Ofsted (14 to 17-year-olds)

Justin Tomlinson Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen). That was an extremely constructive, thorough and positive speech, and it boded well that he made no request for extra money—had he been part of the reshuffle yesterday, I am sure he would have done well. Furthermore, he recognised that one size does not fit all. Every single town and community has different challenges and different opportunities, and that shone through.

I was not intending to speak, but I was disappointed that the Chamber is not packed with lots of eager Members. We are debating a challenge in all our communities, and yet there are so many opportunities to shape ways in which we can make a real difference, so I am cobbling together some of my suggestions and will then be supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), who has a huge amount of experience in this area. I want to concentrate on how Ofsted can focus on engagement, but not at the cost of the academic pursuit of the five A to C grades. Between us all, we are not asking for money or for huge amounts of change; we are only looking for some extras.

I welcome the new Minister of State for Skills, Enterprise and Equalities, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles). I hope he is “planning”—boom, boom!—a bright future for the development of young people; it is early in the morning, so apologies for that.

My interest arises because I went to a school at the bottom of the league tables. Many of my friends failed to engage and they took a very different path from me. Two of them spent time at Her Majesty’s pleasure, although it is fair to say that, when I phoned up my old headmaster to say, “I have made it into Parliament,” he suggested that that was possibly worse. Also, in Swindon we are proud that we will have one of the first university technical colleges opening in September. The UTC will focus on real, tangible skills and working with local employers. I am envious of that, because it was not something I had when I was growing up.

The crux of what I am asking for concerns utilising our fantastic school and community facilities. We have spent huge amounts of taxpayers’ money, rightly, on building brilliant schools, but right up and down the country, as soon as it gets to 4 o’clock, for use of the facilities we slap on a huge hire fee for community and sports groups and groups that want to engage constructively and positively. In a world of extremely busy families, it is incredibly difficult to find volunteers to contribute to society and to make a difference. Where we find them, however, we then say, “By the way, if you want to put on a football or street dance club or to provide scouts activities, we will charge you”—what a huge disincentive. We have already paid for the schools, they already exist, so it is simply a question of getting a caretaker to open them up.

I was a councillor for 10 years and we had precious little open space in my area, apart from in the schools, separated from us by huge fences. No wonder we have childhood obesity and children stood on street corners, not being engaged. I encourage, where possible, opening up those schools for sport, not only for the next potential draft for the World cup, after our disappointing performance this summer, but for the future coaches, treasurers and club secretaries, because the opportunity is for all to engage constructively. A huge number of careers can come about through sport, other than by being top-notch athletes.

Other obvious groups who might use the facilities include the St John Ambulance or the scouts. I have to pay credit to some of their work in the most challenging communities. Such groups have been given extra money to engage in those communities, and they have adapted their models. What might be offered in one community can be very different in another. Any group of parents who wish to engage with young people constructively should have access to our fantastic facilities without price being a barrier.

I also want to touch on the opportunity for young entrepreneurs. Many of the brightest entrepreneurs in this country, such as Lord Sugar and Richard Branson, left school without a single qualification between them. They found, however, that entrepreneurship engaged them. We already have fantastic organisations such as Young Entrepreneur, but we can go further.

I organised a session with one of my local colleges, Swindon college. Rather than running something for a week, based in the main foyer and selling to their friends, the students were dispatched to Blunsdon market. For those who do not shop there regularly, I should point out that it is a really tough environment, where the customers are price sensitive and trade is hard to come by. The students were given a stall on a wet Wednesday afternoon, but all seven teams engaged positively. The best team set up a 1950s cake stall, after visiting the week before and recognising that the clientele was older. They tried to match the market and took £120. What happened after that session is key—the landlords and local business entrepreneurs offered to mentor one of the young entrepreneurs to take things forward. After she left, she set up her own bakery, which is doing well, and the good people of Swindon enjoy her produce. There is real opportunity in such engagement, whether after school or in the school holidays.

I am also a big fan of the National Citizen Service programme. I make six or seven visits to each of the processes in the summer holidays—it is the highlight of the summer recess. The key is the absolute transformation of the children. As its stands, we wait for children to engage proactively—generally, these schemes are advertised and it is the most proactive children who sign up. I would like the NCS programme to be expanded far more, using the long summer break to get children to do good things. For those not familiar with the NCS programme, aptly, there is a debate on it following this one. It involves sport, team work and charity and community work and places a huge emphasis on carrying on beyond the initial programme during the summer.

My final request concerns the battle in this country of youth services versus sport—the two, it seems, will never meet. Actually, those budgets should be merged. Again, if leisure centres are not being used in the evenings, let us open them up and use the facilities. Sport often captures the imagination. When I was a councillor, I was the lead member for leisure, and I remember the lead member for youth saying it was their job to engage with the youth. I said, “Well, I’m beating you, because on a Friday evening when we put the ice-skating disco on, I have 600 young people enjoying themselves. You should be parking your youth facilities outside our ice-skating disco and then you will actually engage with the public.”

When I first got elected, I tried to get in touch with young people by asking them whether we should expand youth clubs. They looked at me as if I was something from the ’80s—I probably was. We therefore need to merge youth and sport programmes and use them better. As with schools, we are not using our leisure centres on a Friday night at 10 o’clock, so let us open them up for constructive engagement if local parents want to put something on.

We have an extremely enthusiastic Minister. I would like every effort to be made to engage and inspire young people. They have only one opportunity. We cannot deliver one size fits all, but we can open up and provide fantastic facilities for positive and constructive engagement, and that will make a real difference.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) and to almost follow the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), who, as my hon. Friend said, made a thoughtful and in-depth speech. I share my hon. Friend’s concern that there are not more people here. This is an important subject and should concern every Member of Parliament. I know that not every Member can attend every important debate, but it is sad that there are not more of us here today.

I will speak briefly about my own experience growing up, attending a proper comprehensive school and my time in the classroom as a schoolteacher, and then talk about some of the positive things that are happening in one of the local authorities in my constituency, North Lincolnshire.

I do not want to outdo my hon. Friend, but I went to the worst performing comprehensive in the worst performing local education authority in the country. Like him, I went to school with people who went down a range of different routes. Some of them unfortunately went to prison on more than one occasion—that was just from my class, and we were the top set. Some went into good old proper, traditional apprenticeships, which I am pleased to see this Government have reinvigorated and restored. A small number of us went on to university. It saddened me that in the years after we left, that route to university was taken less and less by those from my school. In the end, our school was closed down on two occasions—it was a cycle of decline. Unfortunately, a lot of this happened before we had the term “NEETs” and before anybody really seemed overly concerned about disengagement.

By the time I started teaching, there was a lot more emphasis on the issue, I am pleased to say, and there has since been a lot more emphasis on different ways of engaging young people. The point the hon. Member for Nottingham North was making throughout his speech is that we need not only a co-ordinated solution—and not a one-size-fits-all solution—but early intervention. We hear about that all the time. The statistics are quite appalling: if we cannot get to a kid by the time they have started school, it is often too late to recover them.

I saw that both as a secondary schoolteacher and then, up to the day I was elected to this place, as a primary schoolteacher. They are very different jobs, but doing both really convinced me of the case for early intervention. When I was a secondary schoolteacher, we would sometimes be thinking, “What have they done to them in primary school to result in us ending up with this?” I realised as a year 1 teacher that unfortunately the battle was often lost before children even got into primary school. I would strongly endorse any strategy that identifies—as indeed the troubled families initiative and others do—families whose children are at risk of failing pre-school.

In my own area, we have tried to address some of the problems connected to literacy and to get kids to sit down with their parents through launching a project called the imagination library. That project was started some time ago by Dolly Parton, who comes from a family in which illiteracy was normal. It was first launched in the UK in Rotherham; the Labour leader of Rotherham council, Roger—unfortunately I have forgotten his last name—was the first man to bring it here. I took the project to North Lincolnshire council, which agreed to fund it.

Every child under the age of five receives a book in the post every month, and the scheme is properly integrated into the children’s centres in the local authority—an excellent local authority that has not closed a single children’s centre and indeed has expanded some services such as library services. Everything, including the children’s services and library services, is tied in together. Every child is now getting a book in the post every month and getting support from the children’s centres, so that by the time children get to school they have some of the basics. That is really important for their progress through school, but more important is that parents are tied into their child’s educational attainment in literacy very early on.

In the part of my constituency covered by a different local authority, East Riding of Yorkshire council, we have unfortunately not been able to secure council funding, but I run the scheme in Goole myself and raise the money for it. In North Lincolnshire, over 7,000 kids are signed up now, but the number in Goole is unfortunately a bit smaller. After the scheme had been running for a year, we did a feedback survey; I got a letter from a parent of one the children saying that having the books in the post every month was really great because there was a focused thing every month when the family sat down and talked about books. She also said that her own reading had been pretty poor, but the scheme had really helped her and she felt confident that she could help her own children. That is just one example of how we can engage with families early on to ensure that they buy in properly to their children’s education. When I was teacher, we always used to say that the one thing worse than the children was the parents, but the saddest thing I used to see was the parents who never engaged.

[Justin Tomlinson]

My hon. Friend is as ever delivering a powerful speech. When I visited some of the more challenging schools in my constituency, they echoed that comment about parents not wishing to engage. That is a further reason for using school facilities during the summer, as it would allow children to be in a constructive environment rather than one in which they are simply abandoned in front of the television.

[Andrew Percy]

Absolutely—I entirely endorse what my hon. Friend says. There are some parents who, if they have not achieved at school or school was a particularly bad place for them, remain intimidated by teachers or by school. In some cases, there is a sort of embarrassment—I have seen this myself—because they feel as if they are going to be tested and they know their own reading and literacy skills are really poor. Consequently there are some who are almost embarrassed if their children do better than them and so are disengaged from their children’s education. That is one of the saddest things to see. I entirely endorse anything that means we can bring parents in so that the school buildings become their buildings—for example, by putting on adult literacy and numeracy courses, as happens in a lot of places. Whatever, it is all for the better.

Moving up to secondary school, I agree entirely with the comments of the hon. Member for Nottingham North on the changes around equivalency. I taught in a really tough school in Hull, and I was appalled that, despite my protestations, which saw me dragged into the head teacher’s office, we went down the route that I call the GNVQ fiddle. That is exactly what it is. I had children who wanted to do my subject, history, at GCSE but were told they could not because they were not going to achieve a C, and consequently they were forced on to GNVQ media studies. Now, I do not disparage GNVQs at all, and perhaps GNVQ media studies was an entirely appropriate course for some young people, but when it was not their course of choice, and these things were done purely to get the figures up, something is seriously wrong with the system.

What happened when we started allowing the GNVQ fiddle? The school’s figures went through the roof, but as soon as the measure changed again, they plummeted—I think we recorded a pass rate of about 60% one year, but that plummeted to 15% or 16% when the measure changed. We were therefore absolutely right to remove what was clearly a way of fiddling the league tables. However, I share the hon. Gentleman’s concern that the pendulum should not swing too far the other way so that we concentrate only on traditional academic subjects. That was my concern about the EBacc when it was first introduced—that it would become the primary measure, whatever statements were made at the time.

This is not about not having aspirations for young people, but about what is best for their futures. I always give the example of foreign languages in the school I taught in. When I taught at Kingswood, in Bransholme, in Hull, the French department was above my classroom—I certainly knew it was, because of the way my projector used to shake. A lot of people could not engage in French language classes because they lacked the basic literacy skills to engage in English, let alone a foreign language. Often, the message that came back from home was, “Why do you need to learn French? It’s no use round here. Everyone should speak English.” Unfortunately, those children were instantly set up to fail. It would be lovely if they could all achieve at Latin, but unfortunately some of the changes we have seen set some young people up to fail. We need flexibility so that we have proper child-centred education—I know that is a bit of a cliché—and a curriculum that is appropriate for every child.

We are quite right to change how we measure achievement in schools—equivalence and the rest of it—and to want the best for every child. However, what I also saw in my school was that children were written off if they were going to deliver more than five GCSEs at grade C or above for the school. There is a balance to be struck, and something needs to be done to push those children too. There were problems at both ends, and we need to make sure that we do not, as the hon. Gentleman said, allow the pendulum to swing too far.

I want to talk now about a couple of things happening in North Lincolnshire. I am pleased the NEETs figure has been going in the right direction for the past few years. Obviously, North Lincolnshire forms part of the Humber region, which unfortunately has a very low skills base. That is one of the biggest risk factors on the local enterprise partnership’s risk register in terms of bringing in new investment. New investment is coming from Siemens, and one of the company’s big concerns has been about the local skills base. The Humber has some wealthy areas, but also some very challenging areas in places such as Hull, Scunthorpe, Goole and Grimsby. There is a job of work to be done in north Lincolnshire, and I want to talk about a couple of projects.

One thing the local authority has done, which I am very pleased about, is to completely reform and reinvest in youth services. It is not often that local authorities spend more on youth services. It was a painful process to go through, and the Labour opposition was, unfortunately, very anti the proposal to spend more money. The Conservative council reversed the previous council’s cuts of £137,000 to youth services and has actually increased the youth service budget by £200,000.

We also moved away from the traditional in-house model. One of the biggest opponents of the changes said that that model had worked for 40 years, but that defence tells us everything we need to know about why the system was not working—it had not changed for 40 years. It was bizarre that people protested at the council spending more on something, but we got through that. We now have a range of different providers, targeted at every young person but especially trying to engage those who are most at risk of becoming NEETs. We have got Streetbeat in, we have street sport and we have theatre groups. We still have all our youth centres, and not a single one will be closed, because they still have a role to play. We need fixed places, but we need something flexible too. The number of young people engaging with the youth service has increased substantially. The change may not have been popular with the youth workers we had at the time, but the proof of the pudding is always in the eating.

In North Lincolnshire, the employability skills framework has been launched. The scheme targets young people to make sure that they have the CBI’s seven essential skills. There is also the raising aspirations project—it is in the Barton area for now—under which primary schools develop their curriculum to include a real focus on enterprise. We also have the September guarantee and the engagement panel, and business links are improving. The local authority is also providing free careers advice and guidance to most vulnerable young people, which chimes with what the hon. Gentleman said. Most schools buy in additional services.

There is plenty more I could say, but I am aware of the pressure on time. I would just add that external careers guidance is really important, and we need to look at how we require schools—or do not require them—to buy it in. There is a risk of conflict where schools expand to include sixth forms, as is happening in my area. I entirely agree with such moves, because it is important that young people can continue their education in the place most appropriate to them, but there is a risk that too many young people will be pushed in a particular direction, so we must have a real emphasis on proper external careers advice that gives young people a full range of options.

I should add that people in my area are delighted to have a university technical college coming to Scunthorpe. We hope that that will not only regenerate the town centre, but transform the choices available locally for young people.

Finally, I welcome the Minister to his post. I forgot to do so at the beginning, which was terribly rude of me.

Free Schools (Funding)

Justin Tomlinson Excerpts

Monday 12th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that point. My understanding is that significantly more have applied—a significantly higher number—but it is the case that this new provision will help raise standards in Sheffield and that we are providing this new school alongside having increased the amount of money available for primary school places in Sheffield. Under the previous Government, £22 million was provided; over the equivalent funding period, we are providing £36 million.

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

Nothing matches the anger of parents denied a place in a good local school. In stark contrast to when Labour cut 200,000 places in the midst of a baby boom, the proposed New College free school in my constituency is the best opportunity to meet the shortfall in secondary school places. I hope that the Minister will fully support the bid, in stark contrast to Labour’s opposition.

[Michael Gove]

I am sorry to hear that Labour is opposing that excellent additional provision. Swindon, in particular under Conservative leadership, has seen schools improve consistently over recent years. I hope that we see great additional state school provision in Swindon. I will do everything that I can to support the parents who are behind that bid.

Vocational Qualifications

Justin Tomlinson Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

The hon. Gentleman will probably not be surprised to hear that I have made many visits to Corby and learned a lot during them, including about the funding arrangements. It is necessary to have arrangements that ensure that the funding gets to those people who are expanding their apprenticeship programme. That means that it has to be allocated in-year. I know that causes discomfort to some of the providers and I always keep an eye on the situation to make sure it does not get out of hand.

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

It is welcome news that 43% of employers are more likely to offer an apprenticeship than two years ago. However, too many busy businesses are still not aware of the fantastic opportunities and benefits of the apprenticeship scheme. Will the Government take forward plans to promote apprentices through the annual business rates mailer that we already pay for?

[Matthew Hancock]

That is a really important point. Big businesses that have a graduate recruitment round are increasingly moving to having a graduate recruitment system alongside an apprenticeship recruitment system. On Monday, I was at the BBC, which is doubling its apprenticeship intake, and it announced the goal of an apprenticeship intake of the same size as its university intake. The civil service is doing the same in moving towards having both, and all large companies should look at whether that is the right option for them.

PISA Results

Justin Tomlinson Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I cannot disagree with the hon. Gentleman’s conclusion. I would say, however, that the Welsh Administration chose to follow a different path than the reformist path set out by Tony Blair in his education White Paper in 2006. Labour in government deliberately got rid of Tony Blair and abandoned the path of reform during its last three years in office. There is now an opportunity for the hon. Gentleman, who calls himself a Blairite, to embrace reform by agreeing with us. I hope that he will, and that he will learn the lesson from history and from Wales that if you abandon reform, the electorate abandon you.

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

Will performance-related pay help to incentivise heads and teachers to hold teacher training days during the school holidays and not on the first day of term? [Interruption.]

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes not only an acute but a popular point. An interesting thing about the situation in Shanghai is that teacher training—20 days of it, in fact—takes place during the summer holidays. I am not suggesting that we embark on that road now, but I would underline that when we are learning lessons from abroad, we need to acknowledge the vital importance of making sure that continuous professional development is implemented in a way that helps teachers and takes account of parents’ needs.

Small Businesses

Justin Tomlinson Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

It is a real pleasure to have the opportunity to speak now, which is in no small part because I am due in Westminster Hall at 3 o’clock to lead a debate on retail and the high street. I shall therefore be relatively brief. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) not only for securing this debate, but for delivering a speech in which she was characteristically passionate about business. It is a credit to her campaign that so many Members on both sides of the House have come to support today’s important debate.

I am passionate about this subject. At school, I was for ever wheeling and dealing. If anyone needed anything, I was the man to speak to. Shortly after graduating, I set up my own printing and marketing company, which employed local people in my constituency. I sold it as soon as I got elected, however; it is a busy lark being an MP. I was incredibly proud to be given the opportunity to be a small business ambassador and, obviously, to work with the fantastic Minister for Skills and Enterprise, as well as the inspirational Karren Brady, which certainly impressed my wife, who very much liked her book.

I want to talk about some of the positive things the Government have done. We can all celebrate the fact that there are more than 400,000 new businesses, which have helped to create 1.4 million new jobs. The new employment allowance, which comes in on 1 January, is a welcome measure from the Government that will help to push that even further forward. We can celebrate the fact that we now have an extra 500,000 apprenticeships. The start-up loans scheme has celebrated its 10,000th loan, with its loans totalling £50 million. Crucially, that scheme has allowed those 10,000 firms to take on a further 10,000 people, so for each new firm, an additional job has been created, which is fantastic. The red tape challenge is also brilliant, not least because we have asked businesses to suggest which pieces of red tape need to be removed.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making very good points, and I would also like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) on securing the debate. Many small businesses and micro-businesses believe that they get by despite the actions of the Government, rather than because of them, so all the things that we are doing to roll back red tape are absolutely right. Small businesses are creating jobs, but they want to be loved, especially by the Government. Over the years they have not felt loved, and that is what I am looking to the Minister and the Government to deliver.

[Justin Tomlinson]

I very much love businesses, so I will send some love to my hon. Friend’s constituency.

It is great that businesses are suggesting the areas of red tape that need to be looked at, because they are very much at the coal face. Removing two regulations for every one introduced is a real challenge, but the initiative has certainly been welcomed by businesses in my constituency.

Several Members have talked about opening up local authority procurement, which is worth about £4.4 billion a year, and the Government have the commendable aim of getting SME participation in that to about 25%. My hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham), who has had to leave the Chamber, has got hold of some of the forms that small businesses have to fill in when bidding for such contracts. I know that, when I ran a business, it simply was not worth the hassle.

I also very much welcome the increase in the annual investment allowance from £25,000 to £250,000. One problem that we identified was the fact that, for the first time in living memory, businesses had more money in their current accounts than they were choosing to borrow, because they were worried about uncertainty in the market. Increasing the allowance is a brilliant way to encourage businesses to start unlocking some of that money, which will drive forward growth.

Cutting corporation tax always brings a cheer from Conservative Members. Although Labour says that it supports business, it is telling that that support seems to vanish as soon as a business makes a profit. I also welcome the extension of small business rate relief.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman talks about corporation tax. Will he tell the House the rate of corporation tax when Labour came to power in 1997, and what it was when we left office in 2010?

[Justin Tomlinson]

I can tell the hon. Gentleman that, by 2015, we will have the lowest corporation tax market in the G8. That is what businesses are talking about, and I very much hope that the hon. Gentleman will join us in supporting that aim.

Many Members have highlighted the need to look at business rates. Greater minds than mine will solve the dilemma, but it is important to recognise that the world is changing. My hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) mentioned Amazon’s advantages over a traditional high street retailer because of the business rates that it pays. We must recognise that the world is changing and take that into account if we are to achieve a fair business rates system. The 27,000 business mentors are also crucial—I will come back to that subject in a moment—and the enterprise zones and the regional growth fund are kick-starting growth in key areas, which is most welcome.

Staying with the good things, I know that the Minister is particularly excited about the request that I am about to make—it is one that I make repeatedly—and that he is absolutely going to deliver on it. We as a Government are doing many good things, but business people are by their nature extremely busy and, all too often, these good schemes simply pass them by. However, the one thing that they cannot avoid is their bills, and every year they are sent a business rates bill. Even if they have nothing to pay, they are sent a bill telling them how much they would have had to pay but for the fact that the Government are allowing them not to do so. We should be communicating all the Government’s schemes through that mailer. The taxpayer has already paid for the mail, so let us include with it information on all the things that we are encouraging businesses to sign up for, and particularly on the advantages of taking on apprentices and of working with UKTI to develop exports.

I want briefly to focus on championing young entrepreneurs. I was the only one of the 350 students on my business degree course who went on to set up their own business. We all arrived at university keen to do just that, but we had entrepreneurial flair and risk-taking talked out of us. I obviously was not paying enough attention, because I ended up running my own business. The Government help to fund an organisation called the National Association of College and University Entrepreneurs, which encourages young people to take up practical, real-life opportunities for running a business. I have met a number of the young people who have taken advantage of those opportunities and who are now going on to be part of the next generation of wealth generators.

We need to look at what happens in business degrees. Along with all my fellow students, I was given a placement job in the corporate environment, rather than having the opportunity to test running my own business. We could use spare space at a university to run a retail business—that is very apt, given my forthcoming Westminster Hall debate. We could also consider whether part of a placement year could be spent running a business, as that might allow us to encourage a few more of those potential young entrepreneurs to take the step towards that.

We can also do a lot more for people before they go to university. For people who want to go to university, the UCAS system is in place—the conveyor belt is there. People choose their course and, if they get their grades, they head off to university. If people want to be an apprentice, they can look at the fantastic websites available, see what type of thing they would like to be an apprentice in, and go forward to the interviews. However, if someone wants to start their own business, it is pretty much up to them to work out how to do that, so we need to do a lot more to get those 20,000 business mentors to young people.

We have to celebrate schemes such as the Young Enterprise challenge, but we need to ensure that they are not just a one-off opportunity for enjoyment. I took part when I was at school—we worked for a week, made quite a bit of money and really enjoyed it. I recently did something with Swindon college students whereby we got stalls in the local market—a tough trading environment. Seven teams were each given £10 of seed money, and all the money raised on the day went to charity. We raised about £800 for the Prospect hospice, but the crucial bit was that we did not have mentors just at the beginning; we had them at the end.

One lady called Jessica ran a cake stall. Millions of people think about running such a stall, but she realised that the market had an older customer base, so she set up a 1950s-themed cake stall. She made more than £100 on the day. She realised that she had the customer service ability, the skills and the innovation to set up her own business, and now that she has finished at college, she has set up the Little Lemon & Poppy Bakery. We made sure that mentors were in place to help to guide her after she used her initial burst of enthusiasm and went on to do that. I ask the Minister to do all that he can to encourage young people. They have the energy and the enthusiasm, so let us make sure they are a key part of that next generation of wealth generators.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

Start-up Loans

Justin Tomlinson Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

Yes, I will take a special interest in ensuring that the Isle of Wight has access to the scheme. Many of the partners through which it is delivered are regional, but there are many national partners and much of it can be done online. I am sure that broadband internet is readily available on the Isle of Wight. If it is not, it soon will be. I will take a special interest in how many loans are taken up on the Isle of Wight.

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

This is welcome news, especially as the start-up businesses have gone on to employ a further 10,000 people. To build on that, what more can be done to encourage an entrepreneurial spirit within the education system to equip the next generation of young entrepreneurs?

[Matthew Hancock]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for adding to the statistics at my disposal. He is a doughty campaigner for enterprise in the education system. One of the main purposes of bringing together the skills and enterprise briefs is to ensure that the education system reflects and prepares people for the world of employment and enterprise. That is very close to my heart and I look forward to working with him to make it happen more.

Adult Literacy and Numeracy

Justin Tomlinson Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott), who covered all the great work that Unionlearn has done. I have asked to see that first hand in my constituency, but I have not yet had a reply to my request.

It is also a pleasure to follow excellent and thoughtful speeches from my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) and the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman). I also wish to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage), who has done some exceptional work in this area. Indeed, I was surprised by her calm, measured and constructive manner, when I would have struggled to hold back my anger at the fact that one in six adults is financially illiterate. The OECD figures are a disgrace, and we have robbed people of opportunity. We all have drivers of our politics—the issues that motivate us to do what we do—and this is one of my core drivers.

I went to a school that was bottom of the league tables and many of my friends were robbed of opportunities in life. As Members of Parliament we see from our casework people in real distress, arguably through no fault of their own but because they are simply not equipped to deal with the challenges that life throws up. My wife volunteered for two years at a job club and found people were not equipped to get jobs to give them opportunities in life.

[Mr Nigel Evans]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one area in which numeracy has an incredible impact on people’s lives is that of payday loans at 1,400% from Wonga and various other companies? When people do not have the faintest idea what that means, they get into huge financial difficulties which cause great misery. If they were numerate, they would understand exactly why they should not take out loans at those exorbitant rates.

[Justin Tomlinson]

That is a brilliant intervention with fortune-telling skills, as that is exactly what I was about to say. Numeracy is not just about applying for jobs—it is about confidence, about being a savvy consumer and about dealing with things such as payday lending. We have had several debates on this and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) will also touch on that issue—although to be fair, most Treasury Ministers would struggle to calculate the APR on payday lending. We live in a complex world with marketing messages, and my hon. Friend and I are working on a paper at the moment about how consumers are not empowered. The markets are in control because consumers are not equipped to make the right decisions.

I want to talk about three areas in which we have opportunities to help people—financial education, work in schools and using libraries as hubs. On financial education, we have had an exceptionally successful cross-party campaign—235 MPs signed up—and I am delighted that as of September 2014 it will be a core part of the national curriculum. The key driver behind the campaign was the fact that 91% of people who get into financial difficulties say, “If only I had known better.” My hon. Friend the Member for Gosport pointed out that 50% of adults struggle with even primary maths skills, so it is no wonder that people get into financial difficulty. The campaign focused on four strands—schools, further education, higher education and the crucial vulnerable group, work on which is led by my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce). That group is crucial because although we are bringing in the changes in schools, further education and higher education, some people will still slip through the net. The report will be published in the next couple of weeks and will contain important points for the Government to take up, so that we can ensure that the most vulnerable people are not missed out.

I am a big fan of the school reforms, which will drive up standards and include making grammar and spelling important in all exams; making mental arithmetic more important in primary schools; restricting the use of calculators; and upgrading maths in the curriculum. I was a maths fan in school, but I was in the minority, even though maths is incredibly important. The pupil premium is providing schools with opportunities to target resources to those most in need.

I had an inspiring visit to Seven Fields school in my constituency. As I have mentioned in previous debates, I had the honour of the Minister for Schools coming to visit after I had set out just how good the school is. To put it in context, it is in one of the top 5% most deprived areas and it was formerly a failing school. To give credit to the previous Government, money was provided to rebuild the school, which was the beginning of the process, but the fundamental changes came from the school reforms, which gave its inspirational head teacher the ability to make a real difference. Some 70% of the children are on the pupil premium and that money has been used—now that the class sizes have been almost halved to 17—to work with the community to get volunteers to come in and read one on one with the children. That has been done by providing a free Sunday roast on Wednesdays to the Penhill luncheon club, who work one on one with the children on reading and numeracy. It makes a huge difference.

Lately resources have been diverted to the nursery because, as the head teacher told the Minister for Schools and me, some of the children coming through have simply been abandoned in front of the television. Not only can they not walk, they have not even reached the first stages of crawling. They literally have to start again. When the children arrive at the school, they are 18 months behind the national average, but by the time they finish, they have caught up—giving those children opportunity.

Huge effort is put into selecting the best, most ambitious teachers, who want to go the extra mile to make a difference. We all know from our own time in schools how teachers who make the extra effort can make a huge difference. The school also provides a constructive and positive environment, including children taking their shoes off and treating it like their own homes. They also have opportunities to make visits beyond school to do things that they would not otherwise have the chance to do.

The head teacher still has a wish list of things that would make a difference. She feels that school holidays undo the great work that is done. Some of the children are upset that they will not be able to come into school. Before teachers start thinking that I am advocating a 52-week term, I should say that the idea is to open up the schools in holidays for summer camps on sport, literacy or numeracy, or for the Scouts and other volunteer organisations to use. PFI schools often have expensive charges for outside groups, which removes the opportunity for constructive work. The head teacher thinks that some of the children benefit from the almost family environment in the school, and should perhaps be held back beyond primary school age—perhaps up to 14 or when they are in a position to go to the local FE college or start an apprenticeship—because they need that sort of environment, perhaps because of their family background. As they go off to the traditional secondary schools, the influences and temptations away from the right path prove too great without family support—and the school can be a substitute for that.

The final, and perhaps contentious, item is the need for performance-related pay for teachers. My father was a teacher, as were my grandmother and grandfather, and many of my friends are teachers. We need to provide incentives for the very best teachers who make a real difference to people. I do not see why they should not be rewarded financially, because in any other profession they would be.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I wish to explore how the hon. Gentleman thinks that would work in practice. My son is doing a GCSE in business studies with two different teachers. If one is good and one is bad, how would we work out who got the pay rise and who got the sack?

[Justin Tomlinson]

That is a good point, and the key is that I would not do that, because I am a politician and what do I know? It would be the head teachers who decided. We should entrust them to run schools like any other organisation. The head teacher at this school was waxing lyrical about the inspirational teachers with extra enthusiasm and energy, and she should have absolute freedom to ensure that she has the very best teachers for those children from very challenging backgrounds who do not have the luxury of private education and who rely on this single chance in life.

The parents also need to be engaged. My hon. Friend the Member for Gosport mentioned the role of parents. The school I am talking about has parental contracts. If parents want their child to go to the school, they have to play their part and engage with the school, to ensure that it is not only in school hours that the children benefit from the opportunities provided

I am chair of the all-party parliamentary group on libraries, and I think libraries have a big role to play in adult literacy, which might simply be by opening up the doors to volunteer groups in the evenings and when the library is closed. The summer reading challenge has made a huge difference in getting children to read six books over the summer, when previously they might not have read a single book—look at the number of adults who have not read a book in the last 12 months. Perhaps jobcentres could utilise the libraries to provide opportunities, even for those who need to start from scratch. I have advocated in other debates that we should open up school sports facilities for free to organisations that provide constructive, energetic activities for young people, and a similar principle could be applied to libraries.

The situation is a disgrace. We have to show urgency in our attempts to make a difference. People have one chance in life and, as all hon. Members will make clear, they are being robbed of it. That is a desperately poor situation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Justin Tomlinson Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

The second statement is simply wrong. The overwhelming majority of free schools are in areas of basic need. On the first question, I would be very happy to meet the right hon. Gentleman to discuss his specific proposal. We want to be as pragmatic and helpful as possible to councils that face these pressures.

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

Following the recent Public Accounts Committee report, it is clear to me that we have pressure on primary school places because Labour was obsessed with building landlocked expensive private finance initiative schools and decided to remove a quarter of a million primary school places during a baby boom. What is the quickest way for local communities to respond?

[Mr Laws]

The hon. Gentleman is right to point out that from 2003 onwards, the Office for National Statistics was pointing to one of the biggest increases in the birth rate for many generations. Those who are now on the Government Benches were warning the Labour Government that there would be a real crisis in primary school places. In spite of that, 200,000 places were removed between 2003 and 2010. Labour Members will be pleased to know that almost all the 200,000 places have been replaced by this coalition Government.

Pupil Premium

Justin Tomlinson Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

What is very encouraging—the head teacher of the primary school that the Deputy Prime Minister and I visited this morning spoke to us about it—is that many schools nowadays are not simply sitting back and waiting for parents to engage and shrugging their shoulders when they do not. Many of the best schools in the most deprived communities are going out to engage with reluctant parents and they often have considerable success in persuading those parents that education is important for their young children’s future. This can be a way of engaging parents who might not have had good educational experiences themselves, potentially enriching their own lives by contact with the school. I would encourage head teachers and teachers with parents of the type that my hon. Friend describes to visit some of the schools that are doing this work very well, as I think they could learn a tremendous amount from them.

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

It was a great pleasure to welcome the Schools Minister on his visit to Seven Fields primary school. The school’s transformation was due to a combination of inspirational leadership, greater freedoms and the pupil premium. How should we share this best practice so that all schools can benefit from today’s announcement?

[Mr Laws]

It was a pleasure to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency and he was quite right when he wrote to me to highlight the fantastic achievements of this school, which sits in a disadvantaged community and could easily be languishing and struggling, but actually sets incredibly high aspirations, showing that it is possible for schools to deliver. The Government have recently started to publish tables of similar schools, where we look at schools with a similar composition of pupils and look at their performance against other similar schools. That process should encourage schools across the country that are not performing well to look at other schools with a similar intake that are doing a lot better, perhaps visiting them, talking to teachers and finding out what works. This type of school-to-school improvement should be enhanced by the additional measure of information that we are publishing.

National Curriculum

Justin Tomlinson Excerpts

Monday 8th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes an absolutely central point. Every country that teaches history well insists on the history of its own nation being taught. Even the progressive Administration in Holyrood make a point of stressing the importance of Scottish history—I can see the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie), for the Scottish National party, nodding—from which other things flow. I recognise that all nations should in this respect, if in few others, emulate what Alex Salmond has done.

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

I am delighted at the inclusion of financial education and computer programming, both of which are essential skills for our children. Does the Secretary of State believe that they will also help to encourage young children to engage in traditional mathematics, through real-life work and tangible examples?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the key things about his successful campaign on financial education is that he always made it clear that it was about reinforcing the importance of rigour in mathematics, not simply meeting the needs of a vocal lobby outside. The way he ran the campaign is a model of how a Back Bencher can shape the education of millions for the better.