Skills for Jobs White Paper

Alex Norris Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the great work that East Coast College does. It is a brilliant example and has such a positive impact in serving its local community. It will be up to a comprehensive spending review to set any multi-year settlements—not the Budget, sadly—but we will be working on the simplification of budgets and the allocation of moneys, which will benefit and help many colleges in managing their finances.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

Thanks to HS2 and the work of the East Midlands Development Corporation, the outlook for the Nottingham economy is very bright indeed. We need to use the time available to ensure that our population will have the skills to access the tens of thousands of jobs that we will add to our local economy. Will the Secretary of State commit himself to our having local control over his plans to ensure that they fit in with the strategies already in place?

[Gavin Williamson]

We want to ensure that local communities benefit from the type of major infrastructure investments that we are making right across the country, whether that is HS2 or other infrastructure. When the hon. Gentleman has the opportunity to go through the White Paper, he will clearly see that we want to put local business right at the heart of decision making. It is a model that has worked in countless countries, including Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, and we want to replicate it, because those businesses are the ones that are seeking the skills, and we think they should be a key part of determining what is needed locally.

Covid-19: Educational Settings

Alex Norris Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

My hon. Friend speaks not just for her constituents, but for many thousands of youngsters right across the country who are worried about this. I have asked Ofqual to take up this issue, to look at it directly and to make sure that there are measures in place so that those students will be in a position to get a grade. I have asked Ofqual to include that as part of the consultation that it will be doing next week. We have already discussed how this can be done, and we believe that it will be possible to do so.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State clearly prefers testing, rather than vaccination, as the means to make sure our teachers and learners will be safe when schools can reopen. The Prime Minister wants that to happen in six or seven weeks’ time. To have an adequate testing regime in every school by that period will require working around the clock in every minute available between now and then. Will the Secretary of State confirm that every school in my constituency has access to the support it needs to make sure that such a regime will be in place in time?

[Gavin Williamson]

We have already seen the mass distribution of testing kits, and all the equipment that is required, in schools and colleges that take years 7 and above. We will be looking at how we can roll out testing beyond secondary schools into primary settings and earlier years to support staff.

I am as enthusiastic about vaccination as the hon. Gentleman is, but we are very much forward with our programme of mass testing for children, with all secondary schools receiving the initial deliveries. All schools will be getting that level of support in secondary settings, and we are looking at expanding that in primary settings as well. That would include all the schools in his constituency, as well as those in all our constituencies.

Education Settings: Autumn Opening

Alex Norris Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. That is very much what heads will be doing to ensure that there is full education across all year groups in all classes for every child, including in his constituency.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Further education institutions were already struggling prior to the crisis, and that will only have become worse in recent months. Those same institutions will have to make a Herculean effort if they are to get their learners ready for those vital qualifications in the next academic year. Can the Secretary of State explain to further education leaders in my community why they were excluded from the covid catch-up fund and what support will be available instead?

[Gavin Williamson]

We continue to work closely with the vital sector as we look towards the economic recovery that we are going to be building towards as we come out of the pandemic. We will work closely with it in terms of the actions and support it needs to help youngsters who need to catch up, but equally, to ensure that every further education college is fully open for September.

Early Years Education: Equality of Attainment

Alex Norris Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the effect of early years education on equality of attainment.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Charles.

I represent one of the poorest communities and constituencies in the country. I take no pleasure in that fact. Sometimes, and especially on the left, it feels like we play poverty Top Trumps and fetishise life in poorer communities. I do not. I grew up in a low-income, lone-parent family and watched my mum work long hours during the day and study at night so that my sister and I could have a better life. Life in poverty is hard, cold and scary. The people in communities such as mine are brilliant, but the circumstances in which many are compelled to live are not.

The one thing that people know about living in poverty is that they are never going back to it, and that experience brought me to this place. As a young person, I wondered why my family seemed to work so hard but had so little help. As I got older and it became clear that my future would be different, I resolved to use my improved life chances and opportunities to stand up for families who are struggling like mine did.

Education is the great leveller. Available universally, it offers everyone the chance to acquire the skills, knowledge and qualifications to change their lives. When it works well, it is transformational. When it does not, it entrenches the inequalities that we seek to tackle. I still see that too often in my community, and the most patent inequality is between rich and poor—those who have, and those who have not. The gap between people from wealthy families and those from poor families has been too large for too long, with significant implications for the adult lives of those who miss out, because qualifications so often determine income, opportunities and social mobility.

We know that education has the greatest impact and is the greatest leveller when it takes place early in the life course, which is the subject of the debate. In early years education, for children until the age of five, it is about trying to address lifelong inequalities before they arise and breaking the cycle of poverty. After that, we are just firefighting; it is still important, but we are playing catch-up. It is important that we take opportunities such as this to critique the Government’s early years policies, because they are supposed to be making a difference right now.

With an ever-changing UK labour market, the consequences for young people not starting on the right path are as dramatic as they have ever been, if not more so. I will borrow slightly from the hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) by talking a little about white working-class boys, as we did the week before last, when he and the Minister were both here. That cannot be spoken about too much and is not spoken about enough. In my community, the group that struggles the hardest is white working-class boys.

I have given the figures before in the main Chamber, but they bear repeating. In Nottingham, our primary education has come so far on such a rapid journey, and I am proud that we have broadly reached the national average for key stage 2 outcomes. That is not the best or only measure, but it is a significant one. But that success masks significant inequalities between boys and girls, because 70% of girls reach that expected standard for reading, writing and maths combined, while the same is true for only 59% of boys. In different primaries in my constituency, 76% of girls meet the expected standard but only 35% of boys, or 79% and 40%, or 92% and 50%. Of the 29 primary schools in my constituency for which I have data, boys have worse outcomes in 26 of them, and in 17 schools the attainment gap is over 10%. The differences are greatest in the poorest and least diverse communities.

That is a significant challenge that is replicated across the country. White British children who are eligible for free school meals are consistently the lowest performing group. In 2015, only 595 white British boys who were eligible for free school meals achieved level 4 or better in reading, writing and maths—21 percentage points behind the national average. Furthermore, only one in 4 white British boys eligible for free school meals will achieve five GCSEs at A* to C, whereas the national average is almost 60%. This is a story in which groups of children—always the poorest, often the boys and particularly white British boys—start behind, and that gap grows.

There are many factors in creating that gap, including stereotyping and bias at home or even within education, stress at home, and parents’ negative views towards education, which can damage young people’s potential and aspirations. I have been a chair of school governors in my community for a decade, and I frequently see the parental attitude to education reflected in the child’s. The parents did not enjoy their time at school and they pass that on to their children in a sort of self-defeat, not daring not live a full life because of the disappointments of the past.

Our two brilliant universities, the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University, provide great outreach programmes—I suspect they include Mansfield—for which they visit schools. I have observed those lessons, and the kids come out bursting with ideas. Although university is not the be-all and end-all, it is not something that happens to many people in my community. In many cases, kids who go home and say, “I’m going to go to university,” will hear the answer, “No, you’re not.” That is extraordinary and we have to overcome it, because those experiences can lead to poor mental health and emotional wellbeing in children and perpetuate a lack of engagement in education. That is cyclical.

Our schools do what they can to bridge the attainment gap. I chair the school governors at Rosslyn Park Primary School, which is the most challenged school in the city and the region by income deprivation affecting children index score. Before even getting a textbook out or writing on the whiteboard, teachers are learning about the social and emotional aspects of learning and pastoral care—never mind high-level safeguarding work with the local authority—and they do incredible things just to get the children ready to learn. That work has its roots in the ages between nought and five, because we find that when children come to school for the first time, too many are still in nappies or unable to form basic words, with 0% at the combined level of expected development, leaving an awful lot for a school to do. Schools are at the heart of the debate, but they cannot wave a magic wand to overcome those obstacles.

[Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for mentioning our debate in this Chamber a few weeks ago about white working-class boys and attainment. An issue that seems to cut across later attainment and across different measures—the number of young men who end up in prison, for example—is their ability very early on to communicate effectively and understand what is happening around them, particularly in the classroom. Does he agree that early years communication and language support, particularly through provision in nursery and primary schools, is hugely important to helping kids to engage with school in the first instance and reach the right attainment levels later on?

[Alex Norris]

I absolutely share that view. The hon. Gentleman will know from visiting schools and discussing behaviour with teachers and senior leaders, as all Members do, that they talk about the frustration and anger that build up in children— particularly white British boys—which leads to temporary and permanent exclusions. That all comes from the fundamental starting point of not really being able to engage fully and getting frustrated, as we all would.

I have time enough to explain the context in my community with a little potted history of Nottingham. I am sure that the context applies to Mansfield as it does to my part of the city of Nottingham. Ours is one of the poorest parts of the country, but it was not always that way. Up until four decades ago, we had lots of skilled work, with Boots, Rayleigh, Players, Plessis, the pits and much more, but over the course of a generation, virtually of all of that has gone. The massive impact on confidence and aspiration means that cyclical poverty has flowed from that, but, for the first time in a generation, we have a chance to change it. In my community, we have three exciting opportunities: High Speed 2 at Toton; improvements to access to East Midlands Airport, which is now the biggest pure freight airport in the country; and the repurposing of our power station sites as clean energy zones. Those projects will add tens of thousands of jobs—perhaps as many as 100,000—to our local economy, and represent a generational chance to break the cycle.

The uncomfortable truth though is that, were we to fast-forward to that bright future tomorrow, which I would very much like, we would have to bring in people from outside to fill those jobs, because our young people, in the light of their experiences, are not yet ready for them. When visiting schools and talking about HS2 and the timeline for that to come onstream, for example, we are not talking about theoretical people who will work in those jobs, but about the children that we see in the room. They will be the IT specialists, project managers, engineers, logistics experts, nurses, police officers and much more. They are the very children who we need to gear up, educate and skill up for that very bright future.

In Nottingham, we are proud of our record as an early intervention city. That is what we talk about when we discuss early years education. I would be smote down if I did not refer to my predecessor, Graham Allen, who is a national leader in that work. Programmes have been established in my constituency to help to develop new practices and change public services. When I was part of the local authority five years ago, I was very proud that we were one of the sites that won the national lottery community fund’s A Better Start programme for our project, Small Steps Big Changes. I am really proud of the difference that the project makes to the lives of our children and young people. Our Think Dads! training brings dads into the picture in a way that they had not been in the past, with father-inclusive practices when they go into the home. I encourage colleagues to look at the family mentoring scheme in the Small Steps Big Changes project, which skills up people in the community whom neighbours look to for leadership and help tackling the challenges faced by families. Those people get skills and employment as a result, and are often better messengers that we are for some of the messages that need to go through to provide better starts and education.

We are halfway through A Better Start, and I am keen to hear the Minister’s views on how it has done and where it is going. Has he had a chance to visit one of the sites and, if not, would he visit ours in Nottingham? There would be lots there that he would really enjoy. A Better Start is a 10-year lottery-funded programme—that is the best funding for any project in my experience—but it will stop. We will look at mainstreaming the bits that were particularly effective in Nottingham, but in the context of budget reductions. What will the Government’s answer be after that?

The Labour party is committed to early years action. We are so proud of Sure Start, which is one of our great legacies. That is the principle that we need to talk about and the way that we should approach early years education, by giving each child the best possible start in life, through childcare and early education, as well as health and family support. Sure Start provided for locally owned and driven programmes, which were understood and were sensitive to the needs of the parents and children, provided greater support for those who needed it. A child’s ability to succeed is shaped by their home environment. Sure Start was perfectly placed to improve and shape those environments. The cuts to Sure Start are not theoretical—the numbers are as they are—and we risk a lost generation. Whatever one’s views on public finances and the big or small state, everybody knows investing early produces greater returns. I worry that we have a generation that has not had that investment. Our priority should be for those children to catch up, while we invest in their little brothers and sisters.

[Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a great case for providing opportunity for all. The early years national funding formula pays a setting only 100 miles from Cornwall £1.39 an hour more for each child than we receive in Cornwall. Does he agree that, unless we invest in young lives to have the best setting so that pre-schools or nurseries can survive, potentially we are failing this generation?

[Alex Norris]

I absolutely share that view. This is a stitch in time saving nine: those savings are false economies. We could save on our budget balance in the short term but, fundamentally, the cost will be much greater later in the system, whether in criminal justice or elsewhere, such as missed employment opportunities. We can do much better, and plan much better. I am interested to hear from the Minister what the vision for early years is. The challenges are well known, and that is why we have a broad political consensus. What will we do differently to break the cycle in places such as Bulwell, Bilborough, Aspley, Mansfield and Warsop? I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response, and I am grateful for the time.

Education and Attainment of White Working-Class Boys

Alex Norris Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Ben Bradley]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention and I totally agree. As I say, I fully recognise that the challenges I am highlighting in this speech affect many communities and many children from disadvantaged backgrounds, regardless of race or gender. I have said why I am highlighting it in these particular terms today, but she is absolutely right that there is a broader issue that we need to focus on. She also mentioned that kind of parental drive and engagement with schools, which I will come on to.

As I was saying, we need to understand the communities that these boys grow up in. In former coalfield areas such as Mansfield, not so long ago boys generally left school before they were 16, and they went to work down the pit or in a factory. There was a simplistic kind of certainty to that, in that regardless of what happened at school, they would have a job and a career. If someone was lucky, they might get to take the 11-plus and go off to grammar school to do something different. A few children benefited from that route, but then that was taken away as well.

That certainty of career does not exist any more in these communities, but in many cases they have not moved on. Many parents in the poorest communities do not have qualifications and therefore are not able to extol the virtues of school—indeed, they do not necessarily see the point of that education—and they cannot help their children to study because they do not have that level of attainment themselves.

I have schools in my area where 70% of the children are involved with social services, such is the chaotic backdrop to their lives, so school is very far from the top of the agenda for those children. Boys are far more likely to say that school is a waste of time, so we have to engage them in a different way and help them to see the value of school.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate and for the case that he has made; I agree with every word he has said. Does he, like me, see the real sadness that generations—multiple generation—of boys from Nottingham and from Nottinghamshire, which we both represent, have had that perception that school does not matter, and as a result there is wasted talent, instead of all the good things that they could be doing in our community if they had had a better education and we had not failed them?

[Ben Bradley]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention and I agree. I meet a number of young men who are bright, sharp and intelligent, but they do not have many qualifications and are struggling to find work, struggling to make a positive impact and struggling to see where their lives are going. We certainly need to do more to change that situation in the future and, as I have said, to go back to those guys who have finished school already and support them.

We need to prepare children for the 21st century and update our curriculum so that it is fit for the future. Repetitive tasks and memory tests are no longer relevant for study and even top private schools in America have shown that kids simply do not remember such stuff when they come back from school holidays.

The OECD’s programme of international student assessment rankings show that memorisation remains the dominant learning strategy in British classrooms. I could go off on a massive tangent at this point, and if I did I am sure that I would have a huge debate with the Minister for School Standards on this particular issue. However, I only have 10 minutes to cover things today, so I will try to focus on the headline issue, although there is a broader problem.

[Ben Bradley]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention and I agree. There is certainly a disparity that is entrenched when those boys go home over the summer to a household that is not necessarily pushing them to continue to learn and engage, compared with parents who are perhaps better-off and who drive that engagement. We must bridge that gap and I will come on to some of the potential solutions. The point I am trying to make is that we need to create incentives for these boys to learn and to make space in the curriculum, if needed, for something more relevant to them. It would be wrong if we assumed that everyone’s aspiration was to study to degree level. We would do far better to accept that where these boys are getting nothing currently, giving them something of interest and value would be a step forward.

Whether it meets our middle-class aspiration or not is kind of irrelevant; I am talking about choice and variety. Whether we do that through alternative provision or by giving all schools more freedom by offering more vocational and technical education, we have to do something more to show the career value of what they are learning, perhaps by doing it thematically, rather than in subject silos that do not connect with the real world. Everyone needs a certain core knowledge, but outside of that there are lots of different options.

[Alex Norris]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ben Bradley]

I will, but then I am going to have to stop giving way.

[Alex Norris]

I am sorry to come back again, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a real importance for us in this place to start talking about vocational and technical education with the same emphasis as higher education? That would set the tone that, actually, we think all those paths are just as legitimate and can lead to full and happy lives.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Norris Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

My hon. Friend raises a good point. Veterans make attractive members of staff in our schools, they inspire young people and help to improve behaviour. Our Troops to Teachers scheme was slow to begin with, but it is now proving successful in recruiting Army leavers.[Official Report, 4 February 2020, Vol. 671, c. 3MC.]

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

4. What assessment he has made of the educational attainment of children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

[Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)]

5. What progress he has made on closing the attainment gap for disadvantaged children.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Gavin Williamson)]

Against a background of rising standards, the attainment gap has closed by 13% at primary schools and by 9% at secondary schools since 2011. Most disadvantaged pupils attend good or outstanding schools, and 86% of schools are now rated as good or outstanding, which is up from 68% in 2010.

[Alex Norris]

Nottingham schools have made the significant strides in attainment, to which the Secretary of State refers, but massed within that, in less well off and less diverse communities, is poor attainment for boys. What specific interventions will the Department make to support schools to improve outcomes for white working-class boys?

[Gavin Williamson]

The hon. Gentleman highlights an important issue. One group that universities are most unsuccessful at recruiting from is white working-class boys and that is something we need to address. That way to do that is by continuing the reforms that the Government have introduced and continuing to drive standards, and by ensuring that academic rigour is there for every pupil. We must support those children by ensuring the very best teaching and support for every child.

Education and Local Government

Alex Norris Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis). That was an excellent maiden speech, joining a series of excellent maiden speeches made across the House. I wish all new Members well in their time in Parliament.

This is my first speech since returning at the general election, so I would like to take this opportunity to thank my neighbours for electing me again and giving me the privilege of being our voice here in Parliament. I stood for election on a set of promises, and I intend to make good on them. Uppermost of them was to fight for our schools and for the best resourcing for our schooling, so it seems apt to start there.

I was pleased to see in the Queen’s Speech talk of more resources for schools, but we have to understand the context in which we have that conversation. Austerity has harmed Nottingham in very many ways, but nowhere more than through cuts to schools. Since 2015, £20 million has been lost from our children—nearly £400 per head. Those are cuts that will not heal. Over the past 10 years, Ministers have come to the Dispatch Box to say, in very much the same triumphal spirit in which the Secretary of State started this debate, that there will be more money for schools. However, the reality has not matched that. Growing costs, whether through the growing number of pupils or the growing complexity by which some of those pupils need educating, have hoovered up that extra money and the reality has been real-terms cuts. We need to keep a laser focus on that. I certainly will, particularly in two regards. The first relates to what the funding does for class sizes.

Ministers on the Treasury Bench argue that more money is going into schools and those on the Opposition Benches say there is less, so we get into that sort of political back and forth. The reality on the ground in my constituency is that in pretty much every primary school, school class sizes have increased. At Bulwell Saint Mary’s, there have been an extra two and a half pupils per class between 2015 and 2018. At Rosslyn Park, where I have been chair of governors for the past decade, it is also two and a half. It is nearly two at Henry Whipple as well. This is the story across my community. Until that number starts going down, we are going to continue to talk about it. Any new money seems to go to better-off communities. Over the past five years, the average cut in poorer communities has been nearly £400, but for the best-off it has been only a third of that. If the new money goes into schools that are already doing better, it will only widen inequalities.

I do not want to spend my time solely talking about money, because we have to get on to other issues, too. I want to raise something that does not get talked about very much at all. It is one of the unspoken disparities in our education system: the outcome for boys, particularly white British boys in working-class communities. All primary school governors know that rush at key stage 2 to try to get to 65% in combined reading, writing and maths. In challenged communities like mine, that is really difficult. We have worked really hard and achieved that: we are broadly in line with the national average. However, hidden within that is a real disparity.

In my community, 70% of girls are meeting the target but only 59% of boys are making it. Let us look at some of the poorer schools. I will not name them, because this is not about picking out those schools for criticism; it is a broader problem. Nevertheless, in some of our primaries we see the following: 76% of girls meeting the age-related expected standard as against 35% of boys; 79% playing 40%; and 92%—what an outstanding achievement for the girls in one of my primary schools—as against only 56% of the boys. In all, boys have worse outcomes in 26 of the 29 primary schools in my constituency that I can get data for, and in 17 of the 29, the difference is greater than 10%. In general, the poorer and less diverse the ward, the bigger the gap. This is not a Nottingham North or a Nottingham peculiarity and we have to do something about it.

The Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, who is in his place, was on the Education Committee in 2014 which identified this problem and the root causes—low expectations of these children, poor absence rates and discipline, and curriculums that do not appeal to them. When we read that Education Committee report, it is striking that nothing has changed in that time, so I call on the Government to pick up the cudgels on this critical issue and have better curriculums based on international best practice; specific, targeted resource to augment the pupil premium; a focus on catching up for boys who fall behind at key stage 1; and the deployment of the best teachers in the most challenged schools, incentivised to work in the hard environments. Of course, we also need the full reversal of the per-head cut for each pupil that every school in my community has experienced.

[Several hon. Members rose—]