Education and Skills Bill

My name is attached to some of the amendments in this group. I wish to relate some personal experiences that underline the reasons for my support. Some years ago I was asked by a local education authority to run a course for young teenage mothers. In its wisdom, the authority provided a crèche for the children while the mothers attended the course. It did not lead to accredited qualifications of any kind, but I hope that it was helpful to them. Indeed, I have kept in touch with some of those delightful young women and they still say after so many years that they found coming together and talking through aspects of their situation enormously helpful. I recall most vividly one young woman of only 17 who already had two children by different fathers. She lived in very unsatisfactory circumstances. Her mother had thrown her out and would have nothing more to do with her. She was grey-faced and looked about 90 rather than 17 when she said to me, ““I’m not getting any sleep and I simply have no time to think. All I want is to look after my babies properly””. She was very tearful as she said that. To tell that young woman that she had to sign up for some form of accredited qualification because she would be criminalised if she did not would go way beyond any kind of sensible thought or reason. Young people who are already caring for small children need help and guidance. If they are lucky enough to have access to something like the provision made by the local education authority I mentioned a moment ago, then of course they should take up some form of supported educational help—but not, for goodness’ sake, studying for qualifications, writing examinations and taking practical tests. Those young women are vividly in my mind when I support strongly the concept that women with small children should not be forced into education leading to qualifications. My second thought, when looking at the many good things here, concerns voluntary work. Last week a young man, now in his 20s, told me that at his parents’ insistence he stayed on at school for a term after he had finished his very mediocre GCSEs. He said to me, ““I was in deep depression. I hated education, my school and my teachers. I knew that I was not academic and I did not want anything to do with it. So I begged my parents to let me drop out””. He did drop out of school. His parents had the good sense to send him along to the Community Service Volunteers. He signed up with them and worked for, I think, six months in a school for young deaf children. He was transformed. He loved the work and being with the young children. He showed me a collection of the cards they sent him when he was leaving, which said ““We love you””, ““Please come back”” and so on. They are a treasured possession. The point of the story is that voluntary work turned the young man around. If you had asked him to go back into formal education, he would have found it impossible and would have run away. The good end to the story is that, at the age of 24, having been very much helped and turned around by two long periods of voluntary work, one of them overseas, he decided to study for a degree. A few categories of people should be allowed to leave education. They grow up at different rates and feel differently at different ages. Some 16 and 17 year-olds are simply not ready for formal education. They have other interests and concerns in life. If they can be helped through this period in ways not strictly leading to formal qualifications, it is my firm belief that the majority will come back later. I do not think we should be forcing such young people into an educational experience that to them is anathema.