Education and Skills Bill

moved Amendment No. 16: 16: Clause 2, page 2, line 8, at end insert— ““( ) The duty under this section shall not apply to any person until the Secretary of State has published an assessment of the availability of suitable education and training opportunities in each local authority area.”” The noble Baroness said: I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 236 and 237 in our names and mention Amendment No. 17. These four amendments seek to delay the implementation of the compulsion measures in the Bill until the reforms for 14 to 19 year-olds currently under way are completed. A number of noble Lords share our feelings that a great many reforms are under way and that to some extent the Government are putting the cart before the horse. We talked earlier about the NEET group at which the Bill is targeted and about the demotivation that many of them experience in the current secondary school curriculum. The reforms are aimed at trying to motivate them better and encourage them to stay in education or enter training after the age of 16. Many of these young people find the current GCSE/A-level curriculum much too academic—too elitist, in many senses. They will quite possibly learn by doing rather than by cognitive learning and didactic teaching. We feel it is necessary to wait to see whether the reforms work because there is the feeling that we have seen them before. Over the past 25 to 28 years, we have had YOPs, TOPs, GNVQs, TVEIs and vocational A-levels. All have come and gone. The Tomlinson committee was set up in 2000 to address this issue. For three years, it deliberated with experts on the secondary school curriculum—teachers, academics and laymen. The proposal for the diploma embraced current GCSEs and A-levels but allowed for a degree of flexibility. As well as the introduction of practical modules of learning, those who thrived on the more academic courses could do a bit more practical work. In the event, as we all know, the Government rejected the Tomlinson proposal for overarching diplomas. The current diploma proposal is a hybrid between the Tomlinson proposal and what the Government wanted. We discussed diplomas during the passage of the Higher Education Act 2004; initially they were called vocational diplomas, only we had to call them specialist diplomas. There were three clear streams—apprenticeship, diploma and GCSE/A-level—with remarkably little flexibility between them. I am glad to say that the Government have shifted their ground somewhat. Partly because of the introduction of the academic diplomas in science, humanities and languages, we are seeing some bridging of the two in the diploma stream. But it is not at all clear how much bridging will be carried out; nor is it clear how far there is going to be flexibility within GCSEs and the level 2 diplomas, because they have not worked themselves out. It is partly because the diplomas are still such an unknown quantity that we on these Benches feel that the sensible thing is to see whether these new initiatives work in trying to introduce more practical learning for those who are going to be motivated by learning and doing. If they work well, there is no problem. We can raise the learning leaving age because everyone will be involved, motivated and wanting to, but if they do not work and we have the same failures that we have seen in the past, it is premature to try to introduce compulsion. Amendment No. 16 states that we should not introduce compulsion until we know whether the diplomas are going to work; hence, let us have a review of local provision to make sure that the new agenda is up and running and that it is running smoothly at the local level before we introduce compulsion. Amendments Nos. 236 and 237, which propose a delay in effect of two years in the introduction of compulsion, pick up the fact that not only are we seeing the introduction at this time of the new diplomas but we are seeing a new curriculum for key stage 3, a changing science curriculum and a changing languages curriculum. We are seeing the A* at A-level and changes in the A-level syllabuses, including an extended essay. All of that means that there are so many changes on the educational scene that it may not be sensible to have a great crescendo of reforms coming at the same time. I beg to move.