Oral Answers to Questions
Hannah Spencer Excerpts(1Â week, 2Â days ago)
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Georgia Gould
I hear the same stories from families about long waits. The new system that we are proposing is all about identifying needs as early as possible. Through the national inclusion standards, which the independent panel is working on, new tools will be developed to support schools to identify needs early, and then work will be done with the Experts at Hand service to put in place interventions to support those young people.
Hannah Spencer (Gorton and Denton) (Green)
Children in Gorton and Denton are being left without suitable education while families wait for SEND tribunal appeals, but they are waiting for school places that do not exist. Does the Minister agree that we need an independent assessment of SEND school capacity? The Government reforms will not help if we do not first fix the capacity crisis.
Georgia Gould
I absolutely agree that we need more places in our schools. We are working as quickly as possible to get money into local authorities to deliver that capacity. That includes growing the number of inclusion bases, which can be built faster and often allow children to be educated in their community. As I travel around the country, I have seen how life-changing that has been. The money that we have put in is already creating new places, and we will continue to invest this year and next.
Access to Further Education
Hannah Spencer Excerpts(2Â months, 3Â weeks ago)
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Hannah Spencer (Gorton and Denton) (Green)
Too often, the voices of people who come through routes like apprenticeships, working people or tradespeople are missing from these debates, but I am really proud of my education and of my route through as an apprentice.
On apprenticeships, at the moment we are asking too many small and medium-sized businesses to carry the responsibility of training up the next generations of people without the funding and recognition that they deserve. I have met with small businesses across my constituency that want to take on apprentices, but tell me it is too expensive and too complicated; and it is not a lack of lack of willingness—it is a lack of support. We have to make it easier for small businesses to recruit apprentices by simplifying levy transfers, reducing administrative burdens wherever possible, and providing long-term funding certainty for their rising costs.
Apprenticeships need to be made easier for young people and families to understand and access, and to be recognised and respected as the meaningful route into essential skilled work that they are, with support for apprenticeship wages that better reflect local labour markets and the removal of unfair practical barriers. We want free bus fares for under-22s so that no young person is held back from getting to their apprenticeship. We want equal access to funded childcare and the scrapping of disincentives such as those within the benefit system.
Finally, we need economic policy that focuses on spreading opportunity and investment more fairly across the country, so that young people in places like Gorton and Denton are no longer left behind. In places like Gorton, Denton, Abbey Hey, Burnage, Longsight—all the places in my constituency—our young people have never lacked talent or drive, but we must stop wasting it, give them a chance and properly back further education and apprenticeships as the national assets that they are.