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Education and Skills Bill

moved Amendment No. 44: 44: After Clause 33, insert the following new Clause— ““Annual progress report The Secretary of State shall report annually to Parliament on the operation of this Part of this Act, with particular reference to— (a) the effectiveness of arrangements for providing advice to young people about the range of working, training and further study opportunities which are open to them, (b) the effectiveness of advice and support given to employers to enable them to fulfil the duties imposed on them by this Part, and (c) the quality of learning programmes and qualifications available to young persons to whom this Part applies, and the relevance of such programmes and qualifications to the needs of young persons and employers.”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, the Government have rightly put a great emphasis in all their public sector programmes on measuring outcomes and ensuring that things that are put in actually produce results at the end. This amendment is an attempt in small part to ensure that the effectiveness of the legislation is measured carefully and reported on widely. I am grateful to the Confederation of British Industry, which sent a very helpful briefing on this subject. It emphasised that reporting of this kind would increase business confidence, which it feels is not at the moment entirely with the provisions of the Bill. Furthermore, the impact of the current economic crisis on the employment prospects of young people is a terribly important outcome from the provisions of the Bill, and whether the provisions work should be carefully monitored and reported. That is why I am asking in the amendment for an annual report to Parliament. There are three categories of report, but they are not at all comprehensive; there should be other areas as well. We have talked a great deal under previous amendments about careers advice to young people. It is relevant here to quote the CBI’s employment trends survey this year. It highlighted the fact that 52 per cent of employers said that they were dissatisfied with school leavers’ knowledge about their chosen careers. In other words, some very shaky careers advice had been given to those young people when they made their choices, because employers felt that the choices were inappropriate. It is vitally important that the effectiveness of the new arrangements that are put in place for 16 to 18 year-olds should be monitored and the genuine outcome from these new arrangements reported. Secondly, we have not talked enough about the duties being imposed on employers, which are very new. They feel a great deal of discomfort about them. The CBI says that its members are unenthusiastic about some of the provisions in the Bill. They dislike not only the idea of requirements on them to provide time off for young people to attend training courses equivalent to one day a week but that it involves police participation, checking that the young person has arranged a suitable course, and that there are enforcement notices, financial penalties and so forth. They are unhappy. They are asking for good advice and support to reassure them that they will not face financial penalties if they have acted in good faith, and that they will have good advice and help in identifying and accessing high-quality and relevant training and provision for their young employees. Above all, they would like reassurance that they can continue to employ these young people. Otherwise we will find that many employers will not want to employ them. They will say that it is too much trouble because they run the risk of incurring penalties which they do not want and that they do not have time to check on programmes themselves and so forth. The effectiveness of the advice and support given to employers to enable them to fulfil their duties is something that Parliament should be told about and should be carefully monitored by the department. Thirdly, there is a real risk that as we impose on young people the duty to undertake education and training in their latter years—16, 17 and 18 year-olds—the quality of the learning programmes available to them will not be of the highest quality. It will still not reflect the real needs of employers. The CBI again points out that employers spend £39 billion a year on staff development. But the CBI-Edexcel education and skills survey this year highlighted that only a third of employer training leads to a recognised qualification. Therefore, the requirement that the young person must follow only government-specified training may discourage employers from taking on a young person. The CBI emphasised that it supports the progress that the Government have made on qualification reform, but asked the Government to maintain their momentum in accrediting employers’ own in-house training and ensuring that it is easier for employers to award their own recognised qualifications. An annual progress report on the quality of the learning programmes and the relevance of these programmes to the needs of the young people themselves and their employers would be an important thing. I know that the Minister has been telling us that there is a good reason why none of the amendments that have been moved today can possibly be taken on board, but I hope that she will give a more favourable response to this one. I beg to move.