Education Bill

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 86G which is tabled in my name and I shall touch on some of the wider issues that have been raised by Opposition Members in introducing this debate. Perhaps I should say at the outset that I am a member of the independent Skills Commission, although it is not a formal interest. It has members from different parties as well as a large number of professionals. Some years ago the commission was involved in drawing up a report on independent advice and guidance in which, interestingly, we placed quite a lot of emphasis on reporting the growth in social media and online resources as well as the conventional role of the careers service. I shall come back to that in a moment. I, too, have a strong engagement with apprenticeships. The work preparation for, or the option of, opening up young people’s eyes to the world of work is critical and, as I have already adverted to the Committee, I had previous responsibility as a Minister for progression from schools and FE. First, I acknowledge the huge amount of good done by individual careers teachers and in guidance. That is an important distinction in the Minister’s proposals set out in his helpful letter to Members of the Committee, which draw a distinction that is often blurred between education and guidance. While I acknowledge how much has been done in the past—and it is 20 years since I had ministerial responsibility—there have, in my experience, always been patchiness, failures in the system, and a system that is less ideal than the one we would wish for now. In particular, there have always been two problems in schools. The first is the moral hazard of schools seeking to keep hold of pupils who might be much more properly referred to, and have much more successful opportunities within, further education or the private training provider route. Secondly, there is a simple cultural difficulty, which is that some of those schools—particularly if they are teaching conventional and general academic subjects—are not aware of the whole complexity of the issue. That very much centres on, for example, the offer that is now made in apprenticeship frameworks, which are qualitatively different from what was available some years ago. We have been tentatively trying to get this right for a number of years. As a result of some of the concerns that I expressed at the time, we moved towards a system of contractorisation in the 1990s. We then came back to a measure of centralisation, or at least standardisation, through the Connexions service—although that also varied very much in its salience to the target audience—and locally, in my view. Now, my noble friend the Minister, whose initiative I welcome, is providing in this clause a new duty on schools to secure independent guidance. We were talking in the previous group of amendments about philosophy. Probably the only lesson that I remember from my moral philosophy days—although it is important—is that there is a distinction between saying that something ought to happen and saying that there ought to be a law to ensure that something happens. In this place, we should all be mindful that it is not absolutely necessary to ring-fence and litigate to achieve everything, and that there is an important duty on schools to say, ““We need to think about this, obtain independent advice, and make sure that that advice is perceptibly independent””. It is therefore important that in drawing the distinction we are not subverting the need for schools to provide good-quality careers education or work experience. They should open up the eyes of young people to the opportunities before they make critical decisions. I was once caricatured as saying at the margins of the Skills Commission, ““Oh, you are in favour of work experience for five year-olds””. It is not quite like that but there is a point at which we need to keep the two worlds of education and of work at least in touch with one another through the whole school career. I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, is nodding. I think we understand that we need to do that, and it is something on which schools need to continue to focus. We then reach the point of gateway—the moment of serious consideration of the next stage. It is terribly important, for the reasons of moral hazard that I mentioned, that we make it clear that schools are expected to take independent advice and guidance at that point, in the interests of their pupils. That can be supplemented by the electronic media and all the rest of it, but it is a necessary stage. The spirit of my amendment and my concern is that we are feeling our way in trying to provide a better service in the interests of young people—one that enables them to express their choices. The Government are right in doing that. There have been concerns from the Institute of Career Guidance and other professionals. I can understand why many of them feel very strongly about it, but I would say that the status quo has not been entirely successful and we need to look at a better way of doing this that respects the different roles in education and guidance, and mentoring and development, and moves on to the adult careers service whose introduction is to be welcomed. We need to make sure that there are no wrong doors or closed doors, and that people are given good signposting through the process. In that connection, the substance of my Amendment 86G would be to say, ““Do not subvert the Government’s proposals now, but do leave it open and make it a requirement on the Government to report back within three years””. I do not quite accept the tone of the noble Baroness which suggests that everything is falling apart now, although of course I understand her concerns. I do not believe that that need necessarily be the case at all. If I am wrong about that, I would at least like to feel that Ministers are monitoring this within a finite period of time, so that we may ensure –and I hope this time to achieve—the best possible experience and support for our young people.