Free School Meals

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

As I stand here once again at the Dispatch Box winding up an Opposition day debate on free school meals, I have a strong sense of déjà vu, because just four months ago I was standing in this exact spot speaking on the exact same topic—extending free school meals over the upcoming holidays. The big difference between now and then is that just hours before the big debate in June, the Prime Minister performed a U-turn. Today, sadly, there has been no U-turn, and 1.4 million children will be without a hot meal from next week during half-term. For some, it is the only nutritious meal they get every day.

We are about to face one of the toughest winters of our generation. With the pandemic, with the flu season upon us and with the furlough scheme coming to an end, parents are twice as likely to be furloughed than anyone else working, and now they have to worry about feeding their children. We should all be hanging our heads in shame. Some 1.5 million people are already unemployed, the Bank of England has predicted that the employment rate will rise above its previous forecast of 7.5% this year, and food bank use in this country is expected to be 51% higher this winter than last. Almost 1 million of the children who are set to lose their free school meals next week are in areas that are subject to tier 1 and tier 2 restrictions.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[Tulip Siddiq]

I hope my hon. Friend will forgive me for not giving way; I have a lot to get through.

Before I sum up the important contributions that were made in this debate, I want to thank someone who is not an MP but who probably should be. Marcus Rashford has done us proud. It pains me, as a Liverpool fan, to say that—I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) felt the same when we praised him earlier—but we congratulate him on holding the Government to account and on the amazing goal that he scored last night.

I want to pay tribute to two other people who are not in the Chamber today, my hon. Friends the Members for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) and for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), for all the work they have done in championing this issue.

My hon. Friends the Members for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), for Bradford West (Naz Shah) and for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) made passionate speeches about the struggles of the poor children in their constituencies, and I think the speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West will go down in history for demonstrating the passion that she feels about representing the poor people in her constituency. We also heard a very passionate and personal story from my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) about being on free school meals and how that benefited her. That shows just how important being well fed is for a child. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Sam Tarry) also spoke passionately about the struggles in his constituency when it comes to food poverty.

The Government do not think it is worth spending £157 million to ensure that hungry children can get food support in the holidays during a pandemic. Yet, as my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) pointed out, they think it is worth spending £7,000 a day on a consultant for Serco’s failing test and trace system. I do not know whether the House is aware that that fee alone could pay for 2,300 meals for hungry children next week during half term. The amount that we are paying one consultant per day to deliver Serco’s failing test and trace system could pay for 2,300 meals for hungry children. Please let that sink in.

All the other nations of the UK understand this and have now committed to holiday provision. It is only children in England who will not get the support—again, shameful. I pay tribute in particular to the Welsh Government, who have not only guaranteed support through spring next year, but at every stage announced it well in advance, giving families certainty and the right to plan. The result of that strong leadership is that parents in Wales are not having to worry about whether they can put food on the table next year.

I want to share a quote from a parent who shared their experience with the Children’s Society last month. They said, “I tell my kid to make sure they eat all their school meals, as it may be the only meal they have. I often have nothing to eat and any food I do have I give to my kid, as they only get one meal a day. I don’t have a meal many days.” I would like all the Conservative MPs in the Chamber to think about a child who they know, whether it is their own child, their niece or nephew, a godchild or a friend’s child. How would they feel if that child was going to sleep tonight not having eaten, and knowing that when they wake up tomorrow there is no food in the fridge? Can they imagine that small person having a rumbling stomach when they are going to bed at night? This is what we are voting on today. It is about humanity.

Many people on the Opposition Benches might not agree with me, but I genuinely believe that most MPs came into this House for the right reasons. I believe they came into politics because they wanted to make a difference and because they wanted to protect the most vulnerable. This is a chance to demonstrate why we came into politics. I know it is not easy to rebel against the party. I have rebelled a few times against my own party, and it has never been easy, but this is about principles above party. I know it is not easy to defy the Prime Minister, but I am asking hon. Members from across the House to think carefully about what they are going to say when they go back to their constituencies and there are hungry children because they voted in the wrong Lobby. I know it is a hard thing to do, but once again I am asking Conservative MPs to vote with us tonight.

As the House knows, we are in the middle of Black History Month, so I will conclude by quoting a very famous black person, Nelson Mandela, who once said:

“There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children.”

Before Conservative Members vote today, I ask them please to think about what Nelson Mandela said.

Awarding of Qualifications: Role of Ministers

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

Nobody has said that centre-assessed grades are perfect. On the day that the Leader of the Opposition called for them, he acknowledged that problem, but we were in such an extreme situation at that point, where it was vital to put the best interests of young people first. It took days and days of agony and anguish for those young people and their families before the Secretary of State made the right decision.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech concentrating on A-level results, but weeks after the A-level issue was resolved, I still had BTEC students who had not received their grades. We talk about lessons to be learned in 2021, but what about the BTEC students who deserve some justice now?

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend speaks for the constituents of hon. Members all around the House. Indeed, I expect that we may hear some examples of that in the course of the debate. Those students had a particularly difficult experience waiting for further re-marking of their awards, and I think it was only last week that the Secretary of State said that they would all be expected finally to receive their results.

We also need to be clear today about the decision-making process that led to the announcement a few days after A-level results day to award students their centre-assessed grades. In his evidence to the Select Committee, Roger Taylor said that that decision was taken by Ofqual. Can the Secretary of State confirm who made the decision to award the CAGs? Did he do it or was it Ofqual? Is it right that Ofqual did not agree with the Secretary of State’s policy to allow appeals based on mock results, believing that that would not be credible?

While responsibility for decision making appears to have been complex and confused, there is no confusion when it comes to who carried the can for the failure. In the aftermath of this fiasco, the chief regulator of Ofqual and the permanent secretary at the Department for Education were forced to resign—but in our democracy it is Ministers, not officials, who are accountable.

Educational Settings

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

As my hon. Friend will be aware, schools have been doing a lot to provide children with work and enable them to continue to study if the school closes. We are working closely with the BBC, and we are looking at putting more resources online in order to support children to continue to learn even if they are not in an education setting.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State spoke about teachers getting paid, but many others work in schools, including lunchtime supervisors, caretakers and cleaners, many of whom are contract staff. Will all school staff carry on getting paid, or will only teachers and those on full-time guaranteed contracts be paid?

[Gavin Williamson]

It will probably not surprise the hon. Gentleman that we will continue to fully fund schools, and that those people who are working in schools will continue to get paid.

School Admissions Process

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Kate Osamor (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the effectiveness of the school admissions process.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck—for the very first time, I believe.

I applied for today’s debate not only because the topic is of national importance, but because of the issues that my constituents have brought to me in recent weeks. Two weeks ago, the parents of one boy in my constituency came to me, beside themselves and at their wits’ end. To protect the identities of the child and the family, I will call the boy John.

John used to attend one of the schools in my constituency. He was on track, he played football and he learnt judo, but after his mock exams things went downhill and he started misbehaving. Eventually, he was sent to a pupil referral unit and excluded for three months. John’s father told me that during those three months, he essentially became another person: he was arrested and charged for robbery and he received a community service order.

John kept trying to turn his life back around and had a job for a year, but his parents saw him withdraw. It soon became clear that he was caught up with a bad crowd, with drugs and with gangs. In July last year, like other vulnerable children in Edmonton, he went missing. John was assaulted and only came back to his family four months later. He now faces another court case. His parents say that he stays in his room. They fear that his mental health is dwindling fast and that he might harm himself. John’s parents do not excuse the things he has done, but they love their child. They want him to be safe, and they wonder whether things could have been different had the school not excluded him so quickly.

Sadly, the story of John and his parents is not uncommon. It is being repeated all over the country, time and again. All across my constituency, parents know a simple truth: whether, how and where a child is admitted to school, and whether they are excluded from it, can set them on very different paths in life. In recent months, growing numbers of parents have come to me, saying how hard they are finding it to access decent school places in Enfield. Across the borough, we are losing too many vulnerable children to crime and gangs. Our pupil referral units and the wider education system are failing them.

The lives of those individuals affected are ultimately why today’s debate matters so much. I called for it because I know many hon. Members who are not here today but who, had they been able to attend, would have scrutinised with me the schools that this Government have built. The Government have now been in power for the past decade, and I hope that the Minister will back up his defence of their record with firm evidence.

Let us look at some of that evidence. Today, the Sutton Trust released an important new report assessing inequalities in the schools admission process, called “School Places: A Fair Choice?”. It finds high levels of socioeconomic segregation across schools and a marked gap in academic quality between schools attended by poor and by non-poor pupils. We often hear the argument that better-off parents are just more proactive about getting their children into good schools. The Sutton Trust research demonstrates that, in fact, parents across the socioeconomic spectrum make choices based on academic quality. The report found that those families eligible for free school meals make as many choices as richer families about the quality of school and about whether to choose a local school.

The report concludes that it is the school allocation system, rather than parental preferences, that means that children of wealthier families do better. In other words, inequalities in schools admissions exist because of how places are allocated, not because of how parents choose. The Government have based their whole education policy for the past decade on the mantra of promoting choice, but it turns out that it is the supply side of schooling, not the demand side, that is the problem.

On the supply side of school places, the arguments are well rehearsed. On this side of the House, the Labour party favours universal equal access and creating more high-quality places. We said in our last election manifesto that we would consider proposals for integrating private schools into a better state school system. We said that we would end the fragmentation and marketisation of our school system by bringing free schools and academies back under the control of the people who know them best—parents, teachers and local communities.

Let us be honest: parents feel there are not enough good places for children. According to the latest figures published this week by the Office of the Schools Adjudicator, the number of children being home-schooled in England has just risen by 13% to 60,000. The real number may be much higher. I ask the Minister whether the Government accept that in many parts of the country there are simply not enough high-quality school places available for parents to choose from, and what steps the Department is taking to correct that.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

One simple change that would help to create a sufficiency of places would be for the Government to allow local authorities to build schools directly again. There is a lack of schools, the process now to create new schools is difficult and schools do not always get built in the right places. Local authorities, as admissions bodies, know where the schools are needed.

[Kate Osamor]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important point; I shall express my support for that later on in my speech.

The new research from the Sutton Trust also highlights the perverse incentives of school accountability systems that have developed under this Government. Both league tables and the Ofsted system encourage too many schools and academies to take on advantaged children and ignore disadvantaged children in the interests of scoring highly. I ask the Minister whether this new Government will look again at the incentives in our school accountability system.

The Sutton Trust has today made important and considered new proposals for making the schools admissions system fairer. They include marginal ballots, expanding the use of banding tests, prioritising applicants eligible for the pupil premium and simplifying conditions for demonstrating religious observance for applicants to religious schools. Will the Government say today what they make of those options, and will they commit to examining them closely?

The incentives that our Government set for schools matter, not just for admissions but for exclusions. The scandal of off-rolling, whereby schools still willingly exclude pupils too quickly just to improve their academic performance, is appalling. The Government must end it once and for all. Will the Minister consider making schools accountable for the outcomes of pupils who leave their rolls and removing the perverse incentives that let pupils such as my constituent John fall through the system?

I will conclude with a note of caution about the illusion of choice that the Government are giving people. Just this week, the schools admissions watchdog released figures in its annual report showing that in the past year, two out of every five complaints it received were about access to grammar schools—but those complaints were from privileged parents about grammar schools enrolling disadvantaged children. Any parent will know that people want the best for their child, but I am extremely concerned that the reintroduction of selective grammar schools under this Government is encouraging support for inequality. It is giving only an illusion of choice, and we need to ask ourselves whether it may be turning parents of advantaged children against disadvantaged families, who are being blamed for the lack of good school places.

I worry that the Government have introduced competition among parents without creating the new school places to go with it and are passing that off as “choice”. That is turning society against itself and dividing parents and communities. Should we not be putting all our efforts in this country into strengthening our whole public education system and creating high-quality new places, rather than encouraging a brutal race to the top for a lucky few while letting others, such as John, fall through the cracks? I look forward to hearing the Minister’s speech.

Equality of Funding: Post-16 Education

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Yes, it does. I hope the Minister will address that point.

I pay tribute to the work of the Sixth Form Colleges Association in co-ordinating the Raise the Rate campaign, which has been highly effective. As has been mentioned, the Government have responded by pledging an increase of £188 this coming September. That is still far below the £4,700 per student that Raise the Rate is asking for, and it is £822 below the £5,000 that schools receive for each pupil.

That brings me to the second key issue: equality. Young people are now required to participate in education and training until the age of 18, but education funding is reduced for students who have reached 16. This inequality is impossible to defend. It is worth noting that, in the independent sector, fees usually increase at the age of 16 to reflect the additional cost needed to train and educate 16 to 18-year-olds.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Yorkshire College of Beauty Therapy is in my constituency. It is suffering from the fact that the new T-levels in the relevant subjects are being introduced but are not yet ready. The whole area of vocational education is suffering from the same lack of sufficiency that my hon. Friend describes for academic subjects.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

My hon. Friend is quite right. We have debated T-levels previously, and there is the difficulty of transition as we go forward. I hope that we will eventually get to a situation where we have A-levels; good general vocational training, with BTECs continuing as a strong component of that; and T-levels. They all offer something different and important.

Until 2011, the funding for a student at a sixth form in a school continued at the school rate, not at the college rate. Given the concerns about the inequality that that caused, there was quite rightly a campaign. Organisations such as the Institute for Public Policy Research said that we needed to equalise the funding. The Government did that but they equalised it down, meaning that we took away about £800 per pupil in today’s terms from the budget, rather than adding to the college budget. That hurts sixth-form colleges even more, as they generally pay teachers’ terms and conditions and do not get additional remuneration for it. For many years, general FE colleges have got away with underpaying their staff, or rather, the Government have got away without giving them additional resources.

Apprenticeships: SMEs

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) for securing this debate. I must say it is also a pleasure to see the Minister still there in her place opposite me, to continue our discussions from Tuesday.

I will start by commenting on my hon. Friend’s speech. He started with an interesting point about the differences between Germany and England in the status of apprentices and how they are viewed. I saw that when the Education Committee went to Germany, and I was struck by how fantastic the system is there. Of course, there are structural differences that mean we cannot replicate it here in this country, but I think we can all agree that we need to keep selling the idea of apprenticeships, talking them up and explaining what a good thing they are for our country.

My hon. Friend made a very good point about the falling apprenticeship numbers in small businesses. Out of all the figures that he mentioned, the one that struck me was the figure of 34% in small businesses. Small businesses have been hit even harder than medium-sized businesses by the apprenticeship levy. He spoke passionately about apprenticeships in Slough; in fact, I was at the event with him where he talked to some of his fantastic apprentices from Slough, and I was really impressed by their passion and dedication to their training.

My hon. Friend was right to highlight the falling numbers of level 2 and level 3 apprenticeships. Very few people know at 16, or even at 18, what they want to do when they move on in life, so we need to start where people are at. If people are not ready to start at level 3 —if they have not been able to achieve as successfully as we would all like them to in school—they need that level 2 start to enable them to make progress and to fulfil their ambition and achieve social mobility. I am sure that we all agree with that.

My hon. Friend is also right to point out that a question was raised in the debate on Tuesday about the levy for businesses—I am in favour of that levy—and whether the Government expected all businesses to use it. There seem to be conflicting evidence and statements about that, and I would be interested to hear the Minister’s thoughts. Are businesses expected to use all of the levy themselves, or was the intention behind the design that a certain amount of the levy would be kept and used by SMEs? There seems to be a lack of clarity over whether it is a tax that larger businesses contribute to, which can be distributed to small businesses, or whether it is just a system to allow individual businesses to get the money back for themselves.

I am particularly pleased that my hon. Friend raised the question of maths and English and the extra support that is needed. This might not be the right debate in which to talk about that, but I hope that the Department will take it seriously, because we have created a system where the insistence on having people resit their qualification in their first year, even when they are on a two-year course, is causing many people to fail. We have to explore ways to enable everybody to succeed. I would like the Department to go away and think about why it insists that people on a two-year level 2 course should resit at the end of their first year. Why not give them that extra year to practise and develop their skills before they have to sit their exam? Can we not be a little bit more open-minded and creative in coming up with solutions to enable everyone to achieve the maths and English qualifications that we all agree they need?

I really enjoyed the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood)—he has gone, but I will let him know. It was nice to hear him talk about how his father’s interest in engineering got him involved, and how he was not sure what he wanted to do. It was a heart-warming speech. I look forward to visiting his constituency and seeing the examples he gave. He is quite right: we need to invest in engineering and manufacturing skills, and support the making of British goods here in Britain. It has been a source of frustration to me for a long time that we continue to import more and more when we could grow our own, and develop and make things in this country, giving people high-skilled jobs and helping to grow our economy. I hope the Minister will comment on how the apprenticeship levy can do that.

I do not usually comment on the remarks of Scottish National party spokespeople, but I really liked the interesting point that the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) made about the retention of apprentices, which I had not considered before. If we fund apprenticeships, as a Government or through the levy, should we not expect businesses that have had access to those public funds to retain the apprentices? That is an interesting idea to explore, and I look forward to the Minister’s comments on that.

I think we all agree about the importance of apprenticeships, not only for the productivity of our country but for individuals and social mobility. We all agree that SMEs are really valuable to our economy. In fact, during the debate on Tuesday, one Member pointed out that in Northern Ireland, where their constituency is, there are few large, levy-paying businesses, so it is nearly all SMEs. I have not yet had the chance to crunch the data on this, so it will be interesting to see whether the Department has analysed the areas of the country where there are fewer levy-playing businesses, and looked at whether we have therefore created coldspots and areas in which people lack opportunities to access apprenticeships.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

One industry prevalent in small business is hair and beauty. Routes into hair and beauty and other apprenticeships include the level 3 qualification, which the Government just cut thousands of, and T-levels. T-Levels will be the major route into higher-level apprenticeships, but they are not yet ready, and in the hair and beauty industry they will not be ready for years. The pathway to these apprenticeships needs to be solid, small businesses need to know what is happening and the funding needs to come through. Otherwise, we will see an even further drop in apprenticeships, on top of the challenges of the apprenticeship levy.

Music Education in England

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Edward Vaizey (Wantage) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George, in particular because you are someone who has campaigned hard for the arts in your constituency. I hope that your Shakespeare North theatre is coming along well.

As I look around at the small but high-quality attendance at the debate, I see before me a fellow member and an officer of the all-party group on arts, health and wellbeing, the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane); an excellent Labour spokesman, the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), who is also a fantastic asset of that group; and the shadow Arts Minister for the Labour party, the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin). That is not to mention those sitting on our Benches: my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton), a member of the National Youth Music Theatre and of the National Youth Orchestra; the media star, my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell); and of course my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), who represents such a centre of artistic excellence. I will come to the Minister at the end.

I have been a passionate supporter of music education throughout my time in Parliament. Having checked the records, I am pleased that I can still say, hand on heart, that I did not come to the subject late in the day. Shortly after being appointed as Arts Minister in May 2010, I commissioned Darren Henley, who was then the chief executive of Classic FM, to do a report on music education which he duly delivered in February 2011. It might astound and shock the Chamber to learn that the report was commissioned jointly with my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), who was then the Secretary of State for Education, showing his commitment to music education.

The biggest thing to come out of the report was the creation of music hubs, which I felt strongly we should have for a number of reasons. Despite the fact that I only look 21, I am old enough to remember when we introduced local management of schools in the 1980s, and the first thing that went out of the window was funding for music education. When schools took control of their own budgets, perhaps understandably they chose to spend on repairing the roof or other initiatives that the headteacher wanted to follow, and music education suffered. I did not want that to happen again with the introduction of free schools and academies; I wanted to ensure ring-fenced funding for music education. We did secure it: there were some bumps in the road and some anomalies to be ironed out—obviously most of us in the Chamber would want the funding to be doubled, tripled, quadrupled or even more, to make a real difference—but the fact is that the money was saved and ring-fenced.

Music hubs were meant to be innovative organisations; not just money spent by local authorities, but money spent together with local music organisations. It seems ridiculous not to take advantage of the expertise not just of a local orchestra but of innumerable music organisations that might exist in a local area, including perhaps the local music venue, as the hon. Member for Bury North (James Frith) described so well—it was remiss of me not to have congratulated him in my opening remarks on securing this important and welcome debate.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for mentioning music hubs. Before I came to this place, I used to work with a local music hub in Leeds, which opened up vocational routes in music composition, such as work in film, television and video games. Music hubs create new non-traditional opportunities in music. Does he agree that they are important for creating new vocational opportunities for people involved in music?

[Mr Vaizey]

I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman brought up that example; let me take the opportunity to praise the important work he does in this House on video games policy. I am really pleased to hear that example, because the thrust behind music hubs was that they be innovative, different and open up music education in its widest form, not just perhaps in the traditional way.

There were other dogs that did not bark—schemes that have been maintained by the Government and remain effective. One of the most effective was the music and dance scheme, where funding has been maintained to train young musicians to excellent standards and ensure their access to the highest quality specialist music education. Let us not forget that in the wider economy, the Arts Council funding goes to 99 music organisations—not just our major orchestras but important organisations such as Youth Music.

Another aim of the Henley report that I wanted to be implemented was the integration of the In Harmony scheme started by the last Labour Government, which to a certain extent copied the well-known El Sistema scheme in Venezuela. It was whole-class music education. I remember being moved almost to tears visiting a scheme in Everton—not that far from your own patch, Sir George—and seeing incredible children learning music in class. In fact, I was more moved when I met their parents, because the scheme brought the parents and the kids together and brought the parents into school. It gave the kids such pride and belief in what they could achieve. That leads on to a truism that we all know yet we do not act on: things such as music education have a massive impact on kids’ self-esteem and, therefore, on their academic attainment and life chances. If I could wave a magic wand, every school in the country would be part of the In Harmony scheme.

I am very pleased to be on the board of the charity London Music Masters, which does something similar in five inner city primary schools in London. It is heavy going to raise the money but, again, we see an inspiring effect on pupils. I was delighted when they came and played “Here Comes the Sun” in Westminster Hall, breaking every rule possible, but making a fantastic YouTube video. We should all acknowledge not just that music education is important in and of itself, but that it has a massive impact on academic achievement, self-esteem and, as I am sure we will hear from the hon. Member for Cardiff West, people’s health, life chances and mental wellbeing. I know he chairs numerous meditation all-party parliamentary groups.

An important challenge, for the classical music industry more than anything, is diversity. Music education brings the opportunity to learn instruments to a wide range of pupils who would otherwise not get that chance. The creation of the Chineke! orchestra shows the efforts being made in the classical music world to increase diversity, which is urgent.

English for Speakers of Other Languages

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you, Ms Dorries. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) not only for securing this debate, but for her incredibly insightful opening speech, in which she very articulately made the case for ESOL funding.

Only a week ago, I had the pleasure of showing a group of ESOL learners from Halifax around Westminster, as part of a trip organised by Halifax Opportunities Trust to complement their studies. They were a wonderful group of people, each with a different story to tell, but all of them enthusiastic about the opportunity to gain a better understanding of their adopted Parliament, how it works and its relationship to their lives. While they are still studying English, it was their ability to ask questions and understand the answers that empowered them to truly experience Parliament as participants, rather than simply as observers along for the ride.

However, although almost everyone understands the value of being able to speak English, ESOL provision is harder to access than ever before. As we have heard, Government funding for ESOL in England fell from £212.3 million in 2008 to £105 million in 2018—a real-terms cut of almost 60%. Unsurprisingly, Calderdale College in my constituency has had to reduce its ESOL provision by 50%, despite an increase in the number of learners seeking it. We expect the publication of the national ESOL strategy in the autumn. With YouGov polling suggesting that 91% of the British public believe it important that refugees and others who come to the UK should learn to speak English, we know that there is overwhelming support for investment in ESOL as a means for that to happen.

Here in Westminster, I vice-chair the all-party parliamentary group on social integration, which the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) mentioned. In 2017, we published our “Integration not Demonisation” report, which argued that the ability to speak English is one of the key principles underpinning healthy and successful integration within communities. As part of the call for evidence for that report, it was a pleasure to welcome the all-party parliamentary group to Halifax, where the chair and I met with those involved in integration work.

Office for National Statistics research published in the report suggests that approximately 800,000 people living in the UK at the time of the 2011 census could not speak English—2% of the population. In some areas with large numbers of immigrants, including Newham, Brent, Tower Hamlets and Leicester, that can be as high as 9% of the population. Further to this, 22% of Muslim women in the UK self-report that they are unable to speak English well.

To address that, the report recommended that the Government should introduce a national strategy for the promotion of English language learning, which would unleash the economic potential of immigrants, enabling newcomers to participate fully in British life and ensuring that everyone in our society can benefit from meeting and mixing with others from different cultures. We went so far as to say that enrolment in English language classes should be compulsory, acknowledging the Casey review findings that, in some communities, regressive cultural and family norms and practices can prevent the most vulnerable from learning English.

We also asserted that the ability to learn English should be a right extended to everyone. We argued that, while the Department for Education should lead that work, it should be delivered with input from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and other relevant Departments to ensure that it was as effective as possible.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech and a lot of good points. The Government found £10 million in 2016 for Syrian refugees to undertake ESOL classes. If there is money for Syrian refugees, surely there is money for all the communities that need it.

[Holly Lynch]

My hon. Friend makes the important point that we recognised the importance of Syrian refugees being able to speak English, but we have not delivered the funding to extend that programme to other newcomers to our country. We should reflect on that.

Ahead of the publication of the national ESOL strategy in the autumn, I was glad to see that the Government’s immigration White Paper, published in December last year, commits to

“an ambitious and well-funded English language strategy to ensure that everyone in this country, especially those with newly recognised refugee status, are supported to speak the same language.”

However, these proposals contain no new funding for English language teaching, which the strategy will have to address later this year. The ability to speak English is important for many reasons, not least, as I have mentioned, because it is integral to integration. If someone cannot speak English, their ability to find work, meet and converse with people and access everyday services is severely restricted. For someone to be trapped in a world where they cannot interact with those around them will leave them desperately isolated and vulnerable.

There is strong public support for ESOL, not least because it would be a sensible investment. Research undertaken by Refugee Action—I am pleased to see members of the team in the Gallery—shows that it would cost £42 million a year to ensure two years’ ESOL for each refugee arriving in the UK, which would in effect be fully reimbursed to the taxpayer within the first eight months of that individual’s employment at the national average wage.

The Casey review looked at opportunity and integration. Published in December 2016, it made it clear that good English skills are fundamental to integrated communities and particularly important as a means of empowering marginalised women and other socially isolated groups. However, when it comes to working with those groups in particular, as much as I welcome learning in the community, I am sympathetic to some of the points already made about how effective learning in the community needs to be. I have seen good examples of that and I have seen bad examples.

The Women’s Activity Centre in Halifax, which does a great deal to support older, isolated women, predominantly from the Kashmiri community, for whom the inability to speak English is a significant contributor to loneliness and isolation, was approached by an organisation that offered to come in and deliver ESOL. The organisation came in, signed everyone up, took some photos and then brought in an eastern European interpreter who unfortunately could not communicate with that specific group of learners at all. After two lessons, on realising that this approach was futile, they failed to return, letting all those women down. When funding for ESOL is so precious, knowing that dedicated funds can be wasted in that way, delivering no social benefit to those who most need it, is painful for everyone involved.

I have been working closely with Sisters United in Halifax—truly inspirational women who are working alongside Refugee Action to support its “Let Refugees Learn” campaign. Refugee Action has called for refugees to have a minimum of eight hours formal, accredited tuition a week for their first two years in the UK, which, as I have mentioned, would cost £42 million a year, although that would be repaid within the first eight months of a refugee’s being in work. Alongside this, I lend my support to Refugee Action’s “Lift the Ban” campaign, which seeks to promote integration and facilitate opportunities to improve language skills by allowing refugees to work while awaiting a decision on their status.

ESOL provision represents value for money. We know that the demand is there, but at the moment the provision is not. If we are looking for ways of ensuring, now more than ever, that we foster healthy, integrated communities, investing in ESOL would be a really constructive way of supporting those aims.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine West]

Absolutely: it provides a crucial line into a more purposeful existence as a member of the community. There is a real opportunity here, particularly for older women who might not necessarily have had education through to 18 or 21 in the way that many of our younger women do now. I often think about my own grandmother. She left school at 14 and had some quite unusual views, many of which we had clashes over. I often think that if she had had the opportunity to go to school to the age of 21, she would have made a fuller contribution in her different roles.

A lot of women, including those who escaped violence and conflict and who therefore stopped school very young, have this amazing lifeline through our colleges and places such as the JAN Trust, and with the support provided by Citizens UK. Further education colleges have been cut by 50% since 2010 and they are really struggling, but in my constituency, the College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London is doing a fantastic job to provide a lifeline, not just for women but for all adults, to escape that terrible prison that people find themselves in when they do not speak the language of their host country.

I want briefly to mention the issue of teachers’ pay. Six months ago, a fantastic teacher of English as an additional language came in to lobby me. She is a constituent, but teaches at City and Islington College, which has now merged with Westminster Kingsway and the College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London. She said that if she taught in a school, she would be paid way more than for teaching ESL. I hope that the Minister will look carefully at the wage level, because in these difficult times it is important that we assist people to stay in these important roles in the public sector. Those on a relatively low wage also have lower pension contributions, and sick leave and annual leave entitlements can also be different. In general, that two-tier approach to teaching must be stopped.

I reiterate the suggestion made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) that funding to support ESL be continued, or that the Government at least pledge to continue that important work. It would be terrible to lose that. There are important campaigns, such as “Lift the Ban”, which my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax mentioned, which aims to assist asylum seekers, once they have made their application, in being able to work more flexibly, and to start as quickly as possible. It would be a shame for English language classes not to go alongside that.

I moved a private Member’s Bill a couple of months back and was extremely impressed by the range of people I met who would love to be in work. As we are all aware, many refugees come from well-trained backgrounds, perhaps with a medicine degree, or have backgrounds in pharmacy, teaching or engineering, and they arrive in the UK without any English. If they could learn English as quickly as possible, they would be able to work. The “Lift the Ban” campaign calls for the Home Office’s occupation shortage list to be much more flexible and open.

I have raised that issue with the Home Secretary on two occasions in the House, and he said that it was under review. I also raised it with the Immigration Minister, who said that the Government were looking at it. In the way that our wonderful civil servants are used to passing on little notes to other Departments, I hope that the Home Office will look at this again with some urgency, particularly as we have people who are often very well qualified, but find it difficult to find work quickly.

[Alex Sobel]

Prior to entering Parliament, I helped the Cardigan Centre in my constituency to gain lottery funding for an ESOL café. Because they were asylum seekers, many of those people could not access ESOL elsewhere. They were learning English to try to enter work, but they could not, because of the ban. A lot of them had backgrounds from the occupation shortage list. There is a demand and there is this waiting. They cannot get statutory ESOL and have to use charitable ESOL. Those people face both those issues.

[Catherine West]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. There is also a terrible issue with transport to colleges. For destitute asylum seekers, it is very difficult to manage on the current rate of £5.37 an hour. It is doubly difficult when they need to pay for expensive buses, particularly outside London. I understand from recent debates in the House that buses outside London are more expensive even than in our high-value city. There are costs associated with getting to lessons, and this all needs to be looked at in the round.

I thank you again, Ms Dorries, for allowing me to speak with very little notice. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston again, and all other colleagues who have made such fantastic contributions to the debate. I look forward to hearing the shadow spokespersons and the Minister’s response.

Special Educational Needs

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, and I congratulate the hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) on securing this important debate. Today we have here both the hon. Member for York Outer and my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), or inner York—their constituency names reflect their Brexit politics, in a way. Who says nominative determinism is dead?

York has lost £9.9 million of education funding since 2015-16. Such losses are one reason MPs across the country are seeing their Friday surgeries full of parents who are stressed and worried about their children not getting adequate SEND—special educational needs and disabilities—provision. We have heard some great speeches today, from my hon. Friends the Members for Stroud (Dr Drew), for York Central, for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) and for Bury North (James Frith).

Interestingly, the Minister has already talked about this subject in the House, in answer to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) in an Opposition day debate. This is what the Minister said at the time, in relation to evidence on children getting SEN provision in our schools: “In some special schools 100% of the children attending are there only because their parents were able to fight through tribunal. She said”—she continued—“that is actually a class issue, because it is white, middle-class parents who are able to go to a tribunal and know how to work the system and where to get support.” She herself said: “What about all those children whose parents do not have the same cultural capital and do not know how to go out there and fight for them? They are not in these residential special schools, so where are they and what is happening to them?” That is the state of this Government and of our SEN provision, with the Minister herself admitting that the system is absolutely broken.

Children with special educational needs or disabilities are bearing the brunt of the Government’s continued cuts to our schools and our local government budgets. This Tory Government have cut more than £1.7 billion from school budgets since 2015. We recently had a three-hour Westminster Hall debate on a petition—I think you were in the Chair, Mr Davies—during which dozens of Members highlighted the cuts to their local schools. Local government is warning of a shortfall in SEND support of over half a billion pounds this year. These punishing cuts have consequences.

In 2017, over 4,000 children with SEND were left without a school place. In 2016, for the first time in 25 years, more children with SEND were educated outside the mainstream, some because they were subject to informal exclusions and some because they were being home-schooled. The stark fact is that this Government have not bothered to keep track of these children, so we do not know where they are or what support they are getting. Over 9,000 children were off-rolled from our school system last year, many of whom had disabilities and special educational needs.

We have a Prime Minister—this makes me angry—who has said that there is no link between police cuts and the rise in knife crime on our streets, and that there is no link between off-rolling in our schools, so not knowing where our children are, and the rise of knife crime in our society. Most people with common sense will think that is ridiculous. Our police forces are talking to MPs not about child sexual exploitation, but about child criminal exploitation. When we do not know where these children are, that provides a fertile breeding ground. The Government will not match Labour’s commitment to make sure that children have to stay on the school roll, so that we know where those children are. No wonder we have the problem of county lines, drug mules and all the other things that go with that.

The crisis in our education system, in recruitment and retention, and in funding cuts across the board has led to a situation in which the number of SEND children facing fixed, permanent or even illegal exclusions remains totally disproportionate compared with their peers, with three quarters of the pupils in pupil referral units having special educational needs, and children with SEND accounting for around half of all permanent exclusions in 2016.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have a number of pupils in my constituency with SEN who have EHCPs. The schools are not sticking to those plans, making it dangerous for those pupils to be in school and making parents feel that they have to withdraw them. The schools do not have the resources and cannot follow the plans.

[Mike Kane]

I taught in a school and I know that the plans cost money, but that money is not there. Schools are worried about employing cleaners and, according to The Times last weekend, we have headteachers cleaning the loos. I had a delegation from a special school for children with autism in Sheffield yesterday, and they are having to reduce the number of assistants and the ratios of children to people providing support are getting bigger. There is very little they can do.

At one point in their lives, more than 2 million children in England will have some kind of SEND, but shockingly only 3% of children in England have SEND statements or education and health care plans.

School Funding

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

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

Over the past few months, I have conducted two surveys in my constituency about the adequacy of school funding and the impact of funding cuts to schools. The first was of the schools concerned, which described the impact of funding cuts on their ability to deliver the educational outcomes that their pupils deserve. The second was of parents, who are all too aware of the impact of the school cuts on their children’s education. I want to channel their voices and tell hon. Members more about schools and parents in Leeds North West. and by extension the whole country.

For schools the problem is clear: every school surveyed had experienced the need to make some form of cut since 2015. More than 57% have been forced to make staffing cuts due to funding pressures, and 86% have had to reduce the number of books and the educational equipment available to students. More than half the schools surveyed had to let teaching assistants go, and the same number had to make cuts to cleaning and maintenance services, potentially putting our children at risk.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Teachers and students in my constituency told me just the other day that A-level students have only just been able to get textbooks at this point in their second year of their studies, when they are taking their A-levels in the summer.

[Alex Sobel]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point, which I will reinforce later in my speech.

All the respondents expected further cuts to be made in the future. Some 43% of schools had experienced a rise in pupil numbers, and 100% of respondents were either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied. It is uncertain how schools will take on the extra family support obligations created by the cuts to council services elsewhere. One school said:

“We cannot continue to hit the DfE’s expectations for pupil achievement and take more pupils, with less staff and resources. We are at breaking point in this profession. As the council continues to make cuts in other areas, more is put onto schools. We cannot provide the support that is needed for families without the funding to do so.”

The fact that schools are willing to use the term “breaking point” is shocking to me, and should be shocking to the Government.

We heard the same refrain in the parents’ survey. One parent said:

“schools are doing an amazing job and are often the only source of support for children in crisis. Schools should not be trying to provide mental health support and there is no alternative provision for kids with heart-breaking mental health and behavioural issues.”

Another said that

“there is a complete lack of adequate mental health provision for children in primary schools due to funding cuts elsewhere in the system. This is very marked, and I have spoken to a number of parents who are at their wits’ end about where and how to get the right support for their children.”

I had a huge response to my survey. More than 90% of respondents felt that schools had been negatively affected by cuts, and that the cuts were making their children’s education worse.

With those cuts being layered on top of cuts to council services, schools are now clearly at breaking point. That has an effect right across school activities. School trips, for example, are the canary in the coalmine—the first sign that is something going wrong with the school budget. One parent of a year 6 pupil said:

“The head sent out a letter last week explaining that they can no longer subsidise school trips and events in school due to cuts in the school budget. This is very concerning to me … as I know this will prevent a number of children from attending trips … and missing out on the important experiences these trips bring. Also, a lot of class work is focused on the trips children go on”—

so some children cannot go on trips, and that means they are behind on school work. It is not an optional extra, but part of the curriculum of that school.

Children are being left not with the bare minimum of an education, but with an inadequate one, which promises to have knock-on effects for their future and for wider society. Even the most ardent Conservative must be aware that the cost to the public purse of the loss of revenue generated by reduced educational attainment in this country will be far from inconsequential, as will be the social cost of failing in the historical promise that has long linked the old to the young—that things will continue to get better, that the future will be brighter and that we pass on the promise of more than we had ourselves. One constituent put it this way:

“As parent and teacher, I firmly believe the quality of education we are providing this generation is dire. Between funding cuts, inaccessible exams, no support for SEN or EAL, no trips and extracurricular activities being squeezed, I see a generation being told they are failures because we are not providing the funding or resources to help anyone except the most well adapted and able pupils to achieve. We are a laughing stock at best. Shame on this Government for letting it get to this.”

Those are not my words, but those of a parent and teacher in my constituency.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Gibb]

Not right now, if my hon. Friend will forgive me. I want to make sure that I respond to the points from as many hon. Members as I can.

Figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies show that real-terms per-pupil funding for five to 16-year-olds in 2020 will be more than 50% higher than in 2000. We compare favourably with other countries. The UK spends as much per pupil on primary and secondary state education as any country in the G7 apart from America—a point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert).

While more money is going into our schools than ever before, we recognise the budgeting challenges that schools face as we ask them to achieve more for children and to absorb cost increases, such as employer’s national insurance and higher pension contributions to teachers’ pension funds, that have arisen as a result of our determination to bear down on the unsustainable deficit. That means that it is essential to do all we can to help schools make the most of every pound.

In addition to providing additional funding for schools, we changed the way funding is distributed, to make the system fairer. Last April, we started to distribute funding through the national funding formula, with each area’s allocation taking into account the individual needs and characteristics of its schools. That replaced the unfair and outdated previous system, under which schools with similar characteristics received very different levels of funding, with little or no justification. These disparities existed for far too long, as my right hon. and hon. Friends from West Sussex pointed out, leaving some schools trying to achieve with fewer resources the same as other, better-funded schools in similar situations. That is why we committed to reform the system, and I am proud to say that our introduction of the national funding formula delivers that commitment.

Schools are already benefiting from the gains delivered by the national funding formula. Since 2017, we have given every local authority more money for every pupil in every school, while allocating the biggest increases to the schools that have been most underfunded. By 2019-20, all schools will attract an increase of at least 1% per pupil, compared with their 2017-18 baselines. The most underfunded schools will attract up to 6% more per pupil by 2019-20, compared with 2017-18.

The hon. Member for Blaydon will be aware that funding for schools in her constituency has risen from £52.6 million in 2017-18 to £54.9 million in 2019-20—a 4.5% increase in cash terms. In Blaydon, per-pupil funding has risen from £4,468 per pupil in 2017-18 to £4,635 in 2019-20, which is a 3.7% increase over that period.

The hon. Lady cited a figure from the School Cuts website, which incidentally has been criticised by the UK Statistics Authority. It said:

“We believe the headline statement”,

which the hon. Lady cited in this debate,

“that ‘91% of schools face funding cuts’ risks giving a misleading impression of future changes in school budgets. The method of calculation may also give a misleading impression of the scale of change for some particular schools.”

My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) made important points about the over-politicisation of this issue. I understand the points that he made about the historical inequities in school funding in West Sussex.

[Alex Sobel]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nick Gibb]

I will not give way for the moment. The inequities are precisely why we introduced the national funding formula. A similar point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith). My hon. Friends will be aware that funding in West Sussex will increase from £425.8 million in 2017-18 to £459.3 million by 2019-20. That is an increase of £33.5 million or 7.9%. It is an increase of 4.9% per pupil. The argument is made that there are more pupils, but we are also increasing funding on a per-pupil basis.