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Education and Skills Bill

I understand the hon. Lady's genuine commitment to that, but after 10 years of a Labour Government and all the promises that were made about the new deal, it would be helpful if we could have a rather more honest assessment of why the new deal has completely failed to deliver any of the things that were promised. I was making my way through the statistics, but I realise that what we really need is a learned article in the Financial Times by an economic expert analysing these data in the way that the Secretary of State used to do so skilfully in his previous employment. I am trying to make sense of what has been happening. There has been virtually no change in the number of 16 to 18-year-olds having some education in employment and, within that, there has been a modest increase in the number staying on at school and a decline in the number having training. If anything, there has been an increase in the number of young people not in education, employment or training—NEETs. The number of 16 to 18-year-old NEETs has gone up since 1997 from 173,000 to 197,000, and there has been a decline in the number of young people in work. The pattern shows a decline in the number of young people working, a slight increase in the number of young people staying on at school, a decline in the number of young people in training in employment, and an increase in the number of young NEETs. We need the Government to explain why the proposals in the Bill will not simply reinforce those trends, but they have not done so today. Will the Secretary of State tell us whether the way in which the measures take effect will lead to a further decline in the number of young people in employment, perhaps a further decline in the number in employment who are getting a contribution towards training from their employer, and an increase in the number staying on at school? He kept saying, ““Don't worry, this is not really an increase in the school leaving age. This is something much more mature and sophisticated than that. It's an increase in the number of young people who will have an entitlement to education or training in some form.”” I hope that the Minister who responds to the debate will be able to tell us why, given the trends that have been established over the past 10 years under this Government, these measures will not result in a further decline in job opportunities for under-18s, a further decline in work-based training and an increase in the number of young people who have to stay on at school. That is what the trends established under this Government suggest will happen. Why should it be any different in the future? We have not yet heard any explanation from the Secretary of State as to why that will not happen. The Secretary of State's own advisers have issued a warning about this in their excellent and useful report on raising the participation age in education and training. They specifically warn about these dangers. The Secretary of State says, ““It's all right, there are going to be more apprenticeships,”” but what does he mean by ““apprenticeships””? We are worried that some of the things that the Government call apprenticeships look awfully like the job training schemes of our day that they used to denounce. The more the Secretary of State or the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills guarantee an increase in the number of apprenticeships—and the more they say that they can deliver such an increase—the greater the risk that the only apprenticeships they deliver will involve people sitting behind desks in FE colleges. The more real an apprenticeship is, and the more genuinely it involves real employers, and not just training providers, the less likely it is that the Government will stand here and announce some notional target for them. The whole point about real apprenticeships is that their numbers are not determined by Ministers. So every time Ministers come here to announce some ambitious target for apprenticeships, the more sceptical we become about whether they will be real apprenticeships, or whether the Government will have to deliver their target through schemes that are not apprenticeships in the commonly accepted sense of the word at all. If young people stay on at school, we want them to get valuable qualifications. That is an objective shared by all of us on both sides of the House. However, as we know from the evaluations by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, another real source of concern is that some national vocational qualifications are of negligible value. It would be a cruel trick to play on our young people to require them to stay on at school to get vocational qualifications, some of which even—shockingly—have a negative value. We have not heard anything from Ministers about why national vocational qualifications are going to be better. Of course it is good if people stay on at school, but they must not simply be warehoused in education, becoming, in reality, even more disengaged from it. Will the Secretary of State confirm, for example, that when areas in which education maintenance allowances were piloted were compared with those where there were no such allowances, there was a higher number of 19-year-old NEETs in the latter? People stayed on at school for an extra two years on account of the incentive, but it left them even more disenchanted than they were before. Let me come on to some other questions. My hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) eloquently raised the issue of coercion and how the proposals would work out. In some extremely valuable exchanges, we tried to pin Ministers down as to exactly what coercion would mean. By the end of it, it seemed to mean a fine, but I have to say to the Secretary of State, who I know is wrestling with the problems of the quality of childhood and the opportunities facing our children in Britain today, that youngsters whose lives are going off the rails gradually discover that everything the authorities tell them is a bluff and can be ignored. They find that no threat from the authorities needs to be taken seriously, so ultimately they can carry on playing truant and carry on skiving. As a result of my hon. Friend's extremely valuable questioning, it became increasingly clear that 16 to 18-year-olds were going to have something else from the authorities to cock a snook at and ignore. We also need to know more about the effects on other learners. There could be losers from the policy, especially if it involves greater disruption to the education of other children. What are the arrangements for enforcing it? Are the Government going to track every 16 to 18-year-old to ensure that they are indeed complying with the legislation? As I said, Conservative Members share the aspiration of having more young people stay on to gain worthwhile education and training. For us, the key elements of that are common sense. First, it means getting the educational basics right and ensuring that young people master the basics. My hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) has always been eloquent on the cause of synthetic phonics and it was good to hear Members on all sides of the House speaking up in favour of it. We know that reaching level 4 at the age of 11 is crucial to avoid being a NEET later on and crucial to ensuring that people stay on in secondary school. Sadly, if young people do not reach level 4 by 11, the educational opportunities later in their youth will be much reduced. I believe that managing the transitions for young people—from primary to secondary school and from secondary out into college or training—is also very important, but we heard very little about how this new legislation would change that. Providing proper advice for young people is also crucial so that they know what is going to be worthwhile for them. We welcome that and look forward to debating it further in Committee. It can be frustrating to attend, as I did, one of the excellent summer schools run by Sir Peter Lampl and the Sutton Trust. One sees youngsters suddenly excited by the prospect of going to university and realising that it could indeed be for them, but when one starts talking about the GCSEs or A-levels they have studied, one has to wonder who on earth in their schools ever thought that such a mix of GCSEs or A-levels could remotely help them to meet the aspirations that they obviously have. Someone failed to give them the careers advice that they were entitled to expect. We therefore very much hope that the Bill will help to tackle that shocking problem. We also hope that it will lead to more real apprenticeships with proper employer involvement—an issue that my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) cares passionately about. They must be real apprenticeships, but the more real they are, as I said, the less likely it is that Ministers will be able to deliver their glib targets. Finally, we have heard no mention by Ministers of the extraordinary vitality and success of voluntary initiatives that do not need to use the compulsory power of legislation. This morning I visited a charity, Into University, based in north Kensington and elsewhere in London. It tries to learn some of the lessons from the rather disappointing record of Aimhigher, which has not yet succeeded in spreading university opportunities on the scale that we might have hoped for. It said that of course it is necessary to excite youngsters with the prospect of going to university by introducing them to the university experience, but it is necessary to do other things as well: offer practical assistance with homework, enabling them to get work done, perhaps away from a disruptive home environment; provide them with mentoring; and provide them with extra courses to ensure that they can get the A-levels and GCSEs that they need. That was a voluntary initiative and a genuine attempt to improve opportunities for young people in danger of becoming NEETs. There is a lot that the voluntary sector can do—it is good to see the Secretary of State who has responsibility for the voluntary sector on the Front Bench. I very much hope that the Bill is not a case of lazy policy making turning to compulsion when, in reality, smarter policies could achieve the aspirations shared on both sides of the House.