Educational Attainment: Yorkshire and the Humber

Debate between Melanie Onn and Graham Stuart

Monday 18th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon). I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Jo Cox) on securing the debate with the assistance of the hon. Members for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) and for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers).

I am not shy in being absolutely passionate about making sure that children in Grimsby have every opportunity available to them—the same opportunities that are available to all children across the rest of the country. That is why it is so important that MPs from Yorkshire and the Humber are in the Chamber today, speaking with one voice in support of the children of our region.



The fact that Yorkshire and the Humber is the lowest-achieving region in the country should throw into question the Government’s revised funding formula announced in the autumn statement. I am sure the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) will disagree with me greatly, but I will continue regardless. Surely if there were a need to redistribute funding to rural areas, we would expect schools in the south-west or the north-west to be performing worse than those in our region. It makes a mockery of any claim from the Government to be raising education standards in towns such as Grimsby, Doncaster or Rotherham when they are shifting funds away from those towns. The plans currently out for consultation will result in north-east losing around £2.1 million, which is more than £100 per pupil each year. How can it be described as fairer when a town without a single good or outstanding secondary school loses out?

[Graham Stuart]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Melanie Onn]

The hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not—time is rather short.

Many colleagues have talked about the shortage of teachers, partly because of the large number leaving the profession. More than one in 10 teachers quit in 2014, a 10% increase on 2011. That has been a recent issue for schools in Grimsby, where three of the four secondary school heads left their posts last summer. That level of leadership turnover has an impact on children’s educational experience. It disrupts continuity and makes young people believe that their school does not care about them. It gives them less incentive to invest in their school if they do not think the teachers and leadership are investing in it as well. It is an incredibly damaging message to send.

The problem of teacher flight is coupled with that of local schools struggling to bring teachers to the area, which has been mentioned. That is a particular issue facing coastal communities across the public and private sectors. As my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen said, Teach First should be sending more teachers to low-achieving areas of the country. I welcome the national teaching service and urge the Government to hurry up and bring it to Yorkshire and the Humber.

I take this opportunity to commend Macaulay Primary School in my constituency, which I had the privilege of visiting recently, for meeting its own recruitment challenges with an innovative solution, which the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness will approve of—a “grow your own” approach. The school has been supporting its teaching assistants into teacher training schemes, enabling it to fill vacancies with teachers who already have a relationship with the children at that school, as well as experience in the classroom.

Teaching assistants are a huge resource for schools, but they are often undervalued and not used effectively. Unlike for teachers, there is no national pay structure for TAs, so when budgets are squeezed, those remaining often end up having to take on more work, which they are not necessarily qualified to do, for less pay. Research has shown that in many schools, TAs are not being used in ways that allow them to best improve students’ learning. The Education Endowment Foundation has called for closer working relationships between teachers and TAs, and for more training opportunities. Has the Minister considered the EEF’s report and a potential career path from assistant to teacher?

Unison has called for teaching assistants to be paid for 52 weeks of the year, rather than the current term time-only arrangement. Have the Government considered that for TAs who want to become teachers, so that they could spend their time out of the classroom working with teachers to better prepare for lessons and training to become qualified teachers themselves?

I feel well placed to comment on the Government’s recently announced policy of forcing schools to become academies, as all the secondary schools in my constituency have already made that move. That is quite a gentle description of what has happened. One problem I see is that different chains of academies do not seem to work together. To change that, I am trying to co-ordinate a meeting between the companies that operate in my town. Are the Government doing anything to encourage the sharing of best practice between local schools?

What we have seen locally is that schools that were performing okay before they became academies are still okay, but those that were underperforming are still underperforming. I do not put that down to any failure on the part of teachers. The teaching staff I have met are incredibly dedicated, and every child I meet is happy to be in their school. That is a credit to all the people working in those organisations. The fact remains, however, that every secondary school achieved worse results last year than in 2013, and although two schools improved their Ofsted ratings, one school received a worse rating than the previous year, and the other still “required improvement”.

I am coming to the end of my allocated time, but I want to mention two more schools. The first is the Academy Grimsby, a 14 to 16 academy that was set up two years ago by a local further education provider. It allows students to learn skills for the engineering, care and digital industries among others. It was originally set up for hard-to-place children and has been incredibly successful at giving less academic students the chance to learn vocational skills early in life and a much greater chance of finding a job once they finish school.

The second school I want to mention is the Lisle Marsden Primary Academy, which I am due to visit on Friday. It is undertaking a literacy day initiative run by Pobble, which specialises in inspiring reluctant writers as well as stretching the most able readers through its literary programme, which is operating in over 300 schools across the country. Those are examples of schools really innovating to try to get the best, but we need the Government to step in and do more.