Oral Answers to Questions
Mike Kane Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Damian Hinds
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend that exclusion must be the start of something new and positive, as well as the end of something, and that is why the quality of alternative provision is so important. I pay tribute to the brilliant staff and leaders who work in our alternative provision settings, 84% of which are rated good or outstanding. However, we know there is always more that can be done, and that is why we have our innovation fund and other initiatives.
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
The Secretary of State surely knows that he lost nearly 9,500 pupils on his watch last year. They went off roll, and we had no idea where they went. Following on from the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Frith), one in 12 pupils who began secondary school in 2012 and finished in 2017 were removed from school rolls. Given the scale of the problem, will the Secretary of State not tell us when the Timpson review will be published and commit to Labour’s pledge that schools should retain responsibility for the results of the pupils they exclude?
Damian Hinds
I have not ruled that out, as the hon. Gentleman will know. I am sure he will join me in welcoming the consultation we have put out on children not in school and on maintaining a register of children not in school, including the duty to make sure that extra help is provided for home educating parents, where they seek it. There have always been absences from school, as he will know. We have made great progress over the years on absence and persistent absence from school, but we need to make sure that more is done.
Children and Young People: Restrictive Intervention
Mike Kane Excerpts(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this important debate. It was secured by the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb)—who made an excellent speech—along with my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) and the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan), who gave some powerful personal testimony, as did the hon. Member for Dundee West (Chris Law).
This is a difficult and, for some, very personal issue to talk about. I congratulate all the Members who have spoken, including my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed). Members will know that his private Member’s Bill, known as Seni’s law, was predicated on the devastating and inexcusable death of his constituent Seni Lewis in 2010. Seni had been restrained so excessively, so unreasonably, that he died. Seni’s law addressed the issue of prone restraint—the act of forcing someone’s face into the ground—and, as we know, Seni was not the first person to die in such circumstances. In 2014, during his time as a Minister in the Department of Health, the right hon. Member for North Norfolk issued guidance on the restraining of adults, with the intention that it should be followed by guidance on the restraining of children.
The national inquiry into child sexual abuse recently concluded that “pain compliance” was child abuse and should be outlawed, and the Equalities and Human Rights Commission has also argued that such methods should not be used on children. Article 19 of the United Nations convention on the rights of the child, which has already been mentioned today, states that Governments must do all they can to ensure that children are protected from all forms of violence, abuse, neglect and bad treatment by their parents or anyone else who looks after them. According to the BBC, these painful techniques were designed for prison riots, with the aim of forcing individuals to comply through the use of pain. I should not even need to say this, but we should not be using prison riot techniques on children.
What is also concerning, and constitutes the essence of the debate, is the continued absence of clear guidance from the Government. Although their consultation on draft guidance to reduce the need for the restraint of children took place between November 2017 and January 2018, we have still not received the results. Will the Minister tell us when they will be published?
Parents have argued that, in the absence of guidance and with the prevailing uncertainty, schools are using so-called restraint techniques against children with special educational needs and disabilities. That has occurred in an environment of austerity; one that has seen a crisis in funding for children with special educational needs. As we discussed in the previous debate, local authority children’s services are currently overspending by £800 million. It was reported last November, for instance, that council overspending on children’s special educational needs and disabilities has trebled in just three years.
The Minister might be aware that the Challenging Behaviour Foundation and Positive and Active Behaviour Support Scotland released a report in January on the use of restrictive intervention. The report found that 88% of parents surveyed said that their disabled child had experienced physical restraint, and 35% said that it happened regularly. Over half the cases of physical intervention or seclusion were of children between the ages of five and 10, with one case involving a two-year-old child. It should come as no surprise that this has had a negative effect on the children’s health. Over 90% of those surveyed said that restraint had emotionally impacted their child. That physical intervention was for cases of incontinence, meltdowns and shutdowns—situations that leave children unable to communicate as they are so overloaded with emotions.
I will return quickly to the Government’s own delayed guidance. When Ministers launched the consultation, they stated that any guidelines would not apply to mainstream schools. This is clearly illogical. Guidance must apply across the board, not just in specific settings. Otherwise, this suggests that mainstream schools are not safe spaces for children with special educational needs and disabilities. Will the forthcoming guidance be universal, so that all children are protected?
I would now like to move on to the treatment of young people who are autistic or have learning disabilities or mental health conditions. Across mental health, autism and learning disability services, over 1,000 young people were subject to a restrictive intervention in 2017-18. That accounted for 26,000 separate restrictive interventions. What is shocking is that the under-20s in these services who are subject to any restrictive intervention are, on average, subject to more than twice as many as those in any other age group. There are also hundreds of young people who are subjected to seclusion, segregation and—perhaps most worryingly—chemical restraint. We are drugging these young people because their behaviour is deemed to be too challenging. That is not acceptable. I know that the Care Quality Commission is currently carrying out a review of the use of restraint in these services, but it will not report until next year.
Currently 250 young people who are autistic or have learning disabilities are being detained in inappropriate care settings that were covered by the Transforming Care programme. That programme was intended to move people out of inappropriate settings and back into the community. Since 2015, however, the number of young people in such institutions has more than doubled. Some of these children have been sent more than 100 km from home. Ministers have recognised that this is wrong, but they have not yet done anything to stop it. Moreover, the programme expired last Sunday. Can the Minister therefore tell us what plans there are either to continue the work or to introduce a new programme to close inappropriate care settings? What funding will be made available in the next five years, given that the Government have committed to funding only an additional year of the programme?
What happens in early childhood has a defining impact on human development, affecting everything from educational achievement to economic security and health. Violence towards children can leave a long, irrevocable shadow over their lives. There can be no place for it anywhere. I therefore hope that the Minister will take the contributions made to heart.
School Funding
Mike Kane Excerpts(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House notes with concern the increasing financial pressures faced by schools; further notes that schools are having to provide more and more services, including those previously provided by other public agencies including health and local authorities; notes with concern funds for schools being spread more thinly and not being sufficient to cope with additional costs; and further calls on the Government to increase funding provided to schools to cover the additional services schools now perform for pupils.
I will not take interventions, on the grounds that it is a hugely important debate. I first held a debate on this issue in October 2018 in Westminster Hall under the title “School Funding”, and it was extremely well attended. The concerns expressed then about the level of school funding were consistent. Hopes were high that the Minister would be in listening mode and that the Chancellor would open his wallet to find some extra funds. Obviously, that extra funding has not appeared, so it is crucial that the subject of funding for schools should be revisited at the earliest opportunity. We in this House need to keep up the pressure.
I am sure that the British public can be forgiven for thinking this House has taken leave of its senses, with Brexit acting as an all-consuming topic to the apparent exclusion of all others. Indeed, the message from the Chancellor in his spring statement appeared to be that any spare funding that might be available was being stashed away until Brexit was resolved. Our inability to progress Brexit now means that the British taxpayer will be forking out millions for European elections that may or may not be needed, and billions to extend the Brexit can-kicking. It is time we put the focus back on to the future of our young people and children, who deserve a first-class education in a decent school environment, well-staffed with highly qualified teachers and with adequately resourced classrooms. Today, this House needs to reassert its priories. We need to put Brexit on the back burner and say that what matters is the future of our young people.
This issue has attracted significant interest across the House and the application for this debate had around 50 supporters from almost every party represented in this Chamber. I am sure that, like other hon. Members, I could simply dust off my October speech, because I know from the feedback I have heard nationally and locally that nothing has significantly changed in the months since my last debate on this issue. Parents are told that they have a choice on where their children can attend school, yet every year parents and pupils in my constituency are left scrabbling around for school places, with some being offered places a 40-minute drive away. The same Minister is with us today, and I hope that he does not just dust off his October speech, because quite frankly it was not helpful at the time. As I said in my winding-up speech last time, repeating the same mantra over and again but not admitting that there is a deep-rooted, systemic problem makes the Government look cloth-eared.
Mrs Main
I hope that the Minister is listening, and I hope we can have another shot today at persuading him that this funding crisis needs addressing. Brexit cannot be used as an excuse to keep kicking this can into the long grass.
The Government have told us repeatedly that record levels of funding are going to our schools. The simple facts tell us that more money is being spent overall, and that is a good thing, but schools are not feeling the effects of that increase. Teachers and heads keep telling me that we must differentiate between the school’s budget and the teaching budget, and that although more money is being spent on education, it does not necessarily filter down to improve the experience of pupils and teachers.
The pressures facing schools are widely known across the House and in the Department for Education. It should worry us that, earlier this month, over 1,000 councillors wrote to the Secretary of State demanding more money for local schools. That is not just about campaigning for the local elections. Many of those people are on parent-teacher associations and understand the pressures that their schools are under. The campaign supported by those councillors emphasised the real-terms cut in per-pupil funding and the severe problems faced by local authorities in funding education, particularly for special educational needs and disability—SEND—pupils. Their letter stated that, according to the Education Policy Institute, almost a third of all council-run secondary schools and eight in 10 academies are now in deficit.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies recently found that per-pupil school spending had fallen by 8% in real terms since 2010. That must be considered alongside the fact that, according to the DFE’s own figures, there are now 500,000 more pupils in our schools than there were in 2010. That is half a million extra young minds to neuter—
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
Stephen Yaxley-Lennon or Tommy Robinson, as he is known, is currently holding an event in my constituency, and I want to make it clear—I am sure the whole House will agree—that this individual is not welcome to spread his xenophobic, Islamophobic, homophobic, racist vitriol in my community or any other. He seeks to divide rather than unite, but we do things differently in Manchester. We stand together against hate.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for securing this debate and the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) for starting off with a powerful speech. She talked about billions being spent on Brexit rather than education and about a deep-rooted, systemic problem with funding in the system. The whole House has been united in discussing the problem of school funding. There is no party political divide anymore, because everyone on both sides is worried. Things must change.
After what we have heard today, we can be in no doubt about the impact on our schools of this Government’s continued austerity. The situation is shocking. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Education Secretary have both stated in the House that every school in England would see a cash-terms increase in funding, yet that flies in the face of reality and what we have heard today. On top of the funding cuts that schools have experienced, which I will outline later, our schools are having to plug the gaps in local government, healthcare and many other services. SEND and mental health services have been shattered. Some teachers have had to take it upon themselves to take children to A&E, which is outrageous in this day and age.
Local authorities face an overall funding gap of over £3 billion next year, rising to £8 billion by 2025. By 2020, their core funding will have been cut by nearly £16 billion since 2010. Figures compiled by the Labour party show that, in 2017-18, local authorities spent more than £800 million over budget on children’s services and social care due to growing demand and, as a result, were forced to make cuts elsewhere and to draw on reserves. This is having a dramatic impact on the level and type of services that councils across our great country can provide.
Many councils now spend less on early intervention, and youth services across the country have been devastated. On top of this, our schools are experiencing cuts across the board. Since 2015, the Government have cut £2.7 billion from school budgets in England. Despite the claim of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions that no child will lose their free school meal eligibility, the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that 160,000 children—one in eight on the legacy system—will not be eligible under universal credit.
The Government’s own data shows that, as of January 2018, more than 4,000 children and young people with an education, health and care plan or statement were awaiting provision—in other words, they were waiting for a place in education.
Over half a million children are now in supersize classes. There is an unquestionable recruitment crisis in our schools, with the Government now having missed their own recruitment targets for five years in a row. For the second year running, there are now more teachers leaving the profession than joining it.
There is a crisis in our schools to which this Government are turning a blind eye. In fact, there has been a concerted effort by the Government to fudge the figures and deflect attention away from the cuts to school funding over which they have presided. According to data from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the reality is that school budgets are lower in real terms than they were five years ago.
To add insult to injury, we have had the Chancellor’s £400 million for “little extras,” which is an insult to teachers, schools and children who have faced year after year of austerity. The fact is that, across the country, schools are having to write home to parents to ask for money to buy basic resources. They do not need money for little extras; they need it for the essentials.
If funding per pupil had been maintained in value since 2015, school funding overall would be £5.1 billion higher than it is today, and 91% of schools are still facing real-terms budget cuts, despite any reallocation of the funding formula. Members present already know all too well the impact on the ground, and as has already been expressed in the debate, headteachers and parents are telling us about it almost daily.
The average shortfall is more than £67,000 in primary schools, and more than £273,000 in secondary schools. Our schools have 137,000 more pupils but 5,400 fewer teachers, 2,800 fewer teaching assistants, 1,400 fewer support staff and 1,200 fewer auxiliary staff. The Government need to stop their sticking-plaster approach to school finances and give schools the funding they really need.
Sadly, it is clear that austerity is not over for our schools. When will the Minister remove his head from the sand and truly begin to hear the voices of schools, teachers, parents and Members on both sides of the House? I have spent far too many hours on the Floor of the House, along with my colleagues on the shadow Front Bench and right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House, trying to get the Government to face the facts and act.
It beggars belief that the Government have ignored the School Teachers Review Body’s recommendation of an across-the-board 3.5% increase to all pay and allowances and are now calling for it to be capped at 2%—the first time that has happened in the body’s 28-year history. To make matters worse, the Government expect schools to meet the cost of the first percentage point of the pay award from existing budgets, which have already been cut to the bone.
With the economic uncertainty of Brexit and the challenges it will bring, to have a Government who are failing to invest in education and skills defies all logic. As a former primary school teacher, I know the difference a good teacher makes. With the right support and resources, they can raise a child’s attainment and aspiration. We go into teaching because we believe in the value of education. We believe in its power to create social mobility, as the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann) said. We believe in its ability to create ambition for all. This is about our children’s future and the future of our country. Our schools need fair funding, and they need it now.
Nick Gibb
My hon. Friend makes an important point about the teachers’ pension scheme. The employer contribution rate will increase from 16% to 23% in September 2019 but, as confirmed earlier in April, we will be providing funding for this increase in 2019-20 for all state-funded schools, further education and sixth-form colleges, and adult community learning providers. My hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mrs Badenoch) asked about that funding in future years, and it will of course be a matter for the spending review.
The hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) asked whether I could meet his local headteachers to discuss funding, and I would be delighted to do so. The Secretary of State and I meet headteachers regularly, almost on a weekly basis, to discuss not only school funding, but other issues such as standards in our schools, and we would be happy to do that with the hon. Gentleman’s local headteachers as well.
Standards are rising in our schools. Thanks in part to our reforms, the proportion of pupils in good or outstanding schools has increased from 66% in 2010 to 85%. I listened carefully to the excellent opening speech by my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans, who has raised the issue of school funding, both for her constituency’s schools and nationally, on many occasions, including in Westminster Hall debates recently and again today. I am sure that the Treasury will also have heard what she had to say today. I can give her the assurances she seeks that the Secretary of State and I are both working hard to prepare our spending review bid for when that process starts later in the year to ensure that we have the best bid possible for schools, high-needs and post-16 funding.
As I was saying, standards are rising in our schools. In primary schools, our more rigorous curriculum is on a par with the highest-performing in the world and it has been taught since September 2014. Since it was first tested in 2016, we have seen the proportion of primary school pupils reaching the expected standard in the maths test rise from 70% to 76% in 2018, and in the reading test the figure has risen from 66% to 75%. Of course we would not know that if we adopted the Labour party’s policy of scrapping SATs, which of course we will not do.
Nick Gibb
I will not give way.
Since the introduction of the phonics check in 2012, the proportion of six-year-olds reaching the expected standards in the phonics decoding check has risen from 58% in 2012 to 82% last year. We have risen from joint 10th to joint eighth in the PIRLS—the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study—of the reading ability of nine-year-olds, achieving our highest ever score in that survey. In secondary schools, our more rigorous academic curriculum and qualifications support social mobility by giving disadvantaged children the knowledge they need to have the same career and life opportunities as their peers. The attainment gap between the most disadvantaged pupils and their peers, measured by the disadvantage gap index, has narrowed by nearly 10% since 2011.
To support these improvements, the Government have prioritised school spending, while having to take difficult decisions in other areas of public spending. We have been able to do that because of our balanced approach to the public finances and to our stewardship of the economy, reducing the annual deficit from an unsustainable 10% of GDP in 2010—some £150 billion a year—to 2% in 2018. The economic stability that that provided has resulted in employment rising to record levels and unemployment being at its lowest level since the 1970s, giving young people leaving school more opportunities to have jobs and start their careers. Youth unemployment is at half the rate it was when we came into office in 2010, taking over from Labour.
It is our balanced approach that allows us to invest in public services. Core funding for schools and high needs has risen from almost £41 billion in 2017-18 to £43.5 billion this year. That includes the extra £1.3 billion for schools and high needs that was announced in 2017 and that we have invested across 2018-19 and 2019-20, over and above the plans set out in the spending review.
Figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies show that in 2020 real-terms per pupil funding for five to 16-year-olds in schools will be more than 50% higher than it was in 2000. We do recognise, though, the budgeting challenges that schools face as we ask them to achieve more for children. One element of it is about making sure that money is directed to where it is needed most. Since April last year, we have started to distribute funding through the new national funding formula, with each area’s allocation taking into account the individual needs and characteristics of its pupils and schools. Schools are already benefiting from the gains delivered by the national funding formula.
Since 2017, we have given every local authority more money for every pupil in every school, while allocating the biggest increases to the schools that the previous system had left most underfunded. By 2019-20, all schools will attract an increase of at least 1% per pupil compared with 2017-18 baselines, and the most underfunded schools will attract up to 6% more per pupil by 2019-20, compared with 2017-18.
Special Educational Needs
Mike Kane Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, and I congratulate the hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) on securing this important debate. Today we have here both the hon. Member for York Outer and my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), or inner York—their constituency names reflect their Brexit politics, in a way. Who says nominative determinism is dead?
York has lost £9.9 million of education funding since 2015-16. Such losses are one reason MPs across the country are seeing their Friday surgeries full of parents who are stressed and worried about their children not getting adequate SEND—special educational needs and disabilities—provision. We have heard some great speeches today, from my hon. Friends the Members for Stroud (Dr Drew), for York Central, for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) and for Bury North (James Frith).
Interestingly, the Minister has already talked about this subject in the House, in answer to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) in an Opposition day debate. This is what the Minister said at the time, in relation to evidence on children getting SEN provision in our schools: “In some special schools 100% of the children attending are there only because their parents were able to fight through tribunal. She said”—she continued—“that is actually a class issue, because it is white, middle-class parents who are able to go to a tribunal and know how to work the system and where to get support.” She herself said: “What about all those children whose parents do not have the same cultural capital and do not know how to go out there and fight for them? They are not in these residential special schools, so where are they and what is happening to them?” That is the state of this Government and of our SEN provision, with the Minister herself admitting that the system is absolutely broken.
Children with special educational needs or disabilities are bearing the brunt of the Government’s continued cuts to our schools and our local government budgets. This Tory Government have cut more than £1.7 billion from school budgets since 2015. We recently had a three-hour Westminster Hall debate on a petition—I think you were in the Chair, Mr Davies—during which dozens of Members highlighted the cuts to their local schools. Local government is warning of a shortfall in SEND support of over half a billion pounds this year. These punishing cuts have consequences.
In 2017, over 4,000 children with SEND were left without a school place. In 2016, for the first time in 25 years, more children with SEND were educated outside the mainstream, some because they were subject to informal exclusions and some because they were being home-schooled. The stark fact is that this Government have not bothered to keep track of these children, so we do not know where they are or what support they are getting. Over 9,000 children were off-rolled from our school system last year, many of whom had disabilities and special educational needs.
We have a Prime Minister—this makes me angry—who has said that there is no link between police cuts and the rise in knife crime on our streets, and that there is no link between off-rolling in our schools, so not knowing where our children are, and the rise of knife crime in our society. Most people with common sense will think that is ridiculous. Our police forces are talking to MPs not about child sexual exploitation, but about child criminal exploitation. When we do not know where these children are, that provides a fertile breeding ground. The Government will not match Labour’s commitment to make sure that children have to stay on the school roll, so that we know where those children are. No wonder we have the problem of county lines, drug mules and all the other things that go with that.
The crisis in our education system, in recruitment and retention, and in funding cuts across the board has led to a situation in which the number of SEND children facing fixed, permanent or even illegal exclusions remains totally disproportionate compared with their peers, with three quarters of the pupils in pupil referral units having special educational needs, and children with SEND accounting for around half of all permanent exclusions in 2016.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
I have a number of pupils in my constituency with SEN who have EHCPs. The schools are not sticking to those plans, making it dangerous for those pupils to be in school and making parents feel that they have to withdraw them. The schools do not have the resources and cannot follow the plans.
Mike Kane
I taught in a school and I know that the plans cost money, but that money is not there. Schools are worried about employing cleaners and, according to The Times last weekend, we have headteachers cleaning the loos. I had a delegation from a special school for children with autism in Sheffield yesterday, and they are having to reduce the number of assistants and the ratios of children to people providing support are getting bigger. There is very little they can do.
At one point in their lives, more than 2 million children in England will have some kind of SEND, but shockingly only 3% of children in England have SEND statements or education and health care plans.
Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
In Plymouth and across the country, schools are closing early on Fridays. I have heard parents of kids with SEND saying that the disruption to schedules for kids who require structure and support during school hours is especially hurtful. Does my hon. Friend agree that this type of funding cut is really affecting some kids and that we need to ensure that schools are funded properly to give SEND kids, especially those who value structure and support during school hours, the support they need?
Mike Kane
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. Our hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle referred to a finite budget. There are limits to resources, but what are we doing? We are creating a lost generation. In 20 or 30 years’ time, we will say that this is the generation that went through the school system on this Government’s watch. It will be the lost generation: 10,000 children a year are off-rolled, and kids with special educational needs are not getting the assistance they need.
Local authorities have overspent their budgets over the past four years and, as has been highlighted, there is a catastrophic shortfall of more than half a billion pounds this year. The mantra from Ministers that more money than ever before—record investment—is going into education not only rings hollow, but shows a total disconnect between reality and rhetoric. As a further shocking indictment of the Government’s complete failure to provide adequate SEND support in schools, a UN report in 2016 concluded that the UK was guilty of
“grave or systematic violations of the rights of persons with disabilities”.
I came into politics because I was inspired by my MP, Alfred Morris, who introduced the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970 as a private Member’s Bill. That was the first legislation recognising the human rights of disabled people in any legislature on the planet, and Alf Morris became the world’s first Minister for the Disabled. He would be spinning in his grave if he could see what state we have come to in this country and how we are now treating pupils with SEN and disabilities.
The Government must get a grip and fully fund and implement suitable SEND support in schools. Labour would do things differently. We have already said that we would give—[Interruption.] I am hearing muttering from the Government Benches, but the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) needs to hear this message, because things do not have to be like this. We would fund local government services adequately. We pointed that out in our manifesto. We would also replace what has been taken in cuts to our schools. [Interruption.]
Alex Chalk
I am really disappointed by the hon. Gentleman’s speech, because normally he makes such helpful contributions and this one is not that. The fact is that we now spend, as a nation, £50 billion a year on debt interest, which is more than the £43 billion schools budget, and that is in no small part because of the historic failings of the Labour Government.
Emma Hardy
I am sorry, but the argument made by the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), for whom I normally have a lot of respect, would feel a little more truthful were it not for the fact that the Department for Education spends an awful lot of money on its own ideological pet projects. An example is the £4.6 million spent on Troops to Teachers, which has resulted in only 69 teachers.
Mike Kane
We also have to say that there was not austerity up to 2015, because the education budget was protected. What is happening is actually ideological, because the Government do not want to see that amount of GDP spent on schools in our country. We are going back to the 1980s—we all see it.
The national education service that Labour proposes has at its heart the guiding principle that access to education should be a fundamental right for all, no matter who they are, where they are from or what their circumstances are, because a good education can make a difference. The hon. Member for York Outer pointed this out most eloquently. For too long, SEND provision has been seen as an add-on, as an extra. We are committed to a truly inclusive education system, based on choice, where children, parents and adult learners with SEND alike can attend mainstream or specialist provision and achieve their goals. It is simply not right that a child should lose out because of the circumstances into which they were born or because they have special needs. I and my party are determined to change that for good.
Geraint Davies (in the Chair)
We have caught up on time, so the Minister has almost 15 minutes.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mike Kane Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Nick Gibb
We understand the pressures on the high-needs budgets of local authorities up and down the country, including medical science and a whole range of other issues such as extending the age range for special educational needs provision up to 25. All those things have added pressure to high-needs budgets, which is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State towards the end of last year announced an extra £250 million between this financial year and the next financial year to recognise the pressures that local authorities are facing.
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
Figures show that our schools have 66,000 more pupils but 5,400 fewer teachers, 2,800 fewer teaching assistants, 1,400 fewer support staff, and 1,200 fewer auxiliary staff—a total workforce reduction of 10,800 from 2016-17. With weekend reports of headteachers having to clean the toilets, does the Minister still maintain that schools are not experiencing funding cuts from this Government?
Nick Gibb
As I said, since 2017 we have provided and are providing local authorities with more money for every pupil in every school. There are 10,000 more teachers in our school system today than there were when we came into office in 2010. In the recruitment cycle last year, we recruited 2,600 more teacher trainees into teacher training. It is an attractive and an honourable profession to work in. I wish the hon. Gentleman and Labour Front Benchers would support our schools and talk them up instead of talking them down.
Catholic Sixth-form Colleges
Mike Kane Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. Referring to a faith-based debate as an “EVEL debate” might not be the best phraseology.
In addition to being the Front-Bench spokesperson, I should declare that I am the convenor of the Catholic legislators’ network in Parliament. It is important that I put that on the record. It is a real pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas), the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy). I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West, who is an assiduous campaigner for his constituents. Both of us would like to see a day where we are talking not about academisation, but about the co-operatisation of more of our schools up and down the country. He is the country’s leading campaigner for the co-operative movement, in my opinion.
My second interest to declare is that I am a product of Loreto College in Manchester. Having grown up in a council flat and a council house, going to Loreto at the age of 16 widened my horizons unbelievably. It turned me on to politics. I had a lecturer called Colleen Harris, who is still alive. I want to get it in Hansard that I would not be in this place had it not been for her. Coming down here for the first time and seeing Parliament was one of the most amazing experiences that I got from going to that sixth form.
I was glad to visit the college the other week, to campaign to raise the rate, and to speak to the principal, Peter McGhee, who is also the principal of St John Rigby College in Wigan. It is great to know that my principal, Sister Patricia, is still on Loreto’s governing body. The only bit of the college that is left is the 19th-century grade II listed chapel. Otherwise, the college has been rebuilt completely, and serves the whole community of Manchester and Greater Manchester. In terms of social mobility, there was nowhere like it. It helped people from poor backgrounds such as my own to move forward, along with Xaverian College in Rusholme.
The Catholic Church is the biggest provider of education on the planet, and tomorrow 1.2 billion Catholics around the world will be celebrating one of their most solemn feasts: Ash Wednesday. It is a period of reflection, fast and abstinence, but for sixth-form colleges in this country the last 10 years have been a period of fast and abstinence. I want to put some of the figures that have already been stated on to the record. Since 2010, funding for 16 to 18-year-olds has been cut sharply. That is why we are talking about this matter today. Costs have risen, the needs of students have become more complex and the Government have demanded much more of colleges.
Recent research from London Economics found that, in real terms, sixth-form colleges received £1,380 less per student in 2016-17 than in 2010-11—a 22% decline in funding. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown that funding per student aged 16 to 18 has seen the biggest squeeze of all stages of education for young people in recent years. We have had debate after debate in this Chamber about schools, but school funding started to be cut only in about 2015. Since then, about £1.7 billion has been taken out of the system. However, we have seen a continual attack on sixth-form colleges since 2010.
Sixth-form colleges are in a strange place. It is interesting that the Minister and I speak for stand-alone sixth-form colleges, but the responsibility for further education colleges sits with our counterparts in our teams. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West highlighted in his very good speech, funding per sixth-former is £4,545. That is 15% lower than for 11 to 16-year-olds, which is £5,341, and half the average university tuition fee, which is £8,901.
The impact on students could not be clearer. A recent funding impact survey found that 50% of schools and colleges have dropped courses in modern foreign languages as a result of funding pressures. As has been pointed out, 34% have dropped STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering, maths—and 67% have reduced student support services and extracurricular activities. Some 77% of schools are teaching students in larger class sizes. The national funding rate for 16 and 17-year-olds has remained frozen at £4,000 per student since 2013-14. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East pointed out, the rate for 18-year-olds is even lower, at £3,300 per student.
There is only one way to ensure that schools and colleges can continue to deliver competitively good sixth-form education, and that is to raise the rate. I congratulate the Sixth Form Colleges Association on its fine campaign on the issue. According to London Economics, raising the rate would protect student support services, mental health support and minority subject support, and would increase non-qualification time, extracurricular activities and work experience for those in sixth-form colleges. The Government like to target funding at individual subjects or qualifications, but that has had little impact; there are just higgledy-piggledy pots of money here and there for sixth-form colleges to bid for. As the hon. Member for Harrow East stated, the £500 million for T-levels—the Government’s proposed suite of technical qualifications—will not materialise until 2023.
The key point that has been made today is that the option to convert is not currently available to Catholic sixth-form colleges. Colleges that do not change status lose out in multiple ways, as has been mentioned. First, although school sixth forms and 16-to-19 academies have their VAT costs refunded, sixth-form colleges do not. That leaves the average sixth-form college with £386,000 less to spend on the frontline education of students each year.
Secondly, as has also been pointed out, sixth-form colleges face a further financial disadvantage due to the Government’s implementation of the teachers’ pay grant. In September 2018 the Government extended the teachers’ pay grant to cover 16-to-19 academies, but not sixth-form colleges. The Minister has to tell us why that is the case. Extending the teachers’ pay grant would make a huge difference. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West said in an intervention, we really need an answer from the Minister on that.
VAT and the teachers’ pay grant are the two examples of how sixth-form colleges are treated differently from 16-to-19 academies and schools. One solution would be to address both anomalies without requiring sixth-form colleges to change their legal status, but the other—and perhaps more realistic—solution would be for the Government to explore some legislative change. At the moment, Catholic sixth-form colleges will not convert for fear of losing their religious character, particularly if there were some sort of judicial review or legal challenge.
Non-Catholic sixth-form colleges have benefited from £10 million for conversion. That is another anomaly—Catholic sixth-form colleges have not been allowed to bid for that money, as my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) pointed out. He also spoke admirably about Carmel College in his constituency. The Government should commit to allowing Catholic sixth-form colleges to change their status after the March deadline in the area reviews, and ensure that they can access Government funding.
Catholic sixth-form colleges are prevented from converting to academies as their religious character, protected under the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, would not be maintained under current Government rules. They suggest that they would lose protections in areas of the curriculum, acts of worship and governance. Most Catholic sixth-form colleges in this country provide a religious education basis, which is not funded through their Government funding, and extracurricular activities such as mass and prayer, which are unfunded, and chaplaincy work. The key nature of a Catholic sixth-form college and the essence of its governance, and the reason that they are education institutions that are highly prized, is their very strong ethical character in Catholic social teaching. The social teaching in the colleges is driven by human dignity, solidarity, subsidiarity and preferential option for the poor, and that is what is highly prized by parents, both those of the Catholic faith and those not of the faith.
The director of the Catholic Education Service, Paul Barber, said in an article that
“because academisation legislation for SFCs was developed separately from schools, the same safeguards given to schools were omitted for Catholic SFCs”.
Under current Government rules, the colleges would lose protections for the religious character of areas of the curriculum, acts of worship and governance if they converted. Primary legislation would be required, but we have been discussing this for 28 months, and no action has been taken.
It would be an enormous act of good faith for the Government to begin to act. We have seen the problems that have arisen with the Conservative party’s manifesto commitment on the cap on new free schools for Catholic schools, which has led to the Catholic Church refusing to build any more schools in this country, when perhaps 50 are needed in London and 12 in East Anglia. The Government refused to raise the cap. Faith schools are feeling quite battered at the moment, particularly in a muscular liberal secularised world, and are concerned about their status with the Government. It would be an enormous act of good faith for the Minister to act on some of the issues facing Catholic sixth-form colleges today.
School Funding
Mike Kane Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist). I always want to sing “Blaydon Races” every time I think of her constituency. I thought she did her duty diligently as a member of the Petitions Committee, and despite a barrage of interventions, she was very composed when she made her speech.
I thank Mr Andy Ramanandi, the headteacher of St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Primary School, and the group of headteachers, staff and parents who launched the petition we are debating. Over the last few weeks, hundreds of thousands of people have watched their Facebook video, explaining the scale of the impact of the cuts on their school. Headteachers such as Mr Ramanandi, Mr Malik and others who have been involved in the campaign are here today. Their efforts have ensured that cuts to school funding are being debated in this place again, and I commend them for their work. Is it not ironic that the headteacher of a school named for St Joseph, the patron saint of workers, will have to go back to Gateshead tomorrow to start consulting on redundancies to make people unemployed?
This has been a fascinating debate. Normal practice as shadow spokesman is to thank all the hon. Members on my side for the excellent speeches they gave today—“You did really well, well done everybody,”—but that is not what I am going to do. I want to highlight a few hon. Members on the Government side who spoke today. It seems that nearly every MP from West Sussex is in the room: the hon. Members for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and for Crawley (Henry Smith), the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), and the Minister himself—
Mike Kane
Forgive me; the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), too. We know that that authority is having to cut—let me get my figures accurate—£8.9 million from the schools in their patches between 2015 and 2020. The hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) spoke well about Southampton losing £4.9 million over the same period. The hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), my footballing partner, spoke of Suffolk losing £7.8 million over that period.
The hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) spoke passionately about his schools in Stockport. Stockport, my neighbouring authority, is losing £6.4 million and a special school in Stockport has said just this week that it will have to cut Friday afternoons from its curriculum. The hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson), who like my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) represents Gloucestershire, spoke of cuts of £11.1 million. The hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince) spoke about Essex—I was at St Dominic’s just the other week, and what a fantastic school it is—and the £29.8 million cuts faced there. Finally, there was a really powerful speech from the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main), speaking about Hertfordshire having to cut £33.2 million from the budget. I will end my speech with what she said about the cake.
We can be in no doubt after what we have heard today about the impact of continued Government austerity on education. In fact, it is not austerity anymore; the Secretary of State has already said he wants to reduce spending on education and that he thinks it is too high. The policy is ideologically motivated. Education urgently needs investment across the board, and the Government must finally begin reversing the devastating cuts. Just look at how many right hon. and hon. Members have turned out today.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Education Secretary have both stated in the House of Commons that every school in England would see a cash-terms increase in its funding, but that flies in the face of the reality we have heard about today, what parents and teachers are telling us and what is happening on the ground. The Institute of Fiscal Studies has stated that it is simply not accurate, and the UK Statistics Authority has even rebuked the Education Secretary for his statistical inaccuracy. There has been a concerted effort by the Secretary of State and the Minister to fudge the figures and to deflect attention away from the school funding cuts that they have presided over. To add insult to injury, we have had a one-off £400 million for “little extras”, when schools cannot even afford glue sticks at the moment, as we have heard. The fact is that, across the country, schools are having to write to parents to ask for money.
If funding per pupil had been maintained in value since 2015, there would be £1.7 billion more in the system now. That means that 91% of schools still face real-terms budget cuts per pupil. Those in this Chamber know all too well the impact on the ground already. The average shortfall in primary school budgets is more than £67,000, and more than £273,000 in secondary school budgets. Our schools have 137,000 more pupils but 5,400 fewer teachers, 2,800 fewer teaching assistants, 1,400 fewer support staff and 1,200 fewer auxiliary staff.
I have spent far too many hours in this Chamber and the main Chamber, trying with my shadow Front-Bench colleagues and Members from across the House to get the Government to face facts and act. It beggars belief that the Government have ignored the School Teachers Review Body’s pay recommendations—the first time that has happened in 28 years. To make matters worse, the Government expect schools to meet the cost of the first 1% of the pay award from existing budgets.
As a former primary school teacher, I know the difference that a good teacher can make, with the right support and resources, to a child’s attainment and aspiration. We go into teaching because we believe in the value of education, we believe in its power to create social mobility and we believe in its ability to create ambition for all. This is about our children’s future and that of our country.
I will close with the words of teachers and teaching assistants from across the country:
“Last year the school I work at had to lose many of its teaching assistants due to lack of money.”
“I have to buy equipment and supplies for my job.”
“We do not have budget for staff training, resources or opportunities for children.”
“I am a qualified teacher now working and being paid as a teaching assistant, but I am being used to cover classes as the school cannot afford to employ supply teachers.”
“The Minister’s claim that more money is going into schools than ever before is pure sophistry.”
James Frith
On a point of order, Sir Christopher. It was remiss of me not to mention that I am the founding director of a careers education company. In the interests of transparency, I share that with you now.
Relationships and Sex Education
Mike Kane Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David, but especially in this critical debate. I thank all Members who have taken part: the hon. Members for Henley (John Howell), for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), for Bolton West (Chris Green), for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Livingston (Hannah Bardell), my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood), for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), for Bradford West (Naz Shah), for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) and for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), and my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne). Everyone made excellent speeches.
The Government are right to be doing what they are doing. The common good is the maximum utility for the most number of people, but always with a preferential option for those who cannot go along with the decisions. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood whetted my appetite regarding the culture wars today, but we must be careful not to engage in them. Government should and have a right to govern and bring forward guidance on this matter.
I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones), a woman with stunning oratory. She has absolutely brought due diligence to her work on the Petitions Committee and to introducing the debate today. She made powerful points that opened the debate up. I look forward to her soaring oratory when she winds up.
I just mentioned the common good; interestingly, the same concept exists in Judaism—tikkun olam—and in Islamic social thought, but we need to think about what that is. The hon. Member for East Antrim was right—I agreed with him—about one thing. As a school teacher myself, I used to rail against politicians in this place who thought that the answer to every social problem in our country was to get it on the school curriculum. It is not. Parents are the primary educators and we should remember that. The hon. Members for East Antrim and for Strangford might be on one side and the hon. Member for Livingston and my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse slightly on the other side, but I think there was a great degree of consensus in the debate.
A champion of RSE was my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), who got it included in the Children and Social Work Act 2017. Deciding what is in the national curriculum in social work Acts or amendments to them is not the proper way forward, or what I would want if I was in government, but she championed it, she won and here we are today. It is a shame that we did not have the guidance that would have informed this debate, and that the Secretary of State was on his feet in the main Chamber at the same time, but these are the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Proposals made by the Secretary of State at the time, the right hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening), included making elements of PHSE mandatory in all schools and making new subjects—relationships education and relationships and sex education—mandatory at primary and secondary level respectively.
In the past, RSE was seen as an add-on, taught for an hour every fortnight by someone whose job it was not, or by an outside agency brought in to tick a particular box. That was backed up by the evidence of the Department for Education’s own data, which showed that time spent teaching PHSE fell 32% between 2011 and 2015. As a former PHSE co-ordinator I attribute some of that fall to my coming to Parliament.
High-quality relationships and sex education helps to create safe school communities where pupils can grow, learn and develop positive, healthy behaviour for life. Inadequate RSE leaves pupils vulnerable to abuse or exploitation, without an understanding of how to negotiate risky situations or where to go to for help. Statutory RSE needs to be part of the overall teacher training programme, and any qualified teachers whose role includes teaching it must be appropriately equipped and resourced. It needs to be done sensitively.
I taught year 5, including the sex education programme, for a number of years. There was a really well-developed policy through the Standing Advisory Council for Religious Education, local religious organisations and the local education authority. There was a sense of subsidiarity in how it was done in local areas. We lose that slightly through the multi-academy trust system, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill, pointed out. The policy was overseen by the headteacher, we held consultation meetings with all the parents of that class, we did one-to-ones, and we had an accelerated learning programme where objectives were clearly marked out and outcomes noted. It was done late into the term, when I had established good relationships with each child. It was overseen by a parent governor—Mrs Rocca in my case, who was also the school’s secretary—who would sit in on some of the lessons if the headteacher did not.
I would present myself at the school gates at the end of every day of those lessons, to ensure parents could interact with me. At the end of the lesson, when we had reached the objectives, the children could place a question into the pot and we would have an open, honest and constructive conversation about the questions they had. It was done really well at my school; I taught it well, but it was down to really strong leadership from the headteacher.
The Minister needs to outline what budget and resources his Department has identified to support schools, such as the school where I taught, so that teachers can deliver RSE effectively. The Government’s draft guidance clearly sets out the rights of parents and carers to withdraw pupils from sex education, but not relationships education. It also notes that the role of parents in the development of their children’s understanding of relationships is vital—they are the primary educators—and that all schools should work closely with parents when planning and delivering these subjects, to ensure all children and young people receive age-appropriate RSE. The Minister will probably touch upon whether it will be the same for LEA schools as for free schools and academies. We know there are differences in how the national curriculum is delivered.
For primary schools, the draft guidance states that headteachers will automatically grant a request to withdraw a pupil from any sex education that is not part of the science curriculum. For secondary schools, parents will still have a right to request to withdraw children from all sex education delivered as part of statutory RSE, and the request will be granted in all but exceptional circumstances. That will apply up until three terms before a child turns 16, at which point a child will be able to opt in to sex education if they so choose. The guidance is also clear that as primary educators, parents must be consulted on their school’s curriculum for relationships and relationships and sex education.
Children need to be taught what a coercive relationship is, whether violent or sexual. The Government have done remarkable work and I commend the Prime Minister —I rarely say that—on her work to combat human trafficking and the problems it creates. Children need to be taught what is appropriate and what is not when they meet people.
There is a danger that without a clearer steer from Government there will be big variations in what schools deem consultation with parents to be. That was the key message of the eloquent speech from my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill, about the issues at Parkfield. Will the Minister indicate what guidance and support will be available for primary schools to engage with parents on the RSE curriculum?
Views expressed through the consultation are helping to shape the final regulations and guidance, and the Department for Education expects to lay the regulations in spring 2019, alongside final draft guidance. We are expecting schools to be ready to deliver the statutory RSE curriculum in September, so there is not much time for consultation with parents and appropriate training and resources for teachers. Will the Minister outline the consideration he has given to the ability of schools to deliver within those timescales?
RSE is sensitive and can be emotive. Our priority has to be to keep our children healthy and safe. Like many in this Chamber, I believe that age-appropriate RSE should be a statutory subject in schools in order to teach children about mutual respect and the importance of healthy relationships. Its role does not end there. Greater Manchester Police are increasingly worried about child exploitation, but they are more worried about criminal child exploitation. Last year, just short of 10,000 children were off-rolled in years 9 and 10. The state had no idea where those children were. I have criticised the Minister about that, because it makes our young people hugely vulnerable.
Hannah Bardell
The hon. Gentleman makes a particularly pertinent point. The rise in the development of apps and threats to children online are so quick that many parents cannot keep up. Parents who take their children out of school will not have the information to give them the help and support they will need.
Mike Kane
I am sympathetic to that argument, but schools are increasingly off-rolling children and they are not being taught. The key vulnerability is in the home, but there are children outside who are not in school, which is a breeding ground for criminals who want to exploit children. I congratulate the hon. Lady on her powerful personal testimony.
Children must know their rights if they are to exercise them throughout their lives. Relationships and sex education is most effective when it sits as part of a whole-school approach embedded across the curriculum with well-trained staff, with an option for those with religious beliefs to have an input in that system. The Government must ensure schools have the resources to deliver that.
Secondary School Opening Hours
Mike Kane Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) on moving the petition so eloquently on behalf of the Petitions Committee, and Hannah Kidner on coming up with the idea for a petition that has attracted so much support in such a short space of time. She can be very proud indeed that she has made Parliament act on her idea; I will go into why I think it was so popular.
On first reading the title of the petition, that school should start at 10 am as teenagers are too tired, many people will have dismissed the idea—hon. Members have made that case—but there is a growing body of opinion that starting the school day later would be better for teenagers, both in terms of their physical and mental health, which I will come on to, and in relation to their academic performance.
When I researched this debate, I found a 2017 study by Dr Paul Kelley of the Open University. It was conducted at an English secondary school that showed that delaying school start times for teenagers can have major benefits, including better academic performance and improved mental and physical health. The study found that rates of illness decreased by more than half over a two-year period and students in their mid-teens got significantly better grades when they started school at 10 am instead of the usual 8.30 am.
As has been pointed out by several hon. Members, however, children across the world are sleeping less. Here in the UK, the national health service is seeing more serious problems than before, with hospital attendances for children under 14 with sleep disorders tripling in the past 10 years. British schoolchildren are the sixth most sleep-deprived in the world, with American children topping the rankings. There are likely to be a number of sources for that problem, as the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) pointed out, with mobile phone and tablet use featuring high on the list. More than 80% of children in the UK now have their own phone by the age of 12, while 58% have their own tablet by the age of 10, and two thirds of teenagers say they use those devices in the hour before they go to bed. As it happens, it is one of my personal rules not to do that.
Let us face it: we have all become slaves to these devices, and parents must be role models and set an example in that area. Indeed, the Minister has made the issue the focus of his attention in recent weeks, suggesting that our schools should ban mobile phones altogether. I think that suggestion got rather more attention than he ever thought it might when he made it.
I think the reason why so many young people signed this petition is that they see mental health going up their agenda. The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) mentioned that we in Parliament start our day at 2.30 pm on a Monday, but my day started at 9 o’clock with a visit to a company in my constituency called Endress+Hauser, a major manufacturer of pressurised equipment across the continent. Its representatives told me about their workplace practices, changing times to improve people’s mental health and having full staff sessions on anxiety and their mental health and wellbeing. It is a rising agenda.
We know that the number of young people attending accident and emergency departments for a psychiatric condition more than doubled between 2010 and 2015; I think that is particularly what young people are worried about. Just 8% of the mental health budget is spent on children, despite their representing 20% of the population. Any MP with a constituency case load will have more and more parents coming to see them about special educational needs and trying to get that provision through local authorities, their multi-academy trusts and child and adolescent mental health services provision. Referrals to CAMHS increased by 64% between 2012-13 and 2014-15, but more than one quarter of children and young people referred were not allocated a service.
What is hampering schools in making a change? Today in Tes, the Government were criticised for school budget cuts that lead to less innovation in our schools, particularly relating to education technology. The Minister and I are no strangers to that. In the current climate, it is difficult for schools to make such changes, even innovative changes to the school day, when £1.7 billion in real terms has been taken out of the school system since 2015. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge said, every state school is facing a crisis.
Our schools need the Government to take an honest approach to the issue. We must act now and give our children and teenagers the knowledge and confidence to take charge of their own mental health and wellbeing. The current system gives schools the autonomy to organise the school day in a way that best suits their pupils, in conjunction with the wider community. If schools want to change their times, and do so effectively, they must work through a framework and a form of subsidiarity in their local authority area or more widely. If certain countries that make up the United Kingdom—or conurbations such as Greater Manchester or Merseyside, which have their own mayoral systems—consider doing so, I do not think that any of us would be averse to that. They should come back with ideas.
The subject of the petition merits proper consideration by the Department for Education, particularly the underlying challenges faced by teenagers and the ability of our schools and teachers to support them while facing sustained budget cuts and increasing workloads. I congratulate my hon. Friend again on his considered introduction of the petition, and Hannah Kidner on bringing it to Parliament and gaining so many signatures in such a short space of time.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mike Kane Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful for that question. Giving free school meals to infants encourages children to start on the right path to nutritious meals. Those who are eligible will go on to claim free school meals, and it is worth noting that the new eligibility criteria and the protections introduced last April mean that we expect more pupils to be entitled to free school meals by 2022, by contrast to the scaremongering that took place in this place and outside when the policy was introduced.
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
Does the Minister now accept that it was a mistake for his party’s last election manifesto to propose abolishing free school meals? Will he promise that there will be no such proposal ahead of the snap election that looks like it is about to happen and to which his Back Benchers are looking forward so much? Indeed, will he commit to matching Labour’s manifesto commitment to extend universal free school meals to all primary school pupils?
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful for that question. It is good to see the shadow Front-Bench team intact after the weekend speculation that they were about to split with the leadership. It is worth reminding the House that we have extended eligibility for free school meals three times while in government, and we continue to be committed to that policy.