Oral Answers to Questions
Gareth Snell Excerpts(4 years, 7 months ago)
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Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mrs Kemi Badenoch)
Next year local authorities, including Stoke-on-Trent City Council, will share in an increase of more than £700 million in higher-needs funding. We will hold separate discussions with the authorities that have raised specific issues with us.
Gareth Snell
The Minister will be well aware that, as part of its higher-needs recovery plan, Stoke-on-Trent City Council proposes to plunder classroom budgets by £14.5 million over the next four years. The headteachers in the city are opposed to the plan, which will require a sign-off from the Department in order to go ahead. Will the Minister make a commitment today that rather than signing it off, she will convene a meeting of the headteachers in Stoke-on-Trent, so that alternative arrangements can be found that do not necessitate robbing Peter to pay Paul?
Mrs Badenoch
We are aware of the issues that have arisen in Stoke-on-Trent. The commissioner is due to submit a report to the Department today, and officials will review it and submit recommendations to me in due course. Once a decision has been made, the report will be published.
Children’s Social Care Services: Stoke-on-Trent
Gareth Snell Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered children’s social care services in Stoke-on-Trent.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. It is not a pleasure to be having this debate. Children’s services, and the role that councils play in protecting the most vulnerable children in our societies and communities, should be taken away from the party political arena. The Ofsted report that was received by Stoke-on-Trent City Council, showing the failures across the local authority area to help the most vulnerable people, is worthy of discussion with the Minister in order to work out how we can put that system back together. The report is one of the saddest things that I have had the displeasure of reading in my short time as a Member of Parliament.
We know that when it comes to engaging and working with young people, Stoke-on-Trent is now a city of two tales. The Minister will be acutely aware of the excellent work being done by Professor Liz Barnes and Carol Shanahan under the opportunity area, and I am sure he will agree that they are exemplars of good practice across the country, and of how people can achieve very impressive things when they get their act together. The flipside of that—the other side of the coin—is a children’s services department that has now been rated “inadequate” in all four areas of the Ofsted report, which has highlighted some shocking outcomes that prompt the question whether the local authority is fit to continue running that service, and whether the individuals who are responsible for running it at cabinet level are fit to continue in public office.
I do not wish to draw too much on the politics of it, but I want to read out a few of the findings from the Ofsted report, which will set the context for what we are discussing this morning. It starts by saying:
“Children are not being protected…Vulnerable children are not safeguarded in Stoke-on-Trent…There are insufficient fostering placements to meet local need and many children are placed in unregulated placements. The local authority knows that some of these placements are unsafe.”
It states:
“Too many children come into care in a crisis or wait too long to be reunited with their families.”
It also says:
“As a result of poor leadership, management oversight and an absence of clearly evaluated performance information, services for children have seriously declined since the last full Ofsted inspection in 2015.”
That is a damning indictment of a children’s services department, regardless of who is running the council. As a result of those shortcomings, young people are suffering in my constituency and across Stoke-on-Trent.
Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. The reality is that very few Ofsted reports—thankfully—are as bad as the one that has been written about Stoke-on-Trent City Council. However, I want to praise the individual social workers. It has been made clear that they are working extraordinarily hard and achieving good things, but are not being well managed and are not being supported to deliver. Their casework involves over 25 cases. Does my hon. Friend agree that this shows that there has not been the appropriate management or political leadership focus on this area, and that they have abandoned the professionals, who are trying to do their best?
Gareth Snell
I could not have put it better myself. My hon. Friend has rightly pointed out that, as a local authority, Stoke-on-Trent has a level of casework that is higher than the national average. Each individual within that team is managing more cases than the British Association of Social Workers would deem acceptable for any authority, let alone one such as Stoke-on-Trent, where demand is higher than the national average.
The part of the report that I found most shocking stated:
“Support for vulnerable children, including those at risk from child sexual exploitation, going missing…private fostering and extremist ideologies”
was failing. The report basically says that young children in our city are at risk of being groomed for child sexploitation and criminal exploitation. I do a lot of work in this place on modern slavery, and I am appalled to know that not only is it happening in my city, but it is happening in my city because the one authority that is ultimately responsible for dealing with that has failed. I hope the Minister will pick up on that later, not because I want to kick about the council—we will do that in the forthcoming local elections—but because, fundamentally, something must change in Stoke-on-Trent so that we are no longer rated “inadequate” across the four areas when the Ofsted inspectors next come in, and so that I can look into the eyes of my constituents and say, “Yes, your children—if they ever end up in the care system—will be safe and looked after.” That is something that I cannot do currently.
Ruth Smeeth
Although my hon. Friend may not want to bash our councillors, it is important to make it clear that we did not have that rating when we were last inspected in 2015. In fact, we were rated “good”. As Ofsted has made clear, these services have seriously declined since the last full Ofsted inspection in 2015. The majority of recommendations made at that inspection, and at a focused visit in 2018, have not been actioned. It seems that the council has actively disengaged from the process and not followed the Government guidance in this area.
Gareth Snell
Again, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point; I agree wholeheartedly. The report makes it quite clear that there has been a marked decline in the provision of children’s protective services in Stoke-on-Trent since 2015. That coincided with the last round of local elections, in which the City Independent group took control of the local authority. If we are being honest, its record of attendance at the corporate parenting panel demonstrates its disinterest in this area. Of the 16 meetings that one councillor could attend, she attended zero, and she is responsible for the funding of children’s services across the council—eight apologies, and eight non-attendances.
We should make it clear—I will ask the Minister later on—whether there is anything that the Government think they can do to ensure that councillors that have responsibility for these very important areas, including both adults’ and children’s social care, are compelled to attend those meetings, to further their understanding of what is going on. From councillors who have been on the corporate parenting panel, where they have heard from caseworkers who feel under pressure and stretched, I know that information was available at that time to the local authority members who make these decisions, had those members chosen to attend. The fact that they chose to attend none of those meetings shows the interest they have in that service. As a Parliament, we should talk collectively about how we can reinforce to people in decision-making roles their responsibilities.
I want to touch briefly on another comment in the report, which said:
“The response to children and young people who may be at increased risk due to contact with extremist ideology is not robust”.
Stoke-on-Trent is a city in which we have had our problems with both the far right and organised Islamist terrorism, and we need to ensure that we protect our young people from both extremes. The report clearly states that young people are not being protected from extremism activity in a place where we know it is taking place. I do not understand how any local authority or councillor can stand up and defend the report in the way that Councillor Janine Bridges did by saying that things are much better under her watch than they have ever been.
The report sets out in black and white one of the starkest arrangements for protecting young people anywhere—not only in the west midlands, but in the country. I wonder whether the Minister could help me better understand at what point Government step in to start to resolve some of this directly. Frankly, I have no faith that the City Independent group that currently runs the council with Conservatives has either the political ability or the determination to resolve this, other than saying that everything is all right. That has been made quite clear in the leaflets that are being delivered around the city ahead of local elections, which say how wonderful children’s services are. It beggars belief that there is this lack of connection between what is written in black and white by the authorities that are responsible for this, and what is written by the people who have taken decisions that led to this chronic failure in the first place.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing this very important debate to the House; it is vital that this issue gets debated. I understand that Stoke-on-Trent City Council is in quite close contact—particularly through the multi-agency safeguarding hub—with Staffordshire County Council and other excellent councils, such as Leeds. Has he seen a determined effort by the leadership to ensure that—even now—the deficiencies pointed out in the report are beginning to be addressed?
Gareth Snell
The hon. Gentleman points to the MASH system in Staffordshire County Council, which is one of the areas where Stoke-on-Trent City Council has made a rod for its own back. Across the border, in Staffordshire County Council—literally on the doorstep—is a system that is more robust and much better than the one that Stoke-on-Trent City Council operates. A lot of the agencies that are involved in it, including the police and some of the third-party organisations, work with both authorities, so it is not as if it was not possible to tap into that system to see how it works.
The officers that my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) North and I have spoken to understand the severity of the report and want to fix the problem. The officer corps desperately wants to resolve it, and the social workers we know are heartbroken. They have taken it personally, because it is young people entrusted to them who have been let down. However, I have not seen any element of acceptance from some parts of the political leadership that there is a problem that needs to be resolved. They took to the airwaves on the day the report was published to dismiss it and say that it was the Government’s fault for not giving them enough money, local MPs’ fault for not shouting about it previously, and in some cases the families’ fault for having the audacity to find themselves in need of social care in the first place.
I do not have the sense that the cabinet member responsible and the leader of the council understand the gravity of the report that is in front of them. If I am being honest, I do not believe that they have any interest in resolving this problem, because this is not the sort of politics that they want to do. They are not interested in rolling up their sleeves and dealing with the difficult parts of civic life in Stoke-on-Trent. They like to do the fun, happy stuff, such as cutting ribbons in front of new car parks, filling potholes and having their pictures taken—but children’s social care is the sort of stuff that matters to people on a day-to-day basis.
Jeremy Lefroy
The hon. Gentleman and I have joint concern for the city, which is important to the whole of Staffordshire, not just its residents. I understand that an improvement board has been set up to deal with the situation. What is his understanding of its work and its effectiveness so far?
Gareth Snell
There is an improvement board, but unfortunately, given the timing of the report and the purdah period for the local election cycle, no one will tell us what is going on with it, what actions it is taking and whether it is looking to Staffordshire County Council, which I hold up as an example—it is run by a good Conservative administration, which has taken responsibility for these issues and is dealing with them. This is not about Labour and Conservative party politics. There are perfect examples around the country of good Tory councils doing this well, and examples of Labour councils doing it well. This is an example of a council doing it badly, and the leadership refuse to accept that.
Ruth Smeeth
Does my hon. Friend agree not only that the council is doing it badly and has dismissed the report, but that it has failed to acknowledge the impact on families in our city and has not said sorry? Councillor Janine Bridges and Councillor Ann James have acted as if this has nothing to do with them, despite the fact that both of them have been responsible for delivery for the past four years. During that time our children, including homeless children, have not received the support that they are due under statutory provision. Homeless 16 and 17-year-olds do not always receive a timely or thorough response to meet their needs. We have young people on the streets and a political leadership that will not even say sorry.
Gareth Snell
That sums up why there is so much frustration with this process. Our city has problems. None of the MPs who represent it, including me, my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), who would have been here if he was not restricted by his Parliamentary Private Secretary role, would hide that fact. We saw the same when the Care Quality Commission did a system-wide review and found that older people were being left in their beds covered in urine for days because of a social care failing in Stoke-on-Trent City Council. Our frustration stems from the fact that, unless the problem is so stark and is written in black and white in a report that is so damaging that it requires a political intervention at this level, or is splashed in the headlines of our newspapers, nothing gets done and nothing gets changed. There is no remorse, no apology, and no sense that anything that the council was responsible for was its fault. It is always the fault of the Government, of everybody around them, and of the agencies not doing their bit. It is about time that people such as Councillor Bridges, Councillor James and their partners in the coalition took responsibility for the decisions that they have taken over the past four years, which have led us to this place.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North is right. We are highlighting some of the starkest parts of our society. It is a constant badge of shame for me that, when we highlight the awful parts of our society, they always manifest themselves in Stoke-on-Trent in a way that is even worse than they had to be. If we got the basics right—if we got the bread-and-butter politics right and had given a damn about the people we are there to serve—some of this would not have happened.
I am sure the Minister will say that every child service department is now stretched because there is increasing demand. He will say that it is a demand-led service, and the local authority has no immediate control over the demand. I accept that, but if we know the demand is there—if there is a constant reporting system that says, “There is a problem with this system”—and people choose not to act on it, choose not to attend corporate parenting panels, choose to divert funding to other departments, choose not to engage with the Local Government Association, choose not to participate in county-wide programmes, choose to defer the decisions that they should be making to officers, choose not to turn up to reports, and choose not to say sorry, that is a pattern of behaviour of failure. That is not a coincidence or a coalescing of misfortune; it is a pattern of behaviour that has led to systematic failure.
I sincerely hope that the work being done by officers, the social work team and the people who are coming into the local authority is effective. A commissioner has been appointed to establish whether this should stay with the local authority or whether it should become a trust. For what it is worth, even though it is an appallingly run service, I hope the Minister will take heed of what we suggest: we think it should stay with the local authority. We genuinely believe that, once the election is out of the way—whatever the outcome—there will be a renewed appetite to fix this. I have always been a believer that local authorities should clear up their own messes. I appreciate that that is his decision, not mine, and the commissioner’s report will guide him. We have some responsibility for this. We will hold whichever political party is running the council responsible for fixing this, and we know that the Government will do so, too.
I ask the Minister to address these points. Where there are clear examples of councillors not engaging in their executive-level functions, what can we and the Government do to ensure that they take those responsibilities seriously? This is not just a matter of funding; there is clearly a cultural issue. What can the Government do to help change the culture in Stoke-on-Trent? If there is a plan, I will happily work with them to deliver it. Importantly, what does the Minister believe we can do to ensure that when Ofsted comes in next time, it does not give us a catalogue of failures that shows that young people in Stoke-on-Trent have been let down?
Oral Answers to Questions
Gareth Snell Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Damian Hinds
I will. In fact, about 200 employers have already been involved, in one way or another, in their development. Business is at the heart of this major upgrade to our technical and vocational education, including T-levels.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Obviously T-levels are still a couple of years away, and colleges are expecting funding now. What can the Secretary of State do to assure me that when T-levels do arrive, colleges such as Stoke-on-Trent sixth-form college, which will be delivering them, will not have to use some of that additional money to cross-subsidise underfunded courses in other parts of the colleges? Is not the best way to stop that money being misused simply to raise the rate for everyone else?
Damian Hinds
The money that the Treasury has committed to T-levels is new money to finance more hours for young people studying these subjects. I think that that is incredibly important, but, as the hon. Gentleman says, there are other people studying for other qualifications, in Stoke and elsewhere, and they too must be properly resourced.
College Funding
Gareth Snell Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
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Daniel Zeichner
My hon. Friend makes the point very powerfully. As I said, I see the divide in my own city. She is absolutely right.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend rightly mentioned the £4,000 rate freeze. He might like to know that, had the rate increased by inflation since 2013, the figure would be almost £4,300 today; that is just if it had kept pace with inflation. For cities such as Stoke-on-Trent, there would have been about £2.5 million more funding for further education. What does my hon. Friend think that we could have done with that money?
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. Pretty much all of what I was going to say has been said, but in the great tradition of this place I am going to say it anyway.
My constituency is served by three excellent colleges: Stoke Sixth Form College, under the leadership of Mark Kent; Stoke-on-Trent College, under the leadership of Denise Brown; and Newcastle College in the constituency neighbouring mine, under the leadership of Karen Dobson. All three of those colleges provide the basic parts of the social mobility engine in north Staffordshire. If it were not for those colleges, young people across my constituency and north Staffordshire would find their options very limited. Some of the finest minds in north Staffordshire have been through those colleges—not least the Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), who was a student at the sixth-form college.
As well as providing a first-class education for the young people in my constituency, those colleges provide a whole host of life skills and support. That is not reflected in the current level of funding. When the Minister is able again to argue with the Treasury about the rate, I hope she factors in that this is about not just how much we spend per pupil for their education, but the other things colleges provide, which are not accounted for anywhere else in their budgets. The sixth-form college in the middle of my constituency is essentially the extension of a social work practice. It deals with the trials and tribulations of almost all the pupils there. In a community with cohesion and deprivation issues, in which parents struggle with literacy and numeracy and there are young mums with children, the colleges provide a safety net for a whole host of people who otherwise would not be able to access education.
In north Staffordshire, we struggle particularly with mental health provision. Claire Gaygan, the vice-principal of the sixth-form college, told me that in one year there were 70 referrals to the local child and adolescent mental health services but only one appointment was received. That means 69 young people are not accessing the mental health services and support they need. I know the Minister cannot fix that overnight, and I know it is not something she does not take seriously, but too many young people in our colleges need additional support that simply is not being provided.
I pointed out earlier that had funding increased by inflation instead of being frozen, an additional £308 per pupil would be being spent in colleges across the country. I am told by the Library that there are around 8,500 young people between 16 and 18 in Stoke-on-Trent. A quick bit of maths tells us that that would amount to around £2.5 million across the three colleges in north Staffordshire, which would make a big difference to the life chances of the young people I represent.
I fear we are getting to the point where this is a zero-sum game. We had a lot of talk from many Members this afternoon about teachers’ pay, and the funding for high schools and further education. The reality is that we should not be pitting the funding for those up to the age of 15 against that of 16 to 18-year-olds. We certainly should not be trying to level down; we should be levelling up and recognising that if colleges are well funded, universities will have good-quality applicants who can go forward to take on high-quality graduate jobs.
If colleges are well funded, the skills gaps that we face in our communities, particularly those such as Stoke-on-Trent, can be met with ease. If we have well-funded colleges, we will attract the best and brightest staff, who in turn will inspire the next generation to go on and do the jobs that we know are important. Stoke-on-Trent is a city rich in talent and aspiration, but it sometimes struggles to turn that into tangible outcomes. The colleges in my constituency are among the few places that are working to nurture that talent and aspiration. When I visit the colleges in my constituency—I am sure the same is true for all other Members at the colleges in their constituencies—I see the bright young faces of people who have met an inspirational teacher or leader, who has helped them to take the next step towards achieving something great for themselves and their families.
In my constituency, all too often the first generation of a family is accessing further education. The young people who are going to college now are breaking with the things that have gone before, and they have a chance to go on and do better than their parents and grandparents. Often, they come back and inspire the next generation. I have met far too many young people who have gone on to further education and taken qualifications at a more challenging level only because their brother or sister went on such a programme. They have seen what their brothers, sisters and cousins can achieve, and they have emulated and replicated it. The more we can do to stimulate that sort of interaction, the better we can be in providing a college system that works.
That comes with funding. As my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) said, we need to love our colleges. We need to spread that love further, but we cannot spread it more thinly. There simply has to be more love to go around. Investing in our colleges is about investing in our future, in our young people and in the future of our country. I know the Minister takes it seriously. The responses I have received to my education questions show that she knows this is a battle that needs to be had with the Treasury. All of us here today are willing to stand with her as she has that battle for the funding that we need.
The Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills (Anne Milton)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) on securing this important debate, and I offer particular congratulations to the A-level politics students of Brockenhurst College for having started the petition that underlies it. I think we can all agree that securing a debate in Parliament is a pretty impressive piece of A-level project work.
Anne Milton
No, I only have 10 minutes. I am so sorry.
The hon. Member for Blackpool South (Gordon Marsden) mentioned the Augar review, and he should be in no doubt that I have fed my feelings about further education into that review. It is an independent review, and we await it with anticipation; somebody asked about timescales, but I do not yet know when it will report. To reassure the hon. Gentleman, we certainly are not building any new colleges. Institutes of technology, which are possibly what he was referring to, are collaborations. That is not about new buildings; it is about collaborations between FE and HE.
I cannot rehearse all the valuable arguments that have been made, but we sometimes forget that despite all the challenges that FE faces, 81% of colleges are rated “good” or “outstanding”. However, I know that Ofsted has raised concerns about the financial stability of the sector and how finances constrain what FE colleges and sixth-form colleges can do, and of course we have heard a great deal about that today. The petition that underpins this debate was launched as part of the Association of Colleges’ campaign, “Love Our Colleges”—which I do. Campaigns such as this and “Raise the Rate” have helped raise the profile of this issue, and we have had 18 speakers today.
The hon. Member for Cambridge is right to talk about divisions; divisions in society underlie this whole debate. He is also right that further education has been left behind, not just in terms of finance but through the domination of the higher education sector, which has crowded out any conversation about further education and how crucial it is. We must ensure that everyone, whatever their age, background or prior educational attainment, can access the best opportunities that are available.
My hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) mentioned those with special educational needs. As we all know, the further education sector offers a particularly high-quality opportunity to make sure that those young people have a chance to get on in their lives. To talk a little bit about mental health, I am acutely aware of the particular stresses that disproportionately affect young people in further education. We are creating new mental health support teams to address those needs, and we will work with colleges to identify and train designated senior leads for mental health to oversee mental health and wellbeing, with appropriate back-up support available. That is an important innovation.
My right hon. Friends the Members for Harlow (Robert Halfon) and for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) rightly pointed out that people develop at different stages in their life; it does not all happen for people at the ages of 16 or 18. For many people, school has not worked well. Examinations at 16 and 18 have not shown their true potential, and the door needs to remain open for those people. In my view, everybody has potential; everyone has skills, and is able to get a job or career and get on in their life. What they need is the opportunity to develop that potential.
My right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), who is always eloquent, gave us probably the most succinct description of the problems we face. Higher education has dominated Governments of all political persuasions; everyone, including the media, talks incessantly about higher education, and I well remember that at the hustings at my local university during the 2017 election, I was asked about tuition fees. My response was, “What about the 50% who do not go to university?” That did not go down terribly well, but I felt strongly about this issue then, long before I took on this job. My right hon. Friend probably answered his own question about apprenticeships: we were determined to raise the quality of apprenticeships, to make them high quality, relevant to the workplace and, critically, designed by employers. Such major reforms have inevitably resulted in a reduction in the numbers of apprenticeship starts, although that has started to turn around. There has been a rise in the numbers of level 4 and 5 and degree apprenticeships, and they are becoming a route of choice instead of full-time higher education courses, which is excellent.
My hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Andrea Jenkyns) rightly pointed out the additional maths premium. I am not going to go through a whole raft of all the things we have funded, but she is right that overall funding has not kept up with costs. She is also right that playing party politics does not help. I urge Members from all parts of the House to work together with me and with each other to ensure that we make the case. With the post-18 review looking at HE and FE, and with us also looking at the sustainability of the sector, that joint working is critical.
The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) mentioned the cross-party nature of the debate and asked about underspends. It is likely that the Department answer will state that any underspend is recirculated among other departmental priorities. I will see whether there are further details on that, but the money stays within education— although like him, I would like to see it spent on further education. The hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) asked me what the priorities are. I make no particular judgment about the various educational sectors, whether that is higher education or schools, but we hear a lot about schools funding and tuition fees and we do not hear much about FE. He also asked about the case for that funding, and there is a clear economic case and a productivity case. As a country, we cannot afford not to adequately fund the education of 50% of the population to ensure we have the skills we need. On a very personal level, it is about social mobility, community growth and the fact that everyone deserves a chance.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) mentioned mental health provision, which I have referred to, and the complex other needs of students in FE. Part of the case we need to make is that young people and adults often come into FE because their lives have been complex. Their learning needs are often not straightforward. Teaching and learning are only part of the job that FE staff do. There are often many other needs that must be met before any learning can begin to take place. I congratulate him on his thoughtful and collaborative approach. He is right that I need the help of all Members.
The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) is a real champion of her local college. She rightly raised the role that the college has played in her community, and it was a delight to hear her say that. That role is not measurable and is difficult to define, but it is of immense value. The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) probably summed it up better than many. The hon. Lady talked about lifelong learning and how 35% of jobs are likely to disappear in the next 10 years due to automation. The national retraining scheme, where we are doing a lot of research into what works, has received £100 million from the Chancellor. There is collaboration between the TUC, the CBI and Government to address exactly the issues she raised.
I have talked about the sustainability of the further education sector and FE funding. In the run-up to the spending review, it is time to articulate the case for FE. We talk about it not being school or university, but we need a clear vision that everyone can get behind. We have identified some key issues about how we can put FE on a sustainable footing and deliver quality. There are many questions that we need to ask. How do we ensure a high-quality further education offer in each local area so that young people and adults have opportunities to develop their skills and employers can access the training and skilled recruits they need? We want FE to be sustainable. We know that area reviews have done some of the work, but there is probably more work and more collaboration to do. The 16 to 18-year-old population has been declining for several years, but we will see an increase after 2020. By 2028, there will be a quarter more 16-year-olds than there are today, so the problem is coming up behind us.
T-levels do not distract from the issue; they are an add-on. Often in parliamentary questions I give an answer about how much we are spending on T-levels. It is important. It is not a substitute for core funding, and I am aware of that. We also want to see a better and more visible offer for people at level 4 and level 5 in technical education. The Secretary of State emphasised that in his speech last month. What is the role of FE and HE institutions? What is the role of learning and grant funding? Those issues are all bound up in the post-18 review. There are also the key steps we have to take to help colleges recruit and train the teachers they need.
I thank the hon. Member for Cambridge again for securing the debate and I thank everyone for their contributions. I reassure Members that I will take the issues away and continue to champion FE as we prepare for the spending review. I reject any suggestion that I do not care about further education. I did not go to university; I went by a route that included further education, and I am the first to challenge the intellectual snobbery that pervades much of the mainstream media and broadcast media. We have to turn that around. I want a society where it does not matter where someone came from—
Oral Answers to Questions
Gareth Snell Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Damian Hinds
Yes. The selective schools expansion fund was targeted precisely at ensuring that grammar schools that do not yet admit enough pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds and on free schools meals are encouraged to admit such pupils. I have been very encouraged by the applications that we have seen from the 16 successful schools, and I look forward to seeing accessibility increase.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Anne Milton
Some £500 million is going into T-levels as they are rolled out in 2020. I have got a grip, as has the Secretary of State, and I would remind the hon. Gentleman that we have put considerable funding into FE. I am very aware of the challenges it faces, which is why we are looking at the resilience of the FE sector right now.
Improving Education Standards
Gareth Snell Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Nick Gibb
My hon. Friend raises an important point. Grants are given to schools to help to fund the conversion process. About two thirds of secondary schools now have academy status and a significant proportion of primary schools—the figure is, I think, just under one third—have now converted to academy status.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
While the Minister is talking about the conversions to academy status, will he explain why he thinks it is fair that when schools that have a deficit in their overall funding or their budget convert to academy status, that deficit stays with the local authority, rather than going into the multi-academy trust chain? Often, that just produces an additional financial burden for local government.
Gareth Snell
I thank the Minister for being so candid with his answer. Will he explain, therefore, why it is that when schools have a surplus in their revenue budgets, that money goes into the multi-academy trust chain rather than staying with the local authority, given that that surplus will also have arisen under local authority control?
Nick Gibb
The reason for that is twofold. First, the surplus is often working capital and secondly, the school may well have been saving money from their revenue funding to purchase a capital item or to build a science block, and so on, and it would be a pity for those plans not to go ahead simply because they were being converted to academy status.
In opposition, when we were developing our academies and free school policy, we also came to the view that the policy would lead to higher standards not just in academies and free schools, but in local authority maintained schools. Last year, 83% of pupils at St Bonaventure’s Roman Catholic School were entered for the EBacc, up from just 33% in 2015. At St Paul’s Church of England Primary School in Staffordshire in 2014-15, only 50% of its pupils were reaching the expected standard in reading, but last year, that had risen to 87%. I am sure that I could find a lot of other examples of local authority schools that have improved their standards under this Government.
Of course, it does all begin with reading. Central to our reforms has been ensuring that all pupils are taught to read effectively. Pupils who are reading well by age five are six times more likely than their peers to be on track by age 11 in reading, and counter-intuitively, 11 times more likely to be on track in mathematics. For decades, there has been a significant body of evidence demonstrating that systematic phonics is the most effective method for teaching early reading. Phonics teaches children to associate letters with sounds, providing them with the code to unlock written English. Despite that evidence, our phonics reforms were initially met with opposition from some. They were dismissed by some critics as being a traditional approach. I make no apology for this, because phonics works. I pay particular tribute to the former Labour Mayor of Newham, Sir Robin Wales, who, in his independent way, promoted phonics and reading in Newham. Despite being an area of significant disadvantage, Newham now boasts the best phonics results in the country. Labour deselected Sir Robin as its mayoral candidate earlier this year.
In England, schools’ phonics performance has significantly improved since we introduced the phonics screening check in 2012, when just 58% of six-year-olds correctly read at least 32 out of the 40 words in the check. Today that figure is 82%, which means that 163,000 more six-year-olds are on track to be fluent readers this year compared with 2012. In 2016, England achieved its highest ever score in the reading ability of nine-year-olds, moving from joint 10th to joint eighth in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study—PIRLS—rankings. This follows a greater focus on reading in the primary curriculum and a particular focus on phonics.
We need to go further, of course, so backed by £26 million of funding, we have selected 32 primary schools across the country to spread best practice in the teaching of phonics and reading. Our aim is for every primary school to be teaching children to read as effectively as the best, and I will not stop going on about phonics until this is achieved. Reading is the essential building block to a good, fulfilling and successful life.
We reformed the primary school national curriculum in 2014, restoring knowledge to its heart and raising expectations of what children should be taught, particularly in English and maths. Since 2011, the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their more affluent peers has narrowed in both primary and secondary schools in England.
Education Funding
Gareth Snell Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Damian Hinds
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. I commend and pay tribute to the teachers and leaders in the schools in his constituency, and to him for the work he does with them.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State briefly mentioned T-levels. T-levels will come into Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College in 2020, when the money follows, but its principal, Mark Kent, tells me that its funding pressures will start next year. What help can he expect from the Government next year? Given that the Chancellor did not mention further education in his Budget speech, what will the Secretary of State do about that?
Damian Hinds
As the hon. Gentleman no doubt covered in his discussions with the principal of that college, there is also funding for preparation for T-levels and industrial placements, and for staff preparation. There was also confirmation in the Budget of our party conference announcement of extra capital money for facilities and equipment in preparation for T-levels. I will return to technical and vocational education a little later.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge). He may not know this, but I grew up in Suffolk and went to school there, so I know exactly the impact that the last Labour Government had on the communities he talks about. Under the last Labour Government, the school that I went to had a new sixth-form building; received capital investment into its home economics and technology centres; and had a complete revamp of its maths block. That all happened under the last Labour Government, who invested in the capital elements of schools. The idea that capital is a new device that this Government have found and that they are the only ones who are spending it is nonsense. I am of a generation that a Labour Government created through schools investment, education investment and capital investment.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a terrible pity that the sixth form has experienced the worst cuts of any age group?
Gareth Snell
My hon. Friend makes a prescient comment, because I will come on to that exact point momentarily.
Schools in Stoke-on-Trent are suffering the same problems as those suffered by schools across the country. Their per pupil funding has not been protected, so the costs they have to endure and incur are so significant that their budgets no longer balance. Only on Monday I was at Etruscan Primary School in my constituency where the executive headteacher told me that her school budget’s projected deficit for 2020 was almost £500,000. Through diligent work, she has managed to bring that down to £300,000, but there is still a huge gap between what she will have to spend and the money coming in. She is not the only one. The headteacher of St Thomas Aquinas Catholic Primary School has also written to me to explain that she faced a budget deficit of £100,000 over the past year. Moreover, she does not get sufficient resource from Stoke-on-Trent City Council, which is controlled by the Conservatives and independents, to meet the costs of supporting statemented children in her school who require—and who rightly receive—one-to-one tuition and support. She has to supplement that budget from her general school fund, which was also attacked and top-sliced this year by the Conservative and independent council as it sought to meet its higher needs budget. That budget has been overspent because the council has not got its own house in order with in-house provision and is instead sending children from my constituency and the city of Stoke-on-Trent out of area for the provision of particular educational needs. That is not good for the children, it is not good for school budgets, and it is certainly not good for the economy of Stoke-on-Trent.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) has rightly pointed out the scandal that is the funding for further education and sixth-form colleges in particular. Only last week I was talking to the vice-principal of my city’s sixth-form college who said that the cap of £4,000 per learner means that they have to scale back on the extras—not the “little extras” the Chancellor talked about but: the support they put in place for trips; the support they put in place to allow learners who need additional support, but who do not have a statement; the support they put in place through pastoral care; and the support they put in place for their young learners who cannot access child and adolescent mental health services system in our city because of the underfunding of the NHS. They are having to scale back on every single one of those because their costs are going up. Rises in inflation mean that any reserves they had are being eaten into. As a result, the young people in the college are suffering.
The Chancellor announced in his Budget a tax cut for the wealthiest 10%. Everybody in the Chamber will receive a tax cut as a result of the Budget the Chancellor proposed and is being voted through. I was proud to vote against that, because I do not think it is fair or right. I do not know how I can go into a classroom and justify billions of pounds being spent on tax cuts for the wealthiest 10% when headteachers across my constituency are telling me that they cannot afford to buy textbooks and other provisions for their schools.
Gareth Snell
No, because that would take up time and I am sure there are plenty of others who wish to speak.
I cannot go into those schools and justify a tax cut for the wealthiest 10%, while at the same time my schools are going short of provisions. The £10,000 the Chancellor announced for little extras will not go towards closing their budget deficits or towards the provisions they need. It is a disgraceful attack on those schools and their resources.
The Education Secretary looks puzzled by that, but that is the policy of the Government he supports. When I speak to headteachers in my constituency I make it very clear that if they want to see real education funding reform they will not get it from this Government. The Government are simply trying to rig the system to support schools in their constituencies, while cities like mine suffer further. [Interruption.] The Education Secretary asks me what I suggest. What I am suggesting is what I have just said. The funding formula is being re-engineered to move provisions away from areas of deprivation, in cities such as Stoke-on-Trent, towards areas with lower levels of deprivation to placate the electorate in those areas. The hon. Member for South Suffolk said that he knows policies change depending on which electorate they need to placate. That is happening with school budgets. That is why Stoke-on-Trent schools will lose money, while schools in other parts of the country will gain money despite the fact that Stoke-on-Trent ranks 14th for deprivation. [Interruption.] The Parliamentary Private Secretary, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), is shaking his head. He is an MP for the city I represent—
Gareth Snell
It is true: he is an MP for the city I represent. [Laughter.] He will have sat in the same meetings as me, with the Stoke-on-Trent Association of School, College and Academy Leaders and the Stoke Heads and Principals Executive, while headteachers talked about the funding deficits they face. All I would say to the Government and the Secretary of State is this: please take up the baton for schools. Take up the requests from colleges and get more money out of the Treasury. At the moment, he is asleep on the job. The sooner he realises that he needs to stand up for schools the better.
The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)
There is nothing more important to the future of a child than a rigorous academic education in an orderly, safe and nurturing environment—an education that allows every child to fulfil their potential and equips them with the knowledge of the world around them so that they can take on the challenges of that world, an education steeped in the achievements of generations of scientists, and the literature, music and art that lies at the heart of our humanity, and an education system that ensures that they have the language, literacy and maths skills that enable them to function and to learn more.
That should be the start of every child’s life, whether that child is from a wealthy family or a family on a low income, whether they are in the north or the south-west, or whether they are in London or in Manchester. That has been the driving force of this Government since 2010: to raise standards in our schools; to improve the curriculum; to put our education system on a par with the best in the world; to close the attainment gap between those from different backgrounds; and to ensure that every child is a fluent reader long before they leave primary school.
Our reform programme has been opposed by the Labour party every step of the way. In office, those complacent, ideological enemies of promise and close-knit friends of the vested interests presided over grade inflation, falling standards and an education system that left too many children starting secondary school still struggling with reading and basic arithmetic, because Labour was too afraid to challenge the status quo.
Labour failed to introduce fairer funding because it was controversial. We have not shirked our responsibility. The new national funding formula ensures that every pupil in the country is funded on the same basis according to need. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) needs to read up about that.
Labour failed to rise to the challenge of increasing pupil numbers, cutting 200,000 primary school places at a time when the birth rate was rising. One of the first decisions we took after 2010 was to double the funding for new school places to £5 billion. Since then, we have created 825,000 new school places and committed £23 billion of capital funding for 2016 to 2021.
At a time when we are tackling the historically high and unsustainable budget deficit left to us by the last Labour Government, we have none the less protected overall school funding for five to 16-year-olds in real terms, and now spend a record £42.4 billion, which is rising to £43.5 billion next year.
Oral Answers to Questions
Gareth Snell Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Nick Gibb
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: dealing with workload has been a key objective of this Government. In July, we published the workload reduction toolkit, which provides material, practical advice and case studies that headteachers and other staff can use to address workload issues in their schools.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Obviously, the pay award that will go to teachers will also go to teachers in sixth-form colleges, but the Government are not funding that pay rise, so what assessment has the Minister made of the impact of the teachers’ pay award on college budgets?
Nick Gibb
As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said, we acknowledge that funding in the 16-to-18 sector has not been protected in the same way that we have protected school funding since 2010, because since 2010 our priority has been to ensure that basic education between the ages of five and 16 is given the priority it needs.
Speech, Language and Communication Support for Children
Gareth Snell Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries, and thank you for letting me indicate my wish to speak at such a late stage. I congratulate the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) on securing this important debate, and on the tenacity with which she has pursued this issue pretty much every time I have been in the Chamber for questions and she has been able to raise it. The perspicacity of her speech demonstrates that she clearly has this issue in her heart; it is not something that she is doing simply because she can.
I want to touch on the Stoke Speaks Out scheme, which my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) mentioned. It is a wonderful scheme, which Janet Cooper and her team have run for a number of years. The purpose of the scheme is to identify at a very early age young people in Stoke-on-Trent for whom speech and language could be a barrier to their overall development, aspiration and further opportunity.
The team at Stoke Speaks Out do wonderful work, but they have the never-ending problem of constantly having to reinvent the service that they are trying to deliver in order to qualify for new rounds of funding from various different funding agencies and bodies. The reality is that they have a model that works. It has been statistically proven to work, and they have a quantified dataset that shows that their interventions cause improvements. In fact, the baseline for readiness in Stoke-on-Trent schools in 2016 showed that only 35% of our young people were ahead or on track for speech standards, but after intervention by the Stoke Speaks Out team that figure had risen to 54% by July 2017. I think we would all agree that that is a remarkable achievement in such a short period of time for an organisation that was operating on a shoestring.
This is not an issue with our schools. The schools in our city are rated good or outstanding overall. This is a community issue and a societal issue, and it is a problem that is often missed. The most pertinent point that the hon. Member for Taunton Deane made was about early intervention outside school years. We have a disproportionate number of young people in Stoke-on-Trent for whom the 30 hours of nursery provision or pre-school arrangements simply are not available, because of work arrangements or the hours threshold. That means that a lot of young people go directly from a home situation into a reception class. Headteachers around the constituency consistently tell me that young people benefit from provision in a nursery school setting, and that there is a marked and quantifiable difference in readiness for speech and language skills between children who come into school aged four and those who have been through nursery provision aged three.
The simple fact is that early intervention teams within the community health team cannot pick up every case where somebody may have an issue with speech and learning development. Stark statistics suggest that around half the young people in the constituencies of Stoke-on-Trent North, Stoke-on-Trent South and Stoke-on-Trent Central have up to a 12-month delay in their language skills by the age of three. As the hon. Member for Taunton Deane pointed out, that is a huge impediment to their future success.
Schools also talk to me quite readily about the fact that they struggle to get some parents to engage with at-home reading. That is sometimes down to parents not making the effort—we must be honest about that—but it is also because adult literacy rates in some parts of my constituency mean that parents do not have the confidence to sit down and read with their children from a very young age. Again, that can cause issues around how people parent. The hon. Member for Taunton Deane rightly pointed out that the “digital corner parent”, as we call it in our house, sometimes has a much greater presence in the young person’s life than it should, to the extent that a headteacher in one of my schools said that one of their problems was children coming in with American accents, because they watch American cartoons and TV, and that has become dominant. In some of my local schools, the words “soda” and “elevator” are now more commonly used than “pop” and “lift”, because that is the way that some parents arrange things.
Ruth Smeeth
I hate to interrupt a narrative about American television, but one of the most important things that Stoke Speaks Out has done is to deliver 3,000 free books to children across our city as part of the Stoke Reads project. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is as vital for parents as it is for children, as those parents start reading to their children?
Gareth Snell
I thank my hon. Friend for her inevitable intervention. She is right: the more we can get parents reading, the better. My predecessor, Tristram Hunt, did a piece of work with every primary school child in Stoke-on-Trent Central. He arranged for them to receive a copy of H. E. Marshall’s “Our Island Story: A Child’s History of England” as they transitioned from primary to secondary school, so he could be certain that they would have something to read over the summer period. Those small things can go on to develop language skills.
There is also a wonderful organisation in Stoke-on-Trent called Beanstalk, which arranges for volunteers to go into school and read with children. I believe that the mother of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North is a volunteer with that programme. Whenever I go round schools I see teachers and headteachers who have used their pupil premium money in very innovative ways to get young people reading and understanding where language comes from. I must admit that I was somewhat confused when my seven-year-old daughter came home, having done phonics in her year 1 class, with “oohs” and “aahs” and lots of new language sounds that I certainly did not learn when I was at school.
Gareth Snell
Yes, thank you—I was almost there.
That demonstrates to me that there are some wonderful ways in which we can start to tackle this problem, but the work has to be systemic and it has to be continued.
I will ask the Minister some important questions. How do the Government see early intervention work continuing, particularly for young people who are not in nursery provision before going to school?
Rebecca Pow
On the subject of different charities doing good work, in my constituency we have two really good branches of a charity called Read Easy, which work with adults on adult literacy. A lot of adults are scared to admit that they cannot read, but it is a really gentle, lovely way of engaging adults, because of course they cannot help their children if they cannot read properly themselves. The hon. Gentleman made a very good point about that.
Gareth Snell
Once again, the hon. Lady is absolutely right. The headteachers I have spoken to in Stoke-on-Trent say that once they can get parents, who may have had quite an unpleasant time at school themselves, into the school and show them that it is a safe environment for them as well as their children, the engagement levels with those parents increase. Suddenly, the child’s homework gets better, the reading diary is filled in, there is more interaction with the school for pastoral and social events, and the family becomes a much more engaged part of the school community rather than simply dropping their children off and picking them up in the afternoon.
I would be grateful if the Minister explained what the Government can do on early intervention, because it looks as if many of the future funding promises will be geared towards schools, which are already overstretched. If we can reach young people before school, we can close the gap and ensure that their opportunities for learning are increased.
I would also be grateful if the Minister, if he is unable to answer today, could at least think about longer-term aspirational plans. Stoke-on-Trent is an opportunity area, with two wonderful co-chairs, Professor Liz Barnes and Carol Shanahan, leading the way. They know that early intervention and breaking the cycle early on is important. Will the Minister tell us how he sees that programme being funded sustainably? The opportunity area is a three-year programme and they will do what they can in their three years, but that period will run out. How can we embed that work into our culture and society?
The schools in my constituency are working absolutely flat out to address this issue. I know that this is not a debate about fairer funding arrangements, but is there anything that the Minister could do to consider schools in areas such as Stoke-on-Trent, where deprivation levels are higher than we would like them to be on every metric? Might there be longer term intervention programmes for our city? We need to make sure that the generation of MPs who follow me and my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North are not also discussing this issue.
Oral Answers to Questions
Gareth Snell Excerpts(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Nadhim Zahawi
Placing any child or young person more than 20 miles away from their area requires the agreement of the director of children’s services. Children should always be placed where appropriate and the director of children’s services must make that decision.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills (Anne Milton)
We protected the 16-to-19 funding base rate for all types of further education providers in the 2015 spending review. I should point out that the additional investment for the new T-levels to increase hours of learning from 600 to 900 per session will result in £550 million by the time of their roll-out. We are also spending £20 million to help teachers with T-levels, and there is a host of other funding going into FE, not least the restructuring fund—£726 million was made available by the Treasury. There is also the local growth fund for capital and the strategic college improvement fund.
Gareth Snell
What the Minister really said there, in a very long-winded way, was that there is no new funding. T-levels do not exist yet, and the funding she has re-announced already exists. Some £1.3 million would have been available to the colleges and further education establishments in my constituency had the Department not redirected the underspend between 2014 and 2017. I simply ask her: can we have it back, please?
Anne Milton
As I pointed out earlier, we have a post-18 funding review going on and we are looking at the resilience of the FE sector—