National Tutoring Programme and Adult Education

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon]

I could not agree more. I have seen the work of Manchester Council in this regard and I think that it should be replicated throughout the country. More families would benefit as a result, particularly disadvantaged families.

Parental engagement is critical and the family hubs should follow a model of best practice. Feltham Academy, for instance, takes a “cradle to career” approach. When I was in Nottingham last week, I met the headteacher of a school that trains parents to act as mentors in the community for other parents who would otherwise be disengaged from the school. That really works.

I should like the Government to consider, in the spending round, its funding of early years entitlements. I do not understand why the three or four-year-old child of an MP, when both parents are working and earning up to £100,000 each a year, qualifies for 30 hours of childcare, while the three or four-year-old child of a single parent in my constituency—or elsewhere in the country—who may not be able to work because they have that young child to bring up qualifies for just 15 hours. I cannot see how that can be the right decision on the Government’s part. I know the Minister will tell me that some poorer families qualify for extra benefits and extra hours, but the fact remains that that is the position.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Robert Halfon]

I always give way to the hon. Lady and I promise to do so if she will allow me to finish this paragraph.

I am not necessarily asking for more money, but I do ask the Minister to work with colleagues and consider reducing the generous threshold that exists for parents to claim tax-free childcare, a subsidy that does not capture society’s most disadvantaged families. One way we could do this is by dropping the eligibility cap to £65,000 from the existing £100,000 mark. That could free up £150 million, which would go some way towards covering the additional outlay.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his excellent speech. On his point about childcare, I declare an interest as he is talking about MPs with children who qualify for the 30 hours free childcare, as my three-year-old son does. We can have a good debate about who should and should not be eligible for that, and I agree broadly with the point he is making. Does he agree, however, that those 15 or 30 free hours are not actually free because most childcare providers cannot afford to provide childcare at the rate the Government are giving them? Parents are therefore regularly asked to top it up. I can afford the top-up, but many people just cannot afford it and therefore cannot make use of childcare, which is preventing them from going out to work.

[Robert Halfon]

I absolutely accept that where there are strains for providers of early years education, the Government should look at that and fill in the holes, but I think it varies. Some providers have found it very hard and some have managed to provide that service, but I accept the point the hon. Lady makes.

In conclusion, education recovery and the catch-up programme must be the immediate spending priority. I have previously described the Education Secretary as someone who can get mangoes in the Arctic and Brussels sprouts in the desert. He is that kind of person, and I am not surprised that he has managed to wangle all these extra billions from the Treasury for the catch-up and for an overall budget growth of almost 3%. That is a significant achievement in the current climate, and it has to be acknowledged. The House will have noticed that I have not necessarily been asking for lots more money; I have been asking for the Department to spend the money more wisely. It needs to demonstrate, above all, that the catch-up programme is providing value for money. When the Minister goes back to the Treasury, it is going to say that it is not working, and the evidence out there is that it is not necessarily working for the most disadvantaged. There are serious issues regarding the catch-up programme and questions to be asked about whether children are fully recovering from the lost learning in the pandemic. There are long-term issues of social injustice that need to be tackled, and of course early years must be supported, as I have just set out.

I hope the Minister will recognise that these are the priorities for the Government and that education will finally get a long-term plan and a secure funding settlement. We can have a debate about how much it is, but if the NHS can have a 10-year plan and a long-term funding settlement and the Ministry of Defence can have a big funding settlement over the next few years and a strategic review, I do not understand why Education cannot have a long-term plan and a secure funding settlement, at least over a few years. That would give a lot of stability to everyone working in education, to schools, to colleges and to universities, and that would make a huge difference.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

I find myself in a happy position, because normally I am furiously trying to cut down my speech to three minutes. I do not think that is going to happen today, however. I am really quite surprised and shocked at how few people are here for this debate. To my mind, education and our children’s future, particularly given the impact of the pandemic, is one of the most important issues facing us, and given that this debate is meant to be partly focused around the national tutoring programme, which is key to the recovery plan, I would have thought that Members on both sides of the House would be interested, given that children in every constituency are affected. I thank the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) for his speech and congratulate him on securing the debate.

When I looked at the estimates and saw that they had been reduced from the beginning of the financial year, I was a little surprised. I know that there are explanations as to why that has been the case, but given that we have just been through one of the biggest crises that has faced our country since the second world war, which has had a massive impact on children’s learning, their lives and their mental health, I would have thought that, if anything, there would have been a surge of spending through this financial year. I would have expected to see the estimates go up, not down, so I am a little surprised by this. Maybe the Minister will explain more when he responds. Certainly in my constituency, where I am visiting schools week in, week out, every school is really struggling to make ends meet and increasingly relying on fundraising and parental donations, which I find quite shocking.

I see spending on children and young people as an investment, not a cost, and I would urge the Government to do the same. That investment should be made wisely, but the national tutoring programme, which was set up with the very best of intentions and ambitions, risks proving to be “a disaster”, to use the words of Lee Elliot Major, the professor of social mobility at Exeter University. As the right hon. Member for Harlow has already said, even the Department’s own annual report published in December stated that the risk of catch-up efforts failing to address lost learning was “critical or very likely”.

The concept of small group or one-to-one tuition is an intervention that is well supported by evidence and welcomed by many schools, yet we know that the Government’s contractor, Randstad, has met only 10% of its targets for delivering this sort of tuition. I am surprised that when I challenged the Education Secretary in this Chamber a few weeks ago, when we were in the heat of omicron, on why we were not putting air purifiers into every school, he told me—as he told Sophie Raworth on “Sunday Morning”—that he is laser-focused on ensuring value for money. If Randstad is meeting only 10% of its target, I question whether that is value for taxpayers’ money. I particularly look forward to the Minister’s comments on that.

The national tutoring programme was particularly aimed at tackling the learning loss that has been felt most keenly by the most disadvantaged children. As the right hon. Member for Harlow said, all the evidence seems to be pointing to those children having been failed miserably. The National Audit Office questioned whether the programme is reaching the most disadvantaged, and the Education Policy Institute found a marked disparity in the take-up of the NTP between the north and the south. In the south, upwards of 96% of schools are engaging with the programme, compared with just 50% of schools in the north.

It has been reported that tutoring providers will no longer have to ensure that their catch-up reaches at least two thirds of poorer pupils after the target was ditched, even though this was stipulated as a key performance indicator in Randstad’s contract. How does this all fit with the Minister’s levelling-up ambitions?

The feedback from those on the ground trying to access the programme is damning. The leadership team of one academy trust told me they would give NTP a generous two out of 10. There are concerns that the tutoring partners strand is sucking teachers out of schools, and particularly the supply pool, which the Minister will know has come under significant pressure from omicron. Although all the restrictions have been eased, there are still staff and pupil absences in schools. There are many stories of lessons being cancelled at the last moment and tutors not turning up. Schools have had a mixed experience of the tutors with whom they are partnered.

The administrative complexity and burden have left many schools wondering about the value of opting into the programme. One teacher described the admin side as a farce, telling me, “There’s no way you’ll actually get paid if you try to put in honest information. It’s obvious no meaningful records are being kept. To get paid the first time, I had to do six hours of admin over a weekend. There appears to be no evaluation or feedback on what’s going on.”

With schools having to pay a contribution towards the school-led strand of NTP, how does that work for schools that are struggling financially given the huge disparities in school funding in different parts of the country? I know that at least two primary schools in Twickenham have a budget deficit. They lost fundraising money during covid and were unable to claim for many of their additional covid costs. They rely on parental donations and parent teacher association fundraising for some of the basics, with one school having to ask parents for monthly donations to be able to employ teaching assistants. Many schools are having to fundraise to fork out thousands to switch to one of the Department for Education’s mandated phonics providers.

A DFE survey last year found that just 29% of schools are planning to use the NTP in the current academic year, with 30% being unsure. That statistic speaks for itself. The national tutoring programme, if not failing, is severely struggling. It is time for a fresh approach. The Liberal Democrats have been calling for an ambitious package of support for our children and young people as we deal with the consequences of the pandemic. Sir Kevan Collins’s recommendation of £15 billion should be honoured, with the majority of that money being put directly into the hands of schools and a third going to parents and carers in the form of catch-up vouchers, as they are best placed to know what each individual young person needs, whether it is academic or social. That could include counselling support and so on.

The Education Policy Institute suggests that the economic impact of school closures during the pandemic could run into the trillions over the next few decades. A £15 billion investment in our young people would deliver a far greater return than most infrastructure projects.

--- Later in debate ---

[Munira Wilson]

The Minister referenced the various funding announcements for the national tutoring programme, but the House of Commons Library briefing says today:

“It is not clear how much has been spent on the NTP so far.”

For the record, can he clarify exactly how much has been spent to date and on the three individual strands: the school-led, tutor-led and mentoring parts of the NTP?

[Mr Walker]

I do not have those figures to hand, but it is important to state, as in a number of debates, it has been suggested that there will be a major underspend in the programme, that I do not necessarily anticipate that to be the case. I think that we can spend the money and do so effectively, and part of the reason for that is the flexibilities we have introduced to ensure that this can be delivered across all three strands of the programme.

I turn to adult education. My ambition for schools is matched by that of my ministerial colleagues with responsibility for adult education. That ambition is backed by our investment of £3.8 billion more in further education and skills over the course of this Parliament.

Apprenticeships are more important than ever in helping businesses to recruit the right people and develop the skills that they need. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow for his work over a long period to raise the profile and esteem of apprenticeships. We are increasing apprenticeships funding, which will grow to £2.7 billion by 2024-25, and we have already seen more than 164,000 starts in the first quarter of the academic year, which is roughly a third—34%—higher than in the same period in 2020-21 and 5% higher than in 2019-20, before the pandemic. We encourage people of all ages to consider apprenticeships. There is now more choice than ever before, with 640 high-quality standards across a range of sectors.

I note my right hon. Friend’s interest in and continuing passion for teacher apprenticeships and agree that apprenticeships should give a route into a range of professions. I am assured that there is a range of apprenticeships in education, including a level 6 teaching apprenticeship. But we should continue to look at this area while of course maintaining the esteem of teaching being a graduate profession. His suggestion is absolutely in line with that.

I note that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom) had to leave the debate earlier than we might have anticipated. She has been passionate about advocating the importance of apprenticeships for the early years. She has done fascinating work in that space in championing the value not only of the early years but of its workforce. I was pleased that, at the spending review, the Chancellor announced a £300 million package to transform services for parents, carers, babies and children in half of local authorities in England. That includes £10 million for trials of innovative workforce models in a smaller number of areas to test approaches to support available to new parents. With that work, we can look at some of the areas she has championed such as early years mental health support, breastfeeding support and the early years development workforce as potential areas for the development of new apprenticeship standards.

We are also supporting the largest expansion of our traineeship programme to ensure more young people can progress to an apprenticeship or work. We are funding up to 72,000 traineeship places over the next three years. As part of our post-16 reforms, as set out in the skills for jobs White Paper, employer-led local skills improvement plans will be rolled out across England. Those will help to ensure that learners are able to develop the critical skills that will enable them to get a well-paid and secure job, no matter where they live.