Education Recovery

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

The backdrop to this estimates day debate is, understandably, one of a Government Department that has seen its workload, resource and structural capacity dominated by the pandemic, with all the profound implications of that for children, schools and families across the country. It is an inescapable truth that despite the immense efforts of teachers, nursery staff, social workers and so many others, not forgetting parents and children themselves, the past 16 months have been a torrid time, including for many people in my constituency. But now we need to turn the page and push on with our recovery.

To that end, in supporting today’s estimates, I acknowledge the not insignificant additional funding to date of £3 billion for education recovery. With new tutoring programmes, teacher training and development, including £184 million for national professional qualification summer schools, enrichment activities, catch-up and recovery premiums, there is real cause for optimism that we can now turn the tide on lost learning. Although I know that Ministers will want to go further, including looking at time spent at school, this package leaves plenty to be getting on with.

I particularly welcome the £153 million of new funding to provide for evidence-based professional development programmes for early years practitioners, including in the absolutely vital area of speech and language development. With research from the Education Endowment Foundation showing that measures taken to combat covid-19 have deprived the youngest children of social contact and experiences essential for increasing their vocabulary, this is all the more important.

Another key aspect of education recovery is physical education. You will be pleased to hear, Mr Deputy Speaker, that last Monday, 21 June, the taskforce I chair on the future of physical education, with the support of the Association for Physical Education and, among others, the England rugby union world cup winner Jason Robinson OBE, published its report on the future of physical education, which sets out the benefits of high-quality, well-taught PE and how there has never been a clearer or more compelling case for it. As the springboard to a life of physical activity and sport, regular PE not only improves children’s physical, mental and emotional health but has a positive impact on their ability to concentrate, socialise and perform better academically. What is not to like?

That is why the Government’s continued commitment to the £320 million per year PE and sport premium recently confirmed for the next academic year is so vital. It provides the foundation for ensuring that there is great PE and a great PE teacher working in every primary school in England. To embed its legacy, I urge my right hon. Friend the Minister to do all he can to secure a multi-year settlement for the premium at the next comprehensive spending review, and wish him good luck with that. However, the recommendations of our report provide the blueprint for going further to really ensure that PE is at the heart of school life, that it is accessible to all, and, crucially, that it can play a significant role in our children’s recovery from the pandemic. I hope that he has read, or will read, the report, which is mercifully short, and will perhaps meet me and some of the taskforce members to discuss the recommendations in more detail.

I also welcome the consultation and call for evidence launched today by the Department for Education on behaviour management strategies, in-school units and managed moves. This is in order to inform new Government guidance on behaviour, discipline, suspensions and permanent exclusions due to be published later this year, and it represents an active response to recommendations made in my own review of school exclusions of May 2019.

Finally, as we have heard, last week saw 375,000 pupils off school—I can vouch for two of those—with only 15,000 of them with a confirmed case of covid-19. I am aware also of schools now closing early to comply with current isolation rules. That unfortunately means more lost weeks of education on top of the 19 already gone. Clearly the situation is not sustainable. Sending so-called bubbles home is, I am afraid, causing disproportionate disruption to too many children’s education, and that is not to mention the social, emotional, physical and mental health consequences, so I am pleased that the Health Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Minister for School Standards have indicated their desire and determination to develop the plans needed for schools—and, I hope, for colleges, universities and nurseries as well—to be able to return for the new academic year in September as normal. By then, teachers and staff will be double-vaccinated, and, subject to the science, I think there is a strong case for secondary pupils to be afforded the same protection, as is happening in France, Spain, Austria, Israel and elsewhere. In my view, we cannot afford, and our children cannot afford, another disjointed, disrupted, difficult year of education. Thanks to the near victory of the vaccine, we now have the chance to forge a better future for our children—let us make sure we take it.

A Brighter Future for the Next Generation

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Thursday 13th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to open this debate on behalf of Her Majesty’s Opposition, because nothing can be more important than our obligation to create a bright future for the next generation. On the Opposition Benches—indeed, I am sure, across the House—we believe that every child, whatever their background, must be able to make the most of their childhood and reach their full potential. As politicians, we have a solemn responsibility to ensure that the next generation enjoys greater opportunities than we have had, and that Britain is the best country in the world to grow up in.

Regrettably, this Queen’s Speech is a missed opportunity. It is a missed opportunity that comes hard on the heels of a decade of Conservative failures that have betrayed our young people: 1,000 children’s centres closed since 2010 by Conservative Governments; schools funding 9% lower in real terms in 2019-20 than in 2009-10; Labour’s proud track record in lifting a million children out of poverty wholly wiped out by Conservative austerity policies, with more than 5 million children expected to be in poverty by 2024; FE funding cut almost in half, and apprenticeship starts among under-25-year-olds down by 40% since 2016. The problems were there even before the pandemic.

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Of course we all want to do our best for the most vulnerable children in our society, but will the hon. Lady acknowledge that, rather than the picture she has just painted of the past 10 years, the improvement in the delivery of children’s social care services, for example, with more good and outstanding local authorities delivering children’s social care and the number of inadequate services dropping considerably, is a testament not only to the people on the frontline working hard for those children, but to the Government policies put in place to ensure that that could happen?

[Kate Green]

I pay tribute to everyone working in local authorities and in the children’s social care sector for the hard work that has led to improvement in children’s services—vital services for the most vulnerable children in our country—but, frankly, the Government could have made it a great deal more straightforward for local authorities if they had not gone round trashing local authority funding. Our local councils have seen cuts of around 40% in their funding over the last 10 years, and that has put huge pressure on social care professionals, especially children’s social care professionals. It is very much to the credit of social care workers that we have seen improvements around the country, but I hope that the Government will use the children’s social care review that the Secretary of State referenced, which we are eager to engage with, to ensure that we put adequate, sustainable funding in place for these most vulnerable children.

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[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

It is fair to say that the pandemic has made many of us re-evaluate our real priorities in our own lives at home, in our communities and across the country. What do we truly value? How can we nurture all that is needed for future generations to thrive and not falter? It could well be a crowded field, but I am in no doubt that providing every child with the best possible start in life should sit at the very top of that priority list.

That is why I was delighted to be involved in the seminal early years healthy development review carried out by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), to whom I pay tribute, and I understand that it is her birthday today. The review was published in March this year and, pleasingly, forms a key part of the Government’s legislative and policy programme set out in Her Majesty’s Gracious Speech.

I very much support many of the key action areas that came out of the review through a lot of work, deliberation and evidence gathering, in particular the start for life offer, which mirrors in some ways the local offer that we introduced in relation to special educational needs and disability when I was children’s Minister; the formulation and growth of family hubs—again, I welcome the Government’s commitment and investment to date, but there is plenty more that we can do to realise the huge potential of the family hubs model; the development of a more modern and skilled workforce to meet the changing needs of children and families, ensuring that it is relentlessly child-focused, so that we can build the proper support around children and their families that we know works; and, crucially, improving accountability and data and understanding the impact of the interventions and the interactions that we have with families, particularly in those very early years, when we know we can make the biggest difference.

If we do not get it right in the critical early weeks, months and years, we are simply storing up deep-rooted difficulties for decades to come. That is why I have also, alongside the always sunny hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), been co-chairing the Early Years Commission, which is looking at the nought to five age group. We will soon publish a cross-party manifesto, in recognition of the fact that we need to come together to seek to address the long-term challenges associated with the early years and to set out a long-term plan that has the capacity to endure beyond the changing faces of Government.

Many of those findings and conclusions—with some relief, on my part—chime with and complement the early years healthy development review, while at the same time stretching some of the core offer to children up to the age of five. The review is unequivocal in its recommendations that, when it comes to the levelling-up agenda, which we have heard so much about, particularly for those children living in households with high levels of deprivation, the education, health and development of young people must be society’s top priority, as must community and professional support for parents to help them make their homes a nurturing, safe environment where babies and toddlers can take their first steps towards a healthy, happy and productive life. By putting children at the centre of their community and public services and by prudently and effectively investing in early years education, we can together start to transform the life chances of many more children in our country, wherever they happen to live.

I very much support the education recovery plan being led by the commissioner, Sir Kevan Collins, who I know is working hard to find the right formula to help bridge the gaps and build a system that gives better and fairer opportunities for children as we come out of the pandemic. That is against an important backdrop of £1.7 billion of support through the education recovery plan, the catch-up package, the tutoring programme and the recovery premium, as well as the £400 million to improve access to remote learning, given the digital divide that we saw play out in the last year, including in Eddisbury. The increase in support for schools needs to be replicated in the early years.

I want to touch quickly on two other aspects of school life on which we need to continue to do more and have better focus. The first is school exclusions. I led an independent review of school exclusion two years ago, and there has been some progress—for instance, the £10 million on behaviour hubs—but there is still much to do, including a practice improvement fund, ensuring that schools are responsible for children they exclude and moving alternative provision into the mainstream as a centre of excellence. I hope to meet Ministers soon to discuss the progress of all my recommendations, so that we can make further, important progress.

Since finding myself on the Back Benches, I have also found time to chair a taskforce on the future of physical education, with support from the Association for Physical Education and others, including Jason Robinson, the England rugby union star and world cup winner who saw PE as the thing that changed his life from a road of failure to one of success.



One consequence of the pandemic has been a deeply concerning drop-off in physical exercise and activity among children of all ages. Now that schools are back and sports and activities are reopening there are signs of improvement, but I am afraid that evidence is also emerging that some schools are reducing physical education time in order to focus on catching up in other subject areas. So we need to look specifically at physical education, and one key life skill in that is swimming—we saw 150,000 children leaving primary school without being able to swim 25 metres. That situation clearly needs to be addressed urgently, both as part of the welcome catch-up programme and more systematically through physical education by ensuring that all of its irrefutable and lifelong impact on physical, social, emotional and cognitive development is at the very heart of school life. In doing that we can take another step forward in our shared ambition of giving every child the best possible start in life.

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I absolutely assure my right hon. Friend that the Schools Minister would love to do that with his teachers, and is enthusiastically penning in the date. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) is right that there have been some inconsistencies. That is why we set up the national helpline to ensure there is consistency of advice, and are working with schools groups and schools trusts to support them to ensure there is a common approach. We know that getting children into schools, where they have the benefit of education and learning, will give them the best opportunities, and that is why it continues to remain our focus.

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Last month, during National Adoption Week, it was announced that more than 600 children are still waiting to be placed with their forever families. I know that my right hon. Friend has since launched a national recruitment campaign, but could he say what progress is being made, despite the challenges of covid, and what plans he has to ensure that those children are placed with their forever families as quickly as possible?

[Gavin Williamson]

My hon. Friend and I share a common passion about the importance of adoption. We want to drive up the rate of adoption right across the country. There have been delays in Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, which have meant that a number of adoptions have been held up. I am meeting my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Justice to see what more we can do to speed up that process and give children the opportunity to be with a family forever. There is nothing more generous that people can do than open up not just their homes but their hearts to ensure that those young people have the opportunities that we all want them to have.

Awarding of Qualifications: Role of Ministers

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

I refer hon. Members to my entries in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as well as a declared interest in having a son who was another one of the many pupils that made up the 5.2 million GCSE exam entries this summer. He is happy with his results, and as both a parent and a former Children’s Minister, I believe the decision that was made to revert to centre-assessed grades was the right one. Once covid-19 hit and the repercussions became ever starker, ultimately leading to school and college closures, the class of 2020 was always going to need to be treated as an exceptional year. When it became apparent that the process put in place by Ofqual had any evidence or suggestion of unfairness, that was a necessary step to take. It is one that was also taken, as we have heard, in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

For what it is worth, the feedback from my local heads in Eddisbury at the Winsford Academy, Bishop Heber High School and Tarporley High was that the centre-assessed grades, while in need of moderation, were almost moderated out of the final calculated grades altogether—leading, they believe, to some of the anomalies that we saw played out. For A-level students in particular, this caused real and well-founded worry about potentially lost university places and, in some cases, the actual loss or deferred acceptance of their chosen course. So it is important that we look to understand what needs to be done to future-proof the integrity, reliability and fairness of the awarding of exam results for 2021 students and beyond. I have every faith that, in that endeavour, with the assistance of the Chair of the Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) forensically following all legitimate lines of inquiry, the Government will work hard to meet that particular test, although this might also be an opportune moment to review the performance of all awarding bodies, both academic and vocational, to establish whether they are, individually or collectively, what is required to meet the expectations that lie ahead.

The House also needs to consider constructively how best to equip our head teachers, teachers, school support staff, parents and children for the academic year ahead. Take physical education. Whether in relation to behaviour management, academic attainment, mental health, obesity, social skills, self-confidence or, sometimes, reacting positively to failure, physical education can ensure a better core for a better life. That is why, with the support of the Association for Physical Education, I am chairing a taskforce that brings together a range of experts, practitioners, frontline staff and others to look under the bonnet of the PE taught in our schools, with an ambition to demonstrate how to put high-quality PE at the very heart of our recovery and beyond—and boy, it has never been more needed. To that end, it would be helpful if the Minister could reiterate that PE is going to carry on as normal, not least because of the huge benefits that it brings.

Let us make sure that the unique circumstances and challenges of this summer lead to a heightened ability to respond to all conceivable exam-related issues effectively and with fairness, but let us not forget that there are many other aspects of school life to help to shape children’s futures.

Education Settings: Autumn Opening

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

We have had a broad range of measures to assist all children, including children who have special needs. Many children in the sector have benefited from free laptops, and key elements of a covid catch-up will be about helping those children to catch up on what they have lost. I will happily write to the hon. Lady with further details, as she appears to be signalling to me to do.

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Fully reopening schools in September is absolutely the right thing to do. For some children, the experience of lockdown will have been characterised by social isolation, lack of routine and, in some cases, trauma. What is my right hon. Friend doing, through the guidance published today and other measures, to help schools with an increase in poor behaviour from September? May I encourage him to bring forward recommendations in the Timpson review of school exclusion so we do not see children removed from school when they have only just returned?

[Gavin Williamson]

That review did have a very thoughtful author, and we will certainly move forward on that. Our guidance does recognise some of the real challenges that many children will face as they come back into school as they will not have had the same structures of behaviour and discipline built around them. It is vital that we re-establish proper behaviour and discipline practices for all children, and I know schools are working closely on how they build that around those children, but we must understand that where there are good behaviour and discipline policies, there are vastly reduced numbers of those children excluded from schools. We will work with schools to deliver that. I pay tribute to Tom Bennett and the behaviour hubs for the work they do to establish strong behaviour practices in some of the most challenging schools.

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I feel the answer can only be yes.

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

On the same theme, recent data from Sport England suggests that one in three children have been less physically active during lockdown, with one in 10 doing no physical exercise at all. Will my right hon. Friend take the opportunity today, during National School Sport Week, to confirm that the instrumental PE and sport premium for primary schools, which is worth £320 million a year and was introduced by the coalition Government in 2013, will have its funding guaranteed for the next academic year, 2020-21?

Educational Settings

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

In this statement, we are dealing with making sure that we have the provision we need for those key workers in order to sustain our NHS, but I very much accept that many wider issues are raised as a result of this. That is why we have had some reluctance to be in a position of closing schools rapidly, but when the evidence and the science point out the fact that we need to make changes, it is right that we do so.

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

The measures that my right hon. Friend has announced are profound, but it would appear that, in the circumstances, they are now a necessary step to take. Does the definition of “vulnerable children” include children in need, of whom there are about 400,000, and children on a child protection plan, of whom there are about 50,000? If it does, that will significantly increase the number of children whom we hope will still be able to go to school.

[Gavin Williamson]

This is for all those children with a social worker, so those are the categories that will be covered.

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

As I said in answer to the question from the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), the rate of exclusions today is lower than under the last Labour Government in 2006-07. We take the issues referred to in the Timpson report, such as off-rolling, very seriously. Off-rolling is unacceptable in any form, which is why we continue to work with Ofsted to define and tackle it. Ofsted already looks at the records of children taken off roll. Its new inspection framework, which came into force this September, has a strength and focus on off-rolling that we support.

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

When they are used effectively, fixed-period exclusions can help to address the underlying causes of poor behaviour, but when they are not, they are not able to. For some children, that means up to 45 days in an academic year when they are on a succession of repeated exclusions, which is far too long to be out of school. Will my right hon. Friend agree to look at the recommendation in my review—along with the other 29—on how we can reduce that limit of 45 days at the same time as improving practice in this important area?

[Nick Gibb]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his review of school exclusions. Both he and I support our headteachers in the use of exclusion, where appropriate, to ensure that they have good discipline in their schools. My hon. Friend is correct that it is possible for children to be excluded from school for 45 days in an academic year, though it is actually rare for children to reach that limit. In 2017-18, just 94 pupils were excluded from schools in England for 45 days in a single year. The Government are considering these arrangements and we will make a further announcement about our plans in due course.

School Exclusions

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to have you in the Chair, Mr Bone, and I appreciate your calling me in this debate.

In March 2018, while having an unexpected and, as it turned out, well-timed break from Parliament, I was asked by the then Secretary of State for Education to undertake an independent review of school exclusion, to explore how headteachers use exclusion in practice and why some groups of pupils are more likely to be excluded than others. The review was published on 7 May 2019, a little over nine months ago. I will not repeat everything it contains—it is available in the House Library for all to see—but I will take the opportunity left in today’s debate to consider what progress has been made since its publication.

It is worth reminding ourselves that, despite the increase in recent years, permanent exclusion remains a relatively rare event. Just 0.1% of the 8 million children in schools in England were permanently excluded in 2016-17; that still means that an average of 40 children every day are permanently excluded, with an average of a further 2,000 pupils each day excluded for a fixed period. As we have heard, permanently excluding a child should always be a last resort, when nothing else will do. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) that it is right that headteachers maintain an unfettered discretion to remove children, as long as exclusion from school does not mean exclusion from education.

My review reinforced the need for headteachers to have exclusion available as an important tool that forms part of an effective approach to behaviour management. However, it also found that the variation in how exclusion is used goes beyond the influence of local context and that more can be done to ensure that exclusion is always used consistently, fairly and legally. That is important because outcomes for excluded children are often poor—in some circumstances, as we have heard, they can be catastrophic.

Exclusion should, and often does, help break a negative cycle of behaviour, better protect all children involved and lead to an enhanced prospect of educational and personal success and fulfilment. It should not be a trigger or contributor to a worsening trajectory of academic attainment, to the risk of becoming a victim or perpetrator of crime or to prospects of employment rather than prison.

We know from the analysis in my review that there are characteristics closely associated with exclusion: for example, children with special educational needs and those receiving support from social care. Indeed, the analysis showed that 78% of permanent exclusions were issued to pupils who either had SEN, were classified as “in need” or were eligible for free school meals. A large part of the solution must be to better identify, at an earlier stage, those children at risk of entering a revolving door of exclusions, so we can reduce avoidable and unnecessary use of such a sanction. I know that is what headteachers want, too.

That is why I recommended, and the Government endorsed, a practice improvement fund of sufficient value, longevity and reach to support local authorities and mainstream, special and alternative provision schools to work together to establish systems that identify children in need of support and deliver good, effective interventions for them. Such a system would better utilise the expertise and professionalism within alternative provision.

The Conservative party manifesto contained a welcome commitment to an alternative provision reform programme. With that in mind, I ask the Minister to think not just about the capital investment required to improve pupil referral units, which hon. Members have referred to, but about the workforce development required to ensure that the best and brightest are working in alternative provision. That expertise and specialism needs to be integrated into mainstream schools. The charity The Difference, referred to earlier, is undertaking such work; Kiran Gill and her team are already starting to have a strong impact.

I do not have time to go into detail on a number of issues, but I want to flag them with the Minister. They include fixed-term exclusions, the commitment to reduce the upper 45-day limit—the equivalent of a whole term—for which a child can be out of school and the pernicious practice off-rolling, which is illegal and on which Ofsted has borne down. It will be interesting to hear what further work will be done to make sure that it forms no part of our school system. There are also issues around managed moves—voluntary agreements between schools—that mean that a lot of children move around our school system, sometimes undetected; statutory guidance was recommended by my report.

I will briefly touch on the responsibility and accountability of schools. The oral statement made by the previous Secretary of State made it clear that the Government were going to fulfil that recommendation. Lord Nash, the then Lords Minister, was clear that he supported it, although more recently I noticed that Lord Agnew was talking about involving multi-academy trusts in providing alternative provision. It would be good to understand the current thinking on how we make schools better accountable for pupils who are excluded.

Part-academisation causes a problem for some of the recommendations made in my report when it comes to trying to define the role of local authorities. In hindsight, it would have been better, either by evolution or revolution, for us to have completed the academisation of the school system or decided that local authorities had a clear role within it. I tried to define that by saying that local authorities should be responsible for vulnerable children, such as children in care or children with special educational needs. That system could hold true in the future and help ensure that there is co-ordinated action around children at risk of exclusion.

I ask the Minister: when will work on the accountability of excluded children be stepped up and shared outside the Department for Education? When is the consultation on reducing the upper limit of fixed-term exclusions going to happen? How are the Government going to continue to tackle and bear down on off-rolling? How will the Minister help truly integrate alternative provision into the mainstream, so it acts as much as a preventer of exclusions as a recipient?

I know that the Minister is very committed to the programme. To that end, and now that I have been given a more lengthy opportunity to make myself useful on the Back Benches, I tentatively suggest to him that one way to achieve that, for our mutual benefit, would be to re-engage my services with the clear and specific purpose of helping to implement the review’s recommendations by way of a small delivery body. As I said, I know he is keen to make significant progress on this aspect of school life. It goes to the very heart of the Prime Minister’s welcome mission to spread opportunity across our country, with education a vital ingredient for achieving that.

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[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) on securing the debate. In her excellent opening speech, she rightly said that we all agree on one thing—that every child in this country should have the benefit of a world-class education that prepares them for adult life and helps them to fulfil their potential, including children who have been excluded at some point during their school career.

The Government are committed to ensuring that all teachers are equipped to tackle the low-level disruption and the serious behavioural issues that compromise the safety and wellbeing of pupils and school staff. Ensuring that schools are safe and disciplined environments benefits all students. In 2018, the Department for Education’s school snapshot survey of teacher opinion found that 76% felt that behaviour was good or very good in their school. According to recent data from Ofsted, behaviour is good or outstanding in 85% of primary and 68% of secondary schools. Although behaviour in schools is broadly good, those figures show that there is still more to do to tackle the casual disruption that deprives children of up to 38 school days a year, according to Ofsted’s estimates, as well as the challenging behaviour that can result in permanent exclusion. Behaviour cultures are set from the top, and the Government are determined to support headteachers to build and maintain a culture of good behaviour in their schools. For example, we are investing £10 million in behaviour hubs, so that schools with a track record of effectively managing pupils’ behaviour can share that best practice with other schools. That programme will launch in September 2020 under the supervision of a team of expert advisors on behaviour management led by Tom Bennett.

Alongside that, we are reforming teacher training as part of the early career framework, and we have bolstered the behaviour management element in the core content for initial teacher training, so that all new teachers will be taught how to manage behaviour effectively on entry to the profession.

[Edward Timpson]

On teaching training, one of my recommendations was about trauma and attachment training, and really getting under the skin of why some children are struggling to meet the behaviour standards that we expect of all pupils within our schools. Will the Minister recommit to that recommendation, and explain how he intends to move it forward?

[Nick Gibb]

I will come to headteachers having to take into account the circumstances of pupils before they make a decision about exclusions, and to ensure that support is available for children who have special educational needs. I point out to Opposition Members that for the coming financial year we have increased spending on high needs education by 12%—an extra £780 million—which demonstrates our commitment to ensuring that special needs education is properly funded.

Visiting outstanding schools has shown me that a strong behaviour culture can help children who might otherwise struggle to engage in their education to succeed. Michaela Community School, a free school in Wembley to which my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) referred, is unapologetically strict in its standards of behaviour. The whole institution emits a sense of positivity and purpose quite unlike any other school that I have visited. In an area of significant deprivation, children are brimming with pride at the progress they are making.

At Reach Academy Feltham, behaviour is tracked on a transparent points-based system called “Payslip”, which gives rewards and privileges for good behaviour and deducts points for disruption. The school has a notably low number of fixed-term exclusions, and has not excluded a pupil permanently in the last two years.

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[Nick Gibb]

I will not, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me. Although 85% of state-funded alternative provision across the country is rated good or outstanding —an increase, by the way, from 73% in 2013—it remains the case that in some areas, permanently excluded pupils are not able to secure good-quality AP quickly, increasing the risk of them becoming caught up in knife crime. The report on knife crime produced by the all-party parliamentary group chaired by the hon. Member for Croydon Central emphasised the importance of full-time education for all children, including those vulnerable to exclusion. The hon. Lady referred to the fall in the number of pupil referral units between 2014 and 2017. The facts are that in 2014, there were 371 PRUs and alternative provision academies; in 2017, there were 351; and as of June 2019, there were 354. Eight alternative provision academies are in the pipeline to open before 2023.

Our focus must be on improving the availability of good-quality AP, so that when a child is excluded from school, that does not mean exclusion from good-quality education. Those children must have timely access to the support and education they need to help reduce risk, promote resilience, and enable them to re-engage with education and make good progress. We know that is possible, because there is excellent and innovative practice out there.

One great example is the parent and carer curriculum taught at the Pears Family School in Islington, which is an AP free school that opened its doors in 2014 and was found to be outstanding three years later. What is unusual about that school is that parents attend with their children several times a week, and in those sessions parents help pupils to make progress with their reading and are taught how best to support their children in their education. As a result, a high proportion of pupils are successfully re-integrated into mainstream school after a short placement. That model is currently being trialled by the Pears Family School and the Anna Freud Centre in three other AP settings across England. That is just one of the nine projects supported by our £4 million AP innovation fund, which we established to test the effectiveness of innovative approaches to improving alternative provision, an approach that I know my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury supports.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Croydon Central and to other hon. Members for having raised their concerns about this issue. I assure the hon. Lady and other Members that we take this issue very seriously and are addressing it, including by improving school behaviour and providing the right support to those at risk of exclusion.

[Edward Timpson]

I realise that we are about to finish, but I reiterate my offer to my right hon. Friend the Minister. He may need some time to consider the generosity of it, but in the meantime, would he agree to meet me to discuss the implementation of my review, and to write to me in advance of that meeting to answer the questions that I put?

[Nick Gibb]

I would be happy to meet my hon. Friend. He has raised the issue of accountability measures: expectations for pupils in AP have not been high enough in the past, and as part of our drive to improve quality across the AP sector, we will consider how we can better assess performance and strengthen accountability for pupils in AP. We will have more to say on that in due course.

Learning outside the Classroom

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Wednesday 26th April 2017 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families (Edward Timpson)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) on securing this debate. I very much enjoyed his passionate contribution. I know how long he has championed learning outside the classroom, all the way back to his chairmanship of the Children, Schools and Families Committee. When I was still a fledgling Member of Parliament, he showed me the ropes in the ways of Parliament and I am indebted to him for giving me an insight into how to make things happen in this place. Obviously I now have to do it through a different route as a Government Minister. Nevertheless, he gave me a sense that this place can make a difference, on this issue and on many others.

The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that, because of the timing of this debate—it is the penultimate Westminster Hall debate of this Parliament—I am unable to set out anything more than the current Government policy on learning outside the classroom or to commit to any further funding or policy. Be that as it may, it is clear that learning outside the classroom has a key role to play in children’s education. His most successful route to championing it during the next six weeks may be to influence his party’s manifesto and to see whether his proposal can be taken forward. We are all beavering away trying to ensure we get our own ideas into the literature of our respective parties.

When outside activities are structured and organised effectively, they can provide young people with stimulating experiences that build on the knowledge and understanding they gain through the formal lessons with which most of us are familiar. It is up to individual schools and teachers to use their professional judgment to decide how learning outside the classroom meets the needs of their pupils, and to plan lessons and use their budgets accordingly. There are plenty of excellent examples of schools doing just that, which I will say a little more about later.

The national curriculum includes specific requirements for schools in relation to learning outside the classroom in certain subjects. For instance, the national curriculum programme of study for PE includes specific requirements for outdoor and adventurous activities through key stages 2 and 4. Geography is another such area, with outdoor learning through simple fieldwork and observation of key human and physical features in the surrounding environment. There are opportunities through the national curriculum for children to get outside and envelop themselves in what the environment has to offer. Under the new geography GCSEs and A-levels being taught in schools, GCSE pupils need to carry out at least two pieces of fieldwork outside the classroom—that requirement was not there before—and fieldwork is required in both A-level and AS-level content for geography.

Traditionally, science has been seen as one of the ways into learning outside the classroom. The national curriculum provides guidance that schools should use their local environment throughout the year—we are a country that has four seasons—to explore and answer questions about plants growing in their habitat, as well as to provide opportunities to support the aspect of working scientifically in the science curriculum. The guidance specifies the understanding of the nature processes and methods of science for each year group that should be embedded with the content of biology, chemistry and physics. We all remember going outside with a quadrilateral, triangle or square to try to come up with some leaf litter that was interesting. Those types of memories when people recall what they learned as a child at school are very powerful.

[Jonathan Lord]

Does the Minister agree that, in order to learn outside the classroom, pupils do not need to go miles and miles away? West Byfleet Junior School in my constituency has a tiny patch of woodland in the corner of its site. It has turned it into the Willows forest school—children follow a forest school curriculum during the course of a year. It is like going into another world. The school itself is only 50 or 100 yards away, but it is a magical place where younger children can explore nature, animals, bugs and science.

[Edward Timpson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is so much opportunity out there for children if they are given the permission to experience it. Someone who lives in the countryside and is surrounded by fields of cows might learn where milk comes from, but there are also city farms—there is one just down the road in Vauxhall—as well as forest schools. When I was training for the marathon in Delamere forest near where I live, I passed a forest school for early years—two to five-year-olds—run by the Forestry Commission. There are lots of ways into the subject, but we need to give children the chance, rather than making them feel that they have to stick with the classroom for all of their learning experience.

As the hon. Member for Huddersfield said, seeing original paintings, sculptures and historical artefacts in art galleries and museums is a very different experience from seeing printed images. Attending a live concert can enhance pupils’ understanding and enjoyment of music. Seeing a live performance of a Shakespeare play or—dare I say?—a recital of a John Clare poem, which the hon. Gentleman is clearly taken with, can provide pupils with different insights from studying a play or a poem on paper. We have recently updated the subject content for GCSE drama and A-level theatre studies to try to reflect that, and to ensure that students study those subjects with an entitlement to experience live theatre. I am not sure whether the House of Commons would qualify in that regard, but it is an important step forward.

A key element the hon. Gentleman raised was how disadvantaged children can get that equal opportunity of experience outside the classroom. I think back to one of the first children my family fostered. He was four or five years old and we took him on a holiday to north Wales. As we came over the brow of a hill and he saw the Irish sea for the first time, he looked at it and said, “Is that a big puddle?” He had never seen the sea before and did not know what it was. That is the challenge. Yes, we have free museums and we make sure that teachers feel equipped and confident to use learning outside as an important life-skill approach to enhancing learning, but the challenge is to ensure that no child gets left behind when we provide that opportunity.

That is why we support a museums and schools programme to deliver high-quality opportunities for all school pupils to visit museums that are linked to the national curriculum and support classroom learning. Last year, 72,870 pupils from 1,215 schools took part in that programme, including at the Barnsley Museum, the Great Yarmouth museum, SS Great Britain and many others. The £6 million for the programme since 2012 will be supplemented by a further £1.2 million over the next financial year. We are expanding the National Citizen Service for 16 and 17-year-olds.

[Mr Sheerman]

I hope the Minister is going to mention the critical point that I was trying to put over about having someone in the school who is trained. He and I have put up for too long with a variety of jobs—even careers—that were never done well. It was Buggins’s turn simply because someone had a light timetable and could fill in and do it. We need trained people who know about the potential of out-of-school learning to lead it with passion.

[Edward Timpson]

I agree that it is crucial to embed that into the school, and that there should be strong leadership, not just from the headteacher but from governors, who are in a more powerful position than they have ever been to influence what makes a school outstanding.

The John Jamieson School and Technology College in Leeds, just up the road from Huddersfield, is for children aged three to 19 with a range of complex learning difficulties. Every child in that school is given access to a wide range of school activities, and provision is highly differentiated so that no child is excluded. Within that, there will be children who are on free school meals or who have more challenging backgrounds. It is those children whom we need to capture. They need to have that experience and widen their horizons so that I am not in the position I was in when I visited a school in the north side of Manchester a few years ago. When I asked one child whether he went into the town centre much, he said he had never been. He was 10 years old and the town centre is less than a mile down the road. That is still the reality and, although we are making progress, there is clearly still some work to do.

Question put and agreed to.