Education Bill

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

I will, of course, oppose this Bill because it provides yet more evidence of an elitist approach to the education of our young people. This Tory-led Government are out of touch with teachers, with parents and with students.

I get sick and tired of people doing down our young people and their very real achievements, when we should be celebrating with them and praising and encouraging them to do better. They should be able to thrive, doing the things that they do best within a balanced curriculum. Yet at Education questions yesterday, the Secretary of State proudly promoted his narrow 1950s vision of what our education system should look like. His attachment to dead languages such as Latin is worrying. As Secretary of State, he has a responsibility to create a flexible education system that caters for all students—he is failing in that responsibility.

The proposals for the “English baccalaureate” are a backward step, which sends our young people the message that only traditional academic subjects hold any value. Instead of telling young people what subjects they should be studying, the Secretary of State should be giving them the freedom to pursue the subjects that they are passionate about. As my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) rightly questioned, how can the Secretary of State proclaim that Latin is more important than information technology in the 21st century?

About 50% of our young people do not plan to go to university, and I think that number is going to grow as the tuition fees rises are brought into place. We have brilliant universities in this country, including the excellent Teesside and Durham universities, and the young people who aspire to attend university should be encouraged to do so. A university education, however, is not the be-all and end-all, because other things are happening in further education. We must be careful not to send the wrong message to our young people, many of whom work incredibly hard and are rightly proud of their achievements—irrespective of whether or not they reach university.

This Bill contains measures that give the Secretary of State free rein to set uncapped and commercial rates of interest on student loans. The thousands of students who marched passed my office as part of the protests against the rise in tuition fees are learning government lessons the hard way, and it will be their successors who know that we are not “all in it together”.

Youth unemployment is at an all-time high. One in five of our young people are out of work. The Tory-led Government are in danger of creating a lost generation of young people, so why does this Bill repeal Labour’s apprenticeship guarantee? With current levels of youth unemployment, we should be doing everything we can to help young people succeed in education and training. Over and again, we hear the mantra, “We’re all in this together”—but not according to the large numbers of young people in my constituency who have e-mailed me, angry at the way their generation is being targeted by this Tory-led Government. They are most particularly concerned about the move to scrap education maintenance allowance—another broken promise to add to the list.

There is much to criticise in this Bill, but I want to move on to focus on the Secretary of State’s pet project of free schools. The Government’s free schools initiative has serious implications for secondary education in the Stockton borough. Last week, the Secretary of State visited Stockton to announce he had given the go-ahead for an initial plan for a free school in my neighbouring constituency of Stockton South. In my former life as a local councillor in Stockton, I was the cabinet member for children and young people, so I know this is a very difficult local issue.

Ingleby Barwick is a modern and growing housing development, with only one secondary school. Many hundreds of local children have to travel a few miles to get to school. Parents in Ingleby Barwick have campaigned for years for another secondary school, but if they are successful the implications will be problematic. Conyers and Egglescliffe schools—both excellent local secondary schools—rely on pupils from Ingleby Barwick to keep their numbers up. At least one of these schools serves children from my constituency and potentially would have to close if the Secretary of State were to approve a new school in Ingleby Barwick.

If the free school proposal goes ahead, which other schools will suffer, and perhaps even close, as a result? That is what I and affected communities in my constituency want to know. I cannot understand how the Government can allow any school proposal to go ahead without consideration of the local authority strategy for schools. In Stockton the strategy provided for a massive expansion of All Saints school in the middle of Ingleby Barwick, which could have been facilitated without the investment that will be needed if the free school proposal is to go ahead. That idea was ditched by the Secretary of State when he axed Building Schools for the Future.

It is important for parents to have influence over local schools, but free schools will undermine local authorities. I am concerned about the impact that the free schools initiative will have across the Stockton borough as communities and schools are pitted against each other. When it comes to the free schools policy, for every winner there will be an even bigger loser.

The Bill requires the expenditure of hundreds of millions of pounds that would surely be better spent on supporting existing schools. The Secretary of State is preoccupied with his structural changes to the education system, while neglecting what teachers and parents care about most: the provision of the best possible education and training for all our young people, not just the most academically able. Contrary to what the Secretary of State claimed, in my area children across the education system did considerably better over the past 13 years than over the previous 10. We need to work with our schools and local authorities to achieve even greater success, rather than setting school against school. Let us build on success, not abandon it.