Lifelong Learning (Participation and Entitlement) (Hansard, 10 March 1999)

§ Mr. David Chaytor (Bury, North)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to establish an entitlement to paid educational leave for people in employment; to secure comparable treatment for full and part-time students in institutions of further and higher education; and for connected purposes. It is particularly appropriate that I should be promoting my Bill today after both today's statement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, which dealt with the knowledge-based economy, and the various measures on lifelong learning announced in yesterday's Budget. The Bill is concerned with the means by which the Government's vision of an inclusive lifelong society might be implemented.

The Government should be proud that, in less than two years, they have done more to move lifelong learning up the educational and political agenda than the previous Government did in almost 20 years. Publication of the major reports by Baroness Kennedy and Professor Fryer, publication of "The learning Age" Green Paper, launch of individual learning accounts and the university for industry, the significant increase in funding to colleges, universities and local authorities after the comprehensive spending review, and yesterday's announcement on development of new learning centres across the country all show that the Government are serious about attaining their objectives.

The danger of any such expansion in education is that newly allocated resources will be used primarily to reproduce more of what we already had, and that those who traditionally have benefited from investment in education beyond age 18 will continue to receive the lion's share of new investment. That is the legacy of the highly selective and highly elitist education system that we inherited.

My Bill therefore focuses on the educational entitlement that all young people and adults should have if we are to achieve the widening of participation in lifelong learning that is at the heart of the Government's strategy.

The chronic educational under-achievement of our people is well documented. We compare badly with our major competitors: fewer children in pre-school education; poorer attainment in literacy, maths and science; fewer young people staying on after 16; fewer students in university; and fewer workers with higher-level vocational qualifications. The cycle of underachievement has been endemic for over a century, but I am delighted that my Government are now getting to grips with the root causes of the problems—in their drive to improve pre-school education, to force up standards in our primary and secondary schools, and to increase the number of places in our colleges and universities.

The vast majority of new learners benefiting from the Government's new initiatives will be studying part time. However, the financing of education—both in allocations to institutions and in the nature and level of student support—is based on the assumption that the normal mode of study is full time. My Bill calls for an end to this discrimination and an equalisation of treatment for part-time students.

385 There are many different kinds of part-time student. A woman bringing up young children by herself studies at home to complete the GCSEs that she did not complete at school. An older man working 50 or 60 hours a week knows that he faces redundancy if he does not learn to use the computers that are now transforming his industry. Thousands of adults trapped in dead-end jobs know that improving their qualifications is the key to a better life for themselves and their children.

Those part-time students are learning in circumstances that are, by definition, more difficult than they would be if they were able to study full time. They are working, sometimes in two or more part-time jobs, or caring for children or elderly relatives, or coping with their own or a relative's disability. They have never had a maintenance grant, as full-time undergraduates have. They have never had a statutory right to free tuition fees, as full time undergraduates have. They are not usually eligible for discretionary awards from local authorities or for access funds from colleges and universities.

If the Government are to complete the revolution in student finance that started last year, they must now move to end those anomalies. That is why the first part of my Bill calls for equality of treatment for part-time students. That means equality in the way in which institutions are funded. We still find that colleges where a majority of students are part time are funded less generously than school sixth forms and universities, where a majority of students study full time, even where the colleges deliver comparable courses. It also means equality in levels of student support, as most part-time students are still not eligible for student loans. Amendment of the Student Support Regulations 1998 to grant eligibility for student loans to part-time students in colleges is one of the most effective means of widening participation that the Government could adopt.

The second part of the Bill is more specifically concerned with vocational training. For the best part of 20 years, Britain's policy on vocational training has been a shambles. We abolished the old apprenticeships system and now find that we have had to reinvent it under the name of modern apprenticeships. We abolished the industrial training levy and found that employers were not prepared to train workers and lose them to other companies. We created Investors in People and then found that the people who received the investment were in many cases the same people who had always received investment.

Until recently, British companies still invested little more than one tenth of the average amount invested in training by companies in France, Germany and Japan. Is it any surprise that we have so few workers with NVQ level 3 qualifications? Is it any surprise that we have a productivity gap? Is it any surprise that, not to put too fine a point on it, it is BMW considering the future of Longbridge and not Rover considering the future of car plants in Germany?

So the second part of my Bill calls for a national scheme of paid educational leave for employees. Many companies large and small already invest heavily in training and there is growing understanding of the importance of that investment. However, the greatest part of that investment is targeted at those in the boardroom, 386 those who are upwardly mobile, and those who are already highly skilled in professional jobs. Such professionals have always had paid educational leave. The 1997 labour force survey, for example, suggests that graduates receive five times as much continuing training as non-graduates. No one would wish to deny them those opportunities, and my Bill would simply extend the opportunities that are taken for granted by professionals to workers who left school with few, if any, qualifications; to workers in whose family there is no tradition of education or training beyond school age; to workers who cannot help their children succeed in school because they do not have the basic skills or the necessary confidence.

For many millions of people, it is a question not simply of being the first in a thousand generations to go to university but of being the first in a thousand generations to get a few days training a year. Let us be under no illusions about the scale of the problem that we have inherited. There are 13 million people in jobs with no access to training. More than a quarter of adult workers have literacy skills that are so poor that they cannot read basic instructions. Almost one third of the work force have no recognised vocational qualification.

Finding the means whereby unskilled workers with little job security and no prospect of upward mobility can be enabled to develop transferable vocational skills is the biggest challenge for our lifelong learning strategy. That is the key to their economic survival in the knowledge-based economy and the means by which they can raise the educational aspirations of their children. The Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998 introduced that entitlement for young workers. The next step should be to extend the entitlement to all workers.

Belgium, Norway, Italy, France and Sweden already have national schemes of paid educational leave. Italy guarantees 150 hours per year. Belgium guarantees 240 hours per year. In Britain, the workers with the greatest need have always had the least access to training.

The United Kingdom supported the principle of paid educational leave 25 years ago by signing the 1974 convention of the International Labour Organisation. Last year, we reiterated our support for the principle by signing the European social chapter, article 15 of which calls for national schemes of paid educational leave.

The Government are to be congratulated on signing the social chapter so speedily after coming to power and on ensuring that many of its provisions are enshrined in domestic law, but if we are serious about widening participation in education and training, we must urgently consider the implications of article 15 and incorporate its principles into our lifelong learning strategy.

The inequalities that disfigure our society have been created mainly by a divisive system of education which has been more concerned with reproducing a narrow social elite than developing the skills of all our people. In the 21st century, no nation will be able to afford to neglect—