Free Childcare
Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts(7 years, 2 months ago)
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Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank my parliamentary neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Ruth George), for securing this debate, because investing in quality, sustainable and affordable childcare is, quite simply, the best investment a country can make. It enables children to excel and fulfil their potential, and parents to get out to work and fulfil theirs. It enables communities to become more economically active and more highly skilled, and offers the taxpayer immediate savings in benefits expenditure and in the long-term cost of the NHS, the education system and so on.
I am not usually delighted by Conservative manifestos, but when the Conservatives added a pledge of 30 hours a week of free childcare to their 2015 manifesto, I have to confess that I was delighted to see them nick one of Labour’s best commitments. It meant that, whichever party won the election, childcare was about to become more affordable and more accessible for struggling parents. If ever we should have consensus in an area, it is in this one.
As a parent of a nursery-age child myself, I declare an interest. I have also put three older children through nursery, so I can absolutely relate to the thousands of parents for whom the costs of childcare push household finances to the brink. As Members of Parliament we are all paid on very generous terms, but even so, when my youngest two children were in nursery at the same time, the monthly bill came to more than our mortgage, so the need to get this policy right is paramount. That is why I am so bitterly disappointed that the Government have failed to put their money where their mouth is.
I asked parents and childcare professionals in my constituency to send me their early experiences of the policy. Three clear problems emerged: first, local nurseries and childminders have an unsustainable raw deal financially; secondly, the registration system is chaotic and unfit for purpose; and finally, the eligibility criteria for the scheme are far too strict.
Let me start with the terrible deal that nurseries have been dealt and the dire consequences of that. The amount that the Government have given local authorities to provide these supposedly free hours is simply not enough. It does not cover the cost of wages, premises, utilities, food or learning resources. One outstanding nursery told me that it was losing £500 per year for every free 15-hours place. That will double to an impossible loss of £1,000 per place when extended to 30 hours.
Nurseries that offer the 30 free hours are left at risk of closure because they lose money for every hour’s childcare they provide, but nurseries that do not offer them are at risk of closure because parents will, understandably, choose to go elsewhere. Almost all nurseries are therefore being forced to cut costs, and it is children who pay the price. Given that there is a proven link between the amount that staff are paid and the likelihood of a nursery being rated outstanding, a race to the bottom is clearly bad news for staff, kids and parents alike.
The registration system for parents is far too complicated. My constituent Cat applied online in April. The nursery asked for her code, which had not yet been provided. That code took 10 days to arrive, by which time the nursery was told that it had expired. She has repeated the process several times now, with endless phone calls and emails, and is now anxiously waiting to find out whether her application for her child’s place has been successful. That seems a bizarre set of hoops to have to jump through to gain a funded place at a nursery her child is already at.
I have constituents who are not entitled to these free hours because the Government do not deem them to be eligible. They include John and Nicola Andrews from Dukinfield. John works full time, but Nicola is a trainee midwife. Although she works an excess of 40 hours a week practising and studying for the NHS, because that is unpaid, she is not deemed to be a fit candidate for free childcare. This woman is working hard in a valued public service, but we are not going to help her with her childcare—Minister, that is wrong.
Likewise, I have constituents not in work who would like to return but cannot apply for jobs and attend interviews without childcare being in place. We should simply be offering free hours to parents whether they are in work or not, which is the Labour party policy and should become the Government’s policy too.
Minister, please listen to these concerns. Do not hide behind reports from two years ago. This is a mess and it needs to be sorted out for a better deal for parents, providers and, most importantly, children up and down this country.
Mr Goodwill
As the hon. Lady points out, we have tranches of entry, so anyone who has an offer in August for a job that will start in September could get a code. The situation is similar for people who want more hours. We have been as flexible as possible in ensuring that those codes can be given. We take people’s word for it that their job offer is real, but when they confirm the code it becomes apparent.
This provision builds on the existing 15 hours a week of high-quality early learning that workless households of two, three and four-year-olds are entitled to. We know that starting education early makes a difference to long-term attainment and earnings, and that work is the best route out of poverty to transform children’s life chances. I heard this week from a school principal who had supported parents of two-year-olds getting the free hours to retrain and take up employment when their child became eligible for 30 hours. That is a fantastic outcome from a programme in its infancy. The 30 hours is making a real difference.
Jonathan Reynolds
I cannot believe that the Minister is not receiving representations that list the problems with this policy. Let me give him an example that I could not fit into my speech in the time available: my children’s school is ending free provision for under-fours, because the funding simply does not work as it has worked in the past. There is actually a net reduction in provision. Is he honestly saying that he is not receiving messages like that from around the country?
Mr Goodwill
I am surprised to hear that from the hon. Gentleman, because Tameside council in his area received a 25% increase in the hourly rate given after our review. We are putting our money where our mouth is.
As hon. Members will know, we rolled out the policy with a pilot that delivered for 15,000 children, and on 1 September, we rolled it out nationally, so that all eligible parents could join the 15,000 families in our pilot areas already benefiting from 30 hours. As expected, demand for the 30 hours offer has been high, and more than 216,000 parents have successfully received eligibility codes for the autumn term. I am pleased to be able to update the House: 90% of those codes have been checked by a provider on behalf of a parent seeking a 30 hours place. That is up 19 percentage points from 71% when I last reported, which is fantastic progress.
Of course, that figure may still continue to increase slightly, but I want to be clear that I do not expect it to reach 100%, because we cannot predict parents’ choices and situation. People’s circumstances will change. Not every person who successfully applied for a 30-hours code will decide to seek a free place for their three or four-year-old. Some parents will want to stick with a provider who does not offer 30 hours; other parents who applied for tax-free childcare and were eligible for 30 hours and who were issued a code will not want to take up that place because they might use the tax-free childcare offer. The figure may increase slightly, and I will keep the House updated.
Sixth-form Education: International Comparisons
Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Nic Dakin
In March 2016, Ministers introduced five new tests to ensure that new sixth forms are viable, which I welcome, but that was a limited step because it does not cover sixth forms that are already open. There is now a long tail of small institutions, with 1,180 school sixth forms enrolling fewer than 100 students. There is emerging evidence that some of their performance is not quite what we would wish it to be.
Meanwhile, university technical colleges have struggled to achieve viability in a system currently built around exams and transfer at age 16. As a result, six have closed and one did not open as planned. A sensible policy from the Department for Education would be to review sixth forms that are particularly small or underperforming, in the interests of value for money at a time when money is short.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
May I add to the adulation that my hon. Friend is rightly receiving for his speech tonight? I cannot help mentioning Ashton Sixth Form College, which is just outside my constituency—it is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), who is sitting on the Front Bench. Does he agree that one of the strange bits of Government policy, as I understand it, is that where demand does exist for more sixth-form provision, that can be met only through the creation of school, academy or free school sixth-form provision? That seems very strange, given the credit that has rightly been given to the sixth-form sector by Members on both sides of the House this evening.
Nic Dakin
My hon. Friend makes a good point. The Minister is listening carefully and will obviously take that point on board, along with the other points that hon. Members have made.
I would like to conclude by posing a few questions to the Minister. Why are sixth-formers in England funded to receive only half the tuition time and support available to sixth-formers in Shanghai, Singapore and other leading education systems? Why are sixth-formers in England facing a standard diet of just three advanced-level subjects, while those in other international systems can study eight or nine?
It is good to have a Secretary of State who was educated in the comprehensive system and who attended a comprehensive sixth-form college—it is a first that I very much welcome. She will be well aware that 744,000 16 to 18-year-olds choose to study in colleges, while 433,000 choose to study in schools. All are affected by the squeeze in funding for their age group. Will she therefore move away from funding sixth-formers based on an arbitrary funding rate and conduct a review of funding to ensure that it is linked to a realistic cost of delivering a rounded, high-quality curriculum? Will she agree to work with the Sixth Form Colleges Association, the Association of Colleges and the Association of School and College Leaders in conducting the review, building on the current evidence base?
Finally, in the state sector, education funding decreases at the age of 16 to an average of £4,583 per student, per year. In the independent sector, school fees increase at the age of 16 to an average of £15,333 per student, per year. What does the Minister think are the implications of that for social mobility? On the day when the Prime Minister has made an important speech on the matter, it sounds to me like the sort of everyday injustice that she would be keen to tackle in her desire to build a shared society.
Children and Social Work Bill [Lords]
Jonathan Reynolds ExcerptsMonday 5th December 2016
(8 years ago)
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The Minister for School Standards (Mr Nick Gibb)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
I am delighted to be able to open the debate in the absence of the Secretary of State, who is in Shanghai at the education summit. I know she regrets not being here, and she sends her apologies.
As the Secretary of State made clear when she spoke at the national children and adult services conference a few weeks ago, nothing is more important than making sure that children get the best start in life, feel safe, are well looked after and are able to fulfil their dreams. Nowhere is that more important than for those children who do not have the benefit of a loving family to help them on their way and to support them as they grow up, or who face other significant challenges, which make it harder for them to flourish and thrive.
Children’s social care professionals perform some of society’s most vital, most important work, and we entrust them with nothing less than keeping our children safe and making life-changing decisions about what is best for their futures. These are highly challenging, highly complex tasks, performed by deeply dedicated and committed individuals.
However, as we all know, the system in which these individuals work is far from perfect, meaning the help and support being offered to vulnerable children in different parts of the country is a long way from being consistently excellent. Evidence from Ofsted shows that most local authorities struggle in some way to provide consistently effective core social work practice. That is why this Government are determined to bring about the widest-reaching reforms to children’s social care and social work for a generation.
Reviews by Professor Eileen Munro, Sir Martin Narey and Professor David Croisdale-Appleby, among others, have given us a deep understanding of the challenges faced by children’s social care. They have described a system in which initial social worker training is not consistently preparing students for the challenges of the job, and those already doing it too often lack the time, specialist skill and supervision needed to achieve real change for children and families; a system that focuses too much on management and is governed by prescribed approaches rather than excellent practice; and a system where services have not always been designed around vulnerable children, and innovation has not been given enough space to thrive.
Over the last six years, the Government have taken important steps towards addressing these challenges. For example, we have raised standards in children’s homes and enabled young people in foster care to remain with their carer up to the age of 21. We have invested £100 million through our innovation programme to allow radical new approaches to children’s social care to be developed and tested. In April, we announced a £200 million extension to the programme to take this further still. We have taken a variety of steps to enhance the status, skills and capacity of the social work profession—both for children and for adults. Those include appointing chief social workers; publishing definitive statements of the knowledge and skills required by adults’ and children’s social workers; and investing over £750 million since 2010 in traditional and fast-track routes into the profession.
Mr Gibb
If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I would just like to explain some of the tenets of the Bill, and then I will take his intervention.
We are starting to see things change. This year, we have seen the first “outstanding” judgments under the most recent—and most challenging—Ofsted framework. Local authorities are testing innovative ways of supporting families through the children’s social care innovation programme. Examples of excellent leadership across the country are being celebrated by Ofsted and others.
However, we are under no illusion that there is still much more to be done. That is why, in July of this year, the Department for Education published a clear and ambitious vision and plan for the changes that need to be made to drive sustainable improvement across the whole country. This is our plan for putting children first. It sets out fundamental reforms across each of the three pillars on which the social care system stands: people and leadership, practice and systems, and governance and accountability. This Bill is a crucial part of delivering reforms across those three pillars.
Part 1 concerns children who are in care or supported by the state. Clause 1 sets out, for the first time, a set of corporate parenting principles designed to establish consistently high standards in the support of looked-after children and care leavers, and drive a culture of excellent corporate parenting. The principles are intended to help a local authority to think and act in the interests of the children in their care in the same way as any good parent would. This is not about putting a new set of duties on local authorities; it is about changing behaviour and practice. The aim is to ensure that all parts and every tier of local government have the needs and circumstances of looked-after children and care leavers in their minds in their planning and decisions. This responsibility goes beyond just children’s social care, reaching across the whole of the local authority.
Clause 2 will ensure that the corporate parenting ethos extends into adulthood and that all care leavers are clear about the support on offer to them and how to access it. Care leavers will have access to information about the services available to them through a local offer from their local authority, with each local offer based on consultation with care leavers themselves.
Clause 3 will give all care leavers access to support from a personal adviser at any point up to the age of 25. We amended the Bill in another place to make sure that the service is offered at least annually so that care leavers can take advantage of it whenever they need to.
Mr Gibb
If my hon. Friend will forgive me, may I make a little more progress, and then I will come back to him?
The next section of the Bill recognises that children who are adopted or who leave care under another permanence order often have ongoing difficulties resulting from their early life experiences. Clauses 4 to 7 will therefore give them access to the same support that looked-after children receive from virtual school heads at local authority level, and that designated teachers provide in schools to help with their education. Following an undertaking given in the other place, we are bringing forward amendments that will extend these provisions to children who have been adopted from overseas.
Clauses 8 and 9 expand the factors that courts and local authorities must take into account when deciding on the most appropriate place for a child. They do not give priority to one type of placement over another, but they do place more emphasis on stability and what would be in a child’s best long-term interests, taking account of the impact of any harm that the child may have suffered.
Jonathan Reynolds
I am extremely grateful to the Minister. I was trying to tell him that I have to speak in a Delegated Legislation Committee at half-past 4, so the clock was ticking down for me. I want to ask him about a specific point relating to some casework that I have done in my constituency. It is about the lack of safeguarding checks for 16 and 17-year-olds in private fostering arrangements. I had a situation where a young person within that age group in my constituency went into a private fostering arrangement, and the parents were unable to get the assurances they would have had in a public setting. That is not addressed in the Bill, and I wonder whether the Minister would be willing to look at it if I tabled an amendment at a later stage.
Schools that work for Everyone
Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts(8 years, 3 months ago)
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Justine Greening
The reality is that we will work with the Charity Commission to set a more stretching, tougher bar for independent schools to demonstrate that they are, indeed, eligible for charitable status. If they are unable or unwilling to meet those tougher standards, they simply will not be able to get charitable status, and that will then, of course, impact on their tax status too.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
What does it say when the new Prime Minister’s first major initiative is so regressive that the former Tory Prime Minister would rather resign from Parliament than be faced with voting for it? The Secretary of State must know what the real problems are. They are, most of all, the shortage of teachers, the workload that we then put on the rest of the teachers, insufficient pupil funding in some areas and, in most places, an absence of the very best, most outstanding leadership. Please, Secretary of State, take this issue away and come back with something serious about standards, not structures.
Justine Greening
We are working on all of those things, but that does not mean that we should not ask ourselves additionally how we can make sure that there are more good school places for more children, especially in parts of the country where there are currently insufficient good school places. It is not an either/or question. These proposals today—this Green Paper that we are opening up—are about how we ensure that the overall reforms we are bringing forward are going to be successful.
EBacc: Expressive Arts Subjects
Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
Thank you very much, Ms Buck, for calling me to speak, and I also thank the more than 100,000 teachers, parents, arts enthusiasts and many of my own constituents who signed this petition calling for the English Baccalaureate to include an expressive arts option.
There is an old adage used by the business community: “What gets measured, gets done”. Having served as a school governor myself, I remember all too well that key performance indicators, inspection frameworks and exam results inevitably influenced our resources and our priorities. So I agree with the central point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) in opening this debate that excluding creative subjects from the EBacc will devalue and erode their place in our education system, and subsequently in our society.
The impact of that would be significant and detrimental. It would be detrimental in three main ways—to our economy, our wellbeing and our society. First, let us consider the economic case. As a resident of Greater Manchester, I vividly recall the excitement that all we felt as a city-region when it was announced that the BBC would be relocating to us, with its production facilities moving to MediaCity. I knew what a boost it would be to our growth, our productivity and our young people’s life chances. The BBC pledged to create a
“world-class talent pool in the North”
and in the decade that has followed it genuinely has.
As a result of that move, our schools now place real value on creative learning. Take my own local authority, Tameside, which recently partnered with the Lowry theatre and the National Theatre to introduce pupils to the acclaimed production of “War Horse”. The pupils were encouraged to create their own large-scale puppets, to write their own theatre scripts and ultimately to perform in their own productions. It was inspiring; no child involved in such a project will ever forget it.
The Greater Manchester skills strategy now rightly emphasises the skills required by our creative industries, and Manchester is not alone in doing that. Last week, as a member of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, I went on a trip to Soho. I stress that it was not for any personal pleasure; it was to visit some of our creative industries. The companies I saw included the BBH creative agency; Ridley Scott Associates, which is a production company; Smoke & Mirrors, which is a visual effects company, although it does so much more than visual effects; and well-known names such as Google and YouTube, which continue to revolutionise media and creativity. These are exciting, visionary companies at the forefront of the creative industries, which are growth industries. It is clear to me that for the sake of the UK’s economic advantage, our young people need more—not fewer—opportunities to achieve high-quality qualifications in these areas, as well as having a desire to work in them when they start their careers.
Secondly, let us consider the health benefits. Investment in the arts is known to improve wellbeing. Studying creative subjects boosts self-esteem, improves emotional intelligence, and reduces depression and anxiety. Many of these benefits were examined in the Government’s own paper, “Arts for health and wellbeing”, which was published earlier this year. I know from first-hand experience that my son Jack, who has autism, finds literacy and numeracy lessons emotionally exhausting, but he finds music classes exhilarating. So, the arts not only keep our NHS bills down, but they offer employers a labour market of happier, more confident and more emotionally resilient individuals.
Finally, we must consider the societal case for retaining an educational focus on the arts, because the arts enhance our regional identities as well as our economy. So much of what makes Greater Manchester great comes from our culture: from the Bridgewater Hall to the Stone Roses; from L.S. Lowry to Jeanette Winterson; from “Coronation Street” to last week’s wonderful street theatre commemorating the Somme; and our tremendous brass band festivals. Frankly, I could go on, Ms Buck, and fill the whole three hours, such is Manchester’s status as a cultural superpower.
Nationally, too, our arts and culture provide so much of what we celebrate about Britain and Britishness. I think I speak for everyone in Westminster Hall today when I say that none of us wish to keep the debate on the EU referendum going, but for me a particularly resonant case for remaining in the European Union was made not by an economist or a politician but by Axel Scheffler, the children’s illustrator, who said that without the freedoms provided by the EU he and Julia Donaldson would never have created “The Gruffalo”. What a loss that would have been to everyone in the European Union and beyond. Art breaks down demographic and socioeconomic divides: chip away at it and we chip away at so much of what I believe makes our society great.
In conclusion, I fear that the exclusion of arts subjects from the English Baccalaureate represents the latest misguided attack on our education system. It is an attempt to hark back to a bygone era of schooling, in which one size was expected to fit all and only one form of ability was valued, because employment options then were far narrower than—thankfully—they are today. For the sake of our economy, our wellbeing and our enriched society, we must not go down this road, and I move that we include expressive arts in the English Baccalaureate.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Nick Boles
I agree with my hon. Friend. One of the results of the decision to leave the European Union is that we as a nation will have to do what we have done for hundreds of years, which is live by our wits and our talents, and we need to develop those talents by investing in education, in science, in research and in skills training. He is absolutely right about the crucial role that universities play—obviously, my hon. Friend the Minister for Universities and Science is leading on that—but we are working closely together to get more universities involved in providing degree apprenticeships, so that people can get degrees and rise to high positions through apprenticeships.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
One of the messages that has clearly come across to me from my experience campaigning in the referendum is that the free movement of people between this country and the rest of the European Union is no longer acceptable to the people I represent. What contingency plans has the Department got for what it will mean for the British economy to end the free movement of people?
Nick Boles
The hon. Gentleman will know that no changes are going to take place any time soon in any of the arrangements with the European Union. We have made a decision that we are going to leave the European Union, but there will be a lengthy process of negotiation to establish exactly what new arrangements will be put in place. However, he is right that one of the chief sources of concern in our communities is the free movement of people, and I am sure he is also right that in his constituency, as in my own, that will have been a motive for many people to vote. That does not alter the fact that whether we are inside the single market or not, whether we have free movement of people or not, investment in the skills of our own people so that British people can get the best British jobs is what we need.
Further Education Colleges: Greater Manchester
Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Ryan. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) for securing this most timely and pertinent of debates. I think we can all agree that we like to talk about this subject, but to have 90 minutes in which we are not discussing the European referendum is extremely welcome.
I put it to colleagues that Greater Manchester is of course the greatest city region in the country. Anywhere we go in the world, people know who we are. We are a great city region that is, through devolution, on the verge of even further greatness. With more autonomy over long-term investment, infrastructure and innovation, we have a once in a generation opportunity proactively to reshape our economy. We can encourage the growth of specific industries, build proper communities, not just lists of houses, and attract better paid and better quality jobs; but to be ready for all that, we must first build a robust platform for educational attainment and significantly improve our population’s skillset. I share the aspirations that have already been expressed for even further local control and devolution in this area.
Further education is the bridge between schools and the world beyond. It is the link between education and the workplace. It is the sector through which life chances are enhanced, horizons are broadened and second chances are realised. Further education is a stepping stone. It is a leg up. It is a place where ambitions are fostered, new interests are cultivated and barriers are broken down. It is a vital chapter in my own story and in thousands of British success stories. Yet too often FE remains the poor relation in Britain’s education sector. It is undervalued, under-resourced and too often a political football.
I would like to join colleagues in taking the opportunity to reverse that position by making four brief points: first, that the skills revolution that we need in Greater Manchester depends upon a reasonably resourced and strategically valued FE sector; secondly, that we must improve our ability to predict what skills our economy and businesses will need in future; thirdly, that political interference and goalpost moving must be stopped for the sake of our local economy; and finally, that there needs to be a radical rethinking of FE provision for people with special educational needs in Greater Manchester to ensure that wider life chances are truly accessible to all.
Let me start with the need for resources and investment. As it stands, nearly half of the population of my borough of Tameside hold no qualifications beyond level 2. An enormous 48% of residents are only qualified to GCSE level or equivalent. Just 17% hold traditional degree-level qualifications and only 1% are qualified to postgraduate level. To boost wages, attract better jobs and reduce the local welfare bill, it is self-evident that we must urgently upskill the local economy.
It has long been my view that the most effective way to increase educational attainment is to invest heavily in early-years education. Interventions from birth will make the greatest difference to an individual’s life chances and provide the greatest return on investment to the taxpayer for every pound spent. However, to fail to invest adequately in further education is to write off successive generations of young people who did not benefit from the intensive early-years opportunities that we all want to see.
GCSE results have improved strongly in Tameside recently, but there are still significant legacy problems. It is imperative that an ambitious skills strategy forms part of the Greater Manchester devolution strategy and named funds are earmarked within that to support quality local FE institutions. It is also imperative that funds are directed to where they are needed most. I do not think that I am ever described as a parochial MP, and I absolutely understand that a strong Greater Manchester is essential to a strong Stalybridge and Hyde, but I am concerned that local FE leaders tell me that they simply cannot access capital funding and perceive a bias towards central Manchester in the funding of projects that they know the neediest people in our local population will not be able to access.
Tameside has shown that even in these times of quite painful austerity, local investment really works. Through the bold Vision Tameside project, which is a collaboration between Tameside Council and Tameside College, a newly built college in the centre of Ashton is bringing learning into the heart of our local economy. I can share the great news that Vision Tameside is already showing signs of success. Historically, one of the biggest problems in our borough has been an exodus of young learners to FE establishments elsewhere, but this morning the new principal of Tameside College confirmed to me that admissions to the newly built college in Ashton for this September are up on last year by a quite phenomenal 500 places. Students will now learn in an exciting environment that is fit for purpose, with local shops and cafés benefiting from their custom and Tameside becoming a net importer of FE students—not a net exporter. I cannot recommend that vision highly enough.
My second point is that we must diversify our local skills mix. We must get better at predicting what skills the economy in Greater Manchester will really need. As it stands, the skills base in Tameside is unequivocally too narrow. The latest labour market data that I have for this debate suggest that I have more individuals employed in health, social care and education in my constituency than in all other occupations put together. That is clearly not a sufficiently diverse employment base.
I also have, however, twice the national average number of constituents employed in the manufacturing industry, with thriving employers such as the Hyde Group, Smurfit Kappa and Kerry Foods. Even though I said I would not mention the EU, I cannot resist praying for a remain vote next week to protect jobs in the manufacturing sector. Although I will always value public sector jobs and will fight to defend the role of manufacturers and producers, we also need to understand what Tameside’s and Greater Manchester’s role might be in a future, more knowledge-based, economy.
Quality apprenticeships in relevant areas, like the creative and digital training opportunities, are being provided locally by Brother UK, and that is an excellent start. I would also like to see a focus on future roles in emerging sectors such as green and low carbon technologies. We need to work more closely with our existing employers to map their likely medium-term needs while we try to attract other employers and steer our economy’s longer term needs.
My third point is that political interference is actively harming the success of further education in Greater Manchester. Just as primary school teachers have seen SATs altered at the last minute and secondary teachers have seen GCSE requirements amended without sufficient warning, so educators in the further education sector have seen goalposts moved counterproductively by the Government with their heavy-handed approach to remodelling qualifications. The most acute example of this is perhaps the reforms to functional maths and functional English assessments. Such courses provide the opportunity for those who have missed out on essential GCSE-level qualifications to have a second chance at acquiring those core credentials. The Government have now introduced external testing to replace teacher assessment, which has moved the goalposts so dramatically that pass rates in Tameside have halved, and in many places have fallen to single figures. If we make it impossible for people to acquire basic level numeracy and literacy skills, we effectively consign them to the scrapheap, and there will be no winners from this approach.
Finally, as the parent of a child at a special educational needs school, I cannot contribute to a debate such as this without mentioning the dire need to improve further education opportunities for those with special and complex needs. Take autism, for example. It was my great privilege to help Ambitious about Autism’s youth patrons to develop their employ autism campaign, which highlights that although 99% of young people with autism want to work, only 15% of adults with autism are in work. That is a shocking one in four young people with autism not accessing education beyond school.
The employ autism campaign asks for more opportunities to develop skills post-16. As part of my drive to see Greater Manchester become an autism-friendly city, I want us to take a lead on this agenda with more specialist courses and more specialist day colleges, and with no young person left behind through a lack of post-school opportunities.
Ms Ryan, thank you for the opportunity to contribute to today’s debate and to re-establish further education in Greater Manchester as a top priority. Let us invest where it is needed and build a competitive sector that makes our region’s labour market fit for the future.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts(8 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Nick Boles
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising this important question. I recently had an excellent meeting, facilitated by my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller), with groups representing deaf people, and I will shortly be holding a round table with groups representing people with other kinds of disability. It is essential to ensure that everyone can benefit from the opportunity of apprenticeships and other forms of technical education, and we are determined to do that.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
12. What plans she has to require all primary and secondary schools to become academies.
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
17. How she plans to implement the proposed requirement for all primary and secondary schools to become academies.
The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
We expect all schools to be academies, or have plans in place to convert, by 2020 and all schools to be academies by 2022. By setting out our clear expectation for full academisation now, we can give schools, local authorities and dioceses the opportunity to plan effectively for a sustainable future and ensure that no school is left behind. We have set aside funding to support a high-quality, fully academised school system, including over £500 million available this Parliament to build capacity.
Jonathan Reynolds
I support academies where people want them, but there is nothing worse than a top-down reorganisation of a public service for political, rather than sound policy, reasons. In response to a written question from me earlier this month, the Department confirmed that deficits for schools that convert will remain with the local authority. In my borough, over half of our schools will have deficits by 2017. How can the Government justify transferring this burden on to local councils, when it is their own funding of schools that is to blame?
Mr Gibb
I read the hon. Gentleman’s recent letter to the Ofsted lead for the north-west, Chris Russell, and I share his ambition to improve standards of education in Greater Manchester, but it is not a top-down reform; it is devolution in its purest form that gives control of schools to the professionals on the frontline. That is what this is about. He should be supporting the measures because they will raise academic standards right across our schools system.
Trade Union Bill
Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Ms Eagle
It is impossible not to agree with my hon. Friend, and it saddens me beyond words that we are here today dealing with the most significant sustained and partisan attack on 6 million trade union members and their workplace organisations that we have seen in this country in the past 30 years. With the number of days lost to strike action down 90% in the past 20 years, there is no need whatsoever to employ the law in this draconian way.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome my hon. Friend to her new position. She says, rightly, that the number of days lost to strikes in the UK is at its lowest for 20 years. It is even more significant than that: we lose fewer days to strike action in the UK today than we did during the second world war. There is no problem here that needs fixing.
Education and Adoption Bill
Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Nicky Morgan
I thank my right hon. Friend. I hope that hon. Members in all parts of the House will be generous enough to recognise the huge contribution that talented and innovative sponsors are bringing to academies and schools up and down the country. Like her, I welcome—
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Nicky Morgan
I will finish answering this point, and then I might give way to the hon. Gentleman.
I welcome the fact that schools, academies and sponsors across the country are ensuring that young people in Solihull, as in other local authority areas, are receiving an excellent education.
I give way to the hon. Gentleman and then I will make some progress.
Jonathan Reynolds
The Secretary of State is extremely courteous and I am extremely grateful. I am a supporter of academies where they are the right solution for a school, but in my area the academies perform less well than the local education authority schools, so it is clear that school improvement is a lot more complicated than simply forcing schools to become academies. What does she have to say to that, and what is her plan to turn round academies that are themselves underperforming?
Nicky Morgan
Without going into the detail of all the schools in the hon. Gentleman’s area, I would say that sponsored academies are often the weakest schools in an area—they may have been failing or in special measures for a long time—and then a sponsor comes in and works with them to make improvements right across the school for the benefit of its young people. I will come on to talk about the moves that we make as a Department, working with regional schools commissioners, where there are issues relating to academies.
Academy status enables us to move quickly to replace poor governance in failing schools under the guidance of an expert sponsor, and it gives strong leaders the freedom to make decisions that will work for the young people in their care. That is why we have turbocharged the last Labour Government’s academies policy since 2010. When Labour left office there were just over 200 sponsored academies; there are now more than 1,400.
We backed the sponsored academy programme because we could see that it worked for parents, teachers and, most importantly, young people. It is a matter of profound regret that the Labour party now appears to have arrived at a position where it is prepared to deny young people in schools that are not up to scratch the benefits that we know academy freedoms can bring.