Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Norris Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

There are 402 maintained nursery schools. The hon. Lady has championed their cause and I have seen at first hand the great work they do. She is right that the funding goes up to 2020. Clearly, we have to see what happens, but they are a very important part of the mix of provision.

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

Childcare is a critical enabler to allow parents to access further education. Nottingham College, in a move reflective of the exceptionally difficult landscape facing further education, has chosen to shut its nursery in my constituency. That is wrong, and I am campaigning with local residents and councillors to keep it open. Does the Minister agree that access to childcare is an important driver of accessing further education?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I do agree that access to childcare is very important. I will look at the specific details the hon. Gentleman mentions, but suffice it to say that we are investing £50 million more to help schools to open a nursery setting.

Statutory PHSE Education

Alex Norris Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship for the first time, Mr Robertson.

I congratulate my colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce), on securing this debate and the excellent case she made. I will start with the immortal words of those bards of New York City—I know you are a big fan, Mr Robertson —Salt-N-Pepa:

“Let’s talk about sex baby,

Let’s talk about you and me,

Let’s talk about all the good things and the bad things that may be.”

That was a really big song when I was growing up. I was aware that people were talking about sex all around me, and that there were good and bad things, but I never heard anything about it at school. That was where I looked to be educated about the challenges of the world, but I never heard anything about it. I could conjugate lots of Latin verbs, but I certainly did not understand this.

The point is that children are already getting a broad PSHE education. They get it from their friends and siblings, where it is no doubt patchy at best, from the television, which is no doubt worse, and—this should probably make us collectively shudder—from the internet. The subject is out there. Children and young people hear words and research them, but goodness knows what they are shown. I feel that we have a duty to equip our young people with the facts of life and the critical reasoning skills to make good decisions when they negotiate the weird and wonderful opportunities that the world presents them. I believe that to not do so is to let them down.

Two years ago in Nottingham, thanks to the excellent work of Catherine Kirk and Councillor Sam Webster, we introduced a sex and relationship education charter. We went to our schools and got them to sign up, and 70% of them currently are. With two years’ worth of research, we can now say that staff feel more confident in delivering good lessons, pupils have shown maturity and their participation has improved, and in many schools zero parents have chosen to opt out. That context will change as we move on to a statutory footing, but some of the learning that we have in Nottingham will stand us in good stead.

We seek to equip our young people to pass what I call the “Friday night test”. When they are out and about on a Friday night, wherever they may be, we will not be with them, their teachers will not be with them and, most of the time, their parents will not be with them. In those moments of challenge, whether about money, alcohol or sex, have we equipped them to make good decisions about the different risks and benefits? If we have not, we have failed them. In researching this contribution, I saw that a Terrence Higgins Trust survey shows that 70% of young people say they that they have not learned about issues regarding consent. Deary me, what an indication; it is like sticking them in a car on the M1 but not having taught them how to drive.

We need to educate our young people about broader PSHE issues, and we need to do it well. Again, SRE is a pretty good example. That same piece of work by the Terrence Higgins Trust found that more than half of our pupils received relationships and sex education just once a year or less, and—this is the key point—half of our young people rated the RSE that they received in school as either poor or terrible. They are judging that against the standard of what they see in the real world. They are voting, although not quite with their feet, because I suspect that they do not have much choice. We cannot kid them. There is a big, wide world out there and we have to equip them properly.

That starts with properly resourcing our teachers so that they can engage confidently on the wide range of issues. We should also be saying that schools should not be doing this on a termly drop-down day, which students miss if they are away or think is a day when they do not have to contribute as much. Instead, this subject should be woven through the curriculum. I know that the Minister has lots of asks for an hour here and an hour there, but the best way to aggregate them is to weave them through on a daily basis. Our children will be faced with these decisions every day, so let us put it in their education like that too.

Low expectations are a great challenge in my community. This is a gendered issue, and that is worth reflecting on this 100th anniversary of some women getting the vote. There is a perception—this is the sort of cod psychology that young people are exposed to on social media—that we get the love that we think we deserve. Through proper PSHE and SRE for our young people, I want our young women to understand that if they put into the world, they can get good things back. They should expect good things of how men treat them and how their friends treat them. At the moment, that does not happen enough, and I hope that this is seminal moment to change things.

I want to finish by saying that on 28 June—the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince) asked for an hour and 45 minutes of termly time, but I am just asking for half a day of the hard-pressed Minister’s time—Nottingham will celebrate our first sex and relationship education day. The schools, city council staff, statutory agencies and voluntary agencies will come together to celebrate what we have done and to encourage the whole community about their responsibilities. We will issue some of our research and guidance, and some of the things that parents could do to challenge the things that they are not comfortable with.

[Andrew Selous]

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech with many good points. Does he favour changing the name to “relationships and sex education”—to switch those two words round—as many of us think that relationships should come before the sex?

[Alex Norris]

I have to say that I do not get excited about the alphabet soup. In preparing for today, I was desperately trying to work out whether it was PHSE or PSHE. As long as the content is there and our young people are getting it, you can call it whatever you want—I am very relaxed about that.

That event is on 28 June. Hopefully, Nottingham will demonstrate once again that it has been a model for what we are seeking to do as a nation, and I hope that during the consultation we can draw on some of that experience too.

[Mr Laurence Robertson (in the Chair)]

I will leave two minutes at the end of the debate for the mover of the motion to wind up.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Norris Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

The hon. Gentleman is not correct. The attainment-gap index at key stage 2 has closed by 10.5%. We have seen a significant increase in the proportion of children who achieve the expected standard in reading, writing and maths: it rose from 53% last year to 61% this year—an increase of 8 percentage points—and the SATs are significantly more demanding than they were in previous years. We are producing a cohort of primary school leavers who are far better equipped in maths and English, ready for the demands of secondary school.

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

3. What steps his Department is taking to ensure that all schools teach awareness of LGBT issues in an age-appropriate manner.

[Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Lab)]

12. What steps his Department is taking to ensure that all schools teach awareness of LGBT issues in an age-appropriate manner.

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

Schools can teach about LGBT issues within the curriculum and they must comply with the Equality Act 2010. We have established a £3 million programme to prevent and address homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying, and we are making relationships education and relationships and sex education compulsory and engaging thoroughly with stakeholders to inform the design and content of the curriculum in those subjects, ensuring that they are both high quality and age appropriate.

[Alex Norris]

With the change in leadership at the Department, may I ask whether the new Secretary of State shares the commitment of his predecessor that relationship and sex education lessons must be lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender inclusive and reflect the needs of all young people?

[Nick Gibb]

I can give the hon. Gentleman that assurance. We are clear that the new subjects should ensure that young people learn that there are different types of relationships. Schools should ensure therefore that RSE is inclusive and meets the needs of all young people.

Schools: Nottingham

Alex Norris Excerpts

Wednesday 12th July 2017 Westminster Hall

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

I will start by declaring an interest as chair of governors at Rosslyn Park Primary School. I shall not impose on the Minister’s time for more than four or five minutes; I am enormously grateful to him for giving me the opportunity to speak. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) on securing the debate. She, like me, made school cuts the focus of her terrific re-election campaign, and she and I vowed to use all the devices of this place to raise the issue loudly and assertively. We have both spent a lot of time meeting parents at school gates; it is impossible to overstate the strength of feeling on this topic.

Getting a good start in life in order to thrive should be something we aspire to for every child. Regrettably, in my constituency too often that is not the case. That is both the cause of and caused by cyclical poverty in my community. That was the theme of my maiden speech, and it will be the golden thread running through all my work in this place. It is critical that our schools are sufficiently supported to make sure we can close the gap, or too many of our children will start behind and simply never catch up. That is a shame. It is not a fact of life and people rightly look to this place and to the Government in the expectation that there will be action to tackle it. It explains the dismay at the idea that schools in Nottingham might receive real terms budget cuts. Left wing or right wing, whatever their politics, people do not see that as a sensible idea. It is a false economy for the state and will lead to greater dependence in the future. None of us will win. I can understand that there may be historic inequities that need to be ironed out, but I urge Ministers to think creatively and to level up, or they will take from those with the least in order to give it often to those with the least need. I defy anybody to join me at the school gates in Bilborough and explain that to parents.

School improvement is an imprecise art. As I declared, I am the chair of governors at one of Nottingham’s biggest primary schools. We have been on a journey with Ofsted and have got to the point where we are very excited and cannot wait for Ofsted to come and see how well we are doing. Our results last week put us virtually at the national average for attainment and above that for progress. In future years I have no doubt we will go even further. That is all built on current levels of investment and on having outstanding leadership that works outside the classroom, meaning that each leader can make half a dozen or more staff better, leading to better teaching on a daily basis in each class. It means never needing supply and always delivering quality, but that is at risk from real-terms school cuts—nearly £2 million-worth across the constituency.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South mentioned, there are only so many physical budgets that the cuts can come from. In the end, they will come from staff. The public will watch us discuss cuts and talk about real terms and cash terms. That is a political argument for now, but it will mean naught in future. When P45s go out to teachers and teaching assistants, that is what parents will understand and they will not see that as a good thing. It is not helpful for Nottingham and we ask Ministers to revisit those plans and come up with something that works.

Education and Local Services

Alex Norris Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2017 Commons Chamber

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

Thank you for this opportunity to make my maiden speech in this important debate, Mr Speaker. As I believe is customary, I wish to start by paying tribute to my predecessor—this is something I am very glad to do. Graham Allen served our community in Nottingham North with distinction over the past 30 years. He has fought for better jobs, decent housing and the best possible education for our young people. He was a skilled parliamentarian who used all the devices of this place for the betterment of our community. His greatest legacy will be his work on early intervention, securing cross-party support and taking it from a theoretical discipline to one that is already changing the lives of the youngest people in my community. I hope to carry on this work as Labour and Co-operative Member of Parliament for Nottingham North. I and all my neighbours owe Graham a great debt of thanks. He ought to be a freeman of Nottingham or never to have to pay for a pint in Bulwell again, whichever he considers the greater honour.

Speaking of great honours, being the Member of Parliament for Nottingham North is the honour of my lifetime. I am humbled that my neighbours chose me to be their voice in Parliament, and I will not let them down. I am humbled, too, to be a Labour Member of Parliament. I am very aware of the great names that have come before me, and I look forward to proving myself worthy of such exalted company. I am especially proud, during Co-operatives Fortnight, to be one of 38 Labour and Co-operative Members of Parliament this time, and again I look forward to serving the co-operative movement during my time here.

Nottingham has the very best of Britain, so I have pulled out a few highlights. They are not necessarily the ones that Members will find on Wikipedia, as I wanted to make them laugh, especially given the lateness of the hour. Our Old Market Square is one of the best big urban open spaces in the country, so every summer we chuck 100 tonnes—or whatever it is—of sand in there and make a beach out of it, because we are also as far away from the coast as it is possible to get. We have the best public transport outside the capital; we have two top-class universities—I am proud to be an alumnus of one—which have pumped out innovations such as the MRI machine and ibuprofen; we have produced the best British boxer of the 21st century, Carl Froch, as well as the best British boxer of the 19th century, William “Bendigo” Thompson, who was from not too far from where I live; Britain’s best actress, Vicky McClure, is a proud Nottinghamian; we have the oldest inn in England—we know how important that is; and in football our city has won more European cups than London, Paris and Rome—put together. We have the very best of Britain in Nottingham.

However, it is important to reflect on the fact that we have also traditionally had some of the worst of Britain—on health outcomes, results at school and outcomes in the workplace. We should not shy away from that challenge. All our challenges lead back to one point, which is our poverty. Thirty-four years ago, in his maiden speech, my predecessor but one, Richard Ottaway, remarked on Nottingham North’s proud industrial history and listed off all the big workplaces in the constituency. Four years later, my predecessor, Graham Allen, in his maiden speech, remarked that half of those had closed. Thirty-four years on from Richard Ottaway’s speech, none of them are there and they have not been for some time. They were not replaced by the skilled, well paid jobs of the 21st century; instead, what has replaced them is cyclical poverty. We should be angry about that. It is not inevitable and it is avoidable. I am angry about it, which is why I come to this place—I am here to do something about it.

This is what is regrettable about this Government’s legislative plan for the next two years: there simply is not the level of ambition and imagination that my community needs from its Government in order for it to become a better place. A lack of resources is a factor in that, and we have seen disproportionate cuts in Nottingham, but more than that we are talking about the ambition to genuinely create a better Britain that gives everyone a fair shake. Although this Government will not do the things that Nottingham North needs them to do, I will do everything I can, as a Labour and Co-operative party Member of Parliament and trade unionist, to fill this gap. I shall seek to use all the intricacies of this place to highlight our issues. I shall seek to build support for the long-term projects we need to change our community, and I will work and work until we see things get better. That is what I offered to my neighbours and that is what I offer to this place.