Breaking Down Barriers to Opportunity

Kim Leadbeater Excerpts

Wednesday 8th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak on His Majesty’s first King’s Speech, but in communities such as the one I represent in Batley and Spen there is a growing feeling that Britain is no longer working. People are facing a struggle to get a GP appointment, hospital appointment or dentist appointment; they rarely see a police officer on the streets, despite feeling that crime and antisocial behaviour in their community are rising; they are waiting months or even years for an education, health and care plan for their child with special educational needs, seeing them struggle without the support they need and witnessing the impact on their mental health; they are sending their children to school knowing that teachers are overworked, overstretched and without the resources they need to give their child the best start in life; they are just accepting that home ownership is not a likely reality for the younger generation; or, at the end of the month, realising that their hard-earned pay or pension barely covers the increasing bills.

This is the broken Britain the Conservatives have presided over during 13 years of national decline. This King’s Speech could have started the hard work to get Britain’s future back. Instead, what we saw yesterday was a Government desperate to distract from their appalling record by engaging in dangerous and divisive culture wars and announcing yet more gimmicks. Rather than getting on with the serious job of governing, they announced a series of Bills that fail even to scratch the surface of the fundamental reform and renewal that our country needs.

In the area where I live and that I represent in Batley and Spen and across the Spen valley, this sense of broken Britain is clear to see, and I hear it from my constituents all the time. Over the last few months, we have seen the closure of Batley baths, and I and others are currently fighting hard to save Batley sports and tennis centre, Cleckheaton town hall and Claremont House dementia care home in Heckmondwike from closure. The loss of these precious public buildings and services would have a severe impact on local families and communities. For example, local leisure centres are not just places where residents go to exercise and keep physically healthy, although that is crucial if we are to reduce the long-term pressure on the NHS; they also provide opportunities to socialise and meet new people, combating loneliness and social isolation, and significantly improving mental health and wellbeing.

The loss of such facilities hits towns and villages hard and for many years, so we need to act quickly to save them, but since 2010 Kirklees Council has lost £1 billion in funding. If the Conservatives had kept Labour’s funding formula, Kirklees would currently be in surplus. Instead, Kirklees Council is forced to make impossible decisions about which public services it has to cut. The King’s Speech should have included a Bill to fix the broken funding formula for councils and to save vital local services, but it did not. Instead, it leaves us in Batley and Spen facing the loss of facilities when we need them the most. After last year’s disastrous mini-Budget, our communities are paying the price for the Conservatives’ costly mistakes and mismanagement. It breaks my heart to see the impact of this on the community I love, that I am so incredibly proud to represent and that has stood by me in the most difficult of times. Unlike the current Home Secretary, I believe that strong leadership does not need to be devoid of compassion. It should be about bringing people and communities together, not pushing them apart, and that can take many forms locally, nationally and internationally.

Events in the middle east are at the forefront of many of our minds after the despicable terrorist attack on 7 October. The pain of the Jewish community around the world and the intense human suffering we see in Gaza at the moment are unbearable. Israeli hostages are being held in what must be terrifying conditions. Palestinian civilians, families and children—people who have nothing to do with the terrorists of Hamas—are being killed in their own homes. The international community must work night and day to stop the hostilities, to get desperately needed aid—food, water, medicines and fuel—into Gaza immediately and to call loudly and clearly for the release of all hostages.

We must also ensure that international law is upheld, particularly with regard to the principle of proportionality and the serious issues of forcible transfer and the taking of precautionary measures when it comes to protecting civilians. The actions of Hamas on 7 October are to be fully condemned, but the suffering of thousands of innocent civilians, many of whom were not even born when this conflict began, cannot be seen as collateral damage. As the Leader of the Opposition said last week, we absolutely defend Israel’s right to protect itself as a sovereign state, but that is not a blank cheque.

As hard as it feels, we must also stay resolute in the hope that there can be a prospect of a lasting peace in the future. I, for one, will work with colleagues and friends across the House—Jewish, Muslim, Christian or, like me, of no particular faith—to do everything I can to make the all-too-distant vision of a two-state solution more than just words repeated periodically in this place to make us all feel better, but an actual reality for Israelis and Palestinians alike, because they have been let down for far too long.

It takes hard diplomacy, however, and a Government willing to bring people together to de-escalate tensions and provide the leadership and road map to discussions and a political settlement. The Government’s Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill, which has been carried over into this Session of Parliament, does nothing to help that situation. It is a badly drafted and unworkable piece of legislation. It restricts councils and other public bodies from taking ethical investment and procurement decisions, and it singles out individual countries for different treatment. That cannot be the basis of a foreign policy that seeks to heal divisions and unite people, especially when the stakes are so high. In the light of recent events, I hope that the Government will reconsider their approach to that divisive Bill.

As we head towards a general election next year, people across Batley and Spen and the Spen valley will be looking for a Government who bring people together, who value and protect our communities and who are willing to get on with the serious, hard work of governing. This King’s Speech does not offer the change we need. It offers more of the same to a country desperate for change.

We on the Opposition Benches have begun setting out how the next Labour Government will get on with the hard work involved in getting Britain’s future back, by giving back control to local communities and by rebuilding Britain as a country where opportunities spread across the United Kingdom, where a hard day’s work is valued again, where public services are cherished, where communities are enriched, where families have the security and prosperity they deserve, and where our children and young people can look to the future with hope. That is the change that the country and the people of Batley and Spen are crying out for, and that is the change that I know the next Labour Government will deliver.

Ofsted School Inspections

Kim Leadbeater Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hollobone]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising those concerns. I do share them, as do pupils at the school. I had the privilege of speaking to some of the pupils who engaged with the inspectors. They were expecting the inspectors to ask about the curriculum and their academic studies, but they were probed particularly about the Christian ethos. One pupil, very maturely, responded: “It is not so much about Christianity as about Christian values.” That was a very mature and sensible response.

[Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a really powerful and interesting speech, and I thank him for securing this debate. Does he agree that it would be more sensible if Ofsted inspections were not so narrowly focused on academic achievement? Although that is important, and the school clearly has a fantastic academic record, Ofsted should have a more holistic approach and look at things such as how schools work extremely hard to build social and emotional resilience in children and young people and to create a happy and healthy learning environment, which gives pupils the skills and values they need to be well-rounded citizens?

[Mr Hollobone]

I am most grateful to the hon. Lady for making that very sensible point. That is right. The school clearly has a Christian ethos. I am not saying that all the pupils and parents are Christians, but this is about Christian values and the key themes I mentioned at the beginning, which we surely all share: responsibility, compassion, truth and justice. Yet it seems that this inspection team regards those values as inappropriate for a school because they are Christian. The parents and I find that outrageous.

The pupil said that when they responded to the inspector’s question, “The inspector shut my comment down. He made me feel silly, embarrassed and a bit stupid.” Pupils described the interaction with inspectors as “intense”, “uncomfortable”, “tense” and “awkward”. Those are the pupils themselves telling me about their experiences with the inspectors. Something is not right here, and I want the Minister to take that on board.

The school complained about the judgment on sixth form provision. Ofsted said:

“Inspectors spoke to groups of students. They raised the point that they were well prepared for university, but other routes were not as well covered. While I agree that there is no statutory requirement for work experience, it was clear from the evidence that preparation for the wider world of work was not as secure as other areas of students’ wider development.”

That was Ofsted’s comment. However, 98% of pupils go on to education or go straight into employment. Nevertheless, this aspect of the complaint was not upheld. The school also complained about the overall inspection report, the overall judgment, and the inspection process, but all those complaints were not upheld. All the points that the school made to Ofsted were dismissed.

The breach of confidentiality point has not been addressed by Ofsted in any satisfactory way. Ofsted said to the school:

“It was explained that unless you were able to provide any further evidence, we would be unable to look into this any further.”

Yet the headteacher gave Ofsted the names of two local schools that had heard of the downgrade before the report was published. A serious breach of confidentiality has not been investigated properly and has effectively been dismissed.

On the comments about

“a white middle class school”

and

“walking upstairs when wearing a skirt”,

Ofsted said:

“There is no record in the evidence of the exact line of questioning from the team inspector that you referred to. Having spoken to the team inspector, they cannot recall asking the two questions that are cited.”

I have to say to the Minister that I spoke with the pupils involved and they confirmed what was said, so clearly something is not right here.

The headteacher wrote a measured letter to parents to reassure them on the back of the publication of the report, stressing the school’s outstanding academic performance. He said that

“student performance last summer was outstanding”,

and that that was based on the Department for Education’s own statistics. He went on to say:

“GCSE results place us in the top 3% of schools nationally. A Level performance data is still provisional, but with 43% of grades awarded at A and A*”.

On behaviour and attitudes, the headteacher rightly said:

“External visitors to our school almost without exception comment on the impressive behaviour and engagement of our students. On the inspection days themselves, students’ behaviour was exemplary, and the five members of the inspection team unanimously agreed that they saw no low-level disruption during the inspection.”

That is not what the report said. He went on to say, rightly:

“Unfortunately, this detail has not been included in the report, but we will be sharing with students that we were immensely proud of the way they conducted themselves and upheld our core values in the inspection—and continue to do so.”

I have to say to the Minister that since the report was published 500 parents have been in touch with the school to offer their support and basically they say that they do not believe what Ofsted is saying and do not respect the downgrade to “requires improvement”. However, I think there is a wider agenda going on here, because although I believe that Bishop Stopford has been picked on, recent information has come out that more than four fifths of “outstanding” schools inspected last year have lost their top grade after the exemption from inspection was removed. Also, the chief inspector herself said that the outcomes from the first full year of inspection since it was scrapped:

“show that removing a school from scrutiny does not make it better.”

A fifth of schools, including Bishop Stopford, dropped at least two grades.

The Minister will know that schools rated “outstanding” were exempt from reinspection between 2012 and 2020. The exemption was lifted in 2020 after Ofsted warned that over a thousand schools had not been inspected in at least 10 years. Ofsted itself has said that 308 of the 370 previously exempt schools had a graded inspection that resulted in a downgrade, which is 83%: 62% became “good”; 17% fell to “requires improvement”, including Bishop Stopford; and 4% fell from “outstanding” to “inadequate”. This is a power grab from Ofsted, saying to the Government, “You must let us inspect all schools all the time.” I am not sure that is appropriate, given the level of distress it can cause to excellent schools such as Bishop Stopford when an inspection goes wrong.

On behalf of the school, parents and local residents in Kettering, I ask the Minister to quash the report and send in a fresh inspection team. Let us have a proper inquiry into the leaking of the downgrade. If quashing is not possible within the Minister’s powers, can we have a reinspection of the school at the earliest opportunity? I would not want that grade hanging over the school for potentially the next 30 months. At the very least, can we have a meeting between the Minister himself, the chief inspector, the headteacher and myself as the local parliamentary representative, so that local concerns that the inspection went wrong can be relayed in the clearest possible terms to Ofsted?

Oral Answers to Questions

Kim Leadbeater Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I share my hon. Friend’s commitment to improving special educational needs provision in Northumberland, particularly in his constituency. The Department is working closely with stakeholders to develop a sustainable solution. The opening of the new free special school has encountered several challenges, but we expect to deliver the school places in the 2023 academic year. As part of our investment in school places for children and young people with SEND, Northumberland is receiving £3.7 million from the fund between 2022 and 2024. I will happily meet my hon. Friend to discuss the matter.

[Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

I recently held a roundtable of headteachers in my constituency. We talked for almost two hours but, sadly, very little of the conversation was about teaching. Instead, we discussed serious issues around recruitment and retention of staff; inadequate funding and severe pressures on budgets; online safety; mental health—theirs and the children’s—and SEND pressures. What are the Government doing to ensure that all schools have the resources they need to provide pupils with special educational needs and disabilities with the support they need while also being able to maintain high-quality teaching and manage the huge range of other pressures that they face?

[Kelly Tolhurst]

As I mentioned, we are investing £2.6 billion over the next three years in new spaces for SEND and alternative provision. We have also implemented £1.4 billion in high-needs provision capital allocations for local authorities, and £9.1 billion—an increase of 13%—in high-needs funding. The hon. Lady will know that we launched the Green Paper on SEND and AP back in March. We are currently looking at the responses and we hope to respond by the end of the year.

Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Review

Kim Leadbeater Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Chair of the Education Committee; I will always listen to what he and his Committee have to say, because his Committee follows the evidence and works on a cross-party basis.

My right hon. Friend raised a number of important points that the Green Paper attempts to address, although there is of course a consultation. One of his points was about clarity for parents. Our proposal to establish a single national integrated SEND and AP system in England will help to inform parents wherever they live. If they move house, they will be able to find out what they should expect from the system for their child. It will help them to make informed choices from a tailored list of settings. It will strengthen mediation arrangements so that they do not feel they have to go to tribunal and line the pockets of expensive consultants or lawyers. All these things are addressed in the important Green Paper. Part of the work is to ensure excellent provision from the early years to adulthood and to build inclusivity into the system. We will always listen to what my right hon. Friend has to say.

[Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

Following a number of emotional meetings with desperate families in Batley and Spen, I can confirm that the Secretary of State was absolutely right to say that people have lost faith in the system. Demand for EHCPs has soared, rising by 480% in the past five years, and almost half of all plans are issued outside the statutory 20-week period, which in my view is too long in itself. Why has increasing capacity and ending delays not been a focus of the review?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Increasing capacity came before the Green Paper, deliberately. I did not want to publish the Green Paper and come to the House and say we were going to wait another 13 weeks. Today’s announcement of that first tranche of funding—the £1.4 billion—is all about increasing capacity. There is also, of course, the safety valve that we introduced at the spending review to help local authorities to cope. Over the past three years, the SEND and high-needs budget has increased by 40%, including the £1 billion that we announced at the SR. It needs to be put on a sustainable footing and that is what the Green Paper will do. We will of course always listen to parents, families and those who work so hard in the sector.

Physical Education

Kim Leadbeater Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson) for securing this debate. It is not often I get really excited in this place, but today is one of those days. This is a subject close to my heart.

I have a background in sport and physical activity and health and wellbeing, having lectured in these subjects for over a decade and worked both in primary schools, delivering exercise sessions to young children, including the aforementioned “wake up, shake up” activity, and in a secondary school PE department. Based on that experience, I strongly believe that PE should have a much more central role in the curriculum.

Successive Governments have missed the chance to improve the nation’s health and wellbeing by adopting a holistic and preventive approach, placing an emphasis on educating young people about the importance of physical activity, what it means to have a healthy lifestyle, and ensuring that they adopt healthy, enjoyable exercise habits from an early age. With alarming figures relating to childhood obesity, diabetes and a range of other health conditions, along with serious concerns around children’s mental health, we must take a more preventive and long-term approach to health and wellbeing. The provision of high-quality PE in our schools should be a fundamental part of that.

Do not misunderstand me: the provision of good-quality PE is not the only solution to those problems. As the hon. Member for Eddisbury said, we also have to look at a wide range of other things, such as active travel, active families and active communities, grassroots sports provision, nutrition, and addressing the barriers to being more active—be they real or perceived. However, young people’s access to good-quality and wide-ranging physical education is an important part of addressing some of those serious health issues. That is why I think that PE should be a core subject.

I accept that that cannot happen overnight, and we do, of course, have to consider the implications for the broader curriculum. However, as the Association for Physical Education says, we should give PE a higher priority straightaway, with children spending more time on physical activity, and aim to have a highly trained PE teacher in every primary school within a few years.

As The Times Educational Supplement reported recently, by having high-quality, properly resourced and immovable PE provision in our schools, we encourage children and young people to adopt life-long physical activity habits, which will reduce the prevalence of a range of chronic health conditions and, in turn, take some of the pressure off the NHS which we know is bursting at the seams.

The “A national plan for sport, health and wellbeing” report, recently discussed in the House of Lords, noted that:

“Attitudes towards physical activity…track into adulthood.”

In short, by exposing children to a wide variety of PE options and enabling them to develop healthy habits from a young age, we help to create a generation of healthy adults. The benefits of high-quality PE provision do not stop at the physical. The skills that children learn from PE are many: perseverance, resilience, collaboration, teamwork, initiative, and confidence, to name just a few. Those skills help young people to flourish in education and life.

The great thing about physical activity is that there is something for everyone, whether that is in competitive sport, dance, gym, group exercise, running, and everything in between. There is something for everyone—boys, girls, men and women. On that note, I am pleased to be providing a female perspective to today’s debate. I had two very good female PE teachers, who were instrumental in inspiring me to adopt physical activity habits for the rest of my life—including a 30-year hockey career which, sadly, came to an end as a result of the pressures of this job. Those role models are important, and that is why PE should be a core curriculum subject at the heart of our education system.

As well as having PE on the curriculum, it is also important to look at how we can embed physical activity into the education system as a whole. The “creating active schools” framework, designed in part by the Yorkshire Sport Foundation, is a good example of that. It encourages all stakeholders, from local authorities to school leaders and pupils, to play a role in embedding physical activity in the school’s ethos.

To finish, I am pleased to take part in today’s important debate, and to have the opportunity to speak about a subject so close to my heart. I offer to work with colleagues across the House on taking this agenda forward. Thank you.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kim Leadbeater Excerpts

Monday 14th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Alex Burghart)]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: essay mills denigrate the excellent work that the vast majority of students do by allowing a tiny minority to cheat. That is why, in our Skills and Post-16 Education Bill, which will soon receive Royal Assent, we are outlawing them, and we will punish everyone involved in them.

[Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

T7. Will the Minister join me in congratulating all the girls who took part in the FA’s “let girls play” biggest ever football session last week? Will he update the House on the steps that his Department is taking to ensure that girls have equal access to football in schools, and on the work that it is undertaking to ensure that PE is not squeezed out of the curriculum due to the academic over-testing of children?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Will Quince)]

I will certainly join the hon. Lady in those congratulations. Only last week I was with girls playing basketball. It is so important that we encourage girls in particular to take part in competitive sport. We know that there is a massive drop-off from primary to secondary. We are investing significant extra money through the pupil premium as well as £30 million of funding to open up school places after hours. I would be happy to meet her, because I know that she shares my passion in this area. Health and nutrition are really important, and we must get more people playing sport.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kim Leadbeater Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince]

Backed by £9.5 million, we are offering about a third of schools and colleges in England a grant this year to train a senior mental health lead in their setting. Our £15 million wellbeing for education recovery and return programmes are in addition to the £79 million boost to children and young people’s mental health announced in March 2021 for mental health support teams in schools and colleges. My hon. Friend’s point is well made.

[Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

Last week, I met a fantastic local ADHD—attention deficit hyperactivity disorder—support group, who detailed to me the many delays that children are facing in receiving diagnoses and then education, health and care plans, support and treatment. What steps are the Government taking to support pupils with ADHD and suspected ADHD so that they can learn effectively and have a fulfilling educational experience?

Oral Answers to Questions

Kim Leadbeater Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

The NHS covid recovery fund is an important measure to help address the backlog of operations and patient care. Will the Secretary of State set out, following any conversations between the Department, the Treasury and the Department of Health of Social Care, how much of that budget has been earmarked for additional capacity for children with disability and care needs, children and adolescent mental health services, and special educational needs and disability provision, which is quickly becoming a crisis in our schools?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, has been championing the additional £2.6 billion investment in SEND that we have received from the Treasury. That includes money going into mainstream schools to increase that provision. It is important, as we await the review of SEND, that we make the investment now to create places so that parents do not feel that they need to go to court with their local authority to get an education, health and care plan.