Learning outside the Classroom

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Wednesday 26th April 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered learning outside the classroom.

We are considering the subject of out-of-school learning, or learning outside the classroom, as it is known on the Order Paper. I do not want to get your title wrong, Mr Paisley; are you Dr Paisley or Mr Paisley? I want to get it right.

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

“Mr Paisley” is fine—you do not need to promote me.

[Mr Sheerman]

You always seem highly educated to me, Mr Paisley.

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

Thank you. Flattery will get you everywhere.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Not that educated!

[Mr Sheerman]

I am being barracked: the comment “Not that educated” is coming from behind me.

I have been involved in the issue of out-of-school learning for a very long time. I had a very good run as Chair of the variously named Education Committee—it had a number of names, including the Children, Schools and Families Committee. Indeed, the Minister who will answer this short debate was a brilliant member of the Select Committee. We had great fun working together on a lively Committee.

I became somewhat obsessed with out-of-school learning, for two reasons. When one is Chair of a Select Committee of that kind, it is one’s job to visit as many schools as possible, in all parts of the country and at every level. In those days, we covered topics ranging from pre-school learning and nurseries right through to further education, apprenticeships and higher education, so it was a wide-ranging brief. However, when I got to schools, particularly in the primary and secondary sectors, I found that those schools that had the ability to take children outside the classroom transformed young people’s lives. All the research that has now been done on the issue shows that. A report that we did goes back 10 years. We did not have so much research evidence, but since that report came out 10 years ago from the Education Committee, we have been able to conduct research to show just how much young people are stimulated by getting outside the classroom and particularly into the countryside, and I became passionate about getting children out of the classroom and giving them an experience.

One of the wonderful things about getting a class of 30 kids out of the classroom is that we can do wonderful things for them and with them. Let me describe what all the research showed when we did our first inquiry. We have a treasury in London and in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales because we have free museums—what a wonderful treasury, what a wonderful learning experience. But tragically, when we delved into who among our children goes to those museums, we found the following. We found that more middle-class children went to them with their parents regularly. Going to them is a wonderful experience. Now, in London and Leeds, there are all-night stays in museums. That is an incredibly innovative and fun thing to do—sleep-ins at the museum, sleeping with dinosaurs. What a wonderful experience. However, all the research showed that more ordinary kids, from more ordinary, less affluent homes, did not go to the free museums—not even the free museums.

If the people from a less privileged background did go to the free museums, they went with their school. All the research showed what we needed to do if we wanted to reach out to all the children in this country, not just the more privileged—and I do not mean 5% or 10%, but something more like 60%. A very high percentage of kids living in this country, in our towns and cities and in the countryside, do not visit those wonderful museums unless their school takes them out of school to do that. They do not do it, or certainly they do it in lesser numbers and on fewer occasions, so I became dedicated to the view that it should happen.

Then I mixed up one passion with another. I do not know whether I should be indiscreet, when we are getting close to the general election, about falling in love with someone—it might get in the popular press—but I fell in love with John Clare, the English poet. He has been dead a long time: he lived from 1793 to 1864. When I went to school, I had the privilege of having a wonderful teacher who loved John Clare and imparted some of that enthusiasm to me, and I became dedicated to John Clare and giving him a wider audience.

When John Clare was alive, he had only 100 poems in print. The special thing about John Clare is that he was not a posh vicar or a Member of the House of Lords, as many poets were. He was an ordinary working man; he was called the Northamptonshire peasant poet. He was a day labourer, a farm labourer, and his father was a farm labourer; they threshed together in the village of Helpston. However, John Clare went to a dame school and learned to read and write, and after he left school at 12, he never stopped reading and writing. He briefly became popular in the Victorian period, when rustic poetry was popular, and 100 of his poems were in print when he died.

Then, in the 1960s, a treasury of wonderful poetry by John Clare was found. We think that his mental challenge was that he was bipolar. He could have been treated easily these days, but he was bipolar. The well-wishing people who looked after him put him in the Northampton general asylum. He was there for many years—he lived until his early 70s—and we discovered in the 1960s that he had been writing and writing and writing, even better poetry than the poetry that he had already published. One thousand of his poems are now in print, and more are being published.

Then I had the strange fortune of my eldest daughter marrying an academic who happened to be a John Clare scholar, from Cambridge University. He is now senior tutor at Fitzwilliam College and he has written a book about John Clare. I do not know how this happened, but I became the chairman of the John Clare Trust; I bought John Clare’s house; and we raised £3 million to turn John Clare’s cottage into a centre for children to visit. It is for everyone to visit, but we have a particular campaign called Every Child’s Right to the Countryside. I have seen the work that we and other people in the same field have done transform the lives of children; their lives are transformed by going to the countryside. One does not have to love poetry, art, music or what I often called—all my daughters studied English at famous universities—arty-farty people. They do not like that, but you know what I mean, Mr Paisley. I am a social scientist, trained at the London School of Economics in economics, so I can sometimes be disparaging about some of the more literary pursuits.

However, I know that if we take a child into the countryside and use technology, innovation, science or any subject under the sun, we can transform the experience of that child in that environment. Of course, John Clare writes about the woods and hedgerows and the plants and animals of our country, many of which are now very challenged in terms of their very existence. What we found in our work, which we did in partnership with others, was that if we want our country to have a countryside and our people to love it, they must visit it. Our secret—but not very secret—mission is to get people in this country, especially new generations of young people, to come to the countryside to learn and to really find their spark. I come across so many people in this country, even my own constituents in Huddersfield, who would benefit from that. I am sure that other hon. Members feel the same.

[Jim Shannon]

It is always nice to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley—I think this may be the second or third time.

The hon. Gentleman raised those who wish young people to see and be involved with the countryside. I am very aware that in Northern Ireland we have under-achievement by Protestant males because they are not academically inclined, but their disposition might be towards the countryside. One organisation that has enabled those people at least to achieve something from a physical point of view is the Prince’s Trust. Has he had any opportunity to work with the Prince’s Trust to enable people who are not academically inclined to look towards the countryside, because they might find a job and perhaps a realisation of what they could do there?

[Mr Sheerman]

The hon. Gentleman reminds me that we are not talking about an exclusive society of brethren. There are a lot of us, including the Scouts, the Prince’s Trust and lots of other wonderful organisations. The wonderful chief executive of the National Trust came to visit John Clare’s cottage in Helpston only a month ago. We need to work with the National Trust and all the organisations that can offer wonderful destinations to more and more schools. I would be wrong not to mention the Institute for Outdoor Learning, whose chief executive Andy Robinson was very helpful as soon as he heard that I had secured this debate. There are a lot of organisations out there.

All the research shows that it is good for children to come to the countryside. It shows the real improvement in academic subjects, as well as in achievement across the board, from getting children out for a day in the countryside, a museum or somewhere they can get a different perspective on their learning.

[Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. I absolutely share his passion for outside learning. My most vivid memories from primary school are of visits to museums and nature walks in the countryside, but I never got to visit a mosque, a synagogue or a Hindu temple. My own children are now at school. What better way to illustrate a religious education lesson about Judaism than with a visit to a synagogue? Does he encourage schools and other organisations to do that for our young people as well?

[Mr Sheerman]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right; I was going to come on to historical places. He is also right about mosques, synagogues and the diversity in our country of religious buildings in which young people can learn and can better understand the lives of other people who live not far from them.

I secured this debate because not only does all the research show that it is good for children to go out into the countryside, but it highlights a problem that still exists. More privileged children, from homes that are better off and have more money, get the chance to go to the countryside regularly, but a very substantial number of young people in this country never get that chance. Many children in our urban centres and in not so urban centres never go off their estate. That is a shame, but the research shows that it is true. There are children in Huddersfield who do not often go even into the centre of Huddersfield, let alone into the lovely, medieval Bradley wood or to the perfect hunting lodges of Henry VIII that are still around. What a wonderful habitat for them to visit if they had the opportunity!

What is the secret? I have a very good proposal for the Minister. I want him, or somebody, to give me a little bit of money—do you know, Mr Paisley, that there is a magic sum of money if you go to a school? In the old days, when we did our first inquiry—the Minister will remember this—people used to say, “No, we don’t want to go.” One of the big teaching unions said things like, “No, we’re not going to co-operate any longer”, “It’s a bit stressful for teachers”, “It’s more than our jobs are worth”, “What about health and safety?”, and all that. Our report put the lid on that. Health and safety has become not such a big issue; the forms to fill in have been made much easier and the guidance is much better.

The real secret of a school that opens itself to adventure and takes children out is having staff who want to do that and who see its value. When schools do it well, it is nearly always because they have trained one or two members of staff to be the experts who know about the subject or the organisation, who are inspired and who have the passion. That gives comfort to the school and gives focus to the challenge, so that children end up going to the right place at the right time in a safe and rewarding way. We need teachers who are trained and up to speed.

The other thing that we need to do, which is most important, is go to schools with £500 in our back pocket. We have found that that is the magic sum for getting a school much more interested in travel. The organisation goes to the school and says, “This won’t cost you anything. We’ll take 30 of your children into the countryside to have wonderful learning experiences of various types, beautifully mediated by trained teachers or mediators. We’ll take care of the travel and look after the children for the day.”

I have a wonderful challenge for the Minister and any Member who is listening to the debate. I hope that we can go back to it in the new Parliament—I hope that you, the Minister and I will all be re-elected on 8 June, Mr Paisley. I want to continue my programme of challenging every Member of Parliament to raise £5,000, which would cover 10 schools in their constituency—as long as I can persuade them to include schools that do not usually visits.

I am selling some wares in this debate, because we need children in this country to learn better. We need to find and liberate that spark, that talent and that potential in them. If we can do it through the medium of getting them out of school, we will have learned a lesson from good research and good experience. It works here and it works for other countries like ours, so we can draw conclusions from that.

My message is simple. I want more children to come to the countryside and fall in love with it. I want more children to go to museums, mosques and synagogues and learn outside the classroom. There is nothing wrong with a classroom, as long as the teachers in it are good, inspired, well qualified, well motivated and well paid. I will not go into political territory today, but we all know that it is much easier to get kids to go outside the classroom in Maidenhead than in Huddersfield. I am sure that it is very comfortable in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, but I do not represent a constituency in it. Like you, Mr Paisley, I represent a much more diverse constituency, where I look at the schools and want the children in them to have all the same advantages as children who live in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead.

Mr Speaker—sorry, Mr Paisley—I want several things. I want every school to dedicate itself to being open to more out-of-school visits. I want every Member of Parliament to be energised to find 10 schools right across their constituency to go into the countryside and learn. I will not be parochial. They do not necessarily have to go to the John Clare cottage, although we always like to see people in Helpston, which is a lovely place just between Peterborough and Stanford, and halfway to Huddersfield. They could come to Huddersfield to see some of our attractions; it has more listed buildings than Bath or York, as I am sure you knew, Mr Paisley.

If children want a day out, they can go to Huddersfield, to the John Clare cottage or to the Minister’s constituency. Let us inspire them. Let us get them thinking in a totally different way about the countryside, about their lives and about their potential. That is the message of my speech and my reason for trying to secure this debate for some time: it is vital that we get children out of the classroom to learn.

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

It is not often that I am addressed as Mr Speaker, so I will savour today as never before.

--- Later in debate ---

[Edward Timpson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is so much opportunity out there for children if they are given the permission to experience it. Someone who lives in the countryside and is surrounded by fields of cows might learn where milk comes from, but there are also city farms—there is one just down the road in Vauxhall—as well as forest schools. When I was training for the marathon in Delamere forest near where I live, I passed a forest school for early years—two to five-year-olds—run by the Forestry Commission. There are lots of ways into the subject, but we need to give children the chance, rather than making them feel that they have to stick with the classroom for all of their learning experience.

As the hon. Member for Huddersfield said, seeing original paintings, sculptures and historical artefacts in art galleries and museums is a very different experience from seeing printed images. Attending a live concert can enhance pupils’ understanding and enjoyment of music. Seeing a live performance of a Shakespeare play or—dare I say?—a recital of a John Clare poem, which the hon. Gentleman is clearly taken with, can provide pupils with different insights from studying a play or a poem on paper. We have recently updated the subject content for GCSE drama and A-level theatre studies to try to reflect that, and to ensure that students study those subjects with an entitlement to experience live theatre. I am not sure whether the House of Commons would qualify in that regard, but it is an important step forward.

A key element the hon. Gentleman raised was how disadvantaged children can get that equal opportunity of experience outside the classroom. I think back to one of the first children my family fostered. He was four or five years old and we took him on a holiday to north Wales. As we came over the brow of a hill and he saw the Irish sea for the first time, he looked at it and said, “Is that a big puddle?” He had never seen the sea before and did not know what it was. That is the challenge. Yes, we have free museums and we make sure that teachers feel equipped and confident to use learning outside as an important life-skill approach to enhancing learning, but the challenge is to ensure that no child gets left behind when we provide that opportunity.

That is why we support a museums and schools programme to deliver high-quality opportunities for all school pupils to visit museums that are linked to the national curriculum and support classroom learning. Last year, 72,870 pupils from 1,215 schools took part in that programme, including at the Barnsley Museum, the Great Yarmouth museum, SS Great Britain and many others. The £6 million for the programme since 2012 will be supplemented by a further £1.2 million over the next financial year. We are expanding the National Citizen Service for 16 and 17-year-olds.

[Mr Sheerman]

I hope the Minister is going to mention the critical point that I was trying to put over about having someone in the school who is trained. He and I have put up for too long with a variety of jobs—even careers—that were never done well. It was Buggins’s turn simply because someone had a light timetable and could fill in and do it. We need trained people who know about the potential of out-of-school learning to lead it with passion.

[Edward Timpson]

I agree that it is crucial to embed that into the school, and that there should be strong leadership, not just from the headteacher but from governors, who are in a more powerful position than they have ever been to influence what makes a school outstanding.

The John Jamieson School and Technology College in Leeds, just up the road from Huddersfield, is for children aged three to 19 with a range of complex learning difficulties. Every child in that school is given access to a wide range of school activities, and provision is highly differentiated so that no child is excluded. Within that, there will be children who are on free school meals or who have more challenging backgrounds. It is those children whom we need to capture. They need to have that experience and widen their horizons so that I am not in the position I was in when I visited a school in the north side of Manchester a few years ago. When I asked one child whether he went into the town centre much, he said he had never been. He was 10 years old and the town centre is less than a mile down the road. That is still the reality and, although we are making progress, there is clearly still some work to do.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Monday 20th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Lady tries to get me to pre-empt my White Paper, which will come out in the coming weeks. I am pleased that Labour Front Benchers are finally engaging in the fact that there is a real chance to ensure that we have an approach to selection that works in the 21st century and for our education system as it is today.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is the Secretary of State aware that today is International Happiness Day? If she wants to make a lot of people in this country happy, she will renounce this dedication to grammar schools and free schools, and invest in the education of all children up and down the country.

[Justine Greening]

I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has alerted me to the fact that it is International Happiness Day, but he is completely at odds with his Front Bench. We have no idea what Labour’s approach to selection is. We will be publishing our White Paper in response to our consultation, but I suspect that the Labour party will remain a policy-free zone.

Budget Resolutions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I hope she will welcome the element of the Budget that saw £5 million invested in returnships, specifically looking at how we can help women who have been out of the workplace—often starting and having a family—to go back into it and rebuild their careers. I will come on to that later in my speech.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I believe absolutely that wealth creation is important to give us the resources we need to provide a good education, but is the Secretary of State aware that so many schools have seen cutbacks? We in Huddersfield are the 64th worst-hit area out of 650. We do not feel the affluence she is talking about.

[Justine Greening]

We have record investment coming into our schools now.

To secure and build a strong economy, we need sustained investment in human capital—the skills, knowledge and technical excellence that drive productivity and growth. It is people who will lift our country, and we are investing in people. We need to do that now more than ever, because we know there is a productivity gap between the UK and other advanced economies, and we know that part of that gap is caused by skills shortages.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have heard a few Budgets in my time. The first was delivered by Sir Geoffrey Howe, who was a thoroughly decent man. Denis Healey unkindly said that Sir Geoffrey had been round the country stirring up apathy, but he was a decent man and I remember his Budget.

This Budget is deeply, deeply disappointing. In the context of the miserable votes last night, with this country heading headlong into a hard Brexit, I expected an imaginative Budget that prepares the country for what Harold Macmillan called, “Events, dear boy, events.” Well, we have already seen one such event from the First Minister of Scotland, and there will be many more from left field and right field. This country is going to be rocked by events over the coming years, and this Budget does not help anyone—nationally or regionally.

I represent Huddersfield, which is almost the average town in Britain, and it is in a dreadful state. They are going to close the accident and emergency services at our local hospital, and they are going to close the whole hospital. There is chaos across our country, not just in Huddersfield. Two thirds of the health services in our country are in dreadful trouble.

Most of the local authorities I know, especially the ones with indecent levels of deprivation and poverty—the ones in the average, real parts of our urban communities in Britain, not the ones in the leafy suburbs that some Conservative Members represent—are in deep trouble and are unable to bear the cost of social care and health. I was expecting something imaginative from the Budget, and we did not get it.

We also got very little indeed on education. Some earlier speakers asked where we could get alternative funding. The hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) and I used to sit together on the Liaison Committee, and I used to call him, very unkindly, a member of the “barmy army,” but he actually thinks a lot. He has always been quite provocative, and he always has something to say. The fact of the matter is that we need imagination and passion to solve our country’s problems, but I heard little passion from the Government Front Bench today. I feel passion because I believe that every little child in this country has a spark of potential. If we, as politicians, cannot create a system that liberates that spark, we are not doing our job.

As Sir Michael Wilshaw said, the disaster of our education system is that we find bright little kids in our primary schools and we lose them after the age of 11. What sort of country and what sort of school system is that? All parties have underachieved, but we have seen some real change. There are signs of improvement, and I shall briefly give the test that most primary school teachers use to assess a young person’s work. They use “two stars and a wish,” and these are my two stars. First, I give a star for the good fundamental policy approach to skills in this Budget. We have been languishing on skills policy for so long, but there is now some imagination there. Who would have thought it? They used to say that John Prescott was a crazy man of the left who wanted a levy for training. Conservative Members used to say that was an absolutely disgraceful left-wing horror. Well, we now have an apprenticeship levy, as we should. It comes in in April and I hope it will succeed.

The Government actually went about policy making in a sensible way. They took evidence and consulted. They put Lord Sainsbury in charge, along with the former Minister the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), who actually got to know something about skills and training. He has gone now, but some of us will miss him, because he listened. He introduced Lord Sainsbury to the skills commission that I chair, and I gave evidence to them both about what I wanted to see in skills policy. Some of that stuff is in the policy that came through in the Budget. I welcome such evidence-based policy. When I was Chair of the Education Committee, we used to applaud evidence-based policies, along with policies that seemed to work in countries like ours. So, there is something in the Budget in terms of skills, Alison Wolf’s recommendations to the Select Committee, and the work done by the Sainsbury review to talk to businesses, employers and practitioners on a cross-party basis. That is the way to make policy.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

The hon. Gentleman is speaking with great passion and is doing his best to provide some solutions. May I give him another one? Perhaps we should end the fiction that national insurance contributions can pay for all social care. We should merge national insurance and taxation, simplify things, and try to raise more money that way.

[Mr Sheerman]

I have already complimented the hon. Gentleman on being a good, out-of-the-box thinker, and that is another interesting suggestion to debate.

My second star is for productivity. Actually, it is only half a star, because we cannot really check. The Budget includes additional high-value investment, the national productivity investment fund and world-class infrastructure investment. I like most of that, except I am one of those quirky people who still cannot believe in High Speed 2 and in the fact that all that national treasure is being put into a railway that will be out of date by the time it opens in 2033. I think the money should be spent on the national health service, but I know I am in a minority on that.

The Budget also includes £300 million for the future development of the UK’s research talent and to attract talent from the research powerhouses of China, Brazil and Mexico. I like all that—it is all quite good stuff, so it gets half a star. All the stuff about disruptive technology investment to transform the UK economy, electric vehicles, artificial intelligence and robots is good stuff, but there has not been enough private sector research and development for a number of years. Co-operation between business and universities has not been good enough. We will never get the levels of productivity we want until we have the right kind relationships.

Finally, I come to my wish: for goodness’ sake, where is the evidence that grammar schools and free schools do anything to find the spark in children that we want to release? There is no evidence and no research. Not one reputable research institute or organisation in this country believes that a return to selective education will help anyone—quite the reverse. Look at all the research and the experience in other countries. Just look at Kent, for God’s sake! It is the most selective place in the country and it has the worst performance across all schools in the country. That is selective education. It has no research base and no experience base, and there is no global comparison of which we can say, “Isn’t it wonderful?” They do not have it in Denmark, Sweden or Finland. I doubt it is even the latest fashion in Shanghai.

I like policy that is based on good research and good evaluation, and yes, sometimes we should work across the party divide—that is the way to make policy. This Budget has not delivered it. We want that spark to be found and promoted—we want the country to be rich and successful in the challenging disaster of Brexit—but it is not in this Budget.

Children and Social Work Bill [Lords]

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Edward Timpson]

I can reassure the hon. Lady that the whole purpose of bringing relationships education into primary schools is to start creating the all-important building blocks that will make children resilient enough to deal with the pressures and risks that the modern world throws at them. The new clauses are intended to allow a period after the Bill has gone through both Houses during which we can draw on the greatest possible expertise to establish how we should go about teaching these subjects in an age-appropriate way, so that by the time the children leave school they have all the knowledge and skills that they need to make good choices in their lives as they grow up.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Edward Timpson]

I will, but I should make it clear to Members that I do not want to curtail the opportunities for others to have their say, and I want to deal with other aspects of the Bill as well.

[Mr Sheerman]

The Minister will remember what we discussed in those happy days when we served together on the Education Committee. It is all very well to have an obligation, and this is a real step forward, but the fact is that if we do not give the people in the schools real professional training, it will not work.

[Edward Timpson]

We served on that Committee such a while ago that it was then called the Children, Schools and Families Committee. In 2013, Ofsted acknowledged that the teaching of these subjects was still not as good as it should be. We shall be working with teachers and schools so that they understand how to develop their understanding of and ability to teach these subjects, so that there is consistency throughout the education system.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

I will have to write to my hon. Friend with the figure he asks for, but I entirely agree with his comments about the NSPCC. It is worth noting that a variety of organisations assist tremendously in the work of the criminal justice system in making sure that all witnesses can give their best evidence. That is in the interests of the whole system, and it is particularly important when we are dealing with children.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have only attended one trial—a murder trial—where, in the summing up, the family of the young lady who had been brutally murdered had to listen to an absolutely appalling character assassination. It was totally fraudulent, but they had to sit there and listen to that. Has anything been done to stop that horrible practice?

[The Attorney General]

I understand entirely the point that the hon. Gentleman makes. He will recognise that in a criminal trial it is necessary that the defence case is put. That is what we need to see to make sure that the process is fair, but we are doing what we can to ensure that the experience of those who are in court not of their own volition—because they are the victim of an offence or a witness to it—is as easy as it can be, although we accept that it will never be wholly easy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justine Greening]

I have said that we will provide an update during the next stage of the Bill, but my right hon. Friend is right to suggest that a lot of time has elapsed since the guidance was drafted in 2000, and the world is now a very different place. It is time to look at how we can ensure that children have the right access to what I might rename relationships and sex education, and to ensure that it is high quality education. That is why it is right to ensure that the next steps we take are the right ones, and that they can move this forward for the long term. We need to ensure that the young people in our education system today leave school with not only the relationships education but the broader life skills they need to lead successful lives.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the right hon. Lady take on board the fact that successive Select Committees have looked at this matter, and that it is vital not only that every school offers this kind of education but that, critically, we train people to have the right skills to deliver it?

[Justine Greening]

I have said that we need to make progress on this, and I have reflected on the fact that there have now been 16 years in which we really have not done so. When Ofsted produced its recent report on this in 2013, it identified issues around the quality of teaching. As the hon. Gentleman says, this is not just about what our young people should be taught in schools and their access to that teaching; it is also about the quality of the teaching. This is a broader question than simply one of updating the legal perspective of where SRE is taught.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

First, people started talking about the great reform Bill—where do all these greats come from?—and now there will presumably be the great reconstruction bill for the House of Commons. All the time I have been a Member we have made do and mended, and we have got on perfectly well. Why do we need to have this reconstruction? Let us just patch things up a bit and carry on as normal.

[Michael Ellis]

Again, I recommend that the hon. Gentleman read the report. It is decades—in fact, many decades—of patching and mending that has led to patching and mending no longer being practicable in the opinion of the authors of the report, so clearly a number of major issues need to be addressed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I am aware of that programme, and indeed as part of our opportunities area work we are working with both the CBI and the Careers & Enterprise Company to strengthen links between employers and schools. The TfL programme shows how, when we get a closer relationship between employers, local schools and young people, especially those with learning disabilities, it can really make a difference in employment rates.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State must know that there is a serious problem whereby disadvantaged young people are identified to be clever and bright up to the age of 11, in good primary schools, but then we lose them and they fail in secondary. I know she is reluctant ever to answer a question about skills and apprenticeships, but is she also aware of how many young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are locked into the further education system, unable to get their GCSEs in maths and English? When is she going to do something about that? We are talking about tens of thousands of young people.

[Justine Greening]

At key stage 4, the attainment gap between more disadvantaged young people and those who start off from better backgrounds has been getting lower. That is, in part, because we are putting resources into the system, but we are also steadily improving the system itself. The hon. Gentleman talks about further education: one of our key aims across this Parliament is to make sure that technical education delivers the same gold-standard education as academic education delivers for those following academic routes.

National Funding Formula: Schools/High Needs

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I believe we will have done so. We will have brought in a formula that works more effectively and we will have transitioned it in appropriately. I believe that it will be a big step forward, particularly for schools that have been so underfunded for so long.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State is right that this kind of funding has to be upgraded and uprated over time. I certainly welcome that. However, is she also aware that it is the responsibility of this House to check the fairness of that over time through the Select Committee system and in this Chamber? Does she accept the implication that, overall, the challenges in our education system are grave when the chief inspector, who is about to retire, points out that so many bright children in our country, who grew bright through good primary schools up to the age of 11, are lost to education post-11? Will she do something about that? Will she also do something about the chief inspector’s deep worry that pupils in many of the big towns and cities in the midlands and the north are severely underperforming?

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Gentleman sets out some of the challenges that we continue to face in our education system. That is precisely why the national funding formula makes sure that resources go to schools that are in more disadvantaged areas and those that have cohorts of young people and children who are starting from furthest behind. That is not only the sensible approach; it is the right thing to do for those children and schools. For too long, that has not been built into the school funding formula. That is what we are trying to resolve today. This is the second stage of the consultation. There are 14 weeks for everyone to look at whether the way in which we have blended the different criteria is right. I think that it is.

In addition to what we are announcing today, the hon. Gentleman will be aware that we have launched six opportunity areas to look at how we can ensure that we have excellent education in those parts of the country where we still have not seen enough improvement.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

We certainly are not turning our back on genuine international students. We welcome them warmly. There are no limits on the number who can come here and no limit on the number who can switch into work after they finish their studies. We want to see more in the years ahead and we look forward to supporting our high quality institutions in recruiting successfully in countries such as the ones my hon. Friend mentioned.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister must know what is going on in the universities. They are in turmoil about the future of demand from foreign students to come here. Has he seen what the vice-chancellor of Sheffield University said about the Prime Minister’s visit to India? Why are students still classed as immigrants when they come here merely to study?

[Joseph Johnson]

I advise hon. Members to send out a positive message about how welcoming we are in this country. When we look at the statistics, we see that international students are still coming here in record numbers. Visa applications from non-EU international students to study at British universities are up by 14% since 2010, so let us not paint a completely misleading picture of what is going on. The hon. Gentleman mentioned Sheffield, which is a Russell Group institution. Numbers are up 39% at Russell Group institutions since 2010.

Grammar and Faith Schools

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy]

The hon. Lady makes my point for me. Grammar schools tend to receive a lower funding allocation because, as the Minister has admitted, they tend not to take children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and the funding formula is skewed to provide additional funding for children from such backgrounds. In 2016, in Britain, we can do better than this.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister who will reply to the debate was a member of the Select Committee when I was the Chair. We looked at this question and we specifically considered Kent, but we had the rule that we should have evidence-based policy. Where is the evidence that people in Kent or outside Kent benefit from an educational system that is split in this horrendous way?

[Lisa Nandy]

I do not always agree with my hon. Friend on these issues, but I certainly agree with him on that point. The issue of funding and how we spend resources that, as a result of choices made by this Government, are incredibly scarce, is important.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lisa Nandy]

What I am asking the Minister to understand is that this new approach set out in the consultation document is based on no evidence. If he says that we have to discount all the evidence that we have had about the education system thus far, it is incumbent on the Government to prove that this new, expensive approach, which will be highly disruptive to children’s education and to the education system as a whole, will be better for children. This morning at the Education Committee the Minister was forced to admit that there is no evidence that it will be better.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) put to the Minister a simple proposition: there are areas of the country, as we have already heard, where selection still exists. Kent is the one that my hon. Friend mentioned to the Minister when he said that if the Minister is so sure that the new system will work and if he is so keen to explore new ways of working, why does he not pilot it in one area of the country. I ask him please not to inflict an experiment based on such flimsy evidence on millions of children who cannot afford for the Government to fail.

[Mr Sheerman]

As chair of the advisory board of the Sutton Trust, I get sick to death of Ministers in this Government quoting Sutton Trust research out of context and selectively. They should read the report and see what the Sutton Trust actually says.

[Lisa Nandy]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I was reflecting this morning when I listened to the evidence session that education policy is always plagued by ideology and by personal experiences. No Government have ever managed to escape from that, but I have never heard a Minister rely as selectively on the evidence base as I heard this morning. What the Government propose to do will have profound consequences for children. I welcome the fact that they are consulting, but I do not welcome the fact that so far, based on everything that I have seen from the Secretary of State, the Prime Minister and the Minister’s evidence this morning, the Government are not listening.

The consultation paper says that the Government might ask grammar schools to

“take a proportion of pupils from lower income households. This would ensure that selective education is not reserved for those with the means to move into the catchment area or pay for tuition to pass the test”.

That highlights a very real problem and it is a very strong statement. Can the Minister tell us what he means by it? Many free schools introduced in the previous Parliament by Ministers in the Government in which he served claimed to be inclusive, because the proportion of children on free school meals that they took was similar to the national average. However, a closer look at what those free schools were doing revealed that many, such as the West London free school, were admitting as high a proportion of children on free school meals as the national average, but fewer children on free school meals than in the local community. Can the Minister tell us whether the Government are committed to schools that reflect their neighbourhoods and, if so, whether he means by that statement in the consultation document that schools will reflect the levels of disadvantage and diversity in their own communities?

The plans for a more inclusive intake get thinner by the minute. As I said earlier, by the age of 11 disadvantaged children are 10 months behind their peers. Does the Minister have any evidence that asking grammar schools to work with primary schools, which seems to be the big idea to address the issue, will eradicate that difference? How quickly does he think that will happen? More troubling is the finding from the Education Policy Institute that the more selective an area, the fewer the benefits to children in grammar schools. A wealth of evidence already exists. When that is assessed against the Government’s stated goals, it shows their plans to be deeply, deeply flawed.

The consultation paper makes no mention of the impact on society. It is not that long since the Conservatives had a party leader who appealed to their one-nation tradition. Surely no Government of that one-nation stripe would seek to deny children and young people in this country the opportunity to get to know one another. Surely the goal of an education system is to give every child the opportunity to fulfil their potential, both academically and socially, and to allow children to gain social enlightenment, not just social advantage, and live a larger, richer, deeper life as a consequence.

Instead, this Government appear to be set on a path that will pit children against one another and make losers of us all. The tragedy, as my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) has highlighted so often, is that there are real problems in the education system. Attracting and retaining teachers remains one of our biggest challenges. The National Audit Office report highlighted a shocking rise in the number of teacher vacancies between 2011 and 2014. In the face of this, it is baffling why the Government are rushing headlong down a road that will make the situation worse. A poll for The Times Educational Supplement found that more than half of teachers would not work in a grammar school. Three quarters of teachers and headteachers are opposed to these plans. Why does the Minister think he knows better than all of them?

It would make more sense if the Government said, “Look, we’ve considered every option for dealing with some of the problems in our schools system. We can’t find anything else that works, so this is something that we are prepared to try”, but I saw recently that the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) had asked the Government whether they had considered the merits of streaming children in comprehensive schools, rather than pursuing the grammar schools route. The answer came back that they had not. This is the worst sort of dogma, of which we have seen too much in education policy over the years. Worse than that, it will cost the nation dearly.

There is no other country in the world that is proceeding in the direction of trying to segregate children over and over again. Poland, for example, which has delayed selection in recent years to improve its results, has seen a boost in maths, reading and science as a result. Finland used to be a favourite of Education Ministers. When I served on the Education Committee, we used to hear a lot from the former Education Secretary about how brilliant Finland was. We went to have a look for ourselves. It is one of the least selective countries in the world.

Many counties are now trying to end the divide between technical, vocational and academic education, recognising that in the decades to come most of us will need a combination of all three. The hon. Member for Stroud and I visited Germany a few years ago to look at its education system. As Sir Michael Wilshaw recently pointed out, Germany has had a similar model for most of the post-war years and is now attempting to disassemble it, because of worries about its effects both on students and on the country’s productivity, not to mention international rankings.

In the coming years, we will succeed less for what we know, and more for how we use that knowledge. The system of education that this Government are pursuing was not fit for the economy of the 1950s, let alone that of the 2020s and a world in which Britain stands outside the European Union, and we urgently need to address our growing skills gap.

This morning, the Minister told the Education Committee that those who shout the loudest in opposition to his plans are doing the least to address the problems we face. Let me say to him now, on behalf of everybody who cares about children’s education in this country, that that is profoundly offensive. Let me ask him first to put the interests of children above party politics. Will he acknowledge that the previous Labour Government put significant funding into the education system, bringing us up to the European average after years of our schools being terribly and harmfully neglected? As a result, we saw a 31% rise in the proportion of children and young people getting good GCSEs, and I know that because I was working with them in the voluntary sector at the time. The difference in those years was stark: there were more teachers, better buildings, and IT facilities in schools, often for the first time.

One of the things we learnt in those years in government is that frequent interference in the education system can be incredibly damaging; it can undermine the morale of teachers and school leaders and children’s achievement. Perhaps the Government could learn from what Labour got wrong in office, but they should please also learn from what we got right.

If we are to try to end the dogma, let us think about how we learn from the best schools. This morning, the Minister said that grammar schools are very good—I have heard him say that repeatedly—but just for once could he admit that some comprehensive schools in this country are very good, too? The Education Policy Institute said in September:

“If you compare high attaining pupils in grammar schools with similar pupils who attend high quality non selective schools, there are five times as many high quality non selective schools as there are grammar schools.”

Sir Michael Wilshaw said this weekend:

“The latest research shows that the best comprehensives are doing better than grammar schools for the most able children.”

Why are the Government not praising them and looking to them?

I will tell Members why I think that is such a great problem. As Estelle Morris, the former Education Secretary, pointed out last month:

“Many selective schools do well by the children they choose, and of course they should contribute to education beyond their own doors. But does their success with bright, motivated young people from supportive home backgrounds give them the skills and experience to turn round schools with large numbers of struggling and disaffected children?”

The answer lies on Ministers’ own doorsteps, and if they would only take the ideological blinkers off, they would be able to see it for the benefit of children. The Minister recently admitted in a Westminster Hall debate on grammar school funding that grammar schools are, by definition, unlikely to take children who are struggling or on free school meals. Why, then, would they be the major source of expertise on how to help those children succeed?

Further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), there are lessons we can learn about what works. The most dramatic improvements in education that we have seen in my adult lifetime came as a result of the London Challenge programme, which brought comprehensive schools together to lift standards for all their children. We replicated that in Greater Manchester, where I live, with great success—so much so that, even when the Government dismantled the scheme, those teachers carried on working together because they said, “If there is a child in any school in Greater Manchester who is not doing well, that is our collective responsibility and we will come together to sort it out.” They understand that collaboration is the key driver of school improvement, not competition, and that, as the OECD has repeatedly proven, strong autonomy coupled with strong accountability are the ingredients of a great education system.

Ministers have rightly pointed to the absurd situation we have at present where in some parts of the country we already have selection, by wealth and house price. I would have more sympathy with that argument if the Government had not pushed through a benefits cap that has socially cleansed large areas of the country and forced tens of thousands of poorer families to move out of inner London, and if they had not introduced a model of free schools in the last Parliament that allowed schools to draw their own catchment areas and exclude poorer areas.

The answer to the Minister’s problem is surely to make every school a good school. The fact that the Government appear to have completely given up on that, in Britain in 2016, is such a pitiful sight for young people in this country. There are far too many—

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Solicitor General]

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend for the work she has done and continues to do to tighten up the law on offences such as revenge pornography. I believe it is incumbent on the police and on prosecutors to use the existing law more thoroughly, but if there is a case for further reform, the Government will of course look at it very carefully.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Has the Solicitor General seen that over 100 Members of Parliament have now signed a letter to President Obama on the case of Lauri Love, who is going to be extradited to the United States to face trial for hacking into government files? Does he realise that this young man is on the autism spectrum, has severe mental health challenges and may not survive such a journey?

[The Solicitor General]

I am very conscious of that case, as I have a strong interest in autism issues. I have to emphasise that it is of course a matter for the courts—there has been a court procedure relating to this issue—so I am loth to make direct comment on the case, but I am certainly following it very carefully.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities (Caroline Dinenage)]

I am so pleased that my hon. Friend mentions Clover Lewis Swimwear. I have met Clover Lewis, who does outstanding work creating swimwear for women who have undergone mastectomy surgery. We are absolutely committed to supporting women to start and grow their own businesses, and I am proud that Britain has been named as one of the best places in Europe for female entrepreneurs. My hon. Friend will be as pleased as I am that 40% of the loans given out by the Government’s StartUp loans company since it was established have gone to women, providing funding to more than 15,500 women and totalling £87 million.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

T6. Will the Secretary of State welcome the Women into Tech initiative, which just goes to show how many women can get into business in tech? Will she help our campaign to improve the numeracy of girls and young women, as that is the key link between success in management later and everything else?

[Justine Greening]

We had a question earlier about STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering and maths—and the importance of ensuring that girls are taking those. It is important not just for those wishing to pursue a career in engineering, for example; these subjects, and maths in particular, open up all sorts of doors for our young girls. That is why it is so important that the kinds of initiatives the hon. Gentleman has just talked about are in place to help deliver on those aspirations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Lidington]

The points my hon. Friend makes about the pressures of parliamentary life on Members’ families are true, and I think they are true of Members right across the House. As we all know, IPSA is an independent body, and it will, I am sure, consider carefully the representations from hon. Members and others, and then come to a decision at the end of its consultation.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Leader of the House, and all Members of the House, will remember so clearly the dreadful killing of Jo Cox only in June. Since that time, has he had any intelligent communication and conversation with IPSA about how Members are better protected here, in their constituencies and on their travels between them?

[Mr Lidington]

As I hope all Members of the House know, Members’ security was the subject of very urgent consideration following the shocking murder of our late colleague. Under the leadership of the Chairman of Ways and Means, a new package of security measures has been made available to all right hon. and hon. Members, with a fast track for delivering those security improvements, where they are needed.