Relationships, Sex and Health Education: Statutory Guidance
Jim McMahon Excerpts(6 months, 1 week ago)
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Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
In reviewing the 2019 guidance, does the Secretary of State share my concern that not enough is being done on child safeguarding when it comes to child sexual exploitation, and in particular awareness raising, so that children and parents understand the warning signs? Across many towns a play called “Somebody’s Sister, Somebody’s Daughter” was rolled out to secondary-school age children, and that led to 150 disclosures of concern by children about family members or other pupils at the school, where they had seen those patterns of grooming potentially at play. Does the Secretary of State accept that however we want the world to be, 43% of year 3 children—seven and eight-year-olds—have access to a smartphone? If we do not teach these things in schools, they will find out information through other routes, and that will not be at all helpful for the safeguarding of children.
Gillian Keegan
Another approach is obviously looking at access to smartphones at a very young age. On the point raised by the hon. Gentleman, the most appropriate guidance is “Keeping children safe in education”, which is a substantial piece of guidance and used regularly by schools. It is also regularly reviewed. Of course there is a live discussion about our concerns regarding children having access to harmful content through mobile phones at a young age. We will continue to consider that, and that is why I took a step to also ban the use of smartphones in schools.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jim McMahon Excerpts(10 months ago)
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Damian Hinds
My hon. Friend is right about the importance of deprivation factors and, indeed, transport costs. We are increasing the amount under the formula that relates to deprivation, and there is also the sparsity factor. Of course, all schools are benefiting from increases in funding, which will total £59.6 billion in 2024-25.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
When it comes to the funding of schools, should not the Government just follow the money? Amber Infrastructure, which owns Newman College in Chadderton, has paid out £80 million of shareholder dividends during the time for which it has owned that PFI school. The heating system does not work, the roof is leaking—which is affecting 30 classrooms— and now two temporary classrooms must be built to accommodate the pupils. Will the Government intervene and point out to the provider that if the money is there to be taken in dividends, it is there to fix a roof as well?
Breaking Down Barriers to Opportunity
Jim McMahon Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft). I thank her for the work she does and for being a champion for disabled people.
Watching the King’s Speech was quite an occasion, as it is a moment in history. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) painted a picture of how significant it was, but the irony was not lost that the King arrived in a gold-plated, horse-drawn carriage to announce legislation on banning pedicabs at Westminster tube. It just shows that, however grand the occasion, there is nothing like a Conservative Government to bring it down into the gutter—and much else did follow that.
The test of any King’s Speech must be whether it makes life materially better for the people we are all here to represent, and whether it makes the country we love stronger, more confident and more resilient in the face of global uncertainty. By those measures, it can only be marked as another missed opportunity.
It is a missed opportunity to address one of the biggest economic challenges our country faces. The very bond of the British contract is broken—the promise that if people are willing to work hard and play by the rules, in return they can get on in life and do well, and that through our generational effort, our children can go on to do even better. That contract has not just been reneged on; it has been torn up. People in Chadderton, Oldham West and Royton, and right across Britain, know that and they feel the betrayal every single day: families working all the hours God sends, but still unable to make ends meet; young people starting off in life unable to get on the housing ladder; and older people denied the care they need and deserve to live well into older life.
It is a fact that life has always been challenging for working people, but it has not always been this grinding. There was so much missing from the King’s Speech on social care, the environment and nature, child protection and a range of other issues. It was completely hollow and void of ideas and solutions to the issues facing the country. As the proud chair of the Co-operative party, it is disappointing to see the Government fail to take the opportunity provided by the King’s Speech to seize the many solutions put forward by our movement to address those challenges.
As Labour’s sister party for almost a century, co-operators believe in enterprise, grassroots organisation, and that the wealth and value we create together can and should be used to build stronger communities and stronger economies that we can all share in. We believe, too, that ownership matters, because it drives decision making and ultimately determines where the dividend is returned. On energy, for instance, the Labour and Co-operative parties together have a shared commitment to bringing back community energy as a blueprint to safeguarding energy security and investing in cheap, clean renewable energy that is produced and owned right here in the UK. Instead of investing in non-renewables that help only multinational oil and gas giants, the Government should be backing local communities to produce and own their own renewable energy. Labour’s local power plan sets out how to do that, with a bold ambition for 1 million new owners of energy producing 8 GW of energy by 2030.
We also fail to see any action on retail crime, despite an announcement in the Criminal Justice Bill. It is a crisis and a blight on our high streets that stores such as the Co-op Group are victims of significant retail crime. The Co-op Group reports that 175,000 incidents were recorded in the first six months of this year alone. Retail crime should be a stand-alone offence. Shopworkers enforce the laws set by this House, and they should be afforded the protection of it, too.
The Government’s agenda for this Session also neglected to address the ownership that people desperately need over their local communities and the places that really matter to them. Our high streets have been hollowed out. We see the empty, boarded-up buildings; the pubs, shops and community hubs on which we have relied closing down; and the services on which people depend disappearing. Again, the Labour and Co-operative parties can contribute to the solution. By strengthening the Localism Act 2011 and introducing a genuine community right to buy, we can address head-on that issue of community loss. We can encourage communities to come together to buy at-risk pubs, shops and other assets to make sure that they are protected for future generations.
We believe that words are one thing, but there is nothing like action to show what change can achieve. For instance, in my own constituency, when the Daisyfield Inn, a local pub in Bardsley, was at risk of closure, we managed to secure an asset of community value protection on the register of that building. Now, not only has it been retained for the local community, but it has a community allotment out back to help local people fight isolation and to bring the community together even more. It can be done; the model is there, but we can do even more.
Oldham Athletic Football Club, our pride, is now backed by local power, because Boundary Park and the fields next door used for training—Little Wembley—are now also an asset of community value. We recognise that, beyond the bricks and mortar, these are meeting places—they are the fabric, the glue, the identity, the belonging, the past, the present and, with effort, the future, too. Another blueprint for change offered by the Labour and Co-operative parties—yet another chance missed by the Government—really breaking down the barriers that we are talking about here today.
People feel that the economy is not working for them, and that power is being taken away from them. We believe that if we can double the size of the co-operative sector, where more people have a stake in the future, where businesses are rooted in the community, and where decisions are being made for the benefit of the community, not for short-term dividend payment extraction, we will see an economy that is more resilient and more robust, and that will benefit the UK as well. It has been proved that these businesses are more productive, more resilient, and more equitable, because co-operatives are more than twice as likely to survive the early years of trading when compared with other styles of businesses. We have seen that in huge sectors right across the UK. With just a little more effort, we can see them grow even further.
What would that mean for the UK? According to research commissioned by Co-operatives UK, just last year alone the turnover of the co-operatives in the UK contributed £41 billion to the UK economy, an increase of 3.7% on the previous year. This is not a small-fry contribution; it is a significant part of our economy. Instead of wealth being concentrated in the hands of a small number of people at the top, ownership is spread in the communities where the co-operatives operate. That is important for the local community and important for the country overall.
In the end, what we see from the King’s Speech is what we have seen for the past 13 years: a country that is fragmented socially and economically and a Government who have run out of road, out of ideas and out of solutions to fix those problems. Surely the only way now to repair the cracks in the foundations and to give Britain hope again is to call a general election, not provide a King’s Speech.
School Funding
Jim McMahon Excerpts(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
Our schools are under pressure, the like of which has not been seen for decades. In Oldham, we have taken more than our fair share of cuts. I want to use this opportunity to place on record my own thanks to teachers and support staff for the hard work and dedication they show every day in very difficult circumstances. But the cracks are clear, and many teachers, parents and children just cannot take any more.
We have an important opportunity to invest in young people, so they can progress and achieve their full potential, so they can be treated as individuals, and for teaching and learning to be formed around their needs to set them on the path to a positive and productive life with an open outlook, confident in their place in the world, and with a determination to change it for the better. These are high stakes.
For too many, that is not the experience of pupils and parents in Oldham West and Royton. Since 2015, our town has seen cuts in excess of £32 million, with an average loss per pupil of £320. That money is impacting directly on teaching and learning, and on the special educational needs and disability and specialist support provision our students desperately need. The results of the cuts are clear to see. Oldham now has fewer teachers. According to the Government’s own school workforce data, we have lost 100 teachers, while the number of pupils has increased by a third—more than 8,700—since 2010. The numbers simply do not add up. It is not difficult to see why students are struggling, parents are frustrated, and many teachers are leaving the profession because they cannot take the strain. The present situation is not fair on anyone involved in the system.
Our schools have not received the golden gift that the Government would have us believe they are offering. To add insult to injury, Oldham is meant to be one of the opportunity areas that they say need additional resources and additional focus. So much so, in fact, that the Minister for School Standards—who is in the Chamber—decided to return to the scene of the crime, and, a short while ago, visited Yew Tree Primary School in Chadderton. I should be embarrassed if I were in the Minister’s position. Yew Tree primary has suffered a cut of £659 per pupil, but he thought it fitting to go there and talk about what a wonderful job the Government are doing to support schools. The brass neck on that Minister! However, Yew Tree primary is not the only school in such circumstances. Oldham Academy North has seen a cut of £672 per pupil, and at Holy Family in Limeside and Stanley Road primary there have been cuts of £517 and £439 per pupil respectively.
While there are many good examples of good teaching and learning, the fact is that there are secondary schools which are failing to provide a basic standard of education. I entirely support the staff and the work that they are doing, but it is also right for me to give parents a voice when they do not feel that they have access to a good or outstanding school for their children. More than 75% of secondary school students in the Hollinwood ward do not have access to a good or outstanding school; in Royton South the figure is 30%, and in Medlock Vale it is 25%.
We have fewer teachers and more pupils, experienced staff are leaving the profession, and the school system has been fragmented by academisation, free schools, university technical colleges, and all the other pet projects. We are told that there is no money, but there was money enough for £14 million to be found for a failed UTC and £4 million for the failed Collective Spirit free school. Both those schools, incidentally, have got away without a single examination of what really went on with their finances. There is money for pet projects, but there is no money for the basic provision of education in our schools.
Enough is enough. We have heard, across parties, about the frustration that is being felt. There is unity throughout the Chamber: everyone thinks that our young people deserve better and our teachers deserve better. Now is the time to provide the money that will deliver decent education. It does not have to be this way. At the end of January there was a tax surplus of some £14 billion, £5.8 billion higher than last year’s. The money is in the coffers, and there has been a deliberate choice not to use it. That is a scandal.
Nick Gibb
As I have said to the Education Committee, which my right hon. Friend chairs, I do not disagree with that view. We will say more about our approach to the spending review in due course.
In Hertfordshire, where the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans is located, funding for schools has increased this year under the national funding formula by 2.4% per pupil compared with 2017. That is equivalent to an extra £32.1 million in total, when rising pupil numbers are taken into account.
My hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden made a measured and therefore persuasive speech about the funding of schools in her constituency. As a consequence, her words will undoubtedly carry weight with the Treasury. She made the important point that 90% of pupils in her constituency now attend good or outstanding schools, compared with just 67% in 2010.
I listened carefully to my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton); as a neighbouring MP, I find I always do. He will be aware that funding in his constituency has risen by 5.5% per pupil compared with 2017. That is one of the highest increases and reflects the historical underfunding of West Sussex schools—something the national funding formula was introduced to address. He referred to teachers’ pay, which is due to rise by 3.5% for teachers on the main pay scale and by 2% for those on the upper pay scale.[Official Report, 1 May 2019, Vol. 659, c. 3MC.] We are funding both those pay rises, except for the first 1%, which schools will have budgeted for already.
I also listened carefully to the speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne). I congratulate him on the fact that 96% of pupils in schools in his constituency are attending good or outstanding schools. He will be aware that under the national funding formula per pupil funding in his constituency is rising by 4.5% compared with 2017-18.
I welcome the contribution to the debate by my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) and his acknowledgement that, as a result of the fairer national funding formula, schools in his constituency will attract a 5.9% per pupil increase. In a compelling speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) raised the issue of special needs funding. Our commitment to helping every child to reach their full potential applies just as strongly to children with special educational needs and disabilities as it does to any other child, and we know that schools share that commitment. We recognise the concerns that have been raised about the costs of making provision for children and young people with complex special educational needs. We have increased overall funding allocations to local authorities for high needs year on year, and we announced in December that we will provide an additional £250 million over these last two financial years.
Nick Gibb
I will not, because I am running out of time; I do apologise to the hon. Gentleman.
In Hertfordshire, for example, that means that the authority will receive an additional £5.7 million between these two financial years, taking its high-needs funding to £114.7 million. High-needs funding nationally is now over £6 billion, having risen by £1 billion since 2013. We will ensure in the coming spending review that we keep a firm focus on identifying the resources required to ensure that the most vulnerable children are receiving the support they need. Of course, the response to pressures on high-needs budgets cannot be about just funding. It must also be about ensuring that we are spending the money effectively.
My hon. Friend the Member for St Albans also raised the issue of post-16 funding. We recognise the pressures that post-16 funding has been under—my right hon. Friend the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills is also listening to this debate. We have protected the base rate of funding for all 16 to 19-year-old students until 2020, and our commitment to the 16-to-19 sector has contributed to what is the highest proportion of 16 to 17-year-olds participating in education or apprenticeships since records began. We are also providing additional funding to support colleges and schools to grow participation in level 3 maths. Institutions will receive an extra £600 for every additional student for the next academic year, 2019-20.
I have listened carefully to hon. and right hon. Members’ speeches today. The Government recognise the pressure on schools as we seek to balance the public finances. While bringing down the budget deficit, we have protected funding for the NHS, international development and schools for five to 16-year-olds. We are now preparing the best spending review bid that we can for schools, for high needs and for post-16 funding, and today’s debate will undoubtedly have an influence on the Treasury. Standards are rising in our schools. The attainment gap between children from disadvantaged backgrounds has closed by 13.5% since 2011 for primary schools and 9.5% for secondary schools. Reading standards are rising, maths standards are rising and the proportion of pupils being taught in good or outstanding schools has risen significantly. I am grateful to all Members who have contributed to today’s debate and I know that they will have been heard in all the right places.
Relationships and Sex Education
Jim McMahon Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Damian Hinds
We are clear on two things: these issues should be taken on in an age-appropriate way, but by the time a person reaches the end of their schooling, they should have covered them. We trust teachers and headteachers to make the decision about when to do that but not whether to do it.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Secretary of State for bringing forward these reforms, which I broadly welcome, particularly the element of relationship advice and what constitutes a good relationship, but there is no doubt that this is concerning parents in my constituency—I have received a lot of correspondence on this. Clearly we need to get the balance right on our common shared values of understanding and tolerance, but can he give reassurance to parents who are concerned about modesty and appropriateness that the balance will be right and appropriate for the age group?
Damian Hinds
I too have received a lot of correspondence, and I understand that there are great sensitivities. I think it is true to say that there is no set of guidance on relationships and sex education we could come up with that everybody would be happy with, but we have tried to strike a balance. We have written it into the guidance that there needs to be consultation and co-operative working with parents, and through that, I hope parents will be more reassured. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we are a diverse society, and it is important that children growing up in it know about that diversity.
Education Funding
Jim McMahon Excerpts(6 years ago)
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Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank my parliamentary neighbour for giving way. In Oldham, pupil numbers have increased by nearly 4,000, but there are 100 fewer teachers in those schools to teach the additional pupils.
Angela Rayner
My hon. Friend and neighbour makes a very important and valid point. We know the impact that cuts have. Frankly, I have heard the heartbreaking stories too many times: schools begging for donations; vital support staff lost; children with special educational needs and disability suffering the most; the school week being cut; and subjects dropped, with sports and the arts the first to go. So austerity is not over for our children, either.
Damian Hinds
There are published criteria governing how this type of capital can be spent, and I will be happy to provide the hon. Lady with a complete copy. We will be issuing a calculator in December so that schools can work out how much their allocations will be. The allocations themselves will follow in January, and the rules that normally apply to capital of this sort will apply to them.
The £400 million is on top of the £1.4 billion of condition allocations that have already been provided this year for the maintenance of school buildings. The Government will also spend £1.4 billion on condition allocations in 2019-20, and schools can now apply for the first tranche.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Damian Hinds
I think I must ask for the hon. Gentleman’s forbearance.
We will have provided a total of £7 billion for new places between 2015 and 2021. We also continue to introduce innovative free schools to give parents more choice.
Damian Hinds
My hon. Friend asks an important question. There are many ways of comparing spending on education in different countries, and in most cases the UK is shown to be a relatively high spender. If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I will come to some of those figures a little later.
Jim McMahon
It would be interesting to know what the Government will do to ensure that they get value for money. In my own town they have spent £80 million on a failed university technical college and a failed free school, and since 2012 there have been 16 referrals to the police for financial fraud in academies and free schools.
Damian Hinds
The free schools and academies programme has overwhelmingly been a success, but when there are issues in our schools, whether in the maintained or the academy system, we must deal with them quickly. The difference with the academy system is that there is that much more transparency, so people know what is going on. However, as the hon. Gentleman knows, we continue to develop the system and ensure that it works as well as it can.
Damian Hinds
I recognise what my hon. Friend says, and he is right. I thank him for acknowledging the additional money that has gone in, the fairer national funding formula and the additional £1.3 billion in resourcing. It is also true, as I was saying in answer to the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali), that local authorities can move money from schools into their high-needs block, which is sometimes the right thing to do. Of course, we also want to ensure that the facilities are always there to help local authorities manage their high-needs budget as effectively as they can.
We have increased opportunities in technical and professional education by doubling the level of cash for apprenticeships through the apprenticeship levy to £2.5 billion over the course of the decade. By 2020, funding available to support adult FE participation is planned to be higher than at any time in England’s history. At the other end of the age range, high-quality childcare supports children’s development and prepares them for school. That is why this Government are investing more than any previous Government in childcare and early years education—around £6 billion by 2020.
This Government have extended the scope and extent of support in multiple ways. As well as higher reimbursement under universal credit—higher than was ever available under tax credits—and tax-free childcare, we have increased the childcare available for three-year-olds and four-year-olds from 12.5 hours to 15 hours, and that funded early education now has a 95% take-up rate among parents of four-year-olds. There are also an additional 15 hours—so 30 hours in total—for working parents. All of that represents greater entitlement than under the Labour Government.
Then, of course, there was the landmark extension of the 15-hour entitlement to—[Interruption.] Let me start that sentence again. Then, of course, there was the landmark extension of the 15-hour entitlement to disadvantaged two-year-olds in 2013, which has since benefited almost 750,000 children at an investment of £2 billion since the policy began—something that was never made available to disadvantaged families by any Labour Government. Looking ahead, funding for the future comes up periodically at spending reviews. We have a spending review next year, and we are already looking at the approach for this period. Of course, we have a review of post-18 education and funding in progress, and £84 million was confirmed in the Budget for children’s social care to help spread best practice.
Turning to school-age education, I am not the first Education Secretary to stand at the Dispatch Box and say that we need a better balance between technical and academic education. While we plan to invest nearly £7 billion during the current academic year to ensure a place in education and training or an apprenticeship for every 16 to 19-year-old who wants one, I am conscious that funding for 16 to 19-year-olds has not been protected in the same way since 2010 as funding for five to 16-year- olds, but we are ensuring a balance through public policy by developing high-quality routes for technical and vocational education through T-levels and apprenticeships.
On the high-needs budget, funding for local authorities has benefited from the same protections in the funding formula that we have been able to provide for mainstream schools, but there have been increasing pressures. There is a balance to be struck between mainstream and special schooling to ensure that most pupils can be supported in mainstream settings when that works best for them. Finally, we need to continue to ensure, as always, that there is the right level of resource to make sure that the quality of education is at the required level for people wherever they live—in a town, the countryside, the north, or the south.
Alongside all that we need to focus on ways to make the system work better for all schools. Ensuring that we invest properly in schools and distribute funding fairly is clearly fundamental, but how that funding is used in practice is just as important. The education system is diverse, operating between various local authorities, dioceses, multi-academy trusts and individual schools. While that is a strength, it does not always work in the system’s favour when it comes to leveraging the benefit of volume in purchasing, for example. That is why I am working hard to ensure that we come together to help schools get the best value, that expertise is available across the system and that resources that do not need to be purchased or created on an individual basis—from lesson plans to energy contracts—are shared. We will also work to bear down on the £60 million to £75 million that schools spend on recruitment with the new teacher vacancy service and the agency supply teacher deal. By creating financial benchmarking, we are helping schools to share good practice and identify ways to use resources more effectively. All of this allows schools to direct the maximum resource into what they do best—teaching.
Damian Hinds
I am sorry, but I am short of time.
We all want to see standards rise across our schools and across the wider education system and, thanks to this Government’s reforms and the hard work of teachers, this is happening. I say we all want to see standards rise, but every step of the way the Labour party opposed the introduction of phonics checks. In Wales, where Labour runs the education system, PISA rankings for maths, science and reading are lower than those in England.
The Labour party wants to scrap academies and free schools, putting ideology before education and trusting politicians over teachers. In our exchange yesterday, the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) said that Labour’s policy is
“no threat to any new or existing school”—[Official Report, 12 November 2018; Vol. 649, c. 16.]
but she did not, and cannot, reconcile that with her explicit stated policy to stop the free schools programme,
“bring all publicly funded schools back into the mainstream public sector”
and impose the Orwellian-sounding “common rulebook” across the school system.
I have referred to a number of figures in the thousands, millions or billions, but what is clear is that each of those figures would be under threat from the Labour party, because we need a strong economy to invest in our public services. It is a balanced approach to the economy that will mean we can continue to provide our schools and our education system with the resources they need. Labour’s approach of more spending, more borrowing and more debt would take us back to square one and hit ordinary working people, just like last time.
This Government are unapologetic in our ambition for every child and young person in this country. Again, that ambition is backed by more revenue funding going into our schools than ever before—an investment that we are able to provide thanks to our balanced approach to the economy. The benefits of our reforms, backed by that investment, can be seen across the country, thanks to the hard work and dedication of our teachers and education professionals. It is a track record that gives all of us much to be proud of, but the job is not finished. We will always want to do more, and we will continue to do more so that every child, in every classroom and in every part of the country, has the chance to thrive, with none left behind.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jim McMahon Excerpts(6 years, 11 months ago)
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Anne Milton
I would be extremely happy to meet my hon. Friend. In fact, I recently met my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) to discuss this issue. We need to ensure that apprenticeships work for every community, wherever they are and in whatever sector.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
What are the Government doing to address the reported 61% fall in apprenticeship starts since the introduction of the apprenticeship levy?
Anne Milton
I am a bit disappointed that the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable) is not in the Chamber to listen to the rest of this question. If the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon) looks at the figures more closely, he will see that there was a sharp spike of 46% between February and April this year compared with the situation in 2016. This year’s starts are therefore down just 2.8% overall. This was entirely as we anticipated. We have brought in new systems, and it is right that employers that are now paying the levy are taking the time to plan. I suggest that Opposition Members need to talk up apprenticeships and apprentices.
Schools: National Funding Formula
Jim McMahon Excerpts(7 years, 2 months ago)
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Justine Greening
We will be writing to every MP in this House with details about their local schools. I hope that they will be able to share those with local headteachers, and of course the local authority will consult on how then to spread that funding. It is vital that schools, and indeed parents, have the facts and are not given misleading information. It is important that we recognise that more funding—record funding—is now going into our schools system and that we focus equally on the standards we are getting in relation to that investment.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), on the sterling work she is doing to really shine a light on some of the problems in education today. I do not think it does the Secretary of State any justice to come to the Dispatch Box and be so condescending to a colleague on the other side of the House. Would it not make sense for the Government to look at where money is being lost from the system? In my constituency, a university technical college has closed its doors at a cost of £14 million to the taxpayer while a free school has closed at a cost of £4 million. The two closures have resulted in 300 pupils being displaced. Should that not be the focus of the Government’s attention?
Justine Greening
We do take action when we see schools that are not delivering for their pupils. Overall, that has borne fruit over the past few years, which is why Ofsted now grades nine out of 10 schools in our country as good or outstanding—that is significantly more than was the case in 2010. I would have hoped that the hon. Gentleman welcomed that, but I can assure him that where we see schools failing, we are taking action.
Social Mobility
Jim McMahon Excerpts(7 years, 4 months ago)
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Lucy Powell
I strongly agree with the right hon. Lady. I thank her for the joint working we have done on some of the issues in the past, and I hope that that will continue. When she was Secretary of State for Education, she was a strong champion for character education and extra-curricular education. I hope that that is something we can all work on going forward.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
All the additions are absolutely right, but the foundation has got to be strong as well; the funding for our school places is important. If my son Jack decides to go to university, he will be the first in our family to do that, but the school that he is attending faces losing 19 teachers. The sixth-form college that he would almost certainly go to faces losing 22 teachers. At the same time, the Government have wasted more than £10 million on a failed university technical college and a failed free school. How can that make sense?
Lucy Powell
My hon. Friend raises a very important point. I know that he has been championing the issues in Oldham, and I hope to work with him to continue to do that. I will say something on school funding in a moment, if I could make some progress.
Of all the measures and policies of the last 20 years, one that stands out as transformational for our schools is the London Challenge. London went from having some of the worst schools to now achieving the narrowest attainment gap of anywhere in the country. It is a key part of the overall London effect; 30 of the top 50 constituencies for social mobility are in London.
There are two key learnings from the London Challenge, which are now seriously at risk. The first is the supply of great teachers. The Minister’s colleague in the Department for Education has finally started to recognise that recruitment and retention are major issues. Figures obtained by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) show that a quarter of teachers who have qualified since 2011 have left the profession. Statistic after statistic backs that up, and we know that it is the poorest children and the struggling schools that suffer most when teacher numbers drop.
Teachers deserve a pay rise. Yesterday’s pay settlement is a huge disappointment. Real wages of teachers are down by more than 10%. But it is not just about pay; it is about workload and the constant changes to curriculums and expectations. Ministers really must get a grip of the issue and do it fast.
The second learning from the London Challenge is about funding, which my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon) mentioned. The increase in school budgets over many years, coupled with targeted support such as the pupil premium, has had a real impact on the attainment gap, which was narrowing until very recently. It has narrowed significantly in London, where funding was boosted the most. The real terms cuts to schools’ budgets that schools are now having to make—before we even get to the national funding formula—will, again, hit the poorest hardest. Interventions, extra support and supported activities all benefit the poorest most. Recent teacher polling has shown that a third of school leaders are now using the pupil premium to plug the gaps in general funding, that almost two thirds of secondary heads had had to cut back on teaching staff and that schools with more disadvantaged intakes were the most likely to report cuts to staffing.
The Government are totally kidding themselves if they think that the real terms cuts to school budgets, together with the teacher supply crisis, are not going to show in a widening of the attainment gap and a major step back in social mobility in our schools.
Educational Attainment: Oldham
Jim McMahon Excerpts(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)
It feels odd to have an Adjournment debate on such an historic day for our country. I suspect we are in for a long period of scrutiny, review and challenge. It is also a very important day for me personally, as it is my son’s 15th birthday. He was the reason I came into politics and he amazes me every day.
“Oldham kids can be the best in the world and they can aim as high as they want.” That was the message from Baroness Estelle Morris on the launch of the Oldham Education and Skills Commission. For many years, we saw the fragmentation of education, with a diminishing role for the local education authority. In part, that led to a deferral of responsibility for education in academies and free schools at local level. The commission reviewed this in great detail and the message was simple: for education to be the best it must become everybody’s business. Regardless of the type of school they attend, they are our children, our future and our collective responsibility. Even with a complex system of education, there was a collective desire to see standards in Oldham improve. The town needed a joined-up plan—not many different plans that might conflict with each other, but a single vision for what the future could be. Critically, this included early years, primary, secondary, further and higher education, as well as lifelong learning.
When others talk about Oldham they do not always present an accurate picture of our education system. There are some problems, and we acknowledge them in an honest and open way, but there are also reasons to be proud of what has been achieved. Since 2012, Oldham has seen a positive improvement in the proportion of pupils reaching the expected standard—up from 51% to 76%. We accept fully that there is room for improvement, but it should be recognised that progress has been made. The number of primary schools judged good or outstanding has increased from 80% to 95% in just three years. Our secondary schools must do much better, but we should acknowledge that they too have seen an improvement, with the percentage of schools judged good or outstanding increasing from 22% to 62%.
I pay tribute to parents, students, teachers, governors and the local authority for the great strides that have been made, but I am unrelenting in my ambition for that positive experience to be available to all young people in Oldham, not just the lucky ones. All our young people must be given the best possible start in life, a life which will be better but more complicated than ever before. The world is more complicated than ever before. It will be challenging for them to be in an ultra-competitive environment. They will have to be the best they can be.
The Oldham Education and Skills Commission proposed 19 recommendations that would form the foundation of the vision for a “self-improving education system”. It also brought forward two local performance indicators, which sought to meet the ambition for all young people to get on in life and do well. The first was that all national performance indicators be met at the national average or beyond by 2020. The second was that all Oldham education providers be judged as “good” or “outstanding” by Ofsted by 2020. I am sure the Minister would concur with that ambition. The commission outlined its vision in detail in a report published in 2016, and I know that the Minister has taken the time to read it. I greatly appreciate the time he spent doing that and meeting me and my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams). We discussed in that meeting how we could work together on this.
The Minister will be aware that the Government have selected Oldham, along with five other towns, to be an opportunity area for social inclusion, meaning that it will share the £60 million that has been allocated. I want to be fair and balanced, because education in Oldham is so important that I am not willing to create artificial political dividing lines, if we can work together positively. However, as you would expect, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will be challenging those concerned where I think a decision has been made that runs counter to the interests of young people in Oldham. I hope that with that mature relationship we can work across parties to achieve our aim.
For Oldham to do well in a sustained way, it must have the strongest possible foundations on which to build. That means clear leadership, adequate resourcing and collective responsibility—and of course that goes beyond individual schools.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I know that this debate is about Oldham, but this issue applies across the whole of the United Kingdom. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that educational attainment must incorporate not simply grades in academic subjects, but vocational skills, such as mechanics and joinery, and that schools must support those skills of a practical nature so that, whatever their vocation in life, young people are prepared?
Jim McMahon
I absolutely concur. I was an apprentice myself. It gave me the chance of a career and options that I did not have when I was going through the schools system. For a lot of working class kids in particular, a technical vocation means that they can live a decent life with a well-paid job.
As we are clear in our vision for what the town can be, we must also be clear about what our town should not be. Over the last two weeks alone, we have seen the removal of a free school sponsor and, this week, the closure of the university technical college. Every school and college will see a cut to its core budget, and in many places the facilities are simply not fit for modern learning, let alone an inspiring environment fit for our young people. We are left hanging while we wait for the delayed area based review, which has left many colleges in the area not knowing what the future will be. We have not had a meaningful discussion about the future and introduction of new independent faith schools for the town either. We are also left with many unanswered questions about the failure of the Collective Spirit free school and the closure of the £9 million UTC, where not a single child gained the required GCSE results.
I commend the inclusive approach from the regional schools commissioner, but the sheer scale of the challenge is huge and the resources limited. As Vicky Beer moves on to pastures new, there is concern about whether the new commissioner will make the same effort to reach out to local MPs.
There are still many unanswered questions about the financial practices at the Collective Spirit free school, and they need to be answered, not just for sake of the school and the town, but because it might expose more fundamental weaknesses in the academy and free schools system. For a period, the school’s director was also the sole director of a trading company that provided services to that school and another one in Manchester. Collectively, it invoiced for £500,000 of services. Rules from the Department for Education and the Education Funding Agency allow connected party transactions, providing they are provided at cost.
The problem is that, providing the contractor can prove that every penny invoiced was spent, the EFA seems happy to sign it off as within scope. It does not account, however, for where the money eventually goes. For example, a school could trade to a company behind which another company with the same directors is invoicing to get the money out the door. Technically, that meets the criteria—that these limited trading companies should offer an at-cost provision—but it does not tell us how £500,000 of public money has been spent by a relatively small school.
We have asked the questions. I submitted a dossier to the regional schools commissioner last year. That came to me as a result of the bravery of whistleblowers—people who were involved in the school and were concerned about the financial practices going on there and wanted to expose them. I understand that the EFA carried out a review, but it has not been made public, and there is nothing on the website to say what the conclusion was. The public have no way of knowing, either from the EFA, the school website or Companies House which individuals and which companies benefited from those contracts.
No breakdown has been provided, and I suspect that that problem is not limited to this school alone; it is potentially a much wider problem. So today, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), I have written to the National Audit Office in order to provide confidence that the money invoiced into those trading companies was spent on the education of the young people attending the school. When I mention a breakdown, I do not mean just a breakdown of service headings provided at the school; what we want to know is whether invoices can be provided that demonstrate that those services were provided, whether the invoices related to another company and whether connected parties were involved.
My question is this: in the interests of getting the best deal for taxpayers, will the Minister lend his support to ensuring that this review is carried out in a full and meaningful way, and that its results will be published so that the public can make up their own minds? That will lead to one of two things. Either it will prove that the whistleblowers were right and that financial practices were taking place that were not in the interests of the young people at the school; or it will prove that everything was above board, the school adhered to the rules and the money was spent appropriately. It will provide the opportunity to set the record straight, irrespective of what the result of the review turns out to be.
We have talked about the Education and Skills Commission, the issue of the Collective Spirit free school and the information that is still outstanding, so let us now move on quickly to the university technical college. This was a flagship college, with £9 million of public money spent on it. Oldham college gifted land to enable it to happen. I absolutely agree with the principle of wanting to look at things differently and try out new ideas. However, it is not acceptable that the young people who were students there have left school without the required qualifications, thus not achieving their full potential. Again, therefore, I ask the Minister for his support to make sure that if young people have been let down and have not reached their full potential—I must say that the local authorities have been extremely supportive in this matter—they are supported to re-sit their exams.
I also ask the Minister formally to sign up to the efforts and recommendations of the Oldham Education and Skills Commission. That is necessary because there is a danger, as we have seen with the free school and the UTC, of the opportunity area becoming a one-size-fits-all, centrally dictated model that is imposed on Oldham because it shows up as an area that needs intervention. If that happens out of context, and not in line with the Education and Skills Commission findings, it will really be a missed opportunity that will not reflect the significant work that has already taken place, and it will not ensure that the money already provided is used to best effect.
My strong view is that the teaching professionals, the parents, the students and the local authority can, by working together, regardless of the structure of the schools involved, genuinely transform educational outcomes for young people in Oldham, provided that they do so as part of a single plan, instead of through contradictory plans.
I also ask for the area-based review of education to be concluded and, importantly, that a democratic vote takes place in each of the local authorities involved. There is concern that the pressure is coming from central Government, and that the decision will be made by the combined authority before the mayoral elections. At the moment, the combined authority is not a directly elected body, and it is important that those who are elected by their communities have a say on the area-based review, especially if it means fundamental changes to Oldham College.
I ask that current funding arrangements, the review and the consultation take into account areas of high deprivation, particular areas with high in-migration and where a high number of youngsters and parents have English as a second language. We know that that requires additional support. I ask, too, that the former UTC building be transferred to Oldham College, to support the ageing campus on Rochdale Road and benefit Oldham College students. It cost a significant amount of public money, and could still be used to benefit Oldham children. I think that Oldham College is best placed to provide education from that building.
We should not allow a UTC to fail, thus preventing children from realising their potential, without fully understanding the reasons for that failure. I ask the Government to review the project and publish the lessons that could be learned, in order to ensure that the same thing does not happen again. I repeat my call for a review of the performance of Collective Spirit free school, and of the due diligence that was exercised in the selection of the sponsor. However, it is even more important for the financial concerns expressed by whistleblowers to be addressed in a public report.
Finally—a word that Members may be pleased to hear—I ask the Minister to consider the devolution of education to Greater Manchester. The move away from local education authorities has been detrimental to education standards in my town. When there is local control, people know where to go to get answers if schools are not performing well, and when they come together and support each other, it is like a family relationship. We are not seeing that now. What we are seeing is a fragmentation of education, which I do not believe is in the interests of the people of Oldham.
Devolution to Greater Manchester would provide a potential framework for a compromise—not a return to a local education authority arrangement that the Government clearly do not support, but a new model involving a combined authority with a directly elected Mayor. My view is really quite simple. If we trust the combined authority and the new Mayor from May onwards to get on with running the health service and social care, justice, policing, fire, transport and housing, we ought to trust them to get on with sorting out the education system in Greater Manchester. If we could do that, we could teem and ladle skills across Greater Manchester, so that areas in need of that support and capacity at local level could realise their full potential.
What I have said is not intended to be an overt criticism of the Government, although there may be differences between us. I want the Minister to take on board that there are local Members of Parliament who care passionately about Oldham and want to invest time and education to ensure that it can be the best that it can be, while also recognising that we may have to meet in the middle.