UN International Day of Education

Ben Lake Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) on securing this important debate, and I pay tribute to the Members who have already spoken for their contributions. As others have pointed out, the immediate health and economic emergencies of the pandemic have demanded a great deal of Government attention and parliamentary debate across the world, yet it is important to note too the devastating impact that covid-19 has had on children and young people.

The widespread disruption to education offers the most obvious example of the challenges that young people have had to endure. Over 1.6 billion students globally have faced disruption. They face months of uncertainty and prolonged periods without seeing friends and the luxury of some normality. Hon. Members are right to raise concerns about the consequences of this disruption on children’s learning, and I fear that the long-identified link between poor attainment and poverty will have been further exacerbated by the digital divide. Just as worrying is the impact that the disruption of the past year has had on young people’s wellbeing.

Now, I of course understand that this disruption to their education and their lives was sadly unavoidable in the UK, and I would like to take this opportunity to extend my gratitude to our young people, their parents, teachers and lecturers for the extraordinary resilience that they have shown over the past year. In return, I think we have an obligation to play our part. Here in the UK, we should ensure that the support packages that are in place to support families through the crisis are maintained. To prevent an entire generation losing out on education, I believe we must be prepared to spend whatever it takes to ensure that schools, colleges and universities have the resources and flexibility necessary to allow our young people to catch up on any tuition that they have lost over the past year.

Then there are those skills and experiences found beyond the classroom, which are more difficult to quantify but are just as invaluable. Youth organisations and outdoor educational centres have always played a key part in this regard—places such as the Llangrannog Urdd camp in my constituency—and they need financial support now so that they are ready to open and return to capacity as soon as restrictions can be lifted safely.

I draw a comparison between children in the UK and internationally, because although children across the world have seen their education and lives disrupted, at least children in the UK can expect efforts to be made to make up for the past year. We can be confident that we have the means necessary to achieve all this for children in the UK. The same is not true for other countries. When we consider that globally 265 million children and adolescents do not have the opportunity to attend a complete formal education, it seems clear to me that we have a duty to help. Therefore, the decision to reduce the UK’s aid spending must be reversed if we are to play our part in the global effort to secure equitable access to education for all.