School Uniform Costs

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2019 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard, for what inevitably will be the last time in this Parliament. It is also a pleasure to participate in a Westminster Hall debate; I have spoken in a large number of them and I am a happy to finish this Parliament speaking in one. The third pleasure is to follow the speech by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy).

Let me start with where we agree. I would like to hear from the Minister what the plans are for the guidance on school uniforms and whether it will be made statutory. For the reasons the hon. Lady set out, I fully accept the benefit of making that guidance statutory, as I think it will help. Where we tend to differ is in our attitude to school uniforms as a whole. I regard them as important and I have seen evidence, which I am happy to make available, that schools with a school uniform perform better and their children feel much more cohesive and part of something bigger. I would hate to lose that and, thinking back to my own time at school, the feeling of collectiveness that followed from it.

However, I agree that we need to help with the cost of school uniforms, which averages around £350. That is quite a lot, particularly for families at the bottom end of the pay scale. Interesting new methods have been developed to tackle that. I will come to one of them, but my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) mentioned another: putting pressure on organisations to allow badges to be sewn on to standard clothing, which is much cheaper and is accessible to everyone.

In my experience, many schools—I have not done a calculation on this, so I will not say most—take this issue into account and have their own schemes to help disadvantaged families afford uniforms, where one is in existence. Such schemes are very helpful. However, one of the most interesting schemes I have come across uses the internet to make what are, in effect, second-hand clothes much more widely available. I see a lot of attraction in that. People might argue, “Well, it’s second-hand clothing,” but the person who founded the charity that established that scheme was clear when she said, “Well, heavens; a school uniform, whether it’s new or not, looks second hand within two weeks of being worn.” That is absolutely true, so I do not think the fact that the clothing is second hand should play a major part in preventing anyone from being able to engage in that sort of transaction, and it has a material impact on the cost of the items concerned.

This is an important issue to have raised at the end of this Parliament. As I said, it will be interesting to hear the Minister’s response about the statutory basis on which school clothing is to be founded.

Music Education in England

John Howell Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Vaizey]

I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman brought up that example; let me take the opportunity to praise the important work he does in this House on video games policy. I am really pleased to hear that example, because the thrust behind music hubs was that they be innovative, different and open up music education in its widest form, not just perhaps in the traditional way.

There were other dogs that did not bark—schemes that have been maintained by the Government and remain effective. One of the most effective was the music and dance scheme, where funding has been maintained to train young musicians to excellent standards and ensure their access to the highest quality specialist music education. Let us not forget that in the wider economy, the Arts Council funding goes to 99 music organisations—not just our major orchestras but important organisations such as Youth Music.

Another aim of the Henley report that I wanted to be implemented was the integration of the In Harmony scheme started by the last Labour Government, which to a certain extent copied the well-known El Sistema scheme in Venezuela. It was whole-class music education. I remember being moved almost to tears visiting a scheme in Everton—not that far from your own patch, Sir George—and seeing incredible children learning music in class. In fact, I was more moved when I met their parents, because the scheme brought the parents and the kids together and brought the parents into school. It gave the kids such pride and belief in what they could achieve. That leads on to a truism that we all know yet we do not act on: things such as music education have a massive impact on kids’ self-esteem and, therefore, on their academic attainment and life chances. If I could wave a magic wand, every school in the country would be part of the In Harmony scheme.

I am very pleased to be on the board of the charity London Music Masters, which does something similar in five inner city primary schools in London. It is heavy going to raise the money but, again, we see an inspiring effect on pupils. I was delighted when they came and played “Here Comes the Sun” in Westminster Hall, breaking every rule possible, but making a fantastic YouTube video. We should all acknowledge not just that music education is important in and of itself, but that it has a massive impact on academic achievement, self-esteem and, as I am sure we will hear from the hon. Member for Cardiff West, people’s health, life chances and mental wellbeing. I know he chairs numerous meditation all-party parliamentary groups.

An important challenge, for the classical music industry more than anything, is diversity. Music education brings the opportunity to learn instruments to a wide range of pupils who would otherwise not get that chance. The creation of the Chineke! orchestra shows the efforts being made in the classical music world to increase diversity, which is urgent.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

For classical musicians or otherwise, it is important to remember the role that technology plays in producing music is enormous. Does my right hon. Friend agree that there should be more investment in the technology side, and that it should be part of the curriculum?

[Mr Vaizey]

I do; it is important to go with the grain of society, and it seems absurd not to engage children in music education by using the kind of technology that they will use in their day-to-day lives, and will use when they leave school and university and go into the workforce.

I want to make two brief points that are somewhat linked. While I have no doubt at all that Members on the Opposition Benches, and perhaps even on the Government Benches, might have a go at the Government about music education, I feel strongly that headteachers—I will try to put this delicately—should not be absolved of all responsibility. School leadership plays a massive part in ensuring high-quality music and arts education. In my constituency, I have been to Didcot Girls’ School and St Birinus School, where there are passionate music and arts teachers who have put those subjects at the heart of the school curriculum, thanks to the support of their headteacher. They do not say to me, “We can’t afford it.” They do it because they understand why it is so important.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bury North (James Frith) on securing this important debate. I, too, have a musical background, but a classical one; I am a choral conductor and an organist. When I mentioned that before in the main Chamber, I was astonished at the speed with which the former hon. Member for Banbury came up to me and booked me as the organist for his funeral. Fortunately, I have not yet had to play for that, as he is still very much alive and thriving, but at least I have one booking in the bag.

I congratulate the all-party parliamentary group for music education on a fantastic report, which sets out a huge number of criteria and statistics. I will not repeat them, but I will draw attention to the report and the points it makes. It mentions that music tuition is compulsory between the ages of five and 14. That is fine, but the problem comes a bit later and in that earlier period, where I feel that the music teaching profession has been so put down that we need to do something to improve it. I will come back to that at the end of my speech.

A number of hon. Members have already mentioned how the sheer love of expressing themselves goes to the heart of what being a child is all about. If they cannot express that through music, I do not know how they can express it. I quite agree with those who have said that whatever sort of music we try to achieve, it brings out the inner person within us.

The hon. Member for Bury North touched on the importance of the music industry to the UK, but I will just repeat some of that. The industry is worth close to £4.5 billion a year for the UK—a phenomenal amount. The all-party parliamentary group brought out the point that we punch well above our weight internationally. We have something like 1% of the world’s population, but when we think of the hard-hitting albums that have been sold, we realise that a huge number have come from the UK.

If we look at the impact of music, as a number of hon. Members have already commented, we see the imagination it creates among young people. I would also bring out another thing it creates: team building. Anyone who has ever played in an orchestra will know how much team building counts in producing a good sound. Certainly, in the days when I was a clarinettist and played in a number of orchestras, it was a discipline that I appreciated.

Music therefore has a big impact on mental health, and the sustainability of music education is something we should pay a lot of attention to. As the Minister himself has said, music should not simply be the preserve of the elite; it should be available to us all. The school curriculum is not enough on its own to achieve all that; we need a range of extracurricular activities—school orchestras, school bands or whatever they may be. We need a range of other activities that fit in with what is going on in the school curriculum.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) mentioned Youth Music, a national charity helping young people to change their lives through music. I have a great deal of affection for Youth Music, not least because my son is an ambassador for the charity, helping to push forward its aims. I met him last night, because I knew I was going to participate in this debate, and we discussed a number of these points.

Personally, I am disappointed to see the declining number of areas in which singing is encouraged. When Sing Up was Government funded, it had an enormous reach in schools and provided a great base for primary school children. I would like to see more done to help to push that along, and to keep on developing the skills needed to keep a singing culture alive. We are one of the few cultures in Europe that has largely lost its tradition of folk songs; most people do not sing folk songs to their children, despite what the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) may have sung.

[Kevin Brennan]

May I invite the hon. Gentleman to join the all-party parliamentary group on folk arts, chaired by myself with my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) as vice-chair? We are looking for more Tory members.

[John Howell]

For a moment, I thought the hon. Gentleman was going to invite me to sing, which I promise, Sir George, I will not do in this session. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his very kind invitation and I will certainly look closely at that.

We have already discussed how powerful music is in developing the personal and social skills of all those who participate in it, but there is one area that I brought up in an intervention that I would like to bring up again. The Music Commission and Youth Music have challenged the curriculum because it does not provide enough technology. The reason they stress technology is that, whether someone is a classical musician or not, the technology involved in composing or producing the music is the same across the whole industry. My son is a composer and uses a tremendous amount of technology to do that. I urge more emphasis on the technology aspect of music.

I said I would return to one thing in particular that I think we can do. We have had a number of campaigns in the past that have taken social workers, for example, and tried to ensure that they feel loved, valued and part of society. We should do the same for music teachers too. We need a great effort on all our parts to ensure that music teaching is appreciated, that it is seen to be appreciated, and that we can all play our part in taking it forward.

English for Speakers of Other Languages

John Howell Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd July 2019 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I will start with a reference to the all-party parliamentary group on social integration, which correctly provided a statement that, to be successful at getting ESOL taught, we had to recognise that we were up against cultural norms among the groups to whom we were trying to provide the language training. I remember 11 or 12 years ago, when I was a councillor in Oxford, seeing groups of women in particular who had been coming to English classes for five or six years, but whose English was no better than on the day they first went. It was an opportunity for them to get out of the house and have social interaction with other people on the course.

ESOL teaching can be useful for that purpose of providing social interaction, but that does take away from the purpose of providing the language tuition that we all think is important. Fortunately, most refugees do not fall into that category; they passionately want to learn English. There are many reasons for doing that: for talking to neighbours, for having that normal family social interaction, for studying and, most importantly, for work-related activities.

Much of the thinking about teaching English stresses the need for a community-based strategy. I am not sure that I understand what a community-based strategy is in this case, particularly given that so much of the English-language training is provided by large local government organisations that can hardly be described as community-based in the way they operate. At some point we will have to bottom that out when we talk about how these services should be delivered in the best possible way.

I have mentioned that it is essential to run language training courses for large refugee communities; it is essential to run them for all refugees, but particularly so where there are large refugee communities. My own constituency does not have any, so I can speak on this with a touch of objectivity, and look at that training to see how it proceeds. I have also already mentioned the importance of English language training for people getting a job, but that also leads to another question: what role should employers have in providing English language training for people to whom they offer jobs? That is much more than simply the social mixing that I talked about at the beginning.

The ability to teach the English language affects so many other areas. One area that it affects particularly is that of loneliness; if a refugee is lonely and does not have the right language skills, they will be even lonelier. It is essential to be able to address that. I remember reading the story of a refugee lawyer who spoke very little English, but who wanted to be able to continue to practise law when she came to the UK with her family. To be able to practise UK law in the UK, she had to take a conversion course. The stories that were told of the difficulties she faced in finding that sort of language training, just to be able to keep her family alive in the way to which they were normally accustomed, made for a sorrowful tale, and it is one I would recommend to all hon. Members.

Finally, I will mention, as I frequently do in this Chamber, the work of the Council of Europe. The UK is a member of the Council of Europe and it is rare that we take what it does into account. It has a programme called “Linguistic Integration of Adult Migrants”, which is there specifically to ensure that member Governments of the Council provide the linguistic training that is essential for migrants to be able to improve themselves by learning the language so that they can do all the things that we take for granted.

Free Schools

John Howell Excerpts

Wednesday 19th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck. I wish to speak about Europa School UK in Culham in my constituency, but this is not an attempt to get one over on the Minister—quite the opposite. The Minister has been incredibly helpful with that school, and his recent letter to it was a model of assistance that I am told helped to make a significant impact on the heads of other national delegations—it does have the word “Europe” in the title, so I thank him for that.

I disagree with what the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) has just said—I suspect this will go backwards and forwards across the Chamber. Europa School UK was founded as a free school because local people wanted it, not because the Government or any other institution wanted it. It could not be provided for by the local authority because of the way that it teaches the children who attend—I will say something about that in a moment. It also could not be provided for because it teaches the European baccalaureate, rather than any other baccalaureate or GCSEs and A-levels. It now has permission to continue teaching the European baccalaureate until 2021, subject to the European Commission, which effectively owns the copyright. That gives an enormous advantage to children who started when they were five with the expectation of taking the European baccalaureate, and who will now work through the school until 2021.

The school is also a good example of how petitions can work. I presented a petition that had been signed by parents and friends of the school to Parliament, and it had a big effect. Perhaps a message can go out from this debate that parliamentary petitions—as opposed to the e-petitions that we debate in Westminster Hall on Mondays—are not a waste of time, because that petition put the issues raised firmly on the table at the Department for Education, and helped to crystallise them.

Under the terms of the free school, parents have agreed to the provision of a certain type of education, which I am about to describe. The importance of this school began in 2011, when I started getting people together to get permission for the free school to go ahead. At its core was a proposal to do something that has never been offered before in the UK or, incidentally, in the European Union school system. The proposal was to offer a complete, thoroughgoing commitment to full bilingual education from reception until finishing school. Pupils would not simply learn another language; they would learn through that language, which is an important distinction. They would learn the linguistic rhythm of a language and have truly deep language learning, not just acquire a second language overlaid on the first.

Europa School UK was set up as a free school because that is what parents wanted. I remember holding discussions with them at the time, and parents wanted that type of education. It is not only those parents of European origin who work at the Culham Science Centre or at Harwell who enjoy this school; it has become so attractive that it appeals to British-born parents who live in the area and are looking to provide the education that their children need. During Education questions I asked the Minister whether he accepted that Europa School UK was proving popular with all kinds of parents, and he kindly replied that he shared my admiration for the school.

How does it work? A pupil will go in and have a history lesson in German, or geography in French, and they will be taught through those languages throughout the day. It is not a question of picking up the language as one goes along; this is about fully immersing oneself in that language, and it works—I have seen it work, and I will soon go to the school to participate in the presentation of certificates and prizes.

The freedom offered by the free schools programme to allow schools to set their own curriculum has been essential. The founders of Europa School UK adopted the curriculum of the previous European school, which the Commission did not want to fund any more, and modified that with the mandatory elements of the English national curriculum. I mention that because it shows that free schools are what parents want, and they provide something different from what the local authority wants. The success of Europa School UK can be seen in the recent Ofsted report, which produced a very good result.

[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)]

My hon. Friend’s references to Europa School UK remind me of Northampton International Academy, which as a fairly new free school attempts to achieve that ethos. He referred to the ability to drive excellence through parental choice, and Northampton School for Boys has just been granted permission to go for free school status, which comes off the back of being a school that local parents recognise as a provider of excellence. Does my hon. Friend agree that this programme provides an opportunity for that parental view to be broadened and spread across local communities?

[John Howell]

I agree with my hon. Friend, who has hit on the key word that describes the whole programme—choice. It is about parental choice. What I have described has worked well for my school and I hope it works well for his.

There is not much more I can add. The Europa School UK is a model school that everyone is welcome to visit to see how the teaching is done. Of course, they will have to speak Italian, German and Spanish to understand the courses being delivered, but I am sure that will not cause any problems for hon. Members in this multilingual Chamber.

History Curriculum: Migration

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 18th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary.

It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), but I will take a slightly different approach to her on this issue. Before I do so, however, I should declare an interest; I am a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and I state that now because I will use examples from the Royal Geographical Society as I continue.

The point I want to make is essentially this: what the hon. Lady has described as “history” is really “geography”. I know that we could argue for ages about the difference between the two, but I agree that what she has described is appropriate for teaching. I just think that it should be taught under a geographical syllabus rather than under a historical one. I will also give some examples of what the Royal Geographical Society already offers, which schools are already taking up to take forward the teaching of these issues.

The first example is an international one, which is material that is made available to answer the question, “Why has unprecedented migration occurred in the Mediterranean in recent years?” The sort of material that the RGS has produced is related to the work of Professor Heaven Crawley, who has done a lot of work with 500 migrants; that is the actual physical work of interviewing them and talking to them. They have shared their experience of what has driven them to migrate, and of how they went about migrating. That is a valuable lesson to be learned from migrants. Professor Crawley has concentrated a lot on the UK, so let me turn to some of the things on offer from the UK.

One of them is about migration and the skills and job market. What it sets out to do is to get students thinking about who is migrating, about the impacts that migration has made, and about how the current financial crisis may affect patterns and volumes of migration. That brings the course right up to date, to include a lot of the political aspects of migration, because geography is about the current politics and sociology of the situation.

I will give another example. Our Migration Story has made available to schools a series of courses that answer the question, “How has our local area been shaped by migration?” That includes a lot of the historical background that the hon. Lady mentioned, and the sort of questions that it asks include, “How might migrant groups change the local area?” It also asks, “What evidence is there to show how migrant groups have changed the local area over time?” And it goes on to ask, “How has that changed over time and how can we identify the different parts of it?”

Our Migration Story also looks at the background of migrants, including the fact that many of them have come from a small number of countries over the years, although that number is now increasing. So, comparisons can be made between the two—that is, between the UK and other countries.

Another example that I think will appeal to Opposition Members is “Migrants on the margins”. That too is produced by the Royal Geographical Society and includes a range of posters, podcasts, animations, videos, factsheets and lesson plans for teachers. It has been funded by the global learning programme, and provides the context for the idea of migrants on the margins, covering things such as how cities are changing, the causes of migration and why people move. The materials being produced by the Royal Geographical Society are very good and should not go unnoticed.

[Jim Shannon]

Does the Royal Geographical Society take cognisance of the persecution of those with religious beliefs across the world, in particular Christians, and of how they have migrated because of that? Is that part of the background that the society uses? If it is not, may I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that he proposes, as a member of the society, that it should be?

[John Howell]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I have not seen in any of the material any detailed work on that, but I suspect that it is included as part of the thinking that goes on to produce the result. The subject that he identifies is valuable in teaching, in understanding not just how things have happened historically but how they are still happening to Christian groups around the world. I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that point.

The last Royal Geographical Society project is a complex one, but it starts from the position that although migration to Britain in the past has been overwhelmingly the story of a small number of nations, recent immigrants have come from a larger number and the numbers of immigrants who were born in the Caribbean and, indeed, in Ireland—traditionally key migrant groups—have fallen and the numbers of others have risen in their place.

In summary, why do I think that this is more part of geography? We have seen the historical context in all the modules put forward by the Royal Geographical Society, but migration is about place. It is about spatial relationships and it is also about social science, and I think that the issues about place and spatial relationships are more appropriate to a geographical course, given that those modules are already being offered.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

With apologies to the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), I call the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans).

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[Lyn Brown]

Mary Seacole is somebody that Lucy, my mother-in-law, speaks of regularly, and she does not understand why she is not recognised as fully as Nurse Nightingale. So, yes, I would encourage people to explore and discover parts of our history that are not as prevalent and as in your face as some of the other stuff.

The work of the council continues today. As we all remember, the theme for the previous Holocaust Memorial Day was “Torn from home”. Schools in Newham not only used it to reflect on the experiences of the Jewish community who were forced to leave everything behind, incredibly important as that absolutely is, but used it as a theme for creative inspiration—for the writing of poetry, performances of plays and the composing of songs about the lives of their families and the communities that they had come from, which, in many cases, had also been torn from home. Their experiences today are reflected sadly in our history.

Many have forgotten that Irish migrants were subjected to terrible xenophobia and discrimination during the 19th century and into the 20th. We forget that Jewish migration was represented as a real threat. We have learnt not to think of the Huguenots from France as refugees. The world did not come to a stop when those communities joined us; our world was enriched instead. What I am trying to say is that we sometimes fail to make the connections that we should because we have simply forgotten our history—or our geography.

[John Howell]

I will not pick the hon. Lady up on that point, but has she seen the BBC’s “Born Abroad” pages, which take a fantastic look at diversity in Wembley?

[Lyn Brown]

I have not, but I certainly will. As soon as I get back to my office, I will have a quick butcher’s.

Constituencies such as mine have been blessed with diversity. We include Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Indians, Africans, Caribbeans, Irish and many others in our number. When we hosted the Olympic games—it was not a London Olympics, but a West Ham Olympics—we believed that we had a resident representative from every participating country living right there in West Ham. Many in my community have immigrant backgrounds, as do some of my closest and dearest family. It simply would not be the place that I love so dearly without them; and we would be much poorer, not only economically but creatively, in terms of the ideas and perspectives that we can draw on. We would be able to communicate so much worse if we did not have those communities living with us, talking with each other and learning from perspectives. Imbibing the cultures and the stories helps us to communicate so much better as a society. That is why it is really important to me that children are taught to see migration for what it is—not just economically beneficial and not just a charitable act, but unreservedly good for our communities and absolutely essential for our future.

Education Funding

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

On the Wednesday before the recess, I submitted a petition to the House that had been signed by just under 1,000 residents of Henley. I will not read it out, but I hope the Minister will agree that it is a friendly petition. I am concerned about the gap between the enormous figures that are increasingly being put into education and what is actually happening on the ground in schools. The petition asked for a review in advance of the comprehensive spending review to settle once and for all what it costs to run education and how we can get that money to schools.

We have tackled a number of issues separately—we have tackled teachers’ pay and pensions, and agreed to fund them—but we need to know in what other areas funding is falling short in the squeeze that has occurred between keeping the budgets more or less as they are and inflation. Every year, the Minister makes the honest claim that we are spending more on the revenue budget for schools than we were the previous year. That is a very laudable thing to have done, provided the money actually gets to the schools themselves.

One of the things that will help is to bring out the difference between a soft formula and a hard formula. We have a soft formula at the moment, and local authorities have a role in distributing and, indeed, top-slicing the funds before they get to the school. It might be thought that they do not top-slice very much, but they do, and it can make a big difference to the schools. That also applies to schools that are part of multi-academy trusts. We must ensure that, in creating such trusts, we are not just creating another local authority equivalent that is able to top-slice more and more funds, resulting in schools getting less and less. A review and a move to a hard funding formula would be a very good way forward.

I will finish on a completely different matter. Apprenticeships form a large part of further education colleges’ income. In the Henley constituency, I am organising an evening to bring together schools and businesses in order to see what apprenticeships they want to fund and how they can be funded.

Further Education Funding

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Richard Graham]

The short answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) is yes.

Today, I want to set out briefly what the problem is—as you say, Sir Roger, many Members wish to speak—what the case for further education colleges is in more detail, what outcomes we would like to see from more funding going into the sector, what skills and productivity we should be looking for, and some of the key statistics, both locally and nationally, that are on our minds.

Let me start by outlining the problem. It is simply that education for 16 to 18-year-olds has, broadly speaking, not been funded as well as that for other age groups. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has done research that shows that. The chart we used in our letter shows clearly that, of the four main categories of education—primary, secondary, further and higher—further education is the only one on which spending has fallen in real terms recently. It is therefore the most deserving of the four categories, but let it also be said—

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

rose—

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

rose—

[Richard Graham]

I will give way in a second; let me just finish the sentence. I suspect that all of us here share the view that education in general is a good cause for the spending review and the Budget, so this is not to decry the other three categories but to highlight the importance of more funding for further education. Three colleagues wished to intervene—I think they were, in order, an hon. Friend and then two Opposition colleagues.

[John Howell]

I will be as brief as I can. Does my hon. Friend not think that FE colleges have the ability to improve the situation themselves by attracting good companies in to help fund apprenticeships? That is precisely what I am doing with the FE college in my constituency.

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend is always a great champion of these things, and he is absolutely right. Colleges can certainly help themselves by attracting great employers to offer apprenticeships, and we can help them by introducing some of the employers if need be.

Catholic Sixth-form Colleges

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the future of Catholic sixth form colleges.

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, and at the outset of this debate I thank the Backbench Business Committee for selecting it.

Catholic sixth-form colleges face double discrimination under the Government’s funding of post-16 education: they are not academies, so they receive less funding than colleges that have converted to become academies, but even if they wanted to become academies they cannot do so.

The Government have been aware of these problems for a number of years, but they have done little to address either concern. On top of the huge cuts in funding to post-16 education since 2010, this double discrimination is raising concerns within the Catholic community about the long-term future of all 14 Catholic sixth-form colleges in England.

Unlike Catholic schools, the religious character of Catholic sixth-form colleges is not protected in statute, so the trustees of Catholic sixth-form colleges such as the nationally renowned St Dominic’s in my constituency, even if they were huge fans of academising, could not switch their college to make it an academy and take advantage of the many financial inducements that such status might allow.

St Dominic’s has an impressive history. It was established 140 years ago, in 1879, as a school. When the London borough of Harrow reorganised its education system, creating a specific sixth-form sector, the Dominican nuns agreed to transfer the school grounds to the Diocese of Westminster as the site of a new Catholic sixth-form college.

St Dominic’s Sixth Form College opened its doors to its first 289 students—boys and girls—in September 1979. With more than 1,300 students, it attracts young men and women from a wide geographical area across north-west London, with a number travelling more than 15 miles a day to study for their level 3 qualifications. It is a great Catholic college, but it exists within a multi-faith and multi-cultural setting that reflects our very diverse local community in Harrow.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman wanted to add at this point the enormous concentration that that college and other Catholic sixth-form colleges have shown in relation to social justice. That has been a strong element of what those colleges teach and the way that they teach it.

[Gareth Thomas]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to take the opportunity to praise the contribution of Catholic sixth-form colleges in teaching about social justice. I do not know whether that is part of the reason that I keep getting elected. [Laughter.] Certainly, though, Catholic sixth-form colleges deserve his praise for their teaching about social justice.

The staff at St Dominic’s, to whom the hon. Gentleman was perhaps also alluding, are some of the best in the business. They are experts in their field who have devoted their careers to the education of post-16 students. They teach at a very high level, which in turn enables the students to get excellent results.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, for what I believe is the first time. I congratulate my neighbour, the hon. Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas), on securing this debate at an important time for not only Catholic education, but education as a whole. It was a great pleasure to chair the Backbench Business Committee and give him the opportunity to hold this debate.

I rise for a number of reasons, the first of which is fairness. I have always strongly believed in a parent’s right to choose the type of education they want for their children, be that a church school, any other form of religious school, or a secular school—I do not take a particular view. Equally, parents should have the right to choose whether their child receives single-sex or mixed education. One of the great beauties of the London borough of Harrow, which my neighbour and I share, is that we have education for Hindus, Jews, Catholics and Protestants, and we will soon have a Muslim state school as a result of parental demand.

St Dominic’s Sixth Form College, which is in my neighbour’s constituency, has as its main feeders two Catholic schools in my constituency: Salvatorian College and Sacred Heart Language College. They are 11-to-16 schools, both Catholic in nature, and the natural progression for their pupils is to go on to St Dominic’s college. However, St Dominic’s does not just take young people from Salvatorian College and Sacred Heart; as my neighbour alluded to, it takes young people from across north-west London. It has quite a long reach into a number of London boroughs.

The nature of St Dominic’s, and of other Catholic colleges, is that they provide excellent education. That is why they are in demand, after all. It is worth remembering that in many ways we have such advanced education across this country because of the investment made by the Church of England and the Catholic Church going back way before we had state education. It is important to understand that the colleges are excellent. They provide a very good standard of education, are well led and have excellent teachers. That is the feature of a good education system, so it is grossly unfair that they are disadvantaged.

I rise to seek fairness in the system for Catholic sixth-form colleges. It is fair to say that when we have changed the funding formula, sixth forms generally have suffered. Clearly, the priority has been on young people between the ages of 11 and 16, who have a higher rate of funding than sixth forms. A head or member of a governing body of a school, college or whatever that teaches people from the ages of 11 to 18 can adjust the funding to ensure a spread throughout the institution, but a sixth-form college is totally dependent on the funding that comes in for those young people between the ages of 16 and 18. The slight problem is that the average funding is £4,545 for a sixth-form student, which is 15% lower than that for 11 to 16-year-olds. Straightaway, sixth-form colleges are at a disadvantage from a revenue perspective.

One of the challenges in Harrow is that Sacred Heart Language College has always been full. It is an excellent school, so there has been a steady flow of young women going on to St Dominic’s or beyond. It is fair to say that Salvatorian College has had real challenges. However, it is being completely rebuilt and we are looking forward to the new premises opening completely. The school is now full with young boys coming through, so the impact on St Dominic’s will be even greater. The college is full, and as the hon. Member for Harrow West alluded to, there is little if any space to expand. Even if we could get hold of the money required, expansion is a real challenge, given where it is located and that it has such a tight site.

The impact on the funding level is important. Colleges—sixth-form colleges and Catholic sixth-form colleges in particular—are dropping courses in modern languages as a result of funding pressures. When we are trying to encourage the development of modern languages, it is not helpful if colleges are dropping them due to funding. Equally, we are trying to get young people better educated in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. When we are encouraging them to do STEM subjects, it is a disaster for colleges to drop those courses.

There are other issues. St Dominic’s is having to put young people in much larger class sizes to try to use the facilities available. I visited the college only last week. It has a plan to expand into lecture halls, as opposed to classrooms, to try to use facilities to their maximum capability. There is good sense to that. Teachers can lecture, but then there still needs to be the capacity for one-to-one teaching subsequently. As has been mentioned by my neighbour, the hon. Member for Harrow West, and in various interventions, we have a crisis.

[John Howell]

What effect is the situation that my hon. Friend describes having on university applications and the success that Catholic sixth-form colleges have had in getting people into good universities to do good courses?

[Bob Blackman]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. There is that concern. All the Catholic sixth-form colleges are producing an excellent education, with a good flow of young people going on to university and being given the opportunity to excel. Virtually every young person who goes through St Dominic’s goes on to good universities with good courses, particularly in maths and science. We should be encouraging that and ensuring that it happens.

At the same time, we have the challenge of what we could call the learning tax. Catholic sixth-form colleges are not able to academise and therefore cannot claim the VAT back. That gives any college a real challenge. Catholic sixth-form colleges should be able to academise. We should also remove any restrictions on the faith of the leadership of the college. Such colleges should be able to ensure that Catholics are the senior management and senior staff. We should have a position where the intake is in line with legislation, namely that a proportion of the students coming into the college can be selected. They do not have to be exclusively Catholic, but there should be a Catholic flavour to the colleges.

Equally, there is a challenge in what we do to expand such colleges, which are extremely popular and very successful. It is fair to say that the teachers in those colleges are experienced, highly professional and doing a good job, yet they do not get the pay rises they would get if they were working in a college down the road. That is clearly unfair. We have to remove the restriction whereby these colleges are not getting the pay grant that other colleges get. That is unfair discrimination.

Relationships and Sex Education

John Howell Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

I shall try to be absolutely impeccable, Mrs Moon. It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. It is also a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones), whom I seem to follow often in Westminster Hall debates. It is very appropriate that we should discuss this subject today when, as we can all see from the annunciators, the Secretary of State is still talking about relationships and sex education in the main Chamber.

There are two issues and I will treat them separately. The first is sex education, which is essentially about reproduction, and the second is relationships education. The issue of sex education raises two interesting points for me. The first is faith schools, and the second is the rights of parents. I am not one of those people who think that we should simply abolish all faith schools. Faith schools play a crucial role in our society and, at a time when we have gone a huge way to seeing what parents want—how they want their children to be taught—and allowing them to bring forward free schools, it is crucial that we acknowledge their rights to continue to have that with faith schools.

On the question of the rights of parents, I would like to start from the other end by saying that I do not think it is appropriate to put all the effort on to headteachers, who should have this decided by parents. I am sure that many of us remember the times when we had to have conversations with our own children about sex education, and however embarrassing they may have been—it was for me as a parent—it was for us to take them forward. I would like much more in the way of encouragement for the rights of parents. That is why I am enthusiastic about the right to opt out of sex education and to see that as part of the role of parents.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

rose—

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

rose—

[John Howell]

I will give way first to my right hon. Friend.

[Mrs Miller]

My hon. Friend talks compellingly about the rights of parents and of faith schools. Does he not also think that children have the right to know what a good, healthy relationship looks like in this day and age and how to keep safe? Do children not have that right as well?

[John Howell]

I partially agree with my right hon. Friend but am not sure I go all the way with it. Faith schools provide a lot of such education, or could provide a lot of it, if they were worked with and engaged with in a much more successful way.

[Jess Phillips]

The hon. Gentleman talked about how a parent could be there to give guidance and should be able to opt out if they wish to give the guidance. What would he say to a parent who is perpetrating domestic abuse or even sexual violence at home, or to a child who is growing up in that type of environment? How will we ensure that, when those people opt out, the child can understand what a healthy relationship looks like?

[John Howell]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. One does not want to see that level of abuse continuing down the generations, but those issues can be picked up by other measures and dealt with in that way.

[Seema Malhotra]

Could the hon. Gentleman explain how he sees that happening? I will give him an anecdotal statistic from my constituency. I asked a headteacher of a primary school how many children in one class he thought might be subject to seeing domestic violence at home. His answer was five or six, which is pretty staggering. It shows a huge risk in the environments that many young children are growing up in.

[John Howell]

I am afraid that I do not know the answer to the hon. Lady’s question. I will not attempt one off the top of my head, but will think about it for a little bit.

I believe that we already take away so much from childhood. We should fight against the sexualisation of children—that applies to all children. I see a need to address some of these issues, but I do not see that the details of reproductive sex should be part of the compulsory situation.

There is a lot of good in the proposals for relationships education. I will give two examples, the first of which is mental health. I have always had a great interest in the mental health of children at schools in my constituency. One only has to look at incidents of children’s mental ill health to see that we do not want the child to continue to be distressed.

We live in a completely different age to that in which I was brought up. We live in an age in which there is a tremendous amount of social media—it is almost impossible to get away from it. That can produce the problems of pornography. There is a need to have some awareness, but that is an area in which the parents can be involved in a big way.

The second issue is online grooming. I come from a county that has had a major online-grooming scandal over the past few years. Seven individuals abused many girls—I have no idea how many, but the BBC claimed that hundreds of girls could have been abused in that way. I would like evidence to show what effect relationships education could have had in that situation. Could it have prevented that abuse from taking place or were parents in a better position to deal with it?

There are different types of relationships, of course. One cannot pretend that schools exist in a vacuum. One cannot pretend that we do not have lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender relationships. I have been very supportive of them. We have to acknowledge that that is the legal situation in the country. We need to talk about the fact that different forms of relationships exist and make that fact clear.

We are not asking for sacred religious texts to be rewritten or torn up. The role of Ofsted, which was mentioned earlier, is absolutely crucial in that respect. I urge the Government to instruct Ofsted to take a sensitive approach in recognising the nature of faith schools, and to work with the schools to deliver a better view of the way in which they deliver education. That means that schools need to be able to teach—they have a duty to teach—what is allowable under the law without having to approve it. That is the situation at the moment.

In making these remarks I have been advised by the Jewish Community Council and the Torah Education Committee, which run a number of Orthodox Jewish schools. It should be taken as a positive sign that they have reached out, because they are concerned about the effects of the regulations and would like to work with the Government to take them forward. Above all, it is important to remember that we are not asking them to tear up the Torah in order to take this forward. We are asking them to work with the Government to come to a proper solution.

Secondary School Opening Hours

John Howell Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

rose—

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

rose—

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am happy to take interventions from both hon. Members, but I give way first to the hon. Gentleman.

[John Howell]

Please—ladies first.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Well, I am not sure I am going to go for that, but I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) .

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. One of the difficulties with the proposed change is that starting later may well mean finishing later. There are pros and cons to that, which I will come to in a moment, but she makes an important point about safety.

[John Howell]

Has not research shown that we need to limit the amount of time people spend using screens, whether on their phones or their iPads, and that doing so can have a big effect on people’s attentiveness during class?

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point. There has been good research recently suggesting that is the case, particularly with regard to the hours immediately before sleep. There is a range of issues about how we boost young people’s quality of life, and I fully admit that this is only one of them.

I am not an expert, but there are quite a few experts in Cambridge, which I represent, so I know people who are. Sensibly, I would suggest, I sought their advice. I am particularly grateful to the headteachers of Hills Road and Long Road sixth-form colleges, of Coleridge, Netherhall and Parkside secondary schools, of Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology, and more. I was struck by the alacrity and thoughtfulness of the responses that I received from all those institutions; they were really well considered and well thought through, and of course they pointed out both the advantages and the potential pitfalls of this proposal. I suspect that any Member who asked their local colleges and schools about the subject would get similarly well considered responses.

Cambridge headteachers and principals mentioned plenty of positives. The proposed change could provide opportunities for childcare relief for staff, allowing teachers more time with their children in the mornings, which in turn may improve recruitment and retention—a key issue in my area. A lot of people pointed out that starting school later could significantly reduce traffic problems, which are particularly acute in university cities such as Cambridge, and delaying the start of the school day for teenagers could make a substantial change to public transport peaks. Many of us notice the difference getting in and out of Cambridge outside term time.

However, one local headteacher told me that he thought the proposal would work only if it was

“co-ordinated across the system. That is the big issue, as with the current term structure. Because of the need to co-ordinate with primary schools on childcare, working patterns of parents by and large running 9-5, it is hard for individual institutions to step outside the norm.”

His point is well made. I agree with him about co-ordination, although I have to say that I am less convinced that everyone works nine-to-five these days. I note that better employers are introducing more family-friendly flexible working. That should be encouraged, and it could be part of the answer when it comes to staggered school start times.

Let us look at some of the downsides. Although across-the-board change may be positive from an organisational perspective, the context of the school in question is key. Another Cambridge head, who I think has experience from a previous posting, said that although starting later has worked well at Portsmouth College,

“it is very context dependent as a stand-alone solution”.

Clearly, different communities have different requirements and preferences, and any change must take that into account.

There are also questions to do with the impact on the wider community and families—many parents who do the school run on their way to work may find a later start disruptive—and at what age such a change would best suit students. Parents who allow their children to walk home alone may feel uncomfortable with the school day starting at 10 am, as it may mean children returning later in the afternoon or early evening. Clearly, some parents might not feel comfortable with their 11-year-old travelling home in the dark in winter.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main, and it is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner). I will say straightaway that there is a kernel of truth in what he has said, but more research needs to be done on the subject. That is the bottom line of what I am going to say, so I could stop there, but I want to talk about a couple of things. Before he left this place, I remember George Osborne saying what a fine profession we are in when 9.30 is considered to be early. I think that illustrates the point that the issue should be examined in more detail.

When I saw the debate title, I was initially sceptical. I, too, thought it would be about giving teenagers more time to stay in bed for longer and, therefore, to stay up later. However, the scientific evidence, as mentioned by the hon. Gentleman, provides a different perspective. As I said in my intervention, we need to look closely at the amount of screen time used by teenagers during the day, but also, in particular, just before he or she goes to bed at night. Parents have a large part to play in dealing with that important element.

The results of my inquiries suggest that we should take a broader look at the issues. I started by looking at research undertaken in the United States, which is a different country, with different traditions, and where classes have traditionally started much earlier than ours. It is not unusual for them to start before 8 o’clock in the morning—so there is a lot that can be done. One study in the US replaced the self-reported information with information obtained from wrist-worn monitors. The importance of that is that, as the hon. Gentleman has said, many people, when asked how often they feel tired, will say “I feel tired quite a lot,” but I think that wearing wrist monitors, which monitor the amount of sleep they get and when they begin to drop off, is a better approach to the problem.

A school in Seattle delayed its start time from 7.50 to 8.45, which is quite a big change. However, the difficulty is that it resulted in 34 minutes of additional sleep time for the teenagers—that is all. I have to ask: is that significant? One of the other results was that students were late on two fewer school days and had two fewer absences, which is not, I would argue, a large or significant result from the study. Nevertheless, it indicates a possible solution, which is to do more research. Another factor is that the approach in question appears to reduce the number of car accidents and, given that teenagers are at higher risk of having car accidents, that is significant. There are important societal issues at stake, besides just how much time teenagers can sleep.

The hon. Gentleman suggested a potential course of action, particularly for academies and free schools, which are free to do as they wish on the issue. There should be local action, if people think that is the right way to go, but I suspect that that is not what the hon. Gentleman or I want, because there is a difficulty. One school might move its start time to 9.30 and another might keep it the same. There would then be big knock-on effects on such things as childminding, as he explained. More attention needs to be paid to those considerations. The county councils, of course, have responsibility for decisions for maintained schools, and I suspect that they will not be as willing as academies and free schools to study the research.

As an aside, when I was a sixth former, there were completely different regimes for the sixth form and the rest of the school. Sixth formers came in for their particular classes, rather than spending all day at school. That flexibility in the system was a good thing to encourage. If I may say so, given that I am here participating in this debate, it certainly did me no harm. More research along those lines would be useful and I would welcome it.