Oral Answers to Questions

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The hon. Member will recall that when I was Minister for Children and Families, I met the all-party parliamentary group, an incredibly important group, which I know that the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), the current Children and Families Minister, will continue to engage with. We have confirmed that continuation of supplementary funding for maintained nurseries through the spending review period, which provides the sector with long-term clarity. I am happy to meet the hon. Member and the APPG to go through the details.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I strongly welcome my right hon. Friend to his place and thank him for the big Budget increases in education, particularly the 42% increase in cash terms for skills.

Will my right hon. Friend continue to make the case for a longer school day? We know from the Education Policy Institute that it increases educational attainment by two to three months, especially among disadvantaged pupils. According to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, a longer school day increases numeracy by 29%. Will my right hon. Friend at least consider some pilot schemes in disadvantaged areas around the country whereby we can have a longer school day?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful to the Chair of the Education Committee for his question. The priority has to be those children and students who have the least time available to recover. That is why the £800 million for 16 to 19-year-olds for an additional 40 hours of education is so important, plus the £1 billion going into secondary and primary, making a total of £5 billion of recovery money. There are excellent examples in some multi-academy trusts of a longer school day, which I will look at. The average school day is now six and a half hours, and I would like to see everybody moving towards that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Thanks to you!

[Dr Johnson]

I’ve only got three kids. [Laughter.]

Anyway, the lovely market town of Sleaford is growing, which is causing capacity issues for both the boys’ and the girls’ grammar school sites, which are fairly constrained in the town centre. Thanks to the bequest of a very generous lady, the school has identified a site for a joint grammar school building. May I ask my hon. Friend for his support and that of the Government as part of the school rebuilding programme?

Coronavirus: Education Setting Attendance and Support for Pupils

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Thursday 23rd September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Education Committee.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I am pleased to see the Minister, my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour, in his place.

As I understand it from our discussions with the chief medical officer at the Education Committee yesterday and from the Government, the key purpose of the vaccination programme is to keep our children in school. However, I have been sent a letter by parents about the Teddington School in Middlesex, run by Bourne Education Trust, that shows that all students will be sent home on Friday 24 September, after a day of vaccinations today. Therefore, despite Government guidance, there are examples of schools doing this, or of whole year groups being grounded at home or even closed down completely. Will my hon. Friend make sure that schools follow Government guidance to the letter and do not send children home? He should ring the headteachers himself to make sure that we keep our children learning. Will he also ensure that the catch-up fund reaches the poorest and most disadvantaged students, because we know that 44% of students receiving the pupil premium are being missed, and that there are huge regional disparities as well?

[Alex Burghart]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question, and I look forward to working with him in his role as Chair of the Education Committee and as a venerable defender of the needs of children and of the voters who follow.

It is extremely important that schools follow departmental guidance. I am sure that my officials will have heard the example that my right hon. Friend has just given. The message is clear: the best place for children is in schools and there are very clear criteria that tell us when children should be there.

Oral Answers to Questions

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

We are working across the sector to ensure that there is an ever-expanded offer of higher technical qualifications. The lifetime skills guarantee has been introduced and has already had excellent take-up, which means that if people have missed a level 3 qualification, they have the opportunity later in life to take one completely free of charge in order to boost their future employment and earnings potential.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for what he is doing on skills and for the Government’s excellent holiday activities programme over the summer. The attainment gap between boys and girls is widening, with 62.3% of boys receiving A to C grades at GCSE, but 74% of girls receiving the same results. What is he going to do to ensure that boys are not left behind, including in the jobs market?

[Gavin Williamson]

My right hon. Friend and I are very much united in the same mission: to ensure that youngsters from some of the most disadvantaged backgrounds are given every possible advantage to be able to do the very best in their life. There is a concern about the widening gap between boys and girls, which is why all the interventions regarding standards and small group tutoring are about driving up attainment and achievement. Some of the initiatives that we have introduced—such as the summer schools in which half a million students have taken part over the last few weeks and the tutoring programme—have started to have an impact, but I recognise that there is so much more to do. That is why we are absolutely committed to deliver on this.

Awarding Qualifications in 2021 and 2022

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

I realise that the Opposition have to have a critique, but at every stage we worked methodically with Ofqual, the exam boards, stakeholders and the teachers’ unions to ensure that we devised a process for awarding grades in 2021 that was the right approach. We worked carefully and methodically with Ofqual and the exam boards, learning from what happened last summer, to determine the right adaptations for the 2022 exams in order to ensure that they are fair given all the disruption that students have suffered. We wanted to launch the short consultation before the summer break, which we did on 12 July. We want to confirm the position early in the autumn term, so that teachers know at the earliest point in the next academic year the structure for exams in 2022.

The hon. Lady raised the issue of the appeals timetable. For priority cases—where students have missed out on their firm university choice and wish to appeal results—students should request a centre review by 16 August. For non-priority cases, students should request a centre review by 3 September. Centres will need to submit priority appeals by 23 August. Students will be informed of the outcome of priority appeals in most cases by 8 September.

The hon. Lady asked about exam fee rebates. The exam boards have all confirmed that they plan to provide rebates to schools this year. Some have made announcements on the rebate already. The Department will be providing funding to exam boards directly to support the appeals costs and any autumn series losses they make. This will enable the exam boards to pass more funding back to schools via rebates.

The hon. Lady mentioned performance tables. There will be no performance tables in 2021. In 2022 there will be performance tables for GCSEs and A-levels, but not for primary school SATs, given that adaptations cannot be made in that regard.

The hon. Lady raised the issue of teachers’ pay. We do know, and I acknowledge at every possible opportunity, that teachers and support staff have worked incredibly hard over the last 16 months, adapting schools to covid and learning and preparing to teach children remotely for the first time. Teachers are very much on the frontline in the fight against the pandemic. In the September 2020 pay award, teachers received an average increase of 3.1%, with starting salaries rising by 5.5%. The cumulative pay award for teachers since 2018-19 is 8.5%. The pause on pay rises this year is across the public sector, except for health, and is designed to help address the public finances following the financial response to the pandemic. Of course, the pay pause does not prevent pay rises as a consequence of promotion or performance-related pay.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Mr Deputy Speaker, may I quickly take the chance to thank Mr Speaker, you, all the staff of the House of Commons and the other Deputy Speakers for the incredible way in which Parliament has gone on and enabled people who have been shielding to participate? It has been a miracle. I would have liked to say that had I been called in business questions to the Leader of the House.

Of course, we all want exams to take place, but given that we know that 1 million pupils were not in school this week and that 93,500 children have hardly returned to school since schools reopening on 8 March, what analysis did the Department make of the lost learning of pupils—particularly pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, many of whom have not yet benefited from the catch-up programme—who have not been in school for one reason or another in exam years before setting out the policy that the Minister has announced today?

My worry about the approach the Minister set out is that requiring exam boards to provide advance information about exam content and support means that the Government are in essence reducing a 100 metre race to a 50 metre race while keeping all the pupils at the same starting point whatever their disadvantage. The pupils who have experienced the most lost learning will still be the most disadvantaged compared with those who were in school more at the time. Could he at least consider ensuring a level playing field and taking a more nuanced data-driven approach that takes into account the fact that millions of children have experienced lost learning? That could be done by increasing the time allowed to do the exams or adjusting the grade weighting to reflect the number of days that pupils have lost.

[Nick Gibb]

My right hon. Friend’s thoughtful question raises an important point. We did consider a range of alternatives to the proposal on which we finally consulted on 12 July. We worked very closely with Ofqual and the exam boards, and optionality and advance notice disproportionately help students who have had more time out of school compared with those who have remained in school the most, who will have covered most of the curriculum. It helps those pupils. That is also why we are allocating more than £3 billion to catch-up, and the recovery premium and the 16-to-19 tuition fund are deliberately targeted at students and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Covid-19: Education Settings

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I strongly welcome the Government’s announcement today, and I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement. We need to keep our children in schools, not out of them. We know that covid-related absence in secondary schools was 10.4% on 1 July, up from 6.2% on 24 June. Other analysis suggests that year 10 pupils due to sit GCSEs next summer have missed, on average, one in four days of face-to-face teaching this year. What assessment have the Government made of the impact on children not at school in exam years, and what remedial action will they take to ensure that those children who have missed so much school have a level playing field for next year’s exams?

[Gavin Williamson]

My right hon. Friend raises a very important issue that is, of course, a concern to teachers and parents, but most of all to pupils who will be looking towards 2022 and assessment and the awarding of grades. It is our intention to move back to an exam system, but we recognise that we must ensure that mitigations are in place for pupils taking that assessment in the next academic year. We will look at sharing more information about what those mitigations are before the summer, and we will update his Education Committee and the House accordingly.

Covid-19: Impact on Attendance in Education Settings

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for what he is doing to try to keep schools open, but we have 300,000 children being sent home. In addition, 93,500 children are missing 50% of school or more, as identified by the Centre for Social Justice this week in a hard-hitting report.

We are in danger of creating a generation of ghost children, denied a proper chance to climb the education ladder of opportunity. Will my right hon. Friend update the guidance and look to establish mobile testing units in schools as soon as possible, even before September, to stop the need for children to be sent home? Will he also set out a plan, galvanising the forces of the Department, local authorities and schools, for how these 100,000 ghost children are going to be returned to school properly so that we can bring their education back to life and do not damage their life chances for decades to come?

[Gavin Williamson]

My right hon. Friend raises the important issue of children who are not attending school. That is why we have pulled together the REACT teams, which are a combination of DFE teams, regional schools commissioners, local authorities, the police and, crucially, schools themselves, to target those children, working alongside the supporting families initiative led by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

My right hon. Friend will be aware that there is already extensive testing in schools. In fact, some 57 million tests have already been conducted in schools and colleges across the country, so we already have a well-established testing mechanism. The next stage, as we move to step 4 of the road map, is that we want schools to be able to operate more freely. We want all children to be able to be part of the summer activities, whether that is the holiday activity and food programmes or the additional summer schools that schools are laying on. That is why, as part of step 4, we are looking at lifting the restrictions and bubbles that schools currently have to operate, and we are looking at doing that at the very earliest opportunity, so children will be able to benefit through the summer.

Education Recovery

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I do not intend to detain the House for too long with my remarks, given what, as you have just reminded us, Mr Deputy Speaker, is happening not long after this debate.

I thank the House for agreeing to this debate on the estimates in relation to the Department for Education’s recovery package. It is right that Members should consider the amount and distribution of funding allocated to lost learning. I want to talk about the damage to our children and young people’s education and progress, and about how Department for Education funding can be put to its most effective use to mitigate this damage, to encourage innovative methods to recover the learning lost as a result of this dreadful pandemic and to enrich the lives of those truly disadvantaged in this country.

Of course, we should all recognise that schools remained open to disadvantaged and key worker children even when closed to other pupils. For that, we pay tribute to the school leaders, teachers and, of course, all the school support staff, who are often forgotten, but who actually make the running of schools possible.

We are all aware that pupils at all stages of their education experienced lost learning as a result of national lockdowns, school closures and the need for individuals, classes and whole year groups to self-isolate. The impact of each of these periods of absence from school continues to be a significant and ongoing issue. Research commissioned by the Department in May 2021 found that all year groups experienced a learning loss of between two and three months in reading and mathematics. We also know that there are regional disparities in the level of learning loss in reading, with pupils in the north-east and in Yorkshire and the Humber seeing the greatest losses.

Even more alarmingly, while the pandemic has impacted on children and young people differently—for example, remote learning was especially difficult for children with special educational needs and disabilities—disadvantaged pupils have, overall, experienced greater learning losses of as much as seven months in both reading and maths.

A further wretched outcome of this pandemic is that school closures have reversed some of the progress we have been making in reducing the attainment gap. It was already stalling before coronavirus came upon us, but it has made reducing the attainment gap for disadvantaged children over the past decade much worse. Lost learning has structural consequences for these pupils that could result in lost earnings of as much as 3.4% in their lifetimes. That translates to a loss of between £26,500 and £52,300 in their earning potential, which is a tragedy on an individual and societal basis. Sir Kevan Collins, who came to the Education Committee this morning, said that he had worked with the DFE and that the overall loss to the country could be up to £100 billion.

Alarmingly, this week the Centre for Social Justice published findings that, at the end of 2020, almost 100,000 pupils—some as young as primary age—were still absent from school. No amount of proposed covid catch-up funding can help those children if they are not attending school. I worry that we are creating a generation of ghosted children, lost to an education system that does not know where they are, which is damaging their life chances and denying them a chance to climb the education ladder of opportunity. I urge the Minister, who I know cares deeply about these things, to implement rigorous methods of tracking where these children are and assessing what educational standard of learning they are receiving.

Over the past few days we have learned that a few hundred thousand children are being sent home from school because of covid bubbles. That has got to stop. Our children must be in school and learning, because every day they are out of school we are destroying their life chances. Every day they are out of school we are stopping them climbing to the top of the ladder that is supposed to bring jobs, prosperity and security for themselves and their families. I urge radical action not just in tracking the 100,000 ghosted children currently lost to the education system but in ensuring that whole bubbles of children are no longer sent home. Whether it is mobile vans, like blood donor vans, sent up and down the country to test pupils, setting up special test hubs inside or outside school or whatever it may be, we have to keep our children in school.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Chair of the Education Committee for bringing the debate forward and for his knowledge. I followed him last week on young Protestant males’ underachievement, which is important for us in Northern Ireland and certainly here for the Minister as well. Does he agree with me and, I suspect, many others inside and outside the House that there is a big crisis coming in relation to the mental health of children who are unable to cope with life as a result of covid-19 in the last year and its impact on life at home with all the restrictions? Does he feel that the Minister needs to have a strategy in place along with Health Ministers to address children’s mental health from primary school all the way through to secondary school and college?

[Robert Halfon]

The hon. Gentleman, whom I regard as a friend, gets it exactly right. People often focus just on the loss of academic attainment, but there are also the mental health problems facing children during the pandemic. We know that eating disorders have gone up by 400% among young people, which is a pretty horrific figure. We also know that one in six children has mental health difficulties when it used to be one in nine. The Minister is putting a lot more money—many millions of pounds—into mental health, and I welcome that, but I would like to see a mental health practitioner or counsellor in every school in the land, with proper time not just for the kids but for the parents and teachers as well. We have almost a mental health epidemic sweeping through the younger generation because of covid and many other factors that are much more complex.

To go back to the ghosted children, we must implement rigorous methods for tracking where each of these children is and assessing what educational standard of learning they are receiving. I applaud the investment that Ministers and the Government have made so far to address lost learning. The £3 billion of additional support for children to make further progress in the curriculum after a significant amount of time away from school during the pandemic is a genuine commitment to this generation—it is a significant amount of money that should not be sniffed at—but we need to ensure that there is further funding down the track. Let me tell hon. Members about two wonderful schools in my constituency to showcase how that funding can translate to on-the-ground catch-up offers in schools. Abbotsweld Primary Academy has allocated the additional funding to allow for four days of 8 am starts for year 5 and 6 pupils. The start of the day includes a free breakfast alongside physical education lessons, and there is additional time for English and mathematics during the school day. Burnt Mill Academy is using £5,000 of its catch-up funding to offer summer schools to support students’ literacy and numeracy skills, ensuring that the gaps in learning are closed through enrichment activities. Our teachers and support staff all around the country are working hard to put the money to good use so that it has the most significant impact possible, and we give them our thanks.

Let me remind the House that the objectives of the measures to support education recovery are to recover the missed learning caused by coronavirus and to reduce the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers. As I have said, I commend the Department for the money that has been put in—the £3 billion and the increase in pupil premium funding to £2.5 billion for 2021-22. However, will the Minister confirm whether changing the date of the school census in 2020 from October to January has meant a loss of £90 million to schools, as 62,216 children became eligible but did not attract pupil premium in 2021-22? I also ask him whether the catch-up funding proposed by the Government is not new money, but funds repurposed from existing budgets, which are now being shared out among all students instead of focused on those who suffer the most disadvantage and are at the most threat of lost learning. Will he confirm that this is really new money for catch-up and recovery?

As I have argued before, the Government should set out a long-term plan for education and education recovery, with a transparent funding settlement, much as we see from the Department of Health and Social Care and the Ministry of Defence. If the Department of Health and Social Care can have a 10-year plan and a secure funding settlement, and the Ministry of Defence can have a strategic review and a long-term funding settlement, why can education not have a long-term plan and a secure funding settlement?

I really welcome the catch-up programme, and I campaigned for it, but my worry is that just 44% of the children who are using the tutoring programme are eligible for free school meals. The Sutton Trust also says that 34% of pupil premium funding is being used to plug gaps in school budgets—to fix leaky roofs, for example. The funding is not always used for the purpose it should be. The whole reason for today’s debate is to shine light into the darkest corners of budget allocation and highlight where we can concentrate funding in the areas that are often overlooked.

My Education Committee’s report, “The forgotten: how White working-class pupils have been let down, and how to change it”, draws attention to how white British pupils eligible for free school meals already suffer from persistent and multi-generational disadvantage and disengagement from the curriculum, from early years through to higher education. That is compounded by place-based factors, including regional economics and under-investment, and family disengagement from education, all of which combine to create a perfect storm of disadvantage. Carefully allocated catch-up funding can support those pupils to weather that storm.

What Sir Kevan Collins was proposing, as he set out again to the Education Committee this morning, was more from the catch-up offer, to extend the school day, providing enrichment and sporting activities to promote soft skills such as teamwork, negotiation and problem solving, which have all fallen by the wayside during remote learning.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way on that point. During the last education debate, he intervened on me and the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), in his characteristically inquisitorial way and pressed us to say whether we agreed with the extension of the school day and, if so, whether we agreed to an academic focus in that extension. I responded that we did support the extension and out-of-hours activity, but we wanted it to be more creatively focused and used quite imaginatively.

I noticed that Kevan Collins said today, in response to the right hon. Gentleman’s questions, that he wanted to create a space for children to be involved in a much broader range of experiences—the things they have missed, such as sports, drama and art. I know that the right hon. Gentleman is a reflective person. Does he now agree that the approach for any extended time at school needs to be along those lines, rather than the purely academic lines that he was proposing before?

[Robert Halfon]

If the hon. Gentleman looks at everything that I have said in the House, in the Select Committee and in newspaper articles, he will see that I have made it very clear from day one—the Minister will vouch for this, because I have nagged him about it often enough—that I absolutely believe in a longer day. It should be not just for academic catch-up, but for enrichment activities, mental health support and sporting activities; I have made the case and cited statistics to show that those also increase educational attainment. The reason I said what I did to the Opposition was that Opposition Members had been in the media giving quite confusing messages about whether they supported a longer school day. If they support a longer day now with both academic and enrichment activities, I strongly welcome that.

The mental health of young people has sustained worrying damage as a result of extended social isolation during a critical stage of their development. A longer school day provides opportunities to socialise and interact with many more peers than just having lessons can offer. The Department should leave no stone unturned to find underspend in its budget and re-channel the money into catch-up to make Sir Kevan’s vision a reality.

I present a proposition to the Minister. Schools and teachers have carried out the marking and assessment that exam boards normally undertake and are paid handsomely for. Of course, exam boards spent money on exams before they were cancelled, such as on creating and printing exam papers, but substantial refunds to reflect the lack of exam marking are likely to be given to schools and colleges. Last year, OCR gave back a total of £7.9 million, while AQA—the UK’s largest provider of academic qualifications—returned £42 million to schools and colleges, a rebate of approximately 25%. It is suggested that as much as 50% will be refunded this year. There is a strong ethical argument for that rebate to be used to fund pilot schemes in secondary schools to extend the school day, which will help to make the case for funding from the Treasury. Given that the Minister and the Secretary of State have said that the Government are seriously looking at this, I hope that something will come out of the comprehensive spending review.

I have made clear my feelings that the catch-up money is a welcome starter, or possibly what the French refer to as an amuse-bouche—a small bite, or even a big bite, before the main meal—but it should not yet be considered as a nourishing main course. I urge the Department to look at the recommendations in the Education Committee’s report on white working-class children to offer tailored funding at local and neighbourhood level and, as the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities also recommends, to level up educational and extracurricular opportunities.

The Department could start by combining the catch-up funding and the pupil premium in one almighty package, an approach that Sir Kevan Collins supported at our Committee evidence session this morning. Money would be available for pupils whom schools identify as in need—such as SEND students and those who struggle with mental health problems as a result of the lockdowns, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) pointed out—but there would be money clearly ring-fenced in the estimates memo for the most disadvantaged, and it would be microtargeted to reflect regional disparities in learning loss.

Only by ensuring that the catch-up programme achieves value for money and is focused on disadvantaged pupils will the Government head off the four horsemen of the education apocalypse that are galloping towards our young people: attainment loss, mental health damage, vulnerability to safeguarding hazards through persistent school absences, and a loss of lifetime earnings. Let us get these children back on the education ladder of opportunity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

It says on the Centre for Early Childhood website set up by the Royal Foundation:

“Advances in brain science have shown that early childhood—pregnancy to five—has implications for our development that go far beyond our physical abilities. In fact, this represents one of the best investments we can make for the long-term health, wellbeing and happiness of our society.”

In commending my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) for his comments on the main estimates day, I urge my right hon. Friend the Minister to take into account where it all begins.

Lockdown has been a painful time for many new parents during the pandemic. The “Babies in Lockdown” report, produced by the Parent-Infant Foundation, Best Beginnings and Home-Start UK, laid bare the experiences that families have faced. Some 70% found that their ability to cope with their pregnancy and beyond had been impacted on by a result of covid, and only one third of parents expressed any confidence in being able to access mental health support.

Through chairing the early years healthy development review, I can tell colleagues that we heard directly from parents and carers about their experiences of having a baby in lockdown. We heard from dads and partners who did not feel that they could access any support at all for their own mental health, as they felt that the services were there for the mums and not for them. We heard how, in some cases, this damaged the relationship with both their partner and their new baby. We heard from a young single mum who contacted her GP, who said she should speak to her health visitor, but she had not been assigned one. When she contacted the local team, no one could tell her who to speak to. She did not hear from a health visitor until after her baby was born. I know that is not a DFE issue, but does it not highlight the importance of joined-up services?

We heard from a foster carer who felt sure that the baby she was caring for was suffering from foetal alcohol syndrome, but she was unable to get access to any information about the baby. We heard from mums who struggled to breastfeed because their babies suffered from tongue tie, and they could not understand why this had not been picked up.

Among the heartbreaking stories, however, the pandemic has given us the benefit of learning what could be improved and has cast a light on some areas of hope. For some parents and carers, a real lifeline during the pandemic was the opportunity to text their health visitor, to receive virtual advice from their GP, to take part in Zoom parent and baby groups, or even to receive breastfeeding support and advice on screen. The feedback that my review team has received suggests that, while every parent and carer longs for the return of face-to-face support, the vital playgroups and advice sessions, there is also clearly a role for the convenience of virtual services. Faced with the prospect of a bus ride to the nearest children’s centre, a mother with a new baby or toddler in tow can find it difficult to take advantage of the support on offer. Home visits and virtual support must form part of a new start-for-life offer for every family.

That is why the vision for the 1,001 critical days that has come out of the review that I am chairing includes the concept of placing in every local area family hubs that are both physical places with multidisciplinary support that is open access and universal, and virtual hubs that provide the convenience and immediacy of support for a family without having to leave their home.

[Robert Halfon]

I strongly welcome the support and campaign for family hubs, which are something that our report on disadvantaged white working-class boys and girls recommended last week. May I just mention this important statistic to my right hon. Friend? We know that disadvantaged pupils are 18 months behind their better-off peers by the time they get to GCSEs, and that 40% of that attainment gap starts in early years.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right: it all begins in the very earliest period of life. The later we leave it, all that happens is that we compound the problem more. Then we end up firefighting instead of preventing. Prevention is so much kinder and cheaper than cure.

To help every family give their baby the best start in life, we need family hub networks that bring together physical, virtual and home visiting services that put the baby’s needs at the centre of everything that we do. The babies born in lockdown and the toddlers who have had so little company and variety in their young lives need our support for their development. We all want them to be school-ready at four years old, able to learn and concentrate, as well as to play, share, and communicate clearly.

When my right hon. Friend the Minister is considering his Department for Education’s priorities for covid recovery, I urge him to be ambitious for these excellent new family hubs, encouraging every local area to adopt best practice in joining up their start-for-life services between health bodies, local authorities, and DFE policies. Let us bring it all together, putting the baby at the heart of everything that we do. Let us make sure that there is a real focus in Government on the 1,001 critical days—the period from conception to the age of two, when the building blocks for lifelong physical and emotional health are laid down for every human being.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Halfon]

I will be very brief, given the events that are going on. There is actually a lot of unity in the House on this issue, behind the inevitable political barney. I thank all Members who spoke in the debate, particularly my fellow Committee members, the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson), who is an expert member of our Committee, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bury South (Christian Wakeford).

I will just say that there must be a focus on a long-term plan for education with a secure funding settlement, on which there has been a lot of agreement across the House. I really welcome the Minister’s remarks, especially what he said about the longer school day, but I urge him to look at these 100,000 ghost children and make sure that they go back to school and we do not destroy their life chances; to focus the covid package on the most disadvantaged; to do everything he can reduce the attainment gap, and—he knows that this is where we possibly have a slight disagreement—to ensure that the curriculum prepares pupils for the world of work and does not just focus on knowledge.

Question deferred until tomorrow at Seven o’clock (Standing Order No. 54).

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I will suspend the House for two minutes to make arrangements for the next business.

Oral Answers to Questions

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Let us go to the Chair of the Education Committee, Robert Halfon.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con) [V]]

Even before the pandemic, persistent absence—pupils missing 10% or more of their education—was alarmingly high, at 13.1%. As pupils have returned, the overall rate has remained stubbornly high at 13%, or at around 916,000 pupils. For secondary pupils, it has actually risen from 15% to 16.3%. What are the Department’s plans to bring persistent absence down?

[Gavin Williamson]

This is an incredibly important area. At the very start of the pandemic, we set up the regional education and children’s teams—REACT—which were a co-operation between schools, local government, the Department for Education and the police in order to target some of the youngsters who struggle the most and are most likely not to be in school. We continue to expand that work through the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to help the families who struggle the most, and recognise that it is children in that category who are most vulnerable and possibly the most likely to have persistent absence from schools. We will continue to work across Government, recognising that it is not just about schools, but about local authorities, the police, health and social care coming together to bring children back into the classroom and to ensure that they are not missing out on school.

Catch-up Premium

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That the following papers be provided by HM Treasury to the Public Accounts Committee: all papers, correspondence and advice including emails and text messages, from 3 February 2021 up to and including 2 June 2021, to and between Treasury Ministers, senior officials and Special Advisers relating to consideration of the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of the proposals made by the then Education Recovery Commissioner, Sir Kevan Collins, in particular such correspondence relating to the evaluation of the draft report which he produced and submitted to Government on the investment and services needed to ensure children’s education recovers from the impact of the covid-19 outbreak on their learning and development, a copy of that report, and all copies of minutes and papers relating to decisions taken by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and other Treasury Ministers, in respect of that report.

The last 15 months has been a period unlike any other in our recent history, but for our children it has been more than that. Before I go any further, however, I want to place on record the thanks of all Labour Members to all school staff, who have themselves had a harrowing, difficult and stressful year. As well as their resilience, I have admired again and again their continuing focus on the children with whom they work.

Those children have seen not merely a disruption and interruption to their lives, but a disruption of their education and development that risks setting back a generation, damaging their lives and life chances and our economy as a whole. No child should be left behind as a result of the pandemic; I hope every Member of the House agrees on that—in fact, the Prime Minister himself has said as much.

The creation of the post of education recovery commissioner in February was therefore welcome, as was the appointment of Sir Kevan Collins. Sir Kevan is a prominent figure in education and widely respected across this House. He is someone whose expertise and recommendations deserve to be taken immensely seriously, yet less than a fortnight ago Sir Kevan resigned. Why? Because the Government cut the scale of his proposed plan by 90%. In Sir Kevan’s own words:

“A half-hearted approach risks failing hundreds of thousands of pupils. The support announced so far does not come close to meeting the scale of the challenge and is why I have no option but to resign.”

By any standards, that is an extraordinary turn of events. How did it happen? How did we get here? How could the Government handle this so extraordinarily badly? The answer, as so often, is that it would appear to lie with the real decision maker in the Government. It is a pleasure to see the Minister in his place today, but it is the Cabinet’s answer to Macavity—the Chancellor of the Exchequer—who has questions to answer in the Chamber. It is the Treasury that took the shameful decision to block a proper plan for our children’s future. The Minister knows it; we all know it. Comprehensive plans for the recovery of our children’s education were developed and circulated in government, but they were stopped in their tracks by the Treasury.

Perhaps that is not right; perhaps the Government will feel able to disclose the correspondence that we are seeking today to have published, but the sheer gravity of the issue—the lives of a generation and the strength of our future economy—means that it is crucial that we understand the Treasury’s position. That is what today’s motion seeks to enable all Members of the House to do.

Labour fully recognises that it is the responsibility of the Treasury to cast an eye— sometimes a sceptical eye—over all spending plans, securing value for money for public spending, ensuring that money is spent both effectively and efficiently. It will be at the heart of spending decisions under a Labour Government. Reasoned decisions about how to spend money must, however, mean, as schoolchildren are often told, that the Chancellor shows us his working-out. An unthinking aversion to using public money to achieve public good is not a virtue—it is a misguided dogma from which this country has spent a decade suffering the consequences and which today puts at risk the education of a generation.

Sometimes only Government can achieve the change that we need and fix the problems that we face. Failure to invest in those circumstances is a false economy on a national scale. The House does not need take my word for it. Earlier this year, the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggested that pupils who have lost six months of normal schooling could lose approximately £40,000 in income over their lifetime. That adds up to £350 billion in lost lifetime earnings across the 8.7 million schoolchildren in the UK. Lost earnings of £350 billion means about £100 billion less tax revenue to invest in building a strong and resilient economy and society of the future; £100 billion simply dwarves the costings that Sir Kevan prepared for his full programme.

The recovery of learning after the pandemic is a vast challenge, but it is undoubtedly in the interests of both our children and our country. We all know that the value and importance of education are not simply about lessons. School is not merely where we learn about Henry VIII and the solutions to quadratic equations; it is where, in every year, we learn the skills that set us up for life: questioning, leading, communicating; the value of friendship and discussion, and of criticism and disagreement without rancour. When children first go to school they are learning how to play, how to make friends, how to make their way in the world, and how to develop as independent individuals. Missing that opportunity has repercussions throughout their rest of their lives.

Nursery closures mean that children are falling behind. Their transition to primary school will be harder and their long-term success lesser. During the pandemic, children of primary age should have been learning the building blocks of maths, reading and writing that will set them up for life, yet by the end of the pandemic tens of thousands of primary-school children were estimated by the Government to be behind on basic literacy and unable to read or write when starting secondary school. By the end of the second national lockdown, pupils were estimated to have lost two to five months of learning, with particularly severe effects on maths skills. Secondary-school children are young people choosing the course of their lives: the college they will attend; the apprenticeship they will begin; the skills they will develop; the university they might go to.

I want to mention briefly the impact that the necessary restrictions of the pandemic and school closures have had on children in my city of Sunderland. Children have paid a price: a price on their health, with exercise and activity less common and obesity a greater threat; a price on their development of speech and language, as they have been less able to learn from each other and are slipping behind; a price on their reading, with the ability to learn through phonics understandably impaired by the constraints of distance learning; a price on their family relationships, with the confinement of families exacerbating tensions and leading to rising referrals to children’s social care; and a price on the hope and optimism about their future that should fill young people, with exams cancelled and uncertainty about their qualifications and job prospects.

The price that children have paid is not unique to my city. Each one of us has seen the damage—social, emotional and academic—to children in every one of our constituencies. But we know that the disruption has hit some children much harder, particularly those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds and those living in areas with the longest lockdowns. Unless we address that issue, those effects will ripple through the lives of individuals and through wider society. They will exacerbate inequalities among families and generations, weakening us as individuals and as a society.

A generation who missed out on their education and who were not given the support they needed to catch up would be a generation betrayed. That would have consequences—not just for them, but for us all. It would mean fewer people with skills entering our workforce over that next generation. It would mean the workforce as a whole deskilling over time, and that would mean a drop in the output and productivity of our economy.

Skills and education are at the heart of Labour’s vision for the economy and society of the future. The society that we want to see is one where people never stop learning and developing their skills, talents and abilities, and where reskilling for working-age people is as natural as sending our children to school. For us, ensuring the recovery of children’s learning from the pandemic today is crucial to assuring Britain’s success tomorrow—success for individuals, but also success for every community and every corner of our country.

The argument that we make to the Treasury and to the Minister is that Government action at scale can—and must—be effective. If we get it right, we will pay a smaller price now than a much greater price over the many decades ahead, and that price could be huge. Estimates of the total cost of the disruption to education based on individual impacts have ranged from £80 billion to £160 billion. Estimates based on the systemic effect on our economy, looking at the relationship between schooling and growth, suggest figures of more than £1 trillion.

What we do know from the limited past examples of disastrous interruptions to children’s education is that the damage can be real, but it can be fixed. We know it is real, because chronic industrial unrest in Argentina’s education system over many years caused repeated school closures. Women affected by those closures who were at school at the time have seen their lifetime earnings fall by 1.7% as a result. For men, the amount is nearly double that.

We also know that the damage can be fixed—that the price our children have paid is not one they need to pay all their lives long. In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans. Most children were out of school for one to three months, yet subsequent intervention was not merely swift and sustained; it was effective. Four years after that disaster, affected children had caught up on lost learning by about two months. Not only that, but the gains were concentrated in the children whose initial performance after the disaster was worst. The lesson we draw from that example is that intervention is not only an option, it is the right option.

The motion before us seeks to understand why the Treasury has been so opposed to the sort of intervention we need and the sort of future our children deserve. What we need, and what Sir Kevan’s work rightly lays out, is a long-term, funded plan that is evidence-based, scalable and practical, making best use of the tremendous human and physical resources that we have in this country. It must have at its heart increasing opportunities in school, increasing the value of that time, and targeted tutoring for those who need it most. Tutoring means better engagement. Improving teaching helps us to get more out of every extra hour. More time together helps children to catch up on the social and emotional aspects of their development.

I want to pick up two aspects of the plan that Sir Kevan developed for our nation’s children, which the Treasury blocked. They are about the urgency and the duration of the plan we need. The Government, and the Treasury in particular, seem to be caught on the hop again and again. To Treasury Ministers, urgency in dealing with the challenges of public policy is too often for other people—for self-employed workers and small businesses who need to submit claims on time or get nothing, or for businesses which need to remodel their operations overnight as restrictions change with just hours to go.

The Chancellor must never be allowed to forget that his refusal last autumn to set out clear and workable plans until businesses had only hours before deadlines meant thousands of workers either losing their jobs or living in fear of doing so. He has shown again and again that he will not get ahead of the problem—that he prefers to wait and hope it goes away. Our children’s future is not an issue that is going away, and it is high time that the Government faced up to that.

It has been apparent since the day that schools were first closed to most children that they would not reopen for many weeks at least and that one day action would be needed to address the consequences. Each week without action is another step towards lasting damage to the opportunities of hundreds of thousands of children. Waiting until the spending review means that more than 300,000 more children and young adults will have left the school system altogether before a proper plan and proper steps are in place.

The second major point is that schools need to start making decisions now about resources and staffing to deliver over not just a few months, but many years. Long-term outcomes are better delivered when they can be planned on a longer-term basis—more than one financial year at a time. That is, after all, the reason the Government have multi-year spending reviews in the first place. Sharply increased spend should come with proper accountability, which is why Labour has set out clear proposals for increased and improved mechanisms to get the best value out of every pound of public money spent.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), the shadow Secretary of State for Education, has set out Labour’s comprehensive alternative to what the Government have proposed, because, like Sir Kevan, Labour grasps the scale of the problem and the need for the Government to rise to the challenge. Our plan would see breakfast clubs, new activities for every child and a fully funded expanded range of extracurricular clubs and activities. Our plan would see quality mental health support in every school, giving every child the support they need. Our plan would see small group tutoring for all who need it, not just 1%, by reforming the Government’s failing tutoring programme to ensure that no child falls behind because of pandemic disruption.

Our plan would see continued development for teachers, who have had one of the toughest years of their careers. Our plan would see an education recovery premium supporting every child by investing in children who have faced the greatest disruption during the pandemic, from early years to further education, delivering vital additional support for children who need it the most. Our plan would ensure that no child goes hungry by extending free school meals over the holidays.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. Given that she has been talking about the plans of Kevan Collins, and given that a core part of his proposal was to have a formal longer school day, which the shadow Education Secretary said in the media last week was not something she agreed with, does the hon. Lady agree that there should be a longer school day as part of Sir Kevan Collins’ plans?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I am always keen to hear from the Chair of the Select Committee, who I know cares very deeply and passionately about these issues. What I would say in response is that, rather than disagreeing over the nature of that additional time, why do we not focus on trying to get the right outcome for all our children in this country? The block to that rests with the Treasury. It feels at times that we are arguing at cross-purposes. That was not the position that my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) set out. I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman’s assessment of the situation.

We all want to make sure that children have the time they need in school to catch up on that lost time, but in addition to that, we want to make sure there are fully funded extracurricular activities as part of an extended day within the school premises, so that all children—not just those who can afford extra clubs, music, activities or book clubs; whatever it would happen to be—have access to that kind of provision. The block right now and the reason we have not got to that point, I am afraid, lies on the right hon. Gentleman’s Benches.

Last week, the Government could bring themselves neither to support nor to oppose our alternative. Perhaps today they will tell the House why the Treasury blocked the plans that the Prime Minister’s chosen adviser sought to develop, comparable in scope and scale to those of the Opposition.

Children do not vote, and their voices are rarely heard in this place, but we have a moral duty to them none the less: a duty to their future, both theirs and ours. Labour has set out, at length and in detail, the sort of plan that we believe our country needs. The Government’s own education recovery commissioner set out, at length and in detail, the sort of plan that he believes our country needs. Today, our request is simple: that the Treasury explain to parents and families why it believes that our country does not need its own commissioner’s plan.

It is not too late for the Government to change course. What we want, what Sir Kevan wanted, what the people of this country want and what the children of our country need is a properly funded long-term plan for educational recovery. We have set one out. There is still time for the Government, even now, to rise to the challenge and deliver that brighter future that we all want to see.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

As Members can see, the screens say that there is a three-minute limit, but for Alison McGovern and Robert Halfon the limit will be four minutes. It will then revert to three for the duration of the debate.

[Robert Halfon]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

I can see how popular that was: Robert Halfon is now having to add to his speech.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I welcome the debate, although I find it a bit mystifying that we are debating the same subject two weeks in a row. I wonder whether the decision is more about politics than policy.

As I said in the Opposition day debate last week, I firmly believe that the Government investment is a hefty starter in terms of catch-up funding. To recap, there is the £3 billion in total for extra tuition, the £220 million for the holiday activities and food programme, the £63 million for local councils to help with meals—everyone knows my views on free school meals—and supplies for struggling families, and the £79 million for young people’s mental health, and the pupil premium has increased to £2.5 billion.

We should be fair and recognise that we are investing a sizeable sum of taxpayers’ money in education, even though I will continue, obviously, to campaign for more in terms of a long-term schools plan. The Schools Minister made it very clear that recovery funding was just the beginning and not the end of the road for catch-up, and that more would be coming down the track. Anyone looking at my record will have no doubt that I look forward to further funding, greater resources for catch-up and a longer school day, on which, as I have said, the Labour party’s position is very confusing.

I want to mention a couple of things before I conclude. First, at present, disadvantaged pupils are 18 months behind their better-off peers by the time they sit their GCSEs. We know that poorer children are less likely to attend schools with an “outstanding” Ofsted rating, and that even in schools where there are good results, the gap between free school meals students and their peers is as wide as elsewhere.

I have been working closely with Professor Lee Elliot Major, who is an adviser to the Government. In a joint article in the Telegraph, we wrote that in order to reduce that attainment gap, measures should be taken to ensure that Ofsted awards “outstanding” ratings to schools only if they can show that they are

“making efforts to attract the poorest children in their neighbourhoods”

and working to narrow the attainment gap between those disadvantaged pupils and their better-off peers. We wrote that schools should work with neighbouring schools to raise standards, and that teams of inspectors

“should include at least one headteacher who has led a school with high numbers of poorer pupils.”

Secondly, I believe that the Government must look to reform the pupil premium. It is not ring-fenced, and the Sutton Trust has reported that a third of schools use it for other things, such as fixing a leaky roof. It is not just about ring-fencing; there should be much more micro-targeting of disadvantaged groups, particularly those who suffer from long-term disadvantage.

I mentioned last week that although I am fully supportive of the catch-up fund, I am worried that it is not reaching the most disadvantaged. Figures suggest that 44% of students receiving pupil premium funding were missed. The Government must ensure that the money is targeted at the most disadvantaged, because they are the ones who have learned the least during the pandemic.

Nevertheless, I give credit where it is due: the Government have given well over £3 billion, and they have said that more is yet to come. I would rather that, instead of just having these political debates, Members on both sides of the House worked with the Government to ensure that the long-term plan for education is deep-rooted and repairs the damage from covid-19 while also addressing social injustices in education, particularly the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and the better-off.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

There is now a three-minute limit. I call Barry Sheerman.

Ofsted Review of Sexual Abuse in Schools and Colleges

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

We now go to the Chair of the Education Committee, Sir Robert Halfon.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con) [V]]

I thank the Minister for all that she is doing. The report greatly focuses on safeguarding failings within schools, but the question must be raised as to why such failings were not previously identified by Ofsted or the Independent Schools Inspectorate in the first instance. Peer-on-peer abuse is one aspect of the wider systemic safeguarding failings and cannot be seen in isolation. Why is there not a consistent approach to safeguarding through the school inspections regime, and does a lack of consistency not perpetuate the problem further? Will she consider a review into the advice provided to schools by the local authority inspectors to ensure that there is a consistent and joined-up approach in safeguarding? Finally, can the Government identify how they will raise parental awareness of safeguarding issues, such as peer-on- peer abuse? Will parental safeguarding induction and engagement programmes be provided to parents and carers?

[Vicky Ford]

As ever, the Chair of the Education Committee makes some very helpful suggestions. May I reassure him that all schools must comply with the statutory safeguarding guidance, and we are already updating it, as we do each year. The report under discussion makes a number of suggestions about how to strengthen the inspection regime. For example, going forward, inspectors will hold discussions with students in single-sex groups, because, through this report, they have found that that has enabled children to be more confident in coming forward with their own experiences. That has helped to provide a better understanding of the schools or colleges’ approach to tackling sexual harassment and violence, including that which occurs online. Going forward, Ofsted will request that all college leaders supply those records and analyses of what is happening within their organisation, and Ofsted will work with the ISI to improve training for the inspectors, especially on this issue.

My right hon. Friend makes an important point about parental advice. Some schools are incredibly good at providing this. I met a headteacher of a school in Liverpool who works really closely with parents, informing them about the online safety risks. We should remember that it is often the parents who buy the phone and own the phone contract. I would like to see more schools working with parents to ensure that they help to make parents as well as children aware of this. I hope that schools will not only dedicate an inset day to discussing how to improve the RSHE curriculum but use part of that day to think about how they can better involve parents. As I said, there is a huge amount of advice out there for parents, much of it in organisations that the Government fund, including things such as Safer Internet Day. That advice is widely distributed, but we need to up that game to ensure that parents know the advice is there and that they access it.