Fair Taxation of Schools and Education Standards Committee
Debate between Jonathan Gullis and Alex Cunningham(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
Just under a week ago, I visited Ash Trees Academy, a primary special school in Billingham, to discuss the challenges it faces in delivering quality education to children with some of the most difficult of lives—children with both physical and learning special needs. Some of them cannot speak, and others are educated while lying down.
It was great to meet the children, but their access to the full package they need is compromised by a lack of on-site facilities and appropriate staff numbers. One example is the lack of a hydrotherapy pool. Due to a lack of funding, the pool they had was in need of considerable improvement and the decision was taken to fill it in and to repurpose the space. Some children are now transported to another site for vital therapy and to enjoy the water, but there is not enough money in the school for them to have their own special vehicle. I visited the Dogs Trust a few weeks ago, and it has fantastic facilities, including hydrotherapy pools—for dogs!—yet this school for special-needs children does not have such facilities.
Ash Trees also has no medical person. The duties once undertaken by a school nurse, such as feeding youngsters by tube, now fall to classroom assistants. I am in awe of them for undertaking the training to do such a difficult task, but why should school assistants have to undertake that medical duty when schools in other areas have full-time medical staff on site? We owe it to the children to do so much better, and when the schools Minister visits my constituency, hopefully soon—he is nodding his head, because he has agreed to come—I hope he will be able to drop in at Ash Trees to see those challenges at first hand.
Parliament Week is always one of my favourite weeks of the year, when I can indulge myself by doing what I enjoy most, which is visiting schools. I am pleased to say that the majority of children I meet are happy in school. For some, it is the happiest place of their young lives, as they often come from a background of poverty and chaotic lifestyles.
I thought I was imagining that children in some schools are taller and have rosier cheeks and a level of confidence way beyond children in other schools, but I know it to be true. If not for breakfast clubs, free school meals and even snacks provided by teachers, many children would not be equipped to listen and learn in the classroom. It is to this Tory Government’s shame that around 40% of children in the north-east live in poverty, and their life chances are limited as a result.
Schools were in a dreadful state when Labour came to power in 1997, in terms of standards, buildings and resources. Do not get me wrong: I am pleased that recent Governments have built on the legacy left by the last Labour Administration, and I know that, in some places, many children are doing extremely well in good and outstanding schools, but we were never going to get from where we were in 1997 to where we are today in just 10 years. It had to be a long-term policy, so I am pleased that some progress has continued to be made.
Despite the best efforts of our teachers and other staff, not all children get what they need. Headteachers tell me that restricted budgets mean they cannot fill vacancies, or mean they are planning to make people redundant, and that they are worried about the children. Again, despite great strategies from our teachers, many children in key stage 1 in particular are further behind in their education due to the pandemic. Government interventions have had limited success.
As I worry about that, we are told that Eton College plans to open a sixth-form college in neighbouring Middlesbrough, backed by a right-wing Mayor who believes that troublemakers on Teesside should be removed to Rwanda. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) might agree, but some of those troublemakers are the product of 12 years of Tory cuts. I doubt that an elitist sixth form in our area will help to address similar young people in our community. Had schools and children’s services been supported as they ought to have been since 2010, we might not have seen a situation where Middlesbrough’s Mayor says there are so many troublemakers that they should be robbed of their right to remain in the UK.
Is there anything like equality in education? Do we have a system that is geared to the most vulnerable and to children from difficult backgrounds? Those children do attract extra funding, but I remind Conservative Members that their successive Governments, including the coalition Government with the Liberal Democrats, have shifted more and more resources towards more affluent areas and away from areas of deprivation.
