Breaking Down Barriers to Opportunity

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Wednesday 8th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

Before the Secretary of State moves on to what I assume will be higher education, I want to raise with her a serious problem particularly in inner-city schools in England: falling rolls and, therefore, falling income to the school, which usually means the loss of teaching assistant jobs and all sorts of other issues. This issue has affected rural areas a lot in the past, and special arrangements have been made. Is the Secretary of State aware of that? Is she considering what can be done to ameliorate this very serious problem, which damages the life chances of so many inner-city children?

[Gillian Keegan]

The right hon. Gentleman made a good point. Local authorities usually work with us to capacity plan for demographic changes, which often happen from time to time—they go up and down. When we were first elected in 2010, we had to find 1 million more school places because the previous Administration had failed to do so. In some London inner-city schools, the pandemic has changed that more rapidly. We are looking at that and the impact that it has had on rural schools, as some have increases in demand. We are aware of that and we will work with schools on it. I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question.

In a minority of cases, higher education could be a ticket to ride to nowhere, saddling students with debt and no prospects. That is bad for students, the taxpayer and the reputation of our universities, many of which are truly exceptional and admired all over the world. A meaningless and arbitrary target of 50% of students going to university focuses on the wrong thing: quantity over quality. That is why this Government introduced new powers to clamp down on rip-off degrees—something the Opposition claimed was an attack on aspiration. That could not be further from the truth.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) may want to listen to this point, because it directly answers her question. Average earnings for computing graduates five years after graduation can vary from £23,000—barely above the minimum wage—to £85,000, depending on the university. Students who choose computing probably listen to their parents and have thought about their future career. They think that they have made a wise and smart choice. The attack on aspiration would be to let the next generation spend their time and money, only to end up with a degree that does not help them to achieve their goals. Those who lose out from low-quality courses are not the universities but the young people who have been sold a false dream. Many of us will know those young people. Defending that is a short-sighted and, quite frankly, snobbish mindset that fails the very people whose education it is meant to help.

I make no apologies for this Government’s commitment to high-quality education, whether at school, college or university. We have already announced that we will introduce recruitment limits to reduce the quota of low-quality courses and account for earnings as part of the quality regime, so that students know that they will get value for money and a return on their investment. I will make no apologies for our work promoting apprenticeships and technical education as an equally valid route. I know how transformational a good technical education can be: it got me to where I am today. As the only degree apprentice in the House of Commons, I will always champion high-quality technical education. It changed my life and it has the power to change many more.

As Conservatives, we will always work to break down the barriers to opportunity. Today, there are more options to access high-quality technical education than ever before, but that has not always been the case. Under Labour, T-levels did not exist. Under Labour, high technical qualifications did not exist. Degree apprenticeships for jobs such as lawyers, accountants and space engineers did not exist. Skills bootcamps did not exist. The lifelong learning entitlement did not exist. Institutes of technology did not exist. Why? They were all introduced by this Conservative Government.

In case Opposition Members are confused about what institutes of technology are, let me tell them: they bring together education and business, providing skills in everything from aerospace to agriculture, and energy to engineering. Does that sound familiar? It should do; Labour’s big new policy of technical excellence colleges is, effectively, little more than a rebrand of something that already exists. We have already delivered it. Once again, Labour demonstrates that it has no new ideas. It has had 13 years to come up with an original idea, and has failed even that.

Apprenticeships are not a new idea, as demonstrated by the fact that I did one many more years ago than I care to admit. What is new is that people can become a doctor, lawyer, account or space engineer. They can take degree apprenticeships in the NHS, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Amazon, KPMG, PwC—the list goes on. Any career they aspire to, anywhere, they can do now via an apprenticeship. In fact, there are now more than 680 standards, including 170 degree-level apprenticeships, all developed hand in glove with more than 5,000 employers, none of which existed under the Labour Government. Anyone doing one of those apprenticeships today is doing it because of the work of this Conservative Government.

Since 2010, we have seen 5.5 million people benefit from those apprenticeships. We want to support even more people to access these life-changing opportunities, which are now on UCAS. From next year, young people will be able to apply for them alongside undergraduate courses. My apprenticeship was my golden ticket. Today, thanks to this Government, millions more people are being offered the same opportunity. Hopefully, many future Secretaries of State will sit here, having gone through that fantastic route.

It is not just the younger generation who need opportunities. We are all living and working longer. Many of us will have a second career, including me—this is my chosen second career. For me, politics came after three decades working in international business. Like me, many people will want to change. Often, that will require new skills. Some 80% of the 2030 workforce are already in work today. We know that we need more people with new skills, unlocking new opportunities. That is why we launched skills bootcamps. These are free, flexible courses of up to 16 weeks, training people with an offer of a job interview at the end. They support people to gain skills in key sectors such as digital, HGV driving, civil engineering, electric vehicle charging installation or as a wind technician. Often, they are the first step into a brand-new career. Our new lifelong learning entitlement also removes barriers to gaining new skills later in life. People will have real choice about how and when they study, enabling them to acquire life-changing skills to improve their employment prospects. Both those programmes will give people the chance to transform their lives totally at any stage and any age.

This Government have been defined by our relentless drive to spread opportunity through better education. Yesterday, the King’s Speech continued that legacy. Today is the perfect time to take stock of the impact of those reforms. Those who entered school in 2010 are the first generation of children educated under this Conservative Government. They will take their A-levels and T-levels this summer, and their future is brighter than ever before. Standards of reading are higher, standards of writing are higher, and standards of maths are higher. The next generation are coming through, and their potential and their achievements are higher than ever before.

Let us never forget how the Labour party left us with an education system in decline—as, unfortunately, it continues to be in Wales. Labour left us with a limited childcare offer, declining standards in schools, poor technical education and an arbitrary target of 50% of kids going to university. And we know why: because they are political opportunists with empty words and meaningless promises, which will inevitably change.

That is the difference between us: Conservatives deliver. We have delivered the most generous childcare package in our country’s history; we have delivered the highest school funding ever; we have delivered more high-quality technical education than any other Government; and we have delivered for adults looking to learn new skills. As Conservatives, we do more than break the barriers to opportunity; we take the long-term decisions to create opportunity. Now and in the future, every child will benefit from a world-class education because of the decisions made by this Conservative Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

This debate is entitled “Breaking down barriers to opportunity”, and I look at the issues facing people in my community: poverty, low wages, the disgraceful two-child policy on benefits, systematic discrimination, inadequate housing, poor air quality and so on. They affect so many inner-city and other communities across this country, and I do not see any answers in the King’s Speech. On the environmental issues that the King managed to stumble across when telling us about the new policies, we are told that, somehow or other, new oil drilling and new fracking will improve the environment, make the world sustainable and put us in line with all the conventions that the Government have signed up to over the past few years. I just think that this debate is slightly surreal in its title, and in how the Government have addressed it.

I want to say a couple of things about education. In schools—certainly in England—there are deeply stressed teachers and deeply stressed students. We have a mental health crisis affecting all elements of staff within our schools and in particular young people. The mental health crisis goes right down into primary schools. At later stages, we have grotesquely indebted graduates and, in some cases, parents deeply in debt or having problems just trying to find childcare for their children to continue in work. It is not as if we are giving all our children a great start in life. The teaching unions’ strikes over the past year have been about wages, but they have also been about workload and the quality of education delivered in our schools. They have also demanded the full funding of the pay settlement that was agreed to ensure that school budgets were not slashed. The Government then did a volte-face on that. Having accepted that they would refund the schools to pay for the settlement, they have tried to get out of that. We need a catch-up process on our teachers’ salaries. Teachers have been so badly treated by this Government.

In an intervention on the Secretary of State—she kindly gave way—I raised the issue of falling school rolls. She answered that the Government are aware of and investigating the problem. In my constituency, along I suspect with those of many colleagues representing inner-urban areas, there is a problem of falling rolls. That is partly because of people moving out of urban areas, partly because of a lower birth rate and partly because of home schooling. There is a whole variety of issues, but the reality is that many schools have seriously falling rolls, and therefore are questioning their survival. Each school is asked to deal with the problem on its own, along with the local education authority where it is a maintained school. The teaching assistants go first, and the other support staff second. The teachers go third, and all along the line, the after-school activities and so on are all cut back and dealt with.

Successive Governments have understandably had to deal with this issue in rural areas, and they have come to a funding arrangement that has often protected rural schools, albeit with quite low numbers. I suggest the same principles should now be applied to inner-urban communities, too, because keeping a local primary school within walking distance for all children is important as part of the glue of the community, and I hope that issue can be addressed quickly. We do not have an integrated education system. We have far too much competition within the education community, and we have local authorities trying to juggle maintained schools, free schools and academies. They have great difficulty therefore in planning for future educational needs.

In the couple of minutes I have left, I will reflect on the statement earlier concerning the situation in Gaza and the demand for a ceasefire, which I strongly and fully support. All deaths are deplorable. Some 1,400 were killed in Israel, which is utterly deplorable, and a vile act was undertaken to kill those people. We now have more than 10,000 dead in Gaza, including 4,000 children who have been killed. The statement by Netanyahu of permanent occupation in Gaza suggests to me that they are trying to expel the entire population, and a new Gaza will therefore be created in the Sinai desert. That is the prospect we face. Somehow or other, our Government were incapable of voting at the UN even for the minimal request in the Brazilian-authored resolution of a humanitarian pause at that time, and they still refuse to join the global call by a whole range of organisations for a ceasefire. That surely has to be the urgency of it.

This morning on BBC Radio 4, Mr Mustafa Barghouti, an independent member of the Palestinian Authority dedicated to non-violent resistance of the occupation, spoke at length and with great heartfelt feeling of the occupation over 70 years, the settlement policy in the west bank and the continuing and increasing settler aggression towards the Palestinian people. His voice should be listened to carefully. If there is to be a long-term settlement, it must be the end of the occupation, the end of the settlement policy and justice for those hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees living in camps in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and the diaspora all around the world.

What is happening at the moment is ghastly beyond belief. We are watching in real time on television human life being destroyed with weapons, some of which have been in part supplied from this country. Cannot our Government just wake up to the simple humanitarian demand that millions of people in this country are making, and will be making in a peaceful march on Saturday, not in competition with the Remembrance weekend but part and parcel of it?

We are remembering the horror of all those who lost their lives in two world wars and many other wars, and trying to bring an end to this ghastly conflict to save lives from being destroyed in Gaza and anywhere else in the middle east. Surely we can have that voice and make it clear from this House that we support a ceasefire now.