Education and Skills Bill

moved Amendment No. 49: 49: After Clause 9, insert the following new Clause— ““Part-time education and training: funding (1) The part-time education and training, including apprenticeships under section 2(1)(b), of young persons aged 16 to 18 shall be subject to the same levels of funding per person as that provided in relation to young persons in appropriate full-time education or training. (2) In this section, ““funding”” includes, but is not limited to— (a) funding through the provision of educational maintenance allowances and child tax credits, and (b) payments made to providers of education and training including, where appropriate, employers. (3) The amount of funding provided under this section shall be calculated on an annual basis. (4) The Secretary of State shall lay an annual report before Parliament setting out— (a) whether funding has been provided in accordance with this section; (b) what sources of funding have been provided, and how much; (c) why, if funding has not been provided in accordance with this section, the requirement has not been met.”” The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 49 relates to the funding of the additional education that the Bill seeks to promote. The greater part of the extra education induced by the Bill will be the part-time education or training, which is why we are spending so much time discussing it. That is aimed at people who presently do not get it. The amendment seeks to ensure that the annual funding, per person, obtained by the under-privileged group who are brought into education and training through the Bill is at least as good as the annual funding, per person, given to the more privileged people who go down the full-time route, most of whom, or their equivalent, are already going down it. There are two arguments for the amendment, each in itself sufficient to justify it. The first is a practical one, the second a matter of principle and social justice. I shall start with the practical argument. There is really only one major problem with implementing the Bill—finding enough employer places to enable young people who do not want full-time education to have a part-time education. That is the only practical problem. If that can be satisfied, the problems of enforcement will not be a big deal because people on the whole will be quite happy to have a job with a wage. I estimate that the number of additional places, with training, to be provided by employers is of the order of a quarter of a million. This is a very serious challenge even though we have got some time. Unless we can find those places, the Bill means that we are forcing young people into full-time education who do not want it, which is a pretty explosive thing to be doing. How are we going to find these places? It is quite clear that we will not find them unless we have a financial inducement that can be paid to employers who take on young people in a training capacity—like the payments made in many countries to employers who take on apprentices. Such payments would be entirely reasonable. I shall give a few broad facts. At present, a training provider who provides a modern apprenticeship—not normally the employer—is usually paid about the same amount as an FE college providing a full-time education to someone of the same age. So, there is parity, if you like, on the tuition payments. However, students in full-time education also attract EMAs, child tax credits and child benefit. That adds up to approximately £1.5 billion. If a student is in an apprenticeship, he does not need an EMA, a child tax credit or child benefit because he is getting a wage. However, he does need a place. The main problem with the Bill concerns the finding of places that will give opportunities to young people. Therefore, it seems eminently reasonable to use money to provide employers with places for young people to get a part-time education, just as it is reasonable to provide EMAs to induce young people to take full-time education. These are both parallel and complementary policies for securing extra educational enrolments. That is the practical argument. The second argument is one of social justice. If you consider most young people who are in full-time education beyond the age of 16, the great majority will get something like five years of post-16 education, including university, at major expense to the state in all of those years. Now, if you consider the people affected by this Bill, most of them get little beyond 16. As a result of the Bill, they will get an extra two years of education, but for most of them, probably not much more than that. The people we are bringing into education here are going to get two years compared to the five years of people going down the full-time route. How could we possibly justify a situation where the people going down the part-time route for that short period are getting less per year than those going down the full-time route for that longer period? However, that is what is going to happen, as sure as eggs is eggs, unless we do something about it. Therefore, there is a big social justice argument connected with the Bill. If we are going to corral these people into education, we should give them as good a deal as we are giving to the full-time people who will get so much more out of the system beyond the age of 16. We absolutely have to do that. The amendment is necessary for two reasons. First, it is necessary to ensure that the Bill can work. Unless we can show how we can get the places, we should not pass such a Bill. Secondly, it is necessary as a matter of simple justice. I earnestly hope that my noble friend can find some way of including this principle within the Bill. I know that constitutional issues are involved. However, from the Government’s point of view, a Bill that gives no indication of how it could possibly be made to work and no guarantee of fairness to the group who are being forced into compulsory education is not the right way of going forward. I beg to move.