Pupil Premium

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Many schools are already using baseline assessment on entry to school; that is the rational thing to do. It is also the most rational way of measuring progress, rather than doing it over an arbitrary period. I also agree with her that the additional money for the pupil premium and the additional accountability and focus will be crucial to narrowing the gap. The huge amounts of money going into schools with large numbers of pupil-premium pupils will result in some dramatic and impressive progress over the next few years in improving the lot of young people from those backgrounds.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

What the Minister is saying reveals nothing other than his lack of understanding of small children and of child development. What is appropriate at 16, at 14 and at 11 is not appropriate at five. For five-year-olds, learning should be enjoyable, pleasurable and fun. Does he not understand that if he formalises these assessments, he will produce anxious teachers, anxious parents and anxious children?

[Mr Laws]

I am afraid that the mood of consensus has come to an end. The hon. Lady is completely wrong. These assessments are already being completed in schools up and down the land, and most pupils do not even know that they are going through some great baseline assessment process. They just think that they are doing the sort of things that children do in schools. What is the logic of measuring progress, giving it huge status and talking about its importance, which we all do, if we then say that we will measure progress only from halfway through primary education? That does not make sense.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I am amazed that the Secretary of State thinks he can produce a nation of six-year-olds all of whom can spell Tuesday and know that there are two ways of spelling pear/pair. I think that even Hansard will have some problems with that! Is the Secretary of State not aware that pushing children to do things that they are not ready to do is totally counter-productive? In most European countries, they are not even at school at the age of six. Does the right hon. Gentleman not know that, according to the results of a UNICEF study, the one feeling that British seven-year-olds understood was how it felt to fail?

[Michael Gove]

I feel sorry for some seven-year-olds because they will have lived through years of Labour government when failure was all around them, but at last there is a Government who have high expectations for every child. I am sorry that the spirit of consensus that has prevailed so far has been shattered by the hon. Lady, because I had assumed that Labour was committed to ensuring that children in their earliest years had an opportunity to enjoy the very best teaching. It seems to me that it is not just in east Durham that there is a poverty of aspiration on the part of the Labour party.

Apprenticeships

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Marsden]

I had the enormous pleasure of serving under my hon. Friend when he was the Chair of the Children, Schools and Families Committee, and he has probably taught me as much as anyone in this House on this subject. He is absolutely right and he hits the nail on the head: a step-change in the number of apprenticeships is central. It is the focus of our motion.

We resurrected that historic badge of excellence, but this is not a matter for party politics. When the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes) was the Minister with responsibility for apprenticeships, he spoke movingly about what he had learned about the value of the skills of hand and eye from his father. I, too, saw those skills through the working life of my father as an engineer. When he was apprenticed at the age of 14 to the engineering company Crossley Brothers in Manchester just before the second world war, my grandfather told him, “Now Crossleys has taken you on, you will have a job for life.”

Today’s apprentices often face very different challenges and prospects, because many young people can expect to go through half a dozen job or career changes in their lifetime, some probably not even thought of when they start their apprenticeship. That means it is critical to get the mix of bespoke and portable skills right at the apprenticeship stage; and that the range, content and quality remain relevant to the businesses and local economies in which they are embedded. These are challenging issues that demand a co-ordinated and hands-on approach from government, as well as from businesses and educators.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

On what can be done at a local level to celebrate apprenticeships week, I am having a jobs and apprenticeships fair in Bishop Auckland on Friday. I expect 100 jobs and apprenticeships to be available to young people. Does my hon. Friend agree that the background need is to get the economy moving? Unemployment in my constituency is still rising, and seven people are looking at every vacancy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend has just done so, with characteristic acuity and passion.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

14. What his policy is on the secondary school curriculum.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)]

We recently published a number of proposals for the reform of the national curriculum in primary and secondary schools and those proposals are now subject to public consultation.

[Helen Goodman]

We know from industry that computing science is extremely important, and particularly coding skills. However, two thirds of schoolteachers do not have the relevant skills to teach coding. What does the Secretary of State intend to do about that?

[Michael Gove]

That is a very good question from the hon. Lady. One of the things that we have done is disapply the existing information and communications technology curriculum that we inherited from the previous Government, which was not appropriate, was out of date and ensured that students did not acquire the skills they need. We now have a new curriculum and we are working with industry, including Microsoft, in order to ensure that that new curriculum teaches children the coding skills required. I had the opportunity on Friday to see a school in my own constituency doing just that.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

My hon. Friend is right that the introduction of the pupil premium has been very important across the country, and we will announce a further increase in its level for 2014-15. She should be reassured to know that, after we have completed the roll-out of the pupil premium, we intend to move to a fairer national funding formula, which will help many of those areas of the country that have been underfunded, unfairly and illegitimately, for many decades.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

T6. The Government claim to be promoting family life, but the truth is that the bedroom tax will penalise non-resident parents who keep a room so that their children can stay with them on a regular basis. What representations have Ministers in this Department made to the Department for Work and Pensions?

[Michael Gove]

I do not know why the hon. Lady and, indeed, all Opposition Members keep referring to this as a bedroom tax. It is not a tax. It is timely and necessary action to deal with our out-of-control welfare bills, and that action is needed because of the way in which our economy was driven into the ground by the Labour party. It was in power for 13 years, during which no effective welfare reform took place and during which money was spent on a series of vanity projects that only left the country saying, “Thank heavens that a coalition Government have two parties clearing up the mess left behind by that crew of socialist wreckers on whom we wish nothing but a rapid path to contrition.”

History Teaching

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Chris Skidmore]

The E-bac is a welcome development, but we must go further. When looking at grammar schools and selective schools, it is interesting to look beneath the statistics. In comprehensive schools in 1997, 169,298 pupils took history GCSE. That figure has now dropped to 155,982. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) is chuntering. Would she like to say something?

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman tell us why there has been this decline in the study of history? What is his analysis of why this has come about? Is it to do with the interest of the pupils?

[Chris Skidmore]

The decline has been a slow one. I do not wish to make party political points during this debate. David Cannadine’s excellent new book, “The Right Kind of History”, shows that these debates have been going round in circles since the early part of the 20th century and that lamenting the decline of history is nothing new. What is new is that we are competing in an international market against other countries, the pupils of which are being rigorously taught and assessed in all subjects and are driving forward in a way that our pupils are not.

There are some schools in which pupils take history to 16. My hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) has mentioned a grammar school in his constituency. It is of interest to me that while the numbers taking history GCSE have been declining in comprehensive schools, they have been increasing in grammar schools since 1997. Although we have 29.5% of pupils in comprehensive schools taking history GCSE, we have 55% of pupils in grammar schools taking history and 48% in independent schools. The gap between grammar schools and comprehensive schools in terms of the proportion of pupils who are taking history GCSE has increased from 17.4% in 1997 to 24.9% in 2010, which is a real problem. The growing divide in education is no longer just about standards in different parts of the country but about the subjects that we choose to take at school. I worry how that will affect our national identity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Skidmore]

That is a very good point. When we look at the curriculum and the historical content that is being taught, at the moment history teaching obviously finishes for most people at 14. The problem with that approach is that trying to fit into the syllabus the broad span of British history becomes almost impossible and in fact we get a situation where, instead of having a narrative and chronological approach, there is a sort of “Dr Who” time travel fantasy of going from the Tudors back to ancient Egypt, forward to the Romans and then to the Victorians. As a Tudor historian myself, I know that the wars of the roses are rarely taught in schools. Equally, I see that we have a civil war historian in our midst today, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), and he will probably agree that the protectorate is rarely taught in schools and neither is the Glorious Revolution. Unless students have some broad form of a chronology, it is impossible for teachers to get across a genuine interest in history. If history is taught in bite-sized chunks, we are not only doing history a disservice but history students, because they cannot understand the very framework of history itself.

We need to look at that issue, and I believe that making history compulsory to 16 would aid that process of creating a chronology, because for the first time we would then be able to integrate key stage 3 and key stage 4. When we were at school, we actually learned more British history in key stage 3 and even in key stage 2 than we did later on. At the moment, I am writing a book about the battle of Bosworth, an event that is a compulsory part of the curriculum in key stage 2; students have to learn the dates, the framework and what happened then. However, the battle of Bosworth is not part of key stage 3; instead, in key stage 3 students go back again to the mediaeval period. I think that key stage 3 covers the iron age to mediaeval times, with no reference to the Anglo-Saxons or to the Vikings. We need to look at that issue. We should leave the detail up to the national curriculum review within the framework of history being compulsory up to the age of 16.

[Helen Goodman]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way to me for a second time. I am interested in the examples that he has given, because the interesting thing about Britain and our modern identity is surely the fact that, for the past four centuries, our history has been an imperial one and that is one of the most important things about Britain. I am not denying that 1066 matters, but the hon. Gentleman did not mention that whole imperial period, and he needs to foreground it.

[Chris Skidmore]

Yes—absolutely. I now want to talk about the GCSE itself with that point in mind, because we currently have a situation where students stop studying history as a compulsory subject at the end of key stage 3, and then some pupils start their history GCSE as an option. However, the GCSE itself does not necessarily focus on British history; often it focuses on the Third Reich and Stalin’s Russia. There is also the schools history project, which is the history of medicine, but that is a very narrow subject to be assessed on.

Although we can debate what should be in the curriculum, we cannot get away from the fact that in our age examination and assessment drive learning in schools. In addition to history being made compulsory to 16, what we need is a narrative British history GCSE that teaches the whole span of British history, and our imperial history to boot, right up to whatever we would like to call the cut-off period of history. Such a GCSE would give pupils the option to study in depth every period of British history and to be assessed on their knowledge of those periods. Again, I do not want to say what the exact nature of the exam for such a GCSE would be, and a lot of work would need to go into preparing it. However, the GCSE in its current form does not allow narrative British history to be taught. So, in addition to making history compulsory to 16, we also need qualification reform.

I will conclude now, as I am sure that other Members want to speak in this debate; I am delighted to see so many Members in Westminster Hall today—happy new year! This is the first debate for me in this new parliamentary term. We should come to a common conclusion and common ground, so that we can discuss what should be in the history curriculum and what type of examination we should have. We cannot deny that there is a serious problem in our nation. As I said earlier, a subject that should unite us as one nation is becoming a subject for two nations—the haves and have-nots, or whatever one wants to call them. In certain areas of the country, history is becoming a dead subject in schools. I want that situation to end, and I therefore propose that history should be compulsory in schools until the age of 16.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

5. What assessment he has made of the effect on schoolchildren of a lack of high-speed broadband access in schools.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

Broadband is important in supporting teaching in schools. The Department for Education does not collect data on broadband speeds in schools, but evidence suggests that almost all schools in England have access to broadband—speeds will vary, depending on location. Most schools choose broadband provided by local authorities or regional broadband consortiums, which are able to aggregate demand across a region, take account of rural schools and offer services suited to the needs of education.

[Helen Goodman]

I am grateful for that answer. In Byers Green and Binchester in my constituency there are broadband not-spots—they are surrounded by areas that are well served—and so children are told to do homework, using broadband, that they simply cannot do. Will the Minister either lobby his colleagues to ensure that broadband is accessible throughout the country or take steps to make sure that secondary schools stop requiring children to do homework that they simply cannot do?

[Mr Gibb]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s comments. A BECTA survey in 2009 showed that only 2% of primary schools and 1% of secondary schools regarded their broadband speeds as very slow. There is record spending on broadband at the moment and the Government have allocated £530 million over the Parliament for broadband, which is available to local authorities to help improve broadband in their areas.

Independent Debt Advice

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this morning, Mrs Riordan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) on securing this important and timely debate.

A few months ago, I spent a morning in the court—which, incidentally, is also to be closed by the Government—in Bishop Auckland with a CAB adviser who was helping people who were in court because their rents or mortgages were not paid, and they were under threat of losing their homes. That morning I saw how vital the service provided by the CAB is to people at the critical moment when their homes are at risk. I was, therefore, absolutely appalled to discover that the Government are proposing to end the financial inclusion fund in March.

Last year, 1.5 million people were given advice on debt by citizens advice bureaux. Those services were concentrated on people who are most in need in deprived and low-income areas. In my constituency, there are three CABs. The Wear Valley CAB lost a grant of £95,000 in the FIF cuts, together with the legal aid cuts and the cuts that have been forced on the county council by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. It will lose half its workers, which means that there will be no debt advice whatever in the whole of the Wear Valley district. The branch manager, Carol Shreeves, wrote to me in an e-mail:

“We have this week begun to tell clients coming to the bureau that we cannot take them on. Many have been very upset, as it has taken a lot of courage for them to come and seek help. The cut means that the bureau will have to reduce the number of hours it opens and will need to make approximately half its staff redundant. The difficulty is that since Christmas we have seen rise in demand for our services as various statutory agencies trying to save money at this difficult time have been referring clients to us…It seems to be generally accepted that debt advice is needed but the support for it is being withdrawn from all sides.”

[Yvonne Fovargue]

Does my hon. Friend agree that when there is an expansion of debt relief orders, requiring skilled advisers who have to take a complex examination to qualify to be an intermediary in the scheme, it is completely the wrong time to take funding away from skilled debt advisers? The CAB deals with 70% of debt relief orders, so there is no point in expanding the scheme and then leaving people with nowhere to go. There is no point in the expansion of the scheme.

[Helen Goodman]

My hon. Friend has made an extremely well-informed point and demonstrates to us all the complexity of this area and the significance of losing that kind of advice. Of course, the one group of people providing more advice are the loan sharks and the independent debt advisers, who are going round my constituency putting cards through letter boxes, saying, “Come to us”. If people go to them, they will be directed to precisely the people who will put them into a worse situation.

At the same time that that is happening, the Government are cutting the growth fund, which is the money that the Labour Government put into support for credit unions—another place where people can get low-cost finance and have a chat with somebody about how to manage their money.

[Ian Austin]

This is not just about CABs or other advice agencies. The benefits advice shop in Dudley does really important work to get local people the help they need if they have been made redundant or face losing their home, and helps many pensioners receive the benefits to which they are entitled. Is my hon. Friend aware that it is under threat from the local authority as a direct result of the Government’s cuts to local council spending? Does she agree that it is complete nonsense to cut such a service? It costs £300,000 to run but it brings in £2 million to local people, £1.5 million of which is spent in the local economy supporting local businesses.

[Helen Goodman]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Although Dudley is very different from Teesdale, which is another part of my constituency, the situation there is similar. The Teesdale CAB also lost its grant and will have to cut the jobs of two people. Last year, it dealt with 220 cases and a total of £2.7 million of indebtedness.

The third CAB in my constituency is in Sedgefield. It too lost its financial inclusion fund grant of £150,000. Last year, 41% of its work was debt-related. All the debt workers in the Spennymoor CAB will be made redundant in April. The CAB social policy officer in Sedgefield, Martin Jones, said:

“The effect of ending the FIF scheme…will be catastrophic. The level of services that we can provide to our clients will be totally decimated as the CAB will lose over half of our debt team. And all this at a time when unemployment and inflation are rising and putting increasing stress on our clients, many of whom are the most vulnerable in society”.

I confirm that that is correct. On Friday, I learned that in just one part of my constituency, housing benefit cuts will mean that people will have to find another £1 million from their own pockets to pay their rents.

The Minister does not seem to understand that it is all very well to talk about the big society, but the vision of the big society is collapsing. In these communities, where incomes fall and businesses do not do very well due to the Government’s irresponsible policies, CABs will not be able to raise alternative funds to replace Government grants. Furthermore, this is a policy of total financial lunacy. It costs £150 to give a family debt advice. It costs £15,000 to re-house a family. I shall be very interested to hear how the Minister can defend such a lunatic policy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nia Griffith]

My hon. Friend vividly highlights a serious problem; that is exactly what will happen.

There will be cuts to advice on education, employment, family, housing, immigration and welfare benefits. Those cuts will have a direct impact on funding for CABs and their ability to provide a comprehensive service, but they will also have a direct impact on clients’ debt problems. If clients are unable to fight for the welfare benefits or extra provision for a special needs child to which they are entitled, they may be faced with a worsening debt problem.

Given the cuts to legal aid and to CABs through the withdrawal of the financial inclusion fund and local government funding, CABs will struggle, and many will close. The Government’s Office for Civil Society has a transition fund that will apparently provide grant funding to bridge any gap, at least in the short term, but it applies only to England, and it applies only to organisations with an income of between £50,000 and £10 million, which excludes some CABs. Can the Minister clarify whether any of the transition fund will be used for debt advice and, if so, how much?

What are the alternatives to organisations such as the CAB? How else can debt advice be delivered? Are the Government expecting the Consumer Credit Counselling Service and Payplan to deal with all the additional workload of clients who will no longer be able to go to a CAB? Those organisations receive funding from the credit industry, and although Payplan has considerably expanded its services in recent years, it is simply unrealistic to expect it to be able to expand quickly enough to deal with an additional 2 million cases a year. Moreover, it deals with debt; it does not deal with the full range of clients’ problems, which are often inextricably linked to their debt problems.

We have to ask the Government what alternative they propose. Is it debt management companies? The record and practice of many such companies gives rise to serious concern. In September 2010, the Office of Fair Trading told 129 debt management firms that they faced losing their consumer credit licences unless immediate action was taken to comply with its debt management guidance. The OFT found misleading advertising; in particular, firms fail to disclose that a fee is retained by the business. In fact, firms misrepresent debt management services as being free when they are not. That is serious, as clients already have enough difficulties without being exploited still further.

[Helen Goodman]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that meetings were sponsored at the Tory party conference by the very organisations that are perpetrating scams on our constituents?

[Nia Griffith]

I certainly share that very real concern, because not only is the advice not free, it is poor. The OFT found that front-line advisers working for debt management companies lack competence, and provide poor advice based on inadequate information. Not only is the client landed with having to pay a fee that is not made clear in the firm’s advertising, they are then poorly advised. Receiving poor advice on debt management is a serious business; it can cost the client considerable amounts of money.

Furthermore, the OFT also reports that there is low industry awareness of the Financial Ombudsman Service rules for resolving consumer complaints. Even with all the work that CABs and similar providers are doing at present, we currently have a situation where 129 companies that are not fit for purpose are trading on people’s debt problems.

What will happen to a CAB’s clients when the funding for debt advice is withdrawn? Some may not seek debt advice at all, perhaps because they do not know where else to go, or perhaps because they realise that debt advice companies will charge them fees and they worry, rightly, about being exploited and getting into yet more difficulty. Many will be driven to seek advice from debt management companies.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning (Mr John Hayes)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) on bringing the subject to the attention of the House, and it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Riordan.

Many important questions have been asked in this debate. At the outset, let me commit the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr Davey), who is responsible for this area, to writing to Members who raised questions that I am unable to deal with giving specific answers. That is the least that Ministers can and should do in response to Westminster Hall debates.

[Helen Goodman]

rose—

[Mr Hayes]

I will not give way straight away because I need to make progress. I have 10 minutes to deal with the debate. I will give way if I get the opportunity to do so.