Post-18 Education and Funding

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

I believe that Ministers used often to stand at this Dispatch Box and say, “I refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer I gave a few moments ago,” but the Gentleman has just been good enough to repeat it so I do not have to. All these things—the various terms of repayment, the level of the fee, the T-grant top-up and so on—are interrelated; of course they have to be considered in the round and we will do so when we come back with our response.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

There is much to welcome in this review, not least the proposals to tackle the neglect of those who do not go to university, but the universities are right to worry about the proposals for differential funding for different courses, which the Secretary of State appeared to speak quite warmly of a few moments ago. Universities are different; they are not all the same—they have different strengths and different roles—and they are best placed to determine how to allocate resources, so can the Secretary of State reassure us that he respects and understands university autonomy?

[Damian Hinds]

I not only respect and understand but celebrate university autonomy. I think the hon. Gentleman represents a university city so I am slightly surprised at his question, because of course different subjects attract different amounts of money right now, and quite markedly different amounts of money. For example, a great deal more teaching grant goes into medicine than other subjects. The independent panel review report suggests there should be a different balance in the cap on overall fees and therefore how much variability there would be in the T-grant, but it is not introducing that principle for the first time.

Oral Answers to Questions

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

I agree with my hon. Friend that in many instances, it may be better to build a new primary school than to expand an existing school, and a variety of factors will need to be weighed up in making such decisions: the quality of existing provision; the impact on existing schools and the community; and the overall costs and value for money.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

T2. Tony Davies, the headteacher of St Matthew’s Primary School in Cambridge, recently told a national newspaper of his fury when he learned of a £60,000 budget cut to his school next year. The school is much loved by pupils and parents, but it will now have to cut its core education services. Does the Minister share Mr Davies’s fury?

[Nick Gibb]

As we have said a number of times during this Question Time, under the national funding formula, every local authority is being funded with more money for every pupil in every school—a minimum of 1% more, and up to 6% more for schools that have been historically underfunded.

Further Education Funding

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

Recently, Carolyn Fairbairn, the director general of the CBI, spoke at Cambridge Regional College and said that further education colleges have “politically been neglected”, which has led to their historic underfunding. I think that theme will come through in many of the contributions this morning.

I represent an education city, but I see it as my business to speak up just as much for the further education sector as for the famous universities for which Cambridge is known.

When I spoke recently to the director of Cambridge Regional College, Mark Robertson, he detailed many of the funding issues that have been raised this morning. I asked what it would take for him to really make a difference. He smiled ruefully at me and said, “Even a 5% uplift would be absolutely game-changing.” It seems to me that it is important to get that across today: colleges are not asking for a revolutionary change regarding their settlement; they are asking for a relatively small reversal of the damage that has been done over the last decade.

The situation is particularly difficult in areas such as mine, where staff face very high housing costs, there is a lot of churn and a lot of people cannot afford to live and work there. Cambridge is an expensive city and if we compare the pay with that in some schools, we see that colleges are working at a systemic disadvantage.

One key issue is that students are being put through maths and English retakes consistently. I am told by staff that the retakes are very, very difficult. It is very hard to teach people who really do not want to be there and who are almost being set up to fail. I hope that the Minister will consider revisiting that issue, because frankly there are other ways of assessing whether people have the appropriate skills to take them forward. From what I hear, it seems that the retakes process is proving counterproductive. When I speak to Pete Mulligan, a local University and College Union representative, he says that it is really difficult for FE staff who can see ways of taking people forward when those people are being forced down a very narrow route.

I will not repeat the figures that we have heard this morning, but I suspect that the strong message to the Minister from both sides of the Chamber today will be that as we come to the spending review, particularly in the light of the skills challenges around our changing relationship with the European Union, it is really important that we get this matter right. Obviously, there will be an argument about funding and the comprehensive spending review, but the fact there are so many Members here this morning—I have counted at least 20 Members on each side of the Chamber—sends a strong message to the Government that the situation needs to change.

Secondary School Opening Hours

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 229178 relating to secondary school opening hours.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I will start by reading the petition:

“School should start at 10am as teenagers are too tired. Teenagers are so tired due to having to wake up very early to get to school. The Government should require secondary schools to start later, which will lead to increased productivity at school”.

One of the things I love about the Petitions Committee is that the petitions we receive are often direct and to the point. There is no political beating about the bush—no “on one hand” and “on the other hand”. This one goes straight to the point: teenagers are tired, so schools should start later. It has achieved huge cut-through; there has been huge public interest, which is why it is such a pleasure to open this debate.

Over the next few minutes, I plan to lay out some of the scientific evidence that backs up the petition. I will say a little about the huge number of responses, many from teenagers, parents and schools. I will report a little on the responses in my city of Cambridge, and I will say a little about the practical challenges, the wider implications and some of the possible travel benefits.

When I started writing this speech, I was tempted to conclude, in time-honoured fashion, with a politician’s reply of “yes—maybe”, because, sadly, these things are always more complicated than one might imagine, but the more I read, the more I found myself agreeing with the petitioner. Allow me to praise the initiator of the petition. It was started by Hannah Kidner, a teenager doing her A-levels at Blundell’s School in Devon. She is in the Public Gallery. This petition is a great example of people-powered democracy. It was started just three months ago and has already garnered more than 180,000 signatures, proving that there are issues other than our future relationship with the European Union that stir passions.

I will set out the legal position. I thank the Library staff for their excellent briefing, which has informed much of my speech. Academies and free schools set their own school days and term dates with their board and headteacher. Local authority maintained schools decide the length of the school day, session times and breaks, but school must open for 190 days in a school year, and the school year must start after July. That means there is scope for local decision making, rather than the Government issuing an edict. I am not fond of the academy structure, and I favour so-called free schools even less, but they all receive public money, so my guess is that a future Government could act, because they would hold the purse strings. On the other hand, it is always convenient for Governments to delegate decisions that they consider tricky. More of that later.

The question of starting times has been considered at various points in recent years. There are strong feelings on both sides of the debate. I am not an education or neurological development expert, but I am told that many studies across the world over the years, particularly in the US, have suggested that a later start time may have a positive impact on pupils. However, some reviews have found more mixed results, and some have raised concerns about the quality of evidence. In Singapore, a school found that a delayed start time had a positive impact after nine months. A study in Canada found that

“Students from schools that started later slept longer, were more likely to meet sleep recommendations and were less likely to report feeling tired in the morning.”

The authors claimed:

“The study adds weight to the mounting evidence that delaying school start time benefits adolescent sleep.”

Canadian researchers claim that letting teens start school just 10 minutes later might help them to get more than 20 minutes extra sleep on a typical night. Although that might not sound like much, for some sleep-deprived adolescents it might be enough of a difference to enable them to get the recommended minimum eight hours of sleep a night. A lead author of a study into this issue, Karen Patte of Brock University in Ontario, said:

“Our body’s circadian clock naturally shifts later at puberty, so teens get tired later at night (due to later melatonin release) and therefore, need to sleep in longer in the morning in order to get sufficient rest. Delayed (school) start times have been recommended for adolescents to align with their delayed sleep schedules.”

Generally, though, it is thought that a further exploration of the evidence is required. One study, “Delayed School Start Times and Adolescent Sleep: A Systematic Review of the Experimental Evidence,” stated that

“School start times were delayed 25 to 60 minutes, and correspondingly, total sleep time increased from 25 to 77 minutes per weeknight. Some studies revealed reduced daytime sleepiness, depression, caffeine use, tardiness to class, and trouble staying awake. Overall, the evidence supports recent non-experimental study findings and calls for policy that advocates for delayed school start time to improve sleep. This presents a potential long-term solution to chronic sleep restriction during adolescence.”

However, the study goes on to state that

“there is a need for rigorous randomized study designs and reporting of consistent outcomes, including objective sleep measures and consistent measures of health and academic performance.”

I am grateful to Harriet Sherwood, who wrote an excellent piece for The Guardian a few weeks ago highlighting some of the issues underlying this debate. She wrote:

“Sleep experts are warning of an epidemic of sleep deprivation among school-aged children, with some urging educational authorities to alter school hours to allow adolescents to stay in bed longer. Adequate sleep is the strongest factor in the wellbeing and mental health of teenagers, and a shortage is linked to poor educational results, anxiety and obesity”.

She reported that the French Education Minister recently approved a proposal to push the start of the school day back by an hour—albeit to 9 am—for students aged 15 to 18 in Paris. The article continues:

“Scientists say that humans’ circadian rhythms – the body clock that manages the cycle of sleep and wakefulness – change in adolescence. The cycle shifts two hours in teenagers which means that they are wired to go to sleep and wake up later. ‘It’s like they’re in a different time zone,’ said Dr Michael Farquhar, a consultant in paediatric sleep medicine at the Evelina children’s hospital in London.

‘We’re asking them to get up before their body clock is ready, because that’s the way the adult world works. So most teenagers end up sleep-deprived.’

Sleep is the ‘strongest predictor of wellbeing among teenagers’, said Russell Viner, professor of adolescent health at University College London and president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.”

There are strong scientific reasons for considering change, but beyond the simple correlation between teenage brain development and sleep patterns, and the impact that may have on school results, it is important to recognise that schools are more than just exam factories. I am afraid successive Governments have needed to be reminded about that. I suspect most of us would agree that schools are key parts of communities and play a key role in family life, and that that would have to be considered as part of a proposed change to the school day.

[Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

rose—

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

rose—

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am happy to take interventions from both hon. Members, but I give way first to the hon. Gentleman.

[John Howell]

Please—ladies first.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Well, I am not sure I am going to go for that, but I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) .

[Vicky Foxcroft]

My hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech. Does he agree with me and the BMJ that delaying the time children finish school is a very important part of this issue? On his point about our children being safe and part of the local community, ensuring that they stay in school between 3 pm and 6 pm has been shown massively to reduce the potential for knife crime during those hours.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. One of the difficulties with the proposed change is that starting later may well mean finishing later. There are pros and cons to that, which I will come to in a moment, but she makes an important point about safety.

[John Howell]

Has not research shown that we need to limit the amount of time people spend using screens, whether on their phones or their iPads, and that doing so can have a big effect on people’s attentiveness during class?

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point. There has been good research recently suggesting that is the case, particularly with regard to the hours immediately before sleep. There is a range of issues about how we boost young people’s quality of life, and I fully admit that this is only one of them.

I am not an expert, but there are quite a few experts in Cambridge, which I represent, so I know people who are. Sensibly, I would suggest, I sought their advice. I am particularly grateful to the headteachers of Hills Road and Long Road sixth-form colleges, of Coleridge, Netherhall and Parkside secondary schools, of Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology, and more. I was struck by the alacrity and thoughtfulness of the responses that I received from all those institutions; they were really well considered and well thought through, and of course they pointed out both the advantages and the potential pitfalls of this proposal. I suspect that any Member who asked their local colleges and schools about the subject would get similarly well considered responses.

Cambridge headteachers and principals mentioned plenty of positives. The proposed change could provide opportunities for childcare relief for staff, allowing teachers more time with their children in the mornings, which in turn may improve recruitment and retention—a key issue in my area. A lot of people pointed out that starting school later could significantly reduce traffic problems, which are particularly acute in university cities such as Cambridge, and delaying the start of the school day for teenagers could make a substantial change to public transport peaks. Many of us notice the difference getting in and out of Cambridge outside term time.

However, one local headteacher told me that he thought the proposal would work only if it was

“co-ordinated across the system. That is the big issue, as with the current term structure. Because of the need to co-ordinate with primary schools on childcare, working patterns of parents by and large running 9-5, it is hard for individual institutions to step outside the norm.”

His point is well made. I agree with him about co-ordination, although I have to say that I am less convinced that everyone works nine-to-five these days. I note that better employers are introducing more family-friendly flexible working. That should be encouraged, and it could be part of the answer when it comes to staggered school start times.

Let us look at some of the downsides. Although across-the-board change may be positive from an organisational perspective, the context of the school in question is key. Another Cambridge head, who I think has experience from a previous posting, said that although starting later has worked well at Portsmouth College,

“it is very context dependent as a stand-alone solution”.

Clearly, different communities have different requirements and preferences, and any change must take that into account.

There are also questions to do with the impact on the wider community and families—many parents who do the school run on their way to work may find a later start disruptive—and at what age such a change would best suit students. Parents who allow their children to walk home alone may feel uncomfortable with the school day starting at 10 am, as it may mean children returning later in the afternoon or early evening. Clearly, some parents might not feel comfortable with their 11-year-old travelling home in the dark in winter.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. We cannot exonerate the parents. For good or bad, I have two grammar schools in my constituency. Children come to Stroud’s grammar schools from the other side of Swindon. That means there are 11-year-olds who have to get up at 5 o’clock in the morning. We can talk about putting the start of the school day back to 10 am, but at the moment, the days of some 11-year-olds start at 5 am and do not end until at least 9 pm, by the time they have finished their homework. That cannot be good for children. We need to look at what makes a school accessible, rather than letting the free market go mad and letting parents make the choice.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Many of us continue to argue for a good local school in every area. Parental choice sometimes leads to difficult journeys for children, as my hon. Friend explained. That may be the choice people make, but the impact on children may not be as positive as one might wish.

The proposed change would affect not just children and parents but teachers, many of whom already work very long hours. They may prefer school to finish earlier, because they have more to do when the school day finishes. Of course, the change may cause complications for families with children at both primary and secondary school. It may also impact after-school extracurricular activities, particularly in winter, when inter-school sports games may be affected by darkness. Of course, other voluntary sessions happen after school, including exam revision, music classes and community outreach. There is a range of potential pitfalls.

As I mentioned, others in the world do things differently. There have been changes to school start times in other countries. In fact, some of our European neighbours start their days even earlier; some schools run from 7 am until 1 pm. Of course, that depends to some extent on the local climate, but that all shows that this is a very complicated range of issues.

That complexity is not always understood by everyone. Some people have characterised this debate as somehow being about lazy teenagers. Today I was on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire’s excellent morning programme with Thordis Fridriksson. I am told that many people who contacted the show had little sympathy for what they described as “sleepy teenagers”, and thought that getting up on time was good practice for the world of work. That is pretty unsympathetic. People of my generation and older should try to remember what it was like for us when we were teenagers. I am afraid that similar grouchiness can be found in some of our national media, which may be dominated by grumpy old men from a certain background—but maybe I am stereotyping, too.

Having said that, some teachers have questioned whether we would risk undermining the work ethic by accommodating difference. One teacher told me she was concerned, and questioned whether, if young people started later at school, we would not be training them to be up and ready for a job, which would often start earlier. I am not that sympathetic to that view; better employers are generally more open to flexible working. However, I recognise that there are jobs that have to be done at particular times, and many of us have been frustrated by colleagues who struggle to get to work on time, Mrs Main—and not always teenagers. There are always extenuating circumstances.

Moving on to the more detailed practicalities, evidence shows that the term “teenagers” does not do justice to the complexity of the issue. What works for older teenagers may not be so beneficial to younger people. A local headteacher pointed out to me that although there is some

“evidence that for 14-18-year-olds a later start to school is beneficial…the same is not true for 11-13-year-olds. This introduces a bit of a dilemma as meeting the needs of all would mean extending school hours and so adding costs. Given that we are currently unable to meet our costs due to inadequate funding”—

a point I think she particularly wanted me to relay to the Minister—

“any move in this direction would be impossible to deliver with our existing resources.”

This is a key point, particularly for state schools. I suspect that the proper funding of education is the main issue for almost every state school, so questions about the timing of the school day come lower on their list of priorities. Although this debate is not party political, I highlight the difference that sufficient funding would make to schools. It would give them the ability to experiment and to find what suits them, which would arguably lead to the best outcome for this debate.

I conclude by saying a little about the public response; as I said, there has been huge interest. The Petitions Committee Clerks have engaged with the public on this matter, and they have done an excellent job. Last week, they surveyed nearly 5,000 people, some 92% of whom identified themselves as secondary school students, and who were much more enthusiastic about change. The key themes that emerged touched on the academic research that I have mentioned, the effects on family life and transport, the potential mental health benefits, the potential challenges for teachers, and the effect on those with illnesses and disabilities. The Clerks of the Committee told me that the story about this petition was the most engaged-with post ever on Parliament’s Instagram account. When the survey closed, it had had over 5,000 responses in under 48 hours. Clearly, this is an idea that has captured both hearts and minds.

I will read one of the contributions from a parent, which puts the point very well:

“I have five teenage children and it is an absolute nightmare getting them all ready for a 9am start every day. In order to start school at 9am they have to leave the house at 8am and therefore get up at 6.30am.”

That echoes the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Drew). She carries on:

“I would defy anyone to try and get 5 teenagers out of bed every day at 6.30am and not feel, as I do, that this is far too early!...Having to wake 5 teens at 6.30am each day is like trying to raise the dead. I can see that it’s not that they don’t want to get up—they enjoy and look forward to school—but they genuinely can’t get up. Being forced to wake up before they are ready has a massive impact on their health and well-being, which suffers hugely, and moreover so does mine! The school morning is without question the most stressful time of the day for children and parents.”

I have some sympathy for that account, and I am sure others will recognise the situation.

As for the quantitative response to the questions in the survey, the figures are pretty stunning. One of the questions was:

“How often do you feel drowsy or sleepy during the day?”

That is not a question for MPs, Mrs Main, but a question for teenagers. More than 85% of teenagers said that they often or always felt drowsy or sleepy during the day. That is a message that we should take seriously. The next question was:

“How often have you been bothered by trouble falling or staying asleep, or sleeping too much?”

Some 60% were often or always troubled by sleepiness. There is something going on out there that we clearly need to pay attention to.

I hope that I have been able to lay out just some of the arguments made for and against teenagers starting the school day later, and to show that although some might swiftly dismiss such a suggestion, when you look into matters more deeply, they are never as simple as they seem. My conclusion would be that schools and colleges must make their own decisions, but within a co-ordinated and organised local framework, and with sufficient funding to make it possible. We are a long way from having either of those, but we are a rich country, and it does not have to be this way; it is a matter of political choice.

The time may soon come when these issues should be addressed by a radical and reforming Government. We are living through a world of dramatic technological change; knowledge is more universally available than ever before, through every smart phone. Within a couple of decades, the context has changed beyond recognition, yet our organisational structures for learning remain very much as they were half a century ago. As we learn more about ourselves—how we learn, and how we are different at different stages of our lives—why not reform our structures to meet our needs? Why always say that is too difficult? When hundreds of thousands of young people are telling us that they want change, perhaps it is time to create a system that works for them, instead of telling them why it cannot be done.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful to all Members for their contributions, a consistent feature of which was the call for more evidence. I sometimes think that people call for more evidence when they do not necessarily like what they hear from the evidence already there. It seems to me that the strength of feeling of young people in this country, demonstrated through the petition that was so admirably put forward, bears some thinking about. I actually think that there is plenty of evidence—particularly the Open University study—that shows a real potential educational gain here, and some schools and colleges might want to seize that opportunity.

I am always mindful of the level at which these decisions are taken. I remember in the early days of the Labour Government after the 1997 general election, when there were discussions on banning smoking in public places. Tony Blair came to a Labour event and said that it might be left to local councils to decide, because he was a bit nervous about taking that decision. We said, “This needs leadership,” and in the end he did it and no one thinks it controversial now. I would say that the evidence shows that it is very hard for local schools and colleges to take the decision that we debating today on their own. It needs some leadership, and I am hopeful that at some future point we will have a Government who have the courage to listen to our teenagers, act on what they are telling us and find the evidence to back it up.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered e-petition 229178 relating to secondary school opening hours.

Oral Answers to Questions

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

16. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the governance of multi-academy trusts.

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

Our expectations of effective governance in multi-academy trusts are set out in the governance handbook, and they include the skills, knowledge and behaviour that boards need to demonstrate to be effective. We are supporting trustee effectiveness by allocating a higher level of funding to train multi-academy trust boards and by having regular governance conversations with multi-academy trusts.

[Daniel Zeichner]

In Cambridgeshire, as elsewhere, the world of multi-academy trusts is opaque and wholly unaccountable with schools looking over their shoulder to see whether they are the next to be picked off. These trusts receive large sums of public money, but are effectively self-perpetuating oligarchies. When will the Secretary of State do the right thing and pass back control to the people who pay for them—the local citizens?

[Nick Gibb]

These multi-academy trusts are driving up academic standards. In primary schools, disadvantaged pupils in MATs make significantly more progress in writing and maths than the average for disadvantaged students, and the gap in progress between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged primary school pupils is smaller in MATs than the national average. I could go on with more examples of how MATs are raising standards in our country. I refer the hon. Gentleman to the MAT performance table and he will see which MATs are the highest performers.

Maintained Nursery Schools

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers), and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) on securing the debate through the Backbench Business Committee. It has been a well-tempered discussion so far, but I have to say that I am pretty angry about what is happening so I may introduce one or two notes of rancour I am afraid.

In my area there are four maintained nursery schools: Brunswick, the Fields, Homerton and the Colleges. I know all of them well, and whenever I visit I am struck, as other Members have said of their nurseries, by the genuine care and dedication of the staff, who provide an excellent start. I am particularly struck by the support and engagement of parents and I am always struck by the messy play, but unfortunately I am also struck by the real sense of worry about the future because of the threat that future funding will not be secured.

As we have heard, the costs that these nurseries incur are higher, and in a high cost area such as Cambridge it is particularly expensive to hire staff so they are under huge pressure. That of course applies to all nurseries across the sector in Cambridge, but as we have heard the maintained nurseries have particular extra costs, because they are providing something different, because they are schools. Sometimes I do wonder whether the Government entirely grasp this point.

To say that funding streams and accountability within this sector are opaque barely does justice to the complexity. As we all know, this Government have, as usual, made promises on things such as 30 hours and then failed to provide the resources, so passing the buck to local councils who then all too frequently get the blame. As a result, providers within the sector all too easily end up pitted one against another when what we really need is everyone working together to achieve a shared goal: good quality, universal early-years provision with properly trained, well rewarded staff.

Sadly, we are a long way from that. In Cambridgeshire, providers are paid just £4.04 an hour to provide care. The Department for Education has confirmed that it will not provide an uplift in the hourly funding rate from 2019-20, so our nurseries will only receive a 1p rise, to £4.05 an hour. And as we have heard, after April 2020 there has been no guarantee that any supplementary funding will be received for maintained nurseries: no word from the Government about future funding. So these excellent providers, so loved by parents and children, struggle on with a sword of Damocles hanging over them as they battle to cover the high costs of running a service in an expensive city, and now are given no certainty over their futures. This affects hundreds of children, hundreds of families, and of course, many staff.

Sadly, this anxiety surrounding the plight of our nurseries’ funding is not a recent phenomenon; it has almost become a way of life. Very early on in my time in this House I was at the Fields nursery, working with anxious staff and parents over how their future would be secured. In 2017 I delivered a petition on this very subject in this Chamber, and over the years I have repeatedly asked Ministers about this and warned of the approaching cliff edge; time and again I have been told, “It’s all in hand and there isn’t a problem,” but that really is not true in Cambridge and, what is worse, staff have had to go on working week after week, month after month, year after year without any certainty. Frankly, it is a disgrace: the Government should hang their head in shame at the stress and distress their dereliction of responsibility has caused so many people. Austerity might have been a nice parlour game for Osborne and Cameron—a nice bit of political triangulation—but it has caused untold damage and harm, tearing at the fabric of society, and the maintained nursery sector is a particular victim. Frankly, no one should ever forgive the Conservatives for these self-obsessions. Just as it is with the European Union, so it is with austerity: it is always about internal ideological battles and never about the public good.

In the latest round of this long-running saga, the most recent Minister has said that nurseries and local authorities should hold off from making decisions until after the spending review. Well, great. In the current chaos, without any certainty about when the spending review will even take place, that is frankly hopeless.

[Vicky Ford]

I should like to declare an interest, in that about 10 years ago, prior to coming to this place, I chaired a pre-school just outside the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. The pre-schools that are not maintained nursery schools receive less funding per head than the maintained nurseries. How does he justify to parents that their child who attends one of those excellent pre-schools is getting less Government funding per head than a child in a maintained nursery school?

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that point. As I said earlier, the funding mechanisms for this sector are extremely complicated, which can create the danger of setting one provider against another. The answer to her question is clear, and it is astonishing that Conservative Members do not get this simple point. Maintained nurseries are schools; they are different, they have extra costs and they are often located in the poorest areas. I would hope that, taking a cross-party approach, we can try to find a way of maintaining both, because there is a range of providers that are doing an excellent job.

[Karen Lee]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this should absolutely not be a race to the bottom?

[Daniel Zeichner]

It should absolutely not be. The one thing we can all probably agree on is that we would like all these providers to have a sustainable future. I have every sympathy for the other providers, who are also struggling with an underfunded system.

[Vicky Ford]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his answer, but I would also like to make it absolutely clear for the record that I am not in any way suggesting a race to the bottom.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s clarification, but I have to say that, from where some of us are sitting, on this side of the House, that looks exactly like what this Government are intending, in a far wider range of sectors than just the early years sector.

I shall return to the spending review. It is expected in the autumn but, as we have heard, that will be too late for many people. Businesses, local authorities and families need to plan, and they need costed commitments, not empty promises. It is wholly irresponsible to continue to drag out this uncertainty regarding supplementary funding. The Local Government Association tells us that 61% of local authorities with maintained nursery schools fear that their nursery schools will close if their funding is not protected, and 52% say that the loss of that funding will reduce the support available for children with special educational needs; and let us not even start on the crisis affecting that group. Pretending that the current funding is sustainable is an utter fantasy, which is perhaps no surprise from a Government who seem every day to demonstrate that they live in a fantasy world of unicorns. That is fine for nursery stories, but a hopeless way how not to run a country.

This week I was handed a petition, as others have been, from thousands of concerned parents across Cambridge who are calling for better funding and stability for our maintained nurseries. Many of them added extra comments, and they make heart-warming reading. Both the Brunswick and the Colleges Nursery Schools in Cambridge were recently rated outstanding across the board by Ofsted, with comments reflecting on the nurseries’ “high quality care”, “inspirational leadership” and “strong teaching”. Parents commented that their nursery had been a

“fundamental fixed point in our lives”,

and “extremely supportive” to special educational needs and English as an additional language needs, and that it had helped their children to grow in

“confidence, understanding and care for others”.

Are these really the kinds of services that this Government want to destroy?

Under the current funding agreement, nurseries will struggle to stay in business, according to the Department for Education’s own figures. When I visited one of the nurseries recently I was told that, without extra help, it will hit the buffers next April. How depressing, when we know that for every £1 spent on early years, £13 are saved down the line. The Chancellor has announced that his spring statement will take place in March, and I and others will be very disappointed if the Minister here today does not use the next few weeks to make serious representations on this matter, ahead of those announcements. I have had angry words for the Government today, and frankly I think they are deserved. Our maintained nurseries deserve better, and I hope that the Minister will prove me wrong and show that the Government have some sense after all.

College Funding

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 229744 relating to college funding.

I am moving the motion on behalf of the Petitions Committee. It is a pleasure to serve when you are in the Chair, Mr Walker. I should just say that, formerly, before I came to this place, I worked for Unison, one of the trade unions representing staff in colleges, and I am a member of Unite.

I will read the petition submitted by Charlotte Jones, a student at Brockenhurst College in Hampshire, but first let me congratulate those who have promoted it, including the thousands who lobbied Parliament a few months ago; commend the excellent work done by organisations such as the Association of Colleges, the Sixth Form Colleges Association, the University and College Union and Unison; and congratulate the almost 70,000 people who have signed the petition. It is great to see so many hon. Members in Westminster Hall today. I cannot believe that they are all fleeing the main Chamber, for one reason or another, at the moment. I hope that it is because of their enthusiasm for the subject under discussion here.

The petition is entitled:

“Increase college funding to sustainable levels—all students deserve equality!”

It states:

“We call on the Government to urgently increase college funding to sustainable levels, including immediate parity with recently announced increases to schools funding. This will give all students a fair chance, give college staff fair pay and provide the high-quality skills the country needs.

Funding for colleges has been cut by almost 30% from 2009 to 2019. A decade of almost continuous cuts and constant reforms have led to a significant reduction in the resources available for teaching and support for sixth formers in schools and colleges; potentially restricted course choice; fewer adults in learning; pressures on staff pay and workload; a growing population that is not able to acquire the skills the UK needs to secure prosperity post-Brexit.”

I shall start by asking the Minister a simple question: why? Why are 17 and 18-year-olds in colleges and sixth forms worth so much less than younger pupils or university students?

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is starting to make a very strong case about further education. In answer to his question, my belief is that we have a Government who fundamentally do not understand what further education is for. We have a Government full of people who have never experienced the further education sector, which is why they so undermine it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I shall develop a very similar case in a moment, but I suspect that it goes wider than Government, because I suspect that the Minister and most others who speak today will agree that it is simply shameful that the divide has been allowed to grow. I suspect that the Minister will blame the Treasury, and I have some sympathy for that position, but I guess that others will say that the problem goes deeper. The near invisibility of further education and now, apparently, other colleges to people in this place is not a new phenomenon. Arguably, it is at the heart of our current political problem—a divided country, with too many people left behind and ignored. No wonder the education divide mirrors the EU divide almost exactly. That is why I argue that it is in everyone’s interest—everyone’s—that this huge injustice be tackled.

Let me go into some more detail regarding the petition and then move to discussing the national picture, alongside some examples local to me, and the impact of the current funding squeeze. As I said, the petition calls on the Government

“to urgently increase college funding to sustainable levels”

in order to

“give all students a fair chance, give college staff fair pay and provide the high-quality skills the country needs.”

The petition notes:

“Funding for colleges has been cut by almost 30%”

over the past decade, stretching resources, support and the staff available.

[Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

In Hartlepool, we have three excellent 16-plus providers: Hartlepool College of Further Education, Hartlepool Sixth Form College and the English Martyrs School and Sixth Form College. Some of their cuts since 2010 have gone up to 62%. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need urgently to address funding in order to avoid the irreparable damage that that might do to our colleges?

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I suspect that we may be going on a regional tour of colleges over the next 25 minutes or so. The picture that my hon. Friend paints is familiar across the country; indeed, it is all too recognisable across the nation. I represent Cambridge, a place that is rightly associated with excellent education and where higher education often dominates the agenda and discourse. Somehow that makes the contrast all the more stark between the focus on higher education policy—and, frankly, the resources—and that which goes to further education. Many of us remember the huge national outrage when tuition fees for university students were introduced and later trebled, but when fees were introduced in further education, where was the outrage? Where were the marches? In my patch, it was just me and a handful of local trade unionists out there talking about it—thanks, Peter Monaghan and others from Cambridge. Some people noticed, but the vast majority did not. Was the matter considered newsworthy? Hardly at all.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

I would like to add to the points that my hon. Friend is making. Where was the outrage when the education maintenance allowance was taken away? That seriously affected students in further education, many of whom were unable to afford the bus fare even to get to college and receive an education.

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That issue is almost worthy of a whole debate in itself, but the problem is not just the removal of the education maintenance allowance, of course. Where was the outrage in the country about the near collapse in the number of mature and part-time students? People can read about that in the pages of the specialist press; I think that we all know why it does not reach any further.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

rose—

[Daniel Zeichner]

I see my right hon. Friend ready to make some strong points.

[Mr Lammy]

On that excellent point, does my hon. Friend agree that we need to hear from the Government not about bringing back grammar schools, but about funding night schools? If, indeed, we exit from the European Union, should we not be giving people in our seaside towns, northern industrial areas and parts of London the skills to compete in the economy that we are going to have?

[Daniel Zeichner]

Characteristically, I completely agree with my right hon. Friend. Of course, he has been campaigning on these issues very powerfully; I just hope that people are listening.

Let me give some of the numbers. According to the House of Commons Library, in 2010 the average funding allocation was £4,633 per student. The 16 and 17-year-old funding rate has been frozen at £4,000 since 2013-14. The rate for 18-year-olds was cut to £3,300 in 2014-15 and has remained frozen since then. Funding per student aged 16 to 18 has seen the biggest squeeze of all stages of education for young people in recent years. By 2019-20, funding per young person in further education will be about the same as it was in 2006-07—only 10% higher than it was 30 years earlier.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the £3.3 billion of cuts in further education since 2010 is utterly devastating and, given the higher proportion of working-class students attending further education colleges—I was one of them—does he agree that this Government are hell-bent on making life a misery for working-class people in this country?

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend makes the point very powerfully. As I said, I see the divide in my own city. She is absolutely right.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend rightly mentioned the £4,000 rate freeze. He might like to know that, had the rate increased by inflation since 2013, the figure would be almost £4,300 today; that is just if it had kept pace with inflation. For cities such as Stoke-on-Trent, there would have been about £2.5 million more funding for further education. What does my hon. Friend think that we could have done with that money?

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend makes a very powerful point. When many of us go into institutions and ask, “What could you have done and what would the difference have been, had you had these resources?” the response is very telling. I am sure that we will hear similar accounts from others. I will come on in a moment to some of the implications of the numbers.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful case. Just to put a positive spin on it for this Government in the beginning, my local college listened to me and it is very pleased about the bus passes for 16 to 18-year-olds. That has made a great deal of difference for its students.

On the point that the hon. Gentleman is making about the finances, the two colleges in my area—the excellent Richard Huish College, which is in the top 10 in the country, and Bridgwater and Taunton College, which also does an excellent job—have both raised concerns about finances. They find that the cuts mean that they cannot offer staff as much as systems outside FE can, and that it is difficult to recruit. Might the hon. Gentleman comment on that? In the light of the fact that schools outside that system got a 3.5% pay award, which is hugely welcome—I know that those teachers welcome it—does he agree that we should look at the FE system and at least bring it into parity?

[Daniel Zeichner]

Strangely enough, I will come on to staffing issues in a moment. I suggest that the hon. Lady addresses those points to her colleagues on the Government Benches, because they are in a position to do something about it. Young people will be even more enamoured with free bus passes for people up to the age of 25.

Spending per student in school sixth forms will be lower than at any point since 2002. Although there are some minor scraps of comfort around funding for meals and certain subjects, and extra hours for T-levels, they do little to address the cuts that we have seen.

The issues are slightly different for sixth-form colleges offering A-levels and further education colleges offering a number of different qualifications, but the problem of cuts is universal. Our friends at the Sixth Form Colleges Association have tirelessly campaigned on that with their “Raise the Rate” campaign, which has attracted the support of many MPs. They are calling for the national funding rate—the rate of funding per student—for 16 to 18-year-olds to be raised to at least £4,760 per student, including 18-year-olds, and for it to be kept in line with inflation year on year.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend as puzzled as I am that, at £3,300 each, 18-year-olds are the cheapest people in the world to educate, given that, in my experience, people on an additional year are actually the most demanding to teach?

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Those students suddenly and miraculously become much more expensive when they turn up at university; it is amazing.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

I am sorry that I cannot stay for the whole debate, but I am chairing a Committee later. The hon. Gentleman may mention it later in his speech, but I wanted to put on record the important matter of special needs funding. Oaklands College in my constituency has 200 pupils with special needs funding, and that puts huge pressure on the college. I am fully aware that there are cutbacks to be made, but sometimes services just have to be provided for people who have particular needs and need to get their life back on track.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I could not agree more with the hon. Lady, and I will come to that point in my speech. I want to turn to some of the effects of this underfunding, which is significant and has damaging consequences in sixth forms. In total, 50% of schools and colleges have dropped courses in modern foreign languages as a result of funding pressures, with A-levels in German, French and Spanish being the main casualties. That would seem to be the wrong way to go, especially when we are talking about global Britain.

Over one third of sixth forms have dropped science, technology, engineering and maths subjects, while two thirds have reduced student support services, such as mental health support, which we know is increasingly required. There are also, in many cases, limited careers advice services, and that also has a damaging effect. Two thirds of schools and colleges have moved from a four-subject offer to a three-subject offer, significantly reducing students’ choice and ultimately narrowing their options after study. For state schools with sixth forms offering post-16 study, the underfunding affects the education of all students, because, as we know, such schools frequently cross-subsidise post-16 education with funding that is meant for 11 to 16-year-olds.

Given that this country, quite rightly, requires its young people to participate in education or training until the age of 18, it seems quite incredible that across all 16 to 19 provision we reduce investment in education so sharply at the age of 16, from £5,341 for a 15-year-old to just £4,000 for a 16-year-old.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that the level of cuts is so extreme that very dramatic steps are being taken? Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College is one of the biggest in the country, but it has cut its A-levels completely. It has also cut back on English for speakers of other languages, because funding has not been available. It is now redeveloping its sites to release land, just to keep itself going. How can we plan for the future of FE, when there is so much uncertainty and so little finance available?

[Daniel Zeichner]

As always, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. It is very difficult for people working in the sector to plan ahead. With years of area reviews, and all the rest of it, it has been a tough time. At the moment, the situation ahead does not look that good.

Further education colleges provide our communities with access to skills across the board. We see even more diverse challenges there. Although, in their response to the petition, the Government acclaimed their commitment to the adult education budget, in reality the initial teaching and learning funding allocations for adult further education and skills in England fell from a baseline of £3.18 billion in 2010 to £2.94 billion in 2015-16—a reduction of 14% in real terms—and more for the non-apprenticeship part of the adult skills budget. Since then, there has been an increase in funding for apprenticeships, but that really cannot make up for the thousands of people across the country who have suffered as a consequence of these cuts, and who want to upskill and reskill, as technology changes our jobs and our lives.

What about those who work in colleges? College staff were mentioned earlier. Staggeringly, college teachers are paid on average £7,000 a year less than those in schools, according to the University and College Union. In conjunction with busier jobs and fewer resources, this is stretching staff to breaking point, as any of us who go into colleges will hear.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

On that point, 57 members of staff were recently made redundant at Warrington and Vale Royal College in my constituency when the Northwich campus was closed. It is facing funding pressures of about £4 million as a direct result of this under-resourcing.

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend is right and sadly there is a familiar story of not only redundancies, but insecure contracts. The level of morale is really challenging for so many staff. Unison’s head of education, Ruth Levin, pointed out that colleges have faced underfunding, leading to job cuts, course closures and larger class sizes “for many years”. She went on to say:

“Pay in further education has fallen by more than 21% in real terms over the past nine years”.

It is clear that further education colleges have been hit the hardest in recent years, and it is simply not possible to continue down this road of less funding and more demand.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Further education colleges are being asked to implement T-levels, but the T-level system, even though it has not started yet, is already in crisis. The exam boards are taking the Government to court. The colleges are saying that they are unable to cope with the level of funding. Employers are unaware of them. Will that not add to colleges’ burden?

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend raises some important points. I guess it will be for the Minister to respond. In a sector that has seen constant change and churn over many years, there is sometimes a yearning for stability.

On that note, the Prime Minister’s review into post-18 education and funding, chaired by Philip Augar, was announced last year and is eagerly awaited—although I guess the Prime Minister might have other things on her mind at the moment.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making the point about pay and the impact on recruitment and retention. Does he agree that it is especially acute for specialist areas? Sheffield College has seen significant growth in the delivery of higher apprentices in engineering and manufacturing, but it is really struggling to recruit in those specialisms. It has run four recruitment campaigns, but still finds it almost impossible to recruit. These are areas that are crucial for the future of our economy. We need to ensure that they have full parity of pay, so that we can attract the best and the brightest into this sector.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that. I was not aware of that, but I must say that recruitment is a continual problem in high-cost areas such as mine. Given the levels of pay, that is hardly surprising.

Returning to the Augar review, I fear that we will probably have much the same story. I suspect that there will be warm words about further education. However, certainly in terms of the coverage, I expect, yet again, the world’s focus to be on higher education and universities. Important though those things are, I fear that there are unlikely to be real solutions for colleges, but we live in hope—we shall see.

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman just made an interesting point, but in coastal communities such as the one that I represent, which includes Lowestoft Sixth Form College and East Coast College, colleges are vital for the link from education to the workplace and in improving social mobility. We probably need a change in mind-set in this country with regard to how we fund post-16 education.

[Daniel Zeichner]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Only a few days ago we were discussing that in the east of England all-party parliamentary group. Would it not be wonderful if we could have cross-party consensus on this kind of change?

Even the Further Education Commissioner told the Education Committee that further education funding is “unfair” and “sparse”. I have seen this at Cambridge Regional College, an FE college in my constituency, which I visit regularly. I see the excellent work that staff do with students and apprentices from right across the east of England, but the college remains under-resourced and overstretched.

The principal of Cambridge Regional College, Mark Robertson, told me that

“colleges train 2.2 million people annually, and … further education students aged over 19 generate an additional £70 billion for the economy over their lifetime. However, colleges and schools are facing increased pension costs and colleges have not yet had assurance that this increased cost—of around 2% of all income—will be funded.”

That makes no economic sense to me. With colleges adding such huge value to the economy, why are we hitting them so hard?

A similar situation can be found at the fantastic sixth-form colleges in Cambridge, Hills Road Sixth Form College and Long Road Sixth Form College, and in the sixth-form provision at Parkside Community College and Netherhall School. All the teachers at those colleges and schools tell me the same thing; indeed, I see it for myself week after week when I visit them. There are brilliant, hard-working, energetic young people, but increasingly they feel that the system is stacked against them.

Hills Road Sixth Form College is often cited as one of the best state sixth-form colleges in the country, but staff there have told me about the impact of cuts on their provision. Today, the college has £100,000 less to spend on additional learning support for students who need it than it did in 2010. It has been forced to offer fewer subjects and many students take fewer subjects. The average class size has grown by two students, while per capita student funding has dropped by over £1,000.

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

Ipswich was very pleased to welcome opportunity area status, which we were granted by the previous Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening), to try to improve the not very good social mobility in our area. However, there is no way that we will improve social mobility if we do not have the necessary facilities in place, and in particular the skilled and competent staff to help provide the opportunity for additional social mobility.

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend and near neighbour is absolutely right, and that is a key issue for the east of England, which is often seen as a prosperous and successful region, but its skills shortages have been a problem for a long, long time and they need to be addressed.

I will also quote Yolanda Botham, the principal of Long Road Sixth Form College, another excellent college in Cambridge. She tells me:

“The current level of funding has meant for Long Road that we have had to reduce our curriculum offer. We no longer provide A-level German, for example. We have had to reduce the broader opportunities and enrichment opportunities that we can provide, limiting the number of trips and experiences we can offer, which really matter for social mobility. Visits and trips show what’s possible and enable students to see beyond their immediate horizons.”

She says that it is particularly galling to note that

“our private school neighbours, charging £17,000 annually, do not have to pay VAT, yet we do.”

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it seems a bit perverse in the days of Brexit to be cutting back on foreign language provision?

[Daniel Zeichner]

Indeed it is, but this place is full of ironies on a daily basis, is it not?

Yolanda Botham said that for her college

“that £200,000 extra a year could really make an important difference, such as supporting through subsidy more students to take advantage of university summer schools and other opportunities.”

That is exactly the kind of point about social mobility that colleagues have been making. She continued:

“An increase in funds would allow us to better cater for the mental health needs of our students and so, over time, maybe reduce the demands on the NHS. This is in increasing need amongst young people.”

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Recently, I met principals from the Lancashire Colleges network, including the principals of Blackpool and the Fylde College and of Lancaster and Morecambe College. The point they really emphasised to me is that this situation goes beyond subject provision. Further education colleges are absolutely on the frontline of supporting young people through what can often be very challenging mental health needs, at a time when the NHS cannot cope and cannot meet those needs fast enough. Does he agree that FE colleges provide far more than just basic qualifications in education and support young people through what can often be a very challenging time?

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is a message we hear in both colleges and universities: the demands on them are rising. If, at the same time, they have to cut back to just their core provision, who helps the students and what happens next when those problems arise? The cost of meeting them moves somewhere else.

That colleges have to pay VAT has been a long-running problem for sixth forms, and it really is a kick in the teeth for headteachers who are doing their best to balance their budgets, while competing with private schools that are exempt from VAT.

The problems go wider still. The chief executive of Cambridge Academic Partnership, the multi-academy trust that runs Parkside Sixth Form College in Cambridge, spoke to me about the impact of cuts on the international baccalaureate. He said:

“The International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme is recognised across the world as a rigorous qualification, and it is well regarded precisely for the breadth of its curriculum. IB students distinguish themselves by undertaking study across the academic disciplines at a more advanced level. Therefore, they leave further education with an impressive knowledge base that spans their native tongue, a foreign language, the Humanities, the Sciences, Mathematics, and the Arts. Within each of those disciplines lies a plethora of subjects from which students can tailor their Diploma according to the nuances of their interests and future plans. State centres that offer the IB qualification do so due to their commitment to developing well-rounded students, equipped to contribute across all sectors of society.”

Of course, after all that there is a “but” coming.

[Faisal Rashid (Warrington South) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Daniel Zeichner]

Ah, my hon. Friend is going to interrupt at the “but”— very good. Yes, I am happy to give way.

[Faisal Rashid]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. Last Friday, I visited Barrow Hall College in my constituency of Warrington South. It was so refreshing to see so many young people engaged politically and exhibiting so much potential—I could see their potential. Sadly, however, I fear that all too often that potential is being squandered by a further education system that is drastically underfunded. Does he agree that we should all support the “Raise the Rate” campaign, to ensure that young people receive the investment they deserve?

[Daniel Zeichner]

I very much agree. I also applaud my hon. Friend’s enthusiasm, which is the enthusiasm that can be seen in colleges. However, there is also that slight sense of shame when one sees the problems that they are facing.

After the “but”, the chief executive of Cambridge Academic Partnership told me:

“When funding is limited, the skills set that we wish to provide to our students is impacted. Registered IB centres wish to offer students sufficient choice between subjects to give them a learning experience that complements their interests and strengths. A lack of funding reduces that choice because sustaining the breadth of teaching expertise required becomes impossible. It is crucial that school funding reflects the importance accorded to a broad curriculum. If centres are forced to eliminate subjects, it either deters students from undertaking the programme, or undermines the principles of the qualification itself: to be principled, broad-minded and internationally minded.”

Post-16 education is vital to the UK’s prosperity, and at a time when many fear that the Government’s stance on immigration is making access to skills more uncertain, it is foolish to under-invest in young people’s education and training. To be competitive in a global marketplace, the UK must adequately resource the education of future generations. If the Home Secretary acts on the policy proposals in his immigration White Paper, which already threaten the economy as they will restrict access to skills so dramatically, it is essential that we push education and skills right up the agenda, or we will face a crisis that could take many years to resolve. We should be preparing now for that, as providing people with the skills that the country needs takes time, resources and support.

I will conclude by offering an alternative. Labour’s 2017 manifesto made a real offer for education—a national education service. There would be free, lifelong education in further education colleges, enabling everyone to upskill or retrain at any point in life. The manifesto noted:

“Our skills and training sector has been held back by repeated reorganisation, which deprives providers, learners and employers of the consistency they need to assess quality. Labour would abandon Conservative plans to once again reinvent the wheel by building new technical colleges, redirecting the money to increase teacher numbers in the FE sector”.

I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South (Gordon Marsden), who is on the shadow Front Bench, will have more to say, but our manifesto commitment is a real offer for the further education sector and for students. It has to be a strong offer; we cannot go on like this. We cannot go on without being able to say why we as a country so undervalue our 16 and 17-year-olds. I hope that the Minister will be able to provide an explanation.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Oral Answers to Questions

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I would have thought that the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) strongly disapproved of the very creation of the mobile phone in the first place.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

T2. Parents and staff in maintained nursery schools are waiting for the Government to stop dithering on future funding. Excellent schools in Cambridge and all over the country face a funding cliff edge next year. Can the Minister give them the assurance they need, and commit today to the future of our maintained nursery schools?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Nadhim Zahawi)]

We have made £60 million available to maintained nursery schools up to 2020 because of the excellent provision that they deliver. My message, and that of the Secretary of State, to local authorities is not to take any decisions until we get to the spending review.

Anti-bullying Week

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Thursday 15th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered anti-bullying week 2018.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey, and I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting today’s debate. I am also grateful that we are able to have this debate during Anti-bullying Week, as was made possible last year when a similar debate was secured by the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands). Obviously, today is quite a busy day for many parliamentary colleagues, so I fear that some of the Members who I had expected to be with us will not be here, but it is important that we mark Anti-bullying Week in this way.

Like many constituency Members, many of my Fridays are spent visiting local schools—I should think all colleagues do that. I try to visit a school every Friday, and I find that they are all trying very hard to create an environment in which children feel safe, supported, and free from bullying. Just last week, I visited Shirley Community Primary School and had some wonderful conversations with the staff and the children, who were running around a field doing the daily mile. I have to say that they were rather better at it than I was, but it was still good to get some exercise. However, despite all the hard work that teachers are doing, it is important that we spend some time considering the challenges that we face in our schools, and particularly how we teach our children to treat each other. This week provides an opportunity for people to reflect on that question, and creates a space for staff and students to have those conversations about how we treat one another—conversations that are sometimes difficult.

Anti-bullying Week is organised by the Anti-Bullying Alliance, which is a fantastic coalition of anti-bullying charities. Anti-bullying Week reaches 75% of schools in England, touching over 6 million children and young people. It was excellent to see the splendid event organised at Speaker’s House yesterday, which a number of people came here to celebrate. Anti-bullying Week involves many charities, youth organisations and schools, and is used to provide the resources and tools to raise awareness. This year, there have been specific events on particular days, and today is “Stop Speak Support”—cyber-bullying day.

As we all know, sadly, with the rise of social media and technology, a whole range of new challenges has come along. The playground no longer stops when the bell goes. Whereas these issues could once have been dealt with in class, they now extend well beyond the playground, often on the way home and outside school. Sadly, one in five teenagers has experienced cyber-bullying in just the past two months, and children who have been cyber-bullied are more likely than their peers to be lonely, anxious or depressed. I think we are all aware of the rising numbers of young people who are presenting with mental health issues. It is right that the Government are tackling that problem, but of course, it is not just the Government who should respond to it. Social media companies must also take some responsibility and create the kinds of environments in which respectful conduct is required, especially for children.

Section 103 of the Digital Economy Act 2017 requires the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to publish a code of practice for providers of online social media platforms. That is good, but we also have to make sure that that code of practice is enforced, and sadly, it seems at times that it is not being enforced sufficiently well. Facebook, for example, has faced criticism in recent months for pushing back its targets for tackling cyber-bullying. I believe that those mega-corporations can be a power for good, but they also have to take responsibility for maintaining acceptable practices on their platforms.

The Diana Award, which is an anti-bullying charity, runs the Be Strong Online ambassador programme, which empowers students and staff to take a peer-led approach to digital resilience and helps teach young people to explore the digital world safely. It is good to hear that since 2016, over 1,200 young people and staff members have been trained as Be Strong Online ambassadors. That is an example of how we can help improve schools across the board and work with social media companies to improve the quality of our online interactions.

My interest in and awareness of this topic came not just from having been a school governor and chair of governors in a past life—like, I suspect, many of my colleagues—but from a strong constituency link with Red Balloon, one of the most highly respected charities working in this field. That charity runs learning centres and schools for bullied children. It was created 22 years ago by a constituent of mine, Dr Carrie Herbert, who is a real force of nature and a force for change. She started that charity—in her own kitchen—when she saw some of the problems that children were facing, and the charity’s story featured in national newspapers over the weekend.

I will say a little about the report that was in The Guardian on Saturday. One particular young person was prepared to tell her story, and in many ways it probably speaks for many others. Hannah Letters, who is 17, explained:

“I struggled with the transition to secondary school”—

we are all aware that that is a problem in many cases—

“and found it hard to make friends.”

This is very sad to read, but:

“She was sent messages on social media, telling her that no one liked her. ‘One of the girls turned and said to me, “If you had looked after your mother better, she wouldn’t have got cancer.”’”

That is an awful thing to say to any child. She said:

“I had such low self-esteem by then, anything she said I believed. I started to blame myself.”

By the time she was 13, she was self-harming. The article states:

“The bullies were constantly on her mind and she would wake up screaming from nightmares.”

That is a terrible story, but sadly it is not unique.

Hannah was not particularly happy with the response she got from her school. In a familiar cycle, each time she or her mother complained, the bullying got worse. The article continues:

“When the bullies physically attacked her, it was the last straw for Letters’ mother. She took her off the school roll. That meant her school was absolved of its legal responsibility to provide her with an education. She became yet another statistic: one of the 16,000 children aged 11 to 15 who…‘self-exclude’ from school due to bullying.”

That is where Red Balloon came in.

Hannah joined Red Balloon three years ago, and enrolled in its education programmes and received help with wellbeing support. She is planning on studying medicine at university. That is a huge turnaround from the situation she found herself in a few years ago, and it is not a unique story: Red Balloon turns around the lives of students every year, but it is almost a unique service, and here is the rub. The evidence from such institutions as Red Balloon shows that intervention works—it really does—but the truth is that it is also very expensive.

Although intervention looks expensive up front, in the long term it is almost certainly cheaper to intervene and make the difference that Red Balloon can make. For most local authorities, the amounts of money required to put in that intervention would be unthinkable in the current context. In fact, they do not release the money they would have been spending on that education. That is perhaps understandable, given that many find themselves in dire straits. While I suspect we will hear some warm words this afternoon, the real truth is that, although we can see what works, our choice as a society is not to do it, and that should weigh heavily on us. In the meantime, until we can do better, we must support schools to tackle bullying on a daily basis.

Mainstream education must be able to teach children how to treat each other with respect, not just how to pass exams. I suspect there might not be complete agreement with what I am about to say, but my sense is that many schools are increasingly pressured to focus on exams. Many are forced to limit the subjects they offer due to funding pressures. It has been controversial over recent years, but schools have been able to give less attention to some subjects because of the English baccalaureate. In some cases, the decline of the opportunity to take part in arts education can have possibly unintended consequences.

In recent weeks, teachers and academics have written to me with their concerns about their students’ opportunities to develop creative skills and self-expression, which are vital for getting them into work and university, for being part of the community and for expressing themselves. I suspect that taking arts education out of school education can reduce the opportunity for the discussions that arise around the arts, such as how we relate to each other and the kind of society we want to live in.

Returning to the positive, Anti-bullying Week offers schools the opportunity to engage in those discussions and provides the kind of platform on which children can think further about those very important questions, which do not always appear on exam papers.

This year, Anti-bullying Week has the theme “Choose Respect”. It encourages us to own our behaviour and to remember that we all have a choice in how we behave and that respecting each other is an active choice. In school, we should learn how to relate to those who agree with us and those who do not, and to those from different backgrounds and those with different interests. We take those skills with us into our futures and use them for the rest of our lives.

Elizabeth Nassem, a researcher at Birmingham City University, wrote in The Guardian a few months ago:

“Any school trying to tackle bullying needs to look beyond the ‘bully’ and ‘victim’ labels. Instead, it’s helpful to consider bullying as a spectrum of negative interactions that range from mild to severe, such as name-calling and hitting. Ask the children in your school about their experiences of bullying, why children might bully others, and how they think bullying should be addressed…Teachers should consistently speak to children respectfully, listen to children, respond to their views and take time to understand their perspectives. Pupils are then more likely to then do the same with their peers.”

That fits in very well with this year’s Anti-bullying Week theme of “Choose Respect”.

There is also a need to look at the disproportionate amount of bullying that some particular groups experience, including disabled children and those with special educational needs, as well as those who experience bullying based on race and faith. Looked-after children and young carers also suffer disproportionately. By having discussions at school about bullying, and how children can work to choose respect, I hope that can be addressed.

One section of society that is sadly all too often the victim of bullying is people with disabilities. According to the charity Leonard Cheshire Disability, 30% of disabled adults in the UK say they have experienced hostile behaviour motivated by their disability. That is three in 10. That is a distressing statistic and the impact can be chilling, with concern about hostile behaviour reportedly preventing one disabled adult in three from going out in their local area. That makes loneliness and isolation even worse.

There are things that can be done. Since 2014, Leonard Cheshire has run a successful scheme in Northern Ireland with the police to support disability hate crime survivors. It is called, “Be Safe Stay Safe”, and it provides independent advocacy support from qualified, experienced advocates to victims and witnesses of disability hate crime to ensure accessibility to the police and the wider criminal justice system. Will the Minister look at how that experience could be transferred to the rest of the United Kingdom?

Others who also suffer include those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender; ethnic or faith minorities; young carers; and looked-after children. The Anti-Bullying Alliance found that one child in four aged from seven to 15 reports being frequently bullied, while more than a third of disabled children and those with special educational needs are victims of regular bullying. Nearly half of school pupils say that their friends use discriminatory language towards LGBT people. Last year, a poll by the Diana Award found that 61% of school staff had witnessed racism-driven bullying. That is totally unacceptable, and it shows that even in 2018 we have a long way to go to stamp out racism entirely in our schools.

The Anti-Bullying Alliance is calling for urgent action to protect children at higher risk of bullying, and for mental health and wellbeing leads in each school, as proposed in the Green Paper on mental health, so as to have a responsibility to prevent bullying. The alliance thinks, and I agree, that that should be part of a co-ordinated, whole-school approach. While today’s debate is not party political, I gently make the point that these things all require resourcing. The relatively paltry amounts made available in the Budget are unlikely to stretch across all the existing pressures that schools face alongside such new initiatives. If we are going to do it, it has to be funded properly; otherwise, it will fall on already very stretched teachers.

The issue has been addressed by Government and Opposition MPs. By law, all state schools must have a behaviour policy in place that includes measures to prevent all forms of bullying among pupils. That policy is, of course, decided by the school, and all teachers, pupils and parents should be told about it. The Government have said that the Department for Education is working with schools to help them to create an atmosphere of respect that will reduce bullying behaviour both offline and online. I understand that the Minister has written in the Telegraph on the need for effective anti-bullying policies both online and offline. There is clearly widespread understanding of the issues.

I hope that we hear from the Minister that he will seek extra funding from his colleagues to support schools in their attempts to tackle these deep-seated and important issues. We will have a spending review next year, and it is hard to imagine a more important issue that could be addressed to tackle long-term societal problems. I welcome the opportunity to hear from the Minister so that, on what has been a complicated day in this place, he can give some good news to bring us to the end of Anti-bullying Week.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

I thank colleagues for the positive, constructive tone of the debate and for the very thoughtful contributions. The contribution of the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) widened the issue to workplace bullying. The all-party parliamentary group on bullying, which I chair, concentrates very much on bullying in schools, but there is of course no doubt that what is learned at school will hopefully go forward in future and help us to do better, whether here or in other workplaces. I absolutely agree with the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane). The cases he raised should give us all pause for thought.

Most of all I congratulate the Anti-Bullying Alliance, led by Martha Evans and her colleagues at the National Children’s Bureau. This has become a major event each year for schools and is a fantastic opportunity, as I said in my opening comments, for constructive conversations of the kind that may not always be possible throughout the rest of the year. Today, given the discussions we are having about wider issues and the place of our country in the world, “Choose Respect” could not be a better way of promoting dialogue and constructive conversation. I am sure that on a cross-party basis we can agree to congratulate all those involved, to wish everyone well who has been involved in the campaign during the week, and to make sure that we do everything we can to eliminate bullying in schools and workplaces in the future.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered Anti-Bullying Week 2018.

Oral Answers to Questions

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

My hon. Friend is right. Since 2010, the creation of the free schools programme has been a huge success. Those schools, which often serve disproportionately disadvantaged communities, have unleashed innovation and driven up academic standards. To give just one example, 92% of disadvantaged pupils at Reach Academy Feltham achieved grade 4 or above in English and maths last year.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

16. What his policy is on the eligibility of EU students starting courses in English higher education institutions in 2019-20 and 2020-21 for home fee status and student loans and grants.

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

EU students, staff and researchers make an important contribution to our universities. We want that contribution to continue and we are confident, given the quality of our higher education sector, that it will do so. Information on eligibility for the academic year 2019-20 will be made available for students and institutions as soon as possible.

[Daniel Zeichner]

We need much more urgency. The admissions process is open and people are waiting to apply to medical and dentistry schools and universities such as Cambridge, but they face a real drop-off unless certainty is given soon about the status of EU students next year. Why do the Government not support British universities, which are among our great export earners? Is this just another day, another Brexit blunder?

[Mr Gyimah]

We hugely support our universities. Applications for courses starting in the 2020-21 academic year will not open until September 2019. We will ensure that students and institutions have the information they need very soon.