§ 15. Mr. Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield)If he will estimate how many students achieving average and above average results at GCSE level do not continue into further education. [48102]
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Dr. Kim Howells)The youth cohort study of 1996 showed that 44 per cent. of all GCSE candidates in England achieved at least five passes at grades A* to C. Of those, some 2 per cent. did not go on to any form of further education or training.
§ Mr. SheermanI am grateful for that information, but it does not exactly square with what I have from the House of Commons Library, which suggests that only 90 per cent. of high-ability students go on to further education and that about 40 per cent. of average students are lost to further education. Even if we split the difference, the situation is serious. Could not my hon. Friend encourage sixth-form colleges and the rest of the further education sector to take a leaf out of the book of the private sector, and to start looking at their supply chain to see what happens to good-quality students who fail to go on to A-levels and university? Saving those kids before it is too late must be the best investment that could be made in the education sector.
§ Dr. HowellsWe are revamping the careers service to concentrate on precisely those young people who appear to be dropping out when they should be going on to further study. It was a great pleasure for me this morning to launch a new initiative called the Eagle campaign, 1235 linking St. John's college, Cambridge, with Lambeth local education authority. It will try to construct compacts with schools in the area to encourage children to reach for the sky in their educational attainment. That is important. Far too many of our universities tend to look beyond the towns and wards that surround them and search nationally for students, when they should be looking on their own doorstep and finding out how to encourage young children to raise their aspirations and sense of self-esteem so that they go to university and good further education colleges.
§ Mrs. Theresa May (Maidenhead)If further education colleges are to encourage more students to come through their doors in the innovative way suggested by the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), they need to retain their independence and flexibility in order to innovate and provide the courses that best meet the interests of the local community and local employers. Is the Minister aware of the concern in the further education sector that the Government might reduce independence and impose the dead hand of centralisation on the sector? Will the Minister take this opportunity to give some comfort to the sector by assuring it that at least the Government will not reduce the proportion of business governors on the corporation bodies of further education colleges?
§ Dr. HowellsWe are not interested in placing dead hands on anything; we are interested in tearing off the dead hands that the previous Government imposed on so much of the education system. We will open up the accountability of further education college boards so that they reflect the communities that they serve. That means that they will be able to tap the full potential of the community, not just friends of business men who happen to have been placed there by the previous Government.
§ Ms Margaret Hodge (Barking)Does my hon. Friend agree that the previous Government's legacy of the worst participation rate of 16 to 18-year-olds in education of 1236 any of our major competitors is disgraceful? Will he give serious consideration to the proposal in the report by the Select Committee on Education and Employment to abolish child benefit and transfer those resources to a means-tested allowance for students as an incentive for young people to remain in education?
§ Dr. HowellsMy right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and my hon. Friends in the Department are looking very closely at post-16 provision in this country. In doing so, we shall talk to every other Department in Whitehall about how it might be possible to move towards the optimum in terms of persuading young people to partake in education and training after 16. We shall be looking at every possible means of attaining that; no holds are barred.
§ Mr. Tim Boswell (Daventry)At least the Minister spared us the suggestion that his aspiration is to ensure that all children are above the average, but leaving that aside, will he acknowledge that the most important thing is to cause them to aspire to achievement, and to provide the means of giving them the information to achieve their full potential? In that connection, will he remember the importance of the further education colleges and—despite his somewhat grudging remarks—the remarkable fact that, when a previous Administration gave them their independence and released their energies, the level of participation and of involvement rose with unprecedented speed?
§ Dr. HowellsI would be the last person to begrudge the achievements of further education colleges. I believe that they have done a superb job, especially given the appalling situation in which they found themselves under the previous Government. That is why two thirds of them found themselves in very difficult financial circumstances, and why they must cut their way out of the jungle of absurd bureaucracy that characterises the brokering of education in further education colleges in this country.