Draft Legislative Programme 2007/8

EDUCATION AND SKILLS BILL

The purpose of the bill is to:

Raise to 18 the minimum age at which young people can leave education or training, and bring in the legislative changes needed to implement key elements of the Leitch Review into the UK's long term skills needs.

The main benefits of the bill are:

The proposed provisions will mean that more young people participate in learning post-16 and achieve higher levels of skill and qualification. This will benefit them as individuals, and bring significant long-term benefits to business, the economy and to society.
The Leitch provisions in the Bill will provide the key mechanisms to dramatically drive up employer investment in skills, for the UK to achieve world class skills by 2020.
Employers will benefit through increased productivity and capacity for innovation. Individuals will benefit through increased employability and self-esteem. The UK will benefit by being better able to compete in the rapidly changing global economy, leading to increased productivity and employment rates and decreased poverty and inequality.

The main elements of the bill are:

On raising the participation age, the key provisions arising from the Green Paper for the participation age part of the Education and Skills Bill are likely to include:
Duties on young people to participate;
Duties on parents to take reasonable steps to ensure their children participate;
Duties on employers to release young people to undertake education or training, and to check whether a young person is participating before employing them;
Registration duties on providers and local authorities;
Duties on local authorities and providers in relation to young people with special educational needs (SEN), and possibly some other groups;
Establishing an enforcement process and setting out a system of penalties.

On Leitch, the Bill will make provision for:

Introduction of a new legal entitlement for adults to free training in basic literacy and numeracy skills, and to achieve their first full level 2 qualifications;
Subject to futher consultation, legislation to enable the Secretary of State to raise a training levy in a given sector where employers want it and where it will be of overall net benefit;
Subject to policy clearance, provisions to enable data sharing, particularly with HM Revenue and Customs and Department for Work and Pensions, to help report on whether the system as a whole is delivering economically valuable skills

The Bill would apply to:

England and Wales. The Government will work closely with the Devolved Administrations on the responsibilities they have in this area.

Related Documents:

Existing Legislation in this area is:

Comments:

If you have any comments on the draft programme or individual bill being proposed, you can email them to: