Education and Skills Bill

Given that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has dealt in these two amendments with the issue of compulsion, it would be discourteous of me to wait for the Minister to reply and go through the same arguments, in order for him to reply again. We thought that compulsion would be dealt with in the next group. With the leave of the Committee, I will speak to my amendments that start with Amendment No. 7. These all deal with the issue of compulsion. Amendment No. 7 would make it a condition that the young person must agree to Part 1 applying before it applies to him. We and the Liberal Democrats have also tabled amendments to remove the duty to participate from the person and, instead, to create an entitlement, which they may choose to take up. With these amendments, we come to the crux of this Bill. It should come as no surprise that a number of overlapping amendments are tabled to deal with this issue. What they have in common—and what we have in common with the Liberal Democrats and concerned groups outside this House—is the feeling that the Government need to think carefully about the full ramifications of compulsion. It is incumbent on the Government to proceed with caution. We feel strongly that the Government have taken the wrong approach. We should not criminalise those young people who have dropped out of the education system. Instead, we should ask why they have dropped out. It is not simply to spite the authorities, or because there is not yet a law in place which forbids them from leaving. We have to look at young people’s reasons for dropping out of education. It is because they are disaffected with the system and do not see that it has anything further to offer them. It is a sad indictment of those precious years, which should be exciting and fulfilling. Until we can change that, the Bill is simply going to run into trouble. What is to be gained by forcing teenagers to stay in a system that has already failed them by the time they are 16? In many other respects they are treated as autonomous adults; for example, in the Armed Forces and behind the wheel of a car. Some are married. Unless we sort out the underlying problems, these 16 and 17 year-olds will be sent back into education or training against their will. The Government’s own consultation of young people, Raising Expectations, the DCSF’s 2007 consultation report, says on page 4 that a plurality of young people—47 per cent—were against the duty. Thirty-six per cent were in agreement and 17 per cent were unsure. In many cases, that means that they will ignore the duty that has been imposed. Therefore, they will be liable to sanctions and could end up with a criminal record. Before long, this Bill, which we are responsible for scrutinising and revising, will be regarded less as an education and skills Bill and more as a criminal justice Bill. The Government have told us that this is the option of last resort and that it will be seldom-used, but we feel that it will be used and will have a devastating effect on those for whom we ought to do most. A criminal record can be a career-wrecking step and that is not where any of us wants to head. We ought not to criminalise those who have been let down by the education system in their early years. Alison Wolf said in a recent paper that one of the best-established findings in educational research is that children who are doing poorly when they leave primary education almost never catch up. The compulsion element focuses on the wrong place and that is our fundamental problem with it. The Bill, as it stands, would place the onus on the young person to participate. If he or she fails to do so, punishment will follow. The focus of our attention should be what the state and the education system are getting wrong in the years before young people reach the current school-leaving age. If 11 year-olds are leaving primary education with less than basic literacy and numeracy, and if they are failing to catch up by the ages of 14 or 16, why are we surprised that they no longer want to engage in education? Why persist with something they cannot do properly, do not enjoy and does not seem to lead them anywhere? At Second Reading I raised the point that if schools are having trouble keeping under-16s in regular attendance, then what are we to expect the results to be for older teenagers. It is all very well threatening to strong arm young people into participating, but is there really much point if mere participation does not achieve very much? Through the amendments, we wish to find out from the Minister whether compulsion will truly achieve the objectives of increasing the number of 16 and 17 year-olds in education or training, an objective which, as I have said, we share. We fear that the compulsion element will simply create a whole new series of problems without solving any of the underlying ones and will therefore do nothing to improve learning and skills. These amendments would, at a stroke, remove one of the biggest obstacles to wide-ranging support for the Bill, which, as I have said, contains much that is worth supporting. We could turn the Bill into an opportunity ready to be grabbed—a declaration of entitlement for young people to engage in education and training—and we could turn our attention to working out the best possible methods to enable them to do so. That is the reasoning behind removing the duty and inserting a right or entitlement. We fear that compulsion will engender resentment and will be flouted. By turning it into an entitlement we are instead opening up an opportunity. Instead of telling young people what they must do—which is not always the most successful route to follow with young people—we would be showing them what they can do. The Government may say that the current system already is one of entitlement where, under the September guarantee, the LSC has a duty to liaise with schools and course providers to ensure that, come September, any young person who wants it can have a place on a course. We are told that this has an effect on participation rates. It is encouraging, but the system has not been used to its full potential. The framework of support established by the Bill ought to be used to get the maximum effect from the entitlement system. It seems a good idea that we should try to maximise the efficiency of a system based on choice and freedom to participate before we turn to a system of compulsion. So we will be using the Bill as a tool to enable all those opportunities to happen and as a chance to set out the structural changes, the allocation of funds and the commitment of local authorities, education authorities and others to enable young people to reach their potential without having to resort to criminal sanctions.