Children’s Education Recovery and Childcare Costs

Emma Hardy Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

My hon. Friend raises an important point, not least because, throughout the pandemic, we saw vast quantities—billions of pounds—of Government waste, with personal protective equipment literally burnt because the Government had failed to deliver what was necessary. Money was lost to fraud and money was lost in waste. We take our responsibilities on public spending incredibly seriously.

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

Perhaps another pot of money for the Government to look at is how every pound spent in Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs on tax fraud delivers £16 back. If the Government were really serious about raising some extra money for important issues such as our children, perhaps they could look at tax fraud, which they seem to be quite ignorant of at the moment.

[Bridget Phillipson]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight that, as with all these things, it is a question of political priorities. A Labour Government would have prioritised our children’s recovery from the pandemic. They would have been at the heart of what we needed to see as we started to rebuild our country. That is what we would have delivered from government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Walker]

The answer is none, because the £5 billion for recovery is on top of the additional funding that we are putting into schools: the £4 billion coming in for this academic year and the £7 billion over the course of the spending review period. The £5 billion is a targeted intervention specifically for recovery. I will break it down in a little more detail. It includes £1.5 billion for tutoring in schools and colleges, with which we will provide 100 million hours of tuition for five to 19-year-olds by 2024. That is backed by extensive evidence that small group tutoring is one of the most effective tools to support learning and accelerate pupil progress.

[Emma Hardy]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Walker]

I will in a moment.

More than half a million courses have been started by pupils across England, and regionally, the north-west, Yorkshire and the Humber, the north-east and the midlands are leading the way with the highest proportions of participating schools. Now I give way to the hon. Lady.

[Emma Hardy]

I thank the Minister, who is always very generous. If he is looking for something that actually works and has an extremely strong evidence base, I hope he will note that, according to evidence from the Education Endowment Foundation, oracy has a greater impact on children’s progress than extending the school day, small group tutoring, or any of the other elements that he has mentioned in connection with the £5 billion. It was disappointing not to see it included in the schools White Paper, and I hope he will revisit the evidence, because if he wants to use something that works, here is something that is ready to go—“oven-ready”, one might say.

[Mr Walker]

We believe that oracy is very important as part of an overall strategy supporting literacy, language and development in schools. As the hon. Lady will know, our package includes specific interventions in early language development. However, I have engaged and will continue to engage with her in the oracy all-party parliamentary group, which she chairs.

We have listened to feedback on tutoring, and next year we will allocate all tutoring funding directly to schools, improving the programme’s simplicity and flexibility. Great teaching transforms children’s life chances, and we know that great teachers are not born but made. That is why we are investing more than £250 million of additional funds to help provide 500,000 teacher-training opportunities through initial teacher training, the early career framework, and our new suite of national professional qualifications. Supporting teachers, including headteachers, throughout their careers is fundamental to delivering the best outcomes for children.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Walker]

I will take the hon. Lady’s intervention in a moment, if I may finish this point first. As I was saying, this is making it easier for schools to identify and embed the most evidence-based, informed practices and interventions, which will have the greatest impact on disadvantaged pupil outcomes—

[Emma Hardy]

rose—

[Mr Walker]

The hon. Lady mentioned the important work of the Education Endowment Foundation, and she is right to do so, because the EEF’s endowment, all those years ago, has proved very valuable for the sector. It has built an evidence base on which everybody, across parties and across different parts of the educational community, can agree.

One really important intervention we were able to confirm in our White Paper is the £100 million re-endowment of the EEF so that it can continue its work, making sure that initiatives such as the recovery premium and the pupil premium are as evidence-based and effective as possible. I am now going to take the intervention from the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) because I promised to do so.

[Mr Walker]

Pupil premium funding rates are increasing this year by 2.7%. They are reaching the highest level in cash terms that they have ever been, and that is a proud achievement. Yes, the pupil premium was agreed during the coalition Government, but we have continued to invest in and support it, and we have added the recovery premium on top of that.

[Emma Hardy]

rose—

[Mr Walker]

I have a lot to say, so I am going to make a bit of progress now. I have taken an intervention from the hon. Lady already.

Regular attendance at school is also vital for children’s education, wellbeing and long-term development. Our priority is to maximise the number of children regularly attending school. We recognise that the lessons learned during the pandemic must help us to strengthen and improve the overall system, which is why we recently published guidance for schools, trusts and local authorities, setting out how we expect them to work together to improve attendance.

The Secretary of State has also established an alliance of national leaders from education, children’s social care and allied services, who have taken pledges to raise school attendance. That includes work by Rob Tarn, the chief executive officer of the Northern Education Trust, a multi-academy trust serving areas with high levels of disadvantage, to work with other trust leaders to identify and disseminate best practice. Alongside that, we are running a series of effective practice attendance training webinars, which have been accessed by more than 12,000 school staff so far. Our team of expert attendance advisers also continues to work closely with a number of multi-academy trusts and local authorities with high levels of persistent absence to review their current practice and develop plans to improve.

I am pleased to confirm that legislative measures to establish a registration system for children not in school were included as part of the Schools Bill introduced by Parliament on 11 May 2022, which is currently in the other place. These measures will help local authorities to ensure that all children are safe and receive a suitable education. Through our attendance action alliance, the Children’s Commissioner has also begun a review to understand more about children missing education, and where and why they may be falling through the gaps. She has consulted the alliance on her initial findings, but her review is ongoing.

We know that the worries that children and young people may have about their progress at school and how this affects their future are important factors in their wider wellbeing, and subject learning is part of what children and young people enjoy most about school. That is why the additional support we have put in place to ensure that children feel supported in their education, and on track with their learning and wider development, is so vital and integral to their mental wellbeing.

I wish to be clear that children and young people are not alone on this journey and the onus is not on them to catch up; it is something that the whole school and the whole education system is looking to achieve together. It is our priority to support education settings to do so. The things we are doing to support schools are reflected more widely in our schools White Paper.

We have provided specific support for teaching about mental health and wellbeing as part of health education. Taking part in enrichment and extra-curricular activities is well known to support children’s wellbeing, but we know that participation fell during the pandemic. The longer, richer school week that we are securing through the White Paper will help to ensure that all pupils have the chance to have a wide range of experiences, including in sport, music and the arts, and we are supporting the expansion of opportunities to take part in specific schemes such as the cadets and the Duke of Edinburgh award.

We are also updating our behaviour in schools guidance to support schools to create calm, safe and supportive environments, which are important to pupil mental health and wellbeing. The guidance recognises that reasonable and appropriate adjustments may need to be made for pupils and that schools may wish to ensure that their staff are trained on matters that may affect pupils’ behaviour, including special education needs, disability or mental health needs. The guidance also makes it clear that following a behaviour incident staff should take into account any contributing factors and whether a pupil has mental health needs, and consider what support is required.

--- Later in debate ---

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

I join in wishing Brannagh a happy birthday—I hope she has a lovely day.

I wish to start by talking about the points I made in my intervention on the importance of oracy. The Government talk an awful lot about the importance of being evidence-led. The evidence from the Education Endowment Foundation is conclusive on the importance of oracy. It is a shame that the Minister for School Standards is not here right now, because I was slightly concerned that in his response he seemed to be talking about oracy in relation just to the early years, whereas good oracy education needs to be continued throughout the early years, all the way through primary school and on into secondary school.

Through the all-party parliamentary group on oracy, I was recently able to invite some wonderful year 6 pupils from Cubitt Town Junior School in Tower Hamlets to show off their oracy skills. They were absolutely outstanding. Their confidence, the way they spoke to the different adults in the room and the way they articulated everything they had gone through was incredibly impressive. It was even more impressive given the fact that they were children from one of the most deprived areas in the country. Many of the pupils at the school are pupil premium children and some of them have English as an additional language. Despite all the barriers, they have overcome them through sustained and explicit oracy teaching.

It is not just me or the Education Endowment Foundation saying this: Ofsted is saying it as well. In its report on its English review, published on 23 May, Ofsted talks about the importance of oracy—in fact, a whole section is dedicated to it. It says that

“a strong command of the spoken word is a crucial outcome of English education. The benefits of spoken language extend beyond just success at school. Becoming an articulate, effective communicator forms the basis of democratic engagement within wider society.”

Ofsted goes on to say:

“Opportunities for pupils to develop their proficiency in spoken language require explicit teaching”.

I really wanted the Minister for School Standards to hear that point about explicit teaching. Too many people think that skills in oracy are developed through osmosis by just being in an environment. We are talking about explicit teaching. According to Ofsted, those opportunities

“require explicit teaching of the knowledge, for example vocabulary, and ideas necessary for effective communication. These opportunities should be planned carefully, both in English lessons and across other subjects.”

So we are talking about the explicit teaching of oracy. In my opinion, and that of the APPG, oracy teaching should be as explicit as the teaching of reading and writing. Reading, writing and oracy are the three pillars that should underpin all English education.

My hon. Friends have already made for me the points in my speech about how expensive childcare is, so the House will be pleased to hear that I am not going to repeat them all now, but it is worth pointing out that net childcare payments in the UK account for 29% of average income. That is clearly unsustainable and cannot be allowed to continue. Why is the cost so shockingly high? Is it because wages are too low? Is it because childcare costs are too high? It is probably a mix of both.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) made an excellent point about the number of women who are—I hate the phrase—economically inactive because they are unable to go out to work because of the cost of childcare. I recently shared something to do with the cost of childcare on my social media and there were nearly 200 comments under it. I would like to share with the Minister a couple of the points that were made.

One commenter gave the childcare provider’s point of view. They said:

“If the government wants it to work they have to increase the amount that childcare providers get. Currently that is a national lottery. Some providers get most of the funding rate, some providers get about half, as their”—

local authority—

“keeps a large proportion. There are early years providers all over the country closing their doors as they just can’t make it work. Even those that are committee run, not-for-profit and that just take funded 3 and 4 year olds still can’t make it work.

On top of that there’s a massive staffing crisis in early years. Settings are shutting left, right and centre. Many providers, including me, are having to reduce the age range and numbers we care for because we can’t attract qualified staff. There’s a massive national shortage. We would love to pay our fabulous staff more but the funding rates are just too low.”

The hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) made a thoughtful speech. The only point on which I disagree with him is about the childcare ratio. I used to work in children’s nurseries before I trained as a teacher: believe me, if someone has more than two or three two-year-olds, they have their hands full. We should think seriously about the ratio. It is also worth thinking about how things work in a nursery when we look at the ratio of adults to children, because often one of the adults might be doing nappies, another might be feeding and another might be playing with the children, so the ratio can be higher during the time the adult is physically with the number of children, because it is to do with the number of adults and children in the building. I warn against trying to change that as a way to reduce costs.

I want to conclude by quoting what a constituent told me about her difficulty paying for childcare. She said

“I work full-time with a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old. I’m an early years teacher, so see the struggles of many parents with regard to childcare. My 2-year-old is in nursery for ONLY 3 mornings and this costs us around £400 each month. My 5-year-old is in school, but we have to pay breakfast club and after-school club fees. This is another £150 plus per term. Myself and my partner work full-time, and keeping up with payments is a massive struggle. We rely heavily on my mum who is in her 60s and also works, which is a huge strain on her. I think working parents need more support for children under 3.”

I completely agree with my constituent. I do hope that the Government will not put pride in front of accepting Labour’s plan for education recovery and the free breakfast and after-school clubs that would make a great difference to many working families.