Education Bill
Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage) on her brief speech. I shall endeavour to be brief also. I was struck by the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman). I agreed with much of what he said.
I want to take colleagues on a journey to a not particularly closely examined part of the Bill, which deals with children’s trusts. Before I do that, I want to say something about social mobility. The Secretary of State often speaks about social mobility in a way that might lead people to think that he understood it. However, he refers only to statistics on free school meal take-up and admission to Oxford and Cambridge. In my constituency, Darlington, five or six years ago, there were one or two wards where a young woman of 18 or 19 would be more likely to be a mother than to be a student in higher education. I can report with great pride that that is no longer the case. Teenage pregnancies are reducing and participation in higher education in those wards is improving. That needs to be taken into account when we discuss social mobility in the House.
It is not right to portray Labour as the party that resists academies and is against them. Academies are a Labour initiative. [Interruption.] Alan Milburn, indeed. I am pleased that the remaining schools in my constituency that are not yet academies will become academies. I support them in that and I am pleased to see them aspiring to take that step.
Part 5 removes the duty on local authorities to establish children’s trusts. Let me remind the House of the origins of children’s trusts. In 2001 Lord Laming wrote a report commissioned by the former Secretary of State for Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), and the former Secretary of State for Health, Alan Milburn. The report examined the murder of Victoria Climbié in north-west London. One of the key findings was that the various agencies that should have the safeguarding of children at the forefront of their minds were not able to protect that eight-year-old girl.
I quote from Lord Laming’s recommendations:
“Each local authority with social services responsibilities must establish a Committee of Members for Children and Families with lay members drawn from the management committees of each of the key services. This Committee must ensure the services to children and families are properly co-ordinated and that the inter-agency dimension of this work is being managed effectively.”
I do not think that anything that Lord Laming found in 2001 has changed. It is probably more important now that services are co-ordinated and integrated better than they were then.
The Children Act 2004 placed local authorities under a duty to make arrangements to co-operate and promote the safeguarding of children, including the sharing of resources, money and information. I am pleased that Darlington was an early adopter of the children’s trust model before it became a statutory requirement. The success from 2004 obviously differed between agency areas, which was partly because the model was optional and so some areas, such as Surrey, did not take up the recommendation as quickly as they might have done. As a former lead member for children’s services in Darlington and a former chair of its children’s trust, I remember attending a training course with the lead member for children’s services from Surrey county council and its chair of scrutiny, who were utterly perplexed by the idea that those services would need to work quite so closely together.
In 2008 it was realised, following consultation, that strengthening was needed, so all local authorities were required to set up trusts and “duty to co-operate” partners were expanded. Schools were included in that duty to co-operate, and it would be surprising if they were not, as they are best placed to know when things are going wrong and should, if anything, be better supported by the wider children’s services and properly involved in commissioning services.
In November 2010, Ofsted undertook to study six children’s trusts, Darlington being one of them, to find out whether this children’s trust business was all just bureaucracy and a load of nonsense that was having no impact. As chair of the children’s trust, I was relieved to find that what we were doing was having an effect. Ofsted concluded:
“Children’s Trusts were providing more integrated front-line services that were linked closely to and responded to local needs… Trust boards showed considerable flexibility and willingness to find common ground from which to move services forward. They showed strong commitment to intervention and prevention”,
of which everyone is saying they would like to see more.
“They worked effectively in a complex environment which involved different performance targets, priorities and ways of providing services.”
I am proud to have been chair of Darlington children’s trust at the time of that inspection and to have worked closely with the superb director of children’s services, Murray Rose. Our children’s trust was highlighted as an example of best practice. Success has not been replicated in every local authority, so we need to take lessons from the areas that have managed to make this work well for the benefit of children and families, rather than scrapping the whole infrastructure.
In conclusion, and in case anyone thinks that this is some sort of romantic ideal of mine that services should work together properly, I should point out that Ofsted found some tangible outcomes from Darlington’s children’s trust: a rise in the number of young people screened for chlamydia as a result of closer working between schools and health services; a reduction of more than 20% in teenage pregnancy rates; improvements in long-term stability of placements for looked-after children, an area that is close to my heart; the continued improvement of GCSE performance; importantly, an increase in the number of children receiving free school meals who achieve qualifications at age 19; and, most significantly, a reduction in the achievement gap at level 3 at age 19 between young people who had received free school meals and those who had not. I am proud of Darlington’s achievements and would like the Government to reconsider abolishing children’s trusts.
Oral Answers to Questions
Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Michael Gove
That point is well made by my hon. Friend. We have an anomaly at the moment, whereby the position of those in colleges and those in schools is not the same. The whole thrust of our policy making has been to try to ensure a level playing field between schools and colleges. The point he makes with respect to EMA weighs heavily with my colleagues and me.
Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
Staff at the Independent Safeguarding Authority in Darlington learned from The Daily Telegraph on Saturday that the vetting and barring scheme is to be significantly scaled back. What conversations has the Secretary of State had with the Home Secretary about the reduction of that scheme, which is likely to affect child protection?
Post-16 Students
Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Nic Dakin
My hon. Friend makes a clear and cogent point and draws on another case study from another very good college, this time in his constituency. In many ways he makes the same point as the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) about how entitlement funding helps to develop the whole person and is crucial to the thrust of our education service and to what colleges have done so well for so many years.
Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
May I reinforce the point made in the two previous interventions and speak about social mobility? When I discuss the issue with the principals of Darlington college and Queen Elizabeth sixth-form college in Darlington, they say that although they are getting better and better at producing the right grades to get their students into good jobs and good universities, their students are still unable to access the same opportunities as other young people because they do not have some of the softer skills and wider experiences in life that young people from different backgrounds have been able to access as a result of their family’s income. It is so important that our colleges are able to give young people those opportunities and experiences while they are at college.
Nic Dakin
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. She mentions two more very good colleges, both in her constituency. The point that she makes about social mobility builds on the points made earlier by the hon. Member for East Hampshire and my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson). What entitlement funding has done so well is provide experiences that enrich and expand young people’s experiences so that they gain greater confidence and are able to aspire to go on to greater things. The education system post-16, building on the building blocks of the pre-16 experience, has done that so well over recent years. The proposed cuts to entitlement funding call into question colleges’ ability to maintain that momentum.
At the same time as entitlement funding has been cut by 12%, the maximum funding for each student has been reduced from 787 hours, or 1.75 standard learner numbers, in the jargon of post-16 funding, to 702 hours, or 1.56 standard learner numbers. That is a 10% reduction in that part of the funding formula. I warned hon. Members that the debate would get rather technical at certain points.
Some of the money saved by these measures will be returned to colleges and schools with higher numbers of students from disadvantaged backgrounds or with low entry qualifications, but details are not yet available of how the £150 million of disadvantaged funding will work. As the hon. Member for East Hampshire said, the lack of clarity and lack of understanding are causing concern in the sector. Those in the sector understand what is going, but they cannot see what might be coming back into the picture.
Transitional funding, which is being put in place to dampen the effect of the cut in entitlement funding, means that the maximum cut in funding per student next year will be 3%, but there is a lack of clarity about how this funding cut will be profiled in future. Many college principals are working on the assumption of a 3% cut each year for the next four years. Many are drawing up radical proposals to address the shortfall, which might be disastrous for the student experience and result in job losses in the sector.
Many colleges are telling me that if the cuts go ahead, they are likely to lead to a severe reduction in the amount of tutorial, guidance and enrichment available. That will probably be reduced to less than an hour’s tutorial session a week for students, and nothing else will be able to be resourced. Colleges will be in danger of becoming nothing more than exam factories, unable to spend time on developing the whole student, a job that they are recognised as doing extremely well at present. Interventions from Members on both sides of the House tonight have evidenced the effectiveness of the job that our colleagues in the post-16 education system are doing on behalf of those students who, after all, are our future and the country’s future.
It is likely that providers will now struggle to offer a broad range of extra-curricular activities that have for so long been a key characteristic of sixth-form education. Team sport, orchestras, drama productions, sign language, community volunteering, rocket science and magazine editing will all be put at risk.
Education Maintenance Allowance
Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
I am very grateful for this opportunity to speak in the debate and to represent the concerns of my Darlington constituents.
More than 100 people in my constituency will lose their jobs as a result of the Government’s decision to scrap EMA, and about 1,300 students will lose out. Providing EMA of £30 a week to the children of families whose combined earnings are less than £21,000 is the simplest, fairest and most effective way of keeping young people in education and training.
We have two outstanding colleges and one excellent school sixth form in my constituency. College principals have spoken to me of their concerns about the impact of the removal of EMA on their students and their institutions. The college I attended in the early ’90s served at that time a far smaller cohort of young people than it does today. Most came from the well-off areas close to the college. Results were adequate but not great, and admissions to Oxford and Cambridge—which the Secretary of State cares so much about—were rare. Today, the college’s biggest challenge is to accommodate the ever-increasing number of young people from across the region who wish to study there. Queen Elizabeth sixth form college in Darlington is consistently among the best performing sixth-form colleges in the country, and one of the secrets of its success is that it can recruit from a wide geographical area.
I was a governor at QE before the introduction of EMA, and recruitment from secondary schools in the less affluent areas was often either non-existent or in single-digit numbers. That has changed and the situation is continuing to improve thanks to EMA. Because many current QE students travel more than a mile and a half to get to college, they rely on public transport to get them there, which has a cost. Those young people are not able to go home for their lunch, so they need money to buy food. They also need money to benefit from participating in the rich array of important extracurricular activities that are on offer but which need to be paid for. Many students on EMA work to supplement their allowance, but in Darlington students are explicitly encouraged to limit the hours they work, which I think is good. Although having part-time jobs brings many benefits to young people, they must not distract them from the aim of getting a qualification.
It is particularly cruel to remove EMA from students who will be only part of the way through their courses when they lose their allowance. With EMA, students could be certain of the support they would receive, and they could make their choices accordingly. There is a predictability to the scheme that allows families to plan ahead. It shifts horizons and encourages the setting of longer-term goals. The idea that my old college could now be using its budget to provide buses to transport students to it from further afield is a credit to the college, but it is inefficient and it disempowers individual students. With EMA, young people had choice; they were responsible for managing their own bank accounts and for making their own financial decisions. If young people spend all their money on beer and cannot afford to get to college the next day, they lose out on future payments—this is a conditional allowance. It is a tough lesson, but one that young people understand and sign up to.
Few things in life are more expensive than a NEET. The number of NEETs in Darlington has reduced and the level of participation in further education there has increased from 82% to 91%. As a former lead member for children’s services, I think that EMA is very good value for money.
The Government do not understand social mobility. In fact, they have had to get my predecessor and friend, Alan Milburn, to explain it to them. I just hope that they listen, because social mobility is about making choices and living with the results of those choices. Scrapping EMA does the opposite of saying, “We are all in this together.” It says to our young people, “You are on your own.”
School Sports Funding
Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
How ironic that a debate on cuts to school sport should follow the Health Secretary’s statement on public health. He recognises the problem of childhood obesity and health inequality, but it is unfortunate that on this issue, the Government’s left hand does not appear to know what the right hand is doing. This change is not a nudge, it is pitching school sports back into the rough of the 1980s.
In the words of one Darlington schoolteacher,
“hard pushed teachers do not have the time to replace or enhance the work of the Partnerships in organising competitions.”
He continued:
“I am dismayed at the state of democracy in this country if one self confessed hater of school sport”—
I think he means the Secretary of State—
“can scrap a decade’s successful work. Surely this man must listen to the outcry across the nation that this whimsical decision has caused.”
My concern is that without the innovation and expertise offered by school sport partnerships, the most able, motivated and enthusiastic young people will, quite rightly, be given the opportunity to play hockey, netball, athletics and basketball for their house and their school, but the rest will be left with the excuse of concluding that sport just is not for them.
School sport partnerships and specialist sports schools, such as Longfield school in my constituency, have succeeded in combining a growing excellence in competitive sport with activities designed to encourage those less inclined to don a bib and take to the hockey pitch. Selling the same old nostalgic product, as the Tories tried in the ’80s, simply does not work, and I speak as someone who played rugby union for my university. School sport partnerships understand the specific needs of different groups, particularly girls, and develop new activities and experiences that compete successfully with how girls previously chose to spend their time. They have been exceptionally good at listening to what girls want, and flexible in responding to what they have heard. Imaginative initiatives, such as a prom club to help girls feel fit and healthy before their prom night, grab the attention of girls who are so often left out of competitive sport.
However, school sport partnerships have also championed competitive sport. They have offered leadership courses, helping people to gain experience, qualifications and confidence in sport that they can share with their younger peers. Older girls have often inspired younger ones to give sport a go, and SSPs have often worked with primaries to produce a better quality offer. That is a good example of making public money go further.
Why are the Government not listening to young people? The campaign to save that value-for-money approach to school sport is growing daily. Those working in school sports, almost to a man and a woman, believe that that cut has not been properly thought through.
Phil Wilson
As I said earlier, I have received dozens of letters from children in my constituency who are concerned about those cuts. This is from Bradley Johnson, aged 10:
“Dear Mr Wilson…I am writing to ask Mr Gove to please change his mind on stopping the school sports partnership. Please I’ll even beg him if I had to”.
What has the world come to when young children desperate to play sport must beg the Government to do so?
Mrs Chapman
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. If the Government cannot listen to the Opposition, perhaps they can listen to Bradley from Sedgefield.
Alison, the school sport co-ordinator in Darlington, said:
“I believe passionately that we have an obligation to fight for what I feel is the right of every young person in a state school to have the equality of opportunity to find their physical spark.”
The Secretary of State needs to understand the anger, frustration and—frankly—the disbelief at such a rushed and ill-thought-through cut. It is a dog’s breakfast of a cut.
Mrs Chapman
I will not give way because I want to make a progress and this matter is important to my constituents.
Hannah Marshall is a young woman from Darlington who benefited from the Darlington school sport partnership. Her energy and enthusiasm in embracing all the opportunities that presented themselves were sparked when she was in primary school—a range of experiences, competitions and activities were on offer through the partnership. Sport has changed Hannah’s life. She has taken advantage of many opportunities, but she has also made a massive contribution to sport in school and college, and in the wider community, through her voluntary work. Since leaving school, she has studied A-level physical education, biology and leisure studies, and now wants to become a PE teacher. She says:
“I’ve had the best time ever! I’ve loved the sport, playing football and volunteering. My advice is to get involved as much as possible. The more you put in, the more you gain.”
Those are wise words. The Secretary of State should listen to young people such as Hannah, who, unlike him, know what they are talking about when it comes to school sport.
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
Very simply, your own Secretary—[Hon. Members: “You?”] I apologise. Would you accept—[Interruption.] Does the hon. Lady accept that there would and should be a cut to the budget?
Mrs Chapman
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) indicated, if the Secretary of State would like to make the Opposition an offer, perhaps we could start negotiations.
To conclude, there are hundreds of Hannahs throughout the country, but their spark may remain unlit if we allow the end of school sport partnerships.
Funding and Schools Reform
Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to take part in the debate, although I must express some disappointment with the opening speech by the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), the shadow Secretary of State. It lacked a contribution on how to improve our school system. There were improvements in our education system under the Labour Government; there is no question about that. In general, we have a motivated and high-calibre teaching work force, although of course they too could do with further improvement. There was nothing constructive in the right hon. Gentleman’s speech.
When a party is thrown out after 13 years in government, there is a real opportunity to think again. One of the first things Labour Members should do is put their hands up on some of the issues. For Labour to have presided for 13 years over a widening of the gap between the educational outcomes for rich and poor, and a widening of the gap in the overall educational performance of the UK against its key competitors, is not something about which to be complacent or self-satisfied. Collectively, as a political class—although I was on the Opposition Benches—we failed to turn the vast increase in expenditure on education under the previous Government, and the political will that existed then, into sufficient progress for the poorest in our society, which one would have hoped would be delivered by Labour, and for the country overall.
Wrestling with the issues of bringing about improvement in our education system is what we should all be involved in, rather than trying to score points, especially as it is likely that the coalition Government and this Parliament will run for some years. Every party, not least the Opposition, should be dealing with the real issues, and should have a platform for improvement.
Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman speaks about the good will of the Opposition and their desire to reduce inequality in education. Is it not true, however, that we do not yet know how successful our expenditure on reducing such inequality might be because, for example, children who started in a Sure Start centre when those first opened in my constituency are not yet 16, so we do not know what choices they will make?
Mr Stuart
The hon. Lady makes a fair point. Many of those initiatives, such as Sure Start, are being supported by this Government. The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) has been an ardent champion of early intervention and has helped Members in all parts of the House to recognise the need to intervene early in order to make sure that children arrive ready for school, and that they have a decent vocabulary so that they can engage with learning. There is merit in what the hon. Lady says, but even the most ardent supporter of the Labour Government would hardly suggest that the improvements that were wished for have genuinely been delivered.
I am pleased to follow my predecessor, the highly distinguished former Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), who said that he could not see an ideological base. I hope it is a practical evidence-based approach by the Government. It is clear that they believe that giving greater trust, responsibility and control to front-line professionals is more likely to lead to an improvement in standards than central prescription, however well-meaning. It is as obvious to me as the River Jordan that that is the key insight of this Government.
We must ensure that that process is well thought through, that we support front-line professionals, that capability is developed where it does not currently exist, and that it is put in place in time to match any withdrawal of support from local authorities or others who may previously have delivered it.