Exam Reform

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Monday 17th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. One of the problems we have had with languages is not just the decline in the number of pupils taking them—the result of changes made by the previous Government—but insufficient rigour in the way speaking and translation have been assessed. We aim directly to address that.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

One head teacher in my constituency contacted me to say that he went to bed in 2012 but woke up in 1956, and I know that manufacturing employers in my constituency are equally outraged by the Secretary of State’s proposals. Why did he not consult broadly with educationists and employers before coming forward with these proposals, and how will he ensure that young people end up with a qualification that is fit for the skills needs of the future?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her point, but she invites us to consult. As I have pointed out, we are launching a consultation today, but we cannot launch a consultation on any proposals. Perhaps she is inviting us to launch a consultation on whether we should have a consultation on some ideas that someone else might think of before we can actually come forward with our own. It seems to me that she wants to have her consultation and eat it at the same time.

Secondary Education

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Thursday 21st June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point. One weakness in the implementation of the Education Act 1944 was that the third strand, technical schools, did not receive the investment that they should have done, and as a result a weakness in technical education, which this country has had since 1851, was reinforced.

The advent of university technical colleges, an idea pioneered by Kenneth Baker and Andrew Adonis, is going some way to dealing with the problem, and Alison Wolf’s report, which has injected additional rigour into vocational qualifications, also helps to meet that challenge, but we need to do more, including reforming the funding of further education colleges in order to strengthen vocational subjects.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

I do wonder whether the Secretary of State ever visits schools and speaks to pupils and teachers. Children’s progress and achievement can currently be judged by the children themselves and by employers within a common framework. CSEs had little value in the past, so how can he assure me that they will have any value in the future? I cannot see how they can.

[Michael Gove]

I do visit schools, and I am constantly inspired by the amazing job that so many brilliant teachers do. I am encouraged by the fact that more and more teachers are more and more enthusiastic about the changes that we are making, which will inject greater rigour into the system. One of the problems that we face, however, is that employers do not have faith in D and E passes at GCSE at the moment; they do not consider them an appropriate springboard for success at work. We need to work with employers and others to ensure that they have more faith in the qualifications that our young people achieve.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

That sounds like a model of the type of collaboration between local government, industry and schools that we would like to promote and that we are happy to see flourishing under the coalition Government.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Warm words and policy documents—and even Latin—are useless if they are not backed by action. Does the Minister consider that local authorities that have cut youth services completely are providing a sufficient service and, more important, what is he going to do about it?

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am extremely grateful to the Secretary of State for his helpful advice. I was not asking for his advice, but I am grateful for it anyway.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Local authorities have a statutory duty to provide or commission sufficient youth services, but many of them are not now fulfilling that duty. What will Ministers do to make them fulfil their statutory duty?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

The hon. Lady is a long and tireless advocate of the promotion of youth services and she has rightly pointed to the section of the Education Act 1996 that places that duty on local authorities. We are looking to rewrite that duty and streamline it to ensure that local authorities cannot shirk their responsibility to ensure that positive activities are available for young people in their area, and that it is clearly understood.

As part of “Positive for Youth”, I have said that we will look closely at what activities for young people are going on in local authority areas and I invite young people to ensure that they are auditing the youth offer in their areas and reporting back to the centre. That is part of “Positive for Youth” and I hope that she will encourage young people in her area to do that.

Financial Education

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan]

I will give way again in a moment if the hon. Gentleman is dead keen. All right; I will carry on.

The Government are correct in their desire for people to take responsibility for their finances in order to reduce unaffordable debt, but they have to get the ball rolling, which means that they need to find some way of getting this going in our schools.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that although we might want to teach many subjects as part of the curriculum, unless we specify them there is always the risk that they will not be taught? Practical maths has been mentioned, but different parts of the subject might be taught. Some subjects— I would include emergency life support skills among them—are so important that we must specify that they have to be taught.

[Kevin Brennan]

I have sympathy with the Minister over the difficulty created by having more and more subjects shoved and squashed into the curriculum. Education Ministers of all parties will know that it is a difficult task as they come under pressure to include all sorts of subjects in the curriculum. My point is that we need to be absolutely clear what we are talking about. If the Government accept the report, they will have to go a lot further than simply including some practical questions in GCSE maths papers. What my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) said is absolutely correct.

There are examples of good practice out there. I shall not go into them in too much detail, but some schools around the country could link up with local credit unions. This has not been mentioned much in the debate, but it is a great way to encourage responsible saving in community-based organisations and to teach young people about the responsible use of money and about saving.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Willetts]

The life sciences strategy we produced earlier this week aims to rise to the challenge my hon. Friend identifies. In particular, there is an imaginative proposal under which 20 compounds that have been identified by AstraZeneca but are not currently being commercialised will be open to research by others, with a view to using them to create the medicines of the future.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

T5. Bolton university is excellent at recruiting and retaining large numbers of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. It is worried, however, about the future of the widening participation premium, which makes up 6.7% of its teaching grant. Can the Minister reassure them that that premium will be fully funded in 2012, 2013 and beyond?

[Mr Willetts]

We have to look at the Higher Education Funding Council for England teaching grant year by year, so no assurances can be given about the total teaching grant at this stage. That has never been possible under any Government. What I can tell the House is that the total amount of money going into access funding has increased significantly because of the increase in fees. It is now running at a higher level—£200 million higher—than ever before.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

It is reported that youth services are taking a 25% cut on average and we know that some youth services are disappearing altogether. Will the Minister tell us how many youth projects have closed, how many youth workers have been made redundant and what he will do to ensure that local authorities fulfil their statutory responsibilities?

[Tim Loughton]

I cannot tell the hon. Lady how many but I will tell her that this Government are funding 63 myplace centres, the latest of which I opened in Bognor Regis just last Friday. In the next few weeks, the Government will produce their “Positive for Youth” policy, which will point to the future of new partnerships, new forms of funding and new ways of working together to ensure that our young people get decent youth services and a decent offer up and down the country. Reform needs to come to youth services in this country because the model under the previous Government was not sustainable.

New Schools

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend, who was a very distinguished leader of West Sussex county council. In Crawley we need additional capacity and people also need proper choice. The Discovery free school provides both.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

I, too, attended the world skills event at the ExCel centre—I was supporting my constituent, Andrew Fielding, from MBDA, who was competing in electronics. His employers and others at the event told me how essential it is that young people are taught technology in school. What will the Secretary of State do to ensure that there is good technology teaching with up-to-date equipment for all young people in all schools, not just technology colleges?

[Michael Gove]

We are doing everything possible to attract new teachers into science, technology, engineering and mathematics by transforming initial teacher training and providing additional support for teachers who are qualified in those disciplines. We will say more on that when we publish our teacher training strategy, which I hope will be later this month or early next month.

Careers Service (Young People)

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Lady makes a valid point. We de-ring-fenced all the components that make up the early intervention grants, and that funding is £2.2 billion, rising to £2.3 billion next year. That is a very large sum. I acknowledge that we had to reduce it by 10.9% as we moved into the coming year, but that is a consequence of the many very difficult decisions we have had to make in government as a result of the budget deficit. I am sorry to sound like an over-wound gramophone, but those are the consequences of being in government and of inheriting a budget deficit that had to be tackled if we were to get our economy moving again. Young people suffer more than any other group in society when an economy is floundering, and we are in the middle of a very difficult world economic crisis driven by world debt, so we have to get our budget deficit under control if we are to survive as an economy through such difficult periods. I think the best thing for young people is to get our economy growing as soon as possible. That is why we have had to make those decisions.

Local authorities currently have a duty to provide careers advice, and they fulfil that duty through the Connexions service—a service that has, I am afraid, had mixed reviews. The Education Committee’s report said, in measured terms:

“Connexions services have provided careers guidance to individuals alongside wider support services targeted, in general, at more disadvantaged groups; and some Connexions services have been more successful than others in discharging these two duties equally successfully.”

Alan Milburn, who was referred to by the right hon. Member for Leigh, was a little less circumspect in his report on access to the professions when he reported a number of surveys that suggested low levels of satisfaction among young people with the careers guidance they received from Connexions, showing that 45% of over-14s received either no careers advice or advice that was poor or limited. He went on to say:

“Throughout our work we have barely heard a good word about the careers work of the current Connexions service.”

It is very difficult to listen to the emotional tones of the right hon. Gentleman when that is the legacy of the very careers advice that he is so passionate about providing to young people.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

I find it slightly odd that the Minister is not quoting from the Department for Education survey of 5,000 young people, which found that more than 90% were satisfied with the service that they had received. That survey was carried out by his own Department.

[Mr Gibb]

I am not sure what service those people were receiving from Connexions, but there is no doubt that all the surveys showed dissatisfaction with the careers advice given by Connexions. There is more satisfaction with the advice that it gives to vulnerable young people on how to get back on track and back into the mainstream, and I acknowledge that that part of the service has been of a higher quality.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

Local authorities still have a duty to provide careers advice, because section 68 of the Education and Skills Act 2008 is still in force, and they are required to do so. They are making decisions based on the very difficult financial settlement that we were left with by the previous Administration, but there are good examples of good practice from around the country, including Northamptonshire. In April we published statutory guidance setting out how local authorities should continue to meet that statutory duty under section 68 to encourage and help young people to participate in education and training. We are publishing on the Department’s website best practice from around the country.

[Julie Hilling]

I thank the Minister for giving way yet again; he has been very generous. Will he confirm that the careers advice will be given by professionally trained and qualified careers advisers? Will he also confirm that as soon as the Education Bill goes through, local authorities will retain responsibility just for the NEETs and not for everything else, which will transfer to schools, although schools have not been given any additional funding to provide that independent careers advice and guidance?

[Mr Gibb]

On the first point, the duty to provide advice to vulnerable young people who face problems in accessing education will remain with local authorities, whereas the duty to provide careers advice is transferring to schools. Of course, schools currently have a duty to provide careers education, within which an element of careers advice is also required. We are introducing that duty in the Education Bill at a time when we are acting to reduce bureaucracy and remove unnecessary duties and burdens from schools to allow them to focus on driving up standards, so the fact that we are introducing that new duty is a signal of the importance that the Government attach to high-quality careers guidance.

We are giving schools that duty for two reasons. First, we believe in the concept of decentralisation and of devolving decision making. We trust schools to take decisions in the best interests of their pupils, and restoring trust to the teaching profession is the cornerstone of our approach to education reform. Some argue, as has been argued today, that schools have an inbuilt bias to advise pupils to stay on in the sixth form regardless of whether it is in their best interests. That is why the Education Bill imposes the duty on schools to give advice that is independent.

Many of the incentives for schools were distorted by the structure of the league tables. Professor Alison Wolf set out this problem in her landmark report on vocational education. She said that false equivalencies have encouraged schools to enter pupils for qualifications that score highly in performance tables but are not necessarily valued by employers—effectively building bad advice into the system. Some qualifications have been proclaimed as being equal to four GCSEs, but they do not provide the broad grounding that students need to progress. As a consequence, some pupils have been encouraged to make choices that significantly reduce their prospects for success in later life.

That is why we are reforming performance tables—to end the damaging impact of false equivalencies, as well as removing perverse incentives in the funding system that have encouraged schools and colleges to offer qualifications that are easier to complete but do not necessarily provide the rigour and quality that students need. We are also introducing destination measures that set out where school leavers go after they leave school—whether into high-quality employment with training, to further education colleges or to university.

--- Later in debate ---

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I support the idea that a good head teacher will select those teachers who are the most inspirational to the students entering that school and encourage them in their future lives and careers. In this country, however, we often look to the short term and the next job, instead of building up the capability for a lifetime of jobs—which could amount to 10 jobs. We are all going to work longer, because we are all living longer.

I know from the previous comments of Labour Front Benchers that they do not always approve of traditional subjects such as physics, chemistry and modern languages—[Interruption.] Well, I have heard expressed in this Chamber objections to the English baccalaureate. However, even if the Opposition think that those subjects are old hat, which people in China and India certainly do not think, as they are rushing to institutes of technology to study them, I am afraid that we are not that great either at teaching new subjects in the way that employers want.

The shadow Secretary of State mentioned ICT, and Dr Eric Schmidt of Google said:

“Your IT curriculum focuses on teaching how to use software, but gives no insight into how it’s made. That is just throwing away your great computing heritage.”

I fear not only that we are not teaching enough rigorous and traditional subjects, but that we are not teaching the new subjects deeply enough, or in a way that imparts how things work, in order to give us the capability to build more effective programming and IT industries. The problem therefore is not just with the subjects, but with the way ICT is being taught.

The Government are taking absolutely the right approach by encouraging more students to study such core subjects, which will give them broad career options, rather than cut off their options early, as many people have unfortunately been doing.

[Julie Hilling]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way, because I have been sitting here getting increasingly frustrated at the notion that history, geography, modern foreign languages, maths and science are the only subjects that will give a student the breadth of knowledge with which to go forward in their lives. Is the issue not about academic rigour and young people learning to learn and learning to evaluate what they learn? That is the important thing, not the subject that they are doing.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Interventions are getting a little bit too long.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

In the ’80s and ’90s, I spent 10 years as a youth worker in a youth co-operative project for unemployed young people. At that time, more than a quarter of young people were unemployed. They were a generation who had no jobs, no hope and no future. Some of those young people never recovered from that period. Some committed suicide; others turned to drugs and alcohol, or ended up with long-term mental health problems. Even when the economy started to recover, those young people who had spent many years unemployed found it incredibly difficult to get a job. Let us be honest, most employers would probably prefer to employ a 16-year-old fresh out of school than a 26-year-old who has spent most of the past 10 years unemployed, with nothing to get up for and nothing to do.

The youth co-operative tried to stop the cycle of despair for young people. It helped them to gain skills and set up their own businesses. It gave them driving lessons and taught them how to use computers. It built up their confidence and gave them a reason to get out of bed, and it was open 365 days a year. It was about more than skills education; it provided a support network, and it challenged attitudes. It helped people to believe in themselves and gave them practical help. We helped young people who were sleeping in cars and on friends’ floors to get rehoused. We then helped them to decorate their new homes and find second-hand furniture. We helped young people whose schools and colleges said that they were not good enough for university to get there and to complete their degrees, and we supported young people into work. Then we were closed by Tory cuts in the youth service.

The Labour Government came along and introduced the Connexions service, which offered careers advice-plus, in the form of straightforward careers advice for all young people and a dedicated support service for young people not in employment education or training, or those at risk of becoming NEETs. The service did many of the things that the youth co-operative did in the ’80s and ’90s. Now we have another Tory Government, and youth unemployment is at its highest since 1992. We are seeing the destruction of Connexions and the youth service, and all support services are being slashed. It is back to the future again. Young people again feel that they have no jobs, no hope and no future.

We can argue about the effectiveness of the Connexions service. The Government like to use the result of an online survey of 510 respondents who said that they were unhappy with the service, rather than the survey of 5,000 young people carried out by the then Department for Education and Skills, which found that over 90% were satisfied with the service that they had received. Surely no one can argue that online advice is a substitute for face-to-face advice. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman) and, I suspect, many other Members, I did not get good careers advice—[Laughter.]

[Stephen Twigg]

Like all of us; that’s why we are here.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julie Hilling]

Perhaps—although I have to say that it is not a bad job.

It is down to us to ensure that young people are inspired to follow certain careers. How can they find out what jobs and careers are out there? If they do not have friends, family or people in their neighbourhood who are in a variety of professions, how do they find out what they can do, or what their options are? That is the situation that faces many of our young people, especially those from poorer backgrounds.

[Damian Hinds]

The hon. Lady is raising some very good questions, but is she implying that all those services have been working perfectly for the past 10 years or so?

[Julie Hilling]

I am quite happy to concede that they have not been working perfectly, but I have to tell the House that the Government’s proposals will make things worse, not better.

Many industries—not just the professions involving solicitors, doctors and so on—are very much family affairs, in which sons and daughters follow fathers and mothers, aunts and uncles and grandparents into the workplace. Before I worked for a rail union, which was very much a family affair, I had no idea about the range of jobs available in that industry. How does a young person without connections find out about such jobs, and how do they ensure that they have the right skills to apply for them when they do find out about them?

Of course, the advice that young people receive has to be good. I remember a member of my staff taking a young person to meet a careers officer before the Connexions service was established. Again, I am not saying that Connexions was perfect. That young women wanted to become a vet, but the careers adviser very kindly told her about how to become a veterinary nurse. That was disgraceful. We need to be ambitious for young people. I worked with two young people who were told that they were too stupid to go to university. One of them now has her master’s degree, and is a head of department in a sixth-form college. The other has a degree in Russian and splits his time between Russia and Korea. A computer program will not inspire young people. It will not be ambitious for them, and it will not stretch them. It will not build their confidence, or give them the support that they need if they are to reach their full potential.

What if a young person has learning difficulties or physical disabilities? I want to talk about Thomas, whose mum and gran came to see me in my surgery. Thomas had not been diagnosed with a disability and there was a threat to take his mum to court because he would not attend school. Eventually, through our intervention, Thomas was diagnosed with an autism-related condition. He would not leave home, go to school or do anything else. He had a Connexions adviser, however, who regularly came to the house at the same time each week—the sort of thing that a young person with an autism-related condition needs. By using the available funding, the adviser was able to take Thomas out to the library and various other activities, and to give him experience of work programmes. Thomas’s life was transformed, but his mum and gran are now absolutely desperate about what will happen to him.

Connexions was not just about careers advice. Funding was made available to support young people like Thomas or others who for other reasons were not making a good transfer to further education or work. There was funding for programmes that provided support, training and education for young people, including a summer programme for 16-year-olds from the New Opportunities Fund. An activity agreement provided an allowance in return for fulfilling an agreed action plan and funding was provided to purchase experiential learning opportunities. There was a learning agreement aimed at engaging local employers and increasing the number of young people in jobs with training. The programme offered financial incentives to employers and young people, in combination with suitably brokered learning provision.

In Wigan there was a range of bespoke projects aimed at the most vulnerable young people in the borough—including teenage pregnancy courses and a video production course for young offenders. The re-engage project built on the success of the activity agreement pilot by securing a discretionary fund for young people living in Wigan’s most deprived neighbourhoods. That also funded summer projects, in partnership with the youth service, to keep school leavers engaged. An apprenticeship pathways project was delivered by Wigan college and local learning providers, which looked at new ways of engaging and motivating closer to the labour market young people who were struggling to find opportunities. Wigan council’s supported employment team was funded to assist young people with learning difficulties in accessing work opportunities. The council delivered a successful apprenticeship programme, recruiting young people and supporting them through trained mentors. In partnership with local learning providers and colleges, it successfully delivered a range of activities to engage and motivate NEET and potentially NEET clients—including the clearing house, taster sessions, locality-based summer programmes and careers events.

What happened as a result of all that support and all those programmes? Youth unemployment fell by 40% from 1997 to the start of the global financial crisis, and more than half the young people on jobseeker’s allowance were off it within three months. But now it is all gone.

Most young people from advantaged backgrounds will make the transition from school to employment, probably via university, with few problems, but surely we have a duty to support young people who, through no fault of their own, will find that transition difficult or impossible. We owe it to young people to help them fulfil their potential. We owe it to them to give them the best possible support and advice from trained and qualified advisers. I hope that the Government will do another U-turn and save either the Connexions service or the careers service—at least something that will be valuable to young people. And while they are at it, I hope that they will save the youth service, too.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

School Funding Reform

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I entirely agree, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the effective way in which he has lobbied for a more imaginative and sensitive response to school building in future. He has specifically argued that we should ensure that we safeguard the interests of the schools in the west midlands that are in the greatest need, whether in Sandwell or in adjacent boroughs. I commend him on his statesmanlike and constructive approach.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

At a time of devastating cuts to local authority budgets, will local authorities face yet another in-year cut for which they will not be able to budget? As there is an economy of scale in providing services to schools, will children in non-academy schools suffer because of that deduction from local authority funding?

[Michael Gove]

Again, that is a thoughtful question. First, our consultation on reform of LACSEG—the local authority central spend equivalent grant—is designed to balance stability with a reflection of the fact that some local authorities no longer discharge such responsibilities, but still receive funding. On the second point made by the hon. Lady, it is only fair to say that in our consultation we point out that some economies of scale that are claimed do not materialise on the ground— but she will have an opportunity to contribute to the consultation, and I look forward to hearing her thoughts.