Coffee House Shots
Can Labour crack apprenticeships?
If you don't subscribe to The Spectator now is the perfect time to give us a try. We're having an election time offer, three pounds for three months, that's a pretty good deal, magazine, digital access, and to top it off you get a free mug with Morton Moreland's election artwork. So to get the software, go to spectator.co.uk/ mug. Hello and welcome to Coffee How Shots, The Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Cindy Yu and today I'm joined by James Hill and Amanda Spielman, who was chair of Of Call and also chair of Offset. So Amanda, welcome to the Coffee How Shots Podcast. Today obviously is GCSE results day. What were some of the headlines that stood out to you about this day in particular? First of all, it was good to see relative stability. I think that's what everybody needs, a feeling that we're back to a steady baseline, something that gives everybody who uses results, confidence from year to year on how they use them. So that's very good news. The other thing I saw was the North versus South story reappearing and that's an interesting one because I don't think it's quite what it seems. In fact, there's been some pretty good research on this. Firstly, it's really a North versus London and secondly, demographics account for quite a bit of that. And thirdly, when you dig into it, you find that actually very little is accounted for by regional effects. Much more of it is about much more local effects than even within school differences. So the policy levers to address the differences probably aren't the apparently obvious ones of putting more money into the North relative to the South. It also seems like a results day where the COVID effects of the last few years have finally kind of been ironed out, at least in terms of results. Would you say that that's a moment where the education system itself has recovered from the COVID years or would you not say that so far yet? It certainly hasn't recovered yet and some of the findings are that it's younger children, for example, those who had their schooling disrupted while they were in that primary secondary transition period who most affected. So they're yet to come through. But I think it does show that we're past the worst and that's, I hope, encouraging for everybody. James, I guess, for you as well, what are some of the outlining issues in education that you think are either inherited from the COVID years or whatever else that the Labour government is going to be particularly thinking about? We're just focusing on this podcast, we're discussing and you're saying as a matter of how quiet summers were a better summer in some senses for the results. And I think that very much, if you were here in 2020 and 2021 listening to this podcast, we were obviously talking about the huge issues involving different exam boards and the way in which they're adjusted for the COVID disruption, of course, thing that ends up costing Gavin Williamson his job for the second time of the three times he left government. So I think that those are really sort of signs of important things. And I think the government will be just relieved, I think, that today has gone off, you know, good set of results to an extent, large amount of stability. Yes, there's issues in the system caused by COVID. Over the long term, those needs to be worked out. I would simply make the point, I think, that when you look at kind of back of recent years, the Labour Party was very critical about some of the decisions to keep classrooms open in 2020, for instance. And my concern is I don't use that as a point to kind of beat them historically with it when we talk now about the kind of disruption of COVID. But rather, I think an interesting kind of sense of shifting the kind of dynamics, the governing party of the day, which is more present perhaps sometimes more about the kind of the teachers and the elements of that rather than kind of the students. So I think that's going to be interesting going forward in terms of when they talk about some things that school curriculum is going forward, what are the kind of factors in play of the government of the day. And I think the other thing to watch out for is what Ross Clark wrote about on Coffee House today, which was talking about the difference between comprehensive school results versus free schools and academies and how the change to extend the national curriculum out there is going to affect those results, given that comprehensive schools didn't perform as well as those others. Interestingly, grammar schools, I think, have got the most over the grade of seven this time. And I think that would be interesting in terms of the dynamics of the Conservative Party. And you should contest, remember, Graham Brady's resignation back in 2007 of the issue of grammar schools and Theresa May floating at 2016. I wonder perhaps if in the next couple of days you'll see more kind of Tory leadership contenders talking about bringing back Graham schools in that respect. But obviously, I think it's encouraging us for different school trends as well. And maths really going up to a level more, perhaps some are suggesting a recognition of what the school chain reformers were in 2017 and the curriculum in that sense. Amanda. I'm just going to pick up James on that and on Ross's piece, which I saw, because it's important to remember that comprehensive schools and academies aren't what homogeneous populations, because many schools become academies precisely because they're weak or in particularly difficult circumstances. So you can't simply look at their results and say it shows that one's doing better than the other. I just want to make that caveat. There's a private state distinction as well today from the results, isn't there, Amanda? Are you worried about that? I mean, with the exception of grammar schools perhaps, there have been headlines saying that the private state gap has been wider than before. Because of all the selection effects and because most children in private schools don't take key stage two tests, we haven't really got the wherewithal to do much analysis of that. So people can comment and make informed guesses, but it's really, really hard to know. Fair enough. And James today, the education secretary, Bridget Phillips, and also has an op-ed in the sun, a place where you might not usually expect to see the education secretary, but also actually sounding a little bit like the former education secretary, Julian Keegan, because she's talking about apprenticeships. Tell us about that. Well, yes. I mean, in some ways, it's fairly obvious point over the past 10 years. We've had various accessions of conservative and out labor, education secretary's talking about the importance of apprenticeships and getting more people into doing apprenticeships. The amount of apprenticeships obviously increased under the last Conservative government. It was a big thing that I know that Hancock Williams and education minister were very keen on that. And then obviously, Julian Keegan as well, because by her background as well was very keen on talking about that. So Bridget Phillips and really, I think, moving her tanks on this lawn. And I think the key thing for labor is, of course, we've also got the migration stats out today. Now, labor very much did not want to put a figure on how many legal arrivals should come here. Despite the efforts, I know, for instance, of the Sun on Sunday, which I think asked her 10 times in an interview about Cooper in a 10 times an interview to put up for next. She wouldn't say a 10s of thousand-style pledge, and for obvious reason, given the way that was still used to beat the Tories at the end of it. So when I mentioned the apprenticeships and the skills genders, because they say we want to bring down numbers, they weren't saying how many people are going to bring down numbers for, but we want to have a skills and apprenticeship-driven approach. So I think that's going to be the interesting thing, and getting people into work and training, which has obviously been a traditional weakness of British policy of the past, say, 50, 60 years or so. So I think that's going to be one to watch in the context of that. So I've run apprenticeships. It's a very obvious it's a good day to talk them up, et cetera. But I remain interested to see as labor flourishes that agenda more, how that's going to change over the next couple of years. Yeah, Amanda, what would you expect to see from the Labour government on an apprenticeship agenda? Well, a focus on apprenticeships is very welcome. With a warning that this is a very tough nut to crack, because a huge amount has actually been done since 2015. It's been a real area of policy focus, and the apprenticeship levy was introduced to try and increase very substantially the flow of apprenticeship places. And it hasn't worked out as intended, and some of the reasons are obvious, and some I think are less obvious. But what it's done too often is to shift budgets into higher-level programs for people who've already been in work for many years. So many things that are now classified as apprenticeships are not that the classic first step that you or I would probably think of. And it's also led even to some first steps or graduate training programs also being rebranded as apprenticeships. So for example, any trainee accountant in one of the big firms now never used to be technically an apprentice. Now they are. So those firms are recycling the apprenticeship levy that they're paying back into that training. So it's proving particularly hard to find ways to generate the flow of those critical first-stage apprenticeship training places for 16 and 18-year-olds in worthwhile occupations. There's a distinction to be drawn also between Britain and many other systems. We have a historic deep reluctance to constrain young people's choices at 14 and 16 and 18. We may convert you out of the flexibility. And yet, good vocational education systems in most countries actually channel young people quite carefully to make sure that they can't make bad choices and that broadly young people's choices are constrained in ways that more or less match the labor market. We aren't comfortable with that or at least not yet. And I suspect that's one of the things Bridget Phillips will really need to wrestle with. Interesting. And James, on the topic of young people as well, labor today has been essentially forced to come out and deny that a youth mobility scheme with the EU is on the cause. Tell us about this story because it's been bubbling in the background for a while now. And I used to say labor's been forced to comment on it now. Yeah, so in the next couple of weeks, so expecting a kids time to have a meeting with us to von der Leyen. I think this is a precursor to kind of the the medium term of this government, which is going to be talks with Brussels to renegotiate the UK's relationship there. And one of the things that's come out today is this story in the Times Front page of the Times, which is that there could be some kind of reciprocated time-sensitive deal, which British and European Union, young people were able to kind of go between each other's countries, etc. If the details were fully fleshed out, but with the under 30s. And a freedom of movement, kind of. Similar, yeah, but I mean, it depends on who you. On kind of on the statistics, it needs to be worked out, but the way in which the Times have written it is just in much more about it's about the Australia, UK style deal we have when they're New Zealanders. So more of that along the kind of the old system where you could live and work in different countries. Now, obviously, I think the thing to remember, of course, is that it seems that it's more Brussels who are the ones encouraging this. So there's a lot of European reporting on it and sort of sourcing on that. So I think that perhaps would you need to look at, for instance, the youth unemployment rate and the under 30s on the continent, some countries versus here. So I think that's something to kind of look out for in terms of who are making the asks in all of this. I think the key a couple of things, of course, within government, the Minister of Europe is now Nick Thomas Simmons, who's in the cabinet office, which I think is an interesting sign of where the government's potential shift is going to be out of the foreign office into that. Of course, David Lamy has been touring the European capital. So I think Nick Thomas and it's going to be key in all of this and the relationship, the hidden wiring between London and Brussels on that. And then I think also talking to my white hole, there was sort of slight sense, perhaps, of Brussels thinking this was going to be like during the three's May years when their frustration in Brussels was we weren't presenting in London a full set of what do you want. But I think within white hole now there's a sense of we have changed, the government's changed, we want to have a conversation and see where we go from there. So I think these are the initial stages and we expect to see more of this in the coming months. And yet at the same time, they have basically said that youth mobility is not going to happen. It's not on the cars. Well, they've suggested it's not going to be a return to free movement. Of course, that leaves some work about what it could actually be. James and Amanda, thank you very much. And thank you very much for listening at home. Now, if you like this podcast, do give us a follow. And if you really like us, why don't you come see us live on the 4th of September in central London. We'll be at the Emmanuel Centre, Fraser Nelson, Kate Andrews, and a special guest. And to get tickets, you can go to spectator.co.uk/live.