Youth Service Provision

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Alex Cunningham

Wednesday 3rd December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Alex Cunningham]

My hon. Friend is correct. I will not take anything away from the NCS; I think it is a tremendous and very effective programme. The young people whom I spoke to were really enjoying it and they told me that they were learning tremendous things, but as my hon. Friend said, it does not address year-round provision. It is six weeks, then there is a cliff edge and the provision ends.

The loss of specialist staff and locally tailored services should worry us all in that context. Young people want and need to be able to socialise in a safe and secure environment, but they also need specific professional support in many areas of their life, yet the Government measures forced on local authorities will leave many young people with nowhere to go but street corners. What my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) mentioned is probably an example of that. It does not just risk encouraging antisocial behaviour; more importantly, it will leave young people in very vulnerable situations and potentially victims of who knows what as they spend their time on the streets.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is outlining some consequences for socialisation and for the benefits of engaging young people in constructive behaviour. Does he agree—this is on the basis of my discussion with youth workers in Sheffield—that there is an even more significant loss related to youth provision during school holidays, because youth workers have said to me, “Frankly, if people do not engage in these schemes and these schemes are threatened, they will not eat that day”? Is the provision of food within these activities not a serious dimension of this problem that we ought to consider?

[Alex Cunningham]

Most certainly, because a lot of these programmes are aimed specifically at young people from deprived backgrounds who may not have access to the theme parks and holiday experiences that are enjoyed by other young people. It is all the more important that the service provision is there—and that they can eat there. When I went to the NCS in Stockton, they were doing some cooking. I did not care for the famous Parmo pork, with cheese spread over the top, and the pizzas that they made, but they were actually doing something. People said, “It is not very healthy food,” but at least they were eating, and we need to make sure that young people can eat along the way as well.

In many poorer communities, youth clubs and similar facilities are the only service available to young people and provide opportunities to learn new skills and channel their energies productively, but youth centres are so much more than simply a hangout place for young people. Yes, that is one element of the function they serve, and a very welcome one, but well-managed youth centres serve a dual purpose that will now be missed.

That open-access provision is a gateway to early intervention, reaching out to vulnerable youngsters who might otherwise be missed by other services or whose needs might escalate before they are picked up by targeted services. These open-access services are often more appropriate than targeted interventions when it comes to improving outcomes for young people. However, the large numbers of young people at risk of falling through the cracks in provision will not become evident for perhaps five or 10 years, by which time it will be too late.

Stockton-on-Tees borough council, which is responsible for youth services within my constituency, has seen the number of youth centres halved to just 12. That said, through much hard work, I understand that they have succeeded in attracting greater numbers of young people and on a more frequent basis. I take my hat off to them; that is very positive. However, in outlying areas, where provision for young people is generally poorest, the loss of somewhere to go that is close to home is a real problem for communities.

Across the country, the remaining youth provision is provided by youth workers who are thinly spread, overworked and, consequently, less able to fulfil their roles effectively. There is an obvious detriment to the services that they provide and to the young people with whom they work. Although local authorities are limiting the extent of cuts in youth service spending as best they can, that has largely been achieved by reducing the numbers of professional youth workers with the important JNC—Joint Negotiating Committee for Youth and Community Workers—qualification and the skills that come with that.

Again, the context is crucial. In the same two-year period that has seen the number of youth centres dwindle, 2,000 valuable skilled youth workers have been lost from the system. The Unison report highlighted the fact that, as a result, 41,000 youth service places for young people have disappeared, meaning that 35,000 hours of outreach have vanished from youth service provision. That loss is particularly concerning because by building relationships of trust and support with young people, specialist youth workers can actively engage with their communities and help young people to make their own informed decisions about their lives and develop confidence and resilience. In short, youth workers play a central role in supporting young people, yet their years of hard work are being dispensed with and the successes that they have worked hard to achieve are being jeopardised by scything Government cutbacks.

As if that was not bad enough, it has emerged that, as has often been the case under this Government, the impact of the cuts has been felt particularly hard in some of our most deprived communities. In such areas, youth services play an even more significant role: helping young people into work, avoiding and preventing substance abuse and tackling problems of antisocial behaviour and gang violence, as well as boosting community cohesion. However, the effects of austerity have been concentrated in those very communities. The education maintenance allowance has been removed, while support from the access to learning fund and the student opportunity fund has been cut. Housing benefit for the under-25s has been cut, tuition fees have trebled, making higher education more expensive than ever before, and careers services have been slashed. Those cuts are severely short-sighted and will add up to even greater problems as we move forward.

Let us take, for example, the careers service. At a sitting of the Select Committee on Education last week, Lorna Fitzjohn, Ofsted’s national director for further education and skills, reminded MPs that their assessment of the quality of careers advice in schools was that it was less than good in four out of five. It is no wonder: the Government dumped the careers service on schools—I acknowledge that they have the National Careers Service—but did not provide them with the funding that went with the responsibility. They were relying on the national service to offer additional guidance, but few young people have even heard of it.

There are some examples of very good practice, but in most cases, it is left to ill-equipped teachers to cobble something together and, if they have the right contacts, encourage a few employers to come in and chat to the young people. Association of Colleges research indicates that less than half of all colleges have reported that schools in their area are delivering the requirement to provide independent careers advice and guidance. Largely gone are the professional people who had the breadth of knowledge of different opportunities that provided the young with options best suited to their needs.

The Unison survey found that the majority of schools had reduced their careers advice and had no place for careers experts. Research by the university of Derby found that out of 144 local authorities, only 15 would maintain a substantial careers service. Ofsted’s promised review of careers guidance—that particular area of youth services—in 2015-16 cannot come soon enough.

In the current economic climate, which has seen unprecedented levels of youth unemployment and witnessed 1 million young people being out of work, education or training, there can be no doubt about the need for qualified youth workers, who are able to guide our young people into making the right choices for their lives and provide the support necessary for them to enter the work force. We cannot ignore the fact that young people are far more likely to be unemployed than those in older age groups, who are more likely to have experience on their side.

I am fortunate that Stockton borough council is very much a forward-thinking local authority. Its Youth Direction service is therefore geared to provide to young people across the borough a range of resources, including careers advice, business support and an array of targeted youth support projects, but it is the innovation that comes with that proactive provision that is particularly impressive. Working alongside the council’s antisocial behaviour team to carry out joint patrols in Billingham, the Youth Direction service is assisting with the targeting of identified hot spot areas and is actively contributing to reduced instances of antisocial behaviour according to police statistics.

Teaching Assistants

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Alex Cunningham

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Alex Cunningham]

I have been amazed by somebody working with children with special needs; I will give that example later. Those people play a vital role and children with special needs in particular would suffer directly as a result of any reduction.

The aim of the workload agreement was simple: to allow teachers to teach. To do this, the agreement sought to lessen pressure on teachers by reducing the administrative bureaucracy and cutting teachers’ hours through the creation of new and expanded school support roles, including teaching assistants and higher level teaching assistants, and providing extra resource and high-level support for teachers.

Teaching assistants now make up more than a quarter of the total school work force in England, with more than 359,000 in classrooms across England alone. The vast majority—almost 250,000—work in primary schools; almost 20% are in secondary schools; and 9% are in special schools. With primary schools spending £2.8 billion on teaching assistants and support staff in 2010-11 and secondary schools spending £1.6 billion during the same period, such support accounts for a large proportion of the annual education budget. It is for precisely this reason that the role and worth of teaching assistants have been in the public spotlight, particularly since questions were raised several years ago about the value for money that they provide.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend’s debate is critically important. Many of us have been concerned that the pressure on budgets will lead to the loss of teaching assistants. Does he note that one of our biggest concerns as a society at the moment is adult literacy and numeracy? Does he recognise the research from the Education Endowment Foundation, which highlighted the fact that teaching assistants, used effectively, can play a particularly important role in developing literacy and numeracy among children?

[Alex Cunningham]

Yes, that is most certainly the case. Many years ago my wife was a volunteer assistant with adult literacy. I recognise so much the benefit of one-to-one opportunities for children with particular needs, including language and numeracy, who can benefit tremendously if they have that face-to-face contact with a teaching assistant.

The report by the Institute of Education, “Deployment and Impact of Support Staff in Schools”, was surprising, in that it found a negative relationship between the amount of teaching assistant support and academic progress in students. Similarly, Reform’s report also suggested that as much as £1.7 billion could be saved each year, through reducing the costs associated with teaching assistants, and repeatedly contended that teaching assistants

“have a negligible effect on educational outcomes”,

and even claiming that their interventions can

“harm a child’s education”.

However, these findings are very much the result of a Government who focus squarely on resource allocation and productivity per pound spent, rather than on actual educational outcomes and opportunities provided. To put it another way, this is ideologically driven attentiveness to cost at the expense of value. Indeed, several articles last summer reinforced this point. A piece in The Sunday Times, for instance, appearing in the run-up to the comprehensive spending review, argued that teaching assistants should be cut, as the evidence suggests that they do not have a positive impact on pupil attainment. In a similar fashion, an article in the Daily Mail also reported that officials from the Treasury and the Department for Education were considering mass reductions in the number of teaching assistants working in our classrooms, citing an effort to

“save some of the £4 billion a year spent on them”.

Again, the focus was primarily on finances, with the article suggesting that schools

“could improve value for money by cutting the number of teaching assistants and increasing class sizes”.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Alex Cunningham

Monday 16th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

5. What steps his Department is taking to reduce the number of young people not in education, employment or training.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

9. What steps his Department is taking to reduce the number of young people not in education, employment or training.