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Education and Skills Bill

I rise to address amendment No. 149 and the Government amendments. My hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) raised some important points about education in Wales that will have been heard, and which will be heard after the debate as well. If I may address the crux of the matter in amendment No. 149, I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that the Welsh Assembly Government should be able to decide to raise the participation age in Wales at some point in the future. The intention behind the amendment is laudable. It seeks to ensure that young people in England and Wales, who are above compulsory school age, under 18 and without a level 3 qualification, receive the undoubted benefits of education and training. That is a virtuous circle: as the young people receive the benefits of additional education and training, their communities, families and wider society also benefit. It is a classic ““win-win”” scenario. We want those benefits to accrue in England and Wales, to our constituents in Llanelli, Ogmore and elsewhere. Yet I hope that I can explain to my hon. Friend and the House that the amendment, while rightly probing the intentions of the Welsh Assembly Government and Westminster, is unnecessary. It may help if I put the amendment in context. The Welsh Assembly Government are fully committed to ensuring that as many young people as possible stay on in education or training until the age of 18. We have a shared aim of equipping more and more young people in the 14-19 range with the skills and abilities that they need to shape a successful future. The Welsh Assembly Government are putting in place their strategies to achieve that, focused on two key objectives to encourage participation. The first is extending the entitlement of young people to education and training generally, and the second is expanding the range of options available to them, through programmes such as 14-to-19 learning pathways and the Welsh baccalaureate—the Welsh bac. The Assembly Government have a long-standing endorsement of an approach that increases the obligation on providers of services to expand and improve the offers made to young people, and to make staying in education and training more attractive and worth while. They recently concluded a consultation exercise on a draft learning and skills measure, through which they intend to legislate to provide young people with a statutory entitlement to education and training during that period in their lives. I know that the Assembly Government are keen to work with us, sharing and learning from our different experiences as they plan their policies for the future. As my hon. Friend the Minister for Schools and Learners set out in Committee, we do not believe that those matters should be reduced to ““either/or””. Improving the range and quality of the offer to young people is essential, and raising the participation age can galvanise the system to do that. The Government of Wales Act 2006 allows the Assembly to acquire enhanced legislative powers through legislative competence orders—LCOs. If, based on the English experience, the Welsh Assembly Government decide to pursue the approach taken in England, they have the option of proposing a legislative competence order to seek powers to enable them to raise the participation age. In the meantime, we are working with the Assembly Government to ensure that the Bill is drafted in such a way that it enables all aspects of the policy to be capable of application in Wales in future, should they decide to pursue such an approach. However, if the amendment were accepted, it would apply the duty to participate and the rest of the provisions of part 1 in exactly the same form to Wales as to England. It would not allow flexibility to reflect different structures, provisions or qualifications in Wales. I therefore ask my hon. Friend to withdraw it, with the clear commitment of the Government and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales to continue to work with the Welsh Assembly Government to ensure that the approach in England could be adopted if required and requested, and in the light of our shared aim of equipping young people with the skills and abilities for a successful future. I hope that I will not detain us long on Government amendments Nos. 113 to 118. The Bill contains framework powers for the National Assembly for Wales to legislate on regulation and inspection. The amendments would alter those powers so that they more comprehensively cover the regulation of the independent sector. That would avoid the position whereby Westminster regulates some parts of the sector and the Government in Wales regulate others. Clause 133 enables the National Assembly for Wales to legislate on the arrangements for the registration and regulation of independent schools in the context of educational provision and, more generally, of pupil welfare. The framework provision also confers power on the Assembly to introduce measures on the inspection of maintained schools for children of or below compulsory school age, and other education and training for those aged 16 and under, as well as the inspection of independent schools and education and training provided other than in a school to those of compulsory school age. The amendments would extend the framework power to enable the National Assembly to regulate independent nursery schools and part-time educational training provided at independent educational institutions, which provide education for one or more pupils of compulsory school age. That will ensure that the power is comprehensive in giving the Assembly the ability to legislate on regulation in the independent sector. I ask hon. Members to support the Government amendments.