We now begin our public proceedings of the Education Select Committee. Today is the final evidence session in our inquiry on further education and skills. We are very pleased to welcome the Minister for Skills at the Department for Education, Baroness Jacqui Smith, and senior official Julia Kinniburgh. Will you please introduce yourselves to the Committee and make any opening remarks you would like to make?

First, thank you very much for the invitation. I am Jacqui Smith and I am responsible for skills, further education and higher education in the Department for Education. It is an important element of the work we are doing now, with considerable responsibility for work we are doing across Government. It is clear that the Government will not be able to deliver their plan for change, the missions they have set themselves, or the work of, for example, the industrial strategy published just yesterday, without the contribution of skills and of the further education sector. I am glad you have been doing the inquiry. I have watched with interest the evidence you have gathered and I am looking forward to answering questions and hopefully taking this area forward today.

I am director general for skills in the Department, with responsibility also for further education, higher education and skills.

Thank you very much. I will begin our questioning this morning. As you know, the further education sector has experienced a prolonged period of reduced funding. We have heard overwhelming evidence of the extremely detrimental impact of that on the sector. The Chancellor announced an extra £1.2 billion for further education and skills in the spending review earlier this month; is that going to be enough to offset the cuts in funding that the sector has seen since 2010? Will it make a meaningful difference?

I am convinced it will make a meaningful difference, but you are right, Chair, to identify that this is funding after a considerable period of a reduction in funding. I think 16-19 funding in further education was actually 11% lower at the point at which we came into government than it was in 2010-11. There is work to be done to get the FE sector back to where it needs and deserves to be in terms of the needs of the country. That is why, as you say, the Government are making a substantial investment in skills as part of the spending review, with £3 billion of additional funding across the spending review period, including £1.2 billion additional a year by 2028-29. I can talk a bit more about the future in a moment, but we did not wait for this spending review in order to start increasing the investment into FE. This year, 2025-26, we have seen the national funding rate increase by 5.4%, which is obviously above inflation, and higher than that for some priority courses and for English and maths, as well as the original allocation for 2025-26 where we were planning to spend over £400 million of extra funding. We have also added into that £155 million to support national insurance contributions. Of course, back in May when the Department made the announcement relating to the school teachers’ pay review body, we also ensured an additional £190 million into FE to support them with additional pressures, particularly around recruitment and retention. Looking to the future, the funding from the spending review is important not only for ensuring that we are improving the position of FE vis-à-vis the past, but also, of course, to respond to the challenge of demographic change, and particularly a population bulge. The funding settlement will enable us to support 1.3 million 16 to 19-year-olds, which is 65,000 additional learners by 2028-29. There has also been funding for the construction skills package that the Chancellor announced, as well as continued investment in apprenticeships and the growth and skills offer. If you would like me to talk about it, we have also made a capital commitment to further education.

We will come to capital in a moment if that is okay. You mentioned the increase in the number of 16 to 19-year-olds coming through because of the bulge in the birth rate about 16 to 19 years ago. Have you done the analysis in the Department to know the extent to which the existing funding that has been committed will simply maintain per pupil levels of funding, given the increase in the population, or the extent to which further education will be able to commit additional funding to improve the quality and intensity of what they are able to provide to young people?

You are right, Chair, that there was something about the end of the last Labour Government that meant that people wanted to have babies, and we are now seeing the impact of that at 16 to 19. It would be fair to say that we believe the additional funding will enable us to support the 65,000 additional students coming through as part of the bulge. We are working on the extent of how that actually pans out in the funding settlements for the next three years, following on from the SR overall. It would certainly be our intention to ensure that we were maintaining the level of investment that would enable us to deal with that bulge in the population and ensure that we are able to improve, for example, the quality of teaching and the recruitment and retention of staff in FE, because that is one of the fundamental areas of pressure that colleges tell us they are facing.

Thank you. We will come to recruitment and retention in a little while. On a separate funding issue, some Committee members were at City College Norwich yesterday for an interesting visit. The college told us about the issue for their finances caused by their inability to claim back VAT. It was a really stark example, but we know that the problem is common across the FE sector. They told us that they lose £1.2 million, which could otherwise be spent on the education of students, just from their in-year revenue spend because of the VAT that they have to pay. They said that equates to a 1.3% pay increase for all their staff. They also told us that they have recently completed a new building, in the last couple of years, and that if they had been able to claim back the VAT on the capital, they would have been able to put an extra storey on top of that new building. The impact is clear and undeniable. The reason why colleges fell out of being able to claim VAT previously was that they were not part of the public sector. The Government chose to bring them back on to the public sector balance sheet. It seems completely unjustifiable that they are still in this anomalous position where they are having to pay VAT and not able to claim it back. Can you tell us a bit about your discussions with the Treasury on that issue?

First of all, I visited City College Norwich as well and, as with other colleges, they mentioned it to me, so I do understand the situation. It is obvious that although we have discussed it with the Treasury, we have not yet come to a conclusion that would be satisfactory for colleges like Norwich.

Thank you. I will move on to capital funding. What would your response be to the evidence from colleges that the proposed £300 million in capital funding is inadequate and that it will not be enough to secure the cutting-edge equipment and facilities needed to deliver the ambitions of the industrial strategy?

I presume the £300 million you are referring to is the amount we were able to allocate this year for condition funding. Of course, on top of that we allocated a small amount to two areas that were particularly pushed in terms of their capacity. We also have the ongoing impact of the funding from the transformation fund. The response to that is what we were able to secure as part of the spending review in terms of the capital funding settlement. That was £3 billion by 2023-24 for schools, and the school and college estate, which is rising from £2.4 billion this year. That is going to enable us to put £1.7 billion of capital in over the years to 2029-30, to help colleges to maintain the condition of their estate. That is a combined pot and there will be an annual allocation that will rise in line with inflation until 2034-35. Secondly, we have £200 million of capital investment via what we call the skills missions fund, which will enable us to support sector-specific shortages, including by expanding technical excellence colleges as part of the transformation and reform that we are doing in FE, and then £375 million to support post-16 capacity to help through capital means to accommodate the additional learners who are going to be in the system.

Let me turn to the role of specialist colleges. We have received evidence that specialist colleges are underfunded due to their legal status because they are not part of the statutory FE sector. Is there a problem allocating funding to specialist colleges under existing legislation?

I might ask Julia to comment on whether the problem relates to existing legislation. Of course, specialist colleges do benefit from the national funding rate increase that I was talking about earlier. They do tend to be funded, rightly, at the higher band levels so that they get more money. There are particular types of specialist colleges—land-based colleges, for example—where they have higher costs to deliver the subjects they teach, and on top of that we provide a 97.5% uplift to the core funding rate to enable them to offer those particular courses.

To add to that, if it is helpful, Chair, we have provided £125 million through the core schools budget grant to local authorities, but that is to support specialist schools and colleges with the employer NICs increases. That works out at around £496 per pupil in those specialist post-16 institutions. While they are designated separately—which was a consequence of the reclassification by the ONS—as the Minister says, they do still benefit from the core rates in 16 to 19, and we have ensured that they have a contribution covered from the NICs addition that we have put in.

That is all helpful, but the question was about capital funding. We know that they often have additional costs associated with running buildings that have specialist facilities and equipment. We have heard quite compelling evidence from the sector about the extent to which specialist colleges have to fundraise privately and have to live with facilities that are not adequate because they do not get capital funding from the Government in the same way as the rest of the FE sector does. Could you tell us how much capital funding the Government are intending to allocate for the use of specialist colleges during this Parliament?

It may be better for us to write to you about the particular capital issue, if that is okay.

That would be fine. Thank you very much.

Ideally, we would not have made the 3% cut in the adult skills fund that the financial position we inherited meant that we felt we had to do, particularly while not only maintaining but increasing the commitment that we were making to 16 to 19. We are still investing a considerable amount of money through the adult skills fund—£1.4 billion this year. Given the need to make that cut, what we have tried to do is to ensure that the money is spent as effectively as possible to maintain the entitlements that adults continue to have for their opportunities to learn English and maths skills up to and including level 2 and digital skills up to and including level 1. Adults still maintain those entitlements but, to ensure that that money can be spent as effectively as possible, we have devolved a significant proportion of it: 62% of the overall, but 100% to where there are mayoral combined authorities. What mayors say to us is, first of all, that they have a better understanding of where that money needs to be spent, and secondly, that they can combine it more effectively with other funding streams. They can focus it on the areas that are most likely to be able to deliver their priorities and, of course, to work into what the Government’s priorities are there. I don’t sit here and say that this is something that we wanted to do. We did not, but the devolution is particularly important in helping us to make sure that that money is still being used as effectively as possible. As part of the adult skills funding to those areas that we allocate to directly, we have also looked at, for example, the funding rates. We have looked at conditions around the extent to which providers have overspent or underspent. There is a discrepancy—what I am trying to say is that not every provider has got the same cut. We have also tried to make sure that we have focused the money, through the changes we have made to funding rates and other elements of it, on those that are likely to deliver the biggest bang for the smallest amount of buck that there has to be for adult skills funding. Also, if you look at nearly all the skills packages that we have developed as a Government—so the construction skills package that the Chancellor committed £650 million to, the engineering package, the defence skills package announced this week in the industrial strategy—there are elements of all those packages that obviously support the Government’s growth mission and that support adult skills, for example, through additional support for free courses for jobs or additional boot camp provision.

We have heard that the Government want to put further education providers’ funding on an equitable basis for 2025-26. What does this actually mean in practice? Will it go far enough to address college teachers’ concerns about pay disparities in particular?

I have said that it is clearly the case at the moment that if you are teaching students at 16 to 19, you earn less for doing that in a further education college than you do in a school or, in fact, in a sixth-form college. This is not something that is going to happen immediately, but I am quite clear that I cannot see a justification for that difference. Of course, that is part of the reason—not the only reason but part of it—why you see vacancy rates in further education colleges that are too high if we are going to be able to deliver the Government’s objectives for the skills system. There are several important things that we have done with respect to the FE workforce and pay. First of all, we are clear that the Government’s commitment to 6,500 new specialist teachers over the course of this Parliament includes those who are working in colleges. Secondly, as I suggested when I was talking about funding rates, in May this year, at the same time as we announced the school teachers’ pay review body conclusions and the additional support for schools to fund that, we also announced £190 million extra for 16-to-19 provision. Clearly, that is not quite analogous with the schools’ money, because there is a different process for the negotiation of pay in FE, but it was very clearly aimed at enabling colleges to deal with the pressures that come from trying to pay their staff sufficiently to recruit and keep them. One of the things we need to do better is to support people to come into the FE workforce. We run national campaigns around taking teaching further, which encourages industry professionals, for example—people who have had different careers—to come into the FE workforce. That has had some success since it launched, getting over 1,400 industry professionals, I think, into the career. We also want to make sure that we have better links to industry so that employers can play their part in making sure that some of the people they employ can support the development of teaching in further education. We have recognised the particular need to retain staff, which is a similar problem as in schools. For the first time now we have the targeted retention incentive for teachers in FE as well, particularly at that point early in their career when they are deciding, frankly, whether they want to stay in teaching. That is the point at which most people, if they are going to leave, do leave. That is up to £6,000 after tax in the first five years for teachers in some of those key shortage areas that we have seen in FE. There has been good take-up of that. I think nearly 6,000 teachers have been approved for that payment. It is an important statement about the change we want to make and the parity that we want to begin to develop. I am not saying we are near that parity yet, but that commitment to FE teachers’ pay is an important part of what we are trying to do. I hope that we will also be able to say more about the professional development we are providing for teachers in FE, because that is an important part of the status and the progression and how people feel about teaching in FE.

I am very pleased, Minister, to hear you talk about the fact that the pay disparity is not acceptable. We know that the median average difference between the pay of a school teacher and the pay of an FE teacher is currently about £5,500, but they do similar jobs and both are just as essential as each other. Do you plan to do anything more or think the Government could do more to address that gap over the next four years of this Parliament?

Certainly, the whole point about the spending review investment that we have received is to continue to ensure that pay at the very least keeps up with what is happening in other parts of the sector. Secondly, as I have already suggested, there is more that we can do. While teachers in FE and in schools deserve similar consideration on pay and conditions, they are not necessarily the same. Sometimes it is a different route into FE than it is into schools and, in fact, other 16-to-19 education. That is why the more we can do to get employers and industry to recognise the significance of teachers within FE, the better. We also need employers and industry to make a commitment to supporting that, whether through work exchange, for example, where industry professionals can come into colleges, or even sometimes slightly more negatively. For example, I was at Bridgwater & Taunton College recently. It does amazing work alongside employers, and one of the things it has is an agreement that the employers will not poach the people who are teaching—the electricians and other skilled staff they need. That combination of employers and industry working alongside FE is distinct from other parts of the teaching profession and there is much more we can do to develop it.

Can I just add two things, if that is helpful? One is on exactly that point. We are running two pilots with others. One is with Gatsby Foundation, looking at how we bring industry associates into FE. The other is something being led through the Construction Industry Training Board, looking at construction pathfinders, which is a similar point about how we bring those from the construction industry into FE. The other point is that the other element we have been looking at through the packages the Minister referred to, such as the construction package, is putting more into the high-value course premium. That is one of the mechanisms we have to fund those courses that are often a shortage, and that cost more to provide. We have been putting more through those packages through that high-value course premium, which is another mechanism to put more money into FE. The leaders in FE can then decide how they want to distribute across their costs, which include staff pay.

During our visit to City College Norwich yesterday, we spoke with a few of the teachers. One who taught electrical engineering was very candid with me, and he gave me permission to share this: he could double his salary if he were to leave that job and go back into industry, but he loves working with students too much. The college was very transparent with us too, and said it is a real struggle to recruit teachers because of the pay. In these trials or in any other programmes, are you looking at how you can make sure that you offer the highest pay possible to professionals to get them into colleges?

What colleges quite often say to me is that they do use the flexibility that is available within their budgets precisely to address that sort of problem. If we are completely honest, we will probably never be able to match the amount of money that somebody like that could earn working in industry. You therefore need to do a variety of other things. First of all, you need to make sure that the pay is as appropriate as possible. You need to make sure that you are keeping people who have those important skills at the beginning of their careers. That is the reason for the targeted retention incentive. You need to make sure that you have professional development for people who come into teaching FE so that they can feel that it is a worthwhile career. There is also this point that people have the freedom to work where they want to work, but employers have a responsibility, if they want their staff to be trained and if they want the skills for the future, not to poach and to support staff who are in FE. As Julia mentioned that is what we are trying to develop.

We are also looking, within those models, at where people are part-time teaching and part-time within their profession, which has a double benefit because it means that the individuals in the college are benefiting from the most up-to-date professional standards. I was in a college recently where they were being taught design by someone who was three days a week a designer and two days a week in the college. The students were saying to me how much they valued that they were being taught by somebody who is in the industry that they aspire to be part of and, therefore, understands exactly the skills that they need for that. We are looking at how we can promote that model.

In that same department where Mark spoke to the teacher, we met with students, some of whom had to be on home learning for the first part of the year because the college did not have the staff to teach them. Some of them had had their course extended from one year to two years, again because of a staffing shortage where it could not be covered. I do not believe I have heard either of you say that there will be a point at which you expect college teachers to be paid the same as school teachers for teaching the same subjects and the same qualifications. Could I push you again on that? If we want parity of esteem between further education and the rest of the education system, and if we recognise that this is mission critical for the delivery of the Government’s economic growth missions and almost all the other missions besides, having a lack of parity of esteem on pay seems a fairly basic problem. Working towards, with meaningful goals along the way, parity of pay for equal teaching of equal qualifications in different parts of the sector would seem to be a basic requirement for achieving parity of esteem overall.

That is a very fair challenge, Chair, but I did not want to sit here and say that we could achieve something, certainly in this spending review period, that we do not currently have the funding to be able to do. What I did want to do was to spell out the considerably increased, in my view, efforts we are making to get FE pay and, what’s more, recruitment and retention nearer to where it should be. That is something that we will certainly continue to focus on.

As you said, we have a high vacancy rate, but we have seen in the latest workforce figures that vacancy rate dropped by 1%. That is not enough, but it is going in the right direction.

I will drill down a little deeper into recruitment and retention. I welcome the answers you have both given regarding the pay disparity, but the simple fact of a £9,000 difference between a college lecturer and a school teacher teaching the equivalent subject and syllabus is contributing to the recruitment and retention crisis. I also wish to shine a light on the wider workforce challenges that FE staff are experiencing—the burnout, the bigger class sizes, and the insecurity of their jobs. While I welcome the targeted retention incentive payments of £6,000 for the first five years of FE teaching, what more can be done to retain college staff beyond the five years and to recognise and value their experience?

First of all, to go right back to where we started, the fact that there has been an 11% drop in FE funding since Labour was last in government is at the heart of why it is difficult to pay staff what you want to pay them. It is difficult to retain them. It is difficult to do the professional development that you would want to do. That is why those are the things we are focusing on—the increase in investment. The targeted retention incentive is important not only because it happens at the beginning of somebody’s career, but if you—I was going to say, “get over”, but that was not what I meant—are still in teaching after five years, you are much more likely to continue in teaching, so that is the right point to intervene with the targeted retention incentive. We have talked about quite a few of the things we want to do in addition to that. If you think about what we are already planning with respect to technical excellence colleges, one of the things that we have said, for example, with the 10 that we have already announced, which will be up and running from this autumn in construction, one in each region, is that they also need to be centres of excellent teaching that can then be shared more broadly. My experience, from previous times in the Department for Education, of what really made a difference for schools was pay, professional development, recognition of specialist skills, and the ability to be able to develop those. It is that model that we need more clearly to shift across into FE. TECs, for example, are one way in which you can really get into the nitty-gritty of what works well for teachers of construction skills, which is one of the areas where we need teachers in FE and where there have been challenges in recruitment and retention.

Another element that we have not talked about is that we also offer teacher training bursaries in FE. For STEM subjects, including maths, they are up to £31,000 each, and we are matching those rates to the bursaries that are offered in schools. That is another important way. In our surveys of those who have taken those bursaries up, 81% said that they were much more likely to become a teacher in FE because of the bursary being in place. It is an important point about attracting them. They obviously have the bursary for the training and then they have access to the TRI—the targeted retention incentive—for each of those five years. It is £6,000 after tax for each of those five years, so £30,000 in total.

I want to turn to the question of level 3 qualifications. As you know, the Education Committee examined level 3 qualifications reform last year. We urged the Department to retain the three-route qualification model, which provides for academic, applied and technical routes for the long term. Will you continue to fund alternatives to T-levels, such as BTECs, beyond 2027?

What we did, of course, when we came into government—recognising the concern around this—was to pause the defunding that was going to happen at that point in order to review in a pretty detailed way the proposals for defunding by looking at individual areas, and to ask the key question: are there appropriate routes for students at level 3 to follow? Is there an appropriate choice for students at level 3? Of course, doing that meant that we stopped the defunding of a considerable number of qualifications. What is important here is that as well as that we set up the curriculum and assessment review, which said in its interim report—and I agree with this—that while there is a very well-embedded and respected route through A-levels for the academic route and there is an increasingly successful and highly thought of technical route through T-levels, there is a need for a third route that will provide high-quality options for those students for whom the other two routes are not appropriate. I know that this comes down to, “Will you or will you not save BTECs?” The first thing I will say, of course, is that BTEC is a brand name. It does also represent a particular applied general qualification. What I think is important in that—we will need to wait to hear what the curriculum and assessment review says about this third route—is that in my experience of teaching and policy in 14 to 18, qualifications have rarely stayed the same for very long. There has been development. In that third route we need to be confident that what we are offering to students is high quality, that it is clear where they are going to progress to and, if we are saying it is a vocational qualification that therefore links to an occupational area, it should be based on occupational standards. That will mean a development of qualifications, but I am clear that there should be that third route—that third option for students.

We have heard evidence from parts of the FE sector that they were left in a state of considerable uncertainty when the Government undertook the pause and review. We heard, for example, of colleges offering open days and being unable to say whether certain courses would actually be able to be offered because of the uncertainty about the funding. As we go through this process with the curriculum and assessment review and the possibility of further changes, how will you take forward that process with the sector so that that situation is avoided and everybody has certainty? There is a question about certainty going forward, but there is also a question about certainty in terms of the currency and value of qualifications that students have already achieved, which it is important that any process of change does not undermine. What thought have you given to that process going forward?

First, I know that is what some colleges felt, but those were also the same colleges that asked us to pause and asked us to review. From what people have said to me, they largely felt that we had improved the situation because of the review that we undertook. However, given the scale of what happened during the course of that review—given the hundreds of engagements that there were—it was completed pretty quickly. I do understand that it ran across the point where open days and other things were happening. Yes, of course, we need to provide sufficient time for colleges to be clear about what qualifications will be funded by the Government, to ensure that they have high-quality teaching and provision in place. I do not think that should mean we do not believe we should continue to develop the provision for students, because it has to be the case that we are confident that, whatever route you take post-16 for level 3, it will be something that will give you high-quality progression opportunities. We would not be doing students a favour—particularly those who by definition are not doing the well-embedded A-level route or the increasingly well-regarded T-level route—if we simply said that status quo is fine because that is what people have done previously. It is our responsibility to those students to continue to make sure that we are improving that route. I completely take the point that that needs to be done in a way that enables colleges to have some certainty and enables the necessary planning to happen. I would also make the point that it is a pretty confusing landscape out there for students and for colleges. There are 5,655 qualifications for level 3 and level 2, and still 2,091 level 3 qualifications. I am sure somebody could make a case for every single one of those 2,091 qualifications, but I do not think we could be confident that all of them were providing the quality that we want for students and, what’s more, that the student could necessarily find the one that would suit them because of that enormous amount of stuff going on.

The first thing I would say is that compared to A-levels—which have probably been around for as long as all of us can remember, and which even the oldest of us in the room took, and in my case taught—T-levels are pretty new. They have only been around since 2020, so it has been a development throughout that time. Almost all the criteria that you would use to judge whether a qualification is successful are going in the right direction. We are seeing a big increase in students taking up T-levels. There was a 59% increase in growth of T-levels this year from last year. We now have 21 T-levels available. We have over 300 colleges and schools offering them. We have overall pass rates of over 90%. Awareness is growing. Two years ago, 14% of students in years 9 to 11 knew what a T-level was; now it is over 50%. That is important. Retention is improving. Yes, you are right that retention in the most recent figures was 73%. The previous year it was 68% over fewer subjects, so there is progress there. There is also a need to continue developing the way in which T-levels work so that we can get the benefit of a qualification that is clearly linked to occupational standards, where there are more teaching hours than are offered in alternative level 3 qualifications—given that we are a country that is an outlier in the number of hours we offer for students to learn at ages 16 to 19, that is an important point—and that has the industrial placement. When I talk to students who are doing T-levels, the first thing they almost always tell me is how much they enjoy the placement. Of course, that does not mean that there isn’t improvement to be done. We have looked at the assessment burden in some of those T-levels, which we will be changing. We have looked at the ability to be able to scale the industrial placements that will be necessary to continue to grow T-levels, introducing the ability for 20% of that to be done virtually, as is happening in the workplace now, and with digital for that to be up to 50%. We have put in place support through the T-level ambassador network for colleges that want to develop T-level provision and for students who want to know more about what T-levels are. We have seen growth, and we want to ensure that the nature of the qualification is such that it can continue to grow to the levels that we think it is appropriate for within the 16-to-19 cohort. To go back to where we started on this, that does not mean that we believe there are only two options: an A-level route or a T-level route.

On T-levels, the outcomes we are seeing are really good, particularly as this is a new qualification, as the Minister said. The first T-levels were sat in 2022, so even for the T-levels that were first introduced in 2020 this is only our third cohort going through this summer. We have 97% of those who applied to higher education through UCAS accepted in the most recent figures, which is really high. Importantly as well, two thirds of those who progress to an apprenticeship progress to a higher-level apprenticeship—so a level 4, 5 or 6. If you look across all level 3 qualifications, the stat for all level 3 qualifications is around 25%, so that is a significant difference. Many people who are doing the other level 3 qualifications will progress on to an apprenticeship at either level 3 or below. We are seeing that T-levels are making a big difference. The point of them is to embed people into great careers, and that is what we are seeing pulling through.

Minister, we have long talked about trying to get parity of esteem between technical and vocational qualifications and more academic routes like A-levels—this Government, the last Government and probably the Government before that have done so—but the evidence we are seeing is that we are still not there. What are the Government doing to try to promote more take-up of technical and vocational qualifications?

Going back to when I taught both vocational and academic qualifications for 14 to 18-year-olds, up to 1997, it was the same problem then. First of all, for all my experience in this area, one of the reasons why T-levels are important is because for the first time we have a qualification that can stand alongside A-levels in terms of prestige, challenge and, as Julia said, the ability to progress in the technical area. What that teaches me is that there are things you need to do with vocational and technical qualifications to begin to get that parity of esteem. As I said previously, the important one is that you need to make sure that if you are saying this is about an occupation and linked to a particular vocational area, employers have to really see that it is. That means there has to be a clear link to occupational standards. The other thing that those qualifications particularly need is an ability to have work placements that make employers realise that the people studying them are getting the skills they need. It means that those people studying them are getting that additional thing that comes from doing a technical and vocational qualification. It also means that you need to have careers advice that properly explains what the opportunities are for technical and vocational education, and there is more that we need to do. There have been developments, as I say. Young people are much more aware about what a T-level is now, but it is still the case, I suspect, that just by nature of the people who are teaching them, and the nature of being in a school, people have a more innate understanding of an academic route than they do of a technical vocational route, including apprenticeships. You have to be careful that the requirement that is already in legislation—that you get to see six alternative types of provision as part of your careers advice—is actually being delivered. One of the things we are going to do next year is to ask the Careers and Enterprise Company, which is running much of the careers provision, to map the compliance with that particular requirement so that we can be confident that students are getting the ability to see what the options are for them. It is not all about rhetoric, but the very fact that this Prime Minister made as one of his first announcements the setting up of Skills England, the fact that he has consistently talked about the importance of skills, the fact that he references T-levels, those are things that tell you something about what the top of the Government believe about the significance of that route and those qualifications, both to the country and to the individuals who, hopefully, will be able to benefit from them. That is by no means to say the job is done. We will need to continue thinking about how we can ensure that employers feel confident in it and that young people feel this is a route that they can take. To go back to one of the other points I made previously, that means you have to be clear if you do a qualification about where it is likely to get you and confident that that is somewhere you want to go.

That is helpful in terms of the specific measures around employer relations, careers advice and so on. Are you confident that that is enough to turn the dial in the near future, or do you think that in 10 or 20 years’ time we are still going to be having this discussion around how difficult it is and, “Oh dear, we did not do enough”? Are you confident that this is it and it will change it? Because with all the other plans and missions, it really needs to. We need those skills to be able to deliver on so many of the promises that are going to strengthen the economy. Is this part doing what it needs to?

I am confident that what we are doing is right and is shifting the dial. I am not confident that that is the end of what we are going to need to do. By the way, importantly, precisely because of the scale of the challenge that you identify, I do not think this is something that can only be done by Government. We need a cultural change with respect to the significance of skills, and that is going to need employers to feel confident about the qualifications that are being offered and themselves talking up the routes to qualification, whether apprenticeship or other technical routes. It is a national endeavour rather than simply a DFE or education endeavour. That is why I emphasised the point about the Prime Minister, because that is so important in terms of a cross-Government approach to this. If I am honest, the last two times I was in the DFE I am not convinced that what was happening in the skills part of the Department was resonating across Government in the way it is now. So it is about all those things. We have not solved the problem yet. It is difficult to solve for all the reasons you have mentioned, but we are making important progress.

The other positive is that the industrial strategy that was published this week is clear about the importance of skills in driving growth and driving those skills through those industrial strategy sectors, and has clear commitments on skills throughout, which includes FE as well as HE and the role of employers. It is clear that that is a central part and that the Government do recognise, exactly as you say, the importance of skills for driving the missions.

You referenced the requirement to ensure that all students get multiple options put in front of them—that they get that experience, because of the so-called Baker clause. I welcome that you are going to map that out and monitor it more. Could you say a bit more about the plans to do that? Does the Department know how many schools have been subject to interventions for failing to comply with that requirement? I would welcome progress in the future, but do we know how bad the problem is in terms of colleges not getting access to students and not being able to make the case for vocational routes?

I don’t know. Whether or not we know in the Department is another question.

Our latest data, which is actually from 2023-24, but we run this survey regularly, showed that in 90% of the mainstream schools and 89% of special schools the majority of their students had had meaningful encounters with FE colleges, which is the requirement. We also track the number of Gatsby benchmarks—the careers benchmarks—that have been met. At the moment, on average, secondary schools and colleges are meeting 4.8, which is a specific number, of the eight Gatsby benchmarks, which is high. So we do track that throughout. As the Minister says, one of the things we want to do is to then look in more depth at where we are not actually hitting the eight out of eight and where that other 10% is that are not giving those meaningful encounters, to make sure we can address that.

I think you would accept the urgency to close that gap, so what will that look like? What measures are coming?

That is why we committed in our manifesto to improvements in the training of careers advisers and to the two weeks’ work experience for all young people in the course of their secondary education. We have begun, with four mayoral authorities and with the Careers and Enterprise Company, to pilot what that work experience looks like. On top of the work that is already happening, those are the types of things that will help to make sure that what young people are hearing and experiencing earlier on in their school career is likely to give them a true choice on the basis of proper understanding about the routes that are available to them.

Is the survey data that you mentioned from a survey of students or of schools?

It is a survey that the Careers and Enterprise Company does. It surveys with the schools, but it will check that it is a true reflection.

It does not sit intuitively right with the evidence that we have received from very many people we have spoken to in the course of this inquiry about the quality and level of the information that is provided.

I am happy to share the background information behind that that the CEC put together.

That would be helpful. It is hard to find anybody who disagrees with the analysis that we essentially tell young people from far too early in their school career that the measure of their success is whether they get to university or not, that we provide them with poor information throughout their time at school about the full range of options available to them, and that there is a massive disparity between UCAS as a very well-recognised brand, supported by teachers who have mostly all been through it themselves, and as something well understood by parents, and then the total wild west around all the other options that are available. Are you really thinking about the structural level of the intervention that is necessary to make sure that young people understand that there are many routes to a successful life and that they have good information about all those routes? For example, are you thinking about a comparator system to UCAS that allows young people to get access early on to all the information that is available to them? Are you thinking about upskilling teachers to be able to understand vocational education, which almost none of them have been through themselves, so that we really start to shift the dial on this?

Yes. First of all, UCAS has begun to include, for example, information about apprenticeships. It is a fair challenge as to what should be the central place in which you find information about skills opportunities. We have improved, and we will continue to improve, the information provided through Government routes on how you search for an apprenticeship, for example. As well as everything that we have said, the point I was making about improving the quality of careers advice is about precisely that: making sure that people who are careers advisers themselves understand the scope and scale of what is available for young people. There is probably more that we should think about doing in how we support students who are going from school to college to have a smoother transition. That in itself would develop the links between schools and colleges and help teachers to better understand what is available for the sorts of students who want, or for whom it is most appropriate, to go to college. I am not saying that this problem is solved—it is something that we continue to work on—but we are making progress.

I understand why they call it a resit policy. It is an entitlement to continue studying English and maths if you have not achieved the level 2 requirement at age 16. The reason I think of it as an entitlement is, if you think about the counterfactual, I would not want there to be a situation where, if for whatever reason you have not, as a young person, been able to get your grade 4 in English and maths by the time you get to 16, that is the end of the road for you. Everything we know is that you will stand a better chance of employment and in all sorts of other ways if you have got to that standard of English and maths, ideally by the age of 16, but if not, you get the opportunity to continue post-16.

It is also a requirement of the funding colleges get that the students who are continuing at level 3 continue to study English and maths and to sit the exams. We heard yesterday in Norwich about the enormous logistical issues that that causes for them, given that 30% of their students get the qualifications above grade 4 and 70% of them do not. It would be helpful if you could speak to the issues with that policy.

It is a requirement of the funding because it is an entitlement of students and, therefore, you have to fund it. I was coming to it, but I understand that this is not straightforward to deliver. Particularly, it is clear that while there have been improvements in the numbers of young people who are getting to level 2 by the age of 19, there is also an enormous discrepancy between providers about the success they have in achieving this. We have providers that range between 3% and 51% success rates for students getting to level 2. You then have to ask yourself: what are those who are getting the 51% doing that the 3% are not? On the whole it tends to be, from the analysis that we have done, that you need to have high-quality teaching staff to enable you to do that, and a focus on progress as well as attainment. The qualification is important to demonstrate that you have got to that level, but if you are only focused on the qualification, you are probably not achieving the progress that will enable people to get the qualification. You need high expectations for all students. You need a whole-college approach to it so that it is clear that it is a priority for the college and there is support from senior management and from the other vocational subject areas that students are studying. You need good data to track students’ progress. For all of those reasons, I completely accept that we need to do more—the money is important, but not just the money—to enable colleges to offer the entitlement and opportunity to get the English and maths skills that you did not achieve at school, rather than the treadmill, as you have described it, of people continuing to take exams and being demoralised by that. The curriculum and assessment review will have more to say about that. We will have more to say about how we can support colleges to ensure that that is happening, and that we have more at the higher end of success and fewer at the lower end.

That is why I said these are the things that determine whether you are successful in helping young people to achieve. It cannot be solely about: you arrive, you have some teaching, you do the exam in November, you fail it, you have a bit more teaching and you do the exam in the summer. Everybody can see that that is not working. Therefore, you ask what more successful providers do. It is about the list of things that I just talked about, so then you need the focus on that. There are questions about what the type of assessment might be. As they said in the interim report, that is something that the curriculum and assessment review will look at and have more to say about when they publish their final report, but my feeling about this is that the solution is not that you change the qualification. The solution is that you improve the way in which you support the students to have the learning they need to get that improvement in English and maths, which is at the heart of what we are talking about.

That is also an important point, of course. Let us be clear: FE colleges are usually providing a second chance for learners who have not succeeded in school. There is an important prior question about what more you need to do in schools to make sure that you have fewer who need to have the second chance being offered to them by FE. We should credit FE for providing that second chance for so many students.

I really welcome your comment earlier, Baroness Smith, about the skills strategy being front and centre and right at the very top of our Government’s Plan for Change. The Government are being very honest that the country “faces a long list of skills challenges”, including “a fragmented and confusing skills landscape that lets down learners, frustrates businesses and holds back growth.” What steps have you taken to reverse that trend, and what are your priorities over the next 12 months?

As you say, first we need to be clear about where the challenges are for the skills system to be able to make progress. You are right that we have said it is unclear for students and unclear on how to engage with the skills system. That is one of the reasons why we have seen such a big fall-off in employer investment in skills over recent years. You have to be clear about whether the institutions responsible for providing important parts of the skills infrastructure have the funding, the support, and the prestige that they need. That goes back to our discussion about FE colleges. If you want to make progress on the areas where you need to make the quickest progress, you need to not just have a system that is essentially unplanned. You need a system where there is more central Government direction. For example, as we said yesterday, we have decided that there are eight sectors that are really important for growth in the economy, and we will prioritise the skills provision that goes alongside those eight sectors. There is quite a lot of detail in the industrial strategy about the priorities that we want for the coming year, as well as in construction, for which we have already made some quite important announcements about how we want to develop skills in that area. In the industrial strategy yesterday, on our priorities for skills, we talked about the additional investment that is going into FE and, therefore, the ability to be able to support the 65,000 additional learners going through the system. We talked about how we improve and shift support, and in some cases funding, to the priority areas. Julia talked earlier about the high-value premium we are paying to colleges for the provision of particular courses that link with the priorities we have set. We talked about what more we need to do with teachers and retention. We talked about the capital investment, some of which will be focused particularly on specialist provision for the areas of skills that we need to develop. What we have not talked about yet, but it was in the industrial strategy yesterday, relates to the growth and skills levy and the flexibilities that we are introducing in that. We have already said that from this August we will start foundation apprenticeships that we would expect to see providing an additional 40,000 opportunities for young people in apprenticeships in key areas. That will give those young people the opportunity to get into an occupational area and employers the chance to employ with additional financial support. It will help them to get into a particular area and also, of course, there will be shorter apprenticeships, which make the apprenticeship system more flexible. We have made a range of other changes to make apprenticeships more accessible. Yesterday we said that we will be able to introduce the ability to use the growth and skills levy for funding short courses from April next year, starting with courses in digital, AI and engineering, all of which are the types of skills that go across the growth sectors in the industrial strategy. That is some of the positioning and the priorities that will inform what we are doing in the skills area for not just the next year, but I hope over a longer period than that.

I will add one to that long list. Skills England is playing a vital role in underpinning much of what the Minister has said. It has already put out a couple of reports. The latest one, published last month, set out an analysis of the need in those key sectors, which we have not had before. We have not had an overview nationally of where the skills gaps are and what that looks like going into the future. That is just a start. It has only been in operation fully since the start of this month, and it will be doing lots more of that and working with employers and bringing together employers in the critical sectors to collaborate on how we collectively solve these skills issues. It is much less about the Government pointing at employers and employers pointing at the Government. It provides an ability to work collectively, and that is what we are seeing in the likes of the construction package, and we will hopefully see in the defence package and the engineering package that we announced yesterday. That is an important shift in the landscape as well.

The only thing I would say is please bear in mind the need to upskill existing staff as well.

That is the reason why packages such as the construction package include boot camps and the provision of free courses for jobs. That is adult skills provision that enables people to upskill during their working career. The short courses in AI and digital are exactly the types of things that we need because of the changing nature of work, and will almost certainly be the things that people will use when they are already in some other sort of employment.

My team have pointed out that I misspoke and said 4.8 for the Gatsby benchmarks but it is 5.8. Sorry—I thought I said 5.8.

Thank you very much; that is on the record.

You have raised Skills England and mentioned what you see as the strengths of the overview it will have. One of the concerns that has been raised is that it will, as an executive agency, in some ways have less operational independence than its predecessor body. What steps have you taken to ensure that Skills England is able to work impartially and, if necessary, to challenge Government policy in the pursuit of its goals?

There was not an organisation that was a predecessor to Skills England. The legislation that we took through essentially shifted the functions that were in IfATE into Skills England, but Skills England, in the way that Julia described it, has a much more authoritative view of where skills needs are, as opposed to simply, but importantly, the focus that IfATE had on developing qualifications. Skills England needs to be able to do all the work that it has already started to do: the analysis of skills gaps, the real granularity of thinking about where the real priority areas are, the convening of employers alongside trade unions and regional structures to make sure that the system is working as effectively as possible, and bringing employers together on that. There is a real advantage in independence, and it is completely operationally independent in doing all those things, but being able to feed that back into Government for decisions to be made about funding and the direction of policy is also really helpful and important, if we are to have an iterative approach to the way we develop the skill system. The other thing is that, frankly, if I as a Minister wanted to have Skills England under my thumb, I would not have appointed Phil Smith as its chair. He came and gave evidence, and you will have seen this is not somebody who is following orders. That is a reason why we chose him and why we appointed David Bell as his vice-chair, and for the quality and experience of the people who make up the Skills England board as well.

Are you content that it can do all the things you want it to do but also be innovative in the sense of there being space in its terms of reference to be able to challenge current policy?

I think the balance is right in that, yes.

One of the reasons given for setting it up as an executive agency was the need to act urgently, which is completely understandable for the Government with this as their priority. How do you plan to monitor and review Skills England’s operational effectiveness?

I was clear in Parliament as we were taking the legislation through that, as with other arm’s length bodies, there will be the ability to review the structure. If we think that it is the structure that is not allowing Skills England to achieve what we want it to achieve, we are in a position to change that. In the interim, on accountability, Skills England will produce a proper annual report. We have already seen the work that it is doing. It is very visible to people. People will very quickly get the impression and idea of what Skills England is doing and how it is contributing to this whole area. Of course, it is accountable to Parliament through me and Minister Davey, as the Ministers in the Lords and the Commons, and accountable to you in the way in which you are able to question it separately to us, which is completely appropriate.

It will be producing its own annual report with all those kinds of measures in it?

Yes, it will.

I meet often with the mayors and Bridget meets with the mayors. We have good conversations about the journey—for want of a better phrase—for devolution. There has been an enormous amount of progress since this Government came into office. We set out the enhanced skills offer in the English Devolution White Paper, which strengthens the role that mayors play in driving local growth and supporting the labour market and skills need. I have talked already about the devolution of the adult skills fund, which of course in mayoral strategic authorities is wholly without ringfencing. It is completely up to mayors how they want to allocate and spend that. Mayors now have a strengthened role in local skills improvement plans. They are now joint owners with the employers’ representative body for each of the local skills improvement plans. We see that settlement in the English Devolution White Paper as being a floor of the next stage of development, and we are continuing to work with MSAs on where we can go further. We have worked very specifically with Greater Manchester on a task and finish group for the ability to devolve further than that. A good example in the construction skills package is what we will devolve to mayoral authorities to enable them to bring a place-based approach to spending the significant amount of money that is going through that package. We are also keen to make sure that we are developing that not only in the current mayoral strategic authorities but also in those authority that are developing, including those that do not directly have mayors. We will have new devolution packages as new areas of the country come on. There will always probably a creative tension between what the Government devolve and what mayors hope they will get, but in the skills field this is by far the largest devolution to mayors of any progress up to this point. It is the start and the continuation of the process.

The Government’s youth guarantee to ensure that all 18 to 21-year-olds are earning or learning has been broadly welcomed by the sector, but we have heard that its provisions and entitlements should be extended beyond the 18-to-21 age group. What is your view? What measures are you taking to support people of all ages who are not in education, employment or training?

The development of the youth guarantee is an important—crucial in fact—development. The numbers of young people who are not in education, employment or training is one in eight in that situation. I think that is right. That is not to say there is not enormously important work that is happening, along with DWP, to support people who are older to get into the workplace, including the inactivity plans—they are trailblazers—that are happening across the country. There is a particular responsibility to make sure that somebody does not start what should be their working and learning life not in either. Once you have lost people at that age, it is much more difficult to get them in afterwards. That is the reason for the eight mayoral-led trailblazers backed by £45 million in funding to build and think about what will work for the youth guarantee and making that difference to young people who are not in education, employment, or training. Personally, I think it is right that that is the starting point where the real focus and effort is going.

To add to that, for adults as well that is what part of the Adult Skills Fund is there for. That will fund entitlement for people who don’t have their level 2 in English and maths, their level 1 in digital. That partly funds sector-based work academies, which is run out of the jobcentre programme that we join up really closely with. We have an offer that is there for young people, as the Minister said, that is really important given the high numbers that we see, but there is an offer for those who are inactive, who are older than that and who are adults. This is super important as well and the Government have been clear. As the Minister said, we have youth guarantee trailblazers, and we also have inactivity trailblazers that are not specific to the younger age group. We are clear that we need to have a system that works across both.

I will also add that foundation apprenticeships, particularly as we expand the areas in which they can be offered, are particularly suitable for people who may not be in education, employment, or training. I got carried away earlier on—can I just correct myself—with my enthusiasm for foundation apprenticeships and said that I thought we could deliver 40,000. Actually, we have committed to 30,000 foundation apprenticeships, so I am sorry about that.

In the Immigration White Paper in May the Home Office announced that it was planning to explore introducing a levy on the income that higher education institutions get from international students. I am a former HE lecturer and I am intrigued by what the rationale for this is. I see why in some areas it might be good to do it, but I can also see some of the problems that it might bring. Could you share your understanding of the rationale that the Home Office has for that? Secondly, if it is introduced, how much do we expect to get from it? If this is a promise to be able to invest in higher education and skills, what kind of figures are we looking at and where would you expect to spend that money?

In the Immigration White Paper, for the first time—I had considerable frustration when I was Home Secretary that I was not able to do this—there is a clear link between what, as a Government, we are saying about the immigration system and about the need to upskill domestic workers to not have a situation where you solve your skills shortages by importing those skills as opposed to developing them domestically. There is a range of provisions in there, including the first increase for very many years in the immigration skills charge of 32%. That will provide additional resource to invest in skills and conditions around the ability for employers to bring in skilled workers on visas based on their willingness and ability to develop workforce plans. In my view that is an important and significant shift in thinking about skills and the relationship to immigration, but the Government have a clear commitment to reducing net migration and have said that that needs to happen through each of the immigration routes, including international students. That is the reasoning, and there also needs demonstrably to be a link between the people who are coming into the country and the contribution they are making to the country. We retained the graduate visa for international students, which is internationally competitive and an important reason why students come into the UK. It is reduced from two years to 18 months, but it is still an attractive offer internationally. We also said that we thought it was worth exploring a way that could more clearly demonstrate the contribution that international students make. They make an enormously important contribution to our higher education system and, more broadly, to communities. If we were to go ahead with the international students’ levy, that would be money that could then, as we said in the White Paper, be reinvested into higher education and skills. We are not yet at a point—we said we would explore this—where we can talk about the details of the design or be clear about how much it would raise and what we would spend it on. I have spent a considerable amount of time talking with and listening to the higher education sector about this, including its concerns about how it might operate and what it might mean for them. I have made a commitment to continue doing that as we continue to think about whether or not this is a route we want to go down.

I appreciate the wider need to be in control of migration numbers, and you raised the issue of contribution. Do you think this is sending the right message on contribution to international students and to higher education providers whose success quite often comes from the contribution that brains from around the world make to research and teaching? Do you think this is holding those two things in tension—growing the home market of skills, which is absolutely right, but saying to the international market, “We want to control your numbers, potentially bring them down and make money out of you?”

At the research end, there are important ways in which this Government have demonstrated their commitment to continuing to attract the type of people into higher education who are particularly talented and really high value. International students are making an important contribution, not least to higher education funding. My view is that in some cases there has been an overdependence on international students to fill gaps in higher education funding left by the failure of the last Government to take difficult decisions. To be completely clear—and we are clear every time we talk about international students—the UK remains an incredibly attractive place to come and study. Even with changes to the graduate visa, it is internationally competitive. We have per capita a much higher proportion of the best universities than anywhere else in the world. We have high-quality teaching and research, and we welcome people to come and study here. That is the absolutely overarching message, and in actual fact the figures suggest that we are still continuing to attract people to come and study here, and I am pleased about that.

We look forward to exploring that theme further in our separate inquiry on higher education funding.

I look forward to coming back.

When I was talking about the industrial strategy announcements, I touched on some of the changes we have already made in the apprenticeship levy. On the point about hospitality and retail, we are starting with foundation apprenticeships in the areas that I identified because those are the areas of the greatest need in the industrial strategy and the growth mission. I have also heard from hospitality and retail particularly about the contribution that foundation apprenticeships in those areas could make to young people who might otherwise not have a route into the workplace. Therefore, we have said that while we are clear about where we are starting, we certainly want to explore developing them in hospitality and catering. Can I link questions two and three? You are making quite a radical suggestion, which is good, about a change to the way in which apprenticeship provision is funded. A solution to the sort of problem that you identified that there might be for older people is, for example, not having to do a whole apprenticeship but being able to access a boot camp or a shorter course. That is one of the reasons why we have introduced that flexibility into the system. I cannot go any further than that on what you are pushing me on at the moment. One of the starkest elements of the decline in apprenticeship participation is the way in which we have seen a 40% fall in young people starting apprenticeships while we have seen a big increase in people taking up level 7 apprenticeships, which are master’s degree-level apprenticeships. The Government had to make a choice, and our priority is to support young people having the opportunity to do apprenticeships. Level 7 apprenticeships will still exist. If employers think that they are the answer to their skills gaps, there is still every opportunity to do a level 7 apprenticeship. It is just that when the Government had to choose, we have chosen to try to put right the fall-off for young people that we have seen in recent years. That is why we will be focusing the money freed up from level 7 apprenticeships on foundation apprenticeships, shorter-duration apprenticeships and short courses, because that feels like the right place to be focusing now.

We have also said that we will retain the level 7 funding for younger people, recognising that point, exactly as the Minister said. On your second question, which you may want to pick up in your HE inquiry, the lifelong learning entitlement is a good and different opportunity that comes onstream from January 2027. That is where people can draw down throughout their lifetime the equivalent of four years of higher education, which will be level 4-plus. What we want to see from that is people being able to access shorter, modular training to upskill and reskill throughout their lifetime, as the title implies. We hope that that will make one of the big shifts in the sector and give people a different offer throughout their life.

Businesses will be able to decide whether their adult apprentices aged 19 or over without a GCSE pass are required to study maths and English to complete their apprenticeships. We know that having a strong foundation in literacy and numeracy helps people of all ages to progress with their learning and supports them in the workplace. What are you doing to support adult apprentices who do not currently have these qualifications?

Employers and apprentices themselves said to us that if you are over 18, they think it is important that you continue as part of what you are learning in your apprenticeship to have skills in English and maths. What we find, however, is that the requirement to take a qualification quite often means that people perhaps who are older, who have lost their certificate or who are not in the position where they need the qualification, for some of the reasons we were talking about earlier for 16 to 18-year-olds, are finding that requirement is preventing them from getting their apprenticeship. That was the reason why we removed the requirement for a qualification, but we still provide the funding to enable you to do that qualification if that is what you and your employer want to happen. We have seen that for 60% of adult apprenticeships people are still opting to do the English and maths. This feels to me like the right flexibility. You do not have to do the qualification, but the Government are still providing you with the support to do it if you want to.

Do you have the same plans to scrap maths and English requirements for younger apprentices?

No, for reasons that we talked about earlier on the entitlement for young people.

The Government have said that poor mental health is “a significant barrier to learning”. We also know from NHS data that about a quarter of 17 to 19-year-olds have a probable mental health disorder such as depression or anxiety. What are you doing to support young people with mental health issues in FE?

First, you need to get downstream of that, which is why the Government are developing specialist mental health professionals in every school and college by expanding the mental health support teams. Then when we get to colleges you are right that we recognise the challenges of mental health issues for students in FE and HE, but particularly in FE. We are continuing to work closely with them on a whole-college approach to mental health and wellbeing. We have published guidance on the principles of how you promote health and wellbeing, and in doing that we worked alongside the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities. We are supporting the Association of Colleges in its goal to get colleges to sign up to its mental health charter, which provides standards but also practical support on how you might support students in colleges. In Polly Harrow, we have an FE student support champion who also helps the work with colleges on mental health provision, as well as other things. I have met with Polly a couple of times and I know that she is doing excellent work in helping to support colleges in what they need to do in their ongoing pastoral, in the broader sense, and mental health support in colleges.

Brilliant stuff; thank you very much. I have two questions about SEND students. The first one is a little bit closer to home. There is no legal requirement for local authorities to provide free school transport to students with SEND who are aged between 16 and 19 and have already completed their compulsory education. We have heard evidence that local authorities, as they retreat into their statutory obligations because of funding restrictions, are now choosing to restrict free transport programmes, or even limit their criteria very strictly, so that special educational needs students cannot get into FE. I have been contacted by Save Our School Transport in Leeds, which has exactly this concern as Leeds city council changes its policy. Will you consider extending the statutory duty to provide free school transport for special educational needs students so that they can access FE? Can you, or will you, make it compulsory?

We are not committing to that at this moment. It is already the case that local authorities in their post-16 transport policy statements have to include specific arrangements for young people with SEND to ensure that they have the necessary support. They need to publish that provision so that students understand what is available to them. They need to also reassess, as the local authority, when a young person moves from compulsory schooling to post-16 education, the support the young person will need to access education. That is a level of support that is for local authorities to decide. In addition to that, we provide for further education through the bursary fund support for colleges themselves to say, “We can see that for this particular student travel is a problem,” and to be able to fund that. This year we have provided £186 million through the bursary funding as well as, through the overall funding rates, increased provision for colleges that have a larger proportion of students with SEND and other greater needs.

I will leave that particular campaign there, but I will be in touch with you separately. You know the impact that it can have on parents who have to reduce the amount of time they are working to get their children into FE, but I will pick that up with you separately outside of the Committee. My last question is about SEND policy itself. There was a feeling among some of the witnesses we questioned that the SEND policy is often overlooked and that a lack of ministerial co-ordination can lead to inefficiencies, limited accountability and fragmented policy. One recommendation we had heard was to consolidate FE SEND policy under the remit of the Minister for Skills. What do you think about that?

Wherever you put it, you create some division, don’t you? Given the priority that this Government have placed on reform of the SEND system, arguably what is important, which it is, is that SEND provision in FE will be part of the Government’s overall reforms of the SEND system. Of course, we are committed to creating a much more inclusive education system and ensuring that children and young people with SEND have the right provision, whether or not that is in mainstream provision, supported with expertise from other parts of the system. I understand the issues in FE because 20% of FE students have a declared learning difficulty or disability. Once again, we see FE playing an important role for some of the students who most need it. I have seen myself the support we are currently providing to FE colleges, including at City College Norwich, where they have particularly good SEND provision. I saw some work recently in Worcester, where they were working with a specialist provider to have a unit within the college to support students. That is the type of stuff that we need through the overarching SEND reform programme, to make sure it is including FE to the same extent as it is including change in schools.

Further education has often been described as a second chance for care leavers yet, as we all well know, outcomes are not good, and care leavers are three times more likely to not be in education, employment or training. What are the Government doing to address that problem?

You have rightly identified the problem, which I accept. That is why, for example, in the legislation that is going through and in the Government’s reform proposal, we are extending the role of virtual school heads to looked-after children, to make sure that they are getting the educational support they need. All care leavers up to the age of 25 have the right to support from a personal adviser, and that should include information about their career aspirations and ambitions. That is why care leavers are a priority group for the bursary that I was talking about earlier if they are studying in further education. It is why there is already, in the funding formula, an additional amount of funding in the disadvantaged block for students who are in care or who have recently left. That is why there is an additional bursary, for example, in apprenticeships of £3,000—I think it is—for care leavers who take up apprenticeships now. Not all of that support is being fully taken up at the moment and there is a challenge to make sure that the local authorities that continue to have responsibility for care leavers are emphasising their educational potential and opportunities as much as they possibly can, and making sure that the care leavers for whom they are responsible have access to what is already out there. As we think about higher education, we want to do more to make sure that we are upping the numbers of care leavers who are able to benefit from HE as well.

We have a bursary there as well, to complete the picture.

What will happen to change that? You mentioned making sure that councils are properly letting care leavers know about the support that is available and getting them access to that. Is that something that the DFE will enact? Are you in negotiation with MHCLG to make sure that the message is going out to councils about their corporate parenting responsibilities, to improve educational outcomes?

It falls within all the work that we are doing on children’s social care reform. It plays to the additional investment that is going into that to ensure that, whether or not you are a looked-after child, you are getting the support of the virtual head to focus on your education, and you have the support of your personal adviser if you are a care leaver. It is a fair challenge, and we should perhaps think more about how we can make sure that what we are already providing is being properly utilised. As I say, it is certainly an area where we are willing—not least because of our focus on closing the gap of disadvantage, and this clearly is an important gap—to think further about not just how we make sure that the current provision is being taken up but where else we need to go with innovation and additional support.

One of the youth guarantee trailblazers in London is focusing on this. They have a London-wide care leaver trailblazer, which is looking at how best they can support care leavers aged 18 to 25 as well as identifying those aged 16 and 17. Across the piece they are looking at what is the best way of supporting people. We are watching that carefully and want to see what lessons that provides.

As I understand it, the Department does not collect specific data on the post-16 qualifications levels and courses that are taken by care leavers. Do you have any intention to change that? That could be helpful in targeting support.

That is a particularly good point, which I had not previously thought about until you raised it. I am more than happy to come back to you on that.

It is widely accepted that the evidence is clear that economically disadvantaged young people do not perform as well as their peers throughout education, including at FE. What interventions are you making to support disadvantaged students, particularly in FE, and to narrow the attainment gap?

You are right. The Secretary of State, Bridget Phillipson, has been clear in recent weeks about the particular disadvantage gap that we see in schools and colleges, with the lowest performing group being white working-class boys. She has committed to the Department doing far more work on what we need to do to close that gap. I am clear that, first, if it is successful in what is happening in schools, it will impact on FE, and secondly, we will need to think about what is happening in colleges as well. Bridget has made an absolute commitment, and I will be very keen to make sure that FE is included in the work that is happening there.

We have two elements of disadvantage funding that go into our funding formula, on top of the core rate, one of which is focused around care leavers, supporting the conversation we have just had, and the other looks at low prior attainment. We have increased those amounts going from this academic year into next academic year. We have those two strands.

Finally, what is your assessment of bringing in a version of the pupil premium—a post-16 student premium that is comparable to what we have lower down in school—to help with better provision for disadvantaged young people?

The point about the pupil premium is that it puts into school additional support for the young people who are most likely to need it and then is incorporated into the school’s budget and spent across the budget. There is an argument for extending the pupil premium to further education. In the meantime, as Julia has outlined, we have a funding formula that I think more so in FE than in schools has particular provision for areas of disadvantage. If you are a college that has more children with special educational needs, more care leavers, and more requirements around disadvantage, first, you will get more through the funding formula, and secondly, you will get more provision through the bursary scheme to spend on specific support for students that need it. That includes things like if you are in a rural area where students have to travel much further, for example.

Thank you very much. We would be grateful if you could follow up in writing on the areas that you indicated during the evidence, but we are very grateful to both of you for coming to give your evidence to us today. Thank you very much. That concludes our public proceedings.