Clause 1
Education and Skills Bill
9:00 am
Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister, Children, Schools and Families; Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, Conservative)
Exactly—split them up, and then join them together again.
I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire, and the Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster. I also welcome the spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, the hon. Member for Bristol, West. My hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) said on Second Reading:
“We believe that getting more young people to participate fruitfully in education for longer—and not just to age 18—is an unalloyed good.”—[Official Report, 14 January 2008; Vol. 470, c. 669.]
However, we have some concerns about compulsion, and about the danger of criminalising young people who have been let down by the education system—those who, at 11, fail to reach level 4 in English. Alison Wolf said in a recent paper that one of the best-established findings in educational research is that children who are behind when they leave primary school find it almost impossible to catch up. She went on to say that with very few exceptions children who perform well at age 11 do not figure as NEETs—not in education, employment or training—at age 17 or 18.
The Green Paper, “Raising Expectations: staying in education and training post-16”, makes a similar point:
“Those achieving less than five G grades at GCSE are six times as likely to drop out at 16 than those who achieve five or more A*-C grades.”
We do not believe that is right to criminalise the very children whom our schools have let down. We do not believe that it is right to subject them to monitoring by local authorities, with their educational, health and police records being sent to local authorities, and sensitive information being shared around as though it were Army recruitment information.
We share the same goal as the Government on the importance of raising participation, but we hope to demonstrate to the Committee that it is best achieved with the carrot of centres and better education in primary and secondary school, rather than the stick of penalties and sanctions. Amendment No. 1 attempts to draw out from the Government an answer to the question of whether compulsion will achieve the objectives set by Ministers to increase the proportion of 16 and 17-year-olds in education or training. Raising participation is an important objective, and it is one that the Opposition share. Indeed, the regulatory impact assessment states:
“In England...77 per cent. of 17 year olds participate in education or work-based learning.”
That puts England 19th in the table of participation produced by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development—below Belgium, France, Germany, the United States and Australia, and below the OECD average. It is clear that there are huge benefits for the individual from longer participation in education.
The Green Paper states:
“People with five or more good GCSEs earn on average around £100,000 more over their lifetime than those who leave learning with qualifications below level 2.”
It goes on to say:
“Those who participate are less likely to experience teenage pregnancy, be involved in crime or behave anti-socially.”
It also states:
“Those who participate are more likely to be healthy”.
I am not entirely convinced of the causal link to teenage pregnancy; participation rates have been rising in recent years, and so have teenage pregnancies.
The point about the importance of staying on in education and training is well made, and we agree with it. It is good for the individual, and it is important for the United Kingdom’s economy. The Green Paper cites a report by O’Mahoney and de Boer that shows that
“up to one fifth of the UK’s output per hour productivity gap with Germany...results from the UK’s relatively poor skills.”
The Green Paper goes on to say:
“And in relation to literacy, for example, a study has found that if a country’s literacy scores rise by 1 per cent. relative to the international average, a 2.5 per cent. relative rise in labour productivity and a 1.5 per cent. rise in GDP per head can be expected.”
It notes that the key driving force behind the Bill and clause 1 is the move to raise participation by compulsion and, therefore, to raise not only the general level of technical skills, but basic skills, such as literacy and maths. In that respect, my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire has performed a valuable service to the Committee in his dogged pursuit of the issues of literacy and numeracy in our evidence sessions.