Further and Higher Education Students: Cost of Living

George Howarth Excerpts
Tuesday 19th September 2023

(6 months, 1 week ago)

Westminster Hall
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George Howarth Portrait Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)
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I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called in the debate.

Paul Blomfield Portrait Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
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I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of increases in the cost of living on further and higher education students.

I am delighted to see you in the Chair, Sir George. This is a timely debate coming as the new academic year starts. It is based on the two-stage inquiry undertaken during the first half of the year by the all-party parliamentary group for students, which I chair and officers of which are also present. We looked at the impact of the cost of living crisis on higher education students, on which we reported in March, and, in partnership with the all-party parliamentary group on further education and lifelong learning—whose chair, the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), I welcome —on FE students, on which we reported in July.

Although many others have been impacted hard by the cost of living crisis, we were concerned that students should not be overlooked. We were not alone in that concern. Petitions Committee staff wrote to me last week to tell me that there have been six petitions to Parliament seeking support for students. It is important that students are not seen as a homogeneous group. In FE and HE, there is enormous diversity of students, including part-time and full-time; distance learners and commuter students; many with families and caring responsibilities, juggling work with study; classroom-based and apprentices; undergraduates and postgraduates; and home and international. Of course, there is the difference in the arrangements and responses across the four nations of the UK.

The current student cohort, though, have one thing in common: the double misfortune of educational disruption from covid and now the cost of living crisis. Our inquiry collated evidence from universities and student unions, and directly from hundreds of students who engaged with us. We drew on the work of others, including the Office for National Statistics, the Sutton Trust, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Save the Student. I would like to thank Parliament’s Chamber Engagement Team for its work in gathering feedback since the debate was announced. Just over the past couple of days, we have had upwards of 160 students, parents and others contact us.

So what did we hear? First, we heard that the student support system has failed to keep up with rising costs and that it was already unfit for purpose when the cost of living crisis hit, particularly given the decreasing value of student loans. According to the Save the Student survey, the loan fell short of average costs that students face by £439 per month in 2021-22, and that had increased to a shortfall of £582 per month last year. Other factors include the freezing of the lower parental earnings threshold, which means that the proportion studying outside London who receive the maximum student loan fell from 57% in 2012-13 to 38% in 2021-22.

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None Portrait Several hon. Members rose—
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George Howarth Portrait Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)
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Order. In view of the number of people hoping to speak in the debate, I am afraid I must impose a time limit of three minutes on Back-Bench speeches. I am sorry, but otherwise the number of people able to take part would be even more limited.

Apprenticeships and Teacher Training

George Howarth Excerpts
Wednesday 19th October 2022

(1 year, 5 months ago)

Westminster Hall
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Anthony Mangnall Portrait Anthony Mangnall
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I apologise for having two bites of the cherry, but just two weeks ago I held my own careers fair at a local further education college—South Devon College—in my constituency of Totnes and south Devon. It was a fantastic example of how to join up local apprenticeships and local businesses and explore the opportunities in the area. Will my hon. Friend come down and see what we are doing in the south-west—a sometimes overlooked area—so that, across the whole country, we might join up this idea of linking up apprenticeships, colleges and businesses?

George Howarth Portrait Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)
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Order. Obviously, the decision whether or not to take interventions is for the hon. Member who is moving the motion. I would point out, however, that there are five people hoping to speak, and each intervention means that the time limit may be reduced for those people.

Richard Holden Portrait Mr Holden
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Thank you for your guidance, Sir George. I will just say that, when I was in the Department for Education, I visited South Devon College with the then Education Secretary’s special adviser, and I can definitely recommend that my hon. Friend the Minister does so too.

Far too often we hear stories of young people leaving our communities, particularly in constituencies such as North West Durham, to go away to university. They are out of the jobs market for three years and sometimes end up right back where they started, having accumulated student loans in the process. A three-year residential course is not the right route for everyone—actually, it probably is not the right route for the majority of people—but at the moment, in too many cases, it is the only option for those who want to be seen to get ahead. That is specifically the case for the teaching profession, where there is not currently an undergraduate apprenticeship, although there is a postgraduate one. I want to see young people become apprentices so they can earn a degree and valuable skills while earning a stable income right away, rather than continuing on the traditional university route first.

Despite the multifaceted benefits that apprenticeships can clearly provide, we could do more to encourage apprenticeships, particularly in constituencies such as mine, which have seen apprenticeship starts fall in recent years. That really concerns me. I want to see as many people as possible in North West Durham, and across the country, in apprenticeships. The fall in apprenticeship starts also demonstrates that the north has the most to gain by increasing apprenticeships, particularly in areas such as teaching, especially if people can do them through local universities and schools so they do not have move away. If we want to look at different ways to deliver on levelling up, then increasing apprenticeships is critical.

Clearly, an undergraduate apprenticeship route into teaching is a no-brainer. Currently, someone who wants to be a teacher must have a degree and either do a postgraduate apprenticeship or a postgraduate certificate in education. That may make sense for a group of people for whom a few drinks is the right option for their first year at university and who then finally settle down to study, but many of my constituents need to be earning from day one. For so many young people who go into certain FE courses—particularly young women in my constituency—it feels as if their choices are limited from that point, especially if they are interested in education, as they cannot take the final steps into the full teaching profession.

As I have said, the traditional route is not the right one to ensure that as many people as possible can access the profession. That means we are missing out on huge talent in vast swathes of the population, some of whom might be some of the best teachers from the earliest stage of their career. We need to unleash the potential in this broader base of the population. That will also help the sector with vacancies, particularly in certain subjects, possibly including some technical subjects. I do not see any reason why we could not have some of the important academic subject bases as part of that mix; it is about design.

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None Portrait Several hon. Members rose—
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George Howarth Portrait Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)
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In order to try to get in everyone who has indicated that they want to speak in the debate, I will impose a time limit of five minutes on speeches. I will call the first of the two Front Benchers at 5.27 pm.

Arthur Labinjo-Hughes

George Howarth Excerpts
Monday 6th December 2021

(2 years, 3 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Nadhim Zahawi Portrait Nadhim Zahawi
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I know that my hon. Friend feels strongly about the issue, which he and I have discussed recently. Quite rightly, he reminds the House that last week the Government announced that we will amend the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill to include Tony’s law, which will increase the maximum penalty for child cruelty and for causing or allowing serious physical harm to a child from 10 to 14 years’ imprisonment, and the maximum penalty for causing or allowing the death of a child from 14 years to life imprisonment.

George Howarth Portrait Sir George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
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I congratulate the Secretary of State on the thoughtful but determined way in which he has approached this tragic situation. He mentions the need for multi-agency working. I am sure he is right about that, but might I suggest that the review looks at the possibility of placing a duty on those agencies to share information, because that seems to have been a problem in this case, and of establishing a mechanism whereby information received is properly assessed to see what further steps should be taken? As others have said, we need the resources to make a system like that work.

Nadhim Zahawi Portrait Nadhim Zahawi
- Parliament Live - Hansard - - - Excerpts

The right hon. Gentleman raises a really important issue. Although there is a duty to work together and to share information, I want the investigation to look at how well that is working and how we can improve it. Clearly in this case it has not worked, which is why we have lost poor Arthur.

Childcare

George Howarth Excerpts
Monday 13th September 2021

(2 years, 6 months ago)

Westminster Hall
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Steve Brine Portrait Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
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I congratulate the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), who is a friend, on the new arrival. The importance of this issue in the eyes of our constituents, mine included, is reflected in the fact that almost 113,000 people signed this e-petition, which—as has already been set out—calls for

“an independent review of childcare funding and affordability”.

The public, I think, feel we could do more to create a sustainable future for the early years sector, which I represent here today as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on childcare and early education, which has been mentioned. We in that group have spoken for some time about what I would describe as a market failure in this sector, and the need for a meaningful review of it, so it is good that we are having this debate.

Prior to the summer, I had the pleasure of speaking in another debate on this issue, in Westminster Hall in its other incarnation—these debates come around often—and in the months since, things have moved on. The Chancellor has now announced his comprehensive spending review alongside his Budget on 27 October, and it was very useful to speak to him last week—I was in that meeting too, along with my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers)—about many of the issues we are debating this afternoon. I must stress from the outset, as I did to the Chancellor, that this is not all about money. For me, it is about getting back to brass tacks to make our early years funding system work for the children of this country, and for the families who rely on it and the economy that relies on those families. It is about ensuring that our hard-working early years educators—I declare my interest: I am married to one—are rewarded. Most importantly, it is about putting our early years sector on a sustainable footing so that this debate will not keep coming around again and again.

I am here as chair of the all-party parliamentary group, but I am also a Government MP, and I am very proud of the landmark commitment that we as a party made through the 30-hours entitlement. However, I have to say that through my work chairing the group, it has become clear to me that systemic reforms are needed to make this flagship policy work better. Data from the National Day Nurseries Association, which is one of the sponsors of our group, show that in 2019-20, three quarters of councils underspent their early years funding by £62 million. Meanwhile, there is a funding shortfall of almost £3,000 per child per year for every 30-hours place. My hope is that Government will agree to use the forthcoming spending review to fund an early years catch-up premium and address this shortfall, including facing down the local authorities on that underspend. Merely by overhauling the system and tackling the existing underspend, we could properly fund many of those 30-hours places for children right across the country.

That is just one example of how reviewing the funding system would ensure that the existing funding follows the child and is best used. For me, the two issues are intrinsically linked: we cannot fund our early years sector without holding a fundamental review of the funding system, and we cannot simply wait for a review of that system to report without some sort of bridging measures and the long-term certainty that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet spoke about. Between April 2020 and March 2021, there was a 35% increase in nursery closures, just at the time when parents who are key workers needed them most. That is a grave concern for us. The nurseries that are struggling and closing tend to have a higher proportion of Government-funded children. Therefore, the poorer families suffer more from the shortfall between the funding and delivery costs. That causes the lag that is causing the closures.

The future of the sector is in peril, and with it the benefits that it brings to children, their families and the economy. It is not just about the bottom line for providers, but rather the future and development of our children, who are then ready to go on to reception and their primary and secondary education.

George Howarth Portrait Sir George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
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The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful case, as have others. Does he agree that grandparents often have to step in to the breach and provide the necessary childcare? While that is very welcome and they do it willingly, it results in an uneven pattern of child development.

Steve Brine Portrait Steve Brine
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The right hon. Gentleman’s point goes to the heart of the issue. I talked about early years educators; these are not well-meaning amateurs at the end of their career who are just providing plasticine. They are educators and they are preparing children for the world of learning when they go into their primary and secondary education. It is a very good point and it is well made.

Nursery settings have remained open and ready to receive children to help their families get back to work. At the same time, their staffing costs have risen on average by 8.6% through the new national living wage and pension contributions. With the reintroduction of business rates looming, the average nursery will face a bill of about £12,500 for those alone. Surely it would be better to see this money going into the pockets of our early years educators and directly invested in the future of children across the UK. That would be a fitting way to recognise the unsung contribution of early years educators over the last year and to help develop our country’s most valuable asset—the next generation.

Oral Answers to Questions

George Howarth Excerpts
Monday 22nd June 2020

(3 years, 9 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Alec Shelbrooke Portrait Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
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What plans he has to provide time in schools for pupils to catch up on education missed as a result of the covid-19 lockdown.

George Howarth Portrait Sir George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
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What plans he has to help schools deliver programmes to enable pupils to catch up on progress lost as a result of the covid-19 lockdown.

Miriam Cates Portrait Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)
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What support his Department will provide to pupils to make up for time spent out of school as a result of the covid-19 lockdown.

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Gavin Williamson Portrait Gavin Williamson
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One key element of the £1 billion package is ensuring that children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds have extra support through one-on-one tutoring and tutoring in small groups. My right hon. Friend raises an important point about providing more teaching time. That is why we will consult Ofqual on how we can move exams back, giving children extra time to learn, flourish and do incredibly well.

George Howarth Portrait Sir George Howarth [V]
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I welcome the additional £350 million announced last week for catch-up tutoring, but the Secretary of State is aware that schools with already badly overstretched budgets will have to find a quarter of that cost. Will he give an unequivocal commitment that schools, which are best placed to know their pupils’ needs, will be able to target those funds in the most appropriate way for them?

Gavin Williamson Portrait Gavin Williamson
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I am pleased to report that Knowsley Council has seen good sense and is working with the Department to ensure that all schools in Knowsley are opening up, which is a welcome development. The whole purpose of our very targeted approach is that it is evidence-based—we know that direct tutoring of children from disadvantaged backgrounds has the single biggest impact on driving their attainment. As I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will be aware, the other element of the package—£650 million—gives schools flexibility to look at how they can drive improvement, and I urge him to look at the work done by the Education Endowment Foundation to guide how they spend that money.

Education and Attainment of White Working-Class Boys

George Howarth Excerpts
Wednesday 12th February 2020

(4 years, 1 month ago)

Westminster Hall
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Ben Bradley Portrait Ben Bradley
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I have to plough on, or I will run out of time. The challenge, as I have said, entrenches disadvantage, with better-off parents more able to push their children to attain, to do homework and to work hard at school, while those who have the least education themselves or who have chaotic lives struggle to do so.

Early interventions can help. We can refocus where we put our money in early years provision on the most disadvantaged, bearing in mind that currently, a couple earning £200,000 between them can access 30 hours’ free childcare, but a single mum on the living wage working 15 hours a week can only get 15 hours of free childcare. We can encourage nurture provision in a primary setting to ensure children are engaging with school early on and can settle into primary school. That saves all sorts of issues later and draws parents into that school setting early on. We need proper youth work and more trained youth workers to support children and offer direction. Great youth workers are hugely important, and we have the opportunity through the youth investment fund to train thousands more.

When I visit schools in Mansfield, parental engagement is often raised with me as being among the biggest challenges. How do we draw them into the educational environment to support their children at school? The Social Market Foundation, for example, suggests that after-school family literacy classes in primary school would encourage parents to take a more active role in a child’s education. I know some schools do that. My kids go in early for phonics with mum on a Tuesday morning, and I like the sound of that, and I like the sound of using the school setting as more of a community hub to be able to offer other services that push those hard-to-reach parents to come into the school to engage with teachers.

The Department for Education has found that higher rates of exclusions are seen in areas of deprivation. Pupils known to be eligible for and claiming free school meals account for 40% of all permanent exclusions. Again, that is boys from disadvantaged backgrounds. There is a reason why boys more than girls can be disruptive or badly behaved in a classroom setting. Simply using detention or exclusion rarely helps. According to the OECD, boys respond more to a school’s environment than girls. When they are in disruptive, chaotic disorganised settings, their capacity for self-regulation suffers. When they are labelled as the bad kid, they become the bad kid. Often these kids do not have male role models at home. They are confused about masculinity and what it means and their role in society. We need to support them through that, not punish them.

We need to take bold steps fundamentally to change failing schools, which can exacerbate problems, rather than help. A few weeks ago an article in The Sun highlighted so-called dumping grounds, where schools have struggled consistently for a long time even to get out of special measures. We need almost a “Supernanny”-style leadership team capable of taking on these challenges and intervening fundamentally in these schools. We need more incentives for the best teachers to work in such schools, which often exist in the same disadvantaged communities and so cannot attract experienced teachers. It is becoming commonplace for children to have lessons taught by somebody who is not qualified in the subject. Great leaders and great teachers can transform failing schools, and we need to equip them with the resource, the flexibility and the curriculum to deliver real and genuine change.

I wonder whether there is a way to build on interventions such as the London Challenge and offer that kind of resource and impact to the most challenging schools and areas outside London, too. I know that the Government have started on some of those kinds of interventions, and I would be interested to hear more about that from the Minister.

To conclude, I hope we would all agree that we are missing a trick if we are not focusing on ensuring that all children of all ethnicities and backgrounds get access to a good education and to life’s opportunities. That means we cannot continue not to talk about the plight of disadvantaged white boys who are consistently at the bottom of the pile.

We hear a lot in the media and in this place about white male privilege—it seems to overtake discussion a lot—and I challenge those people to come to my community, where men spent their whole lives digging coal underground to keep the lights on, and who are now dying early of lung disease as a result, and talk to them about their privilege. It is their children and grandchildren I am talking about today. They need help, and our communities need help. I hope that this Government’s mission to level up the towns and regions in the UK that have the least includes education as a key priority. I am sure that it does. Unless we grapple with the burning injustice that faces white working-class boys in communities such as mine in Mansfield, we will not be delivering the change that is needed.

George Howarth Portrait Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)
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Before I call Karl MᶜCartney, who I understand has the agreement of both the Minister and the mover of the motion to speak, I ask him to bear in mind that he needs to leave adequate time for the Minister to respond.

Music Education in England

George Howarth Excerpts
Wednesday 17th July 2019

(4 years, 8 months ago)

Westminster Hall
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Tracy Brabin Portrait Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab/Co-op)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. Sir George. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Frith) for securing the debate. If this is his first Westminster Hall debate, he has a great career ahead of him; his speech was powerful and impassioned and addressed an important and urgent question that will affect many youngsters across the country. We have heard several excellent contributions from people who have lived experience in this world. Their concerns about the crisis of music education in England are profound and compelling. I will pick out a couple of moments of great interest.

The right hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) was, as always, a passionate advocate for the creative subjects for all. The work he did creating music hubs and the Henley report is a solid base from which we all work. The highlight of his speech must be funky Gibb, which will stick with us from now on. My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) talked about singing for pleasure and the element of wellbeing. His statistic about cows will also stay with me. The hon. Member for Henley (John Howell), who I will book for my own funeral—he is obviously going to have several bookings now—mentioned early years. Although music is in the list of Ofsted’s expectations, what is the quality of the music provision for the under-5s? We had a debate yesterday about the first 1,001 days of life, and we know that brain development is supported by access and exposure to music. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution.

My hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Thelma Walker) made a profound contribution, speaking about her own experience. No one could challenge her experience of being on the frontline as the head teacher of a school, creating a brilliant experience for young people and giving them an opportunity to live a full and enriched life.

Finally, the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton) talked about the extra pillar to the EBacc. I had a meeting with the Secretary of State to discuss that. His response was, “It will not make a difference.” I hope that when he looks back at this debate he will read the profound and passionate pleas from people who know and have experienced it in their life, and see that this would make a difference.

I welcome the work undertaken by UK Music, Music Industries Association and the Musicians’ Union highlighting the perilous state of music education across the country. As we heard from the hon. Member for Henley, UK Music’s “Measuring Music” reports that the music industry’s contribution to the economy is £4.5 billion, with £2.6 billion export revenue. Britain has less than 1% of the global population but one in seven albums sold worldwide in 2014 was by a British act; I can only imagine those numbers have gone up. Music is a critical part of Britain’s soft power and in the current climate, as we career out of the EU, that power could not be more vital.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s own report on sector economic estimates showed the value of the creative industries rose by 7.1% in 2017—almost twice as much as the UK economy as a whole—to £101.5 billion. Sadly, the evidence gathered, not just by the unions and other trade bodies but by the all-party parliamentary group for music education, shows that music education is at a point of crisis, with creeping cuts to music education, chaotic music education policies and plummeting morale among teachers and educators.

The Music Industries Association report, “The State of Play—a review of music education in England 2019”, proved beyond doubt that the inequalities in music provision are real, concluding that children from families earning under £28,000 a year are half as likely to learn a musical instrument as those with a family income above £48,000. There are children, certainly in Batley and Spen, for whom coming from a family with an income of £28,000 would make them feel very well off. We should always be mindful of children whose lives are so chaotic that they will never get the chance to experience the joy of playing an instrument or singing in a choir.

Eight years have elapsed since the coalition unveiled its national plan for music education; there was much fanfare around the commitment to give every child the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, with the establishment of Government-funded music hubs. Despite this commitment, as we have heard, the truth is that coherent and impactful music education is entirely dependent on the whims and talents of headteachers, the priorities of the music hub and the youngsters’ postcode. Added to this, the decline in take-up of schools offering music at GCSE and A-level means even those kids who do not necessarily want to play but have a love of music do not get the chance unless their parents can pay for costly out-of-school provision.

Of those surveyed in the “State of Play” report, 60% said the introduction of the EBacc has directly affected music provision in their schools. In a recent National Education Union—then the National Union of Teachers—survey, 97% of the union’s teachers agreed that SATs preparation did not support children’s access to a broad and balanced curriculum, saying the time taken to prepare children for assessment in maths and English has squeezed out other subjects and activities. The problem does not go away when our children leave primary school. As we have heard, the proportion of 15 and 16-year-olds taking subjects like music and drama has fallen to its lowest levels. There are outliers: Feversham Primary Academy in Bradford recently made headlines with its focus on music leading to improved outcomes for its pupils. It made the national press, which would suggest it is unusual. It should not be.

While this is not a competition between schools, one of the many reasons parents pay the eye-watering fees to send their children to places like Eton is the attractive music provision. At Eton, there is a purpose-built orchestral rehearsal room, a recording studio, a 250-seat concert hall, an organ room, the opportunity to learn music taught by seven full-time professionals, 70 visiting teachers with over 1,000 lessons a week, teaching the full range of orchestral and solo instruments, as well as the sitar and tabla. Pupils can join the symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, jazz, wind and pipe bands, choirs and choral groups, as well as write and produce their own music in the well-equipped music-tech studios.

I am not saying this to attack other schools in any way, but to reinforce the point that those parents know the value of this enrichment. They know that not every child will go on to be a professional musician, a composer or a singer, but they will have developed as a human being and young person with a love for music and it will stay with them all their life. A recent report from the University of Oxford suggested that 15 million jobs are at risk from automation, but artists such as musicians are at less risk. Parents who send their children to schools with great arts provision are future-proofing their children’s destinies.

Creative subjects are marginalised in the curriculum and the number of post-grad students training to be music teachers has shrunk. As Members of Parliament we can encourage local opportunities. I have seen how music can transform the lives of youngsters and adults in the Batley and Spen Youth Theatre Company’s production of “Les Misérables” and Creative Scene’s production “Batley Does Opera”. They transformed lives, reduced loneliness and mental health issues, boosted confidence and raised aspirations.

We know that creative subjects are a magnet for children who are not naturally academic. They might struggle to read, but come to life on stage; they might be unable to concentrate in class, but play the ukulele for hours. No one loses in music, so we all benefit; there are no winners or losers. Music aids better brain development and maths skills, and it increases human connectivity and concentration levels, but we should look at music for its own sake. It is a gift handed down from generation to generation. Everywhere we go we are surrounded by music. We all attach music to pivotal moments in our lives.

What can we do? Labour is committed to reviewing and reforming the EBacc and ensuring that children get the broad and balanced curriculum they need for the 21st century. Creative subjects will be at the heart of that, with a boost of £160 million for arts education. We will use the cultural capital fund to invest in instruments for music hubs and upgrade music facilities in state schools to match the those found in many private schools. Each child will have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument and we will instigate a creative careers advice campaign. Our creative pupil premium will support schools, ensuring that every child has access to the cultural capital that others in less disadvantaged areas can easily access.

Post Brexit, we will need our arts more than ever, not only for jobs and the economy, but for our spirit and soul. We must support children by giving them every opportunity to love music and engage with it, and to be better human beings from accessing music.

George Howarth Portrait Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)
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I am sure the Minister needs no reminding, but he needs to leave a bit of time for the encore by the mover of the motion.

College Funding

George Howarth Excerpts
Monday 21st January 2019

(5 years, 2 months ago)

Westminster Hall
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Yvonne Fovargue Portrait Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker.

I welcome this debate; the number of signatures shows how important the issue is. It is really important to people in my constituency because we do not have school sixth forms, so students have no choice but to go to a sixth-form college. Wigan and Leigh College offers the vocational route, and does it very well, but I will concentrate on the two outstanding colleges in my constituency that offer academic qualifications for students who might want to go on to higher education. It is their problems with the chronic and sustained underfunding that I will talk about today.

In the last two years, Winstanley College has been named Educate North’s college of the year, Merseyside Educate’s most inspirational 16 to 18 provider and, in April 2017, the Times Higher Education sixth-form college of the year. In addition, it has been rated outstanding by Ofsted for the past 17 years, and has the matrix standard for excellence in support and guidance. It has no problems attracting students. This year, 16 students were offered places at Oxbridge, but it has had to cease offering German A-level. The principal said to me:

“We are lucky that, so far, we have not have to do more but we cannot carry on like this.”

Difficult decisions will be made in the future.

George Howarth Portrait Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
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My hon. Friend will be aware that children and young people from Knowsley travel to Winstanley College to do their A-levels and very much appreciate the education they get.

Yvonne Fovargue Portrait Yvonne Fovargue
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Indeed, they travel from all over the north-west to attend Winstanley College. To have that college say that it does not think it can carry on offering those excellent qualifications is a tragedy for social mobility in the area.

St John Rigby College is the other college in my constituency. It is also an award-winning college. I am pleased to say that the title of Educate North’s sixth-form college of the year happily stayed in Makerfield, as it passed from Winstanley to St John Rigby, which has also won the award of most inspirational 16 to 18 provider.

The principal feels that, although students continue to get excellent qualifications, their experience is not as rich as that of their counterparts a few years ago, because every year something has to be removed from what was previously provided as part of the overall educational experience. Students are getting less specialist teaching than they did three years ago. St John Rigby is a highly inclusive college that really supports its students through the academic route, but students are now taught their specialist subjects for 20 minutes fewer per subject per week than three years ago. That is nearly three weeks’ worth of lost teaching per academic year.

There are increased class sizes, with approximately two extra students per group than four years ago. The college tries to support every individual student, but increased class sizes reduce the amount of time teachers can spend with students. They also increase the workload of the teachers, giving them more marking and making them less accessible out of lessons. Enrichment opportunities have decreased.

The college has maintained its focus on employability skills and career pathways, but that has been possible only because of the cuts that I have mentioned. The activities that have declined are the recreational activities, which play an important part in student wellbeing and mental health. St John Rigby has chosen to put its primary investment into teachers and quality of learning, but its capital investment has reduced to half of what it was four years ago. There has been a decline in the college infrastructure and the estate. That cannot continue much longer.

The principal said to me:

“It feels as though each and every year we are faced with an unpalatable decision of which priority (which just about survived the previous year’s prioritisation exercise) can no longer be provided”.

That is simply not good enough in an area where social mobility is extremely low. How are my students from the Wigan borough supposed to continue to have high aspirations and become more socially mobile when their access to further education courses, and support from the staff who teach those courses, is being continually restricted by lack of funding? More broadly, with the challenges of Brexit, how are we going to produce the competitive and educated workforce of the future if there is systematic underfunding of post-16 education?

Those colleges are doing their best to support students who wish to take an academic route. Investment in T-levels and vocational education should be applauded, but it does nothing for Winstanley and St John Rigby, and for those students who want to take a different route. Therefore, for the sake of our future, the Government have to look at raising the rate of 16 to 18 education to £4,760 per student and, crucially, keeping the rate at least in line with inflation.

--- Later in debate ---
George Howarth Portrait Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
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It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) for introducing this important debate.

I should begin by saying a word about my own background. When I first left school, I served an engineering apprenticeship—that was some years ago now, so I hope nobody will expect me to do any feats of engineering. The crucial thing about the training system at the time, although it was far from perfect, was that we got both on-the-job training in the workplace and the academic or technical side of things on day release to college, which I had the benefit of throughout my apprenticeship.

Those who worked in a relatively small workplace, as I did, only gained a narrow range of skills, because there are only so many things to learn in one place, but the great thing about college was that that range was augmented. We got transferable skills from going to college and taking the various qualifications that were available. It is important that we bear that in mind, otherwise we are training people to work in one workplace with no prospect of ever moving on to another.

Time forbids me to go through all the statistics that hon. Members have quoted at length, but I will say that we know, as has been said on both sides of the Chamber, that we have seen the number of apprenticeships fall and the amount of funding that colleges get—per pupil and overall—fall over the past 10 or so years. That cannot be right. I have had some briefing from St Helens College and Knowsley Community College, and from the City of Liverpool College, telling me that the apprenticeship system is so unnecessarily complicated that it gives them a headache. City of Liverpool College tells me that it has to deal with 14 different funding pots for apprenticeships. That is ridiculous. I hope the Minister will look at that problem and try to find some way of short-circuiting that complicated funding system.

Before I finish, I will briefly refer to points that have already been made by my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) and for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West). Colleges are reporting huge increases in the mental health problems they have to deal with—those statistics have already been quoted—and there is a problem. Colleges must be able to help people with mental health problems get the training or education they need, but to do that they need the resources. In the context of constantly diminishing resources, they just do not have the capacity to do the sort of work that is necessary.

This has been a good debate and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to take part in it. I hope that when the Minister comes to reply, she will address the funding problem that so many hon. Members have mentioned. I hope she will look at simplifying the apprenticeship funding system and take into account the comments that have been made about mental health problems.

Children in Need: Adulthood

George Howarth Excerpts
Thursday 6th September 2018

(5 years, 6 months ago)

Westminster Hall
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George Howarth Portrait Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
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I add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) on a really useful survey of the information that is already known, and on the way in which he has introduced a very important subject and given us the opportunity to debate it.

As my hon. Friend and other hon. Members have provided so much information, I shall focus on just one aspect of the problem—low educational attainment, which is a particular challenge in Knowsley. We know that children considered to be in need are only one third as likely as other children to achieve A* to C GCSE passes in English and maths at the end of key stage 4; the figure is 63% for pupils not so classified. That is a serious discrepancy. We also know that, although this finding is based on a quite small sample, about 13% of young people—16 and 17-year-olds—achieve no GCSE passes at all. However, that is not where the emphasis is. When all the results are published, we publish league tables and show everyone delightedly jumping up and down with their passes, and that is great; we should do that. But what everyone tends to overlook is that huge cohorts of young people are achieving nothing out of their education. I want to focus on that.

We need to take into account the vulnerabilities that the Children’s Society and others have identified, because there is a connection between those vulnerabilities and educational attainment, which I will talk about shortly. A lot of these young people are in poor health. A lot have low satisfaction with life. Just think about being 16 or 17 and being able to identify that you have a low level of satisfaction with life. I suspect that many of these young people experience household poverty. Others feel “useless”. Again, imagine being 16 or 17 and thinking that you are useless. And of course there are those who have caring responsibilities, which is a growing problem among young people.

I do not want to enter into a discussion about sociological despair, because I know where that leads. I am not saying that we do not have to take that into account, but if we say that that is all there is, the consequence is that we do not do anything about the problems. We have to focus on the things that can be done to resolve those problems.

It is important to say that people cannot escape the environment in which they live. They cannot leave at the school gates all the problems in the household or the neighbourhood, which tend to follow people around. The problems that exist in the community also exist, in a slightly different form, in the school itself, but we cannot expect schools to be the only people who can compensate for the problems in people’s lives. In my view, we already overload teachers far too much. We have to look at what other things can be done and who can do them in order to address the problems.

I shall just make three suggestions and then conclude. First, some young people, when they have got to 14 or 15 years of age, have got to the point in their school career where, frankly, the next few years are going to be a complete waste of time. They have fallen so far behind that they are likely to be in that cohort that does not achieve any GCSEs, and attendance at school is sporadic. Sometimes—not in Knowsley, but in other places—some schools overlook absenteeism, because it is better not to have some pupils in the school at all, given the disruption that they cause.

Some young people reach a point at which they need something else in their life. They need some other way of getting back on track to gain some relevant qualifications, some relevant skills. The Department for Education is looking at different options—I welcome this—for alternative provision. Some alternative provision is excellent and provides the sorts of opportunities that I am talking about, but it needs to be said that some of it, to be brutally honest, is no more than cut-price childminding. I hope that the Minister’s Department will start to identify those projects and schemes that can do the work that is necessary with those young people and eliminate the cut-price childminding, which frankly is all too prevalent in some parts of the country.

The second thing that we need to do more of, as the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) mentioned, is to take a more holistic view by working not just with the young people, but with their families. These problems do not appear out of thin air. If there are—as sadly is the case in some families in my constituency—five generations of worklessness in a family, stretching back to the Thatcher Government years, when manufacturing in Knowsley was stripped out almost completely, there is a problem, because no one knows any longer what the relevance of school is. If the future is a life on benefits or of involvement in crime—or a combination of the two—what is the relevance of school? We have to intervene with those families to find ways of getting them to understand the importance of children’s having the opportunities to develop the talent that they have—many of them do have talent. I very much support the idea of that kind of approach.

The final point that I want to highlight is this. There is tremendous scope for mentoring. I know that it became quite trendy in the 1990s to talk about mentoring. Some of it worked and some of it did not. I am not talking about professional mentoring, but there are people in every community—there are many of them in Knowsley—who have successfully brought up their own families. Their children may have gone into useful, productive employment; they may have gone to university. Those people have a contribution to make. Many of them are retired but still fit and well, healthy, and lively in their minds. We have to find ways of linking those people up with families who are struggling, and we need to be very strategic about the way we do that. There is help and advice out there for those families; we just have to find ways of linking them with those people who can provide that help.

I shall conclude by simply saying this. There is a huge challenge that many of us avert our gaze from in our society. The huge challenge is that young people are not achieving what they ought to be at school, yet no one is providing the right alternatives, the right advice and the right framework of support that they need in order to do that. This is not rocket science. I hope that the Minister will take that heartfelt plea on my part seriously, because it is not that difficult to do it. We must have some resources, but more important is the will to do it.

Swaminarayan School Closure

George Howarth Excerpts
Wednesday 18th July 2018

(5 years, 8 months ago)

Westminster Hall
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Virendra Sharma Portrait Mr Sharma
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I thank my hon. Friend for that contribution, which speaks for itself. I fully agree with him that the contribution that the school has made to society in general is great.

I will fight to ensure that the Hindu community of west London continues to have its needs met, despite the closure of an essential part of that community. The end of the Swaminarayan School is a great loss, but we are not lost. The community will continue to call for what it needs, and the Hindu community in west London is stronger than ever.

George Howarth Portrait Mr George Howarth (in the Chair)
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Before I call the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), by leave of the mover of the motion and the Minister, I strongly remind him that the Minister has to have adequate time to reply. Bob Blackman.