Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Review

Debate between Clive Efford and Nadhim Zahawi

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

Debate between Clive Efford and Nadhim Zahawi

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

Debate between Clive Efford and Nadhim Zahawi

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 Vaccinations: 12 to 15-year-olds

Debate between Clive Efford and Nadhim Zahawi

Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s question, but I would just slightly push back. He said that the Government have the answer that we want; that is actually incorrect, because I can tell him that the Government made it very clear that the JCVI and the chief medical officers had to base their decision on the work that they do, unimpeded and unencumbered in any way, and they have made that decision today. I can reassure him that the information provided through the school-age vaccination programme infrastructure will be made available both online and as hard copy—in leaflets—so that parents have all the information that they need, as well as the ability to consent; and, of course, that information will also be available to the children.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I heard the Minister’s earlier answer about assistance for schools with ventilators and air purification. The time to roll that out would have been during the summer holidays, in preparation for the return to school. Yet again, we seem to be way behind the pace of what is going on. May I urge the Minister to talk to his colleague the Minister for School Standards, the right hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb), who is sitting next to him, to get some urgency into the assistance for schools with this issue?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I think it worth reminding the House that ventilation guidance has been there from the very beginning for schools and school leavers to implement, but the roll-out is happening as we speak. Our colleagues in the Department for Education are working right now to get those pieces of equipment into schools as quickly as possible.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Clive Efford and Nadhim Zahawi

Monday 4th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman feels that way. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s counterpart in the Scottish Government, Fiona Hyslop, to whom I speak every week, as I do to Ken Skates in Wales and Diane Dodds in Northern Ireland, thinks that the schemes are working well. We have improved them as we have reviewed them. We have also launched the bounce-back scheme, which is much simpler, of between £2,000 to £50,000, and can get money in the bank within 24 hours.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

What steps he is taking to ensure that businesses do not profiteer from shortages of personal protective equipment in the health and social care sector.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Nadhim Zahawi)]

Profiteering in PPE is completely unacceptable, and I want to be clear that no one should seek to exploit this health emergency for financial gain.

[Clive Efford]

That is a disappointing answer. The problem has been exacerbated by the Government’s failure to stockpile PPE. There are numerous examples of people exploiting this situation, so it will only get worse if the Government do not act quickly. Will the Minister commit to legislating to take power to act against operators who exploit the situation?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The Competition and Markets Authority has already written to the small number of firms suspected of profiteering, and the Secretary of State has recently met business and consumer representatives to discuss what further action might be necessary to address the issue. I have to put on record that the vast majority of firms are acting responsibly. So many across the UK, such as BrewDog, Diageo and hundreds of small operators, are supporting the national effort to tackle covid-19. As I said, the Secretary of State always keeps the options open for tackling profiteering.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Clive Efford and Nadhim Zahawi

Monday 19th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I certainly join my hon. Friend in his thanks, and I would actually like to meet him to look at what other support we can provide. I also commend the director of children’s services at Northamptonshire County Council for doing an excellent job in very difficult circumstances.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Based on Government statistics, 63 schools in my borough will lose funding of £300,000 per annum between 2015 and 2020. Can the Minister tell me what happened to the Prime Minister’s promise to maintain pupil funding?