Safety of School Buildings

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful case for the impact we can all see in our communities when we bring together services to support children and families. We, all of us, know the difference the last Labour Government made around the Sure Start programme in making sure all our children got the best possible start in life, and the evidence around that is even clearer now than it was then.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

I think it was last week that the figures came out on children’s reading and it was discovered, on international assessment, that our young children are the best readers in the western world. Does the hon. Lady welcome that news?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I looked very carefully at all the data that was published, and I pay tribute to our amazing teachers and school support staff who have been involved in making sure that our children get the best possible start in life. I will always be led by the evidence on what is right for children and what is best for their futures. The one area that, I have to say, did slightly trouble me was that, sadly, we see too few of our children enjoying reading. I think all of us want to ensure that as well as getting that really strong foundation, all our children leave school with a love of reading too. There is much there we can welcome and much to praise when it comes to the amazing staff in our schools, but I do not think any of us can be complacent, coming out of the pandemic, about the scale of the challenge that so many of our children and young people are facing.

There is a real lack of ambition for our schools. While the crumbling structures of too many of our schools are all too real, they double as a metaphor for wider problems. Our schools face a recruitment and retention crisis, as teachers and school staff leave the profession in their droves. At the same time, initial teacher training—the pipeline for newly qualified teachers into the classroom—fails to meet recruitment targets in key subjects year after year. It would be laughable were it not so tragic that the Prime Minister believes that ever more children can be taught maths for longer, with even fewer maths teachers. Perhaps the Minister can answer a question on that: if the Government are responsible for the education system, one in 10 maths lessons is already taught by teachers with no relevant post-18 qualification, they want every young person to learn maths until they are 18 and they have no plan to attract more maths teachers, how many more of our young people will end up being taught maths by non-specialist teachers?

It is not just maths. Too many young people face a narrow curriculum, missing out on creative and enriching opportunities. Too many leave school neither ready for work nor ready for life, but why? Because the wider school system is not delivering for our children. We have an accountability system that simply is not delivering the high and rising standards our children need. It is a system that tells us that almost four in five of our schools are good or outstanding according to Ofsted, in a country where tens of thousands of our children do not get the qualifications they need to succeed.

Either the Government have the wrong idea of what good looks like, or the system they have built is not working to deliver it. Some of our children get good schools, great teachers, rewarding opportunities, the opportunity to achieve, the chance to thrive and the knowledge that success is for them, but too many of our children do not get that start. Labour is determined to change that. Excellence must be for everyone—every child in every school, in every corner of our country.

Although the strengths and weaknesses of our schools are at least public, sadly, the state of their buildings is not. The strengths and weaknesses of so much of what goes on in our schools tend to be clear to parents. They can see when teachers keep leaving. They know when their children no longer get to go on trips to museums and when they are asked to pay for stationery or books. They can see that there are almost no music lessons. They know that their kids do not get the same chances for drama as others. But the fabric of the buildings is something that they generally do not see, because the Government are determined to shroud it in darkness. That cannot be right.

It is 13 years since the Government, led by the Conservative party, cancelled the ambitious programme of the last Labour Government to deliver modern, first-class schools for all our children. In those 13 years, not once has capital spending for the Department of Education matched in real terms the level that it was when the Government entered office. But the test is not the money that the Government put in but the state of the buildings in which our children learn. That tells its own story of how unwilling the Government have become to come clean on that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Gibb]

I ask the hon. Member to hold off, because I am trying to create a sense of anticipation for the answer to this debate. We will come to the point that she has made on CDC1 later in my speech. May I also mention that her local authority received almost £1.2 million in school condition allocation for 2023-24 to address these very issues in her local authority area?

It is not just the school community that benefits from this capital spending. Construction projects support jobs and create apprenticeships and T-level placements. The Department is using its experience with innovative methods of construction to support more highly skilled jobs and improve productivity. Our procurement frameworks provide opportunities across the industry and enable small and medium-sized enterprises to benefit from the opportunities that a long pipeline of projects brings.

Furthermore, the earlier priority school building programme has handed over new buildings at more than 500 schools, as part of its commitment to delivering 532 projects overall. We are now building schools more quickly, more efficiently and better targeted on need than ever before. Since 2010, we have reformed our capital programme to bring down the cost of school building. The James Review of Education Capital in 2011 had found that the Building Schools for the Future programme was overly bureaucratic and did not deliver cost-efficient buildings of consistent quality.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way. I welcome the money announced yesterday for St George’s Academy and for North Kesteven Academy in my constituency, which will be very welcome. I was also very excited last Thursday to go to the Sir William Robertson Academy, also in my constituency, which has been part of the school rebuilding programme. It is very excited about the project, but there are some technical issues that need to be addressed, and I wonder whether he will meet me to discuss them.

[Nick Gibb]

I will be delighted to discuss those technical issues with my hon. Friend. It is interesting because, again, she cites more successful bids under the various capital funds that we are allocating to make sure that schools are properly repaired, but she had the good grace to thank the taxpayer for that funding for her schools.