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Unrevised transcript of evidence taken before
The Select Committee on Social Mobility
Evidence Session No. 18 Heard in Public Questions 174 - 183
Witnesses: Professor Ann Hodgson and Professor Kevin Orr
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Baroness Berridge
Baroness Blood
Lord Farmer
Lord Holmes of Richmond
Baroness Morris of Yardley
Lord Patel
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
Baroness Stedman-Scott
Baroness Tyler of Enfield
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Examination of Witnesses
Professor Ann Hodgson, Professor of Post-Compulsory Education and Co-Director, Centre for Post-14 Education and Work, UCL Institute of Education, and Professor Kevin Orr, School of Education and Professional Development, University of Huddersfield
Q174 The Chairman: Welcome to the 18th evidence session of the Select Committee on Social Mobility and the transition from school to work. We are very grateful for the attendance of our witnesses today. You will have an opportunity to introduce yourselves in a minute. This session is open to the public. A webcast of this session goes out live and is subsequently accessible via the parliamentary website. A verbatim transcript will be taken of your evidence, and also put on the parliamentary website. A few days after this session you will receive a transcript. We would ask you to check it for accuracy and let us know of any amendments you want to make, as quickly as possible. If, after this session, there are any points you want to make of clarification or amplification, you are perfectly entitled to submit further written evidence. Please could you introduce yourselves for the record, and then we will begin?
Professor Ann Hodgson: My name is Ann Hodgson. I am from UCL Institute of Education.
Professor Kevin Orr: My name is Kevin Orr. I am professor of work and learning at the University of Huddersfield.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. If we are looking at labour market policies, what policies would be useful in stimulating the development of intermediate and technician-level roles within the labour market?
Professor Kevin Orr: I am very supportive of what the Government have suggested with regard to the 3 million apprenticeships. We have heard this morning how many of those apprenticeships are at level 2 and are going to those over 25, which is not what we might think apprenticeships are. None the less, I think apprenticeships can at least be part of the solution. There was some research carried out by Demos last year. They asked 1,000 parents of 15 to 16 year-olds what they think of apprenticeships. You will be glad to hear that 92% of parents think that apprenticeships are a good idea for young people. When asked the same question about their own children, the answer was 32%. So even within apprenticeships which have high status, there is an issue. I am concerned that if these 3 million apprenticeships are not meaningful, employment-based routes to achievement and to work, that status might be further damaged.
I also like the work that the Gatsby Charitable Foundation has done on the registration of technicians as a way of involving well-established professional bodies and institutions, such as the Institute of Engineers, Institute of Mechanical Engineers, and so on, as a way of registering technicians, providing them with status, and also taking some responsibility for the kind of training that they might have.
These kinds of things will help in certain areas. We have a national problem, but it has very local features. It was referred to earlier this morning as a “jungle”. If we could simplify the system, that would help enormously. According to the Whitehead review, we have over 19,000 regulated adult vocational qualifications in this country, and that is absurd. How can any employer understand what qualifications mean if there is that kind of complexity?
So apprenticeships is part of the answer, though clearly not all these young people are going to do apprenticeships. It has to be part of the answer, but there has to be much more than that. Registration is perhaps part of the answer. A simplification of the vocational education offer is also part of the answer.
Professor Ann Hodgson: Can I add to that, Lord Chairman?
The Chairman: Yes.
Professor Ann Hodgson: I agree with everything that Kevin has said. I would want to add a couple of points. First, we do not really have the same licence-to-practise arrangements in this country as they have overseas. That is, you do not have to have a qualification in order to call yourself a builder or a plumber. Of course, a lot of people do get registered, but it is not part of the system. If we had a much clearer licence-to-practise system, that would be particularly important at the technician level.
Careers education, information, advice and guidance have already been mentioned, but what young people need to know is not only which qualification they should take or what occupation they want to go into, but what are the pathways through to do that; what is the clear transition route through? It adds to what has already been said in the previous session. It is very unclear how a young person gets from A to C, and does B in between, so what kind of training leads to meaningful technician jobs, and, as importantly, what links there are with higher education routes that might be done either part time or full time, so that people can see their way through.
That is easier said than done, of course, because there are so many occupations out there that have not been there in the past that it is quite difficult to know how you find your way through. That is something that needs further work. Hopefully, the committee, which Alison Wolf is on, will help with that. It is getting that information down to parents and young people, and getting employers to come and talk to parents and young people. Where we have had projects that we have been facilitating in that area, hearing from employers about the route ways through and how you might do it is much more effective than hearing, frankly, from a careers education teacher or anyone else in a school. That is part of a later question I think you might be asking.
The Chairman: Professor Orr referred just now to supporting some of the measures that the Government are undertaking. As you know, there will be a duty imposed by the Welfare Reform and Work Bill to report on full employment. Do you think that will have a positive effect?
Professor Kevin Orr: It may well have, but I am concerned that the duty to report on simple achievement of figures with regard to the streaming of apprenticeships may have the effect of incentivising people to be encouraged to take apprenticeships which perhaps are not as worthwhile as they might be: low-level, over the age of 25 perhaps. I do not think that reporting in and of itself will achieve the end of having a decent vocational offer, which is what all of us would like to achieve. Indeed, it could lead to an unintended and damaging consequence.
The Chairman: Would you suggest that local labour market policies would be more effective?
Professor Ann Hodgson: I would say the links between education and work are forged largely in the vocational area at local level. That is where we need to have a focus. It is employers working with schools and colleges, and indeed universities, so that you get the full skills escalator through, that will make a difference at local level. That is difficult in some areas where there is not the range of employment that there is in other areas, so it cannot be a solution on its own. It is difficult to involve a lot of the small and medium enterprises that will provide work for young people. So it is not an easy answer. I think that it is localities that need to be the focus as well as national policy. It is helpful that national policy sets targets and guidelines for equity reasons, because localities can vary very much one from another, but the business part of it happens down at the local level.
Q175 Baroness Blood: This is an area I work in at home. What about learners who are not ready for level 3, either in training or anything like that? What do we do about that cohort of young people?
Professor Kevin Orr: In many cases, further education colleges provide a very good service for those young people, attempting to bring them up to level 2 and giving them access to the kinds of skills that they need to be citizens within the UK. But I have a concern, which is that if vocational education and training is associated with remedial education of whatever kind, or low-level education, that serves to strengthen the lack of status that vocational education and training has. This is something that other countries have struggled with. In Denmark in particular, they are being asked to use vocational education and training as a means of bringing about social justice for the most disadvantaged, including those with special educational needs, who are being channelled towards vocational education and training. This is having the effect of making certain vocational offers less attractive. I would be concerned about that happening here. So the issue that you are talking about is extremely important and one that we need to take very seriously as a society and policymakers. But I am concerned that the discussion will begin to say, “The route for these people is a vocational route”, because that demeans what should be a route for all young people.
Professor Ann Hodgson: I would absolutely concur with that. Another issue is the question of time for young people. A lot of young people can succeed at 19, whereas they may not be able to succeed at 18. When you look, in comparison with other countries, at our post-16 offer for young people, it is short both in terms of the number of weeks in the year that are offered and also the number of hours in each week. In comparison with other countries, we expect people to get to a certain standard in a very short period of time. It is really unhelpful that we are expecting all types of education to be assessed in the same manner—in other words, via external examination. For some young people, that is not valid in terms of a lot of vocational education and training, which is much better assessed through observation or the production of artefacts, and also effectively excludes an awful lot of young people who could get there over time were they given longer programmes, access to workplaces as part of those, but not necessarily the whole thing, and allowed more time to develop and get to level 3. If a young person does not get to level 3 by 18, we see that as a failure. That should not be seen as a failure; it should be seen as a step on the way, and we should be thinking about lifelong learning, not cutting people off at that point.
Q176 Baroness Morris of Yardley: I agree very much with what you said about the role business can play at a local level in talking to young people and parents. I have always had a bit of a bee in my bonnet about this—it comes from my years long ago of being a teacher. I have had some lousy employers. I have lost control of a class because the employer who is talking to the kids has not been able to communicate, structure the debate, respond to kids and make his or her voice heard. I know things have changed a bit, but you think, “Never again”. I have a bee in my bonnet that the Government think at the moment—it makes me really cross—that just because you are an employer you are going to be brilliant because you have the knowledge. There is a set of skills that teachers have that needs to be brought together with the knowledge that businesses have. There is a difference between somebody teaching and somebody learning. We are doing a lot of the teaching and the kids are doing the learning. So where is the quality control in this? I am not for a minute suggesting that Ofsted inspects employers coming into school—that would not be good—but where is the quality control and the message that employers are not top dog and it is about a partnership with the skills of teachers rather than coming in because they have all the information?
Professor Ann Hodgson: That is a very good challenge. We have been doing some interesting work with the Education and Training Foundation on something called Teach Too. That is nothing to do with Teach First. It is the idea of employers coming into colleges and work-based learning providers as part of the teaching team. What is quite interesting is that a lot of the employers are very nervous about doing that for all those reasons.
Baroness Morris of Yardley: Absolutely, for all those reasons.
Professor Ann Hodgson: So there needs to be adequate preparation and discussion about what the needs are. You cannot just invite someone in to do a session; it will not work. The whole preparation of careers education, information, advice and guidance needs to start early, needs to be negotiated, with different kinds of experiences at the right kind of level and age. It may be visits to employers’ premises rather than employers coming in to tell young people what to do. It is also to prepare the young people for what they might hear.
I know that sounds like a bit of a cop-out, but I do not think it is, I think it is to do with genuine partnership, which you hinted at, between employers and providers, and that is planned, there is preparation, a menu of things that are on offer, which is not all employers coming in and telling the schools what to do, and there is follow-up work that relates to the curriculum, so it is much more integrated within the whole curriculum package.
Baroness Morris of Yardley: Perhaps I may have one follow-up question. I agree with all that. You have described a perfect system, but that is asking a lot more of employers. When we approach employers, we are not very good at saying, “But it’ll be the preparation, the follow-up, it’s a lifelong relationship I’m asking for, not a one-night stand sort of thing”. So who in the system is trying to bring about what you have just described?
Professor Ann Hodgson: Where you still have education/business partnerships, they are excellent at this.
Baroness Morris of Yardley: I agree.
Professor Ann Hodgson: You do need a kind of broker organisation that can do this. It is not something that is either in the teacher’s experience or necessarily the employer’s experience. An independent body needs to bring that about. One of the things that employers complain about is that they have multiple demands on their time and multiple institutions that are coming to them. Again, that is why having a co-ordinated response, a body responsible for that, is essential. You cannot do it ad hoc, this school asking an employer to come in, and so on.
Interestingly, the CBI has just done some work on employer and education provider relationships. They say that a deep relationship between a school and an employer is what is needed. I sort of understand that, but that is not possible for every school and every employer. You need some kind of brokerage service so that all schools get that, otherwise some schools and colleges will be very lucky and others will not.
Professor Kevin Orr: Further education colleges are pretty good at this, on the whole, because they have developed relationships with employers over time.
Baroness Morris of Yardley: I agree, they are much better.
Professor Kevin Orr: They know who can do it.
The Chairman: We have a question on the role of employers later on, so we will no doubt return to this.
Q177 Baroness Stedman-Scott: It has been suggested that the first priority of the education system should be to prepare all young people for adulthood and the world of work, and one of the ways to do this might be to add employment and education destinations data as part of the accountability framework. We would like to know what your views on this are, and does it go far enough?
Professor Kevin Orr: I think it is right that we talk about curriculum, not just systems of education. I like the question that the Nuffield review, which Ann was involved in, asked some years ago: what counts as an educated 19 year-old today? That is a reasonable question for us to ask and to argue about what the answer might be. For example, I think part of the answer would be that a young person today needs to be able to judge the provenance of information, to make a judgment as to whether something is valid or not, given the overwhelming amount of information that young people have access to. It is right to talk about curriculum, and what young people learn. Whether it is about simply preparing them for the world of work I do not know. I heard in the earlier session about preparing future taxpayers: that is a rather reductive view of humanity, if I am completely honest. I pay my taxes each month, but it is not my defining feature as an adult human being in the UK.
That said, it is absolutely right that careers education, education about work, about how work has changed within the UK and internationally over the last few decades, is extremely useful for young people. If that is part of preparing young people for the world of work, absolutely, but it has to be seen as a broader question about what curriculum we want our young people to have access to.
Professor Ann Hodgson: To answer specifically your question on employment and education destinations, I think that is a good start, but it will not be enough. It needs to be something that Ofsted focuses on as well, because that is what drives what schools and colleges do. I am very pleased to see that there is a new DfE committee being set up to look at the purpose and quality of education. I hope that that committee will also look at 16 to 19 and will not stop at 16. My concern is that it might stop at 16 because it is DfE. One of the things that this Committee might suggest is that they should focus up to the age of 19.
It is very odd that we have no educational aims and purposes for the 16 to 19 phase. They are not hugely explicit in the national curriculum, but they are certainly not there for 16 to 19 year-olds, whereas they are in other countries. We need a set of purposes and aims for what we are trying to do with young people. Particularly now that we have the raising of the participation age and young people have to stay on, we should say what we want to happen during that phase. So I hope that the work you do, your raising of this question, and the work that the DfE committee does, will make a difference.
Professor Kevin Orr: Perhaps I can say something more about destinations. There is also a question of when you look at those destinations. Some of those prestigious jobs will take a long time to get into, perhaps after years of unpaid internships, but at the end of it the salary might be very good—so at what point are schools judged on what they give their young people?
Also, we need to be careful about how much schools are judged on this because there is a play-off between taking a risk with going to university, perhaps not knowing what you are going to do, and eventually earning quite well, and having a secure job at 18, which may not pay very much, and may incentivise schools to want to get their young people into work at all costs rather than into work that may earn more in the longer term, as we heard previously.
Schools can do so much. Let us put it in simple terms. Schools can allow young people to achieve five GCSEs. What messages those GCSEs send out once they leave school will differ from sector to sector. For some sectors, they will suggest that those young people are prepared for certain types of work. Elsewhere, other qualifications—not GCSEs—might indicate that young person is “the right sort”, with all the ambiguity that means. It sends a message to employers that they come from a certain type of social and cultural background.
In other cases, a qualification might show that young people have been enculturated in a certain way. I do not mean that in a negative sense, necessarily. The school has no control over the way that the qualifications that in good faith they give their young people access to will be understood in the workplace. So I am sceptical about schools being judged on things they have no control over.
Baroness Stedman-Scott: I take the point about control, but I would like to push you a little more on destination data. As a parent, do you not think it would be good to know that in the school your young person is attending, or has just left, people were in education, employment or training, and the NEET population cohort had dropped from Y to X? I accept the point that people are on a journey. In the way that other providers of services that are connected to getting people into work do not just say, “We’ve got 80% of people into work”, but such a percentage of them are still there 12 or 24 months later, to some degree it is in the school’s interest to be able to say for the destinies of those young people over the lifetime of their journey, “We’re not saying they’ve reached their final destination, but they are well on the way, and these are the statistics to back it up”.
Professor Kevin Orr: We do not have enough data within this area. We do have for higher education, but we do not for vocational and further education. Collecting that data would be very useful. I have a concern about making an assessment of schools based on that data. But by all means collect it; it is useful for us to know about.
Professor Ann Hodgson: It is very useful at the local level to demonstrate to young people the kinds of pathways that they might take, based on evidence that has been collected locally. It will vary very much from area to area depending on what kinds of employment opportunities are available, and so on.
Q178 Baroness Tyler of Enfield: As you know, in the previous session we covered the area of careers advice quite thoroughly. I would very much like to hear your views on whether you feel that careers advice could be better delivered by some new independent organisation. What are your views on how we can ensure that truly independent advice and guidance is being delivered to all young people, as distinct from careers education in the curriculum, important as that is? Also, do you feel there should be changes in the way that schools are funded to ensure that they are incentivised to provide the full range of options and advice to young people?
Professor Ann Hodgson: We need to make a distinction between information, advice and guidance, which has to be independent, and careers education. I think that that was what you were alluding to in your question. Schools absolutely should be responsible for careers education. I mean that in a very broad sense, preparing young people for life and work and who they are, where they are, and how they operate in the world, as part of PSHE and other things that are so vital for young people getting connections. They should have access to an independent adviser for their next step. At the moment—you were alluding to this—schools have an incentive to keep young people in their sixth form, and that is not going to go away while we still have competitive institutions and academisation.
We also need to think about the age at which people need advice. At the moment, quite often it is very much focused on year 11, the age of 16. In fact, young people often have to make choices again at 17, and certainly at 18. So we need to think about the kind of advice that is given and when it is given. I understand why careers education, information, advice and guidance is important, but part of my slight scepticism about this area is that sometimes it is seen as a sticking plaster over something that is incredibly complex. We keep making the system more complex—more qualifications, different route ways, more institutions—and then we say, “Now, we’ve got to have some careers education, information, advice and guidance to help young people through that system”. What we actually need is careers education, information, advice and guidance, but also a much clearer set of route ways and pathways through the system for young people. I think it is both.
Professor Kevin Orr: I would concur with that. I know that Connexions had a remit to reduce the number of NEETs, but it was a universal service which did not have a universal purpose. Even when it was relatively well funded and had high recognition, there was little statistical evidence to suggest that it had an impact upon the decisions that young people made. For example, we know that young people’s decisions for GCSEs are often affected by whether they like the teacher or not. That has a stronger effect than careers advice. Nevertheless, like Ann, I am convinced that careers education is important in schools and careers advice should be independent, for exactly the reasons that Ann said. No matter how excellent our careers advice and education service is, we have what has been described as a “jungle”. Careers advice is important, but it is of second-order importance. The first order of importance is to tame that jungle.
I will put it in these terms. A relatively savvy—perhaps prejudiced—middle-class parent will say to their bright young daughter, “Don’t touch the vocational route because you won’t earn as much and you should be going straight to university”. If you are a well-intentioned, well-informed, well-trained careers adviser faced with a bright, high-achieving, working-class girl, do you give the same advice as the middle-class parent, or do you say, “Follow the vocational route”? That kind of dilemma is not to do with the failings of any careers service, it is to do with the flaws within the system—that we have a system that makes this enormous division between a valued academic route and an undervalued vocational route. While clearly I want young people to get good advice, good advice on a bad system is not a solution.
Q179 Baroness Sharp of Guildford: Picking up on what you have said, the evidence that we have had has indicated very clearly that what we do need is a much clearer set of routes and pathways for young people: a co-ordinated, high-quality transition system across the 16 to 19 phase of education. Looking back, in 2004, the Tomlinson report recommended a system of core learning, the basic generic learning that young people had to have, and main learning where they could pick up some of the areas that they were interested in. Do you think that recommendation might still apply today? If co-ordinating bodies for transitions for school leavers were to be established, what should be their main features? Should we be looking at 14 to 19 rather than 16 to 19?
Professor Ann Hodgson: I have to declare an interest here because I was part of the Tomlinson review on one of the groups. The main recommendation from Mike Tomlinson at that time was for a unified qualifications system and that all learning should come within an overarching framework. He called it a diploma. It does not really matter what you call it; it could be a baccalaureate, whatever. The importance of that was that all young people received a core of learning that was felt to be important for 21st century life. It goes back to the question that was asked earlier about what is the purpose of education. It also meant that it was simpler because you could understand that if it is all one qualification, but there are different pathways within it, at least everyone can be asked, “Are you on your bacc or are you are on your diploma? Which part of it are you doing?” It is a way of making sure that everyone gets a certain core of learning, and that is not the case currently.
The pathways that people take at the moment are very different in what they offer the young person, both in their curriculum and in the opportunities going forward. It would offer a core curriculum that we could say, “In this country we have common things that all young people are given access to, and then there are specialisms which they add on to that, and that is our system”. At the moment it is difficult to describe what our system is. We have names of things, such as the English baccalaureate and the technical baccalaureate. They are not qualifications; they are performance measures. It is extremely confusing for people from outside to understand what our system is about. No wonder it is difficult for parents and young people—and they will play safe, as you have said, which might not be the right thing for them.
I will argue for as long as it takes that there is a need for a single unified system of qualifications for 14 to 19 year-olds that allows people to gradually progress up, but within a common framework. That does not mean everyone is doing the same thing: far from it. There will be some features of that system that everyone does, but then there will be opportunity to specialise, to be in different environments out in work or in an educational institution. That is my answer to the first part of your question.
Professor Kevin Orr: Many of us see the Tomlinson report as being a missed opportunity. It had many tremendous recommendations. It also perhaps shows the dangers of policymakers extracting one part of a policy, which was diplomas, without seeing it as part of a unified system, which would have included A-levels and GCSEs. They were doomed to a well-warned failure right from the beginning.
All I would add to what Ann has said is that at the moment the pathways we have are utterly skewed towards A-levels and higher education. In the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England, a large sample of young people was surveyed in the early 2000s and, at age 14, 85% of young people intended to stay in education. At that time it was not compulsory, but 85% intended to stay in education. Some 90% of those intended to go to university. Clearly, half of them were disappointed. We have a system at the moment where university is seen as the sun, the moon and the stars, and everything else is considered a failure. So we do need to identify clearer vocational pathways, but it is also important to make sure that those pathways have status. We heard earlier this morning that it is not just a policy change, it is a cultural change that is required, and that is a difficult thing to do. We do need more coherent pathways.
Whether that means that we need some kind of UCAS-type system, a single point of entry through a body like UCAS, I remain unconvinced either way. I would say that the recent history of further education, vocational education and training is littered with an alphabet soup of bodies that have existed for a very short time doing this kind of work. Some of these agencies have been very well intentioned, staffed by very bright people, but sometimes they have the lifespan of a fruit fly. If a body is to be brought into existence, it needs to have political consensus and some kind of stability which may even exist beyond an election. So that would be my concern with setting up a new body. I am not against it, but I am concerned that any body would be politically vulnerable.
Professor Ann Hodgson: Perhaps I might add to that. At the local level, the one thing that absolutely needs to happen is that schools, colleges and work-based training providers need to collaborate. There are no incentives for them to do that at the moment: in fact, quite the reverse. Until that happens, you will not get impartial careers education, information, advice and guidance, nor will you get clear route ways through. So if there is any kind of work in this area around transitions, it needs to be clear how it works at the local level. That may be that the whole locality becomes responsible for the destinations of young people, not individual institutions—going back to an earlier point—and that there are area agreements about what kind of provision needs to be in that locality, and that involves employers as well.
Earlier, when we gave evidence to the Committee, before it sat, we were talking about the idea of progression and transition boards at the local level, which would involve the providers but would have to have some kind of independent input. The only people at local level who can be independent are the local authorities. They are the only ones who have the duty to provide care and education for 100% of the young people in their locality. Nobody else has that. So I cannot see any other body taking that on at the local level. It is very difficult for them to do now because they are hit constantly by austerity measures, and the kinds of 14 to 19 partnerships that were at local authority level are being decimated across the country. If there is anything that this Committee can do to suggest some form of local body that is in place to look at transitions and has all the data that we talked about earlier, that looks at pathways through, looks at efficiencies, this is where money could be saved because there is so much inefficiency at the local level now because you have overprovision already available and underprovision of other types of opportunities for young people.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: While we are on the Tomlinson issue, could I raise one further question, particularly with Professor Hodgson? In the evidence that you gave to us, you talked about research you had done in a number of localities suggesting that a broader mix of general and vocational qualifications at key stage 4 had a highly motivating effect on sections of the 14 to 16 cohort and increased their aspiration to post-16 study, particularly at level 3. Would you like to elaborate a little on that?
Professor Ann Hodgson: For everyone, the idea of having more practical and applied learning, not just for lower attainers but for the whole cohort, goes back to the idea that was in Tomlinson of having a broad 14-16 phase, but which included both vocational and academic qualifications—or, if not qualifications, then experiences. Unfortunately, the focus on the English baccalaureate, as it is currently conceived, is too large to allow a lot of vocational work to happen at that stage, and the way that it is examined fails a lot of young people.
I am coming to answer your question. What was motivational for the young people in the study that we did in the south-west was that they had access to a range of types of learning, and they could be successful in different parts of it. That motivated them to think that they could go on to do something further, rather than being turned completely off and leaving education altogether, or being put on a course where they exit at 17. Unfortunately, a lot of the recent reforms in this area have not helped. Of course, all young people should study English, maths, science, modern foreign languages, and so on, but whether they should all have to take GCSE examinations in those subjects is my question. There are other ways of learning—applied learning and vocational learning—that could include those kinds of experiences, but not with a terminal examination that is purely externally assessed through exams. So there is a lot that can be done in that space to ensure that young people have a broad education but are motivated to continue.
Q180 Lord Farmer: Can we talk about funding in relation to the disparities between further education and higher education? What changes to the funding of further education do you believe are necessary to improve quality outcomes for the middle attainers and the underserved groups that we are looking at? Where could this funding come from? Are there ways of appropriating funding from elsewhere?
Professor Kevin Orr: One of the things I find refreshing about the way you are looking at this issue is that you are talking about a very large group, perhaps the majority, of young people who have been overlooked by policymakers and others in the past. Many of them are in vocational courses and further education, and so on, which, despite being a very large group of young people, and indeed adults, is not funded as generously as schools and universities. At the level of equity, it is right that further education, vocational education and training, is funded at the same level as schools. That would be a start.
As to where the money comes from, the comprehensive spending review last week found money that the nation did not think the nation had. This is an important issue. We are talking about 40% to 50% of young people, depending how you measure it. Surely this should be an absolute priority for the Government. I know that there has been the suggestion that half a billion could be taken from higher education and brought into further education, and I can understand there is a notion of equality there, but it is the equality of misery. I should declare an interest. I know that it will be a university like mine, a post-1992 widening participation university, which will feel that cut more than elite universities, because we rely more upon public funding because we take in more of the local students, working-class students, first-generation university students, than do Russell group universities. So I am not about to suggest taking half a billion from HE and placing it into FE; it has to come from elsewhere.
Professor Ann Hodgson: Can I make a couple of interventions here? I agree with what Kevin has said. This goes back to a point that I mentioned earlier. We should allow young people who have not gained five A* to Cs at 16 to have a three-year programme. That is the way they will succeed and be able to go on. While that might cost more in the short term, long term it must be saving money because people will be more able to get into the labour market, bring up stable families, and so on.
The other issue for this particular group is the importance of additional support in terms of English and mathematics, which is a difficult issue for further education colleges. It is skewing all their provision at the moment. I will not say all schools, but very often schools will not take young people who do not have a C grade at GCSE English and maths, so where can they go? They go to further education colleges or work-based learning providers. That costs a huge amount of money to take people again through English and mathematics when they have failed. It is a very difficult task, particularly if you want to contextualise it within vocational education and training, which is likely to be more successful. So there needs to be more money for those learners who need more support over time.
Since the removal of the educational maintenance allowance, it is difficult for a lot of young people, in terms of transport, to get to their provision. Again, something needs to be looked at in that area.
In my view, one of the things that would save a lot of money is more efficiencies at local level in terms of overprovision in some cases and underprovision in other cases, so you looked at areas according to the kind of provision there. Some of the sizes of school sixth forms, and classes in school sixth forms, are not efficient—and they are taking money from lower down the school to support their sixth form provision. This is purely to do with the status that a sixth form gives to a school. I understand the importance of role models and status for schools, but why could there not be more shared 16 to 19 provision across an area that each of the schools contributes to so you can get the staff who like to teach at that level? Now that sixth form colleges are allowed to become academies, maybe that will become much more of a possibility for many areas, that you have 16 to 19 provision which is much more efficient than each individual institution having its own small sixth form. It is a thought.
Q181 Lord Patel: I want to explore with you the role of employers in apprenticeships particularly. Do you think there are enough incentives in place for the employers to offer good-quality apprenticeships that will lead to learning life skills, et cetera? What might be the role of partnerships, particularly local partnerships, in promoting good-quality apprenticeships? There are some good examples in the evidence we have heard where even the public sector has used procurement as a means of achieving some of these apprenticeships. Do you think that might be used more widely, not just in the public sector but also in the private sector?
Professor Kevin Orr: Arguably, at the moment there is an incentive for employers to hire graduates, because they do not have to pay for their training; that is being paid for elsewhere, either through public funding or the students themselves. So at the moment, arguably there is an incentive for employers not to be involved in apprenticeships in many cases, certainly higher-level apprenticeships, because it is going to cost them. Some kind of policy that would incentivise employers, especially with those level 3 apprenticeships and above, would be extremely useful in this area. Public sector procurement is a way of doing that and, as you say, a way that has been successful. Certainly in the part of the country where I live it has been successful, where the local authority, for example, has said, “We will deal with you if you do this”. Manchester is one example.
The Government, both at local and national level, have to be very clear about what is expected from employers, especially with regard to apprenticeships. It has been said before that many of them are at level 2. There is evidence that suggests that many of these apprenticeships are not really employment based. They are, “Well, they’re not what my dad did as an apprenticeship”, let us put it that way. They are rather ersatz versions, which risks demeaning the brand of apprenticeship. I would say at a local level, many further education colleges—I know not all of them—are very, very good at working with local employers. I am thinking about places such as where I work in Huddersfield: Kirklees College works with very major companies: Borg Warner is one example that comes to mind. Burnley College works with Silentnight for a range of different vocational education and training, not just apprenticeships.
Those local partnerships do exist, often with further education at their centre, where there is listening on both sides and an agreement as to what each part of that discussion can genuinely offer. Looking at those kinds of local partnerships, which are relatively stable because they are rooted in the local area, is possibly a way forward. Certainly, if government can incentivise employers on vocational education and training through procurement, possibly through some funding, that would be helpful.
Professor Ann Hodgson: We have been doing some work at the institute on what is called two-way street leadership exchange. This is where employer leaders and leaders from colleges, or work-based training providers, work together to develop specific training for employers in a locality. Where this works well is where it is sector based, not generic, and is local; there is a win on both sides. There is a genuine discussion about, “What is it you really need? What is the problem we are trying to solve here?”, and then, “What’s the solution to that?”. Where that has happened, and you can demonstrate benefits on both sides, it can be extremely successful.
I was amazed, to be honest, that this Government brought in a levy system. It was a big surprise, and I think a surprise to lots of people.
Professor Kevin Orr: Absolutely.
Professor Ann Hodgson: At the moment, it sounds as if there might be a free-for-all with the money that comes from that levy. Perhaps there needs to be some ring-fencing around parts of it for level 3. I do not know quite what it is, but I think it is worth looking at it more carefully rather than employers being allowed to spend it exactly as they will, because you will get a lot of what is called “deadweight” in the system and low-level training and substitution of training, rather than the technical and vocational level 3 and upwards that is wanted. I think something around that would be really helpful.
Q182 The Chairman: I am going to ask about responsibility within government. Looking at the clock, I want very succinct answers. No one is responsible at a national level for transitions into work. Who should be?
Professor Kevin Orr: We know that over the last 30 years there have been over 60 Secretaries of State with responsibility for this area, and that is untenable. I do not have a strong view as to whether it should be in DBIS or DfE. On balance, I would say it should be in DBIS. Whoever has it should keep it. It is the flipping of responsibility that is the issue rather than who has it. Let us find a consensus. Let us make a decision across party and stick to it. That is what we want, so that politicians, and indeed civil servants, do not have to keep on being told the same advice time after time from one six-month period to another. I am not so concerned about where it is, so long as it is stable.
Professor Ann Hodgson: I would agree with that. I think it would be helpful if you had one department as we had in the past, not DfE and DBIS, because then it has a proper location and you see the links between general and vocational education—and both should be considered. I do not want to add any more than that.
The Chairman: Are you saying that we bring education and employment under the same heading?
Professor Ann Hodgson: Yes.
Q183 Baroness Blood: We have to make a report and we will be making key suggestions. If there is one key suggestion you could give us, and you have already given us a couple this morning, what would it be?
Professor Kevin Orr: I have thought about this. The Government should ensure that in every town and city there is an institution which is well established, focused on vocational education and training, and has a remit for social mobility. Fortunately for government, these institutions exist and they are called further education colleges. So in terms of policy, I would say those FE colleges need to be better funded and to the same level as schools, and they should be encouraged to do what they do best, which is to provide decent vocational education and training for far more young people than attend sixth form colleges. Prioritise further education colleges.
Professor Ann Hodgson: I have said this before, but I would like to stress it again. I think you need to give young people more time. It is a question of time to get there; it is putting in the incremental steps that will allow them to get there over time, rather than cutting them off as failures at 18.
The Chairman: Thank you both very much for giving up your time to come to share your expertise with us today. We are very grateful. The session is closed.