21
Examination of witnesses
Phil Smith, Alexandra Fitzpatrick, Louise Wright and Richard Vaughan.
Q104 The Chair: Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the latest hearing for the Numeracy for Life Committee and welcome to our witnesses today. Thank you all very much for coming. As I was just saying to my colleagues, I think this is a particularly important session because you represent the crucible of administrative delivery for anything that might happen in the future. That is why I am keen to hear from you all and I will ask the first question along those lines, starting with Mr Smith. Can you explain the new landscape for the oversight of adult skills and programmes such as Multiply, which was specifically focused on numeracy? I know you are newly appointed or newly created, so perhaps you could just set the scene.
Phil Smith: Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity and I am certain that the rest of the team can give some perspective on this. Specifically to ground where Skills England fits, it was aways predominantly about matching the workforce needs to employer demand and making sure those are reflected within the skills system. It is very occupational-based. It is based on clearly skills and evidence that employers provide. We were previously housed as an arm’s-length body from DfE and we are now within the DWP family, although still have a Minister, Jacqui Smith, who straddles both the departments, in that case as a sponsoring Minister.
In that role we are responsible for the occupational standards, which are the bedrock of how apprenticeships and other qualifications are built, and also the apprenticeship and technical education infrastructure workforce planning and so on. Skills England does not own the curriculum per se but obviously the team here can talk through some of the specific things, including programmes such as you referred to. Our role is to ensure that the employer need is reflected in that, and that is a moving target. It is important that we get some stability but we recognise that in a very volatile world it is evolving all the time. We are continually engaging with employers and the system to understand where that fits. We can go on to talk about numeracy as part of those particular standards at a later stage, but basically we have that particular position.
Then, of course, we have representatives here from DWP and DfE who can talk more about the specifics of the programmes for education and its delivery. The adult skills fund, which obviously is responsible for adult skills, is predominantly devolved. Some 70% is devolved out to the strategic authorities and so on. Although there are oversight and guidance, there is budgetary ownership in many cases through those environments. I am sure that we will come on to talk more about that but hopefully that gives a little bit of perspective on where Skills England fits. I do not know whether you want the others to do a similar position. It might be helpful.
The Chair: Yes. Alexandra?
Alexandra Fitzpatrick: First, to introduce myself, I am the director responsible for youth employment policy and for the joint skills strategy in the Department for Work and Pensions. We have alluded to it: through the recent machinery of government change, the Department for Work and Pensions took responsibility for adult skills delivery. That includes the adult skills fund, apprenticeships, the jobs and careers service—so the integration of the National Careers Service alongside Jobcentre Plus—and as Phil said, oversight of the three skills arm’s-length bodies that includes Skills England. That is clearly part of a wider skills system that is jointly stewarded with the Department for Education, and I will let Louise come in next perhaps to talk about continuing Department for Education responsibilities.
The ambition behind the machinery of government change is to bring adult skills policy and delivery closer to the labour market and to employers. DWP brings a really practical focus on how we understand employer need, understand the learner need and then put in place the right skills and employment support to meet both of those things.
Louise Wright: Good morning. I am the programme director for the Post-16 Pathways programme in the DfE. As part of my role, I have responsibility for the qualifications that adults study, and that includes the maths and numeracy qualifications. Also I have responsibility for the tailored learning aspect. That is where we use adult skills funds to make programmes that are specifically designed to meet the needs of an individual. Perhaps they are not yet at the stage where they want to take a qualification and it is more about building their confidence or meeting a particular life need. Colleges and other providers are able to tailor the programme to do that. Those are the two main ways in which DfE and DWP work together to make the system work so that we have qualification and non-qualification provision, which has the expertise of DWP behind it and is funded through the adult skills fund.
I am also responsible for the oversight of the introduction of new qualifications such as V-levels and level 2 qualifications. They are really good examples already of how we see numeracy built into those qualifications so that learners can resit their English and maths. They can also have learning on a V-level, for example, that enables them to embed the learning and learn how to apply numeracy in a more sector-based setting, which we will probably come on to later. I will hand over to Richard who can tell you what we are doing in the 16-to-19 space.
Richard Vaughan: Good morning. Thank you for having me. I am the deputy director in the Department for Education, the same part of the skills group as Louise. I lead on 16-to-19 English and maths. Students who have not secured their level 2 standard at 16 are required to keep on studying in 16-to-19 education. I also am very lucky to be developing the vocational and technical qualifications that we are reforming, which Louise referred to, that many of those same students will be studying currently and learning as we reform and roll out the qualifications. I also had the great privilege to run the now complete Multiply programme, which was a delight. That was a programme aimed at supporting every local area around the country to engage some of the hardest to reach adults back into learning and specifically basic numeracy.
Q105 The Chair: Thank you. Phil, some 70% of the budget for adult skills is now devolved, as you said in your opening comment. Who oversees accountability of that? Is it your job to make sure that they are using that money properly?
Phil Smith: The accountability ultimately is with the department as its money is devolved but, as has been described here, across the team here there is an intent to make sure that not only is that money devolved but we still have things like occupational standards, which are the fundamentals to build into the various deliverables, consistent across the piece. Ultimately, that is with the department. Alex may want to talk more about it.
Alexandra Fitzpatrick: Shall I come in there and talk a bit about the adult skills fund? It is important to contextualise the adult skills fund as one part of the wider skills system and that wider skills system is also accessed by adults. To put that into context, we are investing about £18 billion this year in post-16 education and skills and the adult skills fund is one part of that, which this academic year is around £1.4 billion. You are right to say that the majority of that funding is now devolved. That reflects the benefits that we can get from a locally delivered offer that can then be tailored to a local skills market, a local labour market, and indeed learns lot of the lessons from Multiply in the benefits of that type of model.
How do we then make sure that we have clear accountabilities? We are taking a big step forward there through the integrated settlements. We now have agreed outcomes frameworks with the strategic authorities that have integrated settlements and regular and public reporting against those outcome frameworks. We see numeracy explicitly prioritised within some of those. For example, the North East Combined Authority includes specific progress against numeracy outcomes within its adult skills fund outcome framework, as does the Greater London Combined Authority, for example.
The Chair: That is very helpful. Thank you. I will hand over to Lady Garden.
Q106 Baroness Garden of Frognal: You all seem to get on very well, but this recent reorganisation of bringing DWP into what was previously an Education thing is quite a major change. How can you ensure effective co-ordination between the different teams on numeracy skills, particularly if there is an overlapping policy area?
Alexandra Fitzpatrick: I suggest I come in first there. Part of my role is director for the Joint Skills Strategy hub, and that is one way in which we are making sure that we jointly steward the skills system across the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Education. That is a joint set of teams led by me in Work and Pensions and my director counterpart in the Department for Education. We have a set of teams working, bringing together particularly those areas of shared priority and shared responsibility. I can go into some examples of those, if that is helpful. As Phil said, we then work into a single joint Minister, Jacqui Smith.
Baroness Garden of Frognal: Yes, that is helpful.
Alexandra Fitzpatrick: Very helpful. We routinely jointly advise our Secretaries of State as well—for example a monthly update on shared priorities. We have tried to capture the additional integration that you get with the labour market through the machinery of government while protecting against the risk of new silos appearing in the system.
Baroness Garden of Frognal: Congratulations. My experience of being in government is that departments were very protective of their own areas and it was quite difficult to do cross-departmental work, so I congratulate you on achieving it.
Alexandra Fitzpatrick: Yes, we have worked really hard and we have learnt from other models with another department—for example, where we have a joint directorate with the Department for Health and Social Care.
The Chair: Would DfE like to add to that?
Louise Wright: I am happy to add to that and I fully agree with Alex. We have really close working with DWP, so my team talks regularly with teams in Alex’s area on adult skills. We also embed that through formal governance. Alex has mentioned the joint skills hub but, for example, on our programme boards to manage post-16 pathways, we have colleagues from apprenticeships because we know we are reforming the system as a whole by introducing new qualifications. We have apprenticeships colleagues represented on our programme board and, likewise, I sit on some apprenticeships boards so that we each know what we are doing and can make sure that the system works for learners. I think that is important and I feel that it is going really well.
Q107 Lord Massey of Hampstead: Obviously there are several organisations involved in this hugely important project and 70% of the budget is devolved. What kind of autonomy do the devolved bodies have in the curriculum and how they improve skills across the piece? How does that interact with your leadership?
Alexandra Fitzpatrick: If I start on the delivery, the thing to remember is it is the £1.4 billion adults skills fund that is devolved. For example, the apprenticeships budget is not devolved in the same way. The flexibility that the local areas have and the devolved bodies have is the provision of support within the statutory framework. Critical for this committee is the statutory entitlement for adults to access free provision up to level 2 in maths and English. That is a statutory entitlement that exists for life and, no matter where across the country you access the adult skills fund, you have that statutory entitlement. Beyond that statutory framework, each devolved administration has the flexibility to choose what provision they deliver in what settings to meet their local learner needs and their local labour markets.
Phil Smith: We agree that that is the right thing to do. We recognise that learners and businesses in local environments will look local first. They will tend to look there and the sensitivity and the understanding of the local need is very important. In fact, there is a process that is in its second round now of the so-called local skills improvement plans. Skills England, with the departments, has been a very strong part of defining the structure for that but, as you might recognise, those are about the local skills that are needed for that particular area. They are in their second phase all around the country and the early evidence seems to be that they are much more holistic than they may have been in the first phase.
One of the dangers in devolved is that, of course, people tend to want to tell you how great they are. Secondly, once you get over that, it is about the reality of what you can actually deliver that is aligned to the structures that Alex just outlined but also to the aspirations of the nation. The local skills improvement plans aligned to other sources of input, including the industrial strategy, the jobs plans and so on, are a crucial part of us putting together the matrix, the point that is understood well and can be more agile in the local environment than it can be if it is nationwide.
The evidence where it has worked well has been really good. As Alex said, with the oversight from the departments and the accountability, that balance seems to be working and we are obviously all committed to it to make sure that people get access to resources locally.
Louise Wright: May I add to what Phil and Alex have said? We also have the whole system underpinned by the statutory entitlements. Essential skills are subject to the statutory entitlement that includes numeracy. Anyone who does not have their level 2 maths and English is entitled to the funding so that they can achieve that, and that underpins the system. The system combines the flexibility and all of the benefits of doing things more locally, but is also underpinned by that protection for learners so that they can learn those basic skills.
Richard Vaughan: May I add one final reflection, Lord Agnew? In calling upon those statutory entitlements, a learner studies a given qualification, a maths GCSE or a functional skills numeracy maths qualification. There will be consistency in the specification of those qualifications, the curriculum that underpins. People will teach in different ways, but the awarding organisations provide common consistency. My reflection from working on the Multiply programme, and having boots on the ground on many occasions, is that a lot of that work by definition was with the strategic authorities and large proportions of the allocation, rightly per capita, went to those areas. That was fantastic work with them. The commitment, the organisation and the ability to pull different pots of money and different stakeholders together was a good testimony to how the devolved function around adult skills can work and in partnership with government still.
Q108 Baroness Bull: It is difficult to move on from that without reflecting on what we have heard about the level 2 qualification and the repeated attempts to meet—and on Multiply, where it moved away from qualifications to general numeracy skills—but that is not my question and I know the Chair will want to come back to Multiply in particular.
I want to ask about a strategic approach to numeracy. If we were to imagine an ideal world in which everyone is equipped with the numeracy skills they need to live well and to survive in the workplace, the responsibility for delivering that would necessarily stretch across multiple departments, because it is a lifelong thing. This seems to suggest that a cross-government numeracy strategy would be valuable but what this inquiry is throwing up is multiple programmes, agencies, funding pots, lots of activity but nothing that to me seems like a cross-government strategy. We have repeatedly heard calls from witnesses for Government to focus on numeracy in the way they focus on literacy.
To Phil first, is there a joined-up strategy that we are missing, that we do not know about? If not, do you think there should be one? Finally, where does this numeracy challenge sit within Skills England’s priorities?
Phil Smith: I will leave others to opine on whether there is what you might describe as a straightforward numeracy strategy. From my perspective, we are looking at—and Alex alluded to this in her remarks about the move of skills generally into DWP—how we align the skills that people need for the life that they are going to have, for the jobs that they may undertake and for the effect that has on the individual and the economy. The importance of those within standards such as GCSEs has been described already, but the same is true in the technical education qualifications as well. We try to identify within the requirement for numeracy, because the occupational standards that underpin those define the knowledge, skills and behaviours that are needed for the successful execution of a particular job or career path. Therefore, we have built that consistency into not only apprenticeships but other occupational certificates, foundation certificates, T-levels, the upcoming V-levels and so on. Of course, in some occupations there is a much higher need for numeracy or specific maths skills than in others.
The strategy from a Skills England viewpoint is to say that we want to make sure that we are embedding the right knowledge, skills and behaviours into people’s education and qualifications, such that they are able to align very strongly to the labour market and where they go. I sit on the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council. As you will have seen from the recent Skills England report, we have identified that over the next 10 years about 1.8 million new jobs are required in the priority sectors and the system is not going to fulfil that organically. We need to make sure that we are moving people into those priority sectors, and hence the underpinning within the occupational standards of the importance of those is extremely important.
I think that there is a cross-economy capability here without necessarily having to say, “We have a strategy to heavily intervene”. In a sense, in Skills England we are less attracted to saying, “You have to have a maths GCSE” as opposed to saying, “You have the qualifications within here that are relevant to the occupations and the capabilities you need”. That is the perspective we take on it.
Baroness Bull: How does that align with what we know about people moving between sectors within a working career in the way that we possibly would not have done?
Phil Smith: That is a very good point. One of the other pieces of work that Skills England has recently published is what is called the standard skills classification. I am not sure it is the first time—you guys have been in this business longer than me—but it has been a long time since we have had a standard classification of skills that are required by individuals in the workforce. There are 13 skills in there that are identified or articulated as transferable skills or common skills. There are obvious things, as we have just said, like numeracy and literacy, and digital in fact in this era.
One of the advantages of the standard skills classification is that it gives a common taxonomy for providers, individuals, and employers to start talking about the same thing. In my career—I used to run Cisco in the UK and Ireland—we talked to the Armed Forces quite a lot about how we could get people from the Armed Forces. Quite often their description of a job such as a driver was very different than our description of a driver, because they meant a logistics expert. Giving a common taxonomy to be able to talk about skills in a common way is extremely powerful.
As a result of that also, articulated through the industrial strategy and the post-16 White Paper, Skills England is working with the departments on the principle of skills passporting for everyone. You can see the challenge with young people who want to enter the market and have skills but they are not able to articulate those in a particular way. We are looking at vehicles to dovetail into some that are already there so that we can help people with a common capability and instantiation of their skills to be recognised by employers and others.
Baroness Bull: That is really helpful. Thank you.
Richard Vaughan: The point you raised on strategy and people moving careers increasingly in the modern economy is a key reason why there is a laser focus from early years through school and into 16-to-19 on the continued requirement to keep trying to get the qualification in maths that will then give you the certificate—the thing that can demonstrate that you have grasped these key skills and concepts—which is such an important currency. You see many employers sifting on the basis of having those level 2 qualifications quite early in the recruitment process. Absolutely within the occupational standards it is incredibly helpful, and we are pulling out, as we develop the new vocational qualifications, where the maths and numeracy feature in the different qualifications to help teachers to be able to spot that and for the maths teacher in the college to work with the vocational teacher in the construction course, for example.
I can say more about that, but at the outset it is trying to get as many young people as possible to have the maths qualification that can then be a passport—a ticket through the rest of their careers.
Baroness Bull: We know that quite a high percentage of people do not ever achieve that, which becomes a significant drag on the economy, and I will turn to Alex now. What is DWP doing with the current workforce we desperately need now to be upskilled to deliver the Government’s targets for economic growth? It is too late for the education system and you have got them in the workplace. What are you doing?
Alexandra Fitzpatrick: First, I strongly agree with Phil’s points on your broader strategy question. I do not think there is a single skills need or a single skills qualification and instead our emphasis, including to support those who have education without level 2 qualifications, has to be on an individual’s skills needs, getting down the right support and, critically, focusing practically on what the skills pathway is into work and then to progress in work. That is the laser focus of everything DWP does. I am really excited by a number of pieces of work in the department at the moment that are fundamentally about clarifying what are the skills and careers progression pathways and how we can do the best possible job, particularly for benefit recipients, for customers on universal credit, but also increasingly, and I think absolutely correctly, for a broader spectrum of people who might not be accessing benefits but who would be advantaged by additional support.
The first thing I will talk about is the jobs and careers service. That is a national reform programme for our jobcentre offer. In the past our jobcentres have been too focused on benefit administration and on moving customers into any job available. There is a refocus now to do a better job of understanding customers’ skills and employment position and then responding with a more rounded view of the skills pathways that get you into a better job and then to progress in your careers. That is because we were seeing pretty good success rates of moving people into work, but then we were seeing very low in-work progression.
Another major part of the jobs and careers service reform is the integration of the adult careers provision alongside jobcentre support, so you end up with one national service that offers not just employment and employment support but employment skills and careers integrated into one offer. There is massive opportunity for the department in that. We have the benefit of all the incredibly skilled and experienced careers professionals moving into jobcentres and we are trying to take advantage of that to upskill all our work coaches to do a better job of speaking to people very early on in their conversations with us about what some of the skills barriers are, which we know we can unlock and help with progression.
The second thing I will mention very briefly, because it is a passion of mine, is our focus particularly on young adults. As part of the work with young adults, we are seeing too high numbers of young people for whom not having a level 2 qualification is a barrier to work. We are working with the Department for Education to try to reduce those numbers, particularly during 16-to-19 education, to do the things that we know work to help more young people achieve the qualifications and then to boost our offer early in a young person’s experience of leaving education. We have a much more intensive support offer, which is about identifying the specific skills and employment opportunities in a local area for a young person and doing a much more systematic job of brokering that support and actively supporting the young person to take up those opportunities.
Q109 Lord Hannett of Everton: Good morning. The concern with numeracy for life, the title of the committee, is clear. With education from early levels all the way up to adult, there is a whole variation of different skills and opportunities. We have heard that the UK performs well in international comparisons with maths particularly at school level but that 40% of adults have the numeracy skills of an 11 year-old. Why do you think that what is taught in school is not necessarily translating into numeracy throughout life? I will start with the DfE first. Louise?
Louise Wright: It is a good question. I think it is important to note that the OECD survey that measures how numeracy has changed over time shows really big improvements for 16-to-19 year-olds and they have improved more than any other age group with the change that has been made. That is demonstrating that what we are doing in schools now, and what we have been doing for the past 10 years or so, is feeding through and people are taking that into adulthood. The condition of funding that we have whereby they have to study towards the GCSE or the level 2 maths, shows that that is now starting to pull through to adulthood. Of course there is further to go. We would like to see more people achieving that level but the improvements are a significant achievement, and that is not only for 16-to-19 year-olds. The survey shows that the numeracy levels of adults has improved. We are seeing that in all the age groups bar one.
It is probably important to recognise that in England we use level 2 as our optimal benchmark but that is much higher than the OECD survey shows what it regards as minimum adult numeracy. I think that perhaps sometimes that differential might account for the idea that we have the skills of an 11 year-old. We are unashamedly demanding in England about what we set as our optimum benchmark and we are also pulling that through into other qualifications—for example, the new V-levels that we are developing.
We are developing a digital V-level at the moment, and that includes things about processing, managing, arranging and analysing data, all of which are key numeracy skills. We are doing an occupational certificate in cookery, for example, and that talks about taking and handling money and also about scaling ingredients. We are pulling numeracy through in all sorts of ways and I think that we are being successful in that. The data shows that that is pulling through now in the primary school system.
Richard Vaughan: As Louise said, there is a clear, strong strategy, including following the curriculum and assessing it. The independent review carried out by Becky Francis looked at 16-to-19 maths, and indeed through the school phase where there is a set of reforms coming. The components of that looked at the accountability system, the minimum number of 100 hours for maths in an academic year, with an expectation of 35 further hours, workforce support and training, and practice dissemination. The DfE commissioner, in collaboration with the sector, has just issued a fantastic good practice guide. Ofsted’s new framework is placing a strong focus on English and maths for 16-to-19.
There is a clear strategy there that shows benefits but, as you pointed out, there is a stop and flow. We have 77% of 19 year-olds now getting their level 2 but that has not always been the case and it certainly was not the case before the condition of funding policy began in 2014-15. The experience that I saw through Multiply, and our big evaluation now published, shows that we have very many adults, as Professor Fry and Mr Seagull gave evidence to you—I watched that with great interest—with maths anxiety. There are varying experiences for various reasons of how they experienced school. There is stigma, some cultural acceptance of not being good at maths—all the things you heard from Professor Fry and Mr Seagull.
Why Multiply was so effective is that it has empowered explicitly local areas, including strategic authorities—the Greater London Authority, as we have talked about—to try new things to break through some of those barriers, fears and anxieties to reach adults. Some of that is about the lessons learnt at the organisations that are working with adults. There can be an aversion to going into your further education institution and engaging with a qualification that has tests and exam connotations. A lot of these learners are a long way from that with their confidence. It is outreaching through community groups, and voluntary charitable groups that are known and trusted in the community. We did various local areas of work to upskill some of the stuff in those areas with numeracy teaching. Talking about numeracy and maths through the lens of cooking, household budgets, and helping your children with their homework are the sort of interactions, putting it in those sorts of contexts, that made it feel real, relevant and important but also less terrifying.
Alexandra Fitzpatrick: I agree with Louise and Richard and I will add two things. One is that I think we should be proud of the improvements that we have seen internationally, but we also need to look within them where we see the improvements are particularly among high-performing groups. In government, and the joint youth guarantee particularly, across the Department for Education and the Department for Work and Pensions we are really focusing in on the more disadvantaged groups, the young people who are more likely to fall through the cracks and not leave 16-to-19 education with those qualifications. We are trying to make sure that the improvements are felt by all and our experience, working with young people, colleges and employers, is that in part the response is about more intensive transitional support for those young people, including a greater role for trusted adults, for example, is powerful.
To build on what Richard said, some of the experience of context-specific numeracy and the power of that, particularly for the more disadvantaged groups, is exactly what we are playing into delivery now. We have learnt that from Multiply. It is exactly the approach we are taking to apprenticeships, where there is a focus on occupation-specific numeracy and also through the adult skills fund, where you will find provision like numeracy for work modules within wider employability courses and tailored learned provision. That is precisely to meet the needs of the different groups and particularly to help those who struggle more.
Lord Hannett of Everton: Phil, do you want to add anything?
Phil Smith: As Alex has just said, and as we described earlier, in the occupational standards and the bedrock on which qualifications such as apprenticeships are built we focus on the relevance of numeracy and literacy and digital in particular occupations and try to keep that as a consistent thread. That practical and pragmatic relevancy is very important for everyone but particularly important for people who struggle to access the system in the normal way.
Q110 Lord Hampton: This question is probably to Louise and Richard first. We keep on hearing people call for two levels of maths, the theoretical and the practical, but they exist at the moment and we also have the functional skills qualification. Do you think they are working? If so, how can that message be put across particularly with the functional skills qualification, which seems to be slightly falling under the heading of “you do not take it if it is useful”?
Richard Vaughan: I will respond first, if that is okay, and start with the functional skills qualification. In 16-to-19, the GCSE is by far and away the dominant qualification studied and I think that there are some important reasons for that. The most obvious is its brand awareness, its familiarity to students and parents. It is what students have been studying throughout secondary school and is a very widely regarded qualification, including internationally. Employers know it. It has been around since 1986, so it has permeated, and that goes for students too. They come into college wanting to study for GCSE because that is what they are familiar with.
The functional skills qualification is available from entry level 3 into level 1 and level 2. We still see the functional skills qualification used quite widely in colleges for students at the entry levels and level 1 when they first come into the system as a stepping stone through as they develop their skills. The functional skills qualification is definitely still available. It is funded under condition of funding for 16-to-19 year-olds. It is a useful, helpful qualification and picks up even more uptake as we go into the adult system. At 16 and in key stage 4, the GCSE, you have a qualification that has that brand and status and it has the two-tier papers, as you say. I think the intention of schooling delivering a strong, academic, broad curriculum offering maths through that qualification is to give all children the chance to have that foundation.
What we are doing, including directly in response to the curriculum and assessment review in the 16-to-19 space, links through to the point that was made previously—that we recognise that not all young people are progressing at the same rate and that there are some disadvantage gaps here that are persistent.
We are looking to develop a new stepping-stone qualification that will help to prepare young people to get the GCSE. Lower prior-attaining students, which will often correlate with more deprived backgrounds, would be able to take this course to ensure they have grasped and mastered the fundamentals and concepts that they may have missed during their schooling for whatever reason, setting them up to go on and pass the GCSE in the following year.
Baroness Bull was talking about the persistent resits, persistent failures. The department has been clear that the condition of funding policy is not a requirement to resit; it is a requirement to keep studying and progressing. Of course, we do want people to have the chance to resit, to get that qualification, that essential passport for life, but we want to support them to take an exam when they are ready and at the right time. These are new level 1 stepping-stone qualifications that we have just finished consulting on. We are looking at over 300 very detailed responses. We will be looking at how to develop the qualification to help young people, particularly the ones with a lower prior attainment—below grade 3 at age 16—to master those basics and get some achievement in the process, not have repeated failure, and then step forward into the GCSE.
Lord Hampton: So that will be instead of the FSQ, this new level 1?
Richard Vaughan: In the consultation, we asked questions about which young people should this be for, who would benefit most. We have said that we continue to see a role for the FSQ in the system, and I have heard quite a few respondents say that would be a good thing. We will look at the consultation responses, and there will be a government response, as they say, in due course.
Lord Hampton: Louise, do you have anything to add to that?
Louise Wright: Yes. As Richard said, when you move into the adult space, you see the FSQs used more. They start lower down in the system, so particularly adults who are perhaps further back in their numeracy journey and need to grow their confidence. They might get quite familiar with the FSQs and then continue with them.
I spend quite a lot of time talking to colleges and I think sometimes they feel that when students come in, they have been working towards the GCSE for a considerable time and unfortunately not got it, but it does not always make sense if they are within striking distance, if you like, for them to change pathway at that stage. They do prefer to keep them on the GCSE pathway, partly because they already have the learning that they have banked but just have not quite there yet—partly, as Richard said, because they have been around for such a long time.
I was looking at the numbers. In the adult space I think it is true that more people still finish the level 2 GCSE, but the numbers on the level 2 FSQ are also not insignificant; roughly 17,500 people finished the level 2 functional skill in 2024-25 as opposed to 22,000 on the GCSE. It is more still on the GCSE but it is also significant numbers on the FSQ.
The Chair: We need to press on so we go to a question from Lord Massey.
Q111 Lord Massey of Hampstead: This question is about the Multiply programme, which, Richard, you have been very involved with. What do you feel has been learned from the evaluation about what works in adult numeracy? Of course, many of us have read it. You mentioned certification and the importance of qualifications; it would be interesting to hear your views about whether the lack of qualification was part of the issue there and how the learning is being taken forward now that the programme has ended.
I was also interested in something I picked up, reading the summary here—that most people without level 2 maths do not see a need to undertake further numeracy learning, an observation that I found interesting. I wondered whether that was because those people felt that they had enough to go on in their lives without achieving level 2, or whether they were just a bit delusional. I would be interested in your views on that, if possible.
Richard Vaughan: First, I will say a bit about the key things that we thought we learnt from Multiply, on which we have published several documents in very recent history.
Accessible provision is really helpful and I talked a little bit about this earlier—short informal courses, often not involving getting a qualification. Those courses, by definition, tend to have quite a high number of guided learning hours, which means coming back and back in a quite regimented way, and so are just not suitable for or desired by many of the learners we are trying to reach given some of their anxieties and barriers that I talked about.
I talked about short informal courses and contextualised learning, everyday activities that make it seem a bit less like maths, but it is. There is a phrase I do not particularly like because it has sinister connotations, which is stealth maths, but that is what has been going on through some very carefully well-developed curriculum materials.
I talked about community-based delivery in familiar, trusted settings and some practical incentives for some of these learners. Some local areas made decisions, successfully, I think, to use some vouchers, maybe some food or stationery incentives, some free meals or breakfasts when people went along to some of the events.
Earlier I mentioned strong local partnerships, community, voluntary organisations and employer engagement. Employers are very busy hard-pressed people, particularly in SMEs, but the willingness is there when it is made easy, particularly where you have staff, employees and employees with families who live in communities that they want to support. Those are some of the key messages.
What was great about Multiply, and what the evaluation shows, is that those learners, however tentative those first steps were into some of that provision, was pretty dramatically impactful for them, statistics showing that high percentages of people—58%—went on to some other form of learning, including numeracy courses, and high percentage numbers saying that they felt that they would like to learn more about maths, and would like to maybe consider going and getting a qualification. That first step, the re-engagement and the confidence-building—which a programme like Multiply and the lessons from it are incorporating into broader provision—were helpful.
Alexandra Fitzpatrick: Shall I spend just a minute on the key ways on how we are applying those lessons? I will be very brief. Two things: we are reflecting that devolved, local, flexible learning offer through the adult skills fund, crucially alongside and complementary to that continued entitlement to providing level 2 qualifications, and the focus on applied occupation-specific numeracy in our apprenticeships programme. That has been reinforced by the flexibilities we have introduced for adult apprentices who are no longer required to undertake formal qualifications alongside their apprenticeship for adult apprentices. It is taking the lesson of contextual applied numeracy.
The Chair: I am conscious that we are running tight on time. Lady Hamwee is coming in next. Could I ask you to be succinct in your answers because we have a bit more ground to cover and we are going to be running over time?
Q112 Baroness Hamwee: We have done before. I wanted to ask you about attitudes, and forgive me if what I am going to say sounds rather arrogant from someone from the outside who has not been involved in this world. I am reading about Multiply and some of it seemed frankly so obvious—issues like accessibility for instance. We can all imagine being in a particular situation where we know that if one cannot, in a practical fashion, access what is available—the entitlement, and you have all talked about statutory entitlements, which has struck me—then however much good will there is, you have to make it work in a way that helps the person that you are trying to help. Sorry; I just had to get that off my chest, I am afraid, but you may want to come back on it.
I want to ask about one particular aspect of attitude, and that is whether this very large cohort feels that numeracy is relevant in 2025-26. What is the impact of hearing so much about advanced technology? Do people feel that numeracy is outdated—that there is going to be technology that will do all these things that they need to do? You are nodding, Alex.
Alexandra Fitzpatrick: Yes, let me come in. Thank you. First, I could not agree more that it is logical that you need to create a skills and employment offer that works for the learner and works for the employer; absolutely. That is at the core of what DWP is trying to deliver now through an integrated jobs and careers service. I could not agree more, and we have further to go.
To your earlier question, within that we need to do a better job of helping to explain and how to navigate the system for learners.
I will come to your point about young people’s attitudes. In my work on youth employment, I am talking routinely to young people, to young adults. We meet with a young adult advisory committee six-weekly to discuss policy. We also have the Alan Milburn independent review running at the moment. The interim report is enlightening.
My headline response on this is that what I hear from young people is that they want to be in work. They want to be in good work. They want optimism and hope for their futures, and they see work as part of that. The extension of that is that numeracy skills are one part of that but what they are focused on is: what is the pathway that is going to move them into a rewarding, long-term career? Our role, I think, is to show those skills pathways and apply numeracy at every stage within them. It is not somehow to abstract numeracy from that process; it is about demonstrating and supporting learners to access the provision that gives them the skills they need for work. I think it is highly applied and I think young people see that and want to access the skills provision that moves them into work.
Baroness Hamwee: You said earlier that you recognise the strains on employers, particularly SMEs, and need to provide the bandwidth to enable this to happen, so what is happening to assist them?
Phil Smith: I can comment on that. You are entirely right. In many cases, when you talk to small businesses—and I was at one last Monday with Minister Smith—their general narrative is that they do not have the time or the mind space to do it, and that is true of many. Part of that is due, as Alex articulated, to the complexity of the system and some of the things they have struggled to navigate. The drive here is to simplify, to find people pathways that are straightforward, but also to recognise the skills, as we said earlier, for young people to be able to articulate their skills that they already have.
Once you get small businesses over that hump, it is surprising how much they become advocates and zealots in the area. A business that we went to see up in Coventry—XL Motors—started by an individual some 20-odd years ago, is now full of apprentices coming through at the lower level, and of management who have been previous apprentices. Not surprisingly, they have a big work experience programme. They are very enthusiastic about it when you can get businesses over the hump of, “Is this really relevant for me to bring young people in?”
In the working environment generally—I think there was a reference to this earlier—there is a little bit of muscle memory about not hiring or bringing your own people through, maybe expecting you can hire from other places. I think we are now recognising that is something we need to do more of.
Programmes and interventions are happening throughout the system. At the moment there is some money for a brokerage pilot, which is working with the strategic authorities to look at services where maybe they essentially help an SME take its first step. Many of the SMEs will say things like, “Safeguarding and all, it is hard, I need to do all that, and I do not have to think about that.” These brokerage services are essentially already happening in Northern Ireland. There is a good one happening up in the north-east and in Manchester; in London and other places, it is already happening. They are services where an intermediary will take those people on board and get them into the small businesses. You will not be surprised to know that once a small business has had a couple of apprentices they go, “Oh, these people are actually quite talented and they have something to offer”, and the energy that you see within organisations having had apprentices is enormous. As was suggested, I will not go too far, but the key is getting people over that hump, and that is where the focus is at the moment.
Q113 Baroness Alexander of Cleveden: I have two questions. Richard, I give you the chance to tell me—we have touched on Multiply—if there is anything final you would like to add on the barriers that adults encounter when accessing provision to improve their numeracy skills. Is there anything else on widening access or easing participation that this committee should be alert to?
Richard Vaughan: I think I have covered the main things including the confidence to make that first step. We saw some fantastic work by voluntary and community organisations. Some of the best practice was working through those trusted intermediaries, but some of those organisations will not necessarily be familiar themselves with being in the skills system and receiving skills funding. Some of the procurement that went on under Multiply by local adult education departments to bring those partners in as advocates and intermediaries to reach communities was fantastic.
Baroness Alexander of Cleveden: Can I follow up the issues around the Milburn review? We will probably be publishing a couple of weeks after the final version of the Milburn review, which is due in the autumn, but could I invite you to comment? I heard Alan talk about it last week and he described the skills system as broken, which I suppose comes from the opportunity that people have to opine, but he is complimentary about the direction of travel of Skills England. Can I invite, first, Alexandra and then Phil to give us a flavour of where you think the Milburn review is likely to lead to a nudge in helpful directions for delivery? While there are individual cases, as Phil says, of more apprenticeships, the reality is that we have seen a reduction across the board and there is a lot still to do. Where will the nudge come from in that final report?
Alexandra Fitzpatrick: I agree completely with your summary, which is steps in the right direction, but we are not going far enough and that is why the Department for Work and Pensions Secretary of State commissioned Alan Milburn to look at the root causes. Alan Milburn has shone a light on the systemic challenge of cross-government action to wrap around a young person and support them in the transition from education into employment, and to continue to progress through their careers.
I think the right first steps are through the youth guarantee, through the refocusing of apprenticeships back towards young people after a decades-long, very sharp decline in the number of young apprentices, but there is still much further to go. I think you will see in the report that that is about further action within education but also across to health and welfare, and work with employers too.
Phil Smith: Even prior to the Milburn review, I think Skills England had been talking externally a lot about the fact that the Prime Minister announced the skills system being a mess, but the reality is that a mess does not mean that everything is broken. It means it is not very easy to navigate, it is not easy to understand, it is not maybe organised around the alignment that Alex just articulated, maybe towards younger people but it does also mean that there are a lot of components that, if effectively aligned, could be quite powerful. That is certainly something that we see very much in flow at the moment.
If we can keep with that consistency—and hopefully you have heard about some of the cross-working capability here—I think there is a lot we can do. It is difficult in government terms to keep it. You need to keep tucking things back in. Things like the Milburn review, to your point about a nudge, are a very powerful way of saying, “Okay, we recognise that is all doing good stuff but it needs to be more aligned to a particular cause”. We need to keep an eye on the realities that the industrial strategy has articulated as well as the economic growth.
The Chair: Lord Stansgate, are you happy to do number 8?
Q114 Viscount Stansgate: I know that we are almost out of time, so I will be as quick as I possibly can. Thank you very much for the interesting evidence that you have been giving to us. Two quick questions: first, what roles can employers play in improving the numeracy skills of their workforce? Secondly, how is the Government supporting businesses to do just that?
Phil Smith: I think even without the “to support numeracy” at the end of your sentence, in many cases employers, as has been articulated, have stepped down their support of the skills system, or even of skilling in general. We all know the well-rehearsed statistic that the UK employers invest about half the European average in training their people, and some 40% of employers do not do any training at all. There is clearly some misalignment of people’s perception of the value of training and maybe the capabilities that exist, because it is not just public provision that we need to realign to. Without going through all the things we have talked about already—apprenticeships or associated programmes, or more specifically educational programmes—there are already programmes and capabilities available.
One of the challenges that was brought out in the previous question is the understanding of how it all joins together needs to be much clearer. In Skills England, we talk a lot about the need for much more clear, simple communications, particularly to employers and to individuals, so that they realise that the system does work for them, can work for them, and is relevant. That is an important part of what we can do. I think there is a lot of provision and capability there.
The occupational standards that we have talked about a few times are employee-consulted, employee-built standards. The more we can have employers articulating the need for numeracy, let alone literacy and digital and other fundamentals within those standards, the better. I guess the short answer is that the more we get employers engaged, the better the outcomes will be. We need to change that decline, and I think there is a lot of work to be done to try to do that.
Viscount Stansgate: And the other witnesses?
Alexandra Fitzpatrick: Can I just reflect on your second question, particularly on how Government are supporting businesses? I totally agree about the role of employers.
The first thing to say is, exactly as Phil has said, about giving employers a strong and powerful voice in the design of the skills system. Skills England is leading the charge on that.
Secondly, I would say the Government are focusing on our systems to prepare a workforce capable, willing and able to take on the jobs in the economy today and in the future. That is obviously through our education system and then through our employment and skills support.
Finally, there is a more focused piece of work to be done around de-risking the employment of particular groups that are currently excluded from the labour market. We have a particular participation crisis at the moment for young people. We have a range of programmes that are specifically designed to de-risk young people’s employment, to take some of the financial risk and some of the administrative risk into Government, because it is in all of our interest for those young people to move into work. We have a similar programme for other more disadvantaged groups in the labour market—for example, the long-term unemployed with health conditions.
I would say the answer in those three ways: bringing the employers right into the heart of the system; ensuring there is a work-ready workforce; de-risking the employment of particular groups.
Viscount Stansgate: In view of the lack of time, I will leave it there if that is helpful to the committee.
Q115 The Chair: Richard, I want to circle back on this Multiply programme, given that you had a key role in it. It seems to have many successful strands to it. It had very low rates of dropout. The time needed for the learners was only about 35 days compared with 175 for most comparable FE courses, and it was pretty good value at £800 per learner. All of those things sound fabulous, but what I do not understand is why there was no mechanism built in to assess the progress a learner made at the start and at the end. Why was that not intrinsic in the assessment of the programme?
Richard Vaughan: There are a couple of things going on here. In the nature of the provision, large amounts of it was about re-engaging, building some of the most basic skills through the activities we talked about. There was definitely consideration of before and after session assessment in, if you like, a more formal sense. It became apparent very quickly that that was undermining the whole point of the programme in engaging the learners. It was triggering a lot of the barriers that these learners had around engaging with maths and numeracy provision in the first place. Local areas were telling us that they were seeing very high attrition rates and low take-up of some of the provision. In that sense, our evaluation approach took a step back. We were still gathering information through surveys of learners and providers about what learners were saying after experiencing Multiply, their confidence levels, their feeling of confidence in numeracy and mathematics and the providers’ and tutors’ views of what they were seeing in the learners, but before and after formal assessments of the provision was not viable and did not seem also good value for money on that basis.
You have looked at the evaluation, Lord Agnew. There is a whole weight of products there and strong evaluation approaches from Verian, IFS and other partners across the programme.
The Chair: We do not have enough time to explore this further. I would be grateful if you could write to us on this. What you have just said does not convince me but we do not have time to debate it further.
Q116 Baroness Hamwee: Can I just ask very quickly, Chair, if there is any programme for following up any small cohort among people who have been through the Multiply programme.
Richard Vaughan: That is a very good point. Many learners would have been recruited through some very light-touch outreach activity to engage them in what this is about. What is Multiply? You have seen it on the side of a bus, you have had the flyer, but this is what we are talking about. Then came engaging them in some substantive provision, be it through cooking or what have you. Those learners are tagged—forgive the phrase—on the ILR, the Individualised Learner Record, so that we can then follow them through the system to see if they are going on to take further qualifications, which many have, such as courses and qualifications.
Baroness Hamwee: Their occupation/work, as well as learning?
Richard Vaughan: Destinations? When we write back we will say the extent to which that will tell us. We would have quite a long lag on some of that, obviously.
Q117 Baroness Bull: May I quickly ask for one other piece of written evidence from Alex? You spoke about de-risking employment of particular groups and pointed to two. Last week we heard from Professor Butterworth about the economic value of making it possible for people with maths learning difficulties to thrive in the workplace. Could you say something about how you de-risk for people with dyscalculia and maths learning difficulties in the workplace?
Alexandra Fitzpatrick: Yes, no problem. We will follow up on that.
Q118 The Chair: Again, on the wash-up on Multiply for the DWP—Phil or Alex—I understand that the mayoral authority of Manchester took a year to get the thing going, which seems ridiculous given that they were offered a package. In your role now, as overseeing adult learning, will you be able to crack the whip on that bureaucratic inefficiency?
Alexandra Fitzpatrick: Can I answer that now?
The Chair: Yes.
Alexandra Fitzpatrick: Yes, we work very closely with the strategic authorities, and we do that through a number of programmes. A large swathe of our employment support is devolved in the same way that we have now taken on devolved budgets through the adult skills fund. Yes, we have experience doing that.
Of course, at the heart of devolution is the power for local delivery and local accountability, but then there is a role for the department in overseeing and managing that delivery and we do that in a number of programmes. I can list many.
Phil Smith: We also have a place-based subgroup, which includes periodically the mayors themselves, but there are skills people, a subgroup of the Skills England board, regularly meeting with those people and trying to align provision and make sure that it has some consistency. It is not enforcement, but it is definitely a mechanism for providing strong alignment.
Q119 The Chair: I will give the last word to Louise: what do you think is the main challenge that we face in improving numeracy across our economy and society?
Louise Wright: It is the vast range of need that is out there and bringing it into a system that can cater for all of those different approaches. It requires an immense amount of flexibility and resilience within the system to bring all of those different players together. It does reflect on many of the questions that you have been asking us today about how we bring different parts of the system to bear, to help the vast array of learners out there.
The Chair: That brings us to the end of this session. Thank you all very much. Beyond my specific questions that you are going to write in on, if you have any further thoughts that you think might be useful for us, then do let us know.
Richard Vaughan: Can I just say one final thing, given that we have talked a lot about the GCSEs and we l have just finished GCSE season in maths? I just want to say a huge thanks from all of us to all the learners who have worked so hard and all the amazing staff in schools, colleges, independent providers and local authority-run provision who work so hard with those students.
