Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. He has fought like a tiger for the schools in his constituency and across Northumberland. I have been working with the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to make progress.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)]

As was mentioned earlier in questions, the Under-Secretary of State for Skills and I today launched the new technical baccalaureate, which will make the recognition of vocational education even more demanding and aspirational. I am grateful to Lord Adonis for the work that he has done to shine a light on what is good in vocational and technical education.

[Dr Coffey]

I welcome the launch of the tech bacc today. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that he will not return powers from academies to local authorities, as the shadow Secretary of State seemed to recommend last week? Is that not a U-turn on what Tony Blair and the noble Lord Adonis said when they first set up academies?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was very worried when I read the latest issue of The House magazine. In an interview with the shadow Secretary of State that was generally quite nice—he is a nice chap—he nevertheless said that he had “great respect” for Lord Adonis but “differences of emphasis”. He wanted to put “less of an emphasis” on

“the independent governance that academies have”.

I am afraid that, once more, that is a retreat from reform. Unfortunately, if the Labour party were to return to power, reform would stop in its tracks.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I absolutely will not apologise to the people of east Durham for standing up for better education for their children. Perhaps the most telling remarks about the lack of ambition in schools in east Durham were uttered by Lord Adonis. Having visited a school there, he said that a teacher had told him, “In the past children turned right to work in the shipyards or left to work in the coal mines. Now they might as well walk on into the sea.” That spirit of defeatism reported by the noble Lord is exactly what we need to attack. Instead of attacking the Government, the hon. Gentleman would be better off tackling underperformance in his own constituency.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

I welcome the publication of the dashboards launched by Ofsted last week and recommend them to the public, parents and governors. Will the Secretary of State go further, though, and explain how we can reconcile some of the Ofsted judgments with the attainment and other progress reports?

[Michael Gove]

The chief inspector is absolutely right to publish these dashboards, but they are only the beginning of how governors and others can hold schools to account for their performance. For example, if we look at the performance of schools under the English baccalaureate measure, we see that there are many schools across the country whose superficial headline GCSE figures flatter to deceive.

Personal, Social, Health and Financial Education

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Wednesday 16th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) on securing this important debate. She clearly set out why PSHE is so important. I am pleased to contribute to the debate, because I have a long-standing interest in the issue.

As a Minister in the previous Government, I took through the provisions to introduce PSHE as a statutory part of the national curriculum. It was hugely disappointing that, although the Liberal Democrats supported the Labour Government, the Conservative party declined to support the proposals introduced in 2010 and scuppered them in the wash-up, so preventing them from becoming law. It was striking that the Conservative party failed to engage with the overwhelming evidence that high-quality PSHE needed to be taught, and taught by well-qualified, well-trained teachers, and that it needed to be given sufficient time in the curriculum. The Conservative party also failed to understand that most parents wanted relationship and sex education taught in schools. Young people themselves say that they want it taught, and that includes not just the practicalities of which bit of the anatomy goes where.

As we have heard, when the Government came into power, they published the schools White Paper “The Importance of Teaching”, announcing the review of PSHE. The consultation was launched on 21 January 2011 and ended on 30 November 2011. We have been waiting 14 months to hear something from Ministers about their review, so last November I decided to ask them what was going on. I tabled a question asking the Secretary of State for Education

“on what date his Department’s review of personal, social health and education stopped receiving submissions; and when he plans to publish the results of that review.”

The Minister who is here today said:

“The public consultation phase of the internal review of…PSHE…ended in November 2011. The review will take account of the outcomes of the ongoing national curriculum review and we will publish conclusions in due course.”—[Official Report, 19 November 2012; Vol. 553, c. 369W.]

I wondered why it had taken the Department for Education so long to deal with the issue. What has been happening in the Department since November 2011? Perhaps Ministers wanted to listen further to expert groups in the field to fully understand and appreciate all the compelling evidence about PSHE. Perhaps Ministers have been having extensive meetings and further evidence-gathering sessions, so that they can give us the evidence-based policy decision making that they keep telling us they are so keen on.

I therefore thought that I would ask a few more questions. I asked the Secretary of State

“which groups he has met with to discuss relationship education in the latest period for which figures are available; and which groups he intends to meet for discussions on relationship education in the next 12 months.”

The Minister responded that the Secretary of State had met the hon. Members for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands), for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) and for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes)

“to discuss sex and relationship education on 8 February 2011. The Secretary of State has no such meetings planned in the next 12 months.”—[Official Report, 7 January 2013; Vol. 556, c. 69W.]

I was a bit worried by that.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Diana Johnson]

I am very keen to give way as the hon. Lady was at the meeting.

[Dr Coffey]

I simply wanted to say, just so that the hon. Lady is clear, that the four of us requested the meeting, as opposed to being invited in.

[Diana Johnson]

I am pleased that the Secretary of State agreed to meet that small group of Conservative Members of Parliament and that there was a least one female Member of Parliament present, because the rest were all white men. There has been no mention of any other groups being invited in to meet a Minister. I thought the PSHE Association, the Churches, End Violence Against Women or the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children might have been invited in to meet the Secretary of State, but no. A group of experts on violence against women and girls has been trying for some time to get a meeting with the Department to discuss the issue. Would the Minister agree to meet them to hear what they have to say on the role of PSHE in combating domestic violence?

--- Later in debate ---

[Amber Rudd]

I agree, and I think that my hon. Friend’s 14-year-old daughter is fortunate in having a mother who is able to enter into some such discussions with her. We were particularly concerned about the young people who said, “I don’t have family support at all.” Children who are vulnerable, including those who have been in care, are the ones who are saying to us most loudly, “We have no family support. In that absence, who is going to help us? There is a gap in our lives.”

[Dr Thérèse Coffey]

A question that does come up, though, is whether this should be dictated from the centre or whether, as well as encouraging parents to have the discussions, we allow governing bodies to make choices. The situation might differ from school to school, with different communities and different principles.

[Amber Rudd]

That is certainly something that the Government and the Department should consider. Different schools have different ethoses and different values—some are Church schools, for example—and it is perfectly reasonable for schools with different attitudes, values and religions to have different approaches. My plea, however, is that they have an approach, and in too many cases they simply do not. We must ensure, therefore, that, as has been said, teachers have the proper training to give the good relationship guidance that is so important.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

1. What recent steps he has taken to increase the number of young people in state education in England who aspire to go to university.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

Raising aspiration and closing the attainment gaps between those from wealthier and poorer backgrounds lie at the heart of all our education reforms, including the academies programme, reform of the teaching of reading, and reform of the curriculum and qualifications. Only last week, many top-performing year 9 pupils visited Russell group universities as part of the new Dux awards scheme. We are also introducing in the performance tables two destination measures that show the destinations of young people after they leave school or college.

[Dr Coffey]

I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. I am sure that he will join me in congratulating Suffolk county council on its initiative to increase aspiration and attainment called Raising the Bar, which it launched last week. Does he think that we could go further by encouraging well-endowed universities to reach out to students, from where they gained their wealth, and encourage them to apply more—for example, in the case of Trinity college, Cambridge and Felixstowe?

[Mr Gibb]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The Raising the Bar conference, which took place in Ipswich last week, is a good example of a local authority asking difficult questions about why some of our young people are leaving school without the skills they need to be successful in higher education or employment. As she says, it is right that universities are proactive in dispelling the myths around higher education and attracting students from all backgrounds into universities. Many universities are doing just that, including Cambridge with its summer schools for year 12 students. However, we also need more students from state schools to apply to Oxford and Cambridge—something that I have always promoted.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Norman Lamb]

I will look into the issue the hon. Gentleman raises and will be happy to discuss it with him.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

I am sure all hon. Members welcome the publication of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, which sets out some great initiatives, including the green investment bank and the fight against red tape. Will the Minister work with local government to ensure that it applies regulations judiciously as opposed to ferociously?

[Mr Prisk]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The primary authority scheme, which was started by Labour, will be extended under this Government to ensure that the enforcement of regulation, which is often just as burdensome as the red tape itself, will be appropriate in that locality.

School Funding

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Selous]

I thank my hon. Friend for speaking with passion and for further illustrating the point, which all hon. Members are making.

Some hon. Members have already mentioned that relatively wealthy areas often have significant pockets of deprivation. That is true in my constituency. There is deprivation in Houghton Regis, for example. The indices of multiple deprivation in some wards in that town are not dissimilar to those in much higher-funded Luton next door. The formula fails poorer children in wealthier areas. We need to look at that to see whether the formula could drill down and give additional funding for poorer children in slightly wealthier areas.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that the pupil premium has been a great advance for poorer children, but in many counties there is quite a low level of unemployment and poorer constituents often do not qualify for free school meals and miss out, and are not being helped by the differential funding that he rightly condemns.

[Andrew Selous]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for adding that important point to the debate.

This Government made an impressive start on this issue by publishing “School funding reform: next steps towards a fairer system” a few weeks ago. I am grateful to the Minister and his colleagues at the Department for recognising the problem and setting out a route map for dealing with this issue. Having looked through the document, I understand that it will look to vary funding between different areas to try to deal with some of the discrepancies by up to 1.5% variance from the minimum funding guarantee per year. That will apply in both 2013-14 and 2014-15. That is an important start for which we are all grateful.

It is worth putting on the record that this Government came into office inheriting a complete economic shambles. We are still having to borrow £120 billion just to pay for public expenditure this year and we are honouring our commitments on increasing funding to the NHS and on international development. Notwithstanding that, Ministers in the Department have maintained cash budgets for schools, which is no mean achievement. That should go on the record in this debate. Many hon. Members know that the only way to deal with this issue, and the unfairness that many of us are rightly raising, is to get the economy growing and get real economic growth. In a time of rising budgets, I believe that by doing so we will be able to make significant progress towards dealing with these inequalities. I should welcome some reassurance from the Minister that that will happen as the economy grows.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Rosie Cooper. Not here.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

7. What steps he has taken to reduce the amount of paperwork undertaken by teachers.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

10. What steps he has taken to reduce the amount of paperwork undertaken by teachers.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

The Government are committed to reducing the amount of paperwork undertaken by teachers, heads and governors. We have removed the lengthy self-evaluation form and the financial management standard in schools; introduced a streamlined inspection framework; removed unnecessary duties and regulations in the Education Act 2011; cut the volume of guidance issued to schools by more than half; and made it clear that neither the Department nor Ofsted expects teachers to produce written lesson plans for every lesson. We are reviewing all requirements on schools so that they can focus on raising standards, rather than on unnecessary administrative tasks.

[Dr Coffey]

I thank my hon. Friend for updating the House on the progress that he is making on the amount of guidance. Will he reassure me that we no longer send teachers and governors thousands of pages of bureaucratic guidance, which at one point was equivalent to reading “War and Peace” from cover to cover three times over?

[Mr Gibb]

And significantly less interesting. My hon. Friend is right that we have swept away pages of guidance. We have reduced the admissions code from 160 pages to 50, the assessment guidance from 220 pages to 30, the attendance guidance from 220 pages to 30, and so on. We have reduced the health and safety guidance from 150 pages to eight, and have taken out important guidance on how to do a headcount, why a headcount is important and why schools should ensure that the school minibus is properly maintained.

Rural Schools

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. I congratulate the hon. Member for Copeland (Mr Reed) on securing this debate on the future of rural schools.

I represent a constituency in Suffolk, and when I moved to the constituency, I was impressed to discover how many small rural schools were able to survive. In my patch, I have seven schools with a roll of fewer than 50, and the smallest has about 20 pupils. A further six have a roll of fewer than 100. I have been impressed by the head teachers’ leadership in doing what they can to ensure that they keep the schools going in the communities. As the hon. Gentleman said, it is not a question of the rich rural message. People in urban places are often surprised at how many of our small rural schools have upwards of 40% of pupils receiving free school meals, which reflects the fact that poverty is spread throughout the country and not concentrated in urban areas.

Suffolk has managed to survive. I believe that it was the county council’s policy to try to keep as many schools as possible open. That is different in one of our neighbouring counties, where a deliberate attempt was made to close as many schools as possible and to consolidate primary schools. An interesting way that schools have got around that is by starting to share head teachers. I point to Peasenhall and Middleton schools, which have 56 children between them and share a head teacher, and that seems to work.

I grew up in Liverpool and went to a classic primary school, which had 30 or 60 kids a year and was all one school. When I lived in Hampshire and was a school governor in a rural area, I was introduced to the concept of mixed-age classes—combinations. I then went to schools, such as Peasenhall, where key stage 1 pupils were together and all the key stage 2 pupils were together. Trying to differentiate pupils—admittedly a small number —across a wide range of abilities and progress creates challenging teaching conditions.

I am sure that it is a great pleasure to step out of school and, instead of the hard concrete that I remember playing netball and other things on, have a view of beautiful fields and playing fields. That natural environment is impressive, and perhaps I did not share that experience where I grew up in Liverpool.

There are also financial aspects. We heard the eloquent contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart). Funnily enough, I have a village called Brampton in my constituency as well, which also has a very small primary school that suffers similar challenges to those that he mentioned. We get even less money than Cumbria does; the county of Suffolk gets £4,676.

I hope that the Minister recognises the challenges of sparse population, which include the costs of school transport. Shipping children around is expensive, and towns or cities in particular do not have those costs. I remember getting the bus to school and it was fine because there were buses every 10 minutes or so, but those of us with rural constituencies know that that just does not happen in those areas, and nor would I expect it to. I am not suggesting that someone who lives in the country should have the same public transport service as someone who lives in the middle of the city, but the additional cost pressures are a challenge for rural schools.

It would interesting to hear the Minister’s understanding of the progress on educational challenges for rural schools. People are hugely surprised to hear that somewhere such as Suffolk is pretty low down in its progress towards GCSE targets. That is not unique to my county, but is also true in other rural counties. I hope that the Minister and his officials are working on something to ensure that children across the country get the same support.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) eloquently pointed out, there definitely seems to be a bias towards urban schools, which is perhaps tradition given the more conventional aspects of social deprivation and the indices. He pointed out to me that there are ongoing revenue challenges, because children with additional languages are not being identified quickly enough. More people are coming from eastern Europe with their children and settling in parts of rural and agricultural England, and that is not recognised. Some of the indicators are a few years old, so the revenue is not keeping up quickly enough.

I do not intend to detain the House for much longer. Plenty of right hon. and hon. Members want to stand up to ensure that rural schools get a fair share of the funding, but I encourage them, especially the hon. Member for Copeland, to encourage parents in their areas to find out whether a free school is possible. [Interruption.] Perhaps his nodding indicates that that has already happened. It has certainly happened in Suffolk. West Suffolk is going through a schools organisation review, which I fully support—I support the move towards a two-tier model, because it has been statistically shown that children can make more progress that way—but understandably, significant communities would have their schools removed, and we all know that when a school is lost, an element of vitality is lost as well.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) said, a lot of countryside villages want more building because they want more families. They want a viable community, not to lose a school and see children transported 15 miles. A child transported to school has one minute to get on the bus, which significantly limits their opportunities for after-school activities. There is something to be said about hearing a positive message from the Minister, who I am sure, in his constituency in West Sussex, is constantly asked to ensure that the countryside is not forgotten.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hayes]

The hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to that risk, and it is absolutely right that, given our ambition to widen access, which I articulated a few moments ago, universities should not engage in anti-competitive practices. The Secretary of State has made it clear that that is not acceptable, and my right hon. Friend the Minister for Universities and Science is taking action to prevent it. We will take a very dim view of universities that are not engaged with our mission to elevate the people through access to learning.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

University Campus Suffolk is based in Ipswich, in a neighbouring constituency to mine. One of the challenges it faces is that as it does not award its own degrees, it is not allowed to appear in the league tables, or in other listings that students readily access. Is there something that can be done to remove that element of bureaucracy, so that it can appear alongside any other university?

[Mr Hayes]

Sometimes, my relentless drive to remove bureaucracy is regarded as excessive, but if that is the charge, I plead guilty. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: we need to make the process as straightforward as possible, and we will take action to do so, partly stimulated by her question and her excellent work in this area.

New Schools

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the way in which he has championed those schools in his constituency that lost out as a result of the unfortunate cancellation of the Building Schools for the Future programme, and I look forward to having a private meeting with him and then discussing how I and my ministerial team can do more to help schools in his constituency.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

I was thrilled to receive the letter from Lord Hill stating that the proposed school in Saxmundham has been given clearance to go to the next stage, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will join me in thanking parents, community leaders and the Seckford Foundation for taking the scheme further, but what advice does he have for certain head teachers in neighbouring schools who see it as a competitive threat, rather than as a welcome addition to the educational offering in Suffolk?

[Michael Gove]

The experience so far of existing head teachers, where new free schools have been set up, has been in some cases concern before the application has come forward and, afterwards, some trepidation, but after the school has opened there has been a general recognition that wider choice and an emphasis on helping the most disadvantaged students has helped to raise the prestige and reputation of state education overall, so such proposals should be seen as friendly emulation and not as a threat to any school.