Apprenticeships: Government Support

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) on securing this important debate.

I am proud to stand here as the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on apprenticeships. I am even prouder to stand here and say that I am the employer of not one, but two fantastic apprentices in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke. Jess is about to sit her exams—only next month. I will not wish her the best of luck because I always believe that if someone does the hard work, they will pass the test. She has certainly done the work, so I am sure the test will go through. Then Mya will start with me on 1 February. Jess was 17 years old and Mya is 18 years old. This is a fantastic opportunity for young people to get that important level 3 qualification when they did not feel college was the right option and wanted to earn and learn.

I cannot agree more with the hon. Member for Bristol South on the point about the fact that although degree apprenticeships are important, we also need that ladder of opportunity—I know the Minister was keen on that phrase when I served with him on the Education Select Committee—and we need to offer those level 2 and 3 opportunities, particularly in areas of deprivation where there are people who may not have a formal qualification. In Stoke-on-Trent North, 12% of my workforce do not have any qualifications at all, which is 8% higher than the national average. Level 2 is the first rung on that ladder.

We should do everything we can to accelerate all the way up degree apprenticeships, but we have to build people’s confidence and self-esteem and build people up with the skills to go through the courses at the different stages so they are equipped and ready. It is a bit like when I was in teaching, with the grandmother effect: it is all very well making sure we are supportive and help in every way we can, but if we undermine that process, that could be a problem.

In Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke we have had 13,240 apprenticeships start up since May 2020. I want to congratulate Stoke-on-Trent College for its fantastic work. I partner with the college when it comes to my apprentices. It will also deliver T-levels from the start of this year, alongside the City of Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College, which was an early up-taker of the digital T-levels that began in 2020, with 55 students to date.

Ultimately, there are things that need to happen. We have seen that drop in level 2 take-up, which some recent reports suggest is at 60%—the last was from March 2021. We need to address and work with our local colleges on that. I am delighted that we will see Ofsted inspecting training providers and holding them accountable for the quality of training. EDSK said that the lack of quality training throughout their apprenticeship forces out half of those who drop out. We need to make sure that employers are being held accountable for their work.

When I see £3.3 billion in the levy pot being returned to Treasury, it does not half make me shudder. That £3.3 billion could be invested not just in young people but in older people as well, and not only in upskilling the current workforce, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher) pointed out, but in making sure young people get that opportunity too.

We need much more flexibility with the levy pot. I am not asking to simply open it up, but for us to allow employers to use a small percentage of it to invest in mileage, training or administrative staff to undertake what can be a bureaucratic process, and for an amount to be ringfenced specifically for young people. Apprenticeships are the best way to level up our great country, and I hope to see how the Government will develop them to make that happen.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

I will call Jim Shannon, who has kindly informed me that he will take an intervention. By law, the time limit has to increase by a minute, so could the hon. Gentleman please finish his speech a minute early?

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho]

We work with all areas that are struggling to provide SEND services through our regions group work, our delivering better value programmes, and our safety valve programmes. I will, of course, look at the issue carefully, and we always step in and act when we need to.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

One of the best ways in which young people with SEND can be supported is by remaining in the local area to be educated. That is why I am delighted that, thanks to a significant amount of Government investment, Middlehurst School, which is currently sitting empty, is now being built to create 80 new SEND school places. Will my hon. Friend congratulate Councillor Janine Bridges from Stoke-on-Trent City Council on that amazing work, and will she pledge to come and open that school when it is ready, hopefully at the end of this year?

[Claire Coutinho]

I absolutely commend the work of Councillor Janine Bridges. It sounds as if she is doing a tremendous job to increase the number of places for SEND children. I would also be delighted to come and see whether I can open the school.

Fair Taxation of Schools and Education Standards Committee

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

We will be considering all of our options for how to force this issue, but this is a choice for Conservative Members. There is a clear and straightforward way that we could look carefully at this issue, and the motion sets that out. The question for Conservative Members is whether they are prepared to defend inexcusable tax breaks for private schools, or whether they want to invest that money in ensuring that all our children in our state schools get a great start in life.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

May I ask the shadow Secretary of State whether any Labour Members on the current Education Committee have put such ideas forward to its Chair for investigation by the existing Select Committee?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I cannot speak on behalf of other hon. Members, but I will happily address the point about the substance of the Select Committee in a moment.

Our children are at the heart of Labour’s ambition for Britain. Children alive today can expect to live into the next century, with the pace of change increasing and technological advancements growing. We must equip them for that world, and that must shape how we think about our schools today and tomorrow, about what it means to grow up in this country and about what the country they inherit will become. Children do not lack vision. Time and again, when meeting, talking to and listening to children, I am struck by their optimism and ambition, and not just for themselves and their families, but for our country and our world.

I am determined that, in government, Labour will match that ambition. The education we provide for our children today will shape all our futures, and by delivering an excellent education for every child, we will build a better future for all levels. A child at school now cannot pause and wait for change; they get only one childhood and they get only one chance. Our job is to make sure that their childhood is the best it possibly can be.

This House should not wait either. The Government have told us that they are not prepared to act. The hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), the Chair of the Education Committee, has set out his priorities—I am glad to see that someone in his party is talking about childcare for once, and I welcome his Committee’s interest in this area. However, we urgently need action there too, driving up school standards and the opportunity to end private schools’ tax breaks. A new direction and new ambition are needed to drive forward that change.

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[Gillian Keegan]

There is the huge education benefit, but I think the hon. Member may have his maths a little wrong—I do not think the average is £37,000.

We are improving state-funded education, not undermining the aspirations or choices that parents have for their children. That is important. We are delivering a world-class curriculum for all schools, not attacking world-class institutions that secure international investment and drive innovation. We are driving school improvement, not driving small schools serving dedicated religious and philosophical communities out of business. We are providing the funding to schools that they need.

I am delighted that Labour decided to include school standards as part of this debate, as our record speaks for itself. In 2010, just 68% of schools were rated by Ofsted as good or outstanding, but we have taken that to 88%—hopefully the Members opposite are still following the maths—which is a vast improvement driven by the Minister of State, Department for Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb).

Moreover, the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) should join me in praising the work of this Government. Since we took office, schools in her local authority of Sunderland have gone from 67% rated good or outstanding to 91%. Meanwhile, 97% of schools in the Leader of the Opposition’s local authority now enjoy a rating of good or outstanding—I am sure he has thanked my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton for his role in making that happen. The shadow Schools Minister, the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan), should also be grateful; when Labour was last in power, fewer than half of his local schools met that standard, but I am happy to share with the House that we have taken that dismal record and made it good—literally. Today, Portsmouth now boasts 92% of schools rated as good or outstanding. I want to take this opportunity to thank teachers, headteachers and support staff up and down the country for their incredible work over these years, as they have been the key drivers of this success. I can guarantee that we will not stop there.

Underpinning that record are improvements in phonics, where a further 24% of pupils met our expected standard in the year 1 screening. In just eight years from 2010, we brought the UK up the PISA rankings—the programme for international student assessment—from 25th to 14th in reading and from 28th to 18th in maths.

We will continue that trajectory as we build on the ambitions of the schools White Paper, which will help every child fulfil their potential by ensuring they receive the right support in the right place at the right time. This will be achieved by delivering excellent teaching for every child, high standards of curriculum, good attendance and better behaviour. [Interruption.] Somebody opposite mumbles “13 years”—I am sure that schools are delighted with the improvement I have just outlined over the past 13 years. We will also deliver targeted support for every child who needs it, making it a stronger and fairer school system.

Let us focus on the independent school sector. We are very fortunate in this country to be blessed with a variety of different schools. We have faith schools, comprehensive schools and grammar schools, to name but a few, all of which help to support an education that is right for children. The independent school sector itself is incredibly diverse. It includes large, prestigious, household names—in this House, we will all have heard of famous alumni from Eton—but there are 2,350 independent schools, and not many of them are like Eton. Reigate Grammar School, a fee-paying independent school that now charges £20,000 a year, once educated the Leader of the Opposition; like many in this category, it started as a local grammar and became independent. In fact, 14% of Labour MPs elected in 2019 attended private schools—double the UK average. I will be interested to see which of those hon. Members votes to destabilise the sector that provided the opportunities afforded to them.

As someone who did not benefit from such a prestigious educational background, I stand here focused not on the fewer than 7% of children who attend independent schools, but much more on the 93% who attend state-funded schools, as I did. As the Opposition wish to use parliamentary time on this issue, I would point out that the sector provides many benefits to the state and individuals alike. Independent schools attract a huge amount of international investment, with more than 25,000 pupils whose parents live overseas attending independent schools in the UK. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) pointed out, many could be working in our armed forces.

[Jonathan Gullis]

One of the greatest things I saw while working in the classroom, unlike those on the shadow Front Bench, was a scheme introduced under the Conservative Government by the former Minister for Children and Families, my right hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), which provided looked-after children with scholarships and bursaries to some of the leading boarding and private schools across our country. Are schemes like that—giving those most deprived kids the very best opportunities—not under threat because of the Opposition’s dangerous ideological plans?

[Gillian Keegan]

Absolutely. We will always focus on the people we can help. The more people we can help through a diverse school system, the better.

The independent school sector also has an international presence, exporting services through campuses in other countries. The independent sector includes many settings that serve small, dedicated faith communities, some with lower per-pupil funding than state-funded schools.

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[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

Let me start by saying—although she may not like it—what a tremendous fan I am of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy). Unfortunately, however, in this instance I think she has missed the mark. While I absolutely respect the fact that she, like me, was on the frontline of teaching in state schools across our country, dealing with some of the most disadvantaged pupils in our communities, I need to make sure that she understands people like me.

I went to an independent school because my mother got off the council estate in London through grammar school after her father, a postman who died when she was 17 years old, and her mother, a local teaching assistant, put all the money they could into giving her the very best start in life with a tutor. My father, who had failed his O-levels, went back to school to be a cleaner during the day, then took night school classes and worked his way up, through the Open University, to be the first member of my family to hold a degree. If it had not been for my lifelong-supporting stepfather, who decided to invest in me, his non-biological son, I would not have had the privileged education that I was able to receive. So to try and make out that my family, who did not have holidays, new cars, house upgrades or extensions, but who decided that they wanted to invest in my brother and me to make sure we had the very best education, were simply some super-rich family—well, that is for the birds.

Yes, we were middle-income earners, and yes, my brother and I did not face the hardships that my mother and father had had to face, but to portray in that way any parent who aspires to enable their child to go to that type of school and has the money to do so is simply wrong. I walk around Stoke-on-Trent, North, Kidsgrove and Talke meeting parents who work on the shop floors of our local ceramics manufacturers, who are cleaners in local domestic households, who are workers in microbusinesses hiring maybe two or three local people, and who choose to spend their money in schools such as Edenhurst or Newcastle-under-Lyme, because that is their right, that is their choice and that is their money—while also paying their taxes on top, which funds the state education sector. It is completely wrong to portray such people in that way.

I find it astonishing that the vast majority of Opposition Back-Bench speakers have not actually addressed the motion, which proposes the establishment of an Education Committee 2.0, with a Chair who I am sure they believe would agree with their views, and with members who would obviously have a predetermined conception of what they wanted the outcome to be and would obviously come up with the result that they wanted. When I was a teacher, we certainly did not teach children to answer questions like that in exams, because it would have been the wrong thing to do; the idea was to have the ability to look at all sides of the argument and understand it.

I find it astonishing that we are having this debate, and that Opposition Members, despite praising the current Chair of the Education Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), as the shadow Secretary of State did, are saying to him, “You are doing a good job on childcare and we like what you are doing on careers, but because we are worried that you might not just agree with our policy we are going to try and set up a side-Committee—but, by the way, none of our Education Committee members agree with us, because they have voted with their feet and not turned up for the debate.” They have not even asked the Chair of the Education Committee to put forward his views in either a public or, I assume, a private session. If minutes can be provided to prove me wrong, I will be more than happy to be shown them.

This demonstrates yet again that we are here for purely ideological reasons. The maths simply does not add up—that is why the Prime Minister is absolutely right to want more pupils to study maths up to the age of 18, and I suspect that the Labour party should be the subject of a pilot study for this scheme to make sure that we show how it works and their sums add up.

As has been explained so beautifully by other Members, the scheme will come at a cost to the taxpayer. Some private schools, though not all, will close, and therefore some pupils will need other places. In Stoke-on-Trent we have no secondary school places available to fill, so there will be a cost to the Stoke-on-Trent taxpayer, as kids will be bussed out of the local area to neighbouring schools, although it may not be clear whether they themselves will have spaces. That will put more pressure on teachers at a time when they are still recovering from the covid pandemic.

Labour seems to think that new teachers will magically appear, although they have to go through a year of training and recruitment. That is challenging not because of Conservative rule, but because the likes of Opposition Members are telling me and others, time and again, how terrible teaching is—how terrible the conditions are, how terrible the classrooms are, how terrible the children are to work with. Is it any wonder that people do not turn up and ask to be teachers, when an advert over here is telling them that teaching is the worst profession in the world to work in?

I speak as someone whose partner is a former Labour party member who fully supports what the Conservative party has been doing to raise educational standards with a knowledge-rich curriculum and strong behavioural expectations. I have seen the same in schools with Labour-supporting headteachers, such as Kensington Aldridge Academy, right at the foot of Grenfell Tower, who have done excellent work to ensure that a rigorous curriculum gives children the chance to go to university. I think that, last year alone, six to 12 students went to Oxbridge from that school in that deprived part of Kensington because of the tremendous work of—yes, those friends: obviously, I declare my interest. That shows what this Government have done, time and again, to deliver for those people.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech. According to the PISA—programme for international student assessment—tables, literacy and maths skills plummeted under Labour. We went from seventh to 25th in reading and from eighth to 28th in maths, and it has taken successive Education Secretaries and hard work from Ministers to recover from that position. Does he agree that before applying their big-state, freedom-stripping, economically illiterate ideologies to education, the Opposition should first get the basics right?

[Jonathan Gullis]

I fully concur with my hon. Friend. The simple truth is this. Even the Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), told students at one of his local private schools, Redmaids’ High School, that he did not agree with this policy. Behind closed doors, the Labour Chair of a Select Committee says one thing while Labour Front Benchers say another.

This is not just about money; it is also about jobs. It is about the caterers, cleaners and groundskeepers who will lose their jobs if these schools close, and it will not necessarily be easy for them to find jobs to replace them. It is this Conservative Government who have introduced the successful multi-academy trusts and phonics; literacy and numeracy are up; and the disadvantage gap had narrowed before the pandemic. There is £7.7 billion from the spending review, and an extra £4.4 billion from the autumn statement. The Conservatives are on the side of teachers, on the side of parents and on the side of pupils. It is a shame that the Labour party is not.

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[Tom Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. This motion is deeply puzzling, and there are all sorts of questions like the one she has raised that have gone unanswered. We have not been helped by some of the contributions from the Opposition Benches that have increasingly strayed off the topic under discussion. Quite why the Education Committee, which is a sitting Select Committee, cannot look at this, I do not know. Why do we need to have a stand-alone Select Committee? Why would it take a year to look at this? I do not know. None of it makes any sense to me.

In terms of the impact, some of the changes proposed in the motion would lead to a number of independent schools closing, and it would not be the biggest, more established independent schools; it would be the smaller schools. There would be a consequence to this proposal. There is a legitimate debate to be had about class sizes, for example. We aspire to their being smaller, but the net result of pushing a set of policies that could lead to the closure of some independent schools would be potentially to increase class sizes, as the children who were in those schools would be in state schools. There would be a financial consequence to that.

What I take issue with is the populism and short-term politics behind this motion, which ignores the heavy lifting that is required to deal with the deeply complex issues that are rightly and understandably causing our education system to be unable to achieve its full potential.

[Jonathan Gullis]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Tom Hunt]

I will not give way right now.

Seeking to breed this kind of antagonism between the independent sector and the state sector is really not the right thing to do. In my Ipswich constituency, the relationship between our two principal independent schools and the state schools is close and productive. There is a huge amount of mutual learning between those two independent schools and the state schools. Trying to push the notion that, somehow, evil independent schools are behind all the ills in our state sector is regressive and unhelpful. A more constructive approach would be much more forthcoming.

I attended an independent school because I had two learning disabilities: dyspraxia and dyslexia. When I was 12, I had the reading and writing age of an eight-year-old, which most people now know because I have said it repeatedly. I could not tie my shoelaces until I was 14. I continue not to be the most organised person in the world, and I am still sometimes a bit prickly about all these sorts of things.

One reason why my father fought to put me in an independent school is that he thought I would benefit from that environment. The school helped with my learning development, not because of resources but because it had the freedom and flexibility to take an approach that works for neurodiverse individuals and unconventional learners. The reality is that a lot of young people with learning disabilities end up in the independent sector. Had I stayed in the state sector, I would have cost a lot of taxpayers’ money because of my needs, because of how far behind I was and because of some of my behavioural issues. I ended up going into the independent sector, so I was not a cost to the taxpayer. Taking policy decisions that could lead to the closure of many independent schools would create significant new pressures, because a lot of young people with learning disabilities would go into the state sector.

Many children have my learning disabilities, and few go to the kind of school I attended, without which I would not have ended up where I am today. I am conscious of that, and I live with it every day. I campaign as hard as I can to try to make sure that every young person with the kind of disabilities I have has a fair crack of the whip to achieve their full potential. If I genuinely felt that closing down schools like the one I attended would achieve that, I would agree with this motion.

This motion does not achieve that. It is driven by politics and populism, not by what actually helps young people with learning disabilities. The Opposition are trying to make the point that, somehow, this motion would be a game changer for those with learning disabilities. Let us have a constructive debate, because we know from our casework and from our conversations with constituents that huge numbers of young people with learning disabilities are not getting the support they need, and a lot of that is because of funding. We need every teacher to have greater understanding of neurodiversity, and we need to make sure Ofsted rewards schools that are great at SEND and punishes schools that do not emphasise SEND and potentially even play the system by off-rolling students. We have to do all those things. We should have been having that debate.

I have previously spoken to my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester, the Chair of the Education Committee, about my annoyance with the funding formula and the fact that areas such as Suffolk do not get a fair deal when it comes to funding pupils per head of population. It is all in the data. The way in which money is allocated is opaque and makes no sense. Why should a young person with special educational needs in Suffolk or Ipswich get any less than a young child anywhere else? They should have exactly the same money as anyone else. All sorts of things can be done.

I am very free speaking when it comes to education policy, and I am all up for occasional constructive disagreements with the Government if what they are doing is not right for young people in Suffolk. The Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho), is here, and she recently came to a special school in Ipswich.

So much of our education system is not working as it should, and many young people, including children with SEND, are being let down. I encourage a constructive debate. The Education Committee has a great platform to do that. I regretfully feel that this motion has been driven by short-term politics and not by what actually works, including for some of the most vulnerable young people in our society.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

Just under a week ago, I visited Ash Trees Academy, a primary special school in Billingham, to discuss the challenges it faces in delivering quality education to children with some of the most difficult of lives—children with both physical and learning special needs. Some of them cannot speak, and others are educated while lying down.

It was great to meet the children, but their access to the full package they need is compromised by a lack of on-site facilities and appropriate staff numbers. One example is the lack of a hydrotherapy pool. Due to a lack of funding, the pool they had was in need of considerable improvement and the decision was taken to fill it in and to repurpose the space. Some children are now transported to another site for vital therapy and to enjoy the water, but there is not enough money in the school for them to have their own special vehicle. I visited the Dogs Trust a few weeks ago, and it has fantastic facilities, including hydrotherapy pools—for dogs!—yet this school for special-needs children does not have such facilities.

Ash Trees also has no medical person. The duties once undertaken by a school nurse, such as feeding youngsters by tube, now fall to classroom assistants. I am in awe of them for undertaking the training to do such a difficult task, but why should school assistants have to undertake that medical duty when schools in other areas have full-time medical staff on site? We owe it to the children to do so much better, and when the schools Minister visits my constituency, hopefully soon—he is nodding his head, because he has agreed to come—I hope he will be able to drop in at Ash Trees to see those challenges at first hand.

Parliament Week is always one of my favourite weeks of the year, when I can indulge myself by doing what I enjoy most, which is visiting schools. I am pleased to say that the majority of children I meet are happy in school. For some, it is the happiest place of their young lives, as they often come from a background of poverty and chaotic lifestyles.

I thought I was imagining that children in some schools are taller and have rosier cheeks and a level of confidence way beyond children in other schools, but I know it to be true. If not for breakfast clubs, free school meals and even snacks provided by teachers, many children would not be equipped to listen and learn in the classroom. It is to this Tory Government’s shame that around 40% of children in the north-east live in poverty, and their life chances are limited as a result.

Schools were in a dreadful state when Labour came to power in 1997, in terms of standards, buildings and resources. Do not get me wrong: I am pleased that recent Governments have built on the legacy left by the last Labour Administration, and I know that, in some places, many children are doing extremely well in good and outstanding schools, but we were never going to get from where we were in 1997 to where we are today in just 10 years. It had to be a long-term policy, so I am pleased that some progress has continued to be made.

Despite the best efforts of our teachers and other staff, not all children get what they need. Headteachers tell me that restricted budgets mean they cannot fill vacancies, or mean they are planning to make people redundant, and that they are worried about the children. Again, despite great strategies from our teachers, many children in key stage 1 in particular are further behind in their education due to the pandemic. Government interventions have had limited success.

As I worry about that, we are told that Eton College plans to open a sixth-form college in neighbouring Middlesbrough, backed by a right-wing Mayor who believes that troublemakers on Teesside should be removed to Rwanda. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) might agree, but some of those troublemakers are the product of 12 years of Tory cuts. I doubt that an elitist sixth form in our area will help to address similar young people in our community. Had schools and children’s services been supported as they ought to have been since 2010, we might not have seen a situation where Middlesbrough’s Mayor says there are so many troublemakers that they should be robbed of their right to remain in the UK.

Is there anything like equality in education? Do we have a system that is geared to the most vulnerable and to children from difficult backgrounds? Those children do attract extra funding, but I remind Conservative Members that their successive Governments, including the coalition Government with the Liberal Democrats, have shifted more and more resources towards more affluent areas and away from areas of deprivation.

[Jonathan Gullis]

That’s not true.

[Alex Cunningham]

It is true.

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[Stephen Morgan]

I would expect better of the hon. Member, but I am delighted that he is already looking at the Labour party website. I can send him the membership links so that he can join the party, too.

[Jonathan Gullis]

rose—

[Stephen Morgan]

I will make some progress.

Education is about opportunity—opportunities to learn and grow, to achieve and flourish, and to have happy and healthy childhoods. Governing is about priorities, and VAT giveaways to private schools show exactly where the Conservatives’ priorities lie. They lie not in helping every child to get a great state education, but in helping the wealthiest in society. A Labour Government would make fairer choices. They would do so by asking those with the broadest shoulders to pay their fair share.

[Jonathan Gullis]

I am incredibly grateful to the shadow Minister, who is a good man. He pointed out that some of the money raised would go into teacher recruitment. What specifically will Labour use that money on to drive up teacher recruitment? Will it be by carrying on the bursary scheme and adding more money to it—I signed off on the £28,000—or is there another system that I am not aware of that Labour thinks will work? What specifically will Labour do on recruiting teachers with this extra money?

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

I join the hon. Lady in welcoming the school pupils in the Public Gallery today—it is very good to have children visiting the Houses of Parliament, and I welcome all children who love to come to our House. I also agree with her about having a respectful culture in our schools. It is hugely important, both online and offline, that pupils and staff feel safe and respected in our schools.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

Headteachers across Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke see the importance of the national tutoring programme, but they were concerned when Schools Week reported that £150 million could be clawed back from the scheme through the Treasury. Will the Minister back the plan that I was hoping to initiate when I was in the Department—albeit briefly—and make sure that we reinvest that in the third year of the national tutoring programme to increase the grant to nearly 50%?

[Nick Gibb]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the passionate way in which he conducted the role of Schools Minister in the Department and for bringing to that role all his experience as a schoolteacher. We have allocated almost £5 billion to catch-up programmes, including £1.5 billion to tutoring. My hon. Friend is right: because the evidence about the effectiveness of one-to-one and small-group tuition is so strong, we want schools to use the money we have given them for that. We have been clear that the national tutoring programme funding can be used only for tutoring and that the Department will recover any unspent NTP funding.

Religious Education in Modern Britain

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Maria. I declare an interest as someone who was an RE teacher—although not a specialist, I must confess, which may upset some in the room—and my partner is a head of religious education. Of course, hon. Members will understand the lobbying that took place at home before attending today’s debate.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb) on his return as the Minister for School Standards. I did not have the honour of following him directly—although I told him that was my lifelong dream—but being replaced by him is something I am more than happy to take, because he is one of the best Ministers that this Government have had since 2010. A lot of the Gove-Gibbean reforms, as I always refer to them, have meant that education standards have dramatically improved in this country. As someone who worked on the frontline for eight and a half years and saw that at first hand, I want to thank him for his work in this area then and now.

RE is a compulsory subject. It blows my mind to this day that although it is compulsory, some schools are not delivering it up until the age of 18, as is meant to be the case. There has therefore been a watering down of the quality and take-up of this subject in schools, and I have witnessed that at first hand. The term “postcode lottery” is perfect; I have worked in London, Birmingham and other parts of the country as a secondary school teacher and seen at first hand the impact it has had on pupils wishing to take the subject forward. In some schools, pupils were made to take RE, and in others it was an option. It is sad to see the low take-up, which is why we are seeing a driving down of recruitment figures.

It is clear that people who want to come into teaching do not feel that RE is valued in our curriculum. Although I am broadly supportive of a national standard for RE teaching to ensure that there is equalisation across the country, there is an easier way to put RE on the map. I know the Minister disagrees with me about this, but I dare to utter it: we could put RE in the EBacc, giving it the same status as history and geography. Many RE departments sit within the humanities department and feel like the ugly duckling in that department when RE is the only subject not to go in that EBacc pot. Doing so could have a positive impact, enabling pupils and parents to understand that RE is a subject that is worthy taking, and giving it the status it requires to be in schools. That will have a positive impact on recruitment figures, and on the take-up of RE into GCSEs and post-16 education.

When it comes to recruitment figures, I confess that I was the Minister who signed off the latest round of bursaries and scholarships, and I accept that RE was not on that list. That is because—for good reason—subjects such as physics and geography, which also face under-recruitment, offer highly competitive professional wages in the private sector. On top of the £30,000 starting salary that we are committed to delivering as per our manifesto, we had to give bursaries for those subjects—particularly physics, for which new teachers will get a £29,000 scholarship—to drive up recruitment. Had I had longer than my 50 days in post, I would have ensured that RE was included in that list. We reintroduced the bursary for teaching English. It would be good to see that happen in religious education as well. I will certainly support that from the Back Benches.

Although I do not think that someone needs to be a specialist to teach RE to a high standard—of course, I am biased as someone who did that myself—having more specialist teachers for a subject will always improve educational outcomes and attainment. There is no one better than someone with that passion. I am interested in politics and was trained in citizenship, so I was able to deliver those subjects with passion and gusto. Similarly, my partner, who did philosophy at university, is able to go into school and deliver incredibly high-quality religious education teaching. Again, I accept my bias, but her ability to teach is because of her passion for her subject area and the deep knowledge she has gained through her degree. The more we can do to drive up specialisms, the better.

Hate crimes and radicalisation are real threats, as we know at first hand in Stoke-on-Trent. The attack on Fishmongers’ Hall was carried out by a man from my constituency who had been radicalised within Islam. Islam is not a radical religion—let us not forget it is the faith that says, “To kill one human is to kill all of mankind”—but sadly there are those in every faith who push a perverse ideology. We also see that on the far right in the great city of Stoke-on-Trent, with some people pushing a white nationalist agenda.

If we do not have high-quality religious education alongside the fantastic Prevent work that is undertaken by the city council, police and local schools, how will we ever tackle the misunderstandings, mis-teachings and perverse ideologies that are pushed, particularly on to young people? That is why it is so important that we get religious education right, and we make sure that young people understand and challenge their misconceptions.

It is most important that we accept that faith schools are an important part of our system, and even allow some schools to select by faith. The idea that we would not push RE to be a compulsory subject that is taken up properly in the school system seems to be a bit of an oxymoron, and challenges what we are saying in other areas. We should be pushing work at schools such as St Wilfred’s, St Mary’s and St Thomas’s—all within Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke—to give a high-quality, faith-based education alongside a high-quality, rigorous curriculum. The Minister would want and demand that, and I fully support him in that.

I hope that we have sent a big signal today. This is definitely a cross-party effort and feeling. The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) gave a fantastic speech, and his idea that every Government and every party should commit to religious education in their manifesto is something that I will push within the Conservative party come the next general election.

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[Nick Gibb]

I will keep that idea under consideration. We have already issued guidance about the teaching of religious education in schools.

Regardless of whether teachers are following a locally agreed syllabus for RE or one designed by their own school or a multi-academy trust, ensuring that they have access to high-quality teaching resources is important, as it is for every other subject. We intend to support the teaching of RE through the procurement of full curriculum packages by Oak National Academy—that goes to the point made by my right hon. Friend. We want to make sure that what is taught is of high quality, and that applies not just to RE but to other subjects. Oak is playing an important role in providing resources for teachers and, in the second tranche of its procurement process, will be procuring curriculum materials, maps and plans for religious education.

As the hon. Member for Portsmouth South and others said, recruiting and retaining teachers is crucial to every curriculum subject, so the Department is driving an ambitious transformation plan to overhaul the process of teacher training. This includes stimulating initial interest through world-class marketing, providing support for prospective trainees, and using real-time data and insight from our new application process to help to boost recruitment where it is most needed. In the 2020-21 academic year, we exceeded the postgraduate initial teacher training target for religious education teachers, achieving 129% of the target. The equivalent target in the 2021-22 academic year was narrowly missed, as we achieved 99% of the target. We will keep these issues under review.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes and the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport raised the issue of initial teacher training bursaries. As the Government do not provide bursaries for every subject, I can understand the disappointment of those who are not eligible, and I do not put all the blame for that on to my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North. These are difficult decisions that are taken every year as we decide how to allocate the scarce resource of the bursaries. They are allocated to take account of recruitment historically, the forecast economic conditions and the teacher supply needed in each subject. That allows us to focus the bursary expenditure on subjects with the greatest need and ensures that we spend money where it is needed most. My hon. Friend got that decision absolutely right in his period in office.

Specialist teacher training and continuous professional development are important for every subject. In some cases, subject knowledge enhancement courses may be appropriate for those training to become a specialist. This is where a School Direct lead school or an initial teacher training provider can identify applicants who have the potential to become outstanding RE teachers, but who need to increase their subject knowledge. There is an eight-week subject knowledge enhancement course to help them to become specialist teachers.

[Jonathan Gullis]

The Minister is completely correct to say that continuous professional development is so important to being a high-quality teacher, but sadly we are the only country in Europe that does not have enough specified hours for teachers to do teacher training throughout the academic year. This is something I was looking at in the Department while I was there. Does the Minister agree that to enable the eight-week course to be taken up by non-specialists, such as someone like me, we will need to be able to protect time for teachers to get that professional development?

[Nick Gibb]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and we have clear guidance to schools about mentoring and continuous professional development. The early career framework was implemented to help teachers in the first two years of their career to make sure they have the right mentoring and training so that they can turn into accomplished teachers.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes raised the matter of collective worship, which is an important part of school life. It encourages pupils to reflect on the concept of belief and the role it plays in the traditions and values of this country, and equips them with the knowledge they need to interact with other people. It deals with how we live our lives and includes important moral and ethical issues. Any concerns that a school is failing to provide a daily act of collective worship should in the first instance be raised via the school’s complaints unit.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

3. What steps his Department is taking to attract science, technology, engineering and mathematics teachers to work in disadvantaged areas.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Jonathan Gullis)]

As someone who was a teacher for nearly nine years in disadvantaged areas in London and Birmingham, may I say that teaching is one of the most rewarding jobs you can have? In 2020-21 there was an increase of more than 4,400 full-time teachers in state-funded schools in England. This has resulted in the largest qualified teacher stock since the school workforce census began in 2011. We know that there is more to be done in some areas, which is why early career maths, physics, chemistry and computing teachers working in eligible schools with disadvantaged pupil cohorts can now claim our tax-free levelling up premium.

[Mrs Murray]

One of the key disadvantages we have in Cornwall is the relatively high cost of housing. Cornwall is beautiful and people want to live there, but what more can the Department do to encourage teachers to come to Cornwall and not to other places with cheaper housing?

[Jonathan Gullis]

My hon. Friend will understand only too well, as a former resident of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, that, like Cornwall, it too is a place of outstanding beauty. This Government are committed to ensuring that affordable housing is delivered, and since 2010 more than 9,000 homes have been delivered in Cornwall. In August 2021 we announced £1 billion of funding from our affordable homes programme, which will be used to deliver more than 17,000 affordable homes across the south-west. I am pleased to say that Cornwall is also an education investment area and has 26 schools that are eligible for the levelling up premium, including Liskeard School and Community College in my hon. Friend’s constituency, and specialist teachers in certain subjects in those schools can claim up to £3,000 tax free annually. Finally, in March 2022—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. It is not a full lesson we are putting out, just a good answer.

[Jonathan Gullis]

I am delighted to tell the hon. Lady that, at the next independent pay review, I have asked for this Government’s manifesto commitment to a £30,000 a year starting salary to be honoured for 2023-24.

[Mr Speaker]

Question 4 has been withdrawn.

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[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

11. What steps his Department is taking to improve the recruitment and retention of teachers.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Jonathan Gullis)]

The Department is committed to attracting and retaining the highly skilled teachers we need by investing £181 million in this year’s recruitment cycle, including training bursaries and scholarships worth up to £29,000. We are also delivering 500,000 training opportunities, reforming teacher training and delivering on this Government’s manifesto commitment of £30,000-a-year starting salaries.

[Jeff Smith]

That sounds very rosy, but teacher vacancies have gone up 240% since 2011. According to the latest National Education Union poll, 44% of England’s state school teachers plan to quit by 2027—22% of them in the next two years. Things are particularly difficult because experienced teachers—who may have 20 years’ experience—are leaving the profession. What steps is the Minister taking to address pay, stress and an unmanageable workload, which are driving the most experienced teachers out of the profession?

[Jonathan Gullis]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that great question, because being a teacher is so important and positive, and it is a shame that he used his opportunity to be a bit negative about the profession. As we try to recruit and retain staff, we need people to talk up what a great profession this is to work in. [Interruption.] I am being shouted down by Opposition Members, but there is not a single year of teaching among them—I have nine years’ experience and I get shouted down for simply being someone who worked on the shop floor. The lessons should be learned from the past.

However, let me tell the hon. Gentleman what we are doing. We are making sure that we have the £30,000-a-year starting salary, which is amazingly competitive with the private sector. We are going to have the £181 million in scholarships and grants, including £29,000 in physics, for example. And we are going to make sure that we tackle retention and workload through the Department’s workload toolkit, which has so far reduced workload on average by about five hours.

[Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)]

Wow! This Government have no ambition for our children’s futures: soaring numbers of council schools are in deficit, the attainment gap is at a decade high and the Schools Bill has been ripped up. However, the recruitment and retention of secondary school teachers—not just Prime Ministers—is in crisis. Estimates based on DFE data suggest that the Government are set to fall 34 percentage points below their recruitment target. Will the Minister explain what specific action he will take to stop the rot and fix his own Government’s failure on this issue?

[Jonathan Gullis]

I am glad the hon. Gentleman has been let out of detention by the Standards Commissioner for the very naughty letter he sent only recently regarding me. However, let me be very clear that the hon. Gentleman is making a point—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Let me just say that we want better taste in the House. The Minister is no longer on the Back Benches, so his rhetoric needs to be that of a Minister. I know he has that standing and capability. Come on, Minister!

[Jonathan Gullis]

Mr Speaker, I am making the point very clearly. The hon. Gentleman has an opportunity to stand at the Dispatch Box and talk up the teaching professions, talk up our schools, and talk up our reforms since 2010-11, which have seen the attainment gap narrowed—that was until, of course, the global pandemic, which has affected every single sector of our economy. Sadly, things have not gone in a way that we would have liked, but we are putting in the effort through the national tutoring programme, the £1.3 billion recovery premium, and the £650 million catch-up premium. That is an awful lot of money going into the system. We are also making sure that teachers are of a high quality, and, most importantly, that they have high-quality mentoring, an initial teaching training round and an early career framework, which give them the support that they need.

[James Grundy (Leigh) (Con)]

12. What steps his Department is taking to facilitate collaboration between colleges and employers.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Jonathan Gullis)]

The Department is working closely with stakeholders to monitor cost pressures on schools. Our generous 2021 spending review package is supporting schools with a £4 billion increase to core schools funding in this financial year alone and we are protecting schools through the energy bill relief scheme, although schools and trusts remain responsible for setting their own budgets. The Government are also assisting families directly: as well as the energy price guarantee for households, we are providing more than £37 billion to help households in the greatest need, thanks to our new Prime Minister.

[Bambos Charalambous]

Data from a National Association of Headteachers survey shows that 90% of schools expect to run out of money by the end of the next school year. I have spoken to headteachers who say that while school debt is escalating, demands on schools continue to increase, and the energy crisis is only one element of the funding crisis in education. Can the Minister tell me how the Government expect schools in my constituency to deliver standards and provide additional support when they cannot afford to survive?

[Jonathan Gullis]

As I said in my earlier answer, we have £7 billion until 2024-25 through the spending review. There is the £5 billion in catch-up to maintain standards and ensure that disadvantaged pupils in particular get high-quality support, particularly in tutoring, so that they can catch up on their lost learning, because we know the pandemic had a detrimental impact. There is also the Education (Guidance about Costs of School Uniforms) Act 2021, which was introduced by a Labour Member, which the Government adopted and sent out as guidance to make sure that the overall cost of uniform comes down. We are taking this all very seriously, and I am more than happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and headteachers in his local area to hear from them directly and see what other support we can give.

[Ian Levy (Blyth Valley) (Con)]

21. What steps his Department is taking to increase the number of school places for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities.

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[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

T3. About 20,000 primary school children in 76 primary schools in Trafford benefit from the primary schools sport premium. This is especially important after covid, which we know has had a more detrimental impact on the physical agility and participation of the poorest children. Will the Government commit to extending that premium beyond this academic year?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Jonathan Gullis)]

The hon. Lady knows that I am a huge admirer and fan of hers, which she may not put on any election leaflets. I can tell her that the PE and sport premium is very important to me, especially after the fantastic victory by the Lionesses. They really set the tone with the great work of making sure that sport, particularly football, is more accessible no matter people’s gender, race or anything else, so it is so important that we get this right. I am fully committed to working with the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to get that premium, and I am more than happy to meet the hon. Lady to discuss it further.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

At the end of the first full T-levels cycle, can I commend colleges, including Alton College in my constituency, for their work with employers? What more can be done by Ministers across Government to encourage more employers to come forward and offer industry placements to invest in the talent pipeline, both for their own good and for the good of our entire economy and society?

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[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

Despite my private Member’s Bill, Education (Guidance about Costs of School Uniforms), becoming law to reduce the cost of school uniforms, far too many schools have their heads in the sand, with logos upon logos, emblems upon emblems, and they are not responding to the requirements of the law. What will Ministers do about that?

[Jonathan Gullis]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the passage of his Bill, which is an important piece of legislation. Guidance is clear: schools should be considerate when wanting their own branding, and ensure that it is done in a fair and sustainable way for households. If the hon. Gentleman has any examples or wishes to meet to discuss the issue further so that guidance can be given to schools, I would be more than happy to arrange that.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Why are adoption figures continuing to fall?

[Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)]

Off-rolling is a hidden crisis happening in some of our schools, with black schoolboys being disproportionately affected by the practice, and many being given only a few formal hours of teaching, if any at all. We should be outraged at that, given the attainment gap and the disproportionate numbers of black children who are being excluded from school. What action is the Secretary of State taking to tackle the crisis of off-rolling, and will he ensure that all schools that engage in that practice are recording the numbers affected, including their ethnicity, age and gender?

[Jonathan Gullis]

Off-rolling is totally unacceptable, and no school should be doing that or using it as a method. Where there are unruly children, we must also balance that carefully by ensuring that headteachers have the power to remove them from the classroom, because their impact has a detrimental impact on the other 29 in the class. I am more than happy to meet the hon. Lady to look at any examples she can provide, so that we can call out schools and school leaders who are using that tactic inappropriately. The Department is monitoring the issue and taking it seriously.

[Saqib Bhatti (Meriden) (Con)]

Arden is one of the most successful schools in my constituency and the country, despite the majority of its buildings having been built pre-1958 and it accommodating three times as many pupils as was originally intended. Will my hon. Friend meet me to discuss Arden’s proposal for investment through the school rebuilding programme so that we can support it to be the best that it can be?

[Jonathan Gullis]

My hon. Friend is a doughty champion for the constituency of Meriden and indeed for the school rebuilding programme. He will understand that I cannot comment as the bid is in and the Department must go through a process, but I am more than happy to arrange a meeting for him with my noble Friend Baroness Barran, who is the Minister responsible for this portfolio area.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

Why has the Secretary of State dropped the Schools Bill?

[Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)]

As I hope the House knows, I am a passionate supporter of the power and creativity of engineering and its ability to address the most serious challenges that we face globally. Will my hon. Friend agree to look at the curriculum for opportunities to improve the teaching and understanding of engineering?

[Jonathan Gullis]

My hon. Friend will know that in March 2022 the Department introduced the “engineers teach physics” programme to help recruit high-quality engineers into our workforce. Because of the pilot’s success, the programme has been extended across the country for the 2023-24 recruitment cycle. I am more than happy to see how much more we can do to ensure that science, technology, engineering and maths are driven through the heart of the curriculum, alongside EBacc, which is vital to helping to educate everyone.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I am sure that the Secretary of State is as concerned as I am about the number of children attending school who are hungry. Has he made any representations to the Department for Work and Pensions about raising the £7,400 household income eligibility threshold for free school meals?

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[Mr Speaker]

Order. Can I say to the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) that this is topicals and other people want to get in? We are going to go over the time now. We have got to help each other.

[Jonathan Gullis]

The hon. Lady will understand—she is a fantastic champion for her constituents—that the current global economic state is very serious. Inflation is not unique to this country. For example, it is at 17% in Holland and 10.9% in Germany. We are very aware of the pressures on households, which is why the £4 billion front-loading in the spending review has been so important, with the additional funding for the national tutoring programme, the recovery premium and the catch-up premium, the £2.5 billion for the pupil premium and the free school meals programme.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

Fairer funding has been a manifesto commitment for our party on many occasions. I campaigned for it from the Back Benches and tried to deliver it from the Front Bench. Whatever the timing of legislation, can the Secretary of State confirm that a direct national funding formula is a legislative priority for his Department?

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

Has the Secretary of State looked at the full potential for education of technology to improve performance in schools? Other countries are using it in more sophisticated ways, so has he looked at it?

[Jonathan Gullis]

We want the education sector to have access to best-in-class technology, but schools need reliable internet to deploy it. That is why we are spending £232 million to improve school internet connectivity by 2025.

Trust Capacity Funding

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2022 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Jonathan Gullis)]

My noble Friend, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the School and College System (Baroness Barran), has made the following statement.

The Department is committing up to £86 million in trust capacity funding (TCAF) until March 2025, supporting the Government’s vision for every school to be part of a family of schools in strong academy trusts. TCAF helps trusts develop their capacity and take on underperforming schools, particularly in education investment areas. Today we have launched the second window of TCAF 22-23. The application window runs until 16 December with guidance and application form available on gov.uk. We will soon announce details of the next application window which will be looking particularly for projects which address our priorities for the 55 education investment areas which we plan to publish later this year.

[HCWS335]

Apprenticeships and Teacher Training

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Jonathan Gullis)]

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George, and to make my first appearance as the Minister for School Standards. It could not have been sweeter that it was my next-door neighbour in the parliamentary offices, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden), who managed to get me at the Dispatch Box in Westminster Hall for the first time. I thank him and I thank his parents, who are obviously excellent teachers, for producing such a wonderful son. Most importantly, I thank all the teachers, teaching assistants and support staff who time and again go above and beyond in their incredible dedication to those amazing young people, who will be the future of our country and drive that economic growth that we are so keen to see.

This important debate has been secured by my hon. Friend, who is not just a great champion of his local schools, having visited 22 out of 40 in his constituency to date, but the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on apprenticeships. I was a member of that group for a period of time before starting in this role. I want to put on the record the fact that I am lucky, as the representative of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, to have my own apprentice in my parliamentary office. Jessica is on the verge of completing her qualification, and I felt that I could not preach about apprenticeships if I was not going to support one myself.

The debate is an important one, and my hon. Friend will know that there have been over 13,000 apprenticeship starts in his constituency since the beginning of 2010. They have provided fantastic opportunities for his constituents to enhance their careers and, as he says, earn while they learn. The Government are committed to providing world-class education and training for everyone, whatever their age or stage of life. Since 2015, we have transformed apprenticeships into a prestigious, sought-after option designed to meet the needs of employers and learners across the country, and we have seen over 2,600 starts on the level 6 teacher apprenticeship since its inception in 2017.

Thanks to our transformational reforms, millions of people in a wide range of sectors have benefited from these industry-led routes to earn and learn. In the last academic year, there were 37,000 new trainee teachers—10% more than the last pre-pandemic cycle in 2019-20. To support this, we recently announced a new package of financial incentives worth over £180 million for the 2023-24 academic year. That support for teacher training will include bursaries worth up to £27,000 and scholarships worth up to £29,000, and these incentives will encourage talented applicants to teach key subjects, such as chemistry, physics and mathematics. We are also offering a £25,000 bursary for geography and languages, a £20,000 bursary for biology and design technology, and a £15,000 bursary for English, all of which will be tax free.

I should declare an interest, having been a teacher myself and having got my postgraduate certificate in education at the Institute of Education only in 2011. Never in my wildest dreams—or theirs, probably—would I have thought that I would be standing here as the Minister for School Standards, and I am absolutely honoured to be guiding that next generation of young teachers on their journey, because they are so important.

I am very grateful for the time that my hon. Friend spent at the Department, meeting me and officials on 22 September. I heard and learned more about his idea and what could be done. I will set out the work that the Department has undertaken to date to consider that option. Between 2018 and 2020, a sector-led trailblazer group considered the viability of an apprenticeship with a pre-degree entry point leading to qualified teacher status. In 2020, after detailed consideration and wider stakeholder engagement with initial teacher training providers and schools, including a survey among headteachers, the group rejected the creation of an undergraduate teacher apprenticeship. That was due to its prohibitive costs, the duration required and insufficient demand from the sector.

The Department is always willing to listen to the sector, and as the Minister for School Standards I am absolutely putting teaching degree apprenticeships on the table. However, I need to ensure that there are benefits and take account of the wider views of schools, pupils and prospective teachers.

[Mr Perkins]

When the Minister says there was insufficient demand in the sector, does he mean there was insufficient demand from people wanting to study and pursue that route, or was there insufficient demand from schools to take on apprentices?

[Jonathan Gullis]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to clarify. From my understanding, it was headteachers who reported that there was not a massive desire—and nor did they believe that there would be—within the sector. The cost was definitely the main problem. A regular apprentice gets 20% of time off to undertake further learning, but that figure is 40% when applied to the school year, because there are 13 weeks when teachers are not physically in the classroom with their pupils. The cost to a school was felt to be too great to have someone off timetable for 40% of the time. However, allowing a teaching assistant to take a teaching qualification through a level 5 apprenticeship, which we are exploring, could be a way to deliver teachers through an apprenticeship scheme. We would be using people who are already in the school system—those 200,000-plus teaching assistants who do a fantastic job up and down our country.

Where there is employer demand for new apprenticeships in education, including a route to teaching for those without a degree, we will work with employers and the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education to consider how those proposals could be delivered. We are currently engaging in detailed work with a new trailblazer group to explore the viability of the new apprenticeship standard at level 5. That apprenticeship would enhance training opportunities for existing teaching assistants. It would also offer a route for high-potential individuals without an undergraduate degree, providing them with a career pathway to gain a qualification to train to teach.

I look forward to continuing discussions with school leaders, the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education and my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham on how best to support talented non-graduates to gain the necessary qualifications to train to teach.

I want to ensure that I address the points raised by hon. Members, because that is important. I thank my good friend, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for his kind words and his continued passion for state education, a sector that I am proud to have worked in for eight and a half years. To declare an interest, my partner is a member of that sector as well. It is a fantastic career. I hope that anyone watching today who is not yet a teacher will be able to understand what a great profession it is. Not only is the new starting salary for this academic year over £28,000, but I have supported the pledge in the 2019 Conservative manifesto to ensure that a £30,000 a year starting salary is enacted for the next academic year.

On top of that, there are bursaries. The levelling-up premium is available in education investment areas. That can give someone up to £3,000 tax free, on top of their salary, depending on the subject they teach. We should really promote that. I believe that take-up is really good so far, but we are checking those numbers. I want every Member in those education investment areas to drive those reforms by getting people to sign up as quickly as they can.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) is a fine champion for his local area, and I am glad to have been able to spend time with him to learn about the work he has been doing for education. We have no plans in place yet to look at what we are doing specifically for men. However, my team in the Department are looking at diversity, which is not just about ethnicity; it is about gender as well. It is about men getting into the profession, particularly in primary schools, as well as women getting into leadership roles in the sector. It is also about socioeconomic backgrounds and those white, working class, disadvantaged boys who we want to see representing the profession in schools, as well as people from other ethnic minority groups who, tragically, are falling out of the profession at a quicker rate than their white counterparts. We are going to do a big piece of work in that area. I look forward to visiting Lambeth Academy tomorrow to meet Leon, one of those inspirational headteachers, and understand what he has done throughout his career journey.

I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) was a teacher—

[Mrs Drummond]

Ofsted inspector.

[Jonathan Gullis]

They were the ones I dreaded when I was in the classroom. It is absolutely brilliant that she has that insight into the profession. I understand the importance of maintaining that high-quality education and ensuring that that the skill and knowledge base is there, particularly with the important reforms that we have made to GCSEs and A-levels. That is why I am certainly intrigued to explore further what my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham said about primary education as potentially a pilot route.

[Ben Bradley]

I thank the Minister for giving up a few seconds. On the primary environment—the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) touched on this earlier—the challenges in disadvantaged communities mean that teachers are often seen as social workers, and some of the issues that come through the door are more akin to those experienced in an early years setting than in what we would traditionally associated with a teaching setting. Does the Minister agree that the opportunity to drag people from those care and early years settings and place them in those primary environments might be of huge benefit? That is slightly separate to the discussion about academic excellence and brilliance at post-16, which has been mentioned.

[Jonathan Gullis]

My hon. Friend makes fantastic points. I visited a school in Wolverhampton recently to hear how the multi-academy trust had hired its own social worker to work among its schools. I found that very inspiring. Absolutely, looking at how we can build that relationship between the early years sector and the primary school sector—that knowledge base, that understanding and that familiarity with the local people—is so important.

My hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) is a doughty champion. He has been lobbying and banging the door over Carmel College and its fantastic CEO, Mike Shorten. We know that an appeal is coming, so my hon. Friend will appreciate, as I have said before, that I cannot make any comment, but his and Mike’s comments have been heard and will be taken into consideration when the appeal is made.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins), who also represents Staveley, for his kind words. I am sad that my natural counterpart, the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan), is not here. I assume that he is still in detention with the Commissioner for Standards, having been a bit of a naughty boy recently when he sent a letter about me to The Guardian before she had made a comment. However, I really do appreciate the opportunity to hear the fine words of the hon. Member for Chesterfield and about his passion for level 2 and level 3 apprenticeships, which are absolutely important and should not in any way be seen as unimportant by this Department. Yes, we have put a lot of work into the degree level, but we want those take-ups at level 2 and level 3, and we are very pleased that that is continuing.

Finally, on teacher numbers, we have 466,000 full-time teachers on the books. That is a record number and 24,000 more than in 2010. While there are, of course, rising teacher vacancy rates, it is important to understand the context. The situation across all sectors is challenging, but I will ensure that we challenge that head-on with recruitment and retention strategies.

Initial Teacher Training

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2022 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Jonathan Gullis)]

Today, my Department is informing applicants of the outcomes of the final round of the application process to gain accreditation as a provider of initial teacher training from September 2024. This forms part of the ongoing initial teacher training reform announced on 1 December 2021.

The key aim of the reforms, which centre around the introduction of a new set of clear quality requirements, is to ensure high-quality teacher training is available in all areas of the country. Following the development of the early career framework and National Professional Qualifications, the reforms to ITT are the next step in realising our ambition to create a golden thread of evidence-based training, support and professional development, which will run through every phase of a teacher’s career. We know that the quality of teaching is the single most important in-school factor in improving outcomes for children, especially for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Being taught by a high-quality teacher can add almost half a GCSE grade per subject to a given pupil’s results.

As part of the provider accreditation process, both existing and prospective ITT providers were invited to apply for accreditation to deliver courses from September 2024, when the new quality requirements will come into effect. The process was designed to be proportionate but rigorous, with questions that reflected vital components of the ITT market review’s recommendations.

One hundred and seventy-nine providers have been awarded accreditation in total across the two rounds, and I am pleased to see the high quality of provision that has been accredited.

The Department will now work the accredited providers as part of the next stage of the reform process to ensure that all ITT courses are developed in line with the new criteria and are ready for delivery from September 2024. The Department will also work with these providers to ensure that they have strong partnerships in place to provide sufficient training places in the subjects, phases and areas where they are needed.

I would like to thank all ITT providers for engaging in the process and for their ongoing support as we implement the ITT market review. We understand that providers who have not received accreditation will be disappointed. My Department will work closely with these providers to support their next steps and look to facilitate partnership with accredited providers for those who want to continue to provide ITT from September 2024.

The Department’s priority will be ensuring that the new standards and expectations will continue to be met at all institutions delivering ITT, both accredited and through the formation of partnerships. As the market develops over the next two years, officials will continue to work closely with a range of sector experts to monitor the availability of provision across all regions. We will be encouraging providers who did not achieve accreditation to consider forming a partnership with an accredited provider in the areas where this is needed.

This is a significant step in the delivery of our ambitious programme to create a world-class teacher development system and transform the support teachers receive at every stage of their career—all the way from ITT and early career support, to specialisations and school leadership. The number of teachers in England remains high, with over 465,500—full-time equivalent—working in state-funded schools across the country, which is over 24,000 more than in 2010. I am confident that from 2024 the accredited providers will deliver high-quality, evidence-based, training in a reformed ITT market that prepares trainees to thrive in the classroom, wherever they are in the country.

[HCWS306]

Children’s Education Recovery and Childcare Costs

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

My hon. Friend is completely right. We have seen year-on-year, real-terms funding cuts per pupil over the last 12 years. I find it incredible that Ministers expect some degree of gratitude for rolling back funding to 2010 levels by 2024-25—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) has something to say, I would welcome hearing it.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

I’ll tell you later.

[Bridget Phillipson]

That is very generous of the hon. Gentleman—very generous indeed. I am sure we will all be waiting eagerly to hear his contribution.

Let us not forget how important education recovery should be to the Government, and how much it matters to children, to families and to their futures, to our economy, to our country and to all our futures. Almost 2 million of our youngest children have never known a school year uninterrupted by covid. Students sitting their GCSEs this summer lost around one in four days of face-to-face teaching in year 10. Parents, headteachers and nursery managers who I met across the country told me about delays to children’s speech and language development, about how children struggle to use a knife and fork, about a loss of confidence in our young people, and about their frustrations at being unable to get children the help and support they so desperately need. They have also warned, as has Ofsted, about the explosion in mental health conditions among our young people. At national level, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has been clear that failing to support our children’s recovery now will cost the economy an estimated £300 billion. What bar for evidence do those warnings not meet? Who else needs to tell the Government about the crisis our children face before they finally cotton on? What more reasons do Ministers need to act to protect our children’s futures?

The Government have failed our children. We see in the behaviour of Ministers a heady blend of three distinct approaches to the responsibility of Government. Sometimes they do nothing, or sometimes they do not turn up. Sometimes they actively make things worse and sometimes they belatedly accept that the Opposition are right, but not before families and children have paid the price for their pride. The first two sadly dominate their approach to our children. It has been a pattern throughout recent years. Time and again they have treated our children as an afterthought. We saw that when the support that children needed to learn at home was delayed, and when exams were thrown into chaos for not one year, but two. We saw it over 18 long months of inaction on school ventilation. We saw it when Government Members voted to let our children go hungry during the holidays and—perhaps most powerfully—we saw it when pubs were reopened before our schools.

We saw it in the winter when the Government did nothing for months, even after suppliers warned that the national tutoring programme was at risk of catastrophic failure, and we saw it this spring when we discovered that the Conservatives’ lack of interest in our children’s outcomes had gone so far as to pay tutors to sit in empty classrooms. We saw it in March when I asked the Secretary of State whether he believed that the delivery of the national tutoring programme had been a success. Even he was unable to provide a simple yes. He knows that it has been a disaster and he is not even here to defend it. We see it now as millions of secondary school students face exams without any support to recover the learning that they have lost.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

I warmly thank the teachers, teaching assistants and support staff of schools across the entirety of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke. I also send my best wishes to the students on their upcoming GCSEs and A-levels. If they have worked hard enough, and I am sure they have, they will reap the rewards in the summer.

The Minister outlined a raft of figures—important figures, because a serious amount of money has gone into education, particularly to help with education recovery. Let us look at just a few examples. There is the £400 million going into equipment for remote education and the funding of £5 billion for the catch-up education recovery plan, which includes the £200 million a year holiday activities and food programme. That is a fantastic scheme that not only provides a meal for students on the day but makes sure that they have the physical and mental education that is so important to making sure that those who have free school meals, in particular, do not fall behind in the summer weeks; we know from the statistics that, on average, it is seven weeks once they start the academic year. Helping to bridge that gap is so important.

We have seen in the great city of Stoke-on-Trent the Minister for children and families, my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), hear the call for a family hub. I am looking forward to rolling out family hubs across the city, particularly in Tunstall town hall. They will not only help parents, particularly those on low incomes, to get the support that they rightly deserve and make sure they give every child in their family the best start in life, but make sure that those young people get the early years education that is absolutely critical to a person’s future life chances.

On top of that, Stoke-on-Trent was awarded a priority education investment area, which means that we are going to see not only £30 million in additional funding, plus some more, coming to our area, but a new specialist 16-to-19 free school and more resources to ensure that the city of Stoke-on-Trent no longer lingers in the bottom 20% for educational outcomes and destinations.

In Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, we sadly face the statistic of being 7th worst for children going on to higher education. That is no fault of a Government but sometimes the fault of a system that does not have in place the support network for families to encourage a young person to take that big, important step; they may well be the first in their family or the first in a generation to take it.

I want quickly to talk about the holiday activities and food programme. We have the fantastic Hubb Foundation, led by the mighty Carol Shanahan OBE, who, as chair of Port Vale football club, saw that mighty club win the Wembley league two play-off final and had Robbie Williams for his home-coming concert at the weekend. With her fantastic team, also led by Adam Yates, a former professional footballer, she has supplied thousands of opportunities for activities during every single school holiday. The Minister for children and families was gracious enough to come to Stoke-on-Trent South and Stoke-on-Trent North to see those in action and to engage with Carol and Adam on the great work they are doing. On top of that, at a time of national need, they provided nearly half a million meals across the city of Stoke-on-Trent to children and their families while we were in lockdown. In 2021 alone, the foundation held 1,211 sessions, with 4,688 delivery hours, and provided 57,154 meals. That programme is a UK-leading holiday activity and food programme, and I hope that the Government will always recognise the fantastic work that is done in Stoke-on-Trent.

We also have the fantastic Charlie Rigby, from the Challenger Trust. Charlie has been working with local academy trusts such as the Alpha Academies Trust, led by Simon French. They have come up with a scheme where they will lock off £150 each year for all students on pupil premium. That will give those students the enrichment and extracurricular activities they rightly deserve and need, and, Minister, the trust is simply asking for an extra £600,000. We could then pilot the scheme further within the city of Stoke-on-Trent to extend it beyond those students with pupil premium and show the long-term benefit, as well as provide an extended school day, which the Department knows I am a huge supporter of.

I am also a big supporter of shortening the summer holiday to help those childcare costs. In a report I did with Onward, we estimated that that would save £266 each year to parents just in childcare costs, not including any salary loss from parents having to take time off work or no longer being able to be in work, as well as helping to prevent students from falling further behind, particularly those on free school meals. Those are the types of things we should be considering.

I appreciate that you want me to stick to time, Madam Deputy Speaker, so in summary, I heard the shadow Front Bencher and I do not recognise their picture of education. I spent eight and a half years in the classroom working in the state education sector, both in Birmingham and in London, and I loved every single minute of it. What I do not understand is why Labour Members are yet to answer questions about why they were anti-phonics for so long, why they were anti-Ofsted at the last general election in which they were elected, why they are anti-academies such as the fantastic Michaela Community School led by the brilliant Katharine Birbalsingh, and why they are anti-free school. Well, not all of them are. The hon. Member for Bury South (Christian Wakeford) was a big fan of this Government providing a free school to the people of Radcliffe. I know he warmly welcomed it at the time, when he was on the Conservative Benches. I am sure that he continues to welcome it on every leaflet he has put out in his local area since.

It is great to see that the Government are rolling out that fantastic free school programme. We need far more. The Minister knows that I want to know when wave 15 is coming, and it had better be coming soon because I am desperate to make sure that we have a new 11-to-16 school in Stoke-on-Trent, particularly for the people of Ball Green and that area, which is not served locally enough by a decent secondary school. We need to see some of the best multi-academy trusts coming into the city of Stoke-on-Trent, such as Star Academies and the Northern Education Trust, and I hope that the Minister will assist me with that to ensure that we see the changes we need.

Ultimately, this is a Government who are taking education seriously. We know that if we get education right levelling up will be a true success and all the new jobs that we are creating across the country—including the nearly 2,000 that we have already created since 2019 just from this Government alone, as well as the 8,000 that Stoke-on-Trent City Council, which is Conservative-led, has created in the past six years—will be filled by Stokies, because they will get the best education. It is this Government who are taking them seriously.