Contribution
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on initiating this debate. We have not debated practical and technical education in this House since 2010, so this is the first time in 16 years, and we have three minutes—it is absurd. This House is not holding the Government to account on education; we should have an education Select Committee.
I also congratulate the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, on holding her position in government. There was no chance of her being dropped—she is far too talented—but I thought she might be promoted; I am glad she has not been for the time being, because her knowledge in education is profound. What is more, her real virtue is that she supports the colleges I have been promoting for 15 years; that is, university technical colleges.
Those colleges provide education for 14 to 18 year-olds, and we now have 44 colleges and 21,000 students. The thing of which I am most proud is that they have the lowest level of youth unemployment of any schools in the country. If you leave a bog-standard comprehensive, there is an unemployment rate of 16.4%; it is less than 5% for those leaving a UTC. Last year, 22 of our colleges provided no one who was NEET, and that is unique.
So we need technical and practical education in our schools. These colleges are very popular; we have 45, but we have to turn 5,000 or 6,000 children away each year. We need therefore to expand, but we cannot expand by having new schools, because none will be built in Britain for five or seven years due to falling school rolls. We have devised a way in which we can improve technical and practical education fundamentally by inserting into a bog-standard comprehensive a sleeve of practical and technical education from 14 to 18—the UTC sleeve, as it is called. I am glad to say that one of these is going to open next week in Barrow-in-Furness. BAE Systems has its factories there, but it cannot recruit students from the schools in Cumbria suitable for what it wants to do. This school will be operational next week. There will be 120 students starting, and they will decide themselves whether they want to go down the technical or the academic route. Some 90 so far have elected to do the technical route and 30 the academic, all under the same roof. That is a triumph.
Quite apart from that, I am glad to say that Andy Burnham is very keen on UTCs and sleeves, because he asked us two or three years to deliver the MBacc. A sleeve will start in a Manchester school next year, providing practical and technical education between the ages of 14 to 18. We therefore have the support of rather a key figure in this area, but we need many more.
The thing about our schools is that a good technical education needs workshops as well as classrooms; some have to be converted. It needs machines such as milling machines, lathes, laser cutters, metrology mechanics, and CAD and CAM software. It also needs teachers capable of teaching those subjects to the children; that is, people who have had experience in business. It also needs the active support of local companies so that they can take their youngsters into their workshops, into their factories, for practical experience. I suppose that the Government will wait for Mr Milburn on technical education, but I hope that when we hear of their policy, they will recognise that they have a model for expansion, which is the UTC sleeve. That is the real heart of it.
I will give one small piece of advice to the Minister. I hope that when Mr Milburn has replied and the Government develop the policy and announce it, they will not just start technical education at the age of 16. That is too late; it should start at 14. We are the only country in Europe that does not teach its children below 16 practical and technical education. That is one reason why youth unemployment in Germany is exactly half of ours.
This is an important debate; I thank the noble Baroness again for raising it—it is excellent. I hope the Government will come forward with proposals as soon as possible. The thing about the sleeve is that it can be done instantly and quickly. I offer one last piece of advice to the Minister: whatever she comes up with in terms of the policy, it should not start at 16. We must start at 14. We are the only country that does not teach children below 16 a technical education. We are on the cusp of something very important and very exciting, and this will help the Government because it will stimulate economic growth.