Children’s Centres (Dudley)

Margot James Excerpts

Wednesday 11th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir, and to see my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris) present for the debate. I suspect that he, like myself, is here because he was deeply concerned last month when proposals to cut by 40% the budget for children’s centres in Dudley were published by Dudley metropolitan borough council. I was outraged further because three of the seven children’s centres earmarked for closure were in my constituency. Virtually half of the centres earmarked for closure were to come from a quarter of the borough.

That there was no reasonable basis for the proposal ensured its early demise, and I am pleased and relieved that Dudley council withdrew the proposal two weeks ago. Undoubtedly, a major reason for the council’s change of heart is the excellent work of our children’s centres and their ability to galvanise hundreds of parents, together with the wider community that they serve, to communicate in no uncertain terms just how vital is their contribution to families and communities not only in my constituency, but across the metropolitan borough of Dudley.

Three weeks ago, I held a meeting with the principals and parents from Hob Green, Quarry Bank and Peters Hill, the three main children’s centres that were to be closed by the proposals. I was tremendously impressed by their commitment, excellence and the breadth of work undertaken on the behalf of families and communities.

The council’s proposal, albeit withdrawn, has unnerved everyone involved. A will therefore now exists to ensure that the role of children’s centres and the value that they provide are properly understood. It has also been recognised that, as with all public services, there is a need constantly to assess service delivery and value for money in ways that work ever more efficiently in future. For those reasons, I am pleased to be holding this debate today.

Children’s centres provide many new parents with a structure of support that is a lifeline to them and their children. To help new parents and babies get off to a good start, they offer antenatal classes, breastfeeding support, baby massage, maternal mental health support and other such classes. Maternal mental health support can be absolutely crucial to women suffering from post-natal depression and other mental health states that can impact so negatively on babies and small children.

As babies grow into toddlers, a social divide can start to open up, but children’s centres are doing outstanding work to counter it. Parenting classes, help with behaviour, healthy eating and educational play sessions form the bedrock of support for families with toddlers. Since Hob Green children’s centre opened in 2008, the percentage of children attaining the standard expected at the early years foundation stage has increased from 78% to 88%. That is an increase of 10% in only four years.

Dawn Swingler, the foundation stage manager at Hob Green primary school, in whose premises the children’s centre is sited, said:

“It is very apparent when children join the nursery if they have attended sessions in the Children’s Centre. If they have, they arrive ready to engage, happy to leave their carers and ready to learn. If they have not then we as a staff have to devote time to settling children in, building trust and relationships from scratch, all of this takes time and for these children learning cannot begin for many weeks, sometimes months. Whilst we are happy to do this, the knock on effect is that our range of activities for all children is diminished as staff are involved in this crucial work with individual children.”

Although it is right that children’s centres should help families that are deemed hard to reach, the needs of babies and families with young children do not always correlate with their socio-economic status. A single parent who uses our children’s centres told me of her struggle to get off benefits and into work, but she said that she felt strongly that her children are not deprived. That is true of many parents in similar positions. There are many families who struggle on low incomes and benefits, but whose children cannot be described as deprived or disadvantaged. Conversely, there are families on average or above average earnings whose children are seriously disadvantaged.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. She is making an important point about disadvantaged backgrounds. Does she agree that the Government’s provision of free nursery care for two-year-olds from disadvantaged backgrounds is extremely valuable? Does she also agree that central and local government should look at ways of using the new funding to offer a package of holistic support for two-year-olds and their families, and that children’s centres are often an ideal place to provide support, because they have the benefits and services that she described?

[Margot James]

I strongly agree. I was not implying that we should disregard socio-economic status. I merely meant to point out that it is just one factor that we should consider. I support the Government’s decision to increase the support for disadvantaged two-year-olds by providing 16 hours a week of nursery care. Children’s centres are an ideal place for some of that learning to take place.

There are also families on above average earnings whose children are victims or witnesses of domestic violence or some other horror. Although those children do not fit neatly into a disadvantaged sector by socio-economic standards, they are seriously disadvantaged by any other measure. Domestic violence is not defined by socio-economic status, yet it is a substantial indicator of deprivation among the children of families who are affected by it. The same can be said for alcoholism and drug addiction.

The Government’s classification of wards by socio-economic data, which labels some areas as deprived, is a useful indicator of need but it is only one of many indicators. In isolation, socio-economic analysis is too limited to be the sole driver of policy at a local level. The original proposal to close our children’s centres in my constituency was determined almost entirely by that one measure of socio-economic advantage or disadvantage.

[James Morris]

My hon. Friend is making a very important point. In my constituency, the centre that was proposed for closure at Tenterfields was deemed to be not serving a disadvantaged community. In reality, the people living in the Highfields estate in Halesowen who used that centre would have had to travel 2 or 3 miles down the road to other service providers, had the centre closed. The whole of the Dudley proposal was predicated on a nonsensical analysis.

--- Later in debate ---

[Margot James]

I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent intervention. I completely agree. The Hob Green children’s centre, which I mentioned earlier, covers a huge area. When Hob Green was started in 2008, a similar proposal to start a children’s centre approximately 2 miles away was dropped. The Hob Green centre therefore covers a huge area, which takes in many different communities with different levels of socio-economic advantage. The strength of our children’s centres is that they serve a wide community and bring together people of different backgrounds, who get on together and learn from each other. That cannot be done if children’s centres are confined to narrow disadvantaged communities.

If any thought had been put into the proposals that we are discussing, the number of children under the age of five years might have been considered as an additional factor relevant to the decision-making process. If the constituencies of Dudley North and Stourbridge are compared, for example, we find that 5,508 children under the age of five live in Dudley North, while 8,020 children under the age of five live in Stourbridge. It is illogical to propose the closure of three children’s centres in the area with many more under-fives while proposing to close only one in the area with far fewer children under five.

Having made the case for the vital importance of children’s centres and the work they do, I will conclude by looking to the future. According to a survey undertaken this year by the charity Action for Children, which runs the excellent Stourbridge children and families centre, more than 1 million families are now using children’s centres nationwide. That is an increase.

I am pleased that the Government have increased the total funding for early intervention from £2.2 billion in 2011 to £2.5 billion in the current year. In addition, there is a national fund of £70 million held by the Department for Communities and Local Government to help local authorities reconfigure services. Does the Minister think that the children’s services department of my local authority should be encouraged to apply to access such funding to bring in more joint working between health and education?

Ideally, children’s centres should act as gateways, so that families can receive the support they need, whether for parenting, health services or child development and early learning. On the health side, I am delighted that many children’s centres are acting as hubs for the increased number of health visitors that the Government have deployed. If children’s centres act as gateways for such services, it is far better that they take a joined-up approach. More can be done locally as well as nationally through the greater integration of health and education. That not only means that families will get a better, more holistic service; it also means that those services will be delivered more cost-effectively.

In conclusion, local authorities now have responsibility for public health and additional funding for social care that has been assigned directly from the NHS budget. There is also now a separate funding stream for disadvantaged two-year-olds for 16 hours a week of nursery education. There is therefore a diverse array of funding sources that a fully integrated children’s centre service can now access. It seems quite wrong to be looking at cutting great swathes of our children’s centres just at the time when the focus nationally is on children’s centres doing more, not less, and accessing more funding streams to enable them so to do.

On behalf of all the parents and children in my constituency, I congratulate children’s centres in Stourbridge and across our borough on the excellent and incredibly valuable work they do on a very modest budget. Long may that work continue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I will look into the specific position of Dudley council. We are clear in our guidance, however, that the starting point should therefore be a presumption against the closure of children’s centres. That is an important part of our guidance, because having a wide network is important, so that parents are able to access a children’s centre near their home. Other research by the Department for Education suggests that parents are not willing to travel great distances for early years services, as obviously, with young children it can be difficult to travel long distances. That is why we have a presumption against the closure of children’s centres. In fact, less than 1% have been closed since the start of this Parliament, and new centres have been opened.

I also commend the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge on joined-up services and how important it is that families and children have a joined-up service and experience. Too often, people have to go to different locations for antenatal classes, health checks or parenting classes. Would it not be better for all those services to be on a single site? I went to see some excellent children’s centres with my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Richard Harrington) recently. We saw an on-site midwife who was able to give people advice pre-birth, and stay-and-play sessions and parenting classes were taking place on the same site. Other centres have also done birth registration on site, which is often far more convenient than going to the registry office and helps parents to access a children’s centre. That is something local authorities should be looking at. I am speaking to the Local Government Association about that at the moment.

Some children’s centres provide child care on site, although that amounts to less than 1% of total child care in the country. Centres also provide access to child care through other routes, such as local schools and school nurseries, which provide 30% of child care, as well as private and voluntary sector providers and local childminders. I am pleased that children’s centres are involved in our new trial of childminder agencies, and are providing some training to and support for childminders. We want to see more locally integrated networks of services, so that parents who go to children’s centres have a clear steer on what is available locally and where they can get support and help—a one-stop-shop vision.

The Department for Communities and Local Government is supportive of that vision. It has created a £75 million transformation fund, to which local authorities can submit bids. When I met my hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government recently, he said that there had not been many applications for children’s services, but we want more integration between health and children’s centres. My hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge said that in 2015 more of those responsibilities will be devolved locally, so that seems an ideal opportunity for local authorities to consider co-locating services and making them much more integrated and parent-friendly.

[Margot James]

Does the Minister agree that the more that services are co-located and brought together, the more sustainable the whole children centre model is in the long term?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point and she is absolutely right. She mentioned the Hob Green primary school and its improvement in outcomes from having a children’s centre on site. Some 50% of children’s centres are located on school sites and we are encouraging schools and children’s centres to work more closely together. That, again, is an excellent model.

Children’s centres can be based in schools and health services. That will vary according to area, but we give local authorities freedom to decide exactly how the configuration might work. Services in rural areas where there may be more child minders, for example, may be different from those in densely populated urban areas. The overall idea is that children’s centres should be accessible for local families and provide a gateway to other services.

A record number of parents—more than 1 million, for the first time—use children’s centres. That shows their popularity and massive success, which we should celebrate. My hon. Friend referred to the early years foundation stage and said that she has seen improvement in outcomes as a result of children’s centres.

Another major focus for the Government is the quality of early years provision overall. This year, we have seen a record number of people going into the early years teacher programme—a 25% increase on last year—and that is good news. All those programmes are about improving the attainment gap and outcomes for children. We have a large outcomes gap in this country between children in lower and higher income families, and we know that much of that gap has developed by the age of five. These services are vital and combine to create the best outcomes for children.

We want local authorities to be creative in developing services and thinking about the parent and child being at the centre of services rather than in the configuration of different parts of the health and education system. Services must be parent-friendly. Children’s centres have shown that they are parent-friendly and the fact that more than 1 million families use them is fantastic news.

I am keen to discuss further with my hon. Friend and her colleagues how we can help councils such as Dudley put together applications for the transformation fund, how to look at best practice throughout the country—centres in York are registering births at children’s centres, for example—and how to spread those best practice models more widely.

The Government have funded the Early Intervention Foundation, which is looking at research into best practice so that that can be disseminated more widely across children’s centres and we can ensure that all children’s centres understand the best way of working with parents and improving outcomes for children.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her interest in the subject, and the clear progress she has already made in Dudley. It sounds from the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis that more can be done under the current proposals. Let us ensure that as much as possible of the Government’s funding is spent on high-quality, front-line professionals working with parents and children.

Question put and agreed to.

Al-Madinah Free School

Margot James Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

I will certainly give my hon. Friend that assurance. We scrutinise free school applications very carefully and reject many of them for a variety of different reasons. We will continue to scrutinise them very closely.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

The OECD report published last week places Britain near the bottom of the international literacy and numeracy league tables. Does that not make the case for continued innovation in education? Will the Minister ensure that this poor example does not undermine the excellent and innovative free schools programme?

[Mr Laws]

My hon. Friend makes a telling point about the educational challenges for this country and about the need to focus on educational failure from wherever it comes. It speaks volumes about the Labour party that it should choose to have an urgent question on this one individual school while across the country there are hundreds of other schools facing similar challenges in which it seems to have no equivalent interest.

Oral Answers to Questions

Margot James Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The chief inspector’s words stand by themselves. Never in the history of Ofsted over the past 21 years have so many children been enjoying a good education. I hoped that the hon. Gentleman would have wanted to congratulate teachers on that.

The other point is that we are spending more than twice as much on providing new school places in primary schools as the previous Government. They were warned repeatedly by Conservative Members of Parliament, but they did nothing because they were recklessly committed to a programme of spending and borrowing in a wasteful fashion, which betrayed a generation. Now Opposition Members may mewl and puke as they wish, but I am afraid the guilt is written all over their faces and is there in the National Audit Office report.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

T2. I was shocked to learn that the London School of Economics made only four offers to students in the entire borough of Dudley this year. Does my right hon. Friend agree that secondary schools should be doing more to encourage students with academic potential to choose courses at GCSE and A-level that will enable them to apply to our top universities with a reasonable chance of success?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right—I was delighted to visit an outstanding sixth-form college in her constituency that is leading the way. In a spirit of bipartisanship, her commitment to higher standards in education is shared by the Labour Member of Parliament for Dudley North, Mr Austin, who has worked hard with her and with Chris Kelly to ensure that we can persuade children to read the subjects in university that will give them a better chance to get great jobs. That is why the English baccalaureate, which Labour Front Benchers so denounced, has been such a good thing.

Oral Answers to Questions

Margot James Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Sex education is a statutory part of the national curriculum. The broader point about the nature of sexual exploitation is most effectively dealt with by ensuring that we can prosecute those people who are responsible for despicable crimes.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend will be aware of “Informed Choices”, which was published by the Russell group of universities and deals with subject selection at GCSE and A-level. Does he agree that all young people, not just those designated as gifted and talented, should be made aware of the implications of subject choices at GCSE so as to maximise their opportunity to attend such universities?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a characteristically good point. It is absolutely right that we do not prematurely curtail young people’s freedom of choice. In order to do that, we need to make it clear to them which subjects give them the widest choice later in life, and those are English, mathematics, the sciences, a modern or ancient foreign language, history and geography.

Oral Answers to Questions

Margot James Excerpts

Monday 29th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

I do not think that requiring all those in apprenticeships to study English and maths if they do not have level 2 is “waffle”; I think it is extremely important for improving the rigour and quality of vocational education. Vocational education is vital to this country’s future, and that is why I will put all my effort into championing it.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

Although more girls start apprenticeships than boys, they are very under-represented in some areas. Only 5% of engineering apprenticeships and 13% of IT apprenticeships were taken up by girls. Will my hon. Friend take action to encourage more girls to consider apprenticeships in IT and engineering?

Oral Answers to Questions

Margot James Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hayes]

We have invested in the biggest and best website we have ever had for careers guidance. We will have more than 3,000 places available across the country where people can access the national careers service. Yes, face-to-face guidance matters, but each school will make its own judgment in line with its own needs to do the best by its own pupils. We trust schools; the last Government simply did not.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

Good quality careers advice is affected by the image that different career choices have among young people. Will my hon. Friend give his backing to campaigns such as See Inside Manufacturing, which was designed to inspire young people to think about career choices in manufacturing?

[Mr Hayes]

Indeed. When visiting Jaguar Land Rover in Liverpool, I was fortunate enough to see that working in practice. St Margaret’s primary school was visiting that great British company as part of that programme, gaining the sort of insight into learning, manufacturing and employment that my hon. Friend rightly highlights. Of course we will continue to support that kind of initiative.

Oral Answers to Questions

Margot James Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Prisk]

In the first three quarters, the numbers on net lending stand at £66 million. [Interruption.] What I am trying to say to the hon. Gentleman is that we are committed, through Merlin, to ensuring that lending this year is greater than last year. He needs to be careful in this area, because, as he knows, such schemes are subject to demand. [Interruption.] He asked about credit easing, and I will come to that point. I say to the hon. Gentleman that the £20 billion that the Chancellor has put forward is substantially important and will bring about an important increase. What the Opposition need to remember is that we are actually delivering an increase in lending this year over last year. They did not deliver that. We are, and that is the difference.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

5. What steps his Department is taking to support the commercialisation of new discoveries in life sciences.

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

The UK life sciences sector employs 170,000 people with a turnover of £50 billion, but it is facing enormous challenges, which is why the Prime Minister launched an ambitious new life sciences strategy on Monday. That includes a £180 million catalyst fund to aid commercialisation of new discoveries. We have also improved the regime for clinical trials in the interests of patients and opened up the NHS to innovation.

[Margot James]

I very much welcome the life sciences strategy published by the Government earlier this week. What plans does my right hon. Friend now have to support the development of geographic clusters that will foster collaboration between industry, the NHS and academia?

[Mr Willetts]

My hon. Friend has absolutely described what a cluster is; I congratulate her. We support them. They are important for innovation and growth. Indeed, in the proposals published today, we are talking about making it easier for groups of institutions to come together to bid for funding from research councils, and also our enlightened Treasury has agreed that in future there will not be VAT on cost-sharing arrangements in which groups of institutions come together to share services in the interests of efficiency.

Education Bill

Margot James Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hayes]

As I have said, where public interest is in jeopardy, the Secretary of State will retain powers under the Bill to intervene as necessary. I paid tribute to my hon. Friend a few moments ago for his patient endurance in respect of my forthcoming visit to Beverley. It was Ruskin who said,

“Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.”

We can therefore take it that my hon. Friend is a patient endurer, more noble than strength and beauty. It is likely that the circumstance he describes would happen only rarely, but it is important that when a college wishes to transfer its property, rights and liabilities to another provider, the Secretary of State retains the kind of powers that he requested.

Lords amendments 53, 56 and 62 reinstate statutory safeguards relating to the specific governance and constitutional arrangements of voluntary sixth-form colleges that were inadvertently removed by the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act. It was the previous Government’s view that legislation should reflect the distinct constitutional position of voluntary sixth-form colleges, and they confirmed that they would look to reinstate those protections through legislation. We agree with that view, and it is what the amendments do. The new provisions cover what was afforded by previous legislation or Secretary of State directions.

As Members know, I am a keen advocate of freeing colleges from central prescription, direction and control. Such things inhibit a college’s ability to become the master of its own destiny and stifle innovation and growth in our further education sector. The changes in the Bill will enable the Government to present the best case possible to encourage the Office for National Statistics to review its decision to reclassify colleges into the public sector. However, we are not merely responding to the ONS; we began this programme of reform long before we knew about the ONS reclassification. Indeed, it was one of the first things that I set out when I became a Minister. The changes that we have made in the Bill, including the ones that we have introduced at a later stage, are entirely in the spirit of the policy direction set out in the skills strategy which I published, following extensive consultation, last autumn. Indeed, they are in the spirit of the further consultation in which we were involved over the summer, which will lead to the publication of “New Challenges, New Chances”.

The truth is that the ONS reclassification has been a further spur to us, but has not caused us to change direction. If anything, it has cemented our determination to consider every aspect of college management and every means by which we could free colleges from bureaucracy and direction. That fresh thinking has inspired the changes that have been made to the Bill.

As I have said, the changes, and our efforts to secure the private sector reclassification of colleges, have been welcomed, not least by the Association of Colleges. It considers that they will provide colleges with additional flexibility, allowing them to respond effectively to their local community and economy. I should like to place on record my gratitude to the Association of Colleges for its guidance and support, and indeed for how it has challenged us, in helping the Government develop this impressive legislation.

Lords amendments 28, 29 and 39 concern the business of colleges and inspection. You will remember, Madam Deputy Speaker, the report that the previous Government commissioned from Sir Andrew Foster. I have a copy of the summary here. They asked him to examine the potential of further education, and he concluded that the landscape that it faced was

“crowded with organisations charged with inspection, improvement or regulatory functions. There is unnecessary complexity and duplication of effort and further rationalisation is required.”

He also recognised, I think, that we needed to rethink how colleges were gauged, inspected and monitored. Knowing that we had some outstanding further education colleges in this country, we decided that the time was right to look afresh at inspection and regulation.

In that context, some of the comments that the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), made about schools pertain to colleges too. He dealt with the issue of the inspection of schools earlier this evening, and some of the same principles apply to colleges. In my visits to colleges across the country, I have continually been impressed by the quality of teaching, the standard of learning and the innovative systems that colleges put in place to maximise learners’ potential.

Lords amendments 28 to 30 provide for greater parliamentary scrutiny of regulations exempting further education colleges from inspections, by requiring that all regulations except the first set be subject to the affirmative procedure, so that both Houses can be assured that a full debate will happen before further colleges are exempted. We decided very early on that we wanted to limit the inspection of further education colleges, as we did in the case of schools. However, it is important that that exemption is qualified in the way that I have described. The Prime Minister spoke today of coasting schools, and nor do we want to see any coasting colleges. Although there is little evidence of them, it is important that the House can debate the matter as further exemptions take root.

I turn to Lords amendments 36, 43 and 100, which put the legal framework for apprenticeships on a more sustainable and realistic footing. I need not regale the House at length with how passionately I support apprenticeships—at least, not for more than a few minutes. As you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, I have championed apprenticeships both in opposition and in government, and the Government have turned our rhetoric into action by delivering the biggest growth in apprenticeships in modern times. I have said before, and I am happy to say now, that there is more work to be done. As we make that growth sustainable, we will need to consider bureaucracy and the quality and age spread of apprenticeships. It is absolutely right that we should do that, but let us not understate the growth that we have seen—29% growth in under-19 apprenticeships and 64% growth in 19-to-24 apprenticeships over two years, and a big jump in post-25 apprenticeships.

It is important to say that the previous Government had the same aims. Many times, previous Ministers, including the previous Prime Minister, estimated the likely jump in the number of apprenticeships and the number that would be necessary to fill skills gaps. However, this Government are actually delivering. We are making more opportunities available to more people to add to their skills, which will increase their chances of getting, keeping and progressing in jobs. We know from independent research that someone who has a level 2 apprenticeship is likely to earn £70,000 more over their earning lifetime than somebody who has not, and that somebody with a level 3 apprenticeship is likely to earn more than £100,000 more. That is roughly equivalent to a degree.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the amazing increase in apprenticeships that he has outlined. I met my local college, Stourbridge college, and other colleges last week, and they reported a huge increase in apprenticeships over the past six months. Is he aware of another route into apprenticeships, which emerged during a meeting that I had the previous week with Stourbridge jobcentre? It reported that among 18 to 24-year-olds a route in was via two-week work experience placements. In many cases, they were being converted into apprenticeships.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. It is very interesting to hear of the extensive commitment that the Minister has personally to apprenticeships, and indeed to hear the point that the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) has made, but we are discussing Lords amendments. Although Lords amendment 36 is about securing the provision of apprenticeships in certain regulations, the debate is going a little wide of that. Perhaps the Minister could relate his comments to the amendments.

Oral Answers to Questions

Margot James Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davey]

I was expecting the hon. Lady to thank the Government for putting forward an idea that she and other Members have been pressing on the Government: namely, to launch research on the impact of a cap on the total cost of credit. I am really rather disappointed in her.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

T6. My right hon. Friend will be aware of the Wilson review on the collaboration between industry and universities. I am currently working on a project in the west midlands with local business leaders and universities. Will he meet industrialists and me when the report is competed next year?

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

I would be happy to meet my hon. Friend, because she is absolutely right that one of our priorities is to ensure that the strength of our research base is fed through into stronger support for business and greater business investment, and we look forward to Sir Tim Wilson’s report.

Oral Answers to Questions

Margot James Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

Arne Duncan came to this country to see schools such as Mossbourne academy delivering a very high-quality curriculum. The hon. Gentleman must not confuse the national curriculum with the school curriculum. We do not want to set out every minute of every hour of every day in the national curriculum, which was the approach taken by the previous Government. We should leave it to the professionalism of teachers to determine the school curriculum, which covers issues such as soft skills and ensuring that children have a rounded education and are confident people when they leave school.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

In conducting his review of the curriculum, will my hon. Friend give consideration to the choices that young people make about GCSE subjects at a young age without having enough information about how those choices might affect their university aspirations? Will he ask schools to make sure that they are aware of the “Informed Choices” document recently published by the Russell group of universities?

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. It is a concern that only 8% of young people who qualify for free school meals are even entered for the English baccalaureate subjects and that only 4% achieve the desired results. The Government are determined to close the attainment gap between those from poorer and those from wealthier backgrounds. Taking the right choices at GCSE and A-level is key to ensuring progression either into further and higher education or into successful employment.