Education and Skills Bill
10:58 am
Anne Pinney: To expand on that. These were young people in our alternative education and training services. They were overwhelmingly from disadvantaged and vulnerable backgrounds and all had very complex barriers to learning: homelessness, substance abuse, mental health problems, long-term under-achievement, low self-esteem and so on. These young people did not feel they had a choice at the moment because of their very poor experience of education to date. The challenge in this Bill is to give those young people a real choice by making sure there is the right provision for them and the support to enable them to engage.