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Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I thank the Minister for his response, but it is not a very adequate one. I congratulate him on reducing the figure from 14 per cent in 2004-05 to 6 per cent now—that is an 8 per cent reduction. Yes, that is good. However, I had hoped he would say that the Government would sustain that continuing reduction and that they would have in sight, for perhaps 2011-12, a total elimination. It is madness that they are proposing to allow schools that currently do not have sixth forms to promote them to teach vocational subjects when they have neither staff nor the equipment to teach them properly. It is incredibly expensive to do so. Yes, it is all part of raising the participation age, but this is a very expensive programme. In the colleges, there is a very efficient way in which to teach these things. The Increased Flexibility programme, which used to be so successful, has largely been closed down. I hope that the Government are now beginning to expand the young apprenticeship programme. That is what I would like to see. Colleges take some of the more difficult learners, and are compensated when they have statements and so forth, but they are not completely compensated, and are currently providing an incredible service to the country in terms of helping many of those people to achieve qualifications that they would not be expected to achieve in schools. Yet we are not rewarding those colleges or even promising them that they will get an amount equivalent to what their sixth form comparators are getting. If college lecturers move to a school and teach the sixth form, they are paid more than as a lecturer. That is very galling because they are teaching the same subject. One of the reasons that colleges cannot pay them more is because this differential exists. I hope that the Government can come back and promise us that they will sustain the reduction rather than just sustain the margin.