Oral Answers to Questions

Catherine McKinnell Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

The millions of children persistently absent from school is a national scandal, yet last week Government MPs joined together to vote against Labour’s long-term plan to deal with that issue, putting party above country and children. So far the Government have only announced sticking plaster policies. Will the Secretary of State come forward with a long-term plan to address that properly, or do schools and families have to wait for a Labour Government to finally give all children the education they deserve?

[Gillian Keegan]

Certainly not. Under a Labour Government, school standards would plummet back to where they were the last time Labour had education under their control—27th in the world for maths and 28th for English, if I remember correctly. Standards fall under Labour, and it has absolutely no plans to get children back into school. As I said, this Government have uniquely put in place daily data to enable us to get down and implement lots of different plans. We are also planning to legislate for children who are not in school, which I think was about the only thing Labour actually put in its plan. We are committed to doing that, and we warmly welcome the private Member’s Bill from my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond), the Children Not in School (Registers, Support and Orders) Bill, and look forward to working with her when it progresses to Second Reading on 15 March. I urge all hon. Members to support the Bill.

Children Not in School: National Register and Support

Catherine McKinnell Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

Across the House, I am sure we can all agree that providing our children with a high-quality education is one of the most important things we can do—an education that inspires them to learn, helps them to discover their interests and passions, and sets them up for life. But if children are not in school every day, they cannot access the opportunities they need.

School should not be seen as an optional activity, to be dipped in and out of. However, research by the Centre for Social Justice found that more than one in four parents thought that school is not essential every day—not just one in four adults, but one in four parents. That signifies a real breakdown in the relationship between schools, families and Government, because what example are we setting as a country if such a high proportion of parents are not prioritising getting their children to school every day?

Every child matters and, to those children, every day at school matters, but for years the problem of persistent absence has got worse on this Government’s watch. Last year, 21.2% of children were persistently absent from school—over one in five—which is double the rate from just six years ago. In my local authority of Newcastle upon Tyne, the number of children missing half their lessons rocketed by 282% between 2016 and 2022.

The Secretary of State said that keeping children in school was her “number one priority”, but absence rates have been rocketing for years and we have seen so little action. It only became a priority because the Labour party have consistently spoken about this issue and now, because of the Tories’ inaction, the situation is spiralling out of control, yet they still do not have a long-term plan.

The problem does not exist in isolation. Our children are facing a mental health crisis, record numbers are living in poverty and they are being taught in schools that one teacher recently described to me as “joyless”. What is at stake here is a lost generation missing from Britain’s schools, yet where is the Government’s plan to deal with it?

My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) spoke powerfully about the impact on families in his area, particularly families with children with special educational needs. My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) made a powerful case for why the Government should back Labour’s motion today. My hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton) rightly identified that we need to break down the barriers to opportunity, which means breaking down the barriers to school attendance, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy). Unlike the Tories, Labour will work in government to break down those barriers to opportunity. We will get our children back into the classroom and we have outlined a plan to address the problem if we are in government.

We recognise that not every child learns in school. We support every parent to make the choice about whether they send their child to school or home educate them, but to ensure no child falls through the gap, we need a proper record of where our children are being educated. That should not be controversial. The Conservatives even proposed a register of children not in school, before shelving it when education was no longer a priority for them.

The hon. Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) has campaigned on this issue and the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) spoke powerfully about her campaign on school attendance, but it is shameful that these matters about which Conservative Back Benchers are lobbying their own Government will have to wait for a Labour Government to fix them. We would get on with the job and introduce a register, allowing councils to request information on home education and the ability to visit premises. It is part of our plan to deliver high and rising standards for the next generation.

[Mrs Drummond]

The hon. Lady makes some great points. The problem with the motion is that it talks about persistent school absences. Persistent school absences relate to children who are already on the school roll, and schools are able to track them. A register of children not in school is purely for home-educated children, and not for those on a school register, which is for children who are persistently absent.

[Catherine McKinnell]

I thank the hon. Lady for her clarification, but we are not unclear about this. We do not disagree on the need both to tackle persistent absence and to have a register that identifies where children are being educated. That is something that the Government have pledged to do. The hon. Lady should continue to put pressure on the Government who have the power to do something about it right now, or Labour will do it in government.

We will also roll out free breakfast clubs in every primary school. Evidence shows that they improve children’s learning and development, and they have a positive impact on attendance and behaviour. We will fully fund those clubs by ending the non-dom tax breaks for the mega-rich. It is as much about the club as it is about the breakfast, providing children with a softer start to the school day, and with opportunities to play and socialise with their friends, setting them up well to learn throughout the day. When the Minister sums up, perhaps he can support Labour’s call for free breakfast clubs in every primary school, rather than the fraction that the Government’s programme currently reaches.

Labour is also committed to addressing the mental health crisis that our children are facing. It is a key barrier to learning, yet children remain on long CAMHS waiting lists, unable to access the support they need. We would recruit thousands of new staff to bring down those waiting lists and put specialist mental health professionals in schools and community hubs, so that children can get the help they need, solving problems before they get worse. We would tackle this issue head-on, not let it spiral further out of control.

We also need to see accountability in our system. Labour’s plan will involve annual school checks, which cover persistent absence, off-rolling and child safeguarding, so that problems are picked up early on, not left until the next inspection. In Wales, for example, Estyn has strengthened its reporting requirements on attendance, and all schools are now required to make available their attendance policies. We would reset the relationship that has weakened confidence in our inspection system by reforming the one-word headline grade with a report card, identifying areas where schools need to improve and delivering the support to do so through new, regional improvement teams.

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady support making schools responsible for the children they exclude?

[Catherine McKinnell]

The hon. Gentleman will know that that is part of his Government’s school accountability system. Obviously, we will undertake a full review of our approach to Ofsted. We will also include and address many issues on which this Government are currently failing.

If schools are to offer high-quality education, we must ensure that our children are learning a curriculum that best sets them up for life. The pandemic shone a light on how children’s early speech and language development was affected, and we know that stronger early communication skills boost outcomes and provide better engagement with schools. We would prioritise equipping primary schools with funding to deliver early, evidence-based language interventions. When it comes to the curriculum more broadly, we know that it needs reform. It is far too narrow and it is putting children off learning.

The life satisfaction scores of UK students have fallen through the floor in recent years. The UK now has the second lowest average life satisfaction of 15-year-olds in the OECD. We see that the opportunities for music, art, sport and drama are often squeezed. Opportunities for discussion and debate are few and far between. Our curriculum and assessment review would look at delivering a broad curriculum that prepares children for the future, reflecting the issues and diversity in our society. Assessments would capture the full strength of every child, giving them an excellent foundation in reading, writing and maths without sacrificing the things that make school fun.

To conclude, the difference Labour will bring is clear. Under the Tories, we have had 14 years of decline—of school standards slipping, teachers leaving in droves and education not even getting a seat at the table—whereas Labour will do what we did in 1997: bring education back to the centre of national life, with a focus on putting children first and ensuring that excellence is for everyone. I commend the motion to the House.

Oral Answers to Questions

Catherine McKinnell Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

I, too, welcome the Minister to his place.

On Friday, I joined Labour’s candidate Alan Strickland on a visit to Ferryhill School in County Durham. The staff team and students are amazing, but staff are left teaching in portacabins, the dining room and the sports hall, the staff room is behind a curtain on a stage, and years 10 and 11 are in a different town. Last week, yet more schools were added to the list of those with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, and the Secretary of State could not confirm how many will need complete rebuilds. Given the urgency, can the Minister tell parents, children and staff when this chaos will end?

[Damian Hinds]

Mr Speaker, allow me to take this moment to pay tribute to all school staff, leaders, children and their families, who have shown great fortitude in dealing with the disruption caused by RAAC. We have moved quickly to make sure all schools with suspected RAAC are surveyed and to work with schools to put in place alternative arrangements. Of course none of that is perfect, but schools have shown great flexibility in working towards that, such that we now have 99% of affected schools back with full-time face-to-face education.

School Pupils with Allergies

Catherine McKinnell Excerpts

Thursday 30th November 2023 Westminster Hall

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under you as Chair, Mr Stringer. I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing this debate on pupils with allergies in schools. I absolutely agree with the comments the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) made about the hon. Member for Strangford—he is the reason we are here debating this incredibly important topic—and I congratulate her on her incredibly powerful and heartfelt speech. I also congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) and for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), who have campaigned on this issue for many years in this place.

School should be a place where every child can learn and enjoy themselves—a place where parents can have confidence that their children will be safe and comfortable. Unfortunately, as we have heard at length today, when a child has a serious allergy, school can be a cause of great stress and anxiety for them and their parents. Many charities and campaigners, such as Allergy UK, the Benedict Blythe Foundation and the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, work incredibly hard to raise awareness of allergies and to support important research on them. Much of that work is driven by very difficult circumstances, and I pay tribute to Helen Blythe and her husband, who are here today and who have campaigned tirelessly in the face of their incredibly painful loss.

I regularly make the point that the challenges faced by children and young people do not just disappear at the school gate. Increasingly, schools are places where a whole range of issues that children and young people faces impact their learning and development. However, this debate is specifically about allergies and their impact in schools. Allergy UK research highlights that more than 20% of the UK population is affected by one or more allergic disorder and that 2 million people have been diagnosed with a food allergy. Young children are most commonly affected, with 6% to 8% of children suffering from food allergies.

According to the British Medical Journal, hospital admissions for food-induced anaphylaxis have tripled over the past 20 years, with the largest increase among children under the age of 15. Twenty per cent of allergic reactions among young people happen in a school setting, and 30% of allergic reactions in schools occur in children not previously known to have had a food allergy, where schools are unaware of the allergy. As we have heard, stress and anxiety around allergies can lead to some children skipping meals or missing out on social events because of concerns about the capacity to accommodate them and manage the danger they may be in.

There is some fantastic practice happening in schools, including significant planning and consideration to support children with allergies, but it is vital that best practice is applied across the board and that guidance is kept up to date with the latest developments. Why would we settle for anything less?

In response to a petition earlier this year, the Government pointed to the statutory guidance for schools, “Supporting pupils at school with medical conditions”, which makes it clear that schools should be aware of any pupils with allergies and have processes to ensure they are well managed. They also pointed to guidance to school caterers on displaying allergen information on products. I understand that the Department of Health and Social Care also issues guidance to schools on the use of adrenaline auto-injectors and emergency asthma inhalers.

The Department for Education clearly has a role to play alongside the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department of Health and Social Care, so I have a few questions for the Minister. I understand that the Department for Education recently declined the invitation to sit on the expert advisory group on allergy. I would be grateful if he can confirm whether that is the case and explain the Department’s reasoning, given the statistics that have been outlined today. Will he also set out how the Department for Education monitors the effectiveness of the guidance on allergen management and ensures that it is up to date and in line with best practice? What action is he aware of across Government to support forward-looking research into potentially life-saving treatments and approaches to allergies?

We know about the scale of the challenges in our schools—the workforce crisis means that far too many teachers and support staff are overworked and undervalued —but the safety of children is paramount. The upmost priority for school leaders, teachers and staff is their responsibility to keep the children in their care safe.

I look forward to the Minister’s response. I hope he will reflect on the points that have been raised and respond to the asks from charities, schools and experts in this area.

Oral Answers to Questions

Catherine McKinnell Excerpts

Monday 23rd October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

Last week, the Government added another 41 schools and colleges to the RAAC list, bringing the total to 214. The Education Secretary claims that children prefer to learn in portacabins, but it is far from a joke when some are still waiting for temporary classrooms, studying from home or in cramped sports halls and dining rooms. Can the Minister confirm the total number of pupils who are already impacted and are expected to be impacted by this chaos? When will all children receive undisrupted face-to-face learning? Surely that is the minimum that a parent can expect for their child.

[Nick Gibb]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on her first Education questions and her appointment as shadow Schools Minister, although this is not our first exchange since her appointment. She is right: there are 214 schools and colleges with confirmed RAAC, which is an increase from the 173 we announced in September. Of those 214 schools, the pupils at 202, or 94%, are in full-time, face-to-face education, and 12 schools or colleges are offering hybrid face-to-face and remote education. Our objective and our focus is to ensure that schools are supported to put in place immediate measures to enable face-to-face education to continue.

Support for Bereaved Children

Catherine McKinnell Excerpts

Thursday 14th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) for securing this incredibly challenging debate. I know she has worked hard to raise this issue, both here in this Chamber and prior to that in Westminster Hall. I pay tribute to her for her work to ensure that this matter gets the time it deserves in this place. She made an incredibly moving opening speech.

I also thank all those who have contributed to this debate, because it is not easy to share personal experiences and insights on this issue. My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) made a most powerful speech; I know it will have resonated with many people, and sharing such a personal story will have the impact of making this situation better for somebody else who is facing it. I pay tribute to her for the incredible speech that she made. I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who brought his perspective and his insights into this important issue from his many years of experience speaking in this House.

Bereavement is an experience that is difficult for anyone, but for a child the impact truly is profound. We know and we have heard in this debate the experiences of how that impact can stay with a young person for many, many years after their bereavement. The problem is that we do not even know how many children are currently living with bereavement across the UK. Estimated figures from the Childhood Bereavement Network—we have already heard them in this debate, because they are some of the only figures we have—suggest that each year 26,900 parents die, impacting around 46,300 children under 17. That is happening every year.

Without any further data, we have no way of knowing how many more might be impacted by the death of a close relative. The charity Winston’s Wish has provided the figure that one in 29 children are affected by the loss of a parent or sibling. That could be one in every classroom, with schoolteachers and support staff potentially completely unaware of that child’s loss. For that reason, while schools may name bereavement as a key concern that they would like more support to deal with, the support they can give is currently limited by lack of time and lack of skills among an already stretched school staff.

Schools need the tools to help grieving children. However, between the pandemic and disruption to education, crumbling infrastructure, the cost of living crisis and budget restrictions, school staff increasingly find it a challenge to direct their resources to addressing the issues that young people face. It is the Government’s role to break down those barriers to achievement, yet sometimes it feels as if the barriers are just being built higher for some of our young people.

Teachers are not trained mental health staff, but are often expected to fill that role, because they are often the ones who children turn to, if they turn to anyone at all. Yet when teachers look for support with helping that young person, too often it is not there. We should pay tribute to teachers who go above and beyond their role in supporting young people who they know are suffering bereavement.

While of course young people should feel able to share with their teachers the fact that they are struggling with personal loss, children who are suffering from bereavement need professional mental health support. Every child should have access to that, but we just know that that is not currently the case. Many schools do not have trained mental health resources, and accessing child and adolescent mental health services can take years before a child can even get an appointment, never mind be seen. Far too often, children reach crisis point before any help is found.

During that crucial part of a young person’s life, they are missing out on education due to a lack of support and missing out on their development. Older children may be taking on the role of supporting their younger siblings in dealing with that bereavement, putting to one side their own bereavement, and their education as well. Every young person deserves the tools they need to take advantage of the opportunities that school provides, yet for far too many young people those essential mental health services simply are not there.

In 2021 and 2022, patients seeking mental health treatment spent more than 5.4 million hours waiting in A&E—waiting rather than getting the support they need. The Government’s scrapping of the 10-year mental health plan has left 1.6 million stuck on waiting lists for mental health treatment. That is why Labour recognises that the sticking-plaster approach is failing our children badly. We must move to a preventive plan to support our mental health services and support those who need them. That is why Labour is committed to expanding mental health services and staff, ensuring that everyone can receive mental health treatment within a month of their referral. Labour is also committed to putting a specialist mental health professional in every school, and open-access mental health hubs for children and young people in every community. We need those measures in place urgently to address problems early and provide young people with a place to discuss issues such as bereavement before they reach crisis point.

By reforming and expanding mental health services, we can take the pressure off teachers and allow young people to thrive again at school. Mental health hubs will also allow young people to seek support outside the school environment and in their community instead. The Government may have written off a generation of young people, with crumbling schools and public services, but Labour will ensure that every child gets the support they need to take advantage of opportunities both at school and throughout their lives. That is vital because we know that issues that affect us in childhood can affect us throughout life. We have to go beyond expecting teachers to pick up the pieces; we must instead expand mental health support services and give teachers and students the support they need so they can focus on their progress at school.

I thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh West again for securing this important debate. I hope that the Minister will provide clarity on how the Government will tackle this issue and when they will recognise the importance of mental health support reform.

Financial Education in Schools

Catherine McKinnell Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Westminster Hall

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under you as Chair, Dame Angela. I am really delighted to take on this role as shadow schools Minister, as part of Labour’s education team. I have long believed that every child deserves the best start in life. Ensuring that we have the best schools and the best education and support for all children is key to ensuring that.

I thank the hon. Member for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew) for securing this debate and opening it so thoroughly and for his work on the all-party parliamentary group on financial education for young people. He made a compelling case and set out the issues very clearly indeed. I also pay tribute to the teachers, school staff and charities across the country—which many hon. Members have mentioned—that are working really hard to improve the financial literacy of our young people.

The purpose of education should be to enable young people to understand the world around them, to explore and develop their interests and to prepare them for their futures with the knowledge and skills they will need to thrive throughout life. We know—we have heard many testimonies today—that managing money is fundamental to a person’s stability and security. Whether it is working out prices in a supermarket—no tall order—managing a household budget or figuring out the terms of a mortgage or loan, everybody, regardless of their background, needs to be equipped to make these everyday financial decisions. We have heard the evidence: people who are financially literate are much more likely to have savings, to avoid scams and fraud and to invest their money effectively. This should not be left to chance. Financial literacy is important not just to households, but to our society.

We have heard compelling speeches from all Members who have contributed to today’s debate—my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) and the hon. Members for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) and for Warrington South (Andy Carter), as well as the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell), who contributed previously. This is clearly an issue on which there is a lot of cross-party agreement. A lot of thought and consideration has gone into where we are currently. We need our economy to grow. Giving financial literacy to more people in our society, and everyone as they grow, will equip them to start new businesses, taking them from start to scale-up, to help to grow our economy and pay for the public services that we all need.

As things stand, too many young people are leaving school without these skills. A number of facts and figures have been given today, but the one that really jumped out at me is the OECD figure that an estimated 10 million people in the UK—a fifth of all adults—are financially illiterate. It is shocking and alarming. The UK ranks in the bottom half of OECD countries in financial literacy. We know that that has consequences not just for those individuals who potentially live in constant financial insecurity, but for our whole economy. Almost 13 million adults struggle to pay their bills—today—and more than half of adults do not have savings that could support them for three months if they lost their primary income. We know that life is becoming increasingly hard as we sit here, day by day, for families up and down the country. We know that the hardest hit people will be those whose budgets are the most stretched and for whom money does not go as far as it used to; they are the ones missing out most on financial education.

As we heard from the hon. Member for Broadland, financial education is patchy across the country, and many schools struggle to teach it. Far too many young people leave school without these skills for life. Only 8% of students cite school as their main source of financial education. A Bank of England survey in March found that almost two thirds of teachers cited a lack of dedicated time in the timetable for delivery. In personal, social, health and economic education, the economic too often drops off the end. That is storing up problems for the future.

Young people say that they want to be taught more life skills in school. The Centre for Social Justice conducted a survey, and four in five said that they worried about money. I hear that from schoolchildren when I visit schools in my local area. Two in three say that they have become more anxious about money as a result of covid. Three in four say that they want to learn more about money—and probably about more money—at school, yet Ofsted has found that there is a postcode lottery in the teaching of financial education and the most disadvantaged are missing out. It is not good enough, and it is storing up problems for the future.

A key part of the current financial literacy strategy comes from the mathematics curriculum, which is supposed to ensure that young people leave school with an understanding of personal financial management and the skills that they need for it. However, the Government have failed to recruit and retain teachers, meaning that one in 10 maths lessons in the past year have been taught by a non-expert. That means that the high standards we want for all our children are being delivered for only some of our children. It is not good enough, and it is storing up problems for the future. That is why the next Labour Government will urgently commission a full, expert-led review of the curriculum and assessment. We need a curriculum that is broad, rich, innovative and develops children’s knowledge and skills—a curriculum that ensures children leave school ready for life and builds on the knowledge, skills and attributes that they need to survive. Labour’s curriculum review will look to embed those skills in everyday learning.

Following Labour’s review of all state schools, including academies, they will be required to teach a core national curriculum, so that every parent knows the essentials of what their child will be taught: there will be a common national standard that gives parents and children certainty. Labour will ensure that children are taught those lessons properly. It means being taught by experts, not by overstretched teachers covering for their colleagues. We will do it by recruiting thousands of new teachers across the country and ensuring that all schools are properly staffed, that maths classes are taught by trained maths teachers and that teachers are given manageable workloads, no longer covering their own job and someone else’s.

Education is about opportunity. It is about opportunity for each of us—all of us—our whole lives long. It should enable us to develop the knowledge and skills to explore our interests and thrive throughout life. It is our duty and the Government’s duty to ensure that young people do not miss out on that opportunity. I hope that the Minister will outline what the Government are doing to ensure that every child leaves education financially literate and whether the Government will give parents the certainty of knowing that every school follows an agreed, shared national curriculum. I hope the Minister will reassure us that the Government are listening to the important contributions that have been made today and, again, I thank the hon. Member for Broadland for securing the debate.

Safety of School Buildings

Catherine McKinnell Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

This debate is incredibly important, as it gets to the heart of the responsibility that we all share to the next generation—a responsibility to give every child the best start in life, and the opportunity to thrive at school and throughout their life, and, above all, a responsibility to keep children safe. The Government are not just failing in that fundamental responsibility; worse, they are hiding—from reality, from scrutiny and from the consequences of their decisions over 13 long years. Those consequences mean that this week, children cannot go to school because their buildings are unsafe. And still the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister—and, I have to say, hon. Members on the Government Benches—are desperately trying to pass the buck. They are refusing to be honest about the fact that they speak not just for this Government today, but for the Governments in which they have served, and on whose record they stand.

The Secretary of State has been asking for praise today, because she finally published the list of affected schools, but this is about much more than the schools on her list. It is about schools the length and breadth of this country that are not fit for our children to learn in or staff to work in. That is why our motion asks for two things. First, we are asking for the Department for Education submissions to the spending reviews in which, instead of increasing school building budgets, the Prime Minister—then Chancellor—chose to cut them. Secondly, we are asking for the correspondence on those submissions, like that released in The Observer last year, in which officials at the Department for Education warned that school buildings are a risk to life.

[Alun Cairns]

The hon. Lady is making a number of serious allegations. Does she apply those equally to the Welsh Government, considering that they have been in power and in charge of education for 26 years in Wales? I repeat the point I made in my contribution: would Labour Members in the Senedd support a similar motion that would achieve the same effect, if tabled by Conservative colleagues?

[Catherine McKinnell]

Unlike the Conservative Government in England, the Welsh Government are investing in rebuilding schools, which is why they face a different situation from the one we face. Today we are looking at history and for transparency, not for a geography lesson.

Parents and the wider public deserve to know how and why decisions were taken, such as why the number of schools that the Government are planning to rebuild each year has been cut to just 50. The Prime Minister has been looking for plaudits, but under his leadership, the Treasury almost halved the money going into school building. This week we heard the former permanent secretary say that he was shocked when the number of schools that the Government planned to rebuild each year was not increased to 300, but cut. That is what officials said was needed to keep children safe; not thriving—we are not talking about bells and whistles—but just safe.

The Prime Minister, as Chancellor, said no to the request to rebuild our schools and make them safe, just as he turned down a request to deliver a proper recovery programme for the children recovering from the pandemic. While donating to American colleges, he has condemned children in England to crumbling buildings and, now, another round of learning from home.

Conservative Members have a choice today. They can vote with us to be honest with parents, pupils and staff about the decisions the Prime Minister took and the consequences for our children, or they can stay in their “not me, guv” ranks and vote to keep parents in the dark yet again. The Prime Minister promised to lead a Government of integrity and accountability, so today, at least, they have an opportunity to make that a reality.

My hon. Friends the Members for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott), for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake), for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden), for Jarrow (Kate Osborne), for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western), for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) and for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) all made incredibly powerful speeches about the importance of this issue to the children, parents and school staff in their areas. Many Conservative Members also highlighted the challenge the issue has posed in their constituencies, yet all sought to deflect the blame. That is why this debate is about taking responsibility. The speeches from my hon. Friends set out very clearly why this matters to the parents and in particular the children in our constituencies who are affected by it.

We are, of course, pleased that the Government finally published the list of schools this morning, but are they sure it is accurate? Just today we are hearing reports that schools the Secretary of State told to—if I am allowed to say it—get off their arses have in fact returned their RAAC surveys and, in some cases, have gone ahead and remedied the RAAC themselves in the absence of any support from the Government. Other schools are emerging that are not on the list but have been identified as having RAAC. There is concern, and it explains why the Secretary of State has been so reluctant to release the list. There seems to be a lot of chaos in Government, not only in the lead-up to this situation but in handling it at this stage.

I have no doubt—[Interruption.] The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has literally just walked in. I am not sure what his contribution is at this stage, but I will come on to him in a moment. I have no doubt that when the Minister of State stands up, he will, like the Secretary of State, want to talk about Labour’s record on education, so I thought I would get ahead of him. Labour in government reduced class sizes by recruiting thousands of new teachers and introduced teaching assistants to raise standards for all our children. We increased participation in post-16 education and saw record numbers progressing to university. And we had a school rebuilding programme.

Building Schools for the Future set out a pathway to rebuilding or refurbishing every secondary school in England, backed up by the primary capital programme to invest in the maintenance and repair of primary schools across the country. The last Labour Government set out a plan to transform our country’s school estate, leading to improvements in standards and behaviour and making schools a safe place for children to learn, because Labour knew then, as we know now, that children cannot get a first-class education in a second-class school.

It only took the current Levelling Up Secretary six years to admit that he regretted scrapping the Building Schools for the Future programme and cancelling over 700 school building projects, but it seems that the lessons he learned are not being passed on to his colleagues. It will therefore be for the next Labour Government to make our school estate one to be proud of once more and to make sure that every child in every corner of the country can go to an excellent local school.

I expect the Minister will also quote from the James review and tell the House about the surveys of school buildings that his Government have undertaken. When he does, perhaps he could clarify this. On 11 January this year, the Minister responded to a written question from the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson), stating that their surveys are

“visual inspections only, and do not assess the overall structural integrity of a building.”

Two days later, in response to another question from my hon. Friend, he repeated that, saying that the condition data collection is “not a safety survey”. However, less than a month later, on 7 February, he said that the survey provides a “robust evidence base” for targeting capital funding. It would be helpful if the Minister explained how both those statements can be true at the same time, and how a survey can provide a “robust evidence base” if it is not assessing safety or structural integrity. What this looks like to me is yet more chaos and contradiction from the Government.

It is becoming clearer by the day that 13 years of Conservative government have failed our children. For our school estate, they have been 13 years of cut-price sticking- plaster solutions and inefficient repairs, when green rebuilds and long-term plans were required. We have seen ageing buildings, many of which were built decades if not more than a century ago, with unmet repairs, cracked walls, asbestos, buckets placed in classrooms catching leaks and crumbling roofs. The Government’s complacency on this is unforgivable, but it is clear that they are not going to own up voluntarily to the scale of this problem or their failure.

Whether the issue is lockdown parties, speeding tickets, Government contracts or school buildings, this Government are incapable of transparency. That is why the House must force them to be transparent and to be honest with parents about the choices they made to leave the school estate crumbling around our children, because it is parents, children and school staff whose lives could be at risk—those are not my words, but the words of senior officials in the Department for Education. Last year, the Government invited bids from schools for building replacements or repairs. More than 1,000 schools applied, yet the Prime Minister proudly told us that he planned to rebuild just 500 over the next decade.

We are already seeing the impact of these short-sighted decisions on our school estate. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam has told the House that a parent in her constituency was injured when a piece of cladding fell on her. A recent freedom of information request from Schools Week found that a teacher was reportedly admitted to hospital after being hit by a falling ceiling tile at a school in Bradford. What could have happened if those events had occurred at a different time or place when there were more children in the classrooms does not bear thinking about.

Until the Government own up to their responsibility, it falls to the House to ensure that children go to schools that are safe, that teachers and staff are not put at risk, and that we are honest with the public about the decisions that have been made. For more than a decade, Conservative Governments have neglected that duty. As my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South said in her opening speech, the defining image of 13 years of Tory government will be children cowering under the steel supports that stop the ceiling falling down. I say to the Government, “Come clean, own up, and support our motion today.”

School Week

Catherine McKinnell Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 597715, relating to the school week.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. The petition calls on the Government to require schools to introduce a three-day weekend. It argues,

“Children can have lots of stress at school due to exams and homework and with a 3 day weekend, children could have a longer time to relax”.

When we received the petition in Parliament and I saw how fast it attracted more than 100,000 signatures, my first thought was, “What lies underneath this request?”, so I set about finding out We arranged informal discussions with teachers, healthcare professionals and young people to help inform our debate today. One message that came across loud and clear from everyone that I spoke to was the state of our children’s mental health post lockdown. Teachers told us that children are finding it difficult to make it through the school week, and pupils said they found coming to school difficult and struggled to make it all the way to Friday.

From April to September 2021, more than 337,000 under-18s were referred to child and adolescent mental health services. That is up by a staggering 81% from the same three months in 2019. That compares with only an 11% rise in referrals for adults aged 19 and above. It is clear that the pandemic has had a significant impact on our young people’s mental health. One teacher I spoke to, who had worked in some of the most disadvantaged parts of the north-east, said that she had never experienced anything comparable to the pandemic in terms of the ongoing mental health impact on her pupils.

As part of our outreach, the Petitions Committee ran a survey. Most of the young people that responded expressed strong support for a four-day school week as a solution to the stress and anxiety that many face. One said,

“If Fridays were a part of the school weekend, I would feel so relieved and happy as I can get a longer break from…the stress, peer pressure, bullying…and it would allow more ‘me time’ as some call it.”

Another one told us,

“I at one point had to take GP recommended mental health days off from school, I found that on the days I was at school I was more focused, more excited to leam and more positive about my education in general.”

Another found school to be an inherently stressful place and, distressingly, said,

“Right now, when I walk through the gates of school, I get itchy skin and the bottom of my jaw goes bumpy from stress.”

It was heartbreaking to hear some of the anxieties that many children have around going to school. Our schools should be places to learn about the world and to socialise and develop in a variety of ways. That many children have such fear about going to school should be a concern for us all. How much can a child learn if they are stressed and anxious to the degree that some of these young people clearly are?

None the less, I worry that reducing the number of days that children spend in school would not be the right solution. From the conversations I have had, I know I am not the only one. Let me set out the reasons why. I worry that it would not address the root cause of the problems that many students are concerned about: bullying, peer pressure, harassment on social media, or problems keeping up with their school work. I fear it would simply increase the pressure on young people on their remaining days in school. Without wider changes to our education system, children would have to learn the same curriculum and prepare for the same exams, but in less time, with just four schooldays a week instead of five.

I am also acutely aware of the impact that a four-day week would have on the country’s most marginalised children. For some, school is the only place that they get a decent meal, or gives them respite from a difficult situation at home. The idea of taking that away from them fills me with concern, and many teachers share that concern. Although I cannot support moving to a four-day school week, we cannot ignore the petition as a cry for help.

Many children and young people are still recovering from the emotional trauma of the past two years and dealing with the collapse in mental health support. With all the demands of the curriculum, some of the schools they attend are clearly struggling to find the time and support to look after their pupils’ wellbeing. To gather more in-depth evidence, I spoke to a group of year 7s and a group of year 8s at a school in Newcastle. I wanted to hear at first hand what the school week felt like for them, and whether they thought the call for a three-day weekend would help. Their feedback was so helpful, and I am so grateful to all the young people who engaged and contributed so thoughtfully, as well as the staff who helped to facilitate it.

At the beginning of the session, I asked both groups to indicate with a show of hands whether they thought shortening the school week to four days was a good idea. In the year 7 group, every single pupil put their hand up and agreed with the petitioners. Among the year 8s, however, the proposal was not so popular: only about half supported it. At the end of the session, I asked both groups again what they thought. I will tell Members in a moment how their views changed.

What came out most strongly from our discussion was just how tired pupils feel by the end of the school week. Many thought that a four-day week would be a sensible solution, helping them to feel less tired. Others argued that since they were so tired and unproductive by the end of the week, an additional day off would not actually affect their performance at school, because they would have more time to rest and recover and be more productive on their days in school. One pupil just said, “By Friday, I’m so tired.” I am sure many adults would sympathise. Some argued that they had to spend most of Saturday recovering from the school week, and would then do their homework on Sundays, so the two-day weekend did not give them much of a break. One respondent to our survey said,

“Some weekends I can’t even fit homework in which requires me to have to wake up extra early in the morning or stay up extra late at night in order to get it done which leaves me exhausted for the next day. It just feels like a never-ending cycle and that I am drowning in responsibilities.”

Those are the words of a child.

When pupils were asked what they would do with their extra day off, some said they would enjoy enriching activities such as painting and drawing, while others said they would play outside. When challenged, some did admit that they might end up spending more time on their mobile phones, and the teachers we spoke to suspected that late-night phone use and gaming contributes to their tiredness as much as school does. However, I was hugely impressed by how deeply those Newcastle pupils thought about the proposal. As the discussion in the classroom progressed, there was a clear shift in both groups’ views, as they reasoned that increasing the weekend would have a knock-on effect on the school week. There was a realisation that Monday to Thursday would become very intense and rigidly academic: teachers would have to cover the same curriculum in fewer days, and might be forced to drop some of the activities that the children enjoy. Some year 8s said that the need to cram everything into four days would actually cause more stress.

I worry that the proposed four-day week would not address the issues of stress and anxiety, and could actually add to them. We have some evidence of that: while there have been no significant experiments with a four-day week in this country, it has become common in some parts of the United States. The National Conference of State Legislatures has estimated that around 560 districts in 25 states have allowed at least one of their schools to adopt a four-day school week. More than half of those districts are in just four states: Colorado, Montana, Oklahoma and Oregon. However, that shift has not reduced the length of time that pupils spend at school. Teachers have made up for the lost day by adding extra time to other days or, more rarely, shortening the school holidays. As The Colorado Sun reports,

“Since the North Conejos School District switched to a four-day week last year, teachers cut out the chill afternoons when kids would watch movies, the free time that sometimes filled the space between math and art class. It is bell-to-bell learning.”

As it is, schools in this country already find covering the curriculum almost impossible. For example, one of the issues that the Petitions Committee is looking at is that of water safety. Some 277 people in the UK lost their lives in water accidents last year, which campaigners have told us could be prevented with some very basic water safety knowledge. Water safety is part of the school curriculum and is supposed to be taught in every school, but it is just not happening. The teachers we spoke to said that they have to spend a great deal of time helping children to learn social and emotional skills that the education system presumes are already there. One teacher at a disadvantaged primary told us:

“All I’m teaching in Reception is basic parenting”.

If the school week, the curriculum and school funding allowed for more enrichment activities that developed social and other skills, it would make school more fun and less tiring for children and young people; it would help teachers who are feeling overwhelmed, and support better learning outcomes.

Some of the pupils suggested reconfiguring the school week to have more spaced-out breaks. They said it could look something like the French model—although they did not label it as that—where there is time off on Wednesdays to space out breaks a little more, or university, where people get Wednesday afternoons for sport. Others wanted optional clubs on the day off, so they could go into school for half a day and use it for sport and social activities—a bit of breathing space in the middle of the week.

When Alan Shearer, the famous Newcastle footballer, opened the Sport@Gosforth centre at Gosforth Academy, he gave a speech that left quite an impression on me—I hope I am not putting words in his mouth. He said that he did not particularly enjoy the academic side of school, but what got him up every morning and got him there was the promise that he would get to play football. We need to ensure that every child gets to do something they love in school. If they love it, it is generally because they are good at it, and if they are good at it, it builds their confidence in other areas of their education.

Another problem with reducing the school week is that it could disproportionately impact children from more disadvantaged backgrounds, which would exacerbate the existing inequalities in our education system. Parents and carers would be required either to look after their children or find someone else to do so, particularly in the case of younger children, and we know that a lot of families face challenges relating to childcare. One parent told us:

“I know many children rely on school as a lifeline for food, respite from difficult home environments and for childcare for working parents who have low-paid work.”

More than half of pupils who responded to our survey said that they would spend significant time on their extra days off taking part in activities such as music, art or learning another language. Likewise, parents told us that they would pay to supplement their child’s learning through participating in clubs, educational visits, outdoor learning or other lessons. My concern is that children from more disadvantaged backgrounds would miss out on those opportunities because their families have fewer resources. Within schools, children have access to the same learning resources and the same learning environment. Although disadvantage still plays an outsized role in determining educational outcomes, schools are a really important space for trying to level the field—level up, if you like—for every young person.

I am especially concerned about the potential impact on the most disadvantaged, including those with special educational needs and children with extremely difficult home lives. One pupil told us that she would like to have the extra day off, but she worried about her autistic brother because his default behaviour is not to leave the house unless he must. She said that she would go to the park on her extra day off, but an extra day at home for her brother would just be another day with no one to talk to. Although 83% of pupils told us that they would spend Fridays with family, we know from the explosion in post-lockdown safeguarding disclosures that many parents are at work five days a week, so that could add to the challenge of finding childcare and making sure children are safe. For others, home just is not a happy place to be. I worry that less time at school means that more safeguarding would be missed. One teacher told us that for some of her pupils, a school meal is sometimes the only meal they get. She asked:

“If we take that day away from them, are we confident they’re going to get it at home?”

When I asked the pupils what they thought about the four-day week for the second time, after discussing all these issues, the results were quite different. After thinking about it and discussing it, every year 7 pupil who supported it at first was against it in the end. Year 8s, who had been less supportive initially, were even less so by the end, with just one pupil sitting on the fence. If I am honest, I think those young people made the right call.

For the reasons I have outlined, I cannot personally support the petitioners’ call to reduce the school week, but I hope the Minister has heard the case made by the almost 150,000 people, many of whom are young people at school, who signed this petition. I hope he will give their views full and proper consideration when he responds. We have to engage with the concerns that lie beneath the petition.

We have discussed children and young people’s mental health in this House many times, but the virtual collapse of child and adolescent mental health services is the elephant in the room. The number of children and young people on a CAMHS waiting list soared over the pandemic, as I mentioned earlier, but the wheels came off the system long before that. The tragic reality is that more and more young people with incredibly serious mental health issues are being turned away and told they do not meet the required thresholds.

The Guardian reported earlier this year that one actively suicidal child, who had been prevented from jumping off a building earlier that day, was told they could not be assessed by the crisis CAMHS team unless their GP submitted a written request. In another part of the country, a pre-teen boy was found with a ligature in his room, yet the absence of any marks around his neck meant the referral criteria had not been met because it did not appear that he had tried to take his own life. There is not a single CAMHS employee who wants things to stay this way. They care deeply about their services and children and young people’s mental wellbeing. They are trying to do their best with what they have been given, but we need to invest in child mental health services.

I know that the Government do not agree with the petitioners’ call for a four-day school week either, because they have written to say so, but I hope that the Minister will look at this issue. Children and young people face significant challenges as a result of the pandemic. We are now living through a crisis in mental health that cannot be ignored. It is abundantly clear that the support available in schools and the NHS is not sufficient to meet demand. We need a proper plan to change that. We need to fund a full-time member of staff in every secondary school whose job it is to support pupils’ mental health and stop problems escalating. Primary schools must be able to access specialist support in their area. We need an expansion of our mental health workforce and guarantees that in the more severe cases, young people can access timely support for their mental health—within a month at most.

We need not only to treat the symptoms of poor mental health in young people but to address the causes, including an intensely pressurised curriculum that leaves less time to develop other, broader skills and for children to do the things that they love. It is no criticism of teachers and support staff, because they work incredibly hard to deliver a dense curriculum within constrained budgets and timeframes. That is why the system must find the breathing space for children and young people to do a bit more of what they love to give them a spring in their step as they go to school each morning.

As our children recover from the traumatic experience of the last two years, we need to support schools to deliver enriching activities, to build in time for children to socialise and learn new skills, from music, drama and sports to outdoor activities. We have to be able to offer something for everybody in school. If we are genuinely looking to level up and help people to improve their life chances, which surely has to be the purpose of our education system, let us not reduce it to four days: let us make the five more enriching and more fun.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for School Standards (Mr Robin Walker)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I thank the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) for the way she opened the debate. It was fantastic to hear about the way she engaged with pupils and students in her constituency, listening to them but also deploying her powers of persuasive reasoning—we have heard them during the debate—to conduct that before-and-after exercise and show that people can be won round to understanding the importance of the school week.

I recognise that a large number of people have signed the petition, which raises a number of important issues. I completely understand how an extended weekend can look, on the surface, very attractive to a lot of people, in particular children in school. However, it is important to recognise how shortening the school week would adversely impact children’s learning, as well as reducing opportunities to socialise and participate in enrichment activities, which I will come to in more detail. This is more crucial than ever in the context of the covid-19 pandemic. Overall, reducing time in school reduces children’s life chances, so the Government have no plans to require schools to close on Fridays.

I will begin by setting out the Government’s long-term vision for pupils’ academic achievements, and the importance of being in school to achieve that. I will then set out some of the work we are doing to maximise time in school and why that is more important than ever as a result of the pandemic, and the challenges that children and young people face when out of school. I will set out the work that my Department is doing to support our children and young people to recover from the pandemic. Finally, I will touch on how spending more time in school can improve children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing, enabling support during more stressful times, such as exams, and providing opportunities for enrichment activities.

I am sure that Members present will agree that schooling is fundamental to a functioning society. School equips children with the knowledge and skills to thrive and flourish later in life. My Department recently set out our overarching vision for the school system in the schools White Paper, “Opportunity for all: strong schools with great teachers for your child”. That included our levelling-up mission for schools. Our aim is for 90% of primary school children to achieve the expected standard in reading, writing and maths by 2030. For secondary schools, our aim is that the national GCSE average grade in both English language and maths will increase from 4.5 in 2019 to 5 by 2030.

School life is at the heart of that ambition. That is why, far from seeking to shorten the school week as the petition proposes, we are committed to delivering a richer, longer average school week that makes the most effective use of time in school and includes not just teaching time but enrichment activities, which will help to ensure that all children enjoy a rounded education. To that end, we recently conducted a review of time in school. That found that additional time in school, if used well, can have a positive impact on pupil outcomes. However, some pupils currently receive less time in school than others, because of differences in opening hours. That shortfall accumulates over time. It is simply unfair that a child who receives 20 minutes less teaching time a day loses out on about two weeks of schooling a year.

That is why, as set out in the White Paper, we have set an expectation that all mainstream state-funded schools should deliver at least a 32.5-hour week as soon as possible, and by September 2023 at the latest. We believe that 32.5 hours is the current average length of the school week. I accept the point made by the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan) that many schools are already achieving that. In many respects, that is a good thing; it shows that it can be achieved within what they have. However, by setting that minimum expectation for all schools, we will help to ensure that all children have fairer access to education, regardless of where they live, to help them to achieve their full potential. The new minimum length of the school week also includes break times, thus allowing children more opportunity for socialisation and enrichment activities, which they missed out on too much during the pandemic.

We are encouraging schools to go beyond 32.5 hours where possible. Monega Primary School in east London, where we launched the White Paper, does that by having an earlier start time—8.30 am. That provides pupils with access to 20 minutes a day of intensive reading development. On a weekly basis, that equates to one hour and 40 minutes extra reading time for all the pupils.

By contrast, if schools were to close on Fridays, as the petition proposes, pupils would lose an average of 38 school days in each academic year. Given what I have said about the benefits of time in school, I cannot accept that that would be in the best interests of children, let alone the impact that it would have, as the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North rightly said, on parents.

The work that we are doing to maximise time in school is more important than ever in the context of the covid-19 pandemic. During lockdown, parents often struggled with home schooling. That brought a new appreciation of the fantastic work that teachers do and the difference that they make in children’s lives. In the national survey by the Children’s Commissioner for England, The Big Ask, we heard from more than half a million children on their impressions of online learning and the return to school. Children spoke out about how much they liked school, and about how much they missed it and their peers while the gates were closed. They described feelings of isolation during lockdown, as well as uncertainty around schooling.

Children also spoke about the importance of education for its own sake. One 11-year-old girl said:

“I really want to learn even if it’s hard because education is important to me”.

Education was seen as particularly important by children who face challenges at school, including children with special educational needs. Overall, 84% of children reported being happy or okay with school life. The report highlights how attendance in school is crucial for pupils’ education, wellbeing and long-term development.

However, the Children’s Commissioner has also expressed her concern that currently we cannot identify where each child is. We have already announced, as part of the Schools Bill, which is currently before Parliament, that local authorities will be required to keep registers of children not in school, so that no child can fall through the cracks in the system. I welcome the support from the hon. Member for Portsmouth South for that. However, I should be clear that we are not legislating on the length of the school week as part of the Bill. That remains a non-statutory expectation for all mainstream state-funded schools.

Continuing to help children to recover from the impact of the pandemic remains one of the Government’s top priorities. Being in school is crucial to ensure that children and young people can receive the support on offer to them. Shortening the current school week would therefore risk jeopardising the strides that children and young people have already made. Our latest pupil progress data, published at the end of March this year, shows that we are seeing some good progress for many pupils. Evidence shows that by autumn 2021, primary pupils had on average recovered about two thirds of the progress lost during the pandemic in reading and about half the progress lost in maths.

However, we know that there is more work to do. We believe that the best way for children and young people to recover from the impact of the pandemic is through investment in what works. That is why we have invested nearly £5 billion to fund a comprehensive recovery package, including targeted extra funding, teacher training, tutoring and extra educational opportunities. Maximising time in school is key to securing the benefits of our recovery package, which includes investing £800 million to increase hours in 16-to-19 education by 40 hours per student per year from September 2022.

The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North spoke rightly and passionately about mental health. One of the many valuable aspects of being in school is that it can be a crucial contributor to children and young people’s positive mental health and wellbeing, equipping them to stay mentally and physically well into the future.

That is supported by the evidence. Our most recent annual “State of the nation” report collated a range of data to identify trends in children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing recovery over the course of the 2020-21 academic year. The report found that reductions in wellbeing occurred most clearly for both primary and secondary pupils in February 2021, when varied pandemic restrictions were in place, including school closures. The report also found a link, across all groups of children and young people, between regular attendance at school and college and positive wellbeing, highlighting the critical benefits of being in school for wellbeing.

School is also a place where emerging problems can be identified and early support given. Although educational staff are not mental health professionals, they are well placed to observe children and young people day to day and identify those whose behaviour suggests that they may be experiencing a mental health issue. We have put in place a wide range of training and guidance to help educational staff to identify and understand mental health issues, and to know how to respond effectively. Our recent £15 million wellbeing for education recovery and return programmes provided free training, support and resources for staff dealing with children and young people experiencing the additional pressures of covid-19 and other events, including trauma, anxiety or grief. Around 14,000 schools and colleges across the country benefited from this support, which was delivered through local authorities.

We have also recently confirmed an additional £10 million in grants to extend senior mental health lead training to even more schools and colleges, which means the training will be offered to two thirds of all state schools and colleges by March 2023, and to all state schools and colleges by 2025. However, I hear the concerns that the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North raised about CAMHS, and I will continue to work with health colleagues to try to ensure that they are addressed.

[Catherine McKinnell]

I am grateful that the Minister acknowledges the concerns that I raised. The training he talks about is obviously welcome. Any teacher or education professional would be grateful for the opportunity to identify challenges. What they need, though, is people—experts—they can refer children to, who can then work with them and support them. That must be a priority for the Government, given the explosion in necessary referrals post-pandemic.

[Mr Robin Walker]

I absolutely acknowledge that point. My health colleagues would say that it is a priority for the Government, but I accept that there is more work to do on that front.

The petition mentions exams and homework as particular sources of stress and anxiety for children and young people. This Government believe that exams and other assessments are an essential part of ensuring that young people have acquired the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in further study and in later life. Exams are the fairest way of judging pupils’ performance, and we know that preparing for them can be motivating for pupils and can consolidate learning. However, we are keenly aware that exams have the potential to exacerbate feelings of anxiety and stress among some young people. That is why it is important that schools are clear that, although pupils should be encouraged to work hard and achieve well, that should not be at the expense of their wellbeing.

Schools and colleges should be able to identify signs of exam-related stress whenever it emerges and be in a position to respond appropriately. Teachers are best placed to work with pupils and their families to respond to signs of stress and access appropriate support.

Like exams, we believe that homework is an important part of a good education. Schools have the autonomy to decide whether to set homework and how much of it their pupils must do. Homework that is planned by teachers is an integral part of their curriculum and gives pupils the opportunity to practise and reinforce what they have been taught in class, helping them to consolidate and extend the knowledge and understanding they have acquired. Homework also enables teachers to check pupils’ understanding systematically, to identify misconceptions accurately and to provide clear, direct feedback. I heard hon. Lady’s concerns about children working late into the night and sacrificing parts of their weekend. Clearly, that would be an excessive approach. We want schools to carefully balance study with time to rest and recuperate.

The hon. Lady said, quite rightly, that schools should be fun places that allow children to do more of what they love. Another reason why children being in school is so important is the enrichment support on offer. We know that participation in enrichment activities, which can support wellbeing, fell during the pandemic. The longer, richer school week proposed in the schools White Paper will help to ensure that all pupils have the chance to enjoy a wide range of experiences. We are developing guidance to support schools to develop a varied and high-quality enrichment offer. Inspiration Trust in Norfolk and north Suffolk is an example of a trust that extends the school week beyond 32.5 hours for all of its secondary schools. The schools ensure that all additional enrichment sessions are timetabled and mandatory, which ensures equality of participation by pupils from all socioeconomic backgrounds.

Cultural education, which includes arts, music and heritage, is a vital part of school activity. We support this via the curriculum first and foremost, with arts and music being part of the national curriculum, but we also want all schools to offer co-curricular and extracurricular activity in those areas. Cultural education is important for the enjoyment that these subjects bring in and of themselves, for academic progress, for wellbeing, and for increasing life chances and career opportunities in our outstanding cultural and creative sectors and in wider employment. Our newly published national plan for music education, and next year’s cultural education plan, will help to identify opportunities for schools.

I was pleased to announce on Saturday the national plan for music education, which was co-published by the Department for Education and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The plan sets out our vision to enable all children and young people to learn to sing, play an instrument and create music together, and to have the opportunity to progress their musical interests and talents, including professionally. The plan confirms the Government’s continued commitment to music education and includes £25 million of new capital to purchase hundreds of thousands of musical instruments and pieces of equipment, including adaptive instruments for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities. The plan sets out clear guidance to schools to provide timetabled curriculum music of at least one hour a week for children in key stages 1 to 3, as well as opportunities outside lesson plans to learn how to sing and play instruments, and to play and sing together in ensembles and choirs. We have also committed £79 million of funding over three years for music hubs to support schools and others to deliver high-quality music education.

Physical education, school sport and physical activity are also an extremely important part of school life. All children and young people should have the opportunity to live healthy, active lives, which begins with high-quality PE lessons, opportunities to experience a range of sports, and ensuring that children meet the chief medical officer’s recommendation of 60 active minutes a day, of which 30 minutes should be within the school day.

The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North mentioned the inspirational figure of Alan Shearer and how football motivated him to go to school. That is one of the reasons why in October 2021 the Government announced nearly £30 million of funding a year towards improving and opening up school sport facilities in England, as well as improving the teaching of PE at primary schools. It is also why we confirmed on Saturday that the £320 million primary PE and sport premium will continue for the 2022-23 academic year, to support primary schools to improve the quality of their PE, sport and physical activity.

Finally, it is important to acknowledge the serious impact that the proposal to have a four-day school week would have on working parents, particularly those with younger children, for whom childcare arrangements would need to be put in place on Fridays. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North spoke very well about this issue in her speech and has also raised it in other debates recently. It would be a significant additional cost for many parents, many of whom are already struggling with the cost of living.

I am grateful to hon. Member for providing an opportunity to debate this important issue. It is heartening to see that so many children are invested in talking about their education, but I think we are in agreement on the outcome of the petition. At the heart of the Government’s vision is ensuring that every child and young person can fulfil their potential. The steps we have taken to maximise time in school are key to achieving that mission, but we do not want to reduce opportunities for young people to be in school. Therefore, we have no plans to remove Friday from the school week.

[Catherine McKinnell]

I thank the Minister for his thorough response. I think it is safe to say we all agree that it would not be in the best interests of every child to reduce the school week to four days, but I do not think that diminishes the cause of the petition, the voices that have been heard today, or what I interpreted as a cry for help from young people.

We are at quite a unique time in history—one that we should not ignore. We must not plough on as though nothing has changed, because young people are asking us to recognise that things have changed. The covid pandemic has changed many aspects of our lives. As adults, we have adapted many working practices and the way we do things. Many people have reassessed their lives, their priorities, how they want to spend their time, and what they want to live for. Young people have done the same. I do not think the petition is young people saying that they do not want to be educated. I think it is young people saying that they do not want to feel the enormous crushing pressure that many now feel at school.

I wanted to see how well our education system is performing in comparison with other systems around the world—I looked at this when I was a member of the Education Committee—and I saw an alarming statistic. We perform very highly on one metric: we are in the top five in the world for the number of girls who feel a crushing fear of failure and high levels of anxiety. It is right that the OECD measures those things—not just educational output, but how young people feel and their experience and wellbeing in school.

Everything the Minister has outlined in terms of ensuring that we enrich the school day is positive and encouraging, but it is important that we do not fall down the warren of quantity over quality. We have to ensure that children’s wellbeing is catered for as well as their educational attainment during the time that they spend in school. That is the real challenge for Government.

We cannot ignore the glaring challenge of mental health. There is a general issue that many young people are grappling with: the social media world. Many of us did not grow up with social media; it did not exist when we were at school, but it is something every young person now grows up with. They now have to find a way through that world, managing their mental health and living an online and a real-world existence while juggling their education.

Fundamentally, we cannot ignore the pandemic and pretend it did not happen. It has had a significant impact on our children and young people. We need that additional investment now to meet some of the challenges that have emerged for this cohort of young people who were incredibly isolated. Of course other groups in society were isolated as well, but it was so unnatural for children to be put in that situation of being away from their friends, family and everything they love. The long-term implications are significant. We should put in place the investment needed to support children through this period and to provide support generally with mental health and wellbeing. We should prioritise that support as much as educational outcomes in the way we assess schools and their performance. We have to prioritise happiness and wellbeing, because, ultimately, that is how we will get better educational outcomes. If we have happy, well-balanced and mentally well children, they will perform better at school. We just have to ensure we have the resources in place.

I commend the petitioners and everyone who signed the petition. I appreciate that children may be disappointed they are not getting a four-day week at the end of this debate. Hopefully, what they will be getting is a richer, happier and more well-rounded five days at school that will help them to really fulfil their potential, wherever they might be in this country.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered e-petition 597715, relating to the school week.

Children’s Education Recovery and Childcare Costs

Catherine McKinnell Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

The hon. Gentleman has raised an important issue. Our reforms of the funding formula to ensure that schools are funded according to the cohorts that they serve and according to their activity are an important element in responding to it, although of course they will take time to come through. However, it is also important that we look at retention more broadly. As I have said, the Department has recognised that in its move towards a recruitment and retention strategy rather than just focusing on recruitment as it traditionally did. I hope that the funds that we are putting into schools this year—a £4 billion, or 7%, increase—will allow them to deliver good pay rises, and will help with teacher retention. Work with the School Teachers’ Review Body is ongoing on that front.

Extra time is part of our strategy, and we are increasing the number of hours in 16-to-19 education by 40 per student per year from September 2022. In our schools White Paper we set an expectation that all mainstream state-funded schools should deliver at least a 32.5-hour week, supporting our ambition for 90% of primary school children to achieve the expected standard in reading, writing and maths by 2030, and in secondary schools for the national GCSE average grade in both English language and maths to rise from 4.5 in 2019 to 5 in 2030. The parent pledge set out in the schools White Paper further supports these aims by making clear the Government’s vision that any child who falls behind in English or maths will receive the right evidence-based, targeted support to get them back on track.

I am sure the House will agree that the earliest years are the most crucial stage of child development. We know that attending early education supports children’s social and emotional development and lays the foundation for lifelong learning, as well as supporting their long-term prospects. That is why it is so important that we address the impact that covid-19 has had on the youngest children’s social and personal skills as well as on their literacy and numeracy. On top of spending £3.5 billion in each of the past three years on early education entitlements, we are investing up to £180 million of recovery support in the early years sector.

We will build a stronger, more expert workforce, enabling settings to deliver high-quality teaching and helping to address the impact of the pandemic. This includes up to £153 million in evidence-based professional development for early years practitioners—for example, supporting up to 5,000 staff and child minders to become special educational needs co-ordinators and training up to 10,000 more staff to support children in language and communication, maths, and personal, social and emotional development. That includes up to £17 million for the Nuffield early language intervention to improve the speech and language skills of children in reception classes.

Over 11,000 primary schools, representing two thirds of all primary schools, have signed up, reaching an estimated 90,000 children and up to £10 million is included for a second phase of the early years professional development programme in the current academic year, supporting early years staff in settings to work with disadvantaged children.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

The Minister reels off a lot of statistics, but the most important factor he has acknowledged is how important the early years are. He mentioned levelling up earlier, but the one issue that the Government seem consistently to fail to recognise is the impact that child poverty has on a child’s life chances and opportunities. Will the Government acknowledge that without tackling child poverty—which is on the rise, with a third of children living in poverty in my region in the north-east—any effort to invest in later stages education will be undermined, and that they need to tackle child poverty first?

[Mr Walker]

Of course the hon. Lady is right in saying that we have to grow the economy and drive up prosperity in order to support children everywhere; I think that is something we can all agree on across the House. We need to make sure that we are targeting support towards the disadvantaged, and I have already set out that we are. Of course, more broadly we all want to see a stronger economy, and education can play a key part in that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

When we look at which developed countries have the highest cost of childcare, the UK always comes close to the top of the list. We know that parents are feeling it, as we have heard today. The Petitions Committee, which I chair, has debated the issue at some length in response to calls for an independent review of childcare funding. As the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) said, we should not have an auction of promises. This should not be a party political issue; it needs to be properly looked at in the round.

The comments that we received from petitioners were quite depressing, but sadly not surprising. One response to our survey said:

“My wages will just about cover our childcare costs, therefore I am basically working only to ‘hold my place’ until my baby is old enough not to need childcare i.e. once she starts school.”

Another commented:

“I do not have the option to have family or friends look after my child when I return to work and I can’t afford to not be in work, but childcare costs more than my mortgage for full time hours.”

We all know that the spiralling cost of childcare is a worry for many parents amid the cost of living crisis, but the impact on new mothers is particularly troubling. Decisions that women make in that very short period have a huge effect on their earnings for the rest of their life. That has a direct impact on the gender pay gap, or what many might call the child pay gap.

The International Labour Office has found that in the UK, the pay gap between mothers with two children and non-mothers is 25% across their lifetime. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has found that by the time a woman’s first child is 12 years old, her hourly pay rate is 33% behind a man’s. That is appalling, but we can hardly be shocked when our childcare system is not only one of the most expensive in the world, but assumes that most families do not need any help with childcare costs until their child reaches the age of three. Support is poorly targeted, and it is letting families down.

Unfortunately, there are worrying signs that some problems for new mothers are getting worse. The Times recently reported that in the past few months, the trend of women staying in work has stalled, so we are now seeing an increase in new mums dropping out of the workplace, many of them for good. Furthermore, about 29% of women who are not working say that it is because they need to look after their families, compared with about 7% of men. The figure has risen by 5% in the past year alone. It is the first sustained increase in 30 years, and it is incredibly troubling. Some of this may be due to covid and changes in lifestyle patterns, but the increase is most pronounced among women aged between 25 and 34. It feels as though the clock is ticking backwards for women.

Women may make the decision not to work for various reasons. It is their right to make that choice, and the choice should be supported. But what about those for whom it is not a choice—those who simply cannot afford the childcare, and who give up their jobs as a result? What about the women who work three jobs and barely get to see their children, because that is the only way they can put food on the table once they have paid for their childcare costs? The cost of a part-time nursery place for a child under two has risen by a staggering 59% since 2010, which is totally out of sync with the changes in general prices and average earnings.

There is so much evidence to show that the Government’s own policies are driving up childcare prices. The free hours are of course extremely welcome to those who receive them once their child turns three, but in providing funding at a level that they know is inadequate, the Government are forcing providers to cross-subsidise by making non-funded hours even more expensive. This is robbing Peter to pay Paul, and it is mothers who are losing out as a result.

We need a childcare system that not only helps to make the lives of parents and their children better, but helps to make our economy work. We cannot stand by while it becomes too expensive for mothers to work, so that women are forced back into the home for the sake of those few precious years, out of sheer economic necessity. Early years childcare and support is as essential for parents to get to work as the roads and the rail network, and it provides a great many benefits beyond that. Until we approach it as the vital infrastructure that it clearly is, we will continue, as a country, to let down women, families, and our whole economy.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Will Quince)]

I welcome the opportunity to respond on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government and I thank the many hon. Members who have made constructive and passionate contributions to the debate. I will try to respond to as many of the themes and issues raised as possible in the time available to me; there is much to respond to and so little time in which to do it.

As the Minister for School Standards said at the beginning of the debate, we are committed to making childcare more affordable and accessible, supporting parents and providing children with the best possible start in life. Recovery remains a priority for the Government. It is a key part of building back better, levelling up and making sure that we are ready and skilled for a future in which the next generation can prosper.

Opposition days are, by their nature, political and the Opposition are right—dare I say it—to push us to go further and faster, which is their job after all. I gently say to them, however, that there is not one Member of the House who does not want every child in this country to have a world-class education where they are given every opportunity to fulfil their potential. I have two young children and I want them and every single child in our country to have better life chances than we had, regardless of their background or where they live.

We all want more accessible, flexible and affordable childcare and early years education, with every child having the best possible start in life. We all want every single school to take a whole-school approach to mental wellbeing and to ensuring that the children and young people get the mental health support that they need when they need it.

I turn to hon. Members’ contributions, starting with early years and childcare, which have been raised the most. I join my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton North East (Mark Logan) in rightly thanking all those working in education, early years and childcare. I agree that the early years are often not recognised as much as they should be, which must change. Early years are very much educators and they improve life chances, so let me say from the Dispatch Box: “Thank you.” I cannot let the moment go without saying happy birthday to his daughter Brannagh—I thought it was Princess Elsa of Arendelle up in the Gallery, but I will “Let It Go”.

On early years, the hon. Members for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) and for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) raised the issue of childcare costs. They are passionate campaigners and advocates for change in this area, in which we need change. They are right to point out that there were challenges pre-pandemic that were exacerbated by the pandemic, and that we have to fix our childcare sector and market. They are right to focus on under-twos where the cost is often highest and on school holiday provision, which are certainly priorities for me.

I am certainly aware of the impact on women in particular, because we know that childcare costs fall disproportionately on women, which comes with family planning decisions; disproportionate costs and salary disparities; and women deciding not to work. That is an issue for business, because we are losing a huge talent pool across our country, not to mention the impact on our economy.

The hon. Member for Walthamstow was also right to mention paternity leave. I will certainly look into the stigma issue that she raised and I will raise flexible working with colleagues in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. I do not recognise her figures in relation to nursery and early years funding, which I will come on to in a moment. Let us not forget that, for under-twos and for three and four-year-olds, there is tax-free childcare and up to 85% of the cost is available for those on universal credit.

The hon. Lady was right to pay tribute to the campaigning group Pregnant Then Screwed. I have met with its representatives, I have heard what they have to say and I look forward to continuing to work with them. I cannot say that I agree with them on every single issue, but they raise some good points and there is no question but that change is required in this area.

The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden raised academies, and I agree that academies are excellent. She also said that work is the best route out of poverty, and I totally agree. I am sure that she welcomes the reality that far fewer children—in fact, hundreds of thousands fewer—are growing up in workless households. She was also right to focus on childcare. I understand that she is working cross-party to look closely at childcare costs more generally. I look forward to that committee’s recommendations.

The cost of breakfast and after-school clubs was raised, which is an important factor. The hon. Lady also raised Sure Start, but I have to say that that was not early years education. It did not often provide childcare, and when it did, it was private sector, but I may come on to Sure Start later.

[Catherine McKinnell]

May I make a suggestion to the Minister? There is a significant lack of uptake of so-called tax-free childcare. I say “so-called” tax-free childcare because it is not tax-free; it meets 20% of the cost up to a certain threshold. It could be that, in the desire to create the impression of cutting taxes, the Government have failed to explain to parents what the system actually is, and it may be that, in naming it for political purposes, it has lost its practical application. Perhaps the Government should look at giving a more honest label to the scheme.

[Will Quince]

I may not agree on that particular point, but where I do agree with the hon. Lady is that the take-up of tax-free childcare is far too low. I am looking very closely at that and at what more we can do as a Government to promote it. I would certainly encourage all Members from across the House to promote our childcare offer more generally, of which tax-free childcare is only one part.

More broadly on the point about childcare, I will say this: I have two young children, and I get it. They have both been through nurseries and childminders, and I understand the costs. I know that many parents up and down our country are paying as much, if not more, than their rent or their mortgage on childcare costs. We are very much committed to ensuring that all families get the support they need when they need it.

We are already supporting families and investing to support the cost of childcare. We are offering free childcare to every three and four-year-old—that is the 15 and then the 30-hour offer. We are providing free childcare to disadvantaged two-year-olds—that is the 15-hour offer. We are cutting the cost of childcare for working parents through our tax-free childcare offer, which I have just mentioned to the hon. Lady, and of course paying up to 85% of the childcare costs for those on universal credit, supporting the families who need it most. In total, that comes at a cost of £5.1 billion.