Support for Left-Behind Children

David Johnston Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker—this just got harder.

I pay tribute to the teachers of Wantage and Didcot, many of whom worked throughout the entire lockdown period to keep schools open for some children, and I welcome the additional average 5% that each of them will get through this additional funding.

We have a gender gap in education, with girls doing better than boys at every stage, and we have an ethnicity gap, with certain ethnic groups doing better than others, but no gap is bigger than that between poor children and non-poor children. At key stage 2 that gap is 21 per- centage points, and it widens to 28 percentage points at GCSE. During lockdown that gap has got even worse. We see that with online classes: 79% of children attending private school have had online classes, compared with only 41% of the poorest in our state schools.

Over the past few weeks we have heard a lot from the Opposition about laptops and internet access. I agree that is an issue, but there is no substitute for being taught in the classroom. I would like to hear a little less about laptops and internet access, and a little more about the stance that the unions have taken, as they have said both that people should not be going to school and, in the words of one leader, that teachers should not be teaching a full timetable or routinely marking work in this period. Do Opposition Members think that will make the gap better or worse? I am pretty clear that it makes it worse. I welcome the £1 billion catch-up fund and hope that we can get children into schools in September to make use of that as quickly as possible.

There has been a lot of talk about the dangers facing universities, but we must not forget the students. They have had a long-running teaching strike and low contact time—they have had even less time now—and they have been trapped in accommodation contracts that they could not get out of. Then, when they graduate, students doing some courses at some universities will find that they have worse employment outcomes than if they had simply got a job. We must keep them in mind. The Government are right to cover some of the costs of the international fees gap, but some of those universities that have the highest proportion of international students have the worst records of widening access to young people in this country, so something has to be looked at in the business model.

In closing, I have three quick points to make. First, for everything we fund in education we need to look at outcomes and destinations, and then we need to put more money into those things that provide good outcomes and less into those that do not. Secondly, we have not yet found a way of getting our best teachers to go to those areas that really lack good teachers. Thirdly, we have a big mental health challenge coming for young people, and we will have to prioritise that when the schools return.