Sharia-compliant Student Finance

Baroness Manzoor Excerpts

Wednesday 13th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I think it would be fair to say that that was the question I asked at the point at which it was suggested to me that we should link the delivery of the ASF to the introduction of the lifelong learning entitlement. I think that the last Government were right in making that decision, because the lifelong learning entitlement brings about a fundamental change to the system of student finance, and it is important that, to be able to access the alternative student finance provisions effectively, they are linked to the overarching system for student support. We are introducing the lifelong learning entitlement for applications from September 2026 and for courses and modules that begin from January 2027.

[Baroness Manzoor (Con)]

My Lords, will the Minister say what the Government are doing to raise awareness of sharia-compliant finance to all students and what training is being offered to those that work in this sector?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

For students, we are raising information about, for example, degree apprenticeships that would allow students to study towards a degree while they work, without paying for tuition. Students can also find information on other forms of support on GOV.UK, including bursaries, scholarships and awards for eligible students to ensure that, as the noble Lord pointed out, we help to make progress for the about 6,000 students per year that the Muslim census suggested might not be able to access higher education because of the nature of mainstream student finance.

Ethnicity Pay Gap

Baroness Manzoor Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I will give a couple of examples. First, there was the work the Government did in 2019, when we engaged with a broad range of businesses to understand the complexities of implementing mandatory reporting in this area. It genuinely showed just how complicated it was to do. That was echoed in the Inclusive Britain report chaired by my noble friend Lord Sewell, which brought out a number of points including, critically, the difference between the ethnicity pay gap of those born in this country and those who are not born here, with which I am sure the noble Baroness is familiar.

[Baroness Manzoor (Con)]

My Lords, I have some empathy with the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton. There are disparities in pay for ethnic minorities. There are also disparities in senior and board-level positions, where there are targets for women but fewer targets for people from ethnic minorities. If we looked at individual groups within ethnicity, we would never bring about the changes. It is an argument that my noble friend could ask the department to look at again, so that we can move forward and ensure that we can reduce the inequalities that currently exist.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am more than happy to take this back to the department and share my noble friend’s reflections, but I remind the House that there is no ethnicity pay gap for people born in this country from roughly half the ethnic-minority groups. In fact, in a number of cases there is a pay gap in the other direction. The issue is much greater for those not born in the UK, and there we need to understand to what extent that reflects level of qualification, level of language, age and a number of other factors.

Schools: Citizenship Education

Baroness Manzoor Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness will know that, currently, the data does not allow us to identify that specifically in relation to initial teacher training. We have got the data on the number of citizenship teachers, which has been broadly stable over the last five years. I point out to the House that the number of children doing citizenship as a GCSE last summer was up by 10%.

[Baroness Manzoor (Con)]

My Lords, the Government’s schools White Paper does not address citizenship directly. Can my noble friend the Minister say exactly how the Government are intending to address this?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for her question. She is right that the schools White Paper focused very much on our literacy and numeracy ambitions: that by 2030 90% of primary school children will reach the required standard in reading, writing and maths, and the average GCSE grade will rise from 4.5 to 5 in English and maths. Those subjects are absolutely critical for children being able to engage in citizenship in all its different forms. Our focus on a broad and balanced curriculum will also support that.

Children in Public Care: Unregistered Accommodation

Baroness Manzoor Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I completely agree with the noble Lord. Any cases such as those he has just cited are tragedies. We are doing a great deal to try to help local authorities. We are funding a programme called “staying put”, where a young person continues to live with a former foster carer, and are providing funding for “staying close” to be piloted in eight areas. To date, we have provided over £110 million to local authorities to support them in implementing “staying put”, which has helped thousands of care leavers to transition more smoothly from care to independent living.

[Baroness Manzoor (Con)]

My Lords, there have recently been reports in the media that cared-for children of 16 and over are being placed into accommodation with young offenders. This cannot be right. Can my noble friend say exactly what numbers we are talking about and whether this is accurate?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I cannot give a specific answer to the noble Baroness, but I will write to her if the numbers are available. I certainly agree that it is a tragic error to place a vulnerable 16 year-old in accommodation where they can be subject to any harm. The idea of the post-16 provision is to try to provide a pathway to more independent living. That is why we have a slightly different arrangement for those children or young people.

Schools: Free School Meals

Baroness Manzoor Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, if the noble Baroness would like to write to me with examples of this, I will certainly look into it.

[Baroness Manzoor (Con)]

My Lords, I passionately believe that good nutrition is a human right. What are our schools doing to ensure that parents are educated in good nutritional value? Without good nutritional value, those children are prone to heart disease, obesity and related diseases later in life.

Apprenticeships: Disabled Students

Baroness Manzoor Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, through the SEND reforms we have introduced since 2014 we have made available more than £220 million to help. This includes a package of £20 million for councils, £9 million to establish local supported internship forums and £4.5 million for parent carer forums. In the Children and Families Act 2014 we included the FE sector in a single SEND system. We put four duties on to the sector: to have regard to the SEND code of practice; to use best endeavours to meet special educational needs; to co-operate with the local authority; and to admit a young person if the college is named by the local authority.

[Baroness Manzoor (Con)]

My Lords, can my noble friend say how the Government are monitoring and evaluating the quality of apprenticeship schemes? How are women and ethnic minorities being encouraged into the higher-paid and better-trained apprenticeship schemes?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, at the heart of the reforms that we have introduced over the past year has been listening to the needs of employers: they have a strong voice in the way in which the apprenticeship courses are created. We now have a system of standards that has a much higher level of rigour than existed beforehand. We have end-point assessments, which mean that employers are able to see that the quality of individual apprenticeships is to a standard that meets their needs. This is assisted by the new institute that we have created, the Institute for Apprenticeships, which has a direct mandate to listen to employers. In relation to disadvantaged groups in society, one of the most impressive statistics is that there are 530,000 more disabled people in work today than in 2014.

Dyslexia: Disabled Students’ Allowance

Baroness Manzoor Excerpts

Monday 13th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, specific learning disabilities are treated separately. In a working paper in 2005, where the British Dyslexia Association was part of the consultation group, the view then was that progress into higher education represented a major transition and that more adult-based assessments should therefore be used.

[Baroness Manzoor (Con)]

My Lords, would it be possible for the Minister to take this back? There are some concerns around equality and it would be worth readdressing this issue.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I will need to write to my noble friend on that.

Education: Funding

Baroness Manzoor Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I completely share the noble Lord’s concern about teacher retention. In fact, the news recently has been quite good. I will write to him with precise details but we are seeing more multiacademy trusts having much better teacher retention programmes because they have much better career development programmes for their teachers. I think it was the case until quite recently that a young teacher coming into the profession could look forward to perhaps becoming a head in about 20 years, but it was very difficult to have any visible career structure in the meantime. As a result of schools coming together in teaching school alliances and multiacademy trusts, teachers can now look forward to perhaps being head of a subject in their mid-20s and even being head of a primary school in their late 20s or 30s. There is a much clearer teacher hierarchy and career development structure, which bodes well for teacher retention in the future. It is also fair to say that we have a much more fluid workforce, and in many professions people leave their chosen line of work and change jobs.

[Baroness Manzoor (Con)]

My Lords, due to changes in universal credit, local authorities are no longer routinely advising schools on which students are entitled to pupil premium and free school meals. That means that head teachers are having to contact the local authority to find out this information for themselves, if parents are not able to do so or are unaware that they need to give the information. Therefore, some schools in very disadvantaged areas are losing quite significant sums of money. Can the Minister say how the Government can help to ensure that local authorities are carrying out this duty diligently and are not charging for what was originally free?

[Lord Nash]

My noble friend makes an extremely good point. That point has been brought to my attention and we are looking at it. I will write to her with some further thoughts on this.

Social Mobility

Baroness Manzoor Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

As I said, we will respond to the report shortly, but I entirely agree with the noble Baroness about the importance of mentoring. I know that Chance UK has an active programme in that, and the system she refers to is definitely to be encouraged. At the Bridge Academy in Hackney, which is sponsored by UBS, over 1,000 UBS employees mentor individual pupils every year. When you talk to pupils, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, many of whom have often not met people who work in white-collar jobs before at all, you understand that mixing with people like this and going to their place of work clearly has a transformational impact.

[Baroness Manzoor (Con)]

My Lords, as well as the fact that there are not as many disaffected and disadvantaged young people getting into Russell group universities as there should be, there is a real problem in that, once they are in key roles, they do not progress as quickly as they should, particularly in areas such as the Civil Service and the NHS.

[Lord Nash]

My noble friend makes a very good point. I think that she is talking about what the Sutton Trust has termed “essential life skills”. It recently pointed out that Harvard University has said that the people who have been successful in recent years and are likely to be successful over the next 20 years are those with essential life skills. It is very important that all schools develop these, and I know that many of them do. Certainly, the Civil Service has a talent programme for bringing on people from a wide range of backgrounds.

School Milk

Baroness Manzoor Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

We will play a full role in the existing scheme until we leave the EU, but as our involvement in the scheme will be short term, we are taking a pragmatic approach to keeping changes to current arrangements to a minimum. We will consider the long-term approach to school milk provision, following our exit from the EU, as part of our future domestic policy programme.

[Baroness Manzoor (Con)]

My Lords, milk is also rich in vitamin D, as the Minister has said. There is some research highlighting that young girls from ethnic minorities and Asian women are more prone to vitamin D deficiency. Will the Minister say whether his department is working closely with the Department of Health to highlight this issue so that it can be addressed?

[Lord Nash]

I am afraid I do not know the answer to that question. I will investigate it and write to my noble friend.