Education Maintenance Allowance

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard]

It is kind of the right hon. Gentleman to give way, I am sure. I listened carefully to the powerful case studies of people he has met over recent weeks. I am concerned, however, that he might be out of touch with some of his constituents, and that he does not fully understand the needs of those with complex needs. Is he seriously arguing that a capped payment of £30 a week will fully meet the needs of the people he described? In that case, why does he not support a discretionary learner support fund that would allow individual schools to tailor provision to the needs of their students? Why is he so scared of that?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We must have shorter interventions, because many Members want to speak.

[Andy Burnham]

All I can say is that I do not think the hon. Gentleman was listening. I said that EMA makes life possible, and makes the calculations that young people have to do to stay in education that bit more doable. Is he seriously arguing that taking it from those young people will help them to make a success of their lives and circumstances? I find that hard to believe.

The vast majority of EMA is spent on travel, as a survey for the Association of Colleges confirmed this week. It states that

“94% of Colleges believe that the abolition of the EMA will affect students’ ability to travel to and from College.”

The survey also suggests that some students may be at risk of not being able to follow the college course of their choice due to the cost or availability of transport. That goes to the heart of student choice in education. If students do not have the ability to travel, they cannot get on to the courses that they want to study. The Secretary of State needs to come up with a convincing answer to that.

I want the Secretary of State also to think about the effect of the change on the aspirations of young people who are still in secondary school. I want him to reflect on what a young woman from my constituency told me this week—that her 15-year-old brother had already given up at school because, without EMA, he could not see any way that he would be able to go to Wigan and Leigh college to study the motor engineering course that he had planned to do. Is there not a real risk that taking the lifeline of EMA away from young people will lower the aspirations of children in secondary school? Better participation, attendance, retention and results, supporting choice and keeping hope alive for all kids—surely it all adds up to a compelling educational case for keeping EMA.

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[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Before I call the Secretary of State, let me say that many Members wish to speak, and if we have fewer interventions, we will get through contributions more quickly.

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[Michael Gove]

Sit down. It is rank hypocrisy—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman voted for it; we all know the role he played.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. The Secretary of State is getting very excited. Members are trying to intervene, but I will decide when they have stood on their feet too long. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman would like to carry on putting his points across to the Chamber.

[Michael Gove]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Yes, I am passionate about this. Why should young people be saddled with the economic mess left by that lot? That lot then come back here to say that we are taking opportunity away, knocking the ladder away and increasing youth unemployment, but who created this mess? It was the guilty men and women on the Opposition Front Bench. When the right hon. Member for Leigh was Chief Secretary to the Treasury—

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[Kevin Brennan]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) is tweeting from the Chamber right now that the shadow Secretary of State has refused to meet the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), but in fact the shadow Secretary of State has already met him, and is prepared to meet him at any time. Is it in order for a Member, in the course of a debate, to make points about participants in the debate without doing it here so that everyone can hear the point they are making and have an opportunity to rebut it?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

What I can say is that it is for me to keep order in the Chamber. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has brought this to my attention, and I am sure that no hon. Member will be tweeting from the Chamber to let people outside know what is going on.

[Michael Gove]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making his point, but I do not know what it says about my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) or the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) that while they were making their interventions, he thought his own Twitter feed was more intriguing than the points they had to make. However, he is a genial soul and I know they will forgive him everything, as will I.

Let me return to the central theme of many of the interventions we have just heard—the need to target support better on the poorest. In the context of everything we are doing in education, the coalition Government have already made a series of decisions, with constrained resources, to make sure that the poorest benefit from our policies. We are extending free child care to 15 hours a week for all three and four-year-olds. That did not happen under the previous Government and I had hoped they would support it, but we have introduced it. We are also extending free child care to 100,000 of the poorest two-year-olds. That happened on this watch. Those 100,000 children would not have received free child care and preparation for school if it had not been for the commitment of the coalition Government. I am grateful that some Opposition Members, such as the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) and the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), support us, and I am sure that many others recognise that this is a progressive step that all should applaud.

We are also implementing a pupil premium—£625 million this year, rising to £2.5 billion by the end of the comprehensive spending review. As a direct result of that, every poor child will have thousands more spent on their education. That money will be invested in better teaching, one-to-one tuition and catch-up learning, all of which is additional money on top of the schools budget. That policy was rejected by the Labour party in coalition negotiations. In order to make sure that all those interventions to help the poorest could be funded, the coalition Government had to take some tough choices, one of which is to replace EMA with a new system of support.

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[Michael Gove]

I shall not give way at this stage. I am conscious of the amount of time that has passed, and conscious too that many hon. Members want to speak in the remaining part of the debate.

If we are to increase participation, and if we are to generate greater social mobility, we need to be clear: we need to remove barriers. We also need to ask who faces the largest barriers. How can we help them better and what are the other barriers, as well as the financial one? The research shows us that, yes, the cost of transport, the cost of equipment or the cost of some maintenance can be a factor for some students, but it also shows us that there are bigger barriers: poor guidance, with students not being offered the right advice; poor choices, with an inadequate range of courses available; and above all, poor attainment. The real barrier to participation in education after the age of 16 is the quality of education that a person has received up to the age of 16. Yes, half this country’s students are in receipt of EMA, but by the time that half this country’s students reach the age of 16, they do not have five good GCSEs. We discovered the other week that barely 15% of students have GCSEs in the five essential areas of English, mathematics, science, languages and the humanities.

If we really believe in generating social mobility in this country, we must ask ourselves how every pound is best invested. Graham Allen is quite clear: spend it at the beginning. Frank Field is quite clear: spend it early on. The coalition Government are quite clear—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. The right hon. Gentleman knows better than to refer to Members of the House in that way.

[Michael Gove]

I am sorry, Mr Deputy Speaker.

The hon. Member for Nottingham North—a Labour Member—and the right hon. Member for Birkenhead are quite clear that we should invest in the early years. That is what the coalition Government are doing, and at a greater rate and in a more powerful way than the previous Government. The investment in early years, the reform of education, the investment in the pupil premium and the range of reforms that I mentioned earlier—the right hon. Member for Leigh has remained silent about them—make up a powerful package to generate greater social mobility.

The question for all hon. Members is: are we going to be sufficiently grown up to acknowledge that we have a deficit, or are we going to be deficit deniers? Are we going to be progressive enough to target support at those who need it most, or are we going to say that the existing system is perfect and need not be reformed? Are we going to say, “Let’s get our whole school system right,” or are we just going to spend more on one unreformed benefit? There is a basic choice today: vote with the Opposition, and therefore vote for reaction, complacency and deficit denial; or vote with the Government, and therefore vote for progressive policies, an education policy that will really change things and an opportunity, at last, to kick-start social mobility in this country.

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[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. Before I call the next speaker, I point out that many hon. Members wish to speak. The previous speaker set a good example by not using the full eight minutes. The fewer the interventions, the more speakers I can call.