Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Laurence Robertson and David Johnston

Monday 29th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (David Johnston)]

Places for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities have increased in Gloucestershire since 2015. We estimate that there are 1,700 places, and the local authority opened two additional settings in 2022-23.

[Mr Robertson]

At the moment, 120 pupils have been assessed as needing special school places, but those places are not available. Over the next couple of years it looks like at least 200 more special school places will be needed in Gloucestershire. Can the Minister look at the situation urgently to see what he can do to help?

[David Johnston]

We are working closely with local authorities on this issue. We have allocated more than £1.5 billion of high needs capital allocations in the last two years for local authorities to create additional places. Gloucestershire County Council has announced a 200-place moderate and additional learning difficulties school for four to 16-year-olds, to be delivered through our free school presumption route in early 2026.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Laurence Robertson and David Johnston

Monday 23rd October 2023 Commons Chamber

[David Johnston]

Part of the reason why we are staggering the entitlement is to ensure that we have the staff in place to deliver it. In the next few weeks we will announce changes to the processes for recruiting people. We will launch a big campaign of recruitment in the new year to increase the workforce, and I have every confidence that we will meet the commitment.

[Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)]

24. What recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of funding for special needs education.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (David Johnston)]

Higher needs funding for children and young people with complex needs is increasing by a further £440 million next year, bringing the total higher needs budget to £10.5 billion in 2024-25—60% higher than it was in 2019-20.

[Mr Robertson]

I am grateful to the Minister for that response, and I heard the earlier responses, but there is a shortage of places in special needs schools—special schools for children who need those places. Will he carry out a national assessment of the number of places that are available in special schools against the number of places that are needed, because it is resulting in some children having to attend mainstream schools when actually they should be in special schools?

[David Johnston]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We have approved the opening of 78 special schools, and this year we collected new data from local authorities on their capacity and demand forecast for special schools. That will help us to support them more effectively to fulfil their duty to provide sufficient places.

Social Mobility

Debate between Laurence Robertson and David Johnston

Tuesday 21st March 2023 Westminster Hall

[David Johnston]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have to talk more about this because too often in politics people on the left fear they will demonise parents and on the right they fear they will appear to be the nanny state if they talk about it, but politicians and commentators who say those things are doing exactly the right things for their children. He is absolutely right about the Family Nurse Partnership and a whole range of other things, including family hubs.

The schools system is the easiest lever for politicians to pull, and we have seen huge increases in attainment through academies, free schools and various other initiatives. We have seen London state schools go from being the worst to the best, but we still have parts of the country where the standard of education is not good enough. We have a gender gap in education where girls do better than boys, and an ethnicity gap where certain ethnic groups do better than others, but the biggest gap in education is between children who have free school meals and those who do not. Although we have been making progress—albeit slow—covid has made that situation a lot worse, and has destroyed a lot of the progress we have made. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford says, the national tutoring programme is important, but we have to do more to focus on that.

Let me quickly canter through some other areas. This is about further education colleges and ensuring that the courses they provide will help people in the employment market, which is what we were trying to get to with the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022. When it comes to universities, the success they often trumpet about the percentage of state school students they have masks the fact that a huge proportion of them went to selective state schools—grammar schools—and that the proportion of comprehensive school entry pupils is still low. There is more for them to do, particularly at the most elite universities.

Finally, on professions, Members will have heard me say previously that someone is 24 times more likely to become a doctor if their parent is a doctor; only 6% of doctors are from a working-class background. Again, that is not in the Government’s control. Employers have to do something about that. Some people will say that social mobility is not about people leaving their home area, going to a Russell Group university and getting a middle-class job, but show me someone who says that, and nine times out of 10 they will have done exactly that in their own life. That does not invalidate the point—we need to have both, and to move jobs and investment to those areas—but do not tell me that we should not be trying to get more people into those universities and professions, because they are controlling the country. If we are to get to a position where talent and opportunity is everywhere, everybody has to play their part.

[Mr Laurence Robertson (in the Chair)]

I have to ask Members to please stick to four minutes now.