SEND Provision: Hertfordshire and Central Bedfordshire

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2024 Westminster Hall

[Alistair Strathern]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing his keen interest to Hertfordshire and Central Bedfordshire today. He is renowned for that forensic insight across the House. He is, of course, quite right. When one young person in the classroom is let down, whatever their needs, the whole class is losing out. Putting that right is a fundamental challenge for our new Minister and new Government.

The Ofsted reports received by authorities in 2019 and 2022 across my constituency painted a damning picture of local provision and the challenges families were facing. It is important to acknowledge that since the reports were published, there have been some welcome steps forward. Increases in staff capacity were needed and are welcome. Moves to boost specialist school capacity, however delayed, have to be welcomed. The model that Hertfordshire is moving towards—a model of making SEND everyone’s business to ensure a breadth of ambition for those who look after young people with additional needs right across the partnership—is a novel and noteworthy approach. I am sure it is one that will be of interest to the Minister.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for securing the debate and for starting it so well. He is right to say that there has been recent progress in the delivery of SEND in Hertfordshire, but much of that has started only since the most recent damning Ofsted report. Back in 2021, I invited the then Conservative leader of Hertfordshire county council to attend a ministerial meeting with me to discuss the funding formula and he declined. In 2023, the Conservative group refused to invest an extra £1 million in SEND services at Hertfordshire county council, as the Lib Dems had proposed, and only backtracked after that Ofsted report. This year, the Conservative education portfolio holder apparently decided to join the f40 campaign, but only after I had written suggesting they do so. I am pleased to see that there has been some progress, but does the hon. Member agree that Hertfordshire children have been really let down, not only by the Conservatives in Government but by the Conservatives in county hall?

[Alistair Strathern]

I could not agree more. The way in which families and, crucially, young people in Hertfordshire have been let down typifies a challenge facing local authorities right across the country: in the context of a nationally failing system, how do we make sure our local leaders remain ambitious for our young people and do not become incredibly complacent about performance that cannot be justified? We saw that in Hertfordshire and, heartbreakingly, we see it today in other parts of the UK.

It is clear that even with the early signs of improvement there are significant challenges to address. Local statistics, including those published today by ITV Anglia, lay bare some of the shocking challenges that families and young people are still facing. It is evident that far too many young people are waiting far too long for an assessment, for the support that follows that and, shamefully, even for the school places that are most appropriate for their needs. Alongside that, far too many families are having to battle an appeals system just to secure confirmation of the support their young persons are clearly in need of and clearly entitled to.

Hertfordshire SEND Services: Ofsted Findings

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Ofsted findings on Hertfordshire’s SEND services.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma.

I am relieved to have secured this debate in the wake of the damning inspection report by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission on Hertfordshire’s special educational needs and disability service. Hertfordshire has received the worst possible inspection outcome. I would like to say that that was a shocking revelation, but sadly it did not come as a surprise to me or the scores of constituents who have contacted me in previous years about their experiences of SEND in the county. I had already written to Ofsted twice this year to plead with it to bring forward the inspection as quickly as possible. It finally took place in July and was published in November. I have lost count of the number of families in St Albans I have spoken to who have reached breaking point. My casework team now spend a third of their time on SEND casework.

The Ofsted report sets out, albeit in fairly sanitised terms, what it is like to be a child or young person with special educational needs or disabilities in our area. It describes the poor communication with families about their education, health and care plans. It is explicit about the lengthy delays in preparing the plans. It is clear that when EHCPs are produced, they are often of poor quality. Inspectors also document the local authority’s continued failure to put in place the measures in those EHCPs that would ensure that children’s needs are met. The report echoes the experiences of so many families in St Albans and across Hertfordshire who have contacted me. Those families have been forced to fight every step of the way to get an EHCP, and even then many have to progress their child’s case to formal routes such as tribunals. But even with a tribunal finding in their favour, families still often struggle to get Hertfordshire to deliver on the ruling in a timely way.

The Ofsted report includes all that and more, but it cannot convey the heartbreak and human cost of the failures inflicted on families, so I want to share the experience of just one of my constituents. Charlie—not their real name—is a single parent to three children, two of whom have special educational needs. Charlie contacted me more than a year ago in utter desperation. Their oldest child had been permanently excluded from a mainstream school that could not meet their needs, and one of their younger children had been placed on a reduced timetable. The family was at breaking point. The local authority was well aware of the exclusion and had finally agreed, three months earlier, that special school places were urgently needed, but Charlie could not get any indication of when places might be available or any other support while the places were secured. In fact, calls and emails to the local authority went unanswered. Then, SEND officers failed to turn up to Charlie’s child’s exclusion panel. After that, a case was not presented correctly at a separate special needs panel, causing a further three-month delay, and then the council failed to even communicate the decision of that panel to the family. There was an utter failure in communication.

During this time, Charlie was unable to work. Having used all their annual leave, they were forced to take an unpaid sabbatical. Their bank had been sympathetic for the first three months and had allowed deferred mortgage payments, but with no update from the authority’s SEND service on planned provision, which would have enabled them to return to work, Charlie was about to lose the family home and was at real risk of losing their job. There was a very real danger that a parent and their three children would be made destitute and homeless. As a result, the children were, naturally, becoming more and more dysregulated. Their emotional wellbeing and mental health were deteriorating quickly, and their educational development had halted and in some respects gone into reverse.

When Charlie contacted me and highlighted just how close their family was to collapse, I contacted Hertfordshire County Council, stressing the urgency in no uncertain terms. Astonishingly, I too struggled to get any reply from the council. I had to follow up several times to finally secure a Zoom call with the responsible officers. I sent concise and direct questions about the case in advance of the meeting, hoping that I would get answers. Despite between eight and 10 officers joining that Zoom call, I was unable to get answers to even the most basic questions. I asked if Hertfordshire County Council would pay for the transport of a child from their home to the school, and not one of the officers could answer that question. In the end, I was told that a school placement would likely be in place within two weeks; in reality, it was another six weeks before it was provided. The urgent meeting was held in December last year, yet I was still following up on one of the EHCPs in late March of this year. Even to this day, the county council has failed to confirm the provision for the younger of Charlie’s children.

I would like to assure the House that that awful case is an isolated one, but it is not. Each and every week, my team and I get yet more examples of the chaos and confusion in the SEND service in Hertfordshire. It appears that there is simply no effective triage in place. The service is in such a state of meltdown that they simply cannot distinguish between emergencies and non-urgent inquiries. Hertfordshire MPs of all political persuasions have repeatedly asked for a more effective triage system so that we can escalate urgent SEND cases, yet we still do not have one; perhaps, after years of dysfunction, there are just too many emergencies to cope with.

I will turn to how on earth we got to this point, and I am afraid that it boils down to cold hard cash—or the lack of it. Fundamentally, our county of Hertfordshire suffers from two connected problems of the Government’s making. First, the Government’s flawed national funding formula is based on historical spend, not current need. That means that children in Hertfordshire are still receiving far less per head than children in comparable neighbouring counties, such as Buckinghamshire. Secondly, the funding that Hertfordshire County Council receives does not stretch as far as it could because it must spend huge amounts on expensive placements in the independent sector.

I will turn to the funding formula. This year, SEND children in neighbouring Buckinghamshire receive an average of £935 per head, while children in Hertfordshire receive just £614. That stems from the Government’s broken funding formula, which takes spending in 2017 as a baseline figure, and that has been particularly devastating for Hertfordshire. In 2017, £2.2 million of high-needs SEND funding was diverted from regular spending to provide new special school places by the county council as a one-off investment, and that figure therefore was not included in the baseline calculation at all. Additionally and, in my view, inexcusably, Hertfordshire’s Conservative administration returned £3.7 million, which was allocated for SEND by central Government. Its reasoning was that it was not given enough time to allocate it in that financial year, although I suspect, if asked, many families who were reliant on SEND services at the time would find that pretty hard to swallow.

All in all, the Department for Education formula ignores £5.9 million of annual spend that should have been taken into account when formulating the baseline. I have raised that with Ministers repeatedly in meetings, letters and parliamentary questions since 2021, and I have provided ample analysis from the local authority to demonstrate the disparity. In May this year, I received a shocking response from the then Minister for Children, the right hon. Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho). She suggested that by including the additional money in the baseline calculation, it would merely increase that year’s funding by £2 million, so it was not even worth adjusting. We would bite off their hand for £2 million. I understand that Department for Education officials met with Hertfordshire County Council yesterday to examine those figures again, and I hope the Minister may have an update for me today.

My first question is: will the Minister immediately release that £2 million, particularly in the light of Hertfordshire County Council’s announcement last week that without drastic action by the Conservative administration, the schools budget will be overspent by £15 million?

Secondly, when will the Government change the funding formula so that it is based on current need? The DFE has tried to justify the decision not to correct the formula by suggesting that Hertfordshire’s spend is increasing by a greater percentage each year compared with authorities such as Buckinghamshire. However, at the current year-on-year increase, it would take 15 years to achieve parity. That means that a three-year-old in Hertfordshire today would have to finish all their formal education before they would get equal funding with a child in Buckinghamshire for their SEND needs. That is indefensible.

My third question is about funding for special school places. HCC officers also tell me that, alongside having one of the lowest rates of funding per head, the council also has some of the highest costs. That is a result of needing to place more and more students in independent and out-of-county schools. I am relieved that some new school places were secured in 2019 in the council’s wave 2 bid, but I was very disappointed to be told just last week by officials from the Department for Education that Hertfordshire’s recent application for a new special school—which would go some way to mitigating that cost—was refused.

It was suggested to me that there might have been problems with that application, but HCC officials say they did not receive any negative feedback. Honestly, parents and MPs are simply not interested in finger pointing—we just want to see new school places created. Will the Minister commit to working with Hertfordshire to ensure that it can submit an application that has the best possible chance, so that our county can secure funding for the additional special school places that we so desperately need?

I have two other questions that are directly related to Ofsted. Both day-to-day funding and investment in special schools need to be addressed if we are to see any improvement in outcomes for families in Hertfordshire, but the issues in Hertfordshire now run much deeper than just the financial challenges, as Charlie’s example so clearly and devastatingly illustrates. We have all seen the Ofsted report, and I am disappointed that the Secretary of State has not—yet, perhaps—appointed a commissioner to support the council in rebuilding the service.

I welcome the news of the appointment of Dame Christine Lenehan as an independent chair of the improvement board, but the improvement plans that were presented to Hertfordshire MPs in 2023 by HCC were devastatingly similar to the ones presented to us in 2021. If anything, services have not got better; they have got worse. Families in my constituency have been waiting for far too long, so my next question is: will Ministers now grasp the nettle and immediately issue a formal improvement notice? My final question is: will the Minister appoint a SEND commissioner to get Hertfordshire back on track, in the way that the Government supported Birmingham City Council when its SEND services were found to be failing?

There is no doubt that SEND services are in crisis right across England. In the longer term, I urge the Government to end the postcode lottery of provision. Liberal Democrats would establish a national body to fund high needs SEND, and take pressure off local councils’ decimated balance sheets. But today I ask Minister to step up and take this opportunity to improve the lives of children and families in St Albans, and right across Hertfordshire. I ask him to please issue an improvement notice, please appoint a SEND commissioner to drive improvement forward, please release the £2 million adjustment without delay, and please, for goodness’ sake, fix the absurd funding formula that puts children in Hertfordshire at a permanent disadvantage—for at least the next 15 years. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I congratulate the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) on securing a debate on such an important subject. Improving the special educational needs and disabilities system across the country is a priority for this Government, and that includes improving services for children and young people with SEND in Hertfordshire.

The Government’s ambition for children and young people with SEND is for them to thrive, fulfil their potential, and lead happy, healthy and productive adult lives. That means making sure that they have access to the right support in the right place at the right time, and intervening when a local authority is not providing that. I was therefore very disappointed to learn that Ofsted inspectors have significant concerns about the experiences and outcomes for children with SEND in Hertfordshire. The issues raised in the report are serious. I need to be confident that the local area partnership is taking the right actions to secure rapid and sustainable improvement.

DFE officials, along with NHS England advisers, are due to meet local leaders next week to scrutinise and challenge their improvement plan in response to the inspection. They will seek assurances about the actions that leaders are taking to improve SEND provision rapidly. The local authority has already appointed Dame Christine Lenehan, as the hon. Member noted. She was director at the Council for Disabled Children and will be the new independent chair of the partnership’s multi-agency improvement board. She is one of the country’s most highly respected and experienced SEND experts. I have every confidence that she will push the local authority to take the actions that it should take and move it in the right direction.

The Department for Education has also appointed a specialist professional SEND adviser to provide additional advice and support to the local SEND leaders and to the Department until such time as the Secretary of State is satisfied that that is no longer required. It is essential that rapid action is taken to improve SEND services in Hertfordshire and that the local area partnership accepts collective responsibility and accountability for delivering the agreed actions. That will require a relentless focus on improvement across all service providers so that children, young people and families can access the support that they need.

Let me turn to the hon. Lady’s questions about funding. Funding for mainstream schools and high needs funding for children and young people with complex needs will be more than £1.8 billion higher next year than this financial year. Total schools funding will be £59.6 billion—its highest ever level in real terms per pupil. Within that total, high needs funding will be over £10.5 billion in 2024-25—an increase of more than 60% on the 2019-20 allocations. That will help local authorities and schools with the increasing costs of supporting children and young people with SEND.

We recently announced provisional 2024-25 high needs allocations for local authorities, and Hertfordshire’s allocation is £187 million, which is £8.4 million more than the council will receive this year—a cumulative increase of 29% per head over the three years since 2021-22.

[Daisy Cooper]

The Minister talks about the allocation that will be given to Hertfordshire County Council. Will he confirm that he will instruct his officials to speak directly to HCC about what should have been included in the 2017 baseline, so that we make sure that the money that we are going to receive is a fair reflection of what we should get?

[David Johnston]

If officials have not had that conversation already, I am happy for them to discuss that point with the council. This is the first time that I have heard that point from the hon. Lady today. I am well aware that she and other right hon. and hon. Members representing Hertfordshire have had discussions and correspondence with my predecessors at the Department about the way that the high needs funding formula works for Hertfordshire and other counties, and particularly the different levels of per-head funding that the council receives compared with neighbours. As she might know, officials from the Department met Hertfordshire County Council officers yesterday to discuss the local authority’s concerns, in addition to the meeting that she had with officials last week.

As the hon. Lady suggested, the situation is partly due to the historical spend factor in the formula that was in place when we came to power in 2010 and which used to be used as a proxy for supply and demand. We have been reducing the weight of that factor over time, but because of how much it made up the formula that we inherited, it is not something that can be changed immediately. That is why, as she suggested, the increases for Hertfordshire are higher than for others as we try to close the gap.

[Daisy Cooper]

I accept that the increase cannot happen “immediately”, to use the Minister’s word, but does he agree that 15 years is too long? And if it is, and if immediately is not possible, is there a midway point? Might he look at how Hertfordshire can catch up with Buckinghamshire’s funding, for example, in a few years? Even knowing that that can happen over two or three years, or a maximum of four years, would bring huge relief to our services. Although I might accept him saying that it cannot happen immediately, I cannot accept him saying that it still has to happen over 15 years.

[David Johnston]

I can say to the hon. Lady only that we review the formula every single year. This is not the only factor that is within the formula. I believe that the gap is closing as a result of what we have been doing. As part of our annual process, we will look at every authority to see what is happening.

To turn to the hon. Lady’s questions about special school places, we know that demand for specialist provision in Hertfordshire currently exceeds the number of available places. We have published more than £1.5 billion of high needs provision capital allocations for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 financial years as part of our transformational £2.6 billion investment into high needs provision between 2022 and 2025. That includes almost £27 million for Hertfordshire. Local authorities can use the funding to deliver new places in mainstream and special schools, as well as other specialist settings, and to improve the suitability and accessibility of existing buildings.

Local authorities can also commission new schools through the free school presumption route. Hertfordshire held a successful free school presumption competition in autumn ’22 to identify an academy sponsor to open a 60-place primary school in Potters Bar. The new school is planned to open by September 2025. In addition, a 60-place secondary special free school, the James Marks Academy, was opened in September this year.

Hertfordshire has a county-wide capital programme to deliver the key priorities of the county’s SEND special school place planning strategy. I understand that the local authority intends to extend the current SEND sufficiency strategy by one year into 2025 to provide additional specialist provision places and resource provisions for children with communication needs in mainstream schools, ensuring that children can attend the provision stated on their EHCP and that their needs are met in the most appropriate local provision.

As well as expanding special resource provision in mainstream schools across the county, a priority from Hertfordshire County Council’s strategy is to open more permanent places for pupils with severe learning difficulties, physical and neurological impairment, and social, emotional and communication development need.

Positive actions have been taken. For example, the county is establishing a number of new specialist resource provisions in mainstream schools for children with communication needs. Four secondary provisions with 20 places each are being developed. One is already open and the other three will open in the next academic year. Those will be followed by nine primary provisions with 12 places each across the next two academic years.

I thank the hon. Lady again for bringing this matter forward and for raising the issues that she is seeing with Hertfordshire’s SEND provision. We all care passionately about the outcomes there, along with SEND outcomes across the country, and that is why this Government are determined to transform the system with our reform plan.

Question put and agreed to.

Core School Budget Allocations

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his kind comments. He is absolutely right: as soon as we knew about the error, I wanted to make sure that we were doing everything we could to rectify it and find a solution to the problem that officials and the Department had caused. That was my approach, and that is why we recalculated the whole of the national funding formula notional allocations as soon as we could and published that detail on 6 October.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

For far too long, the Department for Education has been plagued by a litany of failures that have had a devastating impact on children, their parents and teachers. We have had the mutant algorithm and the RAAC roofs, we have a crisis in our SEND system, and now we have a bit of good old-fashioned incompetence. Does the Minister agree that it is high time that the Secretary of State offered an apology to the British public for all this, or does he think that—in her words—we should thank her for doing a flipping good job?

[Nick Gibb]

The last flippant comment was not necessary; these are all serious issues. Issues such as RAAC have been around in our school system since the 1950s and 1960s. When we discovered new facts and new evidence, we took swift action. There will always be almost no notice; when we have evidence, we cannot just sit on it until a more convenient time to announce it. We had to announce it straightaway. Every school with confirmed RAAC has a caseworker allocated to make sure that we are keeping children safe and keeping them in face-to-face education. So far, we have identified 174 schools with RAAC and in the vast majority of those—all but 23 schools—all the children are still in face-to-face education.

In terms of special educational needs, we published a Green Paper and an implementation plan to improve the experience of parents and children with special educational needs in our school system.

Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Review

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My hon. Friend speaks with passion and probably pain from having to consult those parents who have fought and feel that they are sometimes let down by the system. We have to ensure that the system works equally well in rural areas. Lincolnshire, for example, co-created the local system. It brought families and stakeholders in and said, “Look, we have got £50 million. How should we spend that to make sure the provision is the best we can make it?”

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

The Secretary of State has said that decisions about support are too often based on where a child lives and not on what they need. That is the problem facing children in St Albans and across Hertfordshire. The reason is that the Government’s flawed funding formula for SEND is based on historical spend, not current need. This has produced the problem that SEND people in Hertfordshire get only £549 per head, compared with the neighbouring authority of Buckinghamshire, where the figure is £823 per head. That is a whopping 50% more. I met one of the Secretary of State’s Ministers in December and he committed to look at the specific anomaly of Hertfordshire once the Green Paper was published. Now that it has been published, will the Secretary of State confirm that his Department will look at this specific issue in Hertfordshire, and will he write to me in the coming weeks to outline what steps the Department is taking to tackle this anomaly?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Yes, I will write to the hon. Lady. I also want to remind the House that the national funding formula is where we are moving to, to ensure that there is fairness in the system for all schools, including special schools.

Awarding Qualifications in 2021 and 2022

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I ask all Members to focus on shorter questions, as we have two other pieces of business before we get on to the general debate.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD) [V]]

Last month, the Secretary of State said:

“We very much hope and intend for exams to go ahead in 2022”.

That was a statement not exactly brimming with confidence. As the school year draws to a close, more than 1 million school pupils in England, including a third of all secondary school students, are absent because of covid. Are the Government confident that the decisions they have made recently will not affect the ability of schools to reopen safely in October or to stay open safely for the whole academic year, and that young people sitting exams will not be let down for a third year running?

[Nick Gibb]

There is a clear plan that exams will go ahead next year. A large proportion of the pupils who are not in school at the moment are out as a consequence of self-isolating because they have been a close contact of somebody who has tested positive for covid. From 16 August, anybody under the age of 18 will not have to self-isolate as a consequence of coming into such contact. They will be asked to take a PCR test, and when students start school in September they will be asked to take two lateral flow device tests on school premises in that first week of term.

We are determined to do all we can to identify asymptomatic cases of covid, and all the measures in schools—including ventilation and hygiene—will remain in place despite the move to step 4 to ensure that we minimise any risk of transmission of the virus on school premises. As I mentioned in my opening statement, we are also working on contingency plans should it be necessary to cancel exams next year because of the direction of the pandemic. Our very firm plans are to proceed with exams, because they are the fairest way of assessing young people.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 12th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD) [V]]

I start by thanking the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) for her incredibly powerful and moving speech. I offer her my full support and that of my party for her calls for a Bill to tackle sexual abuse and violence on university campuses.

Right now, however, I wish to speak to the reasoned amendment in my name and those of my Liberal Democrat colleagues, even though it was not selected for a vote. I believe in the right to free speech. I welcome the opportunity to challenge people whose views are different from mine and I regard freedom of speech and informed public debate as vital elements of a democratic society. I also believe that universities should absolutely welcome rigorous well informed debate because free speech is, after all, at the heart of academic freedom—the freedom to inquire and explore ideas, facts and data that are difficult and sometimes inconvenient. But the laws required to protect free speech in universities already exist in the Education (No. 2) Act 1986, so no new laws are needed to achieve that goal.

On whether academics are scared to share their own views, the Government’s own White Paper acknowledges that the Joint Committee on Human Rights has examined that issue and concluded that it is just not a widespread problem, so no new laws are needed for that either. If the Government believe that there are still concerns, surely a more effective solution would be for them to beef up the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education, without having to create a whole new role or whole new piece of legislation.

On no-platforming, research has shown that in 2019-20, of almost 10,000 events involving an external speaker, just six were cancelled—that is 0.06%. Again, the evidence just does not support the Government’s claims that this is even really a major problem. It certainly does not justify the heavy-handed approach of giving the Office for Students extended regulatory powers and making it answerable only to the Secretary of State. That is an authoritarian sledgehammer to crack a nut.

The Bill gives students, staff and visiting speakers the right to sue universities and student unions for alleged breaches of free speech, with all the associated costs. That would create an open season for vexatious claims and expensive litigation—and, what is worse, universities would therefore be incentivised to stop holding events on tricky and controversial issues in the first place, for fear of litigation. The Bill would have a chilling effect because, far from protecting free speech, it would stifle it. At the very least, this legislation must include a threshold for harm, as under the Defamation Act 2013, so that that route cannot be abused by individuals or groups who do not have genuine grievances. There is no place for hate speech in universities, but as it is drafted the Bill would enable holocaust deniers, antivaxxers and more to be not only protected on campus but empowered to sue a university in court.

In conclusion, the Liberal Democrats oppose the Bill as worded. It is not based on evidence and is not proportionate. Worst of all, it actively undermines the very principle of free speech that it claims to support. Free speech is about the right of every individual to speak truth to power, but the Bill does the opposite. It gives those in power or with power the ability to determine who is free to say what. Far from protecting our freedoms, it is actually yet another example of this Government’s concerted efforts to take our freedoms away. Given that universities are already required to protect freedom of speech and that research suggests that no-platforming is incredibly rare, the Government should drop the Bill entirely. That is what the Liberal Democrat reasoned amendment sought to do.

Covid-19: Impact on Attendance in Education Settings

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend will probably have seen the figures: more than 50 million tests have already been conducted across schools and colleges. We are very much aware that testing has been an important part of getting schools reopened, and we continue to work with colleagues in the Department for Health and Social Care and in track and trace to ensure that testing is available to all pupils and their families.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD) [V]]

The number of children missing school is rising every single day and families are at their wits’ end, while the Government are once again far too slow to react. Will the Government act now and establish a rapid taskforce with public health directors and school leaders, with a mandate to keep schools open safely?

[Gavin Williamson]

It is fair to say that Liberal Democrats have never been very good at numbers. Actually, schools are open right across the country—they are welcoming children. Millions of children are in school, benefiting from being with their teachers, and we continue to take action to ensure we do everything we can to maximise the number of children there. As part of step 4, as I touched on earlier, we will be looking at lifting more restrictions; that will be announced in the near future.

Education Recovery

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD) [V]]

The pandemic has generated unprecedented financial demands on the Government, but time and time again they have drawn a red line when it comes to supporting children and young people. The former Children’s Commissioner, Anne Longfield, calls it

“an institutional bias against children”,

and Sir Kevan Collins today described the Government’s response as “feeble”. When will this Conservative Government wake up and realise that they are failing an entire generation of young people?

Let us start with those living in poverty. Some of the poorest families had to fight the Government to get free school meals during holidays, not just once but twice. Children living in digital poverty had to wait months and months to get a digital device because the DFE could not get its act together. After receiving independent advice from Sir Kevan Collins that the Government needed to spend £15 billion on educational catch-up, they committed to just a tenth of that. Just last week, the Government confirmed that they would go ahead with a planned cut of some £90 million to pupil premium funding, which helps the most disadvantaged children. That is not levelling up; it is a crushing blow. Why are the Government ignoring their own education advisers? When will they commit to a serious catch-up package? When will they take child poverty seriously?

Let me turn to school budgets more broadly. I welcome the fact that the starting salaries of newly qualified teachers will increase to £30,000 by 2022, but schools are being asked to meet those costs from their already overstretched school budgets. One school in my constituency tells me that 91% of its budget is already committed to staff salaries at existing levels. Simply put, it needs more funding to pay staff what they deserve while still investing in other areas of the school. We already know that the increased work pressure on school staff is leading to a retention crisis and a real fear of burnout. What will the Government do to address the chronic shortfall in schools funding?

Finally, I turn to the current covid crisis in schools. Covid-related pupil absence in state schools has skyrocketed: 375,000 pupils—about one in 20 children—are out of school for covid-related reasons. That is the highest rate since schools fully reopened in March. That is why I am calling on the Government to establish a rapid taskforce with a mandate to keep schools open safely. That taskforce, if set up today, should do its work in July, produce guidance by the end of July and give school leaders time at the start of term in September to get measures in place before bringing children back.

If the Government simply say that they are done with bubbles and self-isolation, transmission rates could go through the roof, opening us up to the risk of new variants, so that is not the answer. Instead, we need ventilation, testing, contact tracing, face coverings and a review of bubble sizes to make them as small as possible. The Association of Directors of Public Health has already indicated that it too wants to see a root-and-branch reform of the current measures. If asked by the Government, I am sure it would move heaven and earth to help them do that.

I want the Secretary of State to make sure children do not lose out on any more valuable time, so I ask today for the Government to commit to setting up a rapid taskforce with directors of public health, and to put a proper plan and funding in place to keep our schools open safely.

Ofsted Review of Sexual Abuse in Schools and Colleges

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford]

As ever, the Chair of the Education Committee makes some very helpful suggestions. May I reassure him that all schools must comply with the statutory safeguarding guidance, and we are already updating it, as we do each year. The report under discussion makes a number of suggestions about how to strengthen the inspection regime. For example, going forward, inspectors will hold discussions with students in single-sex groups, because, through this report, they have found that that has enabled children to be more confident in coming forward with their own experiences. That has helped to provide a better understanding of the schools or colleges’ approach to tackling sexual harassment and violence, including that which occurs online. Going forward, Ofsted will request that all college leaders supply those records and analyses of what is happening within their organisation, and Ofsted will work with the ISI to improve training for the inspectors, especially on this issue.

My right hon. Friend makes an important point about parental advice. Some schools are incredibly good at providing this. I met a headteacher of a school in Liverpool who works really closely with parents, informing them about the online safety risks. We should remember that it is often the parents who buy the phone and own the phone contract. I would like to see more schools working with parents to ensure that they help to make parents as well as children aware of this. I hope that schools will not only dedicate an inset day to discussing how to improve the RSHE curriculum but use part of that day to think about how they can better involve parents. As I said, there is a huge amount of advice out there for parents, much of it in organisations that the Government fund, including things such as Safer Internet Day. That advice is widely distributed, but we need to up that game to ensure that parents know the advice is there and that they access it.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD) [V]]

I welcome this statement, but it is crystal clear from student and teacher feedback that there is simply not enough being done to educate either group on the vital subject of consent, so will the Government give a cast-iron guarantee that consent will be put at the heart of relationships, sex and health education, and that every member of school staff whom students could approach for advice and help can access the training on consent, so that students can get that advice and support, irrespective of whether they raise issues with staff inside or outside the classroom?

[Vicky Ford]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise the issue of consent. It is important, when we look at the testimonials on Everyone’s Invited, to understand that not all of them involved illegal or criminal acts, but some did, and when there is a criminal act, it should be reported and acted on. The victim should have the confidence that it will be safe to report it and that it will be acted on. On the issue of consent, it is very much part of the RSHE curriculum. The curriculum starts at primary school age, where we teach about issues such as healthy relationships and talk about what an unhealthy relationship is and how to report it. Issues such as consent are built in as the child gets older through the period, but it is built into the curriculum, as are issues to do with unacceptable behaviour, harassment, misogyny and sexism. This is all part of the curriculum. I agree with the hon. Lady that it should be taught, and it is being taught.

Education Recovery

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

My right hon. Friend absolutely hit the nail on the head; the children who benefited most were those in schools that kept a clear focus on supporting children with a strong and rich knowledge-based curriculum. That has very much been based on the reforms that have been rolled out by this Government over the last 11 years. There are sometimes siren calls to reduce the standards and quality of our curriculum and what is taught, but that most disadvantages children from the most disadvantaged areas. I reassure my right hon. Friend that every action we take will be about reinforcing the evidence as to what actually works and how we can benefit children, including through tutoring, driving up teacher quality and ensuring that teachers have the right materials, support and training to deliver the very best for their children.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD) [V]]

Sir Kevan Collins has a distinguished 30-year career as an expert in education, while the Secretary of State has spent 18 months presiding over nothing but blunders, putting the future of our young people at risk. Does the Secretary of State think that the right man resigned?

[Gavin Williamson]

The hon. Lady sort of points out that we are very grateful for the work that Sir Kevan has done. Some of the key elements have been done working side by side with him—for example, the tutoring and the driving up of teacher quality and standards, which are very much at the heart of this package. As we look to the future and the comprehensive spending review, we are very much looking at how we can drive that third element—the element of time in the school day—and best use it to give children from all backgrounds the best advantage.