Education and Skills Bill

The amendment seeks to probe what we mean by residence for the purposes of obligation under the Bill. We will make regulations under Clause 53(2) to clarify this further. For the purposes of this debate, our intention is that the duty to participate will apply to all young people resident in England. This does not include people who are here for a day or on holiday or, for example, people who live in Scotland but work in England, but it does include people who have moved here indefinitely from another country. So, it is a reasonable interpretation of the word ““residence””. Amendment No. 3, spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, would exempt individuals in full-time sports. We recognise the need for young athletes and sportspeople to be able to dedicate their time to their training. Therefore, where a young athlete or young sports man or woman is training full-time for a career in their sport, they will be treated like those who are employed full-time and they will have to participate only in part-time, not full-time, accredited education or training. However, we believe that they should be required to participate in this part-time education and training not least because for most young people engaged in sports training, including those aspiring to the highest levels of success, as the noble Baroness mentioned, sport alone is unlikely to give them the skills that they need for future employment—certainly, alas, not in the long term. We would like it to be the case that more are able to make a career out of it, but the number able to do so is very small. However, the requirement has purposely been framed flexibly so that part-time education or training could easily be arranged around an athlete’s training programme and commitments. For example, it could be organised in blocks throughout the year to meet the hours requirement without it necessarily having to take the form of one precise day per week. In some cases, it may also be possible to accredit some elements of the training that a young person is undertaking towards a sports-related qualification. In the academic year 2006-07, 629 new students started on an advanced apprenticeship in sporting excellence. These advanced apprenticeships included places in athletics, cricket, golf, football, rugby, swimming and tennis. They are designed to enable young people to succeed both during and after their sporting careers. Amendment No. 8, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, provides for gap years. She did not specifically speak to this but I will reply anyway so that my remarks are on the record. We are in favour of gap years at 18—many noble Lords probably have children who are engaged in them—but we do not believe that we should be encouraging young people to leave education or training completely at the age of 16. Being NEET at 16 is universally associated with poor outcomes. Staying in learning post-16, in the flexible range of ways set out in the Bill, is hugely beneficial to young people. They are much more likely to gain further skills and qualifications to help them to progress in learning in the future, to find and keep employment and to earn more over their lifetime if they remain engaged at the age of 16. There would also be operational difficulties. It would be difficult to define a gap year for the purposes of the amendment. Does it simply relate to those taking a year off or to those judged to be doing something worth while? Who is to decide? Indeed, many parents are not convinced that what their own children do is sufficiently worth while in their gap year. If a public official had to make this judgment as well, goodness knows where we might be. I do not want to get involved in that level of detail. The noble Baroness was probing our intentions, which are that, while gap years may be perfectly appropriate at 18, a gap year that involves no engagement sufficient to satisfy the Bill in educational training would not be appropriate at the age of 16. I believe that I have covered most of the issues raised earlier, as well as many that were not raised but were intended to be raised by the terms of the amendments.