Education and Skills Bill

I thank the noble Baroness for her intervention. I do not believe that providing the right to postpone will exclude people, as long as the access, opportunities and support are in place. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, about the need to re-engage adults in higher qualifications, not least because the world is changing and people need to be reskilled and upskilled. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, made the telling point that compulsion has not worked for some young people up to the age of 16—the ones on which this Bill is focused—so why should it work after 16? The things that work are choice, support, assistance and encouragement. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for his support on the seriousness of the criminal record issue; we have had a little debate on the effect of a criminal record on the person’s life chances in future. I thank the Minister for his detailed response. He talked about carrots and sticks and gave us a long list of all the initiatives that the Government have brought forward to improve young people’s educational opportunities and qualifications. Why, then, does he not have confidence in all these carrots? As he said, the EMA has already had a beneficial effect. After a fairly short period, there has been an increase of 3.8 per cent for 16 year-olds and 4.1 per cent for 17 year-olds. Then there are the diplomas, which, despite our reservations, we all wish a fair wind. The Government are also vastly expanding opportunities for vocational training and, we hope, for apprenticeships. With the taking away of barriers to access and the learning support contracts, which we know the Government are interested in and which we will come to in later debates, all these initiatives should, if properly implemented—I take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth of Breckland—make it very rare for young people not to voluntarily take up the opportunity to extend their educational qualifications. The Minister talked about other countries, mentioning Germany in particular. There is a totally different cultural attitude to education in Germany. From the beginning of education, children there have very high-quality nursery provision and they do not start formal learning until they are six. I know that because my own niece has done it. So the situation is very different. The noble Lord talked about how successful all the countries that have compulsion are in getting young people to participate. That is a no-brainer. Of course if there is compulsion they are going to participate, but does it do them any good? The Minister said that I was suggesting that local government officials had unfettered discretion. I do not believe that I used the word ““unfettered”” but perhaps I will read Hansard in the morning and check. I am perfectly aware of all the conditions that exist. The point is that it is the local government officer who is making the decision, based on the Government’s guidelines perhaps, and not the young person. I ask the noble Lord a fundamental question: what good is enforcement? As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, pointed out, by the time the authorities discover that a 16 year-old is not participating, it is probably six months down the track. They chase them up and go through all the appeals—I accept that there must be an appeals process when you have some sort of criminal sanction—but all these things are going to take time and, by the end of it, the young person is nearly 18 and it is hardly worth bothering. The alternative is to look at the young person, see what the problems are and sort them out. We should not be waiting until they are 16 to do that. All these things need to be done many years before that because, as the noble Lord, Lord Elton, said, it is those who truanted when they were 13 or 14 who are going to be reluctant to participate in some way after 16. I do not think that any of us in the Committee have the wrong impression about what the participation duty means. We are all aware that it does not mean that the young person who has not enjoyed sitting in a classroom has to carry on sitting in a classroom. But it is authority and the idea of education that has already turned some of them off. We need the totally different approach of encouragement, carrots, personal mentoring and an understanding of what the problem was in the first place. Did the young person have a special educational need that was not addressed at the right time and which caused them to go out into a PRU because they were excluded from school, or simply to truant and not be provided for at all? What was the problem? Much of the Government’s approach is right. This framework of support, if it really gets delivered, is absolutely right. But why not wait and see whether the young people find it attractive rather than saying that we have to have compulsion? The impact assessment underestimates the potential cost of setting up that negative framework. We would rather have something positive—carrots, not sticks. I am sure that we will come back to these issues. I think that I am being encouraged to go on for two more minutes, in which case I most certainly will. The Minister listed a lot of foreign countries; I mentioned Germany. There are many more differences than just the compulsion element, as has been said. Can we please look at the other differences between what those countries do and what we do now? What sort of early years provision is there? Is there early diagnosis of difficulties? When there has been diagnosis, is provision made? At what age do they start formal learning? Is their reading programme prescriptive? What sort of transition stages are there between the primary level of school and the secondary level? Do they have the same problem that we have where young people very often fall behind for a year or so when they first go to the secondary school? What range of curriculum are they offered in the secondary sector? Have those countries already followed the route down which we hope the Government are moving to give young people a much wider range of courses, rather than expecting them all to be academic? It is rather simplistic just to list all those countries’ percentages of participation and expect that to constitute a suitable argument. However, I think that I have made my argument. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.