Children: Development of Essential Skills

Debate between Georgia Gould and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 2nd June 2026 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for School Standards (Georgia Gould)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan. I welcome today’s constructive and thoughtful debate and the constructive tone of both the hon. Members for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) and for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti). I know we all share a desire to ensure that our children are supported to grow up into well-rounded adults. It is brilliant to see young people in the Gallery listening to the debate.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) for securing this debate. He has been such a champion of these issues, and almost on a daily, or at least weekly, basis he stops me to discuss these questions. As he said, I have visited his constituency and seen some of the work that he is leading in practice. As we have heard today, these are massively important topics. The Milburn review has shown the real cost of unemployment for young people and how critical it is to ensure that they have the skills that can support them into the workplace, but also, as we have heard from so many people, support them to be active citizens participating in community life.

I will start where my hon. Friend did in his speech and focus on the importance of children and young people feeling confident to face challenges and shape the world around them. So much change is happening, and we cannot fully imagine the world that young people will go out into. It is therefore critical that they have the core foundations of knowledge as well as a love of learning. We want young people to return to and enjoy learning as their time in the workplace goes on; learning should be core throughout their lives. They must feel that they have the skills to be able to deal with uncertainty, to shape the world and to feel confident. So many young people tell me that that is not how they feel at the moment. That is why the curriculum and assessment review and this debate are so important.

The hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East asked whether we have to choose between knowledge and skills and standards and inclusion. For me, they are two sides of the same coin. It is absolutely critical that we support our children to attain academically. We all know that too many young people are being left behind, and we have stark gaps for disadvantaged young people that we need to address. A big part of that is how they are engaged in education. School has to be unmissable, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell said, the joy of learning is critical. It is important that children are engaged and want to come to school to develop their knowledge, whether that is through enrichment or through teaching the core things that they really want to know about, such as financial education.

In this Chamber and the main Chamber, we often talk about inclusion and the importance of supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities to feel a sense of wellbeing and belonging. Too often, they have not felt that, and that has left them feeling disengaged from education. We will pursue both knowledge and skills and inclusion and high standards for our young people.

We have heard throughout the debate about the curriculum and assessment review and the work that we commissioned Professor Becky Francis to do with an incredibly expert panel. It did a really careful and thoughtful piece of work for the Government, setting out the things that it felt needed to change to support children to be able to go out confidently into the modern world. Lots of the themes that came up in this debate—media literacy, digital literacy, the importance of citizenship, oracy—came out in the review, and we have committed to embedding them. In terms of next steps, a huge amount of work is going on to draft programmes of study and to test them with a range of different partners. We have committed to giving schools four terms to prepare for implementing the new curriculum.

The hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East asked about space in the curriculum. What was really powerful about the work that Dr Becky Francis led was that it gave careful thought to the sequencing of the curriculum, how things fit together and how duplication can be prevented. We are developing a digital curriculum for the first time, so it will be much easier for teachers to make links between different subjects.

The hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell also raised enrichment and its importance in making school unmissable and making young people excited about coming to school. I travel around the country talking to young people, and they often say that it is the thing they really look forward to and that it helps them to feel part of the wider school community. We will publish an enrichment framework with a focus on developing wider life skills relating to arts and culture, civic engagement, nature, outdoor adventure, and sport and physical activities.

Many Members made really important points about making sure that the enrichment offer is open to students who feel further away from those opportunities, and we are working with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to build up the enrichment offer in 400 schools in the most disadvantaged areas. We are investing £22.5 million from the dormant assets fund to make that a reality, as well as working with a whole range of partners to ensure that the enrichment framework for all schools is a really powerful tool.

Another point raised by a number of Members was about citizenship and political education. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) made a really powerful speech about how important that is for votes at 16, but also for our democratic institutions and our ability to disagree agreeably and have these political debates. When we have so much misinformation and division, embedding that in our education system is incredibly important. We have committed to citizenship being statutory in key stages 1 and 2, and to strengthening and modernising citizenship across the curriculum, looking at many of the themes that we have talked about, including media literacy.

The hon. Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance) talked about digital literacy and AI and about making sure that those are core skills. We are looking to embed key areas such as digital and media literacy across the curriculum, because every single subject will have an element of these AI and digital skills, but we are also refreshing the computing GCSE so that particular content is focused on that.

On media literacy, the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton) mentioned misinformation. That is another really important theme that will sit in citizenship but also in other subjects. In history, for instance, people will really think about sources and how to decipher information, and in English people will look at emotive language. Those are areas where we can look at these core themes embedded into the wider curriculum.

My hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Claire Hazelgrove) and others mentioned financial literacy, which comes up more than anything else from young people as being a skill that they really want to have and learn about. We are working across the maths curriculum and the wider piece to look at how we really embed financial literacy, and we will be doing a number of test and learns around implementation and working with teachers.

Turning to the different contributions on early years childcare, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton North East (Kirith Entwistle). She made an incredibly powerful speech about what a lifeline childcare is for families, and I completely agree. I see that all the time as a constituency MP, and particularly how essential it is for mums, who often end up doing so much of that childcare. My hon. Friend mentioned the importance of the 30 hours of free childcare; that has made a difference for people taking up the full entitlement, which we think has saved them an average of £8,000. She also mentioned how fees and different practices can pull away at some of that really important cost of living support. The Secretary of State for Education has written to the Competition and Markets Authority to request a review of the early years childcare market, which is to look precisely at many of the issues that my hon. Friend mentioned. It is worth having a look at that letter, and it is a really important issue to pursue.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) talked about the importance of early years, and my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) spoke powerfully about the long-term impact of delayed language development for children. Sadly, since the pandemic we have seen many more children coming into school with delayed language. We know the long-term impact on children, so that has been a key focus for the Government in developing Best Start hubs, which will give that wraparound support to children, but also introducing new programmes such as the early language support programme, which brings NHS services to schools to identify needs earlier, and the Nuffield early learning intervention programme, which puts support in for reception children. I would be interested to hear more about what is going on in Cornwall and some of the challenges that my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth mentioned, and to discuss that further. This is also a key part of our thinking around the SEND reforms, putting more investment, earlier, into speech and language support and the new Experts at Hand service, which will include speech and language therapists.

[Jim Shannon]

First, may I welcome the Minister’s comments on all the issues that have been raised, particularly mine on screen time? Sometimes we must engage with parents in a way that shows that we understand that children should be given a bit of time on their iPads but that that time should be restricted, too. Does the Minister have any thoughts on that?

[Georgia Gould]

I thank the hon. Member for raising that issue. We have developed guidance for parents to support them with screen time in early years. As a parent of a two-and-a-half-year-old, I know how confusing it can be. It is not something that I was spoken to about when I had my son. It is important we have guidance that is not judgmental but gives parents the best advice. We have put that out now. A lot of expertise has gone into developing it and I have had really positive feedback. Certainly, I have found it very helpful personally in shaping those important decisions. It is also important that through our Best Start hubs we are able to have that conversation and support for children, not just about not being on screens, but about what engagement looks like: what are the activities, how does one encourage a child to speak, and as they get older what are the enrichment activities that they can engage in after the school day?

The hon. Member for Yeovil is always a passionate advocate of support for children with special educational needs and disabilities, and I welcome him mentioning that as part of these wider issues. On the questions on identifying needs, he will know that we are developing national inclusion standards which include research into identification around the needs we have set out in our SEND consultation document. That work is ongoing and it will form part of national inclusion standards. We are working on appointing the panel of independent experts at the moment. It is critical that we get that right, and have that early identification of needs, whether on speech and language or others.

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned the importance of support for young people who are constantly having to re-sit English and maths. He will know we have been consulting on a new level 1 English and maths qualification, which is precisely designed to support children and young people to consolidate their knowledge and be a gateway qualification to deal with exactly that problem, which is one I have heard time and time again.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Georgia Gould and Jim Shannon

Thursday 5th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Georgia Gould]

As I have said, I firmly believe that we need to support SMEs, and I should be more than happy to speak to those in the hon. Member’s constituency and discuss the opportunities that are available. There is so much innovation and talent in this country. We need to ensure that public sector money is supporting our growth mission, and supporting good businesses in communities such as those in his constituency.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Minister for her answers. I have a very simple question: what steps have been taken to ensure that we have better procurement measures domestically in the United Kingdom and the devolved nations, particularly Northern Ireland, as opposed to relying on international partners to provide or deliver goods?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Georgia Gould and Jim Shannon

Thursday 24th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Georgia Gould]

I agree that procurement can be a powerful tool for delivering change in our society. Public sector procurement can help to drive our ambitions around growth, opening up opportunities for communities across the UK. The Government are currently consulting on a new national procurement policy statement that will set out our expectations around mission delivery and social value.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Minister for her very helpful answers. What steps have been taken to ensure that small and medium-sized enterprises in Northern Ireland, and further afield in the United Kingdom, have readily available access to the public procurement system, to ensure that they can secure the best goods for their business and thereby help our economy in Northern Ireland to grow?

[Georgia Gould]

Supporting SMEs through procurement is a huge priority for the Government. It is one of the things that we are consulting on as part of the new national procurement policy statement that I talked about. We are looking across our work in government to ensure that SMEs are part of the procurement process. This is a subject on which we will come back to the House.