BME Communities (Educational Attainment)

Debate between Meg Hillier and Kevin Brennan

Tuesday 26th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Brennan]

Yes. My hon. Friend speaks with a great deal of expertise on this subject. We are all concerned that a lot of very good work on equality could be undone—perhaps not in a deliberate sense—by Ministers who desire to follow their own path and ensure that they distinguish themselves from the previous Government in their approach to education and schools. They could be undoing very good work and taking a significant step backwards in relation to the education system and the topic that we are debating today.

My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth talked about the impact of exclusion on people’s lives and about the fact that the Department itself had calculated that there would be a significant loss of earnings for pupils who were excluded in the course of their lifetime. At the time of that study, I think the reduction in lifetime earnings as a result of exclusion was calculated at £36,000. Worse than that, 80% of the juveniles in prison had been excluded from school at one time or another. That statistic made me sit up at the time, and should make the Minister focus on the issue. If 80% of juveniles in prison have been excluded from school, that must tell us something about exclusion and whether it is effective in trying to change the sort of behavioural problems that probably led to exclusion in the first place. If that exclusion has a racial component, we should be significantly concerned.

[Meg Hillier]

I would always defend a head teacher’s right to manage their school, and clearly exclusion may have a place in that, but a concern that I came across recently is a child who was excluded but brought back into school with intense provision for a short period. That intense provision was for only half a day, so the working parent was left with half a day to try to cover, and it also took the child out of their normal environment. Has my hon. Friend given any thought to how that might have an effect on the outlook of that young person when they re-enter the school?

[Kevin Brennan]

For many years, the scandal was that excluded pupils received little or no education after they had been excluded. My point is that exclusion should be a last resort, and it is sometimes necessary. As a former teacher, I absolutely defend the right of schools to exclude, having followed due and proper process. The Government have reformed that process, and changed the way in which an appeal can be made against exclusion. Instead of insisting on reinstatement, they have introduced fines on schools and head teachers who refuse reinstatement after that has been recommended on appeal.

I do not want to go into the details of that, but I want to make the point that responsibility for that child does not end when they are excluded, and that includes a responsibility on the head teacher and the school that excluded the child, on other schools in the area, even if they are independent academy schools in the state sector, and on all of us who are interested in education. Responsibility for that child does not end at the point of exclusion. One reason why so many young people end up in the juvenile justice system is not that they are inherently bad, but that, at the point of exclusion, there is no proper follow-up to ensure that the child receives an education, let alone attempts made to try to prevent exclusion in the first place whenever possible, given that it should always and everywhere be a last resort.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington said that improvement in GCSE achievement might have been due partially to the use of equivalencies at GCSE, but I think the facts will show that even if that were taken out of the equation, the improvement in London schools in recent years is real, as the Mayor of London said. In fact, results for black Caribbean pupils were rising at a faster rate than those for many other groups, but that does not mean that there is not a real and continuing problem, and my hon. Friend was right to highlight that.

My hon. Friend also spoke about the need for detailed data, and I appeal to the Minister that in his wish to unburden schools of bureaucracy, which is laudable, he does not fail to collect the data that are essential to tackle issues such as this. The Government are keen on having masses of data available in other areas, and that is good because it enables people to trawl through and analyse it, and to get to the root of a problem, but in this matter, less data are likely to be collected and that would be a significant mistake.

I have a few questions for the Minister before concluding and giving him time to respond. In tackling the problem, how will ending the ethnic minority achievement grant help? How will introducing a two-tier qualifications system, if that is indeed what he intends, help to improve black and ethnic minority attainment? How will not collecting proper statistics help? How will abandoning the approach of Every Child Matters help? Obviously, educational achievement is partially a case of good leadership in schools and so on, but it does involve wider issues, which many of these children may be bringing to school with them and which need to be tackled. How will a fragmented approach to exclusions help to tackle this problem? I would be grateful to hear the Minister’s response to those questions.