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Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I want to supplement what the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, just said. In terms of reaching level 2, achieving an A to C grade in English or maths GCSE is quite difficult, but we are introducing a new qualification called functional skills. Nobody quite knows yet what functional skills will involve, but to take the English element, one of the things that employers constantly complain about is that employees cannot do such things as put together a short comprehensive report, or write a business letter. I would imagine that when you are talking about English functional skills, this is precisely the sort of thing that you are going to be involved with; similarly for maths, that this would include some elementary concepts of statistics and accounting. If you are an apprentice working in this sort of area, it is extremely important to have some knowledge of elementary accounts. One would hope that these functional skills are going to be perhaps more approachable for the general run of students, as opposed to the more academic maths and English GCSEs.