Further Education Funding

Karen Lee Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Richard Graham]

I agree with the hon. Lady’s general point that it is incredibly important to give our young people maximum opportunities. Everyone has highlighted the role of further education colleges in that.

[Karen Lee (Lincoln) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Richard Graham]

I will make a tiny bit of progress. I am conscious that a lot of hon. Members want to speak, so I will try to reach the end of my comments and bring the hon. Lady in before I finish.

It would be wrong of me not to mention the importance of Gloucestershire College—Gloscol—in my county of Gloucestershire, which I have known well for the last decade. The management have done their best to try to use resources to maximum effect and give our young people the opportunities that we are looking at across the country. Its 1,000 full and part-time staff serve some 3,500 students across the three campuses in Gloucester, Cheltenham and the Forest of Dean. It is clear, however, that even such a college, which has been rated good for the last three and a half years, is struggling to maintain the range of qualifications that my colleagues in Gloucestershire and I want it to provide.

I will not touch on South Gloucestershire and Stroud College, because the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) will want to, but I suspect that he will mention some similar issues. I also pay tribute to my fellow campaigner in Stroud, Siobhan Baillie, who has visited the college twice recently and has highlighted some of the issues that it faces, including—as is true for all colleges—the teachers’ pension increases that cost it £1 million a year. I hope that the Minister will comment on those pension costs, which are a real issue for many colleges across the country; she has spoken about them before.

[Karen Lee]

I have one brief sentence. I agree with the hon. Gentleman about young people, but colleges support older people and people of all ages as well. I left a grammar school with two O-levels, then went to college, got my A-levels and trained as a nurse—aged 39. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”]

[Richard Graham]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point, as shown by the warmth of approval purring through the Chamber. She is a fantastic example of what a further education college can achieve; perhaps we should have a colleges alumni group in Parliament.

Some of the comments that the Association of Colleges and other royal societies have fed in to me confirm the general picture that I and other hon. Members have painted so far, which is that we need more funding for teachers’ pay; more help to ensure that the range of subjects continues to increase rather than decrease; and more young people to get decent results in English and maths at A-level. We also need to tackle the shortage in science, technology, engineering and maths skills, which are vital for our country’s future, as several hon. Members have mentioned.

I will finish by alluding to a remarkable bundle of statistics. There are 171,000 16 to 18-year-olds doing A-levels in further education colleges—a huge army of young people who deserve to be taught well and given the resources they need—and 672,000 students taking STEM subjects in colleges, who also deserve the best teachers available from a sector where salaries are getting higher all the time.

For all the reasons mentioned, I hope that the debate encourages the skills Minister on her chosen path, which is to be the champion of further education colleges. I also hope it will ensure that, in this spending review and Budget, further education colleges finally get the increase in funding that they deserve, so that they can ultimately improve opportunities and productivity, and be the success that we all want them to be in our constituencies.

School Funding

Karen Lee Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Royston Smith]

That is exactly what I just said, but the hon. Lady decided to interpret what I said as not thinking that children with special educational needs and complex educational needs were being looked after in schools far better than they used to be. There is nothing wrong with putting the case for extra funding from Government, and I expect everyone to do that, but it has to be done within the envelope of public spending. Everyone is asking for money for everything.

[Karen Lee (Lincoln) (Lab)]

In the last Budget, the Chancellor talked about giving “little extras”. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that what we need is proper funding, not “little extras”?

[Royston Smith]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady, but what we are getting is far more than we did. What we need is even more than we have got.

Maintained Nursery Schools

Karen Lee Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Theresa Villiers]

My hon. Friend makes a very fair point. I was going to come to that in my speech. We must find a long-term, sustainable role for the maintained nursery schools in the constituencies of everybody who has spoken. They are potentially beacons of excellence, centres of training and places that have an impact on the whole locality, in terms of raising standards in the pre-school sector. That is an important part of the solution.

We all recognise that there are limits to what the taxpayer can afford, and it is vital that we take care when deploying taxpayers’ funding. We must ensure it is used appropriately. One of the most difficult things for a Government to do is to assess which priorities can be funded and which cannot. As others have said, the funding situation for the maintained sector is becoming very grave, so we must find a solution that saves those schools. Local authorities simply cannot fill the gap, as their funding is under pressure, too, because of the continuing consequences of the very serious deficit that we inherited from the previous Labour Government. Although many local authorities across the country, including my own in Barnet, are doing their best to find ways of supporting the maintained sector, that will not be a solution on its own.

[Karen Lee (Lincoln) (Lab)]

The right hon. Lady just referred to a deficit left by the previous Government, but does she agree that funding nursery schools should be a higher priority than giving wealthy people tax cuts?

[Theresa Villiers]

Of course, funding for nursery schools should be a priority, and I am here to make the case for that. We also need a competitive tax system, and reductions in corporation tax, for example, have led to increased revenue. There is a balance to be struck. We need a competitive economy that attracts investment, and reasonable levels of business taxation are an important part of that. They help to generate the revenue that funds our schools. I do not agree with the sentiment of all of what the hon. Lady said.

BEYA has not stood still and failed to take action. It has gone to great lengths to carve out a new role for itself and has looked for other sources of funding. It is working with children’s centres and on training programmes, but it is still in great difficulty. Frankly, a crunch is coming for its funding and that of other maintained nursery schools. If nothing is done, the threat of closure will become greater and greater. That is why I am here today to appeal to the Minister.

My understanding is that, when the transitional funding was announced a few years ago—I am grateful that the Government chose to do that—it was supposed to give the maintained sector a breathing space, during which time the Government would work with it to develop a new, sustainable role for it. Essentially, as I have already adverted to, nursery schools would become centres of excellence, beacons for the surrounding area and centres of training. That would ensure that they play an outstanding role in the wider early years sector and provide support across the whole range of early years providers. The idea was to provide temporary transitional funding until that new role was settled to put the maintained sector on a sustainable footing for the future.

Time is now running out, and, like others, I appeal to the Minister for an extension of that transitional funding for settlement of that new role to secure the long-term future of the maintained sector and the children whose lives it transforms, and to ensure that in the spending review there is space to save these wonderful schools that so many Members have talked about this evening with such warmth and praise. I believe that this is the important next step to take: first, an extension of the transitional funding; secondly, an agreement on the long-term role of the nursery sector; and, thirdly, a recognition in the spending review that we need to fund these schools for the long term.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that point. As I said earlier, the funding mechanisms for this sector are extremely complicated, which can create the danger of setting one provider against another. The answer to her question is clear, and it is astonishing that Conservative Members do not get this simple point. Maintained nurseries are schools; they are different, they have extra costs and they are often located in the poorest areas. I would hope that, taking a cross-party approach, we can try to find a way of maintaining both, because there is a range of providers that are doing an excellent job.

[Karen Lee]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this should absolutely not be a race to the bottom?

[Daniel Zeichner]

It should absolutely not be. The one thing we can all probably agree on is that we would like all these providers to have a sustainable future. I have every sympathy for the other providers, who are also struggling with an underfunded system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I start by declaring an interest and by congratulating the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) on securing this debate. I supported the application and will certainly be supporting the petitions next week, with one from the nursery school in my constituency that I mentioned earlier.

Thursday afternoons are becoming like a “children’s hour” session, which is fantastic. I said two weeks ago when I opened the debate on children’s social care that we do not have enough time in this place to talk about important issues such as those facing children. We have a lot of childish debates on other topics, but we should be doing more on children and young people. A few Thursdays ago, we had an important, well-informed, emotional debate on baby loss. These are the issues that resonate with and are important to our constituents and their children on a day-to-day basis. It is to be applauded that we have strong interest in this afternoon’s debate and that we have a degree of consensus.

I am disappointed, however, with the politicisation in some Opposition Members’ speeches, because the Government want quality education for all. We can only pay for that quality education by having a strong economy and taxpayers who are in a position to pay tax. Hounding some out of the country does not provide resources to invest in education at any level and we need to balance that. Trying to make this into a political issue or to suggest that there is some ulterior motive—

[Karen Lee]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Tim Loughton]

I will not. Trying to suggest that the Government have some ulterior motive to run down what we all absolutely acknowledge is an essential part of the education system does not help anyone, frankly. I want to carry on with a more consensual approach about how to find a solution to the looming problem of sustainability of funding for these excellent nursery schools, which is the subject of this debate.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan) and I each have a maintained nursery school in our constituencies. West Sussex only has four, so we have 50% of the county’s maintained nursery schools between us. What the schools share is quality and engagement with the local community. Boundstone Nursery School, which has been in existence for many years in one of the more deprived parts of my constituency and is run by an inspirational, exceedingly hard-working, determined headteacher in Jim Brannan, is co-located with other children’s centre services. The services have recently been rationalised into a new single service that provides an aged zero-to-25 prevention and early help service, integrating specialist county council teams with health visitors, school nurses and others. The site provides a one-stop shop for many of the services wanted by my constituents who use and need a maintained nursery school. Long may that continue.

I pay tribute to West Sussex County Council. We have many arguments about how many children’s centres have closed, but no children and family centres in West Sussex have closed. However, this is not a numbers game. This is about the quality of the services that are offered in children’s centres, the success of the level of engagement with the people who most need it, and the outcomes for those children and the families who engage with such services.

We still have many children’s centres that are often closed for too much of the week. The most successful centres, whether they are co-located with nurseries or whatever, need to be open in the evenings and at weekends. They need to be more father-friendly, and we had a debate on a similar topic in Westminster Hall yesterday. We need to make centres more welcoming, flexible and amenable so that, wherever possible, fathers can bring their kids to the nurses and engage with them, the support services and extracurricular activities that are on offer just as much as mums can. This is not about quantity, but quality, the extent of the engagement and the level of the outcomes. We need to make centres busier. In West Sussex we have also integrated them with what we call “Think Family,” which is one of the country’s best versions of the troubled families programme. The Minister has a strong interest in these areas, and he appreciates the importance of getting it right, so I re-emphasise the need to make sure that the Treasury rolls over the funding for the troubled families programme, which comes to an end in 2020. The programme has been a template for how joined-up, sensible preventive thinking prevents an awful lot of problems later on.

Maintained nurseries are an important part of the jigsaw at an important and impressionable stage of a child’s life and a new parent’s life. This can be a lonely and daunting time, and a nursery can be part of a new parent’s support network. I pay tribute to the immense amount of work and investment the Government have put into the free childcare offer, although not without problem; not enough fully to remunerate the cost of this in the independent sector. We are seeing the impact in the maintained sector, too.

Maintained nurseries are the gold standard, which is why so many more of them are rated outstanding, including the Boundstone nursery in my constituency. That is not to undermine the independent sector, but the standards of maintained nurseries are consistently higher. Maintained nurseries have to invest in provision for special educational needs and disability support because, as many hon. Members have mentioned, they are effectively schools, and they take on many of the kids who cannot be adequately catered for in alternative provision elsewhere. Maintained nurseries are doing a more universal job than many other high-quality players in the sector are able to perform.

I declare an interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on conception to age two—the first 1,001 days. I am also the chairman of trustees at Parent Infant Partnership UK, and we run professional services in children and family centres across the country to work with new parents, often single parents, who have attachment problems with their children. Those first 1,001 days from conception to age two are where we can have the maximum bang for our buck in giving the support that has not come, for whatever reason, between a parent/carer and his or her child.

The more we can do to get it right then, the bigger the savings financially and, much more importantly, socially in how that child will consequently become a contributing, balanced, stable member of society later in life. That work is crucial, and it is a false economy not to do it. The cost of getting perinatal mental health wrong is estimated at more than £8 billion a year, and the cost of child neglect is estimated at £15 billion a year. That is one hell of a bill for getting it wrong. Maintained nurseries are part of the solution and can prevent some of those children from ending up in those other ancillary services.

That is why I asked whether a proper audit has been done. If we reduce the places or the quality available in maintained nurseries, because some of them might have to consider their future if the funding is not confirmed and maintained, there will be a knock-on effect on safeguarding services. Maintained nurseries can act as an early-warning system where there are safeguarding problems or parenting problems within a family. Good nurseries are not just for the children who attend each day; they support the parents as well. Nurseries reduce the costs for health, wellbeing and disability services.

As I mentioned earlier, nurseries offer respite for parents looking after profoundly disabled children. Those parents can be confident that their children will be safe and properly looked after, and the nurseries provide a strong respite facility that may be the difference in whether a child is able to stay in the family home.

Madam Deputy Speaker, you are looking at me with concern, so I finish by saying that we need to do our best to make sure that these maintained nurseries continue as they are. For that, we have to give them certainty. When this protected funding comes to an end in 2019-20, some difficult decisions will have to be made if that funding has not been guaranteed, and we need to get that indication sooner rather than later. We need urgent clarification from the Treasury about the funding outcomes for these schools in pretty short order, otherwise they will be making these difficult decisions early, and what has been described as a beacon of early years education will be burning a little less brightly because we have not got it right. We will be reaping the consequences of that in years to come and those children will be reaping the consequences of the false economy that not doing that represents.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karen Lee (Lincoln) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) on securing this important debate and her committed work on such a vital issue. It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes).

I am a proud advocate for nursery schools in Lincoln. I have been contacted by two maintained nurseries in Lincoln, St Giles and Kingsdown, about the precarious position of their funding after April 2020. Currently, nursery schools are unable to plan and budget for the future, and headteachers and families are deeply concerned. A couple of weeks ago, I met the headteacher of St Giles. She had previously written to me, with the support of the parents, the staff and the surrounding local community, to express their fears about the supplementary funding settlement post 2020. We talked for an hour and a half, and I could really see her concern—she is very worried about what they might lose. This problem is not restricted to Lincoln, as Members on both sides of the House have raised concerns regarding nurseries in their own constituencies.

Let us not overlook the immediate threat. Nurseries are already struggling to set budgets, as even before the end of supplementary funding, 64% expect to be in budget deficit. This is very worrying, as last year the LGA found that 61% of local authorities with maintained nursery schools fear that their schools will close if funding is not protected after 2020, with 52% saying that a loss of funding would reduce the support available for children with SEND.

Maintained nursery schools genuinely advance social mobility—that has been said again and again. The evidence is overwhelming. We know that 64% of maintained nurseries are in the 30% most deprived areas. The two in Lincoln are both in areas of marked social deprivation—Birchwood and St Giles. Regardless of one’s upbringing, we all deserve a good education, and their admission process prioritises children who are in greatest need. In a society with so much inequality, we must protect services that support vulnerable people and give them the opportunity to excel in later education. The Government have even accepted that maintained nurseries cost more, as they provide a range of early years provision.

Any planned cuts to funding of maintained nurseries presents an extremely short-term view of educational funding, and it is a false economy. A report by a group of seven maintained nurseries in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, where I am from, estimates that the cost to public sector services of those nurseries closing would be £216,000 to health and wellbeing services, £278,000 to special educational needs and disability services, £256,000 to social care safeguarding services and £480,000 to supplementing extended entitlement services.

The benefits of these nurseries are clear. Maintained nursery schools provide vital support to our local communities, yet the Government failed to address nurseries’ financial insecurity in the last Budget, and the forecasted review in autumn 2019 is far too late. An issue that requires urgency is seemingly being responded to with complacency—and I do not include the Minister in that statement. I promised nurseries, teaching staff and parents in my constituency that I would be their voice in Parliament. They are not expecting anything out of the ordinary, but they do expect and deserve a sustainable financial future for maintained nursery schools, which will protect jobs and the opportunities of children in their communities.

Will the Minister explain to the House how he expects nursery schools to offer places in the spring of 2019 or the following school year when they know full well that no funding arrangement has been decided upon? I, too, understand that the Minister is sympathetic to the plight of our nurseries—his commitment is not doubted for a minute—but with the risk of closures on the horizon, how can the Government expect nurseries to continue in good faith without a forward-looking, secure financial plan?

Children’s Social Care

Karen Lee Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alex Burghart]

I should be delighted to take the hon. Lady up on that. I know that what she is saying is absolutely right. However, there are also many children in need who have one parent in work and whose other parent has severe mental health problems or an addiction. The difficulty in such families is not solely related to money; it is caused by the fact that an individual has a very severe problem that is not being adequately met by social services.

When we find a child who is in need and on the edge of care, we need to take a holistic look at that child’s family. In the past, children’s social care sometimes looked very narrowly at how the child was at any one time and not at the immediate environment in which they were living and what could be done to improve it. Indeed, sometimes children ended up in care without their parents being given—or even approached about—the services that were necessary in order to improve that family environment. I would much rather fix the family’s problems in order to keep that family together so that the child can grow up in a stable home.

In terms of what can be done, I am glad the Minister has undertaken this work, which is starting to flush out good practice in the system and areas where more work needs to be done. I venture to suggest some things on which we need to focus. We must look at those slightly older children who are moving towards leaving school. In my experience over the years, I have found that additional professional mentoring conducted in and out of school can be highly effective. There is a wonderful programme in the east of London called ThinkForward, which gives long-term mentoring to children in disruptive homes. The presence of a stable adult to give advice, be a shoulder to cry on and be a support in a time of need is invaluable.

[Karen Lee (Lincoln) (Lab)]

Child poverty levels in my constituency are really high. We have also had the impact of the full roll-out of universal credit recently. Will the hon. Gentleman acknowledge the impact that UC is having? It is exacerbating the problems that a lot of families are suffering from.

[Alex Burghart]

I am happy to acknowledge that, when families have less money, they can find themselves in debt, which adds to stress and can contribute to poor mental health. I do not know about the cases the hon. Lady is talking about in her constituency, but I have seen the consequences of people being trapped in problem debt for a long time and not being given help to get out of it. That can certainly be a major problem. That issue is slightly off the subject I was talking about. I hope that, if the hon. Lady is unaware of the ThinkForward programme in the east end of London, she will visit it and promote it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karen Lee (Lincoln) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I must admit that I had to look twice as well, because I did not notice the change in Chair—[Laughter.] My point is that I did not notice that one person had left and another had come in. [Hon. Members: “Seamless!”] It was a seamless transition.

It is often said that the true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members. If that is the case, this Government measure up poorly when it comes to the treatment of vulnerable children. This Tory Government have created an entirely avoidable crisis in children’s social care. Last year saw the biggest annual increase in children in care since 2010, and councils are now starting 500 child protection investigations every day. Local authorities’ inability to cope with the increase in service demand is a direct result of this Government’s ideologically driven austerity programme. Since 2010, cuts to local authority funding have resulted in a 40% real-terms decrease in spending on early intervention in children’s services. Research by the Local Government Association has found that local government will face a funding gap of almost £8 billion by 2025.

Vulnerable children should never have to suffer because of the unjust political priorities of the Tory party, but the cuts have a human cost. In Lincoln, my postbag is full of letters and emails from worried parents and carers—I get them all the time. The support system is being pushed to breaking point, and growing demand for support has led to 75% of councils in England overspending on their children’s services budgets by over £815 million. As is always the case with Tory cuts to local authorities, councils have been forced to make cuts elsewhere and draw on reserves as a result. So, not only are children needlessly suffering from underfunded social care, but other services that people rely on are being squeezed as well. I think I mentioned earlier that Lincoln has a particularly high rate of child poverty, and that includes children of working parents, not just of those without jobs.

Budget cuts have also stripped away the capacity for early intervention, increasingly requiring child protection services to wait until a child is in crisis before intervening. LGA analysis again shows that Government funding for the early intervention grant has been cut by almost £500 million since 2013 and is projected to drop by a further £183 million by 2020. This Government are placing vulnerable children in dangerous situations that could have been avoided. I know we talk and talk about austerity, and sometimes people turn off, but this country would be a different place if this Government prioritised funding public services adequately over tax cuts for the rich and for big corporations.

It is particularly important that protection is provided for disabled children. Research by the Disabled Children’s Partnership shows a £1.5 billion funding gap for services for disabled children, and in the past few weeks alone I have had four parents of autistic children contact my office with concerns that underfunded and overstretched services are not providing adequate support. I see that in my postbag all the time. On Monday mornings, before I come down to Westminster, I try to make special appointments at 8.30 and 9 o’clock so that I can see and talk to some of these people, because people in Lincoln really are struggling.

Across the board, we see this Government neglecting the services on which children rely so that they can give people tax cuts. Austerity has not only decimated the provision of children’s social care but driven the rise in service demand. The strain put on parents and children is driving record numbers of young people into a social care service that this Government have cut to the bone.

It is not giving with one hand and taking with the other. When it comes to the vital public services on which working people and vulnerable people rely, this Government are taking with one hand and taking with the other, too.

I hope the Minister is actively listening to me, and I hope he can give me some reassurance. I stand up to say things in this Chamber and, sadly, all I get is empty words—party policy—quoted back to me. I would like to see some real action that actually changes something and makes it better.

[Several hon. Members rose—]