School Attendance

Bob Seely Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2024 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Twigg. Thank you for your kindness earlier. I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) for leaving slightly early to get to the vote, as I missed a little of his otherwise excellent speech.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), my constituency neighbour in Essex—we have got Essex man and Essex woman here today—on securing this debate. She has championed this subject and is absolutely right to do so, because we know that regular school attendance is vital for children’s attainment, mental wellbeing and long-term development, and it is crucial that we have a support system in place to ensure that every child attends school every day, ready to learn and thrive.

My hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds talked about the damage of school closures. Wearing my previous hat as Chair of the Education Committee, I spent a huge amount of my time campaigning against school closures, as I thought that everything we are talking about today, both here and in the main Chamber, would come to pass. I have to say that I was opposed significantly by not everyone, but a lot of Members on the Opposition Benches, and of course some—not all, to be fair—of the unions. I thought, at the time, that it would cause significant damage.

The attendance challenge has grown since the start of the pandemic, not only in England but around the world. There is evidence that, post pandemic, some attitudes to absence have changed. There is a greater propensity to keep a child at home with a minor illness such as a cough or a cold, and we can understand why that has happened. We must at least try and recalibrate back to where we were pre-covid, when an attendance of 95% was achieved year after year.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I fully support the idea behind the Bill introduced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), and indeed the complementary Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond). Will the Minister find the time to meet me to discuss specifically home schooling and how it relates to absenteeism on the Isle of Wight, where we have over three times the national average of home-schooled kids? While I absolutely respect the rights of responsible parents, I worry that especially after covid, some of those home-schooled kids are simply absentee kids from school who are not learning, and who are drifting into isolation, mental health problems or criminality.

[Robert Halfon]

As always, my hon. Friend makes powerful points. I think he speaks not just for some—and I stress some—younger people in his constituency, but also for those across the country. I am not the Schools Minister or the Children’s Minister—I am standing in because of the debate in the main Chamber—but I will mention what my hon. Friend has requested, and I will ask for a meeting with the Schools Minister or the Children’s Minister to discuss the important issues that he has raised.

Contrary to what has been suggested by the shadow Minister, we have started to see some progress, although there is a long way to go. There were 380,000 fewer pupils persistently absent or not attending school in 2022-23 than in 2021-22. Overall absence for the autumn term that has just finished was 6.8%, down from 7.5% in Autumn 2022. That means that, on average, pupils in England are attending school for the equivalent of around a day and a half more across an academic year then they did last year.

It is difficult to make direct comparisons, but we know that absenteeism is a problem not just in the UK, but in other parts of the world too. However, there are signs that our approach is bearing fruit. I mentioned that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford is my constituency neighbour. Absence rates for Essex are very much in line with those of England as a whole, and they mirror the improvements seen nationally in the most recent terms.

We are committed to working with schools and local authorities to drive up attendance rates, and we have a six-point plan to deal with some of the problems. We have set out stronger expectations of the system, including requiring schools to have an attendance policy, appointing attendance champions and expecting local authorities to hold termly meetings with schools to agree individual plans for at-risk children.

We have established an alliance of national leaders from education, children’s social care and allied services to work together to raise school attendance and reduce persistent absence, and the Attendance Action Alliance has pledged to take a range of actions to remove barriers preventing children attending school. The attendance data tool allows early intervention to avoid absences becoming entrenched, and 88% of schools are already taking part in the daily data pilot. We are committed to requiring all schools to share their daily registers as part of the programme.

We have expanded our attendance hubs, which will see almost 2,000 schools supported to tackle persistent absence—reaching around 1 million pupils. We have also launched a campaign to re-emphasise the importance of every school day, not just for learning, but for wellbeing, experiences and friendships too. From September, our attendance mentor pilot will be extended to 10 new areas. Trained mentors will work with more than 10,000 persistently and severely absent children and their families to help them back to school.

Both the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) and the shadow Minister rightly talked about mental health and special educational needs. We are now spending £10.5 billion on special educational needs—that is a 60% increase since 2019. The Children’s Minister has a lot of work under way on this, including a plan for special educational needs which will standardise education, health and social care plans, so that we end the postcode lottery that my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds mentioned.

The hon. Member for City of Durham also asked several questions. As I understand it—I will ask the School Buildings Minister to discuss the issue that she raised—the Department for Education has contacted the Durham research team, offering to discuss the report and clarify areas of mission. We have worked closely with St Leonard’s to provide additional spaces for learning and to put extra education provisions in place. All pupils at St Leonard’s have been in face-to-face education since October and additional educational support is available for those pupils due to sit exams next year, with specialist facilities being sourced at other providers in the local area and transport being provided for pupils. Nevertheless, as I have already said, I will ask the School Buildings Minister to talk to her.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bob Seely Excerpts

Monday 23rd October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

In fact, we are focusing on both. We have reformed the early years foundation stage to ensure that there is more interaction between adults and pupils in that stage, with a focus on numeracy and English as well. In 2011, we took the Singapore primary curriculum as the basis of our primary maths, and we introduced the multiplication tables check for year 4 pupils. An increasing number of pupils are now fluent in their times tables, in a way that generations of children in the past have not been.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) and the Minister are both right to stress the importance of maths, but what is vital to all good teaching is proper school place planning. On the Isle of Wight, councillors are proving unwilling to deliver, or incapable of delivering, a school place plan despite their legal duty. Will the Minister work with me to ensure that the Isle of Wight Council acts to fulfil its legal duties soon—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The hon. Member must try to keep to the main question. He really is drifting. He must return to the subject of primary education.

[Bob Seely]

Will you allow me to raise this subject during topical questions instead, Mr Speaker?

[Mr Speaker]

No.

[Bob Seely]

Okay. I am sorry, Sir. Thank you.

Will the Minister work with me to ensure that the Isle of Wight Council acts to fulfil its legal obligations? At present it is letting down parents, pupils and teachers.

[Nick Gibb]

My hon. Friend is right to raise this issue. We are aware that the Isle of Wight is experiencing a decline in the number of primary school children, which is creating surplus places. The Department is monitoring the situation closely, and the south east regional director will be meeting the local authority next month to discuss this and other concerns that we have about the Isle of Wight.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bob Seely Excerpts

Monday 12th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho]

As I said, we have already set out some flexibilities in a consultation that was published last week, and I urge every single person in the early years sector to look at that. I urge the hon. Lady to look at it too, because there are much wider flexibilities in there: for example, looking at qualifications relaxations. Overall, the Government have set out the single largest ever investment into childcare; Labour has not set out a plan at all.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

8. What assessment her Department has made of the effectiveness of phonics teaching in Isle of Wight constituency.

[The Minister for Schools (Nick Gibb)]

There is overwhelming evidence that systematic phonics is the most effective method for teaching early reading. The English hubs programme is made up of 34 high-performing primary schools with exemplary practice in the teaching of synthetic phonics and reading. They are using their expertise to spread best practice to nearby schools, and have now reached over 1,600 primary schools. The English hub supporting the Isle of Wight has been helping 11 primary schools on the Island with their teaching of reading.

[Bob Seely]

I thank Ministers, first for the new special educational needs school for the Island—it is much appreciated—and secondly for agreeing to a phonics conference in June. The recent Islands Forum held on the Isle of Wight showed the link between education, jobs and the skills agenda and getting better opportunities for islanders, whether they are in Scotland or down on the Isle of Wight in my patch. On the phonics conference, is the Minister willing to pledge that we will get a centre of excellence for the teaching of phonics on the Island? Our nearest one, however good it is, is on the mainland in Southampton.

[Nick Gibb]

My hon. Friend and I have discussed education standards on the Isle of Wight on a number of occasions, and I pay tribute to him for the support he gives his schools and his determination to see standards rise in those schools. The Springhill English hub that he referred to is supporting primary schools on the Island to improve their teaching of phonics. As I said, it is already working with 11 primary schools, five of which have received intensive support, with the intention of ultimately finding a school on the Isle of Wight itself that has sufficient expertise to spread practice within the Island. That conference is taking place at the end of the month, and I hope all primary schools will be able to attend.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bob Seely Excerpts

Monday 14th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michelle Donelan]

Fairness is at the heart of our announcement that no student will pay back more in real terms than they borrowed. It is also about rebalancing for the taxpayer, as every pound that is not paid back by a student is paid back by a taxpayer.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

14. What assessment he has made of the potential impact on education outcomes of an education investment area on the Isle of Wight.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Nadhim Zahawi)]

I was delighted to announced that the Isle of Wight will be an education investment area, which will receive a range of support to improve schools. We will boost the rate of children meeting reading, writing and maths standards by 2030, ensuring that opportunity is as equally spread as talent is in our country.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

The Island has made good progress in improving its education in recent years, which I am delighted about. I am very keen to get as much out of the education investment area as we possibly can, in order to drive up standards further. That ambition was evident in my recent visit, only a few days ago, to Christ the King College, where I talked to students and pupils. The Education Minister has had many invitations today, so will the Secretary of State please come to the Isle of Wight so that he can see the excellent work being done at the Isle of Wight College and at our schools?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

That invitation is far too tempting to turn down, so I shall make time to visit the Isle of Wight with my hon. Friend. Of course, I will be saying more about the work we are doing in the schools White Paper.

Budget Resolutions

Bob Seely Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams). I wish I could say I disagreed with him over HS2, but let us not go there.

I congratulate the Government on their decision to back the Isle of Wight’s levelling-up bid last week and moving it up into tranche 1, accepting my arguments. I am most grateful for that. I want to say, because we are spending an awful lot of money, that it is going to be exceptionally well spent. That £6 million is going to buy quite a few things, but most importantly it will buy the capability to be able to lift 240-tonne ships out of the water at East Cowes. It will be a massive boost for jobs and for Wight shipyards and aluminium boats. With regard to shipbuilding, there is likely to be a significant contract for border patrol vessels, I hope. The Isle of Wight may well be putting in the only UK bid, and it will be a highly competitive one. Those boats have been made in Holland before. It would be nice to see them made in the UK and preferably on the Island, bringing that wealth to the Isle of Wight and also along the south coast.

I congratulate the Government on the universal credit decision. Out of all the excellent things in the Budget—my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary knows this as well as I do—the best is that we are enabling our constituents to make work worthwhile, getting work into families and giving them prosperity and hope. That may well be the most important thing that has come out of this Budget, and it may be influential for years to come.

I want put on record my thanks to Maggie Oldham at the Isle of Wight NHS Trust, who has taken the trust out of special measures. It is now rated as good. I am also grateful for the recent visit by the Education Ministry’s permanent secretary to Cowes Enterprise College to see an example of best practice in embedding careers into the curriculum. Getting people ready for work is clearly an important part of education.

I am delighted that the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts), is here, because I want to talk briefly about transport, just to have a bit of a moan within a positive framework. He and I have met quite often and talked about the Isle of Wight ferries and Isle of Wight transport. I wrote to him last week. I hope we are going to look at a series of issues, and I want to put them on the public record now.

The ferry services fall down too often. If this was a multi-constituency problem, the situation with Wightlink, Red Funnel and Hovertravel would not be accepted, yet unfortunately in this case it is accepted, for whatever reason. We need to challenge that and do better, because interconnectivity is important, as Ministers know. We need to improve our connectivity between the mainland and the Island.

First, following up on the letter that I wrote, can the Government take the power to oversee ferry timetables in the same way that the Rail Minister does with rail timetables? Secondly, especially because we have a Treasury Minister here, will the Treasury support a national infrastructure bid potentially by a new ferry operator—a free-market alternative—to get a new player into the market, especially if it is a community interest company that will keep a low debt level and a more affordable price structure for Islanders? Thirdly, will the Government look at other measures and potentially take other controls over ferry firms, for instance through looking at their debt level? I do not want to sound like the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) or the hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis), but the privatisation of Wightlink did not work, and that company has been loaded up with debt by corporate sharks over the years. That debt gets paid for every time an Islander uses the ferry service, and it is frankly unfair. I also question whether it is right for public services, be they Wightlink or Southern Water, to be owned ultimately by companies based in offshore tax havens. It is not right and it is not good for us that that practice continues.

Fourthly, can we look at extending the EU261/UK261 regulations, which cover air travel, to cover the ferry firms? Fifthly, can we add public service obligations, either supported or unsupported by the taxpayer? Will the Government support the Isle of Wight Council or the Department for Transport taking a share in Wightlink or potentially Red Funnel? Will the Government also look at a cap on costs for those travelling to the mainland for health-related travel? Unlike the Isles of Scilly, we do not have the same beneficial arrangement, and those costs are sometimes higher than they are for other people.

I will leave it there, with one final point—I am looking to the Minister via the Speaker’s Chair. On the fair funding formula, negotiations are ongoing. The Government and the Chancellor accepted for the first time, after my pressing, that the Isle of Wight should be treated as an island and that there are additional costs in providing Government services and doing business caused by separation by sea. Those negotiations are at an advanced stage. I would be grateful, because the Government invested £50,000 to look at this with the Isle of Wight Council, if those negotiations came to a positive resolution. The amounts of money we are talking about are so small when it comes to overall budgets, but would mean a great deal to the Island. That would mean that the Isle of Wight’s additional costs caused by being an island would be recognised by Government for the first time in decades.

Education After Covid-19

Bob Seely Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con) [V]]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered improving the education system after the covid-19 outbreak.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I understand it is your first chairmanship, so many congratulations if that is the case. I thank Members, and most of all the Minister, for taking time to participate in the debate. Frankly, all debates on education are important. I pay tribute to the work that the Minister has done. He is a long-standing Minister and is much respected in his field.

I will start off with a couple of other thank yous that are relevant to the Isle of Wight. I know how hard the headteachers, teachers and pupils on the island have worked, and I thank them all. It has been a difficult year and I think the Isle of Wight has done pretty well overall, especially compared with the national average. It has not been easy and we are grateful to everyone for the efforts that they have made. I thank our education team at the council: Brian Pope and Steve Crocker, and Councillor Paul Brading. I thank them for their dedication to the wellbeing of the island.

One of the worst of many damaging aspects of covid has been the effect on the education of children and young people. Even with our best efforts, it will now take years to repair the damage. Significant events such as pandemics and, indeed, world wars, often serve as disruptors, but they can be positive disruptors. Not only do we now have an opportunity to learn from the past year with its virtual as opposed to real, in-person education, but such situations provide a window of opportunity for sometimes radical change. I want to look at two or three ideas to suggest potential changes to the education system that could benefit not only folk on the Isle of Wight but everyone in the UK.

As I said, the pandemic is no different from significant disruptor episodes, and has identified some important issues such as, in the healthcare context, the link between the health and care home sectors—or lack of it—and how that worked during the pandemic. I want to take this opportunity to ask some big questions about how things can be done differently in education. The Minister has been in his post for some years so I am trying to frame the debate as questions to him, because he has significantly more expertise than I do in the matter. There are three things I want to look at, and the first is term time. The Secretary of State has spoken about that recently. The second is the use of technology to improve education, and the third is Government working in a more integrated and coherent way. I shall refer to my constituency too.

The three-term school year has absolutely had its day. We have not lived in an agrarian society for the best part of 150 years, if not 200 years. Children, teenagers and young people no longer need to go and help with the harvests for a six or seven-week period over the summer. That has not had to happen for decades, if not a century or two. We know that long holidays can damage kids’ learning. I remember going back to school in September pretty much having forgotten everything that I learned the previous year, because in the seven weeks over summer people simply swich off. Research shows that the poorer the children, the worse the damage. Additionally, poorer children are less likely to take part in enriching activities in summer, such as travel abroad, and they are sadly more likely to be malnourished and are more vulnerable to isolation and periods of inactivity. This is a social and mental health problem, as well as an educational problem.

The Secretary of State said that we should look to move to a five-term year, and I completely agree. We should be doing so permanently, and perhaps a royal commission could look at whether it is a four-term or five-term year. We need to split up the term time in order to have shorter but more consistent terms throughout the year. Yes, we still need summer holidays, but they can be staggered depending on the exact school term for any academy or county, with changes in term time. Holidays do not have to be crammed into six or seven weeks in summer; they could be taken in June, July, August or September, depending on when the exact term time falls for any given school.

Why do we have a school year that runs from September to July? Why not from January to December? Why should we have exams in summer, which is full of disruption? Summer is fun—people want to be outside, and it is a very distracting time of year. Why not have exams in March or April, over a winter period in which it is easier to encourage kids to work at home and to study because it is raining outside or it is cold? There is an argument that if we think it is right to do something, let us get on and do it.

My second point is about using technology to improve education. We need to implement the best learnings that we can to enhance education, and I thank the Academies Enterprise Trust, Julian Drinkall and his team for their excellent work at Ryde Academy—some really ground-breaking stuff. Although some schools have struggled with virtual learning, most have not. The Isle of Wight has done very well by comparison and, again, I thank everyone involved, but we need to take the lessons from the pandemic and find the best balance between in-person teaching and virtual learning, because kids need to learn to react with screens as well as in person. I know there is an issue with people saying that sometimes children are watching too much TV at home, but screens can be a great way to encourage engagement with technology at school. Everyone will be living virtually online and in person now, and this is not an option.

Every child should have a tablet or laptop for the duration of their schooling, in the same way that they would have had a pencil and notebook 50 years ago. Certainly when it comes to exams and testing, screens can be almost a non-stressful way to encourage testing at the end of a lesson, at the end of the day or at the end of a week. Testing can become part of the support for children, and indeed for teachers, rather than painful occasional hurdles that need to be overcome. For some children, virtual learning has enhanced their education. For some, it has not worked, and vulnerable children need to be in the classroom, either with in-person teaching or with tablets. For some kids, however—as far as the teachers to whom I have spoken say—more at-home learning has actually been of real benefit, as has been more interaction with technologists. For example, I understand that some children with autism have benefited from being able to work at home with a more flexible timetable. This is about an important duty of care as well as education.

That links to the critical national infrastructure that we actually need, which is not a railway between London and Birmingham; it is fibre to premises for homes, schools and businesses throughout the country. That is the critical piece of infrastructure that we cannot do without in future and that we should prioritise.

My third point is about coherent and integrated working. Talking to educational experts—I like to talk to them anyway, but I wanted to make sure that I had some valid points to make in my speech—there is a sense from some of them, and from some teachers, that although the Department for Education is doing excellent work, it could work more effectively and coherently with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on skills, and with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on kit and support for schools in a virtual world, in order to improve education and work experience. I am sure the Minister will let us know his thoughts on this issue.

Finally, I want to talk a bit about improving education on the Isle of Wight. We have an improving school system on the Island, for which I am very grateful. The officers we have had from Hampshire, who now work on the Island, have helped us drive up standards.

We have had an issue with higher education, only because we have not had it and not had enough of it. My huge frustration has been that for 30 years, while higher education in Bournemouth, Portsmouth, Southampton and Brighton have driven not only education in those cities but student life and the prosperity it brings to those city centres, that education revolution has completely passed by the Isle of Wight, which is painful for us.

The worst thing is that, if someone is young and smart and wants to get a degree, they would pretty much have to leave the island. That inability to keep our most talented people has been a problem for us. Once kids leave, they might not come back until they are 50, 60 or 70. They might come back to retire, but getting them back has been a problem. I would very much like to do more to develop higher education, specifically with a higher education campus in Newport.

We have the Isle of Wight College, under the excellent leadership of Debbie Lavin. Anything the Minister could do, not only with the DFE but also the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, working with me to develop more degree level courses, which people can take on the island, perhaps doing that through the Isle of Wight College or virtually, or with other people setting up a campus here, would be incredibly valuable for us.

I want others to have time to talk, so I will wrap up there. I will be grateful to hear what the Minister has to say to those critical points. To sum up: on term times, can we change the school year and potentially the times we do exams, to enable kids to learn better and more consistently throughout the year? Can we use technology better, with that interaction between the best of in-person learning and learning virtually on screen? We need that for the future, because kids will need to be able to adjust to the real life that they are going to find once they leave school. Thirdly, what can the DFE do to work more coherently with other Departments, to ensure that we drive forward a skills and learning agenda, which is critical for the future of the country?

[Christina Rees (in the Chair)]

I intend to call the Opposition spokesperson at 5.33 pm and the Minister at 5.38 pm. That gives four minutes maximum to Back-Bench speakers, so please confine yourselves to four minutes or less. I call Emma Hardy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Seely [V]]

Thank you very much, Ms Rees. I can sum up in a sentence. I absolutely share the Minister’s sentiments when he says that we must do our best to make sure that nobody suffers a long-term disadvantage. It is clear that long-term debate about delivering the best education system we can will continue, so I thank you for your chairmanship, Ms Rees, Members for their contributions, and the Minister for attending and listening.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered improving the education system after the covid-19 outbreak.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bob Seely Excerpts

Monday 18th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

What assessment he has made of the availability of (a) devices and (b) access to broadband for school and college pupils working from home during the covid-19 outbreak.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

What assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of the roll-out of (a) laptops and (b) other devices to disadvantaged pupils to support remote learning during the covid-19 outbreak.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Gavin Williamson)]

We are investing over £400 million to support access to remote education, including by providing 1.3 million laptops and tablets to disadvantaged children. We are partnering with the UK’s leading mobile operators to provide free data, as well as deliver 4G wireless routers for pupils without a connection at home.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Williamson]

I point the hon. Gentleman to an answer I gave earlier. Over 2.9 million devices are already in circulation within the school system. That has been supplemented by an additional 1.3 million, of which 750,000 have already been dispatched. Over the last two weeks, we have been seeing the dispatch of devices to schools running at approximately 20,000 each day.

[Bob Seely [V]]

I thank Ministers and education officers for their work, and most of all, I thank teachers on the Isle of Wight for keeping education going in these very difficult circumstances; I am sure that the Secretary of State would want to do so as well. Can he explain what further support is being planned for children in need on the Island and what is being done to ensure adequate virtual learning across all schools?

[Gavin Williamson]

I join my hon. Friend in thanking teachers and support staff on the Isle of Wight for their work over the last few months and for their continued work and efforts in terms of ensuring that every child on the Isle of Wight gets the very best education. We have already announced the increase in the number of devices that we are procuring—increasing that from the initial 200,000 that we announced a number of months ago to 1.3 million; this is very much there to complement the offer—and we have set out explicitly the expectations that we have of all schools and colleges in terms of the provision of remote education in these truly unprecedented times.

Special Educational Needs: Isle of Wight

Bob Seely Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered special educational needs on the Isle of Wight.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson, for what I think is the first time, and I am most grateful to the Minister and her team for being here. As she is aware, the purpose of Westminster Hall debates is often to raise issues that are of considerable importance in Members’ constituencies or to groups of their constituents. I have secured this debate in order to discuss the Isle of Wight’s needs in two areas that are important to many parents on the Island: special educational needs and disability, and education, health and care plans, which I know the Minister is familiar with and which she will become more familiar with in her new role. EHCPs outline the special educational needs a child has and the plan that a local authority has to put in place to support that child.

I will speak for probably no more than 10 minutes, just to outline some background and ask the Minister a series of questions. I am aware that she has not received a copy of my speech, for which I apologise—I do tend to write them at the last minute. I am not expecting specific verbal answers from her today, but it would be great to get written responses to some of the questions I raise, because as I say, they are important to my constituents and the children of the Isle of Wight.

Right from the outset, I want the Minister to be aware of the higher percentage of not only SEND provision but provision of ECHPs on the Island compared with the national average. On the Island, 4.4% of kids have an EHCP, compared with a national average of 3.1%, so our level is roughly a third higher. Some 12.7% of our school population has special educational needs or disabilities; the national average is 11.9%, so our level is nearly 1 percentage point higher.

Over the past decade, we on the Island have undergone quite substantial educational reforms, which were the right things to do but which have put education there under pressure. In November last year, Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission conducted a week-long joint inspection of the Isle of Wight to judge our effectiveness in implementing the disability and special educational needs reforms set out in the Children and Families Act 2014, with which I am sure the Minister is familiar. Overall, they were content with what they saw. In a letter to the Island’s authority, they wrote that

“Children and young people were getting an improved deal on the Isle of Wight”,

which is excellent to know. They also wrote that

“Leaders across education, health and care are committed to tackling the historically poor support that these children have received.”

It is highly regrettable that there has been historically poor support on the Island, which may be one reason for the high level of EHCPs we now have. I will come on to the potential reasons for that in a little bit. Our strengths were seen to be

“Strong early identification and support in early years…A strong early help offer…Joint working supporting early identification …Increasingly effective identifying and supporting CYP”—

that is, children and young people—

“who may have Autism Spectrum Disorder”,

and generally,

“Well informed EHC Plans”.

As I say, education on the Isle of Wight has generally undergone significant reform and improvement. To an extent, we went backwards to go forwards a few years ago, which was highly regrettable, but our Ofsted reports are steadily improving. There have been difficulties, but our partnership with Hampshire is a good one; we are now in that partnership voluntarily, working to improve standards. On that point, I thank the Island’s teachers for the excellent work they do in helping to raise standards, as well as kids and parents on the Island. I also recognise the excellent work done by our education officers Brian Pope and Steve Crocker, as well as by Councillor Paul Brading, who leads on education for the council at the political level.

The inspection found three areas that needed improvement. First, although leaders were committed to putting the needs of children at the heart of their work, that was not always effectively communicated. Secondly, children and parents were not always able to influence the support that they received. Although there are good examples of that process—which, as I am sure the Minister knows, is known as co-production—that experience has not been consistently good for all parents, which is clearly regrettable. Thirdly, although EHCPs have improved, the targets that they had were sometimes imprecise and older plans were not always kept up to date. Those issues, particularly the first and third, have meant that some parents lack confidence in the system.

One of the groups of people who come to see me at my surgeries on the Island the most consistently are parents—almost always mums—of children with special educational needs and disabilities or with an EHCP. During the last Parliament, I held a roundtable for parents of kids with either SEND or ECHPs to meet council and education officers. It was clear that one of the parents’ main issues was that the council and the authorities needed to communicate more and engage in more joint working with officers, schools and parents, so that parents could fully trust in the system. That trust was sometimes lacking, especially because we were going through so many other reforms and improvements that needed to take place at the time. In fact, the Island being in the top half of last year’s review is testament to the fact that we are improving. Despite the upheavals that have taken place in Island education, we were still able to produce significant, decent work on SEND and ECHPs under the 2014 Act. Our education authority has pledged to work harder at creating a co-producing strategy with parents, and to communicate better.

More generally, I welcome much of what this Government are doing, and congratulate the Minister on it. They are boosting higher needs funding by over £750 million, an increase of 12%, to ensure that children can reach their full potential. Over the past decade, the number of teaching assistants has increased by 50,000 to over a quarter of a million—the figure is now 264,000. The Government have pledged that from September 2020, a further £31.6 million will be allocated for additional educational psychologists, who clearly play an important role in identifying children who may have SEND issues and may need to have care plans. On the Island, there has been considerable delay in assessing children for autism spectrum disorder because of a lack of appropriate qualified people. I know that problem has now been sorted out, but at the time, it caused considerable distress.

Most importantly in the context of this debate, I understand that a review has been launched into the 2014 Act and how we support children with special educational needs. The review will consider how to boost outcomes and ensure that the right support is in place for children with those needs. I remind the Minister of my key point: we on the Island have a considerably higher proportion of children requiring EHCPs than the national average—4.4%, compared with 3.1%—and children covered by SEND make up 12.7% of our school population, or nearly 13%, as opposed to nearly 12% nationally. Because we are getting EHCPs to children quickly, the costs kick in more quickly than they would in other authorities where the plans take longer to come to fruition. In effect, our efficiency in producing plans results in additional cost.

There are some theories that potentially explain the higher level of plans on the Island. I have been talking consistently to education officers and some headteachers over the past few years, and it seems that the previous gaps in educational attainment caused by some historically lower standards may be one reason for the higher level of ECHPs now. I have questioned whether we have a more paternal attitude on the Island that means that we want to not statement, but identify kids with SEND or who may need education, health and care plans. In the last week, I have talked to headteachers, education officials and Councillor Paul Brading—in fact, we spoke last night—about whether there is a pushy parent factor, which could be an issue in some parts of the UK. They are all adamant that our standards for whether young people get EHCPs are consistent with the national average and that we on the Island are not statementing—or whatever phrase the Minister is comfortable with—children to a higher percentage because we have a lower threshold or hurdle than elsewhere. Our assessment standards are consistent and produce higher numbers of children needing an EHCP.

Either way, it is important to say that, because we have higher than average requirements for SEND and EHCPs, there is greater pressure on our school system and on our funding, both the funding we get for specialised care and general funding. As my education authority explains, if a child has an EHCP, the school funds approximately the first £6,000, then the local authority finds the money from the higher needs block. As I am sure the Minister can see, the more children and young people we have with plans, the greater the cost to overall budgets and the greater the pressure on schools that are already under pressure to produce better results because of historical failings in the past decade.

The critical point is that the more children we have with EHCPs and a SEND statement or diagnosis, the more costs our schools have to bear. That will put our budgets under severe strain, despite the increased funding that I am sure the Minister will mention and that I am delighted about. It will mean that, certainly from next year, a primary school will have £4,000 per pupil and a secondary school will have £5,000 per pupil. Almost every school on the Island will benefit from those increases, which is excellent. We want to level up everywhere, not just in the north, which means helping poorer areas and constituencies in the south-east and the south-west. Importantly, the constituency of the Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann), is not dissimilar when it comes to those issues.

To come to the crux of what I want to ask the Minister, I have five questions. There is a rumour that the first £10,000 for EHCPs and SEND provision will have to be found from school budgets. Can she quash the idea that the commitment for the first £6,000 to be found by schools will go up to £10,000? Is she aware of the pressure that that would put schools with a higher commitment for EHCPs and SEND under everywhere in the UK, but especially in constituencies such as mine? The higher the number of EHCPs, the higher the pressure.

Does the Minister accept that the pressure on Island education resources is nearly 50% higher than on the mainland, because of the increased number of children with a education, health and care plan? Apart from general responses, what support can she offer to Island schools to cope with a case load that is significantly higher than the national average? If she is more comfortable writing to me on that, I would be delighted to receive a letter from her.

How will the review better support Island children and families? Can the Minister reassure me that the review will consider evidence from education authorities in places such as the Island, and from Members of Parliament who represent such constituencies?