Support for Left-Behind Children

Kate Green Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

This has been a very thoughtful debate. I thank the hon. Member for Bury South (Christian Wakeford) for opening it on behalf of the Education Committee.

The Department for Education always has a special responsibility to provide opportunities for the most disadvantaged children to ensure that they enjoy secure, fulfilling and happy childhoods, to provide high-quality education to enable them to achieve their aspirations and reach their potential, and to create a route to lifelong learning that gives them skills for work and enriches their lives and wellbeing. But as many Members have noted, there is an especially significant role for the Department now, in the context of the covid crisis. Most children have been out of school since March, and this will bear most harshly on the most disadvantaged students. A senior official in the Minister’s own Department has been reported as saying that the attainment gap could widen by as much as 75% as a result of the covid impact.

That is in the context of an already troubling picture. Only 57% of children eligible for free school meals achieve a good level of school readiness, compared with 74% of their peers. Only 25% of children with special educational needs and disabilities are school ready, compared with 77% of their peers. By the time children finish primary school, only 51% of disadvantaged children reach the expected standard in reading, writing and maths, and at GCSE only 25% get good passes in maths and English, compared with 50% of all other students. Pupils with special educational needs and disabilities end up 14 months behind their peers at the end of their secondary education, with Gypsy and Roma children more than 34 months behind, and black Caribbean children nine and a half months behind.

I agree with the hon. Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) that the poorer educational outcomes achieved by the most disadvantaged children cannot be addressed by education alone. Poverty scars children’s life chances—their ability to learn and make the most of their education. Children who go hungry or who live in overcrowded housing, as the hon. Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore) noted, or whose parents cannot afford educational toys, trips or activities, face extra barriers even before they get to school.

That is why the rise in child poverty over the past 10 years is so dismaying—up from 3.5 million in 2010-11 to 4.2 million today. The hon. Member for Wantage (David Johnston) was right to draw attention to the impact that that poverty has on children’s attainment. None the less, our education system should be working to compensate for that disadvantage. Instead, as children progress through school, the gap between the most disadvantaged and other students actually widens and this, as has been noted around the House, affects the destinations of those children as they complete their schooling. They are more likely to be NEET—not in education, employment or training—and they are less likely to gain qualifications as adults. As the hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) noted, at a time when we expect the jobs market to be much more difficult as we emerge from the covid crisis, these young people face a particularly challenging future. The Institute for Public Policy Research has said that there will be a further 620,000 young people unemployed at the end of this year.

I recognise that the Government have made some announcements to try to address that—the apprenticeship guarantee; the traineeships; and the funding for careers advice—but these either remain vague, as in the case of the apprenticeship guarantee or the national skills fund, or they are not going to be adequate, as in the case of the traineeships that were trailed earlier this week. We will need much bolder commitments for these young people.

Although the scale of the challenge to come is immense, as has been noted, post-16 education funding is already in difficulty. The FE sector is expecting a £2 billion funding shortfall in 2021, and colleges have already begun to make redundancies, and had done so even before the covid crisis. This is going to make no sense if we see an increase in student numbers in September, which is quite likely if the jobs market becomes very harsh. It is also right to note that it is not clear why post-16 has been excluded from the catch-up funding, as the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) and others rightly pointed out.

The Government need to take a life course approach to tackling the gap in attainment. It begins to open up from the early years. Last year saw a £600 million gap in early years funding and no coherent early years strategy. Giving up on Labour’s Sure Start programme was a serious mistake. Childcare funding is over-complex and shuts out the children who could benefit from the most structured provision. The Government’s own Social Mobility Commission has pointed to the limited reach of the 30-hour offer and suggested its expansion. Ministers have rejected those proposals.

Meanwhile, the impact of the pandemic on the viability of the nursery sector has been devastating. The Early Years Alliance says that one in four may not be open in 12 months—it is one in three in the most disadvantaged areas. Yesterday, the House of Commons Petitions Committee called for an urgent review of funding for the childcare sector and I hope the Minister will follow that up.

On schools, I join a number of colleagues, including the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Shaun Bailey) and the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), in thanking school staff who have been working flat out to support children’s learning during the crisis and are now working on preparations for a return to school in September. The catch-up funding is welcome for children in school, but I agree with the hon. Member for Bury South that we need more details about it: how much will schools receive; will it be per pupil or grant based; which pupils will be eligible for the national tutoring fund; and how much support will it provide to disadvantaged children?

I agree with the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) that the turnaround on extending the voucher system over the summer holidays for those entitled to free school meals is welcome, but, although the Government have allocated £9 million of funding for it, the picture of holiday activity provision over the summer looks pretty patchy. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) and I agree about the opportunity that could be taken to invest in holiday clubs. Unfortunately, there has been confusion about social distancing guidance among some providers, and a sense of a lack of drive or ownership in Government, with different Departments passing the buck. Given the impact that the long summer holiday has on the attainment gap, even in normal times, this is concerning and with just a couple of weeks to go until schools break up, I urge the Minister to take stock of what provision will be in place and act to plug gaps as a matter of urgency.

Even before covid, schools were facing funding pressure. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out that 83% of schools are worse off in real terms than they were in 2015, and that has been played out in, among other ways, a significant increase in class sizes, with 13.4% of children now in classes of more than 31 children and the highest proportion of secondary children in 40 years, and that bears very harshly on disadvantaged children.

The hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) was right to talk about how funding is distributed across different schools, and this is going to become especially important in schools with the most disadvantaged children, as we will see need increase in the aftermath of the covid crisis. There will be more demand to meet mental health needs and those of children with special educational needs and disabilities, children from ethnic minorities and disadvantaged pupils. For poor children, the cost of school, uniform, books, trips, activities and so on, if parents cannot afford it, will often also have to be borne by schools. As more children are on free school meals, as more parents are out of work, there will be more who attract the pupil premium. It would be helpful to hear from the Minister how the Department envisages that additional pupil premium cost being met.

I agree with the Secretary of State that we want a broad curriculum, and the resources must be provided to deliver school sport, arts, music, languages and so on. They are important in their own right and help with attainment in core subjects, too. I agree with the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) about strategies to support the recruitment and retention of teachers to work, especially, with the most disadvantaged children. I wonder whether the Minister can say something about plans to recruit newly qualifying PGCE graduates into the classroom after the summer. Can he also tell us when he will respond to the School Teachers’ Review Body recommendations?

More than 390,000 children now have an education, health and care plan. That is a 65% increase since 2014—far more than anyone anticipated—and many are not receiving the education that they deserve. There has been a significant rise in the number of pupils with education, health and care plans in pupil referral units, and over 1,200 children of compulsory school age are not in education at all. That is a terrible betrayal of those children, and yet, parents continue to report difficulty in getting EHCPs. I understand the reason for the pause during the crisis, but we need to know when the SEND review will be completed. I have been told that some schools have used risk assessments to prevent children from attending school during covid. How on earth was that allowed to happen? I am very pleased that the legal relaxations on SEND provision will not be extended beyond September. Will the Minister say whether he is confident that there will not be a backlog of actions to catch up on and that he can guarantee that all children with special needs will have their needs met in full?

On exclusion, there is clearly a worrying picture of children from certain ethnic minority backgrounds being much more likely to be excluded and the fact that the Government will not have a full picture of black and ethnic minority students in pupil referral units, in particular, because many of those are in the unregistered independent sector and are not subject to Ofsted inspection. Labour’s Education and Skills Act 2008 provided for the registration and inspection by Ofsted of alternative provision in the independent sector, and plans were in place for that to commence in 2012 until they were put on hold by the coalition Government. Will the Minister say whether the Government will now bring forward and fully implement that legislation?

In conclusion, the emergency funding that has been put in place so far has been welcome, but much more is going to be needed as we reach a crisis point for a generation of disadvantaged children. Underlying structural problems remain unresolved and must be addressed. For the most disadvantaged children, their future wellbeing, prosperity and ability to achieve their aspirations and fulfil their potential are dependent on those programmes and that funding being in place.