Education and Adoption Bill

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

I, too, congratulate hon. Members who have made their initial contributions in today’s debate. It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friends the Members for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), and particularly for Norwich South (Clive Lewis). He and I between us have doubled Labour’s representation in the east—from not a lot to, sadly for us, not quite enough.

The Bill claims that schools should do better, and no one is going to disagree with that, but the real question is whether the Bill provides the best way to go about it. Representing an education city, where nearly 1,500 young people are attending schools rated as “less than good”, if one trusts that definition, I find that to be a question well worth asking.

The trouble is that the Bill does not address some of the obvious problems, such as inadequate funding. As a Cambridgeshire Member, I can hardly stand up today without pointing out the chronic long-term underfunding from which Cambridgeshire schools have suffered by comparison with other areas. It is worth pointing out that, partly as a consequence of foolish decisions made in the past by Conservative county councils, today’s young people should not be made to pay for the political errors of previous generations. As the Government consider the national funding formula, I urge them to create a long-term change that will correct this imbalance. The last Parliament saw some limited progress in that area, and produced a welcome, although relatively small, sum for Cambridge schools. This progress, however, will need to be improved massively if we are to bridge the funding gap that has so weakened investment in schools for decades.

I would ask—I am not entirely sure that it will be achieved—for any changes made to be done in an equitable way across the country, rather than being just a further cash grab at other parts of the country that have already suffered and lost out heavily. I would ask, too, that any such funding changes do not reduce the minimum funding guarantee for the most disadvantaged schools, where such an impact would again mean the worst-off schools disproportionately bearing the brunt of Government meddling in education.

I suspect that that point will resonate with many of the people I meet in schools—the headteachers, teachers and support staff to whom I speak regularly. The problem with the Bill, as so many others have noted, is that further structural change is not what is needed to improve schools. What we need are good teachers, good leaders, good support staff and a whole team highly motivated, well rewarded and well regarded. Sadly, we are a long way from that. As we have heard, a record number of teachers left the profession last year, and, as a combined result of these incessant cuts, the attack on morale and the exodus of over-worked teachers, even in a prosperous city such as Cambridge, 7% of the teaching workforce is unqualified, and in some schools, it is double that number.

[Christian Matheson]

Is my hon. Friend aware that these problems are not just happening in Cambridge? The headteacher of one school in the Chester area has for financial reasons been unable to appoint a qualified modern languages teacher, while a music teacher who happens to have a French A-level is teaching early-years French. The head of modern languages in that school has expressed concern to me that the children affected might be lost to languages for ever. That is entirely because of a lack of qualified teachers—and that is due, in turn, to a lack of resources for appointing them.

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is shameful that in one of my schools one in seven teachers is unqualified, and parents are horrified by that. I entirely endorse his comments.

Another issue that is not addressed in the Bill is the bizarrely named Priority School Building programme, which appears to be neither a priority programme nor a building programme. As we discovered last week, its rate of achievement is running at something like 5%. In my constituency, we have the rare occurrence of a new build that is currently under construction, but to such an incredibly low standard that the school has had to sell off its own assets to fund a widening of the corridors. The original plans would have made them so narrow that it would have been a depressing building. Far from lifting standards and inspiring pupils in a disadvantaged area, it would have made the situation worse.

[Rachael Maskell]

At Tang Hall School in my constituency the children are freezing in the winter. They have to wear hoodies, and they are still not warm. Will that not have an impact on standards in that school, and should investment not be put into improving school buildings to improve standards?

[Daniel Zeichner]

Indeed it should, and that resonates with those of us with long memories who remember what life was like under the Conservatives 20 years ago. We thought we’d got past that, didn’t we? If improving schools rather than cutting costs were the Government’s aim, they would be building to the highest standards, not the lowest.

I will conclude by reflecting on the acute pressure on school places, another issue that has not been addressed. In Cambridgeshire, which is a high-growth area, we expect to see a massive increase in numbers in the coming years. Is it not extraordinary that this pressing issue barely gets a mention in the Bill? It is not just a Cambridgeshire problem, because the situation is similar across the country. Why are the Government not addressing it?

A discussion on education is always welcome, but the Bill fails to address the issues that matter. Frankly, the problem is not so much coasting schools as a Government who do not understand the problem and so inevitably get the wrong answer—we could say, a Government who require improvement.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Osamor]

Parents should be totally involved in the education of their children. In the new academisation process, parents are not on governing bodies, which is itself an issue that the Minister should look in to.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is something curious—I welcome it—about the development of regional schools commissioners? Some of us will remember that, when the process first started, many of us suggested that things could not continue with everything being done from the centre. We now have regional schools commissioners. Does she agree that we might end up with that being further sub-divided—we might end up with something that is remarkably like local education authorities?

[Kate Osamor]

I totally agree with all the interventions apart from the Minister’s. On that ground, I will not support the Bill.

Skills and Growth

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

I would like first to congratulate those Members who have made their maiden speeches. I was particularly taken by what the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (John Nicolson) said about a well-educated electorate. I represent Cambridge, so I recognise his description. The point he was making is that the better educated the electorate, the more sensible their electoral choice. If the Government are as successful in their education policies as they claim to be, we will have a much better educated country, so I think the future of progressive politics looks bright. We look forward to their success on that basis. I also agree with the comments of the hon. Member for Watford (Richard Harrington) on university technical colleges. We have a university technical college in Cambridge, and it is doing excellent work and making a major contribution.

I want to reflect on not only some of the problems of the skills crisis, but some of the less well-rehearsed consequences. The problems that my constituency faces—we have an excellent further education college, Cambridge Regional College—are similar to those described so eloquently by many other Members. Unfortunately, there have been similar levels of cuts, with cuts in its budget every year since 2010, and it is facing funding cuts of between £2.5 million and £3 million over the next couple of years.

Yesterday we spoke to a number of representatives from the University and College Union, Unison and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers. They fleshed out what those cuts actually mean. While Government Members are claiming that things are going well, the people on the front line are telling us what that means in practice. We heard about the effective deskilling of many of our key people. For instance, people who had been lecturers are becoming instructors. I do not think that many of us would like to be offered the opportunity to come back the following year to do effectively the same job for £10,000 a year less, and with a very different status, but that is clearly what is happening in a number of places. Whatever one feels about the effect on those individuals, we have to ask what the effect is on the learner experience. I do not believe that it can be good.

If Government Members do not want to listen to the people who represent the staff, I suggest that they talk to employers in their area, as I do in my area. The messages that I hear about skills shortages are absolutely clear. Our local enterprise partnership recently conducted a survey and found that about 91% of employers had problems recruiting in the previous year because they could not find people with the right skills. That is a block on economic progress in our area. Last week, I met the Federation of Small Businesses, which said that the biggest issue its members face is exactly the same problem: they cannot find people with the right skills to do the jobs.

Perhaps more surprising is what I heard from local housing associations when I met them yesterday. Housing associations have a lot on their plate at the moment, as Members can probably imagine. Should the Conservative party’s policies be implemented, they will be required to replace houses. The problem they face is that finding the skilled people to build houses in areas like Cambridgeshire is near impossible. That is the basic problem with that policy. I will tell Members what the answer is for the housing associations. It is migrant labour, because people from other countries have got the skills and will come here to do the jobs.

Interestingly, it is often claimed in debates on other issues that the pull factor to this country is benefits. Actually, the pull factor is the lack of skills in this country—our inability to train our own people to do the jobs that we need to be done. This is a five-year Parliament and there is a long time ahead, so I suggest to Conservative Members, in a friendly, positive way, that if they want to have economic success, they will have to analyse the problem correctly in the first place. If they misdiagnose the problem, they are certain to fail to get the right answer.

[Alex Cunningham]

One problem in this country is the difference between the regions. Unemployment is almost 50% higher in the north-east of England than in the rest of the country, yet there has been a shift of money from the north to the south. I appreciate that my hon. Friend has problems in his area, but there has been a shift of funding from north to south. Does he agree that the Government need to tackle that issue?

[Daniel Zeichner]

It is certainly right that we need different approaches for different parts of the country. That is why I have always been a strong regionalist and why I decry the savage cuts to the regional structures that were made by the last Government. However, I have funding problems and inequalities in my part of the world. Schools in Cambridgeshire are woefully underfunded compared with schools in other parts of the country. This is a complicated set of issues, but my hon. Friend is right that, in general, there has been a shift of resources from poorer areas to wealthier areas. That cannot be right.

I want to reflect on some of the alternative solutions. Given what I have said, it is obvious that in my view the policy that is being pursued of reducing the resources that go to those who provide our training services is not the right way forward. However, this matter goes beyond our colleges. As I just mentioned, our sixth-form colleges have suffered an enormous hit to their funding over the past few years. I understand that over the past five years, their budgets have been cut by as much as a third. My constituency has some fantastic sixth-form colleges—some of the best performing in the country—but they continue to perform well only because of the heroic efforts of their staff in very difficult circumstances. Some of them face appalling recruitment problems. That is not sustainable. We will not be able to go on producing good results with ever-diminishing resources. Frankly, that will not work.

We have seen the near destruction of the careers service in many places. That means that, all too often, the provision of careers advice falls to teachers, who are not necessarily trained in making the right suggestions to young people. Understandably, they tend to fall back on their own experiences. What happens far too often is that the advice given to our young people does not necessarily put them down the vocational route that would be best for them.

Some good things are happening. Marshall Aerospace is doing a very good job in my constituency, working with schools on a programme it has just launched, of encouraging more young people to go into engineering. Frankly, however, it is a drop in the ocean compared with what we need. We need a major change of tack to tackle this problem. I have to say that I have not heard much from Government Members to give me great confidence that that is going to happen. I fear we will to have to wait for a different Government to solve these long-term problems.