Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, for introducing this debate and for the way in which she presented it. I sense, as the noble Lord, Lord Barber, said, that this could be a time when we might make the changes that we have failed to make over the last half a century or more. Despite our pride in what is a good and improving school system in this country, we have a record of relative failure on vocational routes. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, referred to the White Working Class Educational Outcomes report, on which we both served. To be honest, for all my years in education, I was genuinely surprised and frightened by the level of disengagement there is between people living in these communities and what the education and school system is delivering for them at the moment. Vocational education, which is the type of route to a better life that these communities particularly value, delivers poorer outcomes and poorer opportunities for people from these communities than it does for many people from more affluent ones. Instinctively, we all know that, if you begin to look at the good apprenticeships that we now have, they are not being accessed by people from white working-class communities. Fewer people from deprived backgrounds are taking the degree apprenticeship route than are attending Russell group universities or the university sector in general. This is not about saying, “That’s a route that serves people from this community”, but it is about offering real choice. While the curriculum is less rigorous, the qualifications are less coherent and the routes to employment are less clear, this route will not serve either the people in deprived communities or the nation and the economy in the way that we need it to. I welcome the Government’s announcements so far in this field, but adding technical education to one basket in 14 to 16 education is not going to cut it. I worry that our thinking is limited by worry about our past failures. Very often when I start a conversation on vocational routes, the first thing anyone says is, “We can’t go back to splitting people into sheep and goats”. Of course we cannot. No one wants that now. A knowledge-based curriculum is there for everyone, but we should not let our past failures blind us to the need to get this right—and we should believe in our own ability to do so. I have never quite bought into the phrase, “You can’t be what you can’t see”. I never use it. I do not like it. It underestimates the vision, imagination and determination of young people to be what they want to be. But I am sure that those young people cannot achieve what they believe and dream they can if they cannot see a clear route as to how to get there. That is the challenge that we face now. I very much hope that the Minister will build on the work she has already done in delivering it.