English for Speakers of Other Languages

Catherine West Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries; many thanks for squeezing me in at the last minute. I put on record my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) for introducing this important topic and for securing the debate.

It is only two weeks since Refugee Week, when Citizens UK came into Parliament with a young man from my constituency from Syria, Mouteb, who spoke for the first time in beautiful English, even though he had never been to school before because he was in a refugee camp. He appeared in a beautiful school uniform and looked so proud, which was such a wonderful tribute to the work done with refugees when things go well. The group that he is with is supported by Citizens UK but is part of the Government’s Syrian community sponsorship programme, which I am sure the Minister is aware of. That programme could stop in September 2020 if it is not renewed. I hope that the Minister will think about passing that on to Home Office colleagues, so that this important programme, which is a great example of community cohesion, can be maintained.

One local sponsor, who goes to the Methodist church in Muswell Hill, said:

“Community support leads to more successful, faster integration of new migrants than local authority support, and the involvement of people across communities in resettlement can, in time, change the way a whole society treats refugees.”

That is a real tribute to this group, from all different faith backgrounds, who have clubbed together to provide a sort of family around the family, if you like, for these Syrian refugees. Mouteb’s speaking in a meeting in Parliament is a great example of that.

The other group I pay tribute to on its teaching of English as a second language is the JAN Trust, a fantastic organisation in my constituency that particularly helps isolated women, a group that my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) mentioned. It helps women to escape the drudgery of housework and endless hours of childcare; much as one loves one’s children, those hours can go on and on. Getting in front of a whiteboard and being taught by a lovely teacher—ESOL teachers happen to be lovely people, on the whole; that is a terrible stereotype, but they are—provides a wonderful escape for those women.

[Holly Lynch]

My hon. Friend is making an important point. I have worked with older women in my community who are at an age where they need regular medical appointments and support in the home, but because they are unable to communicate, not only do we deny them that escape, but they struggle to access basic services that the rest of us take for granted.

[Catherine West]

Absolutely: it provides a crucial line into a more purposeful existence as a member of the community. There is a real opportunity here, particularly for older women who might not necessarily have had education through to 18 or 21 in the way that many of our younger women do now. I often think about my own grandmother. She left school at 14 and had some quite unusual views, many of which we had clashes over. I often think that if she had had the opportunity to go to school to the age of 21, she would have made a fuller contribution in her different roles.

A lot of women, including those who escaped violence and conflict and who therefore stopped school very young, have this amazing lifeline through our colleges and places such as the JAN Trust, and with the support provided by Citizens UK. Further education colleges have been cut by 50% since 2010 and they are really struggling, but in my constituency, the College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London is doing a fantastic job to provide a lifeline, not just for women but for all adults, to escape that terrible prison that people find themselves in when they do not speak the language of their host country.

I want briefly to mention the issue of teachers’ pay. Six months ago, a fantastic teacher of English as an additional language came in to lobby me. She is a constituent, but teaches at City and Islington College, which has now merged with Westminster Kingsway and the College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London. She said that if she taught in a school, she would be paid way more than for teaching ESL. I hope that the Minister will look carefully at the wage level, because in these difficult times it is important that we assist people to stay in these important roles in the public sector. Those on a relatively low wage also have lower pension contributions, and sick leave and annual leave entitlements can also be different. In general, that two-tier approach to teaching must be stopped.

I reiterate the suggestion made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) that funding to support ESL be continued, or that the Government at least pledge to continue that important work. It would be terrible to lose that. There are important campaigns, such as “Lift the Ban”, which my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax mentioned, which aims to assist asylum seekers, once they have made their application, in being able to work more flexibly, and to start as quickly as possible. It would be a shame for English language classes not to go alongside that.

I moved a private Member’s Bill a couple of months back and was extremely impressed by the range of people I met who would love to be in work. As we are all aware, many refugees come from well-trained backgrounds, perhaps with a medicine degree, or have backgrounds in pharmacy, teaching or engineering, and they arrive in the UK without any English. If they could learn English as quickly as possible, they would be able to work. The “Lift the Ban” campaign calls for the Home Office’s occupation shortage list to be much more flexible and open.

I have raised that issue with the Home Secretary on two occasions in the House, and he said that it was under review. I also raised it with the Immigration Minister, who said that the Government were looking at it. In the way that our wonderful civil servants are used to passing on little notes to other Departments, I hope that the Home Office will look at this again with some urgency, particularly as we have people who are often very well qualified, but find it difficult to find work quickly.

[Alex Sobel]

Prior to entering Parliament, I helped the Cardigan Centre in my constituency to gain lottery funding for an ESOL café. Because they were asylum seekers, many of those people could not access ESOL elsewhere. They were learning English to try to enter work, but they could not, because of the ban. A lot of them had backgrounds from the occupation shortage list. There is a demand and there is this waiting. They cannot get statutory ESOL and have to use charitable ESOL. Those people face both those issues.

[Catherine West]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. There is also a terrible issue with transport to colleges. For destitute asylum seekers, it is very difficult to manage on the current rate of £5.37 an hour. It is doubly difficult when they need to pay for expensive buses, particularly outside London. I understand from recent debates in the House that buses outside London are more expensive even than in our high-value city. There are costs associated with getting to lessons, and this all needs to be looked at in the round.

I thank you again, Ms Dorries, for allowing me to speak with very little notice. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston again, and all other colleagues who have made such fantastic contributions to the debate. I look forward to hearing the shadow spokespersons and the Minister’s response.

[John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)]

I am particularly grateful to you, Ms Dorries, for fitting me in, almost beyond the last minute. As I often am, I was inspired to speak by my parliamentary neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch). Keighley often looks for inspiration to Halifax—I say that as someone who was born in Halifax—and there are similarities between the communities.

In Bradford, there are 25,000 people who cannot speak English or do not speak it well. In Keighley, the figure is just under 3,000. Together with Bradford Council, I hosted a conference on integration in line with the Government’s strategy earlier in the year. One of the top targets that we agreed on was to try to get that figure down in the next five years. We will never get it down to zero, but we will try to get everyone in Keighley speaking English, because it is a liberating and progressive thing to be able to speak English in our society.

We have heard the arguments about employability and loneliness and so on. Let me add one more that comes up, which I find works in the discussions I have with different communities: it is really up there if parents can to speak English. How can anyone possibly guide their children in towns such as Keighley, where many good things but also one or two bad things go on from time to time, and how can anyone make judgments about their children’s friends and the activities they take part in, without speaking English?

It is a wonderful thing that there are so many groups in Keighley. The Sangat Centre works very much with the Kashmiri community. There is the Good Shepherd Centre, a redundant church that was not needed by the Catholic Church that has now become a vibrant centre; English teaching is one of the things that goes on there. In all the centres, there is a big waiting list for the free English lessons, which are largely financed by the community.

We must be inventive. In colleges of education—Keighley stands out in my mind, of course—people are sometimes reluctant to take examinations, but to get the funding, examinations are needed. The one course that really works in Keighley is in driving test theory with English language. Everyone wants to learn to drive in Keighley. Adding some English language teaching to that means it suddenly becomes even more popular, and it also suddenly becomes eligible for funding.

There is also innovation in some of the schools in Keighley. In St Andrew’s, Holycroft and Victoria Primary Schools, English language lessons—and maths lessons as well—are held between 11 am and 1 pm, with a second session from 1 pm to 3 pm, so that parents can come along during the school day, knowing that their kids are at school.

[Catherine West]

Is my hon. Friend aware of Duncombe School, a school of excellence? It provides GCSEs in Turkish and other community languages, so that those who missed out—once again, it is particularly women—can complete qualifications in other languages, meaning that they are proficient in two languages?

[John Grogan]

That is an inspiration; that example is not from Halifax, but we can take inspiration from all round the country. Second chances are very important in learning.

I have little else to add, other than to say that we are grateful in Bradford and Keighley for the money that has come from the integrated communities programme, which I hope will last for more than the current period of three years, because by the time it gets up and running we are halfway into it. To really integrate communities and use the power of the English language to bring about cohesion takes a while, and it can take years, so I hope that in the coming months Ministers will give greater certainty about the future of funding. We are excited in Keighley and in West Yorkshire generally about trying to make sure that eventually everyone in our society can speak English and participate fully in our society.

[Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) on securing this important debate, and I congratulate all the others who were inspired to take part, even if they did so quite late on.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston spoke authoritatively about the problems faced by refugees struggling to learn English in England. She spoke fluently on an issue that she obviously cares passionately about and gave many relevant examples of why it is so important. The hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) spoke about the all-party group on social integration and was able to inject an objective view as there are not many refugees in Henley. He gave us good information about the Council of Europe and the linguistic integration of adult migrants programme. I was not aware of it per se, but it is something that we can all take from here.

The hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) referred to the 60% drop in ESOL funding in England and talked about the work of her all-party group in trying to push Government Departments into doing better. The hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) talked about funding for Syrian refugees and reminded us all that it is only two weeks since Refugee Week. I, too, was inspired by some of the refugees I met in Parliament during that time. She talked about funding, the JAN Trust and the wage levels of ESOL teachers. As a former further education lecturer, I can vouch for the fact that no one in FE is a slacker. You have to be nimble, light on your feet and able to do several jobs at once, but the sector will always manage to retain staff if they are paid appropriately.

[Catherine West]

I want to reiterate the point that someone often needs to be more skilled to teach in an FE setting than in a standard school setting. Does the hon. Lady agree?

[Marion Fellows]

I do indeed, based on my own long experience and that of my friend who is in the Gallery listening to this debate.

The hon. Member for Keighley (John Grogan) hosted a conference on integration and he talked about how the ability to speak English is liberating. I loved the idea of Keighley College doing a course in driving test theory with English. We often need a hook to draw people in and to get funding—again, another problem in further education—and that is a real winner.

The Scottish Government are committed to the principle that all Scottish residents for whom English is not a first language should have the opportunity to access high-quality English language provision. Access to English language lessons allows people to acquire the language skills to enable them to participate in Scottish life: in the workplace, through further study, within the family, the local community and Scottish society, and through the economy. It is one of the joys of life to hear immigrants from all over the world speaking with a broad Scottish accent.

Language skills are central to giving people a democratic voice and supporting them to contribute to the society in which they live. Scotland’s population at the last census was recorded as 5,295,403. The census also showed that more than 310,000, or about 5%, of that population over the age of three spoke a language other than English in the home. ESOL learning is crucial in supporting residents in Scotland for whom English is not a first language. It equips those residents with the communication skills necessary to contribute and integrate economically, culturally and socially, as we have heard from all the speakers today.

To support the delivery of the ESOL programme in line with the national strategy, during 2016-17 funding of almost £1.5 million was allocated to community planning partnerships, which are wide ranging in Scotland. As a result, almost 13,000 learners were recorded as accessing provision, a 24% increase on the numbers recorded in the previous year. Funding is necessary and must be given to promote ESOL. Some 20% of those learners achieved a Scottish Qualifications Authority accreditation, which represents almost 21% of the total number of learning opportunities made available. A total of 129 projects were proposed for the fund and 116 are reported as being complete, giving a 90% completion rate, which is, from my own experience, extraordinary.

Society has changed since the 2007 adult ESOL strategy for Scotland was first launched. Social, political and economic factors have impacted on ESOL provision; these include a change in the profile of refugees and asylum seekers coming to Scotland, and migrants become part of settled communities. There have also been changes to the requirements for English language skills for immigration and welfare benefits and the reform of public services following the Christie commission on the future delivery of public services report. Public services in Scotland are adapting to cuts in funding under Tory austerity, while technology becomes increasingly prevalent and public services and personal lives are challenged to maximise the use of technology, which someone cannot access and use if they do not have the language skills.

We know more about the ESOL provision in Scotland, including who delivers it, how it is delivered and what is delivered. As a result, the Scottish Government refreshed the English for speakers of other languages strategy for adults in Scotland. The refresh provides an updated and informed context for the provision of publicly funded ESOL in Scotland. It sets it in the broad context of learning in Scotland with the expectation that providers will look at the broader context to inform the direction of provision.

We in the Scottish National party believe that refugees and asylum seekers should be welcomed, supported and integrated into our communities from day one. The New Scots refugee integration strategy for 2018 to 2022 sets out a vision for a welcoming Scotland where refugees and asylum seekers are able to rebuild their lives from the day they arrive. The strategy commits to better access to essential services such as education, housing, health and employment. It recognises the skills, knowledge and resilience that refugees bring, and aims to help people settle, become part of the community and pursue their ambitions. There is not a hostile environment for refugees in Scotland.

[Catherine West]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for taking a second intervention. Would the Scottish National party join with others in the House to support the Lift the Ban campaign to lift the ban on asylum seekers working once they have done their paperwork?

[Marion Fellows]

Absolutely, because the ban undervalues people and the skills that they can bring into the UK. As has already been stated, many refugees bring really good skills with them. If they can then learn English, they can contribute a huge amount to the economy and our society.

In 2010, the literacy action plan emphasised the Scottish Government’s commitment to raising the literacy skills of Scotland’s citizens. The strategic guidance, “Adult Literacies in Scotland 2020”, notes the importance of literacy and language skills for ESOL learners:

“Some adults whose first language is not English may have reading, writing and number difficulties very similar to those encountered by ‘traditional’ literacies learners, due to limited schooling in their first language or because they come from a mainly oral culture.”

It is important to support people whose first language is not English to become full and active citizens. Those adults can make an important contribution to the economic success of Scotland, but to do so they must be able to read, write, speak and understand English. I talk a lot about Scotland, which is my role here, but much of what I am talking about could happen in England as well, with the political will.

For young adults, the 16-plus learning choices framework is a commitment in the senior phase of education that guarantees a place in learning for every eligible young person who wants it. It is the model for helping young people to stay in learning post-16. Provisions that support ESOL learners to find employment have great returns personally, socially and economically. Economic integration can help to reduce isolation in a new country. Increasing the opportunities for individuals to develop and use their skills as best they can is not just a strategy for improved economic performance. It is also an effective way of improving the satisfaction and security of work, promoting the health and wellbeing of individuals and enhancing the fabric of our communities.

Language learning remains an important curriculum area in schools and is supported by “Language Learning in Scotland: A 1+2 Approach”. That policy is aimed at schools, but it notes the potential of language learning in general. Work-based ESOL and ESOL for employability can be considered in the context of the Government’s employability and economic strategies. Refreshing the employability framework for Scotland provides a framework that focuses on jobs and growth and recognises the importance of ESOL in helping to address inequality issues that impact on employability. Providers and practitioners report that migrant workers are now becoming part of settled communities in Scotland. ESOL learners in general are becoming less transient. In that regard, I thank those who work tirelessly to improve the lives of Congolese and Syrian refugees who have settled in my constituency. Those people are welcome, and they contribute to our communities.

Refugee Action has made five recommendations for change and I think it important to restate them. It wants a fund to be created to allow all refugees to receive a minimum eight hours a week of formal, accredited English language teaching. It wants the Government to publish an ESOL strategy for England. It wants to ensure that all refugees have access to ESOL. It wants free English teaching to be provided to people seeking asylum in England from the point of their asylum claim. It wants a national framework for community-based language support to be facilitated. Community-based language support is so important. I have talked jokingly—but perhaps I was not joking too much—about asylum seekers and refugees speaking with a Scottish accent. That absolutely helps to empower them, and to embed them in their communities. When the weans start school at five the mothers know what is going on at the school gate.

All those asks are in line with the SNP Scottish Government strategy. Will the Minister commit to providing for them in England?

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. First I want to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), on a speech that not only was superbly constructed but got to the heart of the individual issues. It gave us information about how to address strategy more broadly than the Government have previously done. That breadth was particularly apparent when she listed the different types of refugees she had been dealing with in her constituency, and when she said that starting to speak English fluently means people can get a good job and make their dreams come true.

That applies not only in Birmingham; the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) may have seen what I thought was a moving piece on BBC Oxford the other day about an Afghan cricketer who came to this country as a refugee and asylum seeker and now plays in the city league in Australia. It was the support of the people of Cumnor, and particularly the cricket club there, that got him through the Home Office barriers. It is important to talk about structure, but we should never forget individuals, and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston did not do that. She rightly paid tribute to the report by Refugee Action and pointed out that there has been no new money. She also made the important point that informal ESOL learning groups are run by volunteers and community organisations. The Minister and I have often jointly supported adult education, but I recall her talking a couple of years ago, at the Learning and Work Institute, about the importance of informal learning and how to coax people into doing things that they might not otherwise do.

There is a moral as well as an economic case for the Government to address. I pay tribute to other Members for their comments and observations in interventions and speeches. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) is of course the Labour Home Office spokesperson on such matters. He talked about how provision for children is a key element of the matter, and also a barrier. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) made the important point that the European social fund had been a significant contributor to ESOL and asked whether the Minister would guarantee to match that. As far as I am aware, that will probably come substantially from the shared prosperity fund that the Government have talked about.

My hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) and other colleagues tried to get some detail about that from the Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry), in an excellent Westminster Hall debate two months ago—but detail came there none. I do not know whether the Minister today is in a position to say any more today.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) talked about the importance of first steps and colleges. The hon. Member for Henley talked about the need to get people’s motivation right, and about issues of loneliness and participation. My hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) rightly paid tribute to the work being done in her constituency, and also the work of the all-party parliamentary group on social integration. She and my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) made a particular point about the needs of older women. The stats that my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax gave and the two examples that my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green talked about powerfully illustrated that argument.

My hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (John Grogan), as well as telling us about the challenges in Bradford and Keighley, probably gave the most memorable soundbite of the afternoon, by combining driving with English, but it is an important point because people want to learn English for specific reasons. That relates to the discussion of and concerns about older people—not just older women—who need ESOL.

Finally, the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) spoke on these matters from the Front Bench for the SNP, with her customary crispness and warmth. She illustrated some of the challenges, particularly in relation to teaching and further education in Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom, and discussed changes in the profile and the specifics of what is happening in Scotland.

ESOL classes offer vital support for people across this country whose first language is not English. They offer them the ability to get the knowledge and skills they need to live more active lives. People rely on those services for many reasons—to be able to speak English and enter work, or as a starting point for education here—in order to feel able to integrate and participate in their communities. Those are important aims, and I know that the Minister will agree with me and colleagues present in Westminster Hall that we must give everyone the support and opportunities to achieve them. In fact, I hope there is cross-party consensus on the issue.

As I have already said, the Minister and I have at various times talked about motivation and the need to reach out to people. The Secretary of State himself has said:

“Improving literacy is vital to improving social mobility”.—[Official Report, 19 March 2018; Vol. 638, c. 6.]

In her review of integration, Louise Casey said:

“English language is a common denominator and a strong enabler of integration.”

Indeed, one would expect Ministers to have been investing substantially in these services for years, given how important they say English language is. As I am afraid has been demonstrated today—it is too often the case—that rhetoric has not been matched in reality since 2010. ESOL funding has been cut by over 50%, from £203 million to £99 million. Sadly, it comes as no surprise that participation has also plummeted. In 2009-10 there were 179,000 learners on funded ESOL courses, but by 2017 the figure had fallen to 114,000.

Will the Minister at least acknowledge that the indifference or—let us be charitable—inability to provide funding since 2010 has contributed significantly, if not directly, to the decline in ESOL participation? I know that she will say that funding has increased in recent years, and it is true that there have been small increases in ESOL funding and in specific areas, which we welcome. The Syrian refugees settlement scheme has been talked about. Given that the Government knew, and now have proof, that additional funding is needed to provide ESOL to specific vulnerable groups, it is a matter of concern that they have not gone further. Will they move beyond that piecemeal approach and offer long-term, sustainable investment to deliver ESOL in all our communities? The fact is that the lack of investment makes it impossible for those who need these vital services to access them.

As shadow skills Minister, I have been talking a lot recently about our urgent need to empower two groups of people: young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are not in education, employment or training; and adults who are without basic literacy and numeracy, of whom there are probably between 5 million and 7 million. We cannot separate that from ministerial failure to fund ESOL properly—and not just in further education, but in the Home Office and with others who have shared responsibilities in this area. I appreciate that it is complex—I know what the silos are like in Government—but the Government have to deliver on the matter.

I hope that the Minister can tell us how many refugees and asylum seekers are not currently, and have not previously, enrolled in an ESOL course. I and many hon. Members of the House are concerned that they are not getting the support they need. Some 59% of respondents to a Refugee Action survey said that the number of hours of teaching they received were not sufficient, and 66% said that their current level of English did not make them feel ready to work in the UK. That is simply unacceptable. Can the Minister tell us what steps the Government are taking to ensure that refugees and asylum seekers get the support they need to learn English?

It seems to me that Ministers support that goal, because their own integrated communities Green Paper said that everyone should be able to learn English. I agree, but when will it become a reality? If we will the ends, we must will the means—to be more old-fashioned and colloquial about it, there is the old phrase: “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” Well, no money has been saddled up to power the fine words and exaltation of the Green Paper, and the Government cannot say that they have not been given chapter and verse on what needs to be done.

I pay tribute to Paul Hook and all his colleagues at Refugee Action, which is a national charity that works to enable asylum seekers and refugees to rebuild their lives in the UK. It is the

“leading provider of reception and integration services”,

and in the past three years it has been indefatigable in reminding the Government and Members of the House where we need to go. I am quoting from Refugee Action’s July 2018 reaction to the Green Paper, which lists the problems for refugees. They include long waiting lists, difficulties enrolling in a class, inadequate learning hours, gender barriers, unsuitable classes and travel difficulties, many of which have been touched on in the debate. That is what Refugee Action said last year.

As we have already heard, Refugee Action has now produced a response to the integrated communities Green Paper. I have looked at it, and I am sure that other hon. Members will have looked at it, either the whole thing or a summary. It is an excellent summary of where we are, but unfortunately what it summarises is not good. Refugee Action makes the point that there has been a real-terms cut of almost 60% between 2008 and 2018. I have already mentioned the new research: 59% of refugees do not think that they have had enough ESOL teaching hours. To probe further into that, more than three quarters of parents said that a lack of childcare had been a barrier to their ability to attend English lessons. That bears out in anecdotal and other comments that colleagues have made.

[Catherine West]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we have an enormous problem that results from that? There is isolation and there are resulting mental health problems, which add further costs to the national health service as a result of failing to provide these important preventive services.

[Gordon Marsden]

I agree. I do not wish to take us into another area, but although the significant cuts to the Sure Start programmes and children’s centres impact on native English speakers, they also have an effect on refugees and asylum seekers, particularly in areas where there is ethnic concentration and a large number of migrants.

Refugee Action’s recommendations have already been touched on. They include a fund to support all refugees to learn English; ensuring a minimum of eight hours a week teaching for refugees, which requires an investment of £42 million a year; an ESOL strategy for England; full and equal access to ESOL for female asylum seekers, with the right to access free English-language learning; and facilitating a national framework for community-based support.

This is an issue that I have taken up with the National Association for Teaching English and Community Languages to Adults, Refugee Action and others over the past couple of years. I went back to an article I wrote in FE Week in March 2018, to see whether anything I said then was not up to date. Unfortunately, I do not think much has changed at all. NATECLA said that the

“focus on informal community learning…does not go far enough to address the needs of learners…it is sustained and accredited English language learning”,

which rather supports the point that the hon. Member for Henley made on the need to have progression in those sorts of courses.

Following Brexit, when we will increasingly have to rely on a smaller pool of workers than we have done for decades, it will become absolutely clear that a skill system that is fit for the future must include a minimum competence in the English language for everyone living in the UK—and not just in London, but in other major cities. We should not neglect the challenges in smaller towns and rural areas where there are recent influxes or long-standing ethnic communities. However, ESOL funding has been whittled away, which has inevitably depleted the cohort of dedicated teachers. It is no good the Education Secretary waxing lyrical on ESOL and social mobility if the Department does not provide—either from its own resources, by lobbying the Treasury, or by combining with other Departments—the hard cash to go with it.

The shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), met a group of Congolese and Sudanese refugees in her constituency earlier this year. She says:

“They told me about their experiences of seeking shelter and safety in my area and of the welcome they had received in my constituency. But they also told me that they were desperate for more opportunities to learn English”.

She wrote in an article:

“From my own experience, I know that the opportunity to learn alongside managing childcare responsibilities is crucial.”

Without the opportunity to do that, they will not be able to succeed.

This is not an issue that only well-meaning people in prosperous areas are concerned about. I have received quite a lot of letters on the matter from my constituents in Blackpool. I will quote from a letter that I received from Raven Ellis:

“Without the opportunity to learn English… Being denied this opportunity means refugees can’t integrate properly or find work. Even the smallest everyday things are hard—catching a bus, going to the doctor, or making friends with neighbours.”

To invest makes sound economic sense. The Government’s integrated communities Green Paper had some welcome proposals, but that justifies the need to move further in this area and not to continue to do nothing. Many things can be done informally. Conversation clubs and volunteers are great, but they cannot replace formal teaching. A recent survey by British Future, which talked to a large number of refugees and asylum seekers, bears out that point.

We know from history, and I know personally and practically from the history of the north-west in towns such as Preston, Barnsley, Oldham and Rochdale, as well as Blackpool—we do not have such a proportion of people needing ESOL in Blackpool—how key it is that communities, whether new or permanent, can assimilate instead of just co-existing separately. We also see that in other parts of the country, such as Yorkshire and Humber—my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) is not in his place, but my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley is—and ESOL is key to that. It is key to social cohesion and individual advancement. It is key to enhancing local productivity and the local economy, especially where the number of people who need ESOL is high. It is also key to those people who are newly assimilated to learn to train and gain skills at whatever age. With that bundle of imperatives, I really hope that the Government, in whatever form or shape they take in the next six months, will put some effort into this area.

[The Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills (Anne Milton)]

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill). We all know—there has been agreement in the debate—that English language skills are crucial. Last week I had the privilege of meeting adult education providers in Birmingham, who spoke passionately about helping students to succeed. I also had a chance to chat to some of the students not just about progress they had made to date but about the progress they hoped to make in the future and what that meant for them.

We estimate that 1 million people—quite a big figure—living in England cannot speak English well or at all, and we know how important English language skills are. The Government make funding available for English language through the adult education budget, and via the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government for community-based provision. There is also specific support for refugees via the Home Office. We are keen to ensure that funding offers the best value for money for those learning and those contributing through taxes.

When I looked at the funding streams available for English language, I saw that the Department for Education, MHCLG, the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Work and Pensions all put funding into this area. The hon. Member for Blackpool South (Gordon Marsden) talked about silos, which are a problem because they are not always the most efficient way of delivering the services we want.

Last year, providers supported adults to access English courses with £105 million of investment from the adult education budget. We are developing a new strategy, as hon. Members will be aware, which we plan to publish in the autumn. I share Members’ frustration about Ministers always saying “in the autumn” or “in the spring” or “in the summer” because we are never quite sure when that is. However, we are keen to get the strategy out as soon as possible. I do not mean to be evasive, but it will need to be right before we publish it. It will set out shared aims across Government to ensure that the ESOL provision is effective. We will need to use evidence-based decisions about what we do, and we have undertaken research to ensure that we get it right, which has included speaking to teachers, colleges, adult community learning providers, charities and academics to understand more. Last week, we published a report that explores what barriers those who have not accessed English language support have faced, some of which have been highlighted in the debate.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston articulated extremely well the reasons why being able to speak, understand and communicate in English are critical to building cohesive communities. It has become a bit of political rhetoric to talk about cohesive communities, but we know what that means. It has to mean more than co-existing, which the hon. Member for Blackpool South mentioned.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston also pointed out that specific first-hand experiences are important in highlighting some of the more general problems with accessing ESOL. She raised several points about the devolution of the adult education budget, which is important. I saw some of that in the west midlands. I met staff and some of the Mayors of the combined authorities a couple of weeks ago, and it will be interesting and useful to us all to note what they do in their local areas, because we can all learn from best practice and experience of delivery in different areas.

The hon. Lady asked four questions, which I think I will have answered before the end of my remarks. On her last question, I can only give my wholehearted support to the fact that we must be an inclusive and welcoming country, particularly for refugees, who have often been through a lot and also have much to contribute to the rich fabric of our society.

[Catherine West]

The Minister mentioned the notion of devolution, which is a personal favourite of mine. However, devolving only really works if the money is not top-sliced first. Will she please give assurances that any further devolution will not lead to cuts on the way down?

[Anne Milton]

Of course, around all this is the budget that we have available, and I know that the adult education budget has gone down in its totality. We have a spending review coming up. I am also a fan of devolution. It can make Governments slightly nervous as they hand over authority for something for which ultimately they will be held responsible, which can feel uncomfortable. But in an area such as this, devolution is the way to get solutions that work, because people know and understand their local communities, their population and the barriers in their area. Top-slicing is always a little trick of the Treasury; our job in the Department for Education is to ensure that nobody top-slices anything. We do not want top-slicing. However, as I said, there are a lot of complex funding streams, although not specifically for refugees.

I think it was the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) who asked whether I would give my word that money for ESOL will be replaced pound for pound. I cannot give any assurances, because the spending review is coming up.

Children and Young People: Restrictive Intervention

Catherine West Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Norman Lamb (North Norfolk) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House calls on the Department for Education to urgently issue guidance on reducing the use of restrictive intervention of children and young people; and further calls on Ofsted to change its guidance to inspectors to recognise the importance of seeking to avoid the use of those interventions with children and young people.

I will start by thanking the hon. Members for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) and for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan) for joining me in applying for this debate. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) for taking through the Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Act 2018 to significant advance. He deserves enormous credit. I also pay tribute to Olaseni Lewis, who tragically lost his life through the use of restraint, and to his parents, who fought so hard for justice. Finally, let me pay tribute to the brilliant Challenging Behaviour Foundation and Viv Cooper, who runs it, and to Positive and Active Behaviour Support Scotland and its founder Beth Morrison for the brilliant work of that organisation.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Would the right hon. Gentleman accept an intervention?

[Norman Lamb]

I am not going to take interventions, because I am under strict instructions to keep to time. I hope that Members will accept that, with my apologies.

This is a debate about the human rights of children. I am afraid to say that abuse of children is endemic throughout the system, and I am also afraid to say that the Government are complicit in the abuse of children for failing to get to grips with it and for not issuing guidance, which is now five years overdue. I will develop my points in due course. What are we talking about? Well, the restrictions imposed on children include: physical restraint such as prone restraint, whereby an individual—in this case, a child—is held to the floor with their face down to the floor; seclusion, whereby a child is locked in a room, and these are often children with acute and complex autism, who will be in a state of acute anxiety; mechanical restraint, whereby a child might be tied to a chair or a bed, for example; blanket restrictions, which might involve preventing children from going outside; and chemical restraint. The settings that we are talking about include residential schools, special schools and, incidentally, mainstream schools, as well as children’s homes, assessment and treatment centres, and hospitals within the NHS.

By way of example, when I was Minister I visited a girl called Fauzia, who was admitted to St Andrew’s Hospital in Northampton at the age of 15 and was there for nearly two years. When I visited her, her family told me that she had been subjected to the constant use of restraint, was prevented from going outside most of the time and was often secluded in a room that was, frankly, like a prison cell. I visited her two years after we had got her out of that institution, when she was being cared for by an organisation which understood that staff have to be trained in how autism affects an individual. In the period from the day that she was discharged from St Andrew’s to the day that I visited her two years later, she had not been restrained on a single occasion; we have to read something quite profound into that.

I also met Leo, the mother of Stephen, who has autism and a learning disability. Leo told me the harrowing story of a child subject to prone restraint in a special school. Stephen was referred to a residential school in Norfolk, but prone restraint was again used. Serious medical conditions were ignored and not properly addressed, which ended up with Stephen being rushed to hospital because a bump on his head actually turned out to be a brain haemorrhage that had been ignored for several weeks.

I have also been contacted by Deidre Shakespeare, whose son Harry has been subject to mechanical restraint—being tied to a chair, with his legs also tied to the chair. Deidre and her son live in Tyrone in Northern Ireland, and her concern is that, given the collapse of power sharing, there is simply no authority in Northern Ireland to address these very serious concerns, which in my view amount to human rights abuses.

On the scale of the problem, as I said at the start, it is endemic in the system. The Challenging Behaviour Foundation carried out a survey with 204 respondents: 88% of families said their disabled child had experienced physical restraint; 35% reported it happening regularly; 71% said their child had experienced seclusion; in over half the cases of physical intervention or seclusion reported, the child was between the age of five and 10—these are small children being treated in an entirely inappropriate way; 58% said their child had experienced restraint that had led to an injury; and 91% reported an emotional impact on their child. Radio 5 Live, which I applaud for featuring this issue, made a freedom of information request in 2017—only a fifth of authorities responded—and identified 13,000 physical restraints in the previous three years and 731 injuries. We are talking about children placed in these organisations by the state. It is shocking and scandalous.

Here’s the thing: it does not need to happen in most cases. In most cases, it is avoidable with the proper culture and training of staff. In a report commissioned by the Government, Dame Christine Lenehan, a leading expert in this field, quotes a local authority officer who said:

“There can be a vicious circle occurring within the ASD cohort”—

people with autism. It continues:

“A poor provider triggers challenging behaviour or physical meltdowns (or fails to prevent such events), often exacerbating this with their reactions e.g. restraint, punishment or confinement. Good providers in whose care this behaviour may not have occurred will now not accept the child due to their history and pattern of risk. Therefore, the child is placed in a more restrictive or secure setting which can result in a worsening situation. Eventually, the child reaches a secure NHS setting which often is wholly inappropriate for their ASD needs. In different circumstances, a good specialist day placement could have worked for this child.”

That is really shocking, because so often children who end up in a secure setting never escape from it again and spend their lives in an institution. This is happening within our society behind locked doors, and it is wholly unacceptable.

Dame Christine Lenehan in her report says:

“Strategies such as positive behaviour support (PBS) can also be effective for managing challenging behaviour. PBS assesses the relationship between environmental events and behaviour, identifies what can cause the behaviour and uses proactive strategies to prevent it. One respondent to our call for evidence noted that using a PBS-informed strategy had coincided with an almost 90% reduction in the use of physical restraints.”

If it is possible to avoid it, to use it is an abuse of that child’s human rights—full stop. There can be no compromise on this. We have to end it, and that is why it is so important that the Department for Education takes notice.

I want to contrast the approach between the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Education. As a Minister in the Department of Health, I issued guidance in 2014 for adults designed to radically reduce the use of restraint and to end the use of prone restraint. Now we have a provision, which will be introduced into the formal NHS contract, requiring that certified providers of training meet a standard of training that avoids the use of restraint in the first place, rather than training staff how to use restraint. That is the key difference. It will be embedded in how the NHS works and will be part of the Care Quality Commission framework.

By comparison, the Department for Education seems like a wholly different culture. The child is seen as the problem, interfering with education and therefore disciplined, with no attempt to understand their needs. We have a responsibility to understand what causes the behaviour in the first place, but there is no promotion of positive behaviour support or any other preventive approach. What a bizarre situation we have, when children are less well protected from abuse than adults. That is surely unacceptable.

There is no obligation to collect and report data on the use of restraint or seclusion, and parents do not even have to be told when their child has force used against them. The guidance offered by Ofsted is weak and needs to be reformed and reinforced. There is now a plan for legal action by 600 parents whose children have suffered physically or psychologically, with crowd-funding under way. The claim will be based on age and disability discrimination, and the Human Rights Act.

I have the following questions for the Minister. When will the guidance be published? We have been waiting for five years for it. How many children have suffered abuse in the meantime? Will it take a human rights-based approach? Will it include training at a certified standard as a requirement? Will the training be funded by the Government to ensure that it happens across the country? Will the same approach apply whatever setting the child is in?

Staff need support, training and guidance, but the bottom line is that the abuse of children must stop and the Government must act. We, and especially children, have waited far too long.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

First, I pay tribute to the work of Inquest and Deborah Coles, who has worked in this field for many years and has a great deal of expertise. She continues to support families through very difficult processes, including inquests, which we know, as constituency MPs, can be extremely testing times for families. I also want to thank the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) for securing the debate and for his expertise in this matter.

It is 15 years since Gareth Myatt died in a child prison. That is a terrible anniversary, when we think of how little has changed in the human rights picture. Adam Rickwood sadly hanged himself following restraint, also by people much bigger and older than he was, yet we still hear the sorts of figures mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed).

I want very briefly to put on record my thanks for what I learned as a Member of Parliament from listening to the passage of the Bill and from Seni’s family. They were suffering, but how generous they were to allow their own family experience to teach us, as Members of Parliament, the meaning of what we do and how we can press the human rights of all those young people—not just those under 18, but those in their early 20s—who end up in these terrible situations.

It is clear from the Joint Committee on Human Rights report that there is insufficient oversight and accountability in many of our settings—mental health settings, child prison settings or child training centre settings. For example, there is the tragic case of Amy El-Keria, who died at the Priory some time ago. We know that much of what happened to her before she tragically died involved inadequate staffing levels, failures to share key risk and care information with staff and inadequate systems for identifying and managing ligature risk, such as placing Amy in an unsuitable room containing high-risk ligature points and missed opportunities to remove a scarf in Amy’s possession. There were failures adequately to address the bullying of Amy by her peers or to follow the Priory’s anti-bullying procedures, and failures to pass on key information about Amy’s increased suicide risk on the day of her death. Finally, there was the delay in undertaking the final observation during which Amy was found hanging. To add to that, as I know from reading the paperwork that came out at the inquest, not one member of staff accompanied her to the hospital when, tragically, she was pronounced dead.

We must all remember these terrible incidents. Small numbers of people are in care in some form, but these individual stories do tell a tragic truth. In these individual cases of when things going wrong, there must be much quicker action by those working in child and adolescent mental health services and various other mental health systems. I would also like to see much more supervision of staff, particularly agency staff and new staff coming in on overnight shifts, when so much of this tends to happen.

In summing up, I merely want to put on record two key points. First, the Government must comply with international law and end the restraint techniques that we know, both from the passage of Seni’s law and from the work that the right hon. Member for North Norfolk has emphasised today, are unlawful and contrary to the human rights of children. Secondly, the solitary confinement of children in detention should be completed phased out as a practice.

I will reiterate the very useful points that the right hon. Gentleman made in his opening speech. When will the Government publish guidance on this important area? When will the training requirements be clarified for providers who are paid by the public purse to look after children with severe mental health problems, developmental problems and other sorts of difficulties? Will the funding be adequate for those training requirements and for the providers, and will these apply to all settings in which children, sadly, are virtually imprisoned, including both children’s social care and mental health settings?

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Education

Catherine West Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

My hon. Friend should be reassured that they will be very exceptional circumstances. For example, if a child has experienced a sexual incident, perhaps with another child, or inappropriate touching, a headteacher may decide not to grant the request. The key point is, however, that it will be the circumstances of the child and not the views of the headteacher that will lead to that decision.

We could not have retained the right to withdraw as it currently stands, because an absolute parental right up to the point when the child is 18 years old is no longer compatible with English case law and the European convention on human rights. However, we have delivered on our commitment to maintain a right for parents to withdraw their children from sex education that is also compatible with the law.

We are committed to ensuring that every school will have the support that it needs to deliver these subjects to a high and consistent quality. We will therefore be investing in tools that will improve schools’ practice, such as a supplementary guide to support the delivery of the content set out in the guidance, targeted support on materials and training. As I said to the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), we have up to £6 million to invest in the development of those tools this year. We are also encouraging as many schools as possible to start teaching the subjects from September 2019, so that we can learn lessons and share good practice ahead of compulsory teaching.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nick Gibb]

I will not, because I am about to finish my speech.

We believe that our proposals are a landmark step. They will bring existing guidance into the 21st century, and will introduce new content that will help to equip children and young people with the knowledge that they need to form healthy relationships, lead healthy lives and be happy and safe in the world. I commend them to the House.

School Funding

Catherine West Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Liz Twist]

Yes, clearly the lack of resources in schools and the loss of jobs mean that attention cannot be given to important issues, which is a real detriment to the people affected.

The second part of my speech is about what these figures mean for our schools: for the staff, the governors, the parents, but most of all, for the pupils in each and every school. I am sure that other Members will indulge me if I talk about the schools in my constituency; I have no doubt that many of them will wish to share experiences from their own schools.

Last Friday, I visited Portobello Primary School in Birtley. During my visit, the headteacher and governors of this great community school told me about their concerns about funding pressures. In the last year, they have lost four valuable members of staff to redundancy: a higher level teaching assistant with 20 years’ experience in early years education; an experienced teacher who led on the arts curriculum; a highly skilled teaching assistant who was trained in supporting children with medical and educational needs; and a dedicated school counsellor, who supported young children with their mental health.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that for children with special needs, such as those in Coleridge Primary School in my constituency, this situation is a double whammy?

[Liz Twist]

Yes, I most certainly agree with my hon. Friend on that point.

College Funding

Catherine West Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend and near neighbour is absolutely right, and that is a key issue for the east of England, which is often seen as a prosperous and successful region, but its skills shortages have been a problem for a long, long time and they need to be addressed.

I will also quote Yolanda Botham, the principal of Long Road Sixth Form College, another excellent college in Cambridge. She tells me:

“The current level of funding has meant for Long Road that we have had to reduce our curriculum offer. We no longer provide A-level German, for example. We have had to reduce the broader opportunities and enrichment opportunities that we can provide, limiting the number of trips and experiences we can offer, which really matter for social mobility. Visits and trips show what’s possible and enable students to see beyond their immediate horizons.”

She says that it is particularly galling to note that

“our private school neighbours, charging £17,000 annually, do not have to pay VAT, yet we do.”

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it seems a bit perverse in the days of Brexit to be cutting back on foreign language provision?

[Daniel Zeichner]

Indeed it is, but this place is full of ironies on a daily basis, is it not?

Yolanda Botham said that for her college

“that £200,000 extra a year could really make an important difference, such as supporting through subsidy more students to take advantage of university summer schools and other opportunities.”

That is exactly the kind of point about social mobility that colleagues have been making. She continued:

“An increase in funds would allow us to better cater for the mental health needs of our students and so, over time, maybe reduce the demands on the NHS. This is in increasing need amongst young people.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) on the excellent speech she gave just now, and my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) on introducing this important debate. There is no doubt that with a little more time and spending for FE, we could be less worried about loneliness, which is a current policy concern.

There is no such thing as a job for life, and with the possibility of an election in the air there is nothing dearer to our hearts than the sense that MPs may not have a job for life either. Who knows whether any of us may end up at our FE college at a not-too-distant time, seeking extra courses?

There has been poor retention in apprenticeships for several years, and we all know how crucial it is to get the apprenticeship workstream right. To date that has not happened, but my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle mentioned how important it is, from the beginning of the course, to make the pathway clear so that students can see what happens at the end, and more students can be retained on their apprenticeships. It is a pleasure to have some students here with us in Westminster Hall.

I want to thank Kurt Hintz, the principal of the College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London, which is now part of a consortium of three or four colleges—the largest FE provider in London. There have been pluses and minuses for the teaching in north London as a result of that. Personally, I think the college achieved more before, when it could focus on a smaller population group, but we are where we are. A number of teachers have come to see me, including in the autumn, when the University and College Union organised a parliamentary tour to see MPs. A teacher of English as a second language, who is incredibly committed to what she teaches, pointed out that whereas an average secondary school teacher is paid £37,000, she is paid only £30,000. Many hon. Members have made the case for raising the rate and cancelling out that discrepancy.

Some hon. Members have pointed out that a 67% drop in the welfare workstream, and in extracurricular activity, arts and music, means a much diminished offer to students. I have seen from my casework how much work welfare officers do in the college and how they keep students at college, which is crucial to their mental health.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I attended an FE college, and it saved my life. I was struggling in the chemical industry and had lost my way. Going to FE college saved my life and career. I was a mature student, transferring, and the welfare and the support was wonderful. I just want that for every student in every FE college; they are the heart of our skills environment in this country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine West]

My hon. Friend has repaid his debt to the college sector by committing himself to lifelong learning and apprenticeships. That includes the importance of learning as a part of industrial strategy, especially for towns, where colleges do important work in many pockets of deprivation, in England in particular.

I want to mention the gender and black and ethnic minority pay gaps. Someone who does not get a strong offer in college is likely to enter the workforce on lower pay. That surely has something to do with the fact that so many women and black and ethnic minority members of the workforce are paid less. The Department should surely look into that and rectify it.

Some Members have raised the question of STEM. The 24% drop in the STEM offer in the college sector is a terrible step backwards. What is being done to tie up the FE sector with huge public procurement projects such as Crossrail, the super-sewers project and High Speed 2? Could not some of the money be spent in colleges, to make links? When a big project such as the Thames tideway tunnel finishes, could that tunnelling expertise not then be lent to another high-value expensive public procurement exercise elsewhere?

I know that other hon. Members want to speak. We must redouble our efforts and together with the Minister, who I know is committed to this area, as well as the Chairman of the Education Committee, put pressure on the Treasury and make the case for lifelong learning.

Oral Answers to Questions

Catherine West Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

I do welcome that. As part of yesterday’s announcement, we also said that we would take off the cap on the current round of special and alternative provision free school applications and approve the full set that met the criteria.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Good school places include good school music teaching, but headteachers tell me that they cannot afford to provide high-quality music education, which flows into a lack of access to tertiary places. We have more international students studying at tertiary level than we do our domestic students in some cases. Will the Government urgently review the provision of high-quality music education, so that every child, regardless of their region, background, skin colour or religion, can study music at our wonderful universities?

[Damian Hinds]

I agree with the hon. Lady about the essential importance of music. That is one reason why music is the second most financially supported subject in our school system, after PE. We have invested £300 million in funding for music hubs and other music programmes between 2016 and 2020.

Education Funding

Catherine West Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a terrible pity that the sixth form has experienced the worst cuts of any age group?

[Gareth Snell]

My hon. Friend makes a prescient comment, because I will come on to that exact point momentarily.

Schools in Stoke-on-Trent are suffering the same problems as those suffered by schools across the country. Their per pupil funding has not been protected, so the costs they have to endure and incur are so significant that their budgets no longer balance. Only on Monday I was at Etruscan Primary School in my constituency where the executive headteacher told me that her school budget’s projected deficit for 2020 was almost £500,000. Through diligent work, she has managed to bring that down to £300,000, but there is still a huge gap between what she will have to spend and the money coming in. She is not the only one. The headteacher of St Thomas Aquinas Catholic Primary School has also written to me to explain that she faced a budget deficit of £100,000 over the past year. Moreover, she does not get sufficient resource from Stoke-on-Trent City Council, which is controlled by the Conservatives and independents, to meet the costs of supporting statemented children in her school who require—and who rightly receive—one-to-one tuition and support. She has to supplement that budget from her general school fund, which was also attacked and top-sliced this year by the Conservative and independent council as it sought to meet its higher needs budget. That budget has been overspent because the council has not got its own house in order with in-house provision and is instead sending children from my constituency and the city of Stoke-on-Trent out of area for the provision of particular educational needs. That is not good for the children, it is not good for school budgets, and it is certainly not good for the economy of Stoke-on-Trent.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) has rightly pointed out the scandal that is the funding for further education and sixth-form colleges in particular. Only last week I was talking to the vice-principal of my city’s sixth-form college who said that the cap of £4,000 per learner means that they have to scale back on the extras—not the “little extras” the Chancellor talked about but: the support they put in place for trips; the support they put in place to allow learners who need additional support, but who do not have a statement; the support they put in place through pastoral care; and the support they put in place for their young learners who cannot access child and adolescent mental health services system in our city because of the underfunding of the NHS. They are having to scale back on every single one of those because their costs are going up. Rises in inflation mean that any reserves they had are being eaten into. As a result, the young people in the college are suffering.

The Chancellor announced in his Budget a tax cut for the wealthiest 10%. Everybody in the Chamber will receive a tax cut as a result of the Budget the Chancellor proposed and is being voted through. I was proud to vote against that, because I do not think it is fair or right. I do not know how I can go into a classroom and justify billions of pounds being spent on tax cuts for the wealthiest 10% when headteachers across my constituency are telling me that they cannot afford to buy textbooks and other provisions for their schools.

Draft Further Education Bodies (Insolvency) Regulations 2018

Catherine West Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2018 General Committees

[Gordon Marsden]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point, which illustrates the weaknesses of many of the Government’s initiatives in this area. I will not stray into the institutes of technology, but it is the same principle: the Government think a lot about structures in terms of capital expenditure, but seem less ready to address the issues with equipment that she mentions and—this is, of course, a big bugbear with the sector—the funding of progression and salaries.

The explanatory memorandum states:

“There are currently 37 FE colleges that have a ‘published Notice to Improve for financial health’”.

However, the Department estimated last month that on “today’s assumptions”, over the first 10 years of the insolvency regime, an additional 63 could—I am not saying that they will—

“meet the current triggers for a notice”.

The Department’s document goes on to say that,

“as a central estimate, we believe 100 colleges will need to fully familiarise themselves with the insolvency procedures.”

Again, I stress that that does not mean that they are in imminent danger of insolvency; it is a precautionary measure.

In Government and in legislation, we have to plan and hope for the best, but have backstops for the worst. That is the purpose of the statutory instrument. The Department states that there could be a best case scenario of 80 colleges and a worst case scenario of 150 colleges being at risk. It is therefore slightly strange that paragraph 7.9 of the explanatory memorandum rather blandly states that

“in reality we expect that FE colleges entering insolvency would be a very rare event.”

That seems to be written more in hope than expectation.

This extremely worrying situation cannot come as a surprise because the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that spending on FE and skills fell by £3.3 billion in real terms between 2010 and 2017. Those cuts have been most severe in adult education. That is extremely relevant to the proposals because it is often forgotten that adult learners are an important part of the FE learner area. If that group no longer attends FE colleges in the numbers that it has historically, that puts additional pressures on courses and on the colleges’ financial structures. The Sixth Form Colleges Association has said similar things about the shortfall for its students.

As David Hughes, the chief executive of the Association of Colleges said, while

“the regime being introduced in itself is not a bad thing, the problem is that it is likely to come into effect at an historic low point in college funding.”

I also agree with the University and College Union, which said in its briefing for this debate that the Government’s focus on college insolvency, without considering some of the broader issues, sends the wrong message about the importance of FE. The focus on facilitating market exit in FE rather than strengthening the sector and investing in the necessary resources to help institutions thrive sends a negative message to the public about the importance that the Government ascribe to the sector.

I want to ask several specific questions and make a number of observations that arise from the explanatory memorandum. Paragraph 10 talks about the consultation outcome. The Minister has already referred to the 30 formal responses that the Government received. Paragraph 10.3 states that in response to a question whether

“any specific modification to normal insolvency legislation were needed to allow it to apply effectively to FE and sixth form corporations”

there was

“strong support for the FE insolvency regime mirroring standard insolvency procedures for companies, which is the approach that we have taken.”

There is then a reference to several respondents saying there should be an interim moratorium.

In cold grey terms, those are of course some of the necessary things that the insolvency regime must include, but the difference between the companies that the memorandum uses for comparison and further education is that at least three groups of people are affected. One is the staff and the second is the creditors. Some of those are likely to be small business suppliers and others in the local supply chain, of which FE colleges are often a significant part. It is likely that they would be negatively affected by the insolvency proceedings. The third group is students and lecturers.

I appreciate that it is not an easy thing to include in a statutory instrument, but I appeal to the Minister and to the Department for Education in general to take account, when they consider how to take the matter forward, of those broader audiences. I ask them not simply to look at the question with the narrow scope that a bank might apply.

Paragraph 11 of the explanatory memorandum deals with guidance. It states:

“The Department will publish two sets of guidance before this instrument comes into force.”

It does not tell us when they will be published, and it would be helpful if the Minister could tell us—if not today, then by a note to members of the Committee. That is important, because she has talked about the support that the Government want to give, so as to have more experienced governors and clerks. She gave some examples, and I am pleased to hear that the Further Education Trust for Leadership will be involved in the process.

I am bound to say—and I think that it is also an issue in school governance—that at the moment, although it may change in future, the support that Governments of all hues have given governors in piling on to them various responsibilities, including difficult responsibilities for finance and insolvency, has not been commensurate with the extra time and effort involved, and the extra knowledge they are supposed to possess. I do not think it would be out of place if I were to ask the Minister what amounts of money or, for that matter, practical support from the Education and Skills Funding Agency or the Department, are going to be forthcoming on this occasion. I say that because the issue is important.

I want to touch on the special administration procedures. Concerns were expressed during the passage of the Technical and Further Education Act 2017 about how long they would take. The Minister might be interested to know that her colleague who had responsibility for the Bill in the House of Lords showed, in Committee in March 2017, that he recognised that:

“Concerns have previously been expressed…about the time a special administration might take. I share these concerns. However speedily the special administration is concluded, it will be too long for those involved. Staff, students and creditors will want certainty about what will happen to them at the earliest opportunity.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 1 March 2017; Vol. 779, c. GC215.]

Again, I ask the Minister whether such certainty, or those timescales, will appear in the sets of guidance. If they will not appear in the guidance, will she give the Committee some idea—perhaps through a note, after consulting her officials—of how long that period is likely to be?

These regulations have been deemed necessary. They would have been necessary under any circumstances, but they are particularly necessary because of the sector’s fragility, which has been caused by the cuts that it has faced. I am sorry to say to the Minister—I know she would like not to be challenged on this today—that that was not helped by the Chancellor’s complete failure on Monday to offer any sort of funding uplift to colleges or their staff. That is not to mention the disastrous advanced learner loans policy, for which more than 50% of the allocated funding has been unused and returned the Treasury. Not much of that has been distributed to the colleges that are in dire need of it.

I appreciate that the Minister feels strongly that FEs should have more funding. She has acknowledged that, and made that point again today. She may say, in attempting to erect an air-raid shelter over her Treasury colleagues, that some relief might come on the back of the Augar post-18 report, as a result of issues to do with the Office for National Statistics investigation on resource accounting and budgeting in higher education, which is expected in the new year. The reality, as the Minister just acknowledged, is that the comprehensive spending review will be the first opportunity to offer significant financial relief if the review recommends financial help to FE. That means, in the normal scheme of things, that none of that money will feed through to FE colleges until the academic year 2020-21.

In the meantime, it is fair to ask how many other colleges will slip into a fragile state that might—I stress the word “might”—produce the need for insolvency regulations. It is instructive, in that respect, to quote the FE commissioner, who has been called upon to look at a number of the country’s biggest colleges, which are facing significant challenges as a result of funding cuts and the loans policy. These are simply examples; they demonstrate by no means the full extent of the fragility that has been exposed over the last 12 to 18 months. According to an intervention report from the FE commissioner, Northumberland College has undergone a cashflow crisis. The report says:

“After several years of growth, the college faces a substantial shortfall in income for 2017-18, which is forecast to fall short of the budget target.”

It warns that income is set to decline even further in the college in 2018-19. In July, the Northumberland Chronicle reported that more than 40 staff had taken voluntary redundancy after the college reduced the number of courses on offer.

That is an inevitable consequence of the drip, drip, drip of funding cuts over recent years. To thrive and survive, most FE colleges rely on a diverse mixture of activities, and on money. Money comes from the adult education budget. If there is a shortfall, there are problems. It comes from apprenticeships. Similarly, if something does not take off, there are problems. There are trading activities, and colleges are increasingly reliant on the European social fund and other funding.

That brings us back to the statutory instruments we have debated over the past few weeks and the issue of replacing the European social fund. The Minister is very active in those areas, so perhaps she will say whether she has had more conversations with the Treasury about that since the Budget or before it.

Let me give another example of a college that is in dire straits. Birmingham Metropolitan College was rated in March last year as requiring improvement for the second time in March last year. It is one of the largest colleges in the country, with an income of £61.3 million, total debt for the year of £23.4 million and 16,000 learners. It has had a notice of concern for financial health since July 2015, when it received a visit from the further education commissioner. My third example has been raised on the Floor of the House and elsewhere by my hon. Friends who represent Hull constituencies. It is the dire financial straits in which Hull College has found itself since November 2016, when it was forced to request exceptional financial support from the Education and Skills Funding Agency after its bank withdrew support.

In the light of the things that I have described, the idea that this insolvency thing will be bedded in and called on fairly sparingly might need to be revisited. The Minister was very clear about the timescale for cutting off exceptional financial support for colleges once the insolvency regime is introduced. To be clear, is she saying that her Department will curtail that funding completely? Is she not concerned that, owing to the number of colleges at risk, withdrawing those funds so quickly could have a significant impact on a large number of colleges? What timescale does she envisage, if one has been envisaged, for a transition period between the implementation of the regime that the order will put into place—we all know that such changes do not take place overnight—and the cut-off of that last-resort funding?

The Minister will be pleased to know that I will not rehearse our long-standing criticisms and concerns about the area-based reviews that took place largely under her two predecessors. However, I was hoping that she might be able to tell us how those reviews had reduced the possibility of future financial failures. The statistics I have listed suggest a different picture. What assessment has she commissioned of the impact of the review or their contribution to reducing the possibility of insolvencies? If she has not commissioned an assessment, will she do so—preferably as an external examination, undertaken outside the Department?

I have talked about guidance. The order alludes to the position of students with special educational needs, about whom we have particular concerns. Given the Government’s keenness to be seen to be doing the right thing on disability and equality issues, how does the Minister intend to ensure that there is no disruption to the particular requirements of students with special educational needs in these circumstances, who often require tailored support?

It seems that, as always in these cases, the devil is in the detail. However, the detail is not always there in the memorandum. I raise with the Minister a fairly fundamental issue that we discussed to some degree during the passage of the Technical and Further Education Act 2017 but which does not, needless to say, find itself in these specifics terms today. A primary concern of the Opposition and other organisations, including the UCU, was that the Act basically allowed for the assets of an insolvent college to be handed over to private companies, as long as they were delivering education. Regulation 15, which deals with section 107—the distribution of a statutory corporation’s property—goes into the detail of that, but it does not specify that the college assets that are taken over by a private company should serve the same cohort as the insolvent provider. The regulation reads as if it might allow a college’s assets to be handed to a school or university, or to a much smaller and narrower education institution, possibly for significant profit, without placing any requirement on them to continue to deliver further education as opposed to initial or higher education.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that given some of the cowboys—for want of a better word—in the training industry, many of whom face allegations of corruption, it would be a dangerous state of affairs were any of those smaller companies to pick up the work of an FE college?

[Gordon Marsden]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to flag that up. That would be of considerable concern. I will not mention particular issues, although readers of FE Week and other publications will have seen some of the references out there, but this is a serious issue that may be disadvantageous to local people in terms of choice. Nor is it simply hypothetical—there are examples of such jiggery-pokery. The Minister was not in the Department between 2011 and 2012. If she is not familiar with what happened then with the Apollo Group and various other organisations, I suggest she consults her officials, because those scandals embodied some of the issues to which my hon. Friend refers.

I do not want to take up too much more time, but let me finally discuss the banks. This issue is partly a result of cashflow problems and the banks removing investment from the sector. The 2018 report on college finances by the Association of Colleges provides more information about those issues, and we should be careful to ensure that the new college insolvency regime considers their consequences. There is an old saying that banks are institutions that lend people umbrellas when it is dry but take them away when it is raining. I am afraid that that is increasingly borne out, not just in banks’ cavalier closure of local branches to the public but in their treatment of some FE and other learning institutions. FE is particularly exposed because, on the whole, colleges, for historical and operational reasons, do not have the resources or the reserves that many—although not all—higher education institutions have.

One of the problems with the Technical and Further Education Act and the statutory instruments that flowed from it is that they have little tie-in with the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, which deals with the protection of students in the event of institutional failure. That is a pity, because one in 10 higher education students study in further education colleges.

The Government’s plans are designed to change behaviour among college leaders and lenders. The UCU acknowledges that and does not criticise it, but states that that means colleges will be forced to aim at bigger surpluses, conserve cash, control staff costs and cut capital spending. As abstract things, those are all very prudent, but at a point at which the country faces difficult economic times, that is not really the response anyone wants from colleges—especially when it is not matched by the investment in the sector to which I referred.

Post-Brexit and post-automation, demand among young people for this type of education will rise, as will businesses’ need for skilled staff. The challenge for the Government is to make sure that they match the backstop of the draft regulations with the positive investment that the FE sector desperately needs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anne Milton]

I hesitate to talk about joined-up Government because it never feels as joined up as it ought to be, but joining it up so that a decision about the visa rules does not have an adverse impact on the sector is critical, because having students on courses means financial income. We are doing quite a lot of work on that at the moment, as my hon. Friend might imagine.

I know that Hull has had huge problems; I have spoken to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) about that. I would just say that money is going in; there is a danger of forgetting that when we look at the base rate of funding of further education colleges. The pot of money that the Treasury made available for the restructuring facility was £700 million, and a substantial amount of that will have been spent; that is important. We will also put in £500 million by 2020, with the full roll-out of T-levels.

On the subject of T-levels, we are putting in £20 million over the two years to March 2020 to support providers as they prepare for them. The hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East mentioned technical education; this is at the heart of that. We are also putting together a £20 million investment, including recently through Taking Teaching Further, which tries to get industry expertise into colleges. People with that expertise are often exactly the people we want teaching in FE colleges. There is quite a light regime regarding what qualifications people need in order to teach in an FE college—rightly so. We need to inject people like that into the system. We are providing a maths premium and £38 million for the initial providers of T-levels, so that they can invest in the sort of equipment that is needed.

[Catherine West]

I thank the Minister for her generous approach to discussing this. Will she lay out the steps that her Department is taking to deal with poor practice? The National Audit Office has pointed out that there have allegedly been corrupt practices in the past. What is being done differently to avoid that with the training providers?

[Anne Milton]

I thank the hon. Lady for reminding me of the bit that I had left out: the issue around independent training providers and some of the problems there. There was learndirect, which was a quality issue, and recently of course there was 3aaa; that was not a quality issue—it was actually rated quite highly—but a financial issue.

I am a simple soul; I sometimes find it extraordinary that we cannot keep tabs on all this money that we give out, and it is so important. Experiences should teach us lessons that enable us to tighten the regime as we move forward, but it is important that we do not make things bureaucratic, or the costs of applying for, or getting, funding onerous, with disproportionate cost. There are a number of things going on in the Department—not all of which I can share with the hon. Lady—to ensure that we reflect on this issue. Certainly, after learndirect, I asked officials to go back and find out how they could have realised that this was going to happen. In any sector, a number of organisations wait like vultures for the pickings of Government spending. We always have to protect ourselves from that, keeping in mind that the learner is at the heart of this. We also have to make sure that every £1 of taxpayers’ money gives £1 of value for learners.

It is disappointing to me—I am, of course, an advocate for this sector—that this debate is happening here. I would be interested to see whether, by the end of debate on the Budget at 5 o’clock tomorrow, there has been any mention of FE on the Floor of the House of Commons. I hear a great deal about schools and their concerns about funding. I rarely hear—except in obscure Committees such as this, or on one occasion in Westminster Hall—about FE. It is the squeaky wheel that gets the oil in this world, and if the wheel does not squeak, it is hard for me to make the case for the oil. I commend the regulations to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft Further Education Bodies (Insolvency) Regulations 2018.

School and Early Years Finance (England) Regulations 2018

Catherine West Excerpts

Wednesday 21st March 2018 General Committees

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the School and Early Years Finance (England) Regulations 2018 (S.I. 2018, No. 10).

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Owen. I can feel the palpable energy in the room, among Members and officials alike, from being in the House this early for a Statutory Instrument Committee.

The context for the debate is the Conservative manifesto statement:

“Under a future Conservative government, the amount of money following your child into school will be protected. There will be a real terms increase in the schools budget in the next Parliament.”

That pledge was repeated, and the previous Prime Minister was clear about what it meant:

“I can tell you, with a Conservative Government the amount of money following your child into school will not be cut.”

But the Government are not keeping that promise to the British people. Under the present Government, schools face the first real-terms cuts to their budgets in nearly 20 years, despite the Secretary of State’s having inadvertently claimed the opposite in the House last week.

The National Audit Office has said that under the current spending settlement there will be

“an 8 per cent cut in pupil funding”

between 2015 and 2020. The same conclusion was reached by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. That means that every school in every region and town will lose money because of the Government’s failure to protect funding in schools. The so-called fair funding formula—there we are at last—is simply a redistribution of a sum of money that is already inadequate to support schools and provide children with the excellent education that they are entitled to.

The National Audit Office has also said that the Department for Education expects schools to find a total of £3 billion savings in the course of the Parliament, yet it has failed to communicate to them how to achieve it. Of course I support the principle that all schools should receive fair funding, and there are progressor elements in some of the regulations before the Committee, but the answer is not to take money from schools and redistribute it when budgets are being cut across the country.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that some schools now tell parents that they have to close at 1 o’clock? They give various reasons, but we all know that they do not have the money to pay teachers in the afternoon. Does he agree that although that may not be unlawful, specifically, it takes vital study time away from young people?

[Mike Kane]

I could not agree more. Schools are having to make heinous decisions. In the Minister’s county, West Sussex, some are already threatening a four-day week because of the budget cuts.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Kane]

The solution is to invest, to help every child receive an excellent education. The Government’s stated aim in revising the schools funding formula is fairness. There should be fairness in the formula, and there are good things in it, such as the emphasis on high need, a deprivation index—albeit using a crude measure—and a focus on prior attainment. Why would the Opposition not welcome those things? However, there is nothing fair about a proposal under which funding will be cut from high-performing schools in deprived areas.

A fair approach would take the best-performing areas in the country and apply the lessons from those schools everywhere. It would look objectively at the level of funding required to deliver in the best-performing schools, particularly in areas of high deprivation, and use that as the basis for a formula to be applied across the whole country. Unfortunately, though, the Government are not listening to the voices of schools, teachers or parents. Evidence from the general election suggests that 750,000 people switched their votes to Labour because of the impact of school funding cuts on their local communities.

We only have to look at the impact already being played out. Under this Government more than half a million infant schoolchildren are in super-sized classes, and new research by leading education unions shows that class sizes are rising in the majority of secondary schools in England as a result of the Government’s underfunding of education. There is a particular problem in secondary schools because of the shortfall in funding of £500 million a year for 11 to 16-year-olds between 2015-16 and 2019-20, plus the deep cuts to sixth-form funding of more than 17% per pupil since 2010.

[Catherine West]

My hon. Friend is being generous with his time. Subjects such as music are now offered at A-level only in one school in a large area. Is it therefore any surprise that under 44.1% of the Royal Academy of Music’s intake come from state schools?

[Mike Kane]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I am a product of the Manchester music service, and the music education that I received as a child is nowhere near what we now provide in our schools. We now have secondary schools in Yorkshire charging parents for music GCSEs. My final point on class sizes is that 62% of secondary schools in England have increased the size of their classes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Champion]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We were hoping for a funding formula that recognised the different pressures in different areas. A blanket funding formula does not recognise the real issues we have in the north of England in particular.

The IFS states that overall, school funding will have fallen by 4.6% in real terms between 2015 and 2019. We do not know the real impact of the next round of cuts, but perhaps the Committee can make an informed assessment by looking at what happened in the previous two years. Between 2014-15 and 2016-17, class sizes rose by 54% in primary schools and by 50% in secondary schools. In the same period, the ratio of pupils to teachers rose by 61% in primary schools and by 71% in secondary schools. The ratio of pupils to teaching assistants rose by 58% in primary schools and by 79% in secondary schools.

[Catherine West]

Does my hon. Friend agree that that is having a big effect on morale in schools? Did she know that a position to learn to be a teacher in a primary school in my constituency that once attracted 150 applicants now attracts 10?

[Sarah Champion]

I did not know that, but it pains me to hear it. When I was going through school and university, people aspired to become a teacher. Teaching was a secure career in which people felt they were giving something back to their community. Now, it is seen as something to try to escape from, and we do not attract the best people to be teachers. That is such a shame. The impact on future generations is immeasurable.

Why has there been such a dramatic rise in the ratio of pupils to staff? It is not rocket science. To try to bridge the gap between their costs and the income they get under this Government, schools have had to lose staff. In the same period—2014-15 to 2016-17—staff cuts in primary schools increased by 44%, and cuts to secondary teaching staff in Rotherham rose by a staggering 93%.

Using that as my evidence, I guess that class sizes in Rotherham will increase again for the next two years under this Government. Schools will be forced to cut more staff, so the pupil to staff ratio will increase. There is no evidence—if anyone can show me some, I would welcome that—that bigger classes lead to a better education. I have not discovered evidence of that anywhere in the world. To be honest, all the evidence points to bigger classes leading to worse education.

Are children in Rotherham worth a good education? Is it a surprise that we have some of the highest rates of exclusion and youth unemployment when there is not enough money to pay for an adequate number of teaching staff? I am afraid that things will only get worse under the regulations. The minimum funding guarantee in the local formula is currently set at minus 1.5%. That is a guarantee that no school can lose more than 1.5% of its per pupil funding year on year as a consequence of changes to the local funding formula. Paragraph 8.4 of the explanatory memorandum states:

“The new level of flexibility around the MFG set out in these Regulations will allow local authorities to set the MFG at any value between -1.5% and +0.5%, allowing them to replicate this element of the national funding formula at a local level if they choose.”

The second stage of the consultation underlined the importance of stability in funding levels for schools. As a result, the national funding formula will allocate a cash grant of at least 0.5% per pupil for every school. This new MFG flexibility will enable local authorities to pass those gains on to schools, but here is the but—as of yesterday the CPI inflation rate dropped, woohoo, to 2.7%. Even if the local authorities had the cash to apply the maximum funding of plus 0.5%, schools would still be losing 2.2% in real terms. Perhaps that is why paragraph 10.3 of the explanatory memorandum says:

“An Impact Assessment has not been prepared for this instrument.”

One wonders why.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Gibb]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. I am pleased to be able to discuss the school and early years finance regulations at a time when local authorities are about to receive their first grant payments calculated by the national funding formula—an historic and necessary reform.

The regulations set out how local authorities should distribute between local schools the £33.7 billion of funding that they collectively receive through the schools block of the dedicated schools grant. Before I turn to the regulations, it is important to place them in the context of the historic change that the Government have made to the broader funding system. The introduction of the national funding formula means that, for the first time, this £33.7 billion of funding will be distributed between local authorities based on the individual needs and characteristics of every school in the country.

The Government are determined to create an education system that offers opportunity to everyone at every stage of their lives. That is the key to raising standards for all and improving social mobility. We are making significant progress: more schools than ever before are rated good or outstanding, the attainment gap is beginning to close and we have launched 12 opportunity areas to drive improvement in parts of the country that we know can do better. However, those achievements have been made against the backdrop of the old, unfair funding system, which we have reformed. Under the old system, schools across the country with similar pupil characteristics have received markedly different levels of funding for no good reason.

[Catherine West]

Will the Minister explain whether more schools being rated as good or outstanding, which is happening in many of our constituencies, is linked to a higher rate of exclusions?

[Nick Gibb]

We have launched an exclusions review, conducted by our former colleague, Ed Timpson. He will look at precisely those issues. We actually raised the bar for Ofsted’s judgments on schools. Despite our raising the bar for academic standards, we are still seeing more schools rated as good or outstanding.

In the hon. Lady’s constituency of Hornsey and Wood Green, schools would attract 0.9% more funding if the national funding formula were implemented in full, based on the 2017-18 data. Under the national funding formula, schools in Hornsey and Wood Green will be funded at £5,671 per pupil, compared with the national average of £4,655 per pupil.

[Catherine West]

In that case, will he direct two schools that insist on closing at 1 pm on a Friday, which parents have raised with me as an issue, to open their gates until 3 pm?

[Nick Gibb]

As she will know from the figures I just cited, schools in her constituency are being funded at significantly higher than the national average.

[Catherine West]

That does not answer the question, Minister.

[Nick Gibb]

I am coming to the hon. Lady’s question. Given that schools in Hornsey and Wood Green are being funded at significantly more than the national average, and given that the vast majority of schools are not doing the things she talks about, there is no reason for schools in her constituency to take that action.

Across the country, schools with similar pupil characteristics have received markedly different levels of funding. That is why our promise to reform this unfair, opaque and outdated school and high needs funding system and introduce a national funding formula has been so important, and I am particularly pleased that this Government were able to deliver on that.

This reform represents the biggest improvement in the school funding system for more than a decade. From April 2018, the introduction of the national funding formula will put the funding system firmly on track to deliver resources on a consistent and transparent basis, based on the individual circumstances of every school in the country. Following extensive consultation, in which we carefully considered more than 25,000 individual responses to our proposals, last September we were able to publish full details of the school and high needs national funding formulae and the impact they will have on every local authority.

Those proposals were underpinned by an additional £1.3 billion for schools and high needs across 2018-19 and 2019-20, over and above the funding confirmed at the 2015 spending review. School funding is at a record high because of the choices we have made to prioritise school funding, even as we faced difficult decisions elsewhere to restore our country’s finances.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Gibb]

I will come to the cost pressures that schools have faced in the last two years, particularly the increase in the employers’ contribution to teachers’ pensions—we regard teachers’ pensions as very important—and the higher level of the employers’ national insurance contribution. Again, the higher employers’ national insurance contribution is about raising more tax revenue to help close the historic deficit we inherited. Achieving the reduction of that deficit to 2% of national income, from 10% when we came into office, has enabled us to maintain a strong economy. We acknowledge that there have been cost pressures on schools in that period. Those cost pressures have now been absorbed and schools will see real-terms increases across the board in their funding, taken as a whole.

[Catherine West]

The Minister is extremely generous in giving way to me a second time. Will he comment on the increase to NHS staff today? Will we hear a further announcement in a few months’ time that there may be more money for teachers, given that there tends to be a knock-on effect when one public sector group gets a pay increase? Not that any arguments were won last June, I hasten to add.

[Nick Gibb]

The hon. Lady raises an important point. We have given evidence to the School Teachers Review Body; the Secretary of State gave oral evidence a week ago. We will receive its recommendations, I think, in May and we will respond to them then. It is important that these issues are dealt with by independent pay review bodies.

With the additional £1.3 billion that we were able to identify last summer, we have been able to ensure that all schools and all areas will attract some additional funding over the next two years while providing for up to 6% gains per pupil for the most underfunded schools. That significant extra spending in our schools demonstrates our commitment to ensuring that each child receives a world-class education. The hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East cited our manifesto; we have gone further than our manifesto commitment that no school should lose funding as a result of the national funding formula. Now, every school in every area will attract at least 0.5% more per pupil in 2018-19 than it received in 2017-18, and 1% more in 2019-20.

We also heard throughout our consultation on the formula that we could do more through our formula to support those schools that attract the lowest levels of per pupil funding. We listened to those concerns, and our formula rightly will direct significant increases towards those schools. In 2019-20, the formula will provide minimum per pupil funding of £4,800 in respect of every secondary school, and £3,500 in respect of primaries. In 2018-19, as a step towards those levels, secondary schools will attract at least £4,600, and primary schools £3,300. These new minimum levels recognise the challenges of the very lowest funded schools.

There was considerable debate during the consultation on the funding formula about how much funding it was appropriate to direct towards schools with higher numbers of pupils likely to need additional support—I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s support for that element of the national funding formula—as a result of a disadvantaged background, low prior attainment, or because they speak English as an additional language. In our final formula, we have been able to protect this funding—£5.9 billion in 2018-19—while improving its targeting. Alongside that, we will continue to deliver the pupil premium— some £2.5 billion a year—to provide additional support to schools to narrow the attainment gaps and to promote social mobility. As I mentioned earlier, we have closed the attainment gap by 10% in both primary and secondary schools since 2011.

The dedicated schools grant provides local authorities with funding for their high needs provision and for early years. We are absolutely committed to supporting children who face the greatest barriers to their education. That is why we have also reformed the funding for children and young people with high needs, by introducing a high needs national funding formula. That will distribute funding for children and young people with high needs more fairly, based on accepted indicators of need in each area.

The additional spending that we have announced means that every local authority will see a minimum increase in high needs funding of 0.5% in 2018-19, and 1% in 2019-20. Underfunded local authorities will receive gains of up to 3% per head a year for the next two years. Overall, local authorities will receive £6 billion to support those with high needs in 2018-19. We are also determined to support as many families as possible with access to high-quality, affordable childcare. That is why in 2019-20 we will spend a further £6 billion on childcare support—a record amount of support. This record spending includes £1 billion a year, delivering 30 hours of free childcare for the working parents of 3 and 4 year-olds and funding the increase in rates that we introduced in April 2017.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Kane]

Again, that is a sophist argument that some schools will receive an increase, but not in terms of the general level of cuts since 2015; and it is nothing in comparison with what the Minister rightly pointed out about budget pressure and inflation. All the schools in his constituency will be taking a cut over the next few years.

[Catherine West]

A similar problem has been mentioned to the one in my constituency, where schools are cutting the school day, and I hope that the matter will be raised again, to prevent a domino effect that might lead to a four or four-and-a-half-day week. That would have a huge impact on productivity in the economy, as much as anything.

[Mike Kane]

My hon. Friend is a passionate advocate on behalf of schools in her constituency. The way she stands up for them will be on the record.

There is only one party represented here today that has had a reprimand about dodgy stats on schools: the Secretary of State received one from the UK Statistics Authority last week. The Opposition will not take lectures on statistics at the moment. The funding formula has been a colossal waste of time and effort and has not got to where the Minister wanted. I can see from the reactions of some Conservative Back Benchers that the same situation will continue. Schools in their constituencies will be under enormous pressures, and what has been done has not ended the situation.

The Minister talked about having to rescue the economy. The Government have led us to a nearly £2 trillion deficit in the economy.[Interruption.]

Skills Devolution (England)

Catherine West Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered skills devolution in England.

What a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I hope to have the pleasure of hearing your speech later. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate on skills devolution in England. I am especially grateful to the Members here from outside London, as I am keen to hear about the reality in their constituency regarding how we can tackle the national skills gap as flexibly as possible.

Across our country, we face an enormous challenge in ensuring that we have the skills that we need to operate the economy, and that we are doing all we can to enable people to secure such skills, and support them in doing so. The issue is particularly acute in London, where my constituency is, but it also exists in the larger cities throughout the country and, indeed, in the regions, and the situation has worsened since 2010, when further education colleges faced cuts—they now receive 50% less funding. The centralised skills system needs to be looked at again, in London and in all parts of England. I will set out the problems seen by us on the all-party parliamentary group for London—and by the all-party group for Greater Manchester, with which we have done work on this—and the recommendations outlined in our report, “Bridging the Skills Gap”, which I recommend colleagues read.

Significant steps have been taken since the devolution project started in 2000, but there is a pressing case for specific devolution in this area, and a need to explore ways in which such devolution can be achieved in regions that do not have devolved Assemblies or metro mayors. Although recent economic growth has led to substantial reductions in the numbers of people on jobseeker’s allowance, an estimated 628,000 Londoners are not in work but would like to be—enough people to fill the city of Nottingham twice over—and youth unemployment is high. In 2016, 9.4% of 16 to 24-year-olds in London were unemployed, compared with 3.6% of 25 to 64-year-olds. For both adults and young people, that represents a huge waste of human potential.

The problem is very unevenly spread across London, a city of 8 million people; there are constituencies where very high numbers of young people face larger problems from unemployment and a lack of skills. Almost a quarter of all vacancies in London—23%—are due to a lack of applicants with the right skills. In addition, almost half of firms—42%—are not confident they will be able to recruit people with the higher-level skills that their organisation needs over the next five years. In the London borough of Haringey, where my constituency is located, 35% of 19-year-olds do not have a level 3 qualification, yet London is an increasingly highly skilled economy. There is a clear skills mismatch.

My local college, the College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London, now merged with City and Islington College and with Westminster Kingsway—mergers that took a lot of energy and money out of the sector when we could least afford it—tells me that many students were held back following the sharp reduction in funding. That has led to too many Londoners being in low-paid and often insecure employment, and there has been an increase in the number of low-paid jobs in the capital.

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

To highlight my hon. Friend’s point, in my constituency we send the lowest number of young people on to higher education in the country, despite having two universities in the city, and Bath and Exeter nearby. It is critical that the further education sector pick up such youngsters and support them in their skills and education, not just in London but in places like Bristol.

[Catherine West]

This needs to be looked at specifically in Bristol, where we have seen such a sharp increase in the population of under-30s.

Many people, once in work, fail to get salary and career progression, and 700,000 Londoners are paid less than the London living wage; that has a real impact on families. Recent research by Trust for London shows that people are more likely to be in insecure employment in the capital or in other large cities than elsewhere in the UK.

The population of London continues to grow rapidly—by 1.3 million since 2005—and the demand for basic skills provision grows alongside it. That population growth has increased demand for specific areas of skills provision, such as English for speakers of other languages, or ESOL; the Workers Educational Association has done excellent work in that area. Founded in 1903 and working for a

“A better world—equal, democratic and just”,

the WEA serves people within a two-mile radius and we can see the importance of that local provision throughout the country, not just in cities. However, our cities need to grow their own talent and get businesses to invest more in skills. Levels of business investment are unfortunately at an all-time low and we need a flexible and responsive skills system to respond effectively to the challenges the capital faces. They are urgent challenges and, if ignored, could significantly hamper economic growth, not just in the capital but elsewhere.

There has been criticism from business. Mr Quinn, chief executive of Balfour Beatty, has said that the apprenticeship levy system is very “Yes Minister”, which says something about where we are in thinking through how to enhance the human potential in our economy.

The skills system does not provide the flexibility and responsiveness needed, because providers are often incentivised and rewarded solely on the basis of the quantity of learners achieving a qualification, not according to the quality of the outcomes from getting that qualification, such as higher earnings. The system is market-based and is built on learner choice, but careers advice in London is patchy and inconsistent, which limits learners’ ability to make informed choices and understand the opportunities in the London economy. When I speak to headteachers, they talk about teachers often not being able to put aside valuable time to perform the crucial role of helping students decide which subjects to choose—say, whether to take a foreign language—not just at A-level or when they go on from school, but right back in year 8 or 9, so that they can have ready the skills that we so desperately need in workplaces.

Employers do not engage enough with the skills system to ensure that vocational courses are relevant to their needs. The creation of a Greater Manchester employment and skills board has resulted in the co-designing of apprenticeship courses that can be delivered locally, improving local responsiveness to skills shortages. That was replicated in Sheffield’s city deal and in several other cities, increasing the engagement of small and medium enterprises and delivering on local skills priorities.

It might be too early to tell what impact the apprenticeship levy has had, as it was introduced only in April 2017. I am sure that the Minister has a bit of time to get across that brief—her predecessors had not quite caught up with it. I am sure she will tell us her plans for the levy’s review. April 2017 is not that far back, but I am sure that the Department has plans to review its introduction and effect. Initial statistics from the Department for Education indicate a sharp drop in the number of apprenticeship starts across the UK. Between May and July 2017, they had decreased by 59.3% from the same period in the previous year—in numbers, from 117,800 to just 48,000. I am sure we would all agree, across this Chamber, that that is a crucial area that needs the Government’s attention.

Employers in the public and private sectors report issues with the system’s inflexibility, and it appears that many organisations will fail to spend significant amounts of their levy contributions. It seems highly unlikely that the Government’s aim of 3 million apprenticeship starts by 2020 will be achieved. That is another example of the skills system failing to respond adequately to the current and future needs of our economy.

The skills system in the UK is very centralised, leaving London with few tools at its disposal to cope with London-specific issues, such as the higher demand for English as a second language, historically low levels of apprenticeships and the reliance on incoming labour in key sectors. The picture is potentially worse in other fast-growing cities, such as Coventry and Exeter, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) mentioned; they do not have the same system of devolution that we have in the capital. I am hoping to hear more about those regions of the UK later in the debate.

The system simply does not respond well enough to our growing cities’ needs and priorities. Coventry, for example, is in part of the country that is seeing greater economic growth, although that is coming from a lower base. Our skills system is not matching that growth and is falling behind. The OECD predicts that without significant improvement, the UK will fall to 28th out of 33 OECD countries for intermediate skills by 2020. That would see the UK overtaken by Ireland, Israel and Belgium.

London faces myriad challenges: a rapidly rising population; an over-reliance on migrant labour; skills gaps in many key sectors; low numbers of apprenticeships and an inflexible apprenticeship system; patchy careers guidance; and poor match-up between skills spending and outcomes. The forthcoming devolution of the adult education budget represents an important first step in creating a more efficient skills system, but the Government must be bolder and go further and faster on skills devolution to have the impact needed. Devolving greater powers on skills to London and the metro mayors would enable cities to create a system that meets employer need, not just learner demand.

What about the impact of Brexit? Businesses have met an increasingly large share of their labour needs through immigration. Nearly one in three of London’s workforce is non-UK born, and 90% of London’s businesses recruit EU citizens. Workers from the EU play a vital role in many of the capital’s key sectors, including construction, financial services, hospitality and health and social care. In London, in construction, hospitality and the tech sector, just under a third of all workers are EU nationals. Any fall in EU immigration following Brexit or during the uncertainty that Brexit is producing has a significant impact on not only London, but the UK. We know that London’s economy is a driver of things and has knock-on effects on other regions. Many agricultural areas are over-dependent on the supply of EU labour. The outcome of the discussions and negotiations over Brexit could have a knock-on effect.

The capital attracts highly skilled graduates from across the UK. A significant drop in EU labour could increase that trend, undermining the Government’s industrial strategy and attempts to rebalance the national economy. There is a genuine desire across the House of Commons for every region to grow and for London not to attract all the high-achieving graduates. That could happen for a period, perhaps, but there is a real need to rebalance our economy.

The drop in EU labour could also have a knock-on effect on other key policy areas, such as the need to build more affordable homes in London. A chronic shortage of skills in construction, for example, will create higher project costs and diminish the ability of the sector to deliver the new homes required to tackle the chronic housing shortage facing the capital and the rest of the country. We can think of best practice in public procurement: in many boroughs and city regions, the local authorities are getting much better at using public procurement to ensure that for every £1 million that is spent, say, we get one or two apprentices back from the providers of that crucial capital work. That is mainly in construction and the renovation and refurbishment of social homes, but also in other areas.

All the factors I have outlined suggest that London government and the metro mayoralties need the ability to take a strategic, all-age, whole systems approach to skills. There should be greater engagement with employers and better access to and use of data. The system should allow a more localised approach that works at two levels. In the capital, for example, we should tackle pan-London issues while also having more targeted activity at a sub-regional level to take into account the variations of skills, needs and demand across cities.

The all-party parliamentary group’s report set out eight key principles that should underpin a future skills system. They were:

“1. It must be labour-market led, and include high quality labour market intelligence that captures the needs of individuals, employers and local economies informing learner choice and the provider offer.

2. It must have strong employer engagement in order to identify skills needs and sector priorities.

3. It must have strong local accountability, with joint governance agreed between the GLA and London boroughs via sub-regional partnerships.”

In that regard, we know that other sub-regional areas function much better than London. With a population of 8 million, it is very hard to match the economic partnerships with the various areas. In other sub-regions, we should be able to do much better on local accountability and buy-in from local authorities. The report continued:

“4. It must be outcome-focused, with strategic coordination across all aspects of post-16 professional and technical education to drive better outcomes. The system should focus on and reward delivery of positive outcomes covering jobs, earnings, progression”—

I emphasise that point; too many people are sitting in entry-level jobs way into their 40s and 50s, unable to get that progression that is so crucial—

“personal development and wellbeing outcomes.

5. It must include stronger incentives to encourage provision that meets London’s economic needs and supports progression.

6. It must be flexible to enable London government to have the ability to commission provision based on analysis of need.

7. It must include effective, impartial information and advice to ensure learners can make informed choices that will lead to future employment opportunities.

8. It must take a whole systems approach to ensure that skills policy and commissioning are effectively aligned.”

What would that mean in practice? The Government need to go further, faster, to give local government and metro mayors the levers to address the considerable skills challenges I have set out. They should consider devolving all 16-to-18 provision to combined authorities in other parts of England. The Government should provide commissioning freedom and the ability to set outcomes and incentives for the whole skills system. That would better serve the progression and economic priorities of different areas in England. The Government should give London government control over all vocational capital investments, such as 14-to-19 capital provision and institutes of technology, alongside existing further education capital responsibilities. That would capitalise on local ambition, expertise and intelligence, and align adult education and 14-to-19 capital investment.

The Government should devolve careers funding streams to London government, so that it can build a seamless, single, integrated careers service. The concept of a careers service is something that many people in local government would love to see return, so that they can match aspirations and assist parents, who are so key to helping young people decide what to do next. It would also allow older people to get back into the workplace—or change what they do, now that we are all meant to be working until we are 70. [Interruption.] You have loads of time, Minister. Through those things, we can have a proper system that we can be proud of.

We would like the devolution of careers funding streams to a local level, to build a seamless, single, integrated careers service. The Government should devolve the capital’s future share of the UK’s shared prosperity fund to London government, and ensure that future skills funding settlements take into account each area’s unique needs. We also need short-term flexibilities around the apprenticeship levy. In the longer term, we need to devolve the levy to London. That will be quite a difficult trick to master for a new system, but we need it to be as flexible as possible, so that we can use the resource quickly and build in the ability to develop that longer-term devolution. We could get longer-term value by getting together with local areas to work out the best way forward.

The other voice that needs to be listened to is that of small and medium-sized enterprises. They provide many of the job starts for young people, and older people entering the labour market who need their skills updated. It is difficult for SMEs to communicate with Government, Members of Parliament and the wider system, so that relationship with SMEs must be developed in a special way. We want more flexibility in the levy; for example, it could allow an increase in the amount of levy funding that employers can pass on to their suppliers. That is currently capped at 10%. Local authority areas increasingly use their contracts to have suppliers generate apprenticeship opportunities, but capping that at 10%, particularly in the short term, might mean we are not getting as much value as we could in our timeframe. In 2016-17, for example, London boroughs created 60% of their apprenticeships through contracts and suppliers, as I mentioned earlier.

The Greater London Authority and the Institute for Public Policy Research, a think-tank, have developed a proposal for a skills and progression pilot project, which I recommend the Department look at. A strand of the proposed pilot is to work with employers to pool the 10% that can be passed on to non-levy-paying employers, and support them in developing good-quality apprenticeships through that. The pilot wants to test out increasing the 10% cap as well. There is a strong push for that proposal. In the longer term, the Government should consider full devolution of the apprenticeship levy, as has happened in Scotland and Wales. Obviously, London and other key areas would need to bid and make the case for that, but the Government should not rule that out.

A recent Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development survey found that 53% of employers who pay the apprenticeship levy would prefer a training levy; just 17% support the apprenticeship levy in its current form. I am keen to hear the Minister’s feedback on that proposal.

In conclusion, the proposals might seem radical and far-reaching, but London, Manchester, Birmingham and other major UK cities are experiencing severe skills challenges that could be exacerbated significantly by Brexit. The Government need to act now and allow the skills system to deliver in flexible, responsive ways that the current centralised system does not. The Mayor of London has already indicated that London government is keen to work with central Government to deliver on this agenda, and there is a clear appetite from many of the elected mayors to do the same, as there is from leaders of local areas. I hope we can all work together to improve skills outcomes for all learners and businesses across England.

[Ian Paisley in the Chair]