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.

Investing in Children and Young People

Clive Efford Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

That is not what the Institute for Fiscal Studies says is the record of our spending on schools once we reach the end of the three-year financial settlement for schools.

When schools were closed to most pupils in March last year, we continued to provide support to pupils eligible for free school meals, even though they were at home, and we extended it to the Easter holiday, to the Whitsun half-term and, with inspiration from Marcus Rashford, to the long summer break. Altogether, over £450 million has been spent through the food voucher scheme. We invested more than £400 million to provide laptops, tablets and internet access, with over 1.3 million computers built to order, imported, configured and delivered to schools, so that every child, regardless of means, could continue to study and be taught while locked down at home. Again, what a debt of gratitude we owe to our teachers, who have developed lessons and learned how to teach remotely and to engage their pupils while confronting their own challenges in working from home.

We supported the inception of the Oak National Academy, helping schools to provide high-quality online lessons. Thanks to the hard work and brilliance of scores of highly talented teachers, that has led to over 94 million views and downloads of those lessons, and Oak will continue to have a critical part to play in helping schools and helping pupils to catch up.

We put in place a system of controls in schools to ensure that as they reopened after the summer, they would be as safe as possible from the spread of the virus. We also provided £139 million to help schools cope with the exceptional costs that they faced during the first lockdown. Again, I thank teachers and support staff for all their hard work last summer to adapt their schools and introduce the new safety measures.

In June 2020, while we were still in lockdown, the Prime Minister announced the first £1 billion commitment to ensuring that pupils were able to catch up: £650 million of catch-up premium and £350 million for a teaching programme—a new initiative to provide private one-to- one or small-group tuition for the children most in need. We created a market. We worked with the Education Endowment Foundation to identify and evaluate the best tutoring companies—33 in all—and asked them to expand their number of tutors. So far, more than 230,000 pupils have been enrolled, and our announcement last week extends that further still to 6 million courses. This is an evidence-based approach that research suggests that could help to boost progress by up to three to five months for every pupil who takes one of those 6 million courses. Combined with our provision through the 16 to 19 tuition fund, it will amount to 100 million hours of tutoring over the next three years.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Would the money not be better spent through the schools themselves? Are teachers not in the best position to identify the pupils who are in the greatest need of additional tuition? Could teachers not work in small groups with children to advance them through the school curriculum, rather than involve outside companies that have no idea of the history of the children or their records?

[Nick Gibb]

We want to have both. In the package that we announced last week, £579 million is allocated to schools to do just that. They can use that money either to employ local tutors or to free up their own teachers to tutor the pupils who they know need the most help. The idea behind the hon. Gentleman’s exhortation was announced last week.

Education Recovery

Clive Efford Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

When my hon. Friend entered the Department for Education back in 2010, he was probably very conscious of the fact that state schools sadly lacked the education standards in private schools. As a result of our reforms—reforms that he himself led—we have made such a difference over that time. We want to do that in enrichment activities as well, because we recognise that while this is about the academic, it is also about the confidence that we can give to young people in terms of building their belief in themselves.

That can be done through additional activities in school that may happen in the lunch hour or after school, such as the most brilliant Duke of Edinburgh awards scheme, which I want to see significantly expanded throughout our state school system. It can also be done through combined cadet forces, once the preserve almost purely of private schools but which we have massively expanded. We to continue to build on these things, because we recognise that they give a direct benefit for children. On the holiday activities programme that we will be rolling out, we have been working very closely with local authorities so that they are able to bring in volunteers from all backgrounds—obviously properly Disclosure and Barring Service-checked, and quite rightly so—in order for them to be able to help and assist as part of that programme.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

It seems clear to everybody apart from the Government that, as noted by Kevan Collins, £22 per primary school pupil is insufficient. Less than two hours of tutoring per pupil every two weeks will not be sufficient. Is the Secretary of State saying that Kevan Collins asked for too much money? Is he saying that the £3 billion that the Government have put in is sufficient? Why does he think that he knows better than Kevan Collins?

[Gavin Williamson]

We are doing a comprehensive plan, and there has been over £3 billion over the past year. We recognise that there continues to be more to do. That is why we are doing a review of how the school day can be best used as we work up to the comprehensive spending review. Every undertaking that we have made as part of this has been based on the evidence and what we believe is going to deliver the best results for pupils.

Skills for Jobs White Paper

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I absolutely agree. It is a real Achilles heel of this country. In this country, 10% of the 18 to 65 workforce has higher technical qualifications, as compared with 20% in Germany and 34% in Canada.[Official Report, 27 January 2021, Vol. 688, c. 4MC.] We have to address that skills deficit. This is where there is so much demand for the type of skills that people and businesses want. Of course, the outcomes for people who get those skills and that training are incredibly positive, not least that they usually outperform graduates in earnings.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab) [V]]

The Secretary of State has spoken passionately about the sector, but that is simply not borne out by what has happened over the past 10 years, which has been a story of cuts and lack of investment. What can he do to ensure that funding is guaranteed to continue into the future so that the sector can plan ahead?

[Gavin Williamson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. This is something that I do care passionately about. Like so many Members in this House, I recognise that this debate should be about not just the 50% of youngsters who go to university, but the other 50% as well. We all recognise the importance of what our colleges provide. I recognise that there is a big task ahead and that there will be many demands. As I have touched on before, we have already delivered a £1.5 billion capital funding programme and a £2.5 billion national skills fund. We always need to go further with our colleges, but I recognise that substantial challenges remain. I can absolutely reassure the hon. Gentleman of my commitment to delivering for this incredibly important sector, because it really does change lives.

Education: Return in January

Clive Efford Excerpts

Wednesday 30th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I would certainly urge the Department of Health and Social Care to prioritise vaccination of those who work in schools. All the vaccines currently available have not had or have not completed trials on people under the age of 18. I am sure my hon. Friend recognises the necessity of completing those trials before rolling out any vaccination programme to the younger cohorts.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab) [V]]

If Greenwich schools are included in one of the contingency areas, I hope the Secretary of State will have the decency to apologise to parents in our borough. With that in mind, if mass testing shows up high infection rates among children in schools, what is the contingency plan other than disruption to children’s education continuing into the future? Surely the end point has to be vaccination in schools when it becomes available. Is he planning for when that can be done?

Education Settings: Autumn Opening

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I am delighted that the Secretary of State is now talking to teachers’ representatives and their trade unions, but for too long Ministers have denigrated teachers from the Dispatch Box, which has led to people not believing the Government when they talk about people being safe to return to schools. If the Secretary of State is now consulting with the wider school community, will he say whether he has spoken to headteachers about the practicalities of every child going back, which must happen in September, and about children being able to stay in bubbles and separate year groups? What is the practicality of that in our schools?

[Gavin Williamson]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that we have had extensive discussions with headteachers about those plans, and consulted widely. I also assure him that I have met unions every week all the way through this crisis, and made sure that we have had a regular dialogue to share our plans. This should not be about trade unions dictating what we are doing that is best for our children. We want to work with trade unions and the whole sector, including staff, to deliver the best education for all children. We will continue to have that dialogue. We have done that in the past, and we will in the future.

Free School Meals: Summer Holidays

Clive Efford Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

The Secretary of State has his first volunteer to provide targeted tuition for pupils come September. I look forward to seeing the hon. Gentleman in the classroom once again. I am sure that Members across the House agree that safety has to be the No. 1 priority, and I know that that view is shared by the Secretary of State. We have to work across the House, and the Government really need to start pushing the boundaries and creating a taskforce, with experts, teaching unions and school leaders, to look at how we can safely get children back into school. That will be the best place for them—emotionally and academically—but it is not a trade-off between safety and being back in school. We need to achieve both.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

What we do not need from the Government is another rabbit-out-of-the-hat announcement. My hon. Friend has just set out the sorts of things that we need in place if we are going to reopen schools in September, as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) just suggested. That would require the Government to set out a plan now and to start to engage with teachers’ unions, teachers themselves, heads of schools, local authorities and parents to create confidence that it is safe to send children back to school. That is what is lacking from the Government; they need to engage more widely if we are going to create the confidence that children can return safely.

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. This is about assuring parents, teachers, school staff, pupils and wider communities about safety, and ensuring that we get children back into school in a very safe way. To do that, we have to have a consensus, which is why I have repeatedly called for the creation of a taskforce to bring together all those in the education sector to come up with the safety principles that need to be put in place in schools to ensure their safe reopening, and to produce a national plan for education so that pupils receive the emotional and academic support that they deserve.

Let me turn to additional support measures. I would like the Secretary of State to look at future GCSEs and A-levels, and to have discussions with Ofqual about changes to account for the work that has been lost during this period in order to provide a fair assessment of young people’s attainment. We also need provisions in the event that there is a second spike resulting in pupils being sent back home and being unable to take exams in the usual way.