I always feel nervous to cut off the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar) when he is in full flow. Office for National Statistics data for 2020 shows that 29% of those aged 50 to 64 have a degree, and 20% have A-levels or equivalent as their highest qualification. This Government are committed to ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to upskill, including through: the lifetime skills guarantee, which includes free courses for jobs; new skills boot camps, funded by £375 million, made available through the national skills fund; and a new lifelong loan entitlement.

What recent assessment his Department has made of the proportion of the population aged between 50 and 66 that have a university degree or two A-levels.

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct, as he would often say he always is; he is absolutely right on this issue. It is so important that employers look at the experience—what people have learnt over their careers—and the true value that they are able to bring to that company. We must not be trapped in the situation that so many companies get themselves into, whereby jobs are advertised as “graduate only”, when so many people who could be applying for that job would bring a level and depth of experience unequalled in so many other areas. I would happily work with the right hon. Gentleman to do more to ensure that all employers understand the value of a workforce of all ages.

This question is very timely because, in the here and now, today’s report from the Resolution Foundation highlights the difficulties being faced by the over-50s in getting back into work. One of the many obstacles they face is insistence by employers, or their graduate-stuffed HR departments, on A-levels or university degrees, even when those qualifications are not relevant to the job. The Minister will recognise the unfair nature of this for a generation for which, as is shown by the figures, taking such qualifications was much less common. Can we get employers—public and private—to focus on the person, not the piece of paper, and end this wasteful discrimination against older workers?

The Institute of Teaching will register as a higher education provider with the Office for Students (OfS) at the earliest opportunity, so it can apply for degree awarding powers. The Institute will be required to follow the process for acquiring degree awarding powers, which is managed by the OfS.

Once probationary degree awarding powers have been acquired, the Institute will be able to independently award its own Postgraduate Certificates in Education (PGCEs). In due course, the Institute will also be able to validate the PGCEs of other providers, once it has successfully gained full degree awarding powers.

More information will be provided by the department within the tender documentation for this procurement once it is launched.

The following table shows acceptances to podiatry courses between 2016 and 2020 in England.

The Government keeps the funding arrangements for all pre-registration undergraduate and postgraduate NHS health professionals’ education under review, to ensure that students are appropriately supported.

Full-time nursing, midwifery and allied health profession students qualify for up-front fee loans to meet the full costs of their tuition, partially means-tested loans as a contribution towards their living costs and, where applicable, additional grants for students with disabilities and those with adult or child dependants. Additional means-tested living costs support is available for full-time students whose courses require more than 30 weeks and three days attendance in an academic year.

In addition to student loans, since September 2020, all eligible pre-registration nursing, midwifery and allied health students have been able to access a non-repayable training grant of at least £5,000 per academic year through the NHS Learning Support Fund.

Risks to national security in the UK are a matter for the Home Office.

The department has made no assessment of the potential risk to radicalisation of the UK of the European Institute for Human Sciences. The department works with national and local partners to monitor risks of extremism and radicalisation in education. It has mechanisms in place to investigate extremism concerns linked to the sector and where substantiated, take appropriate action to safeguard children and young people from harm.

In regard to whether degrees or diplomas issued by the European Institute for Human Sciences are accredited:

a) With UCAS and higher education, the institute is not an Office for Students registered higher education provider. The government is therefore not able to answer questions regarding its accreditation.

b) The Institute is not a recognised awarding organisation, so would not be regulated by Ofqual. The government is therefore equally not able to answer questions regarding its accreditation.

c) We have no information as to whether the British Accreditation Council accredits the institutes’ degrees and diplomas, as the council is an independent accrediting body for independent further and higher education providers in the UK.

Children in care generally have lower educational attainment than other pupils.

63% of looked-after children enter care due to abuse or neglect. They often have a disrupted experience of education and this pre-care experience can have a significant impact on their attainment. Looked-after children are almost four times more likely to have a special educational need (SEN) than all children and this in part can also explain the gap in attainment compared to non-looked after children.

We expect looked-after children to be placed in good or outstanding schools. Schools must appoint a designated teacher for looked-after children and local authorities must have a Virtual School Head who is accountable for the educational attainment of all children looked-after by the local authority. We have introduced the pupil premium plus for looked-after children (£2,345 per eligible pupil and is managed by the Virtual School Head) to deliver the outcomes in each looked-after child’s personal education plan. The department’s exclusions statutory guidance is clear that the headteacher should, as far as possible, avoid permanently excluding a looked after child. The rate of permanent exclusion for looked after children was 0.14% in 2014–15. That has reduced in recent years; in 2017-2018, the rate was 0.05%. The local authority must have regard to the relevant statutory guidance when carrying out its duties in relation to the education of looked after children.

Information on the performance of children who had been looked after continuously for at least 12 months at Key Stage 4 is published in a statistical release. Due to the introduction of reformed GCSEs and the 9-1 grading scale, comparisons over a long timeframe are difficult. Table 5a shows that the percentage of children who had been looked after continuously for at least 12 months achieving the threshold in English and mathematics at grade 5 or above decreased slightly from 7.4% in 2017 to 7.2% in 2019. The publication is available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/outcomes-for-children-looked-after-by-local-authorities-31-march-2019.

Equivalent figures are not available for A levels as we do not match data collected for looked-after children with Key Stage 5 attainment data on the national pupil database.

Information on the degree qualifications of children who have been looked after is not held centrally within the department.

The Office for Students published a report that looked at the effects of different characteristics on students’ degree attainment. Annex B describes how care-experienced students have lower rates of achieving a first or upper-second class degree when compared to students who have not been in care. For qualifiers in 2018-19, the attainment rate of care experienced students was 12.1% lower than the attainment rate of students who have not been in care. The report is available here:
https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/publications/differences-in-student-outcomes-further-characteristics/.

Since 2018, we have been working with universities to encourage them to sign up to the Care Leaver Covenant and publish their offer to care leavers. The website is available here:
https://mycovenant.org.uk/offers/educational/.

We continue to work with the sector to better understand the needs of care leavers and increase their attendance and attainment.

Apprenticeships will be excluded from student number controls. When monitoring potential recruitment above a student number control, a higher education provider will not be considered to have exceeded the student number control by virtue of the number of apprenticeship students that it has.

Apprenticeships are jobs with a sustained element of training, so this provision is delivered in conjunction with local employers where the apprentice is employed. Relationships between these employers and providers are usually well established so they are unlikely to be vulnerable to aggressive recruitment practices and they pose little or no threat to the stability of the sector.

However, despite apprentices being in full-time employment, they are sometimes also recorded as studying full-time in the Higher Education Students Early Statistics (HESES) data. This data is used to calculate and monitor student number controls.

For HESES20, the Office for Students will provide guidance on how apprentices are recorded in the data return, which will allow all apprenticeship places to be identified.

Apprenticeships will be excluded from student number controls. When monitoring potential recruitment above a student number control, a higher education provider will not be considered to have exceeded the student number control by virtue of the number of apprenticeship students that it has.

Apprenticeships are jobs with a sustained element of training, so this provision is delivered in conjunction with local employers where the apprentice is employed. Relationships between these employers and providers are usually well established, so they are unlikely to be vulnerable to aggressive recruitment practices and they pose little or no threat to the stability of the higher education sector.

However, despite apprentices being in full-time employment, they are sometimes also recorded as studying full-time in the Higher Education Students Early Statistics (HESES) data. This data is used to calculate and monitor student number controls.

For HESES20, the Office for Students will provide guidance on how apprentices are recorded in the data return, which will allow all apprenticeship places to be identified.