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Education and Skills Bill

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr. Blackman-Woods), who is passionate about getting us back into the OECD top 10. It is a disgrace that we are out of that bracket. Across the House, it is a target that we can all head towards. She also spoke with passion about diplomas. That allows me to declare an interest in the sense that I am the product of the international baccalaureate. I did not do A-levels. If there is any form of education that arms individuals, no matter what their background and what they want to do with their lives, the international baccalaureate and its diploma is it. We should allow more of that. It does not demand that individual pupils limit themselves to three subjects. They learn a wide variety of skills, which they need for the life that they must pursue. It has been said that music is the food of love. I would say that education is the fuel of life and, if it is properly administered, it can not only power social mobility but ignite appetites to learn. It can give children the skills that they need not only to survive but to succeed. The greater competition that we now face is part of the background that we are discussing today. It has been mentioned a number of times by hon. Members on both sides of the House. We have heard about the growth in skill sets that we are seeing across Europe, whether it be Poland or elsewhere, the influx of graduates, non-graduates and those armed with the skills in places such as China, India and South Korea. We are no longer simply the United Kingdom. We are competing with our colleagues from across the globe. That leads us on to the economic case. Unless we arm the next generation with the relevant skills, as the Leitch report said in December 2005, we will miss out on the importance of investment in education, which leads to a more prosperous labour market. The report said that an increased pool of highly skilled school leavers leads to an increase in economic productivity. It is worth taking stock of where things stand after 10 years of this Labour Government. Unfortunately, we are lagging behind several European countries; only 27 per cent. of Britons are qualified to apprenticeship, skilled craft or technical level, compared with 51 per cent. in France or 65 per cent. in Germany. The Government claim that the number of apprenticeships is up from 75,000 in 1997 to an astonishing 250,000 at present, but as the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee noted in June 2007, the increase was due to "““converting government-supported programmes…into apprenticeship””," which means that the number has jumped dramatically.