Oral Answers to Questions

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I think the Secretary of State is rehearsing for his conference oration. That has to be what it is—we are grateful to him.

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

This Government are making a complete hash of the apprenticeship levy in quality and quantity. It is running out of money, so the trainers who provide 70% of all apprenticeships cannot meet the demand from small businesses, such as the two I met recently in Blackpool that have had no money from the Department for Education. There was nothing new in the spending review for providers or for small businesses for apprentices. Starts for 16 to 18-year-olds are down 23% on the pre-levy numbers. There was nothing for the 800,000 young people who are stagnating in the NEET category, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) pointed out. There is not even a dedicated day-to-day Skills Minister to tell them, or us, why they are in this mess. Has anyone in this disappearing Government left the lights on?

[Gavin Williamson]

We have seen a change in attitudes as to what apprenticeships are able to deliver. After a decade and more under the Labour party, when we saw apprenticeships devalued and reduced, we have seen a seismic change in what we are doing, driving up the quality and status of apprenticeships. I know that colleagues on the Conservative Benches take great pride in what has been achieved, but we are always conscious that so much more needs to be done.

Higher Technical Education Reform

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Monday 8th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for giving me advance sight of his statement following on from the media coverage today.

Last year, the Secretary of State made a speech at Battersea power station, which foreshadowed the Government’s announcement of this review today. Since 2010, Labour has said repeatedly that vocational and technical education must be put on an equal footing with academic routes to get the high-skilled workforce that we need. That imperative, given Brexit, has now accelerated, so we welcome the Government’s statement, but while we welcome the words, a lot of the details are still lacking. Will this be an entirely new suite of qualifications, or a rebadging of existing ones? Will the Minister confirm whether the Government are unveiling a plan to rebrand the existing qualifications rather than actually delivering meaningful policy change, and where do degree apprenticeships fit in with this?

The Department’s own policy paper acknowledges that Britain’s departure from the EU and the end of free movement may also accelerate demands for higher technical skills, so does the Minister agree that the reckless no-deal policies advocated by both candidates for his party’s leadership would damage our economy and create even greater skill shortages? Julian Gravatt, deputy chief executive of the Association of Colleges, has said that

“we’re nervous that the focus on reforming qualifications … could divert attention from the post-18 review recommendations”,

which Mark Dawe at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers has echoed. Can the Minister tell the sector which of these recommendations his Department will implement?

All year, Members from across the House have been telling the Department that FE funding has fallen to critical levels. The Institute for Fiscal Studies found it was £3 billion down in real terms between 2010 and 2017-18. Will the Minister commit urgently to a funding uplift to ensure those world-class colleges and providers can produce the skilled workforce we need? Is the Department proposing a national approval of qualifications, and will those qualifications be given additional funding?

The Minister talks about the role of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education and of the Office for Students in his consultation, but with resources already stretched and concerns from the sector about delays in standard approvals and registration, how does the Minister envisage the IfA taking on this extra responsibility? What additional resources will be allocated to it? Will the IfA or the OfS be in the driving seat on delivery?

The Minister said that improving information, advice and guidance would be crucial to deliver the skills base we need, but how does the Department intend to do this with no extra resources available? This morning, the Secretary of State told The Guardian that he would be happy for his own son, aged nine, to take one of the new HTQs. Is it therefore not imperative that we start looking at and talking about information, advice and guidance in schools at a much earlier age—at just that sort of age—to spark inspiration and aspiration in technical careers?

What will be the status of the qualifications getting swept up in these changes? Will the Department ensure that qualifications are not just future-proofed but back-proofed? I ask because the Department tells us that mature students make up the majority of current higher technical students, and in 2015 over half of all HT students were studying on a part-time basis. Can we be clear that these qualifications will not be junked by the Government and employers if they have to retrain?

The Labour party has been developing our national education service and lifelong learning commission with the principle of progression at the heart of skills policy. To do that, we must have a proper feeder process for social mobility and social justice. This comes substantially through level 2 apprenticeships, but we have seen a 21% drop in them recently. How will the Department address that and get people to these higher-level qualifications? The Secretary of State says that students will move on from T-levels to a higher technical qualification, but can the Minister or the Secretary of State, who have failed so far to outline how students will transition from GCSEs to T-levels, tell us how students will move on from T-levels to HTQs?

A review of these qualifications is welcome, but given existing take-up failure with advanced learner loans, there is no guarantee it will be a game changer. How will the Government make it possible for institutions to get the staff they need to deliver more level 4 and level 5 qualifications? If T-levels are going to be a feeder into them, who is going to teach them: existing FE, school, college or training staff, recent providers, or perhaps graduates doing crash courses in T-level teaching?

This announcement will require a big infusion of money beyond the existing £500 million by 2022 and a whole new approach to prioritising continuous professional development for FE staff, which the Government have consistently ignored, will be needed. The Department’s policy paper says that providers struggle to recruit and retain staff, so when will the Department address the fact that FE lecturers and other staff have seen their pay fall by thousands of pounds a year in real terms since 2010 and are still being paid thousands of pounds less than their colleagues teaching in schools?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution. He asked a number of questions. I will attempt to address most of them, and if I do not I will happily write to him after this statement. He asked whether there will continue to be one type of recognised qualification at this level. Of course, he will know that there are individual examples of high-quality qualifications that are well recognised by employers—pharmacy, for example. These qualifications cater for a diverse set of situations and students, including people from a range of backgrounds studying for various purposes and a large volume of adult learners. We propose to maintain this diverse and competitive market through an opt-in system that enables more than one qualification to be approved against a given occupational standard. We want all higher technical qualifications that provide the knowledge, skills and behaviours that employers need to get the recognition they deserve. This is in contrast to the position for T-levels, where, as recommended by the Independent Panel on Technical Education, only one qualification is approved per occupation or group of occupations.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the issue of wider funding to deliver reforms. Of course we recognise that financial arrangements, or incentives, are important in delivering these reforms. We want to ensure that public funding for the delivery of higher technical education is focused on providers that meet the Office for Students’s proposed technical ongoing registration conditions.

We will be considering funding proposals as part of the spending review. The hon. Gentleman has heard that from the Dispatch Box on many occasions, but it is an important consideration. We are also seeking views through the consultation on how we can support providers to develop their workforce and engage with employers through non-financial incentives. I remind the Opposition that the funding that is available for investment in apprenticeships will reach over £2.5 billion in 2019-20—double what it was in 2010-11. So more money is going into the system for these apprenticeships.

On the hon. Gentleman’s slightly frivolous point about the negotiations with the EU, we do need to deliver a Brexit by 31 October. I am surprised that the Opposition have changed their position on this considering how many of their heartlands in the north feel about that issue, but I will leave it there. We have made no-deal preparations in the Department and I feel confident that we will be ready if that is the position—not that we want it to be. We want a deal, of course.

English for Speakers of Other Languages

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. First I want to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), on a speech that not only was superbly constructed but got to the heart of the individual issues. It gave us information about how to address strategy more broadly than the Government have previously done. That breadth was particularly apparent when she listed the different types of refugees she had been dealing with in her constituency, and when she said that starting to speak English fluently means people can get a good job and make their dreams come true.

That applies not only in Birmingham; the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) may have seen what I thought was a moving piece on BBC Oxford the other day about an Afghan cricketer who came to this country as a refugee and asylum seeker and now plays in the city league in Australia. It was the support of the people of Cumnor, and particularly the cricket club there, that got him through the Home Office barriers. It is important to talk about structure, but we should never forget individuals, and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston did not do that. She rightly paid tribute to the report by Refugee Action and pointed out that there has been no new money. She also made the important point that informal ESOL learning groups are run by volunteers and community organisations. The Minister and I have often jointly supported adult education, but I recall her talking a couple of years ago, at the Learning and Work Institute, about the importance of informal learning and how to coax people into doing things that they might not otherwise do.

There is a moral as well as an economic case for the Government to address. I pay tribute to other Members for their comments and observations in interventions and speeches. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) is of course the Labour Home Office spokesperson on such matters. He talked about how provision for children is a key element of the matter, and also a barrier. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) made the important point that the European social fund had been a significant contributor to ESOL and asked whether the Minister would guarantee to match that. As far as I am aware, that will probably come substantially from the shared prosperity fund that the Government have talked about.

My hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) and other colleagues tried to get some detail about that from the Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry), in an excellent Westminster Hall debate two months ago—but detail came there none. I do not know whether the Minister today is in a position to say any more today.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) talked about the importance of first steps and colleges. The hon. Member for Henley talked about the need to get people’s motivation right, and about issues of loneliness and participation. My hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) rightly paid tribute to the work being done in her constituency, and also the work of the all-party parliamentary group on social integration. She and my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) made a particular point about the needs of older women. The stats that my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax gave and the two examples that my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green talked about powerfully illustrated that argument.

My hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (John Grogan), as well as telling us about the challenges in Bradford and Keighley, probably gave the most memorable soundbite of the afternoon, by combining driving with English, but it is an important point because people want to learn English for specific reasons. That relates to the discussion of and concerns about older people—not just older women—who need ESOL.

Finally, the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) spoke on these matters from the Front Bench for the SNP, with her customary crispness and warmth. She illustrated some of the challenges, particularly in relation to teaching and further education in Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom, and discussed changes in the profile and the specifics of what is happening in Scotland.

ESOL classes offer vital support for people across this country whose first language is not English. They offer them the ability to get the knowledge and skills they need to live more active lives. People rely on those services for many reasons—to be able to speak English and enter work, or as a starting point for education here—in order to feel able to integrate and participate in their communities. Those are important aims, and I know that the Minister will agree with me and colleagues present in Westminster Hall that we must give everyone the support and opportunities to achieve them. In fact, I hope there is cross-party consensus on the issue.

As I have already said, the Minister and I have at various times talked about motivation and the need to reach out to people. The Secretary of State himself has said:

“Improving literacy is vital to improving social mobility”.—[Official Report, 19 March 2018; Vol. 638, c. 6.]

In her review of integration, Louise Casey said:

“English language is a common denominator and a strong enabler of integration.”

Indeed, one would expect Ministers to have been investing substantially in these services for years, given how important they say English language is. As I am afraid has been demonstrated today—it is too often the case—that rhetoric has not been matched in reality since 2010. ESOL funding has been cut by over 50%, from £203 million to £99 million. Sadly, it comes as no surprise that participation has also plummeted. In 2009-10 there were 179,000 learners on funded ESOL courses, but by 2017 the figure had fallen to 114,000.

Will the Minister at least acknowledge that the indifference or—let us be charitable—inability to provide funding since 2010 has contributed significantly, if not directly, to the decline in ESOL participation? I know that she will say that funding has increased in recent years, and it is true that there have been small increases in ESOL funding and in specific areas, which we welcome. The Syrian refugees settlement scheme has been talked about. Given that the Government knew, and now have proof, that additional funding is needed to provide ESOL to specific vulnerable groups, it is a matter of concern that they have not gone further. Will they move beyond that piecemeal approach and offer long-term, sustainable investment to deliver ESOL in all our communities? The fact is that the lack of investment makes it impossible for those who need these vital services to access them.

As shadow skills Minister, I have been talking a lot recently about our urgent need to empower two groups of people: young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are not in education, employment or training; and adults who are without basic literacy and numeracy, of whom there are probably between 5 million and 7 million. We cannot separate that from ministerial failure to fund ESOL properly—and not just in further education, but in the Home Office and with others who have shared responsibilities in this area. I appreciate that it is complex—I know what the silos are like in Government—but the Government have to deliver on the matter.

I hope that the Minister can tell us how many refugees and asylum seekers are not currently, and have not previously, enrolled in an ESOL course. I and many hon. Members of the House are concerned that they are not getting the support they need. Some 59% of respondents to a Refugee Action survey said that the number of hours of teaching they received were not sufficient, and 66% said that their current level of English did not make them feel ready to work in the UK. That is simply unacceptable. Can the Minister tell us what steps the Government are taking to ensure that refugees and asylum seekers get the support they need to learn English?

It seems to me that Ministers support that goal, because their own integrated communities Green Paper said that everyone should be able to learn English. I agree, but when will it become a reality? If we will the ends, we must will the means—to be more old-fashioned and colloquial about it, there is the old phrase: “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” Well, no money has been saddled up to power the fine words and exaltation of the Green Paper, and the Government cannot say that they have not been given chapter and verse on what needs to be done.

I pay tribute to Paul Hook and all his colleagues at Refugee Action, which is a national charity that works to enable asylum seekers and refugees to rebuild their lives in the UK. It is the

“leading provider of reception and integration services”,

and in the past three years it has been indefatigable in reminding the Government and Members of the House where we need to go. I am quoting from Refugee Action’s July 2018 reaction to the Green Paper, which lists the problems for refugees. They include long waiting lists, difficulties enrolling in a class, inadequate learning hours, gender barriers, unsuitable classes and travel difficulties, many of which have been touched on in the debate. That is what Refugee Action said last year.

As we have already heard, Refugee Action has now produced a response to the integrated communities Green Paper. I have looked at it, and I am sure that other hon. Members will have looked at it, either the whole thing or a summary. It is an excellent summary of where we are, but unfortunately what it summarises is not good. Refugee Action makes the point that there has been a real-terms cut of almost 60% between 2008 and 2018. I have already mentioned the new research: 59% of refugees do not think that they have had enough ESOL teaching hours. To probe further into that, more than three quarters of parents said that a lack of childcare had been a barrier to their ability to attend English lessons. That bears out in anecdotal and other comments that colleagues have made.

[Catherine West]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we have an enormous problem that results from that? There is isolation and there are resulting mental health problems, which add further costs to the national health service as a result of failing to provide these important preventive services.

[Gordon Marsden]

I agree. I do not wish to take us into another area, but although the significant cuts to the Sure Start programmes and children’s centres impact on native English speakers, they also have an effect on refugees and asylum seekers, particularly in areas where there is ethnic concentration and a large number of migrants.

Refugee Action’s recommendations have already been touched on. They include a fund to support all refugees to learn English; ensuring a minimum of eight hours a week teaching for refugees, which requires an investment of £42 million a year; an ESOL strategy for England; full and equal access to ESOL for female asylum seekers, with the right to access free English-language learning; and facilitating a national framework for community-based support.

This is an issue that I have taken up with the National Association for Teaching English and Community Languages to Adults, Refugee Action and others over the past couple of years. I went back to an article I wrote in FE Week in March 2018, to see whether anything I said then was not up to date. Unfortunately, I do not think much has changed at all. NATECLA said that the

“focus on informal community learning…does not go far enough to address the needs of learners…it is sustained and accredited English language learning”,

which rather supports the point that the hon. Member for Henley made on the need to have progression in those sorts of courses.

Following Brexit, when we will increasingly have to rely on a smaller pool of workers than we have done for decades, it will become absolutely clear that a skill system that is fit for the future must include a minimum competence in the English language for everyone living in the UK—and not just in London, but in other major cities. We should not neglect the challenges in smaller towns and rural areas where there are recent influxes or long-standing ethnic communities. However, ESOL funding has been whittled away, which has inevitably depleted the cohort of dedicated teachers. It is no good the Education Secretary waxing lyrical on ESOL and social mobility if the Department does not provide—either from its own resources, by lobbying the Treasury, or by combining with other Departments—the hard cash to go with it.

The shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), met a group of Congolese and Sudanese refugees in her constituency earlier this year. She says:

“They told me about their experiences of seeking shelter and safety in my area and of the welcome they had received in my constituency. But they also told me that they were desperate for more opportunities to learn English”.

She wrote in an article:

“From my own experience, I know that the opportunity to learn alongside managing childcare responsibilities is crucial.”

Without the opportunity to do that, they will not be able to succeed.

This is not an issue that only well-meaning people in prosperous areas are concerned about. I have received quite a lot of letters on the matter from my constituents in Blackpool. I will quote from a letter that I received from Raven Ellis:

“Without the opportunity to learn English… Being denied this opportunity means refugees can’t integrate properly or find work. Even the smallest everyday things are hard—catching a bus, going to the doctor, or making friends with neighbours.”

To invest makes sound economic sense. The Government’s integrated communities Green Paper had some welcome proposals, but that justifies the need to move further in this area and not to continue to do nothing. Many things can be done informally. Conversation clubs and volunteers are great, but they cannot replace formal teaching. A recent survey by British Future, which talked to a large number of refugees and asylum seekers, bears out that point.

We know from history, and I know personally and practically from the history of the north-west in towns such as Preston, Barnsley, Oldham and Rochdale, as well as Blackpool—we do not have such a proportion of people needing ESOL in Blackpool—how key it is that communities, whether new or permanent, can assimilate instead of just co-existing separately. We also see that in other parts of the country, such as Yorkshire and Humber—my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) is not in his place, but my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley is—and ESOL is key to that. It is key to social cohesion and individual advancement. It is key to enhancing local productivity and the local economy, especially where the number of people who need ESOL is high. It is also key to those people who are newly assimilated to learn to train and gain skills at whatever age. With that bundle of imperatives, I really hope that the Government, in whatever form or shape they take in the next six months, will put some effort into this area.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anne Milton]

Of course, around all this is the budget that we have available, and I know that the adult education budget has gone down in its totality. We have a spending review coming up. I am also a fan of devolution. It can make Governments slightly nervous as they hand over authority for something for which ultimately they will be held responsible, which can feel uncomfortable. But in an area such as this, devolution is the way to get solutions that work, because people know and understand their local communities, their population and the barriers in their area. Top-slicing is always a little trick of the Treasury; our job in the Department for Education is to ensure that nobody top-slices anything. We do not want top-slicing. However, as I said, there are a lot of complex funding streams, although not specifically for refugees.

I think it was the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) who asked whether I would give my word that money for ESOL will be replaced pound for pound. I cannot give any assurances, because the spending review is coming up.

[Gordon Marsden]

I am really sorry to interrupt the Minister, to whom I am listening carefully. I do not mean this in any way sardonically—the mood music coming from her is great—but my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) made a point about losing European regional development fund and ESL funding, and we do have a real concern about this area and others. Can the Minister give us any details on when we will see some nuts and bolts about the shared prosperity fund?

[Anne Milton]

I will refer to that later, but to answer directly now, there is a lot of work going on about the shared prosperity fund. In the Department for Education, we are very aware of the benefits delivered through the European social fund. Moral imperatives were mentioned, and that money plays a crucial part in giving people an opportunity to take a step on various paths in their lives, as will the shared prosperity fund that replaces it. I cannot give details—not because I do not want to, but because I do not know.

The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), who is not in her seat, mentioned a German example. We always have much to learn from other countries, although we can rarely transfer ideas straight across because they will not necessarily work.

The hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) evocatively referred to the prison that people inhabit when they cannot speak English. I have never been in that position, but it must feel like that if people cannot speak or understand any English.

My hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) referenced the all-party parliamentary group’s work and highlighted issues such as loneliness and isolation, which have been well articulated. He also referenced the Council of Europe’s work. Europe gets many mentions in this place and elsewhere at the moment, but we rarely hear about the Council of Europe’s work, so that was good because it does a lot of good work.

Several hon. Members mentioned the particular problems that women face, including cultural and more complex problems. My hon. Friend the Member for Henley also mentioned community provision. I saw an extremely good example of community ESOL where the local authority was working with primary schools to encourage women to come in to help their children with some of their SATs and end-of-year tests. That is a good vehicle for improving their English while helping them to help their children with the tests that they will sit in school. For women who do not find it easy to get to adult community provision, for a variety of reasons, it is a good way to bypass the barriers that they might face in their own homes.

The ESOL strategy emerged as part of the integrated communities strategy action plan. The strategy has involved officials across Departments, so we have a shared vision, including addressing the needs of refugees. As we set out in the integrated communities strategy, we want to create clearer and easier pathways, improve outcomes and get better value for the money that we spend.

We always come back to funding at the end of the day—funding matters. The hon. Member for Blackpool South and I have frequently discussed the financial pressures that FE is under, which we will look at in the spending review. Warm words from me do not necessarily bring more money—they are needed, but they do not guarantee it. I am sure that all hon. Members who are keen for things to be funded will lobby. Debates such as this add to the pressure on the Treasury. We rarely make a good case for education in a broader sense. For people who do not speak English, ESOL is the first step down a path that includes further education. It also enables refugees who have prior education—we have talked about refugees who are doctors—to come to life and feel that they are a useful member of the society and community that they have joined. We can also realise the benefits of that.

The 2011 census revealed that 59%—nearly 60%—of over-16-year-olds who could not speak English or could not speak it well were not in employment. According to the 2014 British social attitudes survey, 95% of people, which is higher than other figures that have been quoted, think that to be considered truly British, people must be able to speak English. About a third of those who completed entry level or level 1 ESOL courses in 2015-16 went on to sustained employment. Some 60% of completions in 2015-16 led to a sustained positive destination the following year in employment or learning, so we know it works.

Through the adult education budget, ESOL is fully funded for those who are unemployed, and all learners are co-funded at 50% of the course rate. For the academic year 2018-19, however, we are supporting those in work on low incomes to access the AEB through a pilot that allows providers to fully fund those on low wages. That is important and will directly help low-paid, low-skilled people who are motivated to move out of unemployment to progress further. We are continuing the pilot in the 2019-20 academic year for learners resident in non-devolved areas, and we will evaluate the 2018-19 outcomes to help to inform our decision on whether to fully implement the trial beyond 2019-20.

As many hon. Members have said, learning English is crucial for integration. In the year ending September 2018, the UK offered protection to 15,170 people. We have committed to settle 20,000 vulnerable refugees who have fled Syria by 2020. As of the end of March 2019, 15,977 refugees have found safety in the UK to rebuild their lives through the vulnerable persons resettlement scheme. Refugees have immediate access to English language tuition. The Home Office and the Department have provided an additional £10 million so that refugees settled through the scheme can access language tuition.

We recently launched new teaching resources to support teachers working with refugees and others adults with the lowest levels of English language and low literacy, in recognition of the fact that they face the greatest barriers to learning. I hope that the English language strategy that we are developing will provide a shared vision for all publicly funded ESOL and will specifically address the needs of refugees. I note that, for those who come to the UK under the vulnerable persons resettlement scheme, additional funds are made available for childcare, which can be a huge barrier, and not just financially, for mothers and carers to learn English.

I could go on about devolution, which, as I said, is important. We will use the learning from that. I thank all hon. Members who contributed to the debate. Last year, the Department alone spent £105 million on ESOL courses and qualifications. We need to improve the quality and effectiveness of what is delivered by commissioning new teaching resources for pre-entry level learners and by funding local authorities to trial the co-ordination of provision in their area.

The key is to put in place a co-ordinated system where we do not waste resources and where scarce resources get to the frontline. We need effective teaching and high-quality teachers—the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green raised the issue of pay. We need to remove and overcome some of the cultural barriers. I also note the need to make sure that the system is fully integrated, so that people can learn English, access good employment and have continued training opportunities, and so that we realise the vision that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston set out, where communities do not just co-exist but are fully integrated.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Monday 24th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Anne Milton]

Those decisions were made some time ago. They have enabled us to make sure that by 2020 spending on apprenticeships will have more than doubled since 2010.

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

My felicitations on your first decade in office, Mr Speaker. Onwards and upwards!

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

Ten more years!

[Gordon Marsden]

Indeed. We are hearing about the ups and downs of funding for apprenticeships, but the National Audit Office told the FE Ministers in March in no uncertain terms that there was a clear risk that the apprenticeship programme would now be financially unsustainable. The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education has said that it could be overspent by £0.5 billion this year. The Minister told FE Week in January that she thought that the apprenticeship budget would be “alright until July”. July is next week. Does she still think that?

[Anne Milton]

Contrary to what the hon. Gentleman has said, previously the apprenticeship system is working well, and levy payers in particular—and also small businesses —are grabbing at the opportunities that apprenticeships offer. I am aware of the budgetary pressures on the system and we will make representations ahead of the spending review on that point.

Secondary Education: Raising Aspiration

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Thursday 20th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered raising aspiration in secondary education.

I am grateful to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Sharma. I am not sure whether anything else is happening in the House today that means that Members might be otherwise engaged, but I am very pleased to have the opportunity to have this debate and to ask the Minister some questions about how the Government are addressing the issue of aspiration.

Aspiration is important to me. In my maiden speech on 24 June 2010, I told the House about a constituent whose only aspiration in life was for her child to receive the tenancy of her socially rented property. On the other side of my constituency, parents told me about their children—how they were going to go to university, how they would certainly buy their own home in the local area and how they hoped to get married as well. That really illustrated to me the disparity in aspiration between different parts of my constituency and, I believe, across the country. I repeat today what I said in my maiden speech nine years ago: we live in one of the most prosperous cities in the western world, but there remain yawning chasms between the aspirations of some of the people I and other MPs represent and the aspirations of others. However, for some people, including Members of this place, aspiration is not that important—I will not take the number of Members here as a reflection of that, although I have to say to the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Blackpool South (Gordon Marsden), that I will take any interventions at any time he wishes to intervene on me.

Aspiration is not important to everyone because some people are of the view that people are either born with a spirit of aspiration or have had it bought on their behalf. That view fosters an assumption that some people are born into this world with a natural capacity to lead, while everybody else does not have that capacity, and that nothing can therefore be done to change the situation.

I certainly do not agree with that view, but we have only to consider our recent record on Prime Ministers to see the strength of it. Only three of the last 11 British Prime Ministers attended state secondary schools. In total, 28 Prime Ministers have been educated at Oxford University and 14 at Cambridge, and nine Prime Ministers were educated at Eton and Christ Church. John Major was the last Prime Minister not to have attended a university; overall, only nine British Prime Ministers did not graduate from university after leaving secondary education. I present those figures not as an attack on private education—I believe strongly in private education and anyone’s right to attend a private institution—but as an illustration that aspiration is imbued in some people.

People may know that tonight there is the premiere of Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s biographical film “Farming”. It tells the story of how Adewale, who is Nigerian, was “farmed out” as a boy by his parents to a white British family in Dagenham, in the hope that he would have a better future than he might otherwise have had. When I heard that this morning on the radio, it illustrated to me that aspiration is affected by not only class and financial attainment but racial and nationality backgrounds.

However, I would go further. When I conducted my PhD research, I attempted to discover whether UK legislation was implemented consistently across different rural areas and, if not, how that affected social exclusion and, particularly, tackling the problem. The first criterion was objective, as the law is the law, but the issue of social exclusion is subjective in the eyes of decision makers. On many occasions, I was told things such as, “We don’t do things like that here”, “That is not something that would be part of our local economy” and, “Access to higher education, certain public services, housing or financial attainment is difficult to achieve in places like this.”

Those views are borne out by the Department for Education’s own research. In its report “School and College-level Strategies to Raise Aspirations of High-achieving Disadvantaged Pupils to Pursue Higher Education”, which was published more than five years ago in January 2014, the DFE said:

“Prioritisation of aspiration-raising varies by geographical location, with London schools making this a particular priority…the difference appears to relate to the relatively high proportion of disadvantaged students in London schools and colleges as well as their close proximity to a large number of HEIs”—

higher education institutions—

“including selective or leading universities”.

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

I am listening with great interest to what the hon. Gentleman is saying; he has spoken previously in the House on these issues and commanded my attention. Does he believe, as I do, that London is, of course, a great place, but it also has many cold spots as well as hot ones, and that is also true of coastal and rural areas and schools? As a Blackpool MP, one of the problems I have found over the years is that the overall statistics for a constituency might look great, but the cold spots, which are often difficult to address in policy terms, are also substantial.

[Dr Offord]

I certainly agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I will take this opportunity to say that my PhD—I am sure he has not read it—was about rural areas and coastal communities, which are very similar in their ability not only to attract inward investment but to provide the kind of public services that many people want. I know well not only the coastline of his own constituency, but that further up the coast, around Cumbria, where I have also lived. There are some coastal communities in that part of the world—I look towards my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison) as I say this—in places such as Flimby, where it is difficult to obtain access to not only employment but higher and indeed secondary education; in those kinds of places, gaining access is not as easy as it is in parts of London. I attribute that to issues such as the difficulty of attending schools or further education colleges because of their geographical location.

When I was preparing for this debate, George and Hilary in my office asked me what I meant by “aspiration”, and it is important that I set out what I mean. By “aspiration” I mean what a child or young person hopes to achieve for themselves in the future. In my mind, that is very different from educational attainment, although for people to achieve their aspirations—in particular, for young people to achieve their aspirations for careers and education and their financial aspirations—they need good educational outcomes. Consequently, I believe that raising aspiration incentivises improved educational attainment.

In an attempt to focus on what I would like the Government to direct their attention towards, I have identified three categories of intervention that I believe foster aspiration: first, interventions that focus on children’s parents and families; secondly, interventions that focus on teaching practice; and, thirdly, out-of-school interventions or extracurricular activities, sometimes involving peers or mentors. The approaches used in these interventions are particularly diverse. Some aim to change aspirations directly by exposing children to new opportunities, while others aim to raise aspirations by developing children’s general self-esteem, motivation or self-efficacy.

I spoke in a recent education funding debate about Copthall School in my constituency, which is for girls. Around 80% of the pupils speak English as a second language, and around half are entitled to free school meals or the pupil premium. The staff and governors are making a great effort to promote aspiration among their pupils, and I am enormously encouraged by what they are achieving. One initiative they are very pleased to promote is the Gatsby career benchmarks, which they describe as

“aspirational and absolutely necessary as a vehicle for social justice.”

It is worth commenting on that programme, as it achieves three vital outcomes: first, it raises aspirations among young people and promotes access to all career paths, not just academic ones; secondly, it enables the development of the skills and the outlook that pupils need to achieve career wellbeing, including adaptability and resilience; and, finally, it underpins the Department for Education’s own guidance to schools on meeting their statutory responsibility to offer career guidance.

As I was writing this speech yesterday, I received a letter from my right hon. Friend the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills, about the Gatsby programme. In concluding, she requested feedback from colleagues about any conversations they might have with schools in their constituencies in the coming weeks. However, I can give some feedback right now to the Minister here today. I have been advised by Copthall School:

“As you will see from the list at the end of this email, at Copthall we are doing a lot to meet the eight Gatsby benchmarks. However, it is a challenge to meet them all, particularly at a time when school funding is in crisis. Most schools have insufficient funding to fully implement the Gatsby benchmarks.”

Yesterday, the Minister and I had a discussion in the corridor, and he said he looked forward to this debate to hear more about my education history, following some of my revelations in previous debates. However, I have to disappoint him: I do not consider this a confessional chamber, but somewhere where I represent my constituents, so on this occasion I will not reveal more. My experience at school certainly had a dramatic impact on my views on aspiration and education, but it would be unfair of me to criticise my school, and particularly the teachers, 30 years after I left, because most people have moved on from their posts, and life was a great deal different then. It would also be wrong of me to comment on the life achievements of others—my peers—who are completely content with their personal history, although I am keen that the mistakes of the past are not repeated.

One mistake that existed in the past and that continues to exist today is the tendency to separate academic and technical education routes into two simplistic alternatives. The problem is that that does not reflect the learner’s journey, which often moves between academic and technical routes at different times in their life. Permeability and flexibility between types of learning in our education system are vital if we are to enable learners to fulfil their potential and progress through both A and T-levels to higher level learning, and to achieve the goals in the Government’s industrial strategy of increasing social mobility and productivity.

As T-levels are introduced, it will be important to avoid sweeping away other qualifications, such as BTECs, which provide important and established progression routes into higher education, in the interests of creating a tidy qualification landscape. More than 100,000 students a year progress with a BTEC on its own or in combination with A-levels. UCAS data shows that, for the 2017 application cycle, only 61% of 18-year-olds held only A-level qualifications, with 11% of remaining applicants holding BTECs only, and 8% a combination of BTECs and A-levels. As a higher proportion of students opting for BTECs come from disadvantaged backgrounds, those qualifications play a critical role in supporting social mobility, providing a pathway for disadvantaged students to progress through to higher-level learning, either on an academic programme or on a higher or degree apprenticeship.

Our most disadvantaged children are often those in care and in need, something that the Secretary of State has also written to me about. Many have little aspiration and currently fall unacceptably far behind in attainment. Last year, the equivalent of one in 10 children needed a social worker at some point. The attainment of such children who require such help is greater than that of those who come from a low-income background. What hope do we give to those children? We must raise their aspiration so they expect more of themselves and believe they can succeed, and we must support schools to support children themselves.

Last year, the number of looked-after children in England reached 75,420, an increase of 4% on the previous year, and it has been increasing since 2008, when the total was 60,000. Young people in care are six times more likely to be excluded from school and more likely to be unemployed after leaving school, and 45% of them suffer from mental ill health. They are clearly being failed.

When I was deputy leader of Barnet Council, I introduced a scheme whereby the council would effectively act as a family business. If we have a family business, we often employ our own children or relatives. My initiative allowed the looked-after children, whom we were corporate parents to, to have a place in a family firm. I was very pleased that one individual not only took the opportunity to involve himself in marketing, but went on to university and provided a career for himself. Others fell by the wayside. It was not a scheme where everyone had an automatic right to a place, but there was an opportunity for them to aspire to achieve something through the services available through the local council. I was keen on the scheme because, as a child, I had a friend who lived in a children’s home, and I always understood that the opportunities available to him and other people in the care home were not the same as those available to someone like me, who lived in a loving family environment. I would like the Government to promote such initiatives. Indeed, local authorities could take the initiative to promote themselves within their communities.

To return to A-levels, high-quality careers information, advice and guidance for students and parents are essential to ensure successful implementation in the coming years. Clear signposting is needed within the curriculum to create awareness of the T-level option and ensure that young people avoid shutting down options—for example, by choosing academic subjects that will not feed into T-level study. That is particularly important, as the choices made about post-16 study will narrow further study and career options. Students at this age are still forming their identities and expectations of life, so it is vital that early information is provided.

Universities have direct experience of recruiting students from a diverse range of qualification backgrounds to access and succeed in higher education. It will be important to engage with higher education admissions professionals on T-levels to ensure that universities develop an understanding of T-levels and are able to communicate entry requirements to prospective students and level 3 providers. It will also be important to assist universities in meeting the specific needs of students progressing from those qualifications into higher education. Information around access to higher education from T-levels should also be communicated to students further down the line when they are making choices about level 3 study in schools and considering pathways and routes from T-levels.

The promotion of aspiration should occur not only in the secondary school sector. Middlesex University is located in my constituency. It has demonstrated to me on numerous occasions its considerable experience and expertise in raising aspiration and boosting social mobility. Some 52% of its current students are eligible for free school meals; 85% of the cohort falls into one of the five widening participation categories; and 50% of students are the first in their families to go to university. There seems to be a link between the university’s promotion of aspiration and its student numbers, as can be seen in its innovative Make your Mark initiative.

In 2018-19, Middlesex University engaged 6,986 school and college students and 286 parents through its outreach activity in 86 workshops in local schools. The outreach work helps young people to understand the opportunities available to them. The Make Your Mark initiative provides guidance for young people on what is likely to be the best pathway for them, including vocational routes such as apprenticeships, through an interactive web microsite. The university has produced a guide and website for 11 to 16-year-olds, featuring blogs, quizzes, insight into what university life and study are all about, and tips on exam success and money matters.

Universities, given the access that they have to schools, have more potential to be the one-stop shops for careers information and guidance at every level. There is also scope for employers, FE and HE to collaborate more effectively in providing high-quality careers information and guidance in schools, centred around the key themes in the Government’s industrial strategy. The careers and qualifications landscape is becoming increasingly complex, and school careers teams struggle to provide guidance where it is needed most.

Instilling a sense of aspiration in young people would set their lives on a trajectory for success, so I would like the Government to take certain actions. A sense of aspiration would create an inclination for learning that continued after formal education and would create a foundation that could be built on in future years to achieve what, for some people, would be incredible results.

I want the Government to engage with the aspiration agenda; the last time it was considered was five years ago in the report that I mentioned. In that time, life has certainly moved on. I want the agenda to expand beyond education attainment and higher education and to promote not only lifelong learning, but other aspects of vocational qualifications. I want more action to address imbalances in connections and opportunities between deprived pupils from comprehensive schools and those from private and grammar schools with more affluent governing bodies. And, as I said, I want lifelong learning promoted.

Finally, I ask the Minister to recognise that not all parts of the United Kingdom are the same. There are places in my constituency where there is still a yawning chasm in aspiration, and they are not the same as other parts of the country, as the hon. Member for Blackpool South mentioned.

In conclusion, the Government can do a lot more to work in collaboration with not only schools and universities but local government, which is in a unique place to be able to deliver an agenda that has been included in the industrial strategy.

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) on securing this afternoon’s debate. We have quality, not quantity, today; quality was certainly there in great profusion in his speech. He placed a very thoughtful focus on the disparity of aspiration and the issues of achievement. He usefully identified the three key areas, which we could all riff off—the focus on parents and families, on teachers and on extracurricular activity. He reminded us that this subject has been a passion of his and was included in his maiden speech some nine years ago.

I listened with great attention to what the hon. Gentleman said. In this House there is a small group of people who are very dedicated on this subject, but we do not always address in an integrated way the issues of those smaller groups of people, such as looked-after children or young care leavers. There are about 1,000 identified young care leavers in Blackpool. I was interested to hear of the hon. Gentleman’s Barnet initiative—I was going to say the Barnett formula—and he may remember from a previous debate that for a small portion of my life as a student, I resided in his constituency, so I know the differentials of which he speaks.

I was particularly interested in the hon. Gentleman’s comments on the Copthall School. The Gatsby benchmarks are great, but they demand a very intensive approach. We have to be careful that for groups such as the Copthall School they do not end up as the equivalent of the freedom to dine at the Ritz. That is an important issue, which politicians of all parties need to address.

I agree with what the hon. Gentleman said on the flexibility to move between the academic, the technical and the vocational. Those words get bandied about too often in this place as if they were in silos, which then achieves that result. Flexibility has always been vital and it is even more vital now, given the speed at which subjects, their teaching and careers will mutate over the next few years. The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), the former Skills Minister—I am proud to call him my friend, although he is on the other side—along with my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), is addressing that point as we speak, taking forward a skills commission that will look at some of those areas. What the hon. Member for Hendon said on that subject was absolutely spot on.

I was glad to hear the hon. Gentleman’s comments on BTECs. We agree with him. A consultation is out, and the Minister might wish to tell us today when he expects to be able to respond to that consultation. The He knows that there has been a very broad chorus of concern about the possibility of BTECs and other qualifications being swept away before T-levels have been able to prove their worth in practice.

Finally, the hon. Member for Hendon mentioned the importance of the university contribution, and I shall mention a couple of universities as I go along. He mentioned Middlesex University, which I am familiar with. I am pleased to say that I shared a platform with the vice-chancellor, Tim Blackman, only a few weeks ago at an event at the Bridge Group, and I am absolutely delighted that, in the Open University’s 50th anniversary year, Tim is to become its new vice-chancellor. All those are good and positive things.

I believe that aspiration and austerity are incongruous bedfellows. If a Government of any description decide to implement an austerity programme over a long time, as this one and their predecessors have done, there is a danger of that aspiration diminishing. In our view, the Government’s decision to go down that road was not an inevitability—certainly not for the long period that it has continued. I shall not go over the arguments about whether they inherited a growing economy in 2010—we believe that they did, on the base of 2008—but whatever the case, it is concerning that the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights recently said that the Government’s policies of austerity have continued unabated, and that a third of children are now in poverty. Austerity is always a political and ideological choice in some sense or other, and that has been clear in the education system.

I am sad to say that we have seen about 1,000 Sure Start programmes cut from the early years; I genuinely mean that, because Sure Start was one of the great achievements of the Labour Government of 1997 to 2010. Children’s services, schools and further and higher education have also seen considerable cuts since the Conservative party came to power in 2010. The Minister and his colleagues in the Department, in their heart of hearts—I know he has one—know that this is not acceptable. After all, the Secretary of State only recently said that he had heard the concerns about funding loud and clear, and last year it was reported that he was trying to squeeze more money out of the Treasury. However, the Government took £3.5 billion out of the capital spend at the last Budget, and so far the Treasury—although we await a spending review, of course—has only offered schools £400 million, in October 2018. That is thin gruel indeed.

To summarise, those cuts, along with the impact of the public sector pay freeze and then the cap, have created a serious problem in teacher recruitment and retention. The hon. Member for Hendon referred to the importance of teachers. There have been inevitable consequences. The Government have missed the teacher recruitment and retention target for five years, and in the past two years, more teachers have left the profession than have joined it. The hon. Gentleman referred to that in the House, when he said:

“Under this Government, the number of teachers has not kept pace with increasing pupil numbers.”—[Official Report, 29 November 2018; Vol. 650, c. 482.]

I have a question for the Minister: how can we expect schoolchildren to aspire in the way that the hon. Gentleman talked about when there are not enough teachers to encourage them?

On top of that, we have the Government’s commitment to T-levels. The hon. Gentleman talked about their importance, and I agree with him. We share the long-standing concerns of Lord Sainsbury and support the recommendations of the skills plan that was drawn up and presented to the Government, which the Government approved; my friend, the principal of Blackpool and The Fylde College, Bev Robinson, had a considerable part in that plan. Despite all those things, schools and colleges are still unable to deliver at a secondary level the high-quality education that people deserve, because they simply do not have the funding to make ends meet.

The aim, of course, is to expand and attract the coverage of vocational education schools to the secondary sector, which is laudable, but the question is the same. The Government have talked about the subjects and standards that they want to roll out for T-levels, but as to who will actually teach them, there has barely been a peep. Maybe there will be a peep today—I do not know. Are they going to be existing secondary school teachers? Are they FE college lecturers, or associates, or other people entirely? If the Government are serious about T-levels being an ecosystem and not another shiny brand that goes the way of other initiatives, they really must focus on them and not simply spend a quarter of a million pounds on a T-level logo.

Those are important issues. Aspiration, of course, can be hugely developed by teachers, but there is so much more that we can do to unlock the innate inquisitiveness, interest and ambition of young people as they enter secondary education. That transition from primary to secondary, as they approach puberty, in schools where they may have left their primary school friends behind, is often very challenging, not least for young people with special educational needs and disabilities, as the hon. Member for Hendon said. That is why the Sutton Trust and others have said over the years that we need earlier interventions and encounters to play a vital role in improving that aspiration. As I said, I recently argued at the Bridge Group and at this year’s Annual Apprenticeship Conference that that is as relevant to achieving wider social mobility in the vocational and technical sphere as it is in the academic.

I believe we should be looking at sustained and dedicated programmes with schools, for children at a much earlier age, and for particular social and ethnic groupings. I believe that approach is likely to yield much better results than many of the current interventions, late in secondary school, where universities will spend tens of millions of pounds but sometimes, arguably, only strengthen offers and representations from some young people who are likely to have gone to there in substantial numbers anyway.

Earlier this week, in the House of Lords, I was privileged to be present at the launch of a new initiative by the National Education Opportunities Network. Graeme Atherton, who founded NEON in 2012 and has directed it since then, was launching its initiative to improve access for white students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Some 10 new HE provider initiatives are being brought together to better support that group, which is one of the least able and likely, from a secondary background, to attend higher education. It is about raising horizons and expectations, not about fixing pupils’ future career patterns at the age of 10. However, I believe the Government urgently need to look at how that integrates with their careers advice strategy—focusing on what happens in individual areas and the way in which Labour, as a party in government, would make more sense of the fractured and fragmented system of information, advice and guidance that we currently have at secondary level, which we believe is an important consideration. I and my colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner)—our shadow Education Secretary—were at a roundtable with stakeholders only this week, discussing how that work might go forward. The Office for Students also has an important role in this area, and I am pleased that it is encouraging collaborative outreach programmes such as those that I have described.

We have been saying for some time that, in a secondary system in which students in schools, FE and sixth-form colleges gain their all-important A-levels or other qualifications at around the age of 18, there must be a robust, independent and wide-ranging review of admissions processes to higher education. That review should focus on a range of things, but particularly the unconditional offers to students of that age that have exploded in recent times, which some have said put those from disadvantaged backgrounds at a key handicap. That is why we believe there is a case for post-qualification admissions, and we were interested to see that the Government have recently asked the OfS to conduct such an inquiry.

The latest OECD international survey on teaching and learning does not, for us in England, make for great reading. England has the world’s eighth-biggest problem with secondary school teacher shortages and the third-highest level of shortages in Europe. For a long time, our party has called for a laser-like focus on the problem of teacher workload; across the continent, secondary school teachers work 37.5 hours a week on average, but in England, that figure is about 47 hours. The question is how much of that is actual teaching, as opposed to paper or virtual bureaucracy. In an environment that leaves many feeling like the proverbial mouse on the treadmill, how are those teachers going to communicate ambition? The digital world and the fourth industrial revolution are all moving ahead at an incandescent pace, and teachers are an absolutely vital element in taking that forward, whether in colleges or schools.

We have 600,000 young people in the category of NEETs—those not in education, employment or training. The Government tell us that that is a stable figure, but it should not be stable; we should be moving on, and I do not see where the Government are taking that issue at the moment. Perhaps the Minister would like to enlighten us.

The Timpson review, which the Government have received, points out that excluded pupils are more likely to already be disadvantaged by class, income, special educational needs or disabilities, with certain ethnic minority groups at a higher risk. Those are the students most in need of support. “Newsnight” recently uncovered more than 1,500 children with SENs or disabilities who are without a school place in England, which only emphasises the problems that Edward Timpson—a respected former Conservative MP and Education Minister—sought to address. The issue of off-rolling needs to be a priority.

The situation, as I say, puts aspiration at serious risk. Right hon. and hon. Members may be familiar with the House of Lords report on the future of seaside towns and cities by my noble Friend the Lord Bassam. That report found that significantly fewer young people from seaside towns and coastal communities can access higher education than those in other parts of England, and that since 2010, there has been a 27% decline in the number of those young people accessing HE. That is another important issue; the Government have identified opportunity access areas, one of which has been Blackpool, but those need to be dealt with more expansively and progressively. The Government’s disappointingly tepid response to the excellent Lords commission illustrates the urgent need to plug this in as a priority for social mobility and economic progress. Many seaside towns suffer from low educational attainment, and local economies then suffer due to skills shortages. These are obviously areas where educational aspiration needs to rank high, and I hope the Minister will consider his Department’s response to that report.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) has spoken in the House about last year’s BBC report that found that malnourished pupils in poorer areas were filling their pockets with food from school canteens due to poverty. My colleague and hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), the shadow public health Minister, has also raised the issue of food at school, school meals, and the gaps through which pupils will fall. As any teacher will tell us, they cannot teach children properly if those children are starving, let alone encourage aspiration.

The hon. Member for Hendon talked about lifelong learning; we agree with him entirely. Of course, people can have second and third chances if they have failures at secondary level, but the whole process needs to reflect that. That is one of the things that we are trying to do through the Lifelong Learning Commission that we have set up, which is looking at these issues. The hon. Gentleman, however, has given us a great deal of food for thought—the Minister especially, I hope. We await his response.

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma; I think it is the first time I have done so. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) on having secured this debate, and on the interesting and persuasive way in which he introduced it.

Since 2010, the Government have worked hard to drive up academic standards. Our mission has been to ensure that every state school is a good school, teaching a rigorous and balanced curriculum and offering pupils world-class qualifications. Only by having high standards across the board can we enable secondary schools to raise and meet young people’s aspirations. In schools, we are transforming careers education—something dear to my hon. Friend’s heart—to harness young people’s aspirations. Our 2017 careers strategy committed investment, support and resources to help schools make visible and lasting improvements, and since 2010 we have seen an increase in the proportion of pupils receiving a good-quality education. As of December 2018, 1.9 million more children were in good or outstanding schools compared with 2010. Some 85% of children are in good schools, compared with only 66% in 2010, which is partly due to our reforms.

As with implementing any effective change, there is no single silver bullet that will bring about a significant and sustainable improvement in standards. We are under no illusions: there is still much more to be done. However, since 2010, the Government have made radical reforms with a focus on improving school standards. As part of our aspiration to provide children with a world-class education, we reformed the national curriculum, restoring knowledge to its heart and raising expectations of what children should be taught. That is now being delivered by all maintained schools, and sets an ambitious benchmark for academies that we expect them to at least match.

Too many pupils, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, were being entered for low-quality qualifications. We therefore reformed GCSEs to put them on a par with qualifications in the best-performing jurisdictions in the world. The result is a suite of new GCSEs that rigorously assess the knowledge and skills acquired by pupils during key stage 4, and are in line with expected standards in countries with high-performing education systems. A-levels have also been reformed to improve students’ readiness for the demands of higher education.

We introduced the English baccalaureate school performance measure, consisting of English, maths, at least two sciences, history or geography, and a language. Those subjects form part of a compulsory curriculum in many of the highest performing countries internationally, at least up to the age of 15 or 16. The percentage of pupils in state-funded schools taking the EBacc has risen from 22% in 2010 to 38% in 2018. My hon. Friend mentioned Copthall School, and I pay tribute to the headteacher and staff of that school, which has high rates of pupil progress. It is well above average at 0.76 for Progress 8. That does not mean much to many people, but that is a high level of progress. The EBacc entry rate is 50%, which is significantly higher than the national entry rate of 38%. The Government’s ambition is for that entry rate to rise to 75% by 2022 and to 90% by 2025. I do not underestimate the challenge that presents, and I will go on to say what we are doing to support schools to achieve that aim. It is right that we aim to provide the best possible education and therefore more opportunities for young people.

Getting the fundamentals right at an early age is vital for a pupil’s success at secondary school and in later life. Children who are reading well by the age of five are six times more likely than their peers to be on track by age 11 in reading and, counterintuitively, 11 times more likely to be on track in mathematics. Ensuring that all pupils in England’s schools are taught to read effectively has been central to our reforms, and we are now beginning to see the fruits of that work. By the end of year 1, most children should be able to decode simple words using phonics and, once they can do that, they can focus on their wider reading skills and develop a love and habit of reading. In England, phonics performance has significantly improved since we introduced the phonics screening check in 2012. At that time, just 58% of six-year-olds correctly read at least 32 out of the 40 words in the check. In 2018, that figure was 82%.

We can see how that work is having an impact. In 2016, England achieved its highest ever score in the reading ability of nine-year-olds, moving from joint 10th to joint 8th in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study rankings. That follows our greater focus on reading in the primary curriculum and a particular focus on phonics. Continuing improvement in reading ability should mean that more children arrive in secondary school able to access the curriculum and with a higher level of literacy than their predecessors.

Maths, science and computing are also fundamental to raising aspirations. We have funded 35 maths hubs to spread evidence-based approaches to maths teaching through the teaching for mastery programme. An investment of £76 million will expand the programme to reach 11,000 primary and secondary schools by 2023. To encourage more pupils to consider level 3 mathematics qualifications and to continue the rise we have seen in A-level entries over the past eight years, we have launched the advanced mathematics support programme, giving schools an extra £600 a year for each additional pupil taking maths or further maths A-level or any level 3 mathematics qualification.

For the good of our economy, we need more young people to pursue degrees and careers in the sciences, including computer science. We have already seen excellent progress, with entries to STEM A-levels increasing by 23% since 2010. We have also launched a four-year computing programme supported by £84 million of funding. That includes a national centre for computing education, at least 40 hubs providing training to schools and a continuing professional development programme to train up to 8,000 secondary teachers without a post-A level qualification in computing.

My hon. Friend talked a lot about careers advice. He is right that if young people are to raise their aspirations and capitalise on the opportunities available to them, they need good careers guidance. In December 2017, the Government published our careers strategy, setting out proposals to improve the quality and coverage of careers advice in schools and to give more aspirational careers advice for young people. The strategy identifies how the worlds of work and education can come together to support young people, using the Gatsby benchmarks, to which he referred. They are based on rigorous national and international research and are the gold standard for careers provision in England. As part of meeting the Gatsby benchmarks, schools should make sure that students understand the full range of education and training opportunities available to them. Exposure to further and higher education and apprenticeships helps to raise aspiration and allows young people to make the right choices for them.

Information on education or training options provided by schools at key transition points too often fails to correct, or even reinforces, the impression that technical and professional education and apprenticeships are second best to academic study. My hon. Friend is concerned about that, and we share that concern. A new law, introduced in January 2018—commonly known as the Baker clause—requires all secondary schools and academies to open their doors to university technical colleges, FE colleges and apprenticeship providers. That will give all young people a better understanding of the qualifications, courses and subjects available at key transition points.

[Gordon Marsden]

The Minister knows that we strongly welcome the Baker clause. There are anecdotal accounts about how successful or otherwise it has been so far. Does the Department have any statistics on how the Baker reforms have impacted on that area as of yet?

[Nick Gibb]

I do not have those figures to hand, so I will write to the hon. Gentleman when and if we have those statistics. We are as concerned about the issue as he is.

We expect to see schools setting up careers events, assemblies and options evenings so that providers can talk to pupils about what they offer and what it is like to learn in a different environment. The evidence is clear that sustained and varied contacts with mentors, coaches, employer networks, FE colleges, universities, alumni or other high-achieving individuals can motivate pupils to think beyond their immediate experiences, encouraging them to consider a broader and more ambitious range of future education and career options.

Activities involving employers, such as careers insights, mentoring, work tasters and work experience are important in giving young people the skills they need to succeed. Such interactions help open young people’s eyes to choices and opportunities, raise aspirations and prepare them for the world of work. As such, we want to create quality interactions between schools and businesses. The careers statutory guidance makes it clear that schools should offer work placements, work experience and other employer-based activities as part of their careers strategies for pupils in year 8 to year 13. Secondary schools will be expected to provide pupils with at least one meaningful interaction with employers per pupil per year, with a particular focus on STEM employers.

With an expanded role, the Careers & Enterprise Company, which was established in 2014, works to link schools with employers, making sure that every young person has access to inspiring encounters with the world of work, including work experience and other employer-based activities. It does that through its enterprise adviser network, which is delivered in partnership with local enterprise partnerships, providing information tailored to local skills and the local labour market. The network operates in all 38 local enterprise partnership areas and has grown rapidly. More than 2,000 business volunteers have been mobilised to work with schools and colleges on their careers strategies through the enterprise adviser network, and participants have reported a 50% increase in employer encounters for pupils. That partially answers the question raised by the hon. Gentleman, but we will come back to him with a fuller answer.

Through its work, the Careers & Enterprise Company has identified and is targeting those areas where additional provision is most needed. It is funding work during 2019-20 to test new approaches and produce resources to improve careers information, advice and guidance for individuals who are disadvantaged, including those with special educational needs and disabilities, looked-after children and those from minority ethnic groups.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon referred in particular to children in care. Last Monday, we published our children in need review. He also referred to the post-16 qualification review and expressed his view about BTECs. That consultation opened on 19 March 2019 and closed on 10 June 2019. We will respond in due course, and the views that he has expressed today will be taken into account as part of that review process.

Since 2010, the Government have introduced a range of reforms with the sole focus of raising standards. I have set out those standards in relation to secondary education and highlighted how those reforms have been complemented by a range of targeted programmes to support and develop teachers’ practice and to provide timely and effective careers advice for students.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Chris Skidmore]

I recognise the point that the hon. Gentleman makes and the potential impact on Scottish universities, as does the Home Secretary, whose officials have been working closely with mine on this. The Government are now considering how best to ensure that students on four-year courses are easily able to move into the student system once their European temporary leave to remain expires. If European economic area or Swiss citizens wish to stay in the UK for longer than 36 months, they will need to apply and qualify for an immigration status under the main study routes of the UK’s new skills-based immigration system. Alternatively, they will be able to apply, under tier 4 of the points-based system, for a student visa to cover the full length of their course.

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

Our higher education institutions—including the Open University, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this month—are world class, but sadly, despite what the Minister says, the Government are letting those universities down. They are not giving clarity at the moment over access to Erasmus+, they are not guaranteeing continued access to Horizon Europe funding and there are fears over research grant collaboration with EU partners.

Now there are reports that the Government are preparing to charge EU students—[Interruption] Stop chuntering!—who currently pay UK fees, a hugely increased international rate, and to scrap their support when we leave the EU, with or without a deal. The Minister is wrong: statistics from the Russell Group show that EU student numbers are 3% down, and EU postgraduate numbers are 9% down for 2018-19. The Education Secretary is said to be pushing this forward. Does the universities Minister agree with it, and is it Government policy?

[Chris Skidmore]

The hon. Gentleman talks about uncertainty, but it is uncertainty that he himself has created, as one of the Members who has not voted for a deal, which would have provided certainty on student mobility and student finance. The deal, if passed, will allow us to begin work on a future relationship that ensures that we can work together, with our universities sector and with our European partners. Although we are leaving the European Union, we are not leaving our European neighbours behind. We want to continue those close partnerships, which is why I have been in Brussels attending the European Competitiveness Council—I hope to do so again on 28 May—to ensure that we can associate into Horizon Europe. I want to continue to work on the possibilities for student exchanges. It is important that we maintain our university system not just as a European one but as an international one as well.

Further Education Funding

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I congratulate the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) and the Backbench Business Committee on securing this debate today. In the time I have available I cannot do justice to the multitude of speeches made, but Members have shown a sharp eye for details about travel, EMAs, keeping rural and other colleges going, unused space, capacity opportunities, FE in the global market and the drop in level 2 and 3 qualifications.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Gordon Marsden]

No, I am not taking any interventions.

It is hugely important that FE is getting the attention it deserves; it is heartening and unprecedented in this year. Members have spent half the Session raising FE funding and raised related issues in recent education questions. The excellent Westminster Hall debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), who is in his place, showed that not new challenges, not new issues, but new urgency was required from the Government, given the state of FE funding. The recent statistics from the Love Our Colleges and Raise the Rate campaigns have highlighted that brilliantly.

We know that the statistics are a standing rebuke to the failure of all three Governments in the past decade to fund FE adequately. The Institute for Fiscal Studies found that spending and skills fell by £3 billion in real terms between 2010 and 2011. Those needing second and third chances have been hard hit and adult education has seen its budget cut by almost half. According to the Association of Colleges,

“Over the last ten years, colleges have had to deal with an average funding cut of 30%...Further education is the only part of the education budget to have had year-on-year cuts since 2010.”

The skills Minister knows all that and, to her credit, has tried to push her colleagues in Government, the Secretary of State and the Chancellor, on the funding envelope, but so far answer comes there none. This is at a time when the massive uncertainties around Brexit and its future impact on our economy make the role of FE in delivering new hope and skills all the more essential than at any time in the past 20 years.

Despite a unified sector lobby of the Government last autumn on the need for the Government to reverse their damaging cuts, the Chancellor has persistently failed to acknowledge it. In his financial Budget of October 2018 he talked about schools getting little extras, but FE did not even get the crumbs. Both he and the Education Secretary cannot be oblivious to the demands not only of the colleges but of everyone else involved in the world of FE—the training providers who make up 60% to 70% of delivery; the employers who see skills programmes, both highly specific and generic, as essential to their success; and the LEPs, combined authorities and mayors, all of whom see such things as essential to success in the 2020s. As a consequence, the fabric of sustainability for colleges has become fretted and threadbare. Last year, the Department stated that there could be a best-case scenario of 80 colleges at financial risk and a worst-case scenario of 150.

The National Education Union’s briefing states that colleges have suffered from cuts in activities such as tutorials, enrichment activities and additional courses. The Sixth Form Colleges Association has said similar things. Students have progressively had financial support reduced since the education maintenance allowance went, and the bursary fund that replaced it was insufficient. I know that the principal and teachers at the superb Blackpool and The Fylde College are moving qualifications across the piece, and they think action is overdue.

The Government must reassess urgently how they fund their apprenticeship programme. Last week Government stats showed that the apprenticeship starts between August 2018 and January 2019, two years from the levy launch, are still beneath the number of apprenticeship starts for 2016-17. A large part of that is because level 2 apprenticeship starts have fallen by more than a third in the space of a year. It is increasingly apparent that the Government levy is not designed or fit for purpose for SMEs or non-levy payers, as the Association of Employment and Learning Providers and Mark Dawe have consistently argued. We need to have a situation in which non-levy payers can train apprentices for small businesses, as some are having to turn them away.

We have seen apprenticeship figures go up, but the costs go up as well, so we have a Government, as the hon. Member for Gloucester emphasised in his speech, who need to take action at both ends of the cycle. Qualifications at levels 5 to 7 need to work. We need to sustain the fuel for them, but, as we have heard, levy payers and SMEs are starved of cash. The Government will seek to address some of the drops in qualifications through T-levels, but the money will not be seen in full until 2021-22 and we have no idea whether it will be sufficient. If there is a capacity issue, and, as we hope, T-levels take off, what capacity will the colleges have to deliver them if no additional funding is allocated by the Chancellor? Where are the institutions supposed to deliver them? Even more crucially, how will we bring them to fruition in the 2020s? Our concern is that setting T-levels simply as a competitor to A-levels will be counterproductive to their take-up and viability. We have to focus on 16 to 18-year-olds at level 3 standard whose preparation has been largely geared towards taking A-levels. Assuming that that will fly for T-levels is a risky strategy.

The AOC has said that the Government need to have a base rate increase of £1,000 per student as a minimum, so will the Government commit to that? Successful delivery requires teaching staff, as we have heard, with specialist industry expertise, up-to-date equipment and smaller class sizes. Average college pay is £30,000 compared with £37,000 in schools, and it significantly lags behind industry. The University and College Union, nationally and its many excellent campaigns countrywide, has said the same for years. Who will actually teach the T-levels? Existing teachers who have received very little in funding for years for CPD or new teachers?

The UCU spelt out in crisp terms in its submission to MPs for this debate what they ask Chancellor and the Education Secretary to do. Pay has fallen in value by 25% in real terms since 2009. Teachers in FE colleges earn on average £7,000 less than teachers in schools. We hear a lot about red lines these days, but will the Minister commit to a red line for her Department to get that changed? Since 2010, around 24,000 teachers have left the FE sector: a third of the total teaching workforce. What will the Minister do to ensure that colleges can increase the pay of teachers and ensure that we have a qualified workforce to teach T-levels after their introduction?

It is clear from what we have heard today that more and more Members across this House, especially in this Chamber, know that FE is an essential factor in delivering the fair, socially mobile, economic and community strategies that we will need in the 2020s. We in the Labour party, with our new national education service plans and now the launch of our lifelong learning commission, see FE as an essential building block to achieve that process. Progression, progression, progression is stamped through everything that we need to do in this area as through a stick of Blackpool rock. For now and for today, what Members in this House—all of them—require from the Government is something a little more short term and modest. If the Minster wills the ends, she must will the means. She must require from the Government something a little more. We must commit here and now to start to make good on the promises and the rhetoric that have so far not been backed up with the funding that FE needs, particularly from the Treasury. She and the Treasury must hear loud and clear all of the excellent speeches and demands, and praise for their colleges and training providers, that Members have spoken of here today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Anne Milton]

I know that my hon. Friend is a fantastic champion of apprenticeships in his constituency and across the country, and I am delighted to hear that he will host an apprenticeship fair in Southport in May. It was a pleasure to visit Southport College last year. There were 1,250 events during National Apprenticeship Week this year, which was a 50% increase on last year. The opportunities for young people and, indeed, older people are quite extraordinary.

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

The Minister rightly talks about the opportunities of the National Apprenticeship Week, but the National Audit Office says that the financial sustainability of the apprenticeship levy, which is key to the Government’s strategy, is at risk. We have a crazy situation with the overspend on higher apprenticeships producing a £500 million deficit, but non-levy payers, which are the training providers for three out of four apprenticeships, are left without funding. Following the catastrophic falls in apprenticeship starts in 2017, why is this Department now looking at another disaster, and how will this Minister stop this driverless levy going over the cliff and taking huge numbers of chances with it?

[Anne Milton]

I have to say that I do not think the hon. Gentleman always believes what he says from the Dispatch Box. [Interruption.] He talks apprenticeships down. How can he possibly talk about an overspend on higher level apprenticeships? In this country, we are desperate for people who are able to do level 4 and level 5 qualifications. The National Audit Office report was a very backward-looking report. I am sure he would agree with me in private, if not from the Dispatch Box, that the difference he will have seen between National Apprenticeship Week this year and the one last year is quite extraordinary.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Anne Milton]

We have a pilot project running in five areas across the country specifically to target young people in disadvantaged areas who might be less willing to take up an apprenticeship, particularly in sectors they would not traditionally look at. We have £500 million of disadvantaged funding in the sector and £127 million of discretionary bursary funding, and there are other projects focusing particularly on apprenticeships to encourage young people who might not have thought of them as an option.

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is clear that the Chancellor has dashed FE’s hopes massively in his Budget, but the Prime Minister, when told in Prime Minister’s questions by my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) last week that FE funding was in crisis, replied complacently that he

“could not be more wrong”—[Official Report, 30 January 2019; Vol. 653, c. 811.]

MPs debating FE here recently all said otherwise. One Member said

“it is clear that funding for…16 to 19…has fallen”—[Official Report, 21 January 2019; Vol. 653, c. 20.]

Another said:

“The bottom line is that the…sector needs more money”—[Official Report, 21 January 2019; Vol. 653, c. 23.]

Those are the words of Conservative Members in that debate. Will the Minister get the Education Secretary to pledge to tell the Chancellor that increased FE funding in the spending review is his top priority, to keep at it and to not take no for an answer?

[Anne Milton]

I notice the hon. Gentleman pointing his finger across the Dispatch Box. The Secretary of State is very aware—because I have not ceased to point it out to him—of the challenges that FE colleges face, and I did hear the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) raise this in Prime Minister’s questions last week. It is good to hear people across the House talking about further education, because sadly the House collectively, including under the last Labour Government, did not talk about it very much.

College Funding

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is an enormous pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone, and that of your predecessor in this debate, the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker). It has been an absolute joy—to echo the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes)—to be in this debate and to hear the unanimous view about what needs to happen in this sector. The Minister has been showered not only with an avalanche of statistics but, more importantly, with evidence of the life-enhancing chances that further education and skills can bring.

The case has been made with an eloquence and urgency that demands a response not only from the Minister—I am sure it will be good—but from the Secretary of State for Education, because he needs to put his shoulder to the wheel in the discussions with the Treasury. I know that the Minister will do her best in that area, but if the Secretary of State for Education does not get that money through and if the Chancellor does not come back and respond to the abject failure in his Budget, none of them will be forgiven. That is the crux of what we have been talking about.

I do not have the ability to praise all the hon. Members who made speeches, but I certainly praise the 70,000 people who signed the petition. I praise all the excellent briefings from the Association of Colleges, the Sixth Form Colleges Association, Unison and the UCU, and all the individual colleges, principals and staff, as well as the many individual students, whom hon. Members have quoted. I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), who spelled out to the Minister in simple, cogent and thoughtful terms the challenge of a divided country that has been left behind; the challenge to make this a newsworthy crusade, which it has not been in the past; and the challenge simply to understand and to question why this has happened.

When EMA was abolished in 2010, £555 a year was being spent; why do we now have 16 to 19 bursaries at only a third of that value? Why, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) said, has the concept of night schools been left behind? Why has this funding been frozen at £4,000? Those issues have not just dropped into the Minister’s tray; they have been in the trays of the four Skills Ministers that I have shadowed since 2011.

I cannot touch on everything that has been said, but I would like to highlight some points. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) talked about the issues with T-levels, as have many other people. If I had more time, I would talk more about T-levels, not to attack them, but to say that they are doing a very different job, and even that job is being hampered by a series of things.

The right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), who is the respected Chair of the Education Committee, was absolutely right to talk about the different ages at which people get second chances and to challenge the Government on building new colleges. I absolutely agree with him: what is the point of building new colleges or new institutes of this, that or the other, if there are inadequate staff to take those courses through and inadequate funding to sustain them? That is the challenge for the Government. This requires a long-term strategy and a 10-year plan.

My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Laura Smith) gave a fantastic speech lauding her own FE college. She also pointed out the dire problems for smaller towns—she was absolutely right to talk about the tragic situation of Manchester Metropolitan University—which were expressed by many hon. Members. My hon. Friends also mentioned the 24,000 FE teachers who have left the sector. The Minister and the Department have to focus on those things.

The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings, whom I am proud to call my collaborator in the joy of further education, was absolutely right to point out that the role of adult learning is in jeopardy because of the sheer volume of funding cuts. The hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) talked about the yawning gap between schools funding and FE teachers’ funding.

My hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) talked about the importance of Winstanley College in her constituency, which reminded me that it is named after Gerrard Winstanley, who was one of the group of Levellers to become known as the Diggers. Thomas Rainsborough, another Leveller, said to Cromwell that the “poorest he”—sorry about the sexism of the 17th century—should have the same opportunities as the “greatest he”. That is the watchword of further education and schools, time after time: people should be allowed to have this opportunity.

My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) put his finger on the button when he talked about the message needing to go to the Secretary of State for Education and to the Treasury, regarding the underspend on 16 to 19 education and advanced learner loans. It is a tragedy that this Government have not only failed to put money in the right places, but introduced systems and structures, such as the advanced learner loans, of which 50% of the money has been returned to the Treasury year after year and nothing has been done about it. That is one of the real problems in this area.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) talked about how valuable further education is to the north Staffordshire economy. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), who serves so strongly on the Education Committee, talked about the social capital in that area. We also heard a number of good points from my hon. Friends the Members for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West), for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) and for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins).

My right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) talked about the over-complex system. My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) quite rightly pointed to the achievements of the last Labour Government in this area and how those have not been replicated so far by this Government. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly) praised the principal of a college in his constituency. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) summed up further education as a beacon of hope and opportunity.

Those are the sorts of questions that come to this Chamber. It is sad that we have to revisit these voices of challenge and hope, because we were all led to believe—as the Minister said in perfectly good faith—that the unprecedented campaign in the autumn would produce a result. That is why, in October last year, I wrote to the Chancellor to request an urgent uplift in this area.

[Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)]

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the shadow Minister, but there is a Division in the House. If there is one Division, we will suspend for 15 minutes. If there is more than one Division, please try to return as soon as possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)]

Order. The debate will resume with the shadow Minister, and we will now conclude at 7.55 pm.

[Gordon Marsden]

As I was saying, these cuts have been very severe. There has been a real-terms cut of anything between 50% and 60% in the budget for adult education, as well as cuts in the budgets for further education and sixth-form funding—which, of course, is why the “Raise the Rate” campaign has been doing what it has been doing. The truth of the matter is that, as Amanda Spielman said,

“I am firmly of the view that the government should increase the base rate for 16 to 19 funding in the forthcoming spending review.”

We really do have to go down that route. We cannot repeat the situation of being marched up to the top of the hill and down again, as we were with the Chancellor.

There are so many aspects of tonight’s debate that I could talk about, but I do not have the time to do so. However, I particularly want to ask the Minister whether she is going to do anything to make sure that the Augar review rebalances the rates between students in FE and HE, and whether that will be a priority in the spending review. We also know about the issues with the financial health of colleges and insolvency; what is the Minister going to be doing in that area? We know that policy makers have not looked holistically at that area, and we need to have that holistic approach.

Because this Government have failed to take a holistic approach, because they have not looked at human capital as well as physical capital, and because the advanced learner loans have been a continuing disaster, we need to have a transformation. We need to have parity of esteem, and that can only be achieved through the sorts of structures that the Labour party are proposing: the national education service and the lifelong learning commission. Having spent 20 years as a lecturer in the adult learning sector, and having seen the powerful effect of FE in my own college in Blackpool, I believe that there is no better way of dealing with this issue than having that step change, not just of funding, but of vision and structure.