Children: Development of Essential Skills

Adam Dance Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) for securing this important debate. For years, we have had an education system that looks pretty good on league tables or spreadsheets but does not really help young people develop essential skills for dealing with this rapidly changing world. Rather than repeat remarks that I have made before, and that other hon. Members have made today, I will cut to the chase and list some issues and solutions that I urge the Minister to consider—so grab your pen, Minister.

The first issue is funding. Somerset is one of the 40 lowest funded education authorities in the UK. We need to see a level playing field for funding, with an increase in school and college funding per pupil above the rate of inflation every year.

The second issue is the type of skills we are teaching. Yeovil college does an amazing job with vocational and technical education, but we need the Government to go further. Can we make AI and digital skills training a core part of the national curriculum as its own subject? If we want to innovate, we need teaching that focuses on the skills needed for business and self-employment, although I may be biased because I ran my own landscaping company.

Thirdly, we sadly have pockets of real deprivation in Yeovil. Will the Minister extend pupil premium funding to disadvantaged young people aged 16 to 18, so they can get the quality education or training they want, rather than having to work any old job—or worse?

My final ask, unsurprisingly, relates to SEND. Can the Minister set out when the research into universal screening will conclude, and whether the Government will commit to adopting it, if that is supported by the research? We cannot help young people develop essential skills without working out how they learn best.

More broadly, can the Minister please promise that the upcoming reforms to the SEND system will not mean that children with SEND lose the right to dedicated time with teaching assistants or speech and language therapists to help develop essential skills? The maths GCSE post-16 resit policy sees too many young people with SEND forced to retake exams that are just not useful for them. It comes with stigma and takes time away from developing the skills they actually need. Can the Minister commit to abolishing or reworking the resit policy to meet the needs of a wide range of young people with SEND more flexibly? I could go on for hours about this subject, but I have bent the ear of the Minister many times, so I will leave it there.

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[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship as always, Dr Allin-Khan. I thank the hon. Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) for highlighting this essential issue. The Democratic Unionist party is committed to the development of early years skills. It is good to see the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti), and the Minister in their places. I thank the Minister for all her hard work and wish her well in that role. Whether in strategy or policy, the focus on children is so important.

The importance of investing in children’s essential skills in the early years cannot be overstated. Success in that has been shown to have an impact on broader society and the economy. Studies conducted by the effective pre-school, primary and secondary education project demonstrated that having a trained early years teacher often leads to better long-term chances for children. I have witnessed that as grandfather to six children, and will later mention their progress.

That evidence has sometimes sadly been neglected, as reflected across the United Kingdom where only one in 10 nurseries has an early years teacher. Children with an early years education were found to go on to gain higher English and maths GCSE results, and were more likely to achieve five or more grades A* to C. The facts and evidence base are clearly there. Children who experienced high-quality pre-school education were better at self-regulation, social behaviour and less inclined to hyperactivity. That is all evidence based—I speak according to the evidence. Children who experienced high-quality pre-school settings were more likely to follow a post-16 academic path. Despite that evidence, more than 80% of parents say they have struggled to access services such as parenting support, health visitors and high-quality early education.

I would like to highlight one issue. My son and daughter-in-law control and restrict screen time on the iPad but, over my time as an elected representative, I have noticed one thing coming back from those involved in nurseries and primary school. This is not a criticism, because people deal with things in their own way, but what happens if the child is busy, hyper or giving a bit of bother? They are handed the iPad. It takes their attention and they are okay for a while, but the amount of time a child is on an iPad must be restricted. I am not sure that every parent understands that. That is about teaching skills, not telling them how to parent. It is about making them aware of the issues.

Some of the nursery staff I spoke to told me of the damage of a child being on an iPad screen for three or four hours a day. That will have a very negative effect on the child. I would like to hear the Minister’s thoughts on that, because that important point is made by nursery school teachers and some parents. Increased screen time for children should be raised as a potential barrier to the development of children’s essential skills.

[Adam Dance]

I totally agree that screen time can be damaging for young people just given a phone or an iPad, but does the hon. Member not agree that screen time can be beneficial if used in the right way to help people with disabilities such as dyslexia?

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[Georgia Gould]

I thank the hon. Member for raising that issue. We have developed guidance for parents to support them with screen time in early years. As a parent of a two-and-a-half-year-old, I know how confusing it can be. It is not something that I was spoken to about when I had my son. It is important we have guidance that is not judgmental but gives parents the best advice. We have put that out now. A lot of expertise has gone into developing it and I have had really positive feedback. Certainly, I have found it very helpful personally in shaping those important decisions. It is also important that through our Best Start hubs we are able to have that conversation and support for children, not just about not being on screens, but about what engagement looks like: what are the activities, how does one encourage a child to speak, and as they get older what are the enrichment activities that they can engage in after the school day?

The hon. Member for Yeovil is always a passionate advocate of support for children with special educational needs and disabilities, and I welcome him mentioning that as part of these wider issues. On the questions on identifying needs, he will know that we are developing national inclusion standards which include research into identification around the needs we have set out in our SEND consultation document. That work is ongoing and it will form part of national inclusion standards. We are working on appointing the panel of independent experts at the moment. It is critical that we get that right, and have that early identification of needs, whether on speech and language or others.

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned the importance of support for young people who are constantly having to re-sit English and maths. He will know we have been consulting on a new level 1 English and maths qualification, which is precisely designed to support children and young people to consolidate their knowledge and be a gateway qualification to deal with exactly that problem, which is one I have heard time and time again.

[Adam Dance]

I thank the Minister for giving way and for answering all my questions, as always. Concerned parents in Yeovil also tell me that kids who have autism, obsessive compulsive disorder, sensory issues or attention deficit disorder cannot find apprenticeships or work, nor have they had help developing the skills they need to get into the creative or agricultural sector. Can the Minister set out what more the Government are doing to support rural schools and employers to get neurodiverse people into those industries?

[Georgia Gould]

I really appreciate that question. Again, talking to families and young people around the country, that comes up all the time. I welcomed the Milburn review’s focus on the experience of young people with SEND and disabilities, and on some of those barriers. There is action we are already taking, through supported internships and our work with further education, but it is an area in which we need to go further. It is something we are continuing to work on with the Department for Work and Pensions. I am happy to have further conversations about those issues.

I want to conclude by thanking everyone for this really important debate. These are areas we are actively looking at as we develop the new curriculum and think about developing the oracy framework we have committed to. Employers have said to us that it is essential young people have the skills they need for later life. Many of us will have seen how powerful some of these interventions are. I was recently with the Duke of Edinburgh, talking to young people in a school in my constituency. They talked about the confidence and problem-solving skills that the programme gave them, changing their sense of what was possible for them. That sits alongside the core knowledge that young people must learn, supporting young adults to be well rounded and able to shape their futures confidently. I hope that we can continue these conversations, as a lot of important ideas were mentioned today. We will consult fully on the new curriculum, which I am sure that all Members will look at with interest.