Tutoring Provision

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2024 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins. I congratulate the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) on securing this incredibly important debate.

If I may, I will briefly thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for giving me a plug and saying why I might have a career in the diplomatic corps in the not-too-distant future, which may come as a shock to many. I appreciate that he invited me, and it was obviously a pleasure to speak to the fine people of Strangford and surrounding areas about our precious and important Union.

The issue before us is very important for me, and I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I was a schoolteacher professionally, working in both London and Birmingham before entering this place. My partner is also an employee of Teach First, which analysed elements of the programme and was involved in delivering some of the tutoring in the earlier days. Although she was not an employee at that stage, it is important to ensure that the record is clear.

The national tutoring programme plays a massively important part in ensuring that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds in particular—those who are registered for free school meals, and those who are not yet registered but who are technically eligible—have the academic ability to attain the grades they deserve. For levelling up to mean anything, we have to get education right. In Stock-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, I can build every shiny building going and bring in every new job going, but what is it all for if kids from Stoke-on-Trent do not end up in those new high-skilled, high-wage jobs, in those buildings or in the new homes we are building in our local area?

Sadly, Stoke-on-Trent has remained in the bottom 20% for academic attainment and achievement for far too long. In the past, the Office for Students has ranked my constituency as the seventh worst in England for kids going on to higher education. Twelve per cent of my entire workforce have no formal qualifications, which is 8% higher than the national average. The number of kids achieving level 3 and 4 qualifications—A-levels or college and apprenticeship qualifications—remains in the bottom fifth nationwide. That is not something that I want to see.

Sadly, the city has languished under a disastrous private finance initiative deal. This is not meant to be a party political dig, but it was administered under the last Labour Government back in 2000. There are 88 schools trapped in a PFI contract run by the council and are seeing huge inflationary increases in their costs. It is predicted that up to £100,000 in additional funding will potentially have to be found for the annual contributions that need to be made, leaving us scrambling. I collared the Minister in the voting Lobby last night to demand more funding, and that goes to the heart of the point. I appreciate that the Government will point to pupil premium funding, which is a superb initiative, but I agree with the Chair of the Education Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), who the hon. Member for Twickenham quoted: the reality is that the money simply will not be there.

There are huge inflationary increases in food and equipment costs, and with teachers’ salaries going up, which the Government have covered in part but not in full. There are also additional costs in Stoke-on-Trent, where we have those increased PFI contributions. Those inflationary pressures, again, driven by covid and Vladimir Putin’s illegal and immoral war in Ukraine, mean that schools are having to use every penny that they can find. They will not be able to continue the important tutoring scheme out of their own existing budgets because of the pressures that they are facing right now.

Stoke-on-Trent is exactly the area where that kind of intervention is absolutely necessary. I share the concern that at the end of this academic year, we will potentially see the end of the national tutoring programme as it is funded currently through additional Government support. I implore the Minister, and I will do everything I can with him, to lobby Treasury colleagues to demand that the scheme continues.

I will say this about the Prime Minister. Back in summer 2022, I supported my right hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) during the Conservative party leadership contest—it feels a long time ago, I know—because he had mentored me for a long time. I had a sense of loyalty to that, and I believe him to be a very good man. However, after he dropped out, I met all the leading contenders, including the current Prime Minister. When I sat down in the room with him for the first time and had a conversation about non-Treasury matters, seeing the fire behind his eyes when he talked about education was inspiring. It is so important, and it is something that sadly I had not heard enough of since the Blair years of “Education, education, education”, although I fear that that was more slogan and gimmick than actual delivery. Still, most importantly, at least it was on the forefront of the education agenda at that time.

[Paul Howell]

Does my hon. Friend agree that expenditure should be focused on initiatives like this programme, as opposed to the broader schemes that try to cover everybody from middle-income families to high-income families and do a broad sweep across the bottom? These are the interventions that the Government should really be focused on.

[Jonathan Gullis]

I completely agree. I have huge problems with universal schemes because they are not a benefit if everyone is receiving them, in my personal opinion. Having universal free school meals for every child in primary school is not a good idea, because why on earth would my children be given access to a free school meal when I myself can afford it? I would rather see that additional funding for middle-class and higher-income parents who can afford it invested in children from disadvantaged backgrounds, so that we can have those well-funded breakfast clubs but also ensure that schools can invest further in such things as the tutoring programme.

We should not forget that the Education Endowment Foundation’s own research says that small group tuition adds four months of progress on to students’ lives. Tes reported that as of January 2024, 390,000 grade improvements in English and maths have been attributed to progress made due to the national tutoring programme over the previous two academic years. That goes to show the importance of the scheme, particularly for English and maths, and particularly when we still have an archaic system in place that means that people must get a pass in those subjects to be able to do an apprenticeship, yet they would not need that to do their A-levels. We have a two-tier system, despite having a major skills shortage in this country. We talk the talk about ensuring that apprenticeships are equal to an A-level, but there are these bizarre barriers in place that mean they are not.

I hope that the Minister will take back the idea of abolishing the requirements at the foundation stage, in order to allow people to get on to apprenticeships and study their English and maths while on those courses to get them up to grade. Of course, any responsible company will want that for their employees because it will improve the outcomes and productivity of the company.

The Government should be applauded for around 5 million tutoring courses that have begun since the inception of the programme, and the fact that they were bold and brave in going for it, despite the fact that Randstad is a dark stain on the Department’s ability to procure. However, going back to what the hon. Member for Twickenham and I were calling for in those early days, it is vital to give the money to the schools and trust the headteachers in large part to deliver this particular programme.

The school-led approach is a much better system. Why? Teachers know who those pupils are. They know their backgrounds and their learning and support needs; they know their parents and have a relationship with them. Teachers are and have always been willing to stay behind after school. If we give teachers the opportunity to have a little more money in their pocket, bearing in mind they probably work double the hours they are actually paid for—I certainly used to do 60 hours a week as a bare minimum while on the frontline as a head of year—that could have a huge and positive impact for them. It could also have a positive impact on the many fantastic smaller focused third sector organisations that, again, have existed for a long time.

I hope we never see a repeat of Randstad, because that was an utter disaster. I was pleased to see that the Government were nimble on their feet and followed a school-led approach; giving that money to the schools directly had a positive impact. I saw that in my albeit very brief time as Minister for School Standards between September and October 2022. During that time, I went on a number of visits to schools in the Black Country that were using that funding. I spoke with the pupils themselves, who said that without the programme, they would not have had the confidence to put up their hand in class to ask teachers questions when they did not understand what was being taught to them.

The national tutoring programme has given pupils confidence—sixth-formers interacting with year 7 and 8 pupils who are new to the school, to build that sense of collective responsibility and help one another. The older pupils learn important leadership skills, using their lived experience to impart the knowledge they have learned from their excellent and outstanding teachers. It all goes to show the power of the scheme. I do hope we will see that.

In February 2023, the National Audit Office said that in the 2021-22 academic year, only 47% of the pupils accessing the scheme were disadvantaged. Like myself, the hon. Member for Twickenham and many other Members present will be worried by that. The national tutoring programme was designed for disadvantaged pupils; it should not be supplementing the tutoring of children whose parents could afford private tuition if needed. While I want to ensure that every child has the opportunity, we need to find out from the Minister— I hope we will hear this today—what the Government have done since that report to really drive up the number of disadvantaged pupils to hopefully reach the 65% target that was initially given to Randstad as part of the contract. That is exactly the type of figure that we would like to see. I agree with Lee Elliot Major, the professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter, that it would be

“a national travesty if we fail to embed tutoring”

into our core schooling day in, day out. We therefore have that responsibility.

Schools Week reported that as of July 2023, there was a £240 million underspend in the tutoring programme over the 2021-22 and the 2022-23 academic year. Can I ask the Minister whether that money was reinvested back into the national tutoring programme to help to cover schools’ costs, which are obviously rising in year in, year out, and to deal with the tutoring programme? That was something I requested within the Department while I was a Minister: for any underspend to go into the next academic year to give schools more cover and give them longer to get the programme up and running, build more trust with pupils and put things in place. That is important as well.

My final contribution is simple. If the Government do not want to go ahead with the national tutoring programme in its current form, I personally believe there is only one other way we can go forward. As any other hon. Member would, I will shamelessly plug my own research paper, which I did with Onward back in November 2020. It calls for not only an extended school day, which I have long supported, but a shortening of the school holidays over the course of an academic year—reducing the summer holiday from six weeks to four.

I support that for two reasons. First, childcare is extremely expensive; it is even more expensive now than when I wrote that report. It was estimated that that change would save the average family £133 a week based on costs associated back in November 2020, which will obviously have massively increased since then. I appreciate that the Government have done a lot in the childcare space with the new scheme providing 15 hours of free childcare as of April. I must confess that my own child, who is two years old, will benefit from it, and we have started the process of getting our code to give to our childcare provider.

The second and most important reason is that from research I have conducted, I understand that it takes around seven weeks for a disadvantaged pupil at the start of a new academic year to finally surpass where they were at the end of the previous academic year. That is seven weeks of lost learning, during which time disadvantaged pupils are unable to accelerate at the same pace as their better-off peers, which is simply unfair. Reducing that holiday to four weeks—I am happy to have a two-week October half term, which would be better for pupils and teachers in terms of rest and wellbeing, as well as trying to spread the cost of the school holidays throughout the year more fairly—would give those younger people a better opportunity.

There are other ideas in the pipeline. I have a research paper that I will happily send the Minister to have a look at and tell me what he thinks. Ultimately, I think it is the right thing. I appreciate that multi-academy trusts can do that of their own volition, and some do, but it should be driven nationally as well.

As I said, education is the absolute bedrock to levelling up. It is the bedrock to making sure that life chances can be achieved. I have no fiscal rules when it comes to education, because I believe that if we shove all the money there, we will have better outcomes on health and work, fewer people needing to use the welfare state, better home ownership, better wages, and less poverty in our country. Education is at the epicentre of achieving that, and we should therefore be pouring money into the sector. That 92% of my schools are now rated “good” or “outstanding”, compared with around 60% in 2010, and 75% of my kids are now reaching the necessary levels in phonics, compared with 53% when we inherited government back in 2010, shows that we have got it right, and that all the changes and hard work can go on to build something more.

I am so passionate about making sure that we get education right. It is essential that the people I serve—my masters and mistresses back in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke; my Lord Sugars who will hire or fire me when the general election comes later this year—have every opportunity to make sure that their children can have the opportunities and ability to access the high-skilled, high-wage jobs I am bringing to my local area to improve their life outcomes. Stoke-on-Trent’s achievement of the levelling-up agenda is driven through the education sector.

Please, Minister: we have to keep this tutoring programme on the tracks. If we do not, an extended school day and shorter school holidays are the alternative, in my opinion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine McKinnell]

As I said, I am really interested to hear what the Government’s vision is. Given that they have committed to ensuring that tutoring is embedded within the national school system, what is their plan for ensuring that that happens? We will inherit that plan from them, so I am very keen to hear the Minister’s response to my question. I will set out Labour’s costed plans in detail, but I am interested to hear how the Government will deliver on their pledge to ensure that tutoring is embedded within the national school system.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has found that schools funding in England is already not increasing as fast as the cost pressures schools are facing. That means that the poorest schools are likely to struggle the most to find the cash for tutoring, and that our most disadvantaged pupils will miss out. With access to tutoring seemingly diminishing, what is the Minister’s plan for children to recover the learning they lost, which they have still not recovered from? I appreciate that he would like to move these issues on to the next Labour Government to solve, but given that this Government are currently in charge, I am sure that, like me, listeners to the debate are interested in hearing what this Government’s plans are.

In government, Labour will consider how more tailored support could be most effectively delivered to ensure that children achieve what they need to in school. Crucially, we will look at introducing a range of measures to ensure that we close the attainment gap. We know that children’s speech and language have really suffered since the pandemic, which has the potential to affect their educational attainment in the much longer term, so Labour has pledged to equip every school with the funding to deliver evidence-based early language interventions to tackle the problem.

We understand that quality teaching is key to unlocking children’s potential, so we would use the funding available from ending the tax breaks currently enjoyed by private schools to hire 6,500 more teachers in our state schools, giving every child the teachers they need to benefit from a quality education.

[Jonathan Gullis]

It is a totally noble aim to bring more teachers into the system. Of course, the Government do an extensive work by providing grants for people taking specific courses; in some cases—science, for example, these are worth up to £20,000. What specifically is Labour’s plan for recruitment of new teachers that the current Government are not doing? I have previously asked shadow Ministers similar questions, because I genuinely want to understand what will be done differently by Labour, bearing in mind that this Government are giving out tens of thousands of pounds to people simply for turning up to the training course, let alone then staying on, with the levelling-up bonus payments in education investment areas. I am keen to hear what the Labour plan looks like.

[Catherine McKinnell]

I appreciate the sincerity of the hon. Member’s wish to talk about the challenge in recruitment and retention. Clearly, it is related to this debate today, in the sense that if we had all the teachers we need, would we need a national tutoring programme? Labour has set out quite detailed plans about how we will go about resolving the teacher recruitment and retention crisis, and we continue to have conversations with the sector to ensure that the money in the current spending envelope for bursaries and incentives is spent as effectively as possible, because clearly there is a problem. The Government are seriously missing their recruitment targets. We have a range of measures, but I do not think it would be appropriate to go into the detail that the hon. Member wants me to go into today. However, I recognise the sincerity of his challenge in that regard and his recognition of the challenge, and Labour is absolutely determined to meet it.

We know that children’s mental health is a huge challenge, so we will put a specialist mental health professional in every school and ensure that young people have access to early support. We will also invest in mental health hubs to ensure that young people can access mental health support where they most need it. We will offer free breakfast clubs in every primary school, to ensure that children have a softer start to the school day and the opportunity to learn, play and socialise. The evidence is clear that such clubs increase attainment and attendance; they will also put money back in parents’ pockets and ensure a start to the school day that can help parents to get to work.

We recognise that there is no one fix, given the level of challenge in our system, but we will focus not only on taking a more targeted approach, so that children who need additional support the most get it, but on making sure that there is a wider network of support for every school community. That network will ensure that every child has the best chance of having the best start in life.

This is all about Labour’s mission to break down the barriers to opportunity and to ensure that every child gets the firm foundation and high-quality education that sets them up for life. Because education is a priority for us, as it has been for every Labour Government, we will put it back at the centre of national life. We will prioritise our children, schools and families once again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds]

Let us not pursue the thing about the pupil premium. That happened to be in both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat plans for Government ahead of 2010. The two parties worked well together in coalition, and that is a good thing that we should welcome. There had been progress on the disadvantage gap. It is also true, as I was just saying, that covid hit the whole world, but it also hit different groups of children differentially, and we are still seeing the effects of that in the disadvantage gap. I will come back to that.

Tutoring has been a key part of our recovery plan, and I thank everybody who has been involved in it: the tutors, the tutoring organisations, the teachers and teaching assistants, and everybody else who has made it possible. My hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield mentioned the particular role and contribution of volunteers, and I join him in that. It is a very special thing to do.

The national tutoring programme is not necessarily what always comes to mind when the person in the street thinks of tutoring. A lot of it, as the hon. Member for Twickenham alluded to, is small group work; it is not just one to one. Although very important work has been done by outside tutoring organisations, most of the work on the national tutoring programme has been done by existing staff in schools. We have committed £1.4 billion to the four-year life of the national tutoring programme in schools and colleges, and invested in the 16 to 19 tuition fund.

For the second year of the programme—my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North referred to this—funding has gone directly to schools. That has enabled schools to choose the right approach for them and their children through the use of their own staff, accessing quality-assured tuition partners or employing an academic mentor. We created the find a tuition partner service to put schools in touch with those opportunities, and also provided training through the Education Development Trust for staff, including teaching assistants who deliver tutoring.

Nearly 5 million courses have been started since the NTP launched in November 2020, and 46% of the pupils tutored last year had been eligible for free school meals in the past six years. That is the “ever 6” measure—a measure of disadvantage. The 16 to 19 tuition fund will also have delivered hundreds of thousands of courses.

The tutoring programme has been part of the wider £5 billion education recovery funding, which is made up of the £1.4 billion for tutoring, £400 million for aspects of teacher training, £800 million for additional time in 16 to 19, and nearly £2 billion directly to schools for evidence-based interventions appropriate to pupils’ needs.

The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North rightly mentioned speech and language interventions. I can tell her that already two thirds of primary schools have benefited—211,000 year R children so far—from our investment in the Nuffield early language intervention programme. The evidence suggests that the programme assists children in making four months’ worth of additional progress, while children eligible for free school meals make greater progress of seven months.

Covid hit the world, including us. It did not hit every discipline in exactly the same way. Some of us will recognise from our own time at home with children that some things were easier to do than others. Reading at key stage 2 and junior school held up pretty well during covid. Maths has now improved and the standard is now close to what it was in the years before covid. Writing is still behind, although we have had a 2% improvement since last year.

Big challenges remain. No one denies that the No. 1 issue is attendance. This almost sounds trite, but there is an obvious link between being at school and the attainment achieved. It bears repeating that even if there are difficulties in having many children in school, we really have to work on attendance. As well as the overall attainment effect of attendance, there is a differential factor between the cohort of pupils as a whole and disadvantaged pupils; in other words, there is a bit more absence in the latter group than the former. There is also a link—some studies say it plays a really big part—between attendance and the attainment gap, which makes it doubly important that we work on attendance.

As colleagues know, schools are doing many things brilliantly, as are local authorities and others, to try to get attendance back up to pre-covid levels. Obviously, every child needs to be off school at some time because of sickness—all of us were when we were children. That will always be true, but we need to get back to the levels we had before covid.

The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North alluded to specific things that we do around breakfast clubs. It is important to do them in a targeted way, and not just in primary school, as the Labour party plans to do, but in secondary school as well. There are issues around mental health support, which is why we are gradually rolling out the mental health support teams across the country. Again, we think that it is right to have that in both phases—it is important at both primary and secondary school—and schools are also doing an immense amount of work.

Although the national tutoring programme was always a time-limited programme post-covid, tutoring will continue to play an important role and we know that the evidence shows that tutoring is an effective, targeted approach to increase pupils’ attainment. Headteachers are best placed to decide how to invest their funding, depending on their particular circumstances and priorities, and that approach underpins our whole approach to the school system, in that we put headteachers in charge. I anticipate many schools continuing to make tutoring opportunities available to their pupils and we will continue to support schools to deliver tutoring in future, including through pupil premium funding, which will rise to more than £2.9 billion in 2024-25.

Schools decide how to use their funding, aided by the Education Endowment Foundation, which sets out good knowledge and advice on the best uses of funding for the education programmes with the most efficacy. I do not think there is a conflict between universal and highly targeted programmes. We target via the funding formula and then headteachers are best placed, armed with the knowledge from the EEF and others, to decide how to use that funding. The overall national funding formula has the disadvantage element, which next year will be a bigger proportion than has previously been the case. Then, of course, there is the pupil premium.

[Jonathan Gullis]

I have outlined in detail why I think schools need the additional funding due to the financial pressures they are under. However, if the Government are not seeking to do that—which, personally, I think is a mistake—is the Department for Education planning to somehow monitor how many schools continue to deliver tutoring and the percentage of disadvantaged pupils? Or is the Department simply not going to keep an eye on the ball after the funding ends and rely on headteachers, who will, as the Minister has rightly said, do things in the best interests of their pupils? Ultimately, that will leave us in this place with less knowledge about the spending decisions and whether the support is continuing and embedded, which was the aim of the programme when initially introduced.

[Damian Hinds]

It is absolutely appropriate to embed tutoring into schools’ wider progress, because we know from our gold standard analyser the EEF and other studies that that approach has efficacy and achieves results, although obviously it depends on how it is done. As my hon. Friend puts it, we will keep an eye on the matter, but that is not the same as specifying that Mrs Smith the headteacher should do this but not that. We think Mrs Smith should be able to decide. We also have Ofsted inspections and the results are published as part of a system that is transparent but that also empowers schools, school leaders and trusts to make those decisions.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

The hon. Lady may have mixed up a couple of things there, but the plan to get children back into school is to have daily attendance data, which we introduced and sent out to every local authority. Some local authorities do not perform as well—perhaps the hon. Lady’s is one of those—but we send out daily data so that they can identify exactly where the schools are. We are working with attendance hubs, which we are introducing across the country. For individual one-to-one attention we have attendance mentors. We have a national campaign and a cross-Government action alliance, all of which has meant that England has a 7.5% absence rate, compared with 11.5% in Wales, and it is much higher in most countries around the world. We have a plan, and we are delivering on it.

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

I worked as a teacher and as head of year with overall responsibility for school attendance. Labour Members seem to forget that there is also a role for parental responsibility in all of this. In my time, I encountered a large cohort of parents who found that it was still cheaper to pay the fines they were given and save the money by going on holiday during term time. Is it not time to ramp up the cost of fines for parents who choose needlessly to withdraw their children from their education, harming the child’s outcomes?

[Gillian Keegan]

Every moment matters in school, and we have improved and increased our school standards. The most important thing is that children are now there. Thanks to our data, we can now see patterns and those who are taking a week off outside term time, or those who perhaps have a pattern of behaviour of taking particular days off. We can go into the data—we are about the only country in the world that can do that, so we are uniquely positioned to tackle the problem. We can go down into the data and work at school level and local authority level, to ensure that we put into action everything we can to improve attendance.

Apprenticeship Levy

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd November 2023 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the apprenticeship levy.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq, and I am looking forward to this debate on the apprenticeship levy. As a former teacher and the former Minister for School Standards, I cannot state enough how important apprenticeships are for young people. They unlock opportunities for them, allow them to earn while they learn and drive social mobility. As the proud co-chair of the all-party group on apprenticeships and the employer of two apprentices—Mya and Jess, who are based in my constituency office—I know just how effective apprentices can be in the workplace.

There have been significant achievements in places such as Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, where we have had 13,240 apprenticeship starts since May 2020. One of the great standout legacies of the past 13 years of Conservative government is our outstanding record on education. Compared with 2010, over 2 million more pupils are at good and outstanding schools, and our kids are some of the best readers in the western world.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb), who served with grace and honour as Minister for School Standards—a role I held briefly, although I basically kept the seat warm for his return—on his hard work in improving literacy and numeracy rates, restoring discipline in the classrooms, empowering a generation of learners and bettering educational attainment. His legacy will live on in this House and across the nation, and we are truly thankful for his service.

I served proudly with the Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education when he chaired the Education Committee, and he understands, as do we all, that further education plays a vital role in providing the skills needed to revive key sectors such as manufacturing and ceramics, so that we can level up the country. We have made great strides since 2019. We introduced T-levels and the lifelong learning entitlement. Government initiatives such as the skills bootcamp scheme, which works with local employers and local authorities to fill skills gaps and vacancies in local areas, should continue to be expanded.

Apprenticeships offer a great opportunity to learn and earn, and they keep talent and skills in our local area, making a vital contribution to the labour market. The huge demand for apprenticeships is waiting to be matched by supply. Almost half of the young people registered on UCAS are interested in apprenticeships, yet only 10% go on to start one. In recent years, there has been a dramatic decline in the number of new apprenticeship starts. Since the apprenticeship levy was introduced in 2017, overall apprenticeship starts have fallen from half a million in 2016-17 to just over a quarter of a million in 2022-23. That urgently needs to be reversed. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that the number of apprenticeship starts for 16 to 18-year-olds has fallen by 41% since 2015-16. For 19 to 24-year-olds, it has fallen by 31%, and for those aged over 25, it has fallen by 26%.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the points he is making. Last year, more than £3 billion of the levy was not spent, I guess for many of the reasons he is setting out. In my community, many of the businesses that would love to have an apprentice find it too hard to get into the scheme. Would it be wise in an area such as mine, where one in four people work for themselves and many opportunities come through small businesses, to redirect some of the underspend to encourage small businesses to take on apprentices? That would be good news for our economy and for everybody else, for that matter.

[Jonathan Gullis]

I could not agree more: the levy should be much easier to access for small and medium-sized enterprises, and even for big levy payers, such as Lloyds Bank, which I met recently in my constituency at Saint Nathaniel’s Academy in Burslem. It said that it found it incredibly tricky to navigate the system to try to get money to the frontline. In that case, it was for digital apprenticeships and skills for those teachers and support staff, as the school went to a Google Classroom-based learning system. I will set out later how I think the levy can be reformed to make it more accessible and to ensure that more SMEs get more opportunities to take up apprenticeships. It is all well and good talking about skills, but if we do not have enough apprentices in the first place with the opportunity to access them, we will always have to overly rely on cheap foreign labour from abroad to fill vacancies. I suspect the hon. Gentleman and I have slightly different opinions on that, but the Chancellor said in the autumn statement today that he wants to see us skilling up and levelling up the opportunities for young people here.

The fall in the number of apprenticeship starts suggests that apprenticeships in their current form are not benefiting young people and helping them get into the workforce. We require businesses to invest in their existing workforce. Increasing the flexibility of the apprenticeship levy would help businesses with the cost of investment in British talent, further militating against the dependency on mass migration. Although increased collaboration between the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education and the Migration Advisory Committee will not eradicate reliance on immigration for vital skills, it will shift the focus to prioritising British upskilling and offer a long-term solution to the nation’s skills shortages.

As evidenced in “The New Conservatives’ plan to upskill Britain”, which I proudly wrote with my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Lia Nici), red wall areas have been hit especially hard by the reduced number of younger apprentices in SMEs. In northern and coastal constituencies, the number of apprenticeships has fallen, while it has grown in places such as Wimbledon and Chelsea. As the New Conservatives’ skills paper suggests, areas such as Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke need more home-grown apprentices so that we do not rely on cheap migrant labour to fill the skills gap. That is why it is so vital that we take on recommendations from industry and reform the levy, so that communities can benefit from apprentices.

One way the New Conservatives’ skills plan seeks to do this is by pushing for the Migration Advisory Committee to work much more closely with the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, by identifying gaps in the market where unspent levy funding can be used to support the training of home-grown talent that will help to close the skills gap. With net migration standing at over 600,000 in the year to June, it is essential that we explore ways to wean the economy off cheap migrant labour, which puts immense pressure on our public services, including our schools, our NHS and our housing supply, with migrants now making up half the demand for new builds. I am confident that reforming the apprenticeship levy to allow underspends to target specific gaps in the job market will help to solve one of the UK’s most challenging long-term problems.

In the New Conservatives’ skills plan, we also raise issues surrounding the levy transfer mechanism and suggest raising the current transfer from 25% to 35%. Since the introduction of the levy five years ago, £4.3 billion has been raised by the levy but kept back by the Treasury. In 2021-22 alone, the revenue raised was £750 million—more than the entire apprenticeship budget—and according to FE Week analysis, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs pocketed an extra £415 million in the year to September 2023. I know that this is an issue for small and medium-sized businesses in Stoke-on-Trent, and I was shocked to see the Sentinel report in January this year that Stoke-on-Trent City Council was forced to send its £1 million apprenticeship underspend back to HM Treasury.

As co-chair of the APPG on apprenticeships, I have spoken to many businesses that say the system for transferring funds is immensely bureaucratic and requires excessive paperwork, which dissuades businesses from pursuing it. Our skills paper therefore sets out plans to increase the apprenticeship levy transfer to 35%. As the New Conservatives’ report sets out, the current cap at 25% limits employers making the most out of their funding, and it is difficult for businesses to transfer funding to SMEs outside their supply chain. That is why we advocate increasing the ease with which funds can be transferred by including other SMEs local to the region of the levy payer, which would keep investment local and widen access to apprenticeship funding.

The New Conservatives and I want to see a greater amount of the billions of pounds of unspent levy funding—like the £1 million underspend in Stoke-on-Trent—spent on skills locally, which will help the levelling-up agenda and assist young people in finding good career prospects near to home. However, to do that, the Government need to be brave and expand access to apprenticeship funding, as we outline in our report.

We need to allow for training to be more sensitive to labour market demands, so that we can upskill our homegrown talent. We should seize on local areas’ expertise, such as Stoke-on-Trent’s thriving video game industry, to make apprenticeships work for the economy. Alongside using unspent levy funding to support SMEs with grants, we should look to make it flexible enough to support shorter courses. Microsoft has identified that a modular approach to apprenticeships would allow apprentices to fit into the gaps in the labour market much more effectively. It says that this is essential to ensure that people are equipped with the digital skills they need to perform an increasing number of tasks.

In some cases, labour market demands do not require long courses, so making the levy more flexible will support shorter courses that meet existing needs of the business, rather than fulfilling bureaucratic apprenticeship requirements. This will enable employees to develop much-needed skills and help employers to address specific skills shortages that they face. Microsoft identifies such flexibility as being necessary for businesses to adapt to the rapidly changing requirements of digital roles, noting that the current 18-month waiting period for the digital apprenticeship standard to be approved is too long. Such long approval times stifle growth and leave employers without the skills that they need. Increasing the flexibility of the apprenticeship levy will also help Britons to upskill, improving productivity and reducing the skills gap.

In my role as the co-chair of the APPG on apprenticeships, I have also spoken with many leading businesses in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke as well as across the country, and they have outlined ideas about how to make the levy work. Policy Exchange’s excellent paper, “Reforming the Apprenticeship Levy”, makes the disappointing point that SME involvement in the apprenticeship system has plummeted since the introduction of the levy, and it states that that has wider implications because, historically, SMEs train higher proportions of apprentices, particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds.

As such, Policy Exchange has proposed a number of recommendations to streamline the process and support SME involvement in the training of apprentices, including financial support for off-the-job training. It suggests that SMEs should be supported with £2,500 to fund off-the-job training for apprentices under the age of 25, with an additional £500 on completion.

Given that FE Week reported that HMRC pocketed around £415 million generated by apprenticeship levy receipts last year, I want the Government to explore whether there is scope to use some of that underspend to back SMEs with the £3,000 payment advocated for by Policy Exchange, which believes that such support would cost around £200 million. The policy was backed by the Prime Minister when he was Chancellor during the covid-19 pandemic, so I urge him to consider that to get more people doing apprenticeships once more.

For some businesses, especially SMEs, the hidden costs are often what prevents them from being able to hire an apprentice in the first place. The funding is there to support our SMEs and to support our apprentices with more than just training, and this simple change could be transformative.

Alongside reforms to the levy, I want to use this time to raise the issue of functional skills requirements, which are also a barrier to apprenticeships. For someone to be an apprentice in England, they must prove that they have good qualifications in English and maths. If they cannot do so, the Government pay to enrol them on a course and enter them into exams to prove that. That is wasting tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, because, in some circumstances, despite an older apprentice holding a degree or other level 4 qualifications, the fact that they cannot find their GCSE or even O-level certificates means that they must retake the exams.

The current focus on functional skills qualifications also poses a challenge to some hoping to complete apprenticeships, disproportionately impacting those from disadvantaged backgrounds and SME employers that are more likely to offer apprenticeships to younger and less well-educated students. I wrote to the Department for Education to raise my concerns about this issue and was disappointed with the response I received this week from the Minister, who said that they are

“currently unable to offer any flexibility here”.

If we were to relax those requirements, there would be a significant public savings benefit, meaning that money could be spent on helping businesses to support their apprentices more effectively. Over the past five years, the Government have spent £379 million on functional skills, with the per-apprentice cost increasing by 64% since 2021-22. If we reduce those costs by being more flexible about functional skills requirements, businesses will benefit.

As the co-chair of the APPG on apprenticeships, I have spoken with businesses who told me that reviewing functional skills requirements, which is also a recommendation in the New Conservatives’ skills paper, will improve retention rates for apprenticeships. That will give businesses confidence that the investment they make in new employees will be worthwhile.

Data supplied to me by Multiverse shows that 60% of apprentices undertaking functional skills exams already have degree certificates, but they do not have their school qualifications to hand, or they were schooled internationally. I do not believe that it is necessary for someone to take on extra training in English and maths if they have a degree-level qualification. A degree should be an indicator of competency in English and maths, and new recruits should be focused on developing skills that are fit for industry and not on functional skills training.

Multiverse argues that this requirement is a significant and unnecessary barrier to work. Its data shows that 74% of apprentices withdrew from their course when they were required to undertake English and maths exams. Given that fewer people have been undertaking apprenticeships since the introduction of the levy, we need innovative and simple ways to improve retention rates, and removing functional skills requirements could help to achieve that.

However, outdated attitudes towards higher education are thankfully ending. Recent polling shows that the British public are more positive about technical and vocational education than they are about university education, with 48% of parents saying that they would prefer their child to get a vocational qualification after leaving school, compared with 37% of parents who would prefer their child to go to university.

More broadly, there is support for prioritising further education and higher education equally, with 31% thinking that vocational education should be prioritised by the Government over university education and only 9% thinking that university education should be prioritised over further education. It is regrettable, therefore, that equal treatment of higher education and further education is not shown through the welfare system. Families should not be penalised if their child opts for an apprenticeship rather than other post-16 education. However, current welfare policy requires child benefit to be removed from families with children aged under 19 in apprenticeships, unlike if their child were studying for A-levels or T-levels.

More needs to be done to ensure that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds benefit from apprenticeships rather than being short-changed by their university experience. For those with low academic attainment or opting for low-return courses, a quality apprenticeship could offer a better option for a variety of reasons. Such a route should not be closed off due to parental financial worries.

In conclusion, the over-expansion of university education by Tony Blair and new Labour has left too many young people in debt, without the skills needed to secure well-paying careers. At the same time, investment in high-skilled trades has dropped, leading to an over-reliance on cheap immigration from abroad to meet our ever-expanding list of job shortages. As the party that values hard work and aspiration, we need to reverse that trend and invest in local talent that matches local labour market demands.

The policy suggestions presented in the New Conservatives’ skills paper aim to shift the balance from Government overspending on low-return higher education and repurpose all money saved for investment in quality technical and vocational education that keeps talent local and high-skilled. That will be achieved only by both disincentivising students from poor-quality university education and incentivising them towards high-quality technical and vocational education.

Such measures also need the support of local businesses. Small and medium-sized businesses need to feel that their investment in local talent is worthwhile and supported by the Government. With renewed prioritisation for apprenticeships and other technical and vocational training and education, our country can upskill its workforce, meet labour demands without reliance on immigration, and ensure good jobs for the present are there for future generations as well.

The central message of the New Conservatives’ skills plan is to increase the parity between further and higher education funding. That means that it is essential for the Government to support all apprenticeships offered by an SME regardless of how much of the levy is used. That will help businesses and individuals get greater access to apprenticeships, which is in line with my vision to make apprenticeships a more viable option and to make clear that degrees are no longer the sole gold standard in education.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

I remind hon. Members to bob now if they want to be called, so we can work out who will speak.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Gullis]

Thank you, Dr Huq. I thank everyone who took part in the debate, and it was great to see broad consensus across the House. As Members have said, the levy is here to stay; no one doubts that, and no one, I think, wants to see it go. Indeed, how can it, now that we have seen it in action for some time? It has been looked at, reflected on and made to work in the interests of both the apprentice and the employer, who work hand in hand and get the maximum value for the taxpayer, who pays into the system.

I commend the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) for being brave enough to admit publicly that we are friends, and I, too, put that on the public record. I certainly hope it will not cost him at the next election in Glasgow East when he has to admit that he has befriended a rabid Brexiteer and Unionist, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) correctly pointed out. I hope that it does not cost him.

It was bewildering suddenly to see my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey)—someone I have watched on the Front Bench for so long—by my side in the debate. She has experience of the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. She not only did great work, but she has first-hand experience of making the levy work in the interests of getting more people into employment. That will greatly benefit the wider debate as we go forward, and I hope the Minister will engage regularly and persistently, as he always does, with my right hon. Friend to make sure we get answers to our questions.

I also have huge respect for my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), who I always enjoy listening to, particularly on these matters. He has spent a lot of time digging into the detail and making sure he understands it, which is very commendable.

Of course, I also thank the Minister himself. I love the fact that he has challenged me, and we will have that back-and-forth. Although I agree with him, and I want to see better quality English and maths coming out, nothing should be a barrier to people getting into education, particularly those who might have learning difficulties or needs that were not supported or identified when they were previously in education. There are also households where people may not have that academic attainment—in Stoke, 12% of my workforce have no formal qualification at all. I do not want generational poverty or educational disadvantage to be passed on, so we must make sure that young people can get level 3. As was pointed out, level 4 and 5 qualifications are important as well, and we must make sure we deliver on them.

I totally accept that we need to see educational attainment kept at a high standard, and I would never want a degree to be seen as a lesser qualification because of the removal—which I personally hope will happen—of this functional skill requirement. However, I understand the danger in removing it and how that could be left open to interpretation, so I look forward to going back and forth with the Minister and seeing how we can go forward.

Finally, Dr Huq, thank you for chairing the debate so well and for being so patient. I welcome any feedback from Members as we leave.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the apprenticeship levy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon]

The hon. Gentleman could not be more wrong. Why is it right to send somebody to a higher education institution, taking out a significant loan of £9,250 each year, to take a course that leads either to poor completion, poor continuation or poor progression? This Government are stopping that by imposing recruitment caps on such courses. I am proud that record numbers of disadvantaged students are going to university. More disadvantaged students are going to university than ever before.

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

Parents and pupils across Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke wait anxiously to find out the result of the fantastic bid made by the further education City of Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College and the higher education Staffordshire University for a free school to unleash the digital skills, in particular, that we want to see in Stoke-on-Trent. Will my right hon. Friend lobby the Schools Minister and the Secretary of State not only to make sure this is announced soon, but to make sure it is delivered quickly so that we get the school places we so desperately need?

[Robert Halfon]

I was very pleased to visit Staffordshire University, which is a model university that offers a brilliant policing degree apprenticeship scheme, among others. The Secretary of State is listening carefully to the bid, and I am sure she will make the announcement shortly.

Higher Education Reform

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

No, I think that the hon. Member has got it completely wrong. Under the Conservatives, an 18-year-old from a disadvantaged background is 86% more likely to go to university than they were in 2010. Under Labour, the richest students were seven times more likely to go to university than the poorest 40% in society.

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

I welcome the Secretary of State’s plans, but I want higher education reform to go further. A recent paper by the New Conservatives included an excellent suggestion to extend the closure of the student dependant route to students enrolled on one-year research master’s degrees. Would she support that?

[Gillian Keegan]

My hon. Friend knows that we have already looked at that in careful detail. It is kept under review, and we recently made changes to the taught course route.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Monday 12th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

This is the same process we follow every year. We take the independent pay review body’s recommendations seriously, are considering the report and will publish in due course, just as we do every year.

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

I met some National Education Union reps in my office for an hour and a half last week, and they were shocked to hear that I was going to say this to the House today. If the STRB has recommended that teachers should get a 6.5% pay rise—it was meant to report in May, something I signed off when I was in the Department—they should be given that pay rise. The Minister will rightly ask where that money is going to come from. I say we take it out of the foreign aid budget, year in, year out.

--- Later in debate ---

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

Improving educational outcomes in places like Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke relies on retaining the skills of highly qualified teachers. One way we can go about doing that is by changing levelling-up bonus payments in education investment areas, so that money can be given to teachers regardless of how many years of service they have. Will the Minister consider that action?

[Nick Gibb]

Having served as Schools Minister at the Department for Education for a period of time, my hon. Friend will be aware that we have levelling-up premium payments for teachers to teach maths, physics and computer science in disadvantaged schools, in order to encourage teachers in those subjects into the schools that need them the most.

Safety of School Buildings

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Schools (Nick Gibb)]

Let us not forget that under the last Labour Government, this country was falling in the international league tables on education standards in our schools. This Government, by contrast, are committed to making sure that every child in this country gets a first-class education and every opportunity to make the most of their abilities. If the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) looked at international education surveys such as last week’s Progress in International Reading Literacy Study—PIRLS—on the reading ability of nine-year-olds, she would see that education standards in this country continue to rise under this Government and thanks to the hard work of hundreds of thousands of teachers and teaching assistants in this country.

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

My right hon. Friend is right to praise the hard-working teachers in places such as Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, but he too deserves praise for being brave enough to be led by the evidence on phonics, as was mentioned by the shadow Education Secretary. Without his early intervention, despite opposition from Labour, we would not have seen that massive climb, and I congratulate him on ensuring that children had the best opportunities and the best start in life.

[Nick Gibb]

It is very kind of my hon. Friend to say that. I believe that that was due to the hard work of our teachers and the fact that the Government challenged some of the prevailing orthodoxies that were failing too many of our children. That is why we came fourth in the world out of 43 countries that tested children of the same age. I do not believe that any Labour Government would have the guts to challenge those orthodoxies, because they are so close to, and in hock to, the unions.

School and College Funding: The Midlands

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Tuesday 9th May 2023 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) on securing this important debate. I, too, echo her words and thank all the fantastic teachers, support staff, lecturers and many others who work in the education profession, from nursery through primary and secondary school to college and university, across the great city of Stoke-on-Trent and wider north Staffordshire, including Kidsgrove, Talke and Newchapel. It is an absolutely fantastic profession, and one that I was proud to spend nearly nine years in on the frontline, working day in, day out with our fantastic young people, who we were looking to make sure excelled into the future.

I am therefore proud to declare my interest as a paid-up member of the NASUWT and as someone whose partner works as an employee of Teach First, a fantastic teacher training organisation. She was also a secondary school teacher at a number of schools in Birmingham and London. I hope all those declarations are now on the books.

The reality is that school funding has increased by 44% per pupil since 2010-11, to £7,460 per pupil. The educational budget in 2023-24 is £57.3 billion, up 64% on 2010-11. In the 2021 spending review, it was a remarkable achievement of the Department for Education to secure £7 billion in additional spending. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor then came in to add another £4 billion on top of that over the next two years—2023-24 and 2024-25—which even the Institute for Fiscal Studies says is an 8% increase in real terms for England and Wales. The IFS also noted that spending in England kept pace with the 13% rise in pupil numbers between 2010 and 2023.

[Mr Perkins]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for quoting the IFS, because that same IFS report said that the loss of funding in the further education sector was the biggest of any education sector, and that even the extra funding in 2020 and 2021 had been eroded by the rapid growth in student numbers. He needs to provide a much fuller description of that IFS report if he wants to refer to it, as I shall be doing when I make my contribution.

[Jonathan Gullis]

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

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

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

rose—

[Jonathan Gullis]

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

[Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Jonathan Gullis]

I give way to my hon. Friend and then I will happily come on to the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan).

[Jane Hunt]

In my hon. Friend’s wonderful speech, will he talk about T-levels, for example, and how we are putting some fantastic skills into local communities, as we are doing at Loughborough College?

[Jonathan Gullis]

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

[Helen Morgan]

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

[Jonathan Gullis]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)]

indicated assent.

[Jonathan Gullis]

It is—fantastic! I am glad to know I got the right place. Those are the types of areas that can offer something unique—something to put on the job advert that says to people why they should come to our area.

Of course, there is also the PE and sport premium for primary schools. I keep referring to my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield because I enjoyed watching him from 2017 being a doughty champion for education when I was in the classroom. That £600 million, two-year funding settlement means that more primary schools can better plan for what they are going to do to invest in young people. I thank the Lionesses and Baroness Sue Campbell for their incredible diligence in leading that campaign. I thank the fantastic local companies in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, such as Bee Active, which delivers the high-quality PE lessons that young people truly deserve—not just in Stoke-on-Trent, but across Staffordshire. That is fantastic, and it again shows that the further investment going into our schools is creating healthier bodies and minds.

There is also the holiday activity food programme, which has been excellently led by the Hubb Foundation. Former Port Vale football player, Adam Yates, has been leading the charge, ensuring that nearly a million meals have been provided across the city to those who need them. In nearly every single school holiday, that programme has been providing thousands of opportunities for young people, working with local schools to target the pupil premium and the free-school-meal students who most deserve those opportunities. That is education at its finest, which is why we should be using the school building more. We should use the building when it is holiday time. We should see the building used to its full potential.

[Zarah Sultana]

The hon. Member made a point about free school meals. Scotland, Wales and even London have a policy of extending those to all primary school pupils. Can I count on the hon. Member’s support for my campaign to extend that provision to all primary school pupils in England?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Gullis]

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

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

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

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

[Helen Morgan]

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

[Jonathan Gullis]

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

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

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

[Mr Perkins]

Does the hon. Gentleman not see a contradiction between his saying, “I would be embarrassed as a parent if my children needed free school meals,” and on the other hand saying, “There is no stigma attached to having free school meals”? The reality is that there are many parents who do not apply for free school meals and might not consider that they are in poverty but who may well be eligible for them. Do the hon. Gentleman’s comments not rather miss the point?

[Jonathan Gullis]

I am sure that the hon. Member would never want to mislead this Chamber, and I accept that there was probably a mistake there. I think that I was perfectly clear when I said that, with the money that I earn, I would be embarrassed if I was unable to put food on my children’s table, day in, day out. I think that that was perfectly clear and the transcript will show it. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will reflect on his words. If I were to see my words misconstrued in any way, I would have to contact Mr Speaker’s office to get remediation, because it would be wrong to politically twist what was said abundantly clearly. Hansard will pick up my words. I would be embarrassed, personally, if I was unable to put food on the table, based on the salary that I earn. That would be taking a meal out of the mouth of a child in my constituency of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, who rightfully would deserve that meal. That is why I would be embarrassed: it would mean that those who need it most would not get the level of help that they truly deserve.

My mother was on a council estate in London, and she got off it thanks to grammar school—something that the hon. Member for Coventry South herself will know well about, having been such a beneficiary of that world-class education, which I hope to bring to Stoke-on-Trent. My father, who failed his O-levels, went back to being a cleaner at his school during the day and did night school in the evening. He went all the way through to becoming a council worker while doing night school for his A-levels, and then he went to the Open University and became the first ever in my family to get a degree.

My grandfather spent 93 hours a week driving lorries, my grandmother worked in hotels, my other grandmother was a teaching assistant, and my other grandfather, sadly, passed away when my mother was 17 years old. That is exactly why I am proud of my legacy—of what my family have done to give me every advantage that I have had in life. I am aware of the privilege that I have had, and I want to ensure that the pupils I am proud to represent in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke get everything that they deserve.

I want Stoke-on-Trent to be great. It is a small but mighty city, and levelling up will be achieved only by getting the education in our sector right. That is why I am so damning of the “Not Education Union” spending its time convincing teachers to walk on picket lines rather than being in classrooms and helping pupils to recover from the pandemic. We have accepted that the gravest mistake was that pupils were not in the classroom during the pandemic. Face-to-face learning is so critical, and the quality of provision was a postcode lottery for some pupils—whether they were given virtual lessons immediately or months down the line. That was no fault of the hard-working teachers. Sadly, it was the fault of Ministers who decided not to let pupils and teachers into the classroom together. I hope that we will never again see a day when face-to-face teaching is brought into disrepute.

I hope that Kevin Courtney and Mary Bousted can put their bias and political game-playing to one side. They are living out their socialist utopian fantasy that they are so desperate for—

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order. May I remind the hon. Gentleman that the scope of this debate is quite narrow? I am sure that he would like to pursue what he is discussing, but I am afraid that today is not the time. We need to stay within the scope of the motion. I am sure that he wants to get back to funding for his midlands constituency.

[Jonathan Gullis]

Thank you very much, Mr Pritchard; yes, I am happy to go back to the funding that has been so important to our local area. We are lucky that the schools in Stoke-on-Trent are quite new, so we are not in the desperate situation that, I accept, other areas are in. I believe that £1.8 billion of additional funding is now going into improving the school estate, which is important to improving our local areas. In Stoke-on-Trent, I want that funding to look at the challenge of the day, which is workload.

Money is going into schools. We now know that there has been an increase, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies itself has said, of above 8% in real terms. We know that that is keeping pace with a 13% rise in pupil numbers. Stoke-on-Trent has seen a 6.8% increase. The money is in the system. Now I want to see that money go where it is needed most. Schools obviously got support through the energy bill relief scheme; up to potentially 40% per month in the case of some schools was the saving from the cap on energy costs, which was a huge intervention. The total figure was about £500 million, if I remember correctly.

I want the money now to be used to think about workload. How can we drive down workload to free up teacher time—to ensure that teachers are spending more time in the classroom and more time doing interventions, rather than getting caught up in unnecessary, bureaucratic meetings? This is where I challenge the Minister to go to the DFE, print off every single piece of guidance issued and have a challenge to halve it. I asked the Department to do that when I was there. People laughed and said that it would fill up my office. It is a concern if schools have to deal with that level of guidance. That means that they cannot spend their time or money focusing on what really matters, which is why we need to ensure that we get the guidance halved.

Of course, there is also the issue of behaviour. Investing in behaviour hubs and behaviour specialisms is massively important to improving outcomes, because it is what is driving teachers out of the classroom and preventing people from coming into the profession. Sadly, they hear too often from Opposition Members how bad teaching is, how terrible teaching is. Talk about a negative advert for the teaching profession—talk about an advert to say why people should not go into teaching! When you are telling everyone how bad it is, do not be shocked that no one wants to go into it. What we need to do is to invest in behaviour hubs, so that we can ensure that young people have good law and order in their classroom, the teacher feels safe and secure and, ultimately, every single pupil has a right to learn, rather than one pupil having a right to disrupt and disregard the ambitions of everyone else.

Thank you, Mr Pritchard, for my time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) for securing this really important debate. She has neatly separated out the views from across the House on the issues facing our schools and the funding they receive. I respond to the debate in not only as the shadow Minister for further education and skills, but as the Member of Parliament for Chesterfield in the east midlands. Funding for schools and colleges in the midlands is an issue I feel passionately about and am very much aware of.

I will reflect first on some of the contributions made by hon. Members. My hon. Friend spoke about a number of issues that together show the scale of the challenge facing our schools. She spoke about the 9% reduction in school spending per pupil, the 14% fall in college spending per pupil and the even bigger spending cut of 28% in our sixth-form colleges. She reflected on the reality facing many of our teachers: one in five routinely buy equipment for their pupils. We all see that when we go into our schools and speak to teachers or they come to our surgeries. We see the extent to which people who were originally trained as educationalists are increasingly taking on that social work function and are expected to be the last line of resort for pupils in poverty. Pupils turn up unable to study because they are hungry or because of the social issues they face. Her speech was powerful in that regard.

My hon. Friend spoke about teachers being on strike, and there were differing views. There is a strange contradiction I hear from Conservative Members between their lauding of teachers when they are teaching pupils and their sense that these same hugely impressive people are somehow being persuaded by trade union leaders to rush out and strike with no idea of what they are doing, despite their education and their knowledge of the schools. The Government think school teachers are so weak as to rush out to strike because a trade union tells them, but what we are actually seeing is a powerful balance.

My hon. Friend hit the nail on the head on this and it was something I read recently in a letter from one of my constituents. If the pay offer was fully funded and teachers were not being told, “Your pay offer will be based on us taking money being used to educate children out of the school,” that would be an entirely different thing, but they can see every day that their school is struggling to get by, being told that it will have even less money because the pay offer will come out of the money that would previously have been spent on equipment, teaching assistants, special needs or other aspects. The offer is unacceptable in the extreme and teachers are turning it down because they recognise the impact it will have on schools. That reflects their commitment to their students.

[Jonathan Gullis]

The hon. Gentleman referred to the teaching unions and to teachers. Does he agree it was wrong of the leadership of the National Education Union to instruct teachers not to assess or mark work during the pandemic?

[Mr Perkins]

rose—

[Mr Perkins]

I understand your point entirely, Mr Pritchard, and I will of course stick to your strictures.

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South also spoke about Coventry College being in a position where it can no longer offer apprenticeships. That is so powerful and so damaging. We recognise the incredible importance of apprenticeships. We also recognise that in many areas there are huge difficulties in accessing apprenticeships, particularly for small businesses. Oftenm it is the colleges that are best at getting those small businesses—the non-levy payers—in to do apprenticeships. [Interruption.] I am sure I am not the only Member with a post-election cold, so please excuse me. My hon. Friend’s point on Coventry College ceasing to provide apprenticeships was incredibly powerful.

Moving on to the contribution of the hon. Member for Stafford (Theo Clarke), I was delighted to hear about the new facilities at Stafford College. The hon. Lady is absolutely right that new facilities make a huge difference, so it is good to hear about the progress being made on new capital spending at that college. I thought the comment she attributed to the Secretary of State for Education—that nothing demonstrates the Government’s commitment to young people like the amount they spend on capital equipment for colleges—was incredibly powerful. For precisely that reason, it is appalling that we have had a massive reduction in capital equipment spend on both our schools and our colleges under this Government. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) referred to the IFS report in November 2021, according to which funding for students aged 16-18 saw the biggest fall of any sector, and the increases only reversed a fraction of the cuts we have had. The hon. Member for Stafford is absolutely right; I will join her in holding this Government to account on their capital spending and use that to demonstrate the extent to which they have let a generation of young people down.

The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North gave a memorable speech. It was, frankly, most misleading of him to suggest that schools are being generously funded. Schoolteachers in his area will have listened to his contribution aghast at his argument that there has been generous funding under this Government. It is one thing for the Government to say it was an economic decision to introduce austerity and that they had to do it; it is quite another to actually suggest that all these schoolteachers are going on strike and leaving the profession at a time that the sector is being generously funded.

The hon. Gentleman asked about additional funding for schoolteachers. Removing the tax perk on private schools would actually fund an extra 6,500 schoolteachers. Look at the record of the last Labour Government: the reality is that we did not see losses in the sector on the scale we have seen under this Government. There has been a massive reduction in the number of teaching assistants and pressure is increasing on schoolteachers. All that has an impact. Look at the massive expansion in social problems in our schools—again, that creates pressure on schools. The idea that this is simply about providing a little bit more money and then schoolteachers’ lives will be better is just missing the point entirely.

[Jonathan Gullis]

The hon. Gentleman has outlined, fairly so, that if Labour was in government, it would recruit an extra 6,500 teachers, having put VAT on private school fees. I mentioned non-doms earlier; I apologise for the mistake in the policy idea. Can the hon. Gentleman say what specifically Labour would do with the money it raised that is not already being done?

[Mr Perkins]

I was in the process of answering precisely that question. As I was saying, it is not that if there were simply a little bit more money and we had these extra teachers, everything would be resolved. The entire approach that this Government have taken to schools has led to a massive decrease in morale that has meant lots of teachers leaving the profession and has led to a reduction in the number of teaching assistants, while the Government’s social policies have led to far more children turning up hungry than there were 13 years ago. All those additional pressures end up diminishing the morale and experience of schoolteachers—they all add to the problem. Frankly, if the hon. Member does not mind my saying so, the very transactional approach that he suggests misses the point about this Government’s failure on schools.

It is a great pleasure, however, to say that there was something I agreed with in the hon. Member’s contribution, which was about the use of buildings in school time—a really important point. In the all-academy world that we largely inhabit in terms of secondary schools, there are pressures that make that different when they are run by local government. None the less, he made that point well.

I will return to the point on which we had a debate. The hon. Member rather missed the point with the tone of his rhetoric on free school meals. I checked again what he said: he said that he would be “embarrassed” if he could not put food on the table with his salary, then created the straw man that his family receiving a free school meal would take it out of the mouth of another child. That is not what universal free school meals do at all. The hon. Member needs to reflect on his language if he genuinely does not want parents and children to feel that free school meals are something to be embarrassed about.

The hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) spoke about teachers he had met who recognised that they had short days and long holidays. It almost beggars belief to suggest that the reason that lots of teachers leave the profession is that they think they do not work hard enough and their holidays are too long. That does not bear any relationship to the schoolteachers I have met, who suggest that the huge workload outside their teaching time is one of the reasons that they are leaving the profession.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Monday 17th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

During the eight years prior to the pandemic, the disadvantage gap closed by 13% in primary schools and by 9% in secondary schools by 2019. The hon. Lady is right that the gap widened over the course of the pandemic, which is why we introduced the national tutoring programme, providing intensive one-to-one and small group tuition to those who have fallen behind. It is why altogether we are spending £5 billion on an ambitious multi-year education recovery plan, why the recovery premium is targeted towards the most disadvantaged and why the pupil premium, introduced by the Conservative-led Government in 2010, is being increased from £2.6 billion to £2.9 billion this year.

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

I congratulate the Minister on having the bravery when he first entered the Department back in 2010 to narrow the disadvantage gap and stand up to the unions when it came to some big reforms in our education sector. It is just a shame that the Labour party continues to stay silent while the unions hold children’s futures to ransom over the fact that they want teachers to continue striking, no matter the disruption it will cause to children’s learning and, potentially, their ability to pass their exams in the summer. What work is being done to ensure that students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, do not have to suffer because union baron bosses such as Bolshevik Bousted and Commie Courtney seem to want to destroy the lives of the young people they serve?

[Nick Gibb]

Well, my hon. Friend makes an understated case for making sure that young people are in school, and it is disappointing that pay negotiations are being conducted by holding strikes. We have reissued guidance to schools to make sure that, where schools have to restrict attendance, they prioritise the most vulnerable children, the children of critical workers and, of course, children in exam years.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

I will do even better than that. We are introducing family hubs, which have a lot more utility and will be much more useful to those who need them.

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

Will my right hon. Friend congratulate Councillor Dave Evans and his team, led by Lisa Lyons, Vonni Gordon and Steven Orchard, for getting Stoke-on-Trent City Council’s children’s services from “inadequate” to “requires improvement”? That is an incredible turnaround, but obviously there is still a way to go.