Free Schools and Academies in England

Nick Gibb Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2018 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. My career has come to a point where I am now serving under people who I entered Parliament with in 1997, such is the level of seniority that they have reached.

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

About time too.

[Nick Gibb]

Indeed. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands) on securing the debate and on his passion and commitment to ensuring that pupils in his constituency fulfil their potential through high-quality schools and education. Thirteen academies and free schools have opened in Chelsea and Fulham since 2010, and I congratulate the teachers, headteachers and all the staff who have dedicated their time to ensuring their success. That includes those who have been involved in establishing Fulham Boys School, of which my right hon. Friend is a patron.

My right hon. Friend talked about a number of free schools. He mentioned Kensington Aldridge Academy, where the excellent headteacher, David Benson, has pushed up academic standards and stewarded it and its pupils through the tragedy of Grenfell Tower. That included a year in temporary accommodation for some pupils and a successful return. My right hon. Friend also mentioned West London Free School, where the headteacher, Clare Wagner, is doing an excellent job with very high academic standards. Watching this debate is Mark Lehain, who established Bedford Free School and was one of the first pioneering headteachers. It has been a hugely successful programme and my right hon. Friend is right to point out its successes.

The hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) needs to be a bit more rigorous in his research than simply clicking through Google. For example, school academies’ accumulated surpluses amount to something like £4 billion. Excluding fixed assets and pension liabilities, the sector’s net assets have increased by £0.2 billion, from £2.6 billion in 2016 to £2.8 billion in 2017. He also referred to accountability. The whole essence of the free schools and academies programme is based on evidence from the OECD that shows that high- performing education systems around the world have two things in common: professional autonomy, combined with very strong accountability. The accountability system for our academies is stronger than it has ever been.

The hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East also raised specific issues about related party transactions, and I want to address that. We have changed those arrangements so that from April next year those transactions will be transparent and receive more oversight. Academy trusts will be required to declare all related party transactions to the Education and Skills Funding Agency in advance and seek its approval for those that exceed £20,000 either individually or cumulatively. He has said in other debates in the Commons that there have been more than 100 closures of free schools. Again, I am afraid that his facts are wrong. As of 1 November this year, 13 free schools have closed since the beginning of the programme. In addition, seven new university technical colleges and 21 studio schools have closed. In total, that amounts to 41 free schools, UTCs and studio schools closing since the programme began, not the number he cites.

[Mike Kane]

Does the Minister not include the collapse of, say, the Wakefield City Academies Trust, which had 23 schools? That is another trust that collapsed.

[Nick Gibb]

Those schools have not closed; they have been re-brokered very successfully to others. The essence of the free schools and academies programme is that we do not allow schools to languish in special measures year after year, which in essence is what was happening when those schools were under local authority control. We take very swift action where schools underperform, and we will not change the law that requires schools to become academies once they go into special measures, because that is how we get improvement. I will come on to some of the examples of how that works in due course.

Every child in this country, regardless of where they live or their background, should have the opportunity to benefit from the very best education. Free schools and academies have shown that professional autonomy in the hands of able headteachers and teachers can deliver a world-class education. For example, Dixons Trinity Academy, a free school in Bradford, achieved extraordinary results in 2017. Its first set of GCSEs placed it among the top schools in England for the progress achieved by its pupils. Strikingly, the progress score for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds was higher than that for the whole school, including more affluent peers. That school and many others show that socioeconomic background should not and need not be a barrier to academic success.

Leading multi-academy trusts, often led by inspirational headteachers, demonstrate that excellence need not be restricted to isolated schools. Thanks to a forensic approach to curriculum design and the implementation of evidence-based approaches to managing behaviour, the Inspiration Trust in Norfolk and the Harris Federation in London—two of the best performing multi-academy trusts—have conclusively demonstrated that all pupils can achieve whether they live in coastal Norfolk or inner-city London.

[Alex Cunningham]

It is good to hear the Minister continue to celebrate the success of our schools, but I still wonder about those that are not quite so successful and the support services they require. In the past week Ofsted has delivered a damning indictment of the education of those with special educational needs, describing the service as “disjointed and inconsistent”. The Guardian reported that the annual report of Amanda Spielman

“drew attention to the plight of pupils with SEND, warning that diagnoses were taking too long, were often inaccurate, and mental health needs were not supported sufficiently.”

Surely those are things that Ministers should be attending to, rather than just celebrating the successes.

[Nick Gibb]

We are attending to all those issues. As a Government, we take mental health issues extremely seriously. That is why earlier this year we published the Green Paper on young people’s mental health, which will transform the quality of mental health support at every level in our school system across the country. The hon. Gentleman is right to raise the issue of high needs funding, which we take very seriously. High needs funding has increased from £5 billion in 2013 to £6 billion this year, but we are aware of increasing cost pressures on the high needs budget, and we are aware of the causes. We have listened carefully to his lobbying today, and to that of other colleagues and schools that have raised those issues. We take those concerns extremely seriously.

The whole essence of the free schools and academies programme is to empower teachers and headteachers and to promote the importance of innovation and evidence. Power is wrestled away from the old authorities. Ideas are weighed and, if they are found wanting, can be discarded. There has been a resurgence—a renaissance —of intellectual thought and debate about pedagogy and the curriculum that used to be vested only within the secret garden of the universities. Now it is debated rigorously by thousands of teachers across the country.

Free schools have challenged the status quo and initiated wider improvement, injecting fresh approaches and drawing in talent and expertise from different groups. There are now 442 open free schools, which will provide more than 250,000 school places when at full capacity. We are working with groups to establish a further 265 free schools. In answer to Alun Ebenezer, the headteacher who runs an excellent school in my right hon. Friend’s constituency, the free school programme is thriving.

Thanks to powers granted by the Government and the expansion of the academies and free schools programmes, teachers and headteachers now enjoy far greater control over the destiny of their school. Decision making has been truly localised and professionalised. These extraordinary schools are changing what is thought to be possible and raising expectations across the country. They are an example to any school seeking to improve. Whether we look at Reach Academy in Feltham, Dixons Academy in Bradford or Harris Academy Battersea—all with high pupil progress scores—we see that there are some obvious similarities.

All of the schools that I have mentioned teach a stretching, knowledge-rich curriculum. Each has a strong approach to behaviour management so that teachers can teach uninterrupted, and they all serve disadvantaged communities, demonstrating that high academic and behavioural standards are not and must not be the preserve of wealthy pupils in independent schools. Indeed, Harris Westminster, a free school that opened in 2014, which has close ties to Westminster School and draws pupils from across London, has reported that, with 40% of its pupils from a disadvantaged background, 18 pupils went to Oxbridge last year.

All around the country the Government have built the foundations of an education system through which teachers and headteachers control the levers over school improvement and parents exercise choice, shifting decision making from local education authorities and handing it to local communities and the teaching profession. With an intelligent accountability system to maintain high standards, innovative schools collaborate and compete with one another to improve teaching, the quality of their curricula and retention of staff.

Two thirds of academies are converter academies, and many have become system leaders within multi-academy trusts by helping other schools to improve. More than 550,000 pupils now study in sponsored academies that are rated good or outstanding. Those academies often replaced previously underperforming schools, so when the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East says that he wishes to disband or end the autonomy that comes with the academies and free schools programme, he is saying that he would not have enabled the 550,000 pupils who were languishing in underperforming schools to be given the opportunity to be taught in much higher performing schools, thus taking away opportunities as an enemy of promise and social mobility.

As at August 2018, 89% of converter academies were rated good or outstanding by Ofsted. Results in primary sponsored academies continue to improve. The percentage of pupils reaching the expected standard in reading, writing and maths in current sponsored academies was 42% in 2016, and in 2018 it was 57%. Academies and free schools are driving up standards all over the country. Queen’s Park Junior School in Bournemouth was placed in special measures in May 2011. In the same year only 50% of pupils achieved level 4 or above in reading, writing and maths, compared with the national average of 67%. In September 2011 Ambitions Academies Trust started working with the school, and in October 2012 Queen’s Park Academy became part of Ambitions Academies Trust as a sponsored academy. Queen’s Park Academy was judged outstanding in all areas by Ofsted in June 2014 and is now providing support for other schools in the trust. In 2017 the school’s writing and maths progress scores were both above average, at +2.3 and +1.4, and 78% of pupils achieved the expected standard in reading, writing and maths.

WISE Academies in the north-east of England has taken on nine sponsored academies since 2012. The trust is making the most of its autonomy—the autonomy that the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East wants to remove—and has reduced teacher workload through efficient lesson planning and by sharing resources. It is innovative in how it teaches, embedding maths mastery techniques from Singapore into its maths curriculum. As a result, every school that has been inspected since joining the trust has been judged to be either good or outstanding.

Free schools are among the highest performing state-funded schools in the country, with pupils at the end of key stage 4 having made more progress on average than pupils in other types of state-funded schools. In 2018 four of the top provisional Progress 8 scores for state-funded schools in England were achieved by free schools.

[Greg Hands]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his excellent exposition of the success and brilliance of so many of our free schools. I do not expect him to make a policy pronouncement today, but will he take on board some of the comments I made in relation to ESFA and the complaints I have heard from various parent groups trying to set up free schools—some successful and some unsuccessful—particularly in an area such as mine where the crucial question is always about the ability to secure the site and, in their view, the bureaucratic approach taken to site selection and delivering financing?

[Nick Gibb]

Yes. My right hon. Friend anticipates the point I was coming to. As he knows, the Fulham Boys School is currently in temporary accommodation and the Department is working hard to ensure that a permanent site will be ready as soon as possible. All parties are working to deliver the site as early as can be achieved, but it remains, as he knows, a complex project. I am aware of people’s concerns about the site. It is a difficult challenge to find a site, particularly in London, but we have more than 400 free schools being established. With any large projects we will find delays and problems, but they are achieved, which is why we have more than 400 successfully opened free schools.

As I was saying, in 2018 our top 10 provisional Progress 8 scores for state-funded schools in England were achieved by free schools, by people who persevered through all the problems of finding a site and getting a school opened. For example, William Perkin Church of England High School in Ealing, Dixons Trinity Academy in Bradford, Eden Girls’ School in Coventry and Tauheedul Islam Boys’ High School in Blackburn are in that top 10. The latter two were opened by Star Academies, which has grown through the free schools programme, from running a single school in the north-west to running 24 schools across the country, made up of nine academies and 15 free schools, and it has approval to open two additional free schools. Of the 10 that have had Ofsted inspections since opening or joining the trust, all have been rated outstanding. That is the kind of programme that the Labour party wants to stop happening in future, denying young people the opportunity of having an excellent education, but the approach works. The free schools and academies programme demonstrates, as I have cited, the benefits of strong trusts and strong collaboration.

Converting to an academy is a positive choice made by hundreds of schools every year, to give highly able teachers the power to make their own decisions; the breathing room to be creative and innovative; and the freedom to drive improvements, based on what they know works for their pupils. My hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) cited the example of the Europa School that converted from the independent European School into a free school. We were very pleased to authorise that new free school to teach the European baccalaureate rather than A-levels and GCSEs. Wary of the risk of being made to drink a shot of rum, I will say that the future of that qualification will depend on discussions with the European Schools system post-Brexit.

We want to go further to make sure that no one is left behind. We want to extend the free schools programme to areas of the country that have not previously benefited from it.

[Alex Cunningham]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way on that point about extending the programme to other areas. My impression is that the vast majority of free schools tend to be opened in the more leafy areas where there is less deprivation. What evidence does he have—perhaps he could write to me—about the number of free schools opened in areas of high deprivation and how they are achieving great things?

[Nick Gibb]

Some 50% of free schools have been opened in areas of deprivation. There has been a determination to ensure that free schools are opened in areas of disadvantage that have been poorly served by the schools system in the past. I will be happy to respond to the hon. Gentleman’s earlier invitation to visit schools in his constituency to see at first hand how they use the programme’s autonomy and freedoms to raise standards.

Earlier this year we launched the 13th wave of free schools, targeting the areas of the country with the lowest standards and the lowest capacity to improve. Those are the places where opening a free school can have the greatest impact on improving outcomes. The application window for wave 13 closed on 5 November. We received 124 applications from both new providers and experienced multi-academy trusts. We are assessing the proposals and will announce successful applications in the spring. We will launch the 14th wave of free schools shortly, demonstrating again to Mr Ebenezer and others that the free school programme continues to thrive, albeit with one threat on the horizon: the Labour party is committed to ending the programme.

This summer we launched a special and alternative provision free schools wave. By the deadline in October we had received 65 bids from local authorities, setting out their case for why a new special or AP free school would benefit their area. In the new year we will launch a competition to select trusts in the areas with the strongest case for a new school. We are also continuing to accept proposals for maths schools from some of our best universities, having already seen excellent results reported by both existing maths schools, Exeter Mathematics School and King’s College London Mathematics School. Those schools have exemplary A-level results in maths, physics and further maths.

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham for the support that he has given to the free schools programme. Some important points have been raised, and I welcome the opportunity to discuss a central part of our education policy and to share some examples of the excellent work in academies and free schools throughout the country. Since 2010 our education reform programme has brought new levels of autonomy and freedom for schools, with clearer and stronger accountability. There are many examples of academies, and the multi-academy trust model, bringing about rapid and effective improvement in previously underperforming schools.

Since 2010 we have been unflinching in our determination to drive up academic standards in all our schools, and to drive out underperformance in our school system. Our ambition is for every local school to be a good school, to close the attainment gap between pupils from different backgrounds, and to ensure that every pupil, regardless of their background or where they live, can fulfil their potential.

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

I invite Greg Hands to wind up the debate briefly.

Mental Health and Wellbeing in Schools

Nick Gibb Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Westminster Hall

[Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) on securing this very important debate. I will not run through all hon. Members’ contributions because we are running very short of time, but I have a few words to say. The hon. Lady’s knowledge and breadth of experience shone through her contribution, and her clinical dissection of the high stakes in the school system was informative and chilling.

As a member of the Education Committee, I am aware that the UK Government are not responsible for education matters in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, but that does not mean that I or anybody else in the House have no desire to improve the mental health and wellbeing of children right across the UK. Schools are on the frontline of supporting children and young people’s mental wellbeing. We can shift the focus on to preventing mental health problems and building resilience through simple methods. In one of my granddaughter’s schools, children are being taught to think not, “I can’t do this,” but, “I cannot do this yet.” That is a huge step forward. It was never done in schools in my and my children’s time.

Increasing the availability of learning tools and experiences in health and wellbeing ensures that children and young develop knowledge about mental health and understand the skills, capabilities and attributes that they need for mental, emotional, social and physical wellbeing now and in the future. The Scottish Government’s mental health strategy focuses on early intervention and prevention, which feeds into this issue.

Over the course of their education, children spend more than 7,800 hours in school. Emotional wellbeing is a clear indicator of academic achievement, success and satisfaction in later life. Combining mental health awareness and coping mechanisms is critical for prolonged resilience. The Scottish Government have spent quite a bit of money recently. I spoke to Clare Haughey MSP, the Minister for Mental Health, who had recently taken on the recommendations of the “Children and young people’s mental health audit” report, which was produced by the Auditor General and given to the Public Audit Committee on 22 September.

It is important that we do not just throw money at these problems. There has to be a change in attitude. Money helps by making counselling available. In Scotland, our hope is that £20 million will provide 250 additional school nurses, and that £60 million will provide 350 counsellors. There will be other counsellors in further and higher education.

In Scotland, we are also doing mental health first aid programmes for teachers so that the early signs of mental health problems are spotted and children can be moved forward into services. In the package of money given by the Scottish Government, there is also provision for community support. The Scottish Government have set up a Mental Health Youth Commission, which is working with the Scottish Association for Mental Health and Young Scot to put young people’s issues front and centre. The Scottish National party Government are committed to meeting their commitments to ensure all children are given the tools they need to achieve a happy and prosperous life.

The UK has signed up to the UN convention on the rights of the child, but has stopped short of making it part of its legislation. That has been done in Wales, and the First Minister of Scotland is committed to making it part of domestic law in Scotland. Article 19 of the UNCRC says:

“State Parties shall take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence”.

The First Minister’s commitment will better enable positive mental health and wellbeing practice in Scottish schools.

Will the updated guidance, which is intended to come into force in September 2020, apply in academies and free schools, as well as local authority-maintained schools? It is my understanding that those types of school do not have to follow national school curriculums.

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

We have changed the basic curriculum, rather than the national curriculum, to ensure that it applies to academies as well as local authority-maintained schools.

[Marion Fellows]

I am very grateful to the Minister for that response.

It is necessary that children across the UK are able to access timely and helpful support when they need it.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

Certainly, and thank you, Mr Stringer; it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) on securing the debate and introducing it so well.

Mental health can have a profound impact on the whole of a child’s life; it is not just about the effect that poor mental health can have on their attainment at school. We worry about the whole life ahead of them. Improving mental health starts with promoting good mental wellbeing and ensuring that children and young people have the help and support that they need. Schools can play an important role with the right support from specialist services, which is why the Government have made mental health a priority, with a shared approach between the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care.

The hon. Members for Oxford West and Abingdon and for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) mentioned exam stress in schools. Tests and exams have always been times of heightened emotions for pupils and teachers, but they are not meant to cause stress and anxiety. As the hon. Member for South Shields acknowledged, I have said on many occasions that schools should encourage all pupils to work hard and achieve well, but that should not come at the expense of their wellbeing. Schools should provide continuous and appropriate support as part of a whole school approach to supporting the wellbeing and resilience of pupils.

The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon also mentioned GCSEs. We have reformed GCSEs to match the expected standards in countries with high-performing education systems, so that young people have the knowledge that they need to prepare them for future success and the skills that Britain needs to be fit for the future. We are determined to ensure that no child has an inadequate education that reduces their life chances; we want to ensure that every child has an education that helps them to fulfil their potential. That is the key driver of all of our education reforms since 2010. Better education means better prospects of quality employment and better health outcomes for those young people in the long run.

As a psychiatrist, my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) brings serious expertise to the debate. He said that it was important that Departments did not work in siloes. I can assure him that I worked very closely with the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), in whose portfolio mental health resides. We worked particularly closely on producing the Green Paper on children and young people’s mental health.

We know that mental health is also a priority for teachers, because of the challenges that many children face in the modern world; a fact that has been referred to by other hon. Members. To get an up-to-date picture of children’s mental health, this Government commissioned the first national survey of children and young people’s mental health since 2004, which was cited by the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron). The results published last month show that in 2017, 11.2% of children and young people aged five to 15 in England had a diagnosable mental health disorder. That figure stood at 10.1% in 2004, so the latest results show that there has been a slight increase since then. They reinforce what we have heard from schools and colleges about how many children face issues and about the need to act. We have listened to what schools have told us and are already taking steps to help schools to support children and young people with mental health problems. The findings of the survey will help us to ensure that the action that we take is informed by the most up-to-date evidence.

I understand the important points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich about the number of staff in children and young people’s mental health services. The Government are already taking significant steps to improve specialist children and young people’s mental health services with £1.4 billion of funding to ensure that an extra 70,000 children a year receive the support that they need by 2020-21.

We recognise, however, that we need to do more, which is why the NHS will invest at least £2 billion a year more in mental health, including children’s services, under the recently announced Budget proposals, increasing NHS funding by an astonishing £20.5 billion a year in real terms by 2023-24. As I said, from that the NHS will allocate £2 billion a year to mental health services. The Budget also included a commitment to set up specialist NHS crisis teams for children and younger people in every part of the country.

[Dr Poulter]

The extra money is of course welcome, but the focus on crisis intervention is perhaps wrong. We should try to stop children getting to that point in the first place, and invest more in early intervention and community teams. In order to do that, we need to reverse the decline in the mental health workforce. I wonder whether that is an issue the Minister will raise in particular, challenging his counterpart in the Department of Health and Social Care on how to improve recruitment and retention of CAMHS professionals.

[Nick Gibb]

My hon. Friend makes a crucial point, which I will come to when I talk about the mental health Green Paper. It is absolutely crucial that we are able to devote resources and expertise to intervening early, before a child’s mental health problem escalates into something requiring medical intervention.

[Luciana Berger]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nick Gibb]

I will, but this will be the last intervention, I am afraid.

[Luciana Berger]

What percentage of that £2 billion extra for mental health services will go to young people’s mental health services? To what extent will it replace—I asked this question before—services that have already been lost, not just from the NHS but from right across education in schools throughout the country?

[Nick Gibb]

I have already mentioned that £1.4 billion will be put into young people’s mental health services. I do not have the precise figure that the hon. Lady asks for, but I am happy to write to her with it. I suspect that it will not have been determined precisely at this point, but our plan is to increase that spending, and we can only get to that through careful marshalling of our economy, because our economy of course produces the wealth that enables us to provide such a level of funding.

In the debate, there was a reference to eating disorders. The Government are on track to meet, or are exceeding, waiting-time standards for eating disorder services and early intervention in psychosis.

[Dr Drew]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nick Gibb]

I will not give way now, because we only have a few minutes left. I have already given way a number of times.

Schools have an important role to play in supporting the mental health and wellbeing of their pupils by putting in place whole-school approaches tailored to the particular needs of those pupils. Our 2017 survey, “Supporting Mental Health in Schools and Colleges”, was commissioned to derive robust national estimates on activities to promote and support mental health and wellbeing. It found that about half of schools and colleges already had a dedicated lead for mental health in place, that 61% of schools offered counselling and that 90% of schools and colleges offered staff training on supporting pupils’ mental health and wellbeing.

The Government are committed to supporting schools and colleges to do more to promote good mental wellbeing in children, to provide a supportive environment for those experiencing problems and to secure access to more specialist help for those who need it. To support schools to build the capability to identify and promote awareness of mental health needs, we have committed to introduce mental health first aid and awareness training for teachers in every primary and secondary school by the end of the Parliament. To date, we have trained more than 1,300 staff in more than 1,000 schools.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nick Gibb]

I will not give way. I am sorry, but I want to leave time for the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon to respond to the debate.

We have recently published updated guidance to help schools to identify pupils whose mental health problems manifest themselves in their behaviour, and to understand when and how to put in place support.

The hon. Member for South Shields raised the issue of PSHE. As part of an integrated, whole-school approach to the teaching and promotion of health and wellbeing, we are making health education compulsory for pupils receiving primary and secondary education, alongside relationship and sex education in all secondary schools—

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

When?

[Nick Gibb]

All pupils will be taught about mental health, covering content such as understanding emotions, identifying when someone is experiencing signs of poor mental health, simple self-care, and how and when to seek support.

The hon. Lady asked when health education would be made compulsory. We have already published draft guidance and consulted on it—the consultation closed on 7 November. It was well received, and 11,000 pieces of evidence were supplied to it. We will respond in due course. Our plan is to roll out the subject as compulsory in the academic year beginning in 2020. We hope for and expect early adopters from September 2019, but it will be compulsory a year later. We want to ensure that all schools have a proper lead team so that they can implement the policy as well as they can.

On the mental health Green Paper, while schools have an important role to play, teachers are not mental health professionals and they should not be expected to act as such. When more serious problems occur, schools should expect pupils and their family to be able to access support from specialist children and young people’s mental health services, voluntary organisations and local GPs. The £1.4 billion that we have already made available will play a significant role, but we want to do more and to provide a new service to link schools to mental health services more effectively, with swiftly available and clinically supervised support.

To enable that, our Green Paper set out proposals to support local areas to adopt an ambitious new collaborative approach. The cornerstone will be new mental health support teams to improve collaboration between schools and specialist services. We expect a workforce numbering in the thousands to be recruited over the next five years to form such teams. They will be trained to offer evidence-based interventions for those with mild to moderate mental health needs. The teams will be linked to groups of schools and colleges, and the staff will be supervised by clinicians. They will work closely with other professionals such as educational psychologists, school nurses, counsellors and social workers to assess and refer children for other specialist treatments, if necessary.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nick Gibb]

I will not give way because, literally, there are only three minutes to go.

The roll-out of the teams will start with about 25 trailblazer sites, each with at least two teams, to be operational by the end of 2019. The first trailblazer areas will be announced imminently. They will test and evaluate a range of ways to set up and run the new mental health support teams to see what works. The overall ambition is for national roll-out of the teams, to be informed by evaluation of the trailblazers. The detail will be considered further as the long-term plan for the NHS is developed.

We also want to ensure that we have a designated senior lead for mental health in every school to oversee the delivery of whole-school approaches to promoting better mental health and wellbeing. The Department will provide up to £95 million to cover the cost of significant training for senior mental health leads. It is an ambitious programme, and I am optimistic that it will help to deal with a number of mental health problems that are emerging among young people in today’s society.

Good mental health remains a priority for the Government. It can have a profound impact on the whole of a child’s life, not just on attainment. We want all our children to fulfil their potential, and we want to tackle the injustice of mental health problems so that future generations can develop into confident adults equipped to go as far as their talents will take them.

Improving Education Standards

Nick Gibb Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered improving education standards.

Since May 2010, the Government have been determined to drive up academic standards. Our overarching objective has been to ensure that every local school is a good school with a rigorous curriculum, higher standards of reading and maths, and with GCSE and A-level qualifications that are on a par with the qualifications used in the best performing countries in the world. Our drive has been to close the attainment gap between children from disadvantaged backgrounds and their more advantaged peers.

In 2010, just 66% of pupils were attending schools judged by Ofsted to be good or outstanding; today, that figure is 84%. We focused on improving behaviour in schools by clarifying the powers that teachers have in the classroom, by scrapping the absurd law that Labour had introduced requiring 24 hours’ written notice for detention for a pupil, and we prevented headteachers’ decisions over expulsions from being undermined by giving them the final say over the return of a pupil. We clamped down on poor attendance and increased the fines for parents who failed to send their children to school. We expanded the academies programme to allow any good school, including primary schools, to opt for the professional autonomy that comes with academisation, and we expedited the route to sponsored academy status for those schools that were seriously underperforming.

There are now over half a million pupils in sponsored academies rated good or outstanding—those schools typically had been chronically underperforming, so that means over half a million pupils receiving a better education. Such schools include Great Yarmouth High School, which was judged inadequate by Ofsted in 2016. It converted to sponsored academy status in 2017 and was taken over by the multi-academy Inspiration Trust with a new headteacher, Barry Smith. Within a year, the school had been transformed. In May this year, Nicholas Marshall, an academic from Sheffield Hallam University wrote:

“Numerous teachers and support staff alike mentioned that the standards of pupil behaviour in the predecessor school were appalling and dangerous and how they had felt threatened. This was not now the case.”

He went on to write:

“The support staff…recounted stories in the predecessor school of large groups of students running around the school and disrupting learning, with adults being treated with gross disrespect and threatened.”

That has all changed. Ofsted now reports that bullying has declined and that lessons take place in a calm and orderly environment.

In 2017, the predecessor school, Great Yarmouth High School, had a Progress 8 score of minus 0.57, in the bottom 12% of schools nationally, with only 6% of pupils achieving the EBacc at grade 4 and just 30% achieving a grade 4 or above in English and maths. Now, just a year after conversion to academy status, Great Yarmouth Charter Academy has 55% achieving a grade 4 or above in English and maths in its provisional GCSE results, and it intends that to rise further still.

At Downhills Primary School in Haringey in 2011, just 63% of pupils were achieving the expected standard in the old SATs in reading, writing and maths combined, compared with the national average at the time of 79%.[Official Report, 12 December 2018, Vol. 651, c. 2MC.] The school was judged inadequate, and in 2012, became a sponsored academy in the Harris Federation multi-academy trust. This move was bitterly opposed by the National Union of Teachers, but today, the school is judged as good by Ofsted, 78% of its pupils are achieving the expected standard in reading, writing and maths in the new more demanding SATS, compared with the national average of 61%, and 82% of its pupils are reaching the expected standard in the new reading SATs.

[Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

I agree with everything that the Minister is saying about the improvements that can come from moving to a multi-academy trust. What practical support do schools get from Government to make that transition, which can sometimes be quite difficult, including financially difficult for some?

[Nick Gibb]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. Grants are given to schools to help to fund the conversion process. About two thirds of secondary schools now have academy status and a significant proportion of primary schools—the figure is, I think, just under one third—have now converted to academy status.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

While the Minister is talking about the conversions to academy status, will he explain why he thinks it is fair that when schools that have a deficit in their overall funding or their budget convert to academy status, that deficit stays with the local authority, rather than going into the multi-academy trust chain? Often, that just produces an additional financial burden for local government.

[Nick Gibb]

The reasoning behind that decision is, of course, that the deficit arose during the period in which the school was under the control of the local authority. That is why the deficit remains with the local authority on conversion.

[Gareth Snell]

I thank the Minister for being so candid with his answer. Will he explain, therefore, why it is that when schools have a surplus in their revenue budgets, that money goes into the multi-academy trust chain rather than staying with the local authority, given that that surplus will also have arisen under local authority control?

[Nick Gibb]

The reason for that is twofold. First, the surplus is often working capital and secondly, the school may well have been saving money from their revenue funding to purchase a capital item or to build a science block, and so on, and it would be a pity for those plans not to go ahead simply because they were being converted to academy status.

In opposition, when we were developing our academies and free school policy, we also came to the view that the policy would lead to higher standards not just in academies and free schools, but in local authority maintained schools. Last year, 83% of pupils at St Bonaventure’s Roman Catholic School were entered for the EBacc, up from just 33% in 2015. At St Paul’s Church of England Primary School in Staffordshire in 2014-15, only 50% of its pupils were reaching the expected standard in reading, but last year, that had risen to 87%. I am sure that I could find a lot of other examples of local authority schools that have improved their standards under this Government.

Of course, it does all begin with reading. Central to our reforms has been ensuring that all pupils are taught to read effectively. Pupils who are reading well by age five are six times more likely than their peers to be on track by age 11 in reading, and counter-intuitively, 11 times more likely to be on track in mathematics. For decades, there has been a significant body of evidence demonstrating that systematic phonics is the most effective method for teaching early reading. Phonics teaches children to associate letters with sounds, providing them with the code to unlock written English. Despite that evidence, our phonics reforms were initially met with opposition from some. They were dismissed by some critics as being a traditional approach. I make no apology for this, because phonics works. I pay particular tribute to the former Labour Mayor of Newham, Sir Robin Wales, who, in his independent way, promoted phonics and reading in Newham. Despite being an area of significant disadvantage, Newham now boasts the best phonics results in the country. Labour deselected Sir Robin as its mayoral candidate earlier this year.

In England, schools’ phonics performance has significantly improved since we introduced the phonics screening check in 2012, when just 58% of six-year-olds correctly read at least 32 out of the 40 words in the check. Today that figure is 82%, which means that 163,000 more six-year-olds are on track to be fluent readers this year compared with 2012. In 2016, England achieved its highest ever score in the reading ability of nine-year-olds, moving from joint 10th to joint eighth in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study—PIRLS—rankings. This follows a greater focus on reading in the primary curriculum and a particular focus on phonics.

We need to go further, of course, so backed by £26 million of funding, we have selected 32 primary schools across the country to spread best practice in the teaching of phonics and reading. Our aim is for every primary school to be teaching children to read as effectively as the best, and I will not stop going on about phonics until this is achieved. Reading is the essential building block to a good, fulfilling and successful life.

We reformed the primary school national curriculum in 2014, restoring knowledge to its heart and raising expectations of what children should be taught, particularly in English and maths. Since 2011, the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their more affluent peers has narrowed in both primary and secondary schools in England.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

York is the worst-funded authority in the country, we have the widest attainment gap in the country, and our poorest schools in the most deprived areas have suffered the biggest cuts. How does the Minister correlate that evidence?

[Nick Gibb]

The Government are spending record amounts on our schools—£42.4 billion this year, rising to £43.5 billion next year—and the national funding formula ensures that deprivation and disadvantage are a priority in the additional needs element of the formula.

[Rachael Maskell]

I asked a specific question about York in the light of the evidence that I presented, and I should like the Minister to respond to it.

[Nick Gibb]

The national funding formula ensures that all areas of the country, including York, are funded on a fair basis. Pupils will receive the same amount wherever they go to school, on the basis of an initial single figure that is the same throughout the country. That represents about three quarters of the national funding formula. The other quarter is determined by the additional needs of the pupil, so a significant element of it is based on disadvantage, whether it relates to the income deprivation affecting children index, free school meals, low prior attainment, or a child who has English as an additional language. Where a particular area fits into the rankings of other local authorities will depend on the number of pupils with additional needs. That is a fair system. It should have been introduced when the Labour party was in office, but Labour left it to us to make a controversial decision to ensure that we have a fair funding system.

[Rachael Maskell]

Can the Minister explain how he proposes to close the attainment gap in York, which is the worst in the country, given that we also receive the worst funding?

[Nick Gibb]

It is our determination to ensure that every part of the country has higher levels of social mobility, and that every part of the country has high academic standards. We have 12 opportunity areas around the country where we are focusing extra resources and extra attention from our national campaigns to ensure that those areas improve their academic standards. We are also rolling out schemes such as the English hubs that I mentioned, which ensure that we spread best practice in the teaching of reading. We have maths hubs, which ensure that we spread best practice in the teaching of mathematics, and we are spreading best practice in the teaching of modern foreign languages. Wherever there is a gap in attainment, we take action to close that gap, and we take swift action to deal with schools—wherever they are—that are underperforming and not providing the quality of education that parents want and that we want for our young people.

[Nigel Huddleston]

I thank the Minister for giving way again. He is being generous with his time.

I wholeheartedly support not only the goals for improving standards, but the fairer funding formula. Schools in my constituency are funded in a similar way to those in the constituency of the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell). We really appreciate the efforts being made to improve school funding in my constituency, because it does make a difference, and I hope that they will be fully implemented very soon.

[Nick Gibb]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his supportive comments. We are, in a transition period—or implementation period, if you like—allowing local authorities to determine the allocations to individual schools within a local authority area, both this year and next year and in 2020-21. However, the funding for those authorities is determined on a school-by-school, pupil-by-pupil basis to ensure that every authority is funded on the basis of the children in its area.

The Government have reformed GCSEs to put them on a par with the best in the world, and A-levels have been reformed to improve students’ readiness for the demands of higher education. We have also introduced the English baccalaureate school performance measure to ensure that all pupils have the chance to create a solid academic foundation on which they can build their future. The EBacc is a specific measure consisting of GCSEs in English, maths, at least two sciences, history or geography, and a language. According to the Russell Group of universities, those are the subjects which, at A-level, open more doors to more degrees. They provide a sound basis for a variety of careers beyond the age of 16. They can enrich pupils’ studies and give them a broad general knowledge that will enable them to participate in and contribute to society.

Confining the EBacc to seven or sometimes eight GCSEs also means that pupils have time to study other subjects, including the arts, music and technical disciplines. Indeed, the vast majority of pupils continue to take the opportunity to study further academic GCSEs or high-value, approved vocational qualifications at key stage 4 alongside EBacc subjects. Under this Government, the percentage of pupils taking the EBacc suite of core academic subjects in state-funded schools has risen from just 22% in 2010 to 38% in 2018. However, we want the percentage to rise further, with 75% starting to study the EBacc by 2022 and 90% by 2025.

Having a secure grasp of the basics of mathematics, including multiplication tables, is crucial for children’s success in moving on to more complex mathematical reasoning. The national curriculum stipulates that children should be able to recall tables up to and including the 12 times table by the end of year 4. Next year we will introduce a new multiplication tables check in primary schools, to be taken by year 4 pupils, to ensure that every child knows their tables. That short on-screen check, which is easy to administer, will help teachers to identify pupils who may need more support in mastering their times tables, and will allow schools to benchmark their own performance against those of others.

Inspired by the success of the far east and building on the reformed national curriculum, we have established and funded a network of 35 maths hubs which are spreading evidence-based approaches to maths teaching through the teaching for mastery programme. We have invested a total of £76 million to extend the programme to 11,000 primary and secondary schools by the end of the current Parliament. The number of pupils taking maths A-level has risen for the past eight years, and it is now the single most popular choice. To encourage even more pupils to consider level 3 mathematics qualifications, we have launched the advanced mathematics support programme, giving schools an extra £600 per year for each additional pupil taking maths or further maths A-level or any level 3 mathematics qualification.

For the good of our economy, we need to equip more young people to pursue degrees and careers in the sciences, including computer science. We have already seen remarkable progress: entries to A-levels in science, technology, engineering and maths have increased by 23% since 2010. We are investing in programmes that improve science teaching, support teacher retention, and increase take-up in subjects such as physics. That includes the network of science learning partnerships, which delivers continuing professional development through school-led hubs, and the stimulating physics network, which is helping schools to improve the take-up of A-level physics, especially by girls.

As a global trading nation, we need to raise the profile of languages, and we are determined to increase the number of students studying a language to GCSE. The proportion of pupils taking a foreign language in state-funded schools was 40% in 2010, and today it stands at 46%. We have introduced a package of measures to support language teaching, and to encourage more students to study modern foreign languages at GCSE and A-level. That includes the modern foreign languages pedagogy programme that I mentioned earlier, a mentoring pilot scheme and generous financial incentives, including scholarships and bursaries, to encourage more people to consider language teaching.

You may not have heard of the Mandarin excellence programme, Madam Deputy Speaker, but it is a hugely successful example of what can be achieved through targeted programmes. According to the CBI’s education and skills annual report, which was published this month, education is the number one driver of productivity and economic prosperity. Mandarin Chinese boosts career opportunities: 37% of UK businesses cited Mandarin as useful to their business, up from just 28% in 2016. Our £10 million Mandarin excellence programme is on target to put at least 5,000 young people on track towards fluency in Mandarin Chinese by 2020. A total of 64 schools have joined the programme, and approximately 3,000 students are now participating. They study Mandarin for eight hours a week, spending four hours in class and four doing homework. The programme is proving hugely successful. At the end of each year the students take a hurdle test to ensure that they are progressing towards fluency, and they are all performing extremely well.

The EBacc may be at the heart of the curriculum, but it is not the whole curriculum. The Government believe that the EBacc should be studied as part of a broad and balanced curriculum, and that every child should experience a high-quality arts and cultural education throughout their time at school. To secure that breadth, each of dance, music, art and design, and drama are compulsory in the national curriculum from ages five to 14.

There are many examples of schools where the majority of pupils study the core academic curriculum while the arts continue to flourish. At Northampton School for Boys, for example, pupils take the EBacc but are also able to keep their options open in studying other subjects such as music, drama and art. Arts are promoted at the school with over 20 ensembles and choirs, and there are many extracurricular opportunities for pupils to experience a creative and varied arts programme.

We are also putting more money into arts education programmes—nearly half a billion pounds to fund a range of music and cultural programmes between 2016 and 2020; that is more than for any subject other than PE. The funding includes £300 million for our network of music education hubs. Just last month, the Arts Council published a report that showed that, through the hubs, over 700,000 children learnt to play instruments in class together last year.

As well as learning to play instruments, children should be taught to listen to music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of the great composers and musicians. That is why our Classical 100 resource produced by the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, Classic FM and Decca is so important. Over 5,500 schools are already using—[Interruption.] I think that is on the list, so well done to the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane). Over 5,500 schools are already using this excellent resource, which is free for all primary schools and I encourage others to do the same.

A culture of good behaviour in schools is critical to enabling pupils to fulfil their potential. We are continuing to support schools to create disciplined and safe environments that allow pupils to be effectively taught. For some schools, standards of behaviour remain a challenge. Poor behaviour not only has a negative impact on pupils’ education and wellbeing, but affects the experience of teachers in schools. That is why the Government commissioned Tom Bennett’s review of effective behaviour, “Creating a culture”, which highlights strategies that schools can deploy to design, build and maintain a school culture that prevents classroom disruption, maintains good discipline and promotes pupils’ education. To make sure our work on behaviour is embedded in the system, we recently announced a £10 million investment to enable schools to share best practice on behaviour and classroom management.

All these reforms have been delivered against the background of a changing landscape in terms of the autonomy of schools themselves. Through academies and free schools, we have given our frontline professionals, local communities and parents more freedom and choice. Since 2010, the number of academies has grown from 200 to over 8,200 including free schools. More than a third of state-funded primary and secondary schools are now part of an academy trust. The reforms of the last eight years show that autonomy and freedom in the hands of excellent heads and outstanding teachers can deliver high-quality education.

Converting to become an academy is a positive choice made by hundreds of schools every year to give great teachers and heads the freedom to focus on what is best for their pupils. Academy status leads to a more dynamic and responsive education system by allowing schools to make decisions based on local need and the interests of their pupils. It allows high-performing schools to consolidate success and spread that success to other schools.

The figures speak for themselves. Some 65% of inspected sponsored academies whose predecessor schools were judged to be inadequate now have either good or outstanding Ofsted judgments. Around one in 10 sponsored academy predecessor schools were good or outstanding before they converted, compared with almost seven in 10 after they became an academy where an inspection has taken place.

Beaver Green Primary School in Ashford, Kent is a good example of how a school can be turned around. Judged as inadequate by Ofsted in 2013 and with a long history of underperformance, it became an academy in 2015 and last year was Ofsted-rated good in all areas, with the early years provision being rated as outstanding. Newfield Secondary School in Sheffield was rated as inadequate from 2006 until October 2010. But meaningful improvements began to take place when the school became an academy, and when it was inspected in March 2017, for the first time as an academy, it was judged as good. At its best, the multi-academy trust model can be a powerful vehicle for improving schools. It allows high-performing schools to consolidate success and spread that excellence to other schools.

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that, among high-performing schools, that can include pupil referral units? There is an excellent pupil referral unit in my constituency called the Pavilion, and I would welcome my right hon. Friend’s affirmation that these units can provide excellent education, which is not always recognised by the general public.

[Nick Gibb]

My right hon. Friend is right. We have published our vision document for alternative provision. We want the right pupils in the right provision. Like her, I can point to excellent examples of alternative provision. The London East Alternative Provision School in Tower Hamlets provides an ordered, calm environment where young people can get their education back on track, and half the pupils who attend that unit manage to achieve a GCSE in maths or English. The Wave Multi Academy Trust in Cornwall is a chain of alternative provision schools which provide an excellent second chance for young people who have lost their way sometimes in education. Since 2012, WISE Academies—a mainstream schools multi-academy trust in the north-east—has taken on nine sponsored academies, all of which previously had significant performance concerns. The trust reduced teacher workload through more efficient lesson planning and the creation of shared resources, and introduced new ways of teaching such as maths mastery techniques brought over from Singapore. That has contributed to every school that has been inspected since joining the trust being judged as good or outstanding.

This is a Government who for more than eight years have been unflinchingly driving up standards in schools with a reform programme that is already delivering more good schools, better-quality qualifications, children reading more fluently, improved mathematics, higher expectations, more control for teachers over pupil behaviour, and more than 800,000 new school places. Opposite we have the serried—or sparse, today—ranks of Labour MPs, whose party opposed our reforms every step of the way, opposed the phonics check and opposed the EBacc, which is giving opportunities of study to the most disadvantaged that are routinely enjoyed by the most advantaged. It is a Labour party that is the enemy of social mobility and the enemy of promise, and that in office presided over declining standards, grade inflation and a proliferation of qualifications that had little value in the jobs market. And it is a Labour Party that would scrap the free schools programme: a programme that led to the establishment of Dixons Trinity Academy, Bradford, which was eighth in the country last year for Progress 8 and 82% of whose pupils were entered for the EBacc; and the Harris Westminster School, which tells us that, with 40% of its pupils from a disadvantaged background, 18 pupils went to Oxbridge last year.

The contrast between the two parties has never been starker: improving education standards delivered by a Conservative Government; and low expectations and falling academic standards, the hallmark of Labour’s approach to education.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

In the past fortnight, we have seen the most unstable period of government since the Maastricht rebellion of the early 1990s. Unlike that debacle, however, this Government cannot rely on their own MPs, or even Unionist MPs, to make up the numbers. Indeed, many of the Minister’s colleagues have aired open mutiny directly to the Prime Minister in this Chamber; it is a piteous sight. So I was surprised to hear the Leader of the House announce last Thursday that there would be a general debate on improving education standards today. Thursday is normally reserved for Back-Bench business, but the Government do not want to hear any Back-Bench business at present.

This is an astonishing act of hubris: the Government have chosen to debate a subject for which they have shown nothing to show but failure over the past eight years. The right hon. Gentleman’s colleague the Secretary of State for Education must know that the Government have failed in their duty to improve educational standards, because in July the Secretary of State conceded that too many teachers were overwhelmed by excessive workload and then pledged to do more to support teachers and said he was trying to squeeze more funding out of No. 11. What did teachers get in last month’s Budget? The primary way of improving standards is to improve the quality of our teaching workforce and the relationship they have with their pupils, but there was no increase in school funding last month. Instead, budgets are set to fall again in the year ahead, and teachers did not see a proper pay rise. In fact, the majority of teachers will face another real-terms pay cut this year.

[Nick Gibb]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was paying attention to the Budget, but £400 million of extra capital was given to schools to spend this year, and another £508 million was given to schools to fund the pay award over two years.

[Mike Kane]

The majority of teachers will face a real-terms pay cut. I will come on to the £400 million in just a moment.

In the Chancellor’s words, all that the teachers got was a few “little extras”. The Secretary of State was said to have winced when asked about the Chancellor’s choice of words, which is not exactly the endorsement that one would expect from a Cabinet colleague. However, the Chancellor then doubled down by saying that the £400 million for “little extras” could buy

“a couple of whiteboards, or some laptop computers or something”.

It is no wonder that the Secretary of State cringed.

I am sure that the Minister will remember his colleague, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), now the Environment Secretary, saying that the measure of this Government’s success would be how the country would perform in the PISA rankings. That is what the Government predicated their agenda on. However, the PISA rankings that followed showed that the UK had failed to make any substantial improvements. In fact, we slipped back down the rankings. That shows the Government’s failure to improve standards on their own terms.

[Nick Gibb]

The children who were tested in those PISA rankings spent most of their education in schools under the last Labour Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Kane]

There is no evidence whatsoever for that. We know that 100 free schools have opened and shut in the past few years. We had one free school in Bermondsey that cost £1 million over two years and attracted 60 pupils. The local authority begged for it not to be opened, but it cost £60,000 per pupil while it lasted. We could have sent those pupils to Eton for half the price, although let me say to my hon. Friends that I am not advocating sending anybody there at the moment. We have 100 schools, unbrokered, containing 700,000 children. The Government cannot get anywhere near enough sponsors for the academies. They have only the Church of England in the rural areas and the Co-op, the Churches and the faith schools. The Education Policy Institute has stated that

“large structural reforms, through the expansion of the academies programme and the introduction of free schools, have so far resulted in…no impact on overall attainment.”

That is a damning measure, after eight years of this Government.

An economical attitude to evidence is apparent from the Government’s claim that 1.9 million children are in schools that are rated good or outstanding. Many of those schools have not been Ofsteded for more than 10 years, and the claim does not take into account the fact that we now have more pupils in the system. This is a discredited statistic. The UK Statistics Authority and the independent Education Policy Institute have raised serious concerns about it. The claim does not account for increases in the school population, or for the number of pupils who are in schools that have not been inspected since before 2010. In other words, it does not give the full picture. Today, the Minister has a chance to correct the record. Are his colleagues, the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister, right to say that their policies have led to 1.9 million more children being educated in schools rated good or outstanding, or is the UK Statistics Authority right to say that they need to put that figure into context? I would be happy to give way to the Minister on this point.

[Nick Gibb]

I said in my speech that, in 2010, 66% of pupils were attending schools that were then graded good or outstanding. Today, 84% of pupils are attending schools that are graded good or outstanding. If we multiply that out, we get the 1.9 million figure that the hon. Gentleman has cited.

[Mike Kane]

There we have it. That at least provides some context, but it is not what the UK Statistics Authority, the Institute for Fiscal Studies or the Education Policy Institute have said. These are made-up figures from a Government who have run out of ideas for education.

The true hindrance to improving standards is austerity. After all, every area of education—from early years, where we have seen 1,000 Sure Start programmes cut, to schools to further and higher education—has seen massive cuts since the Conservative party came to power. Our analysis of figures produced by the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that school budgets are £1.7 billion lower in real terms than they were five years ago.

[Mike Kane]

There is a huge threat to maintained nursery schools, which we hear enough about from Government Members. The Government cut 1,000 Sure Start centres. The sure-fire way to achieve social mobility in our country is to make the best provision available for the youngest people in our society. We do not have that anymore; those Sure Start centres were cut. I will come to the impact of that on social mobility in a second.

Our analysis of the IFS figures shows a £1.7 billion cut in real terms. Government Members know it in their schools, too, because they talk to headteachers just as we do in our constituencies. To unpack that, these cuts, along with the impact of the public sector pay freeze and then the cap, have created a crisis in teacher recruitment and retention, which was not once referred to by the Minister today. The Government have subsequently missed the teacher recruitment and retention target for five successive years, and in the past two years, more teachers have left than have joined the profession.

[Nick Gibb]

rose—

[Mike Kane]

For the third or fourth time, and following his speech, which went on for about 26 minutes, I give way to Minister.

[Nick Gibb]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who has been extremely generous to me and my hon. Friends. I shall try to make this the last intervention. He might have missed the statistics that came out this morning, which showed that this year we recruited 8% more people, or over 2,000 more, into teacher training than we did in the previous year.

[Mike Kane]

Last year, we saw the number of teachers decline by 5,000. The Minister might come up with a statistic today, but teacher numbers are going down. Since 2011, a third of all teachers have left. I spoke to Teach First just the other day in a meeting. The current rate is one in, one out. Does the Minister bear no responsibility for the reforms, the pressures and the lack of pay rises that are the reason why so many great graduates and brilliant people are no longer training the future of our country but are leaving the profession? Does he bear no responsibility at all? Five thousand have left in one year.

Despite the noble effort of staff and teachers, schools are unable to deliver the high-quality education that children deserve because they simply do not have the funding to make ends meet, for either themselves or their schools. The Government’s own analysis has shown that teachers were around £4,000 worse off in 2016, compared with 2010, as a direct result of their policies on pay. Furthermore, the IFS has found that the promised pay rise will see the majority of teachers facing another real-terms pay cut.

Earlier this year, I was shocked to read a BBC article that reported that children were filling their pockets with food from school canteens because they were hungry. This is Tory Britain, 2018. These were children with greying skin. They were malnourished and afflicted with hunger. As a teacher, I know that schools cannot teach children properly if they are hungry in the classroom. That is happening in our country—one that now has 4.5 million children in poverty. That did not happen in a vacuum. Poverty is the grim and logical conclusion to austerity. Its effects are palpable, and its consequences can be irrevocable. If the Government truly want to see standards in education rise, they must do the logical thing and truly end austerity once and for all.

Education

Nick Gibb Excerpts

Thursday 15th November 2018 Ministerial Corrections

The following is an extract from the Westminster Hall debate on the Plymouth Challenge for Schools on 6 November 2018.

[Nick Gibb]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, outcomes at secondary level are mixed. In 2018, 40.4% of students in Plymouth entered the English baccalaureate, which is a core group of academic GCSEs—English, maths, at least two sciences, a language and a humanity. That figure outstrips the national average of 35.1% and is 1.5 percentage points higher than the figure for Plymouth in 2014.

[Official Report, 6 November 2018, Vol. 648, c. 490WH.]

Letter of correction from the Minister for School Standards:

An error has been identified in the speech I gave during the debate on the Plymouth Challenge for Schools.

The correct statement should have been:

[Nick Gibb]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, outcomes at secondary level are mixed. In 2018, 40.4% of students in Plymouth entered the English baccalaureate, which is a core group of academic GCSEs—English, maths, at least two sciences, a language and a humanity. That figure outstrips the national average of 38.5% and is 1.5 percentage points higher than the figure for Plymouth in 2014.

Anti-bullying Week

Nick Gibb Excerpts

Thursday 15th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) on securing this debate. As he and all hon. Members present know, and as we have heard today, particularly from the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley), bullying can have a devastating effect on children and their families.

I offer my sincere condolences to the family and friends of Rachel Steven. Every death of a child is a tragedy. I cannot comment on Scottish procedure, but in England all child deaths, including suicides, will be reviewed by the local authority and the clinical commissioning group, which will analyse what has happened and ensure that any necessary recommendations or changes are made as a consequence of the tragedy.

We must not let up on our efforts to eradicate bullying. Anti-bullying Week gives us an opportunity to maintain focus on this important issue and highlight the positive things that we can all do to help stamp out bullying. Every child’s experience at school should be a happy one. We want schools to be safe, calm places in which teachers can teach uninterrupted and pupils can succeed.

The Government have sent a clear message to schools that bullying—for whatever reason—is unacceptable, and that they need the right tools to tackle it. As the hon. Member for Cambridge said in his opening remarks, all schools are legally required to have a behaviour policy with measures to prevent all forms of bullying. We have ensured that schools have a range of powers and support to help them respond effectively when bullying takes place.

We know that bullying still happens, and that it can have serious and long-lasting effects on children’s education and mental health. Tackling bullying means creating a culture where difference is respected and bullying behaviour is not tolerated by staff, pupils and parents. That is why the theme of this Anti-bullying Week—“Choose Respect”—is so important. There are pupils who are more likely to be targeted because of some young people’s attitudes towards those who are different from themselves, which is not the way it should be. That is why, earlier this year, the Department for Education announced an additional £1 million investment to extend projects led by several anti-bullying organisations until March 2020—the end of the spending review period. That work will support schools to stamp out prejudice and discrimination.

That investment will enable the Anti-Bullying Alliance, which does a phenomenal job, to extend its All Together programme, which focuses on reducing bullying of children with special educational needs and disabilities. It will support a further 300 schools to gain All Together status and provide certified online training for 10,000 professionals. The Anne Frank Trust will further develop its Free to Be debate programme, which encourages young people to think about the importance of tackling prejudice, discrimination and bullying. Over the 18-month extension, it will reach an additional 825 ambassadors and more than 8,000 workshop participants. The Diana Award will extend its peer-to-peer anti-bullying ambassadors programme, training an additional 2,750 young people from a further 270 schools in England over 18 months. As ambassadors, these young people will lead campaigns to empower their student body to have mutual respect for each other and to engage in good, anti-bullying practice.

Earlier this year we also extended the Internet Matters project, which will now run its Make a Noise programme until January 2019. That project supports the reporting of bullying to schools via the tootoot online platform. All four of our grant-funded projects include cyber-bullying as an integral element, and last week the Minister for Women and Equalities announced a further £1 million to extend the anti-homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying programme, which has reached 1,200 schools since 2016.

I had the pleasure of attending the Anti-Bullying Alliance’s parliamentary reception in Speaker’s House yesterday, which I think the hon. Member for Cambridge also attended. That event celebrated Anti-bullying Week and inspired an audience—including fellow Members of Parliament, policy makers, teachers and young people —to take action and unite against bullying. I was proud to present the Anti-Bullying Alliance school staff awards to two remarkable individuals who have gone above and beyond in their school to tackle and stop bullying: Mrs Watkiss from Blue Coat Church of England Academy, and Miss Durrant, a learning mentor from Emerson Valley School.

We know that schools that excel at tackling bullying have created an ethos of good behaviour, where pupils treat each other and staff with respect because they know that it is the right way to behave. This week, the Department for Education published a tool to support schools to develop whole-school approaches that promote respect and discipline. By providing practical advice, guidance and good practice examples of how schools can develop and implement an approach that is shared by the whole school community, the tool builds on the recommendations in Tom Bennett’s independent review of behaviour in schools, “Creating a culture: how school leaders can optimise behaviour”.

A good school culture that sets a clear structure and clear expectations for pupils can go hand in hand with acknowledging differences. A school where good behaviour and respect is the norm can help teachers to identify and support pupils who might have underlying problems, so alongside the tool we have published an update to our advice on mental health and behaviour in schools. This will help schools to identify pupils whose behaviour might result from an underlying mental health difficulty, and to direct schools towards information about how they can adapt their approaches to support those pupils’ individual needs within the context of an approach that is based on clear expectations of behaviour.

It is important also that a respectful school culture permeates every aspect of school life, including what is taught in the classroom. The new mandatory subjects of relationships education, relationships and sex education, and health education will enable schools to deliver high-quality teaching, including on acceptable ways to behave, both online and off, as part of their whole-school approach. The consultation on the draft guidance and regulations closed last week, and we are currently considering the responses; we plan to lay the regulations next year. Under the content for respectful relationships, the draft guidance sets out that pupils should know about the different types of bullying, the impact that it has, the responsibility of bystanders, and how to get help.

As the hon. Member for Cambridge said, today is the first time that Anti-bullying Week has featured a dedicated anti-cyber-bullying day, which is supported by the Royal Foundation’s taskforce on the prevention of cyber-bullying. The aim of Stop Speak Support Day is to highlight the issue of cyber-bullying, which we know affects so many children in our schools, as the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) said. Cyber-bullying is not just a way to bully others anonymously; it can be a means by which face-to-face bullying between pupils at the same school is extended beyond the school day.

Bullying can also start online and follow a child into school. In these circumstances, the effects of cyber-bullying can be felt within the school. Just like face-to-face bullying, it can have repercussions on behaviour during lessons and throughout the school day. For that reason, the Department for Education has already put in place a number of powers and a range of support to enable schools to prevent and tackle cyber-bullying. Teachers have the power to discipline pupils for poor behaviour that takes place outside the school gates, and we have extended teachers’ searching powers so that they can search for and, in certain circumstances, delete inappropriate images or files on electronic devices.

Through the new mandatory subjects of relationships education and relationships and sex education, pupils will be taught about internet safety and harm, including the effects of their online actions on others and knowing how to recognise and display respectful behaviour online. This will complement the computing curriculum, which covers the principles of e-safety at all key stages. The content progresses to reflect the different and escalating risks that young people face, including how to use technology safely, responsibly, respectfully and securely, and where to go for help and support when students have concerns about content or contact on the internet or other online technologies.

We are committed to strengthening the teaching of computing and computer science in schools, so we have launched a new, comprehensive programme to improve the teaching of computing and to drive up participation in computer science, particularly amongst girls. This includes a new national centre for computing and a network of at least 40 hubs throughout the country to support schools to provide resources and training—including elements of e-safety—to primary and secondary schools. The centre will start working with schools this year, and it is backed by £84 million of new funding, which was announced in November 2017.

Children’s online life goes beyond what schools can control and influence. Their efforts need to be backed up by a responsible approach from those who provide social media, taking responsibility for what happens when children use their services. There is a range of other work taking place across Government to help tackle cyber-bullying, including the forthcoming joint White Paper from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and the Home Office, which sits at the heart of the Government’s response to tackling online harm. The White Paper will be published in the winter and sets out a range of legislative and non-legislative measures that detail how we will tackle online harms.

The hon. Member for Cambridge raised the issue of social media companies and the social media code of practice. As he knows, we published the draft code of practice in May and are continuing to engage with social media providers and others to refine the statutory practice with clear, overarching principles and separate best-practice guidance. Another key message of this year’s Anti-bullying Week is that bullying is a behaviour choice, as the hon. Member for Cambridge also mentioned. We want to ensure that all teachers are equipped with the skills to tackle the serious behaviour issues that compromise the safety and wellbeing of pupils, as well as the low-level disruption that too often gets in the way of effective teaching. We are reforming training so that all teachers will be shown in their first two years in the profession how to manage behaviour effectively. Last month, we announced a £10 million programme to support schools to share best practice and knowledge on behaviour management and classroom management.

We know that bullying can have a serious effect on mental health. Children who suffer bullying can face higher rates of anxiety, depression and self-harm in adulthood. The Department has committed to supporting schools and colleges to promote good mental wellbeing in children, providing a supportive environment for those experiencing problems and securing access to more specialist help for those who need it. The Government’s response to the consultation on our green paper, “Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision”, confirmed our commitment to provide significant further support linked to schools. We will incentivise and support all schools and colleges to identify and train a designated senior lead for mental health, to deliver whole-school approaches to promoting better mental health. The Government will also fund new mental health support teams, or units, which will improve collaboration between schools and specialist services, providing a wider range of support and interventions in or near schools and colleges. These teams will be linked to groups of schools and colleges, and will work closely with other mental health professionals to assess and refer children for other specialist treatments if necessary.

I am grateful for the support that the hon. Member for Cambridge has given to this issue this year. The Government are committed to preventing and tackling bullying, but we know we cannot do that alone. We continue to work with schools and partner organisations to ensure that schools are a safe place for all. I am proud to be a supporter of Anti-bullying Week. I pledge to always choose respect, and I encourage other hon. Members to do the same.

Education Funding

Nick Gibb Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

There is nothing more important to the future of a child than a rigorous academic education in an orderly, safe and nurturing environment—an education that allows every child to fulfil their potential and equips them with the knowledge of the world around them so that they can take on the challenges of that world, an education steeped in the achievements of generations of scientists, and the literature, music and art that lies at the heart of our humanity, and an education system that ensures that they have the language, literacy and maths skills that enable them to function and to learn more.

That should be the start of every child’s life, whether that child is from a wealthy family or a family on a low income, whether they are in the north or the south-west, or whether they are in London or in Manchester. That has been the driving force of this Government since 2010: to raise standards in our schools; to improve the curriculum; to put our education system on a par with the best in the world; to close the attainment gap between those from different backgrounds; and to ensure that every child is a fluent reader long before they leave primary school.

Our reform programme has been opposed by the Labour party every step of the way. In office, those complacent, ideological enemies of promise and close-knit friends of the vested interests presided over grade inflation, falling standards and an education system that left too many children starting secondary school still struggling with reading and basic arithmetic, because Labour was too afraid to challenge the status quo.

Labour failed to introduce fairer funding because it was controversial. We have not shirked our responsibility. The new national funding formula ensures that every pupil in the country is funded on the same basis according to need. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) needs to read up about that.

Labour failed to rise to the challenge of increasing pupil numbers, cutting 200,000 primary school places at a time when the birth rate was rising. One of the first decisions we took after 2010 was to double the funding for new school places to £5 billion. Since then, we have created 825,000 new school places and committed £23 billion of capital funding for 2016 to 2021.

At a time when we are tackling the historically high and unsustainable budget deficit left to us by the last Labour Government, we have none the less protected overall school funding for five to 16-year-olds in real terms, and now spend a record £42.4 billion, which is rising to £43.5 billion next year.

[Gareth Snell]

rose—

[Jess Phillips]

rose—

[Nick Gibb]

I will not give way because—[Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. The Minister has made it clear that he does not want to give way. That is his choice and we have to live with his decision.

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[Nick Gibb]

It is our balanced approach to the public finances that allows us to spend record amounts on health and education while at the same time delivering a strong economy with some of the lowest levels of unemployment since the 1970s, unlike in every period of Labour Government, which end with people not working and higher unemployment than when they came into office, as time after time they mismanage our country’s economy.

I listened to the contributions of Labour MPs, but there was almost nothing about standards and, with the notable exception of the hon. Member for Burnley (Julie Cooper), nothing about the importance of children learning to read. Following our focus on phonics and the introduction of the phonics screening check, more children have learned to read more effectively and sooner. England moved from joint 10th in 2011 to joint 8th last year in the PIRLS—Progress in International Reading Literacy Study—international rankings, with our highest ever score in reading.

There was nothing from Labour about the importance of arithmetic, or the reforms to the maths curriculum that have significantly raised standards, with a curriculum on a par with the best in the world to which schools have responded well. We heard nothing from Labour about the importance of children knowing their multiplication tables by heart, nothing about the higher standards following our reforms to GCSEs and A-levels, and nothing about our fairer accountability system, Progress 8, which holds schools to account for the progress of every single child regardless of their ability. There was nothing about the fact that more disadvantaged children are now studying core academic subjects at GCSE with the EBacc. [Interruption.] There was nothing about the fact that under this Conservative Government the attainment gap between children from disadvantaged backgrounds and their more affluent peers has closed by 10% since 2010. We heard nothing from Labour about T-levels or apprenticeships, and nothing from Labour—[Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

If you are really cross, find somewhere else to show your bad temper. In here, Members have put questions to the Minister and we all want to hear what he has to say. We may not agree with him—that is up to you—but we must hear the Minister.

[Nick Gibb]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

We heard nothing from Labour about our investment of half a billion pounds in arts and music education, including £300 million of funding for music hubs. There was nothing about the fact that the proportion of pupils taking history or geography GCSE has risen from 48% in 2010 to 77% in 2017, with the proportion taking at least two science GCSEs rising from 63% in 2010 to 91% in 2017.

The Labour party opposes free schools—state schools established by teachers, education groups and high-performing schools, rather than local councils—which are disproportionately graded as outstanding. Free schools such as Dixons Trinity Academy in Bradford would not exist but for this Government. With a third of its pupils from a disadvantaged background, Dixons Trinity was ninth in the country last year for Progress 8, and 82% of its pupils entered for the EBacc, rising to 86% this year. Free schools such as Harris Westminster would not exist but for this Government. It told us that, with 40% of its intake from disadvantaged backgrounds, 18 pupils secured places at Oxbridge this year and one at Harvard. Six of those 18 were from a disadvantaged background. The King’s College London Mathematics School would not exist but for this Government. It takes students from all backgrounds, with last year 59% of its A-level grades being A* and 92% of its maths A-levels being A*. The free schools programme would be abolished by Labour, the enemy of promise and the enemy of social mobility.

My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) spoke with sincerity about the exemplary work of the schools in his constituency, which teach about Parliament and the first world war. I enjoyed seeing the high standards and phenomenal work at Alverton Primary School in Penzance and at St Erth Community School in Hayle at his invitation last year. My hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) spoke perceptively about reading standards and mathematics, and about the improvement in standards in his schools and the importance of T-levels. My hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) spoke knowledgeably about reading and the rise in Progress 8 and Attainment 8 in his schools.

This is a Government who have put education reform at the heart of their programme, who are committed to ensuring every school is a good school, who have delivered fairer funding, who are spending record amounts on education and schools, on a par with the largest economies—

[Mr Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab)]

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

Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.

Question agreed to.

Main Question put accordingly and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House notes the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ finding that education spending as a share of national income has fallen from 5.8 per cent to 4.3 per cent since 2010, including funding cuts of over two thirds to Sure Start, of nearly a tenth to schools, of over a fifth to sixth forms, and of £3 billion to further and adult education; further notes the Prime Minister’s statement that austerity is over; endorses the Secretary of State for Education’s recent demand for billions more funding and welcomes his comments that there is a strong case for investment in the spending review but notes that the recent Budget provided only small capital projects; offers its full support to the Secretary of State for Education in persuading the Chancellor of the Exchequer that education urgently needs new investment; and calls on the Government to end austerity, not with little extras but by reversing all cuts to education funding.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nick Gibb Excerpts

Monday 12th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

4. What funding he plans to allocate to schools to enable them to provide relationships education and relationships and sex education lessons.

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

We want all schools to deliver high-quality teaching and curriculums in this important area, as many schools already do. The public consultation on the content of relationships and sex education closed last week, and we will use those findings to develop the right support package to complement the content set out in the draft guidance.

[Alex Norris]

The Government’s impact assessment of the roll-out of relationships and sex education suggests that there will be no need for funding support from the second year onwards—that the investment at the beginning will last for ever. This, of course, ignores changes in teachers and the need to change the curriculum in future years. Will Ministers commit today that when they do come up with the final policy, they will accept the need for annual support?

[Nick Gibb]

The kind of support we have in mind is support in terms of materials and training, rather than funding, but we will look very carefully at this once we have examined all the responses to the consultation, to which 40,000 individuals responded.

[Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)]

The Scottish Parliament has recently decided to embed in the school curriculum LGBT issues so that LGBT children can integrate well and, more importantly, that other children treat them well. What thought has my right hon. Friend given to doing the same in England?

[Nick Gibb]

We have certainly given this a great deal of thought in the context of relationships and sex education. We believe that all schools should ensure that young people, whatever their developing sexuality or identity, feel that relationships education and RSE is relevant to them and sensitive to their needs. The purpose of the new provisions includes ensuring that young people learn that there are different types of relationships in modern Britain. Schools should therefore ensure that RSE is inclusive and meets the needs of all young people.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

As I am sure we are all aware from our experiences of this House, the issues that surround relationships and sex education at any age can be incredibly sensitive. My question is therefore about training. At this moment in time, how much training will the Government provide? Will the Minister ensure that every teacher who is going to teach this will be able to “get it”?

[Nick Gibb]

Of course, it is the responsibility of schools to provide the relevant training for their teachers in all curriculum subjects. We are looking at the response to the consultation—which, as I said, closed last week—to determine what support and resources schools will need to be able to deliver this far-reaching reform of the curriculum in our schools.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

5. What recent assessment he has made of the effect of tuition fees on levels of social mobility.

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[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

7. What recent assessment his Department has made of trends in the level of teacher recruitment and retention.

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

The number of teachers remains high, with more than 450,000 in schools across the country—that is over 10,000 more than in 2010. With a strong economy and the lowest unemployment for over 40 years, competition with other professions, industry and commerce for the best graduates is fierce. That is why we have generous tax-free bursaries of up to £26,000 in certain subjects to attract high-performing graduates into teacher training and into the profession.

[Julie Elliott]

I thank the Minister for that answer, but teachers are leaving the profession in droves. In the north-east, over 500 teachers left last year. In real terms, teachers are thousands of pounds worse off than in 2010. Why is the Minister still imposing a real-terms pay cut on the majority of teachers?

[Nick Gibb]

We agreed the School Teachers Review Body recommendations for a 3.5% rise in the pay ranges for the main scale of teachers, a 2% rise in the upper pay scale and a 1.5% rise for the leadership range. We are funding that to schools through a teachers’ pay grant over and above the 1% they will already have budgeted. Earlier this year, we announced the new recruitment and retention strategy, building on existing work to boost marketing and support to applicants. The strategy seeks to increase retention rates by streamlining accountability and stripping away unnecessary workload, which the evidence suggests does not improve children’s outcomes.

[Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)]

What action is my right hon. Friend taking to cut down the time teachers spend doing unnecessary data-driven tasks, to help recruitment and retention?

[Nick Gibb]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: dealing with workload has been a key objective of this Government. In July, we published the workload reduction toolkit, which provides material, practical advice and case studies that headteachers and other staff can use to address workload issues in their schools.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Obviously, the pay award that will go to teachers will also go to teachers in sixth-form colleges, but the Government are not funding that pay rise, so what assessment has the Minister made of the impact of the teachers’ pay award on college budgets?

[Nick Gibb]

As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said, we acknowledge that funding in the 16-to-18 sector has not been protected in the same way that we have protected school funding since 2010, because since 2010 our priority has been to ensure that basic education between the ages of five and 16 is given the priority it needs.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Servicemen and women in Her Majesty’s armed forces represent the very best of British, so what progress is being made with the Troops to Teachers scheme to encourage veterans to become teaching professionals?

[Nick Gibb]

The Troops to Teachers scheme has resulted in a number of high-qualified ex-military coming into our schools. It has been slow to start, but it is a good programme, and I am determined that it will continue.

[Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)]

8. What recent discussions his Department has had with the Treasury on funding for further education.

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[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

13. When he plans to publish the results of the asbestos management assurance process survey of schools and academies.

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

The results of the asbestos management assurance process will be published in spring next year. Seventy-seven per cent. of schools have responded so far, but we expect all state-funded schools and academies to participate, so we have reopened the assurance process from today until February 2019 to give them a further opportunity to do so.

[Meg Hillier]

The problem with publishing this long-awaited information in the spring is that that is likely to be too late to properly influence the spending review. Given that 85% of schools have asbestos and the risks are getting greater as those buildings age, will the Minister make a serious commitment to providing the funding to schools to tackle that asbestos? Otherwise, there is no real incentive for them to come up with a plan, given the pinch on their budgets.

[Nick Gibb]

So far, 17,000 state-funded schools have responded to the survey; of those, 68% were assured by the appropriate responsible body. Since 2015, we have allocated £5.6 billion to those responsible for school building for essential maintenance, including removing or encapsulating asbestos when that is the safest course of action. In addition, through the £4.4 billion priority school building programme, we are rebuilding or refurbishing buildings in the worst condition, and asbestos is a factor in choosing which schools to rebuild.

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[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

21. What plans he has to introduce routine Ofsted inspections for outstanding schools; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

We are considering the Public Account Committee’s recent recommendation that we review the exemption and will respond formally in December. Ofsted assesses the risks in all schools, including outstanding schools, and has the power to inspect any school if it has concerns.

[Clive Efford]

What confidence can parents in my constituency and others have in the Minister’s claim that 86% of schools are either outstanding or good when many have not been inspected for six years and some for as long as 11?

[Nick Gibb]

Ofsted assesses the triggers that will cause an inspection to happen even where a school is judged as outstanding and exempt from inspection—for example, if a school’s results fall, complaints are received from parents or there are safeguarding concerns. All those are triggers that will cause an inspection to happen even in an outstanding school. The hon. Gentleman can be confident, therefore, that a school that is judged good or outstanding is good or outstanding.

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

T2. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

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[Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)]

T7. How many secondary schools offer Mandarin as a language choice, and what can we do to increase the number of schools that offer it?

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

My hon. Friend has raised an important point. In 2017, approximately 91 state-maintained schools entered students for Chinese GCSE. There were 3,654 GCSE entries in that year, and 2,800 A-level entries in 2018. Maintained secondary schools must teach a foreign language at key stage 3, and we fund 64 schools for the Mandarin excellence programme, which is intended to put 5,000 students on track towards becoming fluent in Mandarin.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

T4. The University and College Union has described the Chancellor’s Budget as a “missed opportunity to…address the urgent financial challenges facing our education system”. Will the Minister agree to make representations to the Chancellor and ask him to follow the example of the Scottish Government by delivering a 5.1% real-terms increase in the next spending review?

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

T8. Last year’s adjustment to the funding formula was a welcome first step towards fairer funding for counties such as my county of Staffordshire, but it was only a first step. Will the Minister please explain what more will be done in the coming years to ensure that that gap is narrowed?

[Nick Gibb]

My hon. Friend is right to point out that we made a decisive and historic move towards fairer funding by introducing the national funding formula—something avoided by previous Governments. That was backed by an extra £1.3 billion, in addition to the money allocated at the 2015 spending review. Staffordshire will gain 3.2% per pupil for its schools by 2019-20, compared with 2017-18 funding levels.

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)]

T5. At the weekend, Ofsted warned that gangs are slipping knives into children’s bags to get them expelled from school so that they can be recruited to carry drugs. Today, headteachers in London are told not to exclude too readily pupils with weapons, making them easy prey. The warning from Ofsted comes as the Children’s Commissioner, Anne Longfield, calls for the Government to fine schools that expel children. What is the Government’s response?

[Nick Gibb]

All schools need to be safe and disciplined environments in which pupils feel happy and able to fulfil their potential. We continue to work with the Home Office to consider how best to get the message of its serious violence strategy into schools, and we have ensured that its #knifefree anti-knife campaign has been disseminated to all schools in England.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

The second Bercow report, “Ten Years On”, highlights that there is a very strong correlation between poor speech, language and communication skills, and children who are excluded from schools. Tackling this issue early on can make an enormous difference to children’s life chances. Does my right hon. Friend agree that focusing on this area in the early years is more important than ever, and can he assure us that we can still deliver these services given the pressures on many local authorities that provide these services?

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[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Can the Secretary of State explain why York has the worst funded schools in the country, why Westfield Primary Community School and Tang Hall Primary School have had the greatest cuts and yet are in the most economically and socially deprived areas of my constituency, and why York therefore has the highest attainment gap in the country?

[Nick Gibb]

The national funding formula introduces a fairer system, so that every pupil in every part of the country is funded on the same basis. A child in York with special educational needs, with low prior attainment or from a disadvantaged background will receive precisely the same amount of money as a similar pupil elsewhere in the country.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

Was the Minister as concerned as I was when Warwickshire County Council recently brought forward a strategy document stating that dyslexia would not constitute a special educational need? Is he as pleased as I am that that document has now been withdrawn?

Plymouth Challenge for Schools

Nick Gibb Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Howarth. I congratulate the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) on securing the debate and on the way in which he introduced it. We share a vision for Plymouth of ensuring that every child in the city, regardless of their background or where they live, receives a world-class education that enables them to reach their full potential. That vision is shared by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter), whom the hon. Gentleman mentioned, and by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer). They continually raise education issues with me in the Chamber and the voting Lobbies.

Let me say up front that I support the Plymouth Challenge, which is a school-led initiative supported by Plymouth City Council and the regional schools commissioner, who is appointed by the Secretary of State. The challenge was set up to tackle historical underperformance in a number of secondary schools in the city. It seeks to harness the many strands of school improvement initiatives currently being undertaken in the city and to add to those initiatives capacity, resources and experience from other schools in the area and from outside the area. It was developed by the headteacher strategy group, which is made up of secondary headteachers.

As the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport knows, the Plymouth Challenge is organised around three strands: strengthening leadership, raising standards and raising aspirations. On the second of those, systematic instruction in phonics during the early years of schooling is an essential foundation for teaching children to read. It is hugely important to secure the basics to equip young people with the life skills to decode, read and understand the world around them. The proportion of pupils in Plymouth who meet the required standard in the phonics check rose from 58% in 2012 to 82% in 2018, in line with the national average.

At key stage 2, Plymouth schools and pupils have risen to the challenge of the more rigorous primary school national curriculum that we introduced in 2014. In 2018, 62% of primary school students in Plymouth reached the expected standard in reading, writing and maths. That represents an eight percentage point improvement on the 54% of pupils in Plymouth who achieved the same result in 2016. Despite that gain, Plymouth’s figure is still two percentage points below the national average. It is therefore important that the primary sector continues to deliver improvements and builds on that upward trajectory in reading, writing and maths to get it above the national average.

As the hon. Gentleman will know, outcomes at secondary level are mixed. In 2018, 40.4% of students in Plymouth entered the English baccalaureate, which is a core group of academic GCSEs—English, maths, at least two sciences, a language and a humanity. That figure outstrips the national average of 35.1% and is 1.5 percentage points higher than the figure for Plymouth in 2014.[Official Report, 15 November 2018, Vol. 649, c. 4MC.] That means more young people in the city are studying and achieving through a core academic curriculum, which I firmly believe provides them with the knowledge and skills for a variety of careers beyond school life. However, we need the proportion of pupils studying the EBacc combination to rise significantly in every secondary school in the city.

On other key stage 4 measures, Plymouth lags behind the rest of the country. Its 2018 Progress 8 score is minus 0.32, which is below the national average. One way of improving standards, particularly at secondary level, is harnessing expertise both within and outside a city. A strong Exeter-based multi-academy trust is already having an impact by driving up expectations. Standards at two Plymouth secondary schools are benefiting from that expertise, and Reach Feltham, the top-performing London academy, provides that partnership with leadership support and challenge. That model is proving very effective.

We need to look outwards and build on great examples across the country, be that Michaela Community School’s marriage of high standards, exemplary behaviour and manageable teacher workload, which the hon. Gentleman referred to, Tom Bennett’s approach to improving behaviour in schools, or the myriad trusts finding success in the face of challenging circumstances.

There is also a benefit to be realised from more formal structural partnerships in the city. We welcome the increased engagement in Plymouth of high-quality multi-academy trusts outside the immediate region. Reach South Academy Trust is an example of a MAT that has done precisely that, bringing external expertise and experience into the city by creating a cross-phase hub and, as part of that, sponsoring UTC Plymouth.

The hon. Gentleman raised the national funding formula, specifically the maximum gains cap. Nationally, approximately 75% of schools, including those that were historically underfunded, will be on the national funding formula allocation by 2019-20. I reassure him that schools are already benefiting from that. The formula has allocated an increase for every pupil in every school in 2018-19, with increases of up to 3% for underfunded schools and more for the very lowest funded.

Changes to the formula have delivered significant gains in Plymouth, where schools have attracted an extra 3.3% per pupil on average this year. By 2019-20, that will be 5.9% more per pupil compared with 2017-18. That is equivalent to an extra £251 for every pupil, or a total increase of £10.2 million when factoring in rising pupil numbers. Furthermore, 15 Plymouth schools benefit from the formula’s minimum per-pupil funding level. These schools will not have their gains capped, so they will attract their full allocation by 2019-20.

The Department has also prioritised additional support for Plymouth through the strategic school improvement fund, with £681,000 approved to support 42 Plymouth schools, including funding projects focused on the teaching of phonics and maths. The high-quality training delivered through the secondary system leadership project has been welcomed. Although the project is in its infancy, I am confident that it will deliver increased capacity and capability in effective school self-review, peer review and school-to-school support and improvement.

Two Plymouth secondary schools have further benefited from £299,000 in emergency school improvement funding to drive longer-term whole-school support. The impact of that funding has been significant. For example, a “Ready to Learn” behaviour approach at All Saints Academy has fostered a culture in which rules matter and is proving to be an enabler of excellent teaching.

Furthermore, we have given strong trusts in Plymouth the opportunity to access additional funding to improve schools and increase social mobility through the MAT development and improvement fund. Four Plymouth trusts have been awarded grants and will access a minimum £298,000 of funding in this financial year. In total, that is more than £1 million in additional funding that the Government are injecting into the Plymouth education system. Funding for Plymouth schools is £149.6 million this year, rising to £153.3 million next year.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising the importance of the Plymouth Challenge initiative. I share his vision of a high standard of education for all pupils and a system that enables all—regardless of background —to reach their potential. I have spoken about the collaborative stewardship role that we have taken in working towards transforming education in Plymouth, the impact of the funding streams that we have harnessed and committed to the city’s schools and the importance of working with stakeholders and learning from excellence outside the city. I have also spoken of the formal and informal ways in which we are strengthening leadership, raising aspirations and improving standards for the benefit of Plymouth pupils now and in the future.

I am keen to work with the hon. Gentleman and other Plymouth Members, and headteachers from his constituency, to explore how we can support the system, allowing schools to be at the forefront of improvement while continuing to challenge standards. I very much welcome his involvement in seeking to raise standards in Plymouth schools and very much want to be part of that process. Working with him, headteachers and other Plymouth MPs, I am sure that we can achieve a huge amount through the Plymouth Challenge to raise standards in all Plymouth schools.

Question put and agreed to.

Teachers’ Pay Grant

Nick Gibb Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2018 Written Statements

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

Today I am confirming the allocations for the teachers’ pay grant for 2018-19.

The teachers’ pay grant was announced on 24 July by the Secretary of State for Education. This will be worth £508 million in total and will fully fund the 2018-19 academic year pay award to the end of the spending review period, over and above the 1% rise schools would have expected and been planning for.

On 14 September the Department for Education published the rates and high-level methodology for the teachers’ pay grant.

The grant will be paid to all state-funded schools and academies, including maintained nursery schools. This will be on the basis of pupil numbers in mainstream schools, and place numbers in special schools and other specialist provision. All schools will be funded for at least 100 pupils or 40 places.

Funding for mainstream schools will be allocated on the basis of pupil numbers and each school will have a specific allocation which cannot be modified by the local authority.

Local authorities will receive an allocation in respect of specialist provision in their area. This will be based on the number of places in each school, with all schools being funded for at least 40 places. The local authority will have the flexibility to allocate funding to the schools in their area, taking into account the particular circumstance of the schools and following consultation with them.

Further details and guidance will be published on gov.uk.

[HCWS1028]

School Funding

Nick Gibb Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. We all admired your agility in mental maths at the beginning of the debate.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

A good education.

[Nick Gibb]

I am sure that that is the case.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) on securing this important debate. It is always interesting to follow a Labour spokesman talking about school funding. It was the Labour Government who left the coalition Government with a record public sector deficit of £150 billion, which is equal to 10% of GDP—on the brink of collapse—an economy in recession and high unemployment. We have reduced that deficit to under 3%, we have the lowest level of unemployment since the 1970s and we have halved youth unemployment to record low levels. The hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) should be more careful when he talks about public finances.

This debate is timely, given the looming Budget next week. I am sure that everybody has listened carefully to my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans and other hon. Members who have spoken. We are determined to create an education system that offers opportunity to everyone, no matter what their circumstances or where they live. That is why we have delivered on our promise to reform the unfair, opaque and outdated school funding system by introducing the national funding formula for schools, which previous Governments had shied away from doing, including the previous Labour Government.

The introduction of the national funding formula means that this year, for the first time, funding was distributed to local authorities based on the individual needs and characteristics of every school in the country. This historic reform is the biggest improvement to school funding for a decade and it is directing resources to where they are needed most.

This Government want to ensure that all children receive a world-class education, and we have made significant progress. More schools than ever before are rated good or outstanding; 86% of schools are now rated good or outstanding, compared with—

[Mike Kane]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nick Gibb]

I will not give way.

That figure compares with 66%, which is what we inherited from the previous Government. The attainment gap is beginning to close and we have launched 12 opportunity areas to drive improvement in parts of the country that we know can do better. Children’s reading ability is also improving. We have risen from joint tenth in the reading ability of nine-year-olds to joint eighth in PIRLS, the progress in international reading literacy study.

However, we have made those achievements against a backdrop of inheriting an unfair method of distributing funding, which has hindered and not helped progress. Across the country, schools with similar pupil characteristics used to receive markedly different levels of funding for no good reason, meaning that the right resources did not reach the schools that needed them most. That is why it is so important that we have delivered on our promise to reform the unfair school and high-needs funding systems and introduced a national funding formula.

Schools are already benefiting from the gains delivered by the national funding formula. The formula has allocated an increase for every pupil in every school this year, with increases of up to 3% for underfunded schools. Next year, those schools that have been historically underfunded will attract increases of up to 6% more per pupil compared with 2017-18, as we continue to address historic injustices.

The constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans will attract gains of 2.5% per pupil under the formula next year compared with 2017-18, which is an extra £3.1 million for schools in St Albans when rising pupil numbers are taken into account. Of course, how that money is allocated will depend on the local authority. Special needs funding in Hertfordshire will rise by £4.4 million this year, rising to some £107.9 million.

I listened very carefully to the hon. Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas), and of course I would be delighted to accompany him on a visit to schools in his constituency and to meet headteachers.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) has attended many of these debates on school funding, as he pointed out, and made calls for a fairer funding system. He has been successful in that respect; he should acknowledge his own success in putting the case for schools in West Sussex, because they have seen an increase in the funding allocated to them. How it is allocated on a school-by-school basis will depend on West Sussex, but the funding that it has received for schools in my hon. Friend’s constituency for 2019-20 has risen by 5.5% compared with 2017-18.

My hon. Friend and constituency neighbour the Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan) was right to point to improving standards in her constituency and she was also right to refer to special needs funding, which I will come to. Under the national funding formula, the amounts allocated to schools in her constituency will rise by 3.4% in 2019-20 compared with 2017-18.

I was interested to hear about the “Politics and Pastries” roundtable that the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) held. I would love to have been there; nevertheless, I would be delighted to meet headteachers from his constituency at some point very soon. Pupils in Plymouth will be funded on the same basis as in the rest of the country, despite what he said, under the national funding formula. That is the whole purpose of the national funding formula: based on the same needs, those pupils will receive the same amount. The hon. Gentleman referred to the gains cap, which ensures that changes in funding can be smoothed over the years under the national funding formula. Approximately 75% of schools that gain under the national funding formula—those that were historically underfunded—will be fully on their national funding formula figure by 2019-20.

The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) raised the issue of York’s position in the national league tables of school funding, but I should point out to her that the amount allocated to schools in her constituency will rise by 5.4% in 2019-20, compared with the baseline of 2017-18. We have made a significant—

[Mike Kane]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nick Gibb]

No, I will not give way, because I am running out of time.

[Mike Kane]

rose—

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

Order. The Minister is not giving way.

[Nick Gibb]

We have made a significant investment in our schools by providing an additional £1.3 billion across this year and next, which is over and above the funding confirmed in the 2015 spending review. The additional money means that core funding for schools and high needs will rise from almost £41 billion in 2017-18 to £42.4 billion this year, and to £43.5 billion in 2019-20. As the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies has confirmed, funding for five to 16-year-olds will be maintained in real terms per pupil across this year and next year. The IFS has also pointed out that by 2020 real-terms per pupil funding will be some 70% higher than it was in 1990 and 50% higher than it was in 2000.

Of course we recognise that we are asking schools to do more and that schools are facing cost pressures. That is why the Department is providing extensive support to schools to reduce cost pressures. We have recently launched “Supporting excellent school resource management”, a document that provides schools with practical advice on savings that can be made on the £10 billion of non-staffing expenditure in schools. It summarises the support the Department is offering to help schools to get the best value from their resources, including things such as buying equipment more cheaply and the new teacher supply agency framework, which ensures that fees paid by schools to agencies are transparent and that people are aware of what they are signing up to.

Another issue that was raised was, of course, high needs. We are firmly committed to supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities to reach their full potential. That is why we have reformed the funding for these children by introducing a high-needs national funding formula. We have invested an extra £1 billion in funding for children with high needs since 2013 and next year we will provide local authorities in England with over £6 billion in high needs funding, which is up from just under £5 billion in 2013. We recognise the challenges that local authorities face with their high needs budgets, which is why we have provided them with support to deliver the best value from their high needs funding. We are also monitoring our national funding formula for high needs and keeping the overall level of funding under review.

The issue of teachers’ pay and pensions was also raised. We have responded to the recommendation made by the school teachers’ review body to confirm the 2018 pay award for teachers, which will see a substantial 3.5% uplift for the main pay range, a 2% uplift for the upper pay range and a 1.5% uplift for the leadership pay range. That will ensure that schools are supported to continue to attract high-quality staff members and retain them.

[Gareth Thomas]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nick Gibb]

I will not give way, because of time.

We are funding the teachers’ pay award above the 1% that schools will already have budgeted for, by providing a teachers’ pay grant worth £187 million in 2018-19 and £321 million in 2019-20. This funding will be over and above the funding that schools receive through the national funding formula.

I want to give time to my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans to respond briefly to the debate, so I will conclude by thanking all Members who have contributed to this important debate. It is a key priority for this Government to ensure that every child receives a world-class education, to enable them to reach their full potential. I believe that the significant extra investment that we are making in our schools—both revenue and capital, and distributed more fairly through the national funding formula—will help us to achieve that.