Schools That Work For Everyone

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

Indeed I can. We owe particular attention and focus to looked-after children, and we have been discussing specifically with the Independent Schools Council what more we can do to help that cohort.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

This morning three excellent primary schools in my area, including The Spinney and Mayfield Primary School, announced that, after two years’ work, they are pulling out of their plan to form a multi-academy trust because

“the recent change in education policy now makes the current educational climate too ambiguous for us to proceed”.

I am pleased that they are staying with the local authority, but does the Secretary of State really believe that ambiguity is a good way to run our school system?

[Damian Hinds]

I suppose that for us here in the House, managing politics, ambiguity is a daily feature. I think that converting to academy status, becoming part of an academy trust and having the opportunity to share good practice and learning across schools is a very positive action. Many thousands of schools have benefited from it, and I want more of them to make that positive choice. However, individual schools may have different criteria.

Oral Answers to Questions

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Monday 19th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The Government are working with the sector via the Adoption Leadership Board to address the issue of adopter numbers early on, to ensure that there remain enough approved adopters for children who are waiting.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

Parents whose children use the Fields children’s centre in Cambridge are seeing hours at the nursery cut, the baby room closed, and parents being encouraged to ask their employers to amend their working hours to fit the reduced hours. How does the Minister expect parents and families to cope when he is making their lives so much more difficult?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The experience around the country does not reflect the hon. Gentleman’s view. The opposite is happening. Parents are getting places, especially under the 30 hours a week of free childcare for three and four-year-olds. Almost 300,000 children are now taking up those places, as we announced last week.

Primary School Academisation: Cambridge

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing the House the opportunity to consider the important issue of the academisation of primary schools in Cambridge. I will talk primarily about the necessity of both transparency and accountability in academy trusts and about the academisation process itself. The debate is timely, because just a few hours ago there was a meeting at St Philip’s C of E Aided Primary School in Romsey in my constituency to determine the school’s future after many months of uncertainty. It was local parents raising with me that process and the issues around it that caused me to take a particularly close interest in the case. The more I have seen of it and the more people I have spoken to, the more concerned I have become—hence the request for today’s debate.

I start by thanking those who brought the issue to my attention, who include not only local parents but the many people involved in local schools and the local educational system who have spoken to me over the past few weeks to explain the consequences of the process for the education system in my city and the surrounding area. I particularly thank Rachel Evans of the National Education Union, who has worked hard and carefully with parents and staff to try to achieve the best outcome for the school and the wider community.

Right at the outset, I want to say that I make no criticism of those involved locally, because I believe that they have all been doing their very best for the school, but it is the process they have been put through that causes me concern, and it should also trouble the Minister. Whatever one’s view of academies in general—I will come on to that—there must be something wrong with a process whereby parents, staff and the local community feel that they are just being informed about significant changes to a key local institution, but not involved in any meaningful way. They feel that it is being done to them, not with them. Schools are not businesses and are not privately owned—not yet, anyway. Schools are a key part of the fabric of our local communities, and we all know that they do better when they are a part of their community, with close parental involvement.

Although I am not an educationalist or an expert in this area, I was, like so many of us in Parliament, a school governor for many years. I was the chair of governors for a voluntary aided junior school in a rural market town for almost 10 years. I have known St Philip’s for a number of years, and it is a not a school that I would have had serious concerns about. It did experience a serious dip in results a couple of years ago and also had a problem when there was too long a delay in replacing an outgoing headteacher. That should interest the Minister, because he may want to reflect on why it takes so long to recruit good headteachers, particularly in high-cost areas such as Cambridgeshire—it is no easy task. But, as has been demonstrated by the swift recovery in results, the school clearly has a bright future, and I emphasise that point. I commend the many positive comments that parents made in their considered responses to the recent consultation, in which a strong view emerged that the school has improved dramatically. That leads to a frequently asked question: if the school is so improved, why the need for further change that might, in itself, be destabilising?

I do not criticise the interim executive board, which has been following its understanding of the procedure, but what a flawed procedure it is. Parents were informed by letter of a consultation in which the outcome was assumed to be academisation, and there was no sense of any alternatives being on offer. When parents rightly asked what say they had in any of this, the response was pretty much, “Yes, you can express an opinion, but this is what is going to happen.”

Originally, only organisations in favour of academisation were invited to make presentations at today’s special meeting. Parents rightly protested, and I protested, and I am pleased to say that the IEB did invite people with differing views, including local councillors and a representative from my office. I do not know the outcome of the meeting, and I suspect parents do not know yet, either, but such protests should not have been needed for other views to be put. It still is not really clear what other options are being considered.

The apparently preferred option from the outset was joining the local diocesan multi-academy trust—the Diocese of Ely multi-academy trust, or DEMAT—but there is a question as to whether that is really the best way forward for a city school. Should the school be swallowed up by a sprawling organisation that covers a huge geographical area—I choose my words carefully, and I am sure the Minister understands what I am saying—and whose effectiveness by no means convinces everyone in the local area?

Also, what about the concerns of many in the school, which has a very diverse catchment, that a move to a diocesan trust poses real dilemmas? This is a voluntary aided not a voluntary controlled school, and parents are right to raise the distinction. It is notable that some who clearly express their Christian faith raise that very point. What consideration has been given to other, more local options—or, of course, the option, which the vast majority appear to want, that the school should be as it was before the dip, and is now, by staying with the local authority? To most people, the process did not seem to offer any of those choices, only a one-way path to academisation within one multi-academy trust.

What would the Minister say to a parent who says, as parents have said to me, “I don’t want my child taught by unqualified teachers”? That is one of the freedoms available to academies. How does that parent get a say and, more importantly, how do they influence the decision? What if we discover every parent in the school shares that view? How would they get the decision changed? The answer is not obvious. Maybe the Minister can enlighten us.

The St Philip’s saga illustrates a wider problem with academies and multi-academy trusts. They take public money but are not democratically accountable to their communities. We all know that local authorities are also too often flawed, but they are by definition accountable—people can vote them out and get rid of councillors. Academies in multi-academy trusts do not have to have local representation on their boards, either of parent governors, local councillors or staff representatives. Indeed, I am told by one so-called emerging local multi-academy trust that, when it sought to include local authority representation on its board, it was told by the Department for Education that it could not. Will the Minister confirm whether that is the case and, if it is, why locally elected representatives are so excluded? The processes followed by these trusts are far from transparent, which inevitably leaves communities anxious.

Some multi-academy trusts in my area—in fact most of them—have boards full of impressive management and business figures, and my area is fortunate to have such people available, but the boards are singularly lacking in people on the frontline: parents, teachers and school meal supervisors. They are the people who actually know what is going on.

I mischievously suggest that the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs takes a look at some of these boards. He might observe that the “blob” is more resilient than he thought. For a truly depressing session, I can heartily recommend that he browses the array of websites promoting MATs in any area, but for today’s purposes I shall limit myself to discussing Cambridge. As he looks, he will come across an array of mission statements and management gobbledegook, much beloved of corporate consultancies and full of joyless jargon, such as “pursuit of excellence”, “uniting with a common purpose” and “an outstanding education for all children is at the heart of our vision”. I know they have to do it, as that is the nature of the system—I even have sympathy with the poor people having to sit down to draft this drivel—but it is nonsense and we all know it. It may give us a chuckle when we are watching “W1A”, but this is the real world and it is not honest.

Honesty in times of really tight budgets, not Silicon Valley-esque, vomit-inducing fluff, would say something like, “Trying to make ends meet and retain teachers for more than 18 months in a high-cost area through being part of an inspiring community that works together.” Some people, of course, are trying to do just that, but we have to read between the lines of the waffle to even discern a hint of it. Nowhere on those glossy, newly branded websites do we find what we might want to know: how many unqualified teachers are being employed? What changes have been made to the terms and conditions of those employed? What changes have been made as the school moves away from the national curriculum? Surely that is what should be up there in lights—the truth.

There is a further problem that the Cambridge experience has highlighted. The complex structures of MATs and academies make local accountability through the local media extremely difficult. They are of course overseen by the regional schools commissioners, another extraordinarily opaque structure, largely invisible to parents and the wider world; they have a slightly curious role, given that this Government abolished regions. Never mind; regional schools commissioners exist, but they are technically civil servants and so do not talk to the media. Schools going through this process are also reluctant to speak to the media, so it is not much of a surprise that few people in the local community have any idea what is going on. That might suit the Government’s purposes, but it is a rotten way to run public services in a democracy and it will come unstuck. It also raises the question: what are the Government so afraid the public might find out?

In passing—this is rather topical—let me say that Cambridge people are suddenly waking up to the fact that, through these subterranean and opaque processes, Cambridge is to be the beneficiary of a new free school promoted by none other than Mr Toby Young. I think I can say with some confidence, given what the whole world now knows about him, that Cambridge will want none of that. Perhaps the Minister can also give us some guidance on how that can be stopped.

Why does all this matter? Because the system spends and allocates public money to educate children. Why should parents and communities not be able to simply and quickly ask questions and get answers? MATs are bound to release reports periodically, but they do not give the information that parents and local community members would like to see. As I have suggested, academies work to different rules from local authority-supported schools, so can we at least work out how this is going? I ask the Minister: how many unqualified teachers are there in each MAT in my constituency? How have terms and conditions changed, and what impact has that had on pupils’ education? I hope he will be able to answer, but if he cannot, why not, and who can? And why are parents and communities being kept in the dark?

Beyond those practical questions, there is the wider question of what schools are actually for. Of course, they are primarily there to educate children and to help them to fulfil their potential and flourish, equipping them with skills and knowledge for their lives. However, schools are more than that; they are also community hubs that bring people together, allowing neighbouring families to have conversations and facilitating community events, and they are spaces that people can access in times of need. We have seen recently the excellent work that schools have done in communities that have been stricken by the consequences of austerity and the underfunding of councils. A recent press article highlighted the support that a school in Southwark gave to local refugees, far beyond the call of duty.

So we need to stop seeing schools in a vacuum of exam obsession, blinkered by assessment and rote, and see them as environments for growth and local development. Proper local representation on academy boards would help to provide the longer-term vision needed for seeing through the development of a school beyond a single cohort, giving communities the means to hold schools accountable to the people they serve.

Furthermore, within the fragmented, opaque system I have described, there are costs as well. The emergence of multi-academy trusts has, of course, led to competition between trusts, which want to gather more schools into their organisations. Instead of organisations working collaboratively for the public good, we have trusts eyeing each other up, eager to pick up schools that may have had a blip—and it is even better if they have some financial reserves. Perhaps it should be like in football, with a transfer window so that schools can have some periods of the year when they do not have to fight off predators.

In my constituency, there are around eight different multi-academy trusts, all vying for increased growth. Each of those trusts will, to varying extents, have people working on marketing, management structures, brand development and logos, and they will be paying audit fees. As always, it is public money that is being spent. All this has resulted in a fragmented system of overlapping, opaque organisations that use the public purse in ways that no one understands locally.

It is all rather reminiscent of what happened to the national health service under the previous Conservative Government. I remember Frank Dobson having to come in and clear up the mess, and famously saying to competing NHS trusts that first and foremost they were all part of the NHS and that providing public healthcare needed to come first. Academy trusts need to be redirected to the purpose of education and the public good, not self-promotion.

As I have said, local education authorities were by no means perfect everywhere. Conservative-run Cambridgeshire certainly had and has its faults, but the professional support offered to schools was an important resource and should continue to be. I do not want to see a situation in which, by a process of attrition, it is no longer viable for such services to be available to schools.

I wish to draw my remarks to a close by looking forward. Fortunately, I think it is possible to adapt existing structures and improve local accountability and representation. By bringing a few of the trusts together, rebranding them as the education service and adding the voices of councillors, parent governors and trade union representatives, we could greatly improve the accountability of these organisations to the communities that fund them and that they should serve. In turn, we would increase transparency, which would rebuild public trust and embed our schools in their communities, instead of imposing new rules without consultation.

I must say that some of us saw all this coming, which is why in last year’s general election there was a different vision on offer—one that was much closer to the points I have just outlined. The Labour manifesto promised:

“We will…oppose any attempt to force schools to become academies.”

It also promised:

“Labour will ensure that all schools are democratically accountable, including appropriate controls to see that they serve the public interest and their local communities.”

In my view, those who work in our schools, send their children to them and support schools in their local areas are best placed to give insight into the ways that they should be run—a point that has been made frequently by the shadow Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner). I can say with confidence that that view is shared by many of the people I spoke to in Cambridge in preparing for this debate.

I hope that the Minister will give some assurances to parents and staff at St Philip’s, and those at other schools in and around Cambridge who are likely to find themselves embroiled in similar discussions in coming months. There is a new Secretary of State for Education, so there is an opportunity for a new start and for working with communities, rather than against them.

Sadly, this has been a debate about structures, when in so many ways it would be much better if were talking about standards and what is needed to support, encourage and inspire teachers, who we know are the real key to higher standards. We should also be talking about how to pay those teachers sufficiently so that they can live in high-cost areas such as Cambridge, and so that they stay, rather than go, as happens all too often. I hope they will hear that the Minister has listened, and that the message from the Government will be, “We will work with you and help you to improve.” I hope the message is not that the only way is academisation by one route or another, because that is what it has felt like in Cambridge and, I fear, in many other places as well.

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) on securing this debate, which is timely as it allows me to outline why academies are an important element in the Government’s success and drive in raising standards in our schools. Today, there are 1.9 million more pupils in schools graded by Ofsted as good and outstanding than there were in 2010. Standards are rising in our secondary schools and in our primary schools. Teachers have more autonomy now to run their schools, and 154,000 more six-year-olds are reading more effectively as a consequence of not only the hard work of teachers but the reforms implemented by this Government. There are more young people taking double or triple science today: 91% are entered for those GCSEs today compared with 63% in 2010.

We are a Government determined to raise academic standards right across the system in our schools. The reason why we are having this debate today and why the hon. Gentleman is raising these issues stems from the fact that Cambridgeshire County Council was concerned about standards at St Philip’s Primary School, which is why it issued a warning notice to the school. It is from that that we have the establishment of the interim executive board, which is now consulting parents about converting the school into an academy to be run by a multi-academy trust. There have been many hundreds of responses to the consultation process and it has extended the time for the process, so it does want to work with the local community and with parents. It wants to hear parental views. The overriding objective of the regional schools commissioner, this Government and Cambridgeshire County Council is to see standards improve in all our schools right across the country.

Since 2010, the number of schools benefiting from academy freedoms in this country has grown from 200, when the previous Labour Government left office, to more than 7,000. The system that academisation brings started under the previous Labour Government, and we have built on that process to give professionals the autonomy to run their schools free from political interference and to raise standards. We have now reached the point where 7,000 schools have that professional autonomy and that academy status.

More than a third of state-funded schools are now part of an academy trust. The multi-academy trust model is a powerful vehicle for improving school standards and raising academic standards by sharing, for example, financial back-office skills, facilities and teaching resources and partnering the best of our state-funded schools with schools that are struggling. Two thirds of our academies are converter academies. These are good schools that made the decision to become an academy, and many of them have established multi-academy trusts, helping other schools to improve. A further 2,000 schools have become academies with the support of a sponsor to help them to raise the quality of education that they are providing.

Since 2014, the number of MATs has doubled. As of 1 January this year, 79% of all academies are in a multi-academy trust, with 62% of those academies in a MAT of five or more schools. Academies have been raising academic standards. More than 450,000 pupils now study in good or outstanding sponsored academies which were previously typically underperforming schools. Pupils in secondary converter academies are making more progress between the ages of 11 and 16 than pupils in other types of schools, and 90% of converter academies are rated as good or outstanding. For sponsored academies, since 2010, 65% of schools that were previously inadequate under local authority control are now rated good or outstanding since becoming a sponsored academy, where an inspection has taken place.

A good example of what academy sponsorship is able to achieve is the Harris Academy Battersea, which is the highest performing sponsored academy in England. In 2017, it registered a progress 8 score of 1.49, placing it within the top 1 % of all schools. The National Foundation for Educational Research reported that sponsored academies are significantly more likely to be rated as outstanding compared with similar local authority maintained schools. The professional autonomy of academy status leads to a more dynamic and responsive education system, giving head teachers the opportunity to make decisions based on the interests of their pupils and on local need, and it allows high-performing schools to spread that excellence across to other schools. The Government are determined to raised academic studies by encouraging evidence-based teaching, building on a knowledge-rich curriculum and by providing teachers and school leaders with the autonomy to drive school improvement.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful to the Minister for taking an intervention. He will know that there are other views about the success of these processes. I shall put to him again the essential point in my speech. If a school has recovered, its results are good and it is doing well, and if there is clearly strong support for it, as in this case, why would we want to destabilise it when there is strong support in the local community for it to stay as it is?

[Nick Gibb]

As I have said, in 2016, Cambridgeshire County Council issued the school with a warning notice. To ensure sustainability of standards the interim executive board was established. The board is consulting on the next steps, and it has made the decision that it is best for the school to become an academy under the diocese. It is consulting on that decision, and it is taking parents’ views into account. It had a meeting today, as the hon. Gentleman said, and it will continue to go through the process.

Overall in Cambridgeshire, 97% of secondary schools are academies or free schools, and we expect that to be 100% shortly. One third of primary schools are currently academies or free schools, and that number is expected to rise in the coming year, with 17 schools currently moving to academy status. In the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, there are six secondary schools. Five of them are academies, and the remaining school intends to become an academy this term. There are 23 primary schools and a maintained special school. Just two of the primary schools are academies or free schools, and four primary schools are currently going through the process of joining a multi-academy trust, which is significantly lower than elsewhere in Cambridgeshire.

In September 2014, 82% of primary schools in Cambridge were rated good or outstanding by Ofsted. In November last year, that rose to 91%, which is above the national average. Four of the five secondary academies have positive progress 8 scores, including Chesterton Community College, part of Cambridgeshire Educational Trust, which is in the top 1% of schools nationally and was recently graded by Ofsted as outstanding. Cambridgeshire Educational Trust is a great example of the development of the school-led system in which teaching approaches have raised academic results. It has successfully transferred that outstanding practice to a long-standing underperforming secondary school in Norfolk, and it has received approval to establish two new free schools in 2017, including a post-16 mathematics school in Cambridge, working in partnership with the university.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I appreciate the Minister’s generosity in giving way again. I deliberately tried not to single out organisations apart from the one that stimulated this debate. However, on the back of that eulogy, may I remind the Minister that he has not taken the opportunity to answer any of the questions that I posed? How many unqualified teachers have been employed? What changes to terms and conditions have been made in the multi-academy trusts to which he referred? It is hard to know how to find out.

[Nick Gibb]

The Diocese of Ely multi-academy trust does not use unqualified teachers in its schools. Nationally, about 95% of teachers are qualified. Many teachers who do not have qualified teacher status generally have a skill, knowledge or experience to bring to the school, which is why schools employ them.

Where standards do not meet expectations, the regional schools commissioner and the local authority work together to target underperformance. Action has been taken to ensure sustainable school improvement, including requiring poorly performing schools to join multi-academy trusts. For example, North Cambridge Academy, formerly Manor Community College, has been transformed by Cambridge Meridian Academies Trust. It began as a school in special measures, but is now graded as good, with pupils’ progress in the top 30% nationally.

I am aware that the hon. Gentleman has been involved with the St Philip’s Church of England Aided Primary School in Cambridge. As I said, the local authority established an interim executive board at the request of the former governing body, which felt unable to address the performance concerns at the school. Part of the interim executive board’s role has been to consider the school’s long-term future. Its decision on the future of the school is being discussed at the meeting today, which will include full consideration of academy status following a consultation exercise with parents and the community. The regional schools commissioner, Sue Baldwin, met the hon. Gentleman in October to discuss the future of the school. There is a strong relationship between Cambridgeshire County Council and the regional schools commissioner team, and they meet on a regular basis.

Standards in our primary and secondary schools are rising. The Government’s education reforms have meant that 1.9 million more children attend good or outstanding schools compared with 2010. The academisation programme that the hon. Gentleman discussed has been key to raising those academic standards.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Monday 6th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

We always take swift action when either schools or academies fail—that has been the hallmark of this Government—which is why there are 1.8 million more pupils in good or outstanding schools today than in 2010.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

The Minister, with his last answer, has widened the scope of the question somewhat. I would have argued that there was a rather long distance between Ellesmere Port and the hon. Gentleman’s constituency of Cambridge, but thanks to the Minister, the hon. Gentleman can expatiate.

[Daniel Zeichner]

The salutary example of such schools is a warning to schools such as St Philip’s Primary School in my constituency that are being forced into academisation. Extraordinarily, although there is a consultation, parents have been told that it is a foregone conclusion. Why is the Secretary of State so opposed to parental choice?

[Nick Gibb]

Actually, the academies and free schools programmes are increasing parental choice, because parents now have a choice of provider. It is not just the local authority providing schools; up to 500 new free schools have now been established, by parent groups, teachers and educational charities, and they are raising academic standards right across the board.

Oral Answers to Questions

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Monday 11th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Goodwill]

Certainly, 216,384 parents have secured a code. Of those, as I have said, 71% have already found a place, and no doubt more are finding additional places this week.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

16. Back in 2015, David Cameron promised that the 30 hours would, in his words, be “completely free”. Every nursery I speak to in Cambridge tells me that it is having to cross-subsidise and often charge for extras, including lunch. Will the Minister tell us in what sense that is completely free?

[Mr Goodwill]

May I make it clear yet again that the 30 hours entitlement is free? Additional hours, lunch and other add-ons can be charged for, but they must not be a prerequisite for taking up the 30 hours.

Oral Answers to Questions

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Monday 20th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities (Caroline Dinenage)]

I eventually get to say something! The home learning environment is fundamental to early years development. This Government are investing over £6 billion a year in early years by 2020—more than any Government have ever spent before—and we will look very closely at how to improve the home learning environment.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

I draw the Secretary of State’s attention to recent research by the business-led Cambridge Ahead into teacher shortages in Cambridge. Given the structural problems identified, will the Secretary of State meet Cambridge Ahead and Cambridgeshire MPs to discuss this?

[Mr Gibb]

I would be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and the headteachers he has in mind.

Maintained Nursery Schools Funding

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

I have heard some excellent speeches today but I want to give particular credit to my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) for her excellent speech.

Halton is the 27th most deprived borough in the country, and its maintained nursery schools are important not only to the general population but for the difference they make for children from deprived and poorer backgrounds. They can identify at a very early age children who will struggle all the way through school and the rest of their lives. They are particularly good at that. My constituency has three maintained nursery schools: Birchfield Nursery School, Warrington Road Nursery School and Ditton Nursery School. All of them have been in existence in Widnes for 75 to 80 years to support children’s early education and parents value them greatly. The headteachers have told me that they are extremely worried that the schools may not exist for much longer if the national early years funding formula goes ahead as planned. Early Education forecasts that 67% of nurseries will be unsustainable after transitional funding finishes.

The evidence is clear that the quality of early education makes the most difference in raising achievement for the most disadvantaged children. That justifies such large Government investment in early intervention. Quality is determined by the qualifications of early years staff and teachers. Nursery schools in Halton employ well-qualified and highly experienced headteachers and assistant headteachers, as well as taking on and mentoring newly qualified teachers who work with them as early years specialists. They also have a number of staff members with early years degrees, a qualified early years teacher and special educational needs co-ordinators who are qualified and experienced teachers who have offered support across other settings and enabled transitions and planning to take place to support the most vulnerable children. Again, early intervention is crucial.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for taking an intervention and apologise, Ms Dorries, for not being here at the start of the debate. My constituency is very different to my hon. Friend’s, but it has the Fields Children’s Centre, which I have visited over many years. Does he agree that the work being done in this area is about far more than just childcare?

[Derek Twigg]

My hon. Friend is right. A whole sphere of things can make a difference. I will come back to that later in my speech, but he makes a very good point.

Halton is one of the 25% of councils that will lose money for early years in the revised formula. At present, early years is a priority for Halton and we feel there should be funding to support it—early years has always been a priority in Halton. The 2015 Ofsted early years report endorses the consistent evidence of other national research that the most effective early education is provided by such nursery schools. Over the past five years maintained nursery schools in Halton have annually increased the average points progress made by children in all settings. We can demonstrate outstanding progress for children with special educational needs and disabilities, English as an additional language and those children entering our schools with low levels of personal, social and emotional development—that is really important—communication and speech.

The headteachers in my constituency believe strongly that nursery schools are in jeopardy all over the country because the qualifications of staff and the leadership of headteachers mean that they cost more than any other sort of nursery. The current system of funding early education, or what seems to be now called childcare, assumes that what every nursery offers is broadly the same, but it is not. They cannot be funded in the same way because maintained and private provision have completely different structures. I hope the Government will understand and address that.

Nursery schools lead to the kind of outstanding early years education we want for every child in our country. They play a key role in supporting training in the early years sector including work placements, initial teacher training, qualified teacher status and postgraduate certificate in education placements. Nursery headteachers and staff want to be supported to operate as system leaders for the future to ensure that early years professionals continue to have quality training and development and are able to have a positive impact on young children’s learning.

The recent consultation showed no awareness of the reality of the funding crisis for maintained nursery schools, or of their remit and impact. Proposals should be founded upon research and a commitment to developing early years leadership. One headteacher told me:

“The consultation largely ignored social return on investment and places no weighting on rewarding those organisations mainly schools who have a statutory and moral imperative to support their communities.”

The proposed funding reform would effectively eradicate such nurseries, losing knowledge specialism and damaging the life chances of our most vulnerable children. Nurseries want reassurances from the Minister that the transitional funding mentioned in the consultation will get through to nursery schools and will be sufficient to keep them running while we move towards a new system and leadership model.

I recently asked my local authority, Halton Borough Council, about its view of the situation. People there told me that they will not know the final figures until they receive the census information in February. However, previous estimates based on this year’s funding show that the three nursery schools—even after applying the higher base rate for the maintained nursery schools—will face a shortfall for 2017-18. That takes into consideration the additional protection that nursery schools will receive. Halton Borough Council can only provide the higher base rate for one year, so the shortfall could rise in 2018-19 to £130,000. When the transitional protection is removed in two years, the shortfall could increase to between £160,000 and £190,000. Although the council is working with nursery schools on models and options to reduce the cost, it will struggle to save £130,000-plus, which might mean that it can no longer afford to retain our nursery provision. That is how serious the situation is in Halton, where securing good-quality early years provision is a particular challenge. If Halton ends up having to look at closure, it will be a considerable loss.

Before I conclude, I want to quote the headteacher at Ditton Nursery School, who told me:

“We have a higher base rate for next year (18-19) plus transitional funding for the following year. When this finishes we will have seen our individual budgets cut by between £50,000-60,000 but we have already cut staffing down to a minimum and although looking at a federated model are not sure we will be sustainable when additional funding finishes…Nursery schools drive high quality pedagogy across the sector. We provide outstanding support for Special Educational needs and disadvantaged children thus supporting their learning chances later in education. We offer partnership, innovation and system leadership within the sector, and also support Initial Teacher Training for Early Years. This would all be lost if we closed. We need to ensure that we retain high quality Early years staff to work with our children—they deserve the best.”

I stress that—they deserve the best. The headteacher continued:

“This is difficult when facing such uncertainty. We want to retain quality staff to ensure the best outcomes for our children.”

I recently visited Birchfield Nursery School and talked to the headteacher there. I was so impressed by what was going on; there was a range of support for young people in education and play, and so on. The right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Sir Simon Burns) made a very important point. Nurseries have seen an increase in the number of children who not only do not know how to play, but perhaps more surprisingly, are not able to speak at the age at which they should be able to start speaking. All the headteachers I spoke to said that. Even more surprisingly, that is the situation not just among poorer children, but across the sphere when it comes to talking and play. They said that children are told, “Get on and play with that,” and although most parents are still fantastic at helping their children to talk and at developing their education, a growing number of parents are not. The lack of parents talking and playing with their children is becoming a major problem for some schools. Dealing with that requires extra money and extra effort, and the schools are then making the difference, not some of the parents. Obviously they try and encourage parents to play with and speak to the children more—to have more conversations with them—but it is sometimes an uphill struggle. That is partly because of the nature of the society we live in, but in this respect nurseries are making a real difference to our children, particularly in deprived areas. That intervention is so crucial to helping children’s life chances. Maintained nursery schools have that impact because of the nature of teachers’ qualifications and experience, and because of how they work together.

I therefore urge the Minister to reconsider the plans. The real problem is that the Government are cutting education and funding, and they need to rethink that. She shakes her head, but she should talk to the headteachers. They tell me what is going on in their schools. This is not me making a political point; it is what headteachers tell me, so the Government need to think again about funding. At the end of the day we cannot lose these fantastic maintained nurseries—we must do all that we can to keep them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

I thank my hon. Friend for that very kind invitation. I would be more than happy to visit both him and the Hadfield Nursery School in his beautiful High Peak constituency. He is right to highlight the importance of maintained nursery schools. We have committed to providing local authorities with an additional £55 million per year for nursery schools until at least the end of this Parliament.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

On the same subject, is it not really the case that the 30 hour promise is being funded by stealing resources from state-run nurseries that employ fully qualified headteachers and staff? Will the Secretary of State tell us what analysis she has undertaken of the damage that will be done by the cuts she is making to the funding of state-run nursery schools?

Oral Answers to Questions

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question, and he is absolutely right that we intend to issue a full public consultation shortly on how best to provide the legal protection that we want to see against caste discrimination. When we do that, I am sure that my hon. Friend and his community will want to participate fully in the consultation.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It took the Government almost a year to come up with a very thin eight-page review on the care and management of transgender offenders. That referred to

“a number of events linked to transgender prisoners”

that attracted attention last year. Those so-called “events” were, in fact, the deaths in the space of a month of two transgender women held in men’s prisons. Will the Minister tell us why the Government failed to acknowledge those tragedies in their review, and why their proposals are so meagre?

[Caroline Dinenage]

I question all those statements. The response is not meagre; it is thorough. The Government are firmly committed to ensuring that transgender offenders are treated fairly, lawfully and decently, and that their rights are respected. A revised instruction drawing on the conclusions of the Ministry of Justice’s “Review of care and management of transgender offenders” was published on 9 November. It is already being applied, and will be implemented fully by 1 January.

Oral Answers to Questions

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Edward Timpson]

I think we can all agree that students should be able to challenge those they disagree with by means of open and robust debate. Academic freedom and freedom of speech are central to our higher education system. There is no place for intimidation to attempt to shut down open debate. Universities have a clear legal duty to secure freedom of speech for students, staff and visiting speakers, and they must have clear policies for how they will ensure that that can happen. Should my hon. Friend wish to discuss this further with either me or the Minister with responsibility for universities, I would be happy to oblige.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

Sadly, bullying occurs in most schools. In some cases, it leads to young people effectively self-excluding from school, which puts themselves and their parents in a particularly difficult position. Groups such as Red Balloon in my constituency do very good work. What support would the Minister give to such groups?

[Edward Timpson]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. We can safely say that every school will have bullying at some point in some form, and we need to ensure they have the tools available to tackle it in the best way possible, particularly with the additional threat of cyber-bullying outside the school gates. ChildLine, which the Government help to fund, is receiving more calls. This will remain a very high-profile issue for years to come. That is why we support organisations to help schools more effectively tackle these issues, but we need to be alive to the new ways that bullying will emerge in the future. We will continue to work on that with all organisations, including Red Balloon.