16-to-18 Mathematics Education

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Westminster Hall

[Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)]

Last week, the Secretary of State for Education told the Association of School and College Leaders:

“Lest anyone think we have reached a point where we should slacken the pace of reform—let me reassure them—we have to accelerate.”

I completely agree, and one critical area for reform must be sixth-form provision, especially in maths where we have our largest issues.

Britain’s poor performance in maths is well documented. According to the OECD programme for international student assessment—the PISA study—the UK is ranked in 28th place for maths, although it is in 25th place for reading and 16th place for science. Too often, maths in Britain is seen as something that is nice to have, rather than as the vital tool that it ought to be in our modern society.

Perhaps our weakest area concerns our take-up of mathematics between the ages of 16 and 18. A study by the Nuffield Foundation found that Britain had the smallest proportion—below 20%—of students studying maths between the ages of 16 and 18, when compared with places such as Russia, Japan and Korea where virtually all students in that age group study maths, Canada where the figure is 80%, or France where it is almost 90%. Britain is a massive outlier in terms of maths education for that age group, and that runs contrary to our economic interests and to the interests of individual students who are taking A-levels or a vocational equivalent. A study by Professor Alison Wolf showed that maths A-level has the highest earnings premium of any subject, adding up to 10% extra to the earnings of a maths graduate.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

I am following closely my hon. Friend’s important argument. As well as the earnings premiums for A-levels, Professor Wolf also identified the huge premiums obtained by maths and English GCSE. Will my hon. Friend go on to talk about the importance of GCSE maths retakes, as well as the A-level?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I will come to that point. It is important to give those who do not achieve maths at GCSE the option to retake that course in a different way between the ages of 16 and 18, so that they obtain a good qualification that will be useful for the rest of their lives. The 16-to-18 age group is particularly important, yet it is where this country has a gap. Those are the people who will go on to study maths, physics, information technology and engineering at university, yet we all know from speaking to businesses in our constituencies about the great skills gap in that area.

Services for Young People

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Thursday 22nd March 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to lead the debate under your august chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I am delighted to see that four fellow members of the Education Committee have made it to this Thursday afternoon debate. The hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) is making a ticking movement with her hand, and she is right to imply that we deserve a medal of honour.

The debate is about our report, “Services for young people”. I intend to set out its key conclusions and the policy developments since its publication, and to comment on questions that the Government have still not answered. It is a pleasure to see the Minister present. I am sure that, given his personal commitment, those questions that have not yet been answered will receive answers this afternoon and that we will treasure them when they are duly delivered.

The Committee conducted its inquiry over six months during 2010-11. Our aim was to consider the relationship between universal and targeted services; who accesses services and what they want from them; the roles of the voluntary, statutory and private sectors; and the impact of funding cuts and the scope for commissioning services in future.

The Committee received 158 pieces of written evidence. We heard from young people, both in person and via an online forum, which we ran for several months with the Student Room and through which we received more than 200 responses. Young people were represented on the panels on many occasions when we took oral evidence—I say that for the benefit of anyone who may have ignorantly thought that young people were not involved fully and consistently throughout the process.

We published the report on 15 June 2011 and it was well received by the sector. The Young Men’s Christian Association said that,

“it focuses in on many of the key issues and problems that are being faced by youth service providers across the country.”

Children & Young People Now said that

“at long last there is an attempt from Westminster to address the challenge of serving young people in these austere times”,

and called on the Government to rise to that challenge. On receipt of the Government’s response, we decided to publish a further report commenting on it, because it did not tackle several issues satisfactorily.

Since then, the Government’s cross-departmental strategy on young people, Positive for Youth, was published in December 2011. The Government make a number of welcome commitments and take up some of the Committee’s recommendations. In other areas, however, they do not go far enough. I will return to the merits of that strategy document in a moment, but first I want to set out the Committee’s key conclusions.

Our inquiry found that young people spend more than 80% of their time outside formal education, yet local authorities spend 55 times more on formal education than on services for young people outside the school day. Acknowledging that inequality, we set out to understand which services are most effective at supporting and developing young people outside school.

Witnesses with different perspectives agreed on three key points: first, that public spending cuts had disproportionately affected youth services; secondly, that there was great potential for youth services to help transform young people’s lives; and thirdly, that services had long been poor at proving their impact and, thus, at making their case to Government—a weakness that is all the more pertinent in times of austerity.

On funding, the Committee concluded that the picture looked bleak and was likely to worsen. Funding had been doubly hit, with the removal of ring fences from central Government grants and the 11% overall reduction to the total value of youth service funds that go to local authorities and are redirected into the early intervention grant. We calculated that local authority spending on youth services in 2010-11 equated to only £77.28 per young person a year, which is about 21p a day.

Two surveys in 2011 showed that more than £100 million would be cut from local youth service budgets by March 2012, with average cuts of 28% and up to 100% in some areas. Even the Department for Education agreed, concluding that

“the scale of budget reductions and the pace at which decisions are being made”

was

“limiting the scope for… innovation and fundamental reform”.

The Committee was alarmed enough by the apparent extent of the cuts to urge the Government to consider using their powers to direct local authorities to commission adequate services for young people, which they have a statutory duty to do.

On the impact of services, we received strong personal stories from many young people about their value. One young person wrote on an online forum that

“when young people come to the centre they know they aren’t going to be judged and they can be who they want to be, for some of them it gives a break from stresses outside”,

while another stated that

“without my youth workers I would now be in a lot of trouble with education, work and drugs. But with their help I have been able to sort myself out and get onto the right path and stop the bad things I was doing over a year ago”.

We received a lot of anecdotal evidence about the efficacy of youth services and their individual impact, but, as I have said, collectively, services struggled to show the impact of their work in an easily defensible and statistically strong way.

The importance of youth services, coupled with the limited public resources available for them, makes it more vital that effective services are identified and funded. That is in line with the work of the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) on early intervention. The most important thing when spending limited public resources is to find those interventions that will make the greatest difference. Early intervention does not need to take place only during pre-school years; it could equally take place during the teenage years by getting involved with people who might be at risk and intervening early to support more positive behaviours.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate on the Committee’s report. Does he agree that it would be helpful if we moved away from the confusion surrounding the definition of early intervention? Some people take “early” to mean years 0 to 3, while others take it to mean early in the life cycle of an actual problem. Both things are, of course, important, but they are often conflated.

[Mr Stuart]

My hon. Friend is right. The hon. Member for Nottingham North is also right to not only emphasise the importance of early intervention, but to want to build an evidence base to justify additional public funding. If investing another £100 million into the lives of young people means getting a payback and saving many more pounds later, even the person with the driest heart in the Treasury will see the benefits. I am delighted—this is a tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s work—that the Government have agreed to fund an early intervention foundation that will do precisely that. I hope that, as that work develops, it will look not only at the early years but, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) has rightly said, at early intervention throughout a young person’s childhood.

[Damian Hinds]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for being so generous in giving way early in his speech. He may intend to address this issue later, but will he comment on some of the difficulties involved in measuring the effects of different programmes? We discussed and received evidence about those problems in Committee. The prisoner scheme in Peterborough is a perfect, text-book example of payment by results, but the proposition for a youth club is completely different because of the different client group, control group, time period and the different influences on people’s lives.

[Mr Stuart]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. As he has rightly said, we considered the issue. In principle, I do not think that there is any division between the parties on payment by results. The question is: who is paid by results? Are we really going to try and collect data on a once-a-week youth club in a particularly deprived area which has a brilliant community leader who builds on the history in that area, where parents themselves attended clubs locally and there is great support, and it really brings the community together? Will the expense be completely disproportionate to the effort of collecting it? The answer is probably yes. The danger of identifying something at a micro level where we can easily pay someone to deliver results is that they will then always have to be able to provide that at that micro level before we support the whole principle, and that could limit its impact.

Payment by results is probably better introduced at a higher level. For example, Birmingham city council could have a partnership with Goldman Sachs for the money, Serco for certain other skills, and seek to bring in additional private money to support and strengthen the focus of the services it provides. That extra money could be brought in to support those services on an evidence base that makes the council—and the hard-hearted business people—believe that they can deliver those improved outcomes for young people. As a Government and as a society, we need to be more effective in ensuring that the money to deliver improved outcomes for young people, which we vote for in this place, actually helps to deliver them. It is important to get the mechanics right.

[Damian Hinds]

I promise to be quiet after this brief intervention. Does my hon. Friend agree that what comes up time and again in talking about how to identify a good parenting programme or a good programme for teenagers, is that we know it when we see it? For payment by results, the trick is to leverage the knowing it when we see it so that we can identify the individuals or organisations who are good, and then work out who else to invest money in for the future of our young people.

[Mr Stuart]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As long as there is accountability and people are driven by delivering the outcomes at the end, they should have discretion over how they use their budget. There could be investment in the Friday evening group I mentioned if there was confidence that it was helping to meet our overall goals for delivering change in the local community.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Stuart]

The Minister’s point was well made. We need to get everybody—in my example, from Birmingham city council downwards—focused on outcomes. The danger—this happens in all Governments; it is not peculiar to the previous one—is that, despite talking about rewarding success and penalising failure, the tendency is to reward failure. For those who deliver services, the less they succeed, the more money they get and the bigger the budget that comes to them. To break out of that and ensure that everyone is focused on outcomes and that the bureaucracies that administer these things see it as in their interests to change the lives of the young people for whom they are responsible, would be a good thing, and I wish the Minister luck in delivering it.

Returning to the difficulty of services demonstrating their impact, the National Council for Voluntary Youth Services told us that although

“anecdotal evidence and young people’s stories”—

were available—

“what is really difficult is some sort of set of statistics whereby we could show the total amount of investment and the total amount of return”.

That conclusion was borne out in independent evaluations, including by Ofsted.

Although the impact of youth work encounters with young people can certainly be hard to quantify, the Committee said that local authorities needed some indicators on which to commission services. The Committee recommended that the Government commission NCVYS to develop an outcomes framework that could be used across the country. However, we said that it should be not just a question of counting the number of young people using a service or the number of encounters—in some ways, failure would be rewarded again by such an approach—but a measure of young people’s social and personal development and that they should be involved in its design.

In addition to those three earlier points, the national citizen service—the Government’s new volunteering programme for 16-year-olds—was a key area that witnesses felt strongly about. We addressed that service in our report, and although we liked the idea of a community volunteering project and a rite of passage for young people and found the scheme’s aims entirely laudable, as did almost all our witnesses, we questioned whether the Government could justify its expense.

We discovered that, based on the cost per head of the 2011 pilot, the NCS would cost £355 million each year to provide a universal offer of a national citizen service to 16-year-olds, assuming just a 50% take-up. Even allowing for economies of scale, we felt that there was a risk that the costs of the NCS—a six-week voluntary summer service for 16-year-olds—could outstrip the entire annual spending by local authorities on youth services, which totalled £350 million in 2009-10. Instead, we recommended that the core idea of the national citizen service be retained, including its laudable aims, but that it be significantly amended to become a form of accreditation for existing programmes that could prove that they met the Government’s aims of social mixing and personal and social development, with the component parts of NCS, such as a residential experience and a social action task.

The Government could have said, but did not—I often thought that if I were a Minister I would have said it, although the Minister did not—that the NCS was just being piloted and that the aim of the pilots was to help to identify ways to deliver more. The Government said that they wanted to secure and leverage in more funding and to ensure that they did not scale up the prices that the initial pilot suggested.

We received our initial response from the Government both directly—orally— and in writing from the Minister, who seemed less than entirely thrilled. We felt that the Government, in their initial response to our report, failed to address fully a number of issues, so we wrote a further report, calling on Ministers to clarify their intentions on how the Government intended to measure outcomes from youth services, which is pretty important, given everything that we have been talking about so far, and the grounds on which they would judge whether a local authority had made sufficient provision, because there is a statutory duty on local authorities.

Although the Government said that they were prepared to intervene, they would not tell us on what grounds they would do so, other than in the most general terms. The Government would not describe what services would, or would not, look like if they were likely to trigger intervention, thus leading to the likelihood that councils could continue to make cuts to youth services that the Government described as disproportionate.

We also asked the Government to clarify the total public spending on youth services before the early intervention grant. The Government said that they did not accept our figure—£350 million—so we asked them to tell us what their figure was. As they did not accept our figure, we thought that a reasonable request. We also asked them to tell us how they planned to fund the NCS after the two pilot years. What have the Government said in response to our two reports and, subsequently, in their Positive for Youth strategy?

The aspirations of Positive for Youth have been well received in the sector. The National Children’s Bureau said:

“we are pleased with Positive for Youth’s holistic approach to giving young people more opportunities and better support”.

The National Youth Agency and the NCVYS both welcomed the Government’s publication of a comprehensive strategy, drawn up in consultation with the sector and produced in less than two years after the creation of the Government. However, many youth organisations are concerned that the strategy is vague about how its aspirations will be implemented, so reflecting a worry of the Committee that was mentioned in its report.

Catch22, which works with particularly deprived youngsters, commented that the levers for change in the Government’s policy “lacked bite”. That view was echoed by the Children’s Commissioner, Dr Maggie Atkinson, who said:

“without action this strategy will amount to no more than words on a page”.

The NYA qualified its support for Positive for Youth, saying:

“no vision or policy is worth anything if it isn’t followed by clear and decisive action”.

The chief executive of YMCA England, Ian Green, went further:

“the Government’s vision will come to nothing if those responsible for the delivery of services on the ground are not prepared to implement it, and the Positive for Youth statement is very light on how it intends to address this fact”.

[Damian Hinds]

I suppose that we get used to such e-mails, but does not my hon. Friend accept that it is a statement of the blindingly obvious to say that things will not happen if people do not implement them?

[Mr Stuart]

I was reflecting on those words even as I read them, but their implications are clear. If there is no firm action plan, the criticism—to spell it out for my hon. Friend in case he, too, is missing the blindingly obvious—is that if the strategy produced by the Government after such a long period of preparation does not spell out exactly what they are going to do and how they will hold to account those responsible for delivering services, there is every danger that we will have fine words and no real delivery. That might be a statement of the obvious, but there is a serious risk, with a strategy that is light on content, in respect of whether there is confidence that it will deliver on the ground.

Positive for Youth has the right focus on fostering young people’s aspirations and on their personal and social development. It is good to hear the Government praise the potential of young people and extol the qualities and achievements of the vast majority, especially in light of the negativity towards young people generated by last summer’s riots. The Government and the Minister are right to emphasise the positive. If all we ever measure are provisions averting negative behaviour by young people, we suggest that their natural tendency is to behave negatively. In fact, the Minister wants to emphasise—the Government are right about this—that most young people are positive members of our society and that we should support and celebrate their positive behaviour.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Carmichael]

My hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) is absolutely right, and his point is central to the matter. We should not think that youth services are just about statutory provision, because they are not. They are all part of the big society, which is encouraging many villages in my constituency to start thinking about providing the services that people need, including youth services.

I think that I have made my point about the rich variety of facilities, clubs, sports clubs and so on with which young people can get involved, and about the powerful role played by charities in providing facilities.

[Damian Hinds]

Before concluding his remarks, perhaps my hon. Friend will touch on the provision made by what these days we call faith communities and in the old days used to call Churches. There is an ongoing debate about the role of Christianity and other faiths and religions in public life, and a lot of churches provide important youth facilities that often are not restricted only to members of one particular denomination. The King’s Arms in Petersfield is one such example—

[John Robertson (in the Chair)]

Order. We are talking about the Select Committee report, and although it may be nice to mention every group in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, I doubt that we have got time for them all.

Oral Answers to Questions

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather]

I am hugely grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s support, help and guidance on this issue. I absolutely agree that there is a moral as well as a financial case for investing in early intervention. It is a priority for the Government. He will be aware that I cannot say too much at the moment about the early intervention foundation, but we are working with other Departments to develop a specification for the foundation and are committed to ensuring that we get best value for money. My Department will issue a public notification shortly, in advance of an open and competitive procurement process.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

A challenge for early intervention can be that the beneficiaries are a self-selecting group, so what is my hon. Friend doing, working with local authorities and other Departments, to ensure that those who will benefit most from early intervention get it? Does this not stress again the importance of those decisions being made locally?

[Sarah Teather]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman on this point, which is one reason we are about to begin trials of payment by results with local authorities and children’s centres—to ensure that they are focusing on the families who most need early intervention. It is one of a range of areas where we are trying to focus much more on outcomes, rather than just inputs.

Oral Answers to Questions

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

I can confirm the first part of the hon. Gentleman’s question: the £3 billion is fully committed to and there are no mixed messages. On borrowing, it is not merely a question of the date, but of the fiscal position of the country.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

T10. This week’s National Audit Office report on apprenticeships shows that for every pound of public money that is invested, there is a return of £18. Will my hon. Friend reassure us that he is taking all reasonable steps to continue the successful growth of apprenticeships?

[Mr Hayes]

My hon. Friend will know that the figures published this week show a record number of apprenticeships across the whole country, in all sectors and at all levels. What does the NAO report say? As my hon. Friend described, it shows a massive return on public investment. This is success by any measure. By the way—I did not want to emphasise this, Mr Speaker—it also states that our policy is far better managed than was Train to Gain by the previous Government.

Financial Education

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Chapman]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. She tempts me to break a promise that I made to myself when I came into the debate not to have a rant about the economy and make a wider political point, because I thought that that probably would not be what this occasion demanded. However, she makes that point for me and I thank her for it.

Education is the armour against being misled and I believe that advertising is misleading us. I refer the House to my ten-minute rule Bill of about a year ago, which I am sure all hon. Members have followed closely, which would curb some of the advertising on financial products. Financial education provides protection against some of the most traumatic circumstances a person can find themselves in, from paying an additional fee on an unauthorised overdraft because one is not aware of how the charges work, to losing one’s home or having one’s belongings repossessed and being declared bankrupt. Many of us have been able to learn from our mistakes because either the economy has been in a good state or we have been able to rely on family or friends. We have been lucky but young people now, as the hon. Member for North Swindon said, are in danger of financial mismanagement having a much longer-term effect on their lives. On finishing education, young people immediately face tough monetary decisions. At 17, they are already in debt and tied into contracts that they did not fully understand for things such as mobile phones. I take the slack given to me by the hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) who made a good point about gambling. If that is an issue at primary level, which I had not appreciated, it is right that that be included in the curriculum. Therefore, we need to be properly prepared to deal with these decisions. Put simply, an informed borrower is a safer borrower.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

I appreciate the hon. Lady’s point, but does she not agree that if we have a problem with children under the age of 11 gambling, the most important place to start is not the curriculum, but access to online gambling?

[Mrs Chapman]

I agree completely. That goes back to the first point that I made about financial education being one of four strands of the solution, the others being debt advice, advertising and regulation. The hon. Gentleman is right to point that out.

In schools across England, the provision of personal financial education is ad hoc. We saw some good examples when writing this report. I took it upon myself to visit schools in my constituency and I was impressed with what I found. There is little teacher training on personal financial education and there is therefore limited subject knowledge and confidence among some teaching staff. It is stating the obvious to say that schools face significant barriers to teaching financial education, such as curriculum time, the absence of a statutory mandate and the lack of awareness of suitable resources.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan]

I am sure the hon. Lady is right; she thinks deeply about these subjects and makes intelligent contributions. The report, however, states:

“Personal finance education should be a compulsory part of every school’s curriculum.”

If that is going to be delivered, there must be some transmission mechanism. I am afraid that history teaches us, and future events will teach us, that exhortations from Secretaries of State—no matter how talented or eloquent they be—are not sufficient to make things a reality on the ground. As I say, there has to be a mechanism to make it happen.

In thinking about this issue, the Minister will need to clarify what the role of the national curriculum will be in a schools landscape where most institutions will not be required to follow it. How will that fit in with the original vision of a national curriculum to be taught by all schools across the country, as introduced by Kenneth Baker, now Lord Baker, who was the Secretary of State when I was a teacher back in the 1980s? How can the Minister ensure adequate teaching of financial education if most schools will ultimately be free to follow their own path?

[Damian Hinds]

The shadow Minister says that a transmission mechanism is required. Does he agree with me that if practical maths were made part of the GCSE syllabus for each of the main awarding bodies, such a transmission mechanism would exist?

[Kevin Brennan]

That is for 14 to 16-year-olds. If GCSE maths is taken between the ages of 14 and 16, young people would indeed receive some of this provision. The hon. Gentleman is correct about that, but the report goes much further in its recommendations for making financial education compulsory across all ages in the curriculum.

[Damian Hinds]

rose—

[Kevin Brennan]

I will give way again in a moment if the hon. Gentleman is dead keen. All right; I will carry on.

The Government are correct in their desire for people to take responsibility for their finances in order to reduce unaffordable debt, but they have to get the ball rolling, which means that they need to find some way of getting this going in our schools.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Bingham]

It is not a question of showing off: my hon. Friend never saw the results. In fact, my mother still has the table lamp that I made at school in woodwork to this very day—

[Damian Hinds]

Still waiting for it to come on!

[Andrew Bingham]

I didn’t do the electrics; I left that to my dad.

Schools have moved on. They now teach subjects such as IT, media, technology—

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw) has just said, it is difficult to think of anything original to say at this stage of the proceedings, so I shall be mercifully brief. I must start with the obligatory fawning to my hon. Friends the Members for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) and for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) for the genuinely outstanding work they have done on the all-party group. The way that group has grown is not just impressive but phenomenal. In double-quick time it has brought to the British Parliament an issue that matters so much and about which so many people are genuinely bothered. The report and the depth of the analysis and work the group has done are already helping to stimulate debate here and more widely—and will do so further.

Today’s debate is not about approving every line in the report. I would have loved to remind the shadow Minister, if he were here, that the motion does not say that there should be compulsory financial education in free schools and academies or that it should be part of the national curriculum in primary schools. The key phrase in the motion is:

“That this House…believes that the country has a duty to equip its young people properly through education to make informed financial decisions”.

I could not agree more.

I shall not go into examples of the problems that we have all seen when people have come into our surgeries or when we have met people. My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) has mentioned that some people, astonishingly, think that a high APR must be better than a low APR because it is a bigger number. These things would be funny if they were not so tragic. When we hear about them, our natural reaction is to say, “If we get them young and educate them, we will sort out all these problems.” There is, of course, as it says in the motion, a great advantage to equipping people with the capability to make smart financial decisions. There can also be a more immediate benefit, to which the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) alluded. If teachers get kids to bring in material—junk mail—that they have received at home, and they discuss it, messages can then get back to home, so there will be a beneficial impact even in the shorter term.

Even better than telling, of course, is doing, through schemes such as junior savers clubs. I was a member of the Abbey National junior savers. It used to have gold, silver and bronze; I only ever made bronze, but there you are. We have savings clubs in schools, and I pay tribute to credit unions in particular, although others do this as well, which run schemes in schools, often with parent volunteers and schoolchildren helping to manage them. That is another great way to pick up experience.

I have an issue with PSHE, however. It sometimes feels as though the answer to any social problem in this country is another module in PSHE. That is true whether the problem is that people are too fat or that people are too thin, or whether it is teenage pregnancy. Whatever it might be, we do it in PSHE. There are limitations to PSHE. When one mentions it to teachers, their response is not one that can be written down because it is just a groan. As a general rule, teachers do not like doing PSHE lessons. Although the report of the all-party group says “only 45%” of teachers in the survey had taught personal financial education, I have to say that that struck me as an extraordinarily large number. Almost half the teaching population has taken on the teaching of that subject. I think it unlikely that they are all experts in that area.

In PSHE in general, and this applies also to financial education, there is naturally a reliance on off-the-shelf—or more likely, these days, off-the-net—lesson plans and on input from third parties. Although I accept that the banks and building societies who take part do so with responsibility and do not use it as a way to ram home their brands, there is an element of indirect marketing. It certainly gets the message out there that there is a massive range of financial products, including ones that can get people into debt.

[Andrew Percy]

My hon. Friend’s points are exactly those that we identified during the inquiry and support the argument for putting financial education into PSHE to support maths and raise the profile of PSHE. He is quite right: a lot of the stuff that is used is photocopied hand-outs. That is not teaching a subject properly. If we link PSHE with maths, we can raise its profile and the standards of the teaching and lesson plans.

[Damian Hinds]

I recognise the point, and the report stimulates such debates, but I do not agree.

People mean different things when they talk about financial education. There is a whole continuum. If we talk about pure financial education, as opposed to a mathematical way of approaching it, there are two key dangers. The first I call the redundancy danger, and the second is the ubiquity danger. None of us did financial education at school, and although some people have great financial problems, not everybody does, and it is perfectly possible for somebody to get through life without the benefit of that education. Had we done financial education, we would have learned about cheques, clearing houses and endowment mortgages, and, spreading it out to the wider economy, the public sector borrowing requirement and sterling M3. None of that would be of particular relevance today. We would not have learned about debit cards and payday loans because, to all intents and purposes, they did not exist at that time. There is a real danger that although we think we are equipping people with skills, by focusing too much on financial services, as opposed to the underpinning principles, that education may become redundant.

[Andrew Percy]

It is true that the world does not stand still, but does my hon. Friend agree that if we give young people the ability to understand what is available now, we give them the skills to be able to understand products as they develop and move on into the future?

[Damian Hinds]

I cannot do geometry in a written speech without slides. I would be more tempted to go for the underlying principles, which could enable people to understand the things that used to be there and the things that will be there tomorrow.

The second danger is ubiquity. Already, on the television and the internet, when kids are at home or out, everywhere there are messages about debt. There is a danger that introducing discussion of specific financial services too early in schools might contribute to that feeling by normalising and legitimising the idea that everyone uses such products.

As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole, the key things are the tools, and I think that we agree on that but perhaps differ on how best to use them. To my mind, the key tools and principles that help inform financial decisions are mathematics, but not mathematics on its own. There is also a big element of personal responsibility, common sense and some of the maxims to which my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham) referred. Make no mistake: young people do not learn common sense, wisdom and personal responsibility simply by turning up to PSHE. It is a much wider issue. I would welcome more emphasis on practical mathematics at GCSE, especially at foundation level, although it applies to both levels.

I am pleased to say that I have an original point to make. We also now have an opportunity post-16, because raising the participation age to 18 means that more young people who have perhaps not passed GCSE maths could, if we are to follow the guidance in the Wolf report, be encouraged to keep up maths and English. We need new, innovative, creative and engaging ways of taking on maths, and this would certainly be one of those. I thought that the sample questions that my hon. Friends who constructed the report included in it illustrated very well the practical ways we could use the maths curriculum.

The introduction of these concepts into mathematics is no panacea. The hon. Member for Makerfield and I agree on many things related to debt and personal finance, but I completely disagreed with her today when she implied that there was no element of personal irresponsibility in being over-indebted. There are of course times when it is purely a matter of a change in circumstances and completely unpredictable, but there is also a major issue of responsibility. She was right to say that there are broader concerns about regulation and too-easy access to credit that we must also address. The reason we need to address those concerns, even if we did financial education perfectly, is that in that market, alarmingly, the basic laws of economics, such as the way competition works and the assumption that consumers will be rational, frequently do not apply.

I congratulate the members of the all-party group again on the report that stimulated the debate. My view is that I would say no to adding more to PSHE and specifying exactly how these things should be done at a younger and younger age, but I would say yes on the need to refocus GCSE maths and to find new and creative ways to teach practical maths at 16-plus. I would also say yes to not being afraid to say that people must take responsibility, which is also a good thing to teach in school.

Education Bill

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

I must disagree with my hon. Friend, because the seriousness of the errors was not just in their number—I believe there were 13 errors in exam papers this summer. What was particularly serious was the fact that when we asked awarding bodies to check that there were no further errors, they affirmed that they had done so or that they would do so, but then new errors appeared. That is why what happened this summer was so serious rather than the initial errors in the papers.

On reputation and the market, all the main awarding bodies had errors, so there is no market mechanism—no one of them could say, “We had no errors but the others did.” My third argument is that all regulators have such powers. We cannot rely on the nuclear option of ending accreditation.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

There are considerable costs for schools when they switch from one awarding body to another. Does my hon. Friend therefore agree that the idea of a market operating in the normal way does not quite apply?

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend is right. All kinds of other factors will determine which awarding organisations schools use and why, and there is a “stickiness” compared with the fluidity that might exist in another market situation.

Lords amendment 37 would give the Secretary of State the power to pilot the use of direct payments in education for children with special educational needs. In the Green Paper on special educational needs and disability, we committed to give every child with a statement of SEN or a new education, health and care plan the option of a personal budget by 2014. One element of a personal budget can be a direct payment to a family to buy support for their child. Direct payments are already being used in health and social care, and we want to test how the greater choice and control they give to families can be effectively achieved in education too.

With those brief remarks, I commend the Bill and these amendments to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan]

That is extremely helpful. The Minister’s words will probably satisfy us so that we need not press that amendment to a vote later.

The chief inspector and the question of whether schools can be exempted from inspection were the subject of our earlier debate and of some interventions by me, the Chair of the Education Committee and my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), who is no longer in his place—I almost said Grimsby, but it is important to get the right part of Lincolnshire. Those remarks, and what the Prime Minister said earlier today about coasting schools, bring the issue more clearly into focus. As it stands, the clause removes the requirement for Ofsted—in other words, the chief inspector—to inspect and issue a report on each school in England, at a frequency set out in regulations, that rates the overall quality of the school and sets out its areas for improvement. Clause 41 will have a similar effect on further education institutions, which will be debated in the second group of amendments.

In effect, the provisions would exempt certain schools from section 5 inspections. Furthermore, the exemption would not be for a fixed number of years, and neither would a school be exempt only until something indicated that standards needed to be re-checked, such as a complaint from parents or pupils, a change of head, or concern being expressed by the local authority. It is possible that, under the clause, some schools could be exempt from inspections almost in perpetuity unless they wanted to pay for one.

It was pointed out earlier that a school could still be inspected under the chief inspector’s programme of surveys of curriculum subjects and thematic reviews, during which time the chief inspector may elect to treat the inspection as a partial section 5 inspection. However, that does not mean that every school would be inspected—far from it. In the case of the curriculum and thematic reviews, only parts of the school’s performance would be looked at.

The Prime Minister said earlier today that he was concerned that comprehensives in wealthy villages and market towns were sometimes coasting, although I do not know why he picked out comprehensives; that could apply equally to grammar schools in some parts of the country. He said that the fact that their

“respectable results and a decent local reputation”

hid the fact that their pupils could be performing much better. We know how quickly schools can move, for a variety of reasons, from being outstanding to what the Prime Minister describes as “coasting”. The Opposition’s proposals to provide more triggers for inspections when real concerns arise should have been accepted by the Government.

When Sir Michael Wilshaw gave evidence to the Select Committee on 1 November 2011, during his pre-appointment hearing before taking on his role as the new chief inspector of Ofsted, he said:

“Ofsted is about raising standards and it seems to me that there are only two levers for raising standards; one is Government and regulation, and the other is Ofsted.”

He later went on to correct himself, saying that he meant “two main levers”, stating:

“In terms of accountability, Government and Ofsted are the two main levers.”

In relation to the amendments, will the Minister tell us whether he agrees with the new chief inspector of schools in that regard?

[Damian Hinds]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the theoretical possibility of a school not being inspected for a very long time is not at all the same as that being likely? Does he also accept that the total basket of performance indicators that will be available under the new system will give much more richness, and a greater ability to identify the appropriate times to make such interventions?

[Kevin Brennan]

There are lots of indicators now, but we need triggers to make inspections happen at the appropriate time. We have sought to achieve that throughout the Bill. Given the seriousness of the step that the Government are taking, and the lack of consultation on this proposal, it should at least be the subject of the affirmative resolution procedure the first time that it is put in place. To that effect, we have tabled amendment (a) and the related amendment (b) to Lords amendment 27. We feel very strongly that if the Secretary of State is not going to provide us with any more triggers at this stage, he should at least have to come forward with an affirmative resolution the first time such a provision is enacted. We also think there should be a time limit on the provision. Amendment (b) to Lords amendment 27 would mean that exemptions could hold for only seven years, so the Government would be required to renew regulations at least every seven years.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

rose—

[Damian Hinds]

rose—

[Mr Stuart]

I give way to the Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Stuart]

I am grateful to the Minister for that comment. Perhaps he did mean what he just said, and it may be possible to create an examinations regime in which there are zero—no—mistakes, but the cost of examinations, which this Government inherited from the previous one, is already entirely outwith the value that those qualifications bring to this country. Our system is already over-reliant on examinations, and aspiring to zero errors—ever, in any examination question—will have a deleterious impact on their quality.

Awarding bodies may seek to change the questions that they ask to make it less likely that they ever include an error, and, if the measure suggests that it is unacceptable for them ever to include an error in any examination question, it will be extraordinarily expensive and impact in all sorts of unintended ways.

As Chairman of the Education Committee, I am not yet convinced that awarding bodies are so careless of quality, whatever the errors this summer, that we need such an incentive to make them improve. We need a balanced and proportionate approach, but I fear that the Minister’s words, suggesting that there should be zero errors ever, will lead to something quite different.

[Damian Hinds]

I wonder what level of error Japan, or the other strongest education systems in the world, are targeting. However, notwithstanding my hon. Friend’s point about the relatively small number of errors in this country, I wonder also whether he agrees that following those errors there is a problem with public confidence in examining bodies, and that, when it comes to qualifications, trust and confidence are absolutely all.

[Mr Stuart]

My hon. Friend makes my point for me: public confidence, particularly as far as a political party in power and a Prime Minister who wants to be seen to be doing something are concerned, is all, so they have come forward, as the previous Government did all too often, with a legislative response to something that needs no such response, and on the basis of no proper or considered analysis of the situation. We had 13 years of vast increase in legislative provision, but very little increase in public confidence, so I say, “Don’t stick it in a law because it looks good in this week’s papers; actually think for the long term.” If we had done so, we might not have introduced this provision.

--- Later in debate ---

I have not mentioned the second point, but it is crucial. When money starts to go to schools not necessarily through local authorities but directly from the Department for Education, we will have an even more flexible, fluid way of dealing with schools that will produce excellent schools. But we can never take our foot off the accelerator in the drive to ensure that all our schools do the best they can for their pupils and that their pupils thrive. That is our message, and that is what we must do. The Bill will go a long way towards helping that to happen.

[Damian Hinds]

I wish briefly to discuss a couple of aspects of the amendments, touching on Ofsted and outstanding schools, the anonymity of teachers and Ofqual. I wish to start where my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) so eloquently left off: on the duty to co-operate. I agree wholeheartedly that we should celebrate co-operation, teamwork, playing to strengths and so on. I accept that the Government think it necessary to retain the duty to co-operate, as was, but I hope the Minister will agree that it is not always best to systematise and design processes; free co-operation can frequently be more effective.

In a different but closely connected arena, the Select Committee, on which I sit and of which my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) is Chair, is examining the broader issue of child protection. In that area, the number of flow charts, systems, fall-back plans and required times by which something must happen provide what appears to be a very impressive system, but in many ways more questions are created than are answered.

There is much to be gained from schools co-operating, so that we get more than the sum of the parts. The education improvement partnership in my constituency brings together all 44 schools—nobody forced them, and it was not the result of any duty—to work on a range of things, including the gifted and talented programmes; the provision of pupil referral units; nurture for primary children at risk of exclusion; and training for emotional literacy support assistants. That makes the biggest difference.

The second thing I wish to talk about is Ofsted, outstanding schools and triggers. I accept that there is an honest and reasonable difference between the parties on this, which reflects a difference that we see on lots of subjects. Labour Members would like codified exactly what will trigger the re-inspection of a school previously judged to be outstanding, whereas Ministers are keen to think of a range of things that might make that happen but do not wish to be quite so specific and accept that, to an extent, the system is organic. The Select Committee closely examined whether a change of head should automatically trigger a re-inspection. I think that there is a strong argument to say that such a big personnel change, perhaps when combined with one or two other changes, might be a good reason for so doing, but there might be counterbalancing arguments against.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

I am glad to say that Lord Hill said that he and Sir Michael Wilshaw—I think he specifically named him—believed that changing a head would not automatically trigger an inspection but would trigger consideration. The Government and Ofsted are aligned with my hon. Friend on this requirement.

[Damian Hinds]

That highlights the point about having people running organisations whom we trust and who can make professional judgments, and about their weighing all the evidence and not being hidebound by particular formulae.

In an earlier intervention, I mentioned that we will have much richer data than ever before in the schools system. That is not unique to this country, because a revolution is going on in the education world, as was reported a few weeks ago in a good article in The Economist. We know much more about schools and can therefore do much more predictive modelling than was possible before.

In an intervention, my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward) argued in favour of contextual value added. The Government will not use CVA—and thank God for that; I have yet to meet anyone who understands it. I have served on the Education Committee for 18 months and we are still waiting for our first teacher, head teacher, pupil, local authority officer or anyone else from the education establishment to talk voluntarily about CVA as a measure of school performance. Instead, we have what most people would understand as a value-added measure—progress from key stage 2 to key stage 4—which will do most of that job without the extra complexity and formulaic high jinks that the contextual bit introduces. Of course, it is only one of a large basket of measures and indicators that can be used.

I am sure that it is not in the minds of Ministers or the leadership of Ofsted that any school should go a long time without inspection. I would be amazed if any head teacher wanted to go long without his school being inspected. Many of the indicators are what we might call “digital indicators”, but Ofsted produces an analogue report with much richer evaluation and comment than some of those measures. I am sure that many parents will want to know that there is a relatively recent report informing them about some of the things that they cannot necessarily read in league tables, but I do not think that any of that calls necessarily for the formulaic approach of automatic triggers that Labour Members suggest.

The next area I want to touch on is the anonymity of teachers. Reasonable questions have been asked about why schoolteachers should enjoy special treatment, and why those who work in further education colleges are treated differently. I accept that that is an anomaly, although it is hardly the first anomaly to arise between secondary schools and sixth-form colleges.

[Mr Stuart]

The Government listened and used the Bill to correct an anomaly and allow FE teachers to teach in schools. I led a debate in January and am delighted that Ministers listened to that appeal and are seeking other ways of levelling the playing field for FE and sixth-form colleges and schools.

[Damian Hinds]

Indeed. As ever, my hon. Friend makes a pertinent point.

Teachers are unique—there is something special about them, as opposed even to other people working with children, although I accept the arguments about them—as they have to stand before a class, in a position of authority, and keep discipline. Most of us will have been struck by the number of teachers whom we know who strongly approve of the change introducing anonymity. For the avoidance of doubt, let me say that those teachers would never in a million years get up to the sort of no good that we want to avoid. There is something symbolic in saying that we understand their difficult position in keeping order in their little community and that they deserve our support and this type of anonymity.

Ofqual has already stimulated some fascinating exchanges. In an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness, who chairs the Committee on which I serve, I wondered what level of defect the Japanese would look for. I specifically picked Japan, rather than Shanghai, Finland or any of the popular examples because of my experience of joining the Manchester and Merseyside branch of IBM as a tender 17-year-old. The story new starters were told might have been apocryphal, but it was that that IBM specified a 99.99% success rate in the contract with its Japanese microchip supplier. The Japanese were a bit confused, but dutifully smashed one in every 10,000 chips to ensure that they complied with the rate. The point is that other systems do things better than ours does and that people with other systems accept nothing but the best. Following that experience, IBM adopted the principle that is known in business as zero defects.

[Mr Stuart]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Damian Hinds]

Only if my hon. Friend will speak in Japanese.

[Mr Stuart]

Double Dutch perhaps, but not Japanese.

My hon. Friend asserts that other areas do better than we do—in the accuracy of their examination questions, I assume —but does he have any evidence to back that up? The paucity of such evidence from Ministers makes me question whether we have made the case to introduce such measures.

[Damian Hinds]

I suspect that my hon. Friend knows that my point was a more general one about other people doing better than we do and about their tolerance of failure and imperfection. I recognise that humanity is ultimately susceptible to failure, but I worry about what we should accept.

[Richard Fuller]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the main reasons the Japanese do so well in business is not sticks and penalties but their cultural acceptance of what they need to do?

[Damian Hinds]

I thoroughly accept that point, but we need to ensure that our education system strives to be as good as the best in the world. Ministers are effectively leading the education system in that mission.

I said earlier that public confidence is everything. I accept that the brand equity that examination bodies want to protect is the single biggest motivator to be as good as they can be, but it is worth reiterating that this is not a simple market in which they lose customers if they get something wrong. First, the number of exam-awarding bodies is limited—people do not have limitless choice. Secondly, schools that switch examination bodies face major costs, inconvenience and difficulty in changing curriculums. Thirdly, given the costs and difficulties involved, changes might not be as easy as they appear for schools and colleges.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen McPartland]

I thank the Minister for that clarification. One of the little-known problems with Ofqual’s relationship with awarding organisations is that often when it requests information the organisations can ignore it—I am not saying they do so—because they know that Ofqual only really has the nuclear option; it can either engage with them or not engage. That becomes the organisations’ point of view on the relationship they want with the regulator, rather than the view of the regulator in trying to regulate the industry. We referred to the industry earlier as a market, and it is worth almost £1 billion a year in the UK. There are 182 awarding organisations.

[Damian Hinds]

On the question of reputational risk versus the power of a fine, does my hon. Friend accept that the two are not necessarily alternatives? Being fined or, in an extreme case, being given the highest fine the regulator can give will itself contribute to the costs of reputational risk, so the two can reinforce each other. Reputational risk appears to have been an insufficient deterrent hitherto. Otherwise, we would not have had the extent of problems we saw this summer.

[Stephen McPartland]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend, because reputational risk is very important. The problem is simply that it comes back to reputational risk and the nuclear option, as many awarding organisations can take a chance and build into their business models the number of mistakes they can make before they appear in national headlines. I am not saying that that is what they are doing, but with Ofqual’s current position there is a very odd situation in which the awarding organisations can identify the relationship they want with the regulator, rather than the regulator regulating the industry.

Providing Ofqual with the ability to fine awarding organisations at 10% allows it to say, “If you don’t comply and engage with us, we can fine you up to 10%.” I agree with the Minister that there will no doubt be a sliding scale and that it will be introduced with consultation, but the key point, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) noted earlier, relates to the Japanese example of smashing one circuit in 1,000 to ensure that they comply. We do not want one mistake to ensure that Ofqual and the awarding organisations comply with one another; we want them to have a relationship based on trust and understanding and, as a last resort, for there to be the threat of fine if the awarding organisations do not engage with Ofqual. Reputational risk is important, but I think that we all understand that what affects people ultimately is the bottom line: what profit they are making and how they are engaging. That is what is important, because that is what they are employed to do. I broadly agree with the Ofqual situation. There is a bit of conflict, because it means giving a quango more powers, but in this situation I think that that is correct.

We also had a robust and prolonged debate on Ofsted, with many interventions. There was a suggestion that some schools would not be inspected for perhaps 10, 15 or 20 years, but in practice that is unrealistic. I was under the impression that when a new head teacher took over a school, particularly a primary school, traditionally that would trigger an Ofsted inspection within a couple of years. I understand that under the Bill’s provisions Her Majesty’s chief inspector of schools will trial a new approach so that, when a new head teacher takes over, the inspector will contact the school to discuss the performance and the head teacher’s plans for the future, which I think is a much more effective way of working with outstanding schools.

Triggers have been mentioned. I understand that there will be a guaranteed minimum re-inspection rate of 5% and that governors, through the powers and freedoms we are allowing them—the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) spoke effectively about this in Committee on several occasions—will be able to say that they are losing confidence in how things are going. If parent governors in our constituencies believe that children are not getting access to the best education, they phone their MP or local authority straight away to demand the best for their children. That would also ensure that those schools will have the best from the new freedom to engage and not to be inspected every couple of years.

On a wider note, I am pleased that Ofsted will no longer give six or seven weeks’ notice of inspections. The notice period had meant that teaches would often work for 15 or 16 hours a day for six or seven weeks, including weekends, to try to ensure that their school is seen at its best. I do not believe that that is the best way of conducting inspections. What Ofsted is doing at the moment is giving a couple of days’ notice before turning up, which provides a much better reflection of the school. As the years go by, that will provide a much better snapshot of what is happening.

Also, the freedoms for academies in the Bill will lift education across every constituency and local education authority area. Competition is the wrong word to use in a debate on education, but those schools, head teachers and teachers will be seeking to attract the best children. It is important to focus on providing the children with the best schools. Many of the outstanding schools will not now be inspected as often as before, but they will be spending their time helping neighbouring schools that do not have the best procedures in place to move towards becoming outstanding. I welcome the Bill’s proposals in this area.

My final point relates to direct payments for special educational needs. The Minister said earlier to my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford that people would be able to opt into this process, and I am grateful to him for that, because I would have had great hesitation in supporting any kind of compulsory measure. Now that the Minister has clarified the position, however, I can support the proposal.

Oral Answers to Questions

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

That is a very fair point, and design and technology has many powerful champions, including the hon. Gentleman, but I would emphasise that the single most important thing that we can do if we are to ensure a generation of not just technicians but manufacturing leaders in future is make sure that we perform better in mathematics and that there are more students studying physics and chemistry. They are the key to success, and one of the reasons why the English baccalaureate has been so successful is that it has encouraged students to study those essential subjects.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that there have always been core subjects and option subjects, and that the value of the E-bac is in signalling the most widely valued core subjects without precluding option subjects? That advice is of most value to the most disadvantaged in our society.

[Michael Gove]

That is a typically acute point from my hon. Friend. The subjects in the E-bac bear a close resemblance to the sorts of subjects in an Arnoldian vision of liberal education but, more than that, they are the subjects that modern universities and 21st-century employers increasingly demand. One of the problems that we have had in the past is that too few students from poorer areas have been able to access and benefit from great subject-teaching in those disciplines.

New Schools

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Having visited Nottingham twice over the past six weeks, I am under no illusions about the passion that Nottingham’s MPs and its people have for improving educational performance. I shall do everything possible to ensure that the local community is involved in plans that I think are exciting and will extend opportunities to a particularly deprived constituency.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the pace of his reforms and his constant focus on narrowing the gap for the underprivileged? Does he agree that the benefit of free schools can be felt not just where they appear but much wider afield? The fact that such a school could be set up helps to raise the bar. They can act as beacons of excellence and innovation.

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes my own case better than I could ever make it myself. It is true. We have seen with the academy programme that excellent schools prompt the question, “Why can’t all schools be like that?” As more schools adopt longer school days, longer terms and more personalised learning, parents increasingly ask, “Why can’t more schools offer what these schools are offering?” It is a virtuous circle that raises aspiration and attainment for all.

Careers Service (Young People)

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that it is the quality of advice that counts, more than its quantity? What does she recommend we could do to get more people into schools to talk about STEM subjects, for example, and to inspire pupils to take those—boys and girls?

[Mrs Chapman]

Exactly right; I agree with that. I look at my own sons and wonder who is going to talk to them if they want to go into science, technology, engineering or maths. Heaven help them if they look to me or their father for advice. I can give them advice on politics, psychology, archaeology, retail and cake decorating.

Alan Milburn was right. I am happy to see the service devolved to schools. It is fine for schools to commission the service as they see fit, but they need money to enable them to buy quality face-to-face advice, and there needs to be a proper inspection regime.

[Damian Hinds]

rose—

[Mrs Chapman]

Please be brief.

[Damian Hinds]

Is the hon. Lady aware of the STEMNET ambassador programme, in which people from relevant industries go into schools and get the benefit of continuing professional development while they are sharing their knowledge and enthusiasm with the young people?

[Mrs Chapman]

Fantastic! I am all for that. That is marvellous, but is it happening in every school in the country? Of course not. I have some brilliant engineering businesses which go into schools and inspire young people. They try to point young people in the right direction and show them that there are wonderful careers for them on their doorstep—international careers—but young people need more than a visit from such a company. They need proper face-to-face advice from people who will inspire them.

The businesses in Darlington to which I referred are recruiting senior engineers from Greece, Brazil and Turkey, because we are not producing the people to fill those senior roles. One reason for that is that people are not getting the right advice at the right age. I am not talking just about 16 and FE. I am talking about year 6 in primary school, before they take their options, so that they know that they have to take good science subjects and maths. I am glad to see the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) agreeing with me. Such careers advice will not happen via Google. It needs to be face-to-face, inspiring advice.

I am fortunate to have in Darlington the Queen Elizabeth sixth-form college. I shall shamelessly plug the work of one woman, Stella Barnes, who provides first-class careers advice to young people there. I am sure that despite the pressures that it faces, the college will find the funding to keep Stella doing such fantastic work, but that is one woman and she can only do so much.

In the turbulent world that our young people are entering, job prospects are not certain, the costs of higher education are putting people off, and EMA no longer incentivises young people to stay on post-16. That applies not only to the at-risk, the vulnerable, the people who would not have a job if their mother had not organised something for them. It applies to all young people from all kinds of backgrounds. It is not just about the children of people on benefits. It is about people whose parents are in professional careers but who lack the wherewithal to open other doors—people like myself.

The biggest shame is that the Government have over-promised on what they will do. When they said that there would be an all-age careers service, people took them at their word. They thought that that meant the same for everybody and that it would be fair, but that is not what we will find. Adults can get face-to-face advice, because the Government rightly recognise that they need it, so why can young people not get it? They need it more than anyone else. They need someone to look them in the eye, work out their personal circumstances, listen to their hopes, dreams and aspirations, perhaps give them some if they do not have any, and work out the best thing for them. Otherwise, we are leaving young people stranded.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julie Hilling]

Perhaps—although I have to say that it is not a bad job.

It is down to us to ensure that young people are inspired to follow certain careers. How can they find out what jobs and careers are out there? If they do not have friends, family or people in their neighbourhood who are in a variety of professions, how do they find out what they can do, or what their options are? That is the situation that faces many of our young people, especially those from poorer backgrounds.

[Damian Hinds]

The hon. Lady is raising some very good questions, but is she implying that all those services have been working perfectly for the past 10 years or so?

[Julie Hilling]

I am quite happy to concede that they have not been working perfectly, but I have to tell the House that the Government’s proposals will make things worse, not better.

Many industries—not just the professions involving solicitors, doctors and so on—are very much family affairs, in which sons and daughters follow fathers and mothers, aunts and uncles and grandparents into the workplace. Before I worked for a rail union, which was very much a family affair, I had no idea about the range of jobs available in that industry. How does a young person without connections find out about such jobs, and how do they ensure that they have the right skills to apply for them when they do find out about them?

Of course, the advice that young people receive has to be good. I remember a member of my staff taking a young person to meet a careers officer before the Connexions service was established. Again, I am not saying that Connexions was perfect. That young women wanted to become a vet, but the careers adviser very kindly told her about how to become a veterinary nurse. That was disgraceful. We need to be ambitious for young people. I worked with two young people who were told that they were too stupid to go to university. One of them now has her master’s degree, and is a head of department in a sixth-form college. The other has a degree in Russian and splits his time between Russia and Korea. A computer program will not inspire young people. It will not be ambitious for them, and it will not stretch them. It will not build their confidence, or give them the support that they need if they are to reach their full potential.

What if a young person has learning difficulties or physical disabilities? I want to talk about Thomas, whose mum and gran came to see me in my surgery. Thomas had not been diagnosed with a disability and there was a threat to take his mum to court because he would not attend school. Eventually, through our intervention, Thomas was diagnosed with an autism-related condition. He would not leave home, go to school or do anything else. He had a Connexions adviser, however, who regularly came to the house at the same time each week—the sort of thing that a young person with an autism-related condition needs. By using the available funding, the adviser was able to take Thomas out to the library and various other activities, and to give him experience of work programmes. Thomas’s life was transformed, but his mum and gran are now absolutely desperate about what will happen to him.

Connexions was not just about careers advice. Funding was made available to support young people like Thomas or others who for other reasons were not making a good transfer to further education or work. There was funding for programmes that provided support, training and education for young people, including a summer programme for 16-year-olds from the New Opportunities Fund. An activity agreement provided an allowance in return for fulfilling an agreed action plan and funding was provided to purchase experiential learning opportunities. There was a learning agreement aimed at engaging local employers and increasing the number of young people in jobs with training. The programme offered financial incentives to employers and young people, in combination with suitably brokered learning provision.

In Wigan there was a range of bespoke projects aimed at the most vulnerable young people in the borough—including teenage pregnancy courses and a video production course for young offenders. The re-engage project built on the success of the activity agreement pilot by securing a discretionary fund for young people living in Wigan’s most deprived neighbourhoods. That also funded summer projects, in partnership with the youth service, to keep school leavers engaged. An apprenticeship pathways project was delivered by Wigan college and local learning providers, which looked at new ways of engaging and motivating closer to the labour market young people who were struggling to find opportunities. Wigan council’s supported employment team was funded to assist young people with learning difficulties in accessing work opportunities. The council delivered a successful apprenticeship programme, recruiting young people and supporting them through trained mentors. In partnership with local learning providers and colleges, it successfully delivered a range of activities to engage and motivate NEET and potentially NEET clients—including the clearing house, taster sessions, locality-based summer programmes and careers events.

What happened as a result of all that support and all those programmes? Youth unemployment fell by 40% from 1997 to the start of the global financial crisis, and more than half the young people on jobseeker’s allowance were off it within three months. But now it is all gone.

Most young people from advantaged backgrounds will make the transition from school to employment, probably via university, with few problems, but surely we have a duty to support young people who, through no fault of their own, will find that transition difficult or impossible. We owe it to young people to help them fulfil their potential. We owe it to them to give them the best possible support and advice from trained and qualified advisers. I hope that the Government will do another U-turn and save either the Connexions service or the careers service—at least something that will be valuable to young people. And while they are at it, I hope that they will save the youth service, too.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

So much to say, and so little time to say it in.

Many of the contributions from Opposition Members have been about bad careers advice, stereotyping and ambition limiting. The unfortunate point is that guaranteeing that advice will be provided face to face does not get rid of bad advice; all that it guarantees is that the advice will be heard more directly. The title of this debate displayed on the annunciator is “Careers Service (Young People)”, but doing real service to young people in their careers is about much more than specifying a certain amount of time with the man from the council. It only happens when the whole education system and the economy work together on young people’s careers. We must take a much bigger, broader, holistic view of this at a national level, in industry, throughout the education system and in interaction with individual young people.

As we know, we live in a rapidly changing world that has already changed in many ways, not least through the disappearance of many jobs that young people used to do between the ages of 16 and 18 and in terms of the types of skills we need for the jobs that we expect to be available in the future. As the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) rightly said, the range of different jobs that people might now do over their lifetime calls for much more flexibility.

We do not have a great record in this country, historically, of picking winners, but we need to recognise that certain industries will be growth industries at which we need to excel. Without exception they are industries that need greater skills, and we need to help young people to focus on them. We need better links between industry and education, both so industries can inspire young people to want to go and work in them and so that the skills sets that come out of the education system include the things they need as companies, and that we need as an economy and as a country to succeed in the world. There also needs to be a feedback mechanism so that companies and sectors can tell the education system what they are looking for. We often hear complaints about what comes out, but it is not quite so clear what the mechanism for change is.

There must also be opportunities, of course, for young people to experience, sample and gain experience and training in firms, and I welcome the expansion in apprenticeships and work placements. I agree that we must look again at how the internship system works. We have heard about internships from Opposition Members, and a number of Members of Parliament have taken the decision that they will ensure that internships are paid, so that they are available to the full range of young people.

Education as a whole must guide young people towards fulfilling careers. I was surprised that the right hon. Member for Leigh left colleges out of the motion, as they are an important part of the education system. He referred only to schools, but of course the whole system must work effectively. I do not think anybody could doubt the Government’s commitment to reforming the education system, both to raise the average level of education and, crucially, to narrow the yawning and embarrassing gap between rich and poor.

I am afraid that in parts of the education system too many young people have not been guided towards fulfilling careers. Let me quote the Wolf report:

“The staple offer for between a quarter and a third of the post-16 cohort is a diet of low-level vocational qualifications, most of which have little to no labour market value.”

At an even earlier stage—coming up to key stage 4—it seems that some young people are guided towards subjects that will boost the school’s performance in the league tables more than they might boost the individual’s performance in the job market and their opportunities through life. Perhaps they get face-to-face advice: perhaps somebody tells them that all GCSE subjects will be worth the same to them as any other; perhaps somebody tells them that equivalencies will always be accepted in the outside world; and perhaps somebody tells them that getting a GCSE in accountancy, law or financial services is a key step to starting a career in one of those professions.

I welcome what the Government are doing to publish destination data on schools as well as more information on higher education institutions, and I also welcome the reform of the key stage 4 league tables. I also welcome the somewhat controversial—in parts—English baccalaureate. The simple fact is that those core subjects have a premium value among employers and higher education institutions, and we should stop fibbing to young people. It is not a full curriculum. There is plenty of room for options on top of the English baccalaureate, but the best advice we can give to a young person who wants to keep their options as open as possible is to include in what they study those core academic subjects. Of course it will not be for everyone, and I also welcome the Government’s moves to ensure that the league tables and metrics recognise equally the progress of every child. We must find new and better ways to ensure that post-16 students are more engaged with mathematics.

In conclusion, the motion talks about guaranteeing good careers advice. I put it to you, Mr Speaker, that the only way to guarantee a good careers service for young people is if all the elements—at national level, in industry, in education, and direct advice for people—are working in concert.

School Funding Reform

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am in favour of more flexibility overall, but we need to recognise that money spent on state education should stay in state schools. There are many great state schools in Portsmouth, and I was fortunate enough to talk yesterday with the leader of Portsmouth city council, Gerald Vernon-Jackson, and appreciate how hard he is working, along with my hon. Friend, to ensure that Portsmouth gets the support it deserves for its state schools.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

In making the new capital programme more efficient than BSF, will my right hon. Friend confirm that sums of money will not be earmarked and siphoned off for things like the unnecessary IT projects that led to such cost overruns under BSF?

[Michael Gove]

That is a very distinguished point made by my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds). One of the problems with BSF is that £210 million was spent by local authorities on consultants, including IT consultants, and some of that money was invested in material that we would not describe as state of the art. It is critical to ensure that we get value for every penny we spend. Information technology is critical to effective learning in the 21st century, but so is ensuring that we get proper value for money.