Oral Answers to Questions
Chi Onwurah Excerpts(2 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Education (Gillian Keegan)
Tackling persistent absence is my top priority, as indeed it was last year. I pay tribute to our incredible teachers and heads who have gone above and beyond to get children back to school. We are more than doubling the number of attendance hubs to support 2,000 schools, we are investing £15 million to expand one-to-one mentoring to help 10,000 children and we will be requiring all schools to share data to support earlier intervention. Our plan is starting to work, with 380,000 fewer children persistently absent or not attending last year, and numbers continue to fall.
Gillian Keegan
It is working. It is not going to stick on the trajectory, because we have already turned around the trajectory. Since the pandemic, it is already falling in England. There is no better example of the Labour party having no plan and just sniping from the sidelines than on the question of attendance. I suggest that Labour Members look at other countries around the world because this is a global phenomenon. We have daily data that is almost unique, which is why we are now reducing the figures. If we look at Wales—Labour-run Wales—we see that attendance in school is much worse, at nearly eight days lower per pupil.
Chi Onwurah
The Secretary of State says that keeping children in school is her top priority, but since 2016 persistent absence in Newcastle has more than doubled and severe absence is up 282%. She says it is a global phenomenon, but what matters is what happens in schools in Newcastle. Labour’s plan for schools is supported by Sir Kevan Collins. Why will she not support it? What is she going to do about this, because we need to see change now?
Gillian Keegan
The hon. Lady may have mixed up a couple of things there, but the plan to get children back into school is to have daily attendance data, which we introduced and sent out to every local authority. Some local authorities do not perform as well—perhaps the hon. Lady’s is one of those—but we send out daily data so that they can identify exactly where the schools are. We are working with attendance hubs, which we are introducing across the country. For individual one-to-one attention we have attendance mentors. We have a national campaign and a cross-Government action alliance, all of which has meant that England has a 7.5% absence rate, compared with 11.5% in Wales, and it is much higher in most countries around the world. We have a plan, and we are delivering on it.
Robert Halfon
I would be delighted to come to Grimsby. I congratulate my hon. Friend on becoming the apprenticeship diversity champion. She is a skills champion, and what she is doing on careers and mentoring in Grimsby is a model example of what should be done across the country.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)
We are investing very heavily in breakfast clubs. This is another area in which we think that targeting support matters. That includes secondary schools, not just primary schools, as the Labour party suggests.
Oral Answers to Questions
Chi Onwurah Excerpts(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Robert Halfon)
My Department has made a one-off reallocation of funding to add £15 million to this year’s student premium, now worth £276 million. Universities can support disadvantaged students by drawing on this student premium and their own hardship funds, and many universities such as Newcastle and Northumbria have allocated funds to support disadvantaged students.
Chi Onwurah
Newcastle University student union’s recent cost of living crisis survey revealed that 41% of students had considered dropping out due to financial pressures. They are trying to balance studying with part-time and full-time jobs, and they feel increasingly isolated and exhausted. The student union food bank is restocked daily and is emptied quickly, with the record being within seven minutes. The Minister knows that his additional hardship fund works out at about £10 per student, and students are £1,500 worse off because of the mismanagement of maintenance loans. Why is he punishing students like this?
Robert Halfon
Of course I recognise that some students are facing hardship with the cost of living challenges, like many people up and down the country. The £276 million is a lot of money that universities can draw on. As I mentioned, there has been an increase of £15 million. Students in private accommodation can get a £400 rebate on their energy bills. We have frozen tuition fees for the past few years; by 2024-25, they will have been frozen for seven years. We have increased maximum loans and grants by 2.8% and if students’ incomes fall below a certain level, they can reapply to get their loans looked at. I really welcome the fact that Newcastle University has increased the package of support available to students to more than £1.7 million—
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Education (Gillian Keegan)
Given this is my first Education questions of 2023, Mr Speaker, I would like to wish you, the House and everyone working in our education sector a happy new year, and to share some of what is to come from my Department.
Later this month, along with the Minister for Children, Families and Wellbeing, my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho), I will be announcing our comprehensive plan to reform children’s social care. Soon after, we will return to bring forward our transformational improvement plans to support children with special educational needs.
I hope Members will join me in celebrating National Apprenticeship Week in February, and in April our schools will have something to celebrate as they receive their funding, which will include the £2 billion uplift announced at the autumn statement. This will see overall funding rise by 15% in just two years. We are investing more in our schools than ever before. By 2024-25, it will be £58.8 billion, the highest real-terms spending in history.
Chi Onwurah
Special educational needs provision in school matters. So many parents contact me either because they cannot access such provision or because it is inadequate. One family with two neurodiverse children suffering from bullying and self-harm found that their school’s SEN policy did not even mention autism or neurodiversity. The Minister said this morning that the Government’s response to the review will be published imminently. Can she confirm that it will be published within the month and that the clear standards she mentioned will be enforced?
Gillian Keegan
I take special educational needs very seriously, as does the Minister for Children, Families and Wellbeing. It will be published very soon, so there is not long to wait. I am sure the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) will be delighted with the improvement plan, which we will publish very early in the new year.
Adoption: Support for Birth Families
Chi Onwurah Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
I recognise that the headlines from the House today will be about the Chancellor’s autumn statement, but I am afraid that he has only made things worse for those whose lives are the subject of my Adjournment debate. Nevertheless, I am pleased to have secured this debate on a subject that is often overlooked by Chancellors, Prime Ministers and many others. I am talking about the adoption process by which children are removed from their birth parents and placed in the care of, and ultimately adopted by, parents other than their birth parents.
This year’s John Lewis Christmas advert gives a moving and positive representation of the adoption and care sector, and has brought welcome attention to the topic. I am not ashamed to say that it also brought tears to my eyes when I watched it on the train to the north- east last week. I commend the work of John Lewis and Action for Children on the advert.
Children are the most vulnerable in our society, so it is imperative that the child’s interest is first and foremost in the care and adoption process. Indeed, I would go further and say that the care and adoption process can be successful only if it is child-centred and everyone involved upholds that principle.
That does not mean, however, that birth parents should go without support. For every child adopted, there is a parent or parents who have to go through the process of losing their child. They are often parents in challenging and difficult circumstances, some of whom may not have the social or educational skills to easily navigate the complex adoption process, which is traumatic for many. It is not in the child’s interest to leave their parents without help, for the sake of the parents and the child, because a child placed in care and/or adopted may one day want to make contact with their parents, as is their right.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Lady for bringing this debate forward; I spoke to her beforehand. Does she agree that, often, when children are not told that they have been adopted, or when information about their birth parents is kept hidden from them, that can be a distressing occurrence for adoptive parents that can cause resentment and, in some cases, even a complete breakdown of the relationship between the adoptive parents and the child?
Chi Onwurah
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and he makes a good point. I would always recommend honesty and transparency in everything and there can obviously be challenges where that is not followed. As I said, everything should be done in the long-term interests of the child.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this debate on birth parents, because we know that they often experience a lot of trauma, not least in the age of social media where they can have unsupported contact with their birth child and even more trauma can occur as a result. That is why the all-party parliamentary group for adoption and permanence published a report looking at strengthening families, including the voices of birth parents. Does she not think it is important for those voices to be heard throughout the adoption process?
Chi Onwurah
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and commend the work of the APPG. I called this debate to give more exposure and a greater voice to birth parents, because she is absolutely right that the subject is not discussed enough. She talks about the contact between children and their birth parents, which is likely to be more constructive if birth parents have been supported through the adoption process and beyond.
That is why I want to bring the House’s attention to the work of a unique local charity in my constituency that provides invaluable support to birth parents. It is unique because Families in Care is a charity for birth parents that was set up by birth parents. To my knowledge, it is the only charity in the country that offers the services that it offers. It was originally set up in 1986 by birth parents of adopted children as a parent-led support group. It became a charity in 1992 and employed its first part-time worker. Since its beginning, the delivery model has been nurturing, non-judgmental, holistic and, most importantly, done in partnership with birth parents. My hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) had a university placement with this charity. She is unable to be here this evening, but wanted me to pass on that she gained invaluable experience from her time with Families in Care.
Before I say more about Families in Care, I want to discuss the difficult climate in which it operates. Removing a child from their parents should be a last resort, but that last resort is necessary—all too necessary—and it happens all too often. Over 80,000 children are currently in care in England. This is an all-time high, and it means more children who need our support and more birth parents who need support. The erosion in early help for vulnerable families in recent years, particularly since the Conservative Government came into office in 2010, has been shocking. More than 1,300 Sure Start centres across the UK have closed since 2010, a loss that is not nearly matched by the paltry commitment to open family hubs in just 75 locations. I hope the Minister recognises the impact of that on the adoption and care system.
My constituency in Newcastle has been hit particularly hard. Newcastle saw a 20% increase in the number of looked-after children between 2018 and 2021 alone. The North East Child Poverty Commission’s report this year shows that the north-east has the highest proportion of looked-after children in England, at 108 per 10,000 children. According to the directors of north-east children’s services, this means:
“The North East is in a vicious cycle with levels of demand causing pressure across the system and spiralling costs.”
Analysis from the University of Liverpool shows that the rise in cared-for children has coincided with rising child poverty. Given that, under the Conservatives, the north-east has become the child poverty capital of the country, this is particularly concerning for us. We are once again, after today’s announcements, faced with real-terms public sector cuts, and local authorities—already under enormous pressure—and working people are being expected to bear the burden. Newcastle City Council will have to make the £25 million it spends on children in care go further, placing yet more pressure on the care system and the parents themselves.
However, this is not the only issue. There are inequalities in adoption rates and the number of children coming into care, both in levels of deprivation and ethnicity. In 2020 in Newcastle, white children left social care settings for adoption at double the rate at which non-white children left social care settings for adoption. Gypsy, Roma and Traveller groups are also over-represented in the care system, and are more likely to experience low rates of adoption and fostering compared with national averages.
It is for this reason that the work of Families in Care is so important. The charity provides free, independent and specialist advocacy support, counselling and education for birth parents who are involved in child protection and care or adoption proceedings in Newcastle. Families in Care has been supported since its establishment by Newcastle City Council. However, it remains independent of the local authority, working in collaboration with the council’s children’s services to provide an invaluable mediating service.
I visited Families in Care in October this year, and I was struck by the atmosphere of support, welcome and warmth. I learned of the bespoke care, mediation, wellbeing support and counselling that families receive during all stages of the adoption process before, during and well beyond court proceedings. This bespoke care includes Len, its therapy dog, who I was fortunate to meet. I am told his nickname is Red Len, which is a reference to his beautiful ginger coat and apparently also to his politics, but as I do not speak Husky, I was unable to verify that.
Families in Care also offers learning and development sessions, mediations, therapeutic art, meditation and weekly mental health drop-ins over a cup of tea for parents. I saw one poignant and beautiful work of art, a bright collage of art and craft materials coming together to create a tree wrapped in a rainbow. It carried a powerful message to parents:
“Nothing is impossible, the word itself says I’m possible.”
Through being rooted in the community, and having been established by parents going through the adoption process, the charity is well placed to speak up for birth parents.
Chi Onwurah
Let me share with the House some of the experiences of birth parents, to give them a greater voice. The first story comes from a constituent—a mother, and a survivor of domestic violence and coercive control during pregnancy. I heard how in her case, social workers did not help her mental wellbeing, as she had to re-explain her situation to six different social workers, which she said was retraumatising. She told me how the situation was totally transformed by Families in Care, and said:
“I felt totally alone before meeting Families in Care.”
I was also contacted by another mother who felt overwhelmed by the shame and guilt associated with going to court. She felt ostracised even by her own family, but Families in Care gave her someone she could cry with or lean on for support, and someone she felt was truly in her corner.
Parents journey together with Families in Care, and they work on a peer-to-peer basis. Parents who have come through Families in Care often stay and help other parents who are going through the same situation that they were in previously. That is because, as my constituent put it,
“sometimes a social worker doesn’t look at things from the same perspective as a parent does.”
Families in Care epitomises the value of peer-to-peer mentoring, but much more can still be done to support victims, particularly victims of domestic abuse, through the adoption and care process. One constituent told me that she was refused a picture of her child once the adoption process had been completed. Will the Minister explain why that would be the case, especially when the parent had been subject to domestic abuse and was a victim of coercive behaviour?
What support are the Government planning to introduce to support birth parents through the adoption process? Families in Care provides a unique and vital service to birth parents in Newcastle, and not surprisingly it is overwhelmed by demand in Newcastle and far beyond. Its funding and support is confined to the city of Newcastle, but the demand is not. I know work has been done to explore sharing the expertise of Families in Care with other local authority areas, and it has also been working with a family court judge, Stephen Wildblood, in Avon, North Somerset and Gloucestershire, to see where that model may be best placed to succeed elsewhere, as well as in Newcastle. Families in Care receives consistent and growing demand for its services from across the country. Given the trends in child social care, which I have outlined, will the Minister work proactively with it to identify and assess areas of the UK where its model can be used or adapted to make a real difference to parents? Will her Department work with Families in Care to assess the value of peer-to-peer mentoring for the birth parents of children in care, and take that assessment forward to share across Departments?
When researching for this debate, I found it hard to find robust and nationwide data on birth parents, for example when trying to assess the average education status, or whether the impression that adoptive parents tend to come from the middle classes but birth parents come from the working class has robust data beneath it. I found it hard to find that data. In responding, will the Minister let me know whether that data is available? If it is not, will she put a programme in place to collect it? We need to know more about the reasons for and the likelihood of parents giving up their children or having them taken away from them to be adopted. Most importantly, will she assure me that she will put a support plan in place to ensure that birth parents, wherever they are in our country, receive the peer-to-peer support that they need?
Claire Coutinho
I thank the hon. Lady for that important intervention. Yes, I recognise there is retention and churn in the social care worker system. I am looking at that very closely and am happy to talk to her about it further. Consistency means the ability to build a proper relationship. That means so much in terms of trust, but also in terms of access to the services that we all know are important, because it increases the likelihood of someone actually taking them up.
Part of our adoption strategy includes driving improvement for contact services, which was mentioned. Where ongoing contact with an adopted child is agreed, support for birth parents or family members can help to ensure that the contact is a positive experience for the adopted child. We know that having contact with birth parents is really important for a child’s sense of their past and identity. I spoke this week to birth parents and care-experienced people who talked about the trauma for children of not really understanding where they come from. We are working very hard with regional adoption agency leaders to ensure that contact services provide better support and are a positive experience for all those who are involved, including birth parents.
On top of that, regional adoption agency leaders have established a birth parent reference group. That is really important, because the group will help to shape plans for developing better information for birth parents and family members. It will create resources for other birth parents around letterbox contact, ensuring it is easier to navigate and ensuring that birth parents are involved during the further development of any adoption services who have some of that co-design.
Chi Onwurah
I thank the Minister for the comments she is making and for setting out some of the issues in the adoption process for birth parents. Will she focus on peer-to-peer support, too? The support she references is provided by agencies. As the charity and the parents who contacted me said, peer-to-peer support is particularly important, especially where there is a sense of guilt, trauma or shame associated with engaging with, say, an adoption agency.
Claire Coutinho
I thank the hon. Lady; that is an excellent point. I have seen, in my work in social justice areas over the years, how much of a difference peer-to-peer support makes, particularly in encouraging people to take up services that they sometimes see as the enemy. Having a trusted person saying, “Actually, this is quite good” makes all the difference. I will take that away, but I absolutely agree with her about that.
I will just briefly touch on the independent review of children’s social care, which hon. Members will know well. The review sets out recommendations for the care system and, in terms of the topics they have raised, sets a really positive direction. The review staff spoke with a great number of birth parents to understand their needs and their experience of the care system. It includes lots of recommendations to strengthen family help systems, getting them that early help that was spoken about. It also talked about family help and support being available to birth parents when adoption is being considered for a child, after a decision has been made to place a child for adoption and after a child has been adopted as well. The review also made proposals to improve the contact between birth parents and the adopted child. It is important that we get this right for children and families, and we are rapidly working up an ambitious and detailed implementation strategy in response to the review.
I will touch on court proceedings, because I know that birth parents have described those as being particularly adversarial and traumatic. They have described a lack of compassion and kindness, as well as a lack of communication and updates on what is happening. The care review flagged the importance of making the court process more accessible for parents during family law proceedings. I am pleased to say that I have met some of the team on the cross-sector public law working group, who are looking at how they can improve the process. They are building the evidence base and starting to roll that out to make sure the courts are less adversarial, based on some of the problem-solving approaches in the family drug and alcohol courts, about which I am also very passionate.
In conclusion, I thank the hon. Member—
Chi Onwurah
I am keen to keep the Minister on her feet. I thank her for her response. However, on the role of the charity in my constituency and peer-to-peer care, I urge her to agree to a meeting with me or with the charity so that we can take that issue forward.
Claire Coutinho
I would be delighted to, so let me take that away and see what we can do.
Higher Education Reform
Chi Onwurah Excerpts(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
Given the world that we are in now, given the threats that we face and the opportunities that we want to seize, why would any Government make education harder to access, particularly for those from disadvantaged backgrounds? Let me give just one example. The number of students with special educational needs and those on free school meals—as I was—who are attaining GCSE maths and English is falling under this Government. Why should they be excluded from higher education?
Nadhim Zahawi
The simple answer is that they are not; quite the opposite. If the hon. Lady looks at the Government’s track record, she will see that someone from a disadvantaged background is 80% more likely to go to university than was the case a decade ago. We are consulting on how best to deliver the outcomes. If we become obsessed with the outcome of a great education, a great career or embarking on further study, that is the right thing to do, and we will achieve what we all want to see, which is disadvantaged young people getting the education they need. This package includes £75 million that is focused precisely on disadvantaged pupils who need additional help to get that degree. As the Prime Minister has said, talent is evenly spread in our country; opportunity is not.
Budget Resolutions
Chi Onwurah Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
It is a real pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) and her incisive comments. I grew up in a council house in North Kenton, in Newcastle. I went to excellent local state schools, and the NHS made me well when I was ill and saved my mother’s life when she had cancer. I start with that to acknowledge the personal debt I owe to public services. It is a debt that we surely all feel all the more deeply, given the dedication of public service workers during this pandemic, but apparently the Chancellor does not. Yes, he talked about public services. Indeed, he mentioned them 13 times, but unfortunately this Budget is all talk, smoke and mirrors from a Government with no plan to address the three critical crises we are facing: the cost of living crisis, the climate crisis and the covid crisis. There is so much wrong with this Budget, but in the short time I have today, I will highlight five areas: universal credit, science, transport, local government and protecting our communities.
Last week, the Chancellor tried to present a benefit change as a tax cut, as he was no doubt embarrassed at imposing the highest tax burden in 70 years. But the Resolution Foundation calculates that three quarters of the 4.4 million households on universal credit will be worse off due to the Chancellor’s choices, including taking £20 per week away from each and every one of the 16,000 families on universal credit in Newcastle Central. And that is with real wages having fallen in every region of England by over £23 per week on average since the Tories came to power. That is all we really need to know about this Government: they are making the poorest poorer while cutting taxes on Amazon and champagne. Fortunately, in Newcastle, we have generous Geordies who will support our local food bank, but they should not have to.
We do not generally think of science as a public service, but it is certainly a public good and the foundation of our future economic prosperity and global competitiveness. The Chancellor echoed the Prime Minister’s talk of a science superpower, but he went quickly over the bit where he actually broke the Prime Minister’s commitment to doubling the science spend by 2024-25, delaying it by two years at a cost of £8 billion in private sector investment. In science, as elsewhere, levelling up is nothing but a slogan. The Chancellor’s £1.4 million global Britain investment fund purports to spread economic opportunities across the UK by investing in life sciences, the automotive industry and manufacturing. Those are all sectors the north-east has considerable strengths in and they are critical for addressing climate change. Yet, for example, Government investment in life sciences is just £22 per person in the north, which is two fifths of the £55 per person invested in the south—in the midlands, it is just £16 per person. How will we deliver good, green, sustainable jobs across the north-east, and indeed in all our regions, without investment in science?
The north-east also lost out on transport. I have said many times in this House, and I will say it again, that it costs more to go four measly stops up the West Road in Newcastle than it does to traverse the whole of London on a bus. Lucy Winskell, the chair of the North East local enterprise partnership, was clear that
“government has announced significant transport investment across the rest of the North but not in the North East”.
Communities in Newcastle expect to feel safe and protected—this is the first duty of a Government—yet even when the Government’s promised police officer recruitment is completed we will still have fewer officers than we did in 2010, while police community support officer numbers have fallen by 40%. This Budget did nothing to make our communities safer by tackling the root causes of antisocial behaviour, which mars the life of so many of my constituents. Youth services are still waiting for the £500 million funding they were promised more than two years ago, which is leaving frontline youth services on their knees and young people without vital support and guidance that they need.
However, the Chancellor expects council tax payers in Newcastle to pay more, having cut central Government funding for Newcastle City Council in half. This council tax rise, made in Whitehall, will not begin to make up for the impact of inflation, never mind a decade of austerity and the demands of the social care system. All this comes while across Newcastle children play in litter because the Government will not take plastic pollution seriously or give our council the powers it deserves.
The Tories came into power in 2010 and wrecked our recovery from the financial crisis in the name of austerity. This Budget is an attempt by the Chancellor to position himself for the next Tory leadership election, claiming the credit for repairing the damage of his Tory predecessors while actually entrenching inequality and further neglecting the north. But the north will remember.
Oral Answers to Questions
Chi Onwurah Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Education (Nadhim Zahawi)
We value excellent provision in all subjects, including the arts. We recently rationalised the strategic priorities grant to better meet the funding needs of high-cost, strategically important subjects, including in science, technology, engineering and maths.
Chi Onwurah
I know that the Secretary of State studied engineering, and as a chartered engineer myself, I believe it is essential to invest in STEM skills. However, doing so at the expense of arts subjects shows that the Government really are not serious about our future economy. How will he ensure that our £111 billion creative industries have the skills and people they need when he is cutting in half the subsidy for arts subjects? Is he aware that only a fifth of our artists, performers and so on are from working-class backgrounds as it is?
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for mentioning my engineering background. As part of the same reform programme, we have asked the Office for Students to invest an additional £10 million in our world-leading specialist providers, many of which specialise in arts provision. On providers losing funding in the reallocation as we send a clear message on STEM, I remind her that that income loss amounts to about 0.05% of those providers’ estimated total income.
Covid-19: Education Settings
Chi Onwurah Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Gavin Williamson
I know that my hon. Friend is a great champion for not only the schools in his constituency, but children with special educational needs—we all have a shared passion to do more for them. He is tempting me into public discussions with Her Majesty’s Treasury over the Dispatch Box and straight to the Chancellor. Although I am tempted and he is desperately trying to lure me down that path, I will decline on this occasion to enter that public discourse. But of course children with special educational needs are a top priority for us, and I would certainly expect that to be properly reflected in any future settlements.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
I welcome the end of mandatory bubble isolation, which has caused such disruption to parents, teachers and children, but the impact of covid continues and the poorest are hardest hit. Over the past five years, child poverty in my constituency has risen by 13 percentage points, to 45%, which is six times the national average increase. So what additional support can children in my constituency expect, apart from the catch-up plan, which the Government’s own educational recovery commissioner described as “feeble”?
Gavin Williamson
One thing we can do to best help all children across the country is keep up the continued drive to raise standards across our schools. The hon. Lady dismisses the more than £3 billion of investment that we have made, but it is important investment, targeted at the interventions that will deliver the biggest benefit to her constituents.
Ofsted Review of Sexual Abuse in Schools and Colleges
Chi Onwurah Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Vicky Ford
As ever, my hon. Friend raises an important question, which is about how schools and colleges co-operate with safeguarding partners. They are under a statutory duty to co-operate with those partners once they are named as a relevant agency to that partnership. Our guidance is clear that we expect all schools to be brought into local safeguarding arrangements, and that is one reason why we have asked all our local safeguarding partnerships across the country to review now how that system is working locally.
We want to make sure that our safeguarding partners are supporting our schools. It is really important that a school feels it has a relationship with, for example, the police so that if it has a sensitive issue it wants to discuss with them, that can be done with somebody who understands children and young people, understands the behaviour and understands the school. It is about having that sort of closeness of relationship to support each other. That is what I have been told by headteachers again and again, and that is what I would like to see—that sort of close relationship working through those partnerships to keep schools safe. I believe that schools want to do that, and we need to ensure that our safeguarding partnerships are working hand in hand with our schools.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab) [V]
Sexism and sexual harassment harm girls and boys in their experience of school and help establish a toxic sexual culture, which then infects our streets, our workplaces, our universities and our Parliament. Four years ago, more than three quarters of secondary school students were unsure or not aware of the existence of any policies or practices in their school related to preventing sexism. What difference will students in primary and secondary school in Newcastle see as a result of today’s statement, and when?
Vicky Ford
The hon. Member is absolutely right that this can and does harm boys as well as girls. There are tales I have heard of boys also having suffered from having images of themselves widely shared with their peer groups. The abuse, bullying and harassment has led to devastating mental wellbeing consequences for the boys, and it is important that we recognise that as well.
There are four immediate actions that we are taking today. The first is to support designated safeguarding leads in schools, such as in Newcastle. They do excellent work, but many of them have asked for access to better advice, the sharing of best practice and continuous professional development, all of which we are working on through what I mentioned in my statement.
As I said, we will be increasing the funding for the bespoke NSPCC helpline, so that children in Newcastle and elsewhere, if they have suffered abuse, can pick up the phone and call that line. In fact, they can type in—many kids would rather send a text message to helplines than actually ring them. That advice is there.
Our teachers will get the extra support that we want to put in on how they can deliver the RSHE curriculum. As I have said, we are looking, for example, at better ways that we can help older children support younger children in this as well.
The fourth action we will be taking, which will be important in Newcastle as well as everywhere else, is making sure that our safeguarding partnerships—police, health and local authority children’s social care—absolutely ensure that the safeguarding arrangements that it is vital they wrap around children are working well in every single local area.
University Students: Compensation for Lost Teaching and Rent
Chi Onwurah Excerpts(3 years ago)
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Michelle Donelan
We had to make this decision on balance in relation to all the things that we were relaxing, because everything—even something with the slightest risk—could impact our pathway out of the pandemic. My hon. Friend is right: one of our key concerns was the mass movement of students—potentially up to 500,000 additional students—across England and the UK and the formation of new households.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab) [V]
Last month, I held an open meeting with students in my constituency. They raised issues including financial hardship—current funding is wholly inadequate—and mental wellbeing, lack of planning, tuition fees, rent, professional accreditation and digital exclusion. This is not a question of consumer rights, as the Minister suggests; it is a question of students’ futures after the pandemic. I have written to the Secretary of State, but what does the Minister say to students in Newcastle upon Tyne Central who feel wholly abandoned by this Government?
Michelle Donelan
Once again, I reiterate that the Government appreciate how difficult and challenging this has been for students. It has not been the university experience that any of us would have wanted for them, and that is why we are working with universities to build back on the student experience as soon as they return. We are also working on a package of support for those who are graduating this year.
I have asked universities throughout the pandemic to prioritise mental health, setting up Student Space with the OfS, which is a £3 million additional platform, and setting up a working group and a Department for Education action group co-chaired by the Minister for Children and Families. We have now dedicated an additional £50 million to mental health via the OfS through the teaching grant next year. This is a priority for the Government, and we recognise the impact that the pandemic has had on the wellbeing and mental health of students.
Students’ Return to Universities
Chi Onwurah Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Gavin Williamson
We all know the importance that we all place on being with our families at Christmas, and it is vital that we set out clearly that we are going to ensure that all students can do so this Christmas. We have to set that in the context of what is happening nationally, and we will work with the Department of Health and the university sector to ensure that all those youngsters who are currently studying and want to return to their loved ones can do so—not just in Darlington, but right across the country.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
The Secretary of State says that his Government prioritise education and that he stands behind universities, but he knows that the only financial support the sector has received is to address the shortfall in scientific research funding, which is critical but does not have an impact on the learning experience. Will he specify the support that Newcastle University in my constituency will receive to ensure that 30,000 students receive a supportive, safe educational experience in a city with the second highest coronavirus infection rate in the country?
Gavin Williamson
I spelt out in the statement the £256 million that was made available for universities to support students to continue their studies. We also reprofiled student loans to provide support and have continuously worked with the sector. We have set up a restructuring regime for universities that are facing financial hardship and difficulty, so that they can work with us and we can support them.