I’d like to begin by thanking you for the invitation to speak here today and by commending the Inquiry on the breadth and quality of the ESOL report. I think it’s a significant contribution to the debate that we – Government and partners – must have to improve support for and quality of learning.

We share concerns around many of the same areas as your report and I welcome the clarity of thought and the challenge that the report brings to our thinking; and I commit to being both serious and bold in our response to your recommendations. I should also make clear that many of the points you make are the ones we are already working on.

Context

And let me reflect for a moment on why this discussion is so important and why the timing and relevance of this report are critical. No Government has ever invested so much in the development of basic literacy, language and numeracy skills. Since 2001, we have committed up to £3 billion from adult learning funds to support year on year increases in learners through the Skills for Life Strategy.

We have invested heavily in a more professionalised teaching workforce and in improving the standards and quality of learning - and it’s not just the Government who are investing. Learning providers and employers are committing time and energy to improving skills.

Overall 3.7 million people took up almost 8 million learning opportunities between 2001 and July 2005. Across the board, this is a major investment in time, energy and money.

But the stakes have never been as high in terms of a return on the investment in Skills for Life at every level. For learners, the chance to improve their English and maths skills is the difference between being employable or out of work; having the confidence and the opportunity for progression or being trapped in low skills, low paid work; being able to build a relationship with your neighbours and contribute to your community or being excluded; ultimately taking control of your life and being able to support your family or being trapped in a cycle of disadvantage.

And employers face a daily challenge too - to recruit and retain people with the skills they need for a confident, flexible, productive workforce capable of meeting the expectations and demands of the 21st Century economy.

As a Government, we need to respond. We know we need more people with better skills – and we need them more urgently than we ever have before. We expect Lord Leitch to report on his findings on the UK skills challenge later this Autumn. But his interim report has already signalled the stretch and ambition that will be required if we are to deliver the level of skills that the economy demands. We already know that 70% of those who will be in the UK workforce in 2020 have already completed their compulsory education.

And we know that with changing demographics, to continue with our current level of activity, we will be running to stand still. If we are to do better than that – and that’s our ambition – then – yes - we do need to do more – but, more importantly, what we do, we have to do better and more effectively. And we have to do it in a way that means we really engage those hardest to reach learners who up until now have not benefited from learning opportunities as they should.

The ESOL Challenge

This is why I welcome your report and the ideas and thoughts that it provokes. We have – on one level – delivered an extremely successful approach to ESOL within Skills for Life, and certainly when measured against our initial plans, we have exceeded expectations.

Demand for ESOL courses has tripled since 2001, with 1.9 million learners taking up a range of ESOL programmes by July 2005.

There is no doubt that many people have benefited enormously from these opportunities to improve their skills and are now considerably better off in life and work. And equally, no doubt, that many learning providers have focused on improving learner support and the quality of teaching in response to demand. I want to commend them for their achievements – they have a lot to offer as we look to the future.

But the landscape as we look to 2007 and beyond is very different from that at the launch of Skills for Life in 2001. We have seen sustained growth in our economy with record levels of employment and employers are finding it hard to recruit and retain the people they need.

Many learners have recognised that improving their English language skills opens up opportunities and want to enrol on courses.

Migration from the new European Member States has helped to meet the demand for workers, but has created additional pressures on the availability of ESOL – particularly in London and the South East, but increasingly in other regions. And with heightened sensitivity around integration, we are now focusing more than ever on improving English skills to remove barriers between communities.

And yet it’s clear we need to do more to engage and support some learners. We are still not reaching learners in our priority groups. Inspection reports show that quality is not good enough across the piece and we are not doing enough to disseminate examples of good practice.

Learners spend too long on waiting lists to join courses and then again too long progressing – and we still don’t do enough to link language progression to employability or to further vocational learning.

In the light of all these challenges, the report of the Inquiry is an opportunity to reflect on the progress we have made so far and to consider what more we need to do to meet the challenges ahead. I want to say that I think you’re right to suggest that we must look at the particular challenges for ESOL as distinct from literacy and numeracy. There are many common themes across literacy and ESOL, and Skills for Life gives us a framework for considering the issues, but I think the time is right for us to take a coherent look across Government at the particular issues around ESOL.

Response to the report

And I want to respond briefly to some of the themes and recommendations in the report.

I am committed to ensuring that every learner entering Further Education has a good quality learning experience and derives maximum benefit from the learning. We have already done a lot to improve the teaching and learning infrastructure, but it’s clear that we need to do more; particularly to put in place special diagnostic, support and progression arrangements needed to support ESOL learners, who are themselves a diverse group with complex and varied needs.

There is no single blueprint for good practice and meeting the standard will be challenging. We note your recommendation on a national survey inspection on the quality of ESOL, and we will be considering how to take this forward.

I welcome the thorough examination of teacher training and qualifications in the report. This is a complex area, some of the recommendations are already in hand and I want to go further and consider with the Learning and Skills Council and the Quality Improvement Agency and other partners whether there is more we can do in this area.

In addition, I want to be sure that we all understand what good practice means in terms of meeting the needs of different groups of ESOL learners.

I will therefore be asking partners to build on the work that the National Research and Development Centre (NRDC) have been doing on ESOL to promote the dissemination of good practice through the sector.

And within that work, I want to focus in particular on the needs of learners within the key priority groups. I am grateful to the Inquiry for highlighting in the report details of the particular barriers to achievement and progression faced by these learners. We must do more to overcome those barriers if people from priority groups are to benefit, move into employment, become UK citizens and support their families.

There is a clear link between ensuring the well-being of children and families and the ability of parents to support them in school and in the community. So parents who may be disadvantaged through a lack of language skills are a priority for us.
To this end we are already working to embed ESOL within Every Child Matters and I will undertake to review whether there is more we can be doing here.

Offenders are among those who have the poorest English language skills and yet can benefit most from improving skills. We must make this a priority. I note the Committee’s comments about provision for offenders - and am pleased it noted too the plans we are now putting in place to improve the delivery of offender learning generally.

Reaching those who are out of work and giving them the opportunity to improve skills is also a priority for the Government. We are already working very closely with the Department for Work and Pensions on greater coherence of messages on skills and employment.

And, as part of this work, we are developing with the support of the Learning and Skills Council a new £23 million basic skills and employability programme for JobCentre Plus clients. I can confirm that the programme will support ESOL learners from Entry level 2 through to Level 2, and that through further development of the programme, we will look at the particular needs of learners at pre-Entry and Entry 1.

For both offenders and those on benefits, I expect that transfer of responsibility for funding learning to the LSC to bring new active and effective management and result in improvements in both contexts.

The report raises significant questions about ESOL and work. I think it’s absolutely clear that people who do not have good English language skills are extremely disadvantaged in the workplace.

They are less confident and less able to progress, even if their other skills are good. They are more likely to be in low paid employment, with poor terms and conditions and more at risk from accidents at work. And I welcome the work that has been done through the Union Learning Fund to support these learners to broker understanding among employers and to help them access learning.

There is no doubt that English language skills are essential. But the needs of learners are also very varied. We would not expect highly qualified, highly literate people, or those who need only to brush up their skills to have the same needs for support in learning English as those from hard to reach learners; people who are unable to read or write in their own language for example.

And through the good practice work that I will be asking our partners to carry out, I want to ask for a special focus on ESOL and work, so that we really understand how best to support and deliver English language skills for the workplace.

I will be talking later this month - when we launch Priorities for Success 2 - the Learning and Skills Council’s key planning document - about how we can ensure greater choice for both individuals and employers. That choice will ensure that people can make decisions about which English language qualifications best suit their needs.

This is important. Because not all learners need the level of support that’s available through Skills for Life. Many need a more work focused approach to language skills.

And it’s clear – and well noted in your report - that we need to start looking at who should pay for this learning, and what contribution individuals and learners ought to make when they benefit financially as a result of the opportunity to improve language skills.

We agree that there needs to be change in funding and planning arrangements for ESOL - the current situation is unsustainable. And it isn’t best serving those learners in our priority groups – some of whom have to wait too long to get a place on an ESOL course. We must do more to reach those learners and, building on commitments that we set out in Priorities for Success 1 last year, we have asked the Learning and Skills Council to look at the appropriateness of current funding arrangements and how we might refocus support on priority groups. I will be making announcements on this in a few weeks time.

I agree that we need to do more to explain the position around funding for lower entry level courses. These courses are fundable within the LSC’s recommended balance and mix of provision, between approved and non-approved courses and we will work with the LSC on further clarification of that message.

Conclusion

There is no doubt about the scale or importance of English language skills. They are essential to learners if they are to gain rewarding employment, play a full part in the community and take their proper place in our society; to employers as a measure of adaptability and potential in the workplace and right across Government to support and strengthen our economy and society. In fact few adult skills areas attract such significant levels of interest right across Government.

But we need a more coherent approach and greater and better direction in terms of implementation. And I agree that this needs to come from a position of a clear understanding of what works and appreciation of the particular needs, challenges and issues that face learners, employers, providers and other agencies in delivering ESOL.

I therefore welcome the recommendation to set up a national forum for ESOL and am asking officials within the Skills for Life Strategy Unit to develop further proposals by the end of the year.

Finally, I want to repeat my thanks to the Committee members for your valuable input to this report and for giving up your time to this important work – I know this was over and above your day jobs!

Thanks in particular are due to Derek Grover who has led this Inquiry and who I think has brought a very clear and considered approach to the report, but who has not been afraid to put some really challenging issues on the table.

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