Educational Attainment (Disadvantaged Pupils)

Debate between Alex Cunningham and Ian Mearns

Tuesday 25th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Alex Cunningham]

I do agree that there are examples of local authorities across the country that have not been doing the job of driving up standards that we would have hoped for. That varies throughout the country. However, in local authority areas there are still excellent schools, whether they have converted to academy status or they remain as local authority schools. It is the ones that are not doing well that the local authorities and others need to turn their attentions to.

Across the country, there are nine local authority areas, predominantly in London, where every secondary school student attends a good or outstanding institution. Yet in 13 local authority areas a majority of secondary students attend a school that is not good or outstanding. Although there are areas of high performance across the regions, they are unfortunately far from the norm.

Ofsted’s report puts it bluntly, saying that secondary schools in the north-east and Yorkshire and the Humber are among the worst in the country. That is not an observation I relish, as a north-east Member of Parliament, but it is one that we cannot afford to hide from. Those results are symptomatic of an education system that is failing many of our young people, but it is not all about the system; there is something else.

As has already been said, the Education Committee is currently examining the underachievement of white working-class children, many of whom come from impoverished working and non-working families living in areas where jobs are hard to come by and, as is the case in north-east England, regions where unemployment continues to go up. We are looking for answers to that underachievement, and we want to understand the variation across the country. Perhaps the answer is back in early years, as Governments appear to have agreed over the years.

The previous Labour Government did much for early years provision. I witnessed that in the north-east region, where they did more than ever to give children a better chance at the start of their education. However, we are still not reaching the children we need to reach, and the loss of provision is a serious concern. It is not wholly surprising that young people in the north-east and Yorkshire and the Humber are less likely to attain results above the national level in the key indicator of five good GCSEs, including English and mathematics, than young people from almost anywhere else in the country.

As I said, we have successes in the north-east. The Secretary of State for Education, in his evidence to the Education Committee last month, talked about Sunderland, Gateshead and other pockets across the region where there have been improvements. In my own backyard, the North Shore academy in my constituency has improved considerably in the past few years. The school was developed under Labour and delivered under the current Government.

Poverty is a strong and powerful player. The north-east has the highest proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals outside London, and the gap in attainment between those eligible for free school meals and those who are not is wider than the national average in primary schools. Worse still, the gap widens by the time pupils leave secondary school.

Her Majesty’s chief inspector of education, children’s services and skills may be right to assert that children in England now have the best chance they have ever had of attending a good school, but that broad remark fails to acknowledge the dramatic regional variations that are turning education into that most horrible of clichés, a postcode lottery. Indeed, Her Majesty’s chief inspector accepted as much when he described our school system as

“a tale of two nations.”

He said that the system is

“divided into lucky and unlucky children.”

“Luck” is not a word I work with, but that is what he said. He talked of an

“educational lottery that consigns some children to substandard schools and favours others”.

Her Majesty’s chief inspector is clearly right to state that too many children in our country are unlucky, but too many children from similar backgrounds and with similar abilities end up with widely different prospects because the quality of their education is not consistently good—in other words, because they grew up in different regions and attended different schools with different opportunities.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead outlined, the north-south divide means that people in the south can aspire to tremendous things, but there is not so much aspiration in the north and other regions. That is not fair. We must develop a system that minimises regional and local variations and restores fairness to our education system, ensuring that it delivers the skills and knowledge that the young people of today will need to succeed tomorrow.

We must deliver not only to some young people but to all young people. A crucial element of attaining that goal is to ensure that our teachers—their teachers—are fully equipped to do the job. The path to educational attainment, a path that every parent wants their children to follow, is guided by teachers. Nobody, apart from family, is more important in children’s lives. It is clear to me that the key to securing improved attainment for all, irrespective of the geographical fortune of social circumstance, lies in ensuring that teachers are trained to the highest standards to allow the cycle of progress to continue.

[Ian Mearns]

Outlining the importance of teachers is crucial to this debate because, for too many youngsters, the school day is an oasis of calm in an otherwise chaotic life. It is all too sad that we are asking teachers to put right an awful lot that is wrong for our youngsters.

[Alex Cunningham]

We certainly do, and I have seen some tremendous examples in my constituency and across the Stockton borough of teachers picking up a lot of education. Young children are arriving in nursery school still not knowing how to use a knife and fork, how to interact properly with children or even how to have a proper conversation. We rely on teachers tremendously, which is all the more reason why outreach through children’s centres and other organisations is so vital to helping parents and the wider family to help children to develop.

We need good teachers at all levels and in every neighbourhood, each equipped to deliver a modern education based on an up-to-date understanding of developments in teaching practice, specific subject knowledge and the latest educational tools and technology. The previous Labour Government responded to the challenge of failing education with huge investment in early years and across the primary and secondary sectors. The London challenge delivered great results, but that achievement was not reflected everywhere despite unprecedented resources in our schools.

The current Government are seeing some positive results from the pupil premium, but again the success is far from universal. I have no doubt that the social factors that my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead describes, as well as the quality of education, have to be addressed to build the desire to learn and the desire of all parents to have high expectations of their children so that they do well in a society that offers equal opportunity for good-quality jobs and careers that can ensure they have a life to enjoy, rather than simply an existence.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alex Cunningham and Ian Mearns

Monday 25th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

1. What recent assessment he has made of trends in rent arrears in social housing.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

12. What recent assessment he has made of trends in rent arrears in social housing.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Stephen Williams)]

Housing association arrears at the end of 2011-12 were 4.8% in England—an improvement on performance in the previous year, when they were 5.1 %.

Arts and Creative Industries

Debate between Alex Cunningham and Ian Mearns

Wednesday 19th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

The people of north-east England hold a tremendous passion for the arts. Since the late 1990s, the region has developed a budding significance in the creative industries, spurred by finances made available under the last Labour Government, as well as from the EU and the national lottery.

The placing of the now-iconic Angel of the North welcomed in a new era for the region.

[Ian Mearns]

Does my hon. Friend recognise that we owe a debt of gratitude to the people of Hartlepool, where the Angel of the North was made? Last weekend marked the sculpture’s 15th birthday.

[Alex Cunningham]

My hon. Friend is also an angel; I congratulate him and my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright)—who personally constructed the angel, if we are to believe some of the stories that I have been hearing.

During the decade that followed the erection of the Angel of the North, some £350 million was invested in new and established arts venues, which saw the beginning of an under-recognised British success story. It has provided a major boost to the regional economy and resulted in the creation of not hundreds but thousands of jobs across the culture and tourism sectors. The result of that clever combination of investment and foresight is that the north-east, often one of Britain’s poorest and most deprived areas by many other measures, has established some of the finest creative arts infrastructure in the entire country.

We can boast of not only international attractions such as the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and the Sage Gateshead concert hall, both in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), but national and regional establishments such as the ARC in Stockton and the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art.

Local Government Finance Bill

Debate between Alex Cunningham and Ian Mearns

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Alex Cunningham]

That is an interesting question, which I wish I could answer. I do not see many empty homes, never mind second homes, in our area, so I think it might be a challenge for us to find some. I am sure we have a few, but I doubt they would fill the gap as the Minister suggests they could. In an authority such as Stockton, with high numbers of older people, the burden on the people the measure hits will be tremendous.

The burden will get higher and higher on ever fewer people. In many cases, the gains made by the working poor from the recent £1,000 increase in the income tax personal allowance will be completely wiped out by the reduction in council tax benefit and the knock-on effects. Surely that is exactly the opposite of what the DWP says it is trying to do? Are the Secretaries of State talking to each other? I wonder. Alongside the rise in VAT and other benefit changes, we are faced with these regressive policies that will hit some people extremely hard—people who already work hard for little reward. These proposals are simply a slap in the face for their efforts to improve their lives.

The Local Government Association has calculated that councils are being asked to share the £500 million cut among 1.3 million claimants, which works out at an average loss of £320 each. That is a significant sum for low earners, especially when the Government claim they are trying to protect work incentives for them. It has been estimated that council tax support for pensioners makes up 50% of the total funding, and roughly a further 25% recipients would also be exempt from the reductions in support because of councils’ duties to support vulnerable groups and tackle child poverty. Such people should of course be exempt, but that could lead to the 10% budget cut falling on the remaining 25% of recipients—on the support provided to low-paid people in work. Those people are working hard for their families, trying to do their best. They have pride in what they are doing, yet this Government are just kicking them.

[Ian Mearns]

I have just had a brainwave about where an awful lot of these second homes that will fill the gap will come from. When the housing benefit changes kick in, and people are evicted from their properties because they can no longer afford the rent as the property was under-occupied, those empty properties that belong to private sector landlords will be empty second homes. Of course we can raise the revenue from them. Does my hon. Friend think that is a possibility?