The Secretary of State for Education May I begin by wishing you and
the whole House a happy new year, Mr Speaker? With permission, I
would like to make a statement regarding the return to all
educational settings for children, students and staff. There have
been a number of adjustments to the start of this term, and I am
grateful for the chance to update the House in more detail on what
that means. Although we are beginning the transition from pandemic
to endemic,...Request free trial
The Secretary of State for Education
May I begin by wishing you and the whole House a happy new year,
Mr Speaker?
With permission, I would like to make a statement regarding the
return to all educational settings for children, students and
staff. There have been a number of adjustments to the start of
this term, and I am grateful for the chance to update the House
in more detail on what that means.
Although we are beginning the transition from pandemic to
endemic, covid has undoubtedly been the greatest threat to our
way of life since the second world war, but just as we did then,
we are going to get on with the job. I know that our teaching
communities have been adversely affected by the omicron variant,
which is why I issued our recent call to arms, urging any
teachers who have stepped away from the profession or who have
retired to return, even if it is for just a few hours a week, so
that we can keep children learning. I am glad to say that we have
already seen the first volunteers heading back to our classrooms,
including at least two of our own, my hon. Friends the Members
for Eastbourne () and for Stoke-on-Trent
North (), as well as staff from my
Department who have answered that call. They do this House great
credit, and I am sure I speak for the whole House when I say that
we thank them and wish them well. I will have a better idea at
the end of this week of the exact number of former teachers who
have come forward to lend their support.
Even so, schools will be suffering some degree of staff absences.
At the end of last year the figure was about 8% of staff off and
that is likely to rise, with increasing cases in school and among
young people as we return to school. However, let me say this: I
have absolute faith in our teaching communities. Teachers,
classroom assistants, nursery providers, heads and lecturers in
all our education settings have worked miracles throughout this
pandemic and continue to do so. To ease some of the burden, there
will be a short temporary break from Ofsted inspections during
the first week of term as schools undertake on-site pupil
testing. Ofsted will also encourage settings that have been hit
badly by covid-related staff absences to ask for a deferral of
planned inspections. We will work with supply agencies to make
sure that schools can continue to function, and that we
prioritise children’s learning face to face and, of course, in
the face of staff absences.
In November, we reopened the covid workforce fund, and we are
extending it to the February half-term to support schools that
are facing the greatest staffing and funding pressures. I would
like right now to be crystal clear about one thing: we must do
everything—everything in our power—to keep all education and
childcare settings open and teaching in person. Face-to-face
education is the best way for children and young people to learn
and develop. You do not have to be the Education Secretary to
know this. Teachers know it, parents know it and kids know it
better than any of us.
I would now like to outline the additional measures we have put
in place to make that possible and at the same time limit the
spread of infection. On 26 November, every single nursery,
school, college and university was invited to order supplies of
lateral flow tests, and they will have received their allocation
of the 31 million tests, in advance of their pupils, students and
staff returning, through a dedicated supply channel. As a result,
all our education and childcare settings were already well
prepared for the start of this term.
It is because we know that one of the most effective weapons in
our covid arsenal is a robust testing programme that all
secondary schools were asked to provide one on-site test for
pupils at the start of term. They are getting on with that job
right now, and I thank them for it. All college and university
students and all staff have been asked to self-test at home
before they return to the classroom. Secondary, college and
university students, and education staff and childcare staff
should then continue to test themselves at least twice a week. If
any school or college runs out of testing kits, they can order
more through the usual online ordering channel, or call 119 to
receive further advice and support about their supply. We
continue to work closely with the UK Health Security Agency to
maintain supplies for all our education settings.
We continue to welcome international students to the United
Kingdom, and universities stand ready to support any students who
are required to quarantine on arrival. Overseas students should
not worry, because visa concessions remain in place for
international students to allow them to study remotely until 6
April this year.
The best way people can safeguard themselves and their families
is by getting jabbed. The British public have responded
magnificently, with around 60% having received all three jabs. We
want to make sure that everyone gets vaccinated as soon as
possible, which is why I have been urging parents to get the
second doses for 12 to 15-year-olds that are now on offer. They
can make appointments for both doses on the NHS booking service,
and any children who are at risk in the five-to-11 age group can
also get a jab by the middle of this month. There will also be a
vaccination service in schools for those children who are
eligible for jabs, beginning on Monday.
We have already delivered more than 350,000 carbon dioxide
monitors, which settings have found extremely helpful in managing
ventilation. Teachers have told us that they are finding the
monitors helpful to manage ventilation, and in the majority of
settings existing ventilation measures are perfectly adequate for
the job. For the few—the very few—cases where maintaining good
ventilation is more challenging, we are sending out up to 8,000
air cleaning units from next week. Alongside other protective
measures such as testing, vaccinations and better hygiene, these
will help to manage transmission and keep settings open.
To keep as many people as possible learning in school and college
and higher education, we have said that face coverings should be
worn in classrooms and teaching spaces for pupils and students in
year 7 or above. We would not normally expect teachers to wear
face coverings in classrooms if they are mainly at the front of
the class delivering a lesson. I know people feel very strongly
about this, and some have said we are wrong to do it. I follow
the data, however, as I have always done. The UK Health Security
Agency has said that the measure will help reduce transmission at
a time when rates of infection are so high with the omicron
variant. My Department has also looked at observational data from
a sample of 123 schools where face coverings were in use in the
autumn term and found that there was a greater reduction in covid
absence compared with those where students did not wear face
coverings.
Obviously, wearing face coverings is not ideal. It is distracting
for children at a time when they should be concentrating or
listening to their teachers. I also know that it is not great for
any child’s wellbeing and I have commissioned staff from my
Department to conduct further research to better understand the
negative impacts of face coverings on education along with
publishing the initial findings today, but I have to strike a
balance between the vital need to keep schools open and reducing
the spread of infection. As my hon. Friend the Member for
Stoke-on-Trent North rightly pointed out in his article in The
Times,
“Facemasks are a price worth paying to keep kids where they
belong, in the classroom.”
So, for the shortest possible time, and not a day more, that is
what we will recommend. It is the sensible and pragmatic thing to
do, and it is a proportionate thing to do.
I will review the recommendation on 26 January when I hope the
data will allow us to ditch masks in class. Our young people have
put up with an awful lot over the past two years. By doing
everything that has been asked of them, they will have sacrificed
many of the things all of us here took for granted when we were
growing up. I am determined that we take whatever precautions we
have to take now for the shortest possible time so that children
can get back to the life that they should be leading and that
they deserve.
We all owe it to this generation to give them the world-class
education they deserve. For this reason, I commend this statement
to the House.
5.27pm
Happy new year to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to the
House.
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his
statement. I am glad that children are back at school this term,
and I pay tribute to all the staff working right across
education, whose commitment, dedication and hard work make that
possible. Labour wants children to be in school, learning and
playing together. Every day missed from school is a day they do
not get back in their lives and in their learning. Last term
alone, children in England missed over 10 million school days for
covid-related reasons. More than 1 million children have left
secondary school since the pandemic began. Almost 2 million of
our youngest children have never known a normal school year. That
is why Labour has set out a clear, costed and ambitious
children’s recovery plan that would support our children where
they have missed out, with school activities, breakfast clubs,
and small-group tutoring. The Government’s plans are so limited
and inadequate that their own recovery chief resigned in
protest.
We will get on top of this disease by driving down transmission
through vaccinating eligible children, ventilating our classrooms
and testing regularly and frequently, but the steps the
Government have taken so far, with further details announced at
the very last minute and in the House today, simply do not rise
to the challenge we face.
The Christmas break was an opportunity for the Government to
ensure proper ventilation was in place in our classrooms, to get
eligible children vaccinated and to ensure an ample supply of
tests for families. On ventilation, 18 months ago, in July 2020,
the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies considered a paper
on the aerosol transmission of covid, and recommended:
“Particular attention should be paid to planning for winter to
ensure that spaces can be effectively ventilated without
significantly compromising the thermal comfort of occupants.”
In July 2021 we were told that an air purifier trial, a pilot
study, was under way in Bradford, but by the time the full report
of that study is available, it will be more than 30 months since
the Government first ordered schools to close. How can anyone
look at that timeline without concluding that for this Government
our children are an afterthought?
Meanwhile, at the weekend, we heard that a further 7,000 air
cleaning units are to be issued to schools. That trial will tell
us either that those units are a waste of money, or that for
hundreds of thousands of classrooms 7,000 units is wholly
inadequate to meet the challenge they face. Which is it? While
Ministers take their time to decide, it is winter. Windows are
open in schools across England, and children are having to be
wrapped up in their coats to learn. It is incompetent, complacent
and inadequate. Our children deserve better.
On vaccination, on 30 December barely half of eligible children
aged 12 and over had received even their first vaccination. We
have seen in the past month with the booster jab what can be done
when the political will is there, but for this Government our
children are never a priority. On testing, the Government have
encouraged parents to ensure their children take lateral flow
tests twice a week. I looked last night for lateral flow tests
online. There were none available for home delivery. We cannot
test our children twice a week if there are not the tests
available to do it.
In closing, I ask the Secretary of State some of the questions
not addressed by his statement. What guarantee will he offer
parents about the availability of vaccination slots for their
children, in schools or elsewhere? What is he doing about those
who peddle misinformation on vaccines, and will he bring in
exclusion zones around schools? How does he plan to ensure that
parents can get lateral flow tests for their children? When does
he intend to publish the interim findings of the Bradford air
purification trial? What confidence has he that 7,000 devices are
enough—and why? Can he confirm that they will not be available
until the end of February and that he expects children to sit in
classrooms with open windows, in their coats, in winter?
Has the Secretary of State spoken to the Chancellor, who said
last summer that he had “maxed out” on supporting our children
and refused to fund the recovery plan that Sir recommended? What advice has
the Secretary of State had on whether face coverings would still
be necessary if vaccination levels among children were higher and
ventilation better? Can he explain why he is unable to tell the
House today how many retired teachers and others have come
forward to help in classrooms following his last-minute call?
What guarantees can he give students with exams this month and
later this year about whether they will go ahead? Lastly, but
most importantly, when does he plan to return to this House to
set out the ambitious recovery plan for our children’s disrupted
education that they so richly deserve?
I fear the hon. Lady has very little experience of
operationalising anything, given the way she has attempted to
misrepresent the efforts we have made to ensure that schools are
safe and hygienic. She omitted the fact that we have delivered
350,000 CO2 monitors to our school system. That has allowed us to
be confident that, where schools are able to ventilate, they are
doing so and therefore do not need the air purifiers. Where
schools do need additional help, those 8,000 air purifying
devices are going out as of next week, especially to special
needs and alternative provision settings, which as she knows are
the most vulnerable, and to all other schools that cannot
mitigate the problem of ventilation in the classroom.
There has been some corroboration of that modelling by Teacher
App, which I am sure the hon. Lady will look at in her own time
online. If we take the 350,000 CO2 monitors and look at the data
reported back from schools and which schools have had issues,
8,000 air purifiers is a similar number to the one derived
there.
The hon. Lady asked about lateral flow tests. She heard from the
Prime Minister earlier that we have trebled the number of lateral
flow tests going out, from 300,000 a day to 900,000 a day, and
supply from 100 million a month to 300 million a month, but in
her response to my statement, she unfortunately chose to traduce
a testing infrastructure that is probably the best of breed in
the world.
On retired teachers, again operationally, it is a bit difficult
to say as we have had only one day of school. I need to wait
until the end of the week at least before I can talk to the
agencies and hear exactly how many teachers and temporary staff
have been needed. I will happily share that information with the
House, but, alas, the hon. Lady has clearly not had much
experience of operationalising.
Some £5 billion is going into catch-up and there will be 6
million tutoring sessions. By any measure, that is a massive
scale-up of tutoring. Half a million training opportunities will
also be available—we cannot have a great education without having
great teachers—and £5 billion will go into that.
The hon. Lady asked about vaccination. I can report to her that
the school age vaccination programme will begin vaccinating in
schools again as of Monday, as I mentioned in my statement, which
she chose to ignore. Parents can also book online, go to GPs or
walk-in centres to have their children vaccinated. We already
have over 50% vaccinated.
Finally, on exams, vocational exams scheduled to take place in
January will go ahead, because those students have worked hard
studying for them and they deserve to be able to take those
exams. Those who may be down with omicron and need to
self-isolate will be able to get in touch with their awarding
bodies and have their exam rescheduled. In the summer, we will
also go ahead with exams, and rightly so, recognising that there
has been much disruption to students’ studying, which is why we
are doing it in two steps to go back to the rigorous grading of
pre-covid pandemic levels.
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement and thank teachers,
lecturers and support staff across Stoke-on-Trent North,
Kidsgrove and Talke for their heroic efforts in getting kids
tested on the first day back as well as for promoting getting the
vaccine and I join them in those calls. I wait by the phone to be
called into the classroom on either a Thursday or a Friday
sometime soon.
I am delighted to hear my right hon. Friend’s reassurance about
exams. Can we hear from the Secretary of State one more time that
there is no plan B for the summer, just plan A, so that teachers,
parents and pupils have the confidence that exams will go ahead
as normal, and that we will get back to the exam structure to
which everyone is so desperate to return?
I can absolutely give my hon. Friend that assurance.
I wish a happy new year to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to all
colleagues.
Given that there is a break in Ofsted inspections, could the
Secretary of State speak to Ofsted about having some of the
inspectors return to the classroom, making their inspections more
efficient in future?
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for her question. Just to be
very clear, for this first week, because secondary schools are
conducting the tests that we have asked them to do for the
students’ return, there will be an Ofsted inspection break.
Schools can also request a deferral if they have high
absenteeism. Moreover, practitioners who are currently heads of
schools and also inspectors will not be asked to carry out
inspections when Ofsted returns to inspecting after this first
week. Equally importantly, because of the safeguarding
requirements for children in social care, inspections will carry
on as normal.
Is it proportionate to test asymptomatic children, and then, when
they are negative, to mask them up anyway? Will my right hon.
Friend publish the study to which he referred during his
statement about those schools that had lower absences during the
autumn?
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his question. We have
today published that report of evidence, and I will happily send
him a copy of it after this statement.
Dame
When school pupils had to have laptops, the Government stepped
in, but in future years schools are having to replace laptops out
of their own funding. With the catch-up teachers—the retired
teachers—coming back, who is funding them and how long will that
funding continue?
I mentioned in my statement the covid fund that we have made
available, which we have extended further, so schools that need
additional support in terms of temporary staff have access to
that fund.
It is very much to my right hon. Friend’s credit that he has
published the evidence as he promised he would on talkRADIO on
Monday. However, as I think I have just demonstrated, these face
masks are an incredible inconvenience to us all, and they are an
especially harsh imposition on children. I do not have time to
put all the caveats in the data on the record, but does he accept
that that data needs a lot more work to be really conclusive, and
therefore will he really be looking to end this imposition
absolutely at the first possible moment?
Not a day longer than necessary.
Just before Christmas, I received an email from a local teacher
who said that his experience in the classroom was that schools
are at breaking point due to serious underfunding issues. As a
former secondary school teacher, I can only imagine how difficult
it has been for schools over the past two years. Given that 20
primary schools across Barnsley East are receiving less funding
in real terms than five years ago, what investment are the
Government going to put into Barnsley schools to help them
through this incredibly difficult time?
I remind the hon. Lady that at the spending review settlement we
achieved a funding settlement for schools of £4.6 billion, which
school leaders, certainly those I spoke to, welcomed.
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. I thank him and his
ministerial team, and the officials at the Department for
Education, for working tirelessly throughout the Christmas break
to get our children back to school. Labour has repeatedly
flip-flopped and muddied the waters for parents on the safety of
schools remaining open to pupils. Speaking as a parent myself,
can my right hon. Friend confirm categorically to me, to my
constituents and to every parent in the country that every step
is being taken to keep schools safely open?
I thank my hon. Friend for her remarks. It is a huge team effort
by many of my brilliant civil servants in the Department, and of
course the frontline teachers and headteachers, but also the
support staff in schools. We must never, ever forget that the
support staff in schools have done an incredible job; they have
gone above and beyond. It is absolutely clear to me that the best
place for children is at school learning with their friends,
classmates and inspirational teachers. We saw that in the
Children’s Commissioner’s brilliant Big Ask survey, to which half
a million children responded: they said they wanted to be back at
school. It was brilliant teachers who helped me when I came to
this country without a word of English. So I will do everything
in my power to make sure that schools, colleges and nurseries
remain open and that we begin, I hope—I have said this many times
at the Dispatch Box—to be the first major economy to demonstrate
to the rest of the world how we transition this virus from
pandemic to endemic and live with it in the future.
We have known since early on in the pandemic that air purifiers
are one of the most effective and cheapest ways of reducing covid
transmission in the classroom, as shown by countries such as the
US and Germany, which implemented them many, many months ago. The
Secretary of State’s defence today for the very belated
announcement of only 8,000 air purifiers for over 300,000
classrooms in England is that they do not need them. Will he
publish the data from the CO2 monitors that show that only 8,000
classrooms need them? Why is his Department recommending Dyson
air purifiers when actually there are far cheaper ones available
on the market?
I think it is worth just taking a step back. We delivered 350,000
CO2 monitors. The majority of schools did not report any issues
with the atmosphere in the classroom. The reason why we ordered
8,000 purifiers was that the data we received, the feedback from
those schools using their CO2 monitors, demonstrated to us that
there are probably classrooms that cannot mitigate easily and
will therefore need air purifiers. That is the funnel that we go
through, otherwise we waste public money—taxpayers’ money—on
buying 300,000 air purifiers for classrooms that simply do not
need them. I am sure the hon. Lady can understand that.
Why Dyson?
Why Dyson? Because my civil servants also set up a marketplace
for other schools that want to buy air purifiers, and they have
looked at what is available in the market and recommended more
than just the Dyson brand in that marketplace.
Happy new year to you, Madam Deputy Speaker. My right hon.
Friend’s statement is very much to be welcomed. He is right to
point out, however, that masks are not a cost-free option. What
evidence does he have about their effectiveness, particularly
since the evidence from the US suggests that the effectiveness of
masks varies from 98% for an N95 respirator down to about 25% for
a three-layer cotton mask? If he is insisting that children wear
masks, he is presumably also contemplating the sort of guidance
he should issue about the constitution of those masks and how
they should be worn to ensure maximum effectiveness at preventing
transmission.
Masks are one of a number of mitigations. The most important
mitigation is the vaccine—that is indisputable, whether it is the
first two jabs or, now, the booster campaign—and then the testing
we are conducting in secondary schools this week, which I have
just described, and in other settings as we have guided. I have
today published the work we have done on masks, and it has been
referred to in the House; I will share that with my right hon.
Friend as well. That work is based on an observational study that
we conducted in the Department of 123 schools where they
rigorously applied the wearing of masks. By the way, we have
supplied the masks so that schools have them available and are
able to make them available to their students as necessary.
However, in the face of a highly infectious variant, masks are
one mitigation that I thought was necessary, based on that
observational study and the recommendation from UKHSA, including
some of the evidence from places such as Germany and elsewhere.
It is something that I did reluctantly, because the challenges
around learning are evident as well, and I want to keep them for
as short a time as possible, just as we begin to—I hope—get
through the bumpiest of the next couple of weeks with
omicron.
I am sure that I am not alone in hoping that when the Secretary
of State next replies to questions from the shadow Education
Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland
South (), he drops the rather
patronising tone he took.
The Secretary of State has asked all university students to test
themselves before returning to campus, which is very welcome,
especially in Nottingham, where we are very proud to be home to
60,000 university students. I know that those students will want
to do the right thing to protect themselves, their housemates,
university staff and the wider community, but with a national
shortages of tests, can he explain how he will guarantee that
they are able to do that right thing and test before they come
back to Nottingham?
Nottingham has much to be proud of: not only its students getting
themselves vaccinated—over 90% of university students have now
taken the vaccine, and I thank them for doing so—but being home
to the largest manufacturer of lateral flow tests in Europe,
which the Prime Minister spoke about earlier.
One of the ways in which we have mitigated and made sure that we
deliver more lateral flow devices is by trebling the number. We
used to deliver about 300,000 a day: we have increased the
delivery infrastructure so that we can do 900,000 lateral flow
devices a day. I recommend that people refresh the website so
that they can order their devices. On supply, we have gone from
100 million to 300 million a month. As the Prime Minister
mentioned, we probably have the largest testing infrastructure in
Europe.
Happy new year, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Secretary of State
knows that I do not like the classroom mask mandate one bit. What
so many constituents who have contacted me have said—this saddens
them and puzzles me—is that we are again holding children to a
different standard from the one for the rest of the population.
There are masks in classrooms, so why not masks in every single
office where people have to go to work? We are testing, testing,
testing our children; that has an impact on them and their mental
health. Where does he see that in six months’ time or in 12
months’ time when they return after next Christmas? In short, I
am asking him: what is his exit strategy for schools from
covid?
I remind the House that it is guidance —rather than mandate—on
mask wearing in communal parts as part of plan B, which we
announced at the end of last year, and now on wearing masks in
secondary schools in the classroom. My hon. Friend mentioned the
unfairness of this. I agree—I hope my statement struck the right
tone—about what children have had to endure over the past two
years because of the pandemic. However, I remind the House about
a slight difference: we are asking people to work from home
wherever possible, so they do not need to go into the office at
present, but we want to children to be in school, in a classroom,
learning, because we know that that is the best place for
them—for their education and for their mental health.
Our plan is clear. As the Prime Minister set out, we will review
all the plan B measures on 26 January—in fact, they will sunset
then—and I hope that, by then, as we see more evidence, which at
the moment, clearly demonstrates that the Prime Minister was
absolutely right not to go any further and lock down the country
at Christmas or in the new year, we will be one of the first
major economies in the world to demonstrate how we transition
this virus from pandemic to endemic. I hope that we will get back
to what normal life looks like for students as well as for the
rest of the economy.
I want to return to the issue of exams and assessments. Young
people have a real sense of fairness. When they are seeing some
areas of the country where infection levels are incredibly high
and other areas where these are lower, they are concerned that
there will not be equality across the country to demonstrate
their ability and for their futures. How will the Secretary of
State ensure that every single child will have their assessment
in such a way that their full ability will come to the fore?
I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s important and thoughtful
question. We are doing several things. As I have made clear, we
are going back to examination. Exams will take place this
month—some of the vocational examinations that are coming
through—and then in the summer. I spoke about our work with the
regulator, Ofqual, on recognising the disruption to students’
learning because of the covid pandemic. Through Ofqual, we will
also share advance information with teachers and schools so that
we, again, recognise the challenges around exams this summer for
students. As I mentioned, we will go back in two steps to
pre-covid grading, recognising the challenge that students have
faced.
It is vital that schools remain open and I warmly welcome my
right hon. Friend’s clear determination to keep them open. I
share, however, the concerns of other hon. Members who have
spoken about the mask mandate, which I believe will cause harm to
all children in terms of concentration, their educational
development and social interactions. There are some for whom that
impact will be even more severe. A teacher in my constituency
wrote to me earlier today to say that three of the pupils he
teaches are partially deaf and depend entirely on lip-reading. He
tells me:
“Their experience over the next few weeks will be awful as they
are denied normal interactions”.
What can my right hon. Friend say to those children to ensure
that they will not be left behind?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising an important point. I
remind the House that when teachers are standing at the front of
their classroom, they are not required to wear masks, and those
students who are deaf and rely on lip reading will obviously
continue to be able to learn. Nevertheless, it is an important
point that a number of children will be unable to wear masks,
whether because of a disability or otherwise, which is why it is
guidance and at the discretion of teachers and school leaders. We
trust teachers to do the right thing on this.
The importance of ventilation in schools was first highlighted in
spring 2020, yet it has taken until 2022 for the Government to
offer just 7,000 air-cleaning units when there are well over
20,000 schools and 300,000 classrooms in England. Schools in my
constituency are doing a brilliant job, but I have seen an email
from one school asking children as young as four to come to
school in extra layers so that the windows can be kept open in
winter. Is not the Government’s failure to get to grips with
ventilation in our schools another example of them treating our
children’s education as an afterthought?
I thank the headteachers, teachers and support staff in the hon.
Lady’s constituency for their work. Teachers have gone above and
beyond. Some 99.9% of schools were open at the end of last term
and we are seeing similar numbers now that are determined to stay
open and be a place of enrichment for young people.
I will not repeat myself, but we have roughly 24,300-plus schools
and we have sent out 350,000 CO2 monitors. The feedback from the
majority has been that they do not need air purifiers. When we
did the modelling, we thought that they would need roughly 8,000,
which is what we have. The first ones go out next week. That is
the right, proportionate and cost-effective way to deal with
it.
By the way, the 350,000 CO2 monitors cost £25 million of
taxpayers’ money. We are stewards of taxpayers’ money; we have to
be responsible in how we support schools to remain open and do
what they do brilliantly, which is educate young people.
My constituents, old and young alike, believe that it is of
paramount importance to keep schools going, no matter the
circumstances. I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement and its
clarity, which is in big contrast to what the Opposition have
done during the pandemic, which is to sow confusion with their
flip-flopping about whether schools should be open.
I hope that the shadow Front-Bench team will continue to think
about their position and change their mind.
May I wish you a happy new year, Madam Deputy Speaker? I also
thank the Secretary of State for his statement. Local directors
of public health have been important in the fight against covid,
especially in schools in earlier waves. My hon. Friend the Member
for York Central () raised with the Prime
Minister the issue of real-time information getting to local
directors of public health. Clearly, he did not give her an
answer—he never does to anything—so I ask the Secretary of State
directly whether he can give an assurance that the information
from the testing that is going on in schools will be given in a
timely way to local directors of public health, who can react to
it to assist schools to drive down break-outs where they
occur.
The right hon. Member raises a really important question. This
week, I deliberately had a Zoom meeting with pretty much all
local directors of public health—more than 200 attended—because I
wanted, first, to thank them, and secondly, to hear from them
what they are seeing and picking up on the ground and to get that
evidence. It is important for me and my team to ensure that we
have that communication. I will go further and say that it is
about local directors of public health working with school
leaders, and the communication must be absolutely paramount. That
is why I wanted to have that conversation directly with the
directors so that they could hear from me how important they are
in this whole endeavour. Local doctors who are responsible for
public health are equally important.
I congratulate the Secretary of State on the work that he, his
team and the entire teaching profession have done to keep our
children in the place that is best for them, which is in the
classroom, learning. So many children have fallen back over the
past two years. The Secretary of State spoke earlier about the
plans to enable catch-up; will he say a little more about when we
might be able to implement them?
Absolutely. We managed to secure further funding in the spending
review, so the total amount of funding going into catch-up is now
just short of £5 billion—I think it is £4.9 billion. Those
students who have the least time left in education—that is, 16 to
19-year-olds—are getting, in effect, an additional 40 hours of
education, because it is important that we focus on their
catch-up. Secondary and primary schools focus very much on
disadvantaged students.
The major tutoring programme through which we are delivering 6
million tutoring sessions, each of which is, in effect, 15 hours
of tutoring for those kids, means that we are seeing a real
difference in outcomes. Tuition used to be the luxury of the very
wealthy, but we want to make sure that every child has it
available to them and I want parents to make sure that they ask
schools what they are doing about the additional tuition that we
are making available.
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his positive statement. What
discussions have been held with the devolved Administrations and
the Northern Ireland Assembly to ensure that the focus is on
ensuring that children—particularly those with big exams coming
up, whether GCSEs or A-levels—are taught at school? Furthermore,
will additional funding be available for schools to run catch-up
classes as and when they are needed?
I mentioned earlier the funding settlement in the SR, and when I
talk to school leaders, they say that they think that has been a
good outcome for us in education. Of course, I also spoke about
the £5 billion of catch-up funding. We are sometimes in danger of
getting into an arms race in respect of how much we can announce,
but my focus is on output: how many children have we managed to
get to catch up, whether through the tuition partners scheme or
any of the other schemes I have mentioned?
I am grateful for the Secretary of State’s answer to my hon.
Friend the Member for Rugby () about the £4.9 billion for
catch-up. Going forward, there is an opportunity to make sure
that we get our pupils in front of teachers, and one way to do
that is to extend the school day. The idea was raised with the
Secretary of State’s predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member
for South Staffordshire (), and the Chair of the
Education Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow
(), is a big advocate of it. Is
my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State considering taking
the idea forward as a long-term plan to make sure that pupils
really are educated to the best of their ability?
That is what we are doing as part of catch-up for 16 to
19-year-olds, who have the least time left in education and
therefore in effect face the greatest challenge because of covid.
I have also said at the Dispatch Box previously that because of
our research capability in the Department we now know that the
average school day is 6.5 hours; I would like those whose days
are below average to move towards that average. I will always
look at what the high-performing schools and multi-academy trusts
do to deliver additional work, and not just academic work. The
Minister for School Standards is looking at all the other things
that deliver a rounded, healthy individual who becomes a
brilliantly capable adult.
Happy new year, Madam Deputy Speaker. We all agree that there is
nothing better for attainment and learning than keeping pupils in
school, but will the Secretary of State assure me that mental
health has been considered in his priorities for keeping schools
open? As the Milton Keynes youth cabinet highlighted to me a few
months ago, there is a potential mental health time bomb from
children losing the structure of a school day, so will he confirm
that it is our absolute priority to keep schools open?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his incredibly important
question. He cites the Milton Keynes feedback that he has
received. Half a million children responded to the Children’s
Commissioner’s Big Ask survey, including 2,500 children of Gypsy
and Roma families and 16,000 children with special educational
needs and disabilities. This generation is not a snowflake
generation—it has been a pretty resilient generation through
covid—but, actually, one thing the children cite very clearly is
the impact on their mental health of schools not being open, and
obviously being available only for the most vulnerable children
and children of critical workers. I think that was a painful
lesson for us to learn. I will never want to repeat that, and I
will do everything in my power to keep schools open.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Finally, I call .
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a shame to find myself
bottom of the class, but I guess I must try harder.
I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement and his commitment
to keeping schools open, which will be really important to
parents in my constituency. It is not without its challenges, but
given what we know about the lower heath risk to children and the
emerging evidence about perhaps the less severe impact of the
omicron variant, arguably the biggest challenge is staffing,
which is why some of the measures he took over Christmas are so
important.
I have two questions. First, could the Secretary of State tell my
residents whether his scheme to promote people coming back into
classrooms is still open, and if so, how can I encourage my
constituents to sign up or where can I encourage them to sign up?
Secondly, along with teachers, support staff are clearly hugely
important—at Mansfield council, we have found shortages of
cleaners and all sorts of other very important roles in
schools—so has his Department considered what support or advice
he might offer schools about those roles?
My hon. Friend is certainly not bottom of the class. His
experience of local government and his contribution to national
Government are exemplary. That was a very good double question.
On the first question, we have set up a dedicated site where
people can register, inquire and come forward, and then be
signposted to local agencies in their area to be able to sign up.
On his second very good question, I am also looking at and
monitoring support staff absenteeism because of the omicron
virus, because they are equally important in making sure that our
schools continue to remain open for face-to-face education.
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