Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[David Johnston]

We are working closely with local authorities on this issue. We have allocated more than £1.5 billion of high needs capital allocations in the last two years for local authorities to create additional places. Gloucestershire County Council has announced a 200-place moderate and additional learning difficulties school for four to 16-year-olds, to be delivered through our free school presumption route in early 2026.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

There are only three specialist schools provided by the state in Shropshire. Two of them are—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The supplementary question should relate to the question on the Order Paper.

[Helen Morgan]

Just as in Gloucestershire, we are short of specialist schools—two of our three are rated as inadequate and need improving. The most vulnerable children are unable to go to school because need is not being met. Will the Minister look at what can be done in Shropshire to provide places for the most seriously affected children?

[David Johnston]

In addition to working with Gloucestershire, we work with Shropshire on its capacity. We have already announced 41 new special free schools with a further 38 in the pipeline.

Funded Childcare

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Monday 22nd January 2024 Commons Chamber

[David Johnston]

My hon. Friend has been campaigning on this issue since she arrived in this place. The tax-free childcare code issue was a specific issue caused by parents needing to reconfirm their eligibility every three months to prove that they were still eligible. If they did that quite late last year, they were concerned that they might not be able to get the place they needed in time for the 31 March deadline. As my hon. Friend says, Pregnant Then Screwed has fixed that issue. I would be happy to meet the groups that she mentioned. On the sufficiency of places, we are in monthly contact with local authorities to ensure that they have sufficient places, and only a very small number are reporting any concerns at this point.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

A report from the Early Education and Childcare Coalition last November found that only 17% of nursery managers said they could offer the extended entitlement, because of the crisis in recruitment in the sector, and 35% said they would limit the number of places they offered unless the Government helped with recruitment. More than half of all nursery workers have said they are planning on leaving the sector in the next 12 months. What will the Minister do to address the crisis in recruitment and retention in the sector so that nurseries can provide the extended entitlement that parents want?

[David Johnston]

We have seen a 4% increase in the number of staff in 2023, compared with 2022. None the less, part of the reason why this is a phased implementation and expansion of childcare is to ensure that we have the number of staff we need, and in a couple of weeks we will be launching a big recruitment campaign to get more people into the sector.

Higher Education Reform

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

Yes. The University of Buckingham has taken an excellent leadership position and its two-year degree is very much welcomed by many people. We will introduce the lifelong learning entitlement, which will revolutionise how and when people go to university, what type of courses they take, for what period of time, and how they make those decisions over their entire career and lifetime.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

Many of my constituents study or have obtained degrees from Harper Adams University, just up the road. Those degrees are at the cutting edge of agriculture and the key challenge facing all of us, which is how to feed the planet in a sustainable way. Their degrees and the likely careers they go into are classified by the Office for National Statistics as “unprofessional”. Will the Secretary of State consider reviewing the data and taking a really hard look at how those occupations are classified, because some of my constituents would miss out on a really important opportunity to do a high-class and important degree?

[Gillian Keegan]

I thank the hon. Lady. Harper Adams University is a fantastic university. It does a fantastic range of courses, more and more looking at agri-tech, the technology within agriculture. I am sure it offers fantastic high quality to its students. There have been discussions about the professions and how the data is organised, so I will look at that. A number have raised that concern, not just those in agriculture.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Monday 12th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

The hon. Lady is right: the vast majority of international students return to their home countries once they have finished their studies. Home Office data show that less than 1% of those granted an initial study visa in 2016 had been granted settlement by 2021, but the Office for National Statistics is responsible for the migration figures.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

13. What steps her Department is taking to improve school buildings.

[The Minister for Schools (Nick Gibb)]

Well-maintained, safe school buildings are essential. The Department has supported local authorities and academy trusts to keep their schools in good condition by providing over £15 billion in condition funding since 2015. Our school rebuilding programme will also transform buildings at 500 schools, prioritising those in the poorest condition.

[Helen Morgan]

I recently visited the Corbet School in my constituency, a small, rural, academy trust secondary school. It is very well run, but 25% of its teaching space is in old demountable buildings. How can small rural schools with only 750 pupils on the roll better access funding to improve the buildings the pupils are taught in, to give them the same opportunities as pupils in more urban areas?

[Nick Gibb]

We take into account the condition of any school’s buildings in the capital funding we give either to the local authority or to the trust or diocesan group, and it is up to those bodies to decide how best to distribute that funding to meet local needs. All schools, including rural schools, have the opportunity to be nominated for the latest round of the school rebuilding programme, which is rebuilding and refurbishing school buildings across the country.

School and College Funding: The Midlands

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Tuesday 9th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Gullis]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me the opportunity to repeat the fact from the IFS that, in England, spending kept pace with the 13% rise in pupil numbers between 2010 and 2023. That is in answer to his specific question. It is positive that we are in a place where the IFS has recognised the investment that has gone into the education sector.

Ultimately, for levelling up to be achieved fully and to be delivered in places such as Mansfield or Stoke-on-Trent, we must create young people with the knowledge and skills they need to access the higher-skilled and high-wage jobs that we are so proudly bringing to our local area, such as the 9,000 jobs created since 2015 under Conservative rule of both the city council and the Government, including 2,000 linked to the Ceramic Valley enterprise zone and 500 thanks to brand-new Home Office jobs. We are tapping into the talent pool through colleges, local jobcentres and our university to ensure that we have local people in local jobs, which will be fantastic for our local area. That is exactly what we want to see.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

rose—

[Jonathan Gullis]

In fact, we had a 5.1% increase in per-pupil funding at Kidsgrove Primary School. That is an astonishing increase, which will make a massive difference to the school. I have seen it use that support.

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[Jonathan Gullis]

At the Conservative party conference last year, I sat next to my hon. Friend, who is a fantastic champion of the T-level programme. The Minister—I served on the Education Committee when he was in the Chair—was also a fantastic advocate. T-levels such as the digital T-level offered by the City of Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College will truly transform people’s lives with that access to on-the-job training as well as the in-classroom opportunity. It is a fantastic scheme. I fully support the Department in all its efforts and success to date in rolling this out. As I promised, I give way to the hon. Member for North Shropshire.

[Helen Morgan]

The hon. Gentleman is making a passionate speech. I have met the headteachers of all my secondary schools in North Shropshire, and they tell me that last year’s pay rise was unfunded and that they are really struggling to recruit teachers in the key areas of languages, maths and science. Does he find that the teachers in his area are reporting the same kinds of difficulties and concerns about educating their young people going forward?

[Jonathan Gullis]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her fantastic intervention. Of course, her area faces challenges different from those faced by the city of Stoke-on-Trent, given that hers is a much more rural constituency with, I assume, higher rents and house prices in some areas than the average of Stoke-on-Trent.

When I was at the Department for Education, albeit for only 51 days under a certain former Prime Minister, I was delighted that one of the briefs was the recruitment and retention of teachers. In my very brief time there, I signed off on the 5% pay increase, as put forward by the independent pay body review, which was accepted in full—the highest increase in teacher salaries in 30 years—as well as on the manifesto commitment to deliver a £30,000-a-year starting salary, which is so important if we are to drive recruitment.

Of course, recruitment and retention have been an issue for many years, particularly in science, maths and certain other subjects. One of the challenges is that, rather than getting into the game of “Who’s going to give more grants, and to which subjects?”, we need to have a frank and honest conversation.

Ultimately, the Labour party says that it has a plan to recruit and retain more teachers. I would be delighted if Labour Members could reveal the specific details. They have told me where they will get the money from: they are going to remove the non-dom status—that is fine; that is their entitlement. What they have not said is what they will do differently. Are they going to increase salaries, including starting salaries? Are they going to increase the grants? Are they going to give more grants to more subjects? Are they going to nick talent from around the world by paying people to come here from other countries? That is their prerogative if they so wish, but the detail has yet to be supplied, despite the fact that I have repeatedly asked for it on the Floor of the House and been given some brush-off answers designed to get some Twitter clip—I seem to trend on Twitter quite successfully, almost as successfully as the hon. Member for Coventry South.

The devil is always in the detail, and I look forward to hearing from the shadow Minister about what the non-dom-status money is specifically going to do. If that money drops year on year, how will the funding be covered by any loss incurred by people moving outside the country? These are harsh realities that we have to address and accept.

I go back to the issue of the midlands area. It sometimes feels as if Stoke-on-Trent is rather unfairly treated as the ugly duckling of the west midlands, but we are the gatekeepers to the northern powerhouse, based on where we are located geographically. In the midlands, £6 billion has been allocated for in-forecast schools with higher needs funding—a 7.4% increase from 2022-23. There has been a 5.7% per pupil increase in the west midlands, but the city of Stoke-on-Trent is getting 6.8%, so we are getting 1.1 percentage points more than other parts of the region. That is great news for our schools and, most importantly, for our pupils, because local authorities will have the teachers and resources they need to invest in their local communities and schools, and to deliver the world-class education that, ultimately, is so important.

Of course, it is important to remember that there is a £5 billion education recovery fund, which includes £400 million for teacher training, £1.5 billion for tutoring and, thanks to the Education Endowment Foundation, £2 billion for evidence-based interventions that we know make a difference on the ground. The tutoring was indeed a problem. When I was on the Education Committee, I was as critical as anyone else about the fact that the Government needed to introduce reform and give the money directly to headteachers, who could either bring in their own tutors or pay teachers additional money to work beyond their normal hours.

When I was the Minister for School Standards and spoke to teachers on the ground in Sandwell, Wolverhampton, London and elsewhere about why they had put themselves forward, I heard that it was because they knew the pupils, their background and the support needed. They felt that they were able to deliver the best. The Government legacy has to be a long-term plan for tutoring. If we do not get that right, the gap between advantage and disadvantage will, sadly, continue to grow after all the hard work that the Government did between 2010 and 2019, when the attainment gap narrowed drastically. That is something I was certainly proud of when I was in the classroom and working day in, day out on the frontline.

It is also important to remember that we have to look at teacher numbers. We know that there are 465,500 full-time teachers in the workforce—up 24,200 since 2010. That is more teachers in the classroom, which is a good thing for us all. As I say, there are all the grants that we are handing out, including around £28,000 for some science-based subjects, in order to bring in more people. There is also the new starting salary and, in education investment areas, the levelling-up premium: an additional, tax-free, bonus salary given to the subject areas where we struggle most, so that someone in Stoke-on-Trent and possibly Mansfield—I am guessing that Mansfield is an education investment area.

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[Jonathan Gullis]

It is important to remember that there are far fewer young people in those areas than there are in England. I do not support the hon. Lady’s campaign, and I will say clearly why. Ultimately, why should my children, who are currently aged one and two—it is not long before they could be receiving infant free school meals—get a free school meal given that their father is earning around £85,000 a year and their mother is earning around half that? Why should they be entitled to a free school meal?

I would rather my money went to getting a free school breakfast and a free school meal to people legitimately in need. By targeting the support to those who need it most, we can help the most. Blanket giving people something does not help those most in need; it helps the middle and upper classes, ultimately. That is where it is wrong. I want to see those on lower incomes get the help and support that they need.

One of the things we need to do in our schools is tackle the fact that we have corner shops all too ready to sell big bags of Doritos and Pringles, massive chocolate bars and 1.5 litre bottles of pop to young people. I used to confiscate them by the boatload. I was able to throw parties at the end of every term for year groups because of the amount of confiscated stuff. Corner shops are profiteering from unhealthy junk food targeted at those young people; parents are working hard to give children their hard-earned cash, but those young people are not putting that cash on to their fingerprints, which is how people pay for their meal in most schools now. That is not right; that is wrong.

I want young people to get the support and help they need—those who truly deserve and need it. The vast majority of my constituents will absolutely deserve a free school meal in most cases. Sadly, the average wage is still well below where it should be in Stoke-on-Trent, despite the fact that it increased by 11.8% between 2015 and 2018—outperforming the west midlands and UK averages. I am working hard to bring in those high-skilled jobs. Of course, someone like me has absolutely no right to have their child get a free school meal. I would be embarrassed for a school to give its hard-earned money to my children, when I can afford to put food on their plates. If I cannot, I have failed as a father, frankly, in the position I am fortunate enough to be in and with the money that I earn.

[Helen Morgan]

Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that universal free school meals help to remove the stigma for those pupils who need to receive them?

[Jonathan Gullis]

I must tell the hon. Lady that in all my time in the teaching profession—and I was a head of year, so I dealt with behaviour and attendance—I never once had an incident where a pupil came to me to say that they had been singled out because they were on free school meals. Ultimately, that was never publicised. Unless the pupil shared that information, other pupils in the classroom were unaware of it. The pupil went up to the till, put their fingerprint on, and no one else knew what was going on; there was money in the account as far as the other students were aware. There was no stigma attached, and there should be no stigma attached.

Everyone needs help and support in their lives at some stage. During the covid pandemic, my own father had to rely for the very first time on the welfare state to prop him up; he had been working as a music teacher contracted out to teach individuals and could not do face-to-face teaching. As he is caring for my stepmother as we speak—she has had quite serious surgery—the welfare state is propping him up after the years he has paid into it. Those are appropriate moments to use the welfare state, and the welfare state should support those most in need, but of course I accept the importance of ensuring that a child has food in their belly in the morning. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind about that.

The Education Endowment Foundation fully backs up what the hon. Member for Coventry South, the hon. Member for North Shropshire and I want to achieve. If students have food in their stomachs, their concentration levels, attendance, behaviour and ability to achieve are better. As I say, free school meals should not be given to those who can afford to put food on their children’s tables. That money should be used to provide breakfast and lunch for those most in need, because those children deserve it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

Yes, I am committed to seeing what we can do to improve that, and I will definitely meet my hon. Friend.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

I recently had a meeting with headteachers from across north Shropshire, who were clear that they had two top issues: recruitment and retention of staff, and the fact that rural schools receive less funding than their urban counterparts. Can the Secretary of State tell me what she is doing to help schools in rural areas with those two big problems?

[Nick Gibb]

On recruitment, we have increased the bursaries for this year from £130 million to £180 million, to provide £27,000 bursaries for the shortage subjects. In the national funding formula we have changed a number of elements to give more money to small schools in rural areas through the sparse funding component.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are working jointly with other Departments to consider options for how to improve the system within the parameters of the 2021 spending review. As I have said, as well as the quality of provision, health and safety will continue to be of paramount importance, and any significant changes to regulations would require consultation. My hon. Friend is right that we need more childminders to enter the market; they are often the most flexible and affordable type of provision and I am looking into the regulatory changes we can make to encourage more of them to enter the profession.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

12. What steps he is taking to help primary and secondary schools support pupils’ mental wellbeing.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Will Quince)]

This month, we announced £10 million to extend senior mental health lead training to more schools. Such training will be available to two thirds of schools and colleges by 2023 and to all by 2025. It will support our schools White Paper actions on the promotion of a school week and targeting of support to improve mental wellbeing.

[Helen Morgan]

Since being elected, I have been lucky to visit many schools throughout my constituency. I have been told consistently, both by teachers and by pupils, that students of all ages are struggling to cope with poor mental health and that the situation has worsened considerably since the pandemic. That comes against the backdrop of a survey, reported on recently in The Guardian, that found that 43% of GPs have told parents to seek private care for children with poor mental health. Will the Minister adopt the recommendations of my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) and commit not only to support young people’s mental health but to report on it annually to Parliament?

[Will Quince]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise this issue, which is one of the big challenges of our time. We know that pressures on young people in relation to mental wellbeing are growing, which is why on 12 May I announced an additional £7 million to extend senior mental health lead training to even more schools and colleges. That will help our ambition to reach two thirds of eligible settings by 2023 and brings the total amount of funding for 2022-23 to £10 million. In addition, we will roll out mental health support teams to 35% of all schools by next year. In truth, though, we do need to go further. I regularly speak to my counterpart at the Department of Health and Social Care to see what more we can do in this policy area.

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[Mr Robin Walker]

I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

T10. A recent investigation by Schools Week found that rural schools make up 40% of school closures, which is an increasing proportion. Small community schools are having to fight for survival, but they are central to their communities. What steps is the Secretary of State taking to ensure that rural schools stay open?

[Mr Walker]

We have a presumption against closure for rural schools, but we also want to make sure, through a fairer funding formula, that they are properly funded according to the cohorts of people and the sparsity of the area that they serve, rather than according to a formula that was set up decades ago.