UK Parliament / Open data

Government: Draft Legislative Programme

My Lords, I shall attempt to move from process and seek to address the specifics in the Education and Skills Bill. On Tuesday of this week, my noble friend Lord Jones of Birmingham answered questions on the prospects for manufacturing in the UK. It was evident from the questions and the exchanges that, by any yardstick of measurement, British manufacturing is in decline, with fewer people employed, a reduction in the volume of our exports and a diminishing contribution to our balance of payments. It is clear that if we are to reverse this trend we must return to some basic principles. This means improving our commitment to education and skills as set out in the draft legislative programme, which I welcome. I am delighted to say that I can see some progress in that direction and in the support that is being given. I wish to draw your Lordships’ attention to the report of the noble Lord, Lord Leitch, Prosperity for all in the Global Economy: World Class Skills; to Sir Andrew Foster’s contribution to the debate, Realising the Potential; and to the Learning and Skills Council’s Agenda for Change, all of which add up to a new approach and a new agenda in respect of education and skills. The implementation of the report of the noble Lord, Lord Leitch, is not an option; it is an absolute necessity. The price of neglect is summarised in the report in the following terms. It states that, out of 30 OECD countries, the UK lies 17th on low skills, 20th on intermediate skills and 11th on high skills; that 5 million adults in the UK lack functional literacy; that 17 million adults in the UK have difficulties with numbers; and that more than one young person in six leaves school unable to read, write or add up properly. It was no accident that the Prime Minister used his Mansion House speech to the City of London when, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he addressed the issue of education and skills. Across Whitehall, the Government are now responding to the Leitch agenda; hence its inclusion in the draft legislative programme. In addition, the Further Education and Training Bill has been greatly improved by the contribution from your Lordships’ House, and the recent DfES Green Paper, Raising Expectations, sets out new challenges for the education sector. Taken together, these measures are to be welcomed; they signal a new shift forward to a demand-led system, which will ensure that young people will remain in some form of education or training until they attain the age of 18. These demands also impact on senior education managers. They need to develop new strategies including the development of new qualifications, more focus on the design of courses in co-operation with employers and the growth of apprenticeship and degree foundations. The prize for achieving this ambitious programme is enormous. The noble Lord, Lord Leitch, believes that it would deliver a more prosperous and productive society, with higher rates of employment and lower levels of poverty and inequality. He estimates the potential net benefit to be in the region of £80 billion over 30 years, equivalent to an annual boost to the economy of £2.5 billion. The challenge now to further and higher education is to work in closer partnership to deliver a higher level of skills so that the UK can compete in the emerging markets of the world. For example, at Staffordshire University—where I am chancellor, so I must declare an interest—we are plugging the skills gap through direct interface with employers, evidenced by the foundation degree in applied technology. That ensures that the locally based company, JCB, will have sufficient skilled engineers to grow the company and, in doing so, maintain a manufacturing base in the region. The debate about funding FE and HE rages on, however. The issue is: who pays? With the greatest respect to the noble Lord, Lord Leitch, much as I welcome his report, I do not believe that the voluntary training pledge from employers will deliver the radical training needs of the economy that he has identified. I hope to be proved wrong, but I can see no alternative to a training system of mandatory obligation. I am old enough to remember the levy grant training system, where employers paid through their sector training boards and received a rebate if they delivered the appropriate employee training. I therefore take the view that training should be regarded as a costed investment, based on a model of costed benefit and enforced by the carrot-and-stick approach. In the light of all the proposed changes and various reports, however, what the sector now requires is not contestability, as threatened by the Learning and Skills Council, but a period of consolidation and stability. We all recognise that the rules of the game have changed. Of course further education has to be more responsive to the needs of industry, but further education must also be responsive to its core client group, the community, and its needs for personal development. While further education will remain the engine room for tomorrow’s skills and qualifications, in the end its prime purpose is to equip the individual and to build social capital. That means opening doors as well as opening minds.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

694 c926-8 

Session

2006-07

Chamber / Committee

House of Lords chamber
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