Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Dave Robertson Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

I am sure that today Labour MPs will cheer what they see as the final demise of the Gove-Gibb reforms, but the Bill before us reverses far further back than that. If this Bill passes in anything close to its current form, it will be as if Lord Adonis was never the Schools Minister and Lord Blunkett had never sat in the Secretary of State’s place. It will be as if Tony Blair had never been Prime Minister, and had never made central to his pledge to the British people in 1997 those famous three words: “Education, education, education.”

To be clear, there are things in this Bill that we agree with. There are things that were in our Bill. There are things that build on the work that we were doing on Staying Close, on virtual school heads, on kinship care and more. Of course, there are also things in the Bill that are designed to be eye-catching initiatives—something that the Government learned from New Labour—such as the retail offer, to use the jargon, on breakfast clubs. There are already thousands of breakfast clubs in our country. By the way, we would like to know what will happen to breakfast clubs at secondary school, where they would make more of an impact on attendance than in primary school. There are also the provisions on uniform. We have had statutory guidance on uniform for a long time, so I have no idea why it is necessary to write it into law. The principal aim seems to be to outlaw primary schools requiring the wearing of a tie. The biggest part of this Bill—read the detail—is about attacking school and trust autonomy and giving power back to Whitehall and the local education authority.

Colleagues on both sides of the House know there has been a dramatic transformation in educational attainment in this country. We now have the best primary school readers in the western world, and we have seen dramatic improvements in secondary school maths, reading and science. Children eligible for free school meals are now 50% more likely to go to university than they were in 2010. Why has that happened? In one word: teachers. It is teachers who have made that happen. But there are also brilliant, dedicated teachers in Wales and Scotland, where those improvements have not happened. The most effective teachers exist in an ecosystem, and what has really created the potential for these improvements is that brilliant teachers have been supported by our reforms.

Those reforms have always had two sides. First, there has been a relentless focus on standards and quality, with a knowledge-rich curriculum and proven methods such as synthetic phonics and maths mastery. Schools have been learning from schools, with a hub system across the country and, critically, within academy trusts, which are the key vehicle for school improvement.

We have always known that this focus has to go hand in hand with diversity and choice. Parents must be able to select what is best for their children, and we believe there is a role for big schools, small schools, co-ed schools, mixed schools, denominational schools and so on. Of course, academies and free schools have enabled that diversity to increase further.

To have effective school choice, there has to be capacity in the system. There have to be more places than there are children, which is why we have added more than 1 million new places since 2010, following the Labour party’s unbelievable decision to cut 100,000 places in its last years in government.

Finally, to have diversity and choice, parents need clear information. The key Progress 8 metric is so much better than what came before, the five-plus C-plus at GCSE measure or contextual value added. Combined with clear Ofsted judgments, this has enabled parents to understand quickly and easily what is going on in different schools.

[Dave Robertson (Lichfield) (Lab)]

I could make some points about Progress 8, but that is not why I am intervening.

Just yesterday, my local news website reported that Dr Brown, the award-winning founding headteacher of the award-winning Maple Hayes Hall school for dyslexia in Lichfield, used his 90th birthday message to say that the obsessive focus on synthetic phonics is holding back pupils. That is not me saying that; it comes from the award-winning headteacher of an award-winning school.

[Damian Hinds]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for letting the House know that the new Labour party still rejects synthetic phonics, which has the most remarkable depth of evidence behind it, in favour of its fashionable, progressive policies. This is why I say that all the progress achieved by our reforms is at imminent risk. Labour has already stopped new free schools, and now there will be far fewer academy conversions. Even existing academies are about to see their freedoms eroded.

What is the practical benefit of all these erosions? Take the qualified teacher status requirement. Schools are not going around en masse recruiting teachers without qualifications, but there can be times when it is right for a school to employ a teacher from the independent sector or another country. What will this requirement achieve?

Or take the statutory pay and conditions framework. I know of no evidence that academy groups are undercutting pay and conditions—if any Labour Member does, they should please intervene. Some academy groups pay more, and what does that mean? It means they are investing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dave Robertson (Lichfield) (Lab)]

I am still quite a new Member, but over the last months, we have been privileged to see the best of the House; its support for the fight in Ukraine and the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill spring to mind. Even in this afternoon’s debate, the speeches from the hon. Member for Dorking and Horley (Chris Coghlan) and the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Sir Julian Smith) were excellent contributions that show the House in an exceptional light. Unfortunately, this evening, I may yet see the disappointing spectacle of Members choosing to vote against measures to protect children, solely so that they can make a political statement. That is a significant concern. I reconfirm to any Members on the Opposition Benches who are thinking of supporting the amendment that if they do, they are voting to block the Bill; they are declining to give it a Second Reading. In blocking the Bill, they are blocking the single child identifier and the register of children not in school, which are steps that the Government are taking to protect vulnerable children.

We have heard from some Members that they want to call for an inquiry in certain places. They can still do that if the Bill passes Second Reading, as I hope it will. There is nothing in the Bill to stop such inquiries, or to prevent people from continuing to campaign for them. By voting against the Bill—to support the amendment is to vote against the Bill—they are voting against measures to protect children to make a political point. That is not acting in the great traditions of this place.

I could talk for over an hour on this matter, but I have a minute left, so I will touch on school uniform. Around three years ago, alongside business, schools and the community, I set up Lichfield Back to School Bank, a uniform recycling scheme. Last year, we supported more than 120 families, and around 4% of the city’s school pupils picked up a uniform from us. We prevented six tonnes of carbon emissions through that alone. That, however, is not the real reason why I am so proud of that. Many parents I speak to talk about the weight lifted off their shoulders when they are able to access a school uniform, because the costs are so high and such a concern. A parent came over at the end of the event with a couple of bags of things to put on their kids, which helped them out with costs. They were reduced to tears. They had been feeling pressure; they had been looking ahead to the cost and did not know how they would meet it. Being able to get that stuff at no cost released that pressure valve.

I hope that story stays with me for a very long time. Those are the stories we need to focus on—stories of the real-world impact in our constituencies.