Disadvantaged Children

Andrew Percy Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jessica Lee (Erewash) (Con)]

I, too, begin my speech by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) for securing the debate. For many of us, a motivation in coming to this place and standing for public service was the wish to discuss such issues as improving the life chances for disadvantaged children. I certainly speak for myself in that regard.

It is perhaps important that I declare an interest. For the last 10 years, I have been working as a family lawyer, specialising in child protection. I want to mention the prospects and difficulties faced by those children, in particular, in my speech. I also want to thank my hon. Friend for his impeccable timing. We have the benefit of the very important contribution made by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) and the written paper that he has prepared. Just yesterday, we had the report from the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) on early intervention. There is also the background, since the formation of the coalition Government, of the report that Professor Eileen Munro has been asked to prepare on the challenges faced by social workers and those working in child protection at this difficult time.

My work experience leads me to observe that the current evidence and reports into early-years development are the key to improving life chances for disadvantaged children. I shall expand on that by giving some insight into the care proceedings that some children have to go through and the impact of that on the families involved. First, however, I want to mention the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), who has shown leadership and expertise in raising the issue of outcomes for looked-after children. His all-party group on looked-after children and care leavers is now looking into outcomes for looked- after children, particularly the concerns about the disproportionately lower educational and other outcomes for such children. I am confident that the work undertaken in that regard will feature in and add to the broader debate we are having about outcomes for disadvantaged children.

Many hon. Members might be aware that if a child’s future and life ever become the subject of a court case, they are likely to have suffered a range of abuses and harms, including physical, sexual and emotional harm and neglect. Sadly, there is often a mixture of all or some of those elements. I have read many statements and reports that will stay with me for many years, such as accounts of children who have been so neglected and so deprived of basic nutrition, food and drink that when they arrive in foster care, they automatically go up to the bathroom to try to get water from the toilet bowl. They might smear faeces due to psychological concerns. I remember a case years ago of a child whose feet had been forced into shoes so small for such a long time that if anyone, including a doctor, tried to relieve the child’s pain or go near their feet to treat them, the child would be very distressed and traumatised. Those examples give a tiny insight into the many tragic cases and reports that I have come across over the years.

I should like to highlight the particular challenges faced by social workers, particularly front-line workers. We already have some indications from the Munro review. I shall not dwell on that for long, but I support Professor Munro’s preliminary observations. This issue is not about targets or paperwork; we are talking about professionals who are trying their best. They need as much support as possible and a structure that will enable them to be out helping children and exercising their judgment about those children’s future prospects rather than filling in reports and filing paperwork.

Let me deal briefly also with the difficulties that local authorities have in placing children into foster care. The situation around the country is variable but there can be shortages in foster care placements. That feeds into the concerns raised in the report of the right hon. Member for Birkenhead. The early years are crucial, and disruption and continual placement moves can have a serious impact on children’s, particularly young children’s, development and ability to form attachments and important relationships with adults.

The court process is bewildering and challenging for anyone, even before one has factored in the addictions that the parents and young people involved might be troubled with. They might have limited cognitive functioning or learning difficulties or they might lack a support network. I remember the case of a young mother who had struggled in a relationship of domestic violence; when she was asked if there was anyone she could stay with or who could help, her answer was simply, “No.” I think of many of my friends and family with young children who are not in poverty and have a good support network, but they struggle with young babies, so one can only imagine how difficult it is for young mothers in a very different scenario.

Safeguarding children is ultimately the concern of the courts, and that has to come before anything else, but court proceedings can be lengthy. There are always difficulties in securing court dates, experts, advocates and judges. For a child who goes into foster care at one, proceedings might still be under way when the child approaches their second birthday. Even I can work out that nearly 50% of that young child’s life has been spent in a court process. Again, that brings me back to the contribution of the right hon. Member for Birkenhead, and the concerns about the impact of that process on young children.

Drug and alcohol abuse feature more frequently than any of us would wish and there are difficulties with mental health provision. I look forward to a response from the Minister this afternoon as to how we can more clearly join up facilities and support for parents and for the children who need mental health support.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

The mental health issue is incredibly important. Does my hon. Friend agree that one problem in the education system at the moment is that many school teachers are not properly trained to recognise mental health problems in pupils? It is often too easy to dismiss such problems as bad or difficult behaviour. We must include such training in the teacher training process.

[Jessica Lee]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Again, this is about working across departments and professions. There has already been a good move towards that, but any further support for school teachers and health visitors, working together with social services, will always improve the outcomes for young children.

I welcome the reports on early intervention and the early years, and the progress that has been made as a result of the Munro review, and I urge the Government to consider the national parenting campaign in more detail. I also welcome some of the steps taken by the coalition Government, such as the pupil premium.

My constituency is lucky to have an excellent Home-Start in Ilkeston, and we have great Sure Start centres. They work incredibly hard and I urge local authorities and those in Government, while there is a real momentum, to implement early intervention, and look at how we can all work together in the longer term to improve the outcomes for such disadvantaged children.

--- Later in debate ---

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

I join other hon. Members in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) on securing this debate, and I hope that they will pay attention to what he says later, because he has more ideas on how to progress this matter, which is key to many of us across the House. I shall try to keep to his principle of seeing this as a cross-party effort. As an ex-teacher, I have learned lessons today from legal experts and about early intervention.

I want to talk about an aspect of disadvantage that has not been mentioned yet. I am glad to see the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) in her place, because she has fought for this for a number of years. We talk about poverty, but there is also disadvantage in regard to race and culture. Year in, year out, she has gone on about the underperformance of black boys in particular, but, after all this time, there is still underperformance among children of Pakistani, Bengali and Kurdish origin. I do not know how many reports on that subject have come through the system.

As I said, I am an ex-history teacher, and it might seem that I am giving the House a history lesson, although I hope that things can be learned from history. My speech might bring back reminiscences of an old history teacher. I want to say something about my experience. I do not think there is anyone here who cannot think back to either a teacher or a school that made a difference to them. I support the Secretary of State when he said that

“our schools should be engines of social mobility”.

After 27 years in teaching, I passionately believe that to be the case. I went to a grammar school, and before Members raise their eyes to the ceiling, let me assure them that I am not going to give them a lecture about bringing back grammar schools across the country. My constituency does, however, have the advantage of having the very successful Lancaster royal grammar school for boys and Lancaster girls’ grammar school, which I shall say more about later.

I have 27 years’ experience of teaching in comprehensives, 25 of them in social priority schools. The lessons that I have learned apply to Governments of all persuasions, because they are all tempted to take certain actions. Comprehensives were supposed to be the vehicle for raising social mobility. When I started teaching in them, I was told that they would be the grammar schools for everyone. Then, certain schemes were introduced, including mixed-ability classes and special needs. Then we had special needs teaching in the classroom, and special needs teaching outside it. Then came integrated studies, environmental studies and humanities.

Often, more than 50% of the children whom professionals in those schools were dealing with were entitled to free school meals. Often, for more than 50% of them English was a second language. That is still the case in some of those schools today, although that has not yet been mentioned. Those factors existed alongside all the other problems that hon. Members have pointed out. Every few years, a Government scheme would be introduced in which the teacher was taken out of the classroom and trained to do something new. Any teacher dealing with circumstances of disadvantage will say that the key thing is how much stability, security and aspiration can be given to those children. Why is it that the most way-out education experiments are always done for the lowest achievers and the most disadvantaged?

[Andrew Percy]

It is precisely this issue of having initiative after initiative after initiative that we must end. One particularly damaging example from recent years, given the important role teachers can play in young people’s lives, was hiving off the pastoral role of teachers to other people working in schools. That left teachers simply to deliver the curriculum, never to nurture the children. This provides another example of the constant “initiativitis” from which we must move.

[Eric Ollerenshaw]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. It is always the schools undergoing initiatives that need the greatest stability. That is why I welcome the Secretary of State’s reform of the national curriculum, which will put real history and geography back into it. When those schools attained the achievement and stability they wanted and lifted their pupils A to C grades, they faced another problem. When the students left the school or entered university, the subjects they had studied were not counted as equal to other subjects learned in the more advantaged schools. This happened for the best of intentions, but it amounted to underselling. In my experience, however, with security, good teaching and, particularly, a good head teacher, there is nothing those children cannot achieve. They can match anybody and should be given the right to do so. That means having the right to learn the same subjects that are taught in the best schools. That would provide a level playing field and support could be continued through the system.

I want to give Ministers a case study from Lancaster. In 2003, with the best intentions, the previous Government set up an excellent cluster in Lancashire that linked the primary schools—Bowerham, Dallas Road, Willow Lane, Ridge and Moorside—with the following secondary schools: the Central Lancaster High school, Lancaster Royal Boys’ grammar, Lancaster Girls’ grammar and nine other schools in Morecambe. Teachers had to apply to participate in the initiative, which was conducted under a programme called “Excellence in Cities”, combined with another called the behaviour improvement programme. Civil servants draw up these initiatives, but teachers have to deal with the applications. What this achieved for those schools was, I think, roughly £1 million extra a year, which went to providing learning mentors.

The scheme was abolished in 2008—after just five years. After a few years, the Government no longer even measured the success of the scheme, but it can be measured. Performance at key stage 2 consistently went up year on year above the county average, while exclusions went down far below the county average—and there were some tough primary schools in this cohort. Attendance was also above the county average. Despite the achievements, it was stopped. We were told that the money was being moved to the school development grant. The poor heads were told that they had to reapply to go through the new system, which they did successfully. If we move to the present, we find that the school development grant has been amalgamated into the general schools grant. A successful system, therefore, which stopped being measured—except by the schools—has been moved, moved and moved again by all Governments.

I believe that this case study provides an example of what the pupil premium can achieve. In my view, the schools can get money through the pupil premium, but it is a year away. There are now 12 months in between, during which the whole system might well collapse. There is a gap in the process of one policy following another policy, which has happened before. It provides a warning to the coalition parties. If we want seriously to achieve things, it is not good enough just to agree to great schemes. What is important is what the schemes do on the ground and their impact on the teachers. That brings me back to my point about the teachers who are trying to create stability for what we call the most disadvantaged pupils—the very children who need that stability. I hope that we can continue monitoring these aspects, which will be key to any and every Government.

I acknowledge what the previous Government did with, for instance, academies and Sure Start, but we will have a job to do in tying up the pupil premium and what is left of the education maintenance allowance with the national scholarship for students. We need to tie up that golden thread to maintain support for disadvantaged children in every sector of education, and I hope the Government will pick that up and drive with it.

The lessons that I learn from history are that not only must this issue be dealt with—and it can be dealt with through the provision of good schools and good teachers—but we should pursue it beyond the next month and the next scheme.