 House of Commons |
Session 2007 - 08 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates Education and Skills Bill |
Education and Skills Bill |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Nick
Walker, Tom Goldsmith, Committee
Clerks
† attended the
Committee
Public Bill CommitteeThursday 31 January 2008(Morning)[John Bercow in the Chair]Education and Skills BillClause 1Persons
to whom Part 1
applies
9
am
Mr.
Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con): I beg to
move amendment No. 1, in clause 1, page 1, line 10, at end insert
‘; and
(d) who agrees in writing,
on ceasing to be of compulsory school age, that it
applies.’.
I
welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Bercow; and I welcome your
co-Chairman, Mr. Bayley, who will preside over our next
sitting. May I say what a pleasure it is to serve under your
chairmanship? I am sure that you will be objective and occasionally
indulgent to members of the Committee. You have a high regard for
parliamentary procedure, so it will be real pleasure to work under your
chairmanship.
I also
welcome the Minister for Schools and Learners and the Under-Secretary
of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, the hon. Member for
Tottenham (Mr. Lammy) to the Committee. May I say how
warming it is to see Ministers from two Departments sharing the Bill,
especially as it is the first Bill to be dealt with by Departments that
were once together? No sooner have they been separated than they are
working together again.
I welcome my
hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire, and the Whip, my
hon. Friend the Member for Upminster. I also welcome the spokesman for
the Liberal Democrats, the hon. Member for Bristol, West. My hon.
Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) said on Second
Reading:
“We
believe that getting more young people to participate fruitfully in
education for longer—and not just to age 18—is an
unalloyed good.”—[Official Report, 14 January
2008; Vol. 470, c. 669.]
However, we have some concerns about
compulsion, and about the danger of criminalising young people who have
been let down by the education system—those who, at 11, fail to
reach level 4 in English. Alison Wolf said in a recent paper that one
of the best-established findings in educational research is that
children who are behind when they leave primary school find it almost
impossible to catch up. She went on to say that with very few
exceptions children who
perform well at age 11 do not figure as NEETs—not in education,
employment or training—at age 17 or
18.
The Green Paper,
“Raising Expectations: staying in education and training
post-16”, makes a similar point:
“Those
achieving less than five G grades at GCSE are six times as likely to
drop out at 16 than those who achieve five or more A*-C
grades.”
We do not
believe that is right to criminalise the very children whom our schools
have let down. We do not believe that it is right to subject them to
monitoring by local authorities, with their educational, health and
police records being sent to local authorities, and sensitive
information being shared around as though it were Army recruitment
information.
We share
the same goal as the Government on the importance of raising
participation, but we hope to demonstrate to the Committee that it is
best achieved with the carrot of centres and better education in
primary and secondary school, rather than the stick of penalties and
sanctions. Amendment No. 1 attempts to draw out from
the Government an answer to the question of whether compulsion will
achieve the objectives set by Ministers to increase the proportion of
16 and 17-year-olds in education or training. Raising participation is
an important objective, and it is one that the Opposition share.
Indeed, the regulatory impact assessment
states:
“In
England...77 per cent. of 17 year olds participate in education or
work-based learning.”
That puts England 19th
in the table of participation produced by the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development—below Belgium, France, Germany, the
United States and Australia, and below the OECD average. It is clear
that there are huge benefits for the individual from longer
participation in education.
The Green Paper
states:
“People
with five or more good GCSEs earn on average around £100,000
more over their lifetime than those who leave learning with
qualifications below level
2.”
It goes on to
say:
“Those who
participate are less likely to experience teenage pregnancy, be
involved in crime or behave
anti-socially.”
It also
states:
“Those
who participate are more likely to be
healthy”.
I
am not entirely convinced of the causal link to teenage pregnancy;
participation rates have been rising in recent years, and so have
teenage pregnancies.
The point about the importance
of staying on in education and training is well made, and we agree with
it. It is good for the individual, and it is important for the United
Kingdom’s economy. The Green Paper cites a report by
O’Mahoney and de Boer that shows that
“up to one fifth of the
UK’s output per hour productivity gap with
Germany...results from the UK’s relatively poor
skills.”
The Green Paper
goes on to say:
“And in relation to
literacy, for example, a study has found that if a country’s
literacy scores rise by 1 per cent. relative to the international
average, a 2.5 per cent. relative rise in labour productivity and a 1.5
per cent. rise in GDP per head can be
expected.”
It notes that
the key driving force behind the Bill and clause 1 is
the move to raise participation by compulsion and, therefore, to raise
not only the general level of technical skills, but basic skills, such
as literacy and maths. In that respect, my hon. Friend the Member for
North-East Hertfordshire has performed a valuable
service to the Committee in his dogged pursuit of the issues of
literacy and numeracy in our evidence
sessions.
The essence
of the Government’s case for compulsion is that disaffection
with school among a significant minority of students has left the
country with a lamentable participation rate, particularly in relation
to other developed nations. Their way of tackling the problem is to use
the law to compel 16 and 17-year-olds to remain in education or
training, albeit accompanied by ways of increasing their opportunities.
However, the research commissioned by the Government from the National
Foundation for Education Research
concluded:
“There
was little or no direct evidence of the likely impact of introducing a
system of compulsory education or training to the age of 18; in many
cases change had only recently been introduced, and it was as yet too
early to find evidence of
impact.”
When
I asked the Minister why the Government had proceeded with compulsion,
given the conclusions of the research that they had commissioned, he
simply resorted to listing the advantages of higher participation
rates, which we would, of course, all accept. The issue, however, is
how we get there.
Jon Coles,
the Minister’s civil servant, who bravely came to his rescue,
conceded that the research had reached the conclusions that I outlined,
but gave the excuse that there was a lack of direct precedents. The
nearest example that the Government provided was the raising of the
school leaving age, but that was not a matter of compulsory training.
As page 3 of the research commissioned by the Government
says:
“There
is substantial evidence that participation in education and training
leads to higher wages...but studies relate to raising the
school-leaving age, or (in a few cases) to voluntary participation in
vocational
training”—
the
subject of the studies on which the Government’s research was
based. The report continues:
“it cannot be assumed that the
proposed requirement to participate in education or training to 18
would necessarily have the same
impact.”
It
concludes:
“vocational
qualifications do not yield the same economic benefits as academic
qualifications”.
Conservative
Members believe in good-quality vocational education, and my hon.
Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings has been exemplary
in his espousal of it. We also believe that young people leaving
school, whether at 16 or 18, should have a good general knowledge, and
research shows a direct correlation between an individual’s
general knowledge and their income.
The
Government believe that compulsion will help to tackle the problem, but
they are seeking to tackle the symptoms of the problem of low
participation rates, not the cause. We should be asking why 16 and
17-year-olds are so disaffected with education—more so than
youngsters in France and Belgium. The fundamental reason is the quality
of education that many of them receive in their 11 or 12 years of
compulsory schooling.
Ofsted
complains that 49 per cent. of secondary schools are not good enough,
and 17 per cent. of 11-year-olds leave primary school without reaching
level 4 in reading, while 46 per cent. leave without reaching level 4
in reading, writing and maths combined. That group is among the 41 per
cent. who fail to achieve five or more grade A* to C GCSEs, and it is
also among those who fail to achieve five or more GCSEs, including in
English and Maths. Of course they are disaffected, because nothing
demoralises a person more than being unable to do something that they
are supposed to be able to do.
As my hon. Friend the Member
for North-East Hertfordshire has wisely pointed out, it goes back to
literacy. Reading is a low-level skill—children with a very low
IQ are perfectly capable of learning to read fluently—but the
look-and-say approach to reading is not appropriate for children of low
ability. It involves exposing children to words, and it requires them
to repeat those words until they recognise them on sight, much as we do
when we see words that we have read 10,000 times. The method can work
for bright children, particularly if they have supportive parents or
are among the one in four children who has a private tutor in addition
to school.
Look-and-say has been around
for a long time; it was introduced in the 1950s, and reached its peak
in the mid-1980s, which is why, when the Conservatives left office in
1997, only 56 per cent. of 11-year-olds reached level 4 in English. In
1998, a study of 300 primary school children was begun in
Clackmannanshire by two academic psychologists, Rhona Johnston and
Joyce Watson. The children were divided into three groups. The
psychologists found that the 100 children who took a synthetic phonics
programme in the first 16 weeks of schooling had a reading age seven
months ahead of their chronological age, and seven months ahead of
children in the other two groups. Synthetic phonics was so successful
that they put all 300 pupils on to the programme. The 300 children were
followed for seven years, by the end of which period they had a reading
age three and a half years ahead of their chronological age—they
had a reading age of 14 and a half at age 11.
Synthetic phonics is about
teaching children in the first weeks of school all 44 sounds of the
alphabet, and how to blend them into words, so d-o-g is dog and c-a-t
is cat. It works. Children who are in schools that use the method read
simple words almost straight away, and key stage 2 results are
invariably in the mid-90s, with very high proportions of level 5. I
raise the issue, because it goes to the root of what the Government are
trying to achieve by increasing participation. It is at the root of
disaffection and the country’s skills shortage, particularly the
shortage of basic skills about which employers complain, so it goes to
the root of whether compulsion will achieve the Government’s
objectives. I raise the issue now—I beg a little
indulgence—so that I do not have to keep raising it
later.
Tom Wilson of
the TUC, in response to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for
North-East Hertfordshire during our evidence sessions, said:
“A lot of working people
feel very angry that the system has let them down and that they have
gone through 10 years of school and emerged unable to read or
write.”——[Official Report, Education and Skills
Public Bill Committee, 22 January 2008; c. 52,
Q132.]
Reading is a low-level skill, as I said,
but it has simply not been taught properly to generations of children
in this country. The look-and-say method is like expecting someone to
be able to play the piano after hearing Mozart over and over while
looking at the sheet music. People learn to play the piano by learning
the notes and by practising scales and finger movements—it is
laborious, but there is no other way. Phonics is the same, but children
love to learn to read by that method, because they can genuinely
read—they do not pretend to read a passage after memorising
it.
“Newsnight”
filmed the Britannia Village primary school in east London when the
head teacher brought in Ruth Miskin to transform the way in which
reading was taught. One girl of nine could not read at all after four
years at the school, and she knew that she could not read. A boy of
eight was perpetually in trouble for poor behaviour—he could not
read either. After a few months of synthetic phonics, both children
could read, and both were transformed into happy, achieving children.
The boy’s poor behaviour stopped, to the delight of his mother.
That suggests what the root cause of disaffection is.
There are
similar issues in maths teaching. Ideological obsession means that
children are not taught straightforward, formulaic approaches to
addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. I hope that the
Williams review that the Government have commissioned will achieve for
maths what the Rose review achieved for reading. If we can get those
things right in our primary schools, we should see participation rates
rise without the need for compulsion. It is an intellectual battle that
the Government have still not won, despite the fact that they have
changed the law requiring schools to use synthetic phonics. There is no
research to show that look-and-say is the most effective method of
teaching children to read. A multi-million-dollar research project by
the National Reading Panel in the US concluded that synthetic phonics
is by far the most effective method, particularly for children from
lower socio-economic groups and ethnic minorities. However, Mick
Brookes of the National Association of Head Teachers—I get on
well with him on most issues, but disagree with him on
this—said:
“To
say that look and say is not a tactic to be used in schools
defies the knowledge that we have about how children
learn.”——[Official Report, Education and Skills
Public Bill Committee, 24 January 2008; c. 134,
Q319.]
9.15
am
I visited a
primary school recently—I shall not say where—that
changed to synthetic phonics two years ago. The children’s
reading was transformed. The head became a convert, but when he
discussed it with other local heads, some said, “I am opposed to
synthetic phonics on ideological grounds.” Therein lies the
Government’s problem: how to eschew ideology and replace it with
what
works.
Mr.
Oliver Heald (North-East Hertfordshire) (Con): My hon.
Friend was explaining that there were objections on ideological
grounds. I am a bit surprised. What sort of ideology was
it?
Mr.
Gibb:
My hon. Friend is right, and I shall turn to
that. I know that I am trying your patience,
Mr. Bercow, so I shall quickly reach the end of this line of
argument.
Michael
Barber, who was the head of Tony Blair’s
delivery unit in No. 10 from 2001 to 2005, in his
excellent book, “Instruction to Deliver”, wrote
on page
187:
“Most
troubling of all was evidence that the training of headteachers by the
NCSL”—
the
National College for School
Leadership—
“for
the Consultant Leaders’ Programme had given little attention to
literacy and
numeracy”.
This was
written in about 2004—it does not go back to 1997. Michael
Barber went to write
that
“Indeed, we had
evidence that some of the trainers on the course had even made explicit
the view that focusing on literacy and numeracy was actually wrong. My
faith in the NCSL, and in the departmental officials...was
shaken.”
That
ideology also permeates secondary education. The obsession with
mixed-ability teaching damages children of all abilities, but the least
able are damaged the most, sitting in lessons that they cannot
understand, humiliated on an hourly basis. No wonder they become
disaffected. Some 60 per cent. of academic lessons take place in
mixed-ability classes, including 50 per cent. of English lessons and 75
per cent. of history and geography
lessons.
Jim
Knight:
I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman that
there is an important role for setting, but he mentions history and
geography, for example, which are optional subjects at key stage 4. If
a school had only 20 or 30 pupils taking those subjects, would he still
advocate setting them? If so, how would he resource the extra
cost?
Mr.
Gibb:
That is a valid intervention. I have never advocated
setting when there are only 30 children. Setting takes the most able
children in a subject and puts them in one class. If there are 60
children, there should be two classes of separate ability levels. In
fact, the statistic that three quarters of history lessons take place
in mixed-ability classes applies also to the first three years of
secondary education. There is a long way to go to get setting into our
secondary schools without worrying about low numbers. Of course, if
there is a low number of children, they have to be in one
class.
Nia
Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab): I should like to know where the
hon. Gentleman gets his figures from. As a former school inspector, I
have always found that schools have an enormous variety of imaginative
ways of dividing up pupils, depending on whether the subject is art,
history or English. There are many forms of setting, and I am sceptical
about those figures. I should like to some explanation of how the hon.
Gentleman would work the system in small rural schools. Would he prefer
fewer options for pupils at 14 so that they can be set more
finely?
Mr.
Gibb:
Those figures come from parliamentary answers
provided by Ofsted which, until recently, recorded whether the lessons
that they inspected were in sets or mixed-ability classes. They were
certainly accurate up to 2005-06, although it has been difficult to
get figures beyond that because they are mixed in
with banding. In rural schools, it is possible to set every academic
lesson, even in a small school of 800 or so pupils, if the timetable is
suitably blocked. I went to a school in Milton Keynes
that had an expert timetabler—the deputy head—who said
that it is possible in any school to set every academic lesson if
people know how to timetable
properly.
Nia
Griffith:
I do not dispute the fact. I was a timetabler
myself, and I have seen many different forms of timetabling as well as
mixed systems, in which there can be banding in one subject, setting in
another and mixed-ability teaching in another, which, for subjects such
as PE, may be much more appropriate. However, the fact remains that if
a school wants to offer a subject such as German or music and does not
want to confine that subject to the most able pupils, it inevitably
ends up with a mixed-ability group, and often the results in such
groups depend more on the enthusiasm of the teacher and the materials
used than on the pupils’ abilities at the beginning. I do not
question the value of setting, which has its place, but there are many
approaches, and simply to shower criticism on one seems
inappropriate.
The
Chairman:
Order. Perhaps at this stage I can
assist the Committee by making a number of
observations. First, it is fairly customary at the outset of
clause-by-clause, line-by-line consideration to allow a certain
latitude as the initial amendments are proposed and debated. I hope
that hon. Members agree that I have shown such latitude. Secondly,
interventions should be
brief.
Thirdly, the
hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton will be aware, not least
in relation to synthetic phonics, of the presence on the amendment
paper of amendment No. 115 to clause 70, page 43, line 33, for
consideration later, at which point there will be a good opportunity
for a debate on this matter. I wanted to let the hon. Gentleman develop
his argument and allow hon. Members who were suitably provoked to
intervene on him. However, may I say to him more widely before we
continue that it is legitimate for him to refer to, but not to dilate
on, a number of matters that are at best only tangentially linked to
the amendment that he moved?
Mr.
Gibb:
I am grateful, Mr. Bercow. I am aware of
how indulgent to me you have been during this sitting. It is only in
this sitting, and on this issue, that my remarks will be wide-ranging,
but I wanted to make the argument about
compulsion.
The
Government have resorted to compulsion which, I believe, deals with the
symptoms of the problem, rather than the cause. It is better to deal
with the cause, so that changing the law—and the criminal law,
indeed—to make it compulsory for young people to stay on in
education or training is not necessary. Having made that argument on
this amendment in this sitting, I will in future seek to confine my
remarks to the precise terms of the
amendment.
Jim
Knight:
The hon. Gentleman’s argument is that we
should not introduce compulsion, because we should improve pre-16
education and then everyone will fly through to 100 per cent.
participation. How, then, does he account for the 20
per cent. of 16-year-olds
and 25 per cent. of 17-year-olds who are not participating but have
achieved level 2 qualifications? Why have they not sailed on into
participation? How would the hon. Gentleman engage them to participate
in the way that he accepts would be beneficial not only for them but
for the
nation?
Mr.
Gibb:
It is a good argument. Young people get the
qualifications that they need to get. The question is: have they
enjoyed their education, have they achieved while at school and have
they acquired the knowledge and ability to pursue further academic
study or further training, based on what they have acquired leading up
to that stage? They may have a raft of
qualifications—we could have a debate on another occasion about
what has happened to qualifications in the past 20 or 30
years—but I am arguing that many young people leave school not
adequately prepared for later life, and that they have an unhappy
experience in their time at
school.
During the
evidence sessions, we heard a number of witnesses talk about making the
key stage 3 curriculum more relevant. I will talk on another occasion
about what has been happening to the curriculum in recent years and why
it has contributed to the disaffection and boredom that some children
face in school. For example, I believe that a geography lesson about
town planning is a key reason why so few children want to study
geography to GCSE.
The
system should be about imparting knowledge. I recommend another book to
the Committee: E.D. Hirsch’s “The Schools We Need and Why
We Don’t Have Them”, which explains the ideology that has
dominated American schools and the British education system for
decades. It is an anti-knowledge ideology that says that children
should be given all-purpose tools to learn, rather than have knowledge
imparted to them—as if there is such a thing as an all-purpose
tool. Every subject has its own approach to learning and concepts, and
needs to be taught as a subject.
I disagree with Professor John
White, an external advisor to the key stage 3 review, who, in a work
entitled, “What Schools Are For and Why”—I do not
recommend it to the Committee—said that the
“academic, subject-based
curriculum is a middle-class
creation”.
He goes on to
ask:
“Is
reading Scott Fitzgerald of higher value than walking in the woods or
spending an evening with
friends”?
Mr.
Gordon Marsden (Blackpool, South) (Lab): I am familiar
with the hon. Gentleman’s argument, but I gently suggest to him
that it is rather old news. Such debates about
content versus skills were widely circulated when the national
curriculum was created—I had a peripheral involvement in that
creation. The same arguments were made then about the teaching of
history. Surely the answer is that we need both skills and
content.
Mr.
Gibb:
Yes, but the balance has shifted way too far towards
skills. The key stage 3 curriculum that comes into place this September
is based very much on the Opening Minds curriculum proposed by the
Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures
and Commerce—I may cite the RSA later in
Committee—thus demonstrating that the curriculum has moved to
that end of the spectrum. I recently sat in on a history
lesson that focused on skills—chronology in this case—in
which children were taught isolated and unnuanced facts and dates about
the civil war and asked to put them in chronological order. It was
excruciating: all the nuances and interesting aspects of that important
period in our history were lost in teaching the so-called skill of
chronology.
I do not want
to pursue that line of argument any further; the Committee has been
very patient. However, when discussing changes in the law that require,
on pain of criminal sanctions, a young person to participate in
education or vocational training, it is important to understand why we
have such a low participation rate compared with other developed
nations. Unless we, as parliamentarians and Ministers, are prepared to
challenge that ideology, as Michael Barber bravely did, and as Lord
Adonis continues to to do, there will be no improvement in educational
achievement in this country. New laws to compel attendance might result
in data suggesting higher attendance rates, but new examinations and
qualifications that prevent comparisons with results in previous years
will not conceal the effects of an educational system from the real
world, which increasingly demands high levels of knowledge, expertise
and general education. The real objective is to help young people who
are not in education or
employment.
The right
hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) concluded his speech
on Second Reading
thus:
“My plea
is for the group whom we are failing most...they are in no way
damaged...They are very bright. The question is: why, when they
are so bright, do we fail them so dismally?”—[Official
Report, 14 January 2008; Vol. 470, c. 705-706.]
Before imposing this new duty on young
people, whom the Government, the education
system—all of us—have failed, should we not first examine
how young people have been let down by our education system, and put
that right, rather than pass the whole burden of our failings on to a
group of 16 and 17-year-olds from the most disadvantaged backgrounds
and
communities?
Mr.
David Laws (Yeovil) (LD): May I join the hon. Member for
Bognor Regis and Littlehampton in welcoming you to the Chair,
Mr. Bercow, along with Mr. Bayley, in due course?
We have great confidence that you will continue to chair our
proceedings with fairness, incisiveness and a degree of tolerance, or
what you described a moment ago as latitude. I hope that, at some
stage, I may benefit from the same latitude from which the hon.
Gentleman
benefited.
9.30
am
I also welcome
the excellent ministerial team who, I am sure, will allow us to have a
civilised, constructive debate. I hope that the Under-Secretary of
State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, the hon. Member for
Tottenham will not spread any of his germs among us.
He has temporarily departed the Committee, although I am not sure
whether that is to prevent the spread of germs or because he knew that
I was
speaking.
I
welcome all the enthusiastic Government Back Benchers who will support
their colleagues over the next few weeks, with varying degrees of
passion and commitment, but no doubt with an interest of some of the
fundamental issues that we will debate. I welcome
the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton and his colleagues.
He has already given us an excellent display of his passion for this
subject. When I took over this portfolio, and asked my predecessor, my
hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather), what the
Conservative Front-Bench team was like, she said that the hon. Member
for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton was excellent and passionate about
education, but that her only complaint was that he tended to go on a
bit about synthetic phonics, as we have seen today. No doubt that is a
result of his great belief that synthetic phonics is an important issue
in education that makes a great difference to many people’s
opportunities. He semi-promised us that his mentioning synthetic
phonics today would be almost his only indulgence. However, some of us
are rather sceptical about whether that will be so, given the other
amendments that deal with that matter. In any spare moments during our
proceedings, we shall score the rate at which the hon. Gentleman
mentions synthetic phonics against his excellent colleague, the hon.
Member for North-East Hertfordshire, who has also coined a catchphrase
with his questions about reading, writing and adding up. We look
forward to hearing more about that later on. We also look forward to
hearing from the other Front Bencher, the hon. Member for South Holland
and The Deepings, as well as from my colleague—whom I must
mention otherwise I will be in trouble—my hon. Friend the Member
for Bristol,
West
We
are discussing amendment No. 1 to clause 1, which is an important
paving provision. In five lines, it ushers in the element of compulsion
that is central to the Bill and is a significant expansion of the
Government’s power over 16 and 17-year-olds and their parents,
and over employers and local authorities. It is therefore right that we
look carefully at the clause and at the amendment. The clause sets out
who will be affected by the powers of compulsion. It describes them,
essentially, as English, and it highlights the fact that the measure
will not apply to other parts of the United Kingdom. It indicates that
it will apply broadly to those between the ages of 16 and 18 and to
those individuals who have not attained a level 3 qualification. The
amendment moved by the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton
would give an opt-in to those individuals in relation to compulsion. To
that extent, we welcome it. We have already expressed, on the record on
Second Reading, our many concerns about compulsion. Amendment No. 1
would turn what would otherwise be compulsion into an opt-in, which is
sensible.
The
hon. Gentleman said—you indicated this was satisfactory,
Mr. Bercow—that he would try to use debate on the
early clauses to set out his broad philosophical approach to avoid
detaining the Committee later in our proceedings. I shall start by
saying that I think that all Committee members share the
Government’s aspiration that young people between the age of 16
to 18 should be in education, training, employment or—and we
will come to this later—some other kind of support that will
help them into education, training or employment. It is of great
concern that so many young people between those ages are not in
education, employment or training and do not receive adequate support.
The hon. Gentleman reminded us that in trying to resolve those
problems, we should not focus simply on the symptoms, but on the many
problems that create the environment in which many young people drop
out of education, training and
employment at 16—no doubt we will spend time on that issue later.
We all know that many of those problems go back to the earliest years
in education and, indeed, even before youngsters engage in education
and training in the first place. We share the hon. Gentleman’s
aspiration that more focus needs to be put on that particular part of
young people’s lives to ensure that they are equipped with the
skills and aspirations to enable them to choose for themselves whether
to stay on in education beyond the age of
16.
We have other
concerns about compulsion, which I will outline in a moment, but I
begin by saying that we support the amendment for the reasons given,
and because it will blunt the compulsion weapon that the Government are
seeking to apply in that area. One of the issues that we rehearsed on
Second Reading, and to which we should now return, is
whether it is appropriate to apply compulsion to young people between
the ages of 16 to 18. In introducing the Bill, the Government believe
that it is perfectly proper for the state to insist that young people
should stay on until the age of 18. We assume that at some point, even
the Minister would agree that the Government have no place putting a
duty on young people to undertake education and training. We also
assume that even if there were evidence that it is beneficial to be in
education and training beyond the age of 18, the Government would stop
at that point and say that once people have reached full adulthood, it
is totally inappropriate for the state to insist that they should
engage in a particular form of activity.
Mr.
Laws:
I notice the Minister is nodding, so we can
be reassured that there will not be an appeal to determine whether the
Government have decided that education and training is enormously
beneficial up to the age of 21 or 25 and that everyone will be obliged
to stay on until then.
On Second Reading, we debated
with the Secretary of State the compulsion exercised in the past to
raise the education leaving age from the low level, for example, 100
years ago. We consider that to be a different issue. There has never
been any dispute that individuals of a much lower age than 16 count as
children, and therefore that it is appropriate for the state to
legislate for them and insist that they should be in education until
the age at which they are considered to assume adulthood. I hope that
the Minister recognises that, in applying compulsion to this group of
young people, we are in much muddier waters. We grant an extensive
range of rights to 16-year-olds in relation to the choices that they
make. However, the Bill seems to be cutting against that.
On Second Reading, we noted
that the deputy leader of the Labour party and Leader of the House had
suggested that those rights might be extended in future to allow young
people to vote at 16. They would therefore be considered to be of an
appropriate age to have a say in the running of the country. That would
add to the huge range of rights that 16-year-olds enjoy. As we are we
are considering the issue of compulsion, we should remind ourselves
what those freedoms are—it is important that we discuss the
subject, now rather than return to it later. The Children’s
Legal Centre has provided a useful list of the freedoms that
young people enjoy at age 16. I will refer only to a few of them,
Mr. Bercow; otherwise, not only would I try your patience
but I am not sure that I would have time to read out all the things
that a 16-year-old can do.
Members of
the Committee may be interested to know that 16-year-olds are afforded
the following freedoms: they are considered capable of joining the
armed forces; they are allowed to change their name by deed poll
without parental consent; they can hold a driving license; and at the
moment they can leave school, although they are still entitled to
receive full-time education far beyond 16. Members of the Committee may
not know that 16-year-olds are also allowed to enter or, indeed, live
in a brothel; apparently, even children under the age of four are
allowed to do so, for reasons that are not entirely clear. Furthermore,
16-year-olds can work full-time if they leave school; they can act as a
pilot in command of an aircraft, for the purposes of flight; they can
participate in private or non-commercial gaming or betting,
and—it says “probably” in my notes—they can
leave home without the consent of their parents or anyone else with
parental responsibility.
Police
officers and community support officers can issue 16-year-olds with an
on-the-spot fine, so 16-year-olds are considered to be moving up into
an area where the state regards them as fully responsible for their
actions. They can marry or register a civil partnership. In the case of
female 16-year-olds, they can purchase emergency contraception over the
counter at a pharmacy. 16-year-olds can buy premium bonds, should they
wish to do so. They can also consent to all sexual activity; obtain a
national insurance number; travel, and apply for their own passport. I
think that hon. Members understand the point that I am trying to make.
That is an extensive range of freedoms and, in most respects, it
indicates that we have begun to consider young people aged 16 as
adults. Indeed, my party, in the way that it approaches most policy
issues, generally considers young people aged 16 to have reached an
adult age and therefore to be ready for the extension of voting
rights.
We therefore
need to think carefully, having given young people all those rights and
freedoms, before we determine that, because the state has made a
judgment that it is in their best interests to remain in education and
training, we should pass the measures in the Bill that essentially
treat young people over 16 who, in many other respects, are considered
adults, basically as children, in that the state, rather than they or
their parents, determines what is in their best interests. That is a
big concern, and it would trouble me even if the measures were popular
among young people. The Department and the Minister will acknowledge
that, in the run-up to the Bill’s introduction, there was a
consultation not only with people in the education and training sector
and employers but with young people themselves. A
parliamentary written answer in November acknowledged the response from
young people to surveys about whether they agreed with increasing the
education and training leaving age, and indicated that 47 per cent. of
young people were against such a move, 36 per cent. agreed and 17 per
cent. were not sure.
We had some
discussion in our evidence sessions about different surveys and the
questions that are asked, and how meaningful those surveys are.
However, I think that we can probably trust the evidence of those
particular surveys, because, after all, this is the Department’s
own evidence—we are very trusting of the Department. One assumes
that the questions were phrased at least neutrally and, as is the
inclination on these occasions, even perhaps skewed somewhat in the
Department’s favour. The proposal is therefore quite an
infringement of freedoms and liberties for 16 and 17-year-olds who, in
other respects, are treated as adults. It does not seem to be popular
or to have been welcomed by most young people. One can sum up the
critique of the proposal in the terms given by the Professional
Association of Teachers in their
submission.
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry (Portsmouth, North) (Lab/Co-op): I have been
trying to follow the logic of the hon. Gentleman’s argument. We
have had a great long screed of all the things that 16-year-olds are
allowed to do, which I think is leading towards the hon.
Gentleman suggesting that we should not compel them to stay on and
participate in training when they can do all those other things. Does
he think that 16-year-olds should legally be allowed to buy
alcohol?
9.45
am
Mr.
Laws:
When we consider the other things that 16-year-olds
can do, it is a serious issue, and we ought to review the law and
regulations throughout the area to ensure that that there is
consistency, because currently the situation is inconsistent. If the
hon. Lady believes that young people are capable of making the decision
to get married or to join the armed forces, and of making other
fundamental decisions such as to leave home, it seems odd that they
should not be allowed to make decisions about what is best for
themselves regarding education and training. In its significance for
somebody’s life chances, it seems to be a lesser decision than
the decisions I have just mentioned.
The Professional Association of
Teachers summed up its view before Second Reading by
saying that compulsion was
“a potential minefield that could
be disastrous. We could end up with married, voting parents being
disciplined or criminalised for not attending school or
college”
That is not
just a debating point, but a real risk. The association also said that
it was concerned about the possible effects of the measure on other
learners who were keen to engage in education at 16 and 17 and had made
that choice for themselves. It said:
“Schools and colleges
will be forced to accept a host of unwilling students who will poison
the atmosphere for those willing to learn. Forcing an education on
teenagers will create even more youngsters with a grudge against
society.”
We
have heard similar opinions from several bodies that gave evidence to
us over the past couple of weeks. Those concerns about young
people’s freedoms and the balance between rights and
responsibilities were echoed by many other groups—certainly by
the British Youth Council, and, although we were not able to take oral
evidence from it, by the Children’s Rights Alliance for England
in its written submission.
Mr.
Marsden:
The hon. Gentleman referred to the evidence that
the British Youth Council gave us, but does he recall that in response
to my question about
whether it had considered the broader aspects, such as work-based
training or other educational provision outside school, it said that it
had not? Does that not somewhat weaken the arguments that it put
forward?
Mr.
Laws:
No. I am happy to examine the council’s
evidence later, but my recollection is that it made similar points to
those I have cited from other bodies. It was
concerned not only about the restriction of freedom, but about the
consequences of trying to force young people who are not engaged in
education and training into it. The council was concerned about whether
the situation would be counter-productive, and its concerns seemed
similar to those of the Children’s Rights Alliance for England,
which said in its submission:
“We recognise the good
intentions of Government to encourage the maximum development of 16 and
17 year olds for the benefit of children in wider society. We welcome
the introduction of measures in the Bill to secure better support for
16 and 17 year olds and their families to achieve more in education and
training... However, while we would support measures which
positively encourage young people to engage in education and training,
we are fundamentally opposed to the creation of a duty of
participation on young
people”—
we will
discuss that in a later
amendment—
“or an
extension of the duty on parents. We believe this is unnecessary,
indeed that it will be counter-productive, and that it will be
potentially damaging for the most vulnerable young people in society.
Further, it is not supported by human rights
principles.”
It went on,
interestingly, to quote article 3 of the United Nations convention on
the rights of the child, saying that it ought to be balanced by the
protections in article 12 of the convention, which requires states
party to it to
“assure to
the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to
express those views freely in all matters affecting the
child”.
Earlier
this week, we heard similar evidence on the potentially difficult and
counter-productive nature of
compulsion—obligation—from Fairbridge,
an organisation that tries to re-engage the young people who are likely
to be in the Government’s target group. Nigel Haynes, the chief
executive of Fairbridge, said in his evidence that he did not think
that all the young children who are not engaged in education and
training at the moment would want to
engage:
“Do not
forget that quite a lot of them have walked away from institutionalised
provisions in one way or another, and they really could not give a
damn. The secret is getting the commitment—the first step is to
get them to want to do it voluntarily—and then sustaining that
commitment by making them realise that there are
options.”——[Official Report, Education &
Skills Public Bill Committee, 29 January 2008; c. 195,
Q450.]
That is one of our big
concerns. If the young person does not have commitment and feels that
they are being driven into the provision, it may be difficult to get
them to engage
seriously.
The same
concern about compulsion was echoed by Alison Wolf in her evidence, and
in her excellent paper, “Diminished Returns”, which she
published recently through Policy Exchange. In the executive summary,
she says:
“A
policy of coercing them”—
that is, young
people—
“into
continued participation is at odds with everything we know about the
links between motivation and learning. Young people
who are enrolled for courses and training they do not wish to attend
will be unmotivated and, therefore, extremely unlikely to
learn.”
There is an issue
about young people’s freedom and whether the state should have
the freedom to compel them to be engaged in education and training.
There is also an issue about whether compulsion will be
counter-productive.
I
want to raise two other concerns about compulsion that are at the
centre of our worries about the Bill. We shall table amendments at the
appropriate time in Committee, but our concerns are relevant to whether
there should be compulsion.
I shall restrict my comments
about our first concern, as I shall speak about it in more detail on a
later amendment; it concerns a group of people about whom we are
worried in relation to compulsion for education or training, because
they have great vulnerabilities in their personal
circumstances. They may have drug or alcohol problems, mental health
problems or other health problems and issues; they may be caring for
someone who is terminally ill or they may be a parent. As we know there
is already in society today a proportion of young people who are not
engaged in education or training and, unfortunately, a larger group of
young people—larger than we like to think—who have grown
up in severe and difficult circumstances, either because of their
environment or because of their medical and other problems. Many of
those youngsters are detached from education and training, not only at
16 and 17, but sometimes way before that. The Government, and perhaps
even some of the witnesses, underestimate how many such youngsters
there are and how difficult it will be to get them to
engage.
I
do not underestimate the superb work of some voluntary bodies and many
colleges in getting difficult-to-reach youngsters back and engaged, and
giving them the necessary support to sustain them in learning. However,
I wonder whether for some young people education and training is not a
viable option. From recent experience, I can think of some in my
constituency with whom we would have no chance whatever of getting them
to engage meaningfully in something that looks like education and
training.
Jim
Knight:
Are there therefore categories of young
people who should be exempt from a duty to
participate? I realise that the hon. Gentleman must accept the
principle of compulsion to answer that question, which he does not, but
he implies that education and training should be available to everyone,
except for a few on whom we should just give
up.
Mr.
Laws:
Obviously, I believe that education and training
should be an entitlement and available to everyone, but I do not
believe in compulsion. A particular concern with compulsion—we
will return to that later so I shall not go into too much depth because
another amendment to clause 1 touches on this directly—is that
there may be a group of young people whose vulnerabilities mean that
the prospects of getting them to engage in education and training per
se will be remote. We may not persuade the Minister to back away
completely from the concept of compulsion, although we will not hold up
the white flag yet, but I want to persuade him of the need to make the
system more flexible.
Some
young people might need to take their entitlement later because of
their personal circumstances or because they need a kind of support
that does not constitute education or training, unless we stretched the
meaning of those words beyond what most people would understand by
them. Such young people might need intensive support, which might be
immensely expensive and specialist, but might not constitute education
or training. As we are all aware—one of the groups representing
young people with special needs made this point—there is a large
group of young people with very great needs, but they are not getting
enough support to meet those needs.
If the Government press ahead
with compulsion, I want them to consider what one of our witnesses
called a fourth option—it might be the fourth option, the
third option or whatever. That would involve not
employment or education, but whatever support is needed to re-engage
such young people with society and give them the prospect of being able
to re-engage with education and training.
Jim
Knight:
Has the hon. Gentleman read clause 4,
which attempts to define appropriate full-time
education and training? Subsection (1) refers to
“having regard...to
the person’s age, ability and aptitude, and...to any
learning difficulty which the person may
have”.
The clause goes on
to say that regulations may define education and training and it allows
for a very wide definition, which may include informal training and a
third, fourth, fifth or sixth option—indeed, whatever number of
options we think appropriate to allow us to engage the young people the
hon. Gentleman is talking about.
Mr.
Laws:
No doubt we will be able to have that debate when we
reach clause 4. I am mildly encouraged by what the Minister says, but I
am not quite sure whether his concept of “or otherwise”
in the clause is as wide as I would like it to be. Education and
training of any kind might be impossible for some young people because
they have acute medical problems, while others might be able to engage
personally with education and training, but be completely
unable to do so at the moment because of their personal
circumstances—for example, they might recently have had a child.
I want to explore how serious the Government are about making that
“or otherwise” flexible. The more flexible and pragmatic
they are willing to be, the more they will deal with our particular
concern about compulsion, notwithstanding our general dislike of
it.
I have a
second big practical concern about the effects of compulsion under the
Bill— although I am coming to the end of my comments, in case
you are feeling nervous and less tolerant, Mr. Bercow. Quite
a lot of the evidence that we heard from various bodies—we shall
return to it later—points to the sometimes low value of the
qualifications on offer to young people in employment. It also
highlights the fact that if we compel young people in employment to go
into education and training, there is a significant risk that some
employers will not embrace education and training, but will dump young
people and take on migrant workers or workers over the age of
18.
The evidence from
Alison Wolf and others is that employment can be an enormous release
for some young people because their educational experience has
often not been very good. Equally important, however,
employment can often impart skills in terms of attendance and ways of
working that are far more valuable than some piece of paper that meets
a Government target but which might not be the best thing for the young
person involved.
Our
practical concern about compulsion is that there is a group of very
vulnerable young people for whom it will be
completely inappropriate and we are not sure that the Bill is flexible
enough for them. We are also concerned that compulsion could deny some
16 and 17-year-olds an employment opportunity that is far more valuable
to their future, and a far better education and period of training than
anything the Government could offer through the available vocational
qualifications, many of which, as we know from much of the academic
research, have not been notably successful over a long time, predating
the present Government, at giving people marketable
skills.
We
hope that at some stage in the debate we will persuade the Minister to
experience a conversion—to see the light—on compulsion.
Even if we do not, we will press him to ensure that he is more
pragmatic, so that the elements of compulsion do not, in addition to
offending against our liberal principles, make
circumstances less favourable for the young people whom we are seeking
to
help.
10
am
Nia
Griffith:
I welcome the opportunity to speak on this
extremely important element of the Bill. To me, compulsion is the heart
of the Bill. We need high expectations for our young people. If we tell
them that they can drop a subject at 14, at 12 or 13 they are already
thinking about doing so. If we tell them that they can leave school at
16, they are already thinking about that when they are 14 or 15. By
saying to them, “We expect you to be training or in some form of
education right up to the age of 18,” we give them a much better
vision right the way through from 11 to 18 and we get them into the
frame of mind that says that they will participate, they will do
something and they will use their lives
constructively.
Another
key element of compulsion is the duty that it places on Government and
statutory authorities. There is no doubt in my mind that when budgets
are squeezed, non-statutory services are the first to suffer. If there
is no element of compulsion, it is extremely easy for people to put to
one side the duties that are imposed on them. I refer in particular to
the extremely valuable work of following up and chasing up the young
people who have fallen through the system. We all know that those are
often the most vulnerable, who end up in the most difficult
circumstances and quite possibly in young offenders institutions,
prison and all sorts of undesirable situations in which they may be
exploited and their limited intelligence may lead to them being used as
minor criminals for major criminal gangs and so
on.
Clearly, if there
is a compulsion on authorities to follow up, to find out what those
young people are doing, to engage them and to offer them the right
opportunities, that will be done. If there is no compulsion, patchy
practice will ensue and some areas may have a far better service than
others.
Mr.
Gibb:
I am interested in that argument, which
was put by the Minister during the evidence sessions,
that imposing a potential criminal sanction on vulnerable youngsters is
somehow a way of galvanising and energising officials working in local
authorities. I find that a reprehensible way of trying to make our
public services function better. It seems a huge burden to place on a
minority of vulnerable
people.
Nia
Griffith:
In response, I tell the hon. Gentleman
that my experience of dealing with young people in
the classroom is that, often, we have the image that the ones who are
difficult to reach are difficult in the classroom, but that is not
necessarily the case. Many teachers will have wished for certain pupils
not to turn up on certain days, but we can be certain that the
disruptive ones are always there, because they love the
audience—I am sure that many hon. Members have some empathy with
that. The ones who really fall through the system are often the ones
whom the teacher can hardly name. There is a name on the list, but the
teacher has hardly seen them. One has tried one’s best and sent
a few letters and made a few phone calls home, but at the end of the
day one has 29 other young people to deal with. The pupil who is merely
a name on a list and has hardly been seen is forgotten about, is not
entered for the examinations, and so
on.
Mr.
Heald:
My fear is that that person is sitting at the back,
trying to avoid the teacher’s eye, because they cannot read and
write, or add
up.
Nia
Griffith:
I shall certainly respond the hon.
Gentleman’s point in a moment, but I should like to get back to
that young person who is not in the classroom and has fallen by the
wayside. We need to chase those children up, although I am aware that
schools are now far more vigilant in doing
so.
Stephen
Williams (Bristol, West) (LD): Given that we have had a
compulsory school leaving age of 16 since 1972, which is a long period,
why does she think that we still have the problems of non-attendance
and non-engagement with education? What improvement would the hon. Lady
expect if we raised the leaving age to
18?
There are young people whom we
want to bring back into education. Post-16, the temptation is to say,
“Okay, no problem—you are not our responsibility, so off
you go,” but the compulsion element placed on authorities will
mean that those people will be chased up. The hon. Member for
Yeovil—if I said that phonically, it would be
yeh-o-vil—pointed out that young people have rights. However,
with rights come responsibilities. It is crucial that people recognise
that if they want to share in the wealth of the country, they have a
responsibility to share in the creation of that wealth. I do not
believe that any young person between the ages of 16 and 18 should have
a free ride.
We all
know young people, including some who live on our poorest housing
estates, who play the system. For them, compulsion is important. They
need to get
the message that life is not simply about taking; it
is also about giving back. They need to show a sense of responsibility
and adulthood, so that they can share not only in the benefits of our
society, but in the creation of our wealth. In that way, they would
further their own opportunities.
I should like to respond to the
points made by Opposition Members. First, I remind the Committee about
the issue of GCSE grades A to C. The Committee will recall that the
GCSE was created from thinking in the late 1970s about how we could put
the old O-level system, which was designed for 20 to 25 per cent. of
the population, depending on how many children got grammar school
places in a particular area, and the CSE system, which incorporated
another 50 to 60 per cent. of the ability range, into one examination
system. The 16-plus exam was developed, followed by the
GCSE.
The GCSE was
then divided between A to C grades, which were the equivalent of the
old O-level, and the D to G grades, which were equivalent to CSEs. The
D grade was set as the average grade—the thinking was that
children of average ability would attain D grades. Therefore, those who
do not get A to C grades are not failures. There is a huge danger in
focusing again and again on the idea of grades A to C and grades A to G
in our statistics: we could be telling children that they are failures
if they do not get grade C.
Mr.
Gibb:
The maths specialists to whom I have spoken say that
80 or 90 per cent. if not a higher proportion of the cohort should be
able to achieve grade C in the maths GCSE. I point the hon. Lady in the
direction of schools in this country such as Thomas Telford school,
where despite a banded, genuinely mixed-ability intake, 100 per cent.
of the children achieve grade at least a C in maths GCSE—if it
is not 100 per cent., it is 98 or 99 per cent. How can those schools
achieve that, but other schools cannot?
Nia
Griffith:
Since setting up the system, we have seen
year-on-year improvements in many schools. They have pushed a far
greater percentage of children to take the higher papers and to achieve
those results, because they believe that if the opportunities exist,
they should push their pupils. That was one of the ideas behind
creating an integrated, escalator-type system, so that children had the
opportunity to move from one tier to another and to move up. However,
it is important that our ideas do not fossilise on a divide between
grades A to C and grades A to G. That stops people from pushing
children up from F to E or from E to D, because statistically there is
not much point worrying about them. Schools will instead concentrate
solely on pushing children up from D to C. It is important that we push
up all the way, from Gs to Fs, Fs to Es and from Es to Ds, because only
by doing things that way can we achieve what the hon. Gentleman has
just
mentioned.
Mr.
Gibb:
I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s patience
and for that of other Committee members throughout the morning. Would
she therefore condemn the local education authority in Greenwich, which
is providing incentives for 200 children on the D-C borderline to
achieve a grade C, rather than focusing on the whole cohort to achieve
higher grades?
Nia
Griffith:
I understand the temptation to do that. I am an
ex-teacher and I used to “see” a figure on every
child’s forehead, because we had intelligence-type testing that
told us what they were capable of. For example, the lazy, bright,
intelligent type, with which I am sure many hon. Members are familiar,
who should have been getting an A* but was only getting a B was as much
of a pain to a teacher as the hard-working, and perhaps much less
privileged, pupil who was struggling to move from an F to an E.
Undoubtedly, we need to be wary of focusing only on one group of
pupils. We need to ensure that we are raising the whole
cohort.
If a pupil
does not get a C in English or Maths, that does not necessarily mean
that they cannot read, write or add up. The tasks set involve large
amounts of writing, which have to be read digested and responded to in
essay form. Many pupils can read perfectly well and can understand
basic English messages and write perfectly straightforward English
messages without necessarily having those particular
skills.
Mr.
Hayes:
That brings us to the definition of functional
literacy. Ministers have previously told us that functional literacy is
defined as an individual’s capacity to write to his bank telling
it that he has changed his address. We were told that people who cannot
do that are functionally illiterate. However, people who cannot do that
are in a bit of pickle, because that basic level of literacy is
essential to making one’s way in life, is it
not?
Nia
Griffith:
That is why, in more recent times, we have
looked much more at the basic skills. Some of the things that pupils
enjoy doing in maths and English lessons for GCSE
courses are not about basic numeracy or literacy skills. That is why
the introduction of a more determined focus on those skills is
important and we should certainly continue in that way. However, one of
the reasons why there was a move away from that type of teaching and
from vocational courses in the late-1970s was the introduction of the
national curriculum—a straitjacket of some 10 or 11 rather
academically defined subjects, which was not a suitable diet for all
pupils. I saw many schools abandon teaching the more vocational
courses.
I am pleased
that, alongside what we are doing on compulsion for 16 to 18-year-olds,
we are engaging in a new look at what we do from the age of 14. There
is no doubt in my mind that a range of different courses is
appropriate from the age of 14. Why we ever abandoned what had been
working in the 1950s and 60s in the technical colleges, and so forth,
for the straitjacket of the national curriculum perhaps only the
Conservative Government of the time could tell
us.
Nia
Griffith:
Indeed, the original thinking was his, but
Committee members may remember that it was considerably changed and
driven into a much more straitjacketed approach by Sir Keith Joseph,
who dreamt of everybody having exactly the same sort of education that
he had had, not quite in the century before last, but not far
off.
To return to
the issue of compulsion at 16 to 18, it is essential that we send a
clear message that we expect young people to engage, right from the age
of 11 and that they should, at 14, choose appropriate options that they
will want to continue with. We must ensure that we follow up all of
them, whatever their path in life after 16, to ensure that they can
make a contribution to our society and that we offer them the
best of
opportunities.
10.15
am
Mr.
Heald:
It is good to have this opportunity to say a word
or two about compulsion. I promise not to spend all my contribution
talking about reading, writing and adding
up.
Last year I
visited a lot of projects dealing with social exclusion, and quite a
lot of them also dealt with the interface with the criminal justice
system. For example, I went to the north Liverpool community court,
which is part of an exciting trial of community justice that the
Government are doing. I worked in a direct access hostel for young
homeless men for a week. I visited Rainer, which is doing excellent
work teaching people basic skills, and I went to all sorts of other
projects. Right across the spectrum I noticed that a lot of people
lacked basic skills. I had not quite realised the extent of the
problem, and I have been shocked to learn that 40,000 young people
leave school each year without basic
skills.
When
I talk to a person whom I have found on the streets sleeping rough,
with drug and alcohol problems, of course those things are the first
that strike me. However, in the hostel it was quite interesting that,
after a time, they would come through a lot of those problems. We
wanted to move them from the hostel into a flat, but a lot of them
could not be moved, because they could not add up and do their
budgeting. The staff in the hostel were teaching them and encouraging
them to attend various projects to learn how to add up properly, as I
would put it—to learn basic numeracy skills.
Some of the young people were
really very damaged. Some of the reasons for that damage were other
social reasons. However, when one talks to a person about what it is
like to sit at the back of the class for years, unable to read and
write, it is not surprising that they gradually start failing to
attend. That is not true of every person, but a lot of people sit at
the back, keep their heads down, go to secondary school and cannot
perform, and start bunking off. It is no coincidence that the average
reading age in prison is 11. As a society, we must do much more on
basic
skills.
Jim
Knight:
I do not have the information to dispute the
average reading age of people in prison, but I am interested in what
the hon. Gentleman thinks a reading age of 11 means that those people
are capable
of.
Mr.
Heald:
The first thing to say is that the Minister has his
level 4 in standard assessment tests, which is the category that
someone has to reach to be seen as able to read effectively at age 11.
That is the average reading age in a prison, so what it says about the
literacy level of that community is that a lot of them cannot read,
write and add up properly.
“writing
in a range of forms is lively and
thoughtful”,
Their
handwriting style is “fluent, joined and legible”. Full
stops, capital letters and questions marks are used accurately, and the
pupil can use punctuation in a sentence. Level 3, which is the level
below and so relates to the hon. Gentleman’s point, requires
writing that is “organised, imaginative and
clear”, and that punctuation to mark sentences—full
stops, capital letters and question marks—must be used
accurately. Handwriting is “joined and legible”, and
pupils are
“aware of
standard English and when it is
used.”
I caution against
saying that such people are incapable of writing. If they have achieved
level 3 at primary school, they can
write.
Mr.
Heald:
I simply do not think that to have a population of
adults with an average reading age of 11 is right. The
Minister’s target is functional literacy and numeracy, and
40,000 people a year do not have that when they leave school. I am all
in favour of having a ladder of skills, and I do not think that grade A
to C should be unattainable. However, for that group, what would it be
like, having done 10 to 12 years in school, found it a desperate
experience and been deeply damaged by it, to be told,
“You’ve got to do another two
years.”?
Mr.
Marsden:
The hon. Gentleman has heard numerous examples in
Committee and numerous arguments from witnesses and Ministers that the
Bill’s intention is not to keep such people—to take the
hon. Gentleman’s words—in school for a further two years,
but to offer them other forms of training and education, including
work-based training and education. Does he not see the value of
pursuing that route, rather than that false
antithesis?
Mr.
Heald:
The hon. Gentleman ignores the point that they are
angry young people. The TUC and others have said so. Some are sad that
young people face that stigma, but all the experts and organisations,
such as Fairbridge, for example, say that the key to rescuing those
young people is to get them to want to undertake training or education.
In homeless hostels, social workers throughout the country try to
persuade youngsters who do not have such skills to give it another go.
They say, for example, “If you want to be a dry liner,
you’ve got to have a health and safety skills, so come on,
let’s get your basic skills.” They motivate them to do
it. Such measures are not for the stick, but for the carrot, which is
why I am not in favour of compulsion.
Mr.
Hayes:
It is good to be back in harness with, in
particular, my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and
Littlehampton. We are willing workhorses, ploughing a furrow towards
all that is lovely and noble, and in that spirit we begin our
consideration of the Bill, certain, Mr. Bercow, of your
sagacity, and hopeful of your generosity.
I shall start by reflecting on
the issues on which we agree. The hon. Member for Yeovil reminded us
that the entire Committee agrees on the desirability of engaging many
more young people in education
beyond the age of 16. In their individual interest, and in the
nation’s interest, that is critical, which is why at this early
stage of our consideration, it is right that we should set the Bill in
the context of the problem of the growing number of NEETs. It is one of
the biggest indictments not only of the Government, but of all public
policy makers that in 2008, about 1 million young people are not in
education, employment or training—up 15 per cent. on the figure
in 1997, by the way.
Before a
Minister or another hon. Member intervenes, however, I must qualify
that point. It is true that the NEETs figure includes gap-year students
and young people who have severe challenges, such as drug problems,
mental health problems and so on, so it is not fair to say that all
those 1 million-plus young people are willing and able, because of
their circumstances, to engage in education, employment or training.
However, even at the most conservative estimate—I am one of the
most
conservative of people—the Committee will agree that, let us say,
750,000 of those young people would like to be, should be, and in my
judgment are entitled to be, in education, employment or
training.
Jim
Knight:
Alison Wolf has already been, and I am sure will
continue to be, quoted a lot throughout the Committee’s
sittings. Does the hon. Gentleman, like myself, disagree with Professor
Wolf, who, when she gave evidence, said that we should not be fussed
about NEETs, because sooner or later they will catch
up?
Mr.
Hayes:
Yes, I disagree with Alison Wolf about that. I have
spoken with her on a number of platforms and disagreed with her
publicly about that issue before.
It being twenty-five minutes
past Ten o’clock,
The Chairman
adjourned the Committee without Question put, pursuant
to the Standing Order.
Adjourned till this day at
One
o’clock.
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