Department for Education Motion made, and Question proposed, That,
for the year ending with 31 March 2023, for expenditure by the
Department for Education: (1) further resources, not exceeding
£18,800,792,000, be authorised for use for current purposes as set
out in HC 396 of Session 2022-23, (2) further resources, not
exceeding £21,623,660,000, be authorised for use for capital
purposes as so set out, and (3) a further sum, not exceeding
£54,021,048,000,...Request free trial
Department for Education
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That, for the year ending with 31 March 2023, for expenditure by
the Department for Education:
(1) further resources, not exceeding £18,800,792,000, be
authorised for use for current purposes as set out in HC 396 of
Session 2022-23,
(2) further resources, not exceeding £21,623,660,000, be
authorised for use for capital purposes as so set out, and
(3) a further sum, not exceeding £54,021,048,000, be granted to
Her Majesty to be issued by the Treasury out of the Consolidated
Fund and applied for expenditure on the use of resources
authorised by Parliament.—(.)
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
I call the Chair of the Education Committee.
1.40pm
(Harlow) (Con)
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this
important debate in response to the Department for Education’s
publication of its main estimates for 2022-23. Before I go on
with my speech, may I congratulate my right hon. Friend the
Member for Chippenham (), the now Secretary of
State for Education? She was on my Select Committee and was a
very hard-working member. She has been a superb Minister for
Universities, and I know she will carry on in that tradition in
her new role as Secretary of State.
Today, I want to highlight three areas where the system can and
must prioritise spending to achieve the Department’s goal of
levelling-up education—severe and persistent absence, tackling
disadvantage, and skills. Severe and persistent absence is not a
new problem. Members across this House will know that I have been
going on about that since last summer. At the Education
Committee, we have been hearing concerns regarding the “ghost
children”—a term that I coined last year—throughout the
pandemic.
Let me set the scene. In July last year, the Centre for Social
Justice reported that over 90,000 pupils were severely absent.
Just a few weeks ago, the Children’s Commissioner published a
report that went further, stating that an estimated 124,000
children were now severely absent, with 1.7 million persistently
absent. The Department for Education’s own figures from autumn
last year showed that 1.6 million children were persistently
absent, which is 23.5% of all pupils. More recently, the
Department for Education’s publications have highlighted that
currently over 1,000 schools have an entire class-worth of
children missing.
The Children’s Commissioner has laid out a mandate that
headteachers across the country should be obsessing over
attendance and she is right. How can we expect children to catch
up if they are not even showing up? But in tackling attendance,
we need carrots as well as sticks. The Government have introduced
a consultation on their proposed reforms when it comes to
attendance, including financial penalties, prosecutions and
better data access.
Dame Rachel de Souza has said that
“we do not have an accurate real time figure of how many children
there are in England…let alone the number of children not
receiving education.”
That is from the Children’s Commissioner. That cannot be right.
That is why, almost a year ago now, my Committee called for a
statutory register of children not in school. The Government have
committed to implement that, but this is a matter of urgency and
ideally should be implemented by September.
The recently published book, “The Children’s Inquiry”, from the
parents campaigning group UsforThem, highlights that, although
the Children’s Commissioner mandate has been beefed up, the
powers granted to the office do not include enforcement powers
such as those granted to the Information Commissioner or the
Financial Conduct Authority. The stick approach must include
extending these powers to the Office of the Children’s
Commissioner to help to ensure that every child, regardless of
their background or circumstances, is returned safely to school
at the start of term in September, otherwise we will risk a
generation of “Oliver Twist” children being lost to the education
system forever.
(Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the right hon. Gentleman for his exceptional commitment
to education as Chair of the Committee, and I welcome the
Secretary of State to her new role in this House and wish her
well.
One of the things the right hon. Gentleman and I share, and I
think others in this Chamber share as well, is a concern about
underachievement. In Northern Ireland, the statistics have very
clearly shown the underachievement of young Protestant males, but
on the mainland it is of white males. Does the right hon.
Gentleman feel that, within the estimates for education today in
this Chamber, there are the moneys needed to turn that issue
around—in other words, to make them achievers rather than
underachievers—and that it can actually happen?
I could not hear the first part of what the hon. Gentleman said.
Was he talking about free school meals? I could not hear; I
apologise.
It is my accent—apologies. In Northern Ireland, it is young
Protestant males who underachieve in education. Here on the
mainland—the right hon. Gentleman and I have both spoken about it
in this Chamber before—it is about the underachievement of white
males. I know he shares my concern, but I would just like to know
whether it is possible, within the estimates, that moneys will be
set aside to ensure that those who underachieve actually will
achieve their goals in this life?
I very much hope so. The hon. Gentleman will look at this
forensically and he will know, because we have done an extensive
report on the underachievement of white working-class boys and
girls, that they underperform at every stage of the education
system and worse than almost every other ethnic group. Those
white working-class boys and girls on free school meals do worse
than every other ethnic group, bar Roma and Gypsy children, on
going to university. This is where funds need to be directed. The
money should be concentrated on such cohorts. It is not just
white working-class boys and girls; just 7% of children in care
get a decent grade in maths and English GCSE and 5% of excluded
children get a decent grade in maths and English GCSE. This is
where the resources, in my view, should be concentrated. We need
to address these social injustices in education.
Secondly, I turn to the social injustice of disadvantage. In May,
the Government announced a new Schools Bill, following the
publication of the schools White Paper. Media attention and
discussion has centred around the appropriate levels of
departmental intervention, and I know that the Department has
gutted a significant part of that Bill, but I question whether
this is simply dancing on the head of a pin. Of course, academies
should have autonomy—I do not dispute that—but my question, and
this refers to my answer to the hon. Gentleman a moment ago, is
whether the Bill misses vital opportunities to address baked-in
disadvantage among the most disadvantaged pupils in our
communities.
Disadvantaged groups are 18 months behind their better-off peers
by the time they take their GCSEs. White working-class boys and
girls on free school meals underperform at every stage of the
education system compared with almost every other group.
Moreover, only 17% of pupils eligible for free school meals
achieve a grade 5 in their maths and English GCSE. This figure
expands to just 18% of children with special educational needs,
just 7% of children in care and 5% of excluded children.
Exam results are of course important, and every August they
understandably hit the headlines, but I am just as worried about
the impact of covid-19 on younger children. We cannot afford for
our most disadvantaged children to miss that first rung on the
ladder of opportunity. The building blocks for achievement must
be in place well before critical exam years and, indeed, before
school. I am pleased to see that resource expenditure for early
years has increased by 10.6% in these estimates, although capital
funding has slightly decreased.
(Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful for the focus on disadvantage by the Chair of the
Education Committee in this part of his speech. Another aspect of
disadvantage is experienced by Grange Primary School in my
constituency, which sees huge mobility in the young people it
educates as the cost of living crisis and, crucially, the cost of
renting property in my constituency—and, I suspect, across London
more generally—has rocketed, leading, unfortunately, to many
families moving regularly. That creates huge pressures on school
staff and school budgets. Will he encourage the Department for
Education to look at whether there needs to be more focus on
mobility as part of the funding formula, to help what I think is
a good school with great staff trying to do a particularly tough
job because of that mobility issue?
The hon. Member makes a powerful point. We want to ensure that
everyone has the same opportunities to go to “good” and
“outstanding” schools. The cost of living pressures that he
mentions are powerful, and I am sure that the new Secretary of
State is listening.
(Mitcham and Morden)
(Lab)
Further to my hon. Friend’s intervention, the other side of the
coin for local authorities is finding temporary accommodation
anywhere for families with children. I am sure that many families
from London end up being placed in temporary accommodation in the
right hon. Gentleman’s constituency. In my constituency, we are
seeing more families farmed out to Kent or Essex, so staying on
at a primary school is extraordinarily difficult, with over
124,000 children in temporary accommodation. Does he think that
those issues should be taken in the round because of their impact
on education?
As I said, I am sure that the Secretary of State is listening.
Everywhere we look, there are all kinds of pressures on our
education system. It is not just the things that the hon. Members
mentioned; schools are paying huge amounts in energy bills, for
example, and are not able to afford that. Instead of spending
money on frontline teaching, they are having to pay energy bills.
Those are big issues that the Government will have to deal with.
I very much hope that, given that the previous Secretary of State
had such a passion for education and that he is now the
Chancellor, the education budget will see a significant increase
in the autumn. That could resolve some of the things the hon.
Lady talked about.
The Education Committee’s inquiry on the Government’s catch-up
programme heard that, by summer 2021, primary pupils had lost
about 0.9 months in reading and 2.2 months in mathematics. from the Education Policy
Institute told our Committee of his concerns that vulnerable
groups could be up to eight months behind in their learning.
The Government have invested almost £5 billion in catch-up and,
following the recommendations in the Committee’s catch-up report,
they have ended the contract with national tutoring programme
provider Randstad and given schools more autonomy to organise
catch-up programmes, at least from later in the year. They should
reform the clunky pupil premium so that it much better targets
those most in need of support. Data is available about education
related to ethnicity, geography and socioeconomic background, but
it is rarely cross-referenced to provide a richer analysis. By
creating multivariant datasets, the DFE could facilitate a
sophisticated view of which areas, schools and pupils need the
most help. It could then reform the pupil premium using those
datasets to introduce weighting or ringfencing to ensure that
funding is spent on the most disadvantaged cohorts.
A further key measure that I ask my right hon. Friend the
Secretary of State to consider is provision of school breakfasts.
The Government have rightly spent more than £200 million on the
holiday activities programme, which is also funded and supported
by Essex council in my constituency—I have seen that programme
work, benefiting many children, and I support it—but more must be
done on breakfasts. According to the Magic Breakfast charity, 73%
of teachers think that breakfast provision has had a positive
impact. Attendance increased in schools offering breakfast
provision, with 26 fewer half-days of absence per year. I saw
that for myself with Magic Breakfast on a visit to Cooks Spinney
school in my constituency last Friday, where attendance has
rocketed because the school ensures that the most disadvantaged
children have a good breakfast when they start their school
day.
The study also found that children in schools supported by
breakfast provision made two months’ additional progress over the
course of an academic year. An evaluation of the national school
breakfast programme by EEF found a 28% reduction in late marks in
a term and a 24% reduction in behavioural incidents. School
breakfast provision should be a key intervention that the
Secretary of State should look at more closely. Currently, the
breakfast provision service reaches just 30% of schools in areas
with high levels of disadvantage and invests just £12 million a
year. By comparison, last year, taxpayers spent £380 million on
free school meal vouchers.
Magic Breakfast proposes to invest £75 million more per year in
school breakfasts, raised from the soft drinks industry levy—it
is not even asking for more money—which would both provide value
for money and increase educational attainment. It could reach an
estimated 900,000 pupils with a nutritious breakfast throughout
the year. That could complement other ideas, such as the deeper
strategy for supporting family hubs, and go a long way to
providing those children with the first step on the first rung of
the ladder of opportunity.
Finally, I turn to skills, which I know the new Secretary of
State is passionate about. As my Committee has heard in both our
current inquiry into post-16 qualifications and our previous work
on adult skills, the UK faces a worrying skills deficit. About 9
million working-age adults in England have low literacy or
numeracy skills—or both—and 6 million are not qualified to level
2, which is the equivalent of a GCSE grade 4 or above. Although
participation in adult learning seems to have grown since it was
at a record low in 2019—44% of adults have taken part in some
learning over the past three years—stark inequalities remain.
Those in lower socioeconomic groups are twice as likely not to
have participated in learning since leaving full-time education
than those in higher socioeconomic groups. Our current inquiry
into adult skills has heard that employer-led training has
declined by a half since the end of the 1990s.
The Government have taken some welcome steps including the Skills
and Post-16 Education Act 2022, the £2.5 billion national skills
fund, the £2 billion kickstart scheme, £3 billion of additional
investment in skills and the lifetime skills guarantee. It is
reassuring to see increased resource and capital funding for
further education in the estimates, together with growth in the
adult skills budget—although, in terms of further education, much
of that is catch-up. We need to go further. Levelling the skills
playing field is about how we teach as well as the financial
resources that we put in.
During my Committee’s inquiry into the future of post-16
qualifications, we have heard about the need for a curriculum
that not just imparts facts but embeds cross-cutting skills that
will better prepare all young people for our fast-moving
industrial future. On a recent visit to King Ethelbert School in
Kent, I heard great things about the career-related programme of
the international baccalaureate, but there are concerns about
future approval for its funding. That seems to be at odds with
the Government’s skills agenda. The Times education commission,
in which I took part as a voluntary member, recently recommended
a British baccalaureate-style qualification.
I am sure that my right hon. Friend knows my views on the
baccalaureate-style system. Used by 150 other countries around
the world, it combines academic and vocational learning, creating
true parity of esteem between the two disciplines and adequately
preparing young people for the future world of work. The
Department has recently undertaken a consultation and review of
the qualifications horizon, particularly to reform the BTEC
system. The FFT Education Datalab found that young people who
took BTECs were more likely to be in employment at the age 22 of
and were earning about £800 more per year than their peers taking
A-levels. I understand the need to review the system and prevent
overlaps, but, just to be clear, I urge my colleagues on the
Front Bench not to remove BTEC funding until T-levels have been
fully rolled out and are successful.
I strongly welcome the grip that the previous Education Secretary
had on the Department, and I welcome the fact that he had some
success in the spending review in securing an additional £14
billion over the next years. However, we are still playing
catch-up when it comes to education recovery and further
education. The brutal fact is that the total budget for health
spending will have increased from 2010 to 2025 by 40%, whereas
education spending will have increased by only 3% in real terms
for the same period. Ultimately, as for health and defence, what
we need for education is a long-term plan and a secure funding
settlement.
Every lever and every engine of Government should be geared
towards returning absent pupils to school. I ask the Secretary of
State to set out in her response the practical steps the
Department is taking to address the issues faced by disadvantaged
pupils who are not able to climb the ladder of opportunity. We
are denying those children the right to an education. In my view,
it must be the most important priority for the Department to get
them back into school. It is unforgivable that there are 1.7
million persistently absent children and that 100,000 ghost
children have been lost to school rolls. That number is growing.
Previously, roughly 800 schools in disadvantaged areas had the
equivalent of a whole classroom missing, but figures from the
Department for Education show that now 1,000 schools do. That
situation is wrong. It must be taken seriously, and efforts
should be made to tackle it. As the Children’s Commissioner said
to the Education Committee yesterday, by September every one of
those children should be back in school.
The previous Education Secretary said he could not “hug the
world” but I know his priorities truly were “skills, schools and
families”. I am sure they are the priorities of the new Secretary
of State. Our children, the workers of the future, will need
technical skills but also the ability to think creatively, work
across subject silos and, most of all, adapt. As our country and
economy move towards the fourth industrial revolution, we must
ensure our education system can adapt to meet those
challenges.
2.02pm
(Hemsworth) (Lab)
It is a privilege to follow the contribution from the Chair of
the Education Committee, the right hon. Member for Harlow (). His words were brave, but
one suspects a degree of worry in some of the things he said
about the direction of policy, especially on the funding of the
Department. I welcome the new regime under the new Secretary of
State for Education, the right hon. Member for Chippenham (). We shall see which
direction she takes the Department in.
We are discussing why we spend billions of pounds on education,
and it is worth beginning my contribution on that thought. Our
society puts so much money into education to try to achieve
several different objectives, but I just want to focus on one.
Education ought to help each person to achieve their full
potential in life, and that raises the question of what our
society offers to people. The British promise is that each
generation can expect the next generation to do slightly better
than them, and the one after that to do slightly better; and that
if people work hard and play by the rules, they can expect to do
well in our society.
We sometimes call that social mobility. I note that we are about
to move responsibility for social mobility back to the Cabinet
Office. I do not object to that, but the truth is that education,
as I describe it, plays a central role in delivering social
mobility, or it ought to do so. Yet the Tory Government’s own
Social Mobility Commission concluded that inequality now extends
from birth through to work, and that our class structures are
ossified. The ossified stratification of our society is an
ancient British problem.
That suggests that not every human being is achieving their full
potential. To that extent, their education has to be judged as
not working properly, unless we take the view—I do not think many
in this House do—that the children of the wealthiest are somehow
more genetically endowed than the children of the poorest. If we
took that view, we could say that the stratification reflected
the genetic inheritance of each child, but that is clearly not
the case. The truth is that millions of people’s potential is not
being realised because our education system is not working
properly.
Before I talk about a distributional analysis of how we spend our
money, it is worth restating that I do not take the view—very few
people would—that each person’s attainment is determined purely
by the amount of money we spend. The way we deliver education
must of course be continually developed, analysed and fully
understood. Without adequate funding, however, the rest of it
must fail. The truth is that the amount of funding we are
discussing today will determine the number of staff working in
education, and their morale. If the number of staff is in decline
and their morale low, that will cast a shadow through every
classroom in the country. I think there is some evidence that
that is the case, although we have brilliant teachers, staff,
children and parents. Over the term of this Government, from
2010, the amount of funding per child has fallen, and it is still
falling.
What was the impact of those cuts? I do not want to talk about
university funding, because that is largely done in a different
way, through student borrowing and so on. There are, broadly,
three sectors: early years, schools and further education. There
is an increase in provision for early years, but the truth is
that the cuts have been savage. The first months and years of a
person’s life absolutely determine how much progress they will
make in educational attainment, but the cuts have cut deep.
Childcare costs are soaring, and many families simply cannot
afford their childcare needs. Even since 12 months ago, there are
4,000 fewer childcare providers in place.
Let me skip schools for a second and go on to FE. There will
probably not be many people in the House with my background. I
left school with no qualifications, but eventually I ended up
doing a first and then a second degree. What was the stepping
stone for me, having left school with no qualifications? It was
further education—a college that took an interest in me after I
failed, effectively, or was failed by the school system. There
are millions of people in the same position who would like to do
more, whether they have left school, changed profession or simply
want to catch up. However, under this Government’s austerity
programme, FE funding has been cut by two thirds. That stepping
stone has almost been removed. Many people in my patch and
throughout the country simply do not have access to a college as
I did when I was a younger man.
Let me turn briefly to schools and the main point that I want to
develop. Do not take my word for it; the House of Commons Library
briefing for today’s debate quotes the Institute for Fiscal
Studies. It is quite shocking, but in its placid, bureaucratic
language the IFS states:
“Deprived schools have seen larger cuts over the last decade. The
most deprived secondary schools saw a 14% real-terms fall in
spending per pupil”
over the 10 years up to 2020, compared to a 9% cut for the least
deprived schools. So the most deprived schools have had a 14% cut
and the least deprived schools have had a 9% cut. It goes on to
state that the national funding formula simply repeats all those
problems, providing increases of 8% to 9% for the least deprived
schools and 5% for the most deprived, and that the pupil premium
has failed to keep pace with inflation. In dry language, the
quote in the House of Commons Library briefing states that these
patterns of funding “run counter” to the Government’s so-called
central objective of levelling up poorer areas. We have a Prime
Minister and an Administration who regularly talk about levelling
up, but they have to will the means to achieve a levelling-up
programme. That is not happening.
Let me illustrate the impact on an area such as the one I
represent. I am one of four MPs from the Wakefield district, and
Wakefield Council is the 54th most deprived council area in the
country. When we look at levels of educational attainment, we see
that one in five people get to national vocational qualification
level 4. The national figure is twice that, and the levels of
attainment in Uxbridge, the Prime Minister’s constituency, are
250% higher than those in my constituency. Given the levels of
deprivation and attainment that I mentioned, we would think that
Wakefield Council would get more money, rather than less, in the
distribution of school funding, but that is not the case. The
cuts to schools in the Prime Minister’s Uxbridge constituency
amounted to £276 a child. In my constituency, they amounted to
£514, which is almost twice as much. How can that be right?
I will put on my Facebook page an analysis of the cuts in our
area to every school. However, to take one at random, St Helen’s
Primary School in Hemsworth—I know the school, which is in a
great community, with lovely parents and vital, vibrant
children—has had £746 cut per pupil since the cuts began, and yet
38% of the children are on free school meals. That deprived
community is doing its best against a Government who are cutting,
cutting and cutting. Why should children in an area such as the
one I represent, and in deprived areas up and down the country
that are lacking in social mobility, have to face cuts on that
scale while children in the Prime Minister’s constituency—a
better-off community, with higher levels of attainment than in
mine—do not?
The truth is that the Government have presided over the most
prolonged and savage cuts to education since at least the war.
They have cheated the children, staff and parents in deprived
communities everywhere for the benefit of those who live in the
least deprived, most well-off communities. That is not right; it
is immoral. Today’s estimates fail dismally to make proper
provision for the damage that the Conservatives have done since
they took power in 2010.
2.13pm
(Twickenham) (LD)
I welcome the new Secretary of State to her place and
congratulate her on her promotion. I also congratulate the right
hon. Member for Harlow () on securing this debate; I
have always admired his passion and commitment on all issues
relating to education and social mobility. He speaks from the
heart most of the time, but I thought that he made a valiant case
for the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for
Stratford-on-Avon (), given what we know about
what went on in Downing Street last night.
During their time in secondary school, a year 11 pupil who
finished their GCSEs in the past couple of weeks will have seen
five—yes, five—Education Secretaries in charge of policy and
spending that have a significant and lasting impact on their
lives. Any state school that got through that many headteachers
in such a short period would certainly have been put into special
measures by now, yet this chaotic Government limp on. Time and
again, we see the Department for Education, sadly, notched up as
a temporary staging post on the climb up the greasy pole for
ambitious Ministers.
That is a depressing and damning indictment of the way in which
the Government view children and young people and their
education. It is indicative of the short-term thinking that
pervades a Government who are focused on campaigning, rather than
governing. However, with our children being our most precious
resource—the future of our nation—on whose shoulders our future
economic success will be built, not only should the Department
for Education be viewed as the most coveted brief, to be mastered
and championed relentlessly over many years, but it should be
funded as a long-term investment.
Former Conservative Prime Minister John Major told The Times
Education Commission that education expenditure should be
seen
“as capital investment, on the basis that its effect will linger
for a lifetime”.
I could not agree more, so as we consider the education
estimates, I ask: where is the ambition for our children and
young people? Why is it—as the right hon. Member for Harlow
said—that according to the IFS, by 2025, over a period of 15
years, we will effectively have seen less than 3% growth in
education spending while health spending will have risen by 42%
in the same period?
It is time that we viewed our children’s future in the same way
that we view key infrastructure projects. Human capital—for want
of a better phrase—invested in properly, will deliver a
significant return for our economy and society. However, it does
not fit into three-year spending cycles or four to five-year
parliamentary cycles—although we seem to be on two-year
parliamentary cycles at the moment, and who knows? We might be in
a general election this time next week.
Turning to catch-up funding, the long-term economic impact has
been laid out starkly by the Education Policy Institute. It
calculates that without sufficient investment and support,
children could lose up to £40,000 of income over their lifetimes,
equating to about a £350 billion loss to the economy. With pupils
having missed out on millions of days of face-to-face teaching,
and with the Department for Education, frankly, failing to act
swiftly to support schools or put a proper catch-up plan in place
quickly, the attainment gap is widening.
The National Audit Office said in its report last year that the
Government did not take action to enable vulnerable learners to
attend school and to fund online resources quickly enough. They
could have done more in some areas. The NAO recommended that the
Department
“takes swift and effective action, including to learn wider
lessons from its COVID-19 response, and to ensure that the
catch-up learning programme is effective and reaches the children
who have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, such
as those who are vulnerable and disadvantaged.”
Just yesterday, we saw the first set of SATs results since the
pandemic, showing a steep decline in the number of children
achieving the expected standard at key stage 2.
Alongside the educational gap, children have paid a very high
price in terms of wellbeing and mental health. That is a top
priority for headteachers in my constituency. Parents are at
their wits’ end. I have talked about this month in, month out in
the Chamber, and we all know the NHS statistics that show that
the number of children with a mental health condition has risen
from one in nine to one in six since 2017.
Despite all that, we barely hear any mention of catch-up support
for our children and young people. The Government want to stop
talking about covid—sadly, covid is still with us, although the
Government want to move on—but our children and young people will
bear the scars of their sacrifices during the pandemic for a very
long time. As the EPI suggested, many will pay the price for the
rest of their lives, so we owe it to them to heed the advice of
the Government’s adviser, Sir , who felt compelled—like many
Ministers now—to quit in his capacity as a Government adviser
because they would not take his recommendations seriously and put
in the investment in children and young people that I have
mentioned. He said that he did not believe
“that a successful recovery can be achieved with a programme of
support of this size.”
I remind the House that he recommended that £15 billion be
invested in education recovery, but we have seen a commitment to
only a third of that.
We know that children and young people fare better when parents
are empowered to engage with their education. That is one reason
why the Liberal Democrats have called not just for the £15
billion commitment to be made immediately, but for some of that
money to go towards vouchers to be put directly in the hands of
parents to support their children, whether that is with tuition,
sport, art or music, with whatever they need for their physical
wellbeing and social engagement with their peers, or with
counselling to tackle mental health issues with the advice and
support of their school. Our children and young people are
suffering a double whammy: they have felt the impact of the
pandemic, and now they are at the sharp end of the cost of living
crisis.
(Birmingham, Hall Green)
(Lab)
In my constituency, many children are going to school and having
their only meal of the day there, because of the crisis that this
Government have forced on the residents of our constituencies.
Does the hon. Member agree that it is absurd that that is
happening? Many schools are not even opening for the full five
days.
The hon. Gentleman must be psychic or have very good eyesight,
because he has pre-empted what I was about to say about free
school meals. About 2.6 million children are in families that
experience food insecurity; as he says, the reality is that many
children are going to school hungry, because parents are
struggling to put food on the table. Hunger and poor nutrition
affect children’s ability to learn, their development and their
mental health. How can our most disadvantaged children, who
already have a much bigger gap in attainment as a result of the
pandemic, be expected to catch up? I pay tribute to the schools
and teachers up and down the country who are working their socks
off to put additional support and interventions in place to help
them to catch up, but how can children who are going to school
with empty tummies and sitting hungry in lessons be expected to
benefit from the catch-up?
I sincerely hope that the Government will think again and take
the advice of yet another Government adviser they chose to
ignore: Henry Dimbleby, who advised them on their food strategy.
He recommended that every child in a family in receipt of
universal credit should be entitled to a free school meal. To be
honest, I am shocked that that is not already the case. I really
urge the Secretary of State: if she does one thing in her first
few days, please will she address that? It is a scandal that
children are going to school hungry.
The Ark John Archer Primary Academy in Clapham is not in my
constituency, but I visited it recently because I was told about
the fantastic early years offer that it is developing; Ark has
invested money, alongside the Government’s paltry investment in
early years, to support some of the poorest children. The
headteacher asked me why, although some two-year-olds are
eligible to receive 15 hours of free childcare a week because
they are from disadvantaged backgrounds, we are not providing
them with free school meals. It just seems really odd. The school
is funding meals for everybody, right across its nursery and
primary provision. Whether the child is eligible or not, they are
making sure that every child gets a healthy, nutritious meal.
The school pointed out to me that with some childcare providers,
disadvantaged two-year-olds who are getting free childcare are
having to bring in a packed lunch—quite possibly not a very
nutritious one, but with cheap things that the parents can
afford—and will be sitting alongside children whose parents are
able to pay for their childcare and who are getting a far better
lunch. I find that contrast between the haves and the have-nots
really quite distasteful. When the Education Secretary looks at
free school meals, will she look at the case of
two-year-olds?
As has been said many times in this place, our childcare costs
are among the highest in the world. In the cost of living crisis,
parents are struggling even more to make ends meet with their
nursery and childcare fees. Liberal Democrat analysis of Coram
statistics suggests that parents in inner London who fund 50
hours per week of childcare will have seen an increase in costs
of almost £2,000—I will say that again: £2,000—over the past
year. That is just shocking. The problem is that as childcare
costs go up and parents struggle to make ends meet with their
mortgage or rent, their food and their other bills, fewer and
fewer children will be put into childcare. That is bad for a
range of reasons.
(Oxford West and Abingdon)
(LD)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. I could not agree
more about the cost of childcare. Does she agree that the answer
to the problem is not to decrease the staff-student ratio? I was
taken on a tour of Robin nursery in Kidlington the other day;
Teresa, the wonderful person who runs it, was concerned that if
that ratio goes down, she will not be able to give the safe and
caring level of care that parents need. She is concerned that,
unfortunately, it will be the most disadvantaged students who
lose out, because they are quite often the ones who do not yet
have the help with special educational needs and disabilities
that they need, and they are the ones who need the most love.
I could not agree more. The Government are trying to tackle the
issue of childcare funding in completely the wrong way. My hon.
Friend makes the point about safety and the ability to support
children with SEND. Given the razor-thin margins with which so
many childcare providers operate—we know that they are going
under all the time—if the Government power ahead with this after
their consultation, and if they really think that the saving will
be passed on to parents to help with the cost of living, they are
living in cloud cuckoo land, because of exactly what my hon.
Friend says.
I have given the example of my son’s childminder before. She has
to do all this jiggery-pokery with her invoices every month,
because she has been told categorically that she cannot make it
clear that I have to pay to top up the 30 hours of “free”
childcare that we are meant to be getting, because it does not
cover her costs. It is an add-on. That is fine—I have no problem
with paying it; I am in a position to pay for it—but the point is
that many parents will not be able to afford that top-up or will
end up putting their children into what might be fairly
low-quality childcare. Our most disadvantaged children are the
ones who need the most high-quality input. By the time children
start school, the most disadvantaged are about 11 months behind
their peers. That gap continues to widen, which has been
accelerated by the pandemic.
There is a really important point to make here. Childcare is not
just about babysitting. It is about high-quality early years
input, with properly trained staff who should have an early years
qualification; who should not be on poverty wages, as so many
are; and who should have continuous professional development so
that they can pick up on things like developmental delays in
speech and language, which have become even more prevalent as a
result of the pandemic.
It should be about investing in our early years to help children
to get on in life, but also about supporting parents who wish to
go to work from when their children are at a very young age. We
know that people—mostly women, sadly—are leaving the workforce or
reducing their hours in very large numbers. Once again, that
takes us back to the economic argument for long-term investment
in children and in education. It will be harmful for our economy
that fewer women will be in work and setting up businesses,
because so many are having to give up work to look after their
children. Finally, let me return to where I started. The
Government say that they want to help Britain back to work and
they say that they want to tackle the task of levelling up. The
former Education Secretary, the right hon. Member for
Stratford-on-Avon (), who is now the Chancellor,
has talked about children, skills and education being his
passion, and I hope he will put his money where his mouth is. He
is now in the Treasury, which was the biggest blocker preventing
him and his many predecessors from doing the right thing by
children. They are our future. They will be the innovators, they
will continue to make this country great, and every single child,
regardless of background, deserves the very best start in
life.
If the Secretary of State will not listen to me, I ask her to
listen to the Government’s own advisers, such as on catch-up, Henry Dimbleby
on free school meals, and Josh MacAlister on children’s social
care; so many children are simply written off by the system
because we have a broken social care system. I ask her to step up
now, to make the necessary investment in children and young
people, and to end this Conservative chaos. Our children are
depending on it.
2.30pm
(Mitcham and Morden)
(Lab)
I welcome the new Secretary of State to her place. I hope she has
an ambitious plan for however many hours she will be in office
before the downfall of her Government—but this is no laughing
matter. The fact that we have had three Education Secretaries in
three years tells us all we need to know about the Conservatives’
priorities. Theirs is a party with no plan, no ambition and no
vision for our children. In contrast, education is so important
to us on this side of the House that we say it three times.
Let us start with childcare and the early years, a time of
indisputable importance with an impact that lasts a lifetime. The
Government’s unforgivable failure to support early years
providers shamefully saw 4,000 of them close over the last year.
When parents are paying more on childcare than on their rent or
their mortgage, the system is truly broken. The prohibitive cost
of childcare means that many young couples face a choice between
being priced out of parenting and being priced out of work. If
they cannot afford the childcare costs to return to work, or if
those costs outweigh the salaries that they bring home, work
simply does not pay, no matter how many times the rhetoric is
repeated at the Dispatch Box.
Ours is statistically one of the most expensive countries in the
world in which to raise children, with net childcare costs
representing 29% of income. We should compare that with 11% in
France, 9% in Belgium and just 1% in Germany. If families cannot
afford the childcare—for instance, the before and after-school
clubs that boost children’s learning and development—the
attainment gap grows. Those children will arrive at school to
find that funding per pupil has fallen by 9% in real terms since
the Tories came to power. That means that, by 2024, school
budgets will have seen no overall growth in 15—yes, 15—years.
Meanwhile, many young people are still catching up from the
lockdown school closures. Lockdown was temporary, but it could
have a lifelong impact: the Institute for Fiscal Studies has
warned that students who lost six months of schooling could see a
reduction in lifetime income of 4%. However, the catch-up
programme does not even come close to meeting
“the scale of the challenge”.
Those are not my words, but the words of the Government’s own
education recovery tsar, whose resignation a year ago is all the
evidence that anyone needs when considering whether the scale of
the challenge is really understood.
Why is it that our children, teachers and schools are treated as
an afterthought at every stage by this Government? The crumbs of
catch-up support that are available will let down an entire
generation of young people and, on the Government’s watch, the
pandemic’s impact on their education will be lifelong. In
contrast, Labour’s children’s recovery plan will provide
breakfast clubs and new activities for every child, small-group
tutoring for all who need it, quality mental health support in
every school, continued development for teachers—that is
essential, given that a staggering 40% of teachers leave the
profession within five years—and an education recovery premium,
targeting investment at children who risk falling behind. Those
are not just warm words. Under the last Labour Government, our
rhetoric matched the reality: 3,500 Sure Start centres were
delivered on time, offering a place in every community for
integrated care and services for children and their families.
Now is the time to be ambitious about education in a post-covid
modern society. I believe that we should be putting tech at the
heart of learning, tailoring classrooms to the modern day by
ensuring that every child has the kit and the connectivity to get
online. We should be challenging the norm by considering
qualifications in tech and coding, providing real-world work
experience, and using our ability to connect and learn with and
from others around the world. The 21st-century opportunities for
children, for teachers and for education should be endless. If
there were a competent and functioning Government to take on that
challenge, we would be there; but we are not.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
We will now proceed to the winding-up speeches. I call .
2.35pm
(Glasgow North West)
(SNP)
Let me begin by welcoming the new Secretary of State to her
position. She has been committed and diligent in her role as
Universities Minister, and I am sure she will bring the same
commitment to this role. I know that she has spoken out strongly
in favour of skills education, and I am sure that many of us will
be watching with anticipation over the next few months.
Let me also congratulate the Chair of the Select Committee, the
right hon. Member for Harlow (). As always, he spoke with
knowledge and passion, and I concur with much of what he said. He
talked a great deal about the number of children who are absent
from school, and I want to drill down into that. In the case of
some children, absence is due to illness and not being able to
connect properly with schools. There are many instances in which,
if we had better links between schools and homes, young people
would have better access to education. As the chair of the
all-party parliamentary group on myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME),
I have done a great deal of work on the issue of children who are
excluded owing to that condition through no fault of their own,
and I hope we can do some cross-party work on the subject. There
are other reasons for children not to be at school. An issue that
persists in England, but does not happen in Scotland, is the
off-rolling of children. Off-rolling to massage school results or
to get rid of the problem is not good enough. These young people
should still be the responsibility of the local authority and of
the school, and the school should be doing outreach to ensure
that they can access education. This has to stop.
The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morsden () talked about the
importance of educating the whole person. She mentioned
additional services such as after-school clubs. We need to be
clear about those. They are not a nice add-on; they are key to
the development of young people. With a different hat on, I am a
volunteer coach at a local gymnastics club. Unfortunately, owing
to the cost of living crisis, we are seeing young people not
turning up—young people unable to access important activities
delivered both in and outside schools. Such activities build
young people’s resilience, they build healthy lifestyles, and
they help those young people to communicate, collaborate and work
with others. As I have said, they are key to development, and
they should not be ignored. Amid all the talk about what is
offered in schools, we must also look at what is offered outside
schools for the development of a young person.
Schools are, of course, not immune to inflation and the cost of
living crisis. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the
2021 spending review included an extra £4.4 billion for the
schools budget in 2024-25, as compared with previous plans. While
that may sound like a win, the IFS has also said that
“it will mean 15 years with no overall growth in spending. This
squeeze on school resources is effectively without precedent in
post-war UK history.”
The hon. Member for Hemsworth () detailed some of the other comments that the IFS
has made, including the fact that deprived schools have seen
larger cuts over the last decade. I will not repeat his comments,
but what he said about funding in different areas was extremely
important. If we are talking about equal opportunities for those
from different backgrounds, this must be looked at. Conversely,
in Scotland, the Scottish Government figures on education
spending show that 2020-21 was the sixth year in a row that
education expenditure saw a real-terms increase. This is
important, and the money that has been directed to individual
schools to help them to tackle issues such as child poverty and
after-school clubs makes up part of that picture.
The problem is that the IFS figures and the Budget figures do not
talk about child poverty, which is the biggest issue that will
affect a child’s life chances and attainment. The hon. Member for
Twickenham () talked about free school
meals, and this is something that is really important to us in
Scotland. We have identified that this must take place, and since
January every youngster in primary 1 to primary 5 in Scotland
gets a free school lunch, regardless of income. That will be
rolled out to every primary pupil over this parliamentary
term.
(Glasgow North East)
(SNP)
I wonder whether my hon. Friend was in the Chamber on the day
that a Government Minister was ridiculing the Scottish Government
for the amount of money they spent on what were called welfare
payments, which would include providing free school meals for
those children in years 1 to 5. Does she agree that, whatever a
Government invest their money in, the primary thing they should
invest in is their people and their children?
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend, and it is not just
about the money. As she says, it is about the value we are
putting on those youngsters as well. In Scotland, that starts
right from the moment when parents are given a baby box, followed
by the Scottish Government’s commitment to childcare and free
school meals, and now we have the Scottish child payment of £20 a
week for every eligible child, which is transformational for
families in need. Of course that only goes a little way towards
tackling the cost of living crisis, but we know that hungry
children cannot learn, so free school meals must be central to
this and it would be good to see some movement on that from this
Government.
We also have to look at skills for the future. No party or
Government who have forced through a devastating Brexit in the
middle of a pandemic can credibly claim to be focused on
recovery. A fair recovery must be investment-led. At the centre
of Scotland’s plan is fair work, which is why the Scottish
Government have invested £500 million to support new jobs and
retrain people for jobs for the future, as well as funding the
young person’s guarantee of a free university, college,
apprenticeship or training place for every young person. This is
not about loans; it is about investment, and with 93% of our
young people in training, employment or education—the highest in
the UK—it is paying off.
On the hon. Lady’s point about skills for the future, I am sure
that she and others across the House will agree that more trade
with India is essential to our economic growth in this country,
so does she not think it is disappointing that there has been
such a steep decline in the teaching and examinations of those
who want to learn Gujarati, Hindi and Urdu, which are some of the
key modern languages of India? Is there not a case for the
Government to look at a discrete package—very small is all it
would have to be—to help to reverse that trend? It could include
support for those who teach on a Saturday, often at weekend
schools, and professional development for the teachers, as well
as support to pay for the cost of the places where that teaching
takes place.
The hon. Gentleman obviously speaks with great experience and
knowledge of this area. That is knowledge I do not necessarily
have, but I cannot see any problem with our young people learning
languages and skills and developing links with other cultures, so
this is only to be welcomed and promoted.
In Scotland we have invested more than £800 million in our
further education estate since the SNP Scottish Government came
to power in 2007. An equivalent investment in FE in England would
be around £8 billion, not the £1.5 billion this Government have
committed. It would be really good to know how the college estate
in England is going to be brought up to the standards of the
colleges we now have in Scotland, because we have world-leading
facilities and brand-new colleges. Thousands of students are
getting not just HNCs and HNDs but degrees in further education
colleges such as Glasgow Clyde College in my constituency, City
of Glasgow College in the centre of Glasgow and Glasgow Kelvin
College in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for
Glasgow North East (). I do wonder how England
can hope to compete with these colleges and be truly committed to
skills development without better investment.
For young people in England who want to go to university, the
threat of debt is ever present. The average graduate
debt—depending on the figures we look at—is somewhere between
£45,000 and £50,000 for a young person in England, but what is of
greater concern is the huge number of graduates who now have much
higher debts than that. This year for the first time we have seen
more than 6,500 graduates with debts of more than £100,000.
Inflation is rocketing, and over the next few years debts will
only get worse.
I raised the issue at Education questions on Monday and the
Minister, now Secretary of State, responded that she had to get
the right balance between the graduate and the taxpayer, but that
raises a fundamental question on the purpose of education: is it
about individual gain or about societal good? Nurses, doctors and
teachers, who do not command great salaries, should not be
expected to bear the burden of this debt in order to provide a
public service. According to the IFS, 87% of graduates will not
pay back their student loans within the 30-year payback period,
so what do this Government do? They lower the repayment threshold
and extend the payback period to 40 years. They plan to tackle
graduate debt by saddling young people with ever-increasing
amounts of it. That cannot be right.
My final comments are about science, technology, engineering and
maths—STEM—education. I know this is something that gets strong
cross-party support, but I find it concerning—I declare an
interest as a physics teacher—that the Government’s own social
mobility tsar has talked about girls not taking physics because
they do not like the “hard maths”. I want to hear from this
Government how they are going to tackle that and increase the
numbers of girls in physics. We have been talking about this
issue since I was a pupil at school, and things have not shifted.
We have tried the carrot and it has not helped, so perhaps we now
need to look at the stick if we are to get more girls into doing
physics. This Government need a different approach to post-16
education funding, to provide long-term security and put the
interests of learners at the heart of everything. Education must
be restored as a force for public good and, as such, it must be
publicly funded to provide real lifelong access for all.
2.49pm
(Portsmouth South) (Lab)
I start by thanking the right hon. Member for Harlow () for securing this debate.
Like any good educator, this morning he gave renewed meaning to
the adage, “The pen is mightier than the sword.” He has also
given us an opportunity to discuss departmental spending at a
critical moment for school budgets.
I welcome the Secretary of State for Education to her place,
while noting the absence of any departmental Ministers alongside
her. The personnel in this dysfunctional, merry-go-round
Government may be changing faster than any of us can keep up
with, but the facts and figures speak for themselves.
The Department for Education is one of the four big spenders, so
its spending is a good way to understand the Government’s
priorities and choices. Even a passing look suggests that
children and their education are not among those priorities, and
that this Government’s choices are not made with their interests
in mind.
We have heard a range of views and concerns from Members on both
sides of the House in this debate. The right hon. Member for
Harlow, the Chair of the Education Committee, spoke of the
pandemic’s impact on young people, and specifically children from
disadvantaged backgrounds. He spoke about skyrocketing school
energy bills and their impact on school budgets, and his hope
that the new Chancellor will now invest in our nation’s schools.
He also spoke about the value of breakfast provision, which
Labour’s children’s recovery plan fully recognises.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth () spoke powerfully about the importance of every
child fulfilling their potential and how, in so many cases, young
people are missing out. He recognised our country’s brilliant
teachers and the impact on morale of cuts to school budgets.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden () spoke with her usual
passion about the value of childcare and the huge pressure of
childcare costs on families. She also raised the crumbs of
catch-up this Government are offering, compared with Labour’s
ambitious children’s recovery plan, to meet the generational
challenges head on. As shadow Schools Minister, I hope colleagues
will not mind if I focus on that first.
For the last decade, successive Governments have repeatedly asked
schools to do more with less. School spending per pupil was down
almost 10% in the decade to 2020, which is reflected in the
reality of what parents, teachers and hon. Members report. I am
sure the new Secretary of State will be keen to tell us about the
2021 spending review, as the now former Schools Minister, the
hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), was forced to fall back on
it more than four times in response to the realities reported to
him by hon. Members at departmental questions earlier this week.
The Secretary of State knows full well that, even factoring in
the spending review, the Institute for Fiscal Studies says that
by 2024 per pupil funding will remain similar to a decade ago,
which will mean 15 years without overall growth in spending, the
most sustained squeeze on school resources at any time since the
second world war.
What is more, the broken national funding formula means the least
deprived schools will receive more money than the most deprived,
to the tune of almost 5% by 2023. Despite rehashed announcements
on levelling up—big on rhetoric but low on delivery—the bottom
line is that this Government will continue to hollow out areas of
historical deprivation when it comes to education funding and
recovery.
As ever, annual statistics paint only part of the picture. In
addition to the historic squeeze on funding, school budgets face
further pressure as a result of the cost of living crisis, made
worse by Downing Street, with national insurance up, energy
prices soaring, childcare costs through the roof, food prices up
and universal credit support slashed. It is a perfect storm for
families, schools and businesses, and the real cost is measured
in the opportunities for our nation’s children.
That is why, as part of Labour’s wider offer to tackle the cost
of living crisis, we would invest in childcare places for young
children on free school meals. And because we know childcare
pressure does not stop when children start school, we would
invest in before-school and after-school clubs for children,
too.
Millions of young people have just finished sitting exams and
assessments for the first time since 2019. After the disruption
of the pandemic, it is a credit to our young people that they are
rising to the unprecedented challenges they face. We are so proud
of them all, but this Government have consistently let them
down.
Ministers’ miserable failure to help children recover lost
learning threatens to limit their opportunities. The IFS found
that an average loss of six months of schooling could reduce
children’s lifetime income by 4%, which equates to a total of
£350 billion in lost earnings for 8.7 million school-age children
in the UK. This is the stark scale of the generational challenge
we now face.
The Government’s ambition should have matched that challenge, yet
the total package of so-called catch-up funding equates to just
£300 per pupil. That is just £1 for each day out of school. We
can compare that with the £1,685 per pupil recommended by the
education recovery commissioner, or the £1,800 per pupil in the
US and the £2,100 per pupil in the Netherlands.
It is no wonder Sir resigned more than a year
ago. His plan was rejected by the then Chancellor, who told us he
had “maxed out” on support for our nation’s children. At the time
of his resignation, Sir Kevan said the Government’s plans
were
“too narrow, too small and will be delivered too slowly.”
His warnings have proved to be spot on.
The Government’s flagship national tutoring programme has also
failed children and taxpayers. The latest figures suggest the
Prime Minister’s blusterous target of 100 million hours of
tutoring will not be met until all children currently at
secondary school have left. Worse still, Ministers plan to pull
the rug out from under schools that are working hard to deliver
the scheme. Tapering funding means that schools will be covering
90% of the costs within three years. With eye-watering bills, and
with food and other day-to-day costs rising, there is a real
possibility that schools will struggle to deliver the scheme. It
is children in the classroom who will suffer. By contrast,
Labour’s children’s recovery plan would deliver small group
tutoring through schools for all who need it right now. That is
alongside quality mental health support in every school and
targeted extra support for those who suffered most from lost
learning.
As schools continue to face the pinch, so do families. As hon.
Members have raised in this debate, childcare is critical for
learning and development, but it is also intrinsically linked to
our wider economic prosperity. Before the pandemic, children on
free school meals arrived at school almost five months behind
their peers. Spiralling costs will only make this worse. The
average cost of a full-time nursery place for a child under two
has risen almost £1,500 over the last five years. In fact, the UK
has one of the highest childcare costs as a proportion of average
income. At 29%, we are 19 percentage points higher than the OECD
average.
This is perpetuating the gross inequality that is holding women
back. Some 1.7 million women are prevented from taking on more
hours of paid work due to childcare issues, and we lose £28.2
billion in economic output as a result. The latest bright idea to
cut the number of adults looking after groups of children will
likely reduce the quality of provision and will have no impact on
availability or affordability for parents.
The former Education Secretary liked to claim he was
evidence-led. Although I know the current Secretary of State’s
interest in data is probably limited to the number of Government
resignations since this debate began, I will give her some
figures all the same. Pregnant Then Screwed has said that,
following the proposed ratio changes, only 2% of nurseries and
preschools will lower fees for parents. Even where they do, it
will be by just £2 a week. It simply does not add up.
This chaotic, rudderless Government are cutting off their nose to
spite their face. Ministers’ repeated failure to prevent
disruption and mitigate spiralling costs threatens to hold
children back now and for the rest of their lives. That is a
problem for opportunities in the classroom, but it is also an
issue for our wider economy. Government is about priorities and
choices. In government, Labour made the choice to transform
education, and we would do so again. Our ambitious, costed plans
would put children at the centre of a vision for Britain.
Recognising the challenges, taking responsibility and securing
children’s future, that is Labour’s approach. It is time the
Government put their money where their mouth is and matched our
commitment to securing our children’s future.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Chippenham () on her appointment as
Secretary of State for Education and call her to reply to the
debate.
2.59pm
The Secretary of State for Education ()
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Let me start by saying thank you for the welcome I have received
today and by thanking my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow
() for opening this important
debate. He and I share a lifelong deep passion for education,
given our own experiences, and that is why education has always
been my personal focus, through our time on the Education
Committee, and during my time as Minister for children and
families, as Minister for universities and, more recently, as
Minister for higher and further education.
I am here today because of the countless teachers, lecturers,
school staff, administrative staff, parents, pupils and all those
who keep our education system running. They are looking to
Westminster today for reassurance that their priorities matter.
Exam results day is coming, and covid recovery is ongoing, so I
stand here today because I cannot let them down. That is why I
believe it is vital that the stories and experiences of real
people do not get lost in today’s debate. Forget the Westminster
bubble, if you are a parent of a disabled child wondering what
this Government are doing to make your local school better
equipped and more inclusive, this is the debate for you. If you
are a young person building the foundations of your career at
college or at university, and wondering what this Government are
doing to improve the quality and value of the qualifications you
receive, this debate is for you.
(Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
(Lab)
I add my congratulations to the Secretary of State on her new
appointment. I serve the most income-deprived constituency in the
country, yet I am very proud that my constituency sent more
children to university than any other constituency in the west
midlands last year. In an interview earlier this year, she said
that many of the degrees that those students study were Mickey
Mouse degrees. Which degrees was she referring to?
I have been very consistent on this subject and will continue to
be so; every young person deserves to know that when they pick a
degree course it is of a high quality. Low-quality courses do
nothing to progress social mobility; all they do is limit
opportunities, which I am sure the right hon. Gentleman would not
want for his constituents.
If you are an adult wondering what this Government are doing to
help you gain that new job, high wage or new career, this debate
is for you. In my maiden speech, I said that it should not matter
where someone comes from, it is where they are going that counts,
and I said that education is absolutely key. I said all those
years ago that what it boils down to is that it is so important
that MPs, from across the House, focus on opening doors for our
society and opening up opportunities.
I, too, extend my congratulations to the right hon. Lady. When I
asked my county council what was the single most important thing
we could do to help the SEND backlog, it gave me one thing to
relay to this Government: we should increase the number of
educational psychologists. I hear her passion, so will she put
that on her to-do list urgently and increase their number, not
just to the 200 more that we have now, because that is not
enough? We need to supercharge the number of educational
psychologists available across the country, to help tackle that
SEND backlog.
I will be looking at everything in the coming days and weeks. As
the hon. Lady will know, mental health was one of my key
priorities in my former role. I recognise the importance of
supporting the wellbeing and mental health of young people to
their going on and succeeding in education.
(Eddisbury) (Con)
I join other Members in congratulating my right hon. Friend on
her appointment as Secretary of State for Education, which is
probably the best job in Government, apart from children’s
Minister. Opening doors for children in education is key, but
making sure that we do not close them is equally important. We
learnt from the pandemic that closing schools left a legacy for
our children that we do not want to be associated with. Will she
look seriously at making sure that that does not happen again, by
giving schools the same stature as nuclear power stations and
other parts of our essential national infrastructure, so that as
Government policy we do not close them again en masse?
I am not the only Minister to have gone on record to say that
they believed it was a mistake we made as a Government to close
schools, and we certainly will not do that again. I will
certainly look at my hon. Friend’s suggestion.
The estimates I commend today put the power of investment behind
those principles. We are opening the doors of opportunity and
building an education system that focuses on where someone as an
individual wants to go, not on where they came from. Excluding
the student loan book impairment charges, the Department’s
resources have increased by a staggering £5.4 billion and capital
has increased by £1.1 billion since the estimates last year. This
is the first year of our three-year spending review settlement,
which provides an astonishing £18.4 billion cash increase for the
Department over the Parliament. The total core schools budget is
increasing to £56.8 billion by 2024-25, which is a £7 billion
cash increase compared with last year. This increase in funding
has been front-loaded, to get money to schools rapidly, because
we want a country in which where someone is going is not
determined by where they came from. That starts with the
investment in the crucial early years. We are committed to an
additional £170 million by 2024-25.
I add my congratulations to the Secretary of State on her
appointment. On the issue of her to-do list, I am sure that
teacher recruitment and retention will be one thing she seeks to
look at. May I raise with her the issue of the particular
challenge that schools in outer London have in competing with
schools from inner London for teachers? More funding is
traditionally allocated to inner London than to outer London for
salary costs. Will she examine that issue and recognise that
living in outer London now is just as costly as living in inner
London and that schools in constituencies such as mine should not
be at a disadvantage compared with those in nearby or
neighbouring boroughs that qualify as being inner London when it
comes to offering good salary packages to teachers in the
future?
I will take on board the hon. Gentleman’s comments and add them
to my ever-growing “to-do list”, as he so kindly puts it.
We are also investing £2.6 billion of capital between 2022 and
2025 for SEND. When it comes to supporting all of our children,
young people and adults, schools and families, I am here, because
I believe we must send a clear message today that their
priorities are what we are focused on in this place. We are
therefore making the investments required to entirely transform
our further and higher education systems, towards a model that no
other country has ever attempted.
(West Worcestershire)
(Con)
I congratulate the Secretary of State warmly on her appointment.
Will she take an urgent meeting with me on the subject of further
and higher education in Malvern? Malvern Hills College, which has
been going for almost 100 years, was passed over to the
Warwickshire College Group a few years ago, with a covenant that
the site should be used only for education purposes. WCG, having
closed the college, is trying not only to sell the site, but to
sue my district council. Will she take an urgent meeting?
I would be only too delighted to take an urgent meeting on a
matter that sounds extremely urgent.
Before the intervention, I was speaking about the lifelong loan
entitlement, which is going to be introduced from 2025. Once it
is introduced, we will be the first major country in the world to
provide every working-age individual with a pot of cash to draw
down to use for their education throughout their life, allowing
everyone to share in the life-changing skills on offer at our
world-class colleges and universities.
I welcome the lifetime skills commitment, but when will there be
clarity on the future status of the international baccalaureate
career-related programme I mentioned in my opening speech? Given
the Government’s commitment to skills and vocational education,
was consideration given to exempting the career-related programme
of the international baccalaureate from the approval process for
level 3 qualifications?
I will be looking at that in the coming days and hope to be able
to update my right hon. Friend shortly. As a result of the
lifelong loan entitlement, the UK will be upskilling and
reskilling, supercharging our workforce, where the true potential
of education to support social mobility, improve skills and beat
the cost of living crisis will be unleashed.
Schools and early years are the power behind the great engine of
social mobility in this country. I would not be standing here
today had it not been for the inspiring teachers who helped me,
lifted me up and supported me throughout my school education, and
I know many Members across this House feel the same. That is why
core funding for schools will rise by an extraordinary £4.7
billion by 2024-25 compared with previously announced plans, and
this year, 2022-23, the schools budget will increase by £2.4
billion. The 2020-21 spending review increases that further with
another £1.6 billion for the coming year. This will go directly
to schools to help them respond to the pressures that so many of
them are facing, especially at this time.
I agree that the certainty that those budgetary increases year on
year provide schools in my constituency and across the country is
extremely important, but the Department is also responsible,
almost entirely, for the budget for the primary PE and sport
premium, which is worth £320 million per year and is helping
improve the quality of physical education activity and sport in
our primary schools. Until now, apart from one occasion when
there was a three-year settlement, we have had a cycle of schools
waiting once to year to find out whether they could continue
courses or keep staff for another academic year. Will the
Secretary of State look at that as part of her lengthening to-do
list and see if there is a way, working with other Departments
including particularly the Department of Health and Social Care,
to ensure that budget commitment can be more than just annually
and instead be made further into the future, as is the footing
for the school budget more generally?
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, especially in terms of
our efforts to tackle childhood obesity. I will take that issue
forward over the coming days and look at it.
Families hold our country together and form the basis of a
child’s future, and indeed the futures of all of us: invest in
families and by proxy we will be investing in the rest of a
child’s life. My focus will therefore be on lifting up families
in need to ensure that children get the same opportunities and
support regardless of where they come from. That is why we are
investing over £200 million a year in our holiday activities and
food programme, providing free school holiday club places with
enriching activities and healthy meals for children who receive
benefits-related free school meals. All 152 local authorities in
England are delivering this programme, leaving no child behind
because of where they come from.
(Rotherham) (Lab)
I congratulate the Secretary of State on her appointment to her
new role. One of my passions is early intervention, and in
Rotherham we have a fantastic early-intervention team that works
with families pre-birth to make sure that every child has the
necessary support around them when they get to school. I am a
huge fan of the Sure Start system; can the Minister assure us
that early-intervention systems will get the money they need
under her guardianship?
I certainly can give that reassurance. The evidence highlights
the importance of those formative years, which is why we rolled
out the family hubs programme and have listened carefully to the
evidence. We also continue to invest in early education, with an
additional £170 million by 2024-25 to increase the hourly funding
rates.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow () mentioned many things in his
opening speech that I am particularly passionate about and that
he will know I have mentioned before, including the pupil premium
and breakfast clubs. He also referred to ghost children, and I
want to address that in particular. Far from being ghosts, these
children are, of course, flesh and blood, and they must be
supported back into school so they, too, can go on and seize
those opportunities and reach for the stars.
We are currently implementing a comprehensive attendance strategy
to ensure no child is left behind and to tackle the root causes
of non-attendance once and for all. We have established an
alliance of national leaders from education, children and social
care, and allied services to work together to raise school
attendance and reduce persistent absence. Measures to establish a
registration system for children who are not in school were
included in the Schools Bill that was introduced in the other
place on 11 May. I agree with my right hon. Friend about the
importance of these measures and those that have previously been
announced to ensure no child falls through the cracks. In fact,
that will be the theme of my leadership of this Department:
ensuring no child falls through the cracks in our education
system.
The hon. Member for Twickenham () rightly raised the
importance of covid recovery in education. Our core funding sits
alongside a further targeted package of £2 billion over the
spending review period. Together with existing ambitious plans,
including for the delivery of up to 6 million tutoring courses
and 500,000 training opportunities for teachers and staff, it
takes to almost £5 billion the announced overall investment that
is specifically dedicated to pupils’ recovery. Importantly, it
will deliver an increase in funded learning hours to 40 hours for
16 to 19-year-olds—those with the least time left in education.
It also includes an additional £1 billion of flexible funding
directly to schools to support catch-up, so that those who know
best about the education of their young people can decide how to
utilise that money and support those pupils. The funding will
extend the recovery premium for a further two academic years,
with primary schools continuing to benefit from an additional
£145 per eligible pupil, while the amount per eligible pupil in
secondary schools is expected to be nearly double.
In conclusion, I am here today regardless of what is happening
elsewhere in Westminster, because the people’s priorities remain
the same and somebody has to deliver on them in education. I
cannot, in all good faith, let down the millions of people who
rely on the education system day in and day out, and I will not
stop working for them. By making the UK a skills superpower, we
are delivering an economy that works for all and provides
opportunities for all. By upgrading and uplifting our schools, we
are delivering a system that values the talents of every child,
regardless of where they come from. By giving families the
support they need to thrive, we are delivering a country we can
all be proud of. I therefore commend the departmental estimates
to the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
With the leave of the House, I call on the Chair of the Select
Committee to finish the debate.
3.18pm
I start by referring to the comments of the hon. Member for
Hemsworth (). He might be surprised to learn that I have a lot
of sympathy for what he said; we do not do enough for
disadvantaged pupils, and I have tried to respond on that. He is
right about further education, too, which is why I have visited
my college more than 100 times since being elected as an MP. FE
colleges are special places that transform people’s lives,
especially for those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
I regard the hon. Member for Twickenham () as an hon. Friend, and she
is right that there are too many Education Secretaries. We put
great emphasis on the NHS and the economy, and I accept that we
need to do that, but we need to do the same for education, and I
hope the Secretary of State is in post for longer than 10 months.
I welcome what the hon. Member for Twickenham said about early
years and free school meals. I also welcome what the Secretary of
State said in response about the holiday activities programme,
and about the fact that she is open to the ideas for school
breakfasts. The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden () talked about childcare,
and I have a lot of sympathy for what she said.
The Government are doing some good things in education. Nearly 2
million more children are in good or outstanding schools, and our
literacy rates have gone up. I appreciate what the SNP
spokesperson said, and she is right that we must get more women
into science, technology, engineering and maths—absolutely. I
also thank the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (), the Labour spokesman, for
his remarks.
In conclusion, let me touch on what my hon. Friend the Member for
Eddisbury () said. The Schools and
Educational Settings (Essential Infrastructure and Opening During
Emergencies) Bill, which I introduced, sets out that if the
Government were to try to close schools again, the Children’s
Commissioner would have a veto over the decision—both the current
and the previous Children’s Commissioner have supported the
Bill—and that there should be a vote every few weeks in
Parliament if schools are closed. We should never, ever, close
our schools again, and I hope that the Secretary of State will
look at that Bill.
Above all, we need to see action on absent children. It is
unforgiveable that we are destroying these children’s lives. I
hope that when the Secretary of State comes back to the House,
she can report that significant progress has been made. Even if
we cannot get every child back, we should have most children back
by September, if not before. Finally, let us have that long-term
plan for education and a secure funding settlement. Now that the
Secretary of State’s predecessor is in the Treasury, let him put
his money where his mouth is and fund education in the way that
it should be funded.
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