Further and Higher Education Students: Cost of Living

Nicholas Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous); I profoundly agree with the last point that he made. It is an even greater pleasure, Sir George, to serve under your chairmanship and to be able to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on securing the debate and also on the work done by the all-party parliamentary group for students, which provides material to underpin the debate today.

My own constituency in Newcastle upon Tyne East has a very large student population. Perhaps we are more famous for shipbuilding, heavy engineering and manufacturing cigarettes—all industries that have gone—but we are still famous for having a large student population.

Inflation is an evil that must be exterminated. Mrs Thatcher told us that in 1987 and it made its way into the Conservative manifesto. She might have added that once exterminated, it ought to stay exterminated. For reasons we all understand, it has broken out again and makes us face a series of challenges—some much more easily borne by the rich than by the poor. That is the core point that I want to make in my short address to this debate.

A number of funding authorities have had to address this question. In Northern Ireland, the maximum maintenance awards have been increased by 40%. In Wales the increase is 9.4% and in Scotland, although the support is provided in a different formula, it is a rise of £900 a year, which, depending on circumstances, is an increase between 11.1% and 17.6%. That is the devolved Administrations.

Maintenance loans in England are due to rise, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central told us, by just 2.8%. That cannot possibly meet the general challenges of inflation. When we look at the factors that make up the specific pressures on students, such as rent increases, the cost of food, which has been particularly affected by the arable sector price increases, and transport costs as well, we see that students are disproportionately affected. Yet their interests have not been addressed, so they find themselves working longer hours to earn more money to keep themselves and become subject to an enormous amount of stress and anxiety. That could be a separate debate in itself.

Government’s Education Catch-up and Mental Health Recovery Programmes

Nicholas Brown Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon). We have debated this and related issues before, but today’s debate is particularly important to the life chances of our young constituents. If we believe in social mobility and trying to make things better for the next generation than they were for the last, this debate should be at the heart of those ambitions. I agree with a great deal of what the right hon. Gentleman has said, and accept that the Department, and indeed the Government in general, are making some movement in the direction in which I would like to see us go. Certainly there is common ground and much to be discussed between us.

As usual, these matters boil down to “but more needs to be done”. Let me briefly run through the issues that I think are at the heart of this. The education catch-up programme needs to reach into the schools. Eighty per cent. of schools in the north-east of England which responded to a recent survey—I accept that this information is patchy—said that the Government’s education recovery package was not sufficient to address the impact of the pandemic. More than half of them thought that the catch-up would take five years or more. Since the start of the pandemic, each pupil has had an average of 115 days out of school. The north-east of England saw the highest rise in absence compared with anywhere else in the country in the last year, and I therefore consider that our area ought to benefit from the highest response in the form of countervailing measures to help us to catch up with more prosperous parts of the United Kingdom.

I believe that the Government should focus on three key issues to prevent further disruption. I will observe your strictures on brevity, Madam Deputy Speaker. Those issues are testing, classroom ventilation and vaccines.

Testing schoolchildren regularly is essential to ensure that the infected are isolated and pupils can carry on learning in person. I want to see the Government increase communication with parents to raise awareness of the latest testing guidance, and to work with schools by providing tests for pupils to take home and to promote uptake.

Ventilation may seem a prosaic issue, but I am convinced that it is not. I am not critical of what the Government have done in this respect, but I do think that the approach should be more holistic. For some time now, we have been urging the Government to get proper ventilation systems into schools and colleges. Quality learning requires a comfortable environment, not one in which students and staff must wear coats to keep warm in cold classrooms. The Government must increase the supply now, and ensure that every school is provided with an adequate ventilation system.

The vaccine programme is a key tool—it would even be reasonable to argue that it was the key tool—in preventing further disruption to education. About 2 million 12 to 17-year-olds remain unvaccinated. Some 16 weeks after the vaccine was approved, about half of 12 to 15-year-olds have still not received their first jab. The programme is way behind schedule. Again, I do not want to be critical, because I know that people are trying and doing their best, but as ever, more needs to be done. We need to ramp up the vaccination of pupils.

That is my key take on the issue, but I will also say a few words on the mental health recovery programme. We debated it recently, but the issue is growing. Young people have endured such a long period away from in-person learning, largely because of the pandemic. A recent YoungMinds survey found that two thirds of young people aged 13 to 25 believe that the pandemic will have a negative long-term impact on their mental health. We must do everything we can to ameliorate that.

Record pressures on mental health services cause many sufferers to turn to A&E as a last resort, but by that stage, the issues that require attention can be significant and complex. It is a relatively ineffective way of trying to deal with mental health problems, even if there is provision in the A&E, which there is not always. Earlier intervention is possible and would have significant benefits.

Some 50% of mental health disorders are present by the age of 14 and that increases to 75% by the age of 18, but the provision of mental health services in schools is patchy. As we have debated before, there is no legal requirement on schools in England, although there is in other parts of the United Kingdom. School-based counselling is a proven intervention for children and young people experiencing psychological distress. As well as making for better health outcomes, early intervention makes economic sense and ought to relieve pressure later down the line for the national health service.

There is a successful school-based counselling pilot, of which I am very proud, in the Newcastle upon Tyne East constituency. I enthusiastically commend it and everyone involved, as I do the similar projects that are in place. The project’s early results are encouraging: it finds an improvement in educational attainment for around one in three pupils who received counselling. I support demands to make school-based counselling services more consistent across the country.

The Minister’s programme is moving towards my ideal outcome—it is not so far apart—so at least we are talking about the same sort of thing. I back the Labour party’s proposals to ensure that every school has specialist mental health support. If we were looking to spend money—I mean, are we looking to spend money?—to level up and help people, even perhaps because we believed in social mobility, surely the life chances of the very young would be the area in which to make a start. I am trying to build up the current picture of mental health support teams and how they work in practice with children, and the Minister generously offered us an opportunity to take that up with him when we have a meeting arranged.

I hope that my contribution to this important debate is accepted as being bipartisan and as an attempt to draw people together to make progress.

School-based Counselling Services

Nicholas Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nicholas Brown]

I was really proud of the parliamentary Labour party this afternoon. I thought the speeches from Labour Members were very clear in their purpose and full of compassion for people who have every right to look to us to help them on this important topic. I would say the same of Members from all the Opposition parties. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) for her Front-Bench contribution, which I thought was excellent.

I thank the Minister for catching the tone and spirit of the debate. Clearly, we will want to pursue the conversation, and I welcome his willingness to engage, perhaps after he has had his meeting with his hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates), which I frankly do not envy him. I thought that Conservative colleagues’ contributions were absolutely excellent—[Interruption.] All right; on the whole. I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon), and I say to her that, yes, her constituents have our congratulations and praise for the award that they have won in starting off down a track that the Opposition so strongly support.

There is a lot of common ground and a lot of common purpose, and even the Minister was not so far away from where we want to get to. This is the start of a journey, rather than the end.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the provision of school-based counselling services.

Awarding of Qualifications: Role of Ministers

Nicholas Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

If my right hon. Friend will forgive me, I am just coming to an end. I was delighted to hear of the very high attendance in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley.

I and the Secretary of State know that the situation has caused stress and uncertainty for many, and clearly this was never the intention. I can assure them that we are working with Ofqual to ensure that what happened this summer does not happen again. There are lessons to learn, and we want to be transparent. The Secretary of State—

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).

Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.

Question agreed to.

Main Question accordingly put.

School Funding

Nicholas Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for School Standards (Mr Nick Gibb)]

Of course, the PISA students who were tested in 2015 spent their primary school years being educated under a Labour Government, not under the reforms implemented by this Government.

This has been an important debate, featuring excellent contributions from Members in all parts of the House, at a time when the Government are consulting on the details and weightings of the factors that will make up the new national funding formula.

The hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) launched our debate today with her joke about robbing Peterborough to pay Poole. Alas, her facts are as weak as her joke, because Peterborough will see a rise of 2.7% under the formula, an increase of £3.7 million, and Poole will also see a rise of some 1.1% under the formula. What we have learnt from Labour today is that it does not support the principle of equal funding on the basis of the same need, and half of Labour Members will see a net gain in funding as a result of the new formula, including the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), where funding will increase by £1.7 million, with an extra £1.2 million for schools in the constituency of the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne .[Interruption] I will not give way.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) asked us to look again at the deprivation block. The proportion of the formula that we have applied for deprivation reflects what local authorities are already doing across the country at the moment. The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) asked about high-needs funding; Liverpool is due to gain 14.4% in high-needs funding under the formula, with increases of 3% per year in 2018-19 and again in 2019-20.

My hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) was right to say that the new national funding formula is resulting in the cake being cut a little more fairly. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) was right to point out the flaw in Labour’s motion. The Government are not cutting school spending; it is at an all-time high.

I welcome the constructive and supportive speeches from my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), and my hon. Friends the Members for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), for Kingston and Surbiton (James Berry), for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham), for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman), for Newark (Robert Jenrick), for Solihull (Julian Knight), for Rugby (Mark Pawsey), for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill), for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile), for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) and for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris).

In our manifesto, we promised to remedy the unfair and anachronistic funding system that no longer reflects the genuine needs of pupils and schools. It had become atrophied on the basis of factors as they stood in 2005, rather than the make-up of the student population today: an outdated system, fixed in amber where a pupil in Brighton and Hove secured £1,600 more than a pupil in East Sussex, with countless other examples of unfairness up and down the country.

The Government have already consulted on a set of principles that should drive this new formula—a basic unit of funding; one for primary schools, one for key stage 3 secondary pupils and one for key stage 4 secondary pupils. This figure would make up the vast bulk of the formula, and would be the same figure for every school in England.

On top of this, there is a factor for deprivation, ensuring that schools are able to close the educational attainment gap between those from wealthier and poorer backgrounds. There is also a factor for low prior attainment, ensuring that schools are able to help children who start school educationally behind their peers. There is a factor for sparsity, addressing cost pressures unique to rural schools. There is a mobility factor for schools that routinely take pupils part way through the year. There is a lump sum to help address the fixed costs that disproportionately affect small schools. And there is a factor that takes into account higher employment costs in London and some other areas.

These are the right factors, as responses to the first stage of the consultation confirmed. They are the right factors because they will help drive our education reforms to the school curriculum, which are already resulting in higher academic standards and raised expectations. They will further drive our determination that all children, regardless of background or ability, will be well on their way to becoming fluent readers by the age of six, which 81% of six-year-olds are now, compared with just 58% five years ago. They are the factors that will help further drive the introduction of new, more academically demanding, knowledge-based GCSEs, putting our public exams and qualifications on a par with the best in the world.

As part of our consultation, we wanted to be transparent about the effects of the new formula on every school and every local authority on the basis of this year’s figures, and 54% of schools will gain under the new formula. But with any new formula there will be winners and losers. Even within local authority areas that gain overall, some schools with few of the factors that drive the additional funding will see small losses in income. That is the nature of any new formula, built on whatever basis or weightings—unless, of course, the new formula maintains the status quo.

Accepting that a new formula, by definition, produces winners and losers, accepting that we will ensure that the losing schools lose no more than 1.5% per pupil in any year and no more than 3% in total, accepting that the gaining schools will see their gains expedited by up to 3% in 2018-19 and by up to 2.5% in 2019-20, and accepting in principle that the factors of deprivation and low prior attainment are right, what is left is the question whether the weightings are right. These weightings are crafted to drive social mobility. They are calculated to help children who are falling behind at school, and they are motivated by our desire to do more for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The national funding formula is not about the overall level of school funding or the cost pressures that schools are facing over the three years from 2016-17 to 2019-20. The formula is about creating a nationally delivered and fair school funding system. We wanted to grasp the nettle—a nettle that previous Governments have assiduously avoided—and introduce a new national funding formula, ending the postcode lottery and ensuring that over time we have a much fairer funding system.

Despite all the pressures to tackle the budget deficit that we inherited from the last Labour Government—an essential task if we are to continue to deliver the strong economic growth, the high levels of employment and the employment opportunities for young people that we want—we have managed to protect core school spending in real terms. Indeed, in 2015-16 we added a further £390 million, and for 2018-19 and 2019-20 there will be a further £200 million to expedite the gains to those historically underfunded schools that the new formula seeks to address.

Despite this, we know that schools are facing cost pressures as a result of the introduction of the national living wage and of increases to teachers’ salaries, to employer national insurance contributions, to teachers’ pensions and to the apprenticeship levy. Similar pressures are being faced across the public sector—and, indeed, in the private sector—and they are addressed by increased efficiencies and better procurement. It is important to note that some of these cost pressures have already materialised. The 8% that people refer to is not an estimate of pressures still to come. In the current year, 2016-17, schools have dealt with pressures averaging 3.1% per pupil. Over the next three years, per-pupil pressures will average between 1.5% and 1.6% a year. To help to tackle those pressures, the Department is providing high quality advice and guidance to schools about their budget management, and we are helping by introducing national buying schemes for products and services such as energy and IT.

We are consulting, and we are listening to the responses to the consultation and to the concerns raised by my hon. Friends and by Opposition Members. The Secretary of State and I have heard representations from some low-funded authorities about whether there is a de minimis level of funding that their secondary schools need in circumstances where few of their pupils bring with them the additional needs funding. We will look at this, and at all the other concerns that right hon. and hon. Members have raised.

This Government are taking the bold decision, and the right decision. We are acting to right the wrongs of a seemingly arbitrary and deeply unfair funding system. Over the past seven years, while fixing the economy, the Government have transformed the education system. We have ended grade inflation, breathing confidence back into our public exams. Effective teaching methods such as Asian-style maths mastery and systematic synthetic phonics are revolutionising the way in which primary pupils are being taught.

More pupils are being taught the core academic subjects that facilitate study at this country’s world-leading universities. Some 1.8 million more pupils are now in schools judged by Ofsted to be “good” or “outstanding”. The attainment gap between disadvantaged 16-year-olds and their better-off peers has closed by 7%. That is a record to be proud of.

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).

Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.

Question agreed to.

Question put accordingly (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.

[Michael Gove (Surrey Heath) (Con)]

You can’t take it. You can’t stand the truth.

Schools that work for Everyone

Nicholas Brown Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

Very much so. As I just replied to my right hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), looking at specific areas where there is a persistent and long-term lack of educational attainment and a gap in good school places absolutely has to sit alongside this consultation document. The rest of the Government reforms are now well under way and have delivered so much for children in Britain. They absolutely need to continue.

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State’s statement is deeply divisive. Will she tell us the difference between the selection criteria for a grammar school and for a free school? What evidence base is available to her for not prioritising the needs of the young people who are not going to be selected?

[Justine Greening]

I would encourage the right hon. Gentleman to look at the Green Paper consultation document that we have published today. It not only talks about how we think grammars and selection can play a stronger role, particularly for improving the prospects for disadvantaged children who are academically able, but sets out our expectation that grammars can do a lot more to raise attainment more broadly in their local communities. As I said to the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), the challenge is that we have not engaged much in the reform of grammars before. Now is the time to ask them to do more, but in return we should also be prepared to enable them to open up in other parts of the country.

“Educational Excellence Everywhere”: Academies

Nicholas Brown Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank my neighbour and right hon. Friend for his question. He raises important issues that we have addressed in the White Paper, in the sense that we highlighted that there are difficult issues around place planning and transport, and that we need to work with local authorities, the Local Government Association and others to make sure that we get this right. Ultimately, if schools are autonomous, we have to trust the frontline to deal with those difficult issues.

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

How much scope is there for local government or community involvement in new multi-academy trusts?

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question. The answer is: a lot. In the White Paper, we set out the plans by local authorities—two, certainly—for multi-academy trusts. Many of them are already exploring spinning out their services, as well as setting up multi-academy trusts. There are limits on the ownership that they are able to take. A lot of local authorities are exploring the option of setting up a trust in which the heads of the schools own part of the trust. That is a strong model, and it builds on the great collaboration that we already see in our education system.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nicholas Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I hope that the hon. Lady is content with that answer, although, whether she is or is not, she has had it.

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

7. What assessment he has made of the potential effect of a UK withdrawal from the EU on the UK’s digital industries.

[The Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

With your permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to take Question 7 with Question 14, if that is okay.

We think that leaving the EU would be an absolute disaster for Britain’s digital industries.

[Mr Speaker]

It would be okay, if the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) were here, but he isn’t, so it isn’t, but we will proceed unabashed by his absence, because we have the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown).

[Mr Brown]

The digital sector is very important to the north-east of England, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) made clear earlier. Some 25,000 jobs are now directly involved in the sector. What reassurance can the Minister give the House that there will be market access arrangements with our partners in the EU in the event of a no vote?

[Mr Vaizey]

I am afraid that I cannot give the right hon. Gentleman that reassurance, and that is what really worries me about our leaving the EU. Not only does the digital industry provide the 25,000 jobs he mentioned but overall it represents about 7% of the UK’s gross value added. We are at the heart of negotiating the digital single market, which will give our digital industries even more opportunities, and that is why we must stay in.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nicholas Brown Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to talk about the opportunities offered by schools becoming academies and by fairer funding, which will mean that more money gets to the frontline, that schools are in charge of their own destinies and that they can expand to take on more pupils. We also want local authorities to work with academies to secure more places, and also to secure more free schools—for example, to deal with parental demand.

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

The case for academisation so far rests either on the desire of an individual school to academise or on arguments around school improvement. However, that will not be the case in future, when schools will be required to academise even if they are good or excellent, which will see them risk losing the very features that made them good or excellent. As the Secretary of State considers legislation, will she consider an academisation model that allows such schools that wish to remain in the public sector to have a form of academisation whereby they may do so?

[Nicky Morgan]

I was following the right hon. Gentleman’s question up until the last sentence, when he seemed to imply that, somehow, academies were not part of the public sector. He could not be more mistaken: they get their funding directly from the Department for Education, their teachers are trained in accordance with our guidance and they can follow the national curriculum. What does the right hon. Gentleman say to the headteacher who wrote to me after the Academies Show last week, saying that her colleagues were forgetting that children are the priority, change is the reality and collaboration is the strategy. How can it not be our moral responsibility to serve as many children as possible by working together? That is what we want to see.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nicholas Brown Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I pay tribute, as the whole House should, to his work in achieving this transformation. This is a proud moment for him to leave the House, in a year in which more young people have been to university in this country than ever before as a result of the far-sighted policies that he championed in the House.

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

16. Have the Government examined the case for lifting the cap on student fee contributions, perhaps just selectively? If so, what conclusions have they reached?

[Greg Clark]

We are very happy with the policy. The questions to be answered should be answered by the Labour party, because there is a £600 million gap in its ability to pay for its university policy. No wonder the vice-chancellors are concerned about the chaos into which that policy would plunge our universities.