controversial in some sections of the education community, but it is an enormous step forward in terms of bringing foundation degrees back to the purpose for which they were originally intended. I dispute what the hon. Member for Reading, East (Mr. Wilson) said about how foundation degrees were formulated as a stepping stone to higher education. I think that they were formulated instead to be a higher education qualification that integrated both academic and work-based learning, and that they would be designed in partnership with employers. So they were designed initially to be a free-standing qualification, but one that was vocationally oriented. Providing that caveats are put in place—I shall discuss those later—to ensure that the quality of degrees is maintained, FE colleges with a sound track record of delivering higher education should be enabled to deliver foundation degrees with a strong skills dimension based on employer needs, especially as they now have to do that for level 2 provision onwards. That relates to what I said about defining the role of FE colleges much more clearly to be the sector that concentrates on skills-based education and vocational education. In support of the Bill, the British Chambers of Commerce pointed out that there is an urgent need to plug the skills gap in the UK work force. Enabling foundation degrees to concentrate more closely on that skills gap is an important way forward. There also needs to be a mechanism—we have not discussed this as much as we could have done—to ensure that colleges are flexible in responding to employer need and a changing skills demand. The current system of validating those degrees through universities does not always allow that degree of flexibility. I understand that universities have genuine concerns about losing much of their partnership work with FE colleges. They are also concerned about standards and the creation of a two-tier system. Hopefully, the measures set out in the draft criteria for foundation degree-awarding powers which were published when the Bill went through the other place will allay those concerns to a large extent. I note in particular the requirement that FE colleges must have four years’ experience of delivering HE; that an application for foundation degree-awarding powers will not be considered unless the FE college has consulted its students; that clear advice is given to the Privy Council to grant foundation degree-awarding powers for an initial period of six years, hence introducing the probationary period; that proper inspections and audit arrangements are in place; and that a review period is applied. Those criteria put in the necessary safeguards that have been asked for by the university sector. Universities have done a good job already in validating the degrees and in delivering them in some cases. In my university career before I came into Parliament, I was responsible for validating a number of them. There were two problems in the validation process at the university level. As we have discussed, one was the fact that universities are academic institutions. It was often difficult to get academic staff in universities to look at the skills base of foundation degrees, rather than the academic content. The second problem was that universities often did not have the links with employers that would make foundation degrees sufficiently employer-focused. Although that has improved over time, there are still problems in relation to the close tie-in with the university sector. There is a stronger point to be made about the loss of partnership working in modern universities, but I hope that it can develop in other ways. Clearly foundation degree students will need progression routes to higher education, so it will still be necessary for the further education and higher education sectors to work together to ensure that the routes exist and that one builds on the other. As I have said, however, I think it important to establish foundation degrees as a qualification in their own right. They should not be seen simply as a stepping stone. We know that of those who complete their two-year courses, 35 per cent. go directly into employment, 27 per cent. opt for a combination of work and study, and 32 per cent. progress to further study, the aim of the vast majority being to complete an honours degree. That shows the necessity for further education colleges to provide advice for foundation degree students that includes employment options and work-based learning as well as progression to higher education. I hope that the Minister will tell us how that is to be achieved in practice. I have useful anecdotal evidence from my further education college, which is already an excellent provider of higher education. The principal tells me that many of those studying for foundation degrees wish to return to employment, or to return to it for a period before returning to obtain professional or managerial qualifications rather than honours degrees. Foundation degrees could also help to fulfil the Government’s stated intention to widen access to higher education qualifications. Some 28 per cent. of foundation degree students come from areas of deprivation, 65 per cent. are over 21, and 48 per cent. study part-time. The degrees are important to the Government’s aim of widening participation in higher education, and we should support them for that reason.