Oral Answers to Questions

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

21. What discussions she has had with the chair of the curriculum and assessment review on her proposals to change the progress 8 measure.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Bridget Phillipson)]

Last month, the independent curriculum and assessment review published its final report, and I would like to reiterate my thanks to Professor Becky Francis and the panel for all their work. We will reform progress 8 to balance a strong academic core with breadth and student choice, so that every child can both achieve academically and thrive personally, and we will consult on this shortly.

[Damian Hinds]

Professor Francis was clear that the EBacc grouping should be kept in the progress 8 measure under the heading “Academic Breadth”. The Government have overruled the review, which is quite a big thing to do. The Secretary of State herself used to be a student of modern languages. Have they learned nothing from their terrible error in 2004, or what does she have today against modern languages and humanities?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I do love modern languages, and I was a very keen student of them myself, but I am afraid that, as the right hon. Gentleman will know, the EBacc did not drive improved access to modern foreign languages. He knows that—he will have looked at the data. I do not think that the system as it stands provides the right balance: it unnecessarily constrains student choice, it affects students’ engagement, and it has hampered progress in subjects that strengthen our economy and society. I believe in high standards, strong foundations and academic achievement, but I also believe that access to music, sport and vocational subjects should be the right of every child, not just the lucky few.

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[Josh MacAlister]

Strengthening our child protection system is a key priority for this Government. Very soon we will bring forward plans for the child protection authority. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill contains a number of measures that would make a big difference to the safety of children across the UK, although those measures are unfortunately being blocked and frustrated by colleagues in other corners of this House.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

There is nowhere in the DFE budget from which £6 billion could possibly come other than the core schools budget, so either SEN funding is being cut, the core schools budget is being cut—that implies 5% per head—or the Secretary of State has an explicit agreement with the Chancellor for the money to come from somewhere else, or from new taxes. Which is it?

[Bridget Phillipson]

It is not coming from the core schools budget—I could not be more clear. It will come from across Government budgets, and it is a matter for the next spending review. [Interruption.] It is! Alongside that, we will set out reforms in the new year to improve outcomes for children with SEND—something that the right hon. Member and the Conservative party failed to do over 14 years. They should hang their heads in shame at what they left behind.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to see you presiding, Ms Barker. This has been a good debate, and very good points have been made by hon. Members on all sides, including the hon. Member for Beckenham and Penge (Liam Conlon), who has just spoken. This is a rare and important opportunity to talk about the vital role of hospital schools.

I do not intend to go through every measure in this Bill in detail; we did that at Committee stage, and I took that opportunity to go through many of its measures then. However, I will make a few broad observations about it. First, there are things in this Bill that we like. There are things in this Bill that were in the Conservatives’ earlier Bill, and we should all welcome some of the moves on, for example, multi-agency safeguarding, the expansion of the role of virtual school heads, and so on. Let us be clear—and Ministers, I am sure, will not try to say this today—that if the Government say that they want to withdraw the Bill, it does not mean that they do not like any aspect in it. Ministers are in charge of the Parliamentary timetable and are perfectly capable of withdrawing a Bill, noting that it is nicely set out in discrete units, and coming back the next day or the next week with a better Bill that does not include the bad bits and but does include the good bits.

To be clear, there are many things in the Bill that it would be better to be rid of. It is, I am afraid, a mix of trying to fix problems that do not exist; some retail offers, at least one of which is set to backfire with significant long-term consequences; an over-invasive approach to parents exercising their right, and thereby often giving up a great deal personally, to home educate; and worst, an attack on the school freedoms that have underpinned the great performance improvements that we have seen in schools in England over the last decade.

Let us remind ourselves what that record is. Our primary school readers are now the best in the western world. At secondary, our performance has improved from 27th to 11th in maths and from 25th to 13th in reading. The attainment gap has narrowed, and children eligible for free school meals are now 50% more likely to go to university than they were in 2010. What drove that improvement? It was standards and quality; brilliant teachers with autonomy and accountability; a knowledge-rich curriculum and proven methods, such as synthetic phonics and maths mastery; and a system in which schools learned from schools, with a hub-and-spoke network for different subjects and disciplines. But most of all, it was about academy trusts, where schools could learn from one another.

We knew that that system would drive up standards only if it also ensured diversity and parental choice. People need clear information, which is why Ofsted reports are so important, and why Progress 8 replaced the previous, contextual value-added measure, as a much better way of measuring children’s progress at school. That choice is necessary, which is why academies and free schools were at the heart of our approach.

I am sad to say that, all the while, there was what statisticians call a natural experiment going on. While those reforms were being pursued in England, in other nations of the United Kingdom—in Scotland and particularly in Wales—they were not. If anybody doubts the benefit of these reforms, they have only to look at the comparative results of the different nations of the United Kingdom.

The Government have already stopped new free schools, and this Bill stops more schools getting academy freedoms and erodes the freedoms of existing academies. I have said that the Bill seeks to fix problems that do not exist, and there is no evidence that academies pay teachers less than other types of schools, yet we have these new rules on the statutory pay and conditions framework. There is no evidence that there are armies of unqualified teachers marching through our schools. The proportion of teachers in our schools who are not qualified today is 3.1%. Can you guess what it was in 2010, when the Government changed, Ms Barker? It was 3.2%. There are good reasons to have unqualified staff in school sometimes. Then there is the national curriculum. Schools are already obliged to follow a broad and balanced curriculum, and they get measured on that by Ofsted, yet we now have a requirement in primary legislation to slavishly follow the detail of the national curriculum in its entirety, thereby removing the opportunity for any innovation and differentiation.

Alongside that, the Government have abandoned the EBacc, they are unpicking Progress 8 and, in parallel, they have moved the standard-setting function in technical and vocational education from an independent institute to a body that was first inside the Department for Education and then, inexplicably, moved into the Department for Work and Pensions.

Will the Government meet their targets? Of course they will, because they are in charge of deciding what counts as meeting the target. We saw that the last time Labour were in government, with the famous “five or more GCSEs at grade C or above”. I counted 11 ways in which that statistic was massaged so that every year it looked like the results were getting better and better, when all the while we were tumbling down the international tables comparing attainment at school, and not only in the PISA results. The OECD survey of young adults’ skills looks at countries across the OECD, and we were the only country in that survey where the literacy and numeracy of young adults who had newly left school were worse than those of the generation about to retire.

At least at that time, the then new Labour Government talked about academic excellence. Now, such talk is out of fashion, because it is believed that striving for excellence is somehow elitist. It is not—striving for academic excellence in state schools is the very opposite of elitism. It is what allows children and people from ordinary families to get on a level playing field with those who are in the elite. I say to Ministers, “Please, please don’t undo the progress of the last decade and a half”—some of which, by the way, built on what their predecessors did in the new Labour Government.

[Liam Conlon]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Damian Hinds]

I am coming very close to the end of my speech, and I think Ms Barker would want me to continue to allow for more speakers.

[Paula Barker (in the Chair)]

It is entirely up to you.

[Damian Hinds]

In that case, I give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Liam Conlon]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that what has not been conducive to education and preparing children for the best start in life, as I have heard from primary school teachers across my constituency, is the decimation of Sure Start, which provided children with the best start in life?

[Damian Hinds]

I am so pleased that the hon. Gentleman asked me about that, because it is one of the great slogans of his party. One of my favourite statistics, however—people can look it up; it is available in an official publication—is that there were more children’s centres open in this country when I was Secretary of State for Education than in any year that Tony Blair was Prime Minister. The fact is that from 2008 to 2010, under Gordon Brown, there was a massive explosion in the number of things called a “Sure Start centre”. Basically, people could go to any old building, stick a sign on it that said “Sure Start” with a rainbow, and that became a Sure Start centre.

The Education Committee, which is a non-partisan Committee of this House, conducted an inquiry in about 2011 or 2012 looking at Sure Start. We tried in chapter one to define what a Sure Start centre was, but we could not, because there was no actual design. One Sure Start centre that we visited had no children at all in it; some centres were fully fledged nurseries, family centres—you name it. There is very important work to be done with family hubs and other programmes. When we were in government, we made a huge increase in entitlements to early years education and childcare, which was a good thing to do.

Ms Barker, I said that I would finish shortly, and I will. I say to Ministers that they should please come back with a Bill that can achieve widespread support, but that does not include these damaging measures that will undermine and harm education and opportunity.

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[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Ms Barker. I thank the Petitions Committee for granting this important debate. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) for so ably opening the debate. I pay tribute to the approximately 166,500 people who have signed this petition, including the 184 in my constituency.

There is much in this Bill that many of us can agree on, especially in part 1. During its passage there was cross-party support for the measures in part 1 to ensure that the Government go further in safeguarding and promoting the wellbeing of our children. Part 1 also includes the proposals for a single unique identifier, and I say to hon. Members concerned about it that I do not think it is the precursor to digital ID for our children. If hon. Members look at Professor Jay’s report of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, one of the biggest issues in the system—as I heard when I met her earlier this year—is the lack of data sharing between different service providers, such as health, the police and social services.

Some of the young women and girls who were victims of grooming gangs across the country were regularly turning up in hospitals with sexually transmitted diseases, but that data was not being married up with what the police and social services were seeing. If data had been better shared, those issues might have been picked up. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health strongly supports a single unique identifier for the same reason.

I fully agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) that there are concerns about data sharing, data security and privacy that need to be tackled, and they were explored in detail in the Bill Committee, particularly by the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds). Whether it is the NHS number or a different single unique identifier, however, it is an important provision for safeguarding our children and ensuring that we can better research their needs and commission services to meet them.

As a number of Members have mentioned, part 2 of the Bill feels a bit muddled, particularly the clauses that deal with academies, and in a number of cases it puts the cart before the horse. The right hon. Member for East Hampshire looks back at the last decade of Conservative Governments with rose-tinted glasses, but I gently remind him—

[Damian Hinds]

David Laws!

[Munira Wilson]

David Laws was not in government for the last decade of Conservative Governments; he was there for the first five years and he did some excellent things, not least introducing the pupil premium. I would say, however, that Conservative Governments left us with crumbling schools that are unable to hire specialist teachers, a crisis in special educational needs provision, and a huge problem with persistent absence.

Given those major issues in our education system, I am not quite sure why the Government have chosen to tinker with academies and governance arrangements as their priority for education policy, when there is limited evidence to suggest that a mixed economy of governance arrangements in our school system is posing a major problem. With the promised schools White Paper hopefully being revealed in the new year, although I think it has been delayed twice already, there is a question as to whether part 2 of the Bill was somewhat premature. I am increasingly wondering whether the Government feel the same way, given that the Bill keeps being delayed in the other place. By the time the Bill returns to the House of Commons, it will have been well over a year since it was first introduced.

When the Bill Committee consulted education leaders in January, the one strong message that came through was about how the Government went about drafting part 2 of the Bill. As my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross set out, it was done with limited consultation and showed a lack of coherent vision for the school system; there was no White Paper and no consultation of those on the frontline or in leadership positions across the sector.

That lack of coherent vision and joined-up thinking seems to be a recurring theme for this Labour Government. They introduced free breakfast clubs, but they are not funding them properly. They have capped the number of school uniform items to three, but that will actually risk further inflating prices for hard-pressed families. They have proposed broadening the curriculum, which is something we welcome, and the Bill will make that statutory for all academies, but they have failed to set out the funds or a plan to recruit the necessary teachers to deliver it. During the Bill’s passage, they voted against Liberal Democrat proposals to widen eligibility for free school meals, but they subsequently decided to copy the policy and announced that they will introduce it next year.

Throughout the passage of the Bill, the Liberal Democrats have sought to engage constructively with the Government by tabling amendments and new clauses that aim to improve the Bill and to address some of the concerns raised by the petition that we are discussing today. Given that the Government have already copied at least one of our policies, I hope that the new Minister, who is here today, might listen to some other good ideas in my speech and in the other place.

There is a real fear that this legislation, which is seeking to safeguard children who go missing from education, will over-police home educators, most of whom are doing a great job. I have been very clear at every stage of the Bill—I think there was cross-party support for this—that the Liberal Democrats strongly support having a register of children not in school to ensure that vulnerable children do not simply disappear from the system. We also strongly support the right of parents to choose to home educate, where that is the best option for their child.

In oral evidence to the Bill Committee, however, even the Association of Directors of Children’s Services was circumspect about the vast amount of detailed information that the Bill will expect home educating parents to supply. That level of detail risks becoming intrusive and unnecessary. Many home educators choose to home educate their children not because they want to but because they feel forced to. There is a crisis in our special needs system, and so much special needs provision just does not meet the needs of those children, forcing many parents to give up work so that they can home educate their child. By virtue of their child’s need, parents tend to be much more flexible in how they home educate, but the very onerous reporting mechanisms will interfere with the flexibility that parents need to provide for their children.

I tabled various amendments to try to pare back the burdensome nature of the register, as set out in the Bill. One amendment called for, at the very least, a review of the register’s impact on home educators to be carried out within six months, to ensure that only reporting requirements that are strictly necessary for safeguarding purposes are retained. We also tabled an amendment that would have removed the requirement for parents and carers of children in special schools to secure local authority consent to home educate. Furthermore, we proposed that home educated children should not be excluded from national examinations because of financial or capacity constraints.

Sadly, the Government voted down all our amendments, but I encourage the new Minister to give serious consideration to relevant amendments tabled in the other place, because we must do more if we genuinely want to extend opportunity to every child. Our SEND system is letting down many children, and it is allowing a number of organisations with bad intentions to exploit the market failure in the system. I am talking about private-equity-run special school providers, which are making exorbitant profits, as they have with children’s homes. They are exploiting the lack of provision to hold local authorities and parents to ransom.

The latest revelation in the Budget is that the Government will absorb the costs of SEND provision from local authorities, and the projected £6 billion black hole only strengthens the need to start capping the profits of private special schools. The Bill already makes provision to cap the profits of the same companies that are running children’s care homes and fostering agencies, so I again ask the Minister to consider introducing the measure so that no child is left waiting because of a lack of resource, given that local authorities are being bled dry.

While I am talking about children being left waiting, I encourage the Minister to look at another Liberal Democrat proposal to automatically enrol every eligible child for free school meals, so that no one misses out on a hot, healthy meal. Durham county council, under its previous Liberal Democrat-led administration, auto-enrolled 2,500 children, whose schools benefited from an additional £3 million in pupil premium funding.

It is not too late for the Minister to improve the Bill, which I do not believe needs to be withdrawn wholesale. Instead, with the help of the other place, it can be amended so that there is a strong foundation to improve safeguarding for our children and strengthen provision for them in our schools.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Olivia Bailey)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Barker. I thank the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) for introducing this excellent debate on a landmark Bill. I thank all colleagues for their contributions, and all those in the Public Gallery who have signed the petition, particularly Michelle and Addison, who have been mentioned by my colleagues.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Cheshire (Andrew Cooper) reminded us at the start of this debate—quite nicely, I thought—that we all share the same ambition to try to ensure that our children are safe and get the very best start in life. I thought that was an excellent way to start this debate.

The hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) told us that home educators are often misunderstood. I wanted to start by referencing that directly, because he is right that the vast majority of home educators are doing it in the best interests of their children—the Government and I absolutely recognise that home educators are doing it with the best interests of their children in mind—but he explicitly stated that we are taking away that option, and he was wrong to do so. That is categorically not what this Government are doing.

My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham and Penge (Liam Conlon) shared his personal experience. As the Minister responsible for bullying and behaviour, I would say he is also right to say that he should not wind up the year below! He rightly spoke about the importance of supporting children before those settings, using his own experience powerfully. I thank all the staff of the hospital schools he mentioned today—Royal London hospital, Bethlem Royal hospital, King’s College hospital and the PRUH. I would also like to give him the reassurance he seeks on the risk of bureaucratic, burdensome reporting requirements on home educating families. The Government are determined to ensure that there are no unduly burdensome requirements on home educating families.

Later in my speech, I will address some of the more substantive points that have been made in the debate. As we have heard, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is a wide-ranging piece of legislation, but at its heart, it is about protecting children and ensuring that they have the best possible education. It is also rightly described as the biggest single piece of safeguarding legislation for a generation. As we have heard today, the measures in the Bill cover four broad areas: easing the cost of living for parents, supporting children in care, keeping all children safe, and driving the best possible standards in our schools. I will expand on each of those points in turn.

First, the Bill puts more money back into parents’ pockets at a time when all of us are feeling the impact of the cost of living. Introducing free breakfast clubs in all state-funded primary schools will save families up to £450 a year and drive improvements in behaviour and attendance. The claim made by the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) that we are not properly funding breakfast clubs is inaccurate. We have deliberately adopted a test-and-learn approach with breakfast clubs. In the first phase, we learned from schools, and in the second phase we have increased funding for breakfast clubs for the average school by 28%.

[Damian Hinds]

As a simple, comparative piece of maths, if the Minister is saying that breakfast clubs will save families £450 a year, how much money is the Department for Education providing to the school to provide that breakfast?

[Olivia Bailey]

As the right hon. Gentleman will be well aware, the breakfast club represents 30 minutes of free childcare, as well as a healthy breakfast. That is how we calculated the estimated cost savings for families. We have also increased the funding for schools, as I have just said, having learned from headteachers and schools, which has been widely welcomed.

We are also limiting the number of branded uniform items a school can require, a measure that could save some parents up to £50 per child during the back-to-school shop. Together, these measures could save up to £500 per child per year. The hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) asked about school uniform costs. I would like to take the opportunity to clarify this point: we are introducing the policy deliberately because we need to reduce costly expectations on parents in this challenging time for the cost of living. There will be three branded items that schools may use as they see fit. The hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East mentioned sports clubs, and the Government are taking a common-sense approach here. If, for example, a school wants to loan some pupils its uniform or whatever it may be, it will be able to do that, as long as it is not a requirement for the child to wear it. We are taking a common-sense approach here, but it is important that we set out clearly that there are three branded items.

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[Olivia Bailey]

I am very happy to write to the hon. Gentleman and set that out in detail, but let me try again. There will be a requirement for three branded items. That is the maximum that schools can require. They can choose where they would like to allocate those branded items, whether that be in the main school uniform or for PE. If a child joined a football team, for which the kit is not part of the three required items, then as long as the school does not require the pupil to wear that kit, they may, for example, provide a loan or say that they could buy it. I hope that clarifies the point.

[Damian Hinds]

The Minister says that the limit is three items, but actually, the limit is three in primary school, while I believe it is four in secondary school—she will correct me if I am wrong—so long as the fourth is a tie. Can she tell me for what reason a fourth is not allowed in primary school, if the fourth is a tie?

[Olivia Bailey]

I shall write to the right hon. Gentleman in extreme clarity on that point.

Secondly, the Bill’s children’s social care reforms will shift the system away from increasing reliance on residential provision, towards stronger early intervention and prevention. We want to keep families together as much as possible and, where children cannot remain at home, we want to support them to live with kinship carers or in foster families. Children’s social care has the power to transform the lives of some of our most vulnerable children, and children in care deserve a childhood filled with love, support and access to the opportunities that will set them up for a successful life, but the system is not delivering that ambition. Through the measures introduced by this legislation, we will champion family group decision making, fix the broken care market, create powers to introduce a profit cap for providers, and provide a staying close support package to address the cliff edge that young people face when they leave care.

Thirdly, it bears repeating that this is the biggest piece of safeguarding legislation in a generation, delivering robust action to keep children safe from harm. The Government have challenged themselves, and will continue to do so, to stop children falling through the gaps by ensuring legislation introducing an information sharing duty and provision for a single unique identifier, and ensuring that implementation is as watertight as possible.

Holidays During School Term Time

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate on holidays in school term time. This issue resonates deeply with families across the country, including in my own constituency of Hartlepool, where 530 residents signed the petition we are debating today.

Let us start with the reality that every parent recognises. They search for a family holiday in June and it costs a certain amount; they search for one in August and the cost has exploded. For many families those price hikes make a break together completely unaffordable. I have taken to calling it the Center Parcs tax. This morning I searched the Center Parcs website for a short break next May. Four nights from 11 May is £599; from 18 May it is £599; but from 25 May it is £1,349—a £750 mark-up for the exact same trip, simply because it falls in half-term. It is cheaper to take the fine.

Of course, it is not just one company; the practice is rife across the entire holiday sector. Families are being priced out of spending time together, and the state’s response is to fine them for trying. It is immoral. I say to the Minister, “Ban those practices by holiday companies and end the culture of fines.” Parents should not have to choose between doing the right thing by their children’s education and giving them a well-earned family break. Families already struggling with the cost of living should not be punished for trying to give their children the same experiences as everyone else.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

Could the hon. Member explain how he would stop that practice by the holiday companies?

[Mr Brash]

There are a number of mechanisms. The Chair of the Education Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), offered one solution. I am a believer in price controls in this area and that the state can intervene in the market here; it is basic fairness.

Of course attendance matters. As a former teacher, I have seen at first hand the link between attendance and attainment. Students with 100% attendance are nearly three times more likely to achieve five good GCSEs, including English and maths, compared with those whose attendance drops to 65% to 70%. But let us be honest with parents: the current system is not working. Expecting families to pay fines to prove a point about attendance does nothing to tackle the real problem.

Research shows that fining parents does not improve attendance. There is no statistically significant link between more fines and better attendance rates. Indeed, the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report found the same internationally: fines do not work, but they do harm low-income families. Instead, punitive measures often make things worse, creating tension and mistrust between families and schools. We know many children with poor attendance have special educational needs, as has already been mentioned, or anxiety or mental health issues. Punishing their parents does not solve those challenges; it just adds financial and emotional pressure. The Centre for Mental Health has even warned that fines can exacerbate the very issues that keep children away from school.

I am proud that in Hartlepool we are trying to look at things differently. Alongside nine other local areas, we are part of a pilot programme run with the Department for Education and a social enterprise called Etio. I met Etio last week, and what it is doing is simple but powerful. When it comes to attendance, the focus is on support. Its teams sit down with families to understand what is really going on, whether it is anxiety, caring responsibilities, transport programmes or financial hardship, and offer practical help to get children back into the classroom. The results are encouraging. When families feel supported rather than criminalised, attendance improves and relationships between schools and parents are strengthened. It is just common sense. If we fix the root cause, we fix the problem.

That is the approach we should champion nationally, replacing the blunt instrument of fines with early help, understanding and partnership, because the issue goes far deeper than holiday costs. It is about fairness, common sense and respect for families. Parents should not be treated as offenders for trying to spend time with their children and for giving them a holiday.

Oral Answers to Questions

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Monday 20th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

That is fantastic to hear, not least given the challenges that we still see with quite high levels across our country of young people who are not in employment, education or training. I and the Work and Pensions Secretary are determined to take action on that, and I would be more than happy to do my best to honour my hon. Friend’s request.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

After the creative reimagining of the Government’s target for hiring more teachers, it would be helpful to have some precision on the record for the target of two thirds of young people in higher learning. We know that higher learning means level 4 or above, but what exactly is a gold-standard apprenticeship? Does it mean one in growth sectors with very high levels of completion?

[Bridget Phillipson]

Yes, that is one area. We are refocusing our target to ensure that there are strong technical and vocational routes for our young people, as well as the opportunity to go to university. Going to university remains a strong option for many young people who want that chance—I know Conservative Members have always been keen to do down our fantastic universities—but the big gap that we have as a country is around level 4 and level 5, especially in technical and vocational education. The right hon. Gentleman spent a long time in the Department for Education looking at that issue; this Government will tackle it.

Educational Assessment System Reform

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

It is good to see you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. Assessment in education is obviously one of the most important aspects of what we do in education. It gives children a chance to show what they have learned, what they can do, and we want that to be stretching, but also to be fair. Anything that measures our attainment is inherently somewhat stressful. We also want to prepare children for adult life, and part of that is learning to deal with stress and to make it work in a positive direction.

We obviously do not want exams to be overly stressful, and I commend the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Josh Dean) for his work on mental health. He poses this as a mental health question, and it is true that there is an upward trend in mental ill health in children in this country and, by the way, in most other countries in the developed world, although they do not all have the same exam system as us. France and the United States have very different exam systems, with one largely a terminal exam system and the other not, but we see a pattern that is essentially the same.

A linear study and terminal exams give us some important things. They give us consistency, transparency, and comparability across the country. Because the exams come at the end we can synthesise knowledge, so it is not just a test of what someone happens to have learned for a test, but it is putting together different aspects of knowledge. It is not just one big exam. First, there are seven, eight, nine or 10 subjects, and typically two papers and multiple formats—multiple choice, short-form open questions, essay questions, orals and practicals in different subjects. Ironically, if we reduce the number of papers we would increase the high-stakes nature of tests that come at the end of study. It is possible that if we had continuous assessments, we might not get rid of stress but just stretch it out over a longer period because, as I said, any assessment inherently has some stress attached.

Let me talk briefly about younger children, because that issue is different. SATs are not public exams, and no child should ever be put under pressure coming up to SATs. SATs are a measure of schools, not pupils—I promise that when someone applies for a job or university in adult life, nobody will ever ask them what they got in their SATs. That is not what they are for. The biggest effect that they could have is what set a child gets into in year 7. But ironically, as the hon. Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Sam Carling) said, schools do that anyway. Even if we got rid of a high-stakes assessment at the end of year 6, there would still be one in year 7. I repeat that no child should be put under pressure about SATs. That is not their purpose.

I wanted to say a lot, but that is not going to happen in three and a half minutes. I briefly ask the Minister to confirm that Progress 8 is coming back. We have not been able to do Progress 8 for a couple of years because of covid and not having a baseline, but it is by far the better measure—much better than contextual value added or a raw score. Please will the Minister confirm that the Government are not looking at getting rid of handwritten exams done in exam conditions? Those are the best way to guarantee security of assessment and to ensure that handwriting development continues apace.

We should have an open mind on resits. The point about the policy is not to have more people sitting exams but to carry on studying English and maths. That in itself is a good objective, but we should be open about how it is achieved.

Early Education and Childcare

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Thursday 4th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Morgan]

My hon. Friend is a real champion for mothers, and I commend her for all her hard work in this place over the years. In our “Giving every child the best start in life” strategy, published in July, we set out that we plan to make the process simpler for parents, and we will be working across Government to ensure that issues are addressed so that all children are able to access the entitlement offer. I would be delighted to meet her to discuss these issues further.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

There were five major expansions of early years education and childcare entitlement under the last Government; what the Minister has announced today would have been our sixth. But since we formed this policy, the new Government have made a massive increase in the tax on jobs. When will Ministers next publish their assessment of the economics of running a nursery and of how they ensure that there will continue to be adequate supply of high-quality places, in places like Alton, Petersfield and Horndean?

[Stephen Morgan]

As I mentioned earlier, we inherited a pledge without a plan. I commend the hard work of early years providers and local authorities to deliver this key milestone for working families across the country this week. This year alone, we plan to provide over £8 billion for early years entitlement, rising to £9 billion next year. We announced the largest ever increase in the early years pupil premium, and a £75 million early years expansion grant has delivered support to the sector to increase the places and workforce that was needed. On top of that, we will review funding rates during the course of the next academic year.

Oral Answers to Questions

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

We continue to keep all these areas under review; if the hon. Gentleman would like to write to me with more information, I would be happy to respond with more detail. However, I am clear that this Government are investing more in education. We are turning around the year-on-year declines in teacher numbers with better pay, more support on workload and more money for our schools, including tackling child poverty. That is the difference that a Labour Government are making for our country.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

The Government have tried to have it every which way on these elusive 6,500 extra teachers. If the Labour manifesto had meant that only secondary teachers counted, but they could be in any subject, presumably that is what it would have said. What it actually said was 6,500 new specialist teachers in key subjects, so will the Secretary of State enlighten us: what are those subjects?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I would be very happy to do so. As the right hon. Gentleman just heard, we are seeing big increases in initial teacher training acceptances in many of those key subjects such as maths and science. On the commitment we have made, we had 60,000 fewer children in primary over the course of the last year and, as a former holder of this office, he would rightly expect that we target our efforts in areas of greatest need. Sadly, we are seeing a big decline in the number of children in primary, with the numbers forecast to fall by another 165,000 over the next few years, so we are focusing our efforts where they are needed.

Generative Artificial Intelligence: Schools

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2025 Westminster Hall

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the use of generative artificial intelligence in schools.

It is a great pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Jeremy. You will not be presiding over a heated political debate this afternoon, and I hope this is a good opportunity to openly discuss the enormous change that is upon us. Throughout the education world, a lot of thinking is being done about artificial intelligence and its implications. Most of that thinking is being done by teachers, and I hope we will contribute to some of the wider system and policy questions today.

In a November 2024 omnibus survey, half of teachers said they had already used generative AI in their role; about a quarter said they had no plans to; and the rest either planned to or did not yet know. The most common uses of generative AI are creating resources, planning lessons and communicating with parents.

In the same survey, 6% of teachers said that pupils were permitted to use AI in the work they are set. It is hard to pinpoint an exact number, but it is fairly safe to say that the proportion of pupils actually using AI to some degree in their work is rather more than 6%. The survey data that we have, incomplete as it is, suggests that somewhere between one in three and three in four children are using AI to some degree, with some frequency, in their homework.

In this rapidly changing world, I commend the Department for Education for its guidance update in January and the materials that came out on 10 June, made by the Chiltern Learning Trust and the Chartered College of Teaching. Those materials are easily accessible, but that does not mean that masses of people have seen them. This remains an area in which a lot of communicating remains to be done.

The DFE guidance talks about balancing the safety considerations of AI with the opportunities. Those are definitely two considerations, but they are not the only considerations, nor are they the most obvious. We always have to remember that at whatever pace we work at in this place, or that Whitehall works at, kids will work at about six times that pace.

The four areas I will briefly cover today are two areas of opportunity and two areas of risk, where we need some caution. The areas of opportunity are workload and enhancing learning, particularly for children with special educational needs. The areas of risk are the need for discerning and careful use of generative AI by pupils and, finally, the impact on homework, assessment and exams.

Workload is a big issue for teachers. Historically, along with pupil behaviour, it has often been the No. 1 issue in teacher retention. In a 2019 survey, it was encouraging to see that the reported workload had reduced by about five hours a week, or an hour a day. However, workload remains a stubborn issue, and the biggest contributors have been planning and preparation, marking, and data entry and analysis. There is also communicating with parents, dealing with behaviour issues and so on, but those first three all lend themselves to artificial intelligence.

In particular, the creation of teaching materials seems to be an enormous area of opportunity. Too many teachers spend their Sunday evenings at home, trawling the internet for resources to use during the working week, when much of that work could be done for them. I commend Oak National Academy for its work on the AI learning assistant.

As the Education Committee, chaired by the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), discussed just this morning, the national curriculum is, of course, a framework. It is not a precise set of things that children will learn, because we need diversity in provision. We therefore need to think about how AI can support that diversity. I hope the Minister will give us an update on the content store announcement of August 2024.

AI has plenty of other potential uses, such as for timetabling, for letters and emails home—although my special request would be that we do not add to the volume of communications that have to be consumed—and for report writing. But we need a clear code of practice, because for the trust of parents, and indeed of pupils, there needs to be clarity about when and in what ways generative AI has been used. Care will still be needed. How does a teacher tell children that they must write their own work, if that teacher is generating text through a machine?

The second area of opportunity is in supporting learning. There is clearly a lot of potential for learning personalisation, especially for certain types of special educational need, alongside the role of assistive and adaptive technology. For some subjects, AI will also be useful for dynamic assessment. But schools will have the same issue with AI as with all educational technology, which is that they generally do not have much idea which bits of it are any good. There are both great products and pretty low-grade products, and discerning one from the other is notoriously difficult. As with edtech in general, but even more so with AI, product development cycles do not lend themselves to randomised controlled trials to try to establish what is good. I suggest that schools require an extension of the principle established with the LendED product, which is made with the British Educational Suppliers Association: a sort of forum where teachers can see these products, distil the good and bad, and crucially get recommendations from other schools and teachers, because teachers tend to trust teachers.

[Afzal Khan (Manchester Rusholme) (Lab)]

With the input of biased data, large language models are liable to produce inappropriate, biased or factually incorrect outputs. Does the right hon. Member agree that if generative AI is to be rolled out to schools, actions such as introducing statutory regulations must be taken to limit any bias or misinformation taught to children and young people?

[Damian Hinds]

Funnily enough, I agree with the hon. Member, though not necessarily about statutory requirements. It is certainly true—in fact, he inadvertently leads me on to my next point—that we need to be careful and discerning in using these products. There are many risks, including the safeguarding risks inherent in technology, hallucinations, dud information and, as the hon. Member rightly says, biases.

There are some very direct and sharp risks to children. I am afraid that many misleading, unpleasant and cruel things can be done with AI. They can be done already but, as with so many other things, AI magnifies and turbocharges the problem. Some of those things can be done by adults to children; some of them are done by children to other children. We need to be very aware of those risks, some of which relate to existing practices and policy questions, such as how to deal with intimate image abuse and sexting. The problem further supports the case for a comprehensive school-day phone ban, to take cameras out of schools.

More generally, there is a need for media literacy and general discernment. I am reluctant and nervous to talk about media literacy, and more so about the phrase “critical thinking,” because it is too often conflated with the false dichotomy that occasionally comes up in the educational world: knowledge versus skills. Clearly, we need both. We need both in life, and we need to have developed both in school, but knowledge precedes skills because we can only think with what we know. However, it is really important in this context that children know how AI can make mistakes, and that they come to trust and know to look out for the correct primary sources, and trusted brands—trusted sources—rather than just stuff on the internet.

In the 2019 guidance on teaching online safety in schools, since updated, a fusion of the computing, relationships and citizenship curricula was envisaged. Children would be guided through how to evaluate what they see online, how to recognise techniques used for persuasion, and how to understand confirmation bias, as well as misinformation and disinformation. The new edition of “Keeping Children Safe in Education”, which came out yesterday, lists disinformation and misinformation as safeguarding concerns in their own right for the first time. The online safety guidance also included the importance of learning why people might try to bend the truth on the internet and pretend to be someone they are not. That was a start, but at this technological inflection point, it needs a huge scaling up.

[Steve Yemm (Mansfield) (Lab)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman share my concern about some of the dangers of using generative AI in the classroom, particularly around harmful content and activity? I read the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children’s “Viewing Generative AI and children’s safety in the round”, which gave examples of children creating deepfakes of other children in the class.

Does the right hon. Gentleman also share my concerns about children’s privacy and data protection, and the extent to which many of these edtech applications are created with the aim of minimising data protection? I understand he has concerns about regulation, but this seems to be almost entirely unregulated in the classroom. There is certainly a case for, at the very least, regulating data protection, data to third parties and—

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Jeremy Wright (in the Chair)]

Order. That was either several interventions or a speech, neither of which is permissible. I urge all participants to keep interventions brief.

[Damian Hinds]

The hon. Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) should not misunderstand me, as I am not against regulation. His points about data protection and privacy are really important, although they are probably too big to fold entirely into this debate. His first group of points and what the NSPCC talks about are the same risks that I am talking about.

There is an even broader point, as there is already a lot of blurring between fact, fiction and opinion online. There are all manner of news sources and influencers, network gaming, virtual reality and augmented reality, the metaverse—the whole concept of reality is a little hazier than it once was. With these machines, which in some cases almost seem to have a personality of their own, there is a danger of yet more blurring.

We all shout at our PCs sometimes. Indeed, adults using AI may start to give human form, which is called anthropomorphism, to the machine they are interacting with—I occasionally try to be polite when I interact with one of these interfaces. Apps such as character.ai take that to another level.

We have to think about the impact on children in their most formative years—on their sense of self, their understanding of the world and their mental wellbeing. That includes the very youngest children, who will be growing up in a world of the internet of things and connected toys. It will be that much more important to draw a line between what is real, what is human, and what is not. In time, when the system has had enough time to think about it—we are not nearly there yet—that may be yet another area for regulation.

Finally, I come to the most immediate risks, around homework, assessments and exams. Colleagues may already have had a conversation in which a teacher has said, “Isn’t it brilliant how much so-and-so has improved? Oh, hang on—have they?” They now cannot be absolutely certain. There are AI detectors, but they are not perfect. They can produce false positives. In other words, they can accuse people of plagiarising using AI when they are not. In any event, there is an arms race between the AI machine and the AI detector machine, which is deeply unsatisfactory. Of course, that is where the teacher’s skill comes in, because there is always classwork to compare. Most importantly, there is always the exam itself, and we need to keep it that way.

The safest way to protect the integrity of exams is for them to be handwritten in exam conditions, with a teacher walking up and down between the desks—not quite for everybody, but for the vast majority of children, except where a special educational need or disability requires another arrangement. There are also subjects, such as art, design and technology and computer science, where it would not be appropriate.

There is already a big increase in access arrangements for exams. A particular type of adjustment, called a centre-delegated arrangement, does not need approval from the exam board, so no data on it is available. One such centre-delegated arrangement is to allow the child to use a keyboard—in the rubric it is called a word processor, which is a delightfully archaic term.

If children are allowed to use a keyboard, spellcheck and AutoText are disabled, to ensure safeguards are in place—but it is still true that most people can type faster than they can write, so there is a disparity in the two formats. The regulations require a school’s special educational needs co-ordinator to decide whether a child is able to use that facility, but they are still quite loose in that they refer to the keyboard being the child’s

“normal way of working at school”.

I would love the Minister to say a word about that. The Department for Education should be clear that, where such arrangements are made, it should be because of a special educational need or disability.

[Afzal Khan]

One concern I am beginning to feel is that, while acknowledging that the technological development is important, an over-reliance on generative AI runs the risk of limiting open-mindedness, independent thinking, literacy and creative skills. Does the right hon. Member agree that we must protect key critical thinking and reasoning skills in children and young people, for their future and ours?

[Damian Hinds]

The hon. Gentleman makes his point lucidly and well, and I think it stands on its own feet.

The bigger issue with more children taking exams on a keyboard rather than on paper is that exam boards would like to move entire exams online for all children. In a sense, that would be better because it would be equal; there would not be any difference in the speed of writing and typing.

Some might ask what is wrong with that, as long as it is the same for everybody, and as long as the internet, spellcheck and autocorrect are disabled. I suggest there would still be multiple types of security risk in having exams done en masse online. There is also a wider problem: if a GCSE is done online, how will students do a mock GCSE? They will do it online. How will someone do a year 9 exam? Hon. Members can see where I am going with this. It cascades further and further down the age range, until eventually people question why they are learning to write with a pen at all. Some are already asking that question.

By the time my child is an adult, people will not even be using a keyboard, but other types of communication and interface, and this will seem very archaic. There are important advantages to learning to write by hand, however. Handwriting and writing are not the same thing. The way someone develops their handwriting, learning the strokes and patterns and how letters join together is an important part of learning the skill of wider writing. There is also plenty of evidence that making marks on a page by hand aids visual memory. Handwriting helps us to understand things because, as we write, we synthesize what we are reading or hearing into our own words. There is even evidence to suggest that people do better in tests and have better recall as a result. Maintaining handwriting is therefore important in its own right, quite apart from maintaining the security and integrity of examinations.

DFE guidance states that teachers should keep up to date with this rapidly changing world. That is a tough ask. Over the months and years ahead, the Department will have to do a lot to provide teachers and school leaders with bite-sized, easily digestible chunks of information to keep them up to date with this rapidly changing area. A recent Ofsted report, on 27 June, said that there was not yet enough evidence to conclude what constitutes a good use of AI in schools, but that one common approach among schools that seemed to be using AI successfully was to have a champion who spreads good practice throughout the school. That seems to me a good approach.

Sarah Hannafin of the National Association of Head Teachers stated:

“The technology should be introduced gradually…to maximise its potential and mitigate the risks.”

That is an important point. Most immediately, I implore the Minister not to allow all exams to go digital en masse, except for certain subjects where that makes sense, and except, of course, for an individual child for whom that is the right thing because of their special educational need or disability.

I contend that there should be no rush to move to online exams. There might be opportunities, lower costs or easier administration involved, but there are certainly also risks, some of which are immediate and some of which would manifest only over time and might take us a long time to spot. If we do move en masse to online exams and away from pen on paper, I promise hon. Members that we would never go back. A cautious approach is what is required.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Morgan]

I will certainly take that back. I have had discussions with colleagues at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and others about reliability, safety and biases.

In November last year, with the Under-Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Feryal Clark), I met leading global tech firms, including Google, Microsoft and Adobe, to agree safety expectations and to ensure that AI tools are safe for classroom use. We are also supporting staff to use AI safely. In partnership with the Chiltern Learning Trust and the Chartered College of Teaching, we have published online support materials to help teachers and leaders to use AI safely and effectively, developed by the sector, for the sector. They supplement the Department’s AI policy paper—which we updated in June—alongside the information for educators about using AI safely and effectively, and the toolkit for leaders to help address the risks and opportunities of AI across their whole setting.

To develop our evidence base, we have launched two pilot programmes, the edtech evidence board and the edtech testbed. The first is to ensure that schools have the confidence to secure edtech products that work well for their setting, and the second is to evaluate the impact of edtech and AI products on improving staff workload, pupil outcomes and inclusivity. I want to assure all hon. Members that we will continue to work with schools to support them in harnessing opportunities and managing potential challenges presented by generative AI.

A number of hon. Members, including the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Guildford (Zöe Franklin), spoke about social media, and “Keeping children safe in education” is statutory guidance that provides schools and colleges with robust information on how to protect pupils and students online. The guidance has been significantly strengthened with regard to online safety, which is now embedded throughout, making clear the importance of taking a whole-school approach to keeping children safe online. The DFE is working across Government to implement the Online Safety Act 2023 and to address technology-related risks, including AI in education. I can assure the hon. Member for Guildford that it is a priority for us to ensure that children benefit from its protections.

On the point that a number of hon. Members made about the impact on qualifications, assessment and regulation, the majority of GCSE and A-level assessments are exams taken under close staff supervision, with no access to the internet. Schools, colleges and awarding organisations are continuing to take reasonable steps to prevent malpractice involving the use of generative AI in formal assessments. Ofqual is, of course, the independent regulator of qualifications and assessments, and published its approach to regulating AI use in the qualifications sector in 2024. Ofqual supported the production of guidance from the Joint Council for Qualifications on the use of AI in assessments. That guidance provides teachers and exam centres with information to help them to prevent and identify potential malpractice involving the misuse of AI.

More broadly, the curriculum and assessment review’s interim report acknowledged risks concerning AI use in coursework assessments. The review is taking a subject-by-subject approach to consider assessment fitness for purpose and the impact of different assessment methods on teaching and learning. I assure Members that the review is considering potential risks, the trade-offs with non-exam assessment such as deliverability, and the risks of malpractice and to equity.

[Damian Hinds]

There are two simple safeguards against misuse of AI in exams here in front of me. Will the Minister recognise that the best way to ensure the security and integrity of exams, and how assessment is done lower down the school, is—for the great majority of children, in the majority of subjects—for exams to be handwritten in exam conditions?

[Sir Jeremy Wright (in the Chair)]

For the assistance of Hansard, I point out that the right hon. Gentleman was holding up a pen and paper.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds]

I was happy not to wind up, but you have now made me stand up, Sir Jeremy. We have had a good and constructive debate. I am grateful to the Minister for his engagement, and to all colleagues for taking part.

[Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)]

Please accept my apologies for my late attendance in the Chamber. I was at the statement in the main Chamber on the Horizon scandal, which is perhaps another example of overreliance on technology—the human eye was identifying issues that people could see. My experience comes mostly from the higher education sector, where colleagues I have spoken to report far greater incidence of the use of AI. It is so clever that it is generating false sources to back up incorrect claims, but with incredibly plausible use of academic names in order to make profound points. I wonder whether we now face a reality in which AI might be used not only for marking, but for the marking of AI-generated material.

[Damian Hinds]

Indeed—computers talking to computers, with us as the facilitators. The hon. Gentleman makes a good point.

I will conclude by repeating something I said much earlier in my remarks. We should always remember that, at whatever pace we, the education system or, certainly, Government can work, young people will work at a pace six times faster. I am, again, grateful to the Minister.

Question put and agreed to.

That this House has considered the use of generative artificial intelligence in schools.

Department for Education

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

This debate is a very important opportunity to discuss the upcoming cuts in the Department for Education. We know from the estimates document that overall resource departmental expenditure limits are coming down. We are told that that is largely a technical change as a result of changes to the student loan book, but I have to say that these are rather large numbers to come from such technical changes.

From the comprehensive spending review document, we know that like other Departments, the Department for Education has agreed to 5% in savings and efficiencies. What that document does not explain, however, is 5% of what. Presumably, it is not 5% of the entirety of the DFE’s budget, because the DFE is different from many other Departments in that so much of its spend goes directly to schools, colleges and early years settings providing for children. According to the estimates, the DFE’s admin spend is actually increasing. Part of that, of course—in line with so many other private and public sector organisations across the country—is the extra costs imposed by the increase in national insurance contributions, so what are those efficiencies? I hope the Minister will be able to tell us today.

So many things have already been cut, including the discretionary spend that helps children to achieve their best, with everything from Latin to computer science and the cadets programme. I do not think there are many more things that can be taken out, but perhaps the Minister can tell us. In particular, I would like her to reassure us that the primary physical education and sport premium is safe. Will she please do that in winding up?

[Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

In the past few days, a headteacher in my constituency has told me that their school’s funding is going down significantly in real terms this year. They say that they are now looking at a crisis, with potential staff cuts coming. On top of that, I have heard local providers of early years education saying that they are being even more punitively hit, because private sector providers receive no support with national insurance. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, for a Labour Government who came in promising to do so much for education, our children are actually seeing very little?

[Damian Hinds]

My right hon. Friend makes powerful points, including about the additional unfunded cost pressures for nursery providers—of course, that argument also extends to regular state-funded schools. The one thing I might quibble with is his statement that this Labour Government came in promising to do so much for education. Actually, the Labour manifesto was rather light on commitments on education. The biggest ones were, first of all, the commitment to roll out mental health support teams to cover all schools in the country. On closer examination, that commitment turns out to be not just similar to, but identical to, the policy of the previous Government, which was to roll out mental health support teams to cover all schools in the country.

The second high-profile commitment was about breakfast clubs. The maths on breakfast clubs are something of a mystery to me, because I have heard Ministers repeatedly say that having a breakfast club is going to save parents £450 a year, but they are reimbursing schools £150 a year. Where is the rest of that money supposed to come from? It is also true that some schools—including some in my constituency—already have a breakfast club that is charged at a reasonable rate, so they will lose revenue from their existing breakfast club. Before anyone says, “You have to think about whether it should be charged for or not,” it is worth remembering that the breakfast club provision that already exists is typically reimbursable for families on universal credit at a rate of up to 85%, to the extent that it is childcare that is enabling parents to go to work.

Then, of course, there is the famous—or infamous—commitment to 6,500 additional teachers. Colleagues might remember that that commitment was going to be paid for by the receipts on VAT from private schools. The Government now say that VAT from private schools is going to pay for housing, not for teachers. It is not clear that that policy is going to raise much revenue to spend on anything, given that the most recent figures show a fall in the number of children at independent schools. Those are the Government’s own figures. [Interruption.] I beg your pardon?

[Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)]

A rise in the number of independent schools.

[Damian Hinds]

The most recent figures—the Government’s own figures—show a fall of 11,000 in the number of children at independent schools.

Of course, the number of teachers in the state sector is not going up in this country; it is coming down. The Government have tried to have this every possible way. There is a line in their manifesto that is very clear—it comes up more than once. It says that Labour is going to recruit

“6,500 new expert teachers in key subjects”.

When asked repeatedly what key subjects they had in mind, they refused to say. Eventually they said that these teachers will be recruited—I think am I quoting this correctly, but if not absolutely accurately then pretty close—from schools and colleges across the country. Then some numbers came out showing that the number of teachers in primary schools had gone down. Funnily enough, the target was then redefined so that it did not include primary school teachers; it would include only secondary school teachers.

That brings us back to this question: if it is only secondary schools, where teachers have specialist subjects, what are the key subjects that will count towards this number? If the Government just meant any subject, the word “key” would not be there. What do they mean by expert teachers? If they mean simply teachers with qualified teacher status—[Interruption.] I think the Minister might be readying herself to intervene.

[The Minister for School Standards (Catherine McKinnell)]

indicated dissent.

[Damian Hinds]

No? If the Government simply mean teachers with qualified teacher status, then I gently remind the Minister of something we covered in Bill Committee, which some colleagues might recall. The number of teachers today who do not have qualified teacher status is 3.1%, which does not sound all that high. What do colleagues suppose it was in May 2010, the previous time that there was a change of Government? The answer is 3.2%. So the number of teachers without qualified teacher status has hardly changed, and to the extent that it has, it has slightly gone down.

We know that other RDEL—revenue spending, effectively—is going up, but it has to cover an awful lot. There is £1 billion-plus in national insurance contribution costs. We know from reports from teachers and headteachers in the sector press that shortfalls in the range of 10% to 35% are being reported. School suppliers are also facing higher national insurance contributions, which will also have a knock-on effect on the cost of other services into those schools. Schools are also picking up the cost of breakfast clubs, and there is an extension in free school meals eligibility and so on. Overall, if we look at the detail in the estimates and the spending review, all these increases are front-loaded—that is to say, for 2024-25 the increase is 6.8%, but that then comes down to 5.2% the following year, and then 3.4%, then 2.1%, and then 1.6%.

The main point I put to the Minister—constructively and co-operatively—is that things are changing significantly in schools because of demographic change. We have reached a point where I do not believe it is legitimate to use the measure of real-terms per pupil funding as the yardstick for whether effective school resourcing is increasing or decreasing. That is because the number of pupils will fall. We know already from TES, which used to be called The Times Educational Supplement, that surplus secondary places have increased by some 50% in just two years. Labour MPs may well argue—and I kind of hope they do—that when there is a smaller number of children there will obviously be less funding, and there is some logic to that argument, but in a sense it does not matter what arguments they make in this Chamber, because back in their constituencies, if they talk to headteachers, they will hear something different.

When pupil numbers are rising, if real-terms per pupil funding is held constant, that is a net increase in resourcing to the school. When numbers are falling, and even if real-terms per pupil funding is increased by a few per cent, that feels very much like a cut. Let us think about it in the following practical terms. If a primary school class of 27 goes up to 29, that is an increase in revenue to the school of something like £10,000, £11,000 or £12,000, but the vast majority of costs do not change. It works the same way in reverse. If a class moves from 29 pupils to 27, the school loses £10,000 to £12,000, but there are still the same costs, and the teacher is still being paid the same and so on.

In an urban setting, some whole schools may close—some already have. That is a painful process to go through, and no MP wants to represent an area where schools close, but at least that way the numbers can be made to work over a wider area, and some of those schools can convert to nursery schools, I hope, or to special schools. A big secondary school might reduce, say, from an eight-form entry to a six-form entry and manage the numbers that way. For a rural primary school, neither of those things is an option. There are major indivisibilities. Right now, 92% of DFE funding for schools is driven by pupil numbers, and I just do not think that will work over the years ahead. What will Ministers do to reform funding so that it is fair and effective at a time of falling overall pupil numbers?

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Oral Answers to Questions

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

What are the principal differences between this Government’s groundbreaking plan to introduce mental health support teams to schools and the previous Government’s already in-progress programme to deliver mental health support teams to schools? As I like this Minister, Mr Speaker, let me give him a hint: this has been a rhetorical question.

[Stephen Morgan]

The difference is that we are delivering it to every school in our country to make sure that every child can succeed and thrive.