Education Act 1996 (Travelling Families)

Elizabeth Truss Excerpts

Tuesday 18th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Elizabeth Truss)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) on securing this debate on an issue of great importance that means so much to travelling families, especially showmen and circus communities, who travel for work for large parts of the year. My hon. Friend represents his constituents with aplomb, and he has done it yet again. I also place on record my thanks to the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr Donohoe) and my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones), and representatives of the Showmen’s Guild of Great Britain for their helpful contributions to the meeting that I hosted on 15 April.

The Government’s vision is one of a highly educated society in which opportunity is more equal for children and young people, no matter what their background or family circumstances. The Department’s overall objective is to ensure that everyone has a fair opportunity to fulfil their educational potential. We are making changes to the national curriculum and reforming our examination system to restore public confidence. These reforms will benefit all children attending school regularly.

We are seeking to improve school attendance. There are clear and tangible benefits for pupils who are registered at school and attend regularly. Only 37% of those who miss between 10% and 20% of school sessions manage to achieve five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C, which compares with 73% for pupils who miss less than 5% of school sessions. Our country has one of the largest attainment gaps between the highest and lowest performing students, and I believe that big gap in skills is another thing holding our country back.

My hon. Friend made an excellent case about the good practice in his constituency. I am pleased to hear that Kingsholm primary school has just been rated as outstanding by Ofsted, which we of course want many more schools to achieve. I recognise that there are differences in performance between different parts of the travelling community. Of those pupils recorded as absent due to travelling who come from a Roma, Irish Traveller or Gypsy background, only 8.2% achieve five GCSEs at grades A* to C, which I am sure we agree is not a good performance. The figure for other parts of the travelling community is 40%, which is not as good as the UK average of 58.8%, but it is significantly better than 8.2%.

My hon. Friend suggested that we should work together to produce more accurate results for the showman community, and in our meeting of 15 April we discussed coming up with more details, which I think would be useful. We do not believe that a child’s aspirations should be limited by their access to education, but I am sympathetic to the arguments he made for showmen and circus members today and on 15 April.

The recent consultation on whether to remove the defence for travelling parents engaged in a trade or business has been helpful in raising some of the issues affecting the various travelling communities. I agree that the issues are different for different travelling communities. I was encouraged that the consultation received nearly 2,000 responses. I would like to thank the individuals and organisations who took the time to respond. I think it is notable that, despite having smaller numbers, the showman community provided the overwhelming majority of responses—73%.

This is clearly a very complex issue. I agree with my hon. Friend that it would be wrong to rush to make any changes before considering the consequences. He made a good point that the legislation has been in law for quite some time. We certainly do not want to make any precipitous decisions on the matter. The reason I started talking about educational attainment, however, is that that is our goal, and we need to reach it one way or another.

[Mr Marcus Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for the due consideration she is giving the matter. I ask her to consider the children of showground people who might suffer from conditions such as autism and find it difficult to change environments regularly. Will she therefore consider the impact that moving from school to school from week to week might have on a child with such a condition?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. That is certainly something we should take into account when making our final decision on the matter.

The complexity of the issue is the reason why we consulted, but I think that we should focus not only on the legal sanction element in the current arrangements, but on how we can improve the system so that we can better meet the educational needs of mobile families and place no limit on travelling children’s ambitions or potential to succeed. Both my hon. Friends have suggested ways, including the use of technology, in which we might be better able to serve people with different lifestyles.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester confirmed what the responses to the consultation have been telling us—namely, that showmen try to avoid any interruption to their children’s education but that that has become more difficult in recent years, with many local authorities choosing not to run Traveller education services in the same way as they did previously. For some, that has meant the disappearance of peripatetic teachers who would visit fairgrounds. Local authorities should prioritise and run services in a way that is best suited to local needs.

My hon. Friend also mentioned the distance learning packs provided by schools. Many responses from schools and members of the showman community have indicated that they have good relationship with schools and that they are given access to distance learning packs. There are clearly new ways of communicating involving modern technology that could also be used. It is clear that when this works well it is to be encouraged, but this is not always the case and some people do not enjoy the benefits of such arrangements.

I have set out our vision and expectations for all children, and I maintain that, in raising attainment for all pupils, we will drive up attainment for travelling pupils as well. I will consider the responses to the consultation, together with the Minister for Schools, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester for raising this matter and for his contribution to the discussion. He has highlighted some important concerns. As a follow-up to today’s debate, I suggest that he has a discussion with officials about some of the more technical issues. I know that he has come up with various proposals, including giving exemption to members of the Showmen’s Guild. There would be issues with that, however, because not all showman proprietors are necessarily members of the guild. There would also be concerns about having exemptions for a particular group, and the loopholes that that could create.

We need to look not only at the current proposal for legislation on attendance but at how we can better support families who are travelling. We need to ask whether there are different ways of doing this and whether we could make better use of modern technology. It would be helpful to explore those questions with the officials from the Department who are considering this matter. As I have said, I am not keen to rush to a precipitate judgment. We all want to raise attainment and to ensure that schools are providing a good service to the communities that they serve.

I will also pass on to the Minister for Schools my hon. Friend’s desire to meet him and discuss the issue further. That would be a good thing, because we have been discussing attainment among the different communities, and that is my right hon. Friend’s responsibility. Comparing the attainment among Gypsies, Roma, Travellers and members of the showman community will be important in reaching the final resolution of this issue.

I thank my hon. Friend for raising this issue and for bringing the delegation to the Department for Education in April. It is important that we get this right, and it is a pleasure to be able to work with hon. Members who take such a keen interest in a piece of legislation that might seem detailed but which will have an impact on quite a number of people.

Question put and agreed to.