Clause 4
Education and Skills Bill
6:45 pm
David Laws (Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Children, Schools and Families; Yeovil, Liberal Democrat)
It would be timely to finish our debates on the clause rapidly, but I want to raise a couple of important issues, including the “or otherwise” element that we discussed last week. I have two questions for the Minister, the first of which is about subsection (1) and was touched on by the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings. It mentions
“full-time education or training which is suitable for the person”.
We would like to know how that will be defined, and what would happen if there were a course in a local further education college that a young person might consider suitable and that might meet their needs, but which is either full or closed because of lack of demand. That happens quite frequently at FE colleges that try to provide a wide range of opportunities.
The main issue that I want to discuss brings us back to our debates last week on amendment No. 70. I should like to know what other types of provision there might be for young people with high needs for whom education or training is not the right setting. In its briefing note to the Committee on this clause, the National Youth Agency said that it seeks confirmation that “or otherwise” includes provision of non-formal education as a recognised form of learning outside the classroom.
You will recall, Mr. Bayley, that we had a long debate on this issue on 31 January, when we debated amendment No. 70. In that debate, I referred to the suggestion by James Cathcart of the British Youth Council that the Government should consider a fourth option beyond those in the Bill, which are education or training, employment and sanctions. He wanted, and we want, the fourth option to be support that may help a young person to get back into education or training at some stage, but which may not narrowly meet the definition of education or training.
When we raised that issue on 31 January, the Minister, who was in one of his flexible and helpful frames of mind, said that I was right to refer to
“clause 4 and the breadth of the definition of appropriate full-time provision for which it provides.”
He went on to say:
“I have an open mind when looking at the range of support to be offered. I want to consider the evidence given by witnesses from Barnardo’s, during the first evidence session, through to Fairbridge at the end, from whom we heard about all sorts of good practice. We have also heard from other organisations such as Rainer, which did not give evidence. They all have something to offer, which is why I disagree with him when he describes it as a sledgehammer Bill. It is capable of being much more forensic.”
That was very helpful. I now want to find out how forensic the Bill and how important the word “otherwise” are going to be. I want to find out whether the Minister will be able to deliver on the commitment that he made on 31 January, when he said that he was
“certainly minded to support the notion that some individuals will need intensive, quite possibly full-time, support to get them into a position where they can access and engage with education and training. The important thing is that that support leads them towards a position where they can participate fully in what we would normally describe as education and training.”——[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 31 January 2008; c. 297-98.]
That is very helpful and important because there are young people for whom going straight into education and training, particularly if they slipped out of it before the age of 16, might be difficult, yet they may be precisely those youngsters who do not clear the high hurdles that our local authority colleagues set as a reasonable excuse not to be in education and training.
I referred in a previous debate to an individual in my constituency who did not meet the standards that meant he would be sectionable, or have such mental health or drug problems that he would automatically be given flexibility by those who police the system. From what I now know about him, he would be unable to engage in a formal education and training process of any sort. Indeed, how quickly would he be able to get on to the escalator that the Minister envisages? A small number of people would find it incredibly difficult to engage with education and training, even within the time that the Minister foresees. He said further on 31 January how he could envisage
“intensive engagement over a few months”.——[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 31 January 2008; c. 298.]
However, I think that he said elsewhere that he was not willing for that to go on for a long time, such as 18 months.
I appreciate that we are discussing a small group of young people who might need intensive support for a time before being able to engage with education and training, but I put it to the Minister that there are such people and that, if he fails to accommodate their needs in the Bill, a large number of them will end up having to be dealt with by the panels that will be considering enforcement. As a result, we could have different enforcement patterns throughout the country.
If the Minister accepts the wide definition of “or otherwise” that is possible under the clause, I hope that he will follow through that logic and make sure that funding will also be available to local authorities for such services. We know that they are often expensive and that they are not always available in the types of supply that we would like. For example, I can think of relatively recent examples of the drug service in Somerset having extremely long waiting lists of people who needed assistance in getting off their drug habit.
I want to know not only that alternative support will be available as a later pathway into education and training, and that patience will be shown to such people by allowing them to proceed to education and training in the right time for them, but that the money we shall spend on youngsters who follow the conventional route into education and training will be available in full to support intensive support activities that could be far more expensive in conventional education, inner-school, sixth-form or even employment settings. If the Minister can give us reassurance on those matters today, that would deal with one of our major practical concerns about the Bill.