Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

FE colleges certainly want the freedoms that we gave them in 1992 and they certainly want to engage with local employers, but the question is whether the extraordinary muddle of quangos that they will now have to face—17 regulatory bodies, as identified by Andrew Foster in his inquiry, set up by the Government themselves to look into the amount of hassle and bureaucracy encountered by FE colleges—is the best way of helping them. I was about to tell the Secretary of State how badly my speech at the North of England Education Conference went this year—[Interruption.] I thought he would be interested to hear what an uncomfortable experience it was for me. I turned up to give a speech about the educational agenda as it looks from the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills perspective. I spoke about careers advice, access to universities and the future of FE colleges, but it was clear to me that the concerns of the audience—people from local authorities and children's services, for example—were completely different. They were concerned about the baby P case; they were concerned about the future of social services for children; they were worried about the primary school curriculum and testing. The agenda I was talking about was clearly of very little interest to the representatives of children's services. [Interruption.] It is possible that that was entirely the result of my speech, but I believe we are also observing the fact that children's services simply do not get the 16 to18 agenda, which is so important for so many people in this country. The Secretary of State is going to find out that those services will not be capable of supporting FE colleges in the way we want. FE colleges need to know some basic facts, which I still believe the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills has failed to explain. I hope that he will take the opportunity to answer these questions when he winds up the debate. We have had a draft Bill and two Select Committee reports on this legislation, yet the Select Committee has still been unable to establish answers to certain fundamental questions. What, for example, is to be the funding arrangement for further education colleges under the new system? Will it be funding per student, funding by block grant from local authorities or funding from individual local authorities? How will the new sub-regional structures work? There are FE colleges that have a dozen or more local authorities sending students to them. They still do not know the basis of the funding structures that will face them in a year's time. I hope that the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills will address that issue in his winding-up speech. Let me discuss apprenticeships. The aspiration in the Bill is admirable, and we want more people to know about apprenticeships and to have the opportunity to do them, but I am not at all clear about how the Government will deliver their claim of an entitlement for every learner who wants an apprenticeship to have a choice of two within reasonable travelling distance. There is the assumption there that an apprenticeship is generic, but people do not want any apprenticeship. They want to study a particular course and to take particular training; they want to become electricians or plumbers, rather than do ““an apprenticeship””. Nevertheless, I hope that the Secretary of State will tell us a little about how he sees apprenticeships functioning in the new environment. He appeared, yet again, to be surprised when we quoted figures from the Government's own statistics on what has been happening to apprenticeships. We follow apprenticeships in the sense that most people in this country understand them— level 3 apprenticeships, which are the equivalent of A-levels. That is what ““apprenticeship”” used to mean before apprenticeships were redefined so as to cover a much wider range of training. On the Government's own statistical release, the figures are clear and the number of level 3 apprenticeships has been falling year after year. In 2006-07, it was down to 97,000. We are suspicious when the Government announce targets, where they achieve them by redefinition or fiddling the statistics. I would like the Secretary of State to assure the House that he will continue to collect the statistics showing the number of people, on average, participating in level 3 apprenticeships. Those statistics have been on a continuous downward trend since 1999 and the figure is now below 100,000. For most people, level 3 apprenticeships are what apprenticeships should be like, which is why we heard an intervention from the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac) about why people in Cleethorpes are asking where the apprenticeships are. Level 3 apprenticeships are disappearing and, instead, training courses are being redefined as apprenticeships. That is what is happening. Youth training schemes, which were dismissed by the hon. Member for Wakefield, would now be called apprenticeships and count towards the Government's target. The House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs said:"““Numbers officially 'in apprenticeship' have increased substantially since 1996.””" That is what Ministers like to say, but the Select Committee continued:"““However, as Figure 1 below shows,””—" that is the table—"““most of this increase has been as a result of converting government-supported programmes of work-based learning into apprenticeship. Since 2000, numbers in apprenticeship have increased by almost 20 per cent. although growth now appears to have slowed or stalled and numbers in Advanced apprenticeship have fallen.””" The graph is absolutely clear: the so-called growth in apprenticeships is level 2 apprenticeships that did not even count as apprenticeships until the Government came to office. That is the simple explanation of what is going on. If the Government are to try to achieve those objectives, we need their assurance that they will not achieve them by continuing to redefine the target. That is why the latest danger is that they redefine it through using public sector apprenticeships. I was encouraged by the comment that I heard from the Secretary of State, but let me remind him of what the Select Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills said during its scrutiny of the Bill in draft. The Committee was concerned about what it called ““conversions”” and was trying to establish the fact that apprentices should be new recruits, not existing employees"““who 'convert' from their current jobs to apprenticeships with the same employer.””" I very much hope that the Secretary of State will offer that assurance and clarify, as the Select Committee asked, whether conversions to apprenticeships within the public sector will be counted as achieving the Government's target. We support the Bill's objectives, but very much doubt whether the Government can be trusted to deliver them. They are once more reorganising when they lack vision and once more redefining apprenticeships, rather than encouraging them to grow. They are presiding over an increase in the number of NEETs—those not in education, employment or training—when Members on both sides of the House wish to see it reduced. They are not committed to genuine adult learning, where the number of places has fallen catastrophically. Those are the points on which we shall challenge Ministers as we scrutinise the Bill in Committee.