Oral Answers to Questions

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. Childcare is vital for working parents, which is why this Government introduced the 30-hour entitlement and why we are investing £3.6 billion in early years this year. Breakfast and after-school clubs are also able to open and schools should be working to resume this provision from the start of this term. We have updated our guidance for providers. Any parent who may be struggling to find early years provision should contact their local authority, but I hope the hon. Lady will join me in welcoming the funding for maintained nursery schools, including three in her constituency.[Official Report, 14 September 2020, Vol. 680, c. 2MC.]

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

What recent discussions he has had with school leaders on providing financial support for costs incurred during the covid-19 outbreak.

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

Ministers and officials have been in regular contact with representatives of schools and academy trusts on all aspects of the Government’s covid response, including financial issues. Schools have been able to claim funds to meet certain additional costs and we are providing £1 billion in catch-up funding.

[Chi Onwurah]

Schools in Newcastle went back this week and teachers have spent the summer working incredibly hard to make them covid secure while dealing with the exams debacle. Sacred Heart school in my constituency tells me that it has had to alter classrooms; it has bought visors, face masks and sanitisers; and it has had to increase cleaning rotas and produce online video guidance for every year group. This has cost tens of thousands of pounds, following years of budget cuts. The Minister cannot give them their summer back, but he can give them their money back. Will he do so?

[Nick Gibb]

I join the hon. Lady in paying tribute to the headteachers, teachers and other staff up and down the country who have worked tirelessly to get their schools ready to welcome back students in a safe way from this September. Schools have been able to claim for unavoidable costs incurred between March and July caused by the pandemic that cannot be met from the school’s existing resources—up to £75,000, depending on the size of the school. Core schools funding this year has risen by an additional £2.6 billion. That is part of a three-year settlement, which is the biggest funding boost in a decade. Although of course we keep these issues under review, our priority for additional funding has been to put the maximum possible into catch-up funding—some £1 billion—to schools to enable them to help young people to catch up on their lost education.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Williamson]

Maybe in anticipation of the question, Cornwall College has already been a beneficiary of £1.4 million of extra money heading towards it as a result of our commitment to putting more money into further education in capital build. I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend and the college to discuss further their plans for St Austell and to hear about how they want to transform educational outcomes for those not just in St Austell but more widely in Cornwall.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister talked of a “mutant algorithm” and the Secretary of State disclaimed all knowledge of its decisions as if it was some kind of educational horoscope. Will he confirm for us today that he recognises that algorithms are neither biology nor astrology but complex data manipulation tools, which do what they are told to do, which cannot predict the performance of individuals, and which require a robust regulatory framework before being used in the public or private sector?

[Gavin Williamson]

I very much agree with the fact that there needs to be a robust regulatory framework around any use of algorithms. Algorithms are used every single year in the management of grade boundaries as youngsters are awarded both GCSEs and A-levels. That has always been the case and will always be the case.

Educational Settings

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

Our schools are not only amazing centres of learning but are centres of support for children living in poverty, including 48% of children in Newcastle upon Tyne Central. On free school meals, is the Secretary of State, like Newcastle City Council, looking at ensuring the continued delivery of hot meals to children’s homes? He talks of encouraging online learning, but there is a digital divide in this country and the libraries that help to close that divide are themselves closing. Will he guarantee access to broadband for all children whose schools are shut?

[Gavin Williamson]

We will certainly be looking at working with local authorities such as Newcastle City Council on making sure we have the broadest provision of meals for children and on how best that is delivered. As I touched on in the statement, we will look at how we can grow and expand that not just in Newcastle but in many other areas.

The hon. Lady highlights an important point about the digital divide in this country, and we will be looking at working with schools to ensure that pupils who do not have access to digital resources can have other resources that enable them to learn when schools are closed.

English for Speakers of Other Languages

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Preet Kaur Gill]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important intervention, and he is right. So many Members across the House have been campaigning for this over the past decade. I hope that the Minister will respond to his request.

Last month a report by the Government’s social research team, using methodology agreed with the Department for Education, found that the demand for English language teaching was high, with almost three quarters of survey respondents reporting a “significant demand” for English language learning provision in the communities they serve. However, providers are struggling to meet that demand. Over half the respondents found it “fairly difficult” to meet demand, and one in eight found it “very difficult”. The overstretching of these providers hits learners hard, particularly the most vulnerable. New research carried out by Refugee Action found that 59% of refugees did not think they had received enough ESOL teaching hours and only 34% of respondents felt that their current level of English was enough to make them ready to work in the UK.

Third sector organisations are unable to fill these gaps because limited funding means they have little or no access to hardware and technology to support their teaching.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. She makes the point about third sector provision. In my constituency, First Step and the Angelou Centre provide ESOL classes, as well as Newcastle City Council and Newcastle College, but because of the devastating cuts they are in no way able to meet demand. My constituents and refugees in Newcastle often speak to me about the need to increase ESOL provision so that it is not just a lucky few who are able to receive the gift of the English language.

[Preet Kaur Gill]

It is important that we hear first-hand experiences from Members representing their communities about how difficult it has been and the impact of cuts.

It is disingenuous for the Education Secretary to praise ESOL as a way towards social mobility and inclusion without providing much needed resources. Women are disproportionately impacted by barriers to ESOL and they miss out on the benefits that those who are able to learn English gain. More than three quarters of parents said that a lack of childcare had been a barrier to their ability to attend English lessons. For those on a low income, practical and logistical barriers exist. A quarter of refugee respondents, for example, had not been able to access any financial assistance to pay for travel to classes. That can mean people are forced to miss classes because they are unable to travel to them.

Some groups are excluded altogether from accessing English, such as asylum seekers, who in England become eligible for funding only if they have been waiting for a decision on their claim for six months or longer. That includes a broader issue with the current resettlement process that researchers from the University of Sussex found is leading

“to a tragic waste of refugees’ unfulfilled potential”.

The Government frequently talk about the importance of ESOL provision for refugees. Back in 2016, after many years of ESOL cuts, pressure from the Opposition Benches, from charities and from civil society organisations forced the Government to give additional funding for people arriving under the Syrian vulnerable person resettlement scheme. Although welcome, this fairly modest pot of money supported only one group of people to learn English, and therefore cannot be seen as a solution to the wider problems of access to ESOL.

The Government’s 2018 integrated communities Green Paper acknowledged the vital importance of English for integration but gave no new money specifically for ESOL. In their 2018 immigration White Paper, the Government committed to

“an ambitious and well-funded English language strategy to ensure that everyone in this country, especially those with newly recognised refugee status, are supported to speak the same language”.

Once again, however, there was no new funding. The Government’s failure to act flies in the face of public opinion, which is strongly in favour of supporting people to learn English. For example, recent independent polling by YouGov shows that 91% of the British public believe it is important that refugees who come to the UK learn to speak English. If the Government are serious about allowing everyone the possibility to learn English, investment must be made, not empty promises.

Informal ESOL learning groups run by volunteers and community organisations across the country are a vital part of learning, and we know that they are often fantastic community assets. There is good work ongoing to help reach learners in segmented communities, and we should continue to work to ensure that such groups are joined up and co-ordinated.

There are other innovative forms of ESOL that should also be encouraged. In September, the adult education budget will be devolved to six combined authorities and the Greater London Authority, allowing for creative regional ways of delivering ESOL teaching. For example, the West Midlands Combined Authority is currently exploring ways of delivering more ESOL in workplaces, specific to certain sectors, to firm up the link between learning English and employment. Those new powers and responsibilities need to be matched with appropriate resources, so will the Minister tell us what they will be?

Thus far the Government have ignored the moral case, but perhaps they will listen to the economic one. Much of people’s passion to learn English comes from their desire to find work. Although it is certainly only part of the integration picture, for many it is the main motivation to learn. If people had access to eight hours of ESOL classes a week, the taxpayer would be fully reimbursed for two years of those classes after an individual’s first eight months of employment at the national average wage. In the case of supporting refugees to access ESOL, the cost of providing that volume of learning would be just £42 million a year.

Moreover, leaving people to flounder without the ability to speak the language can have a detrimental effect on their mental health and wellbeing, and lead to isolation and loneliness, all of which are extremely costly to the state and society. Investing in people who want to learn English is a smart thing to do.

[Chi Onwurah]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Will she join me in suggesting that the Minister might do well to look at the German example? All refugees in Germany have access to a 600-hour language course, which enables them to learn to speak German. Clearly the German Government and the German economy see an economic return on that investment, as well as a social return in terms of mental wellbeing.

[Preet Kaur Gill]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important intervention. I was not aware of the German example, and I think that the Minister will be keen to look at it after this debate.

All political parties talk of the importance of helping people to become productive, equal partners in their communities, and supporting people such as Nour to achieve their goals. However, too often the cuts to ESOL that we have seen under the coalition and Conservative Governments have prevented that from happening.

Today I want to ask the Minister four questions. First, will she act now to ensure that everyone can learn English? Secondly, will she commit to producing a formal ESOL strategy for England? Thirdly, what steps is she taking to ensure that people who face particular barriers to learning, such as those with caring responsibilities or difficult travel arrangements, are given the resources they need to overcome them, and to ensure that ESOL provision is always accessible? Finally, in order to have an inclusive, welcoming country, additional investment is necessary to ensure that everyone who needs it is given the opportunity to access high-quality, sufficient English language teaching, so will she support my call and take these demands to the Treasury in advance of the forthcoming spending review?

Further Education Funding

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Richard Graham]

The apprenticeship levy is an issue in itself, which I do not intend to address today, because it is slightly peripheral to what we can achieve in an hour and a half on the overall situation for further education colleges. The hon. Gentleman is right that there are ongoing issues, which I know the skills Minister is doing her best to tackle, and I am grateful to him for raising them.

More funding can achieve results in a couple of slightly softer areas, which are worth mentioning. The challenge around mental health is not unique to further education but exists across the education sector. There is no doubt about it: young students in general are facing more challenges than in the past. Funding to ensure that they get the support they need while at college is incredibly important and should increase their resilience and contribute to better results and opportunities. It is worth adding that to the checklist of things that could be achieved through more funding.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

rose—

[Richard Graham]

Lastly, at the soft end of what could be done, there is a range of enrichment activities, particularly for students aged 16 to 18, where colleges have opportunities to demonstrate that they can compete with other, better funded institutions.

Before I turn to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), who is from the engineering sector and a great advocate for it, I will just touch on a few general facts, which it is useful for us to bear in mind. There are 266 colleges in England—almost one college for every two constituencies. They educate the majority of 16 to 18-year-olds and 2.2 million other young people and adults. On average, there are 1,200 apprenticeships in every further education college. Students who are over 19 generate an additional £70 billion for the economy over their lifetime.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Graham]

I will just make a bit of progress, then I will come to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and then the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss).

The average pay for a college teacher—a number of colleagues have mentioned salaries as an issue—is £30,000, compared to £37,000 for a school teacher. I find that a particularly interesting statistic because it implies that we put a lower value on further education teachers than school teachers, which cannot be right. It is also worth highlighting that in 2017 alone the turnover rate in further education was 17%—almost one in five—which is higher than the rate in schools. As a result of funding issues, 63% of colleges have been making compulsory redundancies. If this was a business, we would have to assume that it was in decline. I think we would all say that it is time that we halted and reversed that process.

[Chi Onwurah]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to highlight the devastating impact that lack of funding for further education is having, particularly on young people. Colleges such as Newcastle College in my constituency are doing great work in really difficult circumstances. Does he agree that adult education and lifelong learning, such as that delivered by the Workers’ Educational Association in hard-to-reach communities in Newcastle—which has also been severely cut and is likely to be cut more in the future—provides the kind of opportunities that we need, particularly for productivity in the fourth industrial revolution, as jobs change in the future?

[Richard Graham]

The short answer is that I agree. Qualifications for workers in key sectors have dropped. Qualifications for construction workers have dropped from 98,000 to 62,000. For engineers, the sector from which the hon. Lady comes, including plumbers and electricians, the figure has dropped from 145,000 to 46,000. That is a huge drop in a relatively short space of time, precisely at the moment when we need more engineers in this country, to take forward our technology revolution.

School Funding

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

I have been a Member of this House for 14 years. Interestingly, for the first decade school funding was not especially an issue in my constituency. The debates that we had with the local education authority and West Sussex County Council were more about standards. That is perhaps not surprising, because overall funding per pupil in this country rose considerably over that period, reaching a peak in 2015, when it was 60% higher than in 2000. Overall, until 2015, there was a very big increase in spending per pupil, but from then on, although overall funding for schools was increased, costs—some of which have been alluded to—rose faster. That drew the attention of schools in my constituency to the fact that our county is the worst-funded county education authority and the third-worst funded education authority in the whole country. It is therefore no surprise that three Members from West Sussex have contributed to this debate.

We all accept that needs are considerably higher in other areas of the country. I represent an affluent rural constituency and I have hon. Friends in West Sussex who have urban areas in their constituencies whose needs are much higher than mine. Nevertheless, the inequity—the gap—is very large. Spending per pupil in some other areas of the country is between 50% and 70% higher than it is in West Sussex. We were therefore strong supporters of a national fair funding formula, and we benefited from the change. In 2017, West Sussex received an extra £28 million through the national funding formula—an increase of 6.5% in its provision—which went more than halfway towards what the f40 campaign estimated we needed to redress the funding gap.

Nevertheless, the rising costs continued to outstrip the income that was provided. The county council adjusted the formula to give more help to primary schools, some of which actually lost under it, and less help to secondaries. Some of the secondary schools in my constituency face deficit budgets and are very concerned. There is a question about whether the formula recognises the basic costs that every school must meet to run.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for emphasising the importance of per-pupil funding. In Newcastle, per-pupil funding has gone down by £240 since 2010. I grew up getting free school meals at a state school. Does he recognise that people on lower incomes have less capacity to do well when funding cuts are made? The pressure put on parents to make up for the funding cuts is higher and cannot be met.

[Nick Herbert]

Yes, I have already said so. We all recognise that there are areas of the country where needs, and therefore spending needs, are much greater. My point is that all schools need a basic minimum. In the last couple of years, West Sussex schools and some in my constituency have struggled to make ends meet because that minimum has not been reached. Given that their funding was at the lowest level per pupil anyway across the whole country, it is much harder for them to make savings.

When we argued for the national funding formula, we never sought to take money away from other schools; we wanted fair funding for our area. It is much harder to introduce a national funding formula in an environment in which spending is not rising sharply. In the last Budget, a number of public service areas benefited considerably from big increases in spending—notably the national health service, defence and social care. Resources are finite, and every Government must choose how to allocate them. That is exactly what the spending review will be about. There is a case to be made for ensuring that the education budget does not fall in real terms, even if the falls are not quite as catastrophic as has been made out. Spending per pupil in the UK is the highest of any G7 country for primary and secondary schools. If adjustments are allowed to happen and budgets that are already tight receive less money, the only way a lot of schools will make savings is by losing people, and that is not something we want.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

Yes to all the above.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

This month, Newcastle’s £9 million Discovery free school closed following a devastating Ofsted report. The Department for Education has said that it—or rather, the taxpayer—will bear the financial cost. Does the Minister recognise that the cost to the students, the people and the economy will be borne by the city of Newcastle, which should have been responsible for the school in the first place?

Oral Answers to Questions

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Anne Milton]

They are an excellent way to study engineering, and I would point my hon. Friend to degree apprenticeships. The first graduates in digital and technology solutions graduated from Aston last year, as did those in quantity surveying from John Moores in Liverpool. We have put aside £10 million to help with the development of degree apprenticeships, which is a brilliant way for young people to get skills.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

Engineering is a fantastic career, as I know very well, but because there are so few women engineers—just 8%—it is much harder for girls in particular to see engineering role models. Will the Minister tell me who specifically is responsible for getting more engineers into schools to share their experience and more schools into engineering companies, and how is their success being measured?

[Anne Milton]

Some 980 partners have signed up, and I would point to the fact that my hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) is the Government’s envoy for the year of engineering. It is absolutely critical: we are putting real money—I repeat, we are putting real money—into improving the teaching of maths for 16 to 19-year-olds. This is really important. As I said earlier, we are using further education colleges and local authorities to get engineering companies into schools to talk to children and teach them about the prospects that exist. For any young woman, I would point to the gender pay gap, which they will see is large in engineering organisations, so there is an opportunity out there.

School Funding: North-east of England

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Wednesday 26th April 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered school funding in the north-east of England.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Betts. I am very pleased to have secured this important debate, albeit on the second last day that Parliament is sitting in this Session. I know the subject of the debate has made many of my constituents very concerned, as well as those of my fellow MPs from across the north-east who, I am pleased to say, are in attendance today in some numbers and those who unfortunately could not be here. They include my fellow Sunderland MPs, my hon. Friends the Members for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) and for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson). My right hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell), who has raised concerns with the Minister following a meeting he had with headteachers in his area, is also concerned about the effect on his constituency. He asked me to convey his apologies, as he really wanted to be here but had to be elsewhere.

I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop), who has done a lot of work over recent months to raise awareness of our collective concerns about the Government’s negligent approach to schools in our region. I have to add, Mr Betts, that he will be sorely missed when he steps down from this place next week, both by us, his regional colleagues, and, I know, his constituents. I am thrilled to see him in his place today.

Labour Members are passionate advocates for the education of children and young people. It is safe to say that “Education, education, education” is a mantra that we still believe in, yet sadly we have seen this Government ride roughshod over our education system and our local schools, by putting them in an unprecedented position. The Government have not only failed to support our schools; they have made cuts that are fundamentally detrimental to the very viability of some schools.

In my contribution this morning, I will set out why that approach to education is so damaging and why there must be an urgent rethink by Ministers. To do this, I will look at three areas: the national situation; how it is affecting schools in my constituency and the north-east; and, finally, how that approach to our education system is affecting the very nature of our schools, whose purpose is to educate our children and address societal issues, such as child poverty and social mobility.

Before I even get to the crux of why I called this debate, perhaps I can already predict what the Minister will say in response. He will probably say, as the Prime Minister said just a few weeks ago, that this Government have protected the schools budget. However, he knows as well as I do that that is not actually the case, because the real issue is the failure to recognise that our schools are facing real-terms cuts, not cash cuts. It is deeply disingenuous of the Government to say that they have protected school budgets. I suppose it is like the Government paying public sector workers the same as they paid them seven years ago and then saying that they have protected their salaries. Oh, hang on a minute—they have done that as well.

These real-terms cuts are mainly down to inflation, but also four other things: the increases in the cost of employers’ contribution to national insurance and pensions; the abolition of the education services grant to local authorities and academies, which has reduced funding by £600 million; the cost of annual pay awards to teachers, which is set to increase by 4.4% by 2020; and, finally, the impact that the apprenticeship levy will have on maintained schools that take on apprentices. Much of this would not be a problem if the Government were not overseeing static funding for our schools, whereby these real-terms cuts now range from between 6.5% and 8%.

On top of all this, there are growing concerns about what the new schools funding formula will do to schools’ budgets and to staff retention and the schools estate, which is in dire need of an uplift. We might easily come to the conclusion that what we are seeing is the complete mismanagement and neglect of our education system—a perfect storm, if you like.

Instead of coming to terms with those issues, we have seen this Government shove their heads in the sand and carry on regardless, ignoring what many in society—from MPs across the House to teachers and parents themselves—are calling for, which is support for our education system to ensure that our children succeed in life. As the Public Accounts Committee recently stated in its report on school cuts,

“the Government does not seem to understand the pressures that schools are already under.”

I completely agree with that, and I feel frustrated that Ministers are continually ignoring the concerns of a wide cross-section of society on this matter.

School leaders, who know their budgets the most, were surveyed by the National Association of Head Teachers, with 72% saying that their budgets will be untenable by 2019-20. That is not surprising when the National Audit Office has set out that the Department for Education expects schools to make £3 billion of savings a year by 2019-20. It is safe to say that this £3 billion cut—which is what it is, rather than a saving—as well as the funding pressures that schools face and the lack of action to support them through all these difficulties, is leading to headteachers having to make impossible decisions, some of which will ultimately impact negatively on pupils and their education, and all because of what the Minister is doing, or not doing, as the case may be.

This sorry state of affairs that our schools find themselves in is nothing to do with efficiencies; it is all about impoverishing our schools. Shamefully, this approach will hit children living in the poorest areas the most, such as in parts of my constituency and those of my fellow north-east MPs from across the House. We all have deprived communities in our constituencies. That means that more and more children will be held back in life, when we should be supporting them to achieve social mobility and to achieve their full potential.

As I stated at the beginning of my contribution, I know that this is an issue that many of my constituents and teachers in my constituency are concerned about. That is not surprising, when the total budget cuts by 2019 across the city of Sunderland are expected to be over £16 million, which means an average cut of £470 in per-pupil spend and a loss of 439 teachers across the borough of Sunderland.

In my constituency, the worst hit school is Rickleton Primary School, which will see a budget cut of nearly £150,000. That is well above the average cut for primary schools nationally, which is estimated at around £103,000, which is still a huge cut. The headteacher of Rickleton Primary School, Mr Lofthouse, set out clearly in an email to me, which I have sent on to the Secretary of State for Education, what those funding pressures will mean for his school, from potential staff redundancies to the impact on his pupils’ education, and it is not only Mr Lofthouse. Many other headteachers across Sunderland have expressed similarly grave concerns. Those concerns were reflected in a meeting I held in Sunderland recently with around 30 headteachers and school governors, who all agreed that our schools were at a crisis point. That led me to securing this debate today.

The worries of those headteachers and school governors are genuine and showed just how concerned they were for the education of the next generation. In all my 12 years as an MP, I have never been in such a meeting, with headteachers expressing concerns of such gravity. If the Minister had been at that meeting, he would have had his eyes truly opened to the extent of his actions and the gravity of the situation. One headteacher from Sunderland said that if they did not see any support from the Government for their school, it would mean losing five teachers, which would not be legal under the 30:1 pupil-to-teacher ratio. The true scale of this issue was described extremely well by another headteacher at the meeting, who said that balancing their budget had always been hard under successive Governments—they had always had to deal with cuts—but that these cuts will be impossible to achieve. She ended by saying:

“This can’t be done—no joke, not kidding or exaggerating”.

Following that meeting, a joint letter from headteachers in different parts of our region, some of which are represented by MPs who are here today, appealed to parents to make their voices heard by the Government regarding these plans. I for one am proud to stand with my local headteachers, school governors and parents who are deeply concerned about this issue and urge the Minister to rethink his disastrous plans, which will negatively affect the lives of children and young people not only in my constituency, but across the north-east and in other parts of England.

To help the Minister along, I will read an extract from that letter to parents. It will help him understand what is happening on the ground and the plight facing our schools right now. It is unprecedented for teachers from three boroughs to get together and write to parents in this way. The letter states: 

“School leaders in our region have endeavoured to make every conceivable cut to our spending, but are now faced with reducing basic services still further, all to the disadvantage of your child.”

Teachers do not go into this profession to make life harder for children and to make cuts. They do it because they want to help transform the lives of all children, especially those who need extra support the most. What we are currently seeing is the exact opposite, and it is all due to this Government’s shocking failures. As someone who has campaigned during my 12 years as a Member of Parliament to improve the lives of children and young people, especially those living in poverty, I fail to see how the Government’s current actions with our education system will help to alleviate any issues of child poverty and disadvantage in our society.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for calling this debate and the critical point she is making about education in deprived communities and social mobility. The school I went to, Kenton Comprehensive School, has announced that it will cut 24 staff posts, including three teacher posts. The head says that she is making every effort to ensure that that does not impact on the learning experience, but does my hon. Friend agree that at a time when we need to enhance our skills, when the future of every child depends on the education they receive, and when social mobility and social equality are such an issue, it cannot be acceptable to cut education and staff in this way?

[Mrs Hodgson]

I totally agree. As my hon. Friend knows, education is a critical way of reducing poverty in society, as it equips children and young people with the knowledge and tools to get on in life, but the best schools also inspire them to go on and achieve their dreams. That is crucial in the north-east, where an estimated 132,000 children are living in entrenched generational poverty. That is why the cuts are deeply worrying to those of us representing seats in the north-east. The children we represent do not deserve that.

It is a well known fact that poverty impacts on the attainment of children in our society. That was clearly documented in 2015, when GCSE results were analysed. It showed that 36.7% of disadvantaged pupils received five A* to C grades, compared with 64.7% of all pupils. In this country, there is a strong correlation between parental social background and children’s test scores, particularly when compared with other developed countries, where it is less so. This is compounded by the fact that children in some of England’s most disadvantaged areas are 27 times more likely to go to an inadequate school than children living in the least deprived areas. That is why it is important that schools are used as a conduit to alleviate some of the issues that children in poverty face and to ensure that they get the best possible start in life.

Poverty is not inevitable. We do not need to see poverty in our society. What poverty tells us is that, due to a lack of political will, innovative thinking and a drive to act, we have failed as a society to address the social and economic issues that cause poverty. We have seen none of those things when it comes to school budget cuts. Instead we are seeing further social separation and division. That is seen quite plainly in the Government’s pet project, where they plan to pump millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money into grammar schools and the rolling out of more free schools and academies, instead of supporting what parents and teachers are calling for, which is for their child’s current school to be funded properly. That was brought to light just today with the publication this morning of the Public Account Committee report. It called the Government’s free school policy “incoherent” and wasteful, with the Department for Education spending over the odds for schools and new free school places in areas where they were not needed, because there was not demand. Why can we not take some of this wasteful spending—the Public Accounts Committee is cross-party and it knows what it is talking about—and use it to mitigate the terrible funding cuts that our schools are facing?

In conclusion, for the sake of the children who live in my constituency, but also those of other MPs across the north-east, the Minister must rethink his and his Department’s approach to education without delay. Our education system should be funded fully and fairly, so that it can not only educate our children, but use its power to help improve our society. I hope the Minister will truly listen to this debate and take all our concerns into consideration, especially those of teachers and parents. Investing in education is investing in our children’s and Britain’s future. Those children in the classroom today are our future workforce. They will take our country on to greater things if we only give them the chance. Failing to support them now will be disastrous for our nation’s future and will only store up problems in later years for society as a whole. I hope the Minister understands the scale of what this all means and will go back to his officials following this debate and seriously reconsider his approach to funding our schools. Our children deserve no less.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

It is an honour to speak on the last day of Westminster Hall in this Parliament. I congratulate the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) on securing this debate. She was talking about the challenges of school funding, but it was disappointing not to hear about some of the impressive improvements in educational outputs across the north-east over the past few years. Children are getting the benefit of the improvements, which have come through the education framework and through Ofsted’s encouragement for schools to hone in on what is important in ensuring that children get the very best possible education from those early years and all the way through.

Speaking as the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed, which is right up in the northern reaches of our region, we have a different set of challenges to many colleagues here today. I have very many small schools, where the challenges relate not to pressure on places, but to transport and the ability to sustain a school that, by definition, will have small and erratic numbers of children. The arrival of Ofsted can be good in one year and not so good in another, because cohorts vary so dramatically from year to year.

Some years ago, the Minister visited a high school at the very top of the constituency, in Berwick itself. We were pleased to welcome him there. The challenge is that the school, like every senior school, has a fixed cost with a small sixth form. There is no other school to go to—the next high school is 30 miles away. If a young person is choosing college rather than sixth form, the next provider is 60 or 70 miles away in my Labour colleagues’ constituencies. That is a very long way from Berwick. The challenge is to ensure that we can maintain the full provision of education in that far-flung school right up on the Scottish border.

What I would pitch to the Minister on this last day before we head into the election madness is that, in considering how to use continuing education more effectively, the Department needs to think more fully about how we encourage schools to use modern online learning tools. It would probably need capital investment, but it would help children in schools where the challenge is not so much, “Can we find a place?” but, “How can children access the high-tech learning skills they need to work in the industries that the north-east is growing, which will become, and are in some cases already, world-leading?”

I challenge the Minister to think about how we change the nature of the education that we give our children. The pupil-to-teacher ratio is important in younger years, but as children go up the school age groups, there is an opportunity to draw in excellent education from around the world. My son has recently been teaching himself how to write computer code—I cannot remember which one—because, apparently, that was of interest to him. He used a free Stanford University online tool. All he needed was a computer and decent broadband to sit in his room and learn it. He can now speak in a very strange language, none of which makes any sense to me, but he is now able to do stuff at school. The course was not available to him at school, so he did it off his own bat. Access to those tools are not expensive. They require technical investment, and for schools to think more broadly about how they use the funding that the Government provide to give children a chance to jump to another level in their educational attainment. The schools can be world-leading.

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way and applaud her recognition of the importance of online learning and the transformative impact of digital technology. Does she therefore agree that the Government’s plans for the universal service obligation for broadband of 10 megabits by 2020 are far too little far too late?

[Mrs Trevelyan]

As the hon. Lady knows, I support the USO and campaigned very hard to ensure that we got it into the Digital Economy Bill. I speak as someone for whom 1 megabit is still a very good day in my house. It is still a challenge for many of my constituents whose children need to do their homework online, but we are getting there. We have kicked the system into a more proactive premise, but I agree that getting access across the board is vital. It will be no good for my constituents to see Newcastle with superfast broadband at 100 megabit or 1 gigabit, because we still cannot download a basic file to do homework. We need to ensure that the universal service obligation spreads across the nation to every home.

The hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West raised the issue of the apprenticeship levy, which for small schools in Northumberland is proving to be problematic because councils have been given the freedom to pass the levy fee on. It is an issue for a small school that suddenly got a bill for £10,000 a few weeks ago and will not take up the opportunity of an apprenticeship, and I very much hope the Minister looks at it in more detail.

--- Later in debate ---

[Phil Wilson]

I will not. The Minister will have plenty of time to make his comments at the end. I want to get through my speech as other people want to make their comments.

There are also cost pressures and budget changes for the primary schools. For Heighington School in Darlington, which is in my patch, that is £125,000. The primary schools in Sedgefield—Sedgefield Primary School and Sedgefield Hardwick Primary School—will see £120,000-odd changes in their budgets. The Minister can shape it any way he wants, but this is affecting schools, teachers and pupils. Headteachers are coming out and saying that, so there is obviously a problem. We can trade figures left, right and centre, but the headteachers are those who know what is happening on the ground.

I want to raise another issue, which is not related to funding but is important to me. It is so important to pupils Christina Davies, Aidan Wong and Melissa Foster from Greenfield School that they came to see me recently. They are concerned about the new GCSEs, where they are treated differently to those in public schools. Only 7% of pupils are in public education—93% are in state schools.

[Chi Onwurah]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the over-representation of privately and public-school educated people in positions of power on the Government Benches, together with this Government’s obsession with free schools and grammar schools, mean that it is impossible for them to understand the budgeting and funding pressures and what they mean for the experience of our young people?

[Phil Wilson]

There is an element of truth in that, and it comes down to the core of my next point, on which I would love to hear the Minister’s comments. In state schools, 40% of coursework used to go towards a final GCSE mark, and there was a chance to sit it in January or June. That cannot be done now. If someone does an IGCSE in a public school, they have the chance to do that, and the result is still recognised by employers.

The pupils from Greenfield school who came to see me are asking why they cannot have a level playing field. If they cannot have 40% of their coursework counted towards the GCSE, why is it not the same in public schools or vice versa? They just want a level playing field and for everybody to be treated the same. Why is it that, just because someone can afford to pay for their child’s education, they have a better chance in life than those children of the 93% of parents who do not have the chance and opportunity to send their children to public school? I am not saying do it one way or the other, but let us have a level playing field. It affects the aspirations and social mobility of our children and is fundamentally unfair.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

We have not only focused on maths and English, but we have in particular made sure that girls in school are taking STEM subjects like never before. That is absolutely vital if we are to have the skills that British businesses need to help us to be successful in the future. I am delighted to say that A-level maths is now the most successful A-level, but we want that progress to continue and to have more STEM graduates in future years.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

Adult education can transform lives, address our skills gap and address technology change, yet the number of adult learners has fallen off a cliff and the industrial strategy does not even mention it. Can the Secretary of State have a word about that?

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

The hon. Lady will be pleased to know that by 2020 we will be spending more on the adult education budget than at any time in our island’s history. We are investing in skills, with millions of pounds for the national colleges and the institutes of technology; we are investing in apprenticeships, with 377,000 over-19s in apprenticeships in the past year; and we are investing in adult education—that is exactly what we are doing.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

The roll-out of universal credit is increasing apace, and from September we expect it to roll out to 43 jobcentres every single month. My right hon. Friend is right to point out that work coaches are a crucial part of getting people back into work. As part of the service reconfiguration, we are working to ensure that individual claimants can maintain the relationship with their work coaches.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

11. What discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on the effect of recent changes to state pensions on the income of working-class women in retirement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Delivery (Caroline Nokes)]

Women reaching state pension age in 2016-17 are estimated to receive more state pension on average over their lifetime than women ever have before. By 2030, more than 3 million women stand to gain an average of £550 a year through the introduction of the new state pension.

[Chi Onwurah]

Working-class women are more likely to be in manual trades, which take a greater toll on the body as it ages, and to die younger due to the health inequalities from which we still suffer. The Minister did not mention the word “class” in her reply. Will she say right now that she will ensure justice for working-class women and all WASPI women by giving them a fair deal in the spring Budget?

[Caroline Nokes]

The equalisation of the state pension age has been well rehearsed in this Chamber; and, no, I will not use the word “class” because, to be quite frank, we are all working now.