Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Debate between Graham Stuart and Catherine McKinnell(3 weeks ago)
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Catherine McKinnell
I will always share in the celebration of schools that are doing well, and the right hon. Lady is absolutely right to celebrate the schools in her area. I do question, however, the shameless pride we sometimes see in the record of her Government; when they left office, England’s schools were getting worse, standards in reading, maths and science were down, roofs were crumbling, children were struggling, and a generation of children were absent from school. We are determined to tackle those challenges head-on. The education that we provide for our children is not just for their future, but for all of our futures. It shapes society today and the society that we want for tomorrow.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
It is good of the Minister, for whom I have a great deal of respect, to give way. As I know her to be an honest person, will she at least share with the House the fact that schools in England are better today than they were in 2010? Picking some tiny subset of time to make out that schools are deprived is not a fair assessment. Schools are demonstrably better in England today than they were in 2010. Please, Minister, at least acknowledge that.
Catherine McKinnell
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his kind words and his assumption of my honesty. The fact is that one in three children starting school is not school ready. More than a third of children leave primary school without a firm foundation in reading, writing and maths. The disadvantage gap is widening. I will come on to what we want to achieve as a Government, but we are not satisfied, as Conservative Members appear to be, with leaving some of our children without the start in life that they deserve. We want the best for all our children, and that is what our changes will achieve.
Catherine McKinnell
I have given way to the right hon. Member. I will do so again later.
It is essential that every child and family has certainty that they can access a good local school—a school that will set high expectations and standards for all our children, enabling them to achieve and thrive. We are bringing forward legislation to achieve our reforms, but there are reforms that we can make for which no legislation is required. We are designing a school system that supports and challenges all schools to deliver for our children. We want a rich and broad curriculum, delivered by expertly trained teachers, who have a good pay and conditions offer that attracts and retains the staff that our children need.
Catherine McKinnell
Try as the Opposition might to make their straw man argument, this Labour Government will demand high and rising standards for all our children. Recent polls of the profession show that, despite all the scaremongering, trust chief executive officers agree that there is nothing to fear from our sensible, pragmatic and common-sense measures, which will drive standards up in every school. Academies have grown from a Government-backed insurgency in our schools, and now make up well over 50% of our school system. That is not about to change. The shadow Minister will be pleased to hear that conversions to academy status are progressing faster under Labour Ministers than at any time since she joined this House, but it is right to look forward and consider how we will build a system fit for the next 20 years. The Bill is a step on that path. It recognises, in the words of one multi-academy trust leader, that parents deserve clarity and confidence in the standards that their children’s school upholds, and that is what this Government will secure.
The Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan), led yesterday’s debate on part 1 of the Bill. I will use my opening remarks to speak to the Government’s amendments to parts 2 and 3. Members commented yesterday on the number of amendments, but the number of substantive amendments is small, and I shall focus on them today.
Many Members have a great interest in city technology colleges and city colleges for the technology of the arts, and they have raised with me the excellent practice supported by those institutions. The Government amendments ensure that these schools can be named on school admission orders, and make it clear that families with children attending those schools will benefit from other measures in the Bill, such as those tackling the cost of school uniform.
Just as we are committed to working with all our schools, so too are this Government determined to work with the devolved Governments to deliver higher standards of education and care in all parts of the UK. The majority of today’s amendments concern the extension of the “children not in school” provisions to Wales. The Minister spoke yesterday of our pride in working with the Welsh Government. Labour Governments in both Cardiff and London will deliver our shared ambition for a society where all children receive high-quality education, wherever they grow up. We will build a Britain where children come first. These 91 amendments will extend all the “children not in school” measures to Wales. There is a legislative consent motion on this change, on which we are working very closely with the Welsh Government.
Amendment 140 will include the Scottish definition of schools in the definition of “relevant schools” for the “children not in school” register clause. This amendment ensures that only those children who are intended to be captured by “children not in school” registers are eligible for registration. Without the amendment, a child who lives in England, but who attends school full time in Scotland, would be required to be registered on their English local authority’s “children not in school” register, despite being in school full time.
The previous Government said that there was no space in their King’s Speech to ensure our children’s safety and education, but for this Labour Government, our children are a priority across the whole of the United Kingdom. Amendments 189 and 170 will ensure that the amendments made on corporate parenting extend to the whole of the United Kingdom. Education is an essential protective factor, which can shield our most vulnerable children from harm. The “children not in school” measures include the new requirement for parents of children subject to child protection plans or inquiries to seek local authority consent. However, not every child subject to these inquires will be at risk indefinitely, so it would not be appropriate or proportionate for those home-educated children who are not at risk and who are receiving suitable education to be placed in a school if it is not their parents’ preference. This Government will respect parents’ rights to opt for home education, while keeping children safe from harm and securing their right to education. Amendments 141 to 148 will ensure that this intention is reflected through the school attendance order measures in the Bill.
Graham Stuart
Will the Minister reassure home-educating parents that the requirements in the Bill will not be overly onerous? For instance, there is a requirement to record the time that each parent spends educating their child. Is that 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year? How exactly would that work? Can she give us some reassurance that this measure can be made manageable and sensible, and will not be disproportionate?
Catherine McKinnell
Parents who are doing the right thing—home-educating their children and providing a suitable education in a safe environment—have nothing to be concerned about in relation to these measures. They are intended to ensure that no child falls through the cracks, and that is what we are delivering.
Graham Stuart
I am sure that the Minister intends to ensure that this does not happen, but would someone have to record all the hours and places in a week? I do not know how much the Minister knows about home education, but children are educated in all sorts of places. She has an opportunity at the Dispatch Box to say that she will come forward with regulations to ensure that they do not have to write down every time that they stop at an ice cream shop for some education about the vanilla flavour.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Debate between Graham Stuart and Catherine McKinnell(3 months ago)
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Catherine McKinnell
No, I will not. I have said that I will not.
I know that we are all united in our desire to ensure that the Bill works for children and young people across the country. I apologise if I am not able to respond to all the points that have been raised; there were a huge number of them, and we will have an opportunity to debate all those issues in the weeks ahead.
This legislation will provide the safe and secure foundation that all children need, and I was surprised by the tone of the shadow Secretary of State’s opening remarks, in which she decried it as “educational vandalism”. I know what educational vandalism looks like: children unhappy in schools, standards falling, staff undervalued, school buildings crumbling, and special educational needs and disability systems failing on every measure. That is the Conservatives’ record on education. It is shameful, and it let down a generation of our children. We are determined to turn the page.
Central to the Bill is cutting the cost of sending children to school. In our manifesto, we committed to offering breakfast clubs in every primary school; through this Bill, we will deliver those clubs, which will ensure that all children get the chance to have a soft start to the school day and are ready to learn. The Bill will also address parents’ concerns about school uniforms by limiting the number of branded items, which will put money back into parents’ pockets.
Many Members have spoken powerfully about the impact of poverty on children in their constituency, including my hon. Friends the Members for Bury North (Mr Frith), for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson), for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome), for Hitchin (Alistair Strathern), for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh), for Stockton North (Chris McDonald), for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), for West Bromwich (Sarah Coombes) and for Hartlepool (Mr Brash). All of them know that tackling child poverty will improve the life chances of our children, and today we have a chance to make that happen.
As Members have highlighted, our measures will ensure that we look again at admissions and place planning to make sure that decisions account for the needs of local communities. That is why we are introducing a duty for state schools and local authorities to co-operate on place planning and admissions, and emphasising the importance of working together to secure the best future for every child.
Catherine McKinnell
We have heard a lot from the right hon. Gentleman today.
Contrary to the comments made by the right hon. Members for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) and for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson), we recognise the importance of admission authorities being able to set their own published admission numbers, and of good schools being able to expand where there is local demand. There seems to have been a huge amount of misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the Bill’s measures on academies. Unfortunately, I simply do not have time to refute it all today, but we are determined to drive high and rising standards right across our school system, to ensure that schools and children have the support to thrive, and to break the link between background and success. That means looking beyond the sign above the door of a school to the children within, but we cannot achieve that without quality teachers. I pay tribute to all our school workforces, who work tirelessly in the service of children and young people.
Wild claims were made today; the shadow Secretary of State asked why the Government were telling teachers that their pay is too high. At no point have we said that teachers’ pay is too high; indeed, we recently implemented a 5.5% pay award for teachers. To be clear, this Bill does not seek to reduce teachers’ pay. We recognise the good practice and flexibility that academies have benefited from, and the focus of our measures is providing a core offer to all state schools while still leaving them the flexibility to innovate.
A number of Members have rightly highlighted the challenges around SEND, including my hon. Friends the Members for Hyndburn (Sarah Smith), for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Rand), and for Scarborough and Whitby (Alison Hume). We know the challenges relating to special educational needs and disabilities. We are absolutely determined to fix the system by improving inclusivity in mainstream schools while ensuring that there are special school places for children with the most complex needs. This Bill will go some way towards supporting those aims, but it is by no means the whole picture, and we will continue to make progress on the reforms that are so desperately required.
Our priority is ensuring that the most vulnerable children do not fall off the radar of the professionals who are working to protect them. Members from across the House have rightly focused on that issue. I commend them for their very thoughtful contributions on these challenging issues, including the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Sir Julian Smith), my hon. Friends the Members for Rother Valley (Jake Richards) and for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), who must be commended for the work that he has undertaken in this area, and my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds South West and Morley (Mr Sewards). There will be “children not in school” registers in every English local authority, and local authority consent will be required to home-educate children who are subject to child protection inquiries or child protection plans, or who are at special schools; that is a proportionate solution that focuses on the most vulnerable.
The Bill will strengthen multi-agency safeguarding arrangements and implement multi-agency child protection teams. We recognise that we must improve information sharing across and within agencies, and we will. The Bill will support children in the care system so that they achieve and thrive. It will keep families together, and children safe, and crack down on excessive profit-making. These are issues that I know hon. Members care very deeply about, and my hon. Friends the Members for Lowestoft (Jess Asato), for Derbyshire Dales (John Whitby), for Forest of Dean (Matt Bishop) and for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey) have spoken movingly about them today.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Graham Stuart and Catherine McKinnell(3 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Catherine McKinnell
My hon. Friend raises an important point. Rather than obsessing about structures and names over doors, we are determined to ensure that every child in every community has a good school and that schools work together in communities with their local authorities to co-operate on place planning and admissions, with every child getting the best education and every school having high and rising standards.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
At just £952, the East Riding of Yorkshire has the lowest high needs block funding of any local authority in the country. Ministers have committed themselves to looking again at the formula so that we can have the right one. Will they please commit to doing everything they can to bring it in for the next financial year so that we do not have another year of grossly unfair and disproportionate distributions of funding?