New Schools

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to be able to confirm that there will be a school that should take students, I hope, from both the constituency of the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) and my hon. Friend’s constituency. It is the extension of an already great offer provided by an outstanding head teacher in the state sector. I am delighted that an area of significant population growth is getting the additional capacity that it needs from an outstanding head teacher.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I think that I was one of the few MPs who attended the skills olympiad. I was impressed by what British young people could achieve, but I am concerned that the English baccalaureate will reduce the practical skills that young people can learn. Will the Secretary of State think again, as I have asked him frequently to do, about including at least one subject in which young people are making, creating, doing and that will count towards the basic five GCSEs that he expects schools to provide?

[Michael Gove]

I underline to the hon. Lady that the principal accountability measure for schools is five GCSEs, including English and mathematics. Among the other three GCSEs or equivalents, there can be a number of applied, technical and vocational areas. The English baccalaureate is a useful accountability measure and raises aspirations, but it is not the be-all and end-all and it has never been the opinion of the Government that it should be. We recognise achievement in all its forms, and it is incumbent on everyone, on both sides of the House, to celebrate the achievement of those who succeed vocationally, as she did in the first half of her question.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend is right to say that these are important issues. Children need to have good-quality PSHE at schools, and that is precisely what the review will cover. We are taking our time setting up the review to ensure that its remit is correctly drafted and that the quality of the review gives rise to a high-quality improvement in the teaching of PSHE in those subjects in our schools.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

But will he ensure that the need for schools to help to prevent domestic violence and violence between boys and girls is made a priority in the review? Every relevant Committee of this House, including the most recent Select Committee on Home Affairs, has identified that although in Britain we are relatively good at dealing with the policing of domestic violence, we are very bad at preventing it. Schools have more of a role to play; will the Minister ensure that they do that?

[Mr Gibb]

Yes. We are determined to play a strong part in the cross-government action plan on ending violence, particularly against women and girls, that is led by the Home Office. We are providing support to families with multiple problems, funded by the early intervention grant, and we are taking forward the recommendations of the Reg Bailey review. The PSHE review will consider sexual consent, which is an important issue to cover, and we are raising standards of behaviour in our schools, with a particular focus on anti-bullying.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend is right. Citizenship is an important subject, and schools have an important role to play in encouraging young people to become responsible citizens and active members of society. I welcome what she says about her school. The Government are fully committed to empowering young people to become active citizens. That is the intention behind the launch of the national citizenship service programme last year.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

The Minister will be aware of his own Government’s violence against women and girls strategy and the excellent report from the Select Committee on Home Affairs, both of which have highlighted the importance of education in schools in preventing violence against women and girls. What steps is he taking to make sure that that plan is delivered in our schools?

[Mr Gibb]

This is one issue that will be addressed in the national curriculum review. The issues that the hon. Lady raises are very important and have been given a very high priority by this Government. We share her concerns and we agree with the importance of raising these issues at school level. That is precisely what the national curriculum review will examine.

Vocational Education

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. There is cross-party commitment to apprenticeships. Unfortunately, however, while they are well intentioned and justifiable in themselves, some of the bureaucracy surrounding the way in which the Skills Funding Agency has supported apprenticeships, some of the requirements that have been placed on apprenticeship frameworks, and some recording responsibilities of employers in respect of the individual learning record, have together added up to a significant burden that means that many small and medium-sized enterprises in particular find it expensive or burdensome to take on an apprentice. My hon. Friend the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills are taking forward a programme to reduce that bureaucracy, and I hope it will be welcomed on both sides of the House.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

As the Secretary of State is well aware, modern business needs people who can make, do, create and invent things, as well as people who can analyse things, and even if Professor Wolf is right that her recommendations are compatible with the English bac if 20% of the curriculum is made available for those kinds of skills to be developed, the Secretary of State knows—as we all do—that, in practice, this is not happening in some schools. Will he therefore consider the following request, which I have made before: that he add to the English bac at least one qualification that is about making, creating or doing, such as in electrical engineering or making music?

[Michael Gove]

I take on board the hon. Lady’s point. I think the intention behind her request is admirable, and it is reflected in what Professor Wolf says. However, it would be wrong for me to prescribe what additional qualification or course might be appropriate to encourage people to acquire those practical skills. One of the points Professor Wolf makes is that there are many courses of study, or pursuits at school or beyond, that might not necessarily lead specifically to a qualification but can provide people with the skills required. It is crucial that we support qualifications that are robust and, where possible, invest in developing them to reflect what employers need, but we must also ensure flexibility and autonomy so that schools can do the right thing for their students.

English for Speakers of Other Languages

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Heidi Alexander]

I agree that college governors throughout the country are making decisions at this time about how they will fund courses next year and whether to keep staff on or put them on notice of redundancy, so there is a real danger that the ability to provide the courses will simply dry up.

I spoke about the possibility of funds just sitting in bank accounts this year, unable to be used, as the students will not be coming through the door because they would not be able to pay their half of the course fees. I ask myself and the Minister whether that is a good use of public funds in such straitened economic times or whether it is an admission that the Department had not really understood the significance of the changes that it included when it published its strategy document last November. What happens in a year’s time, when money has not been spent and budgets are being set for the subsequent year? Does the Minister recognise that reduced spend by colleges and training providers will be a reflection not of demand for English language courses, but of students’ inability to pay?

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

There is an additional point. If courses cease because of cuts, students who have already made some progress but who cannot afford the fees in the coming year will not be able to study. I know from my appalling French that if people do not focus on the study of a new language and maintain their learning, they go backwards.

[Heidi Alexander]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Later in my speech, I have some testimony from Lewisham college students who make precisely that point—that to improve and, indeed, to make the best progress possible, there needs to be continuity of learning.

I was talking about the latest guidance note from the Skills Funding Agency. While I am on that subject, I would like to ask the Minister a few more questions. In particular, why is the Department treating ESOL differently from other basic skills training and foundation learning? In paragraph 47 of the latest Skills Funding Agency note, the Government state that where a learner has an entitlement to a level 2 qualification, entry or level 1 aims will be fully funded to facilitate progression. However, the note also states that skills for life, including ESOL, are exempt from that provision. Will the Minister tell me why? Simply saying, as guidance note 7 does, that guidance note 6 deals with that is not an answer to my question.

It is remarkable that colleges and training providers may not be able to spend money that has been allocated to address basic skills because of the new co-financing requirements that the Government are introducing. That just does not make sense.

I will turn now to some of the wider arguments about why investment in ESOL courses is so important. In the last few days, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research has estimated that eastern European immigration has added £4.9 billon to the UK’s gross domestic product. Surely having more people able to speak the language and able to work is a good thing. The alternative is more dependence on the state and a greater outlay on benefits. That is before we start to think about the knock-on effects of poor language ability on the public purse.

In April, a series of freedom of information requests to London hospitals showed that in the three years from 2007 to 2010, £15 million was spent by seven different hospitals on interpreters and translators. We know that other parts of the public sector, whether councils or the Courts Service, have similarly high bills. Again, I find myself in the strange position of agreeing with a Minister. This time, it is the Minister for Immigration, who is quoted in connection with that story as saying:

“This illustrates very starkly why we need to do more to ensure that those people who are settled in this country can speak basic English.”

Will the Minister responsible for skills tell me what discussions he has had with the Minister for Immigration about the impact of his changes to ESOL? Has he told the Minister for Immigration that his Department’s changes will result in fewer people being able to speak basic English? It is not just the NHS that is affected.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I, too, want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) for initiating this debate. I also want to thank the Minister. Along with representatives of the Refugee Council and the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, I had a meeting with him about this policy. At the end of that meeting, I felt a bit optimistic. I feel slightly foolish about that now; I thought that the Minister had got the point.

That point has been emphasised in speeches today. It is that this policy will affect women in an unfair way and that the women who will be affected are the mothers of children whose future is here in Britain. I do not think that we have heard enough about their children. For a child to succeed in school, the input of their parents is critical and mums who can read in English with their children make a major contribution to their children’s learning.

In my constituency, the evidence is that five times as many women as men are affected by this policy and that it is mums for whom the difference is greatest, because it is mums who quite often find it difficult to get out of their homes. That is not only because they do not have the necessary resources but because there are “gatekeepers” in their family who will not allow them out, except to something safe such as an ESOL class. It is a very liberating experience for mothers to attend such a class.

I urge the Minister to raid not only the translation budgets, which the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) has already referred to, but the interpretation budgets. In our police stations and health service in Slough, we spend a huge amount on Language Line. If we could ensure that patients and criminals alike could speak English, less money would need to be spent on Language Line. The Minister needs to invest to save that money.

The Minister wrote to me after our meeting and said:

“We have therefore prioritised Government investment in training for unemployed people actively seeking work.”

He is being too short-term in his thinking. The people who we are talking about today will be able to work in future, but right now they are not able to seek work actively. Unless we invest in them at this point, they will never be able to seek work actively, because one of the things that I have discovered through speaking to many ESOL teachers is that getting people early, before they have learned to get by with pidgin English, is the key to their achieving success in learning English.

I urge the Minister not only to scoop money out of the interpretation budgets for the Home Office and the NHS and use it to reduce the need for interpretation, but to invest in community provision of ESOL. That provision involves family learning, ESOL with reading and ESOL with basic skills. If he could offer that kind of provision, it would provide some of the things that we need for the mums who I am talking about.

There is another thing that the Minister could do. In his letter to me, he referred to “flexibilities” for colleges. If there were more flexibility for colleges, the risk that my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East referred to—of colleges having money that they cannot spend—would be reduced. In my constituency, for example, the percentage of students who will receive fee remission in the council-run courses will fall from 82% at present to 6% under the Minister’s proposals. If he gave complete flexibility to colleges and other providers about how they used the money that he gave them, I think that they would use that flexibility well.

Unless the Minister has community-based ESOL education for free or at affordable prices for the mums I have mentioned, we will create a generation of children who, although they were born in Britain, will speak pidgin English and will not be able to use their learning as well as they ought to. Unless he invests in addressing that problem, we will lose another generation of workers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather]

While drawing up the Green Paper, we met people from schools with fantastic examples of good practice in working to help support young people moving from one stage to the next. We are grateful for all examples of good practice, and we want to encourage other schools to raise the bar. Some brilliant work has been done. For example, some schools have encouraged young people to set up their own enterprises and companies and in doing so given them real employment opportunities. I would be interested to hear more detail about the school in the hon. Lady’s constituency.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

7. What recent representations he has received on the English baccalaureate.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

10. What recent representations he has received on the English baccalaureate; and if he will make a statement.

The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove): We have received a number of representations on the English baccalaureate since it was announced. Public opinion surveys have shown that this new league table measure is widely welcomed, and on recent school visits, I have been encouraged by the vocal support that teachers and head teachers have shown for this new measure of achievement.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Has the Secretary of State seen the survey of 100 school teachers by the National Association of Music Educators and the National Society for Education in Art and Design that suggests that in 60% of schools that responded there has been a narrowing of the curriculum as a result of the introduction of the English baccalaureate? Would he consider adding a further subject to the suite of subjects in the English baccalaureate, so that it is not all about writing and what other people do, and to ensure that there is an opportunity for young people to do something practical and create or make things themselves, so that we do not reinforce the division between practical and academic learning?

[Michael Gove]

That is a very well made argument from the hon. Lady, and I sympathise with the case that she makes. It is important to appreciate that the English baccalaureate does not and need not take up the entire teaching time in any school day or week. The reason why it is constructed as it is, with just the five areas that we are familiar with, is to ensure time in the school week for other activities, such as art and design, music, physical education—everything that helps to build a truly rounded young person. There is no need to alter the English baccalaureate for schools to offer a truly rounded and stretching curriculum, and I would love to be able to work with her to ensure that the schools in her constituency appreciate that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Thursday 17th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hayes]

The work that we are doing on public sector apprenticeships, in this place and elsewhere, continues. Indeed, I met a shadow Minister—one of her parliamentary colleagues—to talk about apprenticeships and public procurement. The hon. Lady is right—we do need to drive public sector apprenticeships and we do need to lead by example.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Last Friday, I saw a group of young people who were learning on the job in the cultural quarter programme, which is led by the Royal Opera House and participated in by the Victoria and Albert museum and other cultural organisations in London. Thirty-four young people are on that programme, but it is funded by the future jobs fund, so it is about to run out. I invited those young people to come to the House to tell Members of Parliament what they have learned from this programme and how they have encouraged other young people to start careers in the cultural industries. Will the Minister come and listen to what they have to say about the difference that the future jobs fund has made to them?

[Mr Hayes]

As you know, Mr Speaker, the future jobs fund is not within my ministerial purview—[Hon. Members: “Ah!”] Well, never pitch above your pay grade or outside your purview. I will of course meet the young people and the hon. Lady and listen to what they have to say.

Disadvantaged Children

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

When I was first elected to the House and we talked about educational achievement, the conversation was nearly always about A-levels and universities. One of the great things about the Government of whom I was pleased to be member was that we shifted the debate from educational achievement by young adults to one about educational achievement at the beginning of education—children learning to read, for example. What is wonderful about today’s debate is the focus on the very beginnings of education and children at the stage when they are learning to talk and listen. These basic skills are the building blocks of our personalities and future abilities to cope with the world.

[Mr Frank Field]

May I also draw attention to the fact that, not only has there been this wonderful change, but it must be the first Parliament in which more Members want to debate this than the horse racing levy? [Laughter.]

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The laughter following that remark shows that my right hon. Friend is supported in his view. It is a positive shift. My suspicion is that it reflects the greater participation of mothers in politics—but I will not push that point too far! We know that disadvantage starts earlier, well before school, and unfortunately gets worse during formal education. Despite the efforts of the previous Government, which I helped with, the gaps in achievement remain stubbornly wide, although we managed to narrow them in some respects. At five, 35% of children who qualify for free school meals achieve a good level of development, compared with 55% of children who do not qualify. The children on free school meals are more likely to be bullied, twice as likely to be permanently excluded, half as likely to get good GCSEs and, despite progress, less likely to go to university.

We need to make it clear that disadvantage is directly associated with poverty in education. There is a further disadvantage, however, to do with boys. The second lowest achieving group of pupils in schools are white British boys. They are exceeded only by Gypsies and Travellers. People have said that it might be because there are too few male teachers in primary schools. As someone who used to educate primary school teachers, I think it is partly because too few young men are interested in small children, and therefore have the skills and qualities that would make someone like me, interviewing students for teacher education courses, consider them capable of becoming good teachers. Perhaps it tells us something about how we bring up young men that they do not know enough about the lives of children.

[Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)]

Does the hon. Lady think that, unfortunately, our society is suspicious of men who are interested in getting involved with and supporting young children? Indeed, some men might feel that they are making themselves vulnerable if they decide to volunteer to work with young people.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

In my view, the red top newspapers have created that approach much too much. If men had more experience of the lives of children, they would be robust and resilient to those unfounded accusations.

Most speakers in this debate have called for effective early intervention to tackle such inequality. I would strongly urge us to draw on good evidence of what works. For example, in my constituency a family nurse partnership working with teenage mothers has gathered powerful evidence of how it has helped young women not only to bring up their children but to take up education opportunities and build successful and happy lives. We know from research by the HighScope Perry project in America that a structured, play-based early curriculum can make a huge difference to children. I am sad that cuts in child care tax credits will mean that fewer parents will be able to afford access to high-quality provision for their children, despite welcome additional early-years provision for some of the poorest two-year-olds.

Unfortunately, we tend to grab on to things in politics that we think will be popular where there is not necessarily the evidence to sustain them. Our Government were occasionally guilty of that, and the current Government’s proposed marriage premium is also an example. It will skew income distribution to those who are more prosperous and from those who are less prosperous. However, one of the things that we need in this debate is really good evidence. The last time we had a Tory-led Government, they stopped the cohort studies, which tracked the progress of children and young people every seven years, and we now have two cohorts missing. I would strongly urge those on the Treasury Bench to do what they can in this era of cuts to ensure that that mistake is not repeated. Unless we have good quality evidence about what works, we will carry on making mistakes.

[Kate Green]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the important issue of tracking and research. I, too, would ask those on the Treasury Bench to respond to that point, because it is important that we sustain such tracking. It is not good enough to look too early at how a particular cohort of children is performing. The advantage of cohort studies is that we can track people all through their lives.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, although I will not take any more, because they are now beginning to eat into my time. We need good quality evidence. If we do not have it, the odds are that we will make more mistakes. There will be debates in Government about such matters, and although investing in a cohort study is not very sexy, I would strongly urge those Ministers in the Chamber to do what they can to ensure that such evidence is collected.

I want to be brief and talk about the things that need to happen. We know that it is not just teachers who make a difference to children—many Members have spoken about the contribution that parents make—because their peers make a difference too. That is one of the reasons why poor children in prosperous areas overachieve compared with poor children in poorer areas by a factor of 18%. That is why I have some suspicions about the much-trumpeted pupil premium, which does not take into account the fact that poor children in prosperous areas already do much better than those in poorer areas. I would also strongly echo the support that others have given to parenting education. We introduced quite a lot of parenting education, but, unfortunately, the people in my constituency who got most of it were, to be brutal, those who were in trouble with the law or whose children were in trouble with the law. Those people found parenting education quite transformative, as did the parents whose children went to a Catholic infant school in my constituency that offered it. I strongly believe that parenting education can make a huge difference.

Other Members have referred to the problems of children in care. I cannot compete with Members who talked about the poverty of their childhood—mine was very prosperous—but I remember well how shocked I was at how few things, such as books, CDs and clothes, children in care possessed.

I want to mention one more way in which the Government could make a real difference to disadvantaged children. Most of my educational advantages and most of the things I learned were the result of being able to read. I got into books and I discovered whole new worlds that would otherwise have been completely beyond me. When I went to university to do English, I remember asking one of my fellow students what she had read as a child. I was shocked when she said that she had read The Beano, and that was it—yet she had managed to get to university.

Children can transform their lives through books. One of the most depressing pieces of news that I heard recently was the decision to axe the Booktrust. It has a scheme that gives books to babies and gives every mum a book bag. My constituency is full of mothers who do not read English, and for them those books are transformative. They mean that their children can go into school knowing at which end of a book to begin reading. Members of Muslim families might be readers, but their books are often in Arabic, and start at the back. I urge Ministers to do what they can to revive the Booktrust scheme.

Education Maintenance Allowance

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

My brother is the vice-principal of a sixth-form college, and I have asked him that question. He says that it would be an impossible task for his college to decide between one student and another. Colleges want to help students, but they would have to make those decisions with an inadequate fund that covers only a tenth of the amount that it currently covers. The hon. Gentleman’s suggestion would mean passing on an impossible problem, but I welcome the spirit of his remarks. He will notice that I have deliberately moved a broad motion that invites the support of all hon. Members who want the Government to think again. It sounds as if he is one of them.

Let us not throw out everything about EMA that is a success, and that brings me to the economic case for keeping it. In short, EMA is good not just for the individuals who receive it, but for all of us in building a higher-skilled and more prosperous society, in which the costs of social failure are lower. Yesterday, the chief executive of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers called on the Government to rethink their decision. He said:

“Tough decisions have to be made, but the UK economy will increasingly need skilled engineers and technicians over the next few years. Our long-term economic health depends on making the right decisions now.”

Haroon Chowdry of the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that even taking into account a dead-weight cost of 88%, the costs of EMA are “completely offset”. He said:

“The initial outlay of the EMA policy is likely to be more than recouped by the increase in productivity that we expect to result from the 16- and 17-year-olds staying on in education for longer”.

Has the Secretary of State made an economic impact assessment of his policy alongside an equality impact assessment? I have not seen one. Has he assessed how EMA helps to build a skilled work force that benefits us all? If we take that support away, we lose not just those skills—taxpayers must also face the higher costs of social failure as young people drop out of education. Has he made an assessment of that?

On the Government’s own figures, around 78,000 are unlikely to be able to stay in further education without EMA. We cannot know for sure whether all those young people will end up unemployed if they lose EMA, but given today’s figures showing record youth unemployment, it does not look good for them. Will not the Government have to provide support for them in some other form—perhaps a less constructive form—when they have reduced hope for the future?

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

In view of my right hon. Friend’s point about improved qualifications, will he note the figures that East Berkshire college has provided to me? It has a number of students on EMA. I have worked out that its figures on improved retention would mean that 45 or 50 young people in the town that I represent would be unlikely to complete their course if they did not have EMA.

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend is exactly right—that is borne out by the experience of many colleges around the country. Some of those young people are at risk of ending up in the benefits system. Will not the Secretary of State’s policy lead to an increase in 16 to 17-year-olds seeking to claim jobseeker’s allowance in exceptional circumstances, or certainly to an increase in the numbers claiming JSA at 18? We know that every young person not in education, employment or training costs more than £55,000, according to research for the Audit Commission. The IFS has said that EMA successfully reduced the number of NEETs. Will it not therefore cost more to get rid of EMA?

Those costs will add up on many levels. As Paul Gregg at Bristol university has found, youth unemployment imposes a “wage scar” that can last for decades. He suggests that scrapping EMA fails to take account of other benefits, such as lower crime. That adds to the fears that through a combination of the Government’s policies, they are taking hope away from a whole generation.

I have set out the education case, the social mobility case and the economic case for keeping EMA, so let us now deal with the democratic case. The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State made personal promises to young people to keep EMA. Failing to honour them will do great damage to young people’s trust in Parliament and politics. From this Dispatch Box, the Secretary of State said:

“We are entirely in favour not only of the existence of the EMA but of the provisions in the Bill to secure an extension to it.”—[Official Report, 14 January 2008; Vol. 470, c. 669.]

Weeks before the general election, he said:

“Ed Balls keeps saying we are committed to scrapping the EMA. I have never said this. We won’t.”

On the back of these statements, does the Secretary of State not accept that young people embarking on a two-year course in September 2010 had a reasonable expectation that they would receive EMA support for the duration of their course, and that they could not have expected that the rug might be pulled from under them?

Beyond that, do the Government have a democratic mandate for this change? This time it is not the yellow Tories, but the real Tories who have broken their promises to young people. However, did any of the people who voted Lib Dem in May vote to curtail the life chances of the least well-off in this way? Unsurprisingly, the Government’s amendment shifts the ground on to deficit reduction, but if that is now the Government’s main argument why did the schools Minister, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, say to the House in a holding answer dated 7 June:

“The Government are committed to retaining the education maintenance allowance”?—[Official Report, 14 June 2010; Vol. 511, c. 307W.]

What changed after June? Did the full costs of the risky, unwanted reorganisation of the NHS become known, or did the Prime Minister choose his marriage tax break—costed before the election at £550 million, which is almost the same amount as EMA—as a priority above EMA? This confirms the growing impression that this is a shambolic ministerial team that changes its argument and does not know what it is doing.

The House may be forgiven for feeling a certain sense of déjà vu. This is a rushed decision with no warning, no consultation with those most affected, no evidence to support the decision, a growing backlash as the implications sink in, and a desperate rearguard action to justify it with dodgy statistics. If this is starting to sound familiar, it is because we have been here before with, for instance, Building Schools for the Future, school sport partnerships, and Bookstart. The fingerprints of this repeat offender are all over the scene of the crime. My question today to Liberal Democrat Members is this: how much longer are they prepared to carry the can in their constituencies for the disastrous decisions of this Secretary of State?

Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

It is important for primary and secondary schools to work closely together, particularly at that transition point. Getting the fundamentals right is crucial to a child’s success in secondary education and throughout their adult life. The Government are committed to getting all children reading and writing to a high standard, which is why we are promoting the use of systematic synthetic phonics in primary schools and introducing a short reading test for six-year-olds, so that we can identify those who need extra help. We will say more about the age six reading test shortly.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

If the Minister is committed to increasing attainment, does he agree that children in secondary schools learn from each other, as well as from their teachers? If so, why will children in places such as Wokingham receive around twice as much pupil premium as children in places such as Slough?

[Mr Gibb]

Of course, we are still consulting on how the pupil premium will be allocated, but a problem with the current system is that 50% of funding that is allocated on the basis of need does not reach the school. The advantage of the proposed pupil premium—it will be £2.5 billion a year by the final year of the spending review period—is that every penny will reach the schools attended by those pupils.