Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life

Chris Vince Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

Everybody wants to give children the best start in life. That is why we increased spending per pupil in schools by 11% in real terms in the last Parliament, and why we doubled real-terms spending on the free entitlement for the early years. More importantly, it is why we pushed through difficult reforms to schools, which were often opposed by the Labour party. It is why we brought in the knowledge-rich curriculum, why we brought in stronger accountability, and why we pushed through the academies revolution and more parental choice.

The Minister said that our record speaks for itself, and it does. Labour’s record speaks for itself as well. Between 2009 and 2022, England went from 21st to seventh in the programme for international student assessment league table for maths, while Wales—spending the same amount as before—went from 29th to 27th. [Interruption.] Labour MPs clearly do not like hearing this, but I am afraid I am going to carry on. In science, England went from 11th to ninth, while Wales—with same amount of money as before but run by Labour, with no reforms—slumped from 21st to 29th.

[Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)]

On that point, will the shadow Minister give way?

[Neil O’Brien]

I am happy to take an intervention.

[Chris Vince]

I thank the shadow Minister for taking my intervention; he is always very generous with his time. I will give him a friendly intervention. I was going to criticise the Conservatives for a lack of attendance in this debate, but he said the words “no reforms”, and I notice that there are no Reform MPs present for this important debate. When I spoke in the general election campaign about education and it was the turn of the Reform candidate in Harlow to give us his views on the party’s vision for education, he did not have an answer. Does the shadow Minister agree that we do not want the Reform party anywhere near education?

[Neil O’Brien]

The hon. Gentleman is completely right, and it is not the first time—it is generally the case that no one from Reform is present. On this issue, I am afraid that Reform MPs are chronically absent, as we say in education.

I will continue with my theme. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out that the huge difference in performance, and the divergence in performance, between England and Wales cannot be explained by poverty rates or ethnicity. It is to do with the reforms that were not undertaken because of trade union pressure in Wales.

[Neil O’Brien]

I do not think that is true. Looking at the evidence pack produced by the Government’s curriculum review, it is clear that some of the arguments are overstated. It is true that we reversed the decline in the number of young people taking double and triple science; that had been falling for years, and it went back up again because there was more focus on science. It is true that there are a limited number of hours in the school day, but I do not accept that we had some sort of Gradgrindian educational agenda. There continues to be a broad and balanced agenda. If Labour Members want to say that much more time should be spent on a particular subject, they should at least be clear about where it will come from.

Children in England were ranked the best in maths in the whole western world in the 2023 trends in international mathematics and science study, and they moved into the top five in the global rankings for science. What happened in Wales and Scotland? We do not know, as their Administrations removed themselves from those competitions because they do not like accountability. It is the same at all levels.

Whereas we favoured parental choice and autonomy for schools, balanced by strong accountability, the current Government take a very different approach. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which is currently in the Lords, dilutes parental choice, and it gives local politicians more control over pupil numbers for the first time since 1988. The greater autonomy for schools that we brought in has been replaced by a tide of micromanagement of curriculum and staff, and the absurd situation where if someone wants to put up a bicycle shed they have to apply to the Secretary of State. On the other hand, the ultimate form of accountability—placing schools under new management via academy orders—is being slowed down and stopped, which has been criticised even by Labour MPs such as the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh).

The Labour party’s attempts to mess around with Ofsted to please the trade unions have watered down accountability for parents and made things more complicated, but they have not made anybody happy; nobody is happy with what has been proposed in the end. The Government have axed all the forms of support that we were making available to schools for subjects from advanced physics to maths, Latin and advanced computing—they think they are elitist. They have also axed the behaviour hubs, even though there is clear evidence that they were working and schools that went through them were twice as likely to be good or outstanding afterwards. The reform agenda is just not there.

At one point, the Government’s big answer was that they were going to employ 6,500 more teachers: they were going to increase VAT and employ all these extra teachers. The Chancellor said at the end of last year that every single penny of that VAT increase would go to education, but then, confusingly, the Prime Minister said that the money had been spent on social housing instead. It has been a long time since I studied formal logic, but we cannot spend every single penny on education and also spend that money on housing; we cannot spend it on two things. As it happens, we now know that actually there are not those extra teachers; there are 400 fewer teachers. We added 27,000 teachers under the last Government and under Labour there are 400 fewer teachers.

At the point when the numbers came out showing that there were fewer teachers, the Government suddenly declared that primary school teachers do not count—that the fall of 2,900 in primary school teacher numbers did not count. Ministers implied that that had always been their intention—they said, “How dare you say that wasn’t our intention?”—but they announced this policy in a primary school, and they said they would hit their targets for early years through an increase in primary. Now they say, “Oh, numbers are falling in primary,” but numbers are falling by a lot less than when they made the pledge in the updated forecast. If we apply the same logic, half of secondary schools have falling numbers, so perhaps that will be the next way they try to monkey around with the numbers to pretend that the opposite is happening. I would not mind so much if we did not get these chirpy press releases from the Department saying, “We’re doing so well; we’ve got all these extra teachers.” There are fewer teachers—that is the bottom line in what has happened here.

[Chris Vince]

I thank the shadow Minister for giving way again; he is being very generous with his time. I have to say, as a former teacher who left the profession because of the way we were treated by the previous Government, that I always feel a little bit gaslit by the Conservative party. I would just point out to him that during the previous Government’s time in office, a third of new teachers were leaving the profession within five years. Does he not recognise that the pressure put on teachers by the previous Government, the lack of support and the general lack of faith in teachers made a number of them leave, and we lost so much experience that it has been very difficult to get back?

[Neil O’Brien]

There are several things to say about that. The first is that the overall number went up: the hon. Gentleman said that some were leaving, but the overall number went up by 27,000. He makes a good point about early career teachers and that is why we put in the early career framework, which I do think is a big improvement. It is not that there is nothing in what the hon. Gentleman said, but I do think it is funny for him to stand up and talk about gaslighting when the Government are pumping out glossy propaganda saying that there are more teachers, even though their own Department for Education website says that there are 400 fewer teachers. So do tell me all about gaslighting.

My broader worry about the Government’s approach to giving every child the best start in life is that it misses the wood for the trees. Ministers like to talk about some of the small interventions they are making, such as the £33 million they are spending on breakfast clubs and the “best start in life” centres and the increases in spending there. But on the other side of the ledger, how is this being paid for? It is being paid for with a £25 billion increase in national insurance, and, unbelievably for a notionally social democratic Government, that national insurance increase is brutally targeted on the lowest income workers. It is incredible.