Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Efford Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho]

I welcome the Murphy family—hello! Co-production is incredibly important; that is how we have designed our response to the SEN paper. We will continue to consult at every opportunity.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

We know from leaked Government documents that there is a £13 billion backlog in school repairs. Some cases are deemed to pose a risk to life. Is the Schools Minister aware of any school buildings that are at risk of collapse?

[Nick Gibb]

We have been conducting some of the biggest surveys of the fabric of school buildings in this country, which is why we are able to identify risks in our schools. Whenever we are informed about a risk to a school, we take immediate action, which can mean that certain buildings in a school are no longer used. We then send in surveyors, specialists and experts, and remedial action is put in place. We take these issues extremely seriously.

Fair Taxation of Schools and Education Standards Committee

Clive Efford Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, showing her economic literacy in full. I will get on to explaining some of the figures.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Gillian Keegan]

I am very happy to give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Clive Efford]

This issue surely boils down to a moral argument. It is charitable status that gives independent schools their tax benefits, but what kind of charity requires a person to pay an average of £37,000 in order for it to benefit from tax breaks? Is that really a charity?

[Gillian Keegan]

There is the huge education benefit, but I think the hon. Member may have his maths a little wrong—I do not think the average is £37,000.

We are improving state-funded education, not undermining the aspirations or choices that parents have for their children. That is important. We are delivering a world-class curriculum for all schools, not attacking world-class institutions that secure international investment and drive innovation. We are driving school improvement, not driving small schools serving dedicated religious and philosophical communities out of business. We are providing the funding to schools that they need.

I am delighted that Labour decided to include school standards as part of this debate, as our record speaks for itself. In 2010, just 68% of schools were rated by Ofsted as good or outstanding, but we have taken that to 88%—hopefully the Members opposite are still following the maths—which is a vast improvement driven by the Minister of State, Department for Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb).

Moreover, the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) should join me in praising the work of this Government. Since we took office, schools in her local authority of Sunderland have gone from 67% rated good or outstanding to 91%. Meanwhile, 97% of schools in the Leader of the Opposition’s local authority now enjoy a rating of good or outstanding—I am sure he has thanked my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton for his role in making that happen. The shadow Schools Minister, the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan), should also be grateful; when Labour was last in power, fewer than half of his local schools met that standard, but I am happy to share with the House that we have taken that dismal record and made it good—literally. Today, Portsmouth now boasts 92% of schools rated as good or outstanding. I want to take this opportunity to thank teachers, headteachers and support staff up and down the country for their incredible work over these years, as they have been the key drivers of this success. I can guarantee that we will not stop there.

Underpinning that record are improvements in phonics, where a further 24% of pupils met our expected standard in the year 1 screening. In just eight years from 2010, we brought the UK up the PISA rankings—the programme for international student assessment—from 25th to 14th in reading and from 28th to 18th in maths.

We will continue that trajectory as we build on the ambitions of the schools White Paper, which will help every child fulfil their potential by ensuring they receive the right support in the right place at the right time. This will be achieved by delivering excellent teaching for every child, high standards of curriculum, good attendance and better behaviour. [Interruption.] Somebody opposite mumbles “13 years”—I am sure that schools are delighted with the improvement I have just outlined over the past 13 years. We will also deliver targeted support for every child who needs it, making it a stronger and fairer school system.

Let us focus on the independent school sector. We are very fortunate in this country to be blessed with a variety of different schools. We have faith schools, comprehensive schools and grammar schools, to name but a few, all of which help to support an education that is right for children. The independent school sector itself is incredibly diverse. It includes large, prestigious, household names—in this House, we will all have heard of famous alumni from Eton—but there are 2,350 independent schools, and not many of them are like Eton. Reigate Grammar School, a fee-paying independent school that now charges £20,000 a year, once educated the Leader of the Opposition; like many in this category, it started as a local grammar and became independent. In fact, 14% of Labour MPs elected in 2019 attended private schools—double the UK average. I will be interested to see which of those hon. Members votes to destabilise the sector that provided the opportunities afforded to them.

As someone who did not benefit from such a prestigious educational background, I stand here focused not on the fewer than 7% of children who attend independent schools, but much more on the 93% who attend state-funded schools, as I did. As the Opposition wish to use parliamentary time on this issue, I would point out that the sector provides many benefits to the state and individuals alike. Independent schools attract a huge amount of international investment, with more than 25,000 pupils whose parents live overseas attending independent schools in the UK. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) pointed out, many could be working in our armed forces.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

I rise more in sorrow than in anger about today’s extraordinary Opposition motion to create a new education Select Committee for the House of Commons.

I was recently elected as the Chair of the Education Committee, with I believe quite a significant amount of support among Opposition Members. I canvassed Members all across the House and spoke to them about the issues that are priorities for them. I made sure that in my campaign I was listening to Members on all sides of the House about the things they felt would make a difference to the education of children in this country and the things that fall within the remit of the Education Committee. I can count on the fingers of one hand—no, in fact, I can count on one finger—the number of Members who raised this issue as a priority for them. So I find it extraordinary that the Opposition have tabled a motion to make this the subject of an entire Select Committee all of its own, even more so given that their own members of the Education Committee are nowhere to be seen today.

I have great respect for the Opposition Members on my Select Committee, who do an excellent job in holding the Government to account and challenging on education policy issues, not least on some of the issues that the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) mentioned, such as careers information and advice. We are currently conducting an inquiry into that, which was started by the Minister of State, Department for Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), who is on the Front Bench.

It seems extraordinary to me that, without any forewarning or any notice to the Chair of the Education Committee, the Opposition have decided to try to sideline the established mechanisms of this House and to sideline the Education Committee on this issue by creating an entirely new committee. There is absolutely no reason for that. I gently point out that the Opposition should be doing a better job of encouraging their own Committee members to engage. Sadly, I can count four Conservative members of the Education Committee in this debate, but there are none on the Opposition Benches. I suspect it is because they know that this policy is a shambles.

The net financial impact of raising the cost of independent education is likely to have a negative impact on the cost of state education, because it will drive up demand for places in a very constrained secondary sector. In my constituency right now we are pretty much full in the secondary space, and a new school is being built by the local authority at a cost of around £40 million to meet our needs. If we were to raise fee levels for the two independent schools just in the mainstream sector, King’s and RGS, the chances are that many families would no longer be able to afford to send their children to those schools, and they would be looking for places in the secondary sector—places that are not currently there. There is a failure to understand and think through the consequences of the Opposition’s proposed policy.

I detect—and in conversations I have had with Back Benchers from all parties, I heard about it—the huge pressures on childcare. That is one reason I proposed that if I were elected Chair of the Select Committee we should do an inquiry into that issue—indeed, the shadow Secretary of State welcomed the fact that we are doing such an inquiry. I did not, however, hear the same demand and pressure from people saying, “We must do something to make life more expensive for people who choose to send their children to independent schools.”

When the Opposition talk about “tax breaks”, that is a complete misnomer in this respect. The charitable status of education has existed for well over a century. Every Labour Government from 1945 has supported the principle of the charitable status of education, and Labour Members ought to be honest about what they are trying to do. They can make legitimate arguments, and say that they believe independent education is a bad thing and they want to discourage it—if they choose to have that argument, they can have it—but the net result of what they are proposing for the independent sector would be to make it more elite and out of reach for ordinary families. The big names out there would no doubt continue to thrive, with wealthy families that can afford to pay and international students—that issue has already been mentioned—but many smaller independent schools might be driven out of business, and if that were the case, the cost of meeting those places and that demand will fall on the state education sector. As the Secretary of State said, that cost is more than £6,000 per pupil on an ongoing revenue basis, and there is also capital to think about and the extra classrooms and schools that will be required to meet that need. I do not think the Opposition have done their homework in that respect.

I understand from what the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South said from a sedentary position to the Secretary of State that it is Labour’s intention to exclude the specialist independent sector from this policy, but when Labour Members look at their net revenue figure, they are looking at fees across the entire sector, including that specialist sector. I simply do not think they have done their sums. The focus of those on the Opposition Front Bench, as opposed to their Back Benchers—where are they all, frankly, in a debate of such importance to their party?—shows that this is not really about a serious policy for the school system. This is about an attempt to brand the Prime Minister and have a personal go at the leader of the Conservative party. I do not think that will wash with the great British public, and this is more about the politics of the playground than a serious schools policy.

[Clive Efford]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Walker]

I will not give way to Opposition Members, because they have not had the decency to approach my Committee or to speak to me as its Chair before putting down this extraordinary motion. I do not feel that I should have to give way to them during this debate.

I will continue to make the case for investment in education. As schools Minister, I was proud to be involved in negotiating the single largest increase in our schools budget on record in real terms. I am delighted that my predecessor and successor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb), has secured an even bigger increase off the back of that.

The shadow Education Secretary did not appear to have read her own motion when she talked about mental health. We all agree that mental health is a huge challenge and something that needs to be addressed, but there is nothing whatsoever in the motion about mental health, or in the remit of the extraordinary new Select Committee that Labour is trying to create, that addresses that issue. Labour Members need to do their homework before they come forward with such proposals. I am sure my Committee will be happy to consider any serious proposals that come forward, but this ain’t it.

NDAs: Universities

Clive Efford Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Clive Efford (in the Chair)]

I will call Layla Moran to move the motion and then call the Minister to respond. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered non-disclosure agreements and alleged cases of sexual violence, bullying and harassment in universities.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. At the outset of this debate I want to commend the brave young women who have spoken out about their experiences of sexual assault and harassment. This campaign started with survivors and it is a testament to their courage that it has reached this place today. I start this debate by sharing their words. First is Naomi’s story. She said:

“I and several of my friends were involved in a case with a serial offender in my college. He behaved generally creepily towards me, and on one occasion came into a room I was sleeping in. He also assaulted multiple people in College. They confided in me and we decided to report him to our College. We decided to do this rather than going to the police, because we believed College would provide a safe space for us. My friends just wanted to be able to breathe when walking around College, and weren't concerned about getting the guy locked up.

College ran a disciplinary case during which we were all brutally questioned on the truthfulness of our stories. Around three weeks after the hearing, we were informed by email that the panel had found insufficient evidence and wouldn’t be doing anything. They did not tell us what would amount to sufficient evidence. The whole process felt deliberately untransparent.

We all signed no-contact agreements, which contained really important safety measures that we wanted in place, but also…a gagging clause. For me, it…felt like the icing on the cake of a ridiculous system that had let us down. The disciplinary process had failed to sanction a rapist, but was threatening us with sanctions if we talked about it. I can see how for other people it could be very damaging.”

The sad thing is that Naomi’s story is not unique. Another survivor—I will call her Lucy—had a similar experience, but at a different college. After being assaulted by her then partner in her dorm room, she was given a no-contact agreement that included a clause that forbade her from making any information about the assault or the subsequent investigation publicly available. Speaking about the clause, she said:

“I signed it, feeling terrified that if I didn’t agree to it he would be able to enter my accommodation without any consequence. But I was incredibly upset about the effective gag clause. I was terrified of telling absolutely anyone anything, because what if college interpreted that as ‘publicly available’? I felt I couldn’t talk to anyone, my friends or my mental health support or my GP, because of it and felt very alone.”

That is not just one story in one college that happened a long time ago, and not just one incident of bad management by a rogue member of staff. That is recent and these stories are rife. From speaking to the student group, It Happens Here, which supports survivors of sexual assault at the University of Oxford, I know that there are survivors in colleges across universities who have all too similar stories.

Children’s Education Recovery and Childcare Costs

Clive Efford Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes it is a year since the resignation of the Education Recovery Commissioner Sir Kevan Collins; condemns the Government’s continued failure in that time to deliver an ambitious plan for children’s recovery, including supporting their mental health and wellbeing; is concerned that the inadequate attention being paid to childcare, both for the youngest children and around the school day, is allowing the attainment gap to widen and costs to soar for parents at a time when there is significant pressure on household finances; and calls on the Government to match Labour’s ambitious plan for children’s recovery, including measures to keep childcare costs down for parents while the cost of living crisis continues.

Children’s voices are rarely heard in this place, but today I want to put them right at the centre of our discussions. With half-term over, I want to wish the very best of luck to all of the young people sitting exams this week and in the weeks to come. They deserve all of our good wishes, but they deserve far more than that. They deserve to be at the heart of how we think about our country and how we think about the Britain we want to build.

The last two and a half years have been an extraordinary time for all of us—for families, and for schools, colleges, nurseries and universities. I pay tribute to the staff right across the education sector, including teaching assistants, university lecturers, school caretakers, admin staff, childminders, catering staff, everyone who teaches in our schools and colleges, headteachers and nursery workers. So many people deserve recognition, and all parents know it, so I place on record again Labour’s thanks to them for all that they have done.

It has also been an extraordinary and challenging time for our children. After all, they only get one childhood, and although experts have lined up to tell the Conservative party how much it matters to put in place a recovery plan for their education and wellbeing—not just for their learning now, but for their futures—still this Government are failing them. That failure and neglect are even clearer today when the Education Secretary cannot even be bothered to turn up to debate the action we need to secure our children’s futures. He can spend endless hours touring broadcast studios, praising his lawbreaking boss, who has lost the trust of the British people and his own Back Benchers, but he cannot find time to be here with us today to debate how our children recover from the greatest disruption to their learning and lives in peacetime.

It is just over a year since the Prime Minister’s own expert adviser, Sir Kevan Collins, resigned from his post as education recovery commissioner. Sir Kevan’s own words on why he felt that necessary were sadly prophetic:

“A half-hearted approach risks failing hundreds of thousands of pupils.”

He went on to say:

“The support announced so far does not come close to meeting the scale of the challenge and is why I have no option but to resign.”

That is exactly what happened. Sir Kevan repeated his warnings after the autumn Budget, describing the continued lack of an ambitious plan for our children as “incredibly disappointing” and warning that the “meagre measures” the Education Secretary could squeeze out of the Chancellor were a “false economy” that would cost our country dearly in the long term. That warning has been echoed by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Education Policy Institute, front-line teachers, parents and so many others. The Education Secretary is fond of telling us that he has been “studying the evidence” but when are Ministers going to start acting on it?

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the lack of funding for education under this Conservative Government started long before covid came along? Funding in my schools on average is down by 6.3% since 2014-15. Does not that show that it is not just covid—this Government have consistently been cutting our children’s education?

[Bridget Phillipson]

My hon. Friend is completely right. We have seen year-on-year, real-terms funding cuts per pupil over the last 12 years. I find it incredible that Ministers expect some degree of gratitude for rolling back funding to 2010 levels by 2024-25—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) has something to say, I would welcome hearing it.

Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Review

Clive Efford Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My right hon. Friend and I share a passion for data and transparency. I know that he is looking at the evidence of what really works in the early identification of and screening for dyslexia, about which he is passionate.

The Green Paper is about a whole system review and, together with yesterday’s White Paper and our parent pledge that teachers will identify the gaps in English language, reading and writing and share them with parents, it is our greatest lever to begin to look at how we do this well. I am looking forward to working with my right hon. Friend on the evidence of best practice around the world.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The request for diagnosis of special educational needs is the beginning of a long battle for far too many families. Local authorities with stretched resources are often pushing in the opposite direction; parents can wait years for EHCPs, and requests for specific schools are often denied by local authorities for financial reasons. That all points to the need for independent advocacy from the very beginning for parents of children with special educational needs. We cannot assume that every parent starts with the same capacity to deal with the minefield of taking their child through EHCPs, and requests for support in the classroom and other support with educational needs. Will the Secretary of State commit to creating an independent advocacy service that supports parents from the very beginning and holds their hand all the way through the process?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s thoughtful question, which the Chair of the Education Committee also raised. Essentially, the Green Paper will make sure that we hold local authorities to account through the new funding agreements, through the local inclusion dashboard, which will provide transparency so that people can see how areas are performing locally, and through the new area inspection. As well as making sure that we do as the Minister for Children and Families did with the written statement of action in Birmingham, we want to learn from the best. Manchester is doing well; Dixons City Academy in Bradford is an excellent example of how this works well; Passmores Academy, a mainstream academy in Harlow, is doing incredible work. We learn from the best and scale it across the system.

Schools White Paper

Clive Efford Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My hon. Friend raises a really important point. The frontline—the 461,000 teachers and 217,000 teaching assistants—and the support staff and leaders in our education system have gone above and beyond to make sure that schools reopened, stayed open and dealt with omicron. We have looked carefully at the evidence, which is why one of the things we have not done is change the curriculum. A knowledge-rich curriculum is important to make sure we deliver the outcomes we so passionately want to deliver for young people.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

If the Secretary of State is to deliver on this package, which has been announced 12 years into a Conservative Government, he is going to have to fund it. If we want decent teachers at the front of classrooms, we are going to have to pay them, so where is the funding for decent teachers in this package? If we are to improve schools, they need the resources; is anything in this package going to increase per-pupil funding?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

We are investing £7 billion, with £4 billion front-loaded this year and next year, and there is £5 billion for recovery. That is the investment. That is the commitment that we make when we speak, as I did this morning, to great school leaders like the great head at Monega. She will tell the hon. Gentleman that this is doable. The team at Monega has turned the school around in five years and it is now an outstanding school. We want to spread that good practice and quality leadership across the system.

Budget Resolutions

Clive Efford Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Levelling up is at the heart of the Government’s agenda. Levelling up means empowering local leaders and communities to drive real change: boosting living standards, particularly where they are lowest; spreading opportunity and improving public services, particularly where they are weaker; and restoring local pride across the United Kingdom. Every local authority across the UK is eligible for the levelling up fund. In line with the Government’s mission to level up, it is right that we have prioritised areas that have been objectively assessed as most in need of the kind of investment that the levelling-up fund provides. That includes areas in the south of England which are most in need.

Schools are equally important and they have done well in the spending review. One of the biggest challenges we currently face is helping the young people who have suffered so much disruption to our schools during the pandemic. Those young people have been foremost in my mind and are central to the significant investment we announced this week. We know that world-class public services will help to turbocharge our economy. They will give us the skills, knowledge and technical excellence to drive productivity and growth. To deliver them, we have to begin with our schools.

All of us here, without exception, will owe a great debt to a teacher—maybe more than one—who helped us to get to where we are today. Colleagues will be aware that I have more reason to be grateful than most, having arrived here at the age of 11 as an immigrant without a word of English. I will always be grateful to the teachers who helped me on my way, which is why it gives me particular pleasure today, as Education Secretary in Her Majesty’s Government, to say that we are going to increase our spending on our country’s schools. Core funding will rise by £4.7 billion in 2024-25, building on the largest cash boost for a decade provided in the 2019 spending review. That equates to a total cash increase of £1,500 per pupil compared to 2019.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I will make some headway. I have taken many interventions.

Let us not forget that these are not normal times for any of our schools and colleges. The task in front of them, helping every young person to get back to where they need to be, requires all our teaching and education staff to continue to deal with the fallout from the pandemic. To reflect that, we will be allocating nearly £2 billion extra to support young people who are struggling to catch up on missed learning, following the existing investment in tutoring and training for teachers.

[Clive Efford]

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has described the increase in education funding over the past decade as the worst for 40 years. The Secretary of State says he is increasing funding for schools, but by next April, 12 years on, we are only about to achieve the same level of funding that existed in 2010. That is a damning indictment of the Conservative Government over the past decade. Why have young people in our schools been forced to pay the price of Tory austerity?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that question, but respectfully he is completely wrong. It is not the same level of funding as 2010. Let me try to explain it to him and his constituents. The £1,500 per pupil extra by 2024 is £1,500 more than in 2019-20. That is a significant investment in the future of this great country.

To reflect that, we will allocate—as I was saying on recovery—£2 billion extra to support young people who are struggling to catch up on missed learning, following the existing investment in tutoring and training for great teachers. That is in addition to the 6 million tutoring courses and 500,000 training opportunities we have already made, which takes overall investment specifically dedicated to pupils’ recovery to almost £5 billion. That includes an additional £1 billion of catch-up funding that goes direct to schools so that they can best decide how to support education recovery for those of their pupils who most need it. Teaching unions wanted that additional flexibility—I thank them for that—and I listened to them and made representations to my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. As they told me, this funding might pay for specialist small groups, or hiring staff to lead extra-curricular activities outside the school day. In that way, an average secondary school could receive about £70,000 a year in additional cash. That is money that can make a real difference to young lives. Evidence shows that the pandemic has had a significant impact on older pupils who have the least time left in education. We will be investing £800 million in extending the time they spend in colleges.

It is no secret that the most important person in any classroom is the one standing at the front of it, which is why this settlement enables us to raise teachers’ starting salaries to £30,000. We promised that in our manifesto and we are delivering on that promise. That is in addition to a salary boost of up to £3,000 tax free to teach maths, physics, chemistry and computing, which we have already announced, to increase the number of teachers in subjects that are facing the greatest shortfall. It will also build on our groundbreaking teacher recruitment and retention reforms. We want our brightest and best graduates to be queueing up to be teachers. We now have far more compelling reasons for them to do so.

As a former families Minister, I care passionately about giving children a great start in life. That means giving families every support. I have seen for myself on many occasions the incredible effect that our investment can make on helping struggling families. Around 300,000 of our most vulnerable families will be supported with an extra £200 million boost to the Government’s flagship supporting families programme, which supports families through complex issues that could lead to family break- down. That is an approximately 40% real-terms uplift in funding for the programme, taking total planned investment across the next three years to nearly £700 million. As I said, we are being driven by three things: skills, schools and families.

Covid-19: Education Settings

Clive Efford Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

We would always encourage people, if they are poorly or ill, to remain at home in order to be able to get better. But for clarity, those who have been in contact with someone who has had covid will still be able to access education and be able to come in to school, but if they have had that contact, Test and Trace would then be in touch with them and advise them to take a PCR test. But that individual is able to continue to attend school during that time, unless of course they are demonstrating symptoms of covid—we would always advise people to self-isolate if that is the case—or have had a positive PCR test. Those reasons apart, they would be able to attend school.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State has told us that there will be a spike in infections following the relaxing of restrictions, and currently there are 150,000 school pupils with suspected covid-19 that are out of school, so we know that that figure will go up. So this is not about children dying of the infection; it is about schools being a vector for infection. What is the Secretary of State going to do when the winter months are coming, and we have increasing numbers of infections, to ensure that that does not happen, by improving ventilation and assisting schools with the resources that they need to deliver a safer environment?

[Gavin Williamson]

I do not wish to contradict the hon. Gentleman, but schools have not been vectors of transmission; they have been reflective of the wider rates of covid in the community. That is why we continue to have measures in place, including the testing that will be in place for schools as they return after the summer period; and the continued twice-weekly testing that will run through September for children of secondary age, those tests to be taken at home.

Covid-19: Impact on Attendance in Education Settings

Clive Efford Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I assure my hon. Friend that I want schools in Keighley and Ilkley always to be open and never to be closed, and that is certainly something that we want to ensure happens. We do not want to see schools in different parts of the country having to close, which is why we will take all the measures that are required to ensure they stay open.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Schools will not stay open because the Secretary of State wills it—we need a long-term plan. The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care told the House on Monday that we are going to have to live with the virus. What does that mean for schools? Where is the plan for improved ventilation and Nightingale classrooms so that children can socially distance in schools and not have to be sent home in bubbles? The virus is not going away—where is the plan?

[Gavin Williamson]

The hon. Gentleman seems to have paid little heed to some of the measures we have put in place to ensure that children can get back into school. That is probably not surprising given that his party’s policy seems very rarely to be to encourage and make sure that schools are open—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman had the opportunity to ask his question—

[Clive Efford]

You sent our kids back to school with the Kent variant!

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order.

Ofsted Review of Sexual Abuse in Schools and Colleges

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford]

May I also thank the girls from Stroud High School? It takes great bravery and courage to do that, yet it is actions like that by young girls and women across the country that are helping to make the world a better place for future children.

As I said earlier, I can confirm that the strongest protections in the online safety Bill are for children. It is particularly important that companies will be required to protect children from illegal and harmful content, including self-generated content when it is on their platforms. There is, however, still the challenge of peer-on-peer sharing. That is one of the reasons why I believe so strongly that the Home Secretary is right in her firm statements about the risk of end-to-end encryption that we already see, for example, on WhatsApp, but which is potentially coming into other areas. That is another issue that will be need to be considered.

It is really important that we have asked the Children’s Commissioner to do this deep piece of work. She is an extraordinarily experienced former school leader who brings great passion into this world. In fact, I met her only this week to discuss the issue. We must take every step. We know that legislating in the digital world can sometimes be challenging, but we are ahead of the world on this and are absolutely committed to the end objective: ensuring that our children are, as far as possible, as safe online as they are offline. Again, this is also an issue of helping to change the cultural dial.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

When I read the report at lunchtime today, I was absolutely shocked by the scale of the problem that was described by young people themselves. We have known that this problem existed, which is why the review took place, but the evidence that has come forward is startling.

I was in local government when ChildLine was set up in response to the fact that young people could not get their voices heard when they were suffering problems in care. I note that there is the now the hotline to the NSPCC, but that is due to end in October. Will the Minister consider not only whether that should continue beyond October, but whether there should also be a programme to advertise that number and encourage young people to use it going forward, in perpetuity?

This certainly is a problem where boys specifically are the offenders. Does the Minister think that there should be a specific part of the RSHE curriculum that deals with boys’ behaviour and attitudes to make them aware of the problems that their behaviour causes?

[Vicky Ford]

First, let me discuss the specific helpline that we have set up. We obviously fund many other helplines through the NSPCC, including the ChildLine number, at the moment. Since we set up the helpline, we have had 400 calls, so as long as it is being used, it is good. If we start to see it tailing away—I cannot comment post October.[Official Report, 17 June 2021, Vol. 697, c. 6MC.] But we do want to ensure that there is always a place that a child can go to for advice. At the moment, this helpline is the bespoke place for advice, but that is why we have committed to the NSPCC and ChildLine for so many years.

Let me turn to boys. Again, part of the whole new RSHE curriculum is teaching healthy relationships and healthy behaviour: what is acceptable and not acceptable; what is coercive behaviour; what is abusive behaviour; what is harassment; and respect for each other. I think it is important that while we are clear that abuse is abhorrent, we also need to recognise that not all boys and men are abusers, and no one is saying that. We need to make sure that we put in protections and that we are there to act and help a girl who has been abused, but not make the suggestion that all boys are inherently abusers. That is the level that teachers will be working to when they are teaching this, to ensure that they get the balance right.