Budget Resolutions

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

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

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

Education has a key role to play in breaking cycles of poverty, but we know, too, that poverty has a profound impact on a child’s ability to make the most of any educational opportunity available. Yet this Budget did nothing to tackle child poverty, which stands at about 4 million in this country—that is a shameful figure, and it is set to rise.

According to the Child Poverty Action Group, by the age of three, poorer children are estimated to be on average nine months behind children from wealthier backgrounds. Department for Education statistics show that by the end of primary school, pupils receiving free school meals are almost three terms behind children from more affluent families. By 14, the gap grows to over five terms, and by 16, children receiving free school meals achieve on average 1.7 grades lower at GCSE.

We know, too, that the early years are crucial for child development. Maintained nursery schools do an important job for children in their early years and many are struggling financially, yet the Chancellor chose to find £320 million for 140 new free schools. I strongly question his sense of priorities. Some 65% of maintained nursery schools are in the most deprived areas in the UK, and 97% of them are rated as good or outstanding by Ofsted. No other part of the education sector can match that, so their value cannot be in doubt.

Ganneys Meadow nursery school in my constituency has received outstanding judgments in its last three Ofsted reports, and it provides a vital service to families in the local community. Around 20% of the children there have special educational needs or a disability, including autism, epilepsy or mobility problems. The families of a number of the children are on low incomes, and some of the children might be quite vulnerable. The school gives those children the very best start in life, yet despite that service, based on the specialist expertise of highly qualified, trained teaching staff, it is funded at the same rate as all childcare providers. Local authorities can top up that funding, but we all know that they have had their budgets severely cut by central Government.

The Government have announced extra funding for nursery schools but, in practice, schools such as Ganneys Meadow will see their overall income rise by only a very small amount, and they will remain financially squeezed. If the Government are really serious about improving the life chances of the most disadvantaged children in our society, they should back the maintained nursery schools and ensure that they get the funding that they need to secure their future. At secondary school level, funding per pupil in my constituency is expected to fall by 10% between 2013 and 2019, which will mean a loss of £309 per pupil in cash terms between 2015 and 2019. That will inevitably be to the detriment of pupils’ education and staff morale, and it is wholly unacceptable.

The arts in education are particularly at risk at the moment. Uptake of creative subjects at secondary level fell by 14% overall between 2010 and 2015, and the Government have so far failed to respond to the consultation on the future of the English baccalaureate, which included a consideration of the place of arts subjects in the core curriculum. A survey of teachers by The Guardian in January found that 9% of respondents reported that either art, music or drama was no longer offered at their school. About 20% said that one or more of those subjects had been given reduced timetable space. Yet studies here and in the United States have shown that students from low-income families who have the opportunity to engage in the arts at school are significantly more likely to go on to get a degree and are also more employable overall, so these cuts to school funding really are damaging the prospects of our young people.

There are also real issues around adult literacy and numeracy. The latest Government studies, published in 2011, found that nearly 15% of 16 to 65-year-olds were functionally illiterate and that 23% of the people surveyed lacked basic numeracy skills. This is a real crisis, and the Government should tackle it as a matter of urgency, for the sake of not only the individuals involved but their families. When we educate the mother or the father, we educate the child. We need real investment in adult education and lifelong learning. The Chancellor announced £40 million in funding for 2018-19 to test different approaches to helping people to retrain and upskill throughout their working lives, but there have been cuts of more than £1 billion in the sector since 2010. I also question the need for pilots. As a former teacher in adult education schools and someone who has close knowledge of the work of the British Education Research Association, I can assure the Government that there is plenty of expertise out there that they could tap into to put together a really robust programme of adult education and lifelong learning.

I also urge the Government to think beyond retraining and upskilling. Those are important in providing vital training opportunities to help people to move on in their employment, but it is important to provide education for education’s sake. On TV, we see the huge popularity of programmes such as “The Great British Bake Off”, “The Great Pottery Throw Down” and “The Big Painting Challenge”. It is clear that there is a real interest in discovering arts and skills areas that might have nothing to do with employability, but everything to do with creativity and learning. I join my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) in his call for the reintroduction of night schools. They are inexpensive places where people can learn and socialise, and they can help people to grow in confidence and make friends. They also provide an effective way of tackling social isolation. They can be quite transforming for individuals and communities, and I believe that they have a particularly important offer in our ageing society.

In the Prime Minister’s Lancaster House speech, when setting out the Government’s negotiation objectives for exiting the European Union, she said that the Government would aim

“to build a stronger economy and a fairer society”

in which

“every child has the knowledge and the skills they need to thrive”.

If the Government are sincere in that, they should make it a priority to fund early years education. They should also be ambitious in their plans for lifelong learning and make a real priority of tackling child poverty so that children are healthy and able to make the most of the educational opportunities on offer.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Maintained Nursery Schools Funding

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) on introducing the debate. I never fail to be impressed by the passion she brings to her speeches or by her campaigning zeal—I have campaigned with her since before I became a Member.

We know that this debate is of great importance; that is why we have had such a high turnout of Members and such a high-quality debate. I join the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Sir Simon Burns) in praising nursery staff throughout the country for their commitment. He spoke more articulately than I can about all the work that goes on.

The Minister will be aware that Members here know the importance of maintained nurseries for sure, and the role they play in our early years system. They are invaluable. In fact, they are absolutely irreplaceable. The hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) spoke about Scartho Nursery School with such passion, because he knows that that sort of provision cannot be replaced in any constituency up and down the land if it is lost.

Maintained nurseries operate overwhelmingly in disadvantaged areas and, as has been pointed out, 98% of them are rated “good” or “outstanding” by Ofsted. If 98% of them are rated so highly, why do we feel that they are suddenly being so undervalued by the Government, and why do they face this funding crisis? We are at the point now where there is no turning back.

Research by the all-party parliamentary group on nursery schools and nursery classes, which is chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), who is no longer in her place but does astonishingly good work in this area, shows that dozens of nursery schools—I think she said 67—look like they will be forced to close by July this year. That is more than one in 10 nursery schools.

Almost 60% of those nurseries say that they will be unsustainable once the Government withdraw transitional funding support at the end of this Parliament, as my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) pointed out. She talked about educational attainment across the north and referred to the debate that Jo Cox secured about Yorkshire and the Humber. However, we should remember that in London 55% of kids on free school meals get five good GCSEs. If we take the area from the Mersey estuary to the Humber estuary, that figure for kids on free school meals declines to 34%. The Government produced the Nick Weller report about educational attainment in the north, but unfortunately it is now just gathering dust on a shelf somewhere—there is no evidence that any of its recommendations have been implemented.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, and I apologise for not being able to be here for the whole debate, because of a prior engagement. However, I just feel so strongly about this issue that I want to put on the record how well Ganneys Meadow Nursery School in my constituency is doing. It is located in one of the 20% most deprived lower-level super output areas in the UK, but it received three “outstanding” judgments in its last three Ofsted reports. Nevertheless, it is really struggling financially and anything that the Minister can do to mitigate that situation would be hugely appreciated.

[Mike Kane]

My hon. Friend makes a fantastic point, as she defends the maintained nursery in her constituency. It has three “outstanding” judgments, yet it is under all that pressure. What sort of society are we living in when that is happening to professional staff, as well as to parents and their young children?

With so many nursery schools likely to rely on the transitional funding, this debate is of huge importance. In her eloquent speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) said that the order of the day at the moment is survival or closure for most of these operations. So can the Minister tell us how the transitional funding will be awarded, which nursery schools will benefit, and how will she ensure that it is used in a way that supports our nursery schools up and down the land? I ask these questions because providing transitional funding is not the same as providing certainty. My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) also pointed that out. We need long-term sustainability.

Right now, nursery schools across the country support some of our most disadvantaged communities and they are highly valued by parents, as my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) said. He was also absolutely bang on the money about the quality of training provided in these nursery schools. I remember being a PGCE—postgraduate certificate in education—student and spending two, three or four weeks at a nursery school, and I understood that those nursery teachers knew with 95% accuracy what the kids at that nursery would attain at their key stage 1 standard assessment tests and at their key stage 2 SATs, because they knew that what they could do was make the most important intervention in a child’s life.

The Minister and her colleague, the Secretary of State for Education, have said—rather frequently—that the Government are investing a record £6 billion in early years and childcare; we will see if she comes to that figure today. However, that assessment does not tell us the whole story. For instance, it does nothing to consider the impact of changes in the early years funding formula, and nor does it consider the impact of the savage cuts to local government funding that the Minister’s party has pursued for nearly seven years in government.

I will just turn to the situation in Scotland. The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) said, “Nursery education is the crème de la crème”, and I agree with her that nursery education is the best start in life. However, the Scottish National party Government are taking £150 million a year out of Glasgow City Council’s budget. How do we think that will impact on nursery schools in Scotland? And that is after Glasgow Labour had rebuilt every new school of the campus at £600 million over the last 15 years. What do we think those sorts of cuts will do for disadvantaged children in Glasgow? Let us also be absolutely clear that the SNP Government are failing to inspect nursery schools, with inspection ratios going up to years and years before the equivalent of Ofsted goes in and inspects those schools. I am afraid that the SNP Government have a record of failure in Scotland.

School Funding

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

We said that we would protect the core schools budget in real terms, and that is exactly what we are doing. In relation to the hon. Gentleman’s local community, the change in the funding formula partly reflects the fact that, for a long time, we have used deprivation data that are simply out of date. It is important that we use up-to-date deprivation factors. For example, in 2005, 28% of children in London were on free school meals. That percentage has now fallen to 17%. It is right that we make sure that we have consistent investment for children from deprived communities, because that is where the attainment gap has opened up. It is also important that funding is spread fairly using up-to-date information.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

When I was a schoolteacher under the Thatcher Government, I remember my school running out of paper in about February. A colleague and I had to go into the attic of the library and tear pages out of books from the 1970s so that our children could write on them. I remember wondering how we could expect children to write in those circumstances. Is the Secretary of State proud of that record, and what does she think that the scale of these cuts will do to staff morale in schools up and down the country?

[Justine Greening]

I was actually at school during that time period, and I felt that Oakwood comprehensive gave me a great start in life that set me up to be able, hopefully, to make a meaningful contribution to both the economy and my local community.

We are introducing the national funding formula. I accept that it is complex and challenging, and there is a reason why such a thing has not been done for a long time: it is difficult to ensure that we get it just right. That is why we are having a longer consultation. We have provided all the details so that colleagues can see how their local communities will be affected, and then respond.

Oral Answers to Questions

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)]

We will be announcing the response to the primary assessment arrangements shortly. It was important that we raised academic standards in our primary schools, and that is why we had a new curriculum introduced by 2014, after two or three years of preparation and consultation. We are raising standards in reading—there are now 147,000 more six-year-olds reading more effectively than they otherwise would be—and we are raising academic standards in maths and in grammar, punctuation and spelling. That is very important, and we will make further announcements about the details of the assessment soon.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

T2. In the Higher Education and Research Bill, the Government will allow universities simply to shut down if they fail in the HE marketplace, as though their role in local communities was a matter of no significance or concern to Government. That takes no account of the impact that closures will have on students and lecturers or the businesses and communities around them. Will the Government think again?

[The Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation (Joseph Johnson)]

The Higher Education and Research Bill will make student protection plans mandatory for the first time, putting in place systematic protection for students, which at present is very patchy and partial across our higher education system.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

The Bill is about strengthening our capacity to do world-beating research. The money will follow where the excellence is. I have no doubt that there is significant excellence in Wales. That is why there has been significant funding for some of our world-class research that is taking place in that part of the UK. The Bill is about enabling the seven research councils to add up to more, as Sir Paul Nurse said, by bringing them under one umbrella.

The Bill will ensure that the UK is equipped to carry out more multidisciplinary research and to better respond with agility and flexibility to the latest research challenges. By bringing Innovate UK into UKRI, we will harness the opportunities across business as well, so that business-led innovation and world-class research can better come together and translate our world-class knowledge into world-class innovation. Innovate UK will retain its individual funding stream and continue its support for business-led technology and innovation.

We are protecting in law, for the first time ever, the dual-support research funding system in England—a system that many people consider to have underpinned universities’ confidence to invest in long-term research and that has contributed to our well-deserved global reputation for excellence.

The formation of UKRI will provide crucial support during this period of change in our relationship with the European Union. As we face new challenges, we need a strong and unified voice to represent the interests of the research and innovation community across Government, across Europe and around the world.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

Unison, the union, has about 40,000 workers in higher education institutions, which represents a great range of staff. It is very concerned, as am I, that the vote to leave the European Union has produced real uncertainty that will create challenges in terms of funding, research, staffing and students. It asks a question that I would like to put to the Secretary of State: why is there a rush to do this? Should we not look at the new landscape, think very carefully and then decide what we should do?

[Justine Greening]

I do not agree with the hon. Lady, but I recognise the challenges that she talks about in making sure that the universities sector and the higher education sector more broadly come out of the process of Brexit stronger. That is why we are engaging in a structured way across Government and outside Government in sectors such as HE to ensure that we have a smart approach to taking Britain through the Brexit process. I refer her to the point that the University Alliance made earlier today about the Bill being

“a raft that can take us to calmer waters”.

The Bill is how we will provide the security, vision and direction for a strong higher education sector.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Marsden]

No, I will make some more progress.

The higher education White Paper emphasises repeatedly that the driver for the changes is that half of job vacancies from now until 2022 are expected to be in occupations requiring high-level graduate skills, but there is little clarity on what that means. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) asked earlier, does that include levels of technical professional competence? If so, why is there no strong linkage with the skills plan released by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills just two weeks ago? There is an obvious need for crossover between the skills plan and the higher education Bill, but the disconnect between them makes even less sense now that the Department for Education will be taking on skills and further education policy. If the opportunity for students at 16 and beyond to switch between higher education and vocational routes is to be real, why is the skills plan not linked directly with the HE White Paper?

A recent University and College Union survey showed that less than 10% of respondents recalled learning anything in school about higher education before year 9, or having any contact with a university. The Education Committee I served on and Peter Lampl at Sutton Trust have said for a number of years that it is imperative we give young people the aspirations they need at a much earlier age, so that they can make more informed choices about their future educational plans. I would like to see much more about that in the Bill, as I am sure would the rest of the House.

There are also huge question marks, following the changes to the mechanisms of government, about where the money is coming from. Will it all transfer over from the new Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy? With the existing cuts across that Department, where will the resources to implement these wonderful changes come from, especially since the Department has huge school funding issues to fix?

The Government strategy for expanding HE and skills rests on their “loans will cure all” philosophy. As we have already seen, however, that is no guarantee. Less than 50% of the money allocated to the 24-plus advanced learner loans was taken up because of resistance from older learners. BIS had to return £150 million unused to the Treasury. On top of that, students have already been hit in the past 12 months by the triple whammy of scrapping maintenance grants for loans, freezing the student loan threshold and removing NHS bursaries. That has damaged social mobility for the most disadvantaged students.

The Bill places immense faith in the magic of the market. Central to its proposals are a concentration on creating a brave new world of what the Government are calling HE challenger institutions, which are likely to be private and for-profit. Before any Government Member jumps up, let me say that we are not in any way, shape or form opposed to new institutions. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State has had her say. I speak as someone who taught for nearly 20 years in what was a new institution, the Open University, which is one of the proudest boasts of the Labour Government under Harold Wilson. We will take no lessons from Conservative Members on that. The Government propose that new providers could be given degree-awarding powers straight away. Students would in effect be taking a gamble on probationary degrees from probationary providers. Who is going to pick up the pieces if it all goes wrong? It is still unclear what resources the proposed office for students will have to police this progress. What if the problems are not picked up until students have been working for their degrees for, say, 18 months? As I have said previously, the White Paper chirrups about the

“possibility of exit being a natural part of a healthy market”,

but students are not market traders and they do not easily slip a second time into the womb of higher education when they have been let down by that new shiny market.

Cutting corners in the process of becoming a higher education provider also poses a serious risk to staff and students, and increases the risk of public money being misused. We know that in 2011 concerns around BPP and the Apollo group caused the previous Secretary of State, David Willetts, to pause a major extension. Previous expansion of private providers in other jurisdictions has already affected the reputation of their higher education systems, with reports of phantom students, fraud and low quality of education. As Research Fortnight argued in May:

“The government’s proposed reforms are being billed as bold and innovative but in fact they are no such thing.”

It says the wording

“proportionate for the Bill’s regulatory aspects”

is “code for light touch” and that

“instead…the UK government has instead decided to emulate a model from which many in the rest of the world want to escape.”

Encouraging universities or new providers is important, but

“the title of university needs to be seen as a privilege…not an automatic entitlement”

and,

“in the long term it is quality that is at risk if the proposed legislation becomes law.”

One example of a potential threat to quality, which concerns a number of universities, might be the proliferation of private medical schools. Three new medical schools will be opened in England by 2017 and possibly as many as 20 may seek to enter the market in the next few years. These schools will be able to operate free of some of the restrictions facing publicly funded medical schools, in particular around the recruitment of home, EU and international students. That will create a distorted playing field, where existing institutions are unable to expand home or international intakes without penalty. It is also feared that they will have limited engagement with research, lowering the standard of medical education in the UK.

Baroness Alison Wolf was a part of the excellent Sainsbury report to which the Secretary of State referred earlier. In June, fresh from a stay in Australia, which has had its own provider controversies, she urged caution on the back of the experiences in higher education she had found there. She said:

“The Australian experience confirms the madness of the removal of caps on enrolments. I think it is morally outrageous that we encourage young people to take out these big loans and give up years of their lives when it is increasingly becoming obvious that in some universities the average earnings of graduates is lower than the average salary of non-graduates.”

UCU added its concerns, not least about the removal of minimum student numbers from the criteria for university title. So why are we scrapping the right to confer title by the Privy Council? In the rest of the world that might be seen as a symbol of excellence and scrutiny. The problematic unfolding and development of the office for students, certainly in its early years, means it will not be able to have the same sort of international clout, and it removes the role of Parliament from either approving or disapproving the university title as a backstop.

The alternative White Paper, produced by a broad group of researchers and academics—it is a good read—has also done us a service by reminding us of the history and chequered process over alternative providers under this Government and their predecessor. In December 2014, the Public Accounts Committee robustly criticised officials from BIS for repeatedly ignoring warnings from the Higher Education Funding Council for England about the for-profit sector. In the report published in February 2015, the Chair reported that

“Between 2010-11 and 2013-14, there was a rise in the number of students claiming support for courses at alternative providers, from 7,000 to 53,000. The total amount of public money paid to these students…increased from £50 million to around £675 million. The Department pressed ahead with the expansion of the alternative provider sector without sufficient regulation in place to protect public money.”

My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) has already referred to the famous photographed private memo casting doubt on BIS’s ability to solve this problem.

The Secretary of State talked about past objections. I think it was a recycling of something the Minister said recently to the Higher Education Policy Institute conference, although she did not go quite so far back as the Minister, who took us back to the 1820s and the “cockney universities”. When the Minister was asked what these new institutions would look like, having already had a lukewarm response from Google and Facebook, he could only say that a lot of them were interested.

The concern is for students whose institutions are forced to close. It is still unclear what resources the proposed office for students would have to police this or how affected students could be financially compensated and given a clear plan for completing their education. The White Paper says that all institutions will have an exit plan for their students, but how will it work? The Government’s own equality assessment admits:

“Ethnic minority students are more likely to come from a disadvantaged background which may mean that they cannot access the same financial or social resources as white British students in the event of a course or campus closure. We therefore expect”—

not “demand” or “will organise”—

“protection plans to have a greater impact on this group.”

[Margaret Greenwood]

On potential closures, does my hon. Friend agree that this is of particular concern to mature students choosing to study in universities in their immediate locality? Because they have to continue to work, support children and family members and so forth, a closure would create extreme difficulties for them.

[Mr Marsden]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to bring us back to the nub of the issue, which is the family circumstances of the people affected.

In those blithe phrases from the equality assessment lurks the potential for hundreds of broken careers and dashed hopes of social mobility. As serious is the reputational damage that failed challenger institutions or scandals associated with them could do to universities as a UK international brand. The Government’s White Paper was already blasé about the potential knock-on effects for UK plc of their sweeping changes. HE providers across England and the devolved nations of Britain are internationally competitive because they are seen as part of a tried and trusted UK brand. There needs to be a UK-wide strategy in place to safeguard that. As we emerge into a post-Brexit world, it will be even more vital, if we want our UK brand to shine as brightly as possible, that we reassure Scotland and Northern Ireland, especially where there remain unresolved tensions over research between UKRI and the new England-only bodies.

The Government say that the office for students will cover access and participation, but what concrete action there will be to match the rhetoric remains unseen. There remain major concerns about how quality assurance will be affected by the merger of the functions of HEFCE and the QAA. The Government have consistently undermined their own rhetoric on widening participation with cuts to ESOL—English for speakers of other languages—adult skills and social mobility funding for universities, alongside their disastrous decision to scrap maintenance grants for loans, for which we held them to account in this Chamber in January.

Peter Lampl and the Sutton Trust, who have championed that access for more than a decade, repeated their fears in their briefing on the Bill, including, specifically—this has been alluded to but the Secretary of State was unable to give an answer—the fact that English students have the highest level of debt in the English-speaking world. The figures are: £44,000 on graduation and over £50,000 for those requiring maintenance loans.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Marsden]

I am always happy to applaud excellence in the secondary sector, but it is a little rich coming from the right hon. Gentleman, given that he and his predecessor presided over a system in which level 4 schoolchildren were denied automatic access to work experience, which would have built up their skills and capacity to take some of these positions.

[Margaret Greenwood]

On quality in schools, does my hon. Friend agree that there is also the issue of access to further education, particularly adult education? I used to teach on an access to higher education course in a college for adults. When it comes to accessing higher education, that sort of provision is invaluable, particularly for people from disadvantaged backgrounds, but sadly the Bill is very short on anything to do with lifelong learning and part-time education.

[Mr Marsden]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I intend to remedy that as best I can in my remaining remarks.

In the briefing for the Bill, the Office for Fair Access emphasises that it needs to retain the ultimate authority to approve or refuse access agreements. It is timely to emphasise that OfS board members should have expertise around social mobility and fair access. The Bill’s introduction of a transparency duty for higher education applications is positive, but as the Sutton Trust said in May, the Government’s record on improving social mobility is poor. We agree with the National Union of Students that the Government need to create a requirement for an annual participation report.

If we want the office for students to be a genuine office for students, there also needs to be a designated place on the board for a student representative. However, it is not only students who are key stakeholders but people working at all levels in our institutions, and that is why I particularly underline what Unison said about the lack of accountable strategic decision making around employers and students remaining a concern. That is something else that the OFS needs to look at.

We cannot get away from the fact that the student position is nowhere near as rosy as the Government are saying. For 20 years, the official position has been that maintenance support is not meant fully to cover the annual costs of living for full-time students. The loans are supposed to be supplemented by earnings or contributions from family. Too little attention has been paid to the other debts that students contract. The debate around increases to tuition fees is important, but the fundamental problem of sustainability also lies in maintenance support and student cost of living. That is why student dissatisfaction levels are so high and so alarming.

I turn now to the issues around the separation of regulation and funding between teaching at OFS and research at the new UKRI body. GuildHE says that it risks undermining some of the positive interaction between teaching and research. I have already set out the risks that allowing challenger institutions degree-awarding powers from day one could have on the quality of our institutions. The regulation needs to be robust, rather than just proportionate, but as I have emphasised when we debated the Government’s scrapping of student maintenance grants earlier this year, FE colleges are a key driver of social mobility. They deliver more than 10% of all HE courses in this country, often to the most disadvantaged students and often in places with a dearth of stand-alone HE provision and a history of low skills in the local economy. They span the country, from the NCG in the north-east to Cornwall college and my own excellent Blackpool and the Fylde college.

Last year, 33,700 English applicants were awarded maintenance grants for HE courses at FE colleges. One would have thought, therefore, that the Government would have seen them as a key element for expansion as part of their array of challenger institutions, yet hidden away in the annex to the impact assessment for the Bill is the Government’s forecast for the number of FE colleges that will be delivering HE as a result of the Bill. The forecast figure for 2027-28 is exactly the same as that projected for 2018-19, whereas other alternative providers are projected to more than double in number. It is true that the Bill will make it easier for FE colleges to get degree-awarding powers, but what comfort will that bring when systematic cuts to colleges’ ESOL provision, adult skills and other areas have reduced the capacity of FE to participate in HE expansion?

In addition, many key HE programmes on which both FE colleges and modern universities rely could be scrapped if up to £725 million of EU money currently going to local enterprise partnerships is lost—money that produces jobs and skills for them and their communities and on which hundreds of courses and staff depend.

Teachers Strike

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

I accept that the changes implemented in the past five years have been radical. They have taken many years to prepare. The primary curriculum was published in 2013 and became law in September 2014, and the first assessment of it took place in May 2016. The first teaching of the English and maths GCSE reforms began in September 2015, after four or five years of preparation, and the first teaching of a number of other subjects will take place this September. I understand the work involved in preparing for a new specification and a new curriculum, but the changes are hugely important and they will have a dramatic impact on the standard of education in our state schools in the year ahead. That is a prize well worth delivering, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will support higher academic standards in our state schools.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

In encouraging people to go into teaching, what reassurance can the Minister give to those who want to teach art, drama and music that there will be departments that require their services in the years ahead?

[Mr Gibb]

There was a Westminster Hall debate on this issue yesterday, during which I set out the figures for art and design and for music. They show that the take-up and entry figures for those subjects have remained stable, notwithstanding the introduction of the EBacc combination of core academic subjects. It is important that more young people take those core academic subjects of maths, English, science, a humanity subject and a modern foreign language at GCSE. That is what happens in a number of high-performing jurisdictions around the world. We want our young people to be competent in a foreign language. That is why we set a target that 90% of pupils will be taking the EBacc combination by 2020, but that does not mean that there is no space or time in the school curriculum for those important creative arts subjects.

Bill Presented

Digital Economy Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Secretary John Whittingdale, supported by the Prime Minister, Secretary Sajid Javid, Secretary Stephen Crabb, Secretary Greg Clark, Secretary Nicky Morgan, Secretary Amber Rudd, secretary Elizabeth Truss, Matthew Hancock, Mr David Gauke and Mr Edward Vaizey, presented a Bill to make provision about electronic communications infrastructure and services; to provide for restricting access to online pornography; to make provision about protection of intellectual property in connection with electronic communications; to make provision about data-sharing; to make provision about functions of OFCOM in relation to the BBC; to provide for determination by the BBC of age-related TV licence fee concessions; to make provision about the regulation of direct marketing; to make other provision about OFCOM and its functions; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 45) with explanatory notes (Bill 45-EN).

EBacc: Expressive Arts Subjects

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Lammy]

I know the figures game, as I have sat where the Minister is. When he replies to the debate, will he break those figures down into state schools, academies and private schools? If he does, I think we will find that the pattern is very different indeed.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

Will the Minister also inform us what has happened to the provision of individual music lessons for pupils in Sefton?

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend is right. I hope that the Minister comes to that in his round-up, and perhaps he will also talk about Tottenham.

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[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

I want to say first that my sister is learning associate at the Unicorn theatre for children, which works with schoolchildren on drama projects.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) on introducing this important debate, which goes to the heart of the question of what education is for. The English baccalaureate is a performance measure for schools, awarded when students secure a grade C or above at GCSE across a core of five academic subjects—English language, mathematics, history or geography, the sciences and a language—and English literature at any grade. That sets up a hierarchy of value and suggests that English literature is less important than the other core subjects—something that I as a former English teacher would hotly dispute—and that the expressive arts subjects of art, music, drama and dance are of secondary importance. I believe that nothing could be further from the truth.

Through the arts, pupils can explore ideas in the most imaginative of ways. They can develop their powers of verbal and non-verbal expression through physical theatre, painting, music and dance, and can gain an understanding of and a love for our rich cultural heritage. To deny the arts is to deny what it is to be human. Undermine the arts in the curriculum—for that is what the current EBacc does—and we see a spiral of decline in provision, with the expressive arts becoming something accessible only to those privileged children whose parents can afford to pay for after-school activities, with others being left behind.

The hierarchy of value has implications for school planning and resourcing. Entries for GCSEs in arts subjects have fallen by 46,000 this year according to new figures recording England’s exam entries for 2016. It is not difficult to understand that if fewer pupils are taking a subject, demand dwindles and music, drama and art departments will shed staff, damaging the morale of the staff who remain. The uptake of creative subjects fell by 14% from 2010 to 2015, and our creative industries are facing a skills shortage. The Government’s figures show that the creative industries represent more than 5% of the UK economy—more than £84 billion in 2014—and grew by almost 10% between 2013 and 2014. The sector employs almost 2 million people.

The issue is not only about what arts education can deliver to our economy. We are facing a mental health crisis among our young people. We should be providing them with an education that makes them feel integrated and whole and uses all parts of their creativity, and does not just focus on high academic achievement. We know that developing the arts and creativity is important for mental wellbeing. The stories of actors who have been saved by drama at a young age are legion. One such actor told me that theatre had saved him from getting involved in drugs as a teenager. He grew up on an estate riddled with crime, but there was something about theatrical expression that just clicked for him and gave him a way out. I recently met a senior police officer on Merseyside. He felt our education was too obsessed with high academic achievement and that our neglect of educational activities that develop the whole person is leading to real problems in our society, with young people who do not want to or are unable to follow an academic route not being given the opportunity to acquire a broad education that will help them develop as people. That is quite an indictment.

The Government seem to suggest that the English baccalaureate would not be to the detriment of the arts. In response to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) in 2013, they gave the reassuring words:

“The English Baccalaureate measure…leaves space for pupils to study creative subjects alongside a strong academic core. We believe good school leaders will continue to make time for artistic and cultural education.”—[Official Report, 25 April 2013; Vol. 561, c. 1174W.]

In fact, it has not worked out that way. Taking the example of art and design, we find a worrying picture. A recent survey by the National Society for Education in Art and Design found that exclusion from the EBacc is leading arts and creative subjects in state schools to be less valued and accorded less time in the school curriculum, accentuating an existing trend.

At least a third and up to 44% of teacher responses to the survey indicated that the time allocated for art and design over all key stages had decreased in the last five years. For state schools, where respondents identified that there had been a reduction of time allocated for art and design, 93% of those teachers agreed or strongly agreed that the EBacc had reduced opportunities for students to select their subjects. Those changes are in turn affecting the morale of the teachers of those subjects. Some 56% of respondents reported that the reduced profile and value given to their subject by the Government and by school management had contributed to teachers leaving or wanting to leave the profession. We cannot afford to let that happen.

There is a famous quote from Winston Churchill who, when asked to cut funding for the arts in favour of the war effort, said if not that,

“then what are we fighting for?”

That is a key point, because the arts are vital to our culture. We must guard and nourish them. If we do not have artistic expression, we cannot know ourselves and as people we are diminished. I urge the Minister to pause and take time out to reconsider the value of arts education.

Pupils from Overchurch Junior School in my constituency will be performing a production based on the works of William Shakespeare in conjunction with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 10 Downing Street this Wednesday. I urge the Minister to come along, take a fresh look and see at first hand just what drama and the expressive arts can give to our young people. The idea that there is no rigour comparable to that of the core EBacc subjects in mastering the major roles in the works of Shaw, Beckett or Shakespeare is demonstrably untrue.

Finally, the English baccalaureate has been developed as a performance measure for schools, not as the best possible curriculum offer we can provide for our young people. As such, it is distorting the balance of educational provision, and I urge the Minister to think again about the detrimental impact it is having on arts education in our country.

[Mr Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

I call Carol Monaghan.

Education, Skills and Training

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

The Queen’s Speech set out the Government’s intention to publish a life chances strategy, which I understand will be separate from, but run alongside, their new indicators for child poverty, which are being introduced as part of the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016. What could be more fundamental to improving life chances than improving access to education, skills and training?

On Friday, I hosted an all-party group event on adult education and its future at the Carr Bridge community centre in Woodchurch in my constituency. The event was part of a piece of research being carried out by the Workers Educational Association and the University of Warwick, and it brought together experts in the field from right across Merseyside, including Wirral Metropolitan College, Wirral Council, Unite the union and staff from Ganneys Meadow nursery school who voluntarily provide GCSE maths classes for parents, because they know the value of the trusted community setting.

The conversation that afternoon was rich and valuable, and I wish to focus on two areas that were discussed with real passion. The first was the provision of literacy and numeracy classes to people with no qualifications or with low levels of qualification, and the second was the provision of a broad curriculum for all adults with a desire to learn and the need for us to rediscover a vision for lifelong learning in our country.

We know that there is a real problem with basic literacy and numeracy skills among adults in this country. The latest survey published by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in 2011 found that nearly 15% of 16 to 65-year-olds—around 5 million people—are functionally illiterate. That is a really damning indictment of one of the richest countries on earth. A total of 23.7% of participants in the survey—around 8 million people—lacked basic numeracy skills.

In 2013, an OECD study of 24 developed countries ranked England 11th in literacy and 17th in numeracy for people aged 16 to 65. Those aged between 16 and 24 fared even worse, being ranked 22nd and 21st respectively.

Last week, when I was walking down a road I saw a couple of children out playing. They were probably aged between three and four years old. All of a sudden, their mother appeared, tearing down the street and swearing at them to get back indoors. As I looked at them, it was clear to me that there was no future for those children. Their mother needs help.

I know from my own experience as a former adult basic skills tutor the powerful impact that the provision of free, friendly and accessible classes in the community setting can have on the lives of people who struggle to find the confidence to read and to write. I know, too, the powerful self-esteem that can flow when an adult is given the opportunity to learn—after all, we have all experienced that ourselves.

Seeing the mother and her children reminded me of the scene in “A Christmas Carol” where the Ghost of Christmas Present shows Scrooge two children emerging from under his robe. He describes them as

“wretched, abject, frightful, hideous and miserable.”

Scrooge asks Spirit, “Are they yours?” The Spirit replies:

“They are man’s…This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware of them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy…beware ignorance the most.”

That message is as true today as it was in Dickens’s time. We all know the adage, “Teach the mother and father and you will teach the child.” If we are to break cycles of deprivation, we must provide opportunities to learn in accessible community settings free of charge. To pass through this world unable to read and write with confidence is to experience a deprivation that few of us in this House can truly imagine. As one of the richest countries on earth, it is unacceptable that we allow this need to go unmet, yet the figures are telling. The total cut in the adult skills budget between 2010 and 2011 and 2015 and 2016 is around 37% in real terms, which has decimated local services, hence the need for voluntary provision, which I find unacceptable.

Then there is the matter of how we value those who teach basic literacy and numeracy. I know myself that tutors are very often on insecure and temporary contracts, and yet the work that they do is often as important as that of psychologists, nurses and language therapists. We need to provide a clear career structure and training for these basic skills tutors that properly rewards them and the work that they do.

Let me now turn to the matter of wider adult education provision, including those classes for which there is no requirement to take an exam or acquire a qualification. Back in the 1970s, we could walk past any number of schools in the evening and see the lights ablaze with classes full of people studying art, maths, Spanish, history, woodwork and yoga—the list was endless. We all recognise the value of having access to a swimming pool to maintain our physical health. Why do we not pay similar attention to public provision to foster creativity and maintain mental health? Why do we not value education for education’s sake and understand that some people want to learn without working to an exam? This is particularly important in an ageing society in which social isolation is a growing and significant public health issue. Education has an important role to play in tackling that. I believe we should foster a positive culture of lifelong learning so that we can all continue to learn, grow and share with others in our communities. To ignore our creativity and our ability to learn is to deny our society its full potential and deny all of us our humanity.

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[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

This is the climbdown Queen’s Speech or the “as much as we can muster together” Queen’s Speech. It is a Queen’s Speech so fearful of its own destiny—or should I say demise?—that it seeks hardly any powers at all. Nowhere is that more stark than in its flimsy offerings on education and skills.

The Prime Minister said only a few weeks ago that

“academies for all…will be in the Queen’s Speech.”—[Official Report, 27 April 2016; Vol. 608, c. 1422.]

Yet the word “academy” did not even appear in Her Majesty’s Gracious Speech.

The Government had one big idea for education: to force all schools, against their wishes, to become academies. That has been dropped as quickly as it was unveiled to shore up the Chancellor’s lacklustre Budget. There remains a schools Bill, but it is hardly worth the paper it is written on and raises more questions than it answers. If that is the sum total of the new thinking of the first Conservative majority Government in more than 20 years, their education policy is in a very dire state indeed. In the process, their flip-flopping has wasted the valuable time and energy not just of the Department, which is failing to get the basics right, but of school leaders, parents and teachers around the country, who are in open revolt at the Government’s approach.

What a crying shame that after so many years of real progress in education by successive Governments, particularly the last Labour one, this Government are now presiding over a school system in crisis. It is mired by chaos and confusion created by incessant ministerial meddling, and the basics of sufficiency in quality teachers, school places and budgets are woefully lacking. For the first time in a long time, education is right back up there as an issue of public concern.

As we have heard in the excellent speeches by my hon. Friends the Members for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) and for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), and by many Conservative Members, there is relief at the Government’s decision to U-turn on forced academisation. However, the Government seem to have missed the point of the wide alliance that their plans have forged. It is not simply about the politically inept idea of compelling already good and outstanding schools to become academies against their wishes; it is about wider concerns about the desire for a fully academised system—without the underpinning evidence, capacity or robust oversight and accountability—leading to many more Perry Beeches or E-ACTs. Many of those concerns remain, but the Government have failed to address any of them or to produce any clear evidence. Vague assertions and loose statistics that have no correlation to cause and effect simply will not do.

The evidence remains patchy. Analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers shows that only three of the biggest academy chains got a positive value-added rating and that just one of the 26 biggest primary sponsors achieved results above the national average. In areas where there is still underachievement at GCSE, most or all secondary schools are already academies. The highest-performing part of our school system is in primary, where more than 80% of schools are maintained and rated good or outstanding, and where most of the Education Secretary’s 1.4 million good new places have been created. There is simply no evidence that academisation in itself leads to school improvement. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) made many of those points, and my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Julie Cooper) made some excellent points about the fragmented and poor planning that the school system creates. That is why we now have a shell of a schools Bill and a Government with absolutely nothing else to say. I ask the Secretary of State again to get the independent analysis, take stock, ensure that best practice—not worst practice—is being spread and develop high-quality chains to take on more schools before seeking more powers to accelerate academisation.

I support the Secretary of State’s plans to require maths to be taught until the age of 18. Indeed, I think that that should be extended to English, too. But her ambition will fail completely if she does not take urgent action to tackle the chronic shortage of teachers, particularly in maths.

[Margaret Greenwood]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government’s failure to get to grips with the retention of schoolteachers is hurtling us towards crisis?

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[Lucy Powell]

The right hon. Lady shakes her head, but that is the reality on the ground. I could give her a number of examples of that happening in every part of the country.

The Government could have ensured a robust and consistent testing and assessment framework. Instead, we have seen chaos and confusion—calamity after calamity on SATs with baseline testing being abandoned, and new and radically different GCSEs still not ready just weeks before they are due to begin. Today’s kids are guinea pigs for the Government’s chaotic experiments. In every other public sphere, Ministers are championing devolution, yet in education they are going in the opposite direction.

[Margaret Greenwood]

My hon. Friend is being very generous with her time. Does she agree with a point put to me on Friday by a senior police officer on Merseyside that the Government are failing to provide an education that develops our children, particularly those who are not going to gain high academic qualifications, and that that is spilling over in the creation of lots of problems for our police and social services?

[Lucy Powell]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point about the narrowing of the curriculum that we have seen under this Government.

This week’s IPPR North report warns of the growing regional divide. As my hon. Friends the Members for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) and for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) highlighted, Ministers cannot build a northern powerhouse or a midlands engine of growth if they take away the levers that communities are using to tackle the deep-rooted causes of low attainment. However, the real headline of the report is just how well London has done. Why is that? It is—to name but a few reasons—because of the London challenge, significant resources and the development of a pool of world-class teachers. The Government seem to be ignoring all those lessons. Indeed, they are putting such achievements at risk by taking away further resources.

This is a programme from a Government who are unable to persuade even their own Members of the merits of their proposals, who are out of ideas for schools and education and who talk of improved life chances but whose actions make life much harder for those with the least. The Government’s education record has been one of structural change at the expense of standards, chronic teacher shortages, a schools places crisis, falling budgets and assessment in complete and utter meltdown. Their own record is now coming home to roost, and on it they will be judged.

Oral Answers to Questions

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Joseph Johnson)]

We took the decision to protect the science budget, enabling us to invest and put the UK at the front of tackling diseases such as dementia. In addition, a Government investment of £150 million has been announced by the Prime Minister to establish a dementia research institute. I am pleased to confirm that two leading charities, the Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer’s Research UK, have now pledged a further £100 million towards the project. The Medical Research Council will be looking for an inspirational director to lead the institute and bring together the collective experience that exists in the UK and worldwide.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

T2. Guidance issued by the Government on 8 February on the use of Government-funded research for lobbying caused great concern in the field of higher education and indeed among academics in my constituency of Wirral West. Can the Minister confirm that all grants given out under the remit of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills will be exempt from the anti-lobbying clause? Will he also confirm that he is seeking a similar exemption for research grants given out by other Government Departments and agencies?

[Joseph Johnson]

Yes, there has been concern from academic communities and I can confirm that all grants issued by the Higher Education Funding Council for England and the academies will not be covered by that clause.

Enterprise Bill [Lords]

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I wonder, then, whether the hon. Lady agreed with one of the comments that Andrew Fisher made in his book:

“The sole focus of economic debate today seems to be about what leads to economic growth.”

“Why”, he asks,

“are we so obsessed with economic growth?”

In the blurb, the shadow Chancellor called it the best thing he has read in years. On the Government Benches we know why sensible people are obsessed with economic growth: it means more jobs, it means prosperity, it lifts people out of poverty, it pays for our health service and our schools, and it allows us to invest in the future of our nation.

We know that growth is not created by politicians or by civil servants. It is not delivered by Whitehall diktat, or by printing money, or by creating an ever-expanding public sector. Economic growth comes from one thing, and one thing alone: successful private businesses.

The role of Government is to create an environment in which businesses can thrive. So, while Labour’s policy chief dreams of handing taxpayers’ money to trade unions so they can buy out companies, this Government are taking action to back British business.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

In November of last year the green investment bank announced it had raised £10 billion in green infrastructure investment in the last three years. At the time the Secretary of State said:

“As this milestone shows, the Green Investment Bank is going from strength to strength and is having a major impact supporting renewable energy projects across the whole of the UK.”

This, at the moment, is not a private company—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

Order. Lots of Members wish to speak. If the hon. Lady would like me to put her name at the end of my list of those wishing to speak, I will do that, but otherwise interventions must be short, as must the responses.

[Margaret Greenwood]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. We have heard what we need.