Children and Families Bill
Mark Tami Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Timpson
My right hon. Friend knows from his astute chairmanship of the Justice Committee that the intention of these changes to the law is to remove the adversarial, winner-takes-all nature of many of these proceedings and the perception among many parents that they are entering an arena that is about their personal battles, rather than what is in the best interests of the child. The changes will do that not in isolation, but as part of a wider package of measures including MIAMs and the enforcement of the orders.
Nobody would argue that both parents should not be involved in a child’s life if it is safe and in the child’s best interests. We believe that these measures will make it crystal clear to parents who are thinking about their post-separation arrangements or, further down the field, about taking these matters before the court, that the court will judge not the parents’ dispute, but what is in the best interests of the child. The presumption will be that having both parents involved in the child’s life is the right course where it is safe and in the child’s best interests. That is particularly important given the huge number of children who no longer have any contact with one parent after a separation. We need to try to bring that number down and I believe that these measures will help do that.
The message about focusing on children’s needs is reinforced by the replacement of contact and residence orders with the new child arrangements order. That will set out in one place who a child lives with, spends time with or has any other type of contact with, and when. It will move us away from the perception of a hierarchy that is present in contact and residence orders, where the resident parent is seen as the winner or the more important parent.
I will now turn to the special educational needs reforms. I am conscious of the time and apologise to hon. Members who I know will be desperate to get in on this issue. I will take one or two interventions, but then I must press on. These are the most significant reforms in the area for more than 30 years. At the outset, I want to acknowledge the committed work of my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), who was brave enough to push forward these reforms. I am also grateful to the many parents and young people I have met as children’s Minister in Coventry, Bromley, East Sussex and elsewhere, who have so graciously and generously shared their experiences with me.
When one hears stories of young people with needs and extra challenges that they did not ask for bravely battling a system that can be complex and unwieldy and is often a cause for frustration, it underlines the vital importance of making things better. It continues to be the case that children and young people with special educational needs do less well than their peers at school and college, and are twice as likely to be out of education, training and employment at 18.
The Bill builds on the Green Paper initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central to put the interests of children and young people first. It will bring up to date a terribly outdated system and keep the rights and protections that families value. It will give children and young people with special educational needs and their families better co-ordinated support, and more choice and control over how that support is provided. It will provide, for the first time, one system from birth to 25, promoting earlier identification of children’s needs and extending comparable rights and protections to all young people over 16, whether they choose to continue their education in school or in further education.
The Bill also sets out a number of measures to tackle some deep-seated problems. It requires local authorities and local health bodies to work together to plan and commission services for children and young people with SEN. That will make the best use of available resources and deliver integrated support, and it will bring a real commitment across agencies to ensuring that the services required to meet local needs are available. Families should no longer find themselves caught between different parts of the system, waiting for a particular service.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
The Minister may be aware that CLIC Sargent, the children’s cancer charity, has raised concerns about the educational support that is available now, let alone in future, to children who have missed out on school as a result of cancer. Will he meet CLIC Sargent and myself—I have written to him today about that—to see whether we can have a more flexible approach to ensure that such children get the education and support that they need?
Mr Timpson
The hon. Gentleman raises an important issue, and I thank him for alerting me to it prior to the debate. I am of course happy to meet him and discuss the implications of the reforms for him and his constituents as the Bill moves through both Houses of Parliament.
The Bill requires local authorities to publish a local offer giving parents and young people clear, accessible information about the support that is available to them from education, health and social care bodies. The local offer will outline how they can get an assessment for an education, health and care plan and where they can get information, advice and support. Local agencies will be required to co-operate in developing that offer. We will set out in regulations a common framework for the local offer and give further guidance in the new birth to 25 special educational needs code of practice.
Many hon. Members will know from their constituency surgeries that it is a common occurrence for children and young people who need support to have to tell the same story over and over again to myriad different professionals. The measures in the Bill will lead to better, more co-ordinated assessments across education, health and care that involve children, young people and parents from the very start and focus on their goals and aspirations. Along with a new approach to assessment, we are introducing education, health and care plans.
Educational Support (Children with Cancer)
Mark Tami Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
I begin by congratulating CLIC Sargent on its report, “No child with cancer left out”. It is an excellent report that addresses many of the challenges facing children with cancer and raises awareness of the impact that such a diagnosis can have on a child’s education. The report centres on those returning to primary education, but it is just as relevant—many of its points are just as relevant—to those attending secondary school, as well.
Every year, around 2,000 young people aged 16 to 24 are diagnosed with cancer. For those aged up to 15, it is around 1,600. That equates to about 10 families a day being given the devastating news that their child has cancer. That will affect not just the child’s life, but the whole family’s life, including the siblings and everyone around the family. As parents, there is nothing that can prepare us for it. The parent’s world is turned upside down, and all the things that seemed important just the day before suddenly become totally and utterly irrelevant.
The child embarks on a programme of treatment that, while necessary, is frightening for all concerned. In many cases, medical intervention will take years, with many ups and downs along the road. For leukaemia, under standard protocol, it will take three years of treatment for boys and two years for girls. For other cancers, it will be a combination of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery. For some with more complex conditions or for those who relapse, it will mean a stem cell or bone marrow transplant.
Speaking as a parent of a child who was diagnosed with cancer, I can honestly say that, at the time, the last thing I thought about was the future or current educational needs of my son, Max. It never crossed my mind at all. I was totally focused on getting him through the medical battle against this dreadful disease.
That issue has perhaps become part of the problem in that there is no co-ordinated approach to support the child after treatment in respect of education. We tackle and address the physical and medical side, but fail to consider the educational and social needs of the children affected. That is a problem not just for parents, but for schools, local authorities and, indeed, Government policy.
For children who thankfully survive cancer, that is far from the end of the story. For most, it is the start of another journey—this time of trying and working to get back into school, and of re-building and re-establishing friendships with the peer group. It is important both to get the peer group to understand what the children have gone through and to support them in going forward.
The CLIC Sargent report found that nine out of 10 children with a cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment reported that their school life was affected. Two key issues need to be addressed: first, how the school and education authority respond to support the child on return to school and prior to that return; and, secondly—perhaps too often overlooked, but none the less vital—how to prepare the school, and class mates in particular, for the child’s return to school.
On that second point, there appears to be no established procedures to advise and help schools and teachers. There is some good practice out there and some respondents detailed in the report say they had a very positive experience for their child—but, equally, the reverse can be the case. Some schools are ill prepared, or perhaps understandably reluctant to address what is a very difficult issue, particularly when very young children are involved.
We can, after all, put ourselves in the position of the classmates of one of those children. One moment the child is at school playing games, and the next moment he or she is gone, for what must seem a very long time in the life of the other young children. They may send a card, but they will have no other real contact. When the child returns to school, he or she may look very different as a result of chemotherapy and steroids. Lack of hair, a minor issue in itself, may seem particularly strange to younger children. A central line visible through clothing may be difficult for them to comprehend, and probably quite frightening for them.
The other children will obviously have questions to ask. Why has it happened? Could it happen to them? Will the child get better? Is it possible to catch it? I am sure that there will be a host of other questions. Such issues, however, need to be addressed before the child returns to school rather than afterwards, when concerns and, in some cases, bullying may arise. The CLIC Sargent report highlights what is, thankfully, a minority of cases in which classmates have bullied children out of jealousy because of their lower attendance at school, or because they have been on a supported holiday to Disneyland or Lapland through a charity such as the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Perhaps it has not really been explained to the classmates why the child has been allowed to be away from school for such a long period.
Let me say at this point how important I think charities such as Make-A-Wish are in boosting a child’s confidence and well-being. I have done some work with the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust, and my son has certainly enjoyed his experience of it. The trust does excellent work in bringing young cancer sufferers together to meet the challenges that sailing can provide. It is really positive, and really helps them to build their confidence.
Whatever form bullying may take, I think that it is mainly born of a lack of understanding of what a child with a cancer diagnosis has actually been through. In the time in which such children have been absent from school, many of their classmates will have moved on and made new friends. Trying to re-establish former friendships may not be easy, particularly if the child who has been absent is unable to participate in the same activities and games as before. One of the most telling quotations in the CLIC Sargent report comes from a parent who recognised that
“returning to school isn’t just about educational needs—it’s about emotional ones too.”
I think that that is just as important as supporting the academic side of a child’s education.
CLIC Sargent and a number of hospital schools can and do offer support for teachers through events such as teachers’ days, but they cannot be expected to provide across-the-board cover. We need more joined-up thinking on the part of local authorities and hospitals to ensure that a more comprehensive and co-ordinated approach is adopted to enable schools and teachers to tackle the issue. That applies not just to state schools but to private and free schools, and to secondary as well as primary schools. The Anthony Nolan “register and be a lifesaver” campaign is an excellent example of the way in which young people can be educated in how they can save lives by joining blood, organ and cell registers.
The second issue that I want to raise is the educational support that is available to children, both before and after their return to school. The CLIC Sargent report found that over 70% of children had received some form of education during their treatment, either at a hospital school or through home tuition, or in most cases a combination of both. While local authorities have a statutory duty to provide suitable education to children with an illness, there are still issues in respect of children with cancer accessing provision. Hospital schools play an important role when a child is in hospital for a prolonged period, and I can certainly say from my experience that they help re-engage children in what we call normal life, outside of just coping with the treatment itself. When a child leaves hospital but is still unable to return to school, access to home tuition becomes vital.
The report highlights that securing home tuition provision can be far from straightforward. My own experience with Flintshire county council was very positive. My son had an excellent teacher, Jane Watts, who helped him through a very difficult period both in respect of teaching and in being someone to talk to, and I thank her for all the help she gave us. Other parents have not been so lucky, however. Some have found that either the provision is not available or it seems to take an inordinate amount of time to set it up. While entitlement to home tuition in terms of the number of hours to be provided is not defined in law, the majority of local authorities provide a minimum of five hours a week, and that is what my son got. In the vast majority of cases, that level of provision is not enough, and it therefore needs to be increased.
There needs to be flexibility so that provision can be varied, depending on the child’s needs at various times. If the child is undergoing treatment, five hours may be too much, while at other times the child may be able to cope with, and may want, a lot more time than that. It seems strange that in many cases if the child had been excluded from school for bad behaviour, rather than because they had a cancer diagnosis, they would get much greater provision.
Flexibility is key, therefore, but we should also extend provision so it does not just stop when the child returns to school, because it is a vital component in helping children catch up when they return to school and in allowing for further periods of absence. My son had a number of post-transplant absences from school; graft-versus-host disease can lead to weeks, or even months, off school. We were able to pay for extra home tuition once the local authority provision had stopped, but that is not an option for many parents because of financial constraints. I am concerned that in our current difficult financial climate, rather than access to home tuition being extended, it might become even more limited. That must not be allowed to happen. I hope the Minister will address that point, and will agree that we must ensure that quality provision is maintained and enhanced.
The next challenge is the return to school itself. In the CLIC Sargent report, 56% of parents said that their child found it difficult to readjust to school; many found that their child’s skill levels had regressed since treatment and that their child found core subjects, particularly maths and English, far more difficult. CLIC Sargent also found in an earlier 2011 report that 64% of 16 to 18-year-olds with cancer fell behind with their work and failed to attain the results they had expected, with 29% of all young people surveyed saying they had left education altogether.
There is a broad consensus that children with cancer need extra support in school, but there is a lack of agreement on, and understanding of, what that level of support needs to be and the nature of it. Some children will need a minimal level of additional support, whereas others will need a far more formalised special educational needs assessment, which will in some cases go on for their entire school career. No matter how effectively children’s needs are assessed on their return to school, and particularly if they receive extra support, an ongoing level of assessment and support still needs to be provided, as circumstances can change. That goes back to the point I was making earlier: the path to normality is not steady; it is a bumpy road, and there will be plenty of ups and downs along the way.
Therefore, flexibility in provision is key, but clearly that provision needs to be there in the first place. The children and families Bill, which will be before this House in the coming months, gives us the opportunity to build in such provision and guarantee children with cancer the support they need. My concern is that the Bill, in draft form, seems to focus predominantly on children with a high level of special educational needs. I understand why that is, but many children with cancer may not meet those criteria, and may receive little or no support as a result. The Government therefore need to ensure that their definition of special educational needs includes all children with a disability, in order to ensure that education providers’ duties under the Equality Act 2010 are integrated into the raised special educational needs code of practice. For children with mild or moderate special educational needs, there needs to be more clarity on how a new, single, school-based category of special educational needs will interact with the local offer and school-based support. We also need to know how parents can ensure that their child is provided with the level of support they need, and that that support continues throughout to meet their educational needs. Even if there are periods, right up until they go to university, when they drop out and then go back into education, that support should be maintained all the way through and they should not have to go through a laborious process to get it again.
Children with cancer experience many challenges in life, none more so than fighting the disease itself. For those who win the battle, or continue to fight, the very least we must do is provide an environment in which they can reach their true potential in life. Education is the key to that future, and we should do everything we can to provide the additional support that those children need. We need greater co-operation between schools, local authorities, hospitals and Government policy to ensure that that aim is actually delivered. We need to be more co-ordinated; we need to be more joined up in our thinking. These young people need our support and we cannot let them down.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Elizabeth Truss)
I thank the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) for raising an important issue and for his very moving speech about his experience and that of his son, Max. It was particularly informative because it was based on the personal experience of parents and children going through that difficult and troubling situation. It has been very helpful in informing the Government’s policy and I hope that he will continue to engage with the Government, particularly given the forthcoming Bill, which covers some of the issues he raised in his speech. I praise the report by CLIC Sargent and the important work that that charity does to support children. The hon. Gentleman also mentioned the Ellen MacArthur Trust and its vital work.
The Government believe that pupils with cancer deserve as good an education as any other pupil and poor health should never mean poor education. We need to provide good education to all, regardless of their personal circumstances or educational setting. The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the issues for children with cancer as well as those suffering from other illnesses and problems. The problems are very real, but I hope to outline some of the steps the Government are taking to address them. I will also take on board some of his comments for our future work.
We want schools to ensure that they exercise their professional role in supporting all students. They are best placed to know the circumstances of the individual children, what support is most suitable, what is available and how to work with other local bodies. We do not want to prescribe a set of processes for them to go through, because we think the focus should be on outcomes and how the children and families are affected.
I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman that sharing information effectively and efficiently is essential. All relevant information should be shared with the parties involved. Obviously, there are issues about being in touch with data protection principles, but that should not discourage schools or others from providing information when they can do so. Commissioners of services should maintain ongoing contact with the provider, pupil, and parents with clear procedures for exchanging information, monitoring progress and providing pastoral support.
The hon. Gentleman made some powerful points about reintegration into school, which are supported by the evidence from the CLIC Sargent report. There should be agreement on how to assess when the pupil is ready to return and the school should provide an appropriate package of support to assist their reintegration. There should be objectives and plans agreed with parents, providers and schools to ensure successful reintegration. The Government published advice on that last July and further advice on health needs early this year. We have taken action and if he believes that there is more to be done, I or my colleague the children’s Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), will be happy to speak to him further.
As the hon. Gentleman mentioned, the social aspects of reintegration are a huge issue for children and their families. While a child is absent, they should remain on the roll of their school and should be encouraged to feel part of the school. The schools should do everything possible to help the pupil keep in touch with their class, its work and other activities. Schools should also keep the pupil’s peers updated and help remind them that the pupil is still part of the school community.
Elizabeth Truss
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The report contained some excellent examples of best practice. One that struck me was the friends who bought their fellow pupil an iPad so that they could keep in touch and had play dates so that the pupil felt that they were part of the school community while they were unable to attend. Unfortunately, the report also highlights other, less positive cases where there was bullying, perhaps caused by fear or lack of understanding. The Government believe that bullying is absolutely unacceptable and should never be tolerated. We have sent a strong message to schools on this, and we have shared advice and best practice. As part of the school’s approach to tackling bullying, it is also important that children with additional health needs are supported and not stigmatised or made to feel different. Schools need to ensure, through their behaviour and bullying policies and their re-integration plans, that these issues are considered.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the children and families Bill. The special educational needs measures in the Bill are specifically about special educational needs. They deal with a specific issue which, by its nature, does not include all children with medical needs. However, we are ensuring that SEN policy, policy on children with health needs in mainstream schools, and alternative provision policy are sufficiently joined up and work in a complementary way. We are also involving the sector, including parents and representative bodies such as CLIC Sargent, in our policy development and implementation. My officials are meeting CLIC Sargent later this month. We also want our guidance to be living documents which reflect developments, so that everybody who works in this area feels a sense of ownership and understands the important examples of best practice and case studies which were raised in the report and in other work.
We are currently revising guidance for schools on supporting children with medical needs, including those with cancer. This complements the new guidance on ensuring a good education for children who cannot attend school because of health needs. We expect schools, employers, staff, parents and local health services to work together in the interests of the child, focusing on the outcome rather than the process.
A pupil with cancer might fall behind in their education, for example if they are absent to receive treatment. Our advice to schools and local authorities includes ensuring better communication and information sharing to ensure that all involved in the pupil’s education are able to support the pupil to catch up. The hon. Gentleman mentioned English and maths. We are doing more general work to ensure that children who fall behind are able to catch up at the relevant point in their school career, so at the end of primary school a year 7 pupil who has not met the expected standards in literacy and numeracy will be given extra support, such as further tuition, through an additional premium of £500. This will provide valuable support to bring them up to speed in advance of secondary school. I hope that that will also help the students to whom the hon. Gentleman referred in his speech.
A pupil who, earlier in their school career, needs additional help with reading will be identified through a year 1 phonics check and given extra support by their school to improve their reading skills. We want to make sure that pupils with cancer have the same opportunities as other pupils to take exams, that schools will support them in doing so, and that they are encouraged to continue at school if they are in the 16 to 18 age group that the hon. Gentleman mentioned.
While students are not at school, there are important forms of provision, including hospital schools and home tuition. The hon. Gentleman mentioned that five hours were not enough and were not flexible enough. My understanding is that local authorities have a legal duty to arrange suitable education for a child who cannot attend school because of their health. It is up to the local authority to determine the best way to do that, but we expect local authorities to take into account advice offered by the hospital or a consultant when making decisions about that. If the child’s health allows, we expect that provision to be full-time. If that is not happening in practice, it needs to be followed up. That is an important part of the Government’s policy.
I took the hon. Gentleman’s point that extra support should not necessarily stop when a child returns to school if the child needs such support. Again, this is about local authorities and health authorities working together.
In conclusion, I thank the hon. Gentleman for his excellent contribution to the debate, and I look forward to his participation in the upcoming Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Life-saving Skills in Schools
Mark Tami Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Anne Marie Morris
It is key that courses are available and recommended, but I will come to compulsion later. My hon. Friend is right that the number of children who have access to training is relatively small, but all credit to the British Heart Foundation, which started its Heartstart programme in 1996. We now have courses in life-saving skills in 400 of our secondary schools. The problem is that it has taken 16 years to cover only 10% of secondary schools, so it will take an awfully long time to get to 100%.
The position in Europe is much better. Eighty per cent. of residents of Scandinavia and Germany have first aid skills because they learned them in schools and elsewhere. The survival rate from a shockable cardiac arrest in Norway is 52%, whereas our survival rate is between 2% and 12%. Compulsory training is common in Europe—Norway, Denmark and France are good examples. Across the pond, 36 US states have legislation requiring the training. The cardiac arrest survival rate in Seattle is twice what the survival rate is in the UK, and 50% of the population is trained.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
Does the hon. Lady agree that there is a lack of understanding in this country that young people suffer cardiac arrest? We need to do more, because it is not just an older persons’ illness.
Anne Marie Morris
The hon. Gentleman makes an appropriate point. He is right. There is an additional benefit—on top of the volume of people who will end up trained—because cardiac arrest happens to young people as well.
Secondary Education (GCSEs)
Mark Tami Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Damian Hinds
I am always happy to hear from distinguished maths teachers, but I am not quite sure how the hon. Lady’s intervention relates to or contradicts what I just said. I was saying that there have clearly been real improvements, but I do not think there is anyone left, including that distinguished maths teacher, who doubts that on top of those real improvements there has been significant grade inflation, as acknowledged by the shadow Secretary of State.
There are four key elements to the grade inflation. First, there has been the gradual easing of what we used to call the syllabus—now called the specification—on the part of the exam board. Secondly, at the school end, there has been teaching to the test. Thirdly, there have been all sorts of elements in the design of examinations, including modularity or what is now called unitising, early takes, re-sits, the use of calculators and so on. Fourthly—this sounds a bit dull and technical but it is very important—there is the statistical tolerance in the results. Every year, there is rightly a normalisation to say what results, for example, a key stage 4 cohort should get relative to what they achieved at key stage 2, with perhaps a 1% tolerance either way on a finding—but of course the tolerance only ever goes up. That is the most pure form of grade inflation.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman is making these points about how people work within the rules to maximise the effect, but even when I was at school there were children who were thought to be marginal when it came to getting an O-level and were dissuaded because it was thought that they would skew the results and do the school down. Let us not pretend that this is something new.
Damian Hinds
The hon. Gentleman is very youthful looking but I am not sure the league tables were in place when he was at school, so I find that point slightly confusing.
Does it matter that there has been grade inflation? I think we have all heard from higher education institutions, employers in our constituencies and members of the public that it does matter. One witness who gave evidence to the Education Committee’s exams inquiry said they did not believe that employers expect to be able to compare exam results over time, but I have news for him: that is exactly what employers, higher education institutions and parents expect to be able to do, and quite justifiably so. However, the system does not support them in doing that. Although there have been many factors at play with grade inflation, there are three root causes among which there is interplay: the pressure on schools to deliver the results; the competitive land grab for volume market share on behalf of the competing exam boards; and a too malleable system that attempts to put everything on a single scale when everything does not necessarily fit together.
I think we have moved on a good way in this debate. Over the past few days, the phrase we have heard most often on this subject has been about not wanting to return to a two-tier system, but increasingly there is a recognition that there are two tiers now, with 40% of youngsters being left behind. One could even argue that there is a third tier, with the young people who are put on to other qualifications that are of so little value to them in later life. Even in the purer sense, within a single-subject GCSE there are the two tiers of the foundation level and the higher level. Although this has been talked about much today, it is in many ways the best kept secret in education. I keep finding, when I talk to the parents of 14 and 15-year-old pupils, that they are not aware of that distinction. In many ways O-levels and CSEs never went away—they were just rebranded, but into one thing.
Let us take the example of GCSE maths. If someone is entered for GCSE maths at foundation level, that decision will be taken when they are in year 10 and the highest grade they can then achieve is a grade C. That sounds very much like getting a CSE grade 1 in the 1980s. And it is not just maths. Other subjects that are tiered include biology, physics, chemistry, general science, classical civilisation, Latin, English literature, English language, geography and modern foreign languages— almost every one of the core academic subjects that most of us did at school, with the single exception of history.
Children's Subjective Well-Being
Mark Tami Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
Our children are under threat like never before. In the past, threats to children were mainly physical. Many died in infancy, when working or of diseases. The modern threat to our children and young people is more to their mental and psychological well-being.
There are many reasons why, and one is child poverty. After the war, whichever party was in government, child poverty hovered between 12% and 15%, but it went from 13% in 1979 to 29% in 1992. With the huge investment that Labour made over 14 years, we managed to get it down only to 20%—a big reduction, but not enough.
There are other factors. We face an obesity epidemic, with costs to the individual child’s health and self-image. The most recent figures, for 2010-11, show that obesity among children in reception class, at five years old, is at 9.4%, and that by the time they reach year 6, at 10 years old, it doubles to 19%.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that we are storing up problems for the future, both in terms of cost and from a psychological point of view, as many such children unfortunately become very disturbed adults?
Chris Ruane
The cost will be huge in terms of the individual, society and the economy.
When we look at mental illness, we find that certain groups are affected more than others: 45% of looked-after children and 72% of those in residential care suffer with mental illness. Some 1.5% of children are hyperactive; 0.3% have eating disorders; 5.8% have conduct disorders; and 3.7% have emotional disorders. Those figures might sound low, but at any one time 10% of children between the ages of five and 15 are suffering with a mental health disease. That is 850,000—almost 1 million—children.
We have to look at the reasons why that has come about. As I suggested earlier, something happened in the 1980s. The Government often talk about the broken society and broken Britain, but I honestly believe that the problem started to ramp up in the “loadsamoney” era, when there was no such thing as society and atomisation and isolation were rampant.
We have also seen the decline of those institutions that did believe in a big society and in social cohesion, such as the Church and the trade unions. Stable minds equal a stable society, but even Labour used the terms “producer” and “consumer”. We did not use “citizen”, and that is what we need to get back to—to viewing individuals as citizens and as part of society.
The Government can take many kinds of action, and many programmes have been tried, tested and proven. The roots of empathy classroom programme in New Zealand is a big success; the Swedish Government banned advertisements to children under 12, and that, too, has been a big success; and the Welsh Assembly Government introduced the foundation phase, with children learning through play until the age of seven.
My local authority of Denbighshire has had quite a few initiatives, including one by Sara Hammond-Rowley, involving simply sending out information sheets to parents, teachers and social workers, and giving out books, readily understood by parents and teachers, that can help with emotional disorder. We have had volunteering days in the local school in Prestatyn. Thirty-eight local volunteering groups aimed at children were there. The children were let off, one year at a time, to join them in friendship groups. It is about increasing volunteering and getting children away from the TV and computer and into socially interactive and physical activity. That is all to the benefit of those individuals and society.
The curriculum needs to be rebalanced. The national curriculum was introduced by the Conservatives. I was a teacher for 15 years and we followed the curriculum religiously, but we need a review. Have we thrown the baby out with the bathwater? We need to go back to stuff such as gratitude, empathy, discernment, reflection, silence, mindfulness, resilience, centring—the softer, gentler, more emotional approach to the curriculum, heavily present in the Catholic school in which I taught and in many religious schools. That would be a means of countering the advertising, media, peer pressure, consumerism, materialism and individualism.
A number of key statistics are not being monitored by the Government. I have tabled parliamentary questions asking what monitoring there is of advertising’s impact on children; there was no assessment. I have tabled questions about the number of fictional acts of murder that a child will watch, but there is no assessment and no figures are kept.
A young child will see tens of thousands of fictional acts of murder and violence, which do not correlate to their own, natural world. What is most disturbing is that the Government do not collect statistics on self-harm, eating disorders, mental illness, hyperactivity, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or transient children. The statistics are out there; they are often compiled by research departments or voluntary organisations.
I pay tribute to two reports in the past week, one of which—“Promoting Positive Wellbeing for Children”, came out last Thursday and is jam-packed full of practical steps that local and central Government can take to promote positive well-being for children. This afternoon, the Action for Children campaign on neglect was launched; the Minister was there and spoke well. Those reports are excellent documents, but what use do the Government make of them? When the guiding association found out about the speech that I was making today, it sent me a briefing about its research on volunteering.
The Prime Minister talks about the big society and volunteering and I back that 100%. But we need to make sure that his words are backed up with action. This is a quote from the Prime Minister in 2006:
“It’s time we admitted that there’s more to life than money, and it’s time we focused not just on GDP, but on GWB—general well-being. Well-being can’t be measured by money or traded in markets. It’s about the beauty of our surroundings, the quality of our culture and, above all, the strength of our relationships. Improving our society’s sense of well-being is, I believe, the central political challenge of our times.”
I share every single one of those sentiments.
Munro Report
Mark Tami Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Tim Loughton
The hon. Lady makes a good point. I have had reservations for some time about the way in which serious case reviews are produced, read and inspected. This area was clearly highlighted in the report, and the implementation group will need to do a lot more work to see how we get to where we want to be. Ofsted itself will say that evaluating serious case reviews is not the best use of its time and resources.
In the past, we have seen questionable gradings of some serious case reviews. We should be using serious case reviews as serious learning tools. Before the baby Peter case, I did not realise that serious case reviews were not available in their full form to every other director of children’s services and other such relevant people around the country so that they could read what had happened in a certain case in a certain authority, say, “Gosh, hold on a minute—could that happen here?”, and be alert to the problems that had happened elsewhere to see whether they needed to do things locally to ensure that they did not happen there. However, serious case reviews in their full form are available only to a very small number of people.
There have been question marks over the consistency of the quality of serious case reviews, who is commissioned to carry them out, who is controlling the quality of the people producing them, and, above all, who is bringing together the learning expertise and learning points to see whether they have generic applications for people up and down the country. That is not happening as a result of the way in which Ofsted does it, with the very best of intentions. We need to get to a place where a serious case review is not about learning from things that went wrong in a particular case but learning from things that went wrong in the system and applying that to the system elsewhere. We also need to ensure that the people producing serious case reviews produce things of a sufficiently high quality. We have a lot of work to do because the current situation is not sustainable and serious case reviews are not producing what we need them to produce.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
Does the Minister accept that we have a media who are obsessed with the blame game? They will attack social workers for not intervening soon enough, and perhaps the following day attack them for wrecking families and breaking up family units.
Tim Loughton
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. He might have heard me say on many previous occasions that social workers, and other professionals, are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Certain newspapers will carry headlines saying, “Those terrible, incompetent social workers were to blame—they should have intervened earlier and taken that child into care.” Two weeks later, they are saying that those terrible, incompetent social workers are too busy snatching children from good, decent, middle-class families and should be ashamed of it. Social workers cannot win. To get a better system we have to restore the confidence of the public in our child protection system. A key part of that is to get the media to understand more what the job of child protection is all about, and not to be so swift to wag the finger of blame but to help in the explanation and understanding of what went wrong and look to want to bring about solutions jointly, because that is in all our best interests. We are not in that position yet. Things are improving, but we have a long way to go.
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Performance)
Mark Tami Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Vince Cable
I am glad to hear it acknowledged that we began by having to sort out a mess. That is a good starting point for discussion.
Let me now deal with the further education sector, in which I became engaged, with the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning. We began visiting further education colleges, many of which were utterly demoralised and unable to fulfil their function because their capital work had been stopped as a result of a process of utter incompetence. They had been authorised to spend nine times the amount that was actually available.
Let us examine the underlying trends, to which the motion refers. In the last five years of the Labour Government, adult learning—involving people over 19—fell by 1.1 million to 3.5 million. At a time when Government money was being thrown at problems, the Government’s priorities were such that a key area was neglected and declined. We have sought to refocus that energy on apprenticeships, with the consequences that I have already described.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
May I return the Secretary of State to the subject of manufacturing? My right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham) raised the issue of Airbus at the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee. There is great concern about the fact that key workers who are vital to the future of the business will be prevented from entering the United Kingdom under tier 2 of the points-based system. I know that the Secretary of State is concerned about that as well, but what is he going to do about it?
Vince Cable
The right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen made a wholly wrong assertion. The system of immigration for skilled workers was substantially modified to remove intra-company transfers from immigration control. If there are particular cases involving particular companies, I shall be happy to pursue them. As it happens, I met Mr Gallois yesterday and the issue was not raised, but I will happily pursue any specific cases.
Let me now deal with another issue. A few moments ago, I received a challenge. Why, I was asked, did we not move away from some of the messes that we had inherited, and concentrate on the issues relevant to business growth? Let me start with an issue that is absolutely critical but does not merit even a word in the motion—regulation.
We inherited a system in which five new regulations were introduced every day, at a cost to the business sector that was independently assessed at £80 billion— about 5% of GDP. A few days ago the Minister of State, Cabinet Office discovered a book, only one copy of which is in circulation, of all the regulations that had been accumulated. Some 22,800 were bearing on businesses and adding enormously to their costs—
Education Maintenance Allowance
Mark Tami Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Andy Burnham
I will give way in a moment.
The Government’s answer is, “We are raising the school leaving age to 18.” What kind of answer is that? Do they really think they can simply mandate that young people will have to stay on and then provide no practical support to make it work? Perhaps that is why the Chairman of the Select Committee on Education said yesterday that he thought the removal of EMA would be damaging. The Government have a lot of convincing to do as regards senior voices on their own side of the House.
Andy Burnham
As I said, 80% of people get the £30 higher level. I also said that I am not opposed to talking to the Secretary of State about changes. However, if he is to fulfil his goal of keeping young people in education, he will have to talk about a scheme on a much bigger scale than he is proposing, and he will have to do that today.
Let me set out, first, the educational case for EMA. EMA has had a positive impact on participation in post-16 education: that is accepted by all. The Government’s figures suggest that EMA makes all the difference for 78,000 young people. However, as we enter 2011, the financial outlook for many families is changing for the worse. Calculations about the affordability of staying on will have to be redone when the loss of EMA is set alongside changes to other benefits and wages. New research released yesterday by the University and College Lecturers Union suggested that seven in 10 EMA recipients will drop out of education if EMA is taken away.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mark Tami Excerpts(14 years ago)
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The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning (Mr John Hayes)
For too long we have conned ourselves that the only form of prowess that matters is academic accomplishment. We need, in the spirit of Ruskin and Morris, to recognise that practical skills matter too. I recommend that my hon. Friend read my speech to the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce on that subject. Signed copies are available, but I am told it is the unsigned copies that will be clamoured for in years to come.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Secretary of State gave vague assurances on intra-company transfers, particularly those that are vital to the future of Toyota on Deeside. When will he finally end the uncertainty that still hangs over this issue?
Vince Cable
The Home Secretary will announce the results of the consultation very soon, and I am sure that it will give the hon. Gentleman the assurances that he wants on inter-company transfers.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mark Tami Excerpts(14 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Willetts
I know that my hon. Friend has been closely involved with that university, as have other hon. Members. The Higher Education Funding Council for England advises me that, with the university’s new management arrangements and its new plan, it will have a far better prospect for the future.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
On Tuesday, Tata Steel announced its intention to close its Living Solutions business in Shotton, with the loss of some 180 jobs. This is a hammer blow to all those employees and their families, as well as to the local economy. Will the Secretary of State join me in pressing the company to reconsider its decision, and also look at the future of the whole modular construction business?
Vince Cable
I am always happy to meet Opposition Members who have local difficulties with local companies; I have already done so and I am happy to talk to the hon. Gentleman about this. I do not know the details of the case, and I have to say at the outset that we are not in a position to make available large amounts of public money, but if we can help in other ways, we will.