Education and Skills Bill

moved Amendment No. 35: 35: Clause 8, page 4, line 25, leave out ““guided learning”” and insert ““learning time”” The noble Baroness said: I will also speak to Amendments Nos. 37 and 39 to 48 inclusive. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, for introducing us to the Rose project which raised issues about a group of young people who I had not thought about and who could be affected by the Bill. I encourage the Minster to find a way of looking into that. The purpose of this group of amendments is to probe the meaning of the phrase ““guided learning”” and to have a debate about whether a young person’s duty to participate could be fulfilled by learning and practising for part of the time away from their instructor, whatever skill they are studying, as long as that work was specified by the instructor. If the instructor gives homework or work to be done in the library or on a building site or in a hairdressing salon, surely it might be legitimate to count that as qualifying learning. I think there will be much confusion about what qualifies under Clauses 3 to 9. For example, is everyone going to have to add up the number of hours that they do throughout the year to know whether or not they qualify as participating? These amendments are designed to clarify the situation that might reasonably arise in the workplace so that we do not put the student outside the duties of the Bill. I accept that all students will do homework, research, preparation—call it what you will. However, we must remember that we are not dealing with PhD students or even undergraduates but 16 year-olds who are often very disaffected and might not have stayed on in education at all had they not been compelled to do so. They may need a different kind of learning experience before they respond, perhaps being given a little more rope and responsibility for their own learning away from the instructor or out of the classroom. That might be very developing for them. Particularly where they are studying a practical skill, the tutor may deem it desirable to tell them to go away and practise by themselves without someone hanging over them. It might be better for their self-confidence to build up their skills in their own time where there is no one to see them fail, because many of the young people at whom the Bill is aimed fail over and over again. I want to make sure that the specification of what, where, when and how many hours they should study is not so tight as to eliminate the possibility of partly fulfilling the duty to participate by doing it by themselves where nobody can see them fail. Every time we try a new skill, we fail the first time. This morning I coxed an eight on the river at Putney for the first time in my life and I did not do it perfectly. There was a bit of zigzagging going on. I am pleased to say that I did not hit anything, but I was very aware that there were eight men watching me fail. So I have sympathy with young people who are trying a skill for the first time and are perhaps a little bit self-conscious. It may help to build up their self-confidence if they are allowed to do some of the work somewhere else, as long as it is specified by the tutor and proof is given that it has been done. I beg to move.