Oral Answers to Questions

Colin Clark Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his question. We are looking at innovation across the board in the Department, and one of the areas that we are looking at is gamified work. I have seen some excellent work being done with children in Luton.

[Colin Clark (Gordon) (Con)]

13. What steps his Department has taken to increase the take-up of STEM subjects.

[The Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

The Government are committed to tackling our need for science, technology, engineering and maths skills in order to create a dynamic, innovation-driven economy. That is why we are investing an additional £406 million in skills, including maths and digital. This includes the advanced maths premium, and an £84 million programme to improve the teaching of computing, which should help to increase the take-up of these subjects.

[Colin Clark]

The Oil & Gas Technology Centre in Aberdeen is a major promoter of STEM subjects. Does the Minister agree that it is essential to prioritise the take-up of STEM subjects if we are to have the engineers and technicians that we need for the future?

[Mr Gyimah]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This is why we are encouraging more students into STEM education across the entire school system. We have seen a 17% overall increase in entries to STEM A-levels since 2010. In physics, it is overall at its highest level since 1996. However, there is clearly a lot more to do, which is why we are focused on doing a lot through careers and through the university system.

Agriculture GCSE

Colin Clark Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Julian Sturdy]

Again, I entirely agree. I will go on to mention that this is not just about agriculture. The wider rural economy, the environment and food security link back to agriculture and food production.

I understand that the Department for Education has recently introduced changes to secondary qualifications and wants a time to allow those to settle down, but a model exists for how to design and teach the subject at GCSE level, which suggests it would be straightforward for the Government to make it available. Has there been any consideration of replicating the content of the GCSE syllabus available to those in Northern Ireland for students in Britain?

I have been sympathetic to an expansion in GCSE options for some time, but I was encouraged to argue for this more publicly by the intervention of the BBC “Countryfile” presenter, Adam Henson, who publicly called for the introduction of an agriculture GCSE in September last year. He said:

“You can get a GCSE in religious studies and business, so why not in agriculture?”

That is a fair question. A GCSE in agriculture has a strong claim to feature among current non-core science and mathematics options, which currently include geology, astronomy and psychology. Expanding the offer to include the option of a GCSE in agriculture would be a sensible and logical development of the Government’s welcome plans to expand the provision of vocational and technical education in order to create a better skilled and more productive workforce, enjoying higher wages and better living standards. That is recognised in the Government’s industrial strategy, which made the claim of

“putting the UK at the forefront of this global revolution in farming.”

[Colin Clark (Gordon) (Con)]

I am old enough to remember when there was an O-grade, or an O-level, in agricultural science in Scotland—I am substantially older than my hon. Friend the Member for Angus (Kirstene Hair), who is far too young to remember it. An agriculture GCSE has to be about food production and what the countryside is really about, as opposed to the countryside as a national park. The best thing that could come out of it would be that people connect again with food production and the countryside.

[Julian Sturdy]

I entirely agree that it is about connecting with food production, and ensuring that we understand where our food comes from, how it works in the chain, the environmental impacts, and how we manage production. I cannot say that I am old enough to remember the O-level; my year was the last to take O-levels, but I cannot remember having the opportunity to take that one. The point is that we have to ensure that we move forward, and the GCSE would be one way of doing that.

I am watching with interest the development of plans for T-levels, as a full technical alternative to A-levels, but if there is truly to be the parity of esteem necessary to boost the take-up of vocational and technical skills, the option of a vocational or sector-linked qualification needs to be offered to pupils as soon as possible, at the time they first select the qualifications that they will take—that is, at GCSE level. Have the Government considered the effects of boosting the number of students taking the agriculture, environment and animal care route from 2022 by introducing a dedicated pre-16 qualification?

In Parliament, we are all familiar with employers saying that schools do not do enough to prepare our young people for the world of work. Offering an agriculture GCSE would go some way to respond to those concerns, by allowing pupils to equip themselves for work at an early age. GCSE-age children could learn about a practical and essential subject, directly linked to a varied and dynamic field of employment.

Environmental and Food System Education

Colin Clark Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered environmental and food system education in schools.

My reasons for calling this debate were twofold: to highlight some of the positive work already being done in schools and to call on the Government to go further and embed some of this work in the curriculum or support it across all schools. It is so important that our young people learn about the wonders of our natural environment and our wildlife, how we should respect them and how we should take care of them for future generations. Many are also calling for animal welfare to be taught in schools. If young people were taught respect for animals at an early stage, perhaps that would make a difference with some of the horrific crimes that we see carried out against animals.

Young people should also learn about climate change, the impact our behaviour is having on the planet and how we can address that. They should learn about where our food comes from and why what we grow and eat matters. It is not just about acquiring knowledge for the sake of it; it is about children’s mental and physical wellbeing and equipping them for life as adults, enjoying nature and living sustainably. The fact is that they love learning about these things, and I will come on to that later.

The last Labour Government took environmental education seriously. In 2000, education for sustainable development was introduced as a non-statutory element of the curriculum. That was followed in 2006 by the launch of the sustainable schools strategy, which encouraged schools to follow the recommendations in the eight doorways, which were: buildings and grounds; energy and water; travel and traffic; food and drink; purchasing and waste; local wellbeing; inclusion and participation; and the global dimension. Through that, they would have become completely sustainable schools by 2020. Unfortunately, the strategy was scrapped by the Government in 2010.

In 2006, the Government launched the “Learning Outside the Classroom” manifesto, which promoted outdoor learning as an essential part of education, whether that was in school grounds and the local area or visits further afield and residential trips. The manifesto highlighted the value of hands-on, experiential learning as a way of enhancing and supporting work back in the classroom. It is a shame that the current Government have not built on that. As I said, the sustainable schools strategy was scrapped in 2010.

The environmental science and environmental and land-based science GCSEs were recently discontinued. The Government told me that was due to a lack of confidence in new content being developed, but it leaves a vacuum. The environmental studies A-level is currently at the tail end of being phased out, with the final set of exams being sat in the next six months. It will be replaced by a new environmental science A-level that started teaching this year, but the shift to stripped-back, science-only learning will deter many pupils from taking it up. Pupils have told me that is the case.

The national curriculum references the environment and climate change only in science and geography, and even then mostly in relation to the technical causes and processes, rather than the impact of climate change on individuals and communities. Key stage 3 science only includes reference to

“the production of carbon dioxide by human activity and the impact on climate.”

Key stage 4 science only mentions the effects of increased greenhouse gases on the Earth’s climate system and supposed “uncertainties” in the evidence for climate change. The geography syllabus has only passing reference to the changing climate from the ice age to the present day and how human and physical processes can change the environment. The parliamentary digital engagement service put something out on Facebook and Instagram over the weekend, and people came back to say that although there is the option to study climate change in geography, it is not always taken up. Geography GCSE is optional, so young people will not necessarily learn about that aspect of the curriculum unless they are studying that GCSE and the teacher decides to focus on climate change.

The situation is piecemeal and insufficient. We are failing to teach young people about the real-world impacts of climate change or the action that can be taken to mitigate it. The previous syllabus covered environmental issues much more comprehensively, but the then Education Secretary, now the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, tried to remove those things from geography altogether and have them in science only and not talk about the human role. I appreciate that he would dispute that that was his role in events. The former Energy and Climate Change Secretary, the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey), who recently returned to the House, takes credit for forcing a U-turn on the then Education Secretary. I appreciate that there is some controversy, but there was a huge pushback against what were perceived to be the Education Secretary’s plans at the time, and there was a partial U-turn.

Academies and free schools are not obliged to follow the national curriculum, so they are not required to teach environmental or climate change issues at all. The London School of Economics aptly summarised this in its response to the Government’s consultation in 2013. It said that

“there can be no justification for omitting climate change from the National Curriculum, and the education of pupils would be deficient if they did not receive teaching about it…If core climate change teaching is not included as compulsory learning…there is a risk that some students would not acquire essential basic knowledge about climate change. As the UK Youth Climate Coalition points out, ‘climate change is too important to be left to individual teacher choice’.”

As the Government’s enthusiasm for environmental education has waned, many third-sector-run initiatives have risen to fill the gap. One great initiative is the Eco-Schools programme that has been run by Keep Britain Tidy for more than 25 years. It aims to help students embed sustainable development into their schools’ daily lives. In England alone, 17,000 schools are registered on the scheme. Eco-Schools is based on pupil-led, real-world learning, empowering children to create change and environmental improvements by forming eco-committees, conducting environmental reviews of the schools’ practices and drawing up environmental action plans. I have seen that in some of the schools in my constituency. The kids get really engaged in it.

Farming and Countryside Education has a countryside classroom online portal for teachers. It includes materials to allow children to discuss what they deem to be controversial issues, such as badgers, bee health, migrant labour, food waste and flooding.

[Colin Clark (Gordon) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on bringing the debate to the Chamber. There is a great deal of interaction through visits to farms by school pupils. I am sure she will agree that commercial farming is making a huge contribution to protecting the environment. It is important that young people understand that modern farming can play its part. Does she agree that it would be good if school pupils and university students could visit modern farms to understand that farms have moved on and are making a contribution?

[Kerry McCarthy]

I think that is important. It is something FACE encourages. There is also the “FaceTime a farmer” scheme, which was started by Tom Martin, a Cambridgeshire farmer. It teams farmers up with schools. They use FaceTime or Skype to make video calls to classrooms. That is obviously no substitute for getting out on the farms, but it is a good initiative.

The Woodland Trust has flagged up with me that it has the free trees programme and the Green Tree School Awards. It is taking those things into schools, and they are incredibly popular. Another great initiative is the Soil Association’s Food for Life catering award for food quality, which more than 10,000 UK schools currently possess. To become accredited, the school is required to use locally sourced and seasonal produce, maintain in-school gardens and develop students’ practical green skills. It also encourages schools to visit farms. It has Grandparent Gardening Week from 19 to 23 March. It gets local allotment holders, grandparents and so on into schools to help set up school gardens for the growing season. That is a great way of engaging the community in what goes on in schools.

In Bristol, where the Soil Association is based, I went along to Bristol Metropolitan Academy, which is a secondary school. It had the local primary schools come along to take part in something that showed the circle of life of food. The younger kids turned up having grown basil in their schools. They were then shown by a food waste chef, Shane Jordan, how to cook pasta and make a sauce with the basil. The leftovers were then fed into a wormery and they were shown how that worked, which was the bit they loved, of course, with all those squirming worms coming out of the bottom of it. They were then shown how the compost for the wormery helps to grow more basil. It was brilliant to see the kids so involved and learning things about food that they had never heard before.

A project in my constituency, Growing Futures, has a campfire where kids can sit around and talk. People with mental health issues go along as well. The project is also about growing food and it teaches young children about it in a fairly informal setting. We very much want to incorporate that into the Feeding Bristol project that we are running to tackle food poverty in the city.

The Food Growing in Schools Taskforce’s March 2012 report found that green activities in schools result in

“significant learning, skills, health and well-being outcomes for children”.

Surveys conducted by the Learning through Landscapes organisation found that 73% of teachers reported improved pupil behaviour, and 64% reported reduced bullying.

Another initiative that has enjoyed huge success in the UK recently is forest schools, where young children attend lessons in woodland environments. Forest schools have flourished in Bristol. We have had one since 2004 and it has its own woodland to use for sessions. Earthwise, an organisation focused on reconnecting young people with food, farming and the natural world, runs a forest school locally and works with the community farm in Chew Magna in Somerset to deliver educational visits, seasonal cookery days and holiday activities throughout the year. I do not have time today to go into the need to teach young children how to cook the food, but that is important, too.

A report by Forest Research, “A marvellous opportunity to learn”, found that children who regularly attend forest school sessions noticeably developed in confidence and independence, with social and team-working skills, better motivation and concentration and better physical skills and fine motor skills. It is a wonderful programme.

Even small physical changes can have a huge positive impact on children. The Carnegie Mellon school reported up to 26% higher test scores in classrooms with ample natural light, with the addition of plants leading to score improvements of 14%. That seems a strange connection to make, but that was the result of its survey. The 2005 report by the National Foundation for Educational Research, “The benefits of a forest school experience”, stated:

“While watching their children explore the woodland, the parents expressed their wonder at the level of independence and confidence their children were showing”,

and would in the future encourage more freedom outdoors,

“perhaps out of sight in a secure environment, leave the busy paths and let their children lead the way.”

So it is not just something that takes place in the classroom; it is outside the classroom as well. A great quote from one forest school leader summarises this:

“Children have fun during forest school, and so the place in which they have fun becomes important to them—keeping that environment cared for matters to them.”

It has also been shown to have a particularly remarkable impact on the development of students with special educational needs.

Sulivan Primary School in Fulham maintains a reading forest for its students, where children can find books “growing” on trees and in tents, as well as a wildlife garden, pond and vegetable plot. The school describes how children with special education needs, many of whom do not normally enjoy reading, benefit from the way that being in the outdoors relieves stress and anxiety, develops their social skills, motivates learning and allows them to be practical, responsible and productive members of the school’s community.

I am aware of the time, so I will skim over this quickly. The skills, knowledge and enjoyment benefit children when they become adults, too. In 2014, Lantra estimated that there were 230,000 businesses and 1.3 million employees working in the land and environmental industries, and that many more would be required by 2020. The horticultural and agricultural sectors are currently experiencing a skills shortage. The food sector is a huge part of the economy, and innovative, value-added products are the future of that industry. Innovation is going on at Harper Adams University. We need to engage young people and get them interested in careers in that field. There is the waste sector, energy sector, many high-tech engineering jobs, and renewable energy and eco-housing sectors. There are so many things that young people could be inspired to do.

It is almost obligatory in environmental debates these days to mention “Blue Planet”. The BBC natural history unit, based in Bristol, is behind amazing series such as “Planet Earth” and “Blue Planet”. In 2012, it teamed up with the University of the West of England to co-design a masters course in wildlife filmmaking, which is certainly something for young people to aspire to. Who knows? The makers of future “Blue Planets” could be in schools just waiting to have their imaginations fired.

In conclusion, we need to go further and not simply leave initiatives to the schools that have decided to run with them. We must embed them in the curriculum across the board. It could take the form of embedding the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals into lesson plans. It has been disappointing so far that when the Environmental Audit Committee has taken evidence from the Government, they still seem to see the SDGs as something that we do in developing countries rather than something that we are embedding into the way we do things here. School procurement decisions could be used to teach children about healthy eating.

I want to flag up a few countries that have gone further than the UK. I hope we can look at them as examples. The Dominican Republic, which is at great risk of climate change, established mandatory climate change education in schools in 1998. Australia introduced its national environmental education plan in 2000. Brazil’s educational guidelines required climate change to be taught in all subjects from 1998. The Philippines introduced climate change into the curriculum in 2009. Vietnam did it in 2008. Costa Rica has been doing it since the 1980s. If those countries can do it, we ought to do it in the UK, too.

Oral Answers to Questions

Colin Clark Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

We want to ensure that that kind of offer is available for every child in our country, including in Knowsley. As the right hon. Gentleman suggests, there is a lot of work to be done to ensure that the education offer on people’s doorsteps in Knowsley gets better over the coming years. He will know that a lot of work is going on locally, and that is complemented by our national focus on standards. I have written to him about this, and I am happy to do my role in ensuring that we work together to improve education outcomes for children in Knowsley.

[Colin Clark (Gordon) (Con)]

5. What steps the Government are taking to encourage pupils to take up science, technology, engineering and maths.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Justine Greening)]

The Government are committed to tackling our long-term shortage of STEM skills in order to grow the workforce that we need for a dynamic economy. An additional £406 million for maths, digital and technical education was announced in the Budget, including a new post-16 maths premium and a new £84 million programme to improve the teaching of computing, both of which aim to encourage the increased take-up of STEM subjects.

[Colin Clark]

Children in England are benefiting from the Government’s focus on STEM subjects, but does the Secretary of State agree that all children in the UK should be encouraged to study such subjects? A shortage of STEM teachers in Scotland risks undermining children’s opportunities, including at Inverurie Academy in my constituency.

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Scottish Government have failed to deliver better education standards across the board for Scottish children. In fact, looking at Scotland’s PISA results, standards dropped across all testing areas between 2012 and 2015. That is the Scottish Government’s legacy for their children. Scotland is behind England in science, maths and reading, which is a shocking indictment.

International Men’s Day

Colin Clark Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Colin Clark (Gordon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Austin. I will do my best to keep it very brief. Thank you to my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) for securing this debate.

International Men’s Day raises some important issues, as we have heard from other hon. Members. I will try not to go over them again. I am a father of two little boys, so I declare an interest. I attended both their births and the prenatal classes, so I have done my best to start off well.

Equality should mean tackling discrimination issues for both genders, yet there is still too little recognition of the important contribution that men and boys make to our society and that they often face more social pressures than women do. As the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) said, that is not necessarily fair. This can lead to extreme levels of stress and anxiety, and in the worst cases a feeling of failure. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford explained, four in five suicides are by men—I am staggered. It is the biggest killer of men under the age of 35. It does not just happen in deprived areas. The downturn in the oil and gas industry in my own constituency in Aberdeenshire has created huge pressures on families and the main breadwinner. As the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire said, that may be a stereotype, but I am afraid that is the consequence.

Raising awareness about men’s wellbeing also means talking about their own physical health and recognising that men are more likely to die of cancer or heart disease. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford has said, the figures on that are available to us all. As we have heard, 95% of workplace fatalities are men. In my Gordon constituency, where we have had traditionally male-dominated employment—primarily oil and gas, agriculture and fishing—they have gone an awful long way in trying to reduce that. Particularly the fishing industry, which had a bad track record, is trying to improve that. Oil and gas now has a tremendously good track record. More women, of course, are going in to oil and gas, and there may be some correlation with improving safety.

In Scotland, men’s life expectancy is five years less than women’s. In all the statistics, that is true all over the world. Having said that, the aim of International Men’s Day is not to promote one gender over the other. It is not about who faces more discrimination, but calling for a more balanced approach to gender equality.

Hon. Members have spoken about personal cases in their own constituencies. I was recently contacted by the sister of an acting police officer—a man. She wrote to me telling me about his plight. His marriage had broken up. He was struggling to pay maintenance and keep a roof over his head. The most tragic issue for him was not seeing his children. While reading the email I realised that I actually knew him and I had absolutely no idea how much he was struggling with life—similarly to the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), who spoke about his own personal circumstances.

We must promote positive male role models and hardworking men to the benefit of all. Promoting that role model is important to males and females. I was delighted to see at the Remembrance Day in Inverurie how many youth organisations have men—and women—still running them, and to see that youth organisations are now pretty well gender neutral.

[Ian Austin (in the Chair)]

Mr Clark, I hope your speech is coming to an end.

[Colin Clark]

I am definitely coming to an end, Mr Austin.

Quickly, to shoot ahead, International Men’s Day improves gender relations, but it also creates a safer and better society, where each individual regardless of their gender is able to reach their full potential.