Children Not in School: National Register and Support
Damian Hinds Excerpts(9 months, 2 weeks ago)
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The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)
I warmly welcome the Opposition’s focus on the vital subject of school attendance. It is a big issue that we want everyone to talk about. Being in school matters for children—for their education, for their development, for being with their friends and for all else that school brings. As our campaign says “moments matter, attendance counts.”
Everyone will be off school at some point through illness, and sadly some have to be off for extended—sometimes very extended—periods, but we absolutely want children to be in school as much as possible and to cut out avoidable absence. I am sure that the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) joins me in celebrating the success in cutting absence since 2010 and prior to the pandemic. Attendance levels improved significantly, with absence falling from 6% in 2010 to 4.8%, representing 15 million more days in school. Persistent absence, which was at 16% in 2010, came down by almost a third by 2015, and stayed around that level until the pandemic.
Many education systems are dealing with increases in absence since the pandemic. That is true of jurisdictions far beyond these shores. It is also true in all of England and Scotland, and in Labour-run Wales—where, by the way, the increase is from a considerably higher starting point to a considerably higher current point than in England. As such, I welcome the hon. Lady raising this subject. The actual motion, however, suggests that it is perhaps not a subject that the Opposition are taking properly seriously.
The motion starts by saying that the Government are not tackling persistent absence. Let us set aside for a moment that that is plainly nonsense, as I will come to shortly.
Damian Hinds
Not at the moment. There then follows the most colossal conflation—a massive non sequitur—about a register of children not in school because they are home educated. Obviously, absence and “not in school” sound pretty similar, but if the hon. Lady really thinks that the issue around absence is all about children being home educated en masse, she has failed to grasp the issue. [Interruption.] I simply point the hon. Lady who speaks for the Opposition to the motion as it is printed on the Order Paper, which clearly connects the two statements with nothing more than a semicolon between them. We do think that local authority registers are important: they would help improve oversight of those children who are not on school rolls, but they would not directly address the larger group of children who are on a school roll but have been persistently absent from that school.
Damian Hinds
No; I ask the hon. Gentleman to forgive me for a moment.
Before we go on, I would like to say a short word about children in home education. This is often done very well by parents, who make huge sacrifices for their children, often in particularly difficult circumstances, and I pay tribute to those parents. Let us be clear: parents also have a right to home school their children, and that is a right I defend. However, we do think it is important for local authorities to have a register, because we know that not all children who are not enrolled at school are in receipt of a suitable education at home. We also think it is important that parents who are home schooling should be able to source support from their local authority.
The hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South should know that that is Government policy because, as she said, it appeared in the Schools Bill. She may or may not have spotted that in the past few days the Department has completed a consultation on elective home education to inform new guidance. I know she has spotted that a private Member’s Bill has been tabled in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond), which will come before this House on 15 March. Both the Secretary of State and I look forward to working with my hon. Friend as she seeks to progress her Bill through this House. In the meantime, the Government continue to work with local authorities to improve their existing non-statutory registers.
Several hon. Members rose—
Damian Hinds
I give way to the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), just because he has had a go three times.
Paul Blomfield
I thank the Minister for giving way. According to the 2021 census, there are over 197,000 young carers under the age of 18. That is recognised to be an underestimate, so when 85% of headteachers told the school census that they had no young carers in their school, that only illustrated how those carers are unrecognised within the system. Evidence submitted to the inquiry held by the all-party parliamentary group on young carers and young adult carers said that young carers have double the persistent absence rate of their peers—41.6%—but they are not recognised in the Department for Education’s guidance on working together to improve school attendance. When this debate has finished, will the Minister go away and review that guidance, and would he consider requiring all schools to have a lead for young carers in the way that they do for SEN, to make sure they are no longer unrecognised within our system?
Damian Hinds
The hon. Gentleman is right to identify the number of young carers growing up in our country and going through our school system and the particular needs they have, issues that are directly relevant in the case of absence. We are working to improve understanding of where there are young carers, including through the school census that the hon. Gentleman mentioned and also through the guidance that we issue. As he will know, “Keeping children safe in education” is the main guidance on that subject that is issued to schools: it requires designated safeguarding leads to be aware of the needs of young carers, but trying to understand those needs is something that goes broader within school communities. Of course, dedicated professionals working in our school system seek to do exactly that.
Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
It is so generous of the Minister to give way. In my constituency, families struggle. The cost of living crisis is ever present, and the housing crisis forces many families to move from house to house. Children end up quite a long way from school because parents, understandably, want their child to have some level of stability and keep them in the school where they know their friends and their teachers. To be honest, my schools are brilliant and the teachers are really committed, but surely we need recognition that cuts to council budgets, combined with the massive increases in need that there are at the moment, are a contributing factor to children being out of school. Does he accept that?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)
Order. Can I just say to Opposition Members, first, that interventions should not be speeches; and secondly, that they are taking up their own time, and they will lose time on the second debate?
Damian Hinds
Of course, I readily acknowledge that cost of living pressures and inflationary pressures have been difficult for families in many ways. It is also true that the single most important thing to underpin family budgets is employment, and we are benefiting from the still very high rates of employment in this country. We are also benefiting from the proportion of people in work on low pay having come down significantly as a result of the national living wage. Yes, there is much more to do, but there is also a great deal happening. I should now make some progress.
To go back to the children not on school registers, the Government continue to work with local authorities to improve non-statutory registers. I have already mentioned the consultation on revised guidance for elective home education. Through termly data collection, we are also increasing the accuracy of registers, improving the understanding of this cohort of children. However, true accuracy can only be gained with mandatory registers, stipulating the data to be recorded and an accompanying duty on parents to inform local authorities when they are home educating.
We often say that reading is the most fundamental thing in education, because if someone cannot read they cannot access the curriculum, and then nothing else in school really works. However, there is one thing that is even more fundamental than reading, and that is attendance, because whatever great things our schoolteachers do, they can only benefit the children who are there to benefit from them.
I am pleased that we have started to see some progress in this area. There were 380,000 fewer pupils persistently absent or not attending in 2022-23 than the previous year. I am not quite sure how the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South does the extrapolation to her figure of one in four—[Interruption.] Well, that is not what the data series says. On Thursday, we will see the first data published for persistent absence in this academic year. We shall see what that says, but I hope it will show some further improvement. In any event, we certainly know that there is further to go.
Our comprehensive attendance strategy includes a number of different elements. There are clearer expectations of the whole system, including requiring schools to have an attendance policy and to appoint an attendance champion, and for local authorities and schools to agree individual plans for at-risk children. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) will be leading a debate in Westminster Hall very soon in connection with and in support of her presentation Bill on making such obligations statutory.
On data, which the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South spoke about, our attendance data tool now provides near real-time information, not once a year, to allow earlier intervention and avoid absence becoming entrenched. We already have 88% of schools taking part in our world-leading daily registers data pilot, and we want that to be 100% by September.
Damian Hinds
I ask the hon. Member to forgive me, in the interests of time.
We have targeted support in which schools with strong attendance performance support others that need help, and we are expanding that so that almost 2,000 schools will benefit. Our mentoring pilot, which I think the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South inadvertently referred to, is delivering one-to-one support for persistently and severely absent children. That is currently taking place in Middlesbrough, Knowsley, Doncaster, Stoke and Salford, and it will be extended to 10 new areas, with a total of 10,000 children, later this year.
System leadership is incredibly important. That is why we have the attendance action alliance, which brings together leaders not only from the world of education, but from children’s social care, health and allied services. They are all working together to address the wider barriers to and enablers of attendance.
As I said earlier, we must be very clear that some children do need to be off school some of the time. That has always been the case, but there has been some change in attitude since covid, with a greater propensity to keep a child at home with minor illness, such as a cough or cold in some cases. We need to recalibrate at least back to where we were pre-covid. That is why we have launched the national campaign “Moments Matter, Attendance Accounts” to re-emphasise the importance of every day in school, not only for learning but for wellbeing, experiences and friendships.
Alongside this, we have made attendance a key theme of school and children’s services reforms. We have provided additional funding for recovery, including for tutoring and direct funding for schools. To help families, we have committed an additional sum of £200 million to scale-up the Supporting Families programme, which of course has a specific requirement on school attendance. We are also spending on the national school breakfast programme to provide around 350,000 breakfasts on a school day in over 2,500 schools, targeted at the most disadvantaged areas. I also say to the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South that we should look at targeting secondary schools as well as primary schools, because persistent absence can of course be particularly concentrated in the secondary age group.
There are now considerably more children in receipt of free school meals than the last time a Labour Government were in office. This is despite the fact—[Interruption.] This is despite the fact, I say to the hon. Lady, that there are 600,000 fewer children living in workless households and that, thanks to the national living wage, the proportion of people in work but in low pay has halved.
Mental health barriers are also a very important part of this. That is why we are working with NHS England to increase the number of mental health support teams. They already cover 47% of pupils in secondary schools, and that will increase to at least 50% across all phases by March next year.
I am pleased to report that the latest data shows that, while there is still a lot to do, there is some cause for cautious optimism. Overall attendance last term was 93.2%, up from 92.5% in autumn 2022-23, meaning that pupils in England on average attend the equivalent of around a day and a half more across an academic year than they did the previous year. So while there is still a long way to go, this does represent progress.
To conclude, for the vast majority of children school of course continues to be the best place for their education, and it has never been more important to be at school. England’s primary school children are now the best readers in the western world, and at secondary we have made considerable progress.
The hon. Lady said some interesting things about PISA, the main international study of attainment—not the only one, but the main one—in which England has moved up the rankings, having previously come down the rankings before 2010. The hon. Lady says that in the end it is the score, not the rankings, that matter, and she is of course right. I am surprised she does not know this, however: she said education has not been badly affected by covid in every country, but I have to tell her that covid has given a real knock to education across most of the world. [Interruption.] I beg the hon. Lady’s pardon? [Interruption.] It has taken a great knock across much of the world and much of the world is now engaged in recovery programmes to make up that ground. But what the PISA results showed is that the knock sustained in this country was less than in very many other countries.
The PISA results also highlighted something else about education in England. It identifies this country as being in the relatively small set of what it calls “equitable systems.” In other words, as well as having strong performance relative to other countries, that performance is well spread out.
There have always been some children who are educated at home, and I repeat my earlier tribute to parents who, in so many cases, give up so much to do this and do it so well. However, covid created a big increase on top of what was already growth in the numbers, and it is important that we understand that.
The wider issue is that the legacy of the pandemic has also meant that school absence levels are too high. We remain committed to working with pupils, parents, teachers, local authorities, the health service and other partners to tackle these issues through our support-first approach, building on the strengths of the current system and the success achieved by teachers and leaders in our schools prior to the pandemic. Being in school has never been more valuable for pupils, with standards continuing to rise. I am hugely grateful to all our brilliant teachers, heads, partners throughout the system and everyone who has worked to create the progress achieved so far, and I am confident there is a great deal more to come.
Free School Meals: Children with SEND
Damian Hinds Excerpts(9 months, 4 weeks ago)
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The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)
What a pleasure it is to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Huq, I think for the first time. I congratulate the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) on securing this debate on an important matter, as demonstrated by the over-subscription of this debate this afternoon. For their contributions, I thank the hon. Members for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana), for Somerton and Frome (Sarah Dyke), for Strangford (Jim Shannon), of course, for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy), for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) and for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery). My hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) gave a compelling speech, and my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg) made a compelling and pithy point in his speech.
We all agree about the importance of ensuring that all children in school are given the best opportunities to thrive, and the Government are determined to ensure that every child, regardless of background or circumstances, can get the very best start in life. Today, we discuss those who have a special educational need or disability, and colleagues have raised several striking case studies of individual children and their circumstances from their constituency case load or, in some cases, from their personal family experience.
We support, of course, the provision of nutritious food in schools so that pupils develop healthy eating habits and can concentrate and learn, and free school meal provision is important to that being achieved in schools. This Government have extended eligibility for free school meals more than any other. We spend over £1 billion a year delivering free lunches to the greatest ever proportion of school children—over a third. That one in three compares with the one in six who were receiving a free school meal in 2010. That change came despite employment being up by millions, unemployment being down by a million, 600,000 fewer children being in workless households, and the proportion of those in work on low pay coming down substantially since the introduction of the national living wage in 20215-16.
Free school meal provision includes 2 million pupils who are eligible for benefits-related free school meals and a further 90,000 disadvantaged students in further education who receive a free meal at lunch time. In addition, a further 1.3 million infants in reception and years 1 and 2 receive a free meal under the universal infant free school meal policy, which we introduced in 2014. That helps to improve children's education and boost their health, and it saves parents about £480 a year. We have also introduced extensive protections, which have been in effect since 2018, to ensure that while universal credit is being fully rolled out, any family eligible for free school meals transitioning to universal credit from the legacy benefits will retain their entitlement to free school meals, even if they move above the income threshold.
Pupils are eligible for benefits-related free school meals if they or their parents are in receipt of one of the eligible benefits and have submitted a request for meals. As colleagues will know, schools have a duty to provide nutritious, free meals to pupils who are registered with a state-funded school and meet the eligibility criteria for free school meals. The provision should be made for eligible pupils either on the school premises or at any other place where education of those pupils is being provided.
There are, of course, many pupils with special educational needs and disability status that meet the eligibility criteria necessary for free meals. The latest published statistics show that 41.1% of pupils with an education, health and care plan—known commonly as an EHCP—and 37.5% of pupils who are on what is known as SEND support were eligible for free school meals provision in 2023. Similarly, many children with disabilities but not special educational needs will be eligible, and those rates are higher than the overall proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals in England.
The standard food offering provided by schools will, of course, be suitable to the needs of many of these children. However, some pupils with additional needs may require special food provision or arrangements. Let me be very clear: all schools have duties under the Equality Act 2010 towards individual disabled children and young people, and they must make reasonable adjustments to prevent them being put at a substantial disadvantage. That means that a school cannot treat a pupil unfairly as a consequence of their disability.
For the provision of school meals, that could lead to schools making reasonable adjustments to ensure that eligible pupils could still access their entitlement. For example, a school could let a pupil with sensory-processing issues go into the dinner hall before other pupils, or it could appropriately tailor the meal choices to the pupil’s particular needs. Schools do, of course, do those things and are best able to understand the individual children and the circumstances of their school.
We have published non-statutory guidance for schools to advise them generally on their duties to make reasonable adjustments for disabled pupils and to support them in doing so. I would also note that, while schools are not obliged to make such adjustments for pupils who are not disabled, many do work with pupils and their families to accommodate a variety of needs. Working with pupils to make adjustments to help them access food can, of course, as a couple of colleagues have alluded to, also help to improve attendance and behaviour. Further to that, we encourage schools to work with parents and pupils to ensure that their food provision adequately meets a diverse range of needs, so that it can be enjoyed and benefited from by all.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for giving way. My involvement in this is partly informed by constituents writing to me, but also as the aunt of a child whose neurodiversity means that she has a severely restricted diet, which is basically beige things and chocolate. I know that my sister has had huge problems in trying to ensure that she gets the right support at school, but I wanted to ask specifically about the Food Standards Agency. As I understand it, the FSA has been carrying out a review into schools’ compliance with the national school food standards, because there is very little information on the extent to which schools do comply with those standards. Does the Minister also see a role for the FSA in looking at whether schools meet that criteria and are actually meeting the needs of SEND pupils in terms of dietary needs?
Damian Hinds
Obviously the quality of school food is critical, and regulations cover not only free school meals, in the sense of lunches, but all food that is available during the school day—for example, in breakfast clubs that schools provide and even in tuck shops. I may get inspiration, but I think the standards cover up to 6 pm in the evening for things going on during the school day.
When one talks about compliance with regulations, one has to think differently about what is done at a system level and for individual children. Candidly, I do not think that it is realistic to say that you could have a regulatory agency that was looking at every individual case of individual children and their requirements in that particular school, but it is important that we have those standards. If the hon. Lady would like, I would be very happy, of course, to follow up with her separately.
That, in fact, brings me on to the point that I have in front of me, which is that, where parents do have specific concerns that a school’s legal obligations regarding their child are not being met, those should be raised with the school in the first instance, and subsequently, as necessary, with the academy trust or local authority.
Helen Hayes
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I am simply making the point that the absence of any reference in the guidance to the legislation results in a situation of conflict—
Damian Hinds
I ask the hon. Lady only to be patient. That was a central point made by the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby and clearly I need to come on to it. To be straightforward and clear, we will update our free school meals guidance to make reference to the reasonable adjustments duty that is already set out in non-statutory guidance published by the Department elsewhere, in order to heighten awareness about reasonable adjustments, in particular as it relates to meal provision among schools, local authorities and families to support local solutions. That should give parents clarity and something to point schools to when discussing their child’s needs.
Where pupils have a medical condition that impacts their access to food, section 100 of the Children and Families Act 2014 places a legal duty on schools to make arrangements to support pupils with their medical condition. The accompanying statutory guidance from 2015 included in the document “Supporting pupils at school with medical conditions” sets out that governing bodies must have regard to that guidance when carrying out the duty.
The guidance makes it clear that schools should ensure that they are aware of any pupils with medical conditions and that they have policies and processes in place so that those conditions can be well managed. The guidance is also clear that that includes how the processes will be implemented and the potential role of individual healthcare plans in supporting pupils. The guidance is clear that any individual plans should include consideration of
“access to food and drink where this is used to manage their condition”
and any “dietary requirements”.
Members also asked whether supermarket vouchers could be provided in lieu of meals. The requirements for free school meals are clear, such that eligible children should receive their free meal either on the school premises or at any other place where education is being provided. In some circumstances, it may be appropriate to provide supermarket vouchers to parents in lieu of meals. Equally, in other cases, it may be more appropriate for other arrangements to be made, such as food parcels.
The exact nature of alternative arrangements will of course depend on individual circumstances and should be determined case by case. It is rightly up to schools to decide how the provision should be made. We believe that they are best placed to understand individual circumstances, their families and their children, and to tailor their food provision accordingly. Ultimately, the best and most nutritious option is typically for children and young people to receive a hot and freshly cooked meal at school. That is what our policy supports, while allowing for alternative arrangements such as food parcels and vouchers to be put in place where necessary.
It is a condition of free school meal eligibility that children are registered with a state-funded school. Eligible pupils, including those with special educational needs and disabilities, are entitled to receive free meals. Some children are not able to attend a school setting on a long-term basis or sometimes at all, owing to their complex needs. It is right that the Government’s high-level policy and funding framework leaves flexibility for local responses to the complex needs of individual children.
The Department allocates high-needs funding to local authorities to support the education and learning of children with special educational needs and disabilities, and local authorities have wide discretion over the use of that funding. We strongly encourage parents of children with complex food needs to be in touch with their school or local authority to discuss the support available to them.
Damian Hinds
I will ask the hon. Gentleman to forgive me, because I want to ensure that I get through and cover the points. If I end up with more than a minute or two at the end, I will try to come back to him, if that is all right.
Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)
Order. We also need to allow two minutes for Ian Byrne to conclude.
Damian Hinds
Which makes it slightly less likely, but let us see how we get on.
I am aware that concerns have been raised in relation to food provision for the particular group of children we discussed earlier: those with complex needs who are educated otherwise than at school, commonly known—perhaps this is the point that the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown was about to raise—by the acronym EOTAS. Section 61 of the Children and Families Act 2014 allows for local authorities to make special educational provision for those children outside of a school setting. The latest published school statistics show that as of January 2023, there are about 8,000 children and young people receiving EOTAS.
Of course, not all those children and young people would qualify for free school meals under the benefits-related criteria. We fund local authorities to support those children, and decisions about exactly what is included in individual EOTAS packages rightly fall to them. We therefore advise parents of children receiving EOTAS to speak with the local authority if they have concerns. I note the concerns that have been raised today about food provision for children receiving EOTAS under section 61, and I can confirm that my Department will review our published free school meals guidance on that point. That will be available in the spring. We will of course work closely with stakeholders, including parents, to develop the guidance.
Free meal provision to eligible pupils with SEND is only a small part of the overall package of support rightly provided in recognition of the additional challenges faced by those children. To illustrate that, funding for mainstream schools and high-needs funding for children and young people with complex needs will be more than £1.8 billion higher next year compared with this financial year, and total schools funding will be £59.6 billion—the highest ever in real terms per pupil. Within that, high-needs funding will be more than £10.5 billion in 2024-25, which is an increase of more than 60% from 2019-20. That funding will help local authorities and schools with the increasing costs of supporting children and young people with SEND.
I realise that I am short of time, so I will conclude because I think the main points that the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby would want me to come back to are the questions that he set out, and I can reassure him on those points. On his specific question about the holidays and activities fund programme and breakfast programme, I ask him to give me more information so that I can respond more fully in writing. I hope that on his main questions about not creating new guidance, because it already exists, but clarifying and communicating the guidance to schools on reasonable adjustments for children with disabilities and to local authorities about reflecting the need for food to be considered in packages for EOTAS, he will take some reassurance from what I have said. It remains only for me to congratulate and thank again the hon. Gentleman and all Members who have taken part in the debate.
Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)
With a hard stop when the clock says 6.19 pm, I call Ian Byrne.
Dedicated Schools Grant and Pupil Premium
Damian Hinds Excerpts(10 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)
Today the Department for Education has published local authorities’ dedicated schools grant (DSG) allocations for schools, high needs and early years revenue funding for 2024-25, as well as confirming schools’ pupil premium funding rates for 2024-25.
Core schools funding in England will increase by over £1.8 billion in 2024-25 compared to the previous financial year. This follows the 16% increase (over £7.9 billion) in funding from 2021-22 to 2023-24. School funding will be at its highest ever level in real terms per pupil by 2024-25, totalling over £59.6 billion.
Together, these publications confirm the funding increases that each local authority will see next financial year, reflecting the investment made in our education system in the 2021 spending review and the subsequent additional funding announced in last year’s autumn statement.
Mainstream school funding in the DSG will increase nationally by 2% per pupil in 2024-25, compared to 2023-24. Including the additional funding for teachers’ pay, overall mainstream schools funding will increase by 2.6%. This follows the 5.6% year-on-year per-pupil increase we delivered in 2023-24.
The extra funding we announced in July to support mainstream and special schools with the costs of the 2023 teachers’ pay award will continue to be provided alongside, and in addition to, the DSG in 2024-25.
High needs funding will increase to over £10.5 billion in 2024-25, a 4.3% increase compared to this year and an increase of over 60% over the past 5 years. Every local authority will receive an increase in funding of at least 3% per head of its population aged two to 18. This will help local authorities and schools with the costs of supporting children and young people with complex special educational needs and disabilities.
Pupil premium funding will rise to over £2.9 billion in 2024-25, an increase of £80 million from 2023-24. This represents a 10% increase in per-pupil rates from 2021-22 to 2024-25.
The indicative allocations for early years revenue funding in 2024-25 total £6.1 billion. These include funding for the expanded offers for eligible children aged two and under.
The dedicated schools grant allocations will be made available today at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dedicated-schools-grant-dsg-2024-to-2025.
[HCWS157]
Oral Answers to Questions
Damian Hinds Excerpts(10 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)
Nationally, school funding will rise to over £59.6 billion next year, the highest ever in real terms per pupil. This year, the north-east had the largest percentage increase in per pupil funding in the whole of England.
Grahame Morris
I welcome the Minister to his place.
Every day is a school day, but I wonder whether the new Schools Minister is familiar with the School Cuts website, which indicates that 214 out of 240 schools in County Durham face spending cuts in 2024-25. The cumulative impact of cuts in County Durham amounts to £113 million, equating to a £175 cut per pupil. Does he believe that restricting school budgets will help or hinder the educational opportunities and life chances for children in my east Durham constituency?
Damian Hinds
I have seen the website that the hon. Member mentions. Its calculations are based on some very speculative assumptions, and the conclusions that it reaches should therefore be treated with great caution. Next year, County Durham will receive over £391 million based on current pupil numbers, which is an extra £7.8 million for schools.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
I, too, welcome the Minister to his place.
On Friday, I joined Labour’s candidate Alan Strickland on a visit to Ferryhill School in County Durham. The staff team and students are amazing, but staff are left teaching in portacabins, the dining room and the sports hall, the staff room is behind a curtain on a stage, and years 10 and 11 are in a different town. Last week, yet more schools were added to the list of those with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, and the Secretary of State could not confirm how many will need complete rebuilds. Given the urgency, can the Minister tell parents, children and staff when this chaos will end?
Damian Hinds
Mr Speaker, allow me to take this moment to pay tribute to all school staff, leaders, children and their families, who have shown great fortitude in dealing with the disruption caused by RAAC. We have moved quickly to make sure all schools with suspected RAAC are surveyed and to work with schools to put in place alternative arrangements. Of course none of that is perfect, but schools have shown great flexibility in working towards that, such that we now have 99% of affected schools back with full-time face-to-face education.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)
Support staff play a vital role in our schools. We have given schools the freedom to recruit the staff they require to meet their own needs; although we do not collect central data on vacancies as a result, I can tell the hon. Lady that the number of support staff working in schools has increased for the past three years.
Cat Smith
We have already heard in this Question Time about delays in getting the education, health and care plans in Lancashire. As a consequence, rural schools like Quernmore, which I had the privilege of visiting on Friday, are left with more children with special educational needs in mainstream but without the financial support package that should come with that. These small rural schools are therefore having to support children with additional needs and do not always have the right number of staff to be able to do so in the way they would like. Is support available to rural and small schools, especially in Lancashire, to meet the needs of all children?
Damian Hinds
We must meet the needs of all children; and at some level, every teacher is a teacher of special educational needs and disabilities. I recognise that there can be particular difficulties for smaller schools in rural areas, as the hon. Member mentions. We have the wider EHCP system, which is better than the previous system. On places available in special schools, where children are in mainstream schools, I recognise the central role played by teaching assistants. That is why we have set out in the SEND and alternative provision improvement plan how we will look to consolidate that position and give further advice on the best deployment of TAs.
Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)
The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)
Reducing unnecessary workload is a priority for the Department and for me. We have convened a workload reduction taskforce of experts, teaching unions and practitioners to make recommendations on how to minimise workload for teachers and school leaders.
Mrs Drummond
It is good to see you back, Mr Speaker, and looking so well.
The last-minute nature of Ofsted inspections is causing huge anxiety to my small rural schools in Meon Valley. That means that teachers and in particular headteachers are putting off activities, such as residential school trips, educational trips and professional development courses, in case they get that call from Ofsted. Will my right hon. Friend consider changing the notice period for inspections so that teachers can plan their workload better?
Damian Hinds
I value all those activities that my hon. Friend sets out that schools undertake for their children. Like her, I represent a rural constituency—indeed, we have next-door constituencies. I recognise what she says about small rural schools. Inspections have an important role to play, but Ofsted also has the flexibility in the framework to take account of the particular position of smaller schools.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
Teacher workloads are being exacerbated by teacher vacancies that schools are struggling to fill, and funding pressures are resulting in cuts to support staff, who often support the most vulnerable and needy children. That is leading to an exodus of teachers from our schools. Just last week, we saw the staggering figures from the Government that teacher training recruitment targets have been missed by a whopping 50% in our secondary schools, with the sharpest fall in maths, which is allegedly a priority for the Prime Minister. How bad does it have to get before the Government will produce and implement a proper workforce strategy?
Damian Hinds
I can confirm that there are 27,000 more teachers and 60,000 more teaching assistants in our schools compared with 2010. We have the most talented generation of teachers ever, and we continue to focus on a strong recruitment and retention strategy, so that we continue to get the best talent to teach our children.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
The workload and stress levels of teachers rise exponentially during an inspection. I am sure that the Minister will join me in offering condolences to the friends and family of Ruth Perry. In the light of the coroner’s verdict that the “rude and intimidating” nature of the Ofsted inspection contributed to Ruth Perry’s tragic suicide, how is the Minister ensuring the welfare of school leaders is prioritised during inspections?
Damian Hinds
I of course extend my condolences to the friends and family of Ruth Perry. It was the most awful tragedy. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will say a word on that tragedy and Ofsted in a moment. For now, let me just say that of course the inspection framework and process must both be fully informative to parents, and supportive to teachers and schools.
Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)
Free school meals support disadvantaged families to the value of £480 a year, ensuring that eligible pupils receive a healthy, nutritious meal. The Government have expanded free school meals more than any other in recent decades; now, more than a third of pupils in England receive them, compared with a sixth in 2010.
Mrs Murray
Recently, we have had high food inflation. While I welcome the fact that the Government have now halved inflation, one of my small schools has told me that it is unable to provide free meals within the money allocated, as it cannot benefit from the same economies of scale as larger schools. Will my right hon. Friend review the funds available for small schools?
Damian Hinds
I acknowledge my hon. Friend’s point. The national funding formula recognises that some schools are necessarily small and do not have the same opportunities to realise economies of scale. Every school receives a lump sum, irrespective of its size—£134,000 for next year—and the Government have reformed the sparsity factor, increasing funding for that from £42 million in 2021-22 to £98 million in 2024-25.
Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
Michael Shanks (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab)
The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)
Of course, no one should face violence in school. In England, we have taken decisive action to improve pupils’ behaviour through strengthening the behaviour in schools guidance and investing in giving support and propagating best practice through the behaviour hubs.
Michael Shanks
The latest PISA figures, which were released in the last few weeks, show a stark picture of violence in schools across the whole UK. Nowhere else in the OECD do rates of violence reach anywhere near the levels in the UK. Pupils are almost twice as likely as the OECD average to witness a fight in their school—39% in England and 36% in Scotland—and, as a teacher, I can say from experience that violence in schools disrupts every part of pupils’ learning. Exclusion clearly is not working, and the Scottish Government’s recently announced proposal in Scotland is to put all the responsibility on teachers. What more can the Government do to illustrate a way forward for schools to deal with this problem, so that young people’s learning is not hampered by violence in the classroom?
Damian Hinds
For completeness, we ought to note that the PISA study noted that the great majority of pupils in England reported feeling safe in school—very similar to the OECD average—and were less likely than the OECD average to see the most serious manifestations of such behaviour, such as seeing gangs at school or seeing somebody with a weapon.
It is absolutely true that schools must have the full range of measures at their disposal. There is no right level of exclusion, and it should not be used lightly, but it has to be there; it has to be available. Early in our time in government, we made it clear that teachers can use reasonable force. We also extended searching powers, removed the requirement to give parents 24 hours’ written notice for after-school detentions and simplified advice on how to prevent and tackle bullying, because a safe and ordered environment is essential for both children’s education and their general wellbeing.
Simon Jupp (East Devon) (Con)
The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)
My right hon. Friend and constituency neighbour has been a long-time champion on this matter, and I know his local work well. There are 701 free schools open, and a further 140-plus are in the pipeline. There is a current round of applications for consideration of special and alternative provision free schools, but further capital would be a matter for future spending reviews.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Reclaim)
Damian Hinds
As the hon. Gentleman knows, we are conducting a review of RSHE guidance. These are important and sensitive topics and it is important to get them right. He will not have long to wait to see the results.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
Damian Hinds
It sounds like there are important details to get to grips with, so I am happy to meet the hon. Gentleman.
Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)
Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab)
Corpus Christi junior school on Brixton Hill has been closed since July due to RAAC. We now have tenders approved for the significant works that the Department for Education said were necessary and that it would pay for, but they must begin in January to ensure that they are completed in time. Could the Secretary of State explain why, despite repeated requests, her Department has still not approved the necessary funding? Any further delay could mean that my young constituents are left with further disruption and no building to learn in for the next academic year.
Damian Hinds
We are, as the hon. Lady will know, committed to ensure that reasonable costs for temporary accommodation and so on are covered in the immediate term and beyond, to make sure that capital costs are covered for either refurbishment or, in some cases, rebuild. There will be further detail to come before long.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
Despite my private Member’s Bill on statutory guidance to reduce the cost of school uniforms—the Education (Guidance about Costs of School Uniforms) Act 2021—far too many schools require a plethora of logos and branded items. When can we expect more robust intervention from Ministers to deal with this issue?
Damian Hinds
Schools should be reasonable in what they do and that is what our guidance sets out.
Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)
Staff at Bramhall High School have worked extremely hard to maintain the education of students following the discovery of RAAC. I am grateful for the support given by the Department and Stockport Council to ensure that temporary classrooms will be in place in the new year. Will my right hon. Friend join me in thanking the headteacher and the staff for all their hard work? Given the existing condition of the school, will he join me in calling for it to be included in a new build programme?
Mr Speaker
Can you just help me to get through? Members have not got in yet and I really do want to help everybody.
Damian Hinds
I join my hon. Friend in thanking and paying tribute to all the staff, children and families at Bramhall High Street. She is a great advocate for them. Schools and colleges will be offered either capital grants to fund refurbishment or permanently remove RAAC, or rebuilding projects where they are needed.
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
Last week, the Government published an update of the list of schools with RAAC. Will the Minister confirm that the Department is seeking to cross-check its list of schools affected by RAAC with the BBC, because it remains the case that the BBC journalists have more of a grip on this crisis than the Government?
Damian Hinds
We have a lot of people working on this and rightly so, including making sure that all the surveys get done. We have also committed to being transparent, which is why we publish regular updates to the list. We continue to work at pace to try to resolve the problems as quickly as possible for the good of the children.
RAAC: St Leonard’s, Durham
Damian Hinds Excerpts(11 months, 2 weeks ago)
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The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)
It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Vickers, I think for the first time as I respond to a debate in Westminster Hall—
Damian Hinds
The second. I thank the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) and congratulate her on securing a debate on this important subject.
The Government are committed to ensuring that every child in the country gets a first-class education and every opportunity to make the very best of their abilities. I understand that parents, schools and this House are concerned about reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, and we are moving decisively to address it while minimising the disruption to education. Before I come to St Leonard’s Catholic School, I want to set out why we are taking this cautious approach to RAAC and how the Government are supporting schools and colleges across England.
Professional advice from technical experts on RAAC has evolved over time, and the managing its risks across all sectors has spanned successive Governments since 1994. Although local authorities, academy trusts and other bodies are directly responsible for school buildings, and we fund them as such, we have taken a direct and proactive approach to RAAC.
We have been talking to schools about the potential risks of RAAC since 2018, when we first published a warning note with the Local Government Association, which asked all responsible bodies to identify any properties constructed using RAAC and to ensure that RAAC properties are regularly inspected by a structural engineer. In February 2021, we issued a guide on identifying it. Concerned that not all responsible bodies were acting quickly enough, in 2022 we decided to take a more direct approach. Last year, we issued a questionnaire to responsible bodies to ask them to identify whether they had or suspected that they had RAAC, and started a significant programme of technical surveys. We have been sending professional surveyors to schools and colleges in England to assess whether RAAC is present. We have eight survey firms contracted to deliver technical surveys to all schools and colleges that have advised us that they suspect they might have RAAC, so that we can rapidly confirm whether it is indeed present.
Although building maintenance is the duty of councils, academy trusts and voluntary-aided school bodies, RAAC cases over the summer reduced the Department for Education’s confidence that school and college buildings with confirmed RAAC should remain in use without mitigations being put in place. Following careful analysis of those cases, we made a precautionary and proactive change. On 31 August, we updated our guidance to schools and colleges so that areas previously deemed to contain non-critical RAAC are now taken out of use until mitigations are put in place. Professional guidance makes it clear that wherever RAAC is found, it needs to be monitored closely. The technical guidance does not say that mitigations need to be put in place in all buildings that contain RAAC.
As of 16 October, responsible bodies had submitted responses to our questionnaire for 99.9% of schools and colleges with blocks built in the target era, and DFE has since resolved the remaining 17. Any required surveys of potential RAAC cases are carried out by one of eight professional survey firms, and the vast majority of schools surveyed to date have been found to have no RAAC. As of 16 October, 214 education settings had confirmed RAAC in some of their buildings. Thanks to the hard work of school and college leaders, 202 settings—94%—are providing full-time face-to-face education for all pupils, while 12 have hybrid arrangements that may involve some remote learning on some days. We are supporting these education settings to put in place mitigation plans, and the majority have now returned to full-time face-to-face education or will do so very shortly.
We will do everything in our power to support schools and colleges in responding to RAAC in their buildings. Every school or college with confirmed RAAC is assigned dedicated support from one of 80 caseworkers. Project delivery teams are onsite to support schools and colleges to implement mitigation plans. They will work with them to put in place a bespoke plan that supports face-to-face education for all pupils as soon as possible, based on their circumstances. There is not a one-size-fits-all mitigation plan, and what is right for a school or college will depend on a number of individual local factors. Mitigation plans include using other spaces on the school site, in nearby schools or elsewhere in the local area until structural works are carried out or temporary buildings are installed.
The Government are funding the emergency work needed to mitigate the presence of RAAC, including installing alternative classroom space where necessary. All reasonable requests for additional help with revenue costs, such as transport to other locations or temporarily renting local premises, are being approved. The Government are funding longer-term refurbishment or rebuilding projects to address the presence of RAAC in schools. Schools and colleges will be offered either capital grants to fund refurbishment work to permanently remove RAAC, or rebuilding projects where these are needed, including through the school rebuilding programme. The requirements for each school or college will vary depending on the extent of RAAC and the nature and design of the buildings, and we are working closely with responsible bodies to assess what the right solution is in each case.
I recognise the challenges being faced by the staff and pupils at schools that have had to vacate space due to the presence of RAAC, including St Leonard’s Catholic School in the hon. Lady’s constituency. As she will know, a particular challenge for St Leonard’s is the prevalence of RAAC in the school’s buildings, which has resulted in a significant proportion of them being taken out of use while mitigations are put in place. I thank the headteacher and all the staff at St Leonard’s for their hard work in supporting their pupils through this time. I recognise the pressure staff have been under, and I am committed to continuing to work with the school on how we can support it to respond to RAAC and minimise any disruption to education. The Department has been working closely with the school to implement mitigation plans in order to ensure that face-to-face education can continue for all pupils. This has involved structural works to some of the buildings in addition to arranging alternative, offsite accommodation. We have supported the trust in bringing pupils back into face-to-face learning as quickly as possible to lessen the impact on education. All pupils at St Leonard’s, as the hon. Lady said, have been in full-time face-to-face education since October.
Temporary classrooms are being installed on the school’s playing fields. RAAC has impacted on many of the specialist facilities, as she rightly said, including science labs, IT rooms and D&T areas. We continue to explore options for the delivery of those specialist places as soon as possible.
Pupils due to sit exams next year are currently using specialist facilities at other providers in the local area, with transport provided for pupils. We are working closely with the school to identify how all pupils can have access to specialist facilities. We have provided assistance and facilitated sector support to ensure that children at St Leonard’s have not been disadvantaged, prioritising pupils in examination years. Crucially, we are working with the school on extra education support for pupils. That includes sourcing extra teaching capacity at St Leonard’s with an educational support programme that may include tutoring available for pupils this term.
Qualification-awarding organisations have been working and continue to work with schools including St Leonard’s, although they may have specific difficulties in delivering assessments due to specialist classrooms being unavailable for a time. Awarding organisations have discretion to grant extensions to deadlines for non-examination assessment or coursework, based on a school’s specific circumstances, and will offer as much flexibility as they can when considering such steps. I know that St Leonard’s is meeting one of the awarding organisations with which it works tomorrow, and another is hoping to meet St Leonard’s later this week.
As I set out earlier, the Government are funding the emergency work needed to mitigate the presence of RAAC, and all reasonable requests for additional help with revenue costs are being approved. I note what the hon. Lady said about the timeliness of so doing. I will follow up on that, and we will have a chance to discuss it when we meet.
We are supporting St Leonard’s specifically on the funding of temporary classrooms on the school site, we are funding the use of specialist facilities at other providers in the local area, and we will continue to work with St Leonard’s on what further support may be needed.
Mr Kevan Jones
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. Does he not also realise that the trust has a problem because, at the feeder school that I mentioned in my constituency, St Benet’s, pupils are already leaving and next year’s roll is going to go down, so St Leonard’s will have difficulty recruiting students next year? Will any compensation be given to the trust and the individual schools because their rolls have gone down through no fault of their own?
Damian Hinds
I will follow up separately with the right hon. Gentleman about St Benet’s specifically, and we can discuss it further. On overall funding, he will know that there is an established system whereby funding follows the pupil. In the case of St Leonard’s—I was going to come on to this exact point—there is also the prospect of the rebuilding to come, which is a great positive for the school. St Leonard’s is set to be rebuilt as part of our 10-year school rebuilding programme, which, overall, will transform hundreds of schools across England. In the meantime, we will continue to support the school in mitigating the impact of confirmed RAAC.
I am grateful for all the extensive time that the hon. Member for City of Durham has given to this matter, including to this debate. I look forward to meeting her—I believe we will do so next week—to discuss the support for St Leonard’s in more detail. I reassure pupils, parents and staff that the Government are doing whatever it takes to support our schools and colleges in responding to RAAC and minimising the disruption to education. I specifically want to thank the team and staff at St Leonard’s for their hard work in responding to RAAC. The Government have been working and will continue to work closely with affected schools and colleges, including St Leonard’s, to support them, to mitigate affected spaces and to minimise disruption to children’s learning.
Question put and agreed to.
Oral Answers to Questions
Damian Hinds Excerpts(2 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Jonathan Gullis)
The hon. Lady knows that I am a huge admirer and fan of hers, which she may not put on any election leaflets. I can tell her that the PE and sport premium is very important to me, especially after the fantastic victory by the Lionesses. They really set the tone with the great work of making sure that sport, particularly football, is more accessible no matter people’s gender, race or anything else, so it is so important that we get this right. I am fully committed to working with the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to get that premium, and I am more than happy to meet the hon. Lady to discuss it further.
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
At the end of the first full T-levels cycle, can I commend colleges, including Alton College in my constituency, for their work with employers? What more can be done by Ministers across Government to encourage more employers to come forward and offer industry placements to invest in the talent pipeline, both for their own good and for the good of our entire economy and society?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Andrea Jenkyns)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his question, and I also thank his college. Colleges and sixth forms have been doing amazing work in rolling out T-levels. It is amazing, and I will just give an example before I go on to his question—
Covid-19: Education Settings
Damian Hinds Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Gavin Williamson
I can absolutely assure the hon. Gentleman that we talk continually to school leaders, teachers and many in the education sector on these issues. I can assure him that, as I have mentioned a couple of times in answer to questions today, we will be sharing further information on assessment in the next academic year.
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
I strongly welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement and the return to normality and stability with the contingencies and safeguards he set out. Does he agree that although people sometimes talk about a balance between education and health objectives, actually overwhelmingly they go together because being in school is so important for children’s mental and physical health? Indeed, for some children there is also a safety protective factor.
Gavin Williamson
My right hon. Friend is exactly right. The greatest single act to support children’s mental health was welcoming them back into schools on 8 March. That was the single biggest act that anyone could have done to help every single child. [Interruption.] Opposition Members are shaking their heads. They would probably like a situation where schools remained empty and children just remained at home. We on the Government Benches recognise that the beneficial effects of education and children’s welfare are delivered by children being in school.
Education Recovery
Damian Hinds Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
I commend and congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) on securing this debate and on all the work that he and his Committee do. He set out very effectively the extent of the differential impact on children over this past year and a little. Like him and other colleagues across the House, I pay tribute to school leaders, teachers and staff, in East Hampshire and throughout the country.
I am speaking in support of the main estimate and the subsequent announcements from the DFE, which we anticipate will be reflected in the supplementary estimate. I also note that the Government have said that we have not heard the last word on support for education catch-up or acceleration, and of course that is not only about money. We cannot, for example, will into existence many more tutors who are suitably qualified and of the quality we would expect.
There is clearly a role for extra time but that, too, requires careful application and needs to recognise that there is no common starting point. Different schools in different places currently have very different school days. There is, by the way, room in extra time for academic catch-up. In spite of his extensive intervention on my right hon Friend, the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle), who speaks for the Opposition, still managed—rather skilfully—to avoid taking a position on that question. Extra time is clearly not only about academic catch-up, because so much of what has been missed is about enrichment—about character building, personal development, and the sheer joy of growing up and being with other children.
To address those challenges we need a broad approach. I have talked about a whole-of-society response, but there are obviously multiple strands required from Government as well. That needs to include an acceleration of the measures in the children and young people’s mental health Green Paper for example, a refreshed school sports and activity plan, and much more. This is about children at all stages and all phases. I welcome the additional resourcing in the estimate for early years, and also the funding for the extra learning time for T-levels, as part of the upgrade of our technical and vocational education.
My right hon. Friend has long campaigned for a long-term plan for education. We talk a lot about building back better, and I think this should be the moment when we put that long-term plan in place, particularly on funding. School funding in this country by international standards is relatively high, and every year the OECD publishes tables that show that. There are many different measures, and although whichever one we pick, people will say, “You’ve picked the wrong one,” they all show that this country’s spend on state education at primary and secondary level is relatively high. However, there have been three issues with the way that we fund schools.
First, the Department for Education has been dealing for some years now with historical disparities between different parts of the country. In some ways that is a painful process to go through, but it does result in a fairer outcome.
The second issue is strains in the high-needs block. The reforms introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson) in the Children and Families Act 2014 extended rights to extra support, but the strains on high-needs funding go wider and are longer term. Steps have been taken, but we need to do more. That includes, in capital terms, state special school places, but it also includes early intervention support within mainstream settings, including in early years, and a complete reappraisal of the way that financial transfers and some of the potential disincentives work within the system. There is also a case for looking again at how assistants who specifically look after and assist children with special educational needs are employed, so that it is easier for them to move between schools, and so on, as children themselves move on.
The third problem has been that the formula itself sometimes makes long-term planning harder for schools and is therefore less efficient. It does not reflect fully year-to-year swings in pupil numbers and the fact that although some costs are fully variable with the number of pupils in school, some are fixed at different levels—at the level of individual classes or of the school. The approach is not sufficiently long-term to enable schools, which are relatively small financial units in the public sector, to plan properly. It would be good to have rolling three-year or five-year budgets. Obviously, I know that the Treasury dislikes that and that, historically, whoever has been in government, we have operated through spending review periods, but there is a good case for re-examining that.
As we come out of this pandemic, children must of course be at the very top of our list of priorities, but it is also an opportunity to put many things that we do and the way that we do them on a surer, longer-term footing.
Investing in Children and Young People
Damian Hinds Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
Is the hon. Lady suggesting that that figure she has just given for the US relates solely to catch-up funding and therefore is comparable? Does she need to add up a number of figures from the British Government for English schools? Is she suggesting that that is what that figure refers to?
Kate Green
It is certainly not 30 times out in its accuracy. The right hon. Gentleman is right, of course, to ask about the make-up of the different figures, but even on my most generous interpretation of the amount the Government have put in over the past year to support children’s catch-up, which I calculate would amount to £310 per pupil, we are still well short of what other countries are spending.
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), who speaks for the Opposition, was quite right when she said that children are our most precious assets, and, as parents, we share with our brilliant teachers; we rely on them for the education and preparation for adult life of our children, and I want to join with colleagues across the House in paying tribute to them and thanking them for all they do.
This is a moral imperative: we all know that there is a whole-cohort effect from this pandemic and a risk of lasting effects on this generation of children and young people, and we cannot let this generation be put at a disadvantage because of covid. We also know that the effect has been felt very unevenly: some children have progressed entirely as they would have done in a regular year, but many have not, and we know that the attainment gaps that had been closing since 2010 will have started to widen again. We also know that this is not just about academic attainment; far from it, it is about the whole of children’s development—their extra-curricular activities, their socialising and their development as people.
This calls for a whole-of-society response including expanding mentoring programmes, having more volunteer readers, firms working more closely with schools, and having more STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths—ambassadors, accelerated careers programmes and work experience. We need established broadcasters and new media to step up on early literacy programmes, and sports clubs and governing bodies have a key role to play, as do cultural organisations and the voluntary sector. In fact, everybody has a part to play in supporting this generation. For the Government of course it is about many things, too: it is about a bolstered school sports and activity plan, the holiday activities programme, the mental health services support reforms, working with local authority children’s services, innovations in early language and literacy, and the major upgrade to technical and vocational education which has at its heart T-levels.
And of course it is about money. A higher proportion of national income—Government money—is spent on British state schools than in many other countries, but clearly additional resourcing has been needed during the pandemic to support schools, and clearly it is needed now to support schools and children in its wake. Some of the figures bandied around about what other countries are doing are entirely misleading; they are not comparing, as it were, apples with apples or apples with pears, but comparing apples with pomegranates. I am a little surprised that the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston speaking for the Opposition just repeated them without doing some basic fact checking, and I could say the same for her boss, the Leader of the Opposition. However, it is the case, of course, that many countries around the world are looking at the extra support that is now needed, and here we have just recently had the £14.4 billion uplift over three years and since the pandemic £3 billion in three different funding packages over the past 12 months. The last tranche of that will cover 6 million 15-hour tutoring courses in an unprecedented and unparalleled programme of individual and small group tuition. It is right that my right hon. Friend the Schools Minister and his colleagues in the DFE have focused on the programmes with the best evidence, and we know that there is very strong evidence for one-to-one and small group tutoring.
It is also true that we cannot just dial these things up infinitely. People who have spoken to schools recently—I guess that is most colleagues here in the Chamber today—will know that the No. 1 thing that people are talking about is often not a lack of money for tutors but a lack of tutors, because obviously there were not 100,000 tutors hanging around who were not already busy when this thing hit, and that is a difficult thing to scale up for. It is right that schools should have the flexibility to source tutors locally—I was pleased to see that in the package—because it is they who will know their schools’ situation best.
I also welcome the involvement of Teach First in the programme, but I would ask the DFE to redouble its efforts in its search for where talented professionals can be found to support this effort. Of course, teachers themselves are a big part of the effort. For example, every year teachers volunteer to be exam markers, and many teachers will want to be involved in this programme, but we also need to think about recent retirees and PGCE returners. As my right hon Friend the Minister knows, many thousands of people in this country have a postgraduate certificate in education but are not currently teaching. It would be wonderful to get some of them to come back to the profession, either full time or part time—[Laughter.] I am not trying to shame anyone here. We also need to redouble our efforts on teacher workload to free up their time to be able to do these incredibly important things.
Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), I would like to see us move to a rational, long-term, predictable system of funding that works both for when pupil numbers are shrinking as well as for when they are expanding, and perhaps this is the moment when that might be possible. It is important that we look at extra time to make up for lost time, and the tutor programme is of course part of that, as is moving back public exams a bit, but it is right to look at the question of a longer school day. Not everybody is excited about that prospect, but there is clearly a role for some of these important, enriching and broadening activities. It is right that the Government are taking an evidence-led approach, and I was delighted to hear what my right hon. Friend the Minister said. We look forward to hearing more in due course and at the spending review.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
In order to ensure that we get everybody in, I am going to have to reduce the time limit to five minutes.
Oral Answers to Questions
Damian Hinds Excerpts(3 years, 8 months ago)
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Vicky Ford
No, the Government take brain injury and the devastating impact that it can have on a child’s life especially seriously, but the important thing is to make sure that each child gets the support that they need for their particular circumstances. That is why the SEND system is specifically designed to get the right support to each individual child, and that is what we are working on through the SEND review. I am very happy to discuss with the hon. Member exactly how we are working on making sure that each child gets the support that they need for how the brain injury manifests for that child.
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Education (Gavin Williamson)
The Government are committed to international study opportunities. We have demonstrated that through our introduction of the Turing scheme and our recent update to the international education strategy. The new Turing scheme is backed by £110 million and provides funding for around 35,000 students in universities, colleges and schools to go on placements and exchanges around the world, starting in September this year.
Damian Hinds [V]
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that response. Like him, I very much welcome the widening of partnerships and cultural discovery that will be possible under the Turing scheme, but will he say how he will ensure that the scheme also widens access, including for young people from the most disadvantaged backgrounds?
Gavin Williamson
We are putting in place additional support for students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds to help cover the cost of travel to those destinations. It is vital that, as we construct the Turing scheme and we invite new partners into it, we do so such that it is a brilliant way of creating opportunities for children of every single background to study abroad and understand the benefits of working collaboratively on the international stage.