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Education and Skills Bill

My Lords, I could not help reflecting that, in dealing with my first amendment, I am up against a formidable array of educationalists: one former Secretary of State, one former Minister and the distinguished educationalists, my noble friend Lord Layard and the noble Lord, Lord Dearing. Therefore, I enter this debate with a certain amount of humility. Amendment No. 8 specifies that the part-time learning undertaken by young people in full-time work should be done away from their workstations. It is not our policy that this learning should always be carried out away from the young person’s workstation. Of course, many young people participating in this way by combining a full-time job with part-time learning will be released by their employer to undertake training elsewhere, such as a college, so that all their learning will necessarily be entirely separate from their normal workplace. However, some other young people fulfilling the duty to participate in this way will receive part-time training provided by their employer—perhaps at a private training provider or at their workplace. We want to encourage this, as it can be very high-quality learning that meets the employer’s business needs and is immediately engaging and relevant to the young person. That is surely what we are all concerned about. I also could not help reflecting on a recent visit that I made to the Yorkshire and Humber region, where I listened to an employer in a daycare nursery who believed passionately in providing high-quality training. They did so and the training occurred in the workplace, although admittedly someone from a further education institution was brought in to assist in the process. So successful was the quality of the training that they set up a sort of mini-academy, which attracted people from other daycare nurseries. Therefore, there is not only one single route to providing this learning. We need to reflect on and understand what people want, what employers’ needs are—a point referred to rightly by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas—and what all of us who have contributed to the debate want; that is, ensuring that we provide a quality provision. I share that concern. One of the principles behind the changes that we are making to the 14-19 curriculum and qualifications is that learning should be personalised and delivered in a way that engages the young person and suits his or her individual needs and interests. Some young people learn best when they can immediately see the practical relevance and application of what they are learning. Therefore, it would not be right to specify in the Bill that for all young people learning must be away from the workstation. I speak from personal experience. As a young man, I suffered the worst and best of employers—those who provided no training whatever and exploited their workforce, and a much better employer who provided an apprenticeship with high-quality training. So I know exactly the kind of perils that young people face in employment situations, about which the best we can say is that they are rich and varied. Therefore, we do not believe it is right to specify in the Bill that for all young people learning must be away from the workstation. Doing so would unnecessarily prohibit a whole range of very worthwhile learning experiences. Some employers are now so serious about the quality of learning that they are looking to be accredited as awarding bodies on the same terms as traditional awarding bodies, and we would not want to deny young people the opportunity to learn with those employers. Simply requiring the learning to take place in a different location would not in itself provide any guarantees about the quality of the learning. I make it clear that I absolutely agree with my noble friend Lord Layard that the learning that young people undertake must be of the very highest quality. It must involve guided learning, and young people must learn new things, not simply do their day-to-day jobs. That is why I clearly oppose those who suggest that informal, unaccredited, in-house training or simply being employed without training should count. I remind noble Lords that that is the current situation. The Bill is a profound step forward. It is progressive legislation, which will make a fundamental change in the United Kingdom’s workplaces. I agree that we need much more than that for our young people who are employed and that we would not meet their expectations if it were simply informal, unaccredited, in-house training, but we need to ensure that we continue to allow high-quality guided learning at the workstation, as we know that that is how some young people learn some things best. Although I know that it was meant as a passing comment, I thought that ““sitting with Nellie”” was an unfortunate phrase to use. I have had some of my best training by sitting down with people who have showed me exactly how to do something. That is very different from how I was taught at a further education college, which was good at the theory. However, when it came to the practical and to knowing exactly how to do a complex electro-mechanical task, there was no substitute for being with someone who had done that task and had a great deal of experience. I turn to Amendment No. 9. I know that my noble friend is concerned that the clause as drafted could allow employers a way out from providing any training. I reassure him that the clause does not provide such a way out. It says that a young person can be deemed to have participated in enough training if he has participated in a course or courses leading to an accredited qualification that has been assigned sufficient guided learning hours. I stress that point. There have been many contributions and concerns expressed. I understand the concerns, but they do not seem to recognise that the training cannot be just anything that an employer dreams up. If training is funded then it has to go through an accreditation process. Ofqual assigns guided learning hours to each qualification, as part of the accreditation process, as an estimate of the amount of guided learning required to achieve the qualification. This provides a straightforward way for young people, local authorities, employers and others to tell at a glance whether a young person is participating in enough learning. Deleting the reference to a course leading to a qualification with the right number of learning hours and relying on a definition that simply required a number of hours of guided learning would mean that someone could miss some hours of scheduled learning as a result of being ill for one day, for example, and would be required to participate in those hours at another time, rather than simply catch up on the learning they had missed, as would normally happen. To make it absolutely clear, this does not mean that employers can simply sign a young person up for a qualification for which they already had the skills and get them accredited without undertaking any actual guided learning. That would clearly not meet the terms of the legislation. In that case, the young person would not have completed a course involving a series of classes or lessons on a particular subject. They would not complete enough hours of actual guided learning to be accredited, so they would be in breach of the duty under the Bill, as would their employer. We should remember that in many cases the employer will be releasing the young person to do their learning somewhere else, such as a college. We should not presume that all these young people will be at their workstation all the time. Many people will go off on day release and similar schemes. In these cases there will always be a set number of scheduled hours at a completely different location from the workplace, so the question of getting round the requirements will not arise. We are talking only about circumstances in which employers provide accredited training and fund it themselves. My noble friend Lady Whitaker said that she was worried about small employers. I share her concern, but they are the most likely people to go down the funded route. If they do so, be assured that it will have to be accredited. There are safeguards in these circumstances. We need to ensure that we continue to allow high-quality guided learning that takes place at the workstation. We know that some young people learn some things best in that way. I have already dealt with the point raised by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, who unfortunately is not here. I agree with my noble friend Lady Blackstone that we need to get it right in these circumstances. Perhaps I part company with her generalisation that someone would be better off unemployed than in a dead-end job. It may be a difficult choice.