Oral Answers to Questions

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am very aware of these issues, and that is one of the reasons we are consulting on replacing the system of funding that we inherited from the previous Government.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Many 16 to 18-year-olds choose to study at a college rather than in a school sixth form, and they are therefore not eligible for free school meals. How and when are the Government going to address that anomaly?

[Michael Gove]

I am familiar with that anomaly; it is a situation we inherited from the previous Government. We are seeking to ensure that funding is equalised between colleges and school sixth forms.

Vocational Education

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

That is a very good point. It is rather a shame that the view of some Labour Members—which is not shared by my hon. Friend—is that working-class children cannot achieve academic excellence. [Interruption.] I am afraid that that is the view of Opposition Front Benchers. Labour Members therefore feel that this is somehow an unfair and elitist measure, but I think that it is an aspirational measure. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: we need to ensure that all the abilities of all children are recognised, whatever their background. Labour Members need to return to the aspirational educational model that we saw under Lord Adonis, the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) and the former right hon. Member for Sedgefield, which was sadly abandoned three years ago.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I welcome Professor Wolf’s report, which has also been welcomed by the Association of Colleges. I note two points in particular: the suggestion that maths and English education should be continued for youngsters over the age of 16 who are on vocational courses and who did not achieve grade C at GCSE, and the suggestion that vocational studies in schools should be limited to 20% of the curriculum, with 80% devoted to traditional subjects. Will the Secretary of State make those statutory requirements, or will they have only advisory status?

[Michael Gove]

On the continuation of the study of maths and English after the age of 16, we will, in the context of raising the participation age, explore legislative and other options to ensure that all children have the opportunity to follow those paths,. On the related question of the 80:20 split, Professor Wolf says that to ensure the maximum chance of progressing along academic and vocational pathways, there should be an academic core up to the age of 16. She also argues that it is a good thing for all students to experience some practical learning. That is not prescriptive; it is a guide, and one of the points she makes is that university technical colleges, which have a longer school day and school week, can have a full academic core as well as a significant additional layer of practical learning on top.

Building Schools for the Future

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Monday 14th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a balanced point. The point I would make about free schools is that in the work that we have done so far, we have established that we can cut significantly—by up to 50%—the costs of providing school places. There is a proposal for at least one free school in Bradford, and it will be considerably cheaper than BSF schools. I hope that he will work with me to ensure that all new schools that are built—whether free, maintained or academy—are value for money and admit students on the basis of social justice and equality for all.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will be aware that Luton was one of the six authorities covered by the High Court action; the specific school was the Cardinal Newman Catholic school in my constituency. I visited that school on Friday and spoke at length to the head teacher. It is desperately overcrowded and has poor facilities, as is the case with all high schools in Luton. It is not so long ago that Luton had the highest proportion of school-age children in the country. In reconsidering these building projects, will the Secretary of State consider overcrowding and the lack of school capacity?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good case. I am well aware of the problems that affect Luton’s schools. I shall, of course, look closely at the case that he, other Luton Members and Luton’s local authority have made.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

I share my hon. Friend’s concern. That is why we have introduced the English baccalaureate. We are concerned that the number of pupils who currently receive a broad education in core academic subjects is far too small. That is particularly the case for pupils in disadvantaged areas. The English baccalaureate is designed to recognise the success of pupils who gain GCSEs or International GCSEs at grades A* to C across a core of academic subjects: English, maths, a humanity, the sciences and a language. We want to encourage more people to study those core subjects and to give all pupils the opportunity to study them, regardless of the school.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Many youngsters achieve good grades in GCSE maths without ever having studied algebra. That puts them at a disadvantage when they want to pursue mathematics beyond GCSE. Should algebra not be a vital part of GCSE maths?

[Mr Gibb]

Yet again, the hon. Gentleman says something with which I wholeheartedly agree. He is passionate about raising standards in our schools, as are we. That is why we recently announced the setting up of a review of the national curriculum. An expert advisory panel of head teachers from around the country will consider English, maths and science as the first part of the review.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davey]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising this matter. Pre-packs, which is the name of the process that he is talking about, are a way of dealing with companies that are already insolvent. In some circumstances they can work well. However, I recognise the concerns that he has raised about the process, especially when the sale is backed to connected parties, such as the phoenix-type companies that he talked about. I am currently considering the responses to a consultation that the previous Government held on improving transparency and confidence in the pre-pack approach to administration. I plan to make an announcement on that in the near future, and I would certainly be happy to meet him.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) and I have been in correspondence with the Secretary of State about the future of the General Motors van plant in Luton. I thank him for his reply, which we received this week. It seems from press reports that, as of yesterday, there are still uncertainties about the future of the van plant. Will he now intervene directly with the company to ensure that a new vehicle comes to Luton for the period after 2013?

[Vince Cable]

Yes, I know that this is an extremely important part of the British car industry; indeed, it is a highly productive and successful one. I have spoken to Mr Reilly about the issue, and I think that this part of the industry has a very good future.

Youth Service

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Anne Marie Morris]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and endorse what he said. Such organisations should, undoubtedly, be encouraged.

We are missing one key piece: providing youth services must be about providing quality. It is not a matter of how much money is thrown at something but how it is spent to get the best possible result. I am lucky, because Teignbridge, which is my local area and a large part of my constituency, has an excellent youth services record. The portfolio holder described Mike Stevens, who is the leader of the unit in Teignbridge, as outstanding and said that, if she could, she would clone him. There are some extremely able people who deliver high-quality services.

There are two outstanding examples in Teignbridge district. In Newton Abbot, which is at the heart of my constituency, an organisation called Chances, which operates out of a building called The Junction, is responsible for giving many young people who are excluded from school hope and a future that they would otherwise not have. I have seen the kind of outward-bound courses that are offered and the engagement of the teachers who work there, and they are fantastic.

More recently, a new centre was opened in Dawlish, which is another key town in my constituency. It is called Red Rock, and what is special about it is that it is a fine example of the big society. I would take issue with the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), who suggested that the big society was merely a convenient label. The centre evolved from the local business community, the local voluntary sector and the local authority working together.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady speaks about the big society. One imagines that that means that local voluntary and third sector groups will take over where public services are cut. In my constituency, we have had a meeting with a dozen local organisations that are fearful that their funding will be cut, and that they will be able to provide less, rather than more, in future.

[Anne Marie Morris]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution. I shall turn to funding in a minute, because clearly it is relevant, but let me stick with quality, which is key.

That project involves real engagement, and it is not the intention of anyone—certainly not the county council—that group A should take over from group B. What people see in the future is an integrated approach among different parts of our community, which we should commend.

I believe that there is a misunderstanding about funding. The hon. Member for Bolton West spoke about cuts. It is known across the House that this country is plagued with a huge national debt, and that the Government have to look at the measures to be taken. However, they have not cut youth services. They have taken away the barriers between individual prescribed funding streams that central Government used to pass money down to local government, but the amount of money going from central Government to local government remains unchanged.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I am pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to this important debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) on her excellent speech. She is clearly not just an expert but passionate about her working life before Parliament, and she probably knows more than anybody in the House about the youth service. I hope the Government will listen to her.

Luton North is an unusual constituency. When I was elected in 1997 it had the highest proportion of children aged under five in the whole country. In more recent years, it had the highest proportion of school-age children in the country, and those are now young people. There has been a surge of young people, and although Luton has wonderful educational and youth facilities, we have a considerable number of young people who are disaffected and perhaps not so successful in education, and they need much more support. We had a large number of people not in education, employment or training, and until recently, we did not quite know what was happening to them every year.

A number of community centres were built by Labour councils in the past. When I was a councillor in the 1970s, we built superb facilities that are still in operation today. However, facilities alone are not enough. We need staff to operate them. Some of that staffing is now being squeezed, and some of the services in those centres for young people are being trimmed at the edges, despite the fact that we have an excellent Labour council that is doing its best. There are problems now, and unless something is done it will get much worse once the serious cuts come through. To pretend that youth services do not need to be cut and that we can squeeze somewhere else is playing with words. The cuts will affect every service one way or another. The youth service has been underfunded in the past and it does not need less funding; it needs much more.

[Andrew Rosindell in the Chair]

One factor is safety, which my hon. Friend mentioned. Young people are on the streets. It is not just those in gangs, but those not in gangs who do not feel safe. They need places to go and professional staff to organise activities in which they can participate. In a letter that I received this morning, Tracey Quinn, the integrated youth support team manager for Luton North and a senior youth worker, wrote,

“we are proud of the good youth work we do with young people in the north of Luton and any future cuts to this young people’s service will be detrimental to both youth work and young people as part of the North Luton community.”

There is serious concern at local level in Luton. I worked for Unison for many years as a researcher. It has said that Connexions will face cuts of up to 50% across the country. That has serious implications, especially for NEETs.

I must take issue with the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes). He was talking about a national youth service and implying that the Government should take a central role in that. However, when asked to justify current cuts to youth services at a recent meeting with young people, he told them that the decision was not for central Government, but for local councils. That is saying, “We’ll cut your money, but you’ll get the blame.” We cannot blame local authorities when they are facing savage cuts.

My major point is that I do not accept the need for cuts. I have raised that point in the Commons and, before anybody intervenes, I also raised it with Ministers in the last Government before the election. We should be targeting employment creation to bring down unemployment. That will increase tax revenues and reduce the need for benefit payments. The by-product of that will be a reduction in the deficit.

Some countries have gone for savage cuts. I feel deeply sorry for the Irish; they have gone for savage cuts, but that makes their economy perform less well. Setting aside their massive debts, they have seen output decline, and going for deeper cuts will make the problem even worse. The developed world should be reflating not deflating, but we are moving towards deflation. Cutting expenditure on youth facilities will make the situation worse. Employment generation should be used in that area to bring down levels of unemployment and start to reduce the deficit. I could go on at greater length but I have probably said enough. I will listen with interest to what the Minister has to say.

Academies Bill [Lords]

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. My notes tell me that this information came from a National Union of Teachers briefing. I imagine that the NUT is up to date with what is being taught in schools, but I am happy to check that and come back. This teaching has been going on, as it does in other countries where academies are fully fledged, such as the United States. So it certainly is not outside the realms of possibility that not only is it continuing in that particular academy, but that it is happening in a widespread fashion in a number of academies. The point is that there is nothing in the Bill to stop this happening. Even if it has stopped over the past few weeks or months at one particular academy, there is nothing to prevent it from happening again. That is the real concern.

It beggars belief that the Minister in the other place said that although he shared the concerns raised about creationism,

“one of the core aims of the policy is precisely that the Secretary of State should not dictate to academies what they should teach…I fully accept that if you trust people things do go wrong, but that is the direction that we want to try to go in.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 7 July 2007; Vol. 720, c. 299.]

I commend him on his honesty at least, but the substance of what he said is very worrying.

Although, at the moment, the national curriculum does not include statutory sex and relationships education, it does ensure that maintained faith schools teach sexual reproduction as part of the science syllabus. Nothing in the new, deregulated system proposed by this Bill would oblige religious academies to do the same. Personal, social and health education—PSHE—was debated at length in the other place, yet we see no Government move on it as yet. Instead, the Government argued that making PSHE a curriculum requirement under the Bill was not the right way to go, as the best place to consider this was in the forthcoming national curriculum review. Yet, of course, the Government want academies to be free of the national curriculum.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

A recent television report said that there are six times as many teenage pregnancies in Britain than in Holland, yet Holland’s schools have much more rigorous education on sexual and reproduction matters. Is that not of fundamental importance?

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, because it absolutely proves the case that education is a key way of ensuring that we do not have a huge number of unwanted teenage pregnancies. Education does not lead young people suddenly to think of doing things that they might not have thought of doing were they not to have had that education. On the contrary, education is one of the best forms of contraception.

The British Humanist Association has asked, legitimately, whether a new, state-funded, Catholic academy would be allowed not to teach sexual reproduction in biology lessons, let alone wider and more objective sex and relationships education. Again, as far as we can see, nothing in the new, deregulated system proposed by the Bill would seem to prohibit that from happening.

These are not the only concerns, because despite this being paid for by the taxpayer, sponsors of academies have enormous powers to dictate how and what pupils learn more generally. I read today with horror that one academy is apparently installing a “call centre” so that pupils’ “aspirations” can be raised by training for this type of work. In Manchester and Birmingham, for example, a range of academies are being planned, each specialising in preparing pupils for employment in specific industries or commercial activities. I read that Manchester airport, which is one such prospective sponsor, has overtly stated that the principal purpose of its academy will be to provide employees for the airport. That is a pretty reductionist interpretation of the purpose of education. That is why we must ensure that academies do follow the national curriculum, which is what my amendment seeks to do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

Amendment 1 would require all academies established in future to follow the national curriculum rather than one that satisfied

“the requirements of section 78 of the EA 2002”,

which is that academies must provide a

“balanced and broadly based curriculum”.

Amendment 25 would mean that new academies would be required to teach the national curriculum in

“science, mathematics, information technology and English”.

Academies have been regulated since their inception by funding agreements. The previous Government took the stance—for many years—that that was the appropriate mechanism, and we agree with them. We intend to retain the funding agreement as the principle regulatory mechanism for academies. Via the new model funding agreement, academies will be required to teach English, maths and science as part of a broad and balanced curriculum. Beyond that, they can choose a curriculum that both engages and meets the needs of their pupils.

The freedoms in the academy system allow school leaders and teachers to be innovative in their approaches to raising standards and improving pupil engagement by tailoring the curriculum to the needs of their students in response to the type and quality of education demanded by parents. We trust teachers to use their professional judgment. They are the people who are best-placed to make such decisions. We want more freedom and flexibility for schools, not less.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I am listening to the Minister with interest, but I am somewhat astonished. I remember him when he was in opposition speaking strongly in favour of using synthetic phonics in teaching, with which I entirely agree, and advocating imposing requirements on teachers as to how they teach. However, now he is taking a Maoist approach—let a thousand flowers bloom—and giving teachers the freedom to do what they like. That is something of a contradiction.

[Mr Gibb]

The Conservatives have never said, either in opposition or in government, that we will pass a law requiring teachers to teach in that way, although it is the law—as introduced by the previous Government—that phonics should be the method used to teach children to read. I believe, as does the hon. Gentleman, that that method raises standards. We believe that schools should use best practice and we will not countenance schools that use methods that do not result in young people being able to read early in their school careers, which is why we are introducing a test of children’s reading skills for six-year-olds. We will say more about that in the weeks and months ahead.

The hon. Gentleman will also wish to know that we are planning a review of the national curriculum that will inform our proposals for a set of core knowledge. We expect that each academy will want to incorporate that into its curriculum and that there will be parental pressure for them to do so. However, that will be an expectation, not a requirement. We believe that the freedom to be imaginative with curriculum design within a broad and balanced context is a core freedom at the heart of the academies programme that will underpin the improvement in standards that we all want for our schools.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Again, I am listening with interest to what the Minister is saying, but he will know, as I do, that there is a wide range of teaching philosophies among teachers, some of which are successful and some of which are not. We have suffered from this for the past couple of generations. There are apparently 1 million people in London who cannot read because of mistaken teaching techniques. Is it not time that we started to require successful teaching methods to be adopted in all our schools?

[Mr Gibb]

I would hate to be on the opposite side of this argument with the hon. Gentleman. He will have to wait until we make our announcements on this, but there are going to be reforms to initial teacher training, to the tests at age six, and to the training of teachers through continued professional development to ensure that they all use best practice in teaching children to read.

Evidence from the National Reading Panel in the United States and elsewhere overwhelmingly suggests that using early systematic synthetic phonics in the teaching of reading is the most effective way of teaching young children to read. That is my personal view, too. In particular, it closes the gap between boys and girls and between children from poorer backgrounds and others. I have to say, however, that there might well be other methods that the hon. Gentleman and I have not come across that could be even more effective than systematic synthetic phonics. I would like to see what they are, but we cannot rule out teachers being innovative and using such methods, if that results in children learning to read sooner and more effectively.