Budget Resolutions

Lucy Powell Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

The autumn statement saw us provide further investment for R and D. Indeed, the national productivity fund has been set up to make sure that we can fund infrastructure, including R and D, more broadly. However, it is not just through physical infrastructure that our country will be successful—we need to invest in our people and in human capital as well. Through this Budget we are investing in human capital in skills, education and training to create a strong economy that works for everyone.

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[Justine Greening]

If I can make a bit more progress, I will give way.

This Government are rightly focused on apprenticeships because of the huge difference that they can make to individuals, boosting a person’s lifetime earnings by 11% on average. Eighty-three per cent. of apprentices tell us that they believe it is improving their career prospects. This is already making a big difference to individuals. Last year 900,000 people were enrolled in an apprenticeship, which means that more than 3 million people have started an apprenticeship since 2010. They include apprentices such as Adam Sharp, last year’s advanced apprentice of the year, who moved 150 miles to take up a mechanical design apprenticeship in Sellafield and dreams of becoming that nuclear power plant’s chief mechanical engineer; and Becky King, who went to train at the National Physical Laboratory in London straight after college in order to develop her passion for science.

Last week I kicked off National Apprenticeships Week with Barclays in the City. I met young people on apprenticeships at Barclays who were inspiring because they were finding out just how well they could do. Apprenticeships are bringing out the underlying talent of our young people. It is cathartic for them to be able to discover their potential.

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[Justine Greening]

The qualification will be stronger on a number of fronts. First, it will have the commitment of, and its design will be led by, employers. Secondly, it will have more hours, so the student will simply have had a more comprehensive programme of education in achieving the T-level. Thirdly, its quality will be much higher, with more time spent in the classroom and, critically, more time spent on a quality work placement with an employer. Once the person finishes the T-level, they will come out of it ready to work and to begin their career with a high-quality qualification that employers truly value. That I why we feel this is such a significant step forward.

Building such a world-class technical education system will not just generate the skills and productivity that are the foundations of a strong economy; it will also spread opportunity and increase social mobility, helping to break the link between a person’s background and where they get to in life. It will be no surprise to the House that many young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to be on technical courses than their peers, yet such an education has not been at the level that they deserve or that our economy deserves. A report by the Boston Consulting Group and the Sutton Trust suggests that greater social mobility could boost our economy by a staggering £140 billion every year. Different young people have different talents, and if we can successfully put technical education on a par with academic routes, it will not just be good for those young people, but it will be exactly what our economy needs.

Improving the quality of technical education will boost the life chances and future earnings of those young people. This is not about designing a second chance system for the disadvantaged. I do not want technical education to be seen as a back-up to the academic path; I want parity of esteem. I want technical education to take its rightful place alongside the academic track as a totally credible path to a professional career, but we are not there yet.

[Lucy Powell]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

I call Lucy Allan to make an intervention.

[Lucy Powell]

Did you call me Lucy Allan, Madam Deputy Speaker? I am very much a Powell.

Labour Members very much welcome any attempt to raise the status of technical and vocational education and the esteem in which it is held, something we began during our time in government. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is often a mix or blend of the technical and the academic—in engineering, digital opportunities, the creative industries or even health and social care—that will be important in the global world of the future, and will she assure the House that people will not be separated at the age of 16?

[Justine Greening]

The key to success is strengthening the technical education routes, as I have said. Having longevity in the strategy, as was done in Lord Sainsbury’s work, is absolutely critical in giving us an architecture around which we can now build a strategy and, as we saw in the Budget, in which we can now invest. As the hon. Lady says, it is important to ensure that the whole education system fits together. That is why it is so important, as we create more national colleges and institutes of technology, that we talk with further education colleges—they will be at the centre of all this—and also with universities. Universities of course already offer degrees in areas such as engineering, but they can clearly offer more applied learning and more technical education routes for many young people. As she says, we have to make sure that that fits together.

Indeed, we want to increase the quality and availability of higher-level technical education, so that technically gifted students can continue their studies beyond the age of 19. One of our challenges is that not only are the lower rungs of the technical education ladder not as high quality as on the academic route, but there are not really the higher rungs for young people to aim for and to climb successfully. The Government’s new national colleges and institutes of technology will make sure that there are world-class institutions at which to study higher level technical qualifications.

From September 2019, we will introduce maintenance loans for students studying level 4 or higher qualifications at these institutions. This will mean that for them, just as for university students, our best technical minds will not be limited by financial circumstances or place. This approach is just as much about parity between places as it is about parity between people. Nearly three quarters of young people in Barnsley follow a technical path, while less than one quarter do so in Kensington and Chelsea. By levelling up technical education—putting it on a par with academic routes, with reform, investment and focus—we can steadily erase regional inequalities and make sure that the door of opportunity for young people in all parts of the country, whatever education route they choose that fits them, is firmly kept open.

Building opportunity and a strong economy is about having good school places as well as skills. Good schools are the foundation of economic success and social mobility. This Government are resolute in our pursuit of more good school places in every part of the country, especially where they are most needed, to power higher educational attainment. That is why almost 1.8 million more children are in good or outstanding schools compared with 2010. That means, critically, that 1.8 million more young people are getting a better start in attempting to reach their potential. However, 1 million pupils are still in schools judged by Ofsted to be inadequate or to require improvement, so there is more work to do.

Alongside the £5 million a year of investment in skills, the Budget delivers £320 million of investment to fund over 70,000 places in up to 110 new free schools, on top of the 500 free schools we have committed to deliver by 2020. That includes funding for specialist maths schools, building on the successes of the outstanding Exeter Mathematics School, which I had the privilege of being able to visit recently, and King’s College London Mathematics School, which the Prime Minister has visited. Every child in every part of the country needs access to a fantastic school place, so we have to plan ahead and leave no stone unturned in pursuit of those places.

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[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to make my maiden speech during an important debate on education and skills. Both are vital to the future success of my constituency, albeit a greater challenge following the sustained underfunding of Stoke schools.

It is a privilege to have been elected as the Labour and Co-operative Member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent Central in an election that was not planned and following a campaign that, all too often, did not do justice to the wonderful city that I now represent. Many of my colleagues on these Benches—and, I would wager, on the Government Benches—who came to Stoke-on-Trent during the by- election would struggle to reconcile the vibrant, welcoming and proud city they visited with the portrait painted by the national media. All too often, cameras lingered over disused bottle kilns, while our resurgence in hi-tech ceramics went unmentioned. Journalists posed by abandoned shop fronts, just yards away from the city’s thriving cultural quarter, and rarely did our world-class university feature in reports. Commentators talked down my city in order to play up their narrative. They dismissed a capital of culture as little more than the capital of Brexit, pigeonholing my constituents into a box that does not reflect their true character.

While that narrative suited those seeking to win the election on a platform of hatred, division and nationalism dressed up as patriotism, it did a grave disservice to my city, whose motto is “United strength is stronger.” My city demonstrated that nationalism of any sort has no place in our politics. My challenge, for however long I am blessed to represent Stoke-on-Trent in this place, is to champion everything that is great and good about our city; to recognise our problems, but to highlight our many achievements; and to shout loud and often about why the Potteries, above all else, is the best place in the UK, if not the world.

In the Potteries, we are innovators and educators, artists and entrepreneurs. We pioneered the first industrial revolution—something that has been discussed quite a lot this afternoon—and we have the potential to lead the next. We are the home of Reginald Mitchell, Josiah Wedgwood, Clarice Cliff and, more recently, Robbie Williams. But, most importantly, we are home to the Staffordshire oatcake—a delicacy seldom found outside of the ST postcode but which, once savoured, is never forgotten.

[Lucy Powell]

We’ll have to try it.

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[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I echo what has already been said about the fantastic maiden speech of my new hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell). I went with him to visit a maintained nursery school in Stoke, and I know how committed he is to education and skills in the area. That brings me to the main thrust of my own speech.

After nearly seven years, the cumulative effect of Government policy on education and skills is now being felt by pupils, parents and teachers, and has given rise to a number of serious issues, each of which should demand the full attention of Ministers. School budgets are falling for the first time in 20 years. There is a teacher shortage crisis. There has been a huge rise in pupil numbers, requiring about 400,000 new school places. We are seeing the biggest changes in GCSEs and the curriculum for a generation, of which many people are unaware. Primary assessment is in absolute chaos: the pass rate in last year’s standard assessment tests fell from more than 80% to an appalling 53%. We have seen the introduction of more free childcare with insufficient funding, and serious failings in capacity and oversight in the schools system. Many of the Government’s previous “pet projects” have failed and closed. All that has come on top of what the Secretary of State described today as the biggest revolution for a decade in technical education.

Any one of those issues should command the undivided attention of Ministers, but they want to impose two huge further changes on the schools system: a new funding formula which seems to have left all sides unhappy, and the reintroduction of grammar schools without a shred of evidence, which has shone a light on the woeful record of existing grammar schools in supporting children from poorer backgrounds. The Budget had nothing to say about social mobility, closing the productivity gap, or creating the high-wage, high-skills economy that we need. Perhaps the Government would have done better to spend more of their time sorting out the last set of experiments that they said would create “more choice”. What has happened to them? Let us take a look.

Since 2010, when the Government introduced their previous gimmicks—university technical colleges, studio schools and free schools—there have been huge problems and a massive waste of resources. More than 1 in 10 UTCs has closed, and many more are now on the brink. While there are a few excellent UTCs, even the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove)—who had introduced them—admitted that the experiment had failed, saying:

“the evidence has accumulated and the verdict is clear”.

Three in 10 studio schools have closed or are due to close, as Schools Week analysis has found, and many more are on the brink of closure. Only one has reached the 300-pupil mark that was set. The future is therefore looking bleak for those experimental institutions, yet the Government are hellbent on creating more. One in five free schools are in places where they are not needed. With the starving of capital funds to existing schools, and the failure to meet the places crisis by continuing to throw good money after bad, this Budget does nothing to deal with the real issues facing our schools.

Even though we are awaiting the outcome of the Government’s consultation, we heard this week that the Government are hellbent on going ahead with their grammar schools programme, which they are now calling “selective free schools.” I note that the Secretary of State is so ashamed of that policy that she did not even mention it in her speech today. I reiterate that there are very few Conservative Members in the Chamber to defend that policy.

[Maria Eagle]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Secretary of State probably did not mention the policy because she does not agree with it?

[Lucy Powell]

Yes. We can infer that. The evidence is clear on selective education. Those systems do not boost social mobility. In fact, in many cases they widen the gap. As we all know in the House, the big challenge facing our education system is the long tail of under- achievement. It is not about how we can better support the already high-achieving. The only argument advanced by Conservative Members is that the tiny number of children on free school meals who get into grammar schools, who by definition are already high-achieving, do better than all the other children on free school meals. What a joke of an argument that is to base the entire policy on. There is a huge amount of evidence going the other way.

Perhaps that is why, when the Secretary of State addressed the usually mild-mannered and pragmatic Association of School and College Leaders at the weekend, she got booed, which has never happened at that conference before. It may also be why the Sutton Trust, the Government’s own Social Mobility Commission, the Education Policy Institute, the former chief inspector of schools, all the secondary heads in Surrey and many, many others and many Conservative Members have come out against those proposals.

There are plenty of things that the Government should be doing, and we have mentioned a few of them. Perhaps they should get to those core issues, rather than creating yet more uncertainty and instability in the system. They should get on with doing something about the major funding challenge. This is not about fair funding—it is about funding levels being maintained at the levels they are now. The belts are being tightened even more for some schools, but all schools are losing out from those funding measures.

The Government should do something about teacher shortages. For five years in a row, they have missed their retention and recruitment challenges. They should do something about the school places crisis and work with local authorities, rather than plonking free schools where they are not needed. And get a grip on what is happening with the new GCSEs and curriculum. There is absolute chaos there.

If the Government really want to do something about social mobility, they could do a lot worse than look at investing properly in quality provision in the early years, rather than trying to deliver child care on the cheap. There is plenty of evidence to support it, and I am happy to discuss that with Ministers if they want to have a real agenda for social mobility.