Education and Skills Bill

I start with Amendment No. 50 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, which inserts a new clause to enable local authorities to enter into a learning and support contract with a young person who is subject to the duty in Clause 2 to participate but is not participating. We are very grateful to the noble Baroness, along with Barnardo’s and Rainer, for highlighting this approach and its benefits. We will be happy to look further at how we can take this forward in concrete terms and I will reflect further on the arguments that she set out. We know that an agreement that a young person has signed up to, where they understand their obligations and the consequences of not fulfilling them, can be very effective. That is how the education maintenance allowance works and it has been a great success in boosting both participation and attainment. We have also extended the conditions for EMAs so that from this coming academic year providers will take into account a young person’s behaviour and progress rather than just their attendance in deciding whether they have fulfilled their obligations for receipt of the EMA. Contracts or agreements are already widely used with success by voluntary sector organisations, including Barnardo’s and Rainer, in their programmes to re-engage young people and support their transition back to formal learning. The idea has been popular with young people. This something-for-something approach is also the model for our activity agreement and allowance pilots. In these, aimed at 16 and 17 year-olds who are not in education, employment or training, the agreement is tailored to the individual, following an assessment of their needs, and is designed and agreed with them. We would encourage local authorities to pursue this approach, or similarly successful measures that have been developed locally, before considering taking any more formal enforcement action against a young person under the Bill, and we could specify this in guidance that we will give to local authorities. I will consider whether there is a case for any reference in primary legislation, but our current thinking is that guidance is the appropriate place for emphasising this approach. The noble Baroness will have heard my concern many times in the past, but it applies here too. If we were to set out requirements in primary legislation, they might risk making learning and support contracts too inflexible to respond to the specific needs of individuals, too formal to be effectively supportive and too prescriptive to allow for other innovative solutions that have been developed locally. However, as I say, I will consider this issue further. The noble Baroness’s Amendment No. 15 goes further in proposing that participating in a learning and support contract should count as a way in its own right of fulfilling the central duty to participate. While we very much encourage local authorities to pursue a learning and support contract approach or similar measures where appropriate, we do not believe that this should be an alternative route, a way of fulfilling the duty to participate on a par with existing routes. A learning contract is not a form of learning in itself. The contract needs to describe a programme of learning, along with the support needed. It is a tool and approach that can be used to help re-engage young people who have struggled to engage in one of the other routes. In addition, informal, tailored learning programmes of the kind often provided by voluntary sector organisations, including those we have mentioned, will count under the terms of Clause 4, and the entry to learning approach announced in the Children’s Plan in December will help to ensure that good-quality provision which supports progression into mainstream learning is encouraged and recognised. While we are glad to see this important practice highlighted, and we are prepared to offer clear assurances that we will continue to seek to promote this contract approach to re-engagement in learning—I will look at whether there is a case for strengthening this in the legislation—we do not think that it should constitute a learning route in itself. As regards Amendment No. 56 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, at present, the Learning and Skills Council is responsible for ensuring that there is appropriate provision for all 16 to 19 year-olds, and for funding that provision. The overall 16 to 19 budget is planned and allocated by the LSC to respond to learner demand so that all 16 to 19 year-olds who choose to do so have access to suitable provision. However, we have announced that in future responsibility for commissioning and funding 16 to 19 provision will be transferred from the LSC to local authorities. We published our proposals for consultation in March and, subject to that consultation, will bring forward the necessary legislation in the next session. We expect that the calculation of funding for 16 to 19 courses will operate in the same way when local authorities take over responsibility from 2010-11. Once that change happens, local authorities will indeed have the power to decide what provision in their area should be funded and to pool budgets in precisely the way that the noble Lord said was desirable. Therefore, we are moving to precisely the regime that he described where budgets are pooled much more effectively at local level, but we require legislation before we can transfer the funding from the Learning and Skills Council to local authorities. That will be forthcoming in the next parliamentary session.