Dyslexia Screening and Teacher Training Bill

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 2nd December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

It is with great pleasure that I rise to support this private Member’s Bill from my right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock). When I had the pleasure of serving with him in the Department of Health and Social Care, we had a shared objective of making services deliver better for people with neurodiverse conditions. We still have a long way to go on that journey, but I say to the Minister that this Bill will go a long way to helping do that. We have heard that as many as 10% of the population are dyslexic, but only one in five of them is diagnosed. For the other four in five, every day in school is a misery. They are made to feel stupid because their brain does not work the same as everyone else’s, yet their education is completely driven by everyone else’s experience. That misery leads them to fall out of school. As he has said, half of the prison population is comprised of people who have suffered with dyslexia, yet with diagnosis they can be equipped with the tools that enable them to realise that they are not stupid and that their brain just works differently from everyone else’s, and they can get on and become a great success. They have other skills and the fact that their brain works differently means we can better utilise their skillset. I will say no more, because we have just got time to say yes to this Bill. So please, Minister, give us all an early Christmas present and back this Bill.

BACKBENCH BUSINESS

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered relationship and sex education materials in schools.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) and the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) who have co-sponsored this debate, and the Backbench Business Committee, which has been so generous with the time allowed—we will try not to take it all up.

Let me start with a health warning: my speech is not suitable for children. That is sadly ironic, given that all of the extreme and inappropriate material I am about to share has already been shared with children in our schools. As a former biology teacher, I have delivered my fair share of sex education. Teaching the facts of life often comes with more than a little embarrassment for teachers and pupils alike. I remember teaching about reproduction when I was about 30 weeks pregnant with my first baby. One child asked me if my husband knew I was pregnant. Another, having watched a video on labour and birth, commented, “Miss, that’s really gonna hurt, you know.”

Just as children do not know about photosynthesis or the digestive system without being taught, neither do they know the facts of reproduction. Thus, it is important that children are taught clearly and truthfully about sex. Of course, there is a lot more to sexual relationships than just anatomy. Many people believe that parents should take the leading role in teaching children about relationships, since one of the main duties of parenting is to pass on wisdom and values to children. Nevertheless, in some families parents cannot or do not teach children about relationships, and it is also sadly the case that the internet now presents children with a vast array of false and damaging information about sex.

There is widespread consensus that schools do have a role to play in relationships and sex education. That is why the Government chose to make the teaching of relationships and sex education compulsory in all secondary schools from September 2020. According to the guidance, the aim was to help children

“manage their academic, personal and social lives in a positive way.”

Less than two years later, my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary has written to the Children’s Commissioner asking her for help in supporting schools to teach RSE because we know that the quality of RSE is inconsistent.

The Education Secretary is right that the teaching of sex education is inconsistent. Unlike maths, science or history, there are no widely adopted schemes of work or examinations, so the subject matter and materials vary widely between schools. However, inconsistency should be the least of the Education Secretary’s concerns when we look at the reality of what is being taught. Despite its good intentions, the new RSE framework has opened the floodgates to a whole host of external providers who offer sex education materials to schools. Now, children across the country are being exposed to a plethora of deeply inappropriate, wildly inaccurate, sexually explicit and damaging materials in the name of sex education. That is extremely concerning for a number of reasons.

First, if we fail to teach children clearly and factually about relationships, sex and the law they will be exposed to all sorts of risks. For example, if sex is defined as, “anything that makes you horny or aroused”—the definition offered by the sex education provider, School of Sexuality Education—how does a child understand the link between sex and pregnancy? Sex Education Forum tells children they fall into one of two groups: menstruators or non-menstruators. If a teenage girl’s periods do not start, what will she think? How does she know that is not normal? How does she know to consult a doctor? How will she know she is not pregnant? Will she just assume she is one of the non-menstruators?

The book for teachers, “Great Relationships and Sex Education”, suggests an activity for 15-year-olds in which children are given prompt cards and have to say whether they think certain types of sexual acts are good or bad. How do the children know what acts come with health risks, or the risk of pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections? If we tell children that, “love has no age”—the slogan used in a Diversity Role Models resource—do we undermine their understanding of the legal age of consent? Sex education provider Bish Training informs children that:

“Most people would say that they had a penis and testicles or a clitoris and vagina, however many people are in the middle of this spectrum with how their bodies are configured.”

As a former biology teacher, I do not even know where to start with that one.

As adults, we often fail to remember what it is like to be a child and we make the mistake of assuming that children know more than they do. Children have all sorts of misconceptions. That is why it is our responsibility to teach them factually, truthfully and in age-appropriate ways, so that they can make informed decisions.

Another concern relates to the teaching of consent. Of course it is vital to teach about consent. The Everyone’s Invited revelations make that abundantly clear. But we must remember that, under the law, children cannot consent to sex. Sex education classes conducted by the group It Happens Education told boys of 13 and 14 that the law

“is not there to…punish young people for having consensual sex”

and said:

“It’s just two 14 year olds who want to have sex with each other who are consensually having sex.”

It is not hard to see the risks of this approach, which normalises and legitimises under-age sex. Not only are children legally not able to consent; they also do not have the developmental maturity or capacity to consent to sexual activity—that is the point of the age of consent.

The introduction of graphic or extreme sexual material in sex education lessons also reinforces the porn culture that is damaging our children in such a devastating way. Of course it is not the fault of schools that half of all 14-year-olds have seen pornography online—much of it violent and degrading—but some RSE lessons are actively contributing to the sexualisation and adultification of children. The Proud Trust has produced a dice game encouraging children to discuss explicit sexual acts, based on the roll of a dice. The six sides of the dice name different body parts—such as anus, vulva, penis and mouth—and objects. Two dice are thrown and children must name a pleasurable sexual act that can take place between the two body parts. The game is aimed at children of 13 and over.

Sexwise is a website run and funded by the Department of Health and Social Care and recommended in the Department for Education’s RSE guidance. The website is promoted in schools and contains the following advice:

“Maybe you read a really hot bit of erotica while looking up Dominance and Submission…Remember, sharing is caring”.

Sex education materials produced by Bish Training involve discussion of a wide range of sexual practices—some of them violent. This includes rough sex, spanking, choking, BDSM and kink. Bish is aimed at young people of 14 and over and provides training materials for teachers.

Even when materials are not extreme, we must still be careful not to sexualise children prematurely. I spoke to a mother who told me how her 11-year-old son had been shown a PowerPoint presentation in a lesson on sexuality. It was setting out characteristics and behaviours and asking children to read through the lists and decide whether they were straight, gay or bisexual. Pre-pubescent 11-year-olds are not straight, gay or bisexual—they are children.

Even School Diversity Week, a celebration of LGBTQIA+ promoted by the Just Like Us group, leads to the sexualisation of children. Of course schools should celebrate diversity and promote tolerance, but why are we doing that by asking pre-sexual children to align themselves with adult sexual liberation campaigns? Let us not forget that the + includes kink, BDSM and fetish.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is giving a very illuminating speech. The material that she is talking about talks about the detailed practice of sexual acts. She is a former biology teacher herself. Are there not proper boundaries that teachers have to respect in teaching sex education, so that it does not get into talk about behaviours that really strays into a relationship that teachers and children should not have?

[Miriam Cates]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. There is guidance, which I will come on to, but the problem is that the guidance is often very vague and open to interpretation. I will absolutely come on to that in my remarks.

Even primary schools are not immune from using inappropriate materials. An “All About Me” programme developed by Warwickshire County Council’s Respect Yourself team introduces six and seven-year-olds to “rules about touching yourself”. I recently spoke to a mother in my constituency who was distraught that her six-year-old had been taught in school about masturbation. Sexualising children and encouraging them to talk about intimate details with adults breaks down important boundaries and makes them more susceptible and available to sexual predators, both on and offline.

Another significant concern is the use of RSE to push extreme gender ideology. Gender ideology is a belief system that claims that we all have an innate gender, which may or may not align with our biological sex. Gender ideology claims that, rather than sex being determined at conception and observed at birth, it is assigned at birth, and that doctors sometimes get it wrong.

Gender theory sadly has sexist and homophobic undertones, pushing outdated gender stereotypes and suggesting to same-sex-attracted adolescents that, instead of being gay or lesbian, they may in fact be the opposite sex. Gender theory says that if someone feels like a woman, they are a woman, regardless of their chromosomes, their genitals, or, in fact, reality.

Gender ideology is highly contested. It does not have a basis in science, and no one had heard of it in this country just 10 years ago. Yet, it is being pushed on children in some schools under the guise of RSE, with what can only be described as a religious fervour. Department for Education guidance states that schools should

“not reinforce harmful stereotypes, for instance by suggesting that children might be a different gender”,

and that:

“Resources used in teaching about this topic must…be…evidence based.”

Yet a video produced by AMAZE and used in schools suggests that boys who wear nail varnish or girls who like weight lifting might actually be the opposite sex. Resources by Brook claim:

“‘man’ and ‘woman’ are genders. They are social ideas about how people who have vulvas and vaginas, and people who have penises and testicles should behave”.

Split Banana offers workshops to schools where children learn ideas of how gender is socially constructed and explore links between the gender binary and colonialism. A Gendered Intelligence workshop tells children that:

“A woman is still a woman, even if she enjoys getting blow jobs.”

Just Like Us tells children that their biological sex can be changed. PSHE Association resources inform children that people whose gender matches the sex they were assigned at birth are described as cisgender.

Gender theory is even being taught to our very youngest children. Pop’n’Olly tells children that gender is male, female, both or neither. The Introducing Teddy book, aimed at primary school children, tells the story of Teddy, who changes sex, illustrated by the transformation of his bow tie into a hair bow. The Diversity Role Models primary training workshop uses the “Gender Unicorn”, a cartoon unicorn who explains that there is an additional biological sex category called “other”.

Numerous resources from numerous sex education providers present gender theory as fact, contrary to DFE guidance. However, it is not just factually incorrect resources that are making their ways into schools; visitors from external agencies are invited in to talk to children about sex and relationships, sometimes even without a teacher present in the room.

Guidance says that, when using external agencies, schools should check their material in advance and

“conduct a basic online search”.

However, a social media search of organisations such as Diversity Role Models reveals links to drag queens with highly sexualised, porn-inspired names, or in the case of Mermaids, the promotion of political activism, which breaches political impartiality guidelines.

In some cases, children are disadvantaged when they show signs of dissent from gender ideology, as we saw in the recent case, reported in the press, of a girl who was bullied out of school for questioning gender theory. I have spoken to parents of children who have been threatened with detention if they misgender a trans-identifying child or complain about a child of the opposite sex in their changing rooms. I have heard from parents whose child’s RSE homework was marked down for not adhering to this new creed. 

Children believe what adults tell them. They are biologically programmed to do so; how else does a child learn the knowledge and skills they need to grow, develop and be prepared for adult life? It is therefore the duty of those responsible for raising children—particularly parents and teachers—to tell them the truth. Those who teach a child that there are 64 different genders, that they may actually be a different gender to their birth sex, or that they may have been born in the wrong body, are not telling the truth. It is a tragedy that the RSE curriculum, which should help children to develop confidence and self-respect, is instead being used to undermine reality and ultimately put children in danger. 

Some may ask what harm is being done by presenting those ideas to children, and, of course, it is right to teach children to be tolerant, kind and accepting of others. However, it is not compassionate, wise, or legal to teach children that contested ideologies are facts. That is indoctrination, and it is becoming evident that that has some concerning consequences.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) for his speech, which I know was deeply personal and very difficult to give. It really illuminated what we are talking about and showed that our overall approach has to be to prevent harm. I think we are all addressing the subject in that spirit, but we are now in a deeply unsatisfactory position in executing the delivery of this content and we need to do better.

One of the reasons I championed the importance of relationships and sex education in schools was that I had become concerned about the increasingly sexualised environment in our society, which sees young people exposed to sexuality and sexual practices before they are sufficiently mature to handle them. As my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) said, social media and the internet mean that we are all just one click away from pornography. The content of some of that material is of a much more exploitative nature than perhaps was available pre-internet, which is why we need to equip all our children with the tools to protect themselves.

We need to be able to teach young people about sex in a way that emphasises emotion and intimacy, and all the issues around consent and enjoyment. Their introduction to it can be about the purely physical aspects, which can be harmful and mean that behaviours can be normalised before children are able to properly understand what a healthy sexuality is based on: intimacy and consent. We have an environment that is difficult for both girls and boys, and we need to ensure that we address the emotional needs of both sexes, which are different.

For me, the importance of RSE is all about emphasising the primacy of consent and respect. I want boys to feel that they are able to call out sexually abusive behaviour by their peers when they witness it, because we know from recent campaigns that being a victim of sexually aggressive behaviour starts in schools.

I heard a horrendous example when I visited a local school on International Women’s Day. I was with a group of 13-year-old girls. Sometimes such visits go really well and there are loads of questions, but this was one of those really difficult ones, so I just lobbed it out there and asked, “How many of you have been harassed?” The answer was every single one of them, and for most it had happened in school. That abuse is exactly what we are talking about. I want to make sure that girls feel empowered to call that out and not just have to accept it.

The girls told me that they are pressurised into sharing intimate pictures, which are then shared by phone. One girl said to me, “If you make a stand, you just attract more attention to yourself and end up getting more harassment, and if you comply you’re easy. What are we supposed to do in those circumstances?” One difficulty with making sure that we start to tackle these issues at an age-appropriate time is, when is that time? The exposure to this content is unregulated and children can be exposed to it at a very young age.

I had high hopes that RSE would empower our girls and be an important tool in the war against sexual violence, but I have been horrified by some of the content highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge that is being delivered in schools. As she said, anyone can be a provider. The DFE needs to get a hold on that if it is going to protect our children from harm. My hon. Friend highlighted the dice game, which I was utterly appalled to see. It reduces sex to just being about penetrative acts. Forgive me, but at the risk of being romantic and sentimental, a healthy sexual relationship is about fulfilment for both parties—it is not just about physicality.

As the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown said, this is about safety and safe sex. A dice that displays objects and where they can be inserted is not a healthy approach to teaching people about safe sex. We hear that young girls now think that the way to avoid getting pregnant is to have anal sex—that that is safe sex—but that is not without other risks. We can teach people to have a healthier approach to their sexual relationships without sex being reduced to physical interaction.

I have more to say, but at the risk of crowding other Members out, I will stop there. If we are to churn out healthy children with a healthy respect for each other, and a safer environment for both girls and boys, the Department for Education needs to get a proper hold on making sure that good content in this field is circulated, and bad content is exterminated.

Making Britain the Best Place to Grow Up and Grow Old

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), who represents an exciting area of the country on the Humber. Thurrock may be in the south-east, but I share her exasperation about London-centric policy making, which has gone back decades. In that sense, we should welcome the commitment to levelling up, although she set quite a high bar for proving what it means in practice. I share some of the concerns that she has expressed. When I look at my local road infrastructure in Thurrock, I can see that a national approach has not served us especially well. We must make sure that levelling up really means something in practice.

We are talking today about making this country the best place to grow up and grow old, and it is the greatest country in the world. When I look at what is happening around the world, I think, “Aren’t we lucky to be here in the United Kingdom?” When I read our newspapers, watch our TV or listen to Opposition Members, I often think that this country is much better than they say it is, and that should be celebrated. That is not to say that we cannot do better and there are not challenges that need to be addressed.

In this place, we talk too often about how much we are spending on solving a problem, rather than about the outcomes that we are trying to deliver. Success is not measured by how much we spend; if we try to measure it in that way, we end up with a very short-term approach that does not fix the problem. That is why we end up having the same debates over and over again.

One area I want to highlight in that regard is social care. For the last 10 years, we have been obsessing about how we pay for social care, without properly looking at how we design a social care system that is fit for purpose. The challenge is that we are all living longer, and we have not revisited our systems and policies to address that. We need a life course approach to our housing. We know that falls are the biggest source of elderly ill health, so why are we not doing more to incentivise people to approach how they live in a way that suits their new length of life?

We also need to give younger people hope that they will be able to buy their own home, and this is where the two policies come together. Too often, we look at policies in silos. Why are we not encouraging people to make better use of their housing assets for their whole family? We can incentivise granny annexes, and we can give young people some hope by ensuring they have greater access to the wealth in their parents’ home. If we can do that, we will save money in the health service, because unnecessary hospital stays are much more expensive than dealing with a little inheritance tax problem, which might unlock some investment.

Housing is a big challenge, and we need some radical approaches to it. Council housing is a big part of it, and we must have a Macmillanesque expansion of our housing supply. We can deal with that by having fixed-term tenancies, to make sure that we are giving the most help to those most need it and not having homes being stuck.

I also wish to say something more widely about health, because I have always said that government perhaps works too well for the pointy-elbowed middle classes who are good at fighting for their interests and not for those who most need it. In that respect, I am disappointed that we have not made more progress with reform of the Mental Health Act 1983. It is now four years since Sir Simon Wessely brought forward his review. We spent a great deal of time consulting users, who often had to relive their own trauma in order to give us their advice. So we have really let those people down in delivering material change. We know that deprivation of liberty can be an important part of looking after people with severe mental ill health, but we also know that it is misused, as Sir Simon Wessely’s report shows.

I have little time left, but I wish to highlight a couple more things we need to properly address in that regard. We are still using the Bail Act 1976 to remand people in custody for their own protection. The criminal justice system should not be the place where we deal with people with severe mental ill health; in 21st-century Britain, that is completely unacceptable. We have made much of acting to remove prison cells and police cells as places of safety, and I assumed that we were making considerable progress on that—I thought that this was used in a very limited way. So I was horrified to hear from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons that in the three women’s prisons it visited last year 68 women had been remanded for their own protection. That is not acceptable and I want more speed in dealing with it.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I now call Paulette Hamilton to make her maiden speech.

A Brighter Future for the Next Generation

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Thursday 13th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

It will not surprise you, Madam Deputy Speaker, to hear that I will be taking a rather more positive outlook on the Queen’s Speech than the one we have just heard from the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock). After the difficult events of last year, of course it should be true that across the House we all want to guarantee a brighter future for everyone. We must think particularly about the children—and about the university students, for that matter—who have had massive disruption to their schooling, not only because the pandemic has damaged their education and potentially their life chances but because they are going to be paying much higher taxes for the rest of their lives to deal with the consequences of it.

I want to reflect on the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin). She is absolutely right to say that we can spend only the money that we collect from taxpayers, whether it is the taxpayers of today or the taxpayers of tomorrow. There is a risk, if confidence in our economy falls, that there will be consequences for the markets. We all need to be conscious of that, particularly when, in the wake of the pandemic, it is very easy for us to ask the Government for more money for this and for that. It is not without consequence, and I think we have to be very careful. I want to make a plea not just for the taxpayers today and tomorrow, but for everyone, because if we end up in the situation that my hon. Friend described, interest rates can only go one way, everyone will feel impoverished, everyone with a mortgage, and we really need to be careful about that. It is a number of decades since we have had that experience in this country, but that does not mean it will never return. We must always be vigilant about protecting our money and having a sensible monetary and fiscal policy.

It is also fair to say that the quality of our public services should not be measured by what we spend on them; it should be measured by what they actually deliver. I have huge confidence in all our public services and all the workers in them. They are as determined as we all are to get us out of the position that we are in, and I am sure that there will be great amounts of innovation, imagination and leadership to get us back to a new normal.

It is also worth saying that the impact of the pandemic has not been borne equally, and our focus on building back better must be inclusive. It needs to be fair to all generations and all communities. We need to govern as one nation where everyone has a stake. I have to say, having been an MP for 11 years, that I am now happier than ever that we are doing just that. There are communities out there who thought that the political classes were not speaking for them. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) referred to the issue of immigration as having influenced Brexit, but that was just one issue. There was a general feeling among the public that all politicians really were not talking about the world they lived in.

We know that we live in the greatest country in the world, but every time we switch on the news, we hear how terrible everything is. That is neither true nor what people want to hear. Communities do not want to be told they are being left behind. Our citizens are proud of the communities they live in. They do not want to be talked down to. They want hope, they want to be able to realise their ambitions and they want their communities to be the best they can be, but they want to lead that. They do not want to just take what has been given to them and be grateful. They want to be assured that their Government are working for them, and that is why I am so pleased with this Queen’s Speech, because those communities will be very pleased to see the investment that is being delivered by this Government.

In Thurrock, we are hugely excited to be delivering the Thames freeport. Tilbury, in my constituency, is the poorest of the 100 poorest towns in this country. I am proud that it is a one nation Conservative Government who are showing their confidence in Tilbury through the freeport and through the towns fund. It has been a long time coming. After years of neglect from a Labour Government and a Labour council, I am proud that it is a Conservative Government and a Conservative council that are investing in Tilbury and making sure that we realise that ambition. Generally, it feels very much that the Labour party has historically neglected its core voters in its traditional communities, taking the view that those voters would have nowhere else to go. Well, they do, and the results of the last week prove that they are now voting Conservative because we are giving them hope, and we are talking about the things that matter to them.

Turning again to how we build a better future for all our young people, we absolutely must grip this issue of building more homes. I know that will not be welcomed by everybody on these Benches, but this is something where we must show responsibility and leadership, because for too many young people the ambition of owning their own home seems to be a pipe dream. We need to properly invest, with imagination, in the ability to deliver housing solutions, to which they can then respond.

I really welcome the strategy on tackling violence against women and girls. We have had a moment of revelation in this House about the issues women face today, although it was not a revelation to women Members of this House. We must make sure that we are able to take action that enables women to feel empowered and not threatened as they go about their lives.

Similarly, I welcome the online safety Bill. It is fair to say that the legislative environment has not kept pace with the development of social media and the internet, which has become weaponised as a tool for abuse and bad behaviour. Sadly, that abuse and bad behaviour are now spilling out into the real world. We must take advantage of that Bill.

In the short time left available to me, I wish to mention one of the things the Chancellor of the Exchequer said in approaching this pandemic, which was that the NHS would have all the money it needed to deal with it. Largely, that has been true—in fact, in some respects it has had too much; Track and Trace has a huge budget for perhaps not being as effective as we would like it to be. I just want again to give a shout out for our pharmacists, who stepped up to the plate during this pandemic. They were open when GPs were not. But we know that the financial costs of that are leading a third of them to face potential closure. I do not think we can afford to lose that valuable part of our NHS and I hope the Government do something to address it.

Birmingham Schools

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. There is absolutely no place for segregation of boys and girls in British schools, and girls must be given every possible opportunity to do as well and achieve as much as, if not more than, boys. The hon. Gentleman’s comments are especially welcome on a day on which the Prime Minister is holding a girl summit, which is focusing particularly on early forced marriage and female genital mutilation.

I do not think that I was in the House when the hon. Gentleman was Chairman of the Education Committee, but I am glad to hear that his visit to Birmingham went well. One of the issues is that although some of the schools there were outstanding, the problems still occurred. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: we cannot let up in trying to identify the problems. That is why I welcome the preventing extremism unit that has been set up in the Department, and why I will be expanding it.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

The truth is that, in some areas of our country, it is difficult to recruit people of quality to participate in governing bodies, which makes such bodies vulnerable to a takeover by a narrow interest. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is incumbent on all of us who have leadership roles in our communities, including all Members of the House of Commons, to inspire and enthuse people who are interested in becoming school governors?

[Nicky Morgan]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Being a school governor is an important role. What we do not want to do is make that role so burdensome that we put off really good people who would bring with them the skills that our schools need. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that those of us who are in positions in public life, such as Members of Parliament and councillors, should do all that we can to talent-spot and recommend good people to be school governors, because our schools need them.

Free Schools (Funding)

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Monday 12th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

In fact, we are increasing funding for additional school places in Sefton by nearly 50%. We are doing that because, thanks to the reforms that we have made, we are in a position to provide school places more cheaply than the last Government. Of course I am always happy to talk to the hon. Gentleman about ensuring that high-quality provision continues, but the fact remains that there is more funding under this Government than there was under the last.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for the 1,950 extra school places that he has provided in Thurrock, including places at the Harris primary academy free school, which is due to open. After years of severe need in the Chafford Hundred area in my constituency, a free school is now delivering much needed provision, and is making a real contribution to under-privileged children as well as offering choice.

[Michael Gove]

Education standards are rising in Chafford, thanks to the academy and free school programme. It was an absolute pleasure for me to visit a studio school in my hon. Friend’s constituency last week, when I had an opportunity to see how our school reforms are helping children in a disadvantaged part of Essex to achieve everything of which they are capable. I pay tribute to the energetic work that my hon. Friend has done in supporting that school and the many others which are raising standards in Thurrock.

Secondary Schools (Accountability)

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that, at a time of declining social mobility, it is important to tackle coasting schools to make sure that they do not fail the brightest pupils from the most modest backgrounds and that all schools have a responsibility to have a programme for talented children, which should not be just an optional extra?

[Mr Laws]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. One of the deficiencies of the existing accountability regime is that it is too easy for schools in comfortable catchment areas to coast and to fail to deliver for many of their pupils. They are not in the spotlight at present; they will be in the future.

Apprenticeships

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to participate in this debate, which has been characterised by positive and constructive contributions from all parts of the House. That shows just how much support there is for more and better apprenticeships.

I am proud to represent a constituency with a strong manufacturing base and a strong and vibrant logistics industry. Apprenticeships have always been a feature of these industries. When I meet the wealth creators in Thurrock, without exception they are people who have learned their skills in the workplace. That fact needs to be understood. For many people, choosing an apprenticeship will be the most effective route to their personal advancement. I would like to highlight some successful local programmes and, in doing so, highlight some areas where the Government could do more to encourage better apprenticeships.

The port of Tilbury has always offered a number of apprenticeships each year, placing a high emphasis on skills and even establishing its own logistics academy to provide bespoke training that suits its business. This year the port has developed a new apprenticeship in health and safety, which is central to its business, as ports are hazardous places. The port has advised me, however, that the apprenticeship framework can often prove inflexible for the kind of training that it wishes to offer. I suggest to the Minister that we need to ensure that the framework focuses on equipping workers with the intended skill, rather than just ticking boxes.

In addition to the established industries, Thurrock also has an emerging centre of excellence in the creative industries. My hon. Friend the Minister saw this for himself only last week, when he visited the new Backstage Centre, which will provide a great deal of training through putting on live musical and theatrical events. The creative industries are a growing sector, but it is also a sector that is characterised by self-employment and small and medium-sized enterprises. That is another area in which the Government really need to do more work. It can be daunting for a sole trader to take on the onus and responsibility of managing an apprentice, but the National Skills Academy for Creative & Cultural has provided a collective framework to enable a number of SMEs and sole traders to come together and offer training to young people. There is a need to pass on those skills to other people if we are going to make the most of that growing industry, in which Britain leads the world.

I want to highlight the example of a particular individual who is currently going through his apprenticeship with the Royal Opera House. Not all Members will know this, but the Royal Opera House’s production park is in my constituency of Thurrock. Everything that those Members who enjoy going to the opera see on stage has been made in Thurrock—and very proud of that we are, too.

The Royal Opera House’s current apprentice is a young man named Jamie Ashwell. He decided to take up the offer of an apprenticeship rather than doing a stage management degree at university. For Jamie, the choice was simple. He is working for a world-leading arts organisation, getting experience of real projects and working with leading practitioners in the industry—and he is being paid, to boot. I envisage that, in the future, some of the strongest apprenticeship places will be as hotly contested as some of our most prestigious university places.

The apprenticeship route also suits the Royal Opera House. It needs people with real practical skills in the type of work that it does. People with arts degrees who apply for jobs in its costume or make-up departments, for example, do not necessarily have the required technical skills. By offering apprenticeships, the Royal Opera House can train people up in areas such as bespoke tailoring and wig-making—true crafts that are not available to those studying for degrees.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I have had the privilege of visiting the set-up at Thurrock, but there was one thing that I really missed. Under the former future jobs fund, the Royal Opera House created a programme that went wider than the apprenticeships as a way of bringing in young people to learn the skills that the hon. Lady is describing. It had a wonderful group of young people studying there as a result of that scheme but, sadly, it is no longer available to young people who would like to learn about working at the Royal Opera House.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

The hon. Lady makes a good point, but the Royal Opera House continues to engage in a really big outreach programme involving local schools. She makes an important point, however, because one of the ways of attracting young people and demonstrating the opportunities afforded by apprenticeships is to open their eyes. It has been pointed out that schools often place an emphasis on universities, but we really need to ensure that they take advantage of every opportunity to open young people’s eyes to what is on offer.

I encourage the Minister to look at what more can be done to support the efforts of smaller firms and, in particular, sole traders to offer apprenticeships. We need to unlock and encourage the entrepreneurism in those growing industries, and to look at the apprenticeship framework, but I think that all Members on both sides of the House can congratulate themselves on the renewed emphasis that we have placed on this important way of providing our young people with the skills that they need to make the best of themselves.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

School Places (Thurrock)

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

This year, all over the country there has been a shortage of primary school places. I wish to highlight the issue of pupil place provision in the Chafford Hundred area of my constituency and address the human consequences of the state failing to deliver against the legitimate expectations of parents for a local school place. Before I do, I must welcome the Minister of State, Department for Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws). It is his first time at the Dispatch Box for some time and I think that I speak for many hon. Friends when I say that it is good to see him back as a member of the Government.

In theory, we have a system for managing school place allocations in which parental choice is the guiding principle, but for too many parents in my constituency there is, frankly, no choice. The changing demographics of the area have led to insufficient capacity in the west of the borough, where the population is increasing, and over-provision in the east. The result is that parents, far from choosing schools, too often are expected to take what they are given, as inevitably the most popular schools are over-subscribed. This has been a particular problem in the Chafford Hundred area for a number of years.

To put the problem in context, Chafford Hundred is a settlement of modern, high-density housing that started to come together only in 1989. It is an attractive suburb, especially for families, and a self-contained community hemmed in by major roads such as the A13. It is widely accepted locally that when the modern housing was built insufficient attention was paid to ensuring satisfactory public service provision for the area. Complaints about inadequate GP provision and insufficient school places have been a common complaint ever since. This year the problem has been particularly acute.

The area’s changing demographics have been accelerated by the fact that rising property prices and inward migration have led to families occupying less space than would have been expected in the 1980s. Flats in Chafford that were intended for young single people are now occupied by families with children, which has led to increasing demand for school places. Taken together, these factors have made it a considerable challenge for the local education authority to ensure that the provision of school places keeps pace with demand.

This year the three primary schools in Chafford offered some 270 reception places between them. That number was short of the demand by 51. What has made that particularly difficult locally is the fact that many parents had no awareness of the under-provision and the news that they could not send their children to any of the three local schools that serve the suburb came as a real shock and caused considerable distress. Many of the parents have accepted the alternative places offered by the local council, but as of today there are six children without a place.

Thurrock council argues that reasonable offers of alternative places have been made to the parents. I would like to explore with the Minister what constitutes a reasonable offer. The parents object, in particular, to the fact that some of the school places they have been offered are more than 3 miles away from their home, distances that are clearly not walkable for five-year-old children. The area is also not well served by public transport. Furthermore, five of the six children had attended pre-school at the schools where they were seeking a place. Again, the parents had every expectation that their demands to stay at the schools would be met.

The parents are chastising themselves for being so naive as to assume that their children would automatically get a school place locally, but it really should not be too much to ask. All the families work hard and pay their taxes. The only things they expect from the state are to have their bins emptied, to be able to go to a local doctor and to have a school to send their children to. This seems to be one of the occasions when those who work hard, do the right thing and do their best for their families end up being poorly supported.

One of the worst outcomes is the degree to which this pits parent against parent in the scramble for a place when all are equally entitled. Indeed, one of the parents was told that the LEA cannot discriminate against people who are less articulate than they are, as if being one of the unfortunate ones who missed out on a place was not itself an injustice.

I have been impressed by the spirit that the parents have shown in continuing to press their case. Earlier this year, the children themselves went to Downing street to present a petition to the Prime Minister. The image of the children chanting “Walk to school” as they marched up Downing street will stay with me for some time. I am sad to say that the parents have largely been seen as a nuisance by the LEA and are very bruised by their attempts to press their case. They should not be made to feel that way. These people have not failed; they are victims of a failure by the state to deliver against their expectations. All they want is the best for their children, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In failing them, the local authority should not be causing further distress.

All of us, as public servants, need to be more honest about where we fail, because we will undermine trust in politicians and the state if we are not. Good leadership is acknowledging when something has gone wrong and doing something constructive about it, not shooting the messenger and hoping they will go away. I am sorry to report that members of the council have been more interested in debating the potential replacement of the GCSE than in exploring practical responses to this problem. It is incumbent on all local councillors to realise that it is their job to ensure that the authority delivers on its obligations rather than debate matters of national policy.

For my part, I am not satisfied that the offers made by the council are reasonable given the circumstances of these children. There are very strong reasons why parents are relying on a local school place. For example, Madison Horwood has a little brother called Mason who requires regular treatment at Great Ormond Street hospital, and her mother relies on her friends and neighbours to get Madison to school while she is taking Mason to hospital. Hayden Agambar has a little brother called Tommy who is attending pre-school at one of the local schools the children wish to attend. When his mother asked the council how she could be in two places at once, she was advised that as there was no legal requirement to attend pre-school she should remove Tommy from his place. That is not an acceptable response at all.

The appeals process should overrule the LEA where there is a strong case for doing so, and understandably the parents have gone through this process, but they report to me that the system lacked integrity. For example, Hermione Williams’s paperwork was lost twice. I am also advised that Thurrock council did not run the appeals process in line with the current guidance issued in February this year. Parents are meant to be given 20 days to prepare and lodge their appeal, but they were given only 14 days. Appellants are supposed to be given 10 days’ notice of their appeal hearing, but one parent received one day’s notice. Panel members overseeing the appeals were often not presented with papers until the day of the appeal. Another parent felt that the admissions officer made comments regarding her dealings with the council that were prejudicial to her getting a fair hearing. Furthermore, the rules say that an authority should not limit the grounds for appeal, but I am advised that Thurrock council’s letter to appellants tried to imply that they could appeal in only two areas. As a result of all this, the parents do not feel that they have had a fair opportunity to appeal against the decision made by Thurrock council and believe that the process was run in a way that would have only one outcome.

In the meantime, five of the parents of these six children still have no school place. The parents are considering developing ways of home educating rather than accepting the offers made to them, which they continue to argue are unreasonable. At the same time, they are worried that removing their children from school may not be the best thing for them. They are wrestling with a very distressing conflict that I am having to witness.

In the longer term, we can deal with these problems. We obviously need additional school provision in Thurrock and in the Chafford Hundred area, and I am pleased to say that the local community has got behind a proposal for a free school. I hope that the Minister will look on that bid with sympathy when it is ultimately submitted. I think that lessons have been learned from this episode. Certainly, as the population of Thurrock grows there will be much more focus on ensuring that we have satisfactory school provision in future.

In the meantime, we have to think about these six children. We are not talking about numbers but individual people: Hayden, Ava, Hermione, Madison, Holly and James. They deserve a school place. I am not generally in favour of forcing schools to take more children against their will, but we have nine reception classes in Chafford, and I would like to make one final appeal to see whether we can make every effort to get a school place locally for these children.

I look forward to the Minister’s observations on a very unhappy episode that I know has been repeated elsewhere in the country. I also invite his observations on how LEAs should ensure that they meet their obligations under the Education Act 2011 to ensure that there is adequate provision, particularly against the backdrop of free schools. Bids for free schools will be more forthcoming in some areas of the country than in others, but local authorities still have a responsibility to make sure that there is an adequate supply of school places. I would also welcome the Minister’s observations on what he expects of local authorities when they handle an appeals process and on what constitutes a fair hearing.