Oral Answers to Questions

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

My right hon. Friend has been campaigning on this issue on behalf of her constituents for a long time. An extra £60 million has been provided for the coming financial year. I know that we are going to be meeting shortly to discuss the particular circumstances that arise in Barnet, and look forward to working with her to find a solution for the maintained nursery schools in her constituency.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

T9. According to the Department’s own statistics, Sheffield Music Hub is one of the best in the country, and— alongside Sheffield Music Academy—the only one of its kind not to have a permanent home. There are ambitious plans to create a centre for inclusion and excellence in music education in Sheffield. Will the Minister agree to meet, or ideally visit, the team to see for himself how the project could transform thousands of lives and benefit our city?

Education Funding

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I know that my hon. Friend has been campaigning with many other colleagues who have been affected by historic lower levels of school funding in certain counties, and the result of his campaigning is the settlement that we have announced today. Special educational needs are a vital issue for every school in every part of the country, and it is vital for us to ensure that the level of funding is right. The £700 million that will be provided in the first year will have a direct impact in ensuring that those children have the level of provision and support that is required.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

Some of the consequences of the chronic underfunding of special educational needs have been a huge rise in the number of exclusions and an increase in the number of parents forced to home-educate their children because they cannot find school places for them. What measures will the Secretary of State attach to this funding to ensure that there are enough specialist places and enough support in mainstream education to keep children with special educational needs in schools?

[Gavin Williamson]

It is always vitally important that we do everything we can to support children with special educational needs in mainstream schools, but I would point out that the numbers of exclusions from schools are lower today than they were when there was last a Labour Government.

Further Education Funding

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) not only on his eloquent speech but on taking so many interventions. I also congratulate every Member who is here, because their presence sends out a strong signal, not only to the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills, who we know gets the message, but to the Treasury. I hope that the televisions in the Treasury are blaring away with Westminster Hall on the screens, because it is the Treasury that needs to get the message. That is why a cross-party consensus is so important. We are all essentially saying the same thing—that further education has been overlooked and needs sustainable, long-term funding.

We are lucky enough in the Black Country to have some fantastic colleges, including City of Wolverhampton College. It is a place that is close to my heart because I studied my Spanish A-level there alongside those I studied at school. The college provides vital educational opportunities to both young people and adults. It offers more than 300 vocational and academic qualifications to 4,500 students, covering a wide range of full and part-time courses, including a well-regarded journalism course. It also has some fantastic, but expensive to maintain, facilities that enable people to train in the trades, such as plumbing.

Many of the facts and figures have been covered by colleagues, but it is worth saying that the Institute for Fiscal Studies recently said that further education was the “biggest” loser in cuts to education. It simply cannot be right that funding per pupil for 16 and 17-year-olds has been frozen at £4,000 since 2014 and £3,300 for 18-year-olds, or that lecturers are paid about £7,000 less than teachers. It is not about just the money or the statistics; it is about what we value as a society and what our objectives are. If we are serious about tackling inequality and about ensuring that our young people, and adults who have perhaps missed out on opportunities at school, fulfil their potential, we need to do something about the situation.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

In Sheffield, we have a tale of two cities. The difference in life expectancy between the east and west is 10 years. One of the biggest differences is that in the east we have little access to schools with sixth forms, so FE is a really important unlocker for social mobility. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is fundamentally a class issue?

[Emma Reynolds]

Indeed. If we are serious about social mobility, we must fund further education better. More broadly, if as a society and as an economy we are serious about attracting more investment into the UK and competing in the world and, crucially—the hon. Members for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) and for Gloucester mentioned this—if we are serious about tackling low productivity, we cannot do anything about those things unless we invest in the skills of our young people and adults. We know that we have a problem with that in the UK; it is not a new problem. It is pretty clear to everyone here that we need sustained increases in funding for colleges, and the Raise the Rate campaign will, I hope, ultimately be successful.

The colleges have done a good job in raising the problem. Often in education debates, we focus purely on the early years, which are very important, and on primary and secondary and then university education, and further education is overlooked. That is why today’s debate is critical.

I say again that I hope the TVs in the Treasury are switched on to Westminster Hall this morning. I thank the Minister for her advocacy. This is not just the right thing morally; increasing and sustaining further education funding is the right thing to do for the prosperity of our country.

Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Funding

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. This debate could not be more important, because—like all hon. Members—in every surgery I have held since being elected, I have met the parents of children with SEN. Without exception, they are dedicated to their children’s future, and many have sacrificed their jobs and careers in order to navigate the labyrinthine systems, which they often feel have been deliberately designed to prevent them from accessing the support that their child is due. They include the parents I saw last week, whose eight-year-old son has a variety of complex needs but has not been to school for three years, the 12-year-old with autism spectrum disorder, processing disorder and anxiety, who has been out of school for 16 months, and the child who has selective mutism as part of his ASD, whose school is, in his mother’s words, “supportive”, but frequently uses informal exclusions when short-staffed, as it cannot provide one-to-one support.

None of these types of cases will be unfamiliar to us, and they are all the more heart-breaking in their familiarity. We are normalising the mistreatment of children with special educational needs and, without a shadow of doubt, funding is the primary issue. Sheffield City Council has a deficit of £6 million for the high needs block, out of a total deficit of £8 million for school funding this year. That underfunding manifests itself in a number of ways. First, mainstream schools have less additional and specialist support in place and so are unable to cater for children with SEN. I have had reports of parents going to schools in my constituency and being told explicitly, “This is not the school for your child if he has autism.” As there are not enough spaces, more and more parents are choosing to educate their children at home, not truly out of choice, but out of desperation. The cuts to the local authorities have left teams so short-staffed that the availability, quality and consistency of EHCPs is really poor.

There are other issues beyond funding. A recent Ofsted inspection of Sheffield found that

“High levels of fixed-term and permanent exclusions result in children and young people with SEND not achieving as well as they should…Good outcomes for children and young people with SEND are compromised by the widespread use of partial timetables for lengthy periods. At the time of this inspection, 70 pupils with an EHC plan and 118 with special educational needs support were on these partial timetables.”

When can we expect the Timpson review, and does the Minister recognise the vital role of Ofsted in making our schools much more inclusive?

Finally, navigation for parents needs to be much simpler. Parents need clearer pathways and an understanding of their rights. They absolutely do not receive clear or timely information on the support available for their children and how to access it. One parent said to me, “It is so very wrong that a child who needs more educational support than others gets none at all. The lack of provision is a total disgrace and has created a sub-group of children with special needs and no schooling.” Sadly, that is the picture that many parents and children now face. Who could disagree with her?

Oral Answers to Questions

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Chris Skidmore]

Absolutely. I look forward to working with the OfS in future, above all to help deliver the best possible outcomes for students, based on the publication of transparent data. The OfS requires providers to meet high-quality standards, which are assessed by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education. As I say, we have introduced the TEF to identify and reward institutions that deliver high-quality teaching and positive student outcomes.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

How many universities are currently considered at risk of insolvency? Does the Minister agree that allowing universities to fail would improve neither quality, nor choice? If he does agree with that, will he give us a categorical assurance that that will not happen on his watch?

[Chris Skidmore]

All universities are autonomous institutions that have the independence to be able to govern their own finances. The OfS is currently going through a process of re-registration of certain institutions, and I hope that all institutions have put in place sound financial measures to continue for the future. If that is not the case, the Government are working with the OfS towards establishing student protection plans, to ensure that all students’ education will not be harmed.

College Funding

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend raises some important points. I guess it will be for the Minister to respond. In a sector that has seen constant change and churn over many years, there is sometimes a yearning for stability.

On that note, the Prime Minister’s review into post-18 education and funding, chaired by Philip Augar, was announced last year and is eagerly awaited—although I guess the Prime Minister might have other things on her mind at the moment.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making the point about pay and the impact on recruitment and retention. Does he agree that it is especially acute for specialist areas? Sheffield College has seen significant growth in the delivery of higher apprentices in engineering and manufacturing, but it is really struggling to recruit in those specialisms. It has run four recruitment campaigns, but still finds it almost impossible to recruit. These are areas that are crucial for the future of our economy. We need to ensure that they have full parity of pay, so that we can attract the best and the brightest into this sector.

Cost of School Uniforms

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Frank Field]

Again, I see the Minister busily rewriting his speech—[Laughter.] We are laughing, but I know that nobody outside will mistake that: our comments are dead serious. I have heard horror stories about parents going without food to provide uniforms. They do not want their children to look different from other children, and they wake up at night worrying about it. This is an incredibly serious debate, but we are making some of our points as humorously as possible because we know we have got the Minister on our side.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way, and I congratulate him on securing this really important debate. The points he has been making are really serious. Buying school uniforms potentially plunges parents into poverty, but it also forces them to pick certain schools over others because of the expense of the uniforms. The previous Labour Government introduced a statutory school admissions code that explicitly required schools to prevent the cost of school uniforms from getting in the way of admission. Perhaps the Minister will consider reintroducing it.

[Frank Field]

It is really great that all my best points are being taken. The Government say they are concerned about social mobility, but school uniform costs affect parents’ choices about which school they send their children to, irrespective of where they come not in the 11-plus selection but in the selection of schools. I thank my hon. Friend for that immensely important point.

Oral Answers to Questions

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

Data published by UCAS today shows that the 18-year-old entry rate to full-time education in Walsall North has increased by 54% compared with 2006. In our last guidance to the director of fair access, we asked that areas with the poorest progression to university received particular attention.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

T8. A maintained primary school in my constituency has received over 20 pupils in year from a local academy because of their permanent exclusion, or because they have been pushed out due to the risk of a permanent exclusion. What more can the Department and local authorities do to disincentivise academies from excluding pupils and pushing them on to maintained primaries?

[Justine Greening]

First, the new national funding formula much better helps schools to deal with this issue of students coming into schools in year. Secondly, following the race disparity audit, we launched an exclusions review to make sure that the whole process around how a child is permanently excluded is properly delivered.

Mental Health Education in Schools

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Monday 6th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Catherine McKinnell]

I absolutely agree, and we are not at odds in that viewpoint. What I hope comes out of the debate—what I hope the Minister listens to and takes on board—is the holistic approach. It is about taking a whole-person approach in the education system, while ensuring that our health system matches it equally. We talk about parity, but my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) is absolutely right that that is not a reality for those needing mental health support. We need proper training and resources in schools from as young an age as possible to give that support and educational input and to ensure that specifically trained health professionals can provide support and treatment where necessary for young people.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is being very generous with her time. As has been mentioned, a survey by HeaducationUK found that 75% of school leaders said they lacked the resources to meet the mental health needs of their pupils, citing the lack of training as one of the main contributing factors. I of course agree with the right hon. and learned Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald) that counsellors and an holistic approach would be beneficial and would help to nip the problem in the bud, but I would like to put on the record the massive funding pressure on schools. I am sure that teachers and heads will be looking at this debate saying, “Of course we would like to put that on, but we are currently having to cut core subjects from our curriculum, let alone looking at additional extras that it would be wonderful to have in schools.”

[Catherine McKinnell]

I absolutely agree, and my hon. Friend makes the case clearly, as I intend to in this debate. It is not about talking the talk but about walking the walk, to ensure that we have the resources necessary, not only for the training that our teachers need to feel confident about providing educational input where appropriate, but for trained professionals to be in place where required.

Schools are under inordinate pressure. I had a very difficult meeting with a local headteacher who struggled to hold back tears as she explained that she would have to lay off the school councillor for this financial school year—the choice was that or cancelling all the school excursions for the entire year. That is a very difficult decision for any headteacher to make, but there are school leaders up and down the country making those difficult decisions that ultimately will ensure that our children do not have the support that they need, and that children and their families are not looked after when they are in trouble, which will have long-term impacts on the education outcomes not only of that child but all the other children in that school.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine McKinnell]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It feels uncomfortable to talk about this in monetary terms, but ultimately an invest-to-save policy approach would make huge differences, because if teachers and young people are better supported in their mental health and wellbeing, that will relieve pressures in that school and further down the system, and into adulthood and beyond.

The Government should take seriously the recommendations that I outlined from YoungMinds, which all address putting targets in place and the funding necessary to meet them. I want all children across the country to have the best possible education, filled with rigour and challenge—one that will provide them with the right knowledge and skills to set them up for their adult lives, where they will face many challenges, including in the workplace. However, I know from my time on the Education Committee and from regular conversations with school students, parents and teachers across my constituency just how much pressure young people feel under as a result of ever-increasing demands for schools to deliver the right academic results. Indeed, a constituent recently contacted me about her son, who was prevented from studying certain subjects at A-level despite having achieved good B grades at GCSE. She commented:

“My son is resilient but this has knocked his confidence as he is effectively being told he is not good enough at the start of a really important two years of school.”

There are increasing concerns about the introduction of the English baccalaureate and its significant narrowing of the curriculum at many secondary schools, which reduces the opportunity for many pupils to excel, such is the pressure on schools to deliver results in a small number of Government-defined core subjects.

There is really disturbing pressure on primary age pupils as a result of significant recent changes to the curriculum, school performance measures and SATs. A recent Guardian survey found that some 82% of primary school leaders had seen an increase in mental health issues among primary age pupils around the time of exams, with effects including loss of eyelashes through stress, sobbing during tests, sleeplessness, anxiety, fear of academic failure, low self-esteem, panic attacks and depression. That is in primary schools. I find that a really disturbing picture. Although I am pleased that the Government have listened to some of the concerns across the sector and agreed to scrap key stage 1 tests by 2023, the impact of high-stakes assessments clearly remains for key stage 2 pupils.

It seems to me that there is little point in the Government mandating compulsory mental health education in our schools while they actively undermine pupils’ mental health in the way that I have outlined and that I have seen in the young people I have spoken to and heard from. Indeed, the joint report of the Education and Health Committees concluded:

“Achieving a balance between promoting academic attainment and well-being should not be regarded as a zero-sum activity. Greater well-being can equip pupils to achieve academically. If the pressure to promote academic excellence is detrimentally affecting pupils, it becomes self-defeating. Government and schools must be conscious of the stress and anxiety that they are placing on pupils and ensure that sufficient time is allowed for activities which develop life-long skills for well-being.”

I look forward to hearing how the Minister intends to ensure that this situation is rectified, as it is clearly in the Government’s gift to do so. Of course, a plethora of other issues contribute to the poor mental health of far too many children and young people. The Select Committees’ joint report touched on some of those, which include social media pressures, cyber-bullying, internet safety, sleep deprivation and body confidence.

I seriously urge the Government to recognise just how detrimental families’ economic situations can be for children and young people’s mental health. As part of its breathing space campaign, the Children’s Society powerfully highlighted that

“children in low-income families with multiple debts are more likely to suffer from mental health problems than equivalent families with fewer debts.”

It is estimated that in my constituency alone, some 3,348 children live in families with problem debt. Again, it is in the Government’s gift to do something about that.

Of course, one of the key ways to ensure that our schools deliver something is measurement of it by Ofsted. Reporting to the Education and Health Committees’ inquiry, the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health described Ofsted as the

“largest driving force in school practice”;

the Institute for Public Policy Research stated that the

“Ofsted framework has a very strong ability to influence school behaviour”;

and the Education Policy Institute commented that the

“benefit of having Ofsted look at wellbeing is that it is a signal to schools that it is part of their job, and it is not just about accountability measures and the academic side”.

However, IPPR research found that just one third of Ofsted reports made explicit reference to pupils’ mental health and wellbeing, even after personal development and wellbeing criteria were included in the Ofsted inspection framework. That is why the Select Committees’ joint report recommended:

“More must be done to ensure that mental health and well-being are given appropriate prominence in inspections and in contributing to the overall grade given to the school or college. The recently appointed Chief Inspector should, as a matter of priority, consider ways in which the inspection regime gives sufficient prominence to well-being.”

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend, who is making a compelling case and a thoroughly excellent speech; she has stolen nearly all the points I wanted to raise. She makes an important point about Ofsted and why it is wholly inappropriate to roll mental health education into PSHE. Ofsted mentioned PSHE provision in just 14% of its secondary school reports and only 8% of its primary school reports under its most recent inspection framework. That shows how poor PSHE provision is in schools and why it is vital that mental health education provision is completely separate.

[Catherine McKinnell]

I thank my hon. Friend for both her kind comments and her intervention. We will go on repeating the same arguments and the same compelling case for change until the Government make the changes that we know are needed. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s responses to the specific concerns that I outlined in relation to the Select Committees’ joint report and to the concerns raised by my hon. Friend, from whom I hope we will hear more later.

It would be hugely remiss of me to lead a debate on this subject without touching on the increasing pressures on our education system. Although I firmly believe in the importance of mental health education in our schools, I am always reluctant to propose placing yet another requirement on teachers, who are hugely overworked and under-resourced, particularly given the ongoing financial crisis that many of our schools face.

Despite the Government’s recent announcement about additional funding, the reality is that 88% of our schools still face a real-terms budget cut by 2020. In my constituency, that means Walbottle Campus losing more than £460,000 in real terms between 2015-16 and 2019-20—the equivalent of 10 teachers or £321 per pupil. For Gosforth Academy, it equates to a total real-terms loss of almost £430,000 in the same period. Those are staggering sums, and I know how agonising that is for headteachers who are trying to balance the books. I mentioned earlier that at least one of my local headteachers had to cut the school counsellor to make the necessary savings.

There is little point in seeking to introduce compulsory mental health education at the same time as budget cuts are resulting in existing mental health support for students and families being axed—a situation that is reflected around the country, as the evidence given to the Education and Health Committees showed. There is also little point in introducing compulsory mental health education or a whole-school approach to mental health if it is not done properly, which is why the Select Committees’ joint report highlighted that doing so

“will have implications for staffing and training and the balance of provision and delivery of subjects across the curriculum to allow more time to focus on well-being and building resilience.”

Our report also emphasised:

“Teachers are not mental health professionals, but they are in many cases well placed to identify mental ill health and refer students to further assessment and support. Training school and college staff to recognise the warning signs of mental health ill health in their students is crucial. We encourage the Government to build on the inclusion of mental health training in initial teacher training and ensure current teachers also receive training as part of an entitlement to continuing professional development.”

I know that there is much support for that from hon. Members who have already contributed to this debate.

Teachers Strike

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

No, I think that is an anachronistic approach to discussing important political issues. We have regular discussions with the teacher unions. We have all kinds of reference groups of representative teachers whom we meet regularly in the Department for Education. We are very aware of teachers’ concerns about the changing curriculum and worries about workload. We had a workload challenge to which 44,000 teachers responded. We take all these issues very seriously, and we respond to concerns. We do not want to go back to the 1980s and have strikes as a way of engaging in issues of concern. They are not necessary, and most teachers agree with that.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

The Minister can say all he likes about school budgets going up, but the facts on the ground paint a very different picture. One of the schools in my constituency has had to close down its summer school, which was deliberately targeted at helping deprived students to catch up before the beginning of the school year. Will he look at that example, and other examples that other hon. Members are sure to raise, to make sure that the funding cuts do not impact on deprived students, in particular?

[Mr Gibb]

Yes, of course I will look at any individual examples that the hon. Lady or any other hon. Member wants to bring my attention, and I will make sure that the school is receiving the best possible advice on how to manage its budget.