Education and Local Government

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I am going to make some more progress, as I have been very generous in allowing interventions.

We have made great strides with the more rigorous academic programmes of study, but we know that the arts are vital in helping young people learn creative skills and widen their horizons. We also know that the creative industries play an important role in the United Kingdom economy. For those reasons, we will offer an arts premium to secondary schools to fund activities from 2021. We will also continue to fund music education hubs next year, with an extra £80 million.

I would now like to come on to standards. Thanks to Ofsted inspections, we have seen standards in our schools rise continuously since 2010. Plans are in place to take forward our pledge to lift the inspection exemption that currently applies to outstanding schools. That will mean parents have up-to-date information and reassurance about the education being provided by their child’s school.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

I was a schoolteacher up to the last general election and have worked as a head of year in the pastoral system and have worked both in London and inner-city Birmingham. Does my right hon. Friend share my opinion that it is terrifying to think that had Labour got into power it would have scrapped Ofsted, leaving our children in a much more dangerous position going forward?

[Gavin Williamson]

My hon. Friend and fellow Staffordshire Member makes a powerful point, because what the Labour party was doing was throwing away the ability to ensure that we enforce ever-increasing standards and better attainment for our children. What was even more disturbing were the proposals to scrap Ofsted. Labour was saying that for those children who are most vulnerable—those who are in social care—there would be no independent inspectorate to make sure that their interests were being protected, and it was letting local authorities mark their own homework. That is not what any of us wish to see. I hope that the Labour leadership race will give Labour the opportunity to rethink some of its more imaginative policies and come back with something that works for both pupils and parents.

Since 2010 the Government have been transforming the education system to place more autonomy and freedom in the hands of teachers, giving parents more choice. The free schools programme has been a key part of this and is a stand-out success. Our manifesto pledges to build more free schools, to continue to promote innovation and to continue to drive higher standards in schools, especially in some of the communities that are most deprived and that need to see something better in the education provided.

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[Chris Grayling]

What we know is that standards have risen around the country, and this is an exercise in levelling up funding, with a commitment to provide an absolute minimum to every pupil in the secondary sector and every pupil in the primary sector. That surely is the right way to go about it. On top of that, there is directed funding to meet the individual needs of individual areas.

My first request is about one of those individual needs. Will the Secretary of State look carefully at the small number of schools in my area and others with a disproportionate number of special needs pupils? We have a real opportunity here. Headteachers in those schools are saying that they are finding it an increasing burden on their shoulders to deal not just with the special needs issues but with the issues that often surround those special needs pupils. The two Secretaries of State here today would do those schools a great favour if they could consider ways of strengthening the partnership between local authorities and those schools in dealing with the individual challenges presented by the more troubled students. Particularly in the primary sector, some schools are still facing financial challenges because of the sheer volume of special needs in their schools. I am thinking specifically about some, though not many, of the schools in my own constituency.

[Jonathan Gullis]

I refer my right hon. Friend to the example of schools in Solihull. At Solihull Academy, we saw 13 headteachers come together and pour an equal amount of money into the pot to set up alternative provision for children with special educational needs and attendance and behavioural issues. Is that a model the Government could consider?

[Chris Grayling]

Absolutely. I mentioned the two Secretaries of State, rather than just the one, precisely because I think partnership is one way to ease pressure on heads in schools and create a better package of support for those young people.

The other area brought to my attention is the funding situation for academy trusts that have found themselves under pressure in the last couple of years. The increased funding settlement will help, but will the Secretary of State for Education reconsider the way we support academy trusts so that we can do everything we can to ensure that they can deliver the full benefits of the partnerships they offer?

I want to move on to housing and local planning. Mr Deputy Speaker, you will know that the Queen’s Speech contained further welcome measures to support the growth of first-time buyers in the housing market and the provision of housing in this country. It is much needed. I cannot believe there are many of us who do not deal with the challenges in our constituencies of families who cannot get homes in the social housing sector and are struggling even to get into the rented sector, let alone to buy their own home. We need to build more houses. I think that unites most people on both sides of the House.

We have to do that in the smartest possible way, however, and help local authorities that have particular challenges to meet the needs of their areas. I represent three local authority areas. Conservative-controlled Reigate and Banstead has done a very good job of putting together a local plan and delivering a sensible strategy for the future. Liberal Democrat-controlled Mole Valley District Council has only just started bringing forward its plans and ideas. I await the detail in the coming weeks, but I fear that it will still try to build on substantial parts of the green belt, which we must seek to resist wherever possible.

The particular challenge—my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government is aware of my concern—is in the borough of Epsom and Ewell, which is the majority of my constituency. It is the most densely populated borough in Surrey, and its open spaces, such as they exist, are almost entirely green belt, so there are relatively few opportunities to build new housing without encroaching on the restrictions around green-belt development and without building disproportionately high buildings that would destroy the character of the area.

There are ways of solving this problem. I have put some ideas to the local borough as to how it can do that. One is by integrating residential and commercial development in mid-height developments in parts of Epsom and Ewell where there is an opportunity to create not just housing but economic opportunities. In the University for the Creative Arts, we have one of the best creative universities in the country, if not in Europe. We can harness the skills of the young people coming out of that university to build new businesses in the area and provide homes adjoining them so that those young people can develop businesses and live close by.

We will need two things to deliver the right approach for the area. The first is wisdom from the Planning Inspectorate. It has to work with us. It is all too easy for it to come in, follow a broad-brush national guideline and not actually consider the local circumstances or work with the local authority and local politicians to deliver the right strategy for the area. My message for the Secretary of State is this: the more he can encourage the inspectorate to take a wise, thoughtful and strategic approach, the easier it will be for those of us who believe we have to provide additional homes to ensure that happens.

The second thing is that, particularly in densely populated areas with limited opportunities for development, there will be a limit to the number of years for which these extra houses can be provided. We cannot build 500 or 600 houses a year in perpetuity. While I believe we have to put our foot on the accelerator and deliver more housing right now, I hope that the inspectorate will not be encouraged simply to come back and say, “You have to make this provision in perpetuity. You have to provide sites going on and on into the future”. The national planning policy framework states specifically that we must provide housing and look after the local economy, but we must also make development sustainable, so there will be a limit to how far into the future we can carry on building in areas that are already intensely developed.

I give this commitment to the Secretary of State: I intend to play an active role in making sure that my constituency delivers the homes we need—that is essential —and that we use the tools in the Queen’s Speech to support first-time buyers, who should have the opportunity to live and work locally, but I also want an inspectorate that is wise enough to work alongside local politicians to deliver that and does not just shoehorn in developments that are inappropriate for the area.

That is all I wanted to say. I am grateful to the two Secretaries of State for the conversations I have had with them over the past few months about some of these issues—I intend to carry on having those conversations—but I am also very proud to be standing here as part of a majority Conservative Government delivering a Queen’s Speech that is full of the things this country needs and ideas that will transform people’s lives. We will hear lots of nonsense from the Opposition Benches, but people should not pay the slightest attention to it. The Government are delivering, will carry on delivering and will make a real difference to Britain.

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[Carol Monaghan]

I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned the PISA studies, because that gives me an opportunity to talk about them. Let us talk about PISA. What exactly is it? It is an extremely crude metric that looks at very particular things. What it does not look at are communication skills. It does not look at problem-solving skills, and it does not look at employability skills. Those are the very skills that employers have been asking for, which is why we transformed our curriculum in Scotland. Countries that do well in PISA, such as China and South Korea, also have extremely high levels of student suicide. I do not want that for my young people in Scotland, and not one of us should. China also selects the pupils whom it puts forward for PISA. So there are many things that are wrong with it.

These are the questions on which we should be judging our young people. Are they in employment? Yes. Are they having a positive experience? Yes. Are they developing the skills that employers and businesses are asking for? Absolutely.

[Jonathan Gullis]

The hon. Lady has mentioned PISA. Does she not share the concern of Conservative and, I hope, Opposition Members about the decline among students in Scotland in maths and science—which provide the vital skills to which she referred—in comparison with their compatriots in England?

[Carol Monaghan]

When I look at the tiny differences between students in England and students in Scotland—and there are tiny differences—and at the holistic education that has been developed in Scotland, no, I do not share that concern. Scottish students are developing a broad range of skills. Unlike youngsters in England whose curriculum is being squeezed and narrowed, they still have a broad range from which to choose. No: I absolutely defend our Scottish education system. In the last 10 years, our attainment gap has narrowed, while we are still battling with the effects of austerity. The hon. Gentleman is a teacher. I am a teacher too. I have been there, trying to teach children who have had no breakfast. How can we deal with an attainment gap when the kids who we are teaching are so hungry that they cannot concentrate? That is what we should be looking at.

I mentioned teachers’ pay earlier. It is a bold statement that, by September 2022, the Government will increase teachers’ starting salary to £30,000. Great; fantastic; but Scotland is already there. From this year, after their initial probation year, Scottish teachers will be earning £32,994. That is happening now, but unfortunately this Government are miles behind. If we are talking about teaching as a profession—if we are talking about valuing the very people who make the difference to our young people—we need to pay them properly.

The Secretary of State did not answer my question about the guaranteeing of teaching salaries in academies. For too long, academies have been able to set their own pay scales, and to work outside the scales that are negotiated with teachers’ unions and the profession. Academies pay what they want, and that means, once again, that they are able to pay salaries that are below the nationally agreed levels. Yes, in some cases they may pay above, but they often pay below, and that is certainly not the way to encourage others to join the profession. In Scotland we have more teachers per pupil, and that too must be looked at: while the Government are sorting out the salary, they might deal with that as well.

Let me now say something about tertiary education. We in Scotland are often attacked about the number of youngsters achieving entry to university. As I have said, I do not make the distinction, but for the benefit of those who do, I will say some things about universities. The largest-ever number of Scottish students are at universities, and record numbers of our poorest students are going to them: 15.6% of full-time first-degree entrants are from the most deprived areas of Scotland. That is tackling inequality in a real way.

In January last year, the Commissioner for Fair Access, Sir Peter Scott, said that “significant, and welcome progress” had been made on access, and that

“Scotland is now the pace-setter among UK nations in fair access to higher education”.

He went on to say that Scotland’s improving widening access figures vindicated our free tuition policy. He said:

“The latest figures vindicate Scotland’s policy of free higher education, which of course has other aims apart from making universities more socially inclusive—not least the commitment that higher education should be seen as a public good from which society as a whole benefits and not just as a private investment producing higher earnings for individuals.”

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[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

“Ay Up Duck” is how I should start, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) will be happy with my pronunciation.

May I start by saying what an honour and a privilege it is to make my maiden speech today, and to represent the people of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke? I could not be prouder to serve and, as I said to the Stoke Sentinel at 5.30 in the morning of election night, I will “work my bum off” to deliver the change that my constituents deserve.

I would like to pay tribute to my predecessor, Ruth Smeeth. She will be remembered as a tireless campaigner for our armed forces, against holiday hunger and fighting antisemitism. The abuse that she has suffered as a result of her Jewish heritage is a disgrace. I know she will continue in her work to combat antisemitism and all other forms of racism, and she can count on me to stand shoulder to shoulder with her on such issues.

As a teacher, a school trade union representative and a Tory, I realise I am not the typical stereotype, and I could not think of a more fitting debate in which to make my maiden speech. Education is by far the most powerful tool we have to improve social mobility. In my own family, I have seen this at first hand. My mother, who joins me in the Gallery today, got into a grammar school off the estate in London. My father, having failed his O-levels, took up work as a caretaker to attend night school, ending up at Durham University with a Masters. The hard work, resilience and determination of my parents has allowed them to achieve more than what many, and indeed they themselves, would have anticipated had they been confined to the lazy stereotypes placed upon them. Teachers serve the young people they educate outside the bounds of academia, often assuming the role of mentor, providing intellectual and emotional support. For most of us there is that one stand-out teacher who changed the way we think and made a difference to our lives. The teacher who inspired me is Dr Simon Peaple. He was the head of history and politics at my school. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher), who cannot be here, will know him well, because he is now the leader of the Labour group on Tamworth Borough Council. His teaching was so effective that, despite him coming to campaign for my predecessor, I was able to make it on to the Green Benches today. But, in all seriousness, his dedication to his students, extensive subject knowledge and passion for the job stuck with me, and I would like to thank him for all that he did.

Getting education right across Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke is crucial. In 2018 the progress 8 scores showed a majority of children underachieving and only 1% of students getting AAB at A-level compared with 12% across the rest of the west midlands. However, signs of improvement are beginning to show: today, over 80% of schools are rated good or outstanding, and 2019 GCSE results showed a 6% increase in the pass rate for English and maths across the city of Stoke-on-Trent. And with the Government’s support via the Stoke-on-Trent opportunity area, more breakfast clubs and a 4.7% increase in per pupil funding, the city is on the up.

I say the city is on the up because for too long it has been perceived negatively. Football pundits talk about whether players can perform on a cold Tuesday night in Stoke-on-Trent and last week Piers Morgan wondered whether the Duchess of Sussex would ever want to face opening a community hall on a wet Wednesday in Stoke. In addition, the town of Kidsgrove has been passed from pillar to post in Boundary Commission changes and is now being nicknamed the forgotten town. Well, I say that Stoke-on-Trent is a city to be proud of, Kidsgrove will no longer be forgotten, and it is time that we started talking about Talke—a bit of cheese.

If Members are looking for somewhere to spend their next bank holiday weekend, they need look no further. After enjoying a cheesy Staffordshire oatcake they can make their way to the mother town of Burslem, birthplace of Lemmy from Motörhead, 16-time world dart champion Phil “the Power” Taylor and Robbie Williams. They can also go for a walk around the award-winning park or pop down to Vale Park and see Port Vale FC play, or see local businesses such as Synectics Solutions, Titanic Brewery and Autonet, which together employ thousands of local residents.

Burslem was the heartbeat of this city and hosts its ceramic industry from Royal Stafford to Moorcroft. In neighbouring Middleport we can see Steelite and go on a tour of Middleport Pottery. The place is home to “The Great Pottery Throw Down” on Channel 4 and was used for filming on the TV series “Peaky Blinders”.

Next, we can visit another of the original six towns, Tunstall, where we will soon be able to visit the newly refurbished town hall, go shopping at the indoor market and see another ceramics giant in Churchill China.

We can then make our way to Kidsgrove and Talke. Here we can walk along the beautiful Trent and Mersey canal to see the Harecastle tunnel; at one and a half miles long it was once the longest in the country, responsible for taking the coal to the kilns. We can also see the site of the old sports centre, which, thanks to the efforts of Kidsgrove sports centre community group and the Conservative-led Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council, will be refurbished and reopened next summer so it can retain its place as a key community asset.

It is said that world war two was won in the skies, as alluded to by my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Paul Holmes), thanks to a little plane called the Spitfire. In Talke my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh can visit the Reginald Mitchell peace garden, named after the Spitfire inventor and yards from where he was born. Reginald Mitchell is heavily celebrated across the Potteries and in 2003 was voted the greatest midlander in the BBC’s online TV and radio vote.

Lastly, we have Chatterley Whitfield colliery. It is one of the most complete former colliery sites in Europe and has been designated a scheduled ancient monument. It was the first colliery in the country to achieve an annual output of 1 million tonnes, which was achieved in 1937 and again in 1939. The colliery ceased production and closed its doors on working miners in March 1977. The hard work undertaken by the Friends of Chatterley Whitfield has seen some buildings brought back to use, sell-out tours on heritage weekends and important documents saved. However, this important piece of heritage is still at risk of being lost. The potbanks would not have fired if it were not for the coal brought from the deep mines at Chatterley Whitfield. The Potteries would not have existed. I made it a central pledge in my campaign to protect and preserve the site with a long-term plan. The loss of such a site would mean that future generations could be denied an invaluable opportunity to learn about their past. I will not stand by and let that happen.

Talking up an area is very important, but it is crucial to acknowledge the challenges we face. We need more school places, better public transport and to bring more high-skilled, high-wage jobs to Stoke-on-Trent, Kidsgrove and Talke. We must invest in the city by opening up free schools to offer more parental choice. We must reverse some of the Beeching cuts by opening up the old mineral line and ensure the city of Stoke-on-Trent becomes the core of the tech revolution. Silicon Stoke is an ambition to put this city at the centre of future skills and jobs. We are rated as having some of the best 4G download speeds in the country and we are leading the way by rolling out 60 miles of full fibre broadband across the city, thanks to Swedish firm VX Fiber and this Government’s investment of over £9 million. According to council officers, that could generate a £625 million boost to the Stoke-on-Trent economy, meaning more jobs and higher wages.

Stoke-on-Trent, one of the great cities of the industrial revolution, knows what it means to be at the centre of the country’s economy. I wish to see the city reignited at the heart of the coming technological revolution. One of my roles as a Member of Parliament is to represent the people, the place and the history of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke. I will pursue relentlessly the potential and ambition of my constituency, and I will shout at every turn about how amazing the city is and the opportunities it possesses. Make no mistake: we are on the up.