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Education and Skills Bill

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson), who always speaks with good sense, based on good experience, on these matters. I want to associate myself with those who have said that this is an historic opportunity. The Government are legislating to change the educational leaving age to 18, with clear benefits, both social and economic, for individuals and for the country. That is an important aspect of the Bill, but not by any means the whole of it. As the Leitch review highlighted, the need for skilled people is growing, and the Bill's provisions, which also focus on improving opportunities for young people and adults alike, will help to meet the needs of a high skill economy. I should like to address three themes from the Bill: how we include the excluded; how we bridge the gap between the value that we place on vocational study and on academic study; and, perhaps most interestingly, how we create new architecture to promote dialogue and a greater sense of responsibility on the part of the private and public sectors of our schools and begin to bridge the historical gap between them. As chair of the all-party group on skills and a member of two successive Education Committees, I have witnessed the development of Government policy on education and skills. It has been a long and significant journey over the past 10 years. Highlights included the Tomlinson review, which brought about the revolution in vocational learning that we are now extending. That revolution has progressed particularly under this new Government under two new Secretaries of State and a Prime Minister whose commitment to skills while in Government, for 10 years as Chancellor of the Exchequer and now as Prime Minister, has been unrelenting. The Bill enshrines in legislation much of what Governments have been working towards for some time. It sends a strong and positive message to young people as well as to adults and promotes excellence and educational progression in a supported and well-resourced environment. Raising the age at which teenagers remain in education to 18 should not be about dragooning them to stay on in education regardless, or straitjacketing them, but it should embody a recognition that it is not a realistic, life-changing option to enter the world of work without skills of some kind or another. That is why the Bill's central commitment to 18 is book-ended by provisions that value vocational skills and promote social inclusion. I hope that it will prompt us to look at new structures in pre-16 and post-16 education—for example, the studio schools that are being suggested in my local authority in the context of the building schools for the future project. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) said, we must crack the problem of bright young people who feel isolated from the education process. There must be much more on-site learning, and we must raise those people's aspirations. A few years ago, I went on a visit with the Education Committee to North Carolina, where we saw how children as young as 13 or 14 who were traditionally isolated and alienated from academic learning did powerfully well in skills academies within schools. We should consider that option in future. The Bill transfers responsibility for the Connexions service to local authorities. I hope that that will give us an opportunity to develop a step change in information, advice and guidance provision, and that the local link interacting between local authorities and mainstream educational services and children's trusts will enable Connexions to provide a better service that responds more flexibly to the local economy, career opportunities and the skills base.