Education and Skills Bill

moved Amendment No. 36: 36: Clause 8, page 4, line 25, after ““learning”” insert ““away from the individual’s work-station”” The noble Lord said: I will speak also to Amendment No. 38, because both amendments are about the definition of education and training. This is crucial to the Bill. When we first heard about the Bill, the Secretary of State said that it would require at least one day a week, or the equivalent, of off-the-job education or training. That is why many of us were excited by, and welcomed, the Bill. Yet when one looks at its detail, one finds no reference to off-the-job education or training, nor any guarantee of one day a week or the equivalent. These amendments seek to rectify those omissions, and thus to implement the Secretary of State’s original promise. This is not a minor issue; it is central to the character of the Bill. If this is to be a landmark Bill that reduces the huge educational inequalities in our country, it has to do more than simply improve the very specific skills of those affected by it. It must also raise their general ability to think about what they are doing, to analyse a problem and to communicate in writing. In a world in which specific skills rapidly become obsolete, it is these transferable skills that are important if we want to raise the educational level of the country’s less educated people. At present, many young people in Britain lack these skills. Interestingly, at the age of 15 our young people now do as well in literacy and numeracy as young people in France and Germany, but by the time they are 20 twice as many British people are without a decent level of skill. The reason is absolutely simple; you only have to look at the descriptions of the education systems. In Germany and France, and many other countries, people go on developing their general skills between the ages of 16 and 19. In our country, many do not. To develop those general skills of thinking, analysing and writing requires a serious amount of off-the-job learning. Of course, it should be associated with the job; that is what motivates people when they are off the job, away from their work station. Amendment No. 36 insists that, in the case of part-time education and training, the required number of guided learning hours take place away from the individual’s work station. It may be on the employer’s premises, around the corner; in many cases that is the best possible arrangement. It must be a place separate from where the individual does his job. It must be a place where he can concentrate on acquiring the underpinning knowledge, numeracy and literacy that develop through analysing problems. That is what the amendment proposes. We know that many employers will not like this suggestion. They will argue, correctly, that on-the-job training is as valuable as off-the-job training. They may, incorrectly, argue that you can have one without the other, and that is enough. You need both. That is the point which everybody concerned with education inequality has always stressed. We need the off-the-job element to develop transferable skills. That is why this can claim to be an Education and Skills Bill, not just a skills Bill. We should reconsider the enforcement issues that we touched on previously. Enforcement is important. How could we know whether 280 hours of guided learning was being undertaken if some of the learning that could count was on the job? Simply by looking at somebody who was working at his work station with his supervisor near by, how could we know whether he was getting guided learning? One cannot enforce the provision of guided learning hours on the job. It seems to me that if we want the landmark Bill which the Government want, we have to tighten up the definition of guided learning to mean that which is carried out off the job. I suspect that the Minister will refer to Clause 6, which states: "““‘relevant training or education’ means training or education towards an accredited qualification provided by a course or courses””." He may try to argue that that somehow makes it off the job. If it does, let us call it off the job. If it does not, you can easily see how some qualifications, for example an NVQ which could be studied entirely on the job, could be redesignated as courses. The meaning of words can be changed. We do not want an Act in which the meaning of words can be changed in such a way that they completely alter its purpose. In this connection I refer to some shocking statistics. Under the modern apprenticeship scheme, which the Government fund, the apprentice is meant to be studying not only for an NVQ but for a technical certificate, which allows, typically, a day a week off the job. Two surveys have been conducted on this. The 2005 survey found that apprentices were receiving five hours of off-the-job training a week. That is not too bad and is more or less in line with what we are talking about. However, an identical survey conducted in 2007 showed that this had fallen to three hours a week. That is an appalling situation and shows how efforts to develop the transferable skills of our workforce are being undermined. If the Minister wants to retain the education element of the Bill, he will have to accept Amendment No. 36, or something like it. Amendment No. 38 concerns the amount of education or training; that is, 280 hours of guided learning. However, Clause 8(2) contains a let-out because it states that the relevant person can be ““completing”” a course which would normally require those hours. I am not sure what ““completing”” means; it is a very peculiar word, but I assume that it means participation. Does this mean that you do not have to have 280 hours of guided learning; that you have to be involved in a designated course but do not have to do those hours? It is easy to see how a youngster could be signed up for a course that he finds so easy that he does not need to do all the hours that are normally assigned to it. What do we as education reformers think should happen? If a course is so easy that the relevant student can do it in less time than is allocated to it, he should do something more difficult or he should finish it off quickly and move on to something more difficult. This is about raising the population’s education aspirations, not getting a quick fix. Many employers will approach the Bill in a spirit of devising what is the least they can get away with. When you read it—I am sure that the Minister and his officials read it this way—you should ask yourself how employers will try to get round its provisions. Many young people will also want to get round them. Tens of thousands of young people will collude with their employers to do the least that they can get away with rather than satisfy the Bill’s spirit, which is to extend the part-time or full-time education leaving age to 18. That is what the Bill is about. Amendment No. 38 would close that let-out. I hope that the Minister can see the risks involved in Clause 8(2). I have been told that the aim of the clause is simply to allow for occasions when the relevant person fails to complete the 280 hours due to sickness. If that is the case, let us call a spade a spade and say that rather than have the remarkable form of words to which I referred. There is a lot at stake in both the issues raised in these amendments. We are looking to the Bill to set the parameters of the education system for the next quarter of a century. We should not be thinking about what we can get employers to accept next year. In fact, the Bill will not be fully enacted for seven years. We should be thinking reasonably ambitiously about an education system that is appropriate for this country for the next 25 years. I am sure that the Government want this to be a landmark Bill which will transform the life chances of at least a third of our young people, but it will not do that unless they make the changes which I have suggested. I beg to move.