Oral Answers to Questions

Neil Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

I am really sorry to hear that my hon. Friend’s constituent has encountered those difficulties, and he is absolutely right to bring that kind of case to the House today. We have committed to review, streamline and demedicalise the gender recognition process, and we will certainly consider evidence of any administrative barriers to people gaining the legal gender recognition that they want.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

7. What assessment she has made of the potential role of personal, social and health education in promoting equality.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Justine Greening)]

We want schools to put high-quality PSHE at the heart of their curriculum, ensuring that all young people are prepared for life in modern Britain. Effective PSHE not only helps provide pupils with key life skills, but gives them the knowledge to understand their rights and responsibilities to respect individual differences and to challenge prejudice and discrimination.

[Neil Carmichael]

Does the Secretary of State agree that embedding PSHE—life skills as she correctly terms it—will help us to deal with social mobility and productivity, and that we should see proper, age-appropriate teaching across the piece in our schools?

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to link this matter with social mobility. We know that strong PSHE can make the biggest difference to young people growing up in more disadvantaged communities. It is important not only that we have healthy, resilient and confident pupils coming out of our education system who are better placed to do well academically, but that we improve our non-academic outcomes, as that is also hugely valued by employers.

School Funding

Neil Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

The very fact that we are having this debate is proof that there has been a huge step forward, because there is a proposal on the table for fairer funding. We should salute the Government for getting this far. We are obviously in a consultation process. The Education Committee is part of that process, in a sense, because we will be seeing the Minister for School Standards shortly, and we will expand on many of my points then.

In a funding situation where schools in a county like Gloucestershire are, in effect, no further forward and some are actually going backwards, there are clearly issues to explore. One of those is the need to lift the baseline, which can be done in a number of ways; I will suggest three. First, we must look at the deprivation assessment in line with the pupil premium, because the two things are clearly related, and it would be wise to consider the impact of one in the context of the other. That provides scope to lift the baseline.

The second area is small schools. We all want to support small schools, but we might need to look at the ratio between what we think of as a small school and a slightly larger school. The use of statistics, as we all know, can have unpredictable and unintended consequences, and that is possibly the case with small schools. The third area is recalibrating the 3% floor, which could give authorities that have had historical problems with underfunding some way out of that.

I know those three ideas are complicated in the context of these reforms, but we need to demonstrate that we really are committed to providing fair funding. If we think carefully about the impact of the various measures I have outlined, in conjunction with the wider question of the objectives of the new funding system, we may well deliver for our children exactly what we want.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Neil Carmichael]

No, I am not going to give way, because too many people wish to contribute.

In an ideal world, we would want to spend more on education. When the Government continue to grow the economy, as I am sure they will, with or without Brexit, that will be achieved. But we have to be realistic about the size of the cake and make sure that everybody has an appropriate slice.

Sex and Relationship Education

Neil Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities (Caroline Dinenage)]

I should like to start by congratulating my right hon. Friend—and, indeed, my real friend—the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) on securing this really important debate. I share her view on the importance of children and young people having access to effective, factually accurate, age-appropriate sex and relationship education. This is a subject that the Government take very seriously, and we have welcomed the extremely helpful input of many Members across the House and, not least, of my right hon. Friend’s Women and Equalities Committee. We also welcome the ongoing scrutiny of the Children and Social Work Bill. The Government are committed to exploring all the options to improve delivery of sex and relationship education and personal social and health education and to ensuring that we address both quality of delivery and accessibility in order to support all children in developing positive, healthy relationships and being able to thrive in modern Britain.

The Government welcomed the Women and Equalities Committee’s comprehensive report on “Sexual harassment and sexual violence in schools” that was published in September 2016 and contained several recommendations, including proposals relating to SRE and PSHE. I was honoured to take part in an evidence session as part of that inquiry. I emphasise that we are in full agreement that sexual harassment and sexual violence in schools—no matter what form they take—are absolutely abhorrent and unacceptable and should not be tolerated.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

I am grateful for what the Minister is saying. Does she agree that the debate about SRE is intrinsically linked with PSHE? This is about life skills and enabling young people to deal with the challenges they will face later, by having the capacity to understand what they are facing.

Oral Answers to Questions

Neil Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I had a chance to visit a Bristol school last week, which was a fantastic opportunity. That school is working with Bristol University. On our continued reforms, we want to make sure that we see improvements in classrooms. The hon. Lady will no doubt welcome our recent launch of the strategic school improvement fund. That fund is about making sure we can get the investment to schools that need to improve quickly and effectively.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

Good and outstanding secondary school provision must include the provision of technical and professional education, which is essential for our skills base for the future. Does the Secretary of State agree that university technical colleges play a really important role in that and can and should be good or outstanding?

[Justine Greening]

I agree. As with all schools, we expect them to deliver high standards. I had the chance recently to go to Didcot UTC, which provides a fantastic education—a very different education perhaps, but one that works for them and their interests. It is getting very good results because of that.

National Funding Formula: Schools/High Needs

Neil Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

I certainly welcome this statement, as will many parents across the country. It has been long awaited, as the Secretary of State conceded, but it has the right tone, the right context and, essentially, the right capacity to make the changes. It will also enable schools to plan ahead, which will be very good for all schools in terms of teacher recruitment and teacher retention, which we also need to address. Will she be sure to accommodate issues about the future of local government, because there will be some changes? This is a national formula, so the future of local government must be considered in that context.

[Justine Greening]

We are busy doing that already. I felt it was quite important, in the second-stage consultation, to recognise the need to understand how a little bit of local flexibility could help us to make sure that the formula works right on the ground. That is therefore part of the consultation I have set out. We have set out our plans for the 2018-19 transition year, and we are asking how we can look at this more carefully for future years. That is precisely why it is important for colleagues from both sides of the House to take the time to engage with the documents—there is a lot of data—we are publishing today.

Children and Social Work Bill [Lords]

Neil Carmichael Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 5th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

The Bill is a very good one. It has been amended in the House of Lords, and we will need to consider the implications of that in due course. The central points of the Bill are well founded. I am particularly impressed with the theme of reflecting the work of the Munro report and improving the capacity of social workers to use their own judgment, rather than simply rely on box ticking. That is an appropriate theme for the Bill and it explains why the regulatory structure introduced by the Bill will help. It is through such a regulatory system that the ability to make judgments will be made easier.

It is important for social workers to have a clear eye on what professional regulation is all about. The profession should be operating, of course, at arm’s length, which is usefully stressed in the Bill. A register of social workers makes a lot of sense, because one of the things that we must do is enhance professionalism in social work. That is where I have some difference with the Government, in that I think that ultimately we should have a professional body for social workers. The Education Select Committee made it clear in a recent report that it thought there was a strong case for such a body, and I think there is an appetite for that beyond the Chamber. I urge the Government to have an open mind, and I suggest that they continue to send signals that they would like a professional body to be established. I also think that an independent review of proceedings in five years’ time makes a huge amount of sense, because that is a realistic timescale.

There is, however, one area in which I think the Bill needs some additions, or at least some recognitions. Given that more than 70,000 children are effectively children of the state and that so many more children are subjected to sexual abuse, and given the historical sexual abuse that has taken place, our failure to place the issue of sex and relationships education front and centre is becoming increasingly obvious. The Government must embark on a full consultation to provide reassurance that something will be done about this most important matter. I ask the Minister to confirm that there will be a realistic and meaningful consultation on the introduction of statutory SRE.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has raised that point. May I ask him to back Labour amendments to make SRE part of the safeguarding of all children, so that we can finally ensure that we keep every young person in the country safe?

[Neil Carmichael]

To an extent, that will depend on what the amendments are, and whether the Government make it clear that they will organise a full consultation. However, I note what the hon. Lady has said, and I am sure that the Government have noted what I have just said. We need a full, meaningful and comprehensive consultation on this important matter.

Five Select Committee Chairs sent a letter to the Secretary of State. Obviously, I organised one of them. The others came from the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee—Members may well ask what it has to do with SRE, and I can explain if they wish me to—the Women and Equalities Committee, the Health Committee, and the Home Affairs Committee. All those Committees effectively said precisely the same thing: we need SRE to be introduced statutorily in our schools.

Finally, I want to say something about latitude for local government. The Select Committee did some work relating to children in care, particularly those with mental health difficulties. When we went to Trafford, it was strikingly obvious to us that through co-operation with other agencies, coterminous structures and strong leadership, the council was delivering outstanding results. Its ability to benefit from strategic leadership at the top end, operational leadership within the structures themselves, and a coterminous relationship not only with its own organisations and related agencies but with the police force was clearly extraordinarily beneficial for working practices and the way in which decisions were made and responses given on issues connected with children in care and children at risk. Therefore, the Government are right to move towards giving local government more latitude in the way it formulates its structures to deliver outcomes.

In short, there is a lot to be said for the Bill. It is critical that we acknowledge that some form of professional body will be good for social workers and social work generally. The absence of SRE is a pity. It is important, however, that the Government give the firm commitment I have asked for. Generally speaking, the Government are going in the right direction on local government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Neil Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

It was, of course, this Government who transformed the computing curriculum in our schools. We removed the ICT curriculum, which had become outdated and dull, and replaced it with a computing curriculum. We have also provided funds for the training of a whole cadre of teachers who will be able to teach that very difficult subject.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

What steps is the Secretary of State taking to improve financial management and accountability in multi-academy trusts and academies, especially academies that were established in some haste before 2010?

Grammar and Faith Schools

Neil Carmichael Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me a great opportunity to discuss this issue once again today, because of course the Education Committee was at it this morning for two and a quarter hours. I must say that it is very impressive that both the Committee and the Chamber are busy dealing with the subject in this way. I wish that we were given an opportunity to do the same on matters connected with exiting the European Union, because it would be of great benefit if the Chamber could discuss those in similar detail.

One of the concerns with the whole question of grammar schools—this is proved by what I have just said—is that it is a bit of a distraction from some core requirements of our education policy, one of which, of course, is fairer funding. That was alluded to by the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), who is a former member of the Education Committee. We cannot escape the fact that too many schools are suffering because of the unfair system for allocating money, and we have to get that right. I suggest that that is definitely a priority for the Government.

Another priority must be to make sure that all primary school children can make the transition from primary to secondary in a way that lands them well. A good landing requires numeracy, literacy, appropriate life skills and the sense of confidence that comes from having been to a proper and effective primary school.

[Dame Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is an interesting contrast in this country? In health, the money follows the patient, but in education the money does not follow the pupil. One of the challenges with the funding formula is that many children get educated in a different local education authority but not at the level of funding they would have received had they remained within their own authority.

[Neil Carmichael]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that very good point. It is clear that the disparities between authority areas, and therefore schools, is too great for us to be complacent. We must take action.

The third area of alternative priorities is the post-16 sector. Too many people in any year group post-16 are not proficient in numeracy or literacy. According to the OECD, backed up by the World Economic Forum, about 20% of any year group are not comfortable with numeracy and literacy. That is not good enough for a modern economy that aspires to be open and to conquer social mobility and productivity. We have to focus on what matters, so I repeat that the issue of grammar schools is something of a distraction.

Whatever we say about education policy, we must be mindful of two things. First, social immobility in this country is simply too great. The fact is that there are communities with too many young people who are basically trapped, and who stay trapped—that is the difficulty. That is the first issue that we must always think of when considering education. The second point, which is just as relevant, is productivity. If we can have a more productive economy, we will by definition have one with more skills and higher salaries and wages. That is a contribution to social mobility—enabling people to improve and develop. The two things are linked.

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Does he agree that the third issue should also be about social cohesion? Does he share my concern about some of the proposals on faith schools? I recognise the contribution that they make, but can he think of a single reason why the child of an atheist parent like myself should be excluded from a school because of their parents’ lack of faith? Does he also share my concern that 100% selection by faith risks driving communities into further segregation and does nothing to improve social cohesion?

[Neil Carmichael]

I thank my hon. Friend for that instructive intervention. It goes off the issue of grammar schools, which I was hoping to talk about, but she is right that the issue of faith schools should be addressed. I say two things. First, we must have an inclusive society; we cannot parcel people up in that sector and say, “That’s you—off you go!” That is not acceptable. We must make sure that our faith schools do not do that and instead are all embracing. It is the outward-looking school, of whatever faith, that will do a good job.

[Keith Vaz]

I have mentioned successful faith schools in Leicester. My first school was a convent school in Aden, Yemen, and atheist children went to that school. The point made by the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) is right: although such schools are faith-based, they need to be able to take people from other faiths. Many members of the Hindu faith attend Catholic St Paul’s school in Leicester. Faith schools can be a powerful force for integration as well as providing faith for those of a certain religion.

[Neil Carmichael]

One day I will have to get to Leicester, given that it had such a good football team and all the experiences that the right hon. Gentleman has highlighted. It is important for people of faith and atheists to learn about each other. That has to be the guiding light when we are talking about such schools and communities.

The Education Committee held an evidence-check session this morning because we believe in evidence, which must be the cornerstone of policy making. Of course, values matter too.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

My hon. Friend gathered valuable evidence from the excellence that he saw when he visited grammar schools in my constituency. Does he not recognise that that excellence across 163 schools is also valuable evidence from which we need to learn? We need to work out how we can magnify it across the country as a whole.

[Neil Carmichael]

I certainly did enjoy visiting the school in Salisbury and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing attention to that visit. It was exceptional; we talked about politics and highlighted the great work of a former Member of this House, the right hon. Sir Edward Heath. I was pleased to do that, especially given that we are now discussing Brexit so frequently.

Grammar schools are good schools, but the question we have to ask ourselves all the time is about all the other schools. That is at the heart of the matter. There are 3,500 secondary schools: what do we do about the 3,400 or so schools that we depend on for the vast majority of our teaching?

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

When we heard evidence this morning from Dr Becky Allen, was the Chair of the Select Committee struck, as I was, by her comment that not a single study claims that children are better off in a secondary modern? The evidence from Anna Vignoles of Cambridge University was that selective systems are definitively not a force for social mobility. Does not following the evidence suggest that selection is not the way to go?

[Neil Carmichael]

I want to formally welcome the hon. Lady to the Education Committee; she spent her first two and a quarter hours with us this morning, and I trust that she will want to repeat the experience on a weekly basis. I am coming on to the evidence, but she is absolutely right: our witnesses were explicit.

We heard from a number of policy experts, academics and representatives from the Department as well as the Minister for School Standards himself. We had a feast of opportunity to probe these issues, and that is what we did. Witnesses told us that grammar schools do well but that schools in their surrounding areas suffer. That is fairly obvious if the best teachers and brightest pupils are pulled away.

One thing that was not properly addressed was the issue of capacity versus scale. We might well want to improve the capacity of schools, but if we do so by simply having more grammar schools, we risk weakening existing grammar schools by pulling pupils away from them. We heard from the Minister that many grammar school pupils are travelling three to four times the distance that they would ordinarily travel if they were going to a local school. That must suggest that the grammar school is picking up pupils from further away than their local area, so the issue of scale becomes relevant.

Professor David Jesson from the University of York said that reintroducing selective education is “perverse”—that might be extreme, but that is what he said. He went on to say that only 3% of grammar school pupils are on free school meals. Now, that is a fact—it is evidence. It may well be that grammar schools can be encouraged, stimulated or whatever to improve that figure, but it has been 3% for several decades. So the question must be, can we really expect it to rise? That is an issue the Minister for School Standards may well want to address in his closing remarks.

[Suella Fernandes (Fareham) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the comments he has made, but I am curious to know what he thought of the evidence we had today in the Education Committee about comparisons with countries such as the Netherlands, Singapore and Hong Kong. Selection is a very strong part of their education systems, and they dramatically outperform Britain in the programme for international student assessment tables and other international tables when it comes to achievement.

[Neil Carmichael]

What I did think was slightly amusing was that, again, in this time of Brexit, we were given the example of the Netherlands as a country to emulate, given that we are departing from the European Union and that the Netherlands is a component part of it. I take the point, but it actually rests on another, which is that we have significant cultural differences with those countries—certainly with the other two my hon. Friend rightly mentioned. The issue of whether we can actually transpose their systems, when there is such a cultural difference, would raise a few questions.

[Mr Gibb]

At this time of Brexit, would my hon. Friend not share my worry that, of those level 5 pupils—those able children—leaving primary school who go to grammar school, 78% achieve the EBacc, including a foreign language, whereas only 52% of those who go to a non-selective school achieve the EBacc?

[Neil Carmichael]

The Minister is right in what he quotes, but the solution is really to make sure that those schools that are not doing well enough do better—I would have thought that that was elementary.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we cannot have a one-size-fits-all approach, because there may be parts of the country—Cheltenham being one—where the comprehensive schools offer fantastic social mobility and fantastic value added? That might not be the case elsewhere, but it certainly is in Cheltenham, so we should intervene only with great care.

[Neil Carmichael]

I think I can agree with my hon. Friend—he is absolutely right. His constituency neighbours mine, and I obviously know the situation in Gloucestershire extremely well.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Neil Carmichael]

I am going to take just one more intervention, because I think you, Madam Deputy Speaker, are going to give me a telling-off like the one you really gave the hon. Member for Wigan.

[Catherine McKinnell]

I thank the Chairman of the Select Committee for giving way—he is being very generous. Does he agree that quoting statistics about children who have been selected to go to a selective school to have a selective education is, by definition, not really a measure of the best solution for providing the best education for all children in this country?

[Neil Carmichael]

Yes, I would agree with that. The hon. Lady, who is also a member of my Select Committee—I will have to pay tribute to the whole lot in a minute—makes a very astute point. The fact is that if pupils are selected on the basis of academic testing to go to a school and then do very well, people really should not be surprised; they should actually be disappointed if one or two fail the grade, let alone get the sort of figures the Minister suggested they did.

[Kate Green]

The hon. Gentleman is right, of course, that pupils who are selected and supported at home and who go to selective schools will, on the whole, do well. However, does he share my concern that, in my borough of Trafford, where we do have selective education, some grammar schools are beginning to see a rise in mental health problems among their students because of the academic pressures placed on those kids? Now, that can happen for a whole range of reasons, but it is certainly something that troubles headteachers in Trafford, and I wonder whether he would like to comment.

[Neil Carmichael]

I thank the hon. Lady very much for that interesting intervention. She is right about two things. The first is the specific point about children’s mental health being put under pressure in certain circumstances. However, there is also the wider issue of the mental health of young people, and we need to think carefully about that, because there is evidence that the number of children being affected by mental health issues is rising, and rising too fast. That is something that the Committee, which I note the hon. Lady is not a member of, will consider in due course.

I want to finish this section of my speech, on Professor Jesson’s observation. If grammar schools are introduced as new schools, they really must make a contribution to surrounding schools and feeder schools. One way for us to achieve that—rather than simply saying that we will punish grammar schools because they are not doing something we want to do and that those punishments will include, for example, no right to expand further—is to say that such schools should be part of a multi-academy trust. If they are going to be new schools, and if we insist on having them, they should be absolutely responsible for, and indeed charged with the task of, making sure that the schools around them are really improved through direct action.

[Lucy Powell]

I thank the Chairman of the Select Committee for being so generous in allowing interventions. As I am not going to mention this in my speech in a moment, may I ask whether he is aware of the example of Bright Futures—just one of a number of examples—which emanated from a very good grammar school in the Trafford local authority area? It was then expanded to take on other schools, especially those with a high proportion of disadvantaged children, but it has palpably failed to turn those schools around, because it found that its expertise in dealing with highly able, highly advantaged children is not transferable to some more disadvantaged areas.

[Neil Carmichael]

I am aware of the goings on in Trafford. The Select Committee went up there to look not at grammar schools or any other schools but at aspects of child protection. However, I did notice what was going on, and I take the hon. Lady’s point.

The Committee noted that the current selective system favours children whose parents can afford to pay for tutoring, and that observation is absolutely right. One witness told us that entrance tests presuppose that a child’s ability is fixed, and we all know, if we have children, that that just is not the case. We have to have a testing system that takes into account the fact that children develop at different paces and in different ways, and one of the many problems with the testing systems we have had in the past is that they do not do that.

The evidence suggests that it would be extremely difficult to create a tutor-proof test, and we explored that in some detail in the Committee this morning. One suggestion is to bump up children on free school meals by a certain number of points to equalise things. That effectively proves that any test can be fixed to achieve any aim, so we have to be really careful about how we shape such a testing process. The Government really have to look at how a test would be shaped and calibrated to achieve the outcomes they suggest they wish to see. That test would be further complicated if the Government would, as they have suggested in the Green Paper, like different age groups to go through it. We could be talking about not just 11-year-olds, but 14-year-olds or 16-year-olds, for example, so different tests might be required for different years, and that is something that will need to be considered.

The Minister told us that the Government are

“trying to end the correlation between disadvantaged backgrounds and poor performance…we want to break that link and that is what is driving our reforms.”

We, on the other hand, emphasised that what is important, beyond more choice, is improving outcomes. We have to be very careful about this. Outcomes matter most, and we should be using them to measure the schools system, rather than simply saying, “Aha, there’s plenty of choice.” Choice is a mechanism, not an outcome, and we must not confuse the two. If we do, we lose sight of what is most important, which is equipping our young people to leave school, leave college and benefit from the opportunities that they ought to be benefiting from.

I asked the Department for Education’s chief scientific adviser about this issue. I always like asking such people questions because they can, in normal circumstances, isolate evidence, have control periods, and get down to what is really making the difference—although one can hardly do that in a school, as he acknowledged. He told us that this policy,

“like all policies, requires improvement”.

I thought that was helpful, because it does, but he also acknowledged the consultation process that we are now going through. It is absolutely right that we have a period of consultation on this proposal and on other aspects of the education system.

The Committee heard some powerful evidence from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which was already in the news because of the forecasts connected to Brexit and the implications of falling taxable income. The institute told us something we already know—that the economy is completely different from what it was several decades ago. The sorts of young people we need are not academics and workers but we need them all to have skills. We know that because the evidence shows that we can produce only half the number of engineers we need each and every year and that one of the driving forces of migration has been a shortage of skills in our economy. We will all be aware of firms or professional bodies in our constituencies that cannot recruit the people that they need. We therefore know that the institute is right.

That is why our education system must reach into every home with excellence. This is about making sure that every school can safely take on a pupil and guarantee them a first-class education. It is not about lifting some pupils out of a system because they are of one type or have a certain advantage. It is about making sure that we provide opportunities for all children—excellence everywhere, which is, I think, the title, or at least part of the title, of a White Paper that we have considered. Let me reinforce that point by referring to the work of the OECD, which has already been cited. We know that the OECD likes autonomy, because it has told our Committee so several times, but it is not keen on selectivity. If we value the work that that independent organisation does in making international comparisons—I certainly do—then we should take some account of what it says. It is not particularly complimentary about the idea of having pupil selection, and we should remember that.

As I have said before, we need to have a large number of options for young people at secondary level. I describe that as fluidity—the fluidity for a young person to make the choices that they might want to make as they start thinking about their career options. That is why I am so keen on, for example, university technical colleges. It was terrible that during the ’60s and ’70s only 2% of any year group could get into a technical school. It is necessary to have good secondary schools in groups, so that they can help each other and give young people the opportunity to choose the direction of travel that suits them, on the basis of their aptitudes and ambitions, their knowledge of the economy and their employment opportunities. That is life fulfilment at its best.

It is really important that we link those things to what I said at the beginning about social mobility and economic productivity. Without both those objectives working effectively together and supporting each other, we will not make a success of anything in our country because we will be wasting talent and abandoning people. Instead, we must make sure that we use all our talents and do not leave people behind. That is what the education system should be about, that is why we are having this debate, and why the Minister is wise to have this consultation period. I hope that he responds to some of the points I have made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

If the hon. Lady had read the consultation document, she would have seen that page 28 states that we will require

“existing selective schools to engage in outreach activity… We therefore propose to require all selective schools to have in place strategies to ensure fair access.”

We want to extend the requirements to existing schools which, incidentally, is something that no Labour Member urged their Government to do over 13 years. This Government, however, are seeking to take measures to ensure that all grammar schools that want to expand and all new grammar schools do more to widen their social intake.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) mentioned alternative priorities for the Government. During his speech today and during the Select Committee hearings, he hinted that his alternative priority was Brexit, but he also mentioned the national funding formula, the transition from primary to secondary and post-16 literacy and numeracy. All three are priorities for this Government and we have taken and are taking action. We have already consulted on phase 1 of the national fair funding formula and will be consulting on phase 2 shortly. I have already described all the measures that we have taken to improve outcomes for primary school pupils, so that they are ready for secondary education.

[Neil Carmichael]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

I will give way to my hon. Friend and then to the shadow Minister.

[Neil Carmichael]

I just want to clarify one priority. It is not Brexit; it is ensuring that we make the best job of Brexit—there is a big difference. My other priority was primary schools and ensuring that they are all good and effective. The Minister reminded the House that 80% of primary schools are still in the custody, so to speak, of local authorities, so will he be thinking about ensuring that new grammar schools have links with those primary schools, some of which are where the biggest problems exist?

[Mr Gibb]

We have made extremely good progress in raising academic standards in primary schools in reading and mathematics with the knowledge-based primary curriculum. However, one of the conditions on which we are consulting is for new grammar schools to have relationships with feeder primary schools and to establish new feeder primary schools as part and parcel of the objective of widening the social intake into expanded, existing and new grammar schools.

Looked-after Children/Social Work Reform

Neil Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Fourth Report from the Education Committee of Session 2015-16, on Mental health and well-being of looked after children, HC 481, and the Government response, Cm 9284, and the Third Report from the Education Committee of Session 2016-17, on Social work reform, HC 201, and the Government response, HC 733.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gapes. I am grateful to the House for the opportunity to debate the Select Committee on Education’s work on children’s services and the mental health and wellbeing of looked-after children, and on social work reform. Our Committee has a large and growing set of responsibilities, so it is an extremely good use of time to debate two of our reports at once. I appreciate the House’s indulgence. I pay tribute to the specialist advice we have received from Dr Matt Woolgar; Professor David Berridge, our adviser on such matters; and Marion Davis, also one of our advisers. All three contributed massively to the value of our work, and that is much appreciated.

During our inquiries, we heard from children in care, care leavers, foster carers, social workers and other front-line mental health workers. We visited the excellent services provided by Trafford Council, and we took evidence from a young woman in care and two carers with experience of mental health services. Our meetings with children and professionals in Trafford and Westminster were crucial to the recommendations we made. I thank all those who gave their time to speak to us; they spoke in a very helpful and frank manner.

There are significant challenges to overcome in both looked-after children’s mental health and social work reform. The responses from the Government to our recommendations were, frankly, a little disappointing. We need urgent action to solve problems with mental health services for looked-after children, but the Government have not acknowledged the urgency, and have passed the ball to an expert working group, rather than making the immediate changes that the Committee pressed for. Indeed, many of the people contributing to that working group will be similar to, if not the same as, those who contributed to our findings. Our recommendations on social work reform have largely been ignored. During our inquiry, it was clear that there are things that need to change, but again, the Department has not really taken what we suggested on board.

I shall start with the Select Committee’s inquiry on the mental health and wellbeing of looked-after children. Following a report on child and adolescent mental health services by the Health Committee and an update to the Government’s statutory guidance, we felt that it was a policy area that required scrutiny, so we launched our inquiry in September 2015. Almost half of children in care have a diagnosable mental health disorder, and they are significantly more likely to experience poor health and educational and social outcomes than their non-looked-after peers. Let us not forget that children in these situations are children of the state, because of their special circumstances. Our inquiry took evidence from experts including Sarah Brennan, chief executive of YoungMinds; Professor Peter Fonagy from NHS England; and Natasha Devon, founder of the Self-Esteem Team.

In April this year, we published our report. We found that provision for looked-after children with mental health concerns is poor in many areas throughout England. That variance should be of concern to us all. Some local authorities are providing integrated services, with a strong focus on multi-agency working and support for key workers such as foster carers and school staff; others are not. A significant number are failing to identify mental health issues when young children enter care, and services are turning away vulnerable young people for not meeting diagnostic thresholds, or for being without a stable placement. So there is good and there is bad, which is not acceptable. We found that methods of assessing children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing as they enter care are inconsistent, and too often fail to identify those in need of specialist care and support. For that reason, we recommended that all looked-after children have a full mental health assessment, carried out by a qualified mental health professional.

Leaving the care system can be a time of significant upheaval and disruption, and the period is likely to be even more unsettling for care leavers with mental health concerns. In short, it is the cliff-edge problem. We found that support for young people leaving care is inadequate and based too heavily on inflexible age restrictions. We therefore recommended that care leavers be able to access CAMHS up to the age of 25, rather than the current age of 18, and that the initial assessments of those entering care be carried out more thoroughly and consistently.

We received a huge amount of evidence on the capacity of CAMHS to respond and treat looked-after children and young people. We heard too many times that CAMHS refuse to treat young people who are without a permanent settled placement. The young woman we took evidence from, to whom I referred earlier, said that she had been waiting for CAMHS for more than two and a half years, but had been unable to access services because she had moved a staggering 13 times during that period. We recommended that CAMHS never refuse to see children or young people without a stable placement, or delay access to services until a placement becomes permanent. In recognition of the distinct challenges that looked-after children and young people face, we recommended that they have priority access to mental health assessments by specialist practitioners, and that subsequent treatment be based on clinical need.

The Government’s response acknowledged the vulnerability of looked-after children and the need for timely and effective mental health diagnosis and treatment. We are pleased that the Government have set up an expert working group for looked-after children’s mental health and wellbeing; however, having conducted a lengthy and detailed inquiry on the issue, we are disappointed that so many of our recommendations have simply been referred to that group. We will monitor the working group’s progress, and look forward to receiving updates from its co-chairs in due course, because we are very interested in the subject.

Let us move on to the second report. At the start of the year, we launched an inquiry on the Government’s plans for social work reform—and they do have plans. Although the Government had previously made it clear that improving the quality of child and family social workers and children’s services was a priority, the lack of clarity on how the aim would be achieved meant that we believed it was an important area for us to look at. During our inquiry, we heard from social workers, social work academics, local authority leaders, and many more experts in the field.

Social workers deliver an incredibly important service to some of the most vulnerable children in the country, but evidence suggests that they are doing more work than ever before. Children’s social workers are managing increased case loads: we have the highest number of children in care for 30 years, and the number of children subject to a child protection plan has risen by 50% in the past five years alone. Just last month, Sir James Munby, the president of the family courts, issued a warning about what he terms a “clear and imminent crisis” facing care proceedings, because in the past 10 years the number of care applications going through the courts has doubled. Despite those increased workloads, it is important to remember what an important job social workers do. The number of children who die due to homicide or assault has fallen by 69% since 1985 and remains in long-term decline. That is thanks to the hard work of social workers, police and others. This is not a story of social workers not doing things; the question is how they are led and resourced.

Although we can never be complacent when it comes to the safety of children, the Government need to ensure that in making reforms we do not forget about the good work that children’s social workers do across the country, which often goes unnoticed. On behalf of the Select Committee, I thank social workers for what they do, and I want that message to be amplified.

We published our report in July. We found significant weaknesses in the planned reforms, and recommended important changes. Existing career pathways are confusing, and provision of continuing professional development is inadequate and inconsistent. A national career development framework is urgently required. Children’s social workers need much more assistance after qualifying to enable them to specialise. That became increasingly obvious as we carried out our work. During our inquiry, we regularly heard that it is vital that social workers receive a generic start, with specialisation to follow afterwards. In the current system, however, that is far too difficult to achieve.

The Government’s reforms do not focus enough on tackling endemic retention problems. The average social worker’s career is only eight years long, compared with 16 years for a nurse or 25 years for a doctor. Almost a fifth of social work jobs are vacant, and they are mostly filled by agency workers. Poor working conditions, caused by high case loads, negative media coverage and the blame culture, are a threat to keeping good, experienced social workers in place. We need manageable case loads for those workers, and a national workforce planning system to forecast supply and demand. We also need to talk about social work in a positive way. I have done that already, but it is very important that we do so frequently. Without immediate action in these areas, experienced social workers will continue to feel under pressure and undervalued, and will therefore leave the profession.

One of the biggest problems facing social workers is the lack of a professional body. The closure of the College of Social Work in 2015 has led to a significant absence of high-profile leadership for the profession. A new body would take the lead on a number of crucial functions and so drive improvement in the sector, for example by defining CPD and the post-qualifying framework; endorsing courses; promoting practice excellence; and shaping national and local policy. That really is the No.1 priority and could address so many of the retention issues. The Government should halt their regulatory reforms until they have figured out a way to help the sector to replace the College of Social Work.

Finally, we could not ignore the wider context in which children’s social workers operate. While we welcome the attempt to introduce innovation, the Government’s proposals are untested. We do not believe that there should be any expansion of the independent trust model until there is clear evidence that it works. Unfortunately, despite the Government agreeing with us on so many issues in their response, that response seems to show that they are determined on their course of reform and unwilling to reconsider it.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I declare my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Does my hon. Friend share my frustration that too often there appears to be an obsession with changing structures, titles and the nature of the vehicles delivering children’s social care, when what really makes a difference are some of the things that he has already mentioned, such as making sure that we do not have 20% vacancies for social workers in certain parts of the country—that is why there is such a huge variance in the number of children taken into care in different local authorities—and looking at the quality of the outcomes for these children? We should do that, rather than obsessing about the system, which is supposedly there to help these children. It is the people on the ground and to whom my hon. Friend quite rightly paid tribute—the too-often maligned social workers—who really help, but they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

[Tim Loughton]

I share my hon. Friend’s frustration, but the frustration is worse than that: some of the recommendations in his Committee’s excellent reports relate to recommendations made in the Munro review, which reported in 2011. Since then, very little progress has been made on those recommendations, which have been looked at, researched and looked at again, and they remain unimplemented.

[Neil Carmichael]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s support. He underlines points that I have made, but he is absolutely right about the lack of progress since 2011.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to talk about these issues in the Chamber, because both reports are emblematic of our interest in the whole question of children’s services. I thank all the Members who have come to participate. Two of my colleagues on the Education Committee have done so, and I am grateful to them. We have a huge chance to make an important difference in both these critical areas. It is clear that we all share the objective of improving outcomes for children in care, and I do not doubt that the Minister is as keen as we are to see improvement. I am grateful for all that he has done in the past to demonstrate that commitment. We need a response to my questions, and an approach to our two reports that suggests a sense of urgency and a commitment to ensuring that we can deliver a better future for children in need of support and help. I commend those thoughts to the House, and I hope that the Minister will answer my questions in due course.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Carmichael]

It is a great pleasure to wind up the debate. I thank the Minister for his commitment to the issues we have raised and for the answers he has given to many of our questions. I have no doubt that he is determined to improve the lot of our children in care and of our social work profession as a whole. I am pleased that he referenced Eileen Munro’s focus on judgment and I look forward to seeing that developed further. It is encouraging that he is going to help to nurture and craft a professional body. That is important for social work. We certainly found in Trafford that effective leadership, good training, good continuing professional development and a combination of levels of leadership amounting to a delivery that was unified, transparent and open was extraordinarily beneficial. We want to see that across the whole country to deal with the variance in local authorities that the Minister acknowledged.

My hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) referred to our forthcoming inquiry into fostering. We look forward to hearing from the Minister about the Department’s fostering stocktake. We have written seeking information about that in readiness for our inquiry.

The Minister can be absolutely sure that we will not rest until we see improvement. The work we have done, the fact we have charged the debate, as the Minister acknowledged—we are grateful for that—and also the changes taking place in the Bill currently going through the House, not least Lord Nash’s amendment, are all good signs. I leave the debate with the sure knowledge that the Education Committee believes these matters are important and urgent.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

Oral Answers to Questions

Neil Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I agree with the hon. Lady that early years provision is a vital part of the education system, which is precisely why we have been consulting on how we can have a sensible approach to its funding, but I disagree with her characterisation that we are cutting funding. That is simply not correct.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

The Secretary of State will surely agree that fairer funding for schools is a top priority, but another priority must be to ensure that we have adequate skills training, especially in the professional and technical sectors. I believe that that should be a key objective of the Green Paper. Will she reassure the House that that is also her priority?

[Justine Greening]

I made it very clear in my Conservative party conference speech last week that one of our biggest challenges is to ensure that we make the same progress in technical education that we have seen in academic education over recent years. This is vital for the more than 50% of children and young people who do not go on to university, and it will be vital for our employers if we are to have a Brexit Britain that can be successful.