Education and Skills Bill

As I said long ago on the first day of our deliberations in Committee, we are interested in the approach of learning and support contracts. We are grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, Barnardo’s and Rainer for highlighting this approach and its benefits. We know that an agreement that a young person has signed up to, where they understand their obligations and the consequences of not fulfilling them, can be very effective. We would like to encourage local authorities to pursue this approach or similar successful measures that have been developed locally before considering taking any more formal enforcement action against a young person. We could specify that in our guidance to local authorities. However, while we very much support the idea and the approach, we need to consider further whether it would be desirable to go further and set them out in primary legislation in the way that the noble Baroness suggests. That could risk making learning and support contracts too inflexible and prescriptive to respond to the specific needs of individuals, but I am happy to reflect on this issue further before Report stage.