Girls (Educational Development)

Amber Rudd Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Amber Rudd (Hastings and Rye) (Con)]

The Government are right to put so much emphasis on qualifications and on raising school standards. Every time our excellent Secretary of State for Education gets up and raises the flag for higher standards in schools, I want to cheer him, and as a parent I harass my children regularly, with mixed results, but I must confess that there is perhaps one thing more important than qualifications and that is, of course, confidence. If you have confidence and qualifications you are king and are likely to become a Member of Parliament—

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. Could you not say “you”? I have masses of confidence and qualifications, but I am sure that the hon. Lady is not referring to me. I have noticed other hon. Members doing the same. I do not wish to stop the flow of the debate, but if speakers could not refer to me, I would be grateful.

[Amber Rudd]

Of course, Mrs Main. I will adhere to that, confidently. With qualifications and confidence—king. Without qualifications—trouble, absolutely. But anyone who is brimming with confidence can get on and make the right choices.

It is very important that, along with studying for their qualifications, young people learn confidence at school, but why is it particularly necessary for girls? We so often see girls outperforming boys in qualifications, so why is it that when I go, as I often do, to the mixed schools, particularly the secondaries, in my constituency and get up and talk to the pupils, I get many questions, but very rarely from the young women? They seem to think that they have to sit quietly, and that worries me. It worries me that the next generation of young women are not confident enough in the classroom, and that will have an impact on their future lives. We know what low confidence is about; it is about low self-esteem, and in areas of high deprivation, such as the ones I have in Hastings, we are more likely to get the low self-esteem that goes with lower family expectations and unwise choices.

The topic I want to address today is teenage pregnancy. The UK has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in Europe and the developed world, and one of the highest in the whole world. The previous Government made strong efforts to tackle the problem. In 1999 they put together a 10-year strategy to reduce the number of teen pregnancies, and a lot of money was spent on it. The different impacts and influences on the young women making the choices were analysed, and we found out a lot about the effects of welfare, of access to employment and housing, and of confidence, but unfortunately the strategy did not have a tremendous impact. Over those 10 years, the number of teen pregnancies fell by only 13%; the goal had been 50%. Any decrease is of course good, because having such high levels is an unacceptable way for communities to operate, but we could do more, by boosting confidence in schools. We must have a platform that addresses how we can influence young women so that they make smart choices.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the best ways of influencing young women to make smart choices is to show them role models? All too often the role models in the media are about make-up and singing as career success. Does she agree that a great advantage of the initiative taken by my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey) is that it shows young women that there is a huge multiplicity of female role models out there who can inspire them?

[Amber Rudd]

I agree. It is incredibly important that young women realise that there are other women out there who can help them to make smart choices. We need to reduce the impact of all the advertising and television that seems to suggest to them that celebrity and early parenthood are a way forward. It is well known that these young women sometimes make what we call a choice to go ahead and have a baby at a young age. They think it is a smart choice—they see the welfare benefits—but in the vast majority of cases it is not a smart choice, and it has unhealthy outcomes for the young woman and the baby.

In schools, we can do two things. We can raise educational standards, of course. In some cases, it is hardly fair to say that young women with no qualifications make choices. They do not make choices, because they are left with no qualifications. Having qualifications is incredibly important, and I hope that this Government raise standards. We also need to help young women with their self-esteem, so that they have, quite simply, the confidence to make choices—to say “No” when they want to, and to ask for birth control so that they do not end up having babies quite so young.

Last week I saw Hilary Pannack of Straight Talking, a leading UK charity, which was set up in 1998 to combat the high levels of teenage pregnancy. The charity does an extraordinary thing, delivering peer-to-peer education in schools. It employs young mothers who have had babies as teenagers to go into schools and make clear the sort of life that lies ahead. They do not say, “This is a disastrous thing to do,” because no life is a disastrous thing, but they do explain the hardships of young motherhood and the lack of choice about their own lives. The organisation is very successful. It told me that it tries to explain why not to get pregnant:

“The approach is centred on the belief that young people might know how not to get pregnant”—

this is not pure sex education; they understand the facts—

“but they also need to know why not to get pregnant.”

My experience of talking to young women in Hastings is that that would be a very useful guide.

Coming back to the impact of deprivation, in 2007-09 the teenage conception rate in Hastings was, unfortunately —

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. I am trying to give some latitude to the Member, but somewhat tangentially some of her comments range rather wide of the debate on confidence. If she could keep bringing her comments back to confidence, I should be grateful.

[Amber Rudd]

Okay. I am interested in talking about this topic because confidence is probably the single most important element in a young woman’s life choices. One of the most destructive factors is a young woman not having the confidence to be able to make the choice to get her qualifications and develop her career, and instead making what is effectively a choice to have a baby very young. That is why this is absolutely about confidence. It is about having the ability to make that choice.

I encourage the Department for Education to engage with the charity Straight Talking so that we have more representations from women who have been in that situation and can deliver peer-to-peer advice in schools, so that young women can focus on that choice. I welcome the fact that the Department is consulting on the subject--if any Members would like to input into it, the consultation closes on 30 November. If we are going to reduce the rate of teenage pregnancy, which is a casualty of lack of confidence, addressing confidence is absolutely paramount.