Lord Sharma
Main Page: Lord Sharma (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Sharma's debates with the Department for Education
(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)
I will be brief. Let me first congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) on securing this incredibly important debate. It is an issue that is not aired or talked about enough, and we need to put it at the top of the agenda when we talk about education.
I want to raise the case of my constituents, Mr and Mrs Slade, who approached me two years ago because they wanted their daughter, Ava, who was born at the end of August, to delay her start to school by a year. I have some sympathy with such a view because my older daughter Isabella is also an August-born child. She is doing absolutely fine at school now, but when she first started, her age did make a difference. If she had started a year later, it would have made a difference, but in a positive way.
As I said, Mr and Mrs Slade approached me two years ago, and I wrote to the Department. The then Minister of State for Schools, my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), gave me a prompt reply. He said:
“It must be the parent’s choice when their child starts school and the law provides flexibility for parents on this issue.”
That was absolutely great news, but he then went on to explain that the parents had to talk to the school, the head teachers, the governing body and the local authority. That was where Mr and Mrs Slade found the huge difference between the theory and the actual practice of getting a delayed start for their child. They battled for almost two and a half years with Reading borough council, which was not as helpful as it could have been.
Mr and Mrs Slade said to me that the local authority effectively hid behind some of the clauses of the admissions code. They admitted that even if their child started in the year when the local authority wanted her to start, she would cope, but no one wants their child just to cope; they want them to thrive in school, and that is what this debate is about. Parents are best placed to judge how well their child will do in a school setting, which is why we should do more to empower them to make those decisions, obviously in consultation with local authorities and governors.
I welcome the guidance that the Department has issued, and I congratulate the Minister on the work that she is doing. I also back my hon. Friend when she says that we need to monitor the advice that is being given and to see whether local authorities are complying with it. We need to give more information to parents, governors and governing bodies. I was a school governor many years ago and feel that this issue should be built into governor training, to explain to governors how they can help parents who want a delayed start for their offspring.
When the then Minister of State wrote to me in 2011, he stated:
“Ms Slade should also be aware that if her daughter were to be educated out of her chronological age group whilst at primary school, any secondary school which she later moved on to would not be obliged to continue this arrangement.”
We also need to consider that matter. I look forward to the Minister’s response.