Clause 69

9:00 am

Jim Knight (Minister of State (Schools and Learners), Department for Children, Schools and Families; South Dorset, Labour)

I beg to move amendment 316, in clause 69, page 43, line 28, leave out ‘section 15ZA(1)’ and insert ‘sections 15ZA(1) and 18A(1)’.

Christopher Chope (Christchurch, Conservative)

With this it will be convenient to take Government amendment 317.

Jim Knight (Minister of State (Schools and Learners), Department for Children, Schools and Families; South Dorset, Labour)

The clause requires the Young People’s Learning Agency to issue guidance to local authorities about the performance of their functions under proposed new section 15ZA of the Education Act 1996. Amendments 316 and 317 will extend that requirement to include local authorities’ functions in relation to securing education and training for those subject to youth detention.

Amendment 238 would remove the requirement placed on the YPLA to issue guidance to local authorities about the performance of their duties and replace it with a requirement to issue guidance to providers. It would also remove the ability of the YPLA to issue any other guidance about any other of its functions.

Christopher Chope (Christchurch, Conservative)

Order. Amendments 396 and 238 have not been selected for debate.

Jim Knight (Minister of State (Schools and Learners), Department for Children, Schools and Families; South Dorset, Labour)

In which case, I apologise to the Committee.

John Hayes (Shadow Minister, Innovation, Universities and Skills; South Holland and The Deepings, Conservative)

It is not easy to contribute to the debate when we have had too few words of introduction to the amendments. Perhaps I can set them in the Committee’s mind more clearly. The amendments broaden the guidance to include young people in detention. As other amendments on detention have been passed, it is difficult to object to these. However, there are questions that should be asked. Perhaps the Minister will deal with them when he replies.

First, will the guidance be clear enough to ensure that those in youth detention have access to a coherent curriculum, and a range of qualifications consistent with that curriculum, when they move from home to host authority? The Committee will remember that we debated the difficulties of a young person being in a host authority away from their local council and the consequent difficulty of transferring information between those two local authorities.

Secondly, will the guidance ensure that a premium is placed on sharing information between those authorities, in the way that I have described? That is, after all, vital to fulfilling local authorities’ duties as set out in the Bill.

Thirdly, will the guidance ensure above all that a premium is placed on the consistency of training and education that is offered to those in detention? They are often young people who have been passed around for their entire lives. If we are to break that cycle of desperation, access to consistent, equitable and coherent education and training is absolutely necessary. I refer the Minister once again to independent and Government analysis, which suggests that a problem with training and education for those in detention—both young people and others—is the provision of a consistent diet of education that leads to qualifications which enable them to change their lives when they are free to do so.

Jim Knight (Minister of State (Schools and Learners), Department for Children, Schools and Families; South Dorset, Labour)

Clearly, there will be interplay between the guidance referred to in respect of the youth offender clauses. Our aim is to ensure that all young people have the right learning opportunities and support. We have worked with higher education colleges and employers to develop the new diploma. There are issues about the availability of diplomas in young offenders institutions and other youth detention centres, where most young people are detained for an average of three to four months. It will not be practical for them to study for the full diploma, particularly given that we have said that no individual school or college is capable of delivering the whole entitlement. It therefore stands to reason that no individual youth detention centre will be able to do that either.

However, the diploma is a flexible course. We are considering how young offenders might be able to study for some components that can then contribute to a full diploma when they are no longer in custody. For example, a small number of young offenders institutions are involved in pilots on the delivery of functional skills in English, maths and information and communications technology, which would be an integral part of all learning routes.

It is clearly critical that young people in custody have access to high-quality education and training consistent with that available in the mainstream sector. In the guidance to local authorities, we expect education and training in juvenile custody to place a clear focus on the core functional skills of literacy, numeracy and ICT. We had a long debate about the importance of those skills, particularly literacy, for those young people in particular. The guidance will set out how we expect that to be delivered, as well as the elements of the additional diploma entitlements that cannot be delivered, so that there is complete consistency. Where we can achieve that, we want to do so.

Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister, Children, Schools and Families; Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, Conservative)

The Minister would not expect a comment about reading and literacy to escape an intervention from the Opposition. Will he confirm that the guidance will recommend the use of synthetic phonics in the teaching of reading, using programmes such as the toe-by-toe approach, which is a phonics-based programme used in prisons? Will he also confirm that the guidance will be consistent with Government policy and the law as far as children are concerned, and that phonics will be the basis of ensuring that prisoners can read properly?

Jim Knight (Minister of State (Schools and Learners), Department for Children, Schools and Families; South Dorset, Labour)

Just because the hon. Gentleman talks most about synthetic phonics does not mean that I do not share his passion to ensure that all children and young people are confident readers and achieve their full potential in reading. Naturally, the guidance will be consistent with Government policy and the law—it would be bizarre to suggest otherwise—and, certainly, we want to ensure through that guidance that delivery is based on reading schemes that work. We know from Jim Rose’s work that the consistent application of synthetic phonics is the best way to teach young people to read.

John Hayes (Shadow Minister, Innovation, Universities and Skills; South Holland and The Deepings, Conservative)

Let us be clear about this. So the guidance will deal with content, methodology, qualifications, and the generation and transmission of information from one agency to another? Is the Minister saying that those are the essential elements of the guidance, following the history of inconsistency and incoherence in the training and education of offenders? With an assurance on that, we would be happy to move on.

Jim Knight (Minister of State (Schools and Learners), Department for Children, Schools and Families; South Dorset, Labour)

As I said, there is an interplay with guidance relating to the youth offender clauses, but the whole spirit of the changes in the legislation covering young offenders’ education is to achieve coherence, consistency and access to the range of qualifications to which the hon. Gentleman referred. That is what we will seek to deliver, and the guidance will be an important part of doing so.

Mary Creagh (Wakefield, Labour)

I have visited New Hall women’s prison and young offenders institution in my constituency. The Minister’s proposals are a massive step forward compared with the days of, perhaps, only 10 or 15 years ago, when there was a farm around the prison and prisoners were expected to do farm labouring jobs, which are disappearing because farming is becoming increasingly mechanised. Before we come to core curriculum issues, we should consider basic life skills, such as getting up in the morning, looking after oneself, communication skills and, particularly for young women  in prison who may be mothers, a massive focus on how to care for their children, not just while they are in prison, but when they leave.

Christopher Chope (Christchurch, Conservative)

Order. The hon. Lady can make a speech on this group of amendments even when the Minister has sat down.

Jim Knight (Minister of State (Schools and Learners), Department for Children, Schools and Families; South Dorset, Labour)

If my hon. Friend is going to make a speech, I look forward to it, and perhaps it would be best to respond to it when she has done so, rather than anticipating it.

Mary Creagh (Wakefield, Labour)

I did not intend to make a speech, but I know from my visits to New Hall prison that it is unrealistic to expect young women who, as hon. Members have said, come from disrupted and disadvantaged backgrounds, and who may not have been at school for one or two years, to go into a GCSE-level curriculum, whether they are 14, 16, 17 or 18, on day one in prison. Prison staff work incredibly hard with local education authorities and agencies to provide high-quality training.

I have been a trustee of Rathbone for seven years. The life skills training that it and other excellent training organisations do, in giving young people a different way of thinking about themselves, is more important than taking them from a learning institution and putting them in a massive, frightening institution—there is a very high suicide rate among young women and other young offenders—and saying, “This is just like being at school except prison bars surround you.”

We need to start working on the inside—I may not be expressing this very well—and on how people feel about and value themselves. We are talking about people who have been told throughout their lives that they are failures, and being in a young offenders institution is a further confirmation of that. Additionally, however, we then start them on a GCSE curriculum that says, “By the way, you’re going to fail again.” I am very keen on the work that Rathbone has done on entry to employment and life skills courses in prison. Will the Minister and colleagues talk about that?

John Hayes (Shadow Minister, Innovation, Universities and Skills; South Holland and The Deepings, Conservative)

I reassure the hon. Lady that she is making her case extremely well. Transparent passion is always better than eloquence. I have also met and discussed those issues with officials of Rathbone. She is right that many of the people we are talking about need bite-sized, accessible education and training because they have been failed by the system the first time around. It would be quite wrong to shoe-horn them into a system that was inappropriate for them.

In my brief contribution, I was saying that there should be an opportunity to provide the kind of training that is responsive to people’s needs and deals with them as people. Rather than take a rigid approach, we need to take a lateral and creative approach to bring those people back into engagement.

Mary Creagh (Wakefield, Labour)

I hope that I can be more eloquent as well as passionate. Rathbone has been doing prison work only since about 2003-04, but it has developed that. Nacro has also been involved in some excellent work.

Christopher Chope (Christchurch, Conservative)

Order. I am reluctant to interrupt the hon. Lady, but the amendment is quite narrow and talks about the guidance that will be issued by the YPLA. This is not a Second Reading-style debate on the whole subject matter. I would be grateful if she confined her remarks to the amendment.

Mary Creagh (Wakefield, Labour)

The guidance could look at creating bespoke, individual learning plans for learners as they come into prison. It could set a reasonable set of objectives for the learner to achieve, based on baseline measurements when they enter prison and the length of their tariff. They could then be measured when they leave prison. That is how to measure achievement and distance travelled, not by imposing a national curriculum or core skills framework that treats everybody the same and neglects the fact that young people may not be able to read, write or speak properly, or dress or look after themselves, when they arrive in prison.

Jim Knight (Minister of State (Schools and Learners), Department for Children, Schools and Families; South Dorset, Labour)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for those points. I know that the Under-Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families will have been listening carefully. She will take the policy forward and implement the measures in the Bill, and oversee the formulation of the guidance that we have been discussing.

As I said, the important thing that we are trying to achieve is a read across between the education that is available to young people outside custody and young people inside custody. An important aspect of that is the development of the foundation learning tier. One of the foundation learning tier pathways is to help young people who might otherwise struggle in independent living to develop some of the life skills about which my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield spoke so eloquently. Rathbone, Fairbridge and many others are experts at developing such skills.

I hope that with my reassurances, the Committee will agree to the Government amendments.