Education and Opportunity

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

Congratulations on your election, Madam Deputy Speaker, and on taking your place. It is wonderful to see you here. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey) on his maiden speech. It was very moving, informative and funny, exactly as maiden speeches as ought to be, and I hope that he has a successful time in this place.

I welcome the Secretary of State’s comments on children with special educational needs, but I want to raise an issue that has already been mentioned a number of times: the lack of available school spaces for children with special educational needs. I want to talk about two schools in my Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes constituency, Cambridge Park academy and Humberston Park school. The parents of children there with special educational needs are very concerned about their education, because the schools lack capacity and the places to meet the needs of the area. The parents also have concerns that if their children cannot go to local schools, they will have to go out of area. That adds pressure to children, who will perhaps have to move away from friendship groups, and to families, because there would be additional travel time, and they would be further away if issues arose with the child in that out-of-area placement. That is incredibly difficult for families.

We should also mention the problems when children with special educational needs or disabilities reach the 16-plus point in education. They can become trapped in a never-ending cycle of trying to achieve level 1 or level 2 qualifications in maths and English—qualifications that sometimes they are just not going to achieve. That just sets them up repeatedly for failure. I urge the new Secretary of State and her team to take a look at that and perhaps consider being more flexible. We should view education in the light of supporting young people to achieve their maximum potential, and not focus on that very narrow academic path.

I associate myself with the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) on state-maintained nurseries. We have the state-maintained Great Coates village nursery in my constituency, and Scartho nursery school sits just outside my constituency, but services children within it. Both face an increasingly challenging environment. During my previous time in Parliament, I championed those nursery schools and secured additional funding for them, but that was only temporary; again, our local Conservative council is seeking to reduce the number of state-maintained nurseries, due to a funding shortage. I ask that that be looked at as a matter of urgency.

As has just been mentioned, the Conservative Government had started the process of scrapping BTecs—a decision that the Protect Student Choice campaign has described as “reckless”. It will be welcomed across the sector that this new Labour Government have decided to pause and review that decision. BTec qualification are well understood by employers. Applied general qualifications lend themselves well to young people who are not sure about their career path but have an interest in a particular sector or industry. I talked about young people with SEND whom the cycle of repeating maths and English does not suit; BTecs may be the right route for them. They are flexible, they sit well alongside other academic qualifications such as A-levels and apprenticeships, and they can be studied as stand-alone courses.

When we in Labour talk about opportunity, surely flexibility and a range of options to support young people through their learning and education must feature. The Secretary of State speaks of breaking the class ceiling, and BTecs enable that very thing. For those for whom the strictures of the current school system have not captured their skills or energies, BTecs allow for broad exploration of a working area and provide another route into university or employment.

Franklin sixth form college in my constituency—which was my college—has had great success. Its BTec students have gone on to work as paramedics, in nursing and in engineering. I take this opportunity to commend the outgoing principal, Peter Kennedy, on his excellent work during his time at the college, when it has gone from “requires improvement” to “outstanding” in its Ofsted inspections. I know that he would want me to recognise the excellent support that he has had from his governors and staff, who have supported his vision for the growth and improvement of the college. They have done amazing work and provided an outstanding education establishment for a growing number of young people. I wish him well in his retirement. I welcome the incoming principal, Wendy Ellis, who I am confident will continue that excellent work and—like Peter—will never lose her enthusiasm for young people.

It is imperative for the young people of Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes that a plan for BTecs is put in place swiftly to ensure that there is sufficient time for colleges to advertise courses and for students to know what is available in time for the 2025 terms. I was going to ask how long the review process would take, but the Secretary of State took the wind right out of my sails by saying that it will be complete by the end of the year, That is excellent and welcome news, and I congratulate the team on taking that process seriously and putting a set of measures in place swiftly. As part of that review, the Government could consider allowing students to enrol on all 134 existing applied general qualifications—the AGQs that have been mentioned—up to and including the 2026-27 academic year. If it helps the Government make a decision, that would cost nothing because funding was not due to be withdrawn until 1 August 2025, and it would avoid the concern about young people disengaging entirely from education without options such as BTecs being available.

I ask the House to give me a little leeway to talk specifically about academisation. I would not ordinarily rise to speak in favour of academies as a broad-brush educational principle, but that is the landscape that we currently find ourselves in—one that Franklin college would like to explore as an empty multi-academy trust. It would be a local, substantial system-led MAT for northern and coastal Lincolnshire. That status has been applied for via a very exceptional route, as I understand it, but the application is currently sitting with regional directors of the DFE, despite the proposal being widely supported by local stakeholders.

The principle behind the move towards academisation is to build on the college’s strong track record of support for local schools and academies, and engagement with employers and other organisations on initiatives to materially change young people’s lives. The change in status would allow the college to support the area’s schools and employers to meet future need for highly educated, highly skilled young people. For growing local industries, such as clean energy, that is absolutely necessary. Perhaps the Secretary of State or her team could write to advise me on how that process can be moved along to the next stage. That would give confidence and clarity to the college and potential future partners, and would be of benefit to the whole of northern Lincolnshire and beyond.

The future of young people in Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes is a concern not just for me but for the local authority and the wider community. There is a strong desire across the constituency not just for available and plentiful opportunities for children and students, but for the provision to get them into those opportunities easily. The young people of Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes have all the same ambition and talent as young people anywhere else in the country, and I want that ambition and talent to be nurtured, with the right structures in place to enable and lift every single one of them.