Black History and Cultural Diversity in the Curriculum

Chris Evans Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 324092, relating to Black history and cultural diversity in the curriculum.

This petition calls on the Government to teach Britain’s colonial past as part of the UK’s compulsory curriculum, and it has received over 240,000 signatures. The petition was started by Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson and arrived on the parliamentary website on 10 June 2020. Within 48 hours, it had reached the threshold of 100,000 signatures. The speed at which the petition met the threshold for debate shows the strength of feeling across our country that change is necessary and urgent. Multiple petitions cover similar subjects, and the Petitions Committee has taken on this issue as one of our key projects for the year.

The creators of the petition, which calls to add education on diversity and racism to all school curriculums and to make the UK curriculum more inclusive of black, Asian and minority ethnic history, have also given evidence to the Committee. Holding hearings in partnership with the Women and Equalities Committee, we have heard from a wide variety of sources in this field, from the Education Minister to schoolchildren. I pay tribute to the Chair of the Petitions Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), for her commitment to the review. I am so pleased that the petitions have rightfully gained support from the public, which has allowed the Committee to investigate an area that I have long been passionate about: diversifying and improving our teaching of history in this country.

I must declare an interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on archives and history, and I am also an honorary fellow of University of Wales Trinity Saint David. I am passionate about history and, above all, the way it is taught. It amazes me that we are so narrow in our curriculum. When I did GCSE history many years ago, we studied Adolf Hitler’s Germany, crime and punishment, which was mainly about Jack the Ripper, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. That was it. I then did my A-levels, when we did the Tudors and the civil war—Oliver Cromwell, Charles I and all that. Our curriculum is just far too narrow. It is easy for the Government to point to the option of teaching topic 3—“Ideas, political power, industry and empire: Britain, 1745 to 1901”—at key stage 3. However, it is not mandatory; it is only one of many topics that can be chosen by schools and teachers. It is clear that the signatories to the petition do not feel that this is enough, and I must agree with them.

The Committee found that 45% of primary school teachers and 64% of secondary school teachers who responded to our survey disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement that:

“The National Curriculum ensures that students in my school experience a balanced range of ethnically and culturally diverse role models.”

Our inquiry has also shown that, far too often, subjects are not being taught because teachers lack confidence and, above all, proper training. One in four teachers told us that they lack confidence and the ability to develop their pupils’ understanding of black history and cultural diversity, with 86% calling for specialised in-school training to help address this. It is leaving students unprepared when they reach degree level, which continues a cycle of a lack of confidence within the subject.

Dr Deana Heath, who teaches southern Asian and imperial colonial history at the University of Liverpool, said: “I face an uphill struggle at the start of each new academic year. Many of the undergraduates who greet me know virtually nothing about any of the subjects I teach.” Although some black and BAME history is now taught in schools, it is far too narrow in scope. Most students’ experience of racial history up until A-level is incredibly American-centric. Students learn about American slavery and the black civil rights movement. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and even my great hero, Muhammed Ali, are now studied at GCSE by many pupils. However, very little black British history is taught.

When students learn about the transatlantic slave trade, Britain’s role is often simplified or is just a small part of their study. Few secondary school students learn about British slave plantations or slave ships. Even fewer learn how British involvement in the global slave trade shaped domestic economics, politics, empire building and industrialisation. Black British history has largely been forgotten in the UK curriculum, even though there have been black Britons since Roman times.

A student might have a chance to learn about the Montgomery bus boycotts in Alabama, but often does not learn about the history of bus boycotts much closer to home. In Bristol in 1963, there was a successful bus boycott for the Bristol Omnibus Company’s refusal to hire black or Asian bus crews. Many in the UK will know the name Rosa Parks, but not enough know the name Paul Stephenson. On the same day in 1963 that Martin Luther King gave his iconic “I have a dream” speech from the steps of Washington, the British Omnibus Company announced that there would be no more discrimination in the employment of bus crews.

I suspect we feel more comfortable looking at discrimination perpetuated by America than we do taking a closer look at our own history. We cannot continue to whitewash the UK’s past. Students must be taught a nuanced and honest view of British history. British and European history studied at GCSE and A-level all too often seems to be the history of white powerful men. History curriculums, especially until university, are too frequently studies of monarchs, politicians and military leaders. That creates an often Eurocentric white male, upper or middle class view of history and knowledge. That is not a full history of Britain, Europe or the world.

The roles of working classes, minorities, women and all those who have been underrepresented have not been granted the historical significance they deserve. Not only is teaching such a narrow view of history a disservice to the subject; it makes it far less accessible. Students in British secondary schools often feel too far removed from the Churchills, Napoleons or Henry VIIIs. A diverse curriculum is necessary to write new entry points in history—a new standpoint from which we can understand our past and the world we currently live in.

The few women featured in the curriculum are either painted as exceptions to their sex, such as Florence Nightingale, radical, such as the suffragettes, or are monarchs such as Elizabeth I and Victoria. Very few non-white women are mentioned in history textbooks for secondary school students. Mary Seacole is one of other the very few. Studies of women such as Seacole must be encouraged, to recognise the diversity of Britain’s past and the importance of such diversity, but unfortunately that has taken too long.

William Howard Russell, a war correspondent for The Times, wrote in 1857 that he hoped England would not forget Seacole as

“one who nursed her sick, who sought out her wounded to aid and succour them, and who performed the last offices for some of her illustrious dead.”

Yet it seems that exactly that happened for many years, In 2016, a statue of Seacole was erected across the road from this place. When the lockdown measures are lifted, I urge everybody to go over and see the wonderful statute to that wonderful woman. It took 12 years to raise the funds required and should be a symbol of pride in a black British heroine. Unfortunately, even the little act of posting a photograph of me with the statue on Twitter resulted in some terrible abuse about the role of Mary Seacole. That has no place in society. It amazes me that somebody who did so much for the people she looked after would be questioned about whether she was a nurse. That has to stop. Mary Seacole should be celebrated as an influential figure in British history. Her story, and the racism she faced, ought to be taught widely in history curriculums. We also must make sure that she does not stand alone. The history of Britain is incredibly diverse, and the curriculum should reflect that. It is not enough to pick one figure from history. The diversity of Britain and the way that attitudes to and experiences of race, sex, sexuality, disability or class have shaped history are vital to our understanding of today.

Ultimately, it all matters because of the impact it has on young people. A report from Paul Campbell, a lecturer in sociology at the University of Leicester, found:

“The lack of a sufficiently diverse or decolonised curriculum and faculty meant it was often difficult for black students to be able to connect content and assessments directly to their own lived realities”.

He found the students were multiply disadvantaged and

“have to work harder than their peers to connect with assessment and curriculum content.”

The lack of diversity in our curriculum can be found throughout our education system; although the petition is focused on history, it is equally true of the likes of English literature and other subjects. The Black Curriculum, one of the leading charities in this field, says that its aim is to provide a sense of belonging and identity to young people across the UK. To me, that is the whole point of the debate. It is our duty to get this right so that all students see themselves represented in education.

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[Chris Evans]

This has been a fantastic debate, and I pay tribute to all Members who have taken part. One thing that I have always felt about history is that it is the story of people’s lives and their shared experience. I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) and for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe) for their very moving speeches.

I hope the Minister will listen to what my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) said about the pilot scheme on black and ethnic minority history being run there. I hope that that can be rolled out across the country. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (John Nicolson) for his passionate speech, and I thank the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) for her speech about how, in her area, they have bravely taken on Britain’s colonial past and the extremes that that history has thrown up. I also thank her for her wider campaigning in Parliament.

I pay tribute to the Labour Front-Bench spokesperson, my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) for his succinct, passionate and wide-ranging speech that brought in everything that encompasses black history and the experience not just of ethnic minorities but of the working class in the last 30 years. I also thank the Minister, whom I have known since 2017, when we served together on the Public Accounts Committee, for stepping in at the last minute in place of the Minister who should have responded. She gave a very constructive and informative speech. To be honest, I was quite hopeful from the end of her speech that we can come to some arrangement with the Government to bring black history to the fore in schools. She said that the Government really get that, and there is consensus around the issue, so we can really improve the teaching of history.

Ultimately, as I said in my speech, I am passionate about history and about the way it is taught. For too long, it has been seen as a dry subject, when really, it can be brought to life because it is about the lives people have lived. The way history is taught is now more important than ever. So many people deny that so many things happened, and with the rise of fake news, it is very important that we stick to the facts and that everybody’s voices are heard on our experiences of growing up in the country that we call Britain.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered e-petition 324092, relating to Black history and cultural diversity in the curriculum.

Tuition Fees

Chris Evans Excerpts

Monday 16th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petitions 300528, 302855, 306494, 324762, and 552911, relating to university tuition fees.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Sir David. I want to thank Miriam Helmers, Sophie Quinn, Wiktoria Seroczynska, Maya Ostrowska and Georgia Henderson for creating the petitions, which have more than 980,000 signatures, collectively—a very significant number. In the order of the names I have given, the petitions are to “Require universities to reimburse students’ tuition fees during strike action”, to “Reimburse all students of this year’s fees due to strikes and COVID-19”, to “Refund university students for 3rd Semester Tuition 2020”, to “Require universities to partially refund tuition fees for 20/21 due to Covid-19” and to “Lower university tuition fees for students until online teaching ends”. Each petition differs slightly from the others, but a common thread runs through them, and that is the fact that hundreds of thousands of students are aggrieved because they have not received adequate value for money from the universities. I want to make it clear that, as the Committee has heard in evidence, university staff have gone to extraordinary lengths to provide teaching during the pandemic. To many petitioners, the fault lies at the door of the universities.

For the last 30 years, school leavers have been told repeatedly by Government and the media that a university degree is the best, if not the only, option to take them towards a fulfilling career. For many, gaining a place at university is the culmination of a lifelong dream. However, it comes at a cost. English universities can charge up to £9,250 a year in tuition fees. So if, for example, someone did a three-year course at £9,250 a year and got £6,378 a year for their maintenance loan they would graduate with £46,884 of debt, and that is before interest is added. By any stretch of the imagination that is a massive amount of money. We would think that if someone is investing that type of money, they deserve an adequate return on the investment, and that if they do not get it, they should be properly compensated. Students simply want value for money.

I want to explain two of the ways in which many students feel they did not receive value for money, because of the pandemic and strikes. The Petitions Committee conducted a survey of people who had signed relevant petitions and received more than 25,000 responses from current students. Most students who responded told the Committee that teaching hours at the universities had fallen because of the pandemic, and they were either “dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied” with the quality of the education they were receiving. A student enrolled on a clinical course expressed disappointment at the quality of the teaching. Clinical practice did not take place, and they described the fear that this raised:

“It isn’t a case of will the medics, dentists and vets of this year come out as less trained individuals but a question of how much poorer will their practice be.”

The drop in teaching hours affects arts students as well. Seminars and debates are difficult to translate into online teaching, especially when there are international students, who are often in different time zones because of the pandemic. That has meant for some that the interactivity of discussion, which is vital to subjects such as history or English literature, is lost. For those who are affected by strike action as well, teaching from January 2020, through to the summer, was minimal.

In a written submission, the National Union of Students expressed a concern:

“A whole cohort of students would lose faith in the UK’s education system if they are not financially reimbursed for missed teaching.”

Wiktoria Seroczynska, the creator of the petition to refund student tuition fees for the third semester of 2020, has told me that among those she has spoken to across different universities,

“comparing the quality of education we were promised to what we have right now, is shocking.” 

She has explained that students feel very let down and have found it difficult to engage with their learning in the same way. Reduced contact hours, a struggle to engage students in online learning, a lack of mental health support and a lack of connectivity with tutors have all contributed to a far reduced experience. The pandemic has meant that universities have been forced to adapt the way in which they provide teaching, but the Government’s delay in giving clearer guidance has often meant rushed decisions. Georgia Henderson, who created the petition to lower tuition fees until online teaching ends, has echoed this, saying that there has been a lack of clarity from the Government regarding plans of action for students.

Students were encouraged to return with the promise of a mix of in-person and online courses, but many found themselves being taught wholly online. This has not only cost them rent, but left many isolated in a new place they have only just moved to, without any form of support system. As we have recently seen in Manchester, with a rent strike and the occupation of Owens Park by students, it is clear that many feel let down. One student, Izzy Smitheman, told the BBC:

“They brought us here for profit rather than our safety”.

Another has said that students feel they were “tricked” back into university in September. Students feel greatly mistreated by the Government: blamed for the rise in covid cases, locked in accommodation in new cities with no support network, and not receiving the teaching they have paid for. The Government’s lack of engagement with these issues is severely damaging.

The lack of clarity, and the difference between what students were led to believe and the reality of their teaching, have hugely affected students’ mental health. Since the beginning of the academic year, a student has died every week from suicide. Let me repeat that horrendous statistic: since September, every week, a student has taken their own life. Every week, parents have been told that their child died alone at their university; every week, friends and families grieve for a life cut short; and still the Government have not addressed these students’ issues. Their petitions voice a “desperate cry for help”, as Georgia Henderson says. The Government have repeatedly failed to plan for the safe learning of students at universities, leaving those universities to navigate a way to deliver high-quality teaching at short notice, often with devastating effects on the mental health of students. The Government need to realise that, without proper planning, it is the student—the young person—who suffers.

Petition 300528 would

“Require universities to reimburse students' tuition fees during strike action”.

The petition argues that if universities were forced to issue students with refunds for missed teaching due to strike action, that might strengthen the case of striking teaching staff. Ultimately, universities should take their teaching staff’s complaints seriously and negotiate with them in good faith. However, far too often, striking staff feel that this is not the approach being taken. In February, during strike action at universities across the country, University and College Union chairperson Jo Grady said:

“We are on the same side in this dispute and we hope students will put pressure on their vice-chancellors”

to send their representatives back to the negotiating table

“with a clear mandate to work seriously to try and resolve the disputes”.

The universities Minister has said that this situation is neither of the universities’ making, nor the Government’s. However, the Government have a duty of care. Just as the most vulnerable are rightly going to receive funding through the winter grant scheme this year, so too should the Government look after their students. The Government have stepped in to provide financial aid for other essential sectors of our society that have experienced financial difficulty due to the pandemic, but have not given any aid to higher education. Petition creator Georgia Henderson has told me that students understand that it is up to universities to lower tuition fees. However,

“as the government was responsible for increasing the cap on said tuition fees, I see it only fair for the government to lower these in the light of Covid.”

Universities are vital to our economy and vital for our country to continue to thrive. We pride ourselves on our educational institutions and on the contributions that our universities make and have made to the world. Surely we ought to make sure that their integrity is maintained, that students feel they are being treated fairly, and that higher education in England is not only rigorous but good value for money.

Currently, if a student wishes to seek reimbursement from the university, they have the right to take up an individual complaint. Many students do not know how the system works, and even if they did, placing the responsibility on the individual is not efficient, reasonable or fair. Many have argued that the current processes set up to deal with complaints are inadequate for the volume of complaints expected as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Office of the Independent Adjudicator received 2,371 complaints in 2019. If even 1% of students in higher education were to complain to their institution and have that passed on to the OIA, that would represent a roughly tenfold increase in the number of complaints it had to deal with. Even if the OIA’s capacity were increased, the exact circumstances in which students should expect to receive a refund or be able to repeat part of their course are not clear, which would mean a vast number of lengthy, time-consuming and confusing cases. If the financial burden of those refunds falls entirely on the universities, it will cripple them and inevitably lead to staff redundancies.

The Petitions Committee produced a report on the impact of coronavirus on university students. One of its recommendations was that the Government put in place a new process to consider complaints that would cover complaints arising from covid-19 and other out-of-the-ordinary events that affect the courses of large numbers of students, including large-scale strikes. That would at least mean that students who believe themselves to be entitled to a refund would have a clear method of pursuing it.

Universities already face a fall in revenue. If they are to maintain their high-quality staff and facilities, they will not be able to reimburse all students. Therefore, conversations need to be had to ascertain the level of refund that students could reasonably demand based on the teaching they received, how feasible it is for universities to do that and how much the Government should give to support universities and students.

The petitions have made it clear that students feel “forgotten about” and

“cruelly mistreated by the government”,

as Georgia Henderson wrote to me. If, as the Government say, they believe that students should be at the heart of higher education, they need to act on their concerts. If they do not, they run the risk of tarnishing this country’s long-held reputation for excellence in academic institutions.

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[The Minister for Universities (Michelle Donelan)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans)—is that right?

[Chris Evans]

It is the most difficult one to pronounce.

[Michelle Donelan]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate, and I am grateful for the opportunity to respond to a number of the points that he and other hon. Members have made.

I acknowledge the significant impact that covid-19 has had on staff, students and higher education providers. The Government do not for one minute underestimate that. This pandemic has been hard for all of us, but in so many ways young people have been disproportionately impacted. Students have been left facing a number of challenges. I am hugely grateful for the resilience, innovation and dedication shown by staff and students over the past nine months. The constant uncertainty has made things worse, but the improvements in mass testing and constant scientific advances, including a potential vaccine, offer a glimmer of hope.

We have heard some compelling speeches today focusing on the case for a tuition fee refund. I repeat that the Government get how hard the ramifications of covid have been. In fact, they have been at the forefront of my mind throughout. Since March, therefore, I have emphasised the importance of keeping universities open during the pandemic, as I reiterated in my recent letter to higher education providers. We simply cannot ask young people to put their education and lives on hold indefinitely. The human cost of lost opportunity and damaged social mobility would be immense. The Government were elected on a manifesto to level up; curtailing the ambitions and dreams of our young is not the way to achieve that.

We listened to the scientific advice, which informed our higher education guidance at every stage, including the return to university. The hon. Member for Islwyn and many other hon. Members have called for a blanket tuition fee refund, but it should be noted that the Government do not set the minimum level of tuition fees. We set the maximum, and we have been very clear that if higher education providers want to continue to charge the maximum, they must ensure that the quality, quantity and accessibility of tuition is maintained. We have been working closely with the Office for Students to ensure that, and we will continue to do so.

We have heard accounts of students who feel that the quality of their education has declined. My message to them is that there is a system in place that can help. First, a student should pursue the official complaints procedure at their university. If they remain unsatisfied, they should go to the OIA. That can lead to some form of tuition fee refund. Without the first stage, institutions would not have the opportunity for early resolution of complaints with students, so it is important.

I hear the concern, including from my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey), that students may be reluctant to come forward. I reassure all students, however, that the OIA’s good practice framework is clear that there must be appropriate levels of confidentiality without disadvantage and that providers should make that clear to all students.

OIA cases will normally be completed within 90 days, and the process is designed to make it simple and easy for students. The form is online. It asks for basic information and a summary of the complaint. The OIA requires the provider rather than the student to send it all the information. Some hon. Members have argued that the policy places too much on the shoulders of students.

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[Chris Evans]

Sir David, you have chaired many debates over the years, including many I have spoken in, so you will know that my constituency has been referred to as “Iswine” and “Islin”. Indeed, in a debate on diabetes that you chaired—it was a number of years ago, so I do not know whether you remember it—I was referred to as the hon. Member for insulin. [Laughter.] I make that point just to apologise to some of the petitioners, because I tripped over their names and hope they will forgive me. They were making really important points.

This has been a very passionate debate. We have heard contributions from my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), the hon. Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe), my hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) and for York Central (Rachael Maskell), and the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey). We had a fantastic summing-up speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), as well as the response from the Minister.

The wonderful thing about petitions debates is that we know we are debating something of central importance to people. The various petitions we have discussed today received nearly 1 million signatures, which proves how deeply parents, staff and, most crucially, students are concerned about these various issues.

Personally, although I heard what the Minister said, I am still concerned about the number of complaints that have come through, and I am really worried that the system will positively groan under the weight of the number of complaints that are bound to come. As I said in my speech, if complaints to the OIA go up by just 1%, that would be a tenfold increase. That would be a real problem, so I hope that the Government will understand it and develop policies to address it.

Ultimately, however, the problem we have is that universities have marketed themselves over the years with an idealistic view of student life. Because of covid-19, which is nobody’s fault, such an idealistic view can no longer be achieved. If people hope for the type of student experiences that I enjoyed, and that I think everybody in this room enjoyed, that is not going to happen. However, what people do expect and should receive is the top-quality education that this country is renowned for throughout the world. There should be no excuse about that. When people sign up for university, they are making a massive financial commitment, and the Government should step up to that as well.

Members made many other points tonight, but I will focus on the point that my friend the right hon. Member for Tatton made about the Open University. The way things are, if people are just going to enrol and end up doing only online courses, they might as well stay with the Open University. That will be a real challenge for universities in the coming years. It will cause a fall in revenue and the Government will have to revisit some of the issues that we have raised today.

I will end by thanking everybody who has taken part in what has been a fantastic, measured and, at times, impassioned debate. I thank you all on behalf of the Petitions Committee. Finally, may I thank you, Sir David, for your measured and fair chairmanship of the debate?

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered e-petitions 300528, 302855, 306494, 324762, and 552911, relating to university tuition fees.

History Curriculum: Migration

Chris Evans Excerpts

Tuesday 18th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Mr Streeter. I, too, apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown). She has been in the House a lot longer than I have and perhaps should have been called first.

I am passionate about history—one of my proudest boasts is that I am a history graduate—and I want to talk about how history is taught in schools, about how a subject about the human life story is often seen as boring and dry. It amazes me that we are so narrow in our curriculum, in how we speak. I did GCSE history, and I could sum it up like this: there was Adolf Hitler’s Germany, which I studied in depth, then crime and punishment, which was mainly about Jack the Ripper, and then we did the Arab-Israeli conflict, and that was it. I then did my A-levels and we did the Tudors and the civil war, and even when we talked about people we talked about them as great people. We talked about Elizabeth I, yet we did not talk about her persecution of Catholicism. We talked about Oliver Cromwell and the new model army but we did not talk about the terrible events at Drogheda. We smooth over those awful events while we are talking about great men.

When we are talking about such things, we also seem to forget about the growth in family history. Right now, people who study history in their spare time, through the various family history websites, want the answers to two questions: who am I, and where did I come from? It is time to do that in schools. I want to use the example of when I visited the Fleur-de-Lys local history society and spoke about a former Member of this House, S. O. Davies. He was deselected by the Labour Party in 1970, was then re-elected as an independent and died in 1972. He was the first person to introduce a Bill to bring in the Welsh Parliament. After the lecture, we started talking about oral history and its importance. There were so many people in that room.

[Jim Shannon]

I want to reflect on what the hon. Gentleman said about when he was at school. In my early years at school—long before he was at school of course—our religious and history teacher gave us the opportunity to learn Irish history along with British history, and also about other religions, thereby giving us a perspective on the rest of the world. It is good to know that that did not make me less of a Unionist, by the way—I would just like Members to know that. It is important to have that.

[Chris Evans]

That is very interesting. The hon. Gentleman makes a pertinent point. I did not study Irish history until my third year. I hold my hands up that I did not know who Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera were. I knew nothing about the cause of the troubles. When I was growing up, the troubles were just something that happened over the Irish sea in places I did not recognise but if I had been taught about it I would have understood where the troubles began. That, essentially, is what I am getting to.

Coming back to my upbringing in south Wales, on every street corner there was a Bacchetta, a Gamberini, a Sidoli; the Italian community migrated into south Wales and set up cafés, ice cream parlours and other things. The story of south Wales is also the story of migration. Many of the pits and steelworks came about from people migrating in for the work, yet we never talked about that. Interestingly, I grew up in Lower Bailey Street in Wattstown in the Rhondda but I did not know who Bailey was. He was a guy called Crawshay Bailey, a landowner from Northumberland who had never visited south Wales.

What is so important about these migrant stories—we see this with the Windrush generation as well—is the question of how many of us sit down with a relative or an elderly friend and record their experiences. Their experiences are the experiences of Great Britain, and that is what I am talking about in my example of the Fleur de Lys local history society. We were sitting there just as Tower colliery was closed—the last deep mine in south Wales. The number of people who remember the mines and have experience of working underground is getting smaller, and we need to sit down and record those experiences, because once they are gone they are gone forever. I urge everyone here to sit down with a friend or relative and talk about their experiences. I direct this to the Minister: this is something we should seriously look at having on the curriculum. We should get schoolchildren to speak to their relatives, and ask them to keep an archive of those relatives’ experiences, especially as they are now getting old.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point about migration and the history of those coming into communities in south Wales. Of course, many from south Wales went to Chile and other parts of the world, to mine there. So we have had migration out of the country, when people have been seeking employment.

[Chris Evans]

My favourite fact is always that in Pennsylvania in the 1920s there were more Welsh speakers than in Wales. That came from Welsh migrants going to West Virginia and Pennsylvania to work in the mines. We also have the famous colony in Patagonia, which was set out in the famous novel “How Green Was My Valley”.

We need to be a bit braver about our history, about our history as an island race, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) said. We have to accept that slavery happened. We talk about it a lot when we talk about American history. We touched on it a lot when I was at university—

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

The hon. Gentleman indicated that we should be a bit more brave in remembering our history. Does he agree that it is sometimes regrettable that in recent years we have seen student campaigns in a small number of educational establishment to remove links to Rhodesia, for example, because of the perception of what happened there? Is it not much better to recognise and acknowledge that those things happened, whether we agree or disagree, rather than trying to obliterate them, particularly in seats of learning?

[Chris Evans]

That is the whole point of this debate: we cannot whitewash our past. These things happened; we should recognise them, and we should learn lessons so they never happen again.

The Department for Education itself said in 2014 that the teaching of Britain’s involvement in the slave trade was considered patchy. We should accept that for well over 300 years, whether we like it or not, Britain played a leading role in forcing Africans on to slave ships for transportation across the Atlantic ocean. It is not just America that has to take the blame for the slave trade; it is this country. When Britain abolished slavery in its colonies in 1830, it paid the slave owners financial compensation. The enslaved people themselves received absolutely nothing—okay, that was a long time ago, but there were 46,000 slave owners, and 3,500 lived in Britain. Those are truths that we should not be afraid to address.

In response to the earlier intervention from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), I made a point about not understanding history until I got to university and studied it in more depth. I understand Dr Deana Heath, who teaches southern Asian, imperial, colonial and global history at the University of Liverpool, when she says:

“I face an uphill struggle at the start of each new academic year. Many of the undergraduates who greet me know virtually nothing about any of the subjects I teach.”

When I went to university to study history, I was one of those undergraduates. It was not just Irish history that I did not know about; it was British history, and the terrible record of the colonies.

This issue is really important, so I have two asks of the Minister. First, I hope that he takes seriously the idea of putting oral history at the front and centre of the curriculum. Secondly, although we have a great history, we should also shine a light on those things that are uncomfortable for us, because if we do not learn from those mistakes, we run the serious risk of repeating them. I urge the Minister, who I know is a good and thoughtful man, to take those points on board.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary, and it is a real honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans), who made a passionate and pertinent speech. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) for securing today’s debate, and for her superb opening speech.

Three of my four grandparents were Irish, and my much-loved brother-in-law is of Jamaican descent. Without him, I would not have my very beloved niece. Migration is central to who we are as a family, and it is also central to who we are as a nation. Only by understanding where we come from can we truly understand where we are going and where we are now. Including stories about migration in our history lessons is a central part of that, and I am proud that Labour has committed to creating an emancipation educational trust to support that work.

It is hardly news to many of us that migration has shaped our country for centuries, because we have grown up in diverse communities and have ourselves been shaped by that history. However, the history of different types of migration is not taught as widely as it should be. So many people do not know that there were hundreds of free African people living and working during the Tudor period, and some were even at Elizabeth I’s court. We seem to think that migration is only a very recent thing, but that is a nonsense. We need to embrace and understand our history much better than we currently do.

I am going to take a different approach from that of the other Members who have given speeches so far, because I will talk about West Ham. In my maiden speech in 2005, I talked about one example of how migration has helped in Newham. In the 1980s, we were suffering from the dying docks and the ravages of Thatcherism. Green Street was dying on its feet; the only two things that were doing well were West Ham United football club—which had its best ever season in 1986—and, sadly, the local jobcentre. However, a few traders got together, who were overwhelmingly Asian and African-Caribbean, and took a risk. They got some money together and started rejuvenating the area through their businesses. First they sold food, then fabrics—things that the big chains would not touch—and then businesses focused on designer fashion and jewellery came slowly on to Green Street.

Now, Green Street is a one-stop wedding shop, serving not only the local community but people from all over the country and, indeed, much of Europe. Without migration, those community-spirited and canny traders would not have been in Newham, and our local economy would have suffered an even worse decline. My kitchen would have certainly declined, because there was nowhere that I could buy turmeric, chillies, coriander, cumin or the other exotic items in the new cookbooks that were stocking my shelves at that time. On Christmas day, I remember having to pop out a number of times to grab that thing that I had not managed to put in my basket before. That is a recent history, but none the less an important history, and one that risks being lost unless we make an effort to ensure it is remembered and celebrated.

Whenever I think about stuff like this, I think about Eastside Community Heritage, led by the redoubtable Judith Garfield. Eastside has always been clear that letting people own and tell their stories is the best way of collecting testimonies and engaging communities in their past, and that is exactly what they do. Unsurprisingly, many of their projects are focused on the contribution of migrants—people such as Kamal Chunchie, who was born in Sri Lanka and served in the Army’s 3rd Middlesex Regiment during the first world war alongside members of my family, witnessing horrifying conditions in the trenches. He was gassed twice and shot once, and served right up until the end of the war. After the war, he came back to Canning Town and served that community for the rest of his life. He established the Coloured Men’s Institute and provided solidarity and means of support for black and Asian families living around the docks. Disgracefully, racism was common at that time, and many living in and around those docks were denied a home and a living. Kamal’s institute became a community centre that served all the poor and needy in Canning Town, providing shelter, regular meals, Christmas celebrations and toys for children. Over the course of the 1920s and 1930s, his work prevented destitution, alleviated poverty and built solidarity. For that, he was greatly and rightly loved.

Eastside has created a number of projects, including those on the Ugandan Asian community; on the role of nurses from the Caribbean in building our NHS, such as my brother-in-law’s mum, Lucy; and on historic communities in Newham, such as the Chinese and Bengali communities. I have attended lots and lots of Eastside’s events, which are wonderfully informative, telling stories that would otherwise be simply forgotten. Several of those projects have been created in collaboration with our schools, including Sarah Bonnell and Forest Gate, so that our children understand the rich diversity of their history. Students helped create exhibitions about African and Caribbean fashion and the role it has played in the local economy, our culture and our lives. I would have loved to take part in projects like that, growing up; I was always really excited by the beautiful clothes that my Asian friends wore, and I remember learning how to dance in the sixth-form common room. Such projects bring our history alive for children from all backgrounds, and help us to understand the current social problems that we have.

One pressing social problem today is that across the world, we are witnessing a resurgence in far-right politics—a politics of hatred and division, which offers only scapegoats, not solutions. All too often across the world, migrants—even asylum seekers, the most vulnerable of us all—have been targeted. I do not have to remind people in this Chamber about Trump, whether it is his nonsense about Sadiq Khan, his attempt to enforce a Muslim ban, or his constant scaremongering about central American families fleeing to safety. I do not have to remind people in this Chamber about Netanyahu, who describes African refugees as,

“illegal infiltrators flooding the country.”

Brazil’s Bolsonaro described the residents of a black settlement as,

“not even good for procreation.”

It happens in so many ways in so many places, and all of it is linked. It is more important than ever that our young people understand the bits of this country’s history that we do not celebrate enough and the rich diversity of our home’s past and future. We need all of our citizens to understand the contributions and the lives of the people that migration has brought, and we have to build solidarity among the different parts of our communities, just as Kamal did in the 1920s.

In my constituency, Newham Council has done wonderful work to counter and prevent the rise of the far right. It has done it for decades and it set up a holocaust memorial exhibition as a response to the rise of the far right in the 1980s and ’90s. It celebrates Black History Month and still makes sure that the children’s education focuses on Holocaust Memorial Day.

[Chris Evans]

As usual, my hon. Friend makes a powerful speech. Will she join me in encouraging everybody to visit the Mary Seacole statue, which is just across the road outside St Thomas’ Hospital, to see the wonderful contribution that she made as a British Jamaican woman to nursing in this country?

Education and Adoption Bill

Chris Evans Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you for calling me, Mr Deputy Speaker. I congratulate you on your re-election as Chairman of Ways and Means. It is a pleasure to follow the new hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond). I was also pleased to hear from the hon. Member for Telford (Lucy Allan), whose predecessor was and is a great friend of mine and was well liked throughout the House. He is sadly missed.

I support the amendment, because I believe that the Bill could have been much more ambitious than it is. It fails to provide a clear definition of a coasting school. A number of Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), have expressed concern about coasting schools. I am struck by the fact that the Secretary of State has come to the House and—as she has done on five previous occasions—failed to provide a definition. I do not think it right for us to have to wait until the Committee stage of a Bill that includes the term for the Government to define it. What does the amorphous word “coasting” mean? Is it based on exam results, progress measures or Ofsted ratings? What defines a coasting school? We still do not know. That strikes me as a worrying feature of the Bill.

The Bill is important, and there are parts of it that I commend, but I believe that it has not gone far enough. We need to be much more ambitious and bold when we talk about education in this country. There is a massive difference between the levels of attainment of those who are receiving free school meals and their more affluent peers, but the Bill does not address it.

In 2009, the Centre for Development and Enterprise, a South African organisation, published a report entitled “International Best Practice in Schooling Reform”. It was based on workshops that had taken place in Washington D.C. Global education experts examined more than 100 school systems across the world to establish what worked in improving education and what did not. The report concluded that giving schools more autonomy was an “ineffective reform”. In fact, it argued that

“time required by school leaders to manage and run autonomous schools takes time away from supporting teachers and supervising the system”,

to the detriment of education outcomes.

It is not a question of more funding, which evidence shows does not work past a certain level. The Bill talks of converting failing or coasting schools to academies, but it should be about meaningful reform and the following of best practice all over the world. Unfortunately, it is sadly wanting in that regard.

I believe that there are five things that we must get right if we are to ensure that our education system improves. First, there must be a new appreciation that the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers. There is no more important lever for the improvement of student outcomes than teacher quality. The world’s top-performing systems recruit talented people and train them intensively. Teaching must be considered a prestigious profession and teachers must have all the support that they deserve. They should have competitive starting salaries and adequate remuneration for excellence, which can be affordable if the remuneration curve remains shallower than it is in other professions. Those who do not meet strict criteria, however, must be forced to leave teaching, or asked not to join in the first place. We should reward and support good teachers and make it significantly easier to get rid of bad ones.

Secondly, reforms must focus on improving teaching skills and changing classroom practice. According to the report from the Centre for Development and Enterprise, if teachers are given effective support and in-service training, student performance can be significantly improved within three to six years. Continuous professional development applies to other professions, so why can it not apply to teaching? Problems arise when teachers come straight out of university, do not interact with their peers and have no examples of excellence. The best systems in the world—those in Belgium, Finland, Hong Kong, Japan, the Netherlands and New Zealand—improve teachers’ skills by bringing professionalism, mentoring and apprenticeships back to teaching. They have comprehensive feedback systems which enable teachers to learn from their mistakes and improve in problem areas.

In 2007, Eric Hanushek of Stanford University found that the only way to increase the economic output of school leavers was for students to learn effectively and to be taught well. We can achieve that only by supporting our teachers, and ensuring that teaching is a highly skilled, attractive career option that supports and constantly seeks to improve the people in it.

Thirdly, there is leadership. The best education systems recruit and train excellent head teachers—people with intrinsic leadership skills. I would wager that the best-performing academies are those with the best head teachers. Even in my south Wales constituency, where we have no academies, the best schools that I visit usually have the best head teachers. These people should be supported to become effective leaders, and not just effective educators. We must get this right, because without effective leadership the reforms will never be embedded.

To improve education we must look at not just the people, but the environment in which children learn, and that brings me to my fourth point. The Royal Institute of British Architects report “Building a Better Britain” makes the case that good school design could have a direct impact on reducing maintenance costs and improving student wellbeing and attainment. For example, its evidence suggests that ensuring that corridors are designed so that they are not too narrow can significantly reduce bullying. Good design of schools delivers value not just now, but in the future.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, high performance requires that every child succeeds—not just the select few in the schools chosen, but every child, everywhere. From Land’s End to John o’Groats, from Treginnis to Lowestoft, all students need to be well educated and must be given the teaching they need to fulfil their ambitions. We need standards and measures of success relevant to the needs of our country. We need effective mechanisms to help schools to achieve those standards. Pressure without support does not yield better performance. We need to make sure that targets are being met. We need to identify the obstacles to success and put in place strategies to overcome them.

To reduce wide disparities in education and in the country at large we must overcome huge challenges. We must reverse decades of socio-economic problems keeping those in poorer areas from achieving their potential. The harsh reality is that the circumstances of someone’s birth are often to their greatest detriment in terms of how well they will do at school or how well they will do in life. We can help to overcome that. We can change the sad fact that being born poor means someone is likely to stay poor, but we can do so only with great teachers, with great schools and if we make the right choices and follow the evidence. The Government had a real opportunity in this Bill to set out an ambitious plan for Britain, but, unfortunately, they have been found wanting.

Voter Registration

Chris Evans Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you for calling me, Mr Williams. I think I only have four minutes, so I will throw away the magnum opus speech that I was going to give and just make a few points that I think were covered by my hon. Friends the Members for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) and for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) in two outstanding, passionate speeches.

My key point is that the introduction of voter registration, as we have seen, is so important. As my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd wrote in Progress magazine, we could return to electoral registration rates like those of Alabama in the 1950s. We saw the situation in Florida in 2000, with the famous Bush versus Gore presidential election, where there was widespread belief that people were missing out on a democratic duty.

[Chloe Smith]

On that point, I intervene extremely briefly to ask the hon. Gentleman whether he is implying that he thinks I am racist, as I think his hon. Friend, the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd, was doing?

[Chris Evans]

No, I do not think I said that. If I implied that, I apologise. I do not think the hon. Lady is racist.

[Chris Ruane]

And neither do I.

[Chris Evans]

I do not think my hon. Friend believes that either, and if that was implied, I apologise.

Like many people in this debate, I believe that the new voter registration system is being introduced too fast. As it will be introduced just months before the general election in 2015, if it does not work, people will have no vote and therefore no voice in the election.

In July this year, the Electoral Commission found that the electoral register is only 86% complete. That equates to about 7.5 million people not being able to vote. Combine that with inaccuracies on the electoral register and one in seven voters have no voice in elections at all. What makes that worse is that 40% of those who are not registered believe that they are. I know so many people in my constituency and in other constituencies I have lived in who have turned up to vote and found that they are not on the electoral register at all, but they pay their bills and their council tax, so they cannot understand why they cannot vote. As has been said, that is a particular problem for young people who are less likely to register than older people who will see through their democratic mandate; for black and mixed-race people, who are less likely to be registered than white people; and for people who are living in the private rented sector who are less likely to be registered than home owners.

That picture shows that the groups in society who are most transient are less likely to vote, and I look forward to the Minister’s response on that point. This is an area that I believe that the Government must get right. Although we accept that individual voter registration can help to rectify the situation, the methods proposed by the Government may just make it worse. Under their plans for data-matching, the electoral roll will be matched with DWP data, and the groups who are likely to be unregistered are also the least likely to have matching information on databases. The duty now lies with the Government to work with civic groups, electoral registration officers and others to ensure that every last step is taken to maximise registration. We cannot allow whole swathes of the country to lose their voice at the next general election. This is an area that the Government must get right or risk having millions disfranchised. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s thoughts on that, and with that, Mr Williams, I conclude my remarks.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Evans Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

I am happy to take up any invitation; as the former planning Minister, I do not get so many. I will simply say that there are more places in sixth-form colleges this year than there were in 2010. Despite the funding constraints and the need to make some difficult choices, this Government are backing sixth-form colleges.

[Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)]

8. What recent assessment she has made of the effectiveness of work-related learning in schools.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

Work-related learning helps young people to become better prepared for employment and develop the skills that employers say are important. The new technical awards for 14 to 16-year-olds are one example of how young people can learn the practical skills needed for the workplace. Our revised statutory guidance on careers advice, effective from September, will strengthen the requirement for schools to build links with employers to give students an insight into a broad range of careers.

[Chris Evans]

I welcome the Minister to his new post. I listened to what he just said and cannot disagree with any of it. Even the CBI says that 52% of respondents to a recent survey say that schools must teach pupils about work-based skills. Therefore, can he tell the House why the Government have seen fit to abolish year 10 work experience?

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Evans Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)]

10. What assessment he has made of current provision of information, advice and guidance for young people.

[The Minister for Skills and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)]

We have introduced a new duty on schools to secure independent and impartial careers advice. For the first time, we have a National Careers Service and Ofsted will judge a school’s leadership on how well they deliver.

[Chris Evans]

Careers Wales has referred 9,000 people to the Jobs Growth Wales programme and 75% of them are now in sustainable employment. Have the Government studied the Welsh experience?

[Matthew Hancock]

Yes, of course; we have looked all around the world. We are increasing the amount of mentoring to ensure that we have the best people, including employers, to inspire young people to go into careers that will enable them to reach their potential.

Apprenticeships

Chris Evans Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and to hear his Irish accent. The Celtic fringe is present in force today in this debate.

I begin with the good news that apprenticeship week is being celebrated in Wales with £40 million being given by the Labour-led Welsh Assembly for expanding apprenticeships. Has the Minister had the chance to read the statement by the Welsh Assembly Minister announcing a one-off payment of £500 to small and micro-businesses to overcome the barriers to employing apprentices? I hope that he will think about introducing something similar throughout the country.

The idea of apprentices always conjures up romantic images from the ’50s and ’60s of the draughtsman, the plumber and the electrician taking a five-year apprenticeship. As much as I welcome apprentices and apprenticeship week, I am concerned that a number of people believe that they are following an apprenticeship when they are doing nothing of the sort. It is not the regeneration of apprenticeships, but the rebadging of apprenticeships. I think of Morrisons as the largest employer of apprentices in this country. One in 10 apprentices work at Morrisons, but what are they apprenticed to do? What profession will they come out with? Is it a meat cutter, a green grocer or a fishmonger? I do not know, and I hope that we will look into that.

Apprenticeships that last only a matter of weeks or months devalue great apprenticeship schemes such as those at Pensord Press in Pontllanfraith in my constituency and in Jaguar Land Rover in the constituency of the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy). The Richard report bears that out. He noted two things that I have seen myself: the quality and the quantity of apprenticeships. I was hoping to develop this point further, but I have only a minute. At the moment we have box-ticking, and many companies do not appreciate the worth of apprenticeships. I hope that the Minister will look at the example of Germany, where apprentices take an exam at the end of their apprenticeship, like a driving test. There is a qualification standard for each and every sector, so that employers know exactly what they are getting.

Unless we grasp the nettle now and unless we bring about real quality apprenticeships, we risk falling even further behind India and China, and that is the worst thing that we could do for our young people.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Evans Excerpts

Thursday 17th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)]

14. What assessment he has made of the likely effects on the construction sector of the outcome of the comprehensive spending review.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Mark Prisk)]

The comprehensive spending review set out our plans for £200 billion of investment over the next 10 years as part of the first national infrastructure plan. This was welcomed by many in the construction sector.

[Chris Evans]

Does the Minister agree with Steve Morgan of Redrow when he says that the new homes bonus scheme is unlikely to prompt councils to approve more homes?

[Mr Prisk]

A number of benefits are being put forward for home building and for construction as a whole. The key issue with the housing market is whether the demand is there. That is the challenge: we will do our bit, but the market will need to operate as well.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Evans Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Willetts]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, one of the proposals in Lord Browne’s report that we are looking at very carefully is to do more to encourage the accreditation of skills developed in businesses and the workplace as part of a degree qualification.

[Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)]

18. What recent representations he has received on access to finance for small businesses.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

19. What recent representations he has received on access to finance for small businesses.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Mark Prisk)]

I refer the hon. Gentlemen to the answer I gave to a similar question earlier.

[Chris Evans]

Atega Business Solutions, a new business start-up based in my constituency, tells me that part funding is available to it, but that in most cases it has to spend 100% of the cost before it is eligible to claim back 50%, which deters it from applying. What advice would the Minister give to Atega to secure funding when money is tight?