Education Bill

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 86AA, 86CZA and 86DB in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp of Guildford. I want to start by commenting on the last point made by the noble Lord, Lord Boswell of Aynho. There is a real crisis currently in career advisers’ roles as local authorities face some very difficult decisions, and a review even in a year’s time will be too late. I therefore support the proposal made earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, that there be a transition plan to make sure that we do not miss it. Our amendments focus on very specific issues arising out of the new proposals for the careers service. The first is a slightly technical one regarding schools being the responsible body for careers advice. In theory this makes sense. However, the draft legislation removes the right of local authorities to enter the school and to ensure that careers advice is appropriate. This is particular bizarre since local authorities are specifically charged with ensuring that children with special needs and those in PRUs get the advice and support that they require. The same is also true for the National Careers Service, which has no right to check on the quality of careers advice and guidance. I suppose it could do so from a distance, but, frankly, there may be occasions when it would want to look at a specific school. I therefore hope that the Minister will look at this matter again, and will make sure that the bodies charged with responsibility for careers advice nationally, but also those locally with very specific responsibility for the most vulnerable pupils, actually have an opportunity to check what is going on in schools. I fully support the proposal that advice and guidance must be independent. I am grateful to the Minister for his helpful letter and detailed attachment which has already been referred to. Ambitions for the new careers service are set out well therein. However, the Bill is silent on some key issues which would provide reassurance and guarantee independence and the excellence quality. First, there are no plans for quality assurance to assess whether schools secure that independent, impartial careers advice and guidance. In response to the question on how the Government will monitor the new duty, the note from the Minister says: "““Schools should be accountable to the pupils, parents and communities they serve in respect of this duty””." I suspect that most pupils, parents and communities would find the very onerous duty of monitoring quality control somewhat beyond them. I am not sure that it fulfils what we seek to cover in our amendment. Much has been said about the importance of technology in an earlier amendment. But we are really concerned about face-to-face advice and guidance disappearing from the Bill. Young people often do not know the breadth of what is on offer, despite the fact that some excellent web careers advice is available: for example, Careers Box, with little video snips on YouTube and young people talking about their experiences of apprenticeships or their first time in work. The difficulty is that young people often do not know what is out there, and starting to look is very difficult. I can give you an anecdote from the time when I was chair of the Cambridgeshire Learning and Skills Council, where we had a very severe shortage in the construction industry of both plumbers and electricians. If you ask most 12 and 13 year-olds who know they probably want to do something with their hands whether they want to go into construction, the chances are that they will say no, and I am not sure that many school teachers would automatically guide them in that direction. The LSA and FE colleges worked with careers advisers and Connexions to really give young people an opportunity. I am pleased to say that within one year both plumbing and electrical courses were oversubscribed and continued to be because word went back to these young people’s peers. If we remove from the loop the very specialist knowledge that careers advisers have, we might well have a problem if advice is not independent and certainly if it is restricted to just the experience that schools have. Thirdly, as others have said, we have to ensure that the advice is truly impartial and independent. I am sorry to say that some schools still pressure young people to stay on to continue with AS-levels even if it is not in their best interests. Again, the Minister’s note is helpful in reinforcing the key point about independent advice and guidance but this is so important that we want to see advisers having to be qualified. That would provide two benefits. First, we will have an assurance about the knowledge and skill base of advisers —they, too, will recognise that—and, as importantly, it will give careers advisers the professional status that they deserve. Starting careers advice at the age of 14 is too late, once options for Year 11 have been chosen—whether it be the EBacc or other courses. As already commented on, the Year 8 dip is a well-known phenomenon. This country desperately needs more engineers, scientists and mathematicians but, if we look at the subjects chosen at AS-level and A2, those are consistently going down. That needs to be remedied. Starting guidance earlier is important, whether at 13 or even 12 as another amendment suggests. Again, an illustration of this from my local area is a web advice tool about pathways—which was mentioned before. A 13 or 14 year-old can actually see how choosing a course that they do at 16 might lead on to either an apprenticeship, a vocational or even academic qualification, which might lead them into a profession. I suspect that the point about expecting outcomes from 16 to 18 year-olds to tell us whether a careers service’s advice is working well is far too short-sighted. We need something significant earlier on. Finally, I will speak briefly in support of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Low, on information, advice and guidance for special needs pupils. City College Norwich has a special unit for pupils with autism spectrum disorders which has transformed their experience. The guidance is very wide-ranging. It has to be different from the standard one size fits all that we even had under the Connexions service. I met a young man whose experience was that, as he started at 16 at the college, he and his family thought that he would never get a job because of his Asperger’s. He was offered some work experience in the college library—simple, repetitive work that absolutely fitted in with his needs. Two years on, he is working full-time there. That is a significant success story. I know that other pupils at City College Norwich have had similar success. We have to accept that we need special provision for pupils with SEN. Thank you.