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Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I beg to move that this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments 1 and 2 en bloc. I will speak also to Amendments 3 to 6, 15 and 16 and associated Motions.

I am delighted to be back in the Chamber to discuss the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill. It is the Government’s belief—which I know is shared by your Lordships—that the skills sector has been forgotten for too long. This Bill represents a landmark moment for skills, bringing greater parity between further and higher education. Noble Lords will have seen the letter from my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education outlining the Lords amendments tabled, the key issues raised throughout the Bill’s passage and our position on each. I ask noble Lords to consider their positions alongside the concessionary amendments and policy changes that the Government have already announced since the Bill was in this House. These include delaying the removal of funding for technical educational qualifications that overlap with T-levels by a year and putting the role of mayoral combined authorities in the development of LSIPs into the Bill.

Furthermore, we tabled a number of amendments on Report in the Lords in response to issues raised by your Lordships in this House, including the criminalisation of cheating services and the requirement for LSIPs to consider skills needed for jobs relating to climate change and other environmental targets. I am delighted also to announce that we have tabled a further concession relating to the number of encounters for years 8 to 13 students with a range of providers of technical education, which I will come to in the third grouping.

First, I address Commons Amendments 1 to 6 and the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Watson: Amendments 3A, 4A and 4B. We have been clear that local skills improvement plans should be developed by designated employer representative bodies working closely with employers, relevant providers, mayoral combined authorities, the Greater London Authority, local authorities and other local stakeholders.

The Bill already places duties on relevant providers to co-operate with employer representative bodies to ensure that their valuable knowledge and experience directly inform the development of the plans. This includes independent training providers, which are referred to in Amendment 4B, that provide English-funded post-16 technical education or training. Let me reassure the noble Lord, Lord Watson, that the views of independent training providers will be taken into consideration in the development of the plan.

The Government also recognise the importance of mayoral combined authorities and the Greater London Authority and their work as commissioners and convenors in their areas with devolved adult education functions. That is why, in the Commons, the Government brought forward Amendments 1 and 2, which place a duty on the Secretary of State to approve and publish a local skills improvement plan only if satisfied that, during the development of the plan, due consideration has been given to the views of the mayoral combined authority or Greater London Authority where it covers the specified area.

Further details will be set out in statutory guidance, informed by ongoing engagement with key stakeholders and evidence from the trailblazer pilots. Guidance can be updated regularly to reflect evolving needs and priorities, as well as best practice. We will ensure that the views of key stakeholders including mayoral combined authorities, the Local Government Association and the Association of Colleges are considered in the development of the statutory guidance.

Furthermore, relevant providers and key local stakeholders are already playing an important role in the local skills improvement plan trailblazers running this spring, which are spurring new collaborative working. I therefore hope that the noble Lord, Lord Watson, will not insist on his amendments.

I now turn to Commons Amendment 15, Amendments 15A and 15B from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and my noble friend Lord Baker’s Amendment 16A. Many of your Lordships have spoken passionately about our reforms to post-16 qualifications, both now and when the Bill was last in this House. We listened carefully to these issues and have made some significant changes as a result.

At Second Reading in the other place, the Secretary of State announced that we are allowing an extra year before public funding is withdrawn from qualifications that overlap with T-levels, and before reformed qualifications are introduced that will sit alongside T-levels and A-levels.

Our reform programme is rightly ambitious, but we understand that it would be wrong to push too hard and risk compromising quality. The additional year strikes the crucial balance between giving providers, awarding organisations, students and other stakeholders enough time to prepare and moving ahead with our important reforms. That is why we cannot accept a three-year delay, as the amendments to this Motion propose.

These changes are part of our reforms to our technical education system that will be over a decade in the making from their inception, building on the

recommendations in the Sainsbury review, published in 2016, which itself built on the findings of the Wolf review of 2011.

T-levels are a critical step change in the quality of the technical offer. They have been co-designed with more than 250 leading employers and are based on the best international examples of technical education. We have already put in place significant investment and support to help providers and employers prepare for T-levels. By 2023, all T-levels will be available to thousands of young people across the country. The change to our reform timetable means that all schools and colleges will be able to teach T-levels for at least a year before overlapping qualifications have their funding removed.

Last November, the Secretary of State also announced the removal of the English and maths exit requirement from T-levels. This is about making the landscape fairer, so that talented students with more diverse strengths are not prevented from accessing and successfully completing a T-level. The change brings T-levels in line with other level 3 study programmes, such as A-levels, which do not have such a requirement.

In addition, Amendment 15B would also require consultation and consent from employer representative bodies before the withdrawal of funding approval from qualifications. As your Lordships will be aware, we have twice consulted on our intention to withdraw funding from qualifications that overlap with T-levels. T-levels were designed by employers to give young people the skills they need to progress into skilled employment or to go on to further study, including higher education.

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The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education will continue to involve employers actively when making decisions about qualification approval, including through its route panels. These panels hold national sector expertise and expert knowledge of occupational standards which have portability across employers. Institute approval will in itself be a mark of quality and currency with business and industry; it ensures both employers and employees have the knowledge, skills and behaviours they need. The requirement for a public consultation and consent from employer representative bodies would duplicate existing good practice and introduce an unnecessary burden.

I next turn to Commons Amendment 16 and Amendment 16A. Throughout the discourse around the Government’s technical education reforms, there has been some misunderstanding about our intentions. I must make it clear that while A-levels and T-levels will be the best academic and technical options for most 16 to 19 year-olds, our reforms do not mean we are replacing all applied general qualifications, such as BTECs.

I can assure noble Lords that we recognise the need for other qualifications—ones that provide knowledge and skills in areas that are not covered by T-levels or not well-served by A-levels. We see a valuable role for such qualifications in the reformed landscape where there is a clear need for them and they meet new criteria for quality and necessity. Our reforms will

ensure that every qualification is high quality and has a clear and distinct purpose. All learners should be able to attain the skills they need to succeed in higher education or progress into skilled employment.

We set out the types of qualifications we intend to fund, alongside A-levels and T-levels, in our response to the level 3 consultation in the summer. This includes large academic qualifications, such as BTECs or similar, as a full programme of study in areas that do not overlap with T-levels and are less well-served by A-levels—for example, performing arts or sports science. We have made it clear that students will be able to take BTECs and applied general qualifications alongside A-levels as part of a mixed programme—for example, taking applied general-style qualifications in subjects such as IT, engineering or health, alongside an A-level core. These qualifications will still need to meet the new criteria for quality and necessity.

We have listened to the views expressed in this House and have acted on them. The Secretary of State’s policy announcements are significant changes that acknowledge and satisfy the aims of these amendments. To push these amendments would risk the whole reform programme and potentially let down a generation of learners. I therefore urge your Lordships to accept these Commons amendments. I beg to move.