Education and Skills Bill

We are back to the problem of accreditation again. Why does it have to go through these Ofqual hoops to be acceptable for the purposes of the Bill, when for the purposes of life afterwards there are all sorts of other things that will do just as well but happen not to be accredited? Can we not allow local authorities the flexibility to take on board, particularly at level zero, courses that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, says, give you a record of progress—a certificate of completion, fine, but not an accredited qualification? Most of these courses will do that, because if someone has gone through the courses successfully they will want the badge. Something that gets them started again and on the road to education can be an enormously important part of doing right by the children at the bottom of the pile between the ages of 16 and 18, but it will never be accredited in the way that Ofqual means. If an employer is offering something, someone must say whether it is satisfactory, but that person surely should be the local authority, which is at the appropriate level to take that sort of view, while Ofqual is just too far away to ever look at it. To clamp everyone into the formalities of an accredited qualification does not do right by those at the bottom of the pile.