King’s Speech
Baroness Andrews Excerpts(5 months, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Andrews (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London from the spiritual security and shelter of these Benches. My real regret is that I cannot actually see our Front Bench, but I am very pleased that my noble friends are there and particularly welcome my noble friend Lady Smith of Malvern. I had the pleasure of working with her many years ago, and know that she understands the role of this House. She made a brilliant maiden speech. I am also very sorry that we are losing the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, who has made a real contribution to health and social care in this House.
The new Government have set a blistering place but, more importantly, have changed the tone of government. They have already begun the business of rebuilding trust and belief in public services. They have an audacious focus on the long term. What they demonstrate to me is the value that they put on the skills of the care economy, the invisible scaffolding that underpins the real economy and enables growth. The King’s Speech made an intergenerational commitment to child and adult health and social services that is about much more than money. It is about skills and investment in aspiration and well-being.
Taking the long view means addressing the failure of the past 14 years to recognise the structural faults in the care economy by valuing skills, whether in child or adult services, and putting training and careers in place. The King’s Speech does not duck the difficult issues. In 1945, women stayed at home and looked after families from children to adults, from cradle to grave. Nearly 80 years later we have an ageing and deeply unequal society. We now need a social contract between the generations and between the state, the family and the individual. We need to reset that social contract.
The King’s Speech and the announcements made alongside it signify that. The skills for England Bill, the children’s well-being Bill, the pledge to recreate the salary review for school support workers and, for me, above all, the commitment to a fair pay agreement for adult social care workers bring a new dimension to how we see the contribution as well as the aspiration of those who teach, support and care for the young and old. The children’s well-being Bill recognises that children cannot learn if they are hungry, have special needs, or if the curriculum and assessment system is not fit for their future. Breakfast clubs will make a huge difference to hungry children, but let us add enrichment and learning in that extra part of the day.
The appointment of Kevan Collins is a wonderful step forward. I hope this Government will enable him to realise his ambitions for the whole child, so damaged during the Covid years, that he was not able to put in place. I hope that will also signal a commitment to an out-of-school learning programme just like the one the last Labour Government put in place, which was such a success for children.
This debate is about change. People working in childcare settings and adult social care have been waiting years for it. These professions attract the best people, mostly women, but we know too well that they cannot recruit and retain staff. Early years providers are closing across the country because, despite the best efforts of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, whom we all respected, the last Government did not address the reality of what rapid and unfunded expansion would mean. The children who lose out, as ever, are the poorest. Perhaps I might suggest that the Minister meets urgently with the Early Years Alliance to get its knowledge and experience of where the priorities should lie. There are still 150,000 vacancies in adult social care. Women’s jobs seem to be worth less, with the minimum wage or less, low status and no career. That is where change needs to start—and it will with an unequivocal commitment to a fair pay agreement for adult social care.
To build for the long term, on Wednesday the Skills for Care organisation produced a workforce plan for adult social care to match the NHS plan. It is different because it is coherent, it is owned by the whole sector and it allocates responsibilities. Let us act on that and let it develop the relational skills that are central to the best quality of care. Let us acknowledge and act on the strong value we get from unpaid carers, not least with an amnesty for those who, through no fault of their own, have fallen into the debt trap. If there is to be a royal commission, let it be swift; there is no reason why it cannot be.
We have the longest prescription and the best set of what we can do—and we have a brilliant new Minister in Stephen Kinnock, who knows from experience what care means and has the skills and energy. This is the King’s Speech we have been waiting a very long time for.
Universities: Financial Sustainability
Baroness Andrews Excerpts(7 months ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
Obviously, the pension scheme is an element, but I am not aware that the entitlement of university lecturers is changing. Clearly, it is up to individual institutions to make themselves as attractive as possible to academic staff.
Baroness Andrews (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Lord opposite asked a legitimate question—how poorer areas, which are benefiting hugely because they have universities in their midst, are likely to be affected if the number of overseas students drops and the university becomes in a more precarious and even more fragile state. This morning, on the radio, one university was cited as having a drop of 40% in its overseas students over the past year. How will that affect the university and the community it serves?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I think that the noble Baroness, on one level, knows the answer to her question, which is obviously that if there is less money going in, it will have a negative effect. But that is not the real question. The real question is: what are the Government doing to make sure that there is significant investment in those areas? There absolutely has been significant investment in all of the areas the noble Baroness cites, not just in relation to universities but also in colleges and institutes of technology, building the skills pipeline of the future.
Childcare Entitlements
Baroness Andrews Excerpts(8 months ago)
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Baroness Andrews (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister began by saying that this is the biggest expansion in childcare, and she is right; we share those ambitions. But it is because it is the biggest expansion we have experienced in childcare that the NAO report is so worrying.
Among the things the report says, in many different ways, is the difficulty the DfE has in getting the right data to plan properly. While I have listened to what the Minister said about how the DfE will respond, with better benchmarks and so on, I find it very difficult to know how it will do that given the quality of data. I will quote from page 33 of the report:
“Given limited engagement, DfE does not know the market’s willingness and capacity to increase places … There remain uncertainties over whether the sector can expand”.
If you take that set of uncertainties, it becomes clearer why this is the DfE’s top risk. The risks have already been enunciated by my noble friends. They include risks to places, operational infrastructure, insufficient parent demand and an unstable market. That is an extraordinary range of risks. The risk register must be glowing red. Can the Minister share the risk register with us so that we can see where the DfE sees the greatest risks coming from and what the responses will be? If she cannot do that, maybe she can explain how the risks identified are being addressed on a systematic basis.
I turn to the conclusion of the NAO report. It says that the DfE
“has assessed its confidence in meeting milestones beyond April 2024 as ‘problematic’. It must now use available data to understand when it needs to intervene”.
But, as I said, if the quality of data and access to data are so limited, how will the department do that?
The conclusion ends:
“In extending entitlements, the government’s primary aim is to encourage more parents into work. Even if DfE successfully navigates the significant uncertainties”,
which are documented throughout the report,
“it remains unclear whether the extension will achieve its primary aim, represent value for money and not negatively impact DfE’s wider priorities relating to quality and closing the disadvantaged attainment gap”.
Each of those phrases carries tremendous weight, particularly the last one about the attainment gap. How are the Government going to respond credibly to that set of very authoritative statements?
Finally, I have a general point. The NAO report is a reality check. I have every sympathy with the Minister and with the DfE in trying to deliver this, because it is a huge challenge. One of the reasons for that is that it is an object lesson in how not to make policy. The Government did not consult the providers early enough or get an understanding of what the market was like on the ground. They did not address the historical underfunding, as we discussed when we debated this last November, which was built into the system from 2013 onwards, and did not understand the lack of resilience in the sector. The Minister talked about retention and recruitment but, in fact, between 2018 and 2023 an increase of only 5% was achieved in recruitment and retention. The target for the coming years is much higher.
This is a very serious report, and it is going to demand from the department a very serious and credible reply. The real risks are the risks to parents, who want and need to be able to count on this service, and to children, who need quality provision, which they are not likely to get unless investment is properly guaranteed and targeted.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I have to say that I did not agree with everything that the noble Baroness asserted. To start with the risk register, it is not glowing red, but it is of course a priority risk for the department. The noble Baroness understands this extremely well from her previous experience. We are doubling the commitment in this area financially: we will spend £8 billion a year once this rollout is complete, from £4 billion today. That is a massive increase, and it is a real challenge in a market with a number of small providers and with the way in which, rightly, we work through local authorities and providers. So it would be irresponsible—and I think that the noble Baroness would be criticising the Government—if it was not a significant risk for the department. But that means that it gets a great deal of focus, and there are very detailed plans to support it.
As for consulting the sector, I slightly take exception to what the noble Baroness said. The department works very closely with the sector, providers, parents and local authorities, and it is crucial that we do, because we are committed to getting this right.
As for the willingness of providers, and the point that the noble Baroness picked from the report about our understanding of willingness and capacity, as I pointed out earlier, capacity for all types of provider rose by over 20% last year. That is very significant, as I am sure that the noble Baroness agrees. On the point about willingness, almost 40% of group-based providers, 33% of school-based providers and 42% of child minders said that they would be more likely to offer places to children under three, given this expansion. About half of them—it is slightly different, but I shall not bore the House with all the numbers—said that those would be additional places, so they would not be substituting an older child with a younger child.
Where I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness is that this is a very serious report. We take it very seriously, and we will respond in full.
Early Years Education
Baroness Andrews Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Baroness Andrews
That this House takes note of the importance of good quality early years education provision and environments, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Baroness Andrews (Lab)
My Lords, this debate could not be more timely. I am extremely grateful to noble Lords who have put their name down to speak this afternoon, despite the hour and the weather.
In the spring Budget, the Government made £4.3 billion of new investment to expand entitlement to childcare. For children between nine months and three years, who will be offered 30 hours of funded—not free—childcare per week from April 2024, this was extremely welcome. I want the Minister to know that we are grateful indeed for, and acknowledge the significance of, that investment. Why was this new funding therefore received by the childcare sector with more alarm than joy? Briefly, it is because it has become clear over the past seven years that the sector is simply too fragile to deliver additional places at the price that the Government are prepared to pay for them, without putting even more providers at risk and adding to the potential erosion of the service. Since the Government are actually purchasing about 80% of all childcare hours the providers, especially in the poorer areas, will be made even more vulnerable because there will be less scope for asking richer parents to pay more.
At the heart of this issue, therefore, is the chronic and cumulative underfunding of the existing provision for three to four year-olds, which led the Institute for Fiscal Studies to estimate yesterday that funding was 10% below that which it was in 2012, and that funding will simply not reach many of the poorest families at all. It is that which is raising the alarm now among providers and parents, and that alarm is shared by the Select Committee on Education, which reported in July that without every effort, the extra places cannot be delivered—and possibly cannot be delivered without risk—and that the existing places may become more vulnerable.
Yesterday, the Government announced that £400 million would be available for the policy. Again, that is welcome news but, in a complicated funding environment, I have to ask the Minister for further clarity. Can she tell me whether this, or a proportion of it, is new money? What and who, and exactly how, will it be funding? Can she just give us those details for greater clarity? How will it improve the situation for the many existing providers who provide just for three to four year-olds? How will it incentivise those who want to expand the service to the younger children?
When there is such huge investment at stake, it is really dispiriting that we cannot be certain that, with the best intention, extra places can be provided, that objectives will be met and that there will not be such perverse outcomes. Those perverse outcomes were baked into the Childcare Act 2016. It gives me no pleasure to say this but I and many others, informed by the childcare networks, warned in this House then that unless places were fully funded, there would be an exodus of providers that could not afford to bear the burden of expansion. It turned out that the funding provided was a quarter of what was estimated to be needed.
I also make the point that the Government’s own objectives short-changed the children involved. While the emphasis was on getting parents back into work, there was no equivalent urgency or assurance on quality or educational outcomes, especially for those with special needs. The child, it seemed, had been left out of the policy—so it still seems, but it is so much worse now after Covid. In the short term, we can already see the impacts: the sustained loss of language, learning and socialisation in very young children, which is of course worse in disadvantaged areas; a wildfire of absenteeism in secondary schools; and a breakdown of some basic trust between parents and schools about the value of attendance. Then there is the ultimate broken environment: the crumbling concrete, which puts children and teachers at risk.
I have enormous respect for the Minister. This policy is not of her making but I know that she and her colleagues, like us, want it to succeed. She will also know that when I say that childcare provision has been knowingly underfunded, I am referring to the information obtained directly from her department, revealed by a freedom of information request from the Early Years Alliance, which shows that in 2015 DfE officials were already worried about a funding gap and had already estimated that, by 2021, the hourly costs for funded-hours entitlement for three and four year-olds would reach £7.49. In 2021, however, providers were receiving only £4.89 for each place.
The foundations were being undermined from the start, because the original gap between what the Government were prepared to pay for and what it actually costs to care for and educate a young child has widened every year, accelerated by inflation, the cost of living increases and minimum wage increases. In 2024, providers will get £5.62 per place. The sector estimates that the real cost is over £9.
What is clear is that, across all comparisons, the UK is still the third most expensive of all OECD countries for childcare. This bears down most on families who earn less than £45,000; they do not qualify for universal credit but cannot afford the £14,000 now estimated as the annual cost of one child in full-time preschool care. Parents and children are falling through the cracks. But the present crisis is not just about financial shortfall; there was another gross failure in 2015. Staffing accounts for 70% of costs. What was crucially needed was a workforce plan in place dedicated to building the childcare workforce of the future, with provision for training and professional development and a clear focus on learning outcomes. That did not happen.
Instead, funding was grafted on to a service which was already struggling with retention and recruitment. Ofsted has shown that the service has shrunk from 85,000 providers to 60,000 since 2015. According to the Early Education and Childcare Coalition and the University of Leeds, 57% of nursery staff and 38% of childminders are considering leaving the service in the next 12 months. A workforce plan is more urgent now. We cannot start soon enough. I urge the Minister to go back to her department and urge her colleagues to put in place the beginnings of a workforce strategy, because it is in the poorest areas that we have the greatest impacts as it is where children’s preparation for school and attainment in school is lowest.
I am afraid I have a few more statistics. Half of providers exist just on the margins of profitability. The National Day Nursery Association estimates that the average setting has lost £32,000 as a result of those 15-hour places for three to four year-olds, and 96% of those were good or outstanding; these are not poor providers. Ofsted’s latest figures—from August 2022—up to now show a loss of 3,200 additional providers. The fastest exodus from the profession is by childminders, who are becoming an endangered profession. Of all these statistics, the most alarming I have seen is an estimate that by 2035 there will be only 1,000 childminders left in the UK.
To be graphic, what we are watching is a system which has been unequal from the start become more unequal, more unfair and more inefficient. Women are still being held out of the workplace and we need them to be as fulfilled and as productive as possible, particularly in the poorest areas. The Early Years Alliance is a good example. It is one of the largest community-based providers. It has 132 settings four years ago in the most deprived areas; now it has 42. It is in the childcare deserts that childminders have left at the fastest rates. They are the areas where the pressures on preschool settings are the greatest because there are so many fewer high earners who can help cross-subsidise the system. When 80% of those places are funded for poor families, you do not have the scope to borrow and cross-subsidise. You have two choices; cut the hours of your staff or cut your staff entirely. Perhaps the Minister will say that a low take-up reflects lower birth rates or that women are choosing to work from home more. If she does, I urge her to give us the evidence for that.
We can all agree that we will never deliver for children unless the Government deliver for the early years’ educators, who feel “undervalued” and “under-respected”, in their words. We really need a review of pay and conditions. Nearly half of them survive on benefits or tax credits. The Sun recently put out an article with the 20 least popular jobs in the country. At the bottom of the list, earning about £22,000, were early years educators. What does that say about the value we put on children? It is estimated that it would take five early years educators pooling their resources to afford an average-price house.
I have a few related questions. Why was there no reference at all in the Autumn Statement to the impact of higher minimum wages on those caring for three to four year-olds? Exactly how many new places are expected to be created for younger children with the new money? How many new staff will be needed, and how will they be found and retained? What is the plan?
What is the estimate of the number of younger children under the new scheme who will come from families on universal credit? How will that be evaluated? Has DfE made any estimate of the amount of dead weight—parents who are presently paying but who will move, by different means, on to the funded places? How is that being evaluated? Why have the Government rejected all the evidence from the sector and parents about the change in the ratio from 4.1 to 5.1 staff, which is going ahead despite all the evidence that this will cause retention to deteriorate further? Why, in the spring, did the Government not consult or even inform the sector regarding the planned expansion before it was announced? It read about it in the newspaper.
Why have the Government rejected Select Committee’s arguments on the need for sustainability by rejecting recommendations on the right rate of funding for all ages and the abolition of business rates? This is a unique sector with a unique national public service to offer, and it would make a massive difference if business rates were removed. Is the Minister prepared to meet with the Early Education and Childcare Coalition and the Early Years Alliance to listen to their shared concerns?
There is no need to rehearse the importance of early learning: we have decades of evidence on how and why these years have the most profound impact on what people make of their lives—speech and language, curiosity, relationships and behaviour. A threadbare, uncertain and stressful environment holds every child back. These are the same children who suffered so badly by being locked out because of Covid, and whose parents could not provide the books, the companionship, the conversation, the outdoor play, the stimulation.
The evidence is piling up. Ofsted has charted the continuing impact on child development, such as language and learning loss, and more children needing specialist help and waiting longer. The Education Policy Institute has said that according to the evidence, the disadvantage gap between poor children and the rest, which has been much reduced over the past decade, has been “reversed”. In June this year, the Public Accounts Committee noted in relation to older children that Covid had wiped out a “decade of progress” in reducing the attainment gap. This is really serious. The Children’s Commissioner told the Covid inquiry that children and the child’s perspective were entirely left out of Covid planning. It is worth reading all 130 pages of her evidence.
One of the most conspicuous failures has been not following the powerful and expert advice of Sir Kevan Collins. What was wanted for secondary and primary school children was a properly funded, coherent, active-learning programme that was not simply tutoring, but which brought enrichment, motivation and an appetite to learn. I know that because I spent much of my life in that sector.
No one in the Chamber disputes the link between children in poverty and school failure, nor how the number has grown. No one disputes that putting the childcare sector on a stable footing and making that investment work properly is as much about expanding the minds of children as it is about expanding the economy, and the care economy in particular, which underpins it all. It is about ensuring that the future is in safe, intelligent and courageous hands.
This why the current situation is so profoundly frustrating and dispiriting, and I have some sympathy with Ministers in this respect. We seem to have ended up with a Treasury model focused on childcare, not children. Children are invisible and their value is commodified into the cost of places, rather than optimising the benefits to them. Although the additional funding this spring and the announcement yesterday are of course welcome, they do not put right the profound structural problems that will make it so difficult to deliver this policy, which we all want to see—indeed, they could make it worse.
If the evidence in the next few months shows that there is an issue with delivery, I urge the Government to listen to what the sector tells them and not to short-change providers, parents and children. We need to assert that every child matters, and we need to see this at the centre of every government policy, in bold caps. Otherwise, after years of failing to provide, this will be the generation that was promised more but given less.
Baroness Andrews (Lab)
My Lords, I think that is an excellent note on which to end a very good, passionate, as usual, and expert, as usual, debate. I thank the noble Baroness for associating herself and her party with our grief at the death of Lord Darling.
It has been a debate about quality, and lots of elements that constitute quality have been raised. Lots of questions have been asked and I am particularly grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for these known harms—and probably unknown harms as well. They are very important to explore. A whole range of issues constitute quality, including the value and the content of food and the absolute necessity of play—to quote Schiller, we are not fully human unless we know how to play.
I thank noble Lords for their emphasis on the essential nature of child development. Many questions were answered by the Minister but quite a few were not, so I would appreciate answers particularly to the questions I raised on the £400 million. I also have some questions arising from her winding up. There are reasons to be cheerful and we should not diminish the importance of, for example, those statistics about numeracy and literacy in the later primary years. However, while the information brought forward yesterday by the department suggested that 67% of children are in good development, there are still a third of children who apparently are not—that is a very high proportion. I would like that to be explored.
I would also like to know more about when the evaluations will start—I hope that it will be immediately. There are lots of initiatives, but the Minister did not really answer the questions which are so fundamental about the coherence of strategies, particularly for retention, and going forward with this acknowledged frailty in the system.
I have much more I could say, which I do not think anybody would be grateful to hear at this stage, but I am very grateful to the Minister because I know we share a huge range of values and both sides of the House want this policy to succeed. I am grateful that we have had an opportunity to dive a bit deeper into some of the issues. I would like to follow up some of the questions when I read Hansard and I will pass on the invitation to the agencies. I am sure they would appreciate a personal conversation with the Minister, because there are always more questions and there is always more to do.
Higher Education: Arts and Humanities
Baroness Andrews Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
A love of the arts can come from many sources—importantly from universities and schools but also from wider cultural experiences. As the noble Baroness knows, we are committed to the bursaries that we are putting in to support particularly the modern foreign language teachers that were referred to but also our wider commitment to the creative industries in this country.
Baroness Andrews (Lab)
Does the noble Baroness agree with me—I am sure she does—that the creative industries in this country generate £109 billion a year and are 5% of our GDP? Does she agree that anything that is done through funding, or through language that attempts to create a false dichotomy between creativity in science and in the arts—or that talks about low value, as opposed to high value—is damaging to creativity as a whole and to our ability, as a country, to produce the innovation and cultural vitality that we need across the whole spectrum, whether it is in the arts or the sciences?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I feel that the noble Baroness and I listen to different bits of what the Government say about this. It was only last month that the Government announced their plans to grow the creative industries from the current £108 billion by a further £50 billion, and a million more jobs by 2030. We are making a major investment in the sector, particularly in performance and screen technology research labs based in Yorkshire, Dundee, Belfast and Buckinghamshire.
Education: Funding
Baroness Andrews Excerpts(7 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Nash
I am grateful to the noble Lord for recognising that we have been the first Government for some time to grasp the issue of the anachronistic state of school funding. It was never going to be easy —that is quite obvious from the debates we have had. However, we are determined to press on and make school funding fair. As I have said, there will be no cuts per pupil as a result of the national funding formula.
I would invite the noble Lord to come into the department and see the extensive work we are doing on school efficiency and organisation to make sure that schools fully understand how to make the resources available in a more efficient way so that there are many more resources for the front line. I recognise the pressures that schools are facing, but it is a fact that under the Labour Government schools received a 5.1% per annum increase in their funding in real terms and that during that time we slumped down the international league tables in the performance of our schools. So it is not just about money; it is about the efficient deployment of resources.
Baroness Andrews (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister has been insistent on fairness in both the Statement and in what he has just said. I am sure that he is familiar with the work of the Education Policy Institute, which said in a recent report that:
“The most disadvantaged primary and secondary schools in London are expected to see an overall loss of around £16.1 million by 2019-20 ... In addition, the distribution of funding based on area deprivation … shows that pupils who live in the least deprived areas experience the highest relative gains”.
What is fair about that?
Lord Nash
The noble Baroness refers to the Education Policy Institute, with which I am very familiar as I attended its one-year anniversary event only a couple of weeks ago. It is a very excellent organisation, ably chaired by my ex-colleague David Laws. As I have said, we are determined to make the funding formula fair. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, it is clear from what we have said that we have looked at the issue of losers. We will redress that in the fact that no school will have its budget cut on a per-pupil basis as a result of these changes. Certainly, as part of the consultation—the 25,000 responses we have had—the point made by the noble Baroness has been made.
Schools: Volunteer Reading Helpers
Baroness Andrews Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Nash
The noble Baroness makes an extremely important point; I know that she is very experienced in this area. It would be nice to see all schools have coding clubs—I know that an increasing number are. I think that the figure for pupils doing computing at GCSE is around 50,000, but I will write to her on that, and I will certainly look at the resources available. I am very happy to discuss the matter with her further.
Baroness Andrews (Lab)
My Lords, further to the question on libraries, is the Minister aware that the gap in reading and especially in writing between boys and girls continues to widen? The most innovative schemes, which often help the most disadvantaged families and therefore boys, are in libraries. Is the Minister further aware that 8,000 jobs have been lost in libraries during the past six years and that 350 libraries have closed in that time? Can he tell me how many libraries are likely to close in the coming year—I am happy for him to write to me—and what impact he thinks it will have on his ambitions for literacy?
Lord Nash
Sadly, I cannot predict the future, but I can say that we have more than 3,000 public libraries and I understand that approximately 110 static libraries have closed in the past six years—some have merged. Local authorities are legally required to provide a comprehensive and efficient library service. Some do that via mobile libraries, but we leave it to them to decide how to do it.
Grammar Schools
Baroness Andrews Excerpts(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Andrews
That this House takes note of the Government’s proposals for the extension of grammar schools and selection in education.
Baroness Andrews (Lab)
My Lords, I start by thanking all noble Lords who have made time for this debate today. We have a very distinguished cast of speakers; I am particularly glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Vere of Norbiton, has chosen this debate to make her maiden speech. We very much look forward to that; indeed, I look forward to the whole debate, particularly the Minister’s contribution.
At a time when, both at home and abroad, the country faces massive uncertainties and deep social divisions, there has never been a more important time for clear thinking, clever solutions and humane policies. The Prime Minister has decided that the answer lies in a nationwide expansion of grammar schools, described in the title of the consultative document before us today as:
“Schools that work for everyone”.
This, she says, is the way to create not just a meritocracy but—with capital letters—a Great Meritocracy, to be launched from the narrow ledge of educational and social selection. This is a controversial policy; it is a failed policy. It is a policy that was abandoned by all political parties as not fit for purpose more than half a century ago.
We have to take its resurrection and indeed the extension of systematic selection very seriously indeed. This has been made much more difficult by the terms in which the debate has been conducted so far. We live in an age where politicians are distrusted, language seems to have lost its meaning, and evidence can be simply ignored as irrelevant. There is a clear link between each of these. Language really matters. Grammar schools, whatever else they do, are not intended to work for everyone. By definition and design, they select and groom a small minority of academically inclined children. Other children pay a high price for this. Likewise, the term “meritocracy” has been turned on its head. Grammar schools were always seen by the man who coined that term, and indeed who wrote the book—Lord Young of Dartington, a good friend and much missed in this House—as the enemies of meritocracy. A true meritocracy follows only when every child in the early stage, irrespective of background, in every school has the same chance to succeed and access the curriculum.
Evidence for a massive reversal in education policy such as the deliberate reintroduction of grammar schools really matters. But, instead of evidence we are, I am sad to say, presented with a series of myths about the virtues of grammar schools, which have been rebooted for political purposes. We are told, for example, that parents want grammar schools, that they close the attainment gap between rich and poor children, that they accelerate social mobility, and that they galvanise all schools to do better. These claims are widely challenged already, not by the usual suspects but by a unique coalition, in my opinion, which has brought together previous Secretaries of State for Education—who see their records seamlessly undermined—the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer, trade unions, Opposition politicians, academy trusts, networks, think tanks, educationalists and, of course, the Chief Inspector of Schools himself.
Most important of all, the myth of a golden age of grammar schools is being publicly dismissed on a daily basis, not least in parts of the conservative press, by people of my generation who know from bitter experience what it meant to be declared a failure at 11 and to have to live with that failure all their lives, packed off to secondary modern schools before they even had a chance to know what they were good at. It is true that polls suggest that many parents may like the idea of grammar schools in theory but, when pressed further, they certainly do not want a return to selection. Unfortunately, the two go together. As Peter Kellner, the pollster, put it:
“Many of us want the best possible schools, but hate the idea of children being sorted into sheep and goats”.
Let us also be honest about the language of choice. Where grammar schools still exist, in that small enclave of wholly selective areas, it is the schools that do the choosing, not the parents. The head of educational assessment at the OECD said recently that schools were very good at social selection, but less good at academic selection. He makes a very important point because, when grammar schools were at their height, research at the time estimated that 70,000 children were wrongly failed.
I turn now to the available evidence in the light of the proposition. Working-class children across the country as a whole are losing out specifically because they are being denied the unique opportunities of a grammar school education. Certainly, the evidence shows that, where they exist, grammar schools get better results than other schools—and so they should. It might have something to do with the fact that, as a recent IFS study found, entrants to current grammar schools are four times more likely to have been educated outside the state system than to be entitled to free school meals. It may also be something to do with the fact that many children who are entered for the exam are being methodically coached for that exam. Professor Frank Furedi of the University of Kent has said that the notion of the meritocracy has been “subverted” by “hard cash”, as parents pay for coaching to ensure a place. It is not so much a meritocracy as possibly a plutocracy. With this demography and these advantages, it would be scandalous if grammar schools did not do better.
So for me, therefore, the most irresponsible claim the Prime Minister has made is that grammar schools close the attainment gap between rich and poor pupils. Yes, indeed, they do, but only within grammar schools, and even then the evidence needs to be treated with extreme caution. What the consultative process will do, I hope, is to throw more light on the performance of grammar schools, because contemporary research from 1967 shows that even then, at the height of the grammar schools, the small proportion of working-class children who passed the exam were more likely to leave early and with fewer O-levels. Sixty years later not much has changed. Contemporary research on the way in which grammar schools meet the demands of the very few disadvantaged students who pass the exam concludes that some are working but others are not, and that one in five is giving cause for concern.
The Prime Minister should also look with equal caution at the evidence of how well grammar schools serve the brightest children. In the largest and most recent study of its kind, the Educational Policy Institute found that there is no benefit to attending a grammar school for high-attaining pupils. Since the White Paper is based on the opposite assumption, I would be very grateful if the Minister gave me contrary research to that effect.
For those who do not trust academics or experts, I say, “Look at London”. London schools in recent years have been transformed to the point at which they are now able not only to really stretch and improve results for the brightest but are reducing inequalities. The record shows that 15% of pupils on free school meals get eight or more GCSE passes at Grade B compared with 6% outside London. So perhaps the Minister can tell me why London schools and local authorities are not clamouring for more grammar schools. The reality is that the attainment gap that really counts—the national attainment gap—between the poorest children who get to grammar schools and those who do not is at its widest in selective areas. This is the gap that holds the whole country back.
The Educational Policy Institute has recently shown graphically that the Prime Minister’s claim that new grammar schools will help children from disadvantaged backgrounds does not stand up. In wholly selective local authorities you find the lowest attainment for free school meal pupils. Chris Cook undertook an extensive analysis of selective education for the Financial Times and found that poor children do worse than they would in the comprehensive system. The evidence from Kent, the exemplar of the selective system, reinforces this. Alan Milburn, the social mobility tsar, has pointed out that in Kent 27% of children on free school meals get five good GCSEs compared with the national average of 33%. The great meritocracy is, I fear, a great illusion. It advantages children already in grammar schools and disadvantages children in the rest of the schools. How could it be otherwise, given that Michael Wilshaw, Chief Inspector of Schools, has said recently that if someone had opened a grammar school next to Mossbourne academy he would have been absolutely furious? He added that it would have taken away the youngsters who set the tone of the school and that youngsters learn from other youngsters and see their ambition, which percolates through the school. In fact, we need look no further than the Government’s own consultative document, which goes to extraordinary lengths, I felt, to set out a series of damage limitation strategies precisely to protect local schools such as partnerships with non-selective schools, none of which, however, deal with the fact that opening a selective school in an area automatically handicaps every other school, no matter who owns it. Those are not my words but those of somebody who was until very recently an adviser to government on education. Once a selective system has been created, those other schools, by definition, automatically become second-best, along with their children, because what has not changed is the impact of being marked down as a failure for not passing the 11-plus on a single day. This is nothing less than a trapdoor through which the majority of 11 year-olds would fall.
For these reasons, the idea that grammar schools promote social mobility is risible. The fact that the heyday of the grammar schools between 1950 and 1970 coincided with significant social mobility driven by economic and technological change is just that—a coincidence. We can also in all humility learn from other countries. There is no evidence from the international PISA research or elsewhere to suggest that nationally selective systems are linked to better test outcomes.
There are no other models for systematic social selection in the English-speaking world. In Europe, England, along with the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Finland, is currently among the top countries which produce a high equity and better test outcomes on the Human Development Index. We should be proud of that record. What Government or country would want to jeopardise that achievement? Why would any country want to go down this distracting cul-de-sac, riddled with division and failure, instead of focusing on how to improve the diverse skills of all its children and give them an equal chance of success? Of course, many schools can do better—no one can challenge that. But my goodness, there are proven ways of doing that, with support, leadership and incentives, and the last thing that is needed is to set up a scheme for rival schools to reinforce failure. No matter how you dress it up, what you call the schools or what compensatory policies you put in place, the fact is that the majority of schools and children will be knocked back.
There is no doubt that this is an area where educational policy and politics elide in a toxic way, and that is neither effective policy nor effective politics. Indeed, I am generally baffled by the politics of it. At best, a policy which will now prioritise grammar schools over other models casts doubt on everything the Government have said they have already achieved in education over six years. Woe betide the academies and the free schools—they simply will not know what has hit them. The former head of the New Schools Network, Rachel Wolf, made this clear when she said in the Spectator that,
“the pursuit of grammars at the expense of academies and free schools could undo the extraordinary progress made in the last few years”.
She deserves an answer from the Minister today as to why the Government think this risk is worth taking.
It is important that we get an answer to that question because the Minister must know that the great enemy of meritocracy—the failure of children to thrive and therefore learn and succeed—is poverty. When a child grows up in a home with no books, no family support for reading or language and no access to rich experiences outside the home, they are born into disadvantage and locked into it. If the Government want to accelerate social mobility, the first thing they should do is implement the recommendation of their old Commission on Social Mobility and Child Poverty, including on parenting skills. If they want to close the attainment gap between the poorest and the wealthiest children, which starts at birth and widens every year of schooling, they should prioritise early years learning, particularly literacy and language skills. If they want to ensure that schools become as effective as possible, they will concentrate on what happens inside schools, not between them, and on the quality and the excellence of teaching and learning, not on everlasting changes in the ownership and structure of schools. They will continue to invest in school leadership throughout the school, encourage brilliant new teachers through the Teach First programme, invest in professional development and ensure that all children—I have experience of this—have a rich menu of things to do outside the school day which enables them to learn that success comes in different ways.
In a global, digital, highly stressed world, we should not be looking for a narrow, academic curriculum. We should follow other successful countries such as Singapore, which put greater emphasis on flexibility and creativity. If we did that, at least we might be able to face a post-Brexit future, with all its risks and exclusions, with greater confidence and a more collective purpose. We might have a more generous and more inclusive view of the future. We might be more successful as a country. The alternative, which is set out in this White Paper—its central principle an out-of-date and long-abandoned policy—will reinforce a view of a country which has lost its way and is content to rewrite history, reject evidence and revert to nostalgia: a country which may well work for no one.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
Again, I note the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, which are clearly opposed to what we are planning, but I can only repeat that it is right to question and look at these issues to see how selection can play a greater part in our education system, as a holistic approach.
We will expect selective schools to play their part, either by supporting other less well-performing schools or sponsoring new schools in areas where they are needed, as well as removing the barriers that prevent disadvantaged students accessing selective education. I took note of the many comments made, notably by my noble friend Lord James, the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and indeed by the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, about the 11-plus, the main point being that certainly in the past—a long time ago—the 11-plus meant that children were classed as failures. I must repeat that we are not talking about introducing the 11-plus. We are proposing that more selective schools are introduced in a diverse schools system.
A flexible approach to new selection is the priority. For example, we are proposing to encourage new selective schools to consider admission at later ages and how they could respond more flexibly to children’s differing rates of development, and according to their talents. This could include moving pupils between schools, encouraging this to happen at different ages, as my noble friend Lord Cormack said, such as 14 and 16, as well as 11, or pupils joining the selective school for specific subjects or specialisms.
Selective schools are good schools. Some 99% of selective schools are good or outstanding and 80% are outstanding. They are popular with parents. As I have already mentioned, there are also a number of non-selective schools that are similarly highly rated, but this is a complex picture and about giving parents the choice of the high-quality education that they want for their children—a choice between good selective education and good non-selective education. It is only right we should examine how we can open up this choice to more families.
Contrary to the arguments put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, the evidence shows that grammar schools provide good results for those who attend them. Looking at the raw exam results, almost all pupils in selective schools—96.7%—gain five or more A* to C grades at GCSE, including English and mathematics, compared with 56.7% at non-selective schools.
Baroness Andrews
I am very sorry to interrupt the Minister. I would not dispute what he said: I said that grammar schools get good results, better results, because of the demography and the support parents give children to pass the exams. That is why it is social, rather than educational, selection.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I realised that we would probably have a dispute at some point about not only the statistics but the ideological angles that we take.
The most recent research by the Educational Policy Institute indicates a positive impact of around a third of a GCSE grade higher in each of the eight subjects. Even when we take the higher-ability intakes into account, we see that pupils still perform better in selective schools than in non-selective schools. I can assure the noble Lords, Lord Giddens and Lord Cashman, that the consultation focuses on how selective schools can contribute more to ensuring greater social mobility.
A number of studies have found that selective schools are particularly beneficial for the pupils from disadvantaged families who attend them, closing the attainment gap to almost zero. Indeed, one study found the educational gain from attending a grammar school to be around twice as high, of seven to eight GCSE grades, for pupils eligible for free schools meals as for all pupils—around 3.5 grades.
While it is hard to determine the real impact of selection on those who do not attend selective schools, the Sutton Trust found no evidence of an adverse effect on their GCSE performance, while others found small adverse effects. Nevertheless, this is evidence based on the selective school system as it currently operates.
Selective schools could contribute in a number of ways, sharing expertise and resources, assisting with teaching and curriculum support, and providing support with university applications. The Government’s proposals intend to make grammar schools engines of academic and social achievement for all pupils, whether they are in selective or non-selective schools.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich asked about the parameters of funding for the new opportunity areas, as Norwich is one of the first that we have announced. We will make available up to £60 million of new funding to support targeted local work in the opportunity areas to address the biggest challenges that each area faces. We expect it to be used to fund local, evidence-based programmes, and local project management and evaluation.
I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, that any proposal to remove the 50% cap on faith admissions for faith schools will include proposals to ensure that they promote inclusivity and community cohesion. The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, raised a point about plans for existing schools to become selective in a planned manner. I can assure him that the consultation asks for views on how existing non-selective schools should become selective. The Secretary of State will also take account of the impact on local communities when deciding which proposals to approve.
The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, asked why London schools appear to be successful without selection. There are a number of reasons why London schools have improved in recent years, but there is no evidence to demonstrate that a lack of selective schools is one of them.
The noble Lord, Lord Addington, referred to special needs and the need for more teacher training in SEND. In July 2016, the Government published a new framework of core content for initial teacher training, developed by Stephen Munday’s expert group.
I believe that I am running out of time. I have a few more questions that I would prefer to answer, but I fear that I will have to call a halt. I will certainly write to all noble Lords who have raised questions and review in Hansard what I and others have said.
Baroness Andrews
My Lords, I am grateful for a little extra time. It has been a splendid debate and I am grateful to all noble Lords on all sides of the House for their contributions. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, on her maiden speech. She managed to be non-controversial on a controversial subject—we look forward to more of that. We are all in stages of recovery in many ways, but we will go on trying to do our best.
It has been a challenging debate for the Minister and I completely understand why. I began by making a plea for greater clarity in this policy and in educational policy as a whole. I say with the greatest respect to him that we have not had it. What we have done in the House today is to do a service to the Government, because we have provided a wealth of evidence about the impact of grammar schools not only on the children who attend them but on the whole ecology of education and the life chances of children who do not go. The evidence—I think, counterfactual evidence—that he cited in relation to London was hollow in the extreme. I will read his speech with care, but I hope that he will read this debate with care and draw it to the attention of the Minister for Education in this House.
It is imperative that we get the right evidence in the right place at the right time to tackle inequalities in education. That is what this debate has been about. We have heard moving stories about the personal impacts and evidence from my noble friend Lord Giddens about the true nature of meritocracy and how it can be galvanised in a highly complex and highly competitive society. From the problems of failed expectations to which my noble friend Lord Puttnam drew attention to the many issues raised, not least by my noble friend Lord Knight, about the future, and the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, about “standards not structures”, it is clear that there is a wealth of hard information here. I really hope that it will be taken advantage of.
Childcare Bill [HL]
Baroness Andrews Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for the statement he has just made, for the policy statement which he provided us with over the summer and for the briefing yesterday, which demonstrated that detailed work is being undertaken to understand the different business models of providing for childcare.
However, one element fundamental to ensuring that 15 hours of free extra childcare per week can be delivered at high quality is funding. In Committee, we were assured that that information would be available prior to Report to enable a full understanding of the Government’s commitment in terms of the amount of funding. At that stage, the Minister gave a commitment that the Government would announce by Report the findings from their call for evidence as part of the funding review, so that we could have details of the delivery model based on the principles laid out. Unfortunately, that is not available.
Waiting for that information will not cause a delay. The background analysis of the information has been carried out. We heard about it yesterday, and very good it is too. But the figures have not been put into the crunching machine, so we do not know how much will be available to fund this important element of improved childcare—increased hours—that we all welcome. I do not see how, as Members of this House, the role of which is to scrutinise legislation to try to improve it, we can fulfil our responsibilities unless we have that information. We support the Bill, but the funding is fundamental.
All through the progress of the Bill, on all sides of the House, we have made the point about the lack of information—both on the regulations and on the amount of funding that would be available. We have tabled an amendment about cross-subsidisation, which has already been raised in relation to funding. I will speak more about it when we come to the amendment.
The only commitment we have from the Government, as expressed in their policy statement, is that there will be an increase in the hourly funding rate for childcare. What we do not know is how much that will be. It could be 5p an hour. It could be £5 an hour; I hope it is but we do not know. Without knowing, I do not see how the other elements of the Bill can stand up to scrutiny. How can we assure ourselves of the quality of childcare that will be provided if the amount of funding that is available is not declared? How can we be sure that training for staff in childcare can be made available if the funding is not there? How can we be sure that the number of places will be available if the amount of funding does not support an increase in the number of places that will be required? It is fundamental to the success of this Bill—and we all want it to be a success. I urged the Minister to tell us how much money will be available. Unfortunately his hands are tied, and I appreciate that. That is why we ought to delay discussing this Bill, until we know how much will be available, because everything else depends on it.
At the moment, it is the equivalent of being told that we can buy a car when we do not know whether we can afford a second-hand Mini or a brand new BMW. Young children need and deserve better than that.
Baroness Andrews (Lab)
My Lords, I listened very closely to what the Minister said about the progress that has been made since Committee. Clearly there has been some progress, but I want to press him on certain points and to reiterate the points of colleagues across the House. The Select Committee said that it was surprised and disappointed at the Government’s response. It was surprised because it is unusual—very unusual indeed—for a government department not to respond more positively to a report of the committee. I will come back to that in more detail. Certainly I am less surprised than the committee, but I am equally disappointed. I understood, like many of us across the House, that what we were to expect, before the start of Report, was a full analysis of the impact that these changes would make, based on the information obtained about the costs borne by the sector and the distribution of those costs, so that the House, to quote the noble Lord, will,
“be able to say a lot more about the delivery model”—[Official Report, 1 July 2015; col. 2093.]
Frankly, that promise has not been fulfilled. We do not know more about the delivery model, we cannot comment on it and we cannot make more sense of it.
Baroness Andrews
My Lords, I support my noble friend on this point. If the Delegated Powers Committee had believed that first-time affirmative action was sufficient it would certainly have said so, because its mark as a committee is to be proportionate. There is a very good reason why it has said, so strongly, that any changes must be done through the affirmative procedure each time. Perhaps I may use the Government’s arguments against them. The Minister previously argued that these definitions of eligibility were technical, but they are not. The point about these regulations is that the definitions represent the substance of the Bill: who is going to be eligible for these extended childcare provisions. They are a serious aspect of the Bill and should be on the face of it. The Minister argued that there may be a need to change the definitions and if they are in secondary legislation they can be changed more easily. If that is the case, the changes to the definitions are very serious indeed. As the committee says, they may be made to remove or add new categories. The Government know that they are dealing with a febrile and dynamic situation with a complex aspect of policy and they may well require to change these regulations. We are dealing with massive uncertainties here. The Government would be well advised—I say this in all sincerity—to follow the advice of the committee in this instance and ensure that each change in the regulations is properly debated in this House by way of an affirmative resolution
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, I do not often listen to myself in debates but I did so earlier on and began to wonder if I was sitting on the right set of Benches, on a Cross Bench. However, I am now reassured that I am, on two grounds. First, I welcome the report of the Delegated Powers Committee very warmly indeed: somewhat more so than the Minister. Secondly, I support the amendment on a belt-and-braces basis. The point has just been made that there are many uncertainties here and we need to be reassured that these will be resolved on the Floor of this House.
Higher Education: Part-time and Mature Students
Baroness Andrews Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Andrews
My Lords, the Minister has referred three times to the expansion of apprenticeships, which is excellent, but that expansion should not take place at the expense of the destruction of further education. The cuts of 24% in the FE budget and the adult skills budget earlier this year mean a loss of 400,000 FE students in this year alone. How many of those will be in construction, engineering and creative skills—the future of the economy—and how many adults will not be able to access literacy and numeracy? How will that help us build the houses we need and the economy we need, and to get more families into work— the ambition of his Government, as I understand it?
Lord Nash
We have created 2.5 million more jobs in the private sector, which is about 2.5 million more than the Labour Party thought we would create. We fully recognise the importance of further education in getting people the skills they need. That is why we have committed nearly £4 billion in 2015-16 to adult learning and further education, including nearly £800 million to apprenticeships funding.