Sure Start Children’s Centres

Karen Buck Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Stuart]

It is certainly a time to fiddle with it. There is ample room for improvement, but it would be a shame if these centres were inadvertently dismantled before what they could deliver had been properly thought through. I certainly agree with the hon. Gentleman about that.

I also want the Minister to say whether there are any incentives in place for local authorities to ensure that they focus on changing the life chances of young children, because all too often people will pay lip service and say, “Of course we’re on board with this.” I am reminded of another Select Committee trip, this time to the Netherlands in the last Parliament. The Dutch changed the way local authorities were financed in respect of young people’s services. I think they froze the money from central Government so that if there was a spike in youth unemployment and so forth, local authorities would be at serious financial risk, but if they addressed such matters, they would be much better off. As a result, local authorities stopped just processing young people and putting the financial claim for that into the centre. Instead they became locally responsible for the financial consequences of young people remaining as NEETs. I believe—the previous Select Committee Chairman will put me right if I am wrong—that they more than halved the number of NEETs over the years.

If there are incentives for local authorities that are real and that bite and that mean they take this issue incredibly seriously and focus on it, that would give me more confidence than even the maintenance of the centres. If I felt that local authorities were driven by a desire to grasp this agenda and make a difference to their young people’s lives and one of them told me it was closing some of its children’s centres, I would find that more encouraging than watching, in this time of fiscal retrenchment, centres close apparently because they were especially local and apparently because things would then get better.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very powerful case, as always. On local authorities and incentives, I wonder whether he shares my concern that some authorities may do what it looks as though my local authority is doing. Westminster city council is trying to keep the children’s centres open so it can avoid the controversy attached to closing a building, but it is slashing outreach and drop-in services and other services that actually work and that are provided from within the bricks and mortar of those buildings. That is likely to have an even worse impact on children’s outcomes.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Just before the Chairman of the Select Committee responds to that intervention, I want to make the point that, although there is no time limit on Back-Bench speeches and the House is listening attentively and with respect to the Chairman of the Select Committee, I know that he will want to take account of the substantial interest in making contributions to the debate, and I am keen that everyone who wishes to speak should have the chance to do so. I know that the hon. Gentleman will tactfully take account of my gentle ministration.

Oral Answers to Questions

Karen Buck Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point about the importance of youth services, particularly of local authorities speaking to the people for whom those youth services are intended—young people. Not only has my Department set up a group from the voluntary sector dealing with youth issues, but a group of young people representing many of those organisations will be meeting me shortly to discuss the impact of the current situation on the charities and services in their areas.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

The Minister responsible for children’s centres repeats the claim that good local authorities will merge their back-room functions and protect front-line services. Flagship Conservative council Westminster is merging back-room functions with Hammersmith, yet we expect children’s centres to face a significant reduction in staff, in the range of services and in outreach facilities, which are anticipated to fall by 40%. Is Westminster a good council?

[Sarah Teather]

I repeat that we are encouraging local authorities to focus in particular on outcomes, rather than on inputs. That is why we are beginning the process of payment by results. Local authorities will need to ensure that their services are structured in such a way that they improve outcomes for the most vulnerable children and families, otherwise they will not benefit.

Education Maintenance Allowance

Karen Buck Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

Either that is a school sixth form or the answer that the Secretary of State’s Department issued was wrong, but it is an appalling state of affairs if he has barely ever managed to take himself along to a sixth-form college to speak to the staff and students who will be affected. [Interruption.] Yes, he has been to one in his own constituency but no one else’s. That is very helpful of him. I might remind him that he is responsible for everyone’s constituents. At a stroke he is axing a £500 million scheme, which will have a profound effect on 650,000 young lives and on the viability of 230 FE colleges and 95 sixth-form colleges, for which he has policy responsibility, without so much as troubling himself to go along and hear at first hand what the decision will mean.

The Secretary of State needs to climb down from his ivory tower once in a while and get out in the real world. How many students has he met who will be directly affected by the changes? Has he met any? I am not sure whether he is nodding, but if he had met some I am absolutely sure that, if nothing else, he would long since have asked his Ministers to stop implying that those high-achieving and talented young people can be described as “dead weight”.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Through my right hon. Friend, may I issue an invitation to the Secretary of State to come with me to City of Westminster college? Its principal has written to me to say that 1,500 of his students will lose their EMA, which in his experience has transformed attendance and achievement at the college.

[Andy Burnham]

I will do so, but I cannot answer for the Secretary of State. I have been to sixth-form colleges in London, and that brings me to my case about social mobility. If he visits a sixth-form college while he is in the job, may I suggest that he could do worse than visit the one that my hon. Friend mentions, or indeed Newham sixth-form college, which I visited yesterday? If he does, he might meet the young man who told me about the practical effect of losing EMA. He feels that he will have to lower his ambitions in the universities to which he applies, because he thinks his exam grades will undoubtedly suffer.

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[Michael Gove]

Not yet. That was a choice and it costs, so does the right hon. Gentleman support it? We do not know. Does he back our expansion of Future Leaders? That is an investment, it costs, and we chose. Does he back it? Our expansion in the number of national and local leaders of education costs, and we invested, so does he back it or oppose it? On all those policies, we hear silence. On policies to tackle underperformance, we are extending academy freedoms to 400 new schools. Does he support that extension of opportunity? Does he support, or would he reverse, our policies to get stronger schools to help weaker schools? Does he support, or would he reverse, our policy on getting the schools commissioner back in place to turn failing schools around? Those are all policies being introduced by this coalition Government to extend social mobility and opportunity, but on every one the right hon. Gentleman is silent. He has only one policy: to spend money that we do not have.

[Ms Buck]

The right hon. Gentleman visited Westminster academy, in my constituency, which was established by the previous Government and which introduced and piloted Teach First. Some 80% of sixth-formers at that school receive EMA, but how many will receive a version of EMA when he withdraws 90% of it?

[Michael Gove]

I did have the great pleasure of visiting Westminster academy, and I am delighted to have the opportunity to do so again later this month. I hope that the hon. Lady will join me then, when we will have a seminar on how we can extend school autonomy and freedom in order to drive up standards for the poorest. The number of children who will receive support, which may be enhanced support in some cases, depends precisely on their circumstances. The point was made in research commissioned by the previous Government—not by us—that the current arrangements for EMA are poorly targeted. Some who need more support do not receive it, and some who receive support should not be receiving the amount that they do.

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[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

The decision to abolish EMA is an act of educational and social vandalism. It has caused huge distress and anger among young people, who do not see, as I do not see and the Opposition do not see, why they should carry a disproportionate burden of the deficit reduction strategy.

We have heard from some speakers about early intervention, particularly in respect of young people. We all believe in the importance of making further progress on early intervention in the early years to pay off in 16 years’ time. To abolish EMA is to do away with an early intervention that will pay off in two years, because EMA is a means of preventing young people from leaving school and failing to obtain the qualifications that will enable them to get jobs and go on into higher education. That will cost money. We know it will cost money, and we know from the IFS that there is research to confirm that measures that leave more young people unemployed and without qualifications will cost us in the short term—this year, next year and the year after. There is no economic case for the abolition of the education maintenance allowance.

Has EMA worked? We hear from Ministers so often, “Let’s devolve the responsibility to heads. Let’s hear what is being said at a local level.” Listen to my heads and to the principals of my further education colleges. They are saying, “Don’t do this.” Jo Shuter, the principal of Quintin Kynaston school, is an award-winning head teacher who has transformed a school that was extremely challenging a few years ago. She said to me that at a school where 84% of young people are on the education maintenance allowance in the sixth form, abolishing it will be extraordinarily damaging and will wreak havoc on her sixth form. She is not alone in saying that.

The City of Westminster college, which I mentioned earlier, quoted the figure of 250 students this year, every year, who are obtaining qualifications, who were not staying on in school and obtaining qualifications without EMA. Those 250 pupils alone justify the expenditure on EMA. But EMA is not just about staying on into the sixth form, as we heard from many other speakers; it is about giving head teachers a tool to manage attendance and progress at school, and it is much valued for that. It is also about reducing the need for part-time employment. I agree with the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones) that part-time work can be a valuable thing. I did it; many of us did it. I also know that in the school that my child attends, which took over from a failing secondary school where just 18% of pupils were obtaining 5 A to C GCSEs, that figure has now increased to 63%. The school did that with Saturday schools and sessions in the school holidays. It is a similar picture at Paddington academy and Westminster academy—some of the most deprived schools in the country.

If we encourage pupils to lose their focus on their studies—another point emphasised by the principal of Quintin Kynaston—they will not work. It is all very well in the high-achieving schools, all very well for the pupils who do not need to be worrying about transforming their educational results, but it is not satisfactory in those schools that are on a journey, and which we know most need the improvements. We have heard from other speakers about how this impacts most severely on large families, on black and minority ethnic families, and on lone-parent families. The removal of EMA is not fair and it is not proportionate in its impact.

I want to spend my last couple of minutes on a particular concern. The reduction of funding for a more targeted programme poses a real question about what we seek to achieve. Are we looking for that money to maintain the staying on at school rates in those groups of people who currently do not, or are we looking to provide additional financial assistance for those pupils who are most challenged? Two into one will not go. There are schools in my constituency where 80%-plus of pupils are on EMA. At City of Westminster college, 75% are on EMA.

Last week, the principal of Westminster academy, which has been so transformed in recent years, told me that 60% of students who have been through the school—almost two thirds—have had multi-agency involvement from the mental health trust and social services because they are children in need and at risk. That figure is extraordinary. How are we targeting resources to that school, and how will we leave that responsibility without imposing a cost and a burden on the head teachers and principals who will be deciding between all those competing claims—the students who are under financial pressure and that overwhelming number of school students who have challenging circumstances, such as mental health problems, children who are themselves homeless, children in families who are homeless, and children from families where the parents are in prison or have drug or alcohol or mental health problems? An invidious pressure is being put on those schools. It will increase costs and increase the burden, and without doubt it will result in fewer children obtaining educational qualifications, fewer children staying on and great hardship for the families who most need help.

School Sports Funding

Karen Buck Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I will accept a package that keeps the basic infrastructure in place and keeps school sports co-ordinators in their jobs. I have said that I will accept a reduction, but it is the Secretary of State’s job to put forward a package that does just that.

What the Secretary of State has done is a senseless act of vandalism defying all logic, leaving people speechless. The Australian sports commissioner has asked how this country could dismantle a “world-leading” school sport system. The chief executive of the Canadian Olympic committee has taken the unusual step of writing to the Secretary of State to ask how, months away from a home Olympics, we can have this wholesale change in sports policy. We have called this debate because we want the Government to listen, to change course and to protect a basic school sports structure before it breaks down.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend was very supportive of me in his previous incarnation at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport when I came to talk about school provision in inner London. Is he aware that the school sport partnership in the London borough of Westminster, which is set to lose £400,000 a year, has, since 2005, increased from 55% to 100% the number of young people taking part in at least two hours of sport a week, including the promotion of inter-school competition?

[Andy Burnham]

They are astonishing achievements, particularly in an area such as the one my hon. Friend represents, where traditionally there have been difficulties accessing good-quality sports provision. I remember those discussions. For the children living in that inner-city environment, that is an unbelievable achievement, and they should be congratulated on what they have done.

Ministers do not seem to understand why people feel hurt and angry. They use provocative language and selective figures, and they seem not to understand what has happened on the ground in their own constituencies—or, worse, they do know what has happened, but they are not prepared to acknowledge it because it does not fit with their political purpose. Either way, it is very bad. If it is the latter, it is appalling.

Funding and Schools Reform

Karen Buck Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

It is depressing to hear such nonsense from the Government Benches after all these years. Is the hon. Gentleman saying to me that it is acceptable for a school to have leaking roofs or to have no playing field? Is he saying that office blocks are fine for schools? I disagree. I believe that we can do better for our children. If that is a call to cut off the funding to deprived authorities, he should be utterly ashamed of himself.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Perhaps the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) could enlighten the House by pointing us to any private schools that have outside toilets and leaking roofs.

Academies Bill [Lords]

Karen Buck Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

I hope that the Committee will excuse me if I intervene briefly in my capacity as Second Church Estates Commissioner to deal with the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert). What he was talking about was something of a straw man. There is nothing in the Bill that changes the existing relationship between the state and faith groups, although it is important to remind the Committee of a couple of things.

First, the reason why there are so many faith schools among primary and secondary schools in England and Wales is that, as part of the Education Act 1944, the then Government persuaded the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church to place at the disposal of the state all the Church schools that they had previously run. The then Government simply could not have delivered universal state education through the 1944 Act if the Churches had not brought all their schools into the state system.

Secondly, one fundamental principle of the 1944 Act was that, so far as possible, children should be educated in accordance with the wishes of their parents. No one is obliged to send their child to a faith school; they do so because they wish to. I suspect that it is the experience of us all in the House that faith schools in our constituencies are consistently and substantially over-subscribed. I have one faith school in my constituency—Blessed George Napier school, a Roman Catholic comprehensive secondary school in the diocese of Birmingham—that is consistently over-subscribed, because parents wish to send their children there.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Could the hon. Gentleman help me to understand why, across the piece and on average, faith schools have an intake that is substantially less deprived than maintained schools?

[Tony Baldry]

I do not accept that as a principle or an assertion, although I would be happy to meet the hon. Lady to talk about it, because the Church takes considerable pride in the fact that it admits into its schools a wide range of pupils, from all backgrounds, all faiths and all cultures, particularly in London. The Church of England sees that as an important part of its outreach and its commitment to the community and society as a whole.

--- Later in debate ---

[Glenda Jackson]

I do not wish to be rude, but the hon. Gentleman is not a testament to his own education. He does not listen to what I say. The point that I was making about a community was not about education, but about the way in which communities work together over a wide spectrum of experience, ethnicity and age. I consider that the Bill has enormous potential to create a serious breakdown in social cohesion—

[Ms Buck]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Glenda Jackson]

May I just finish the sentence? Then I shall be delighted to allow my hon. Friend to intervene.

It seems to me that the strongest bulwark against that serious breakdown is to ensure that we have an admissions policy that is fair in the broadest sense, as suggested by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas).

[Ms Buck]

Is not my hon. Friend’s point reinforced, and that made by the hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) undermined, by the extraordinary variation in the intake of precisely the pupils whom my hon. Friend has described—pupils who are on School Action Plus, pupils with special educational needs and pupils who are entitled to free school dinners? Schools with a significantly larger proportion of pupils in those categories almost invariably struggle to achieve the educational standards achieved by schools that choose to take fewer such pupils. Will not allowing more schools to choose less deprived pupils increase that variation between higher and lower-performing schools?

[Glenda Jackson]

I entirely agree, and we must take that seriously.

We have come so far in so many ways in this country. I know that the hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) disagrees with me, but over the past 13 years I have seen a transformation of the schools in my constituency and a transformation of the educational levels of pupils in my constituency, and that seems to be increasing. There are invariably benefits in such circumstances, because of the wide variety of people whom our children meet. The variations in culture, language and tradition feed into schools in a way that has an intrinsically positive effect not only on the children’s education, but on the quality and stability of life in this country.

I am a product of the 11-plus, and I remember distinctly what happened at the time. I lived in a very small town. I was probably related to two thirds of the people there, and everyone knew me and my entire family. The results of the 11-plus came in. As I walked to school people asked me, “Have you passed?” and I said, “I don’t know.” “Oh,” they said, “You’ve failed.” I went home for lunch. The brown envelope had arrived; I had passed. I went back. In the intervening time, my mother had run around and told everyone that I had passed.

What is most shocking to me, however—I did not realise it at the time, but I realise it now—was the attitude of adults whom I had known all my life. I must say in fairness to them that they had always looked out for me and mine and ours, because at that time there was a community culture of looking out for our children. They had changed in a second their view of what I was capable of and of what I was as a human being. If Government Members really wish to return that burden to the shoulders of 11-year-old children, I throw up my hands in despair because I do not know what they want from education or what they expect of our children.

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[Mr Brady]

My hon. Friend is being uncharacteristically ungenerous; Mr Blair needs all the support that he can get right now given that some of his friends are not helping him much.

As the ballot arrangements were introduced by a Labour Government and have been nurtured and kept in place by Education Ministers throughout the period of Labour government, I am sure that the shadow Minister will support my amendment. I am also sure, given the very strong support that the Minister of State, Department for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), has given to the continuation of grammar schools—he has also visited some of the excellent schools in my constituency—that the Government will want to reassure us that grammar schools are entirely safe under the Bill, and I look forward to hearing that reassurance.

During the general election, all four candidates in my constituency, which I think probably has the best state schools in the country, were to a greater or lesser extent supportive of the selective system. Even the Labour candidate was reasonably warm about grammar schools because he, like me, is an old boy of Altrincham grammar school for boys; perhaps that helped to condition his views on the subject. The Liberal Democrat candidate was strongly in support, and I hope that our coalition partners will follow suit and strongly support the grammar schools in the two Divisions on them this evening. The other candidate from the United Kingdom Independence party was also very supportive.

[Ms Buck]

Can the hon. Gentleman help me with one point? If grammar schools are, as he and other proponents of them claim, a route for high-achieving children from more deprived backgrounds, why do they have fewer children who are entitled to free school meals than other schools?

[Mr Brady]

There are a number of reasons, but the principal one is that most inner-city grammar schools were sadly destroyed by misguided policy, so there are fewer grammar schools in the most deprived areas and they tend to survive—[Interruption.] No, I am responding to the hon. Lady’s point. They tend to survive in the outer-urban and more rural areas. The reduction in grammar schools, particularly in London, where there are so few, has had another effect: they have become more selective over time. In my borough of Trafford, we select about 35% of that cohort to go to grammar school, but selection can amount to as little as 1% or 2% of the ability range at some London grammar schools.

[Ms Buck]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point about the national statistics, but is he saying that, in Trafford, grammar schools have the same proportion of children on free school dinners as non-grammar schools?

[Mr Brady]

That would depend on the part of Trafford that one was in, and the figure would largely relate to the school’s catchment area, but overall grammar schools have become more selective than they should have had to become.

I do not want to detain the Committee for long. The crucial point about amendment 49 is that it would protect the status quo not just of the excellent schools that are thriving and popular in their communities, but of their protection in current education legislation. If the amendment is accepted and those schools become academies, they will have the protection of a parental ballot, which will transfer with them and prevent any change in their status without reference to the parents. I hope that the amendment is uncontentious, and I very much hope that my Front Benchers warmly welcome it.

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[Vernon Coaker]

That could be a debate that the hon. Gentleman will want to have another time. The context for this debate, though, is to consider the changed profile of schools that wish to become academies as opposed to the profile of schools that are already academies. We are debating a different situation in which those academies, through a funding agreement rather than through statutory legislation, now have to abide by various things such as admissions codes, exclusions and so on. That is the point that we are making about the genuine difference between these two sets of the schools and the need for some of the amendments that we have before us.

[Ms Buck]

Is the Minister not wrong? There are actually cases in which two schools serve the same neighbourhood and one has a dramatically lower number of children on free school dinners, on School Action Plus or with special educational needs than the other, which is only a few hundred yards away. Neither school is situated in a more affluent area; they simply have different intakes. That shows that something else is going on in their admissions policies.

[Vernon Coaker]

Such a difference in intake is certainly true in many cases. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn pointed out, it is also crucial for us to understand the difference between the profile of pupils at the new academies that the Government intend to set free and give all sorts of freedoms to, and those at the existing academies. The study by the Centre for Economic Performance is extremely important in that respect.

Academies Bill [Lords]

Karen Buck Excerpts

Monday 19th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

First, outstanding schools can be found in any area, including areas of disadvantage. Secondly, if most of our outstanding schools are in areas of advantage, is it not a telling indictment of 13 years of Labour rule that all the best schools are in the richest areas? The hon. Gentleman lost his seat just five years ago; if only he had stayed in the Department for Education, perhaps the situation would not have been so bad. We will ensure that every school that acquires academy freedom takes an underperforming school under its wing to ensure that all schools improve as a result.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

I believe that I am the only Member of Parliament who is the parent of a child at an academy, and I am a great believer in what academies have been able to do, but I want to reinforce the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg). Precisely because academies have invested resources in the most disadvantaged areas—the school that my child attends is the 16th most deprived in the country—they have been able to exercise a relative improvement. Surely spreading those resources and the advantages of academy status to highly privileged schools will do the reverse of what the Secretary of State intends and widen the gap in educational achievement.

[Michael Gove]

I take the hon. Lady’s point, but she is making the case that only resources drive improvement. Resources are critical, but so is autonomy, and the record of the CTCs shows that it was their autonomy that drove improvement. We Government Members all know that it is the ethos and quality of a school, and in particular the capacity of a head teacher to lead, that make all the difference.