School Admissions Code

Nick Gibb Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2016 Commons Chamber

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

Thank you, Mr Bercow—Mr Speaker, rather; I beg your pardon. I am still recovering from Question Time earlier today.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) on securing this debate on the admission of summer-born children, and pay tribute to him for leading the campaign to ensure that summer-born children and those born prematurely have the best and most appropriate start to their education. Yet again, he made a compelling case. I welcome this opportunity to explain the Government’s position, and to provide an update on next steps. I share his concerns about this issue, and would like to reassure him that we have been considering how we can take forward the changes announced last year to summer-born children’s entry to school.

As my hon. Friend is aware, admission authorities must provide for the admission of all children in the September following their fourth birthday. We know that most parents are happy for their children to go to school at this point, confident that they are ready for the classroom. Parents are, however, not obliged to send their child to school until they reach compulsory school age, which is the start of the term after their fifth birthday or, to be precise, the prescribed day after they turn five. Where parents feel their child is not ready to start school before compulsory school age, there are flexibilities in the system that enable them to defer the date on which their child is admitted to school until later in the reception year, or to arrange for them to attend on a part-time basis until they reach compulsory school age.

Where parents of a summer-born child want their child to start school at the age of five, as the law enables them to, their child will start school at the point when other children in their age group are moving up from the reception class to year 1. Like my hon. Friend, many parents have concerns, which I share, that starting formal schooling in year 1 and missing the essential teaching that takes place in the reception class may not be right for their child. Where parents would like their child to start school in the reception class at the age of five, they must currently make a request for them to be admitted out of their normal year group. The admissions code requires the admission authority to make decisions on such requests based on the circumstances of the case.

We have already made improvements to support summer-born children. In December 2014, the Government strengthened the code to make it clear that all decisions must be made in the child’s best interests. In making that decision, the admission authority is required to take into account the views of the headteacher of the school concerned, as they are best placed to advise on which age group at their school the child is best suited to. The code also makes it clear that admission authorities must take into account the wishes of parents, alongside other information relating to the child’s development—any relevant medical history and, in the case of premature children, whether they would have fallen into the lower age group if born at the expected time.

The Government amended the code and revised the non-statutory guidance on the admission of summer-born children to ensure transparency for parents and the best outcomes for children. The new code and guidance provide more information for both admission authorities and parents on how the process should work, emphasising that decisions should be made in the best interests of the child.

Unfortunately, in spite of that change to the code, parents and admission authorities still occasionally fail to agree on what is in the best interest of the child. I have been concerned for some time about the number of cases in which it appears that children are still being admitted to year 1 against the wishes of their parents. As a consequence, these pupils are missing out on the essential early teaching of reading and arithmetic that takes place in the reception class. There are also concerns that some children who are admitted outside their normal year group are later expected to miss a year and move up, against their parents’ wishes, to join the other children of the same age range, as my hon. Friend pointed out.

Another issue, which my hon. Friend raised this time last year, is the admission of children who were born prematurely in the summer term. I agree that the potential problems that may be experienced by some summer-born children would probably be more likely for a premature child, born in the summer, whose expected date of birth was September or later. As my hon. Friend is aware, last September we announced our intention of making a further amendment to the admissions code to ensure that summer-born children could be admitted to reception at the age of five, if that was what their parents wished, and to ensure that those children were able to remain with that cohort as they progressed through school.

We made this announcement last year so that schools and local authorities were aware of the policy direction when making decisions on the cases before them. It is very welcome that some local authorities have now changed their policies on deferring entry to school and have become more flexible in agreeing to parental requests, in line with the policy intention explicitly set out in my open letter of 8 September last year to parents and local authorities. Nevertheless, as my hon. Friend pointed out, the admission of summer-born children continues to be a problem in some parts of the country. We need to do more to help parents, particularly those with genuine concerns about their child’s readiness for school.

Since our announcement last year, I know many parents throughout the country have been waiting for the change to come into force. I understand that it is frustrating, but it is important that we take the time to consider carefully how best to implement the change, and how the new arrangements will be put in place. We will support summer children in the best way we can, but it is important that we also consider the wider impact of any policy changes. It would clearly not be right for every summer-born child to delay starting school until they are five, as many will be ready to take on the challenges of formal schooling earlier. In developing this policy, we want to make sure that parents have the information that they need to make informed decisions about their child’s education. We also need to ensure that parents do not use the flexibilities as a mechanism by which to gain an unfair advantage in the admissions system by applying for a place in the reception class of their preferred school for when their child is four, and again for when their child is five. Furthermore, while we want to provide admissions flexibility where it is most needed, we also want to ensure that we do not create unintended consequences for the early years sector.

We have been considering all these issues carefully as we develop the policy. In particular, we have carried out work on the likely cost of full implementation. First indications show that the costs are high. These are, however, based on a limited amount of information on why parents might choose to defer their summer-born child’s admission to school. This is why we are starting to collect more information and data before making a decision on how to roll out any changes. I know my hon. Friend has a particular concern about the problems faced by some premature children and their readiness for school. I hope I can provide some reassurance that we will also be considering how best to support those children in any future changes.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this important issue today. I hope he is reassured to know that we have been driving this policy forward and ensuring the detailed work is being carried out on the arrangements we might put in place to support parents of summer-born children.

[Stephen Hammond]

Much of what the Minister has said is very helpful in adding detail. I am particularly interested in the cost analysis. My understanding is that headteachers think that while there would be a cost for movement between years, the overall cost would not be particularly excessive. I shall look at the analysis with interest. He says he is driving the policy forward. Can he give some indication of when he expects to either have the consultation or change the code?

[Mr Gibb]

We want to make sure that we have done all the research necessary to determine the extent to which parents will take advantage of new flexibilities. Some local authorities have looked seriously at the letter I sent them and are being very flexible in their approach to the parents of summer-born children. We will look to see what comes out of that experience in determining the likely take-up of those flexibilities by parents of summer-born children, which will then drive the analysis of the costs. The costs may well be neutral to a school, but may not necessarily be neutral to the system as a whole, if children stay in early years provision for longer than they would otherwise have done and therefore spend an extra year in the education system.

We are carefully considering the issues and collecting data on them, which will drive how we determine this policy. I hope that my hon. Friend is reassured that we are driving policy forward and ensuring that the detailed work is being carried out on the arrangements that we might put in place to support parents of summer-born children and to ensure that they do not feel pressured to send their children to school before they are ready.

Question put and agreed to.

Educational Performance: Boys

Nick Gibb Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)]

Well, let me get on with it, Mr Walker. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Karl MᶜCartney) on securing this important debate. It has been an excellent and pacy debate, with excellent speeches on both sides of the Chamber, particularly the passionate speech, based on personal experience, of my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans), the thoughtful speeches of my hon. Friends the Members for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), for Telford (Lucy Allan) and for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond), and other speeches that I will refer to in a moment.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln and the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) have so clearly set out, there are still far too many young people—boys and girls—who are held back by their background and circumstances and who leave school without the basic building blocks for a successful future. The Government are determined to tackle those issues. Tackling educational inequality means raising the bar, setting the highest expectations for all pupils at every stage and raising standards so that every school can deliver a world-class education.

We have already made enormous strides. More than 1.4 million more pupils are now being taught in schools judged good or outstanding by Ofsted than in 2010. Once again, this year’s A-level and GCSE results are testimony to the hard work of thousands of pupils and teachers. But while it is right that we celebrate those achievements, we must also recognise that there are groups of pupils for whom the chances of achieving good GCSEs and A-levels are simply too low.

Tackling the inequality driven by socio-economic background is a key priority for the Government, as is tackling the inequality driven by gender. Whichever way we read the data, they show that girls outperform boys at all educational stages in most areas of the curriculum. In 2015, there was a gap of nearly 16 percentage points between girls and boys judged to be achieving a good level of development at the end of the early years foundation stage: 74.3% for girls and 58.6% for boys. The gap persists at primary school in most, but not all, subjects.

In 2015, while boys’ and girls’ performance in mathematics was consistent—87% of boys and girls achieving level 4 or higher in the key stage 2 maths assessment—a significantly higher percentage of girls than boys achieved the expected standard in reading, writing and grammar, punctuation and spelling. In reading, writing and maths, 83% of all girls achieved at least the expected standard, compared with 77% of boys.

By the time pupils reach the end of key stage 4 at secondary school, the gender gap in attainment has increased. Girls outperform boys across all major curriculum subjects, although the size of the gap varies considerably by subject. For example, in 2015, girls only just outperformed boys in maths and individual sciences, but in English the gap was nearly 15 percentage points, and in the most commonly studied languages—French, German and Spanish—it was around 10 percentage points. Girls remain more likely than boys to be entered for the English baccalaureate: in 2015, more than 43% of girls studied the suite of English baccalaureate qualifying subjects, compared with 34% of boys. More girls than boys achieved it, too: 29% of girls, compared with around 19% of boys.

The cumulative impact of low prior attainment during primary and secondary school is likely to be one of the main factors influencing the slightly lower proportion of boys progressing to a sustained college or sixth form at 16 and the slightly higher likelihood that boys will be not in education, employment or training at the same age. In England, young women are 36% more likely to apply to university than young men; the difference in application rates between them is the highest on record.

It is important to note, however, that gender gaps are a common occurrence internationally, as the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) pointed out. They are in favour of girls in reading, in favour of boys in mathematics but mixed in science. According to the most recent PISA study—the programme for international student assessment, conducted by the OECD—the reading ability of girls is higher than that of boys in every country.

On average across OECD countries, 15-year-old girls are around a year ahead of boys—38 PISA points. The size of that gap is narrower in England: our girls outperform boys by 24 PISA points. The gender gap in maths is reversed—boys do better—and is not as large: 11 PISA points, or four months of education, across the OECD. In fact, boys only scored significantly better than girls in 27 out of 65 countries, and the gender gap remains in favour of girls in Jordan, Qatar, Thailand, Malaysia and Iceland, as I think the hon. Lady referred to. The size of the gap is similar in England to the average across all OECD countries, which is 13 PISA points.

What are the drivers of boys’ under-achievement? I listened very carefully to the excellent speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South. While there is a plethora of data to show where and by how much girls do better than boys in education, there is only limited evidence that explains precisely why boys do not perform as well as girls. There is no shortage of theories, but many of them are not supported by robust research evidence. For example, it has been argued that boys naturally prefer examinations and girls prefer coursework, so boys may have been disadvantaged by the move from exam-based assessments to GCSEs, which place a greater emphasis on coursework. In fact, the attainment of girls at the end of secondary school was already improving before the introduction of GCSEs, and subsequent reductions in the weighting of the coursework component of GCSEs have had little impact on gender attainment patterns.

Another view, which my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln referred to, is that the performance of boys is held back by the lack of male teachers in schools, particularly during the primary phase. He is right to point out that there is a huge disparity in the numbers of men and women teaching in primary schools, but studies that have looked for correlation between teacher gender and pupil attainment have mostly found no relationship of improved attainment when boys are taught by male teachers—although that does not mean we do not want to address the imbalance in the gender of primary school teachers.

The research evidence does suggest that the behaviour and attitudes of boys and girls towards school and academic study tend to differ in a number of ways—my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South referred to some of those. Pupil-level factors appear to play an important role in the gender attainment gap. We know that there are some schools in which pupil attainment is high and the gap between girls and boys is small or non-existent. Those schools tend to be characterised by a positive attitude to study, high expectations of all pupils, high-quality teaching and classroom management, and close tracking of individual pupils’ achievement.

As the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden so passionately and ably pointed out, academies in the Harris Federation in her constituency are improving educational standards for pupils from poorer backgrounds because they adopt those attitudes to education. I have not yet seen evidence of the gap closing, because I do not have the data, but if the hon. Lady has them, or if I can get them from Dan Moynihan, it would be interesting to see the extent to which the Harris Federation’s approach to education is having an impact on the gender gap.

It is important not to generalise. It is simply not true that all boys do badly and that all girls do well. For example, white British girls who are eligible for free school meals generally do much worse than white British boys who are not. Indeed, there is clear evidence that poverty is a much bigger predictor of poor educational attainment than gender, as the shadow Education Secretary pointed out. While gender imposes a relatively consistent educational performance gap across all ethnic groups, the impact is compounded significantly by deprivation. As the Prime Minister noted in her inaugural speech, the chances of going to university are extremely low for white working-class boys. In 2015, fewer than one in four white British boys eligible for free school meals achieved five A* to C grades at GCSE, including English and maths, compared with more than 56% of non-disadvantaged white British boys.

The question is: how are we tackling educational underachievement? The Government’s approach is to set high expectations for what all pupils will achieve by introducing an ambitious and stretching national curriculum and world-class qualifications. To deliver such reforms, we are building a school-led, self-improving education system, characterised by high levels of autonomy and strong accountability arrangements, through which the characteristics of high-performing schools, such as those referred to by the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden, can be shared and embedded across the whole system.

We want all pupils to secure the basics in literacy and numeracy by the end of primary school, and we have set higher standards in those areas of the curriculum. We have embedded the teaching of phonics in key stage 1, which we know is the most effective way of teaching reading for all children, and we are providing catch-up funding to secondary schools to support those pupils who do not achieve the expected standard at 11. As a result, 120,000 more six-year-olds are on track to become fluent readers. Our introduction of the English baccalaureate sets a strong expectation that all pupils will receive a rigorous academic education that prepares them for adult life and success in our modern economy. We have made clear our aim that, by 2020, the vast majority of pupils, boys and girls alike, will take those facilitating subjects as part of a well-rounded education that opens the door to education and employment.

Our new performance accountability measures are also intended to drive up attainment across the board. Secondary school performance tables now report on pupils’ progress from the end of primary school to the end of secondary school, as well as their GCSE attainment. The new measures, known as progress 8 and attainment 8, will encourage schools to focus their attention on the progress and attainment of every pupil, not just those at or near the borderline of a particular performance threshold.

Looking beyond the curriculum, our commitment to character education seeks to ensure that all pupils develop the essential qualities of resilience, perseverance and self-control, all of which are critical for success in both education and adult life.

[Angela Rayner]

In the spirit of this debate, and bearing in mind what is happening in the media, does the Minister believe that grammar schools will help with his aspirations or make things harder?

[Mr Gibb]

The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State have been clear that we need to build a country that works for everyone. We are looking at a range of options to allow more children to go to a school that helps them to rise as far as their talents will take them. We will, of course, say more in due course, as policy is developed under the new Secretary of State.

Our vision for a self-improving school system is fast becoming a reality. Our growing network of teaching schools and multi-academy trusts is ensuring that institutions can collaborate and receive the support they need to raise standards. We are working hard to create a sustainable and diverse succession plan of high-quality school leaders and headteachers, and our expansion of the highly successful Teach First programme—

SATs Results

Nick Gibb Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)]

This has been a good debate, if a short one, about how we ensure that children leave primary school fluent in the basic building blocks of an education. Over the past six years this Government have been determined to ensure that our education system is properly equipping the next generation of school leavers with the knowledge and skills that they need for life in the modern economy, and the ability to compete in an increasingly global jobs market.

Under the remarkable leadership of the Prime Minister and of my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), now the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, and my right hon. Friend the current Secretary of State for Education, we have introduced the most far-reaching education reforms for generations—reforms which are working.

Of course, it would have been easier not to have engaged with the reforms, and to have allowed the continued inflation of results—the year-on-year increases in GCSE grades and SAT test results—masking our decline in standards compared with the most successful education systems in the world. It would have been easier not to take on the vested interests; easier not to embark on raising the bar; easier not to demand phonics; easier not to look at better ways of teaching maths; easier not to challenge the publishers and demand better textbooks; easier not to insist on more pupils taking the core academic subjects that make up the EBacc; easier not to increase the numbers taking foreign languages; easier not to encourage more take-up of maths and physics A-levels.

But we were determined to halt Britain’s decline in the PISA international league tables, which showed the UK falling from seventh in reading in 2000 to 25th by 2009, and from eighth in maths to 28th, and we fell further still in the 2012 PISA survey. We therefore appointed a panel of experts, who examined the curricula of those countries that topped the PISA rankings. We produced a new primary national curriculum, which we consulted on in 2012 and finalised in 2013, and which came into force in 2014, with the first new SATs tests taken two years later, in May 2016.

The new curriculum requires fluency in reading, and it requires phonics in the early years of primary school, followed by a focus on developing a habit of reading. Spelling and handwriting techniques, and grammar and punctuation, which were neglected for decades, have been restored to the school curriculum.

In maths, we looked to the Singapore primary maths curriculum, ensuring fluency in calculation technique, long multiplication, long division and fractions. We reduced the age by which all children should know their times tables from 11 to nine. This year, we piloted a computer-based multiplication tables test. I visit schools up and down the country, and I see more and more pupils fluent in their times tables. That was not so six years ago.

The academic year 2015 was always going to be a challenge, with the new maths and English GCSEs being introduced for first teaching from September 2015. The new, revised GCSEs are on a par with the qualifications taught in the best-performing countries in the world. That is what the education reforms are about: raising academic standards in our schools, raising expectations and raising aspiration. And they are working. The focus on phonics has raised reading standards. In 2011, when we trialled the new phonics check—a short test to ensure six-year-olds are mastering the basic skill of reading simple words—just 32% passed. In 2012, 58% passed, and that rose to 69% in 2013, 74% in 2014 and 77% last year. That means that 120,000 more six-year-olds today are reading more effectively than they otherwise would, because of this Government’s reforms and the focus on phonics.

The new SATs in reading are designed to resist teaching to the test. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) hinted, the way for pupils to do well is to have read a lot during their time at primary school—to have read increasingly challenging books and to have developed the habit of reading regularly. That is why 88% of pupils at Harris Primary Academy Peckham Park reached the expected standard in the new reading test. It is why 88% at Elmhurst Primary School in Newham reached at least the expected standard in reading.

The new maths SATs are made up of one arithmetic paper and two maths reasoning papers. The only way to do well is to ensure that pupils are not only fluent in mathematical calculation, but have a deep, conceptual understanding that comes from practice and good teaching. That is why 94% of pupils at Elmhurst Primary School achieved at least the expected standard and 96% of pupils at Harris Junior Academy Carshalton reached at least the expected standard.

The hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) read a letter from an experienced headteacher in his constituency to his pupils. However, the tests are designed, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, to hold schools to account, not pupils. We know we are asking more, but we are doing that because we are committed to giving young people the best start in life.

This year’s results are the first to be released following the introduction of a more rigorous national curriculum, which is on a par with the best in the world. The results show that there is no limit to our children’s potential, and that schools can rise to the challenge of ensuring that pupils meet the new, higher standards. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) pointed out, neither schools nor parents should try to compare this year’s results with those in previous years; they simply cannot be compared directly. We have published data to show the national averages for the number of pupils meeting the new expected standard. That allows schools to see how their pupils have performed against the national average, which is a much more useful comparison for schools and parents.

The hon. Member for Southport also raised the challenge of the new grammar test. I have to tell him that the national curriculum tests that were sat this May took over three years to develop. During that process, they go through three rounds of expert review, which includes teachers, curriculum experts, markers, special educational needs and disability experts, inclusion experts and cultural experts. The questions are also trialled twice with pupils at the appropriate age—once to check that the questions are functioning as required and that children give appropriate answers, and once to determine the difficulty of the questions, which are improved throughout the process.

My hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) asked the relevant questions about whether we, as a country, are doing a good enough job in educating our young people. As he said, too many children are not given enough knowledge and skills to flourish in secondary school. He is right to point out that there are always challenges when new tests are introduced, but as the tests bed down, teachers become more familiar with the curriculum.

The hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) cited the headteacher at Christ the Saviour Church of England Primary School, an outstanding school in her constituency, as being worried about the floor standards. The Secretary of State has made it clear that given the greater challenge of the new SATs, the number of schools regarded as being below the floor will not be greater than 1 percentage point more than last year. In response to the hon. Member for Blackpool South (Mr Marsden), we are publishing provisional progress figures early in September so that schools will know if they are below the floor. The December figure is the finalised figure after adjustments for errors.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle pointed out that there is more to education than English and maths, and that we need more time in primary school for science, for art, for history and for geography. I totally agree. A knowledge-rich curriculum is key, and that is what the best primary schools in this country are delivering.

The hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) says he knows of too many schools that have seen a sharp drop in their results this year. He is right that the results will focus the minds of the schools that are struggling to deliver the results that other schools in similar circumstances are delivering, and we will help them with that challenge. The stage 1 national funding formula consultation shows that we are proposing to introduce a lower prior attainment factor that will provide extra support to help children catch up.

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned Ofsted and the impact that it will have through the new, more challenging assessments. I have acknowledged that point. I have already written to Sir Michael Wilshaw to ask Ofsted to take into account, when inspectors examine schools, the fact that this is the first year of much more challenging tests and a much more challenging curriculum.

[Vernon Coaker]

For me, this is one of the most fundamental points. What does the phrase “take into account” mean? Does it mean that Ofsted reads it and then does nothing about it? I appreciate its independence, but this is a fundamental point. I have been where the Minister is in taking these things into account and looking into them, and so on, but schools absolutely want reassurance about whether they are going to go from being outstanding to being at risk. It would be helpful if he said a little more about that.

[Mr Gibb]

Experience so far is that inspectors are already taking my letter into account and adjusting their judgments. They are not looking at raw data in an unintelligent way; they are looking at it intelligently, reflecting the concerns raised in my letter. We have also now introduced the progress measure, which means that progress will be a much more important part of determining whether a school falls below the floor.

The hon. Member for Blackpool South asked about Pearson. It has investigated the leak and taken a number of steps to ensure that rogue markers do not deliberately release marking schemes in future, and it is tightening up its contractual arrangements.

As a result of this Government’s education reform, 66% of secondary schools and 19% of primary schools now have academy status, with the professional autonomy that this brings. A total of 1.45 million more pupils are in schools rated “good” or “outstanding” by Ofsted than in 2010. More pupils are taking and securing good grades in the core academic subjects at GSCE that employers and universities most value. More pupils are studying foreign languages and taking A-levels in maths, physics and chemistry. As a result of our reforms more children are reading fluently, and doing so earlier.

I was saddened by the approach taken by the new shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner). Yesterday, in a Westminster Hall debate on term-time holidays, she supported our reforms to improve school attendance. Today, she is reverting to the approach of her predecessor-but-one, the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), in opposing the rise in academic standards and the rise in expectations that the new SATs reflect and assess. She is, alas, simply kowtowing to the NUT “line to take”. This Government are about raising standards, raising expectations and delivering successful and effective reform. I urge the House to reject Labour’s motion.

Question put.

InitialTeacher Training

Nick Gibb Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Written Statements

[The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)]

I am today publishing the reports of the three initial teacher training (ITT) expert groups which I commissioned last year, following a review of ITT carried out by Sir Andrew Carter OBE. Alongside these reports I am also publishing a Government response setting out how we intend to take forward the groups’ recommendations.

The review groups were tasked with developing a new framework of core content for ITT; behaviour management content for ITT; and a set of standards for school-based ITT mentors. The three groups were chaired by, respectively, Stephen Munday CBE, Tom Bennett, and the Teaching Schools Council (under the leadership of Vicki Beer CBE and, latterly, Dr Gary Holden).

Sir Andrew Carter’s report, published in January 2015, highlighted that the system in England is generally performing well, but that more needs to be done to ensure all trainee teachers receive a strong grounding in the basics of classroom management and subject knowledge development, as well as key areas of practice such as assessment and an increased understanding of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Sir Andrew also suggested that the quality of school-based ITT mentoring is not as good as it could be, and his report made a number of recommendations to both Government and the sector in this regard.

Good teachers are the single most important factor influencing pupils’ achievement in school. The Government are therefore committed to ensuring that the education system can recruit, train, develop and retain the best possible teachers in our schools. Key to this is to strengthen the quality and content of ITT programmes so that new teachers enter the classroom appropriately equipped in essential areas such as subject knowledge development and subject-specific pedagogy, practical behaviour management strategies, a sound understanding of SEND, and the ability to use the most up-to-date research on effective teaching practice.

The Government welcome the reports of the three expert groups as an important step towards realising our goals of further improving the quality of teacher training and raising the status of the teaching profession, while directly addressing the issues raised by the Carter review. Our recent White Paper, Educational Excellence Everywhere, published in March 2016, set out plans to develop a new set of quality criteria that will in future be applied when training places are being allocated to providers. We will therefore consider how best the new framework of content can be used to inform those criteria, with a view to ensuring that all providers who are allocated training places are clearly demonstrating the quality of content in their courses. Further detail of how we intend to apply the new criteria to the allocation of ITT places from 2017/18 onwards will be published shortly.

Tom Bennett’s report sets out some clear recommendations for the teacher training sector on how behaviour management should be delivered within ITT. An abridged version of his full recommendations has formed part of the new framework of core content for ITT. It is clear from the report that providers of ITT should ensure that trainees are able to access high-quality training before they are ready to enter the classroom; this is a recommendation with which we strongly agree, and we would encourage all providers to ensure that their programmes are structured accordingly.

Linked to high-quality training programmes is the critical role that school-based mentors should play in supporting teacher trainees to develop into effective teachers. This is particularly true as we continue to drive the move towards more school-led teacher training, as set out in the White Paper. The Teaching Schools Council, led firstly by Vicki Beer CBE and subsequently by Dr Gary Holden, has developed a set of standards that I believe can help to bring consistency to the practice of mentors, raise the profile of the mentoring role in school-led training, and contribute to building a culture of coaching and mentoring within the teaching profession. All of these are crucial if our next generation of outstanding teachers is to have the greatest possible impact on improving standards of teaching and allowing our children to reach their full potential.

I am placing copies of the reports from Stephen Munday CBE, Tom Bennett and Dr Gary Holden, along with the Government’s response to their recommendations, in the Libraries of both Houses.

[HCWS83]

School Penalty Fines and Authorised Absence

Nick Gibb Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Westminster Hall

[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 129698 relating to school penalty fines and authorised absence from school.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson, and a privilege again to have the opportunity to debate this subject, which looks like it is simply not going to go away. It is evident that parents from all around the country feel strongly, which is why we get to debate it again. We are here as a result of the online petition titled, “No more school penalty fines and bring back the 10 day authorised absence”, which has received more than 200,000 signatures to date. I am sure that we are all clear on the background, but let me put on the record that the petition states:

“Back in 2013 the government changed the law on taking your children out of school in term time so that now you receive a penalty fine of £60 per child”,

which can increase if the fine is not paid within a certain time.

Before the change in the law, which was passed by way of a statutory instrument and without the impact assessments being considered, headteachers had the discretion to allow up to 10 days off for pupils in special circumstances. That approach was rooted in common sense: teachers know the pupils, know the families they come from and know the communities that they are a part of. Sadly, we now have a Big Brother blanket ban on all family holidays in term time that gives the message that the state knows better than parents what is right for their children.

As we know, the rule was turned on its head by a recent court ruling, which judged that it was unlawful to fine parents for taking their children out of school when their children are regularly attending school. Confusion now reigns. We recently heard from Devon County Council that, until the details of the new law are made clear, it has suspended issuing any new penalty notices and cases to be heard in court will be adjourned. Cornwall Council has apparently been accused of going soft on fining parents. Although I welcome the decisions that these two south-west councils have taken, for the sake of fairness and clarity, schools and parents across England need to know where they stand.

Mr Russell Hobby, the general secretary of the school leaders’ union, the National Association of Headteachers, stated that, as we approach the holiday season, the recent ruling had

“created confusion for schools and parents”

and that

“the system of fines is clearly too blunt an instrument and in many cases it drives a wedge between schools and families.”

Swift action is needed to clarify the position for families, schools and all concerned.

The Minister knows that I care deeply about this—we have discussed and debated it before—partly because of the negative effect on the people of my constituency in Cornwall. I have made that case and spoken about the impact on the tourist industry many times before. I do not intend to repeat those arguments, but I want to address what I believe are some of the key arguments and some of the points that parents up and down the country feel very strongly about. I believe that we need to return to a policy that brings back common sense and a degree of flexibility.

I believe that the policy devalues the place of the family. The Government do not know what is best for my or anyone else’s children. Every child is unique and every family is different. This one-size-fits-all blanket ban does not allow for the uniqueness of every child and every family. It is not the Government’s role to tell parents what is best for their children.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)]

Does my hon. Friend accept that it is the Government’s role to say that education should be compulsory from the age of five to 16?

[Steve Double]

I thank the Minister for that intervention. Of course I agree with him that we value compulsory education in this country and that it has a very important part to play. However, compulsory education does not happen only in the classroom—it does not mean that children should be stopped from taking a family holiday, which, I would argue, has an equally important role in their upbringing.

One parent who was fined for taking his child to a sporting world championship that a family member was competing in wrote these words to me:

“The notion that a state official can criminally enforce their perspective on which family members are important to a child is very disturbing coming from a democratic government…By focusing on what is an ‘exceptional circumstance’, and trying to eliminate cheap holidays, the law has sent schools down the path of criminally enforcing ethics, family values, the intimate details of children’s lives and relationships, without any qualifications or regard for academics, the wellbeing of the child, or the integrity and dignity of the family structure.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

Absolutely. Many businesses in such resorts find themselves in that position. That feeds back into the point I made earlier: because the season is now so focused, families who run tourism businesses in my constituency and that of my hon. Friend have no choice. There is no way they can possibly go on holiday during the school holidays, so they have to request to take their children out of school, otherwise they will not be able to enjoy a holiday.

It is absolutely right that the Government have a duty to ensure that children have full academic attendance and a full school record. I am not arguing with that, but there must be some carrot and some stick. My fear is that, with the 2013 guidelines, the balance has shifted rather too much towards the stick approach, which I do not think is valuable or helpful.

Let me go off script for a moment. I am a bit of an old-fashioned Tory sort of boy, and I like less government. I like smaller government. I like government that does not just sit in Westminster bringing a clunking fist down rather hard on parents, families and working people who are just trying to do the right thing. I have an uneasy sense that the current regulation and policy are on the wrong side of that. I passionately believe that, as a Conservative Government, we should be helping hard-working people who occasionally have no choice but to take their children out of school. As in the case of my constituents, Mr and Mrs Short, they might do so not for a holiday but for a perfectly reasonable sporting endeavour. I am not sure how we have reached the point where, as a Government, we are saying, “We, centrally, know better than you.”

[Mr Gibb]

This debate boils down to two phrases: “in special circumstances” and “in exceptional circumstances”. It is about the difference between the words “special” and “exceptional”, so the way my hon. Friend is describing matters exaggerates the issue. Even he believes that headteachers should grant term-time holidays not in all circumstances but in special circumstances. The Government believe that they should be granted only in exceptional circumstances.

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

I thank the Minister for his views. I shall simply say this: at the moment, we are in a mess. Teachers, headteachers, schools and parents do not know where they stand. I take his point, which is perfectly reasonable. I do not agree that I am exaggerating the situation, though, because I have been on the receiving end—as I am sure other hon. Members have—of hundreds of emails, letters and phone calls from parents and headteachers who are deeply worried about the position in which they now find themselves. That is not an exaggeration.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

Could my hon. Friend define what he means by “good” in that circumstance, and will he confirm that it is the level that the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) referred to as one day a fortnight?

[Mr Turner]

No. Mr Platt used the term “good” to describe his child attending school all-year round except for a fortnight, which is not the same as one day a fortnight, and there was no evidence from any quarter to question that description.

Isle of Wight Council wanted a different interpretation of the law and so it took Mr Platt’s case to the High Court. The High Court found that it was not acceptable for the authority

“to criminalise every unauthorised holiday by the simple device of alleging…that there has been no regular attendance in a period limited to the absence on holiday.”

The judgment said that regular attendance must be measured over a longer period of time, and Mr Platt’s daughter’s attendance record was satisfactory in that respect.

The High Court’s judgment did not find favour with either Isle of Wight Council or the Department for Education. The Department has now provided the council with funding and legal support to take the case to the Supreme Court. Mr Platt is being given no such help; he is fighting this battle using private resources and not public money. The state is throwing the book at him for daring to stand up to the authorities and being found right—not once, but twice. So this is a real David and Goliath situation.

I am a former teacher and both my parents were teachers, too, so I understand the importance and value of education. I have experienced at first hand the difficulties of teaching a class where not all the children are in the classroom full-time. However, I have also seen the immense value of family holidays, in educational and other terms.

I have listened to the Government’s argument about the relationship between attendance and attainment. It exists, but it is not a simple picture. As the latest research from the Department itself says:

“There are a range of pupil, school, parental and societal characteristics that are likely to affect attainment in varying degrees.”

It is the interplay of factors that cannot be judged in Whitehall. Schools can collaborate with parents to ensure that a child’s education will be enriched by a family holiday and of course the child can be set work to be completed while they are away.

However, if the headteacher cannot justify that the holiday is being taken in “exceptional circumstances”, then parents can be criminalised under legislation introduced by statutory instrument in 2013. For many years, parents have been legally responsible for their child’s regular attendance at school, and headteachers are accountable for the performance of their school and their pupils. So it should be headteachers, working with parents, who decide whether or not to allow a family holiday, or any other kind of absence, after taking into account all the individual circumstances.

Before being elected to this House, I ran the Grant Maintained Schools Foundation and I am proud that this Government have taken forward the principle that we worked so hard to promote—greater autonomy and decision making in schools. So I find it incomprehensible why, on this particular issue, the Government insist that they know better than headteachers what is best for individual children.

There is a misconception that prior to 2013 parents had a right to take their children out of school for up to 10 days for a holiday. That was never the case. Headteachers were able to agree to a child being absent on a family holiday in “special circumstances”. It has been said, including by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Schools himself during a debate last October, that the 2013 amendments “clarified” the situation, but I disagree. A change from “special circumstances” to “exceptional circumstances” is a material difference, and it has given rise to markedly different approaches from local education authorities.

We now have a postcode lottery that determines whether a parent is prosecuted. For example, I understand that in the west country Cornwall has issued four “school fines” in the last three years, but Devon, which is just next door, has issued 1,386 such fines in the last year alone. The variation is great even among just primary schools on my island. In one school, the parents of 176 pupils received fines over three years, while another school did not issue any fines at all. That cannot have been the Government’s intention—or, if it was, they are not explaining it well.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)]

It is a pleasure to serve once again under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I welcome the response to the debate from the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner). I predicted that she would make a formidable shadow Secretary of State, despite the odd circumstances of her appointment, and today she has reconfirmed my view. I welcome her support for the Government’s policy, particularly her support for the Government’s attitude to attendance. She clearly shares our concern that attendance is key.

The hon. Lady raised the example of a diagnosis of cancer as not being regarded as exceptional. I refer her and other Members taking part in the debate to the National Association of Head Teachers advice and guidance, which, at point 10, states:

“Families may need time together to recover from trauma or crisis.”

A cancer diagnosis is therefore regarded as an exceptional circumstance, and attending hospital or illness is of course a reason to authorise absence.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) for leading this important debate. The subject is close to his heart—we debated the issues fairly recently on 19 May and also in an urgent question that he raised on the Floor of the House. The debate gives me the opportunity to restate the Government’s position on school attendance for parents, schools and local authorities, particularly as I know some parents and schools have been confused by the recent High Court judgment in the Isle of Wight term-time holiday case. I hope I can fulfil the request from the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne to provide clarity on that. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones) for his constructive approach and to other hon. Members who have taken part in the debate.

The e-petition states:

“No more school penalty fines and bring back the 10 day authorised absence.”

My hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay referred to the 200,000 people who signed the petition. We take that very seriously, but it is a small proportion of the parents of 8.4 million school-age children in this country. My hon. Friend the Member for North Devon said that he does not agree with the part of the petition that refers to bringing back the 10-day authorised absence—nor does my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay, nor the Government today and nor the Government in 2013.

In 2013, the Government clarified the law to address what was a widespread misconception that parents were entitled to take their children on holiday during term time. No such entitlement has ever existed in law. Teachers and schools support the increased clarity. As anyone who works in schools knows, education is cumulative, and unauthorised absences have a significantly adverse effect on the child who is absent as they miss vital stepping stones towards understanding curriculum content. Unauthorised absences also damage the education of the rest of the class as teachers have to spend time trying to help the absent pupils catch up when they return. The Government clarified the law to ensure that headteachers retained the discretion to authorise a leave of absence by considering the merits of each request and deciding whether it qualifies as an exceptional circumstance. Children should not miss school unless the circumstances are genuinely exceptional.

I refer my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon to point 3 of the NAHT guidance:

“If an event can reasonably be scheduled outside of term time then it would not be normal to authorise absence.”

The converse is that, if an event cannot reasonably be scheduled outside of term time, such as a championship or a sporting event of high significance to the child or indeed to the country, then of course it would fall within point 3 of the guidance, although it is ultimately a matter for the discretion of the headteacher.

The regulatory changes that we introduced in 2013 have been very successful. Since their introduction, as the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne said, the rate of absence due to term-time holidays has decreased by more than a third. The number of persistent absentees in England’s schools has dropped by more than 40%, from 433,000 in the academic year 2009-10 to 246,000 in 2014-15. Some 6.8 million days were lost due to authorised and unauthorised term-time holiday absence in the 2012-13 academic year. That fell to 4.1 million days in 2014-15—a drop of 2.7 million days—meaning more children sitting in more classrooms for more hours. That has been driven particularly by a drop in absence due to authorised term-time holidays, with only 3.4% of pupils missing at least one session due to authorised term-time holidays in 2014-15, down from 15.1% in 2012-13.

My hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay correctly cited statistics that showed that the rate of agreed term-time holidays is lower for persistent absentees than for other pupils: 0.5% due to family holidays by persistent absentees versus 1.9% for other pupils. However, the situation is reversed for unauthorised term-time holidays: 0.6% of all possible sessions missed for persistent absentees versus 0.3% for other pupils.

[Steve McCabe in the Chair]

The Government acknowledge that family holidays can be enriching experiences, but the school year is designed to give families numerous opportunities to enjoy holidays without having to disrupt children’s education. Parents should plan their holidays around school breaks and avoid seeking permission from schools to take their children out of school during term time unless there are exceptional circumstances. I recognise that the cost of holidays is a frustration that many parents share, and I certainly encourage travel operators to do what they can to provide value for money to families, but ultimately, in a competitive market in which British businesses are in competition with others across the globe, it is for those businesses to decide their prices based on demand across the year.

Tourism is a key industry that supports almost one in 10 jobs in the United Kingdom. That is why the Government are encouraging more visitors to discover more of our country, as set out in the five-point plan that the Prime Minister announced in July 2015. Holiday sales in the UK continue to be buoyant, suggesting that there is sufficient supply and strong demand. There were more than 124 million overnight domestic trips in Britain in 2015—a 9% rise on 2014 and the highest figure since 2012. The amount spent was also up 9% to £25 billion, a record £19.6 billion of which was spent in England.

If parents and schools want different term dates so they can take holidays at less busy periods, we encourage them to discuss that with their local authority. The authority to change term dates sits with academies, voluntary-aided schools and local authorities. Decisions about term dates are best taken locally, especially where the local industry—for example, tourism—creates a compelling reason to set term dates that differ from those of the rest of the country.

As of January 2016, about 81% of secondary and 41% of primary schools, educating 57% of all mainstream registered pupils, have the responsibility for their own term and holiday dates. That includes all academies and free schools, and other schools where the governing body is the employer of staff, such as foundation or voluntary-aided schools. Some of those schools have led the way in making innovative changes in the interests of pupils and parents.

[Steve Double]

I understand the point that the Minister is making about varying term times, but it presents real difficulties. For instance, a primary school in my constituency that the Prime Minister praised for changing its half-term dates had to revert back after two years because of the pressure on parents with children at other schools that did not change their term dates. It created more problems than it solved.

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend raises a real, practical issue about having different term dates in different parts of the country. That is something that the local authority and academies have to take into account when they consider changing term dates to reflect an industry or tourist needs in a particular region. They will have to weigh up the comparative advantage of that inconvenience versus the convenience of the industry that supplies the jobs in that area. That is why the decision needs to be taken locally by people who know how to weigh up those advantages and challenges.

That happened, for example, in Landau Forte Academy in Derby, which has operated on a five-term year since 1992. Eight-week terms are followed by two-week breaks and a four-week summer holiday. The academy feels that a shorter summer holiday is particularly beneficial for pupils from low-income backgrounds, who might not otherwise receive any stimulating activities in the holidays. It takes into account the dates of other local schools to ensure there is always some overlap of holidays. For example, one of its two weeks in October is always half term for other Derby schools.

Bishop Bromscombe School in St Austell, for example, improved school attendance by moving to a two-week May and June half term that allows parents to holiday outside peak times—[Interruption.] I assume that that is the school that my hon. Friend was talking about. It has now reversed that decision. If I had been quicker, I would have omitted that paragraph from my response.[Laughter.] I could, I am sure, cite other examples from around the country of schools that have taken advantage of that freedom.

Our reforms have put teachers in charge of their classrooms and headteachers in charge of their schools. Many measures are available to improve school attendance. Only when all other strategies to improve attendance have failed should sanctions such as penalty notices or prosecution be used. Schools, local authorities and the police have been able to issue penalty notices for unauthorised school absence since September 2004. There were 151,000 penalty notices issued for unauthorised absence in the 2014-15 academic year, up 54% from the 98,000 issued in 2013-14, indicating a continuation of the upward trend since 2009-10. The increase in 2014-15 was greater than the yearly increases prior to 2012-13, but it is lower than the increase of 88% between 2012-13 and 2013-14.

I believe it is right that local authorities and schools are actively addressing pupil absence. The impact of that can be seen in the historical downward trend in the absence figures, which show that, since 2009-10, almost 200,000 fewer pupils are persistently absent.

Although the Government are disappointed with the High Court judgment on school attendance, we are clear that children’s attendance at school is non-negotiable, and we will take the necessary steps to secure that principle. I recognise that the High Court judgment has created uncertainty for parents, schools and local authorities. Given its importance, it is essential that the matter is clarified, which is why we decided to support Isle of Wight Council’s request for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court, and why I wrote to all schools and local authorities in England to make it clear that the High Court judgment does not establish that a pupil’s attendance above 90% is regarded as regular attendance.

Headteachers are responsible for deciding whether there are exceptional circumstances that merit granting a pupil leave of absence. My letter concluded by explaining to local authorities receiving requests for refunds that the decision in the Isle of Wight case does not require them to refund penalties that have already been paid. The Department for Education expects applications for such refunds to be refused.

[Lilian Greenwood]

I agree that 90% does not constitute sufficiently regular attendance. Do the Government intend to amend the current legislation to define the term “regular” to give local authorities and schools the clarity that they are looking for?

[Mr Gibb]

The Government will set out our next steps in due course and will make an announcement. In the meantime, as I have said, I have written to local authorities and schools setting out the current position, notwithstanding the Isle of Wight case. We have supported the Isle of Wight’s decision to appeal to the Supreme Court. That is the Government’s position, but we will have more to say about next steps in due course.

The Government’s commitment to reduce overall school absence is part of our ambition to create a world-class education system. That cannot be achieved if children’s education is disrupted due to preventable absences. The evidence is clear: every extra day of school missed can affect a pupil’s chance of gaining good GCSEs, which has a lasting effect on their life chances. That is why we take this issue so seriously.

Teachers Strike

Nick Gibb Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I do not wish to disrupt the flow of the hon. Gentleman’s eloquence or the eloquence of his flow, but at this point all he needs to do is ask his urgent question. His more detailed supplementary will come after he has heard what the Minister has to say, in which I am sure he is extremely interested.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)]

There is absolutely no justification for this strike. The National Union of Teachers asked for talks, and we are having talks. Since May, the Department for Education has been engaged in a new programme of talks with the major teaching unions, including the NUT, focused on all the concerns raised during the strike. Even before then we were engaged in round-table discussions with the trade unions, and both the Secretary of State and I meet the trade union leaders regularly to discuss their concerns.

This strike is politically motivated and has nothing to do with raising standards in education. In the words of Deborah Lawson, the general secretary of the non-striking teacher union Voice, today’s strike is a

“futile and politically motivated gesture”.

Kevin Courtney, the acting general secretary of the NUT, made it clear in his letter to the Secretary of State on 28 June that the strike was about school funding and teacher pay and conditions, yet this year’s school budget is greater than in any previous year, at £40 billion—some £4 billion higher than 2011-12. At a time when other areas of public spending have been significantly reduced, the Government have shown our commitment to education by protecting school spending.

We want to work with the profession and with the teacher unions, and we have been doing that successfully in our joint endeavour to reduce unnecessary teacher workload. With 15,000 more teachers in the profession than in 2010, teaching remains one of the most popular and attractive professions in which to work. The industrial action by the NUT is pointless, but it is far from inconsequential. It disrupts children’s education, inconveniences parents, and damages the profession’s reputation in the eyes of the public, but our analysis shows that because of the dedication of the vast majority of teachers and headteachers, seven out of eight schools are refusing to close.

Our school workforce is and must remain a respected profession suitable for the 21st century, but this action is seeking to take the profession back in public perception to the tired and dated disputes of the 20th century. More importantly, this strike does not have a democratic mandate from a majority even of NUT members. It is based on a ballot for which the turnout was just 24.5%, representing less than 10% of the total teacher workforce.

Our ground-breaking education reforms are improving pupil outcomes, challenging low expectations and poor pupil behaviour in schools, and increasing the prestige of the teaching profession. This anachronistic and unnecessary strike is a march back into a past that nobody wants our schools to revisit.

[Nic Dakin]

Not only have we had the first junior doctors strike on this Government’s watch, but today we have failure in another public service with the teachers strike. Sadly, this Government have relished attacking education professionals, undermining them and describing them as “the blob”, instead of engaging with them and celebrating their role in driving up individual child and school performance. At a time when people have a right to look to Government for stability and security, a breakdown of trust among teachers and a strike of this nature is most unfortunate.

At the heart of this is concern felt by people on the frontline, be they teachers, head teachers or parents, about future school budgets. Everyone knows that despite the Secretary of State’s protestations, school budgets are going to fall in real terms, year on year, up to 2020. Head teachers know it, parents know it, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies has confirmed it. The only person who is shoving her head in the sand in total denial is the Secretary of State. That failure of Government has resulted in what we are witnessing today—massive disruption, classes cancelled and pupils sent home.

The Chancellor has made it clear that he is tearing up his fiscal rules. As my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) asked yesterday, will the Government now commit to securing our children’s future by reversing the planned cut in funding and securing the necessary cash for our nation’s children? As I asked yesterday, will the Minister commit to publishing the Government’s response to the School Teachers Review Body by the end of this academic year so that head teachers can plan effectively?

It is clear that the Government have lost the plot. They have a problem with teachers—they cannot recruit or retain enough, and they have lost teachers’ confidence in large numbers. It is clear today that our children, who are our future, are paying the price of Tory education failure.

[Mr Gibb]

It is nice to hear from the shadow shadow Schools Minister on the fourth row of the Opposition Benches. The only people who are undermining the teaching profession are the leadership of the National Union of Teachers. I am disappointed that the hon. Gentleman is jumping on this dispute to make cheap political points, instead of joining the Government and condemning this unnecessary and pointless strike. Will he now say that he opposes this strike by the NUT, which is disrupting children’s education and inconveniencing parents?

Finally, just to respond to the hon. Gentleman’s point about the School Teachers Review Body report, we will publish the report, together with our response and a draft revised school teachers pay and conditions document, as soon as we have completed our consideration of it.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

Parents do not know why many teachers have gone on strike, and I am sure many of the teachers themselves do not understand why this strike is taking place. What parents do know is how difficult it is to make arrangements for childcare at short notice. Will the Minister pay tribute to the many teachers who are in work today, doing the right thing by their pupils?

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend is right. These strikes not only damage children’s education, with every extra day of school missed damaging the outcomes for those children, but hugely inconvenience working parents, who have to make childcare arrangements or take a day off work in order to look after their children. So I share my hon. Friend’s comments, and I pay tribute to the vast majority of teachers and head teachers who are working today, resulting in seven out of eight schools refusing to close.

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

As in the case of the junior doctors dispute, I am sure that the general public watching this debate will see through this Government’s mirage and their fascination with what they seem to think is the picture out there. Taking strike action is one of the most difficult decisions any teacher makes. No one takes that decision lightly, but teachers have said enough is enough. They are fed up with the cuts, which 70% of heads say are directly affecting educational standards. Will the Minister now accept that class sizes are increasing, pupils are getting less choice about the subjects they learn, jobs are going and children are getting less individual time with staff?

I find the Minister’s faith in the free market’s ability to decide teachers’ salaries touchingly naive, on a day when the pound has fallen to a 31-year low. Can he tell us whether there is any limit to how far he is prepared to see teachers’ salaries fall? Meanwhile, the Secretary of State has refused to say anything about what will happen to teachers’ pay and conditions in September, and we have still not heard anything about that from the Minister. We are less than a month from the end of term, so will he finally end the uncertainty and update the House on what teachers can expect?

Unfortunately, the Secretary of State seems to be spending more time on the Justice Secretary’s campaign for the Tory leadership than on her day job. Will the Minister now agree to get around the table and thrash out a better deal for the next generation, which is what every parent across the country wants? The working conditions of our teachers are the learning conditions of our children, and our children deserve the very best.

[Mr Gibb]

What the public are seeing is a Labour party that is equivocal about whether it agrees with strike action that is disrupting children’s education. The hon. Lady is not prepared to condemn strike action that is not only damaging children’s education but hugely inconveniencing working parents, who have to make alternative arrangements for looking after their children.

The hon. Lady talks about class sizes, but the average infant class size has remained at 27.4—unchanged from 2015. Indeed, of the 3,066 infant classes with 31 or more pupils, 80% have just 31 pupils, and that is because of the flexibility we have built in to allow one or two extra children—for example, twins—to have access to those schools. Will the hon. Lady condemn that policy?

I have said that we will publish the STRB report when consideration of it is complete. We will consult teachers and stakeholders about the future of the STRB and about the arrangements when all schools are academies. However, let me give the hon. Lady one final chance to say, on behalf of the Labour party, that it condemns this unnecessary and futile strike by the National Union of Teachers.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Working mums and dads in my constituency will today be hugely inconvenienced by this completely unnecessary strike action. Many of them work in the local NHS and in local public services and social services, and their patients and customers will be inconvenienced by their absence as part of a politically motivated strike that is, frankly, an embarrassment to many members of the NUT itself. Will my hon. Friend the Minister praise those teachers who have walked across picket lines today to teach children in our local schools? They are the shining example, not the NUT.

[Mr Gibb]

Yes, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. Nothing is more important than ensuring that young people get a good education—that they master the basics of reading and writing, get good GCSEs and are prepared for life in modern Britain. I do pay tribute to all those teachers who have gone into work today, despite the NUT’s action, which is based on a ballot of less than 25% of its members. We want to make sure that no child’s education is disrupted, and I pay tribute to the fact that seven out of eight schools have refused to close.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

This strike by teachers is significant. This group of people have gone into a vocational and caring profession. They are not driven by money, but they do seek to be recognised and valued for the job they do. The ongoing erosion of teachers’ pay and conditions and their increasing workload make their vocation hard to live out, particularly when they could earn more and have better terms and conditions working in the local supermarket. It is easy to say at the Dispatch Box that teachers are valued, but actions have to match the rhetoric. Yesterday in Education questions, I asked the Minister a question, and I repeat it today: what is he doing to ensure that teachers have a nationally guaranteed level of pay? How is he working with teachers to reduce their workload? How is he protecting their terms and conditions, such as maternity and sick pay?

[Mr Gibb]

Kevin Courtney, the acting general secretary of the NUT, has made it clear that the dispute is about pay and conditions. On workload, what is disappointing about the strike is that we have been working extremely closely and constructively with all the teacher unions to tackle unnecessary workload. As a consequence of our discussions, we have established three workload groups, staffed by highly experienced teachers and headteachers. We have looked at data management, planning and dialogic marking. Those groups have all reported, and we have accepted all their recommendations. That will have a genuine effect on the top three workload issues highlighted by the Secretary of State’s workload challenge, to which 44,000 teachers responded. On teachers’ pay and conditions, as we move into a situation where more and more schools become academies, we will consult with the profession about the future of the STRB process.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

If the shadow Secretary of State is right that strike action is always a big and difficult decision, is it not about time that strike action is not allowed when such a derisory proportion of members—in this case, 24%—vote for it, particularly given the huge disruption it causes to pupils’ education, to parents’ lives and to other teachers, who have to cover for those who are out on strike?

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Trade Union Act 2016 will ensure that industrial action in essential services gets the go-ahead only after a ballot of at least 50% of members. Bearing in mind that the turnout for this ballot was just 24.5%, this strike would not be legal if the new regulations had taken effect. We are consulting with stakeholders on the regulations, and the thresholds are likely to come into force later this year.

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

I received a message today from Nicola, a teacher—I am sure her class is not full of twins—who said that she is trying to work out how to fit next year’s class of 34 into a room with furniture for just 28 children, while also making leaving cards for four members of staff. What does the Minister have to say to Nicola?

[Mr Gibb]

What I would say is that the percentage of pupils in infant classes of more than 30 is 5.8%, which is down from 6.2% in January 2015. In the last five or six years, we have created 600,000 more school places. We have doubled the amount of capital going into creating new school places, compared with that spent by the previous Labour Government. Incidentally, they removed 200,000 primary school places, which is the problem we have had to tackle, and they did not plan for the increased birth rate.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

Our teachers do a fantastic job, but does the Minister agree that there are ways to protest that do not involve damaging children’s education and inconveniencing parents? Does he agree that there has to be the strongest possible justification for such drastic action and that that threshold has not been met in this case?

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Ministers in the Department are always open to having discussions with trade union leaders. We have one-to-one discussions, we attend the new programme of talks and we attend the roundtable talks. Officials also have regular talks with the trade unions. This is not a necessary strike, because those discussions are always taking place. This has more to do with the internal workings of the NUT than with the real pay and conditions of teachers in this country.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Has the Minister not got a cheek to be talking about 20,000-odd teachers deciding to strike for a moment or two, when he is part of a Government who are going to let only 120,000 people decide the Prime Minister, instead of having a general election? Does he agree with that?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Gentleman talks about 20,000 teachers, but there are 456,000 teachers in this country—the highest number in our history. He has been a Member of this House for a long time, and he knows that we live in a parliamentary democracy.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab/Co-op)]

This is an England-only strike. There are no strikes in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, because their devolved Governments listen to and respect teachers. Standards have increased in Wales year on year, and the gap with England is closing. Where teachers are valued and listened to, that does not lead to strike action. The Minister should follow the lead of the devolved nations in supporting all teachers.

[Mr Gibb]

The problem with education in Wales is that standards are behind those in this country. In fact, yesterday we were asked what advice we could give to the Welsh Government about our academies programme, our reforms to the curriculum, and our reforms of GCSEs and A-levels, which are resulting in higher and improving standards in this country. The gap, I suspect, is widening.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

As we now have a Chancellor talking about post-Brexit largesse, what do Ministers intend to do to ensure that the projected schools funding cuts are prevented?

[Mr Gibb]

We have protected school funding on a per-pupil basis. School funding is now at £40 billion—the highest it has ever been, and £4 billion more than in 2011-12. Because of the decisions that the Chancellor took in his Budgets, particularly the June 2010 Budget, we are not facing, and have not faced, the crisis facing countries such as Greece that had the same deficit as a percentage of the budget. We have not faced their crisis of closing schools, slashing salaries, and cutting numbers of teachers; we have maintained stability in our system. The average class size has remained stable in that period despite the fact that we have also created 600,000 more school places.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

There is a section of the Government that does not believe in experts, but, for the record, is the Minister really contradicting the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which predicts an 8% fall by 2020 in school budgets, in real terms?

[Mr Gibb]

We are aware that there are costs that schools have to face in the coming years, but we have protected school funding. If we look across Whitehall, we see the reduction in spending that we have had to secure to tackle the record public sector deficit that we inherited in 2010—£156 billion, or 11% of GDP. It is now down to less than 4% of GDP, thanks to those savings. We have issued significant guidance to schools about how they can manage their budgets and procure savings and efficiencies in the way they run their schools to meet these challenges.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) on ensuring that the Government are held to account on the failure in education policy, which is very important. The Minister should know, as he articulated, how real the demoralisation is of teachers in our schools. Have the Government made any assessment of the impact on our children’s education of how demoralised teachers are? Why do the Government not take serious steps to try to lift the morale of teachers rather than constantly denigrating them in this Chamber?

[Mr Gibb]

No one on the Government Benches is denigrating teachers. Teachers in this country are a much respected profession who are providing a very high, and improving, quality of education to young people. We have reformed the primary curriculum and the secondary curriculum, and we have reformed GCSEs, putting them on a par with the best qualifications in the world. The teaching profession has responded magnificently to those new challenges. Today we have published the key stage 2 results on a pupil basis, and we see that two thirds of pupils are now meeting the new expected standards in reading and 70% of pupils are meeting the new expected standards in mathematics. That is a tremendous achievement given the very significant rise in the expectations and rigour of the new primary curriculum.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

Just to be clear, does the Minister accept the IFS’s prediction that school budgets will fall by over 8% up to 2020—yes or no?

[Mr Gibb]

School budgets have been protected. We are spending £40 billion, and we have said that per-pupil funding for schools is protected throughout this Parliament. Schools will face increased costs of salaries, pension contributions and national insurance, but we have provided advice to them about how they can meet those challenges to procure more efficiently and to make sure that their staffing arrangements provide the best education within their budgets. We have protected school funding throughout this Parliament.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

Perhaps I need to declare an interest, as my sister is a teacher. With regard to why she would go on strike, it is not just about her terms and conditions—it is about the pupils to whom she believes she has a responsibility. The Minister has mentioned record budgets. Will he confirm or deny whether, in real terms, the budget has gone up per pupil?

[Mr Gibb]

It has gone up in real terms overall, as I have said, and £40 billion is the highest ever level of spending. We have had to take some very difficult public spending decisions over the past six years because of the mismanagement of the public finances by the Labour Government—a party and a Government whom the hon. Gentleman supported. As a consequence of taking those difficult decisions, we are not facing the challenges that other countries in Europe that have had similar levels of public sector deficit have had to face.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I think that our constituents would expect us to try to cool the temperature here. Those of us who have been around in education for some time know that previous Labour Governments have had their disagreements with the NUT. The fact of the matter is that there are a lot of unhappy teachers out there at the moment, and they do have some real concerns. This is an important statement. Indeed, what other statement could have got the whole ragtag and bobtail that remains of the Government Front Bench here at one time? This is a serious matter. Let us cool the temperature, talk to teachers, meet their concerns, and get them back to work.

[Mr Gibb]

I totally agree with the hon. Gentleman and former Chair of the Education Committee; he is right. We do talk to the teaching profession. We have regular discussions. The Secretary of State and I, and other Ministers, regularly visit schools up and down the country and talk to teachers. There is no question but that the reforms that have been put in place over the past five or six years have been very significant; we do not resile from stating that. It was important that we raised standards of reading and arithmetic in primary schools, that we reintroduced grammar into the primary curriculum, and that we revised and improved the curriculum in secondary education. We have to make sure that our young people are prepared for life in modern Britain and prepared to compete in an increasingly competitive global jobs market, and we are delivering on that. I am delighted by the way in which the profession has responded to those challenges.

[Julie Cooper (Burnley) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that teachers are the experts in education, and that when these professionals have genuine concerns that funding cuts are damaging the education of our children, it would be irresponsible of them not to make those concerns known to Government? If the teaching profession had the respect and the ear of this Government, they would not be in the position of having to take last-resort strike action to protect the education of our children.

[Mr Gibb]

No, I think that is an anachronistic approach to discussing important political issues. We have regular discussions with the teacher unions. We have all kinds of reference groups of representative teachers whom we meet regularly in the Department for Education. We are very aware of teachers’ concerns about the changing curriculum and worries about workload. We had a workload challenge to which 44,000 teachers responded. We take all these issues very seriously, and we respond to concerns. We do not want to go back to the 1980s and have strikes as a way of engaging in issues of concern. They are not necessary, and most teachers agree with that.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

The Minister can say all he likes about school budgets going up, but the facts on the ground paint a very different picture. One of the schools in my constituency has had to close down its summer school, which was deliberately targeted at helping deprived students to catch up before the beginning of the school year. Will he look at that example, and other examples that other hon. Members are sure to raise, to make sure that the funding cuts do not impact on deprived students, in particular?

[Mr Gibb]

Yes, of course I will look at any individual examples that the hon. Lady or any other hon. Member wants to bring my attention, and I will make sure that the school is receiving the best possible advice on how to manage its budget.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Schools in my constituency are affected by industrial action today, and governors have been clear with me and with parents that it is funding pressures, particularly in relation to children with special educational needs, that are forcing them to make redundancies to balance their budgets. Will the Minister guarantee that the needs of children with special needs are adequately funded?

[Mr Gibb]

We want to make sure that the education of those children in particular, and that of all vulnerable children, is protected. One of the reasons we introduced the pupil premium, which provides £2.5 billion a year, was to make sure that funding goes to the most vulnerable children in our school system. We are consulting on the national funding formula and on the high needs funding formula. That consultation has closed and we will respond to it shortly.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

My impression is that the Minister is prepared to hand out blame but not to accept it. He says that this action is damaging children’s education and disrupting parents, but his Government’s decision to impose on primary teachers of key stage 2 a new four-year curriculum that they had only two years to deliver led to a chaotic series of results, which were published today. The results have upset parents and they are much worse than the Secretary of State predicted. Does that not harm children’s education more than the antics of the NUT today?

[Mr Gibb]

No, it does not. The new curriculum is essential if we are to prepare young people for life in modern Britain and equip them to do well at secondary school. The previous levels did not ensure that children, including those reaching level 4 at the end of key stage 2, went on to get at least five good GCSEs. This curriculum is much more rigorous and it has been designed to be on a par with the best education jurisdictions in the world. Some 66% of pupils are already meeting the new expected standard in reading, while 70% are meeting it in maths and 72% in grammar, punctuation and spelling. I think that teachers have done a great job in preparing pupils for this new, more demanding curriculum.

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

Brilliant former colleagues of mine have been brought to their knees by the unmanageable and exhaustive workloads introduced by this Government. Given that more teachers left the profession than joined it last year, does the Minister accept the link between teachers’ morale and the huge numbers leaving the profession?

[Mr Gibb]

Let me give the hon. Gentleman some facts: in 2015, 43,000 teachers left the profession—some due to retirement, while others went into other walks of life—but 45,000 entered it. Some 14,000 people returned to the profession, which is a higher number than the 11,000 in 2011. I do not recognise the picture painted by the hon. Gentleman. Whenever I visit universities and schools and make public statements, I talk up the profession, to encourage young graduates and sixth formers to think about a career in a very important and highly respected profession.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

I do worry about the Minister’s arithmetic capabilities when he sets himself against the IFS, which has clearly said that school budgets will be cut by 8% in real terms by 2020. That is one side of the equation. The other side, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) has said, is teacher morale, which has been compounded by some of the changes to the curriculum and the additional workload. Why have Ministers set their face against the teaching profession in this way? Have they not today reaped what they have sown?

[Mr Gibb]

I accept that the changes implemented in the past five years have been radical. They have taken many years to prepare. The primary curriculum was published in 2013 and became law in September 2014, and the first assessment of it took place in May 2016. The first teaching of the English and maths GCSE reforms began in September 2015, after four or five years of preparation, and the first teaching of a number of other subjects will take place this September. I understand the work involved in preparing for a new specification and a new curriculum, but the changes are hugely important and they will have a dramatic impact on the standard of education in our state schools in the year ahead. That is a prize well worth delivering, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will support higher academic standards in our state schools.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

In encouraging people to go into teaching, what reassurance can the Minister give to those who want to teach art, drama and music that there will be departments that require their services in the years ahead?

[Mr Gibb]

There was a Westminster Hall debate on this issue yesterday, during which I set out the figures for art and design and for music. They show that the take-up and entry figures for those subjects have remained stable, notwithstanding the introduction of the EBacc combination of core academic subjects. It is important that more young people take those core academic subjects of maths, English, science, a humanity subject and a modern foreign language at GCSE. That is what happens in a number of high-performing jurisdictions around the world. We want our young people to be competent in a foreign language. That is why we set a target that 90% of pupils will be taking the EBacc combination by 2020, but that does not mean that there is no space or time in the school curriculum for those important creative arts subjects.

Bill Presented

Digital Economy Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Secretary John Whittingdale, supported by the Prime Minister, Secretary Sajid Javid, Secretary Stephen Crabb, Secretary Greg Clark, Secretary Nicky Morgan, Secretary Amber Rudd, secretary Elizabeth Truss, Matthew Hancock, Mr David Gauke and Mr Edward Vaizey, presented a Bill to make provision about electronic communications infrastructure and services; to provide for restricting access to online pornography; to make provision about protection of intellectual property in connection with electronic communications; to make provision about data-sharing; to make provision about functions of OFCOM in relation to the BBC; to provide for determination by the BBC of age-related TV licence fee concessions; to make provision about the regulation of direct marketing; to make other provision about OFCOM and its functions; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 45) with explanatory notes (Bill 45-EN).

Oral Answers to Questions

Nick Gibb Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Commons Chamber

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

1. What assessment she has made of the effect of conversion of schools to academies on teacher pay scales.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)]

Academies have the freedom to determine their own pay arrangements. They are not bound by the provisions of the “School teachers’ pay and conditions document”, and can set the pay of their staff at the level they consider appropriate to recruit and retain the high-quality teachers they need. Academies’ freedoms also extend to other areas, including the curriculum, enabling them to develop approaches that better meet the needs of their pupils.

[Marion Fellows]

For local authority maintained schools, teacher pay scales are nationally agreed, as the Minister has just said, and they give teachers a clear indication of how their salaries will increase. However, allowing academies and academy trusts to set their own pay scales means that staff pay is very variable. What assessment has the Secretary of State carried out of the effect of deregulating pay scales on teacher morale and retention?

[Mr Gibb]

May I first welcome the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) and congratulate her on her appointment as shadow Secretary of State? She follows in the footsteps of the long-serving hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass), and I suspect she was more surprised than I was by her appointment. Having worked with her in seeking to raise standards in Oldham schools, I know how able a shadow Secretary of State she will be.

In answer to the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows), flexibility is of course important. It enables academies to flex their salaries and to recruit and retain the top-quality graduates they need. It is a very worthwhile policy, and it is working.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is essential that headteachers have the ability to flex salaries to retain the very best staff? Will he also comment on whether resigning after 48 hours in the education sector sets a new record?

[Mr Gibb]

I think it must be the record for the shortest-serving shadow Secretary of State. I am particularly offended, though, that there is no one to shadow me, and I wonder what I have done to deserve that offence.

[Mr Speaker]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman will bear up stoically and with fortitude under the burden.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

Could the Minister now answer the original question? Is he advocating the abolition of national pay scales, because that is what it sounds like he is saying?

[Mr Gibb]

What I am saying is that, with the new freedoms academies have, they are able to pay salaries to attract the best teachers. That is a very good policy; it enables them to retain and attract the graduates in maths, physics and modern languages that schools and headteachers are telling us they need to recruit.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

The School Teachers Review Body reported a very long time ago, and we are nearly at the end of the academic year. What is holding up the Government’s response to this report?

[Mr Gibb]

Ah, so there is my shadow, sitting on the Back Benches. He is very welcome. I wish he were sitting on the Front Bench and not there. However, in answer to his question, we are currently considering the STRB report, and we will publish it shortly, together with the Government’s response.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

24. It is likely that academies in better-off areas will be able to access more funding and therefore pay higher salaries and attract the best teachers. What will that do for staff morale in academies in poorer areas? How will they be able to attract the teachers needed to close the attainment gap?

[Mr Gibb]

Academies’ funding rates are the same as those for the area in which they are situated. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will say something shortly about the national fair funding formula, which we hope will make funding across the country fairer.

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to face the Minister for the first time today. As he mentioned, we have discussed education issues in one of the areas in my constituency, in Oldham. It has been an interesting week, and I am really pleased that there are still two women at the Dispatch Box overseeing education; that is really good news.

We face a crisis in the teaching workforce, and it has not been made any better by the potential problems with teachers’ pay. Almost 50,000 teachers quit this year—the highest figure ever. More teachers left than were recruited, and applications are still falling. The crisis has left academies spending nearly £200 million more on supply teachers in the last year. Is the Minister now prepared to apologise for the Government’s accusation that the Opposition were scaremongering in raising this issue?

[Mr Gibb]

The truth is that there are record numbers of teachers in the profession today. There are 456,000 teachers—15,000 more than there were in 2010. Some 43,000 teachers left the profession in 2015, but they were replaced by 45,000 coming into it. Talking down the teaching profession does not help to encourage graduates to come into it. Wherever I go, I talk up the profession. I hope that the hon. Lady, in her role, will do the same.

[Angela Rayner]

I think that every single teacher does an absolutely superb job. Ministers should listen to teachers when they talk about the issues that teachers face every single day in the classroom. On today’s evidence, it seems that Ministers are failing and not coasting. They are not prepared to apologise. Where is the evidence that devolving terms and conditions to school level will lead to higher standards? Can the Minister tell us of any other high-performing country in which this has been done?

[Mr Gibb]

Academies are improving their standards at twice the rate of local authority schools; that is particularly the case for primary schools that have been underperforming and have been turned into academies. After two years, they are improving their standards by 10 percentage points—twice the rate of local authority schools—and using their flexibilities to ensure that they can recruit the best teachers into their classrooms.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

Academies are able to pay higher rates of pay to keep teachers, but deregulation of pay scales means that staffing budgets can also be slashed, with the key resource—the teacher—becoming a second-class asset. What steps has the Minister taken to protect pay scales to ensure that teachers have a nationally guaranteed level of pay?

[Mr Gibb]

It is odd to hear people complaining that we are going to cut teachers’ salaries and at the same time saying that there is a shortage of teachers and that it is difficult to recruit. The free market will ensure, of course, that salaries—the jobs market—[Interruption.] We are living in a strong economy. We have to compete for our graduates with companies up and down the country. That is what will secure high salaries for the teaching profession.

[Carol Monaghan]

Tomorrow’s planned strike by members of the National Union of Teachers has come about as a result of the ongoing erosion of teachers’ pay and conditions, with entitlements such as sick leave and maternity rights under threat. How does the Minister plan to protect teachers’ maternity rights under the academy system?

[Mr Gibb]

The strike is based on a ballot in which under 25% of teachers in the NUT voted. I agree with Deborah Lawson, the general secretary of Voice, which is a non-striking teachers’ union, who has called these strikes a “futile” and “politically motivated” gesture. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said, this strike will

“harm children’s education, inconvenience parents and damage the profession's reputation in the eyes of the public”.

Does the hon. Lady agree with that assessment?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)]

The White Paper set out our commitment to ensure that parents have a more significant voice in schools. We will build on existing effective practice in academies to strengthen the expectation that they will listen to the views and needs of parents. We will also launch a new parent portal, setting out key information that parents need to know about schools.

[Rehman Chishti]

Parent governors play a vital role in schools across the country and in my constituency of Gillingham and Rainham. The excellent portfolio holder for children’s services in Medway, Councillor Mike O’Brien, asks the Minister to confirm that the parent governor role will continue under the Government’s new plans for academies.

[Mr Gibb]

I agree with my hon. Friend and the excellent Councillor Mike O’Brien, whom I know well and wish all the very best, that parents play a very important role in the governance of our schools. I fully expect that to continue as more schools become academies. High-quality governance is vital for the success of our schools, and boards need governors with the right skills to perform the role well. Many parents have the skills to make them effective governors, and boards will continue to appoint them as governors for that reason. There is nothing in the White Paper proposals to prevent academies from continuing to have elected parent governors if they wish to.

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State sought to ban parents from becoming school governors. She has blocked Ofsted from inspecting academy chains, and she refuses to have any democratic oversight of regional school commissioners. In her final days in office, with school improvement stalled, according to the chief inspector, has she not realised that the command-and-control, “Whitehall knows best” approach to schools and education does not work?

[Mr Gibb]

This seems like an upside-down House: the Labour Front Benchers are on the Back Benches, and its Back Benchers are on the Front Bench. We intend to increase academy engagement with parents by creating an expectation that every academy will put in place arrangements for meaningful engagement with parents and for listening to their views and feedback.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

23. Will the Minister use this occasion to reassure parents of pupils at the Europa School in my constituency that they will still be able to play a part in the running of their school?

[Mr Gibb]

Yes, I am very happy to give my hon. Friend that assurance. Of course they will. The Europa School provides an excellent education. Since it became a free school in 2012, it has been rated good by Ofsted, and it continues to provide a very high-quality education.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

Parents in my constituency have been left feeling bewildered and angry after an academy order was issued for Sedgehill School but was withdrawn for six months because the regional schools commissioner could not find a sponsor. What does this uncertainty say about the state of the Government’s academy programme, and how can this uncertainty possibly be good for pupils?

[Mr Gibb]

What it says is that the regional schools commissioners are very selective about the sponsors that oversee our academies programme. That is why two thirds of secondary schools are now academies, one in five primary schools is now an academy and standards are rising faster in academies than in local authority schools.

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

I would also like to pay tribute to my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), and her team for the work that they did with MPs from across the House to convince the Secretary of State that full-scale forced academisation is not right for our children or our communities. As glad as we are that the right hon. Lady was for turning, she still plans to convert schools into academies across vast swathes of our country. Will she now rethink her description of parents as “vested interests”, which added insult to injury?

[Mr Gibb]

May I correct the hon. Lady? Her predecessor was not the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell); it was the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass), and I regret that she felt it necessary to resign. The academies programme is very successful, even without taking the powers that we had suggested. The programme is moving at pace—there were 200 academy conversions last month—and sponsored academies are improving faster under this arrangement. I hope that the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) will support a programme that began under the Labour party, although it began under a new Labour Government, not this old Labour Opposition.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

4. What progress her Department is making on ensuring that funding is fairly distributed across schools.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)]

5. What progress her Department is making on giving parents of summer-born and premature children the choice to defer their child’s start at school.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)]

Subject to parliamentary approval, we have decided to amend the school admissions code to support summer-born children in delaying entry to the reception year. We are now considering how to implement that change, and what other changes it would be appropriate to make to the code at the same time.

[Stephen Hammond]

I thank the Minister for that answer. He will know that the delay to the consultation on the code is causing some concern, because of inconsistent responses from local authorities. May I press him further: can we ensure that the code covers the difference between actual dates of birth and due dates?

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend has been a strong campaigner on this issue. As a consequence of his representations, and as part of our review of the code, we are considering whether it would be appropriate to use the due date of premature children rather than the birth date to determine when they start school.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

6. If she will make it her policy that all school children who are non-UK EU nationals retain access to the education system in the event of the UK leaving the EU.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con)]

12. What steps her Department is taking to improve schools in parts of the country where there has been persistent underperformance.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)]

Our strategy for what we are calling “achieving excellence areas” will tackle entrenched underperformance in areas where low school standards are reinforced by a lack of capacity to deliver and sustain improvement. We want to eradicate pockets of underperformance in our school system, and we will do so by targeting leadership and other school improvement programmes in areas of greatest need. We look forward to working with the first areas from this autumn.

[Dr Davies]

I thank the Minister for his reply. Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector of schools, has called on the Welsh Assembly Government to introduce academies in Wales, saying that they improve performance. Does the Minister agree with me that raising standards is vital to helping the economy, and that it is important that political boundaries do not get in the way of business growth in my own area of north-east Wales?

[Mr Gibb]

How wise Sir Michael is, on this and on so much else! Raising standards is key to helping the economy grow and to improving productivity. Officials at the Department will be more than happy to hold discussions with their counterparts in the Welsh Government on how academies are raising standards. We would also be happy to discuss our education reforms over the past six years, which are raising standards and expectations in reading, writing, maths and the whole curriculum, in sharp contrast to what is happening in Wales under a Labour Administration.

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

13. What steps her Department is taking to increase the uptake of languages at GCSE.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)]

The Government have acted to halt the serious decline in the number of pupils taking language GCSEs—40% of pupils in 2011 took a GCSE in modern foreign languages, down from 76% in 2000—and thanks to the EBacc, the proportion of pupils in state schools entered for a modern foreign language GCSE increased by 20% between 2011 and 2015. Our ambition is that 90% of pupils in mainstream secondary schools will enter GCSEs in EBacc subjects, including a language.

[Jake Berry]

The internationalist manufacturing and business base across Rossendale and Darwen needs people with modern language skills if it is to continue to compete and succeed. What steps can schools take to co-operate with local businesses, such as those in my constituency, to ensure that the menu of language skills that pupils leave school with matches business requirement?

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and one of the key goals of the Careers and Enterprise Company is to increase that engagement with business. The CBI’s recent report found that 77% of businesses valued foreign language skills and that nearly one third rated Mandarin as a useful language.

[Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)]

Will the Minister make sure that Punjabi continues to be available at GCSE for many years to come?

[Mr Gibb]

Yes, I can make that commitment.

[Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

15. What plans her Department has to improve child and family social work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)]

T2. Following a rather poor Ofsted report for the local authority in Portsmouth, will the Secretary of State outline what support her Department can give to help schools in Portsmouth to become centres of excellence?

[The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)]

My hon. Friend is a strong promoter of educational excellence in Portsmouth. Centres of excellence in initial teacher training will be designated on the basis of criteria such as the quality of trainee teachers recruited, the quality of training courses, the outcomes for trainee teachers and training providers’ effectiveness in recruiting. We expect to confirm the schools and universities that have been designated as centres of excellence for the 2017-18 academic year when the allocation of training places is made in the autumn.

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

Ten days ago, we had the Government’s latest figures for apprenticeships. They showed that only one in four apprenticeships was going to young people under 19, whether it be in the number of starts or participation, and, even worse, that there were only 12,000 traineeship starts compared to 109,000 apprenticeship starts for under-19s. Does this not show that, after all the time and money Ministers have devoted to apprenticeships, they are still flailing around for a coherent strategy to get young people under 19 to the starting-block—either for traineeships or apprenticeships?

[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely wrong. Following the apprenticeships review in 2012, employers are designing new apprenticeships that are more responsive to the needs of business. More than 1,300 employers are involved; 241 standards have been published; and more than 160 new standards are in development. In the last Parliament, there were 2.4 million apprenticeship starts, and the reforms to technical education will build on that. This is a very successful part of our education system.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

T3. One of the concerns about the fairer funding formula is what happens to sixth-form students. Can Ministers confirm that fairer funding will apply to sixth-form students in particular, and clarify what is proposed for sixth-form colleges?

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[Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)]

T4. Some schools and headteachers are nervous about becoming academies. I believe they need not be, but what reassurance and guidance can the Minister give them on the path to academisation?

[Mr Gibb]

The process of conversion to academies will be assisted by the Department and once a school notifies the Department it wants to convert to academy status, with all the professional freedoms that that brings, there will be a named official who will help it through the process.

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

T9. When research shows that six out of 10 LGBT students have experienced homophobic bullying, there is much to be done to improve life for LGBT pupils. Following her support for UK school diversity week, what plans does the Secretary of State have to ensure schools offer an LGBT-inclusive education?

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[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will be aware of the recent report by the Traveller movement showing that Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children are four times more likely to be excluded from school than other groups, yet 100% of appeals against exclusions from Gypsy, Traveller and Roma children are successful. What action is the Secretary of State taking to address this state of affairs?

[Mr Gibb]

We had a group in the last Parliament to address this very issue, and we are considering how to take that work forward. It is very important that all children, regardless of their background, attend school and we do not have any lesser expectations for children from different ethnic groups. This is a particular group that is underperforming in our system and we need to do more to ensure that they attend school and achieve.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

T6. The principal of Paignton academy, Jane English, recently received a lifetime achievement award for teaching and inspiring generations of students, yet the school has been held back by having some elderly buildings that urgently need replacement. Can the Minister update me on when funding will be made available to do this?

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[Mr Gibb]

That decision will have been taken after consultation. It will have been taken by the regional schools commissioner, with his local knowledge, in the best interests of pupils in that area.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

T7. More schools in Medway are now being rated outstanding and good. Will the Minister join me in paying tribute to the excellent work of Councillor Mike O’Brien, the cabinet member for children’s services at Medway council, who, alongside council officers, school leaders and parents, is working hard to raise standards in Medway?

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[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

T8. I thank the Schools Minister for his recent visit to the Acorn alternative provision academy in my constituency to see the excellent work that it is doing. Does he agree that the delivery of high quality and innovative alternative provision education is vital to raising the life chances of children who find themselves in the most difficult and challenging situations? Can he update the House on the work that his Department is doing to support alternative provision across the country?

[Mr Gibb]

I was actually expecting a question on term-time holidays from my hon. Friend, but I am nevertheless delighted to join him in congratulating the Acorn AP academy. It is an excellent alternative provision academy with a real focus on academic achievement for vulnerable pupils. I certainly agree that outstanding alternative provision is vital, and in our education White Paper we set out reforms that will help to build a world-leading system of alternative provision. The reforms will incentivise schools to commission high-quality provision and make the schools more accountable for the outcomes of alternative provision pupils.

[Mr Speaker]

I can authoritatively pronounce from the Chair that the screeds written for Ministers at Education questions are significantly longer than those written for other ministerial Question Times. That is not a compliment.

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[Mr Alan Mak (Havant) (Con)]

Ensuring that students have access to the latest technology is key to raising standards in schools. Will the Minister join me in congratulating Havant College on its pioneering partnership with Google, which ensures that every student has access to a tablet computer?

[Mr Gibb]

Yes, I would be delighted to join my hon. Friend in congratulating Havant Sixth Form College on harnessing the expertise and ingenuity of Google’s staff and products. The intelligent selection and use of technology in schools and colleges can be a great asset in helping to improve educational outcomes. I hope that this screed was within the time limit, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

Just.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Is the Minister of State surprised to learn that when I shared his latest response to my correspondence about teacher shortages in Slough with our local headteachers, they found it cynical and said that it failed to address the real recruitment and retention problems that they face? Will he meet me and those headteachers to discuss a practical arrangement to deal with the teacher shortages in our town?

[Mr Gibb]

Of course I will meet the right hon. Lady and the teachers from her constituency to discuss this issue, which we take very seriously. We are competing for graduates in a strong economy, and we have recruited 15,000 more teachers since 2010. There are 456,000 teachers in the teaching profession, and 14,000 more teachers returned to teaching last year. That is a higher figure than in previous years. Teaching is still a popular profession, but we are dealing with the challenge of a very strong economy and competing in the same pool for graduates. We take this issue seriously, which is why we have very generous bursaries to attract the best graduates to teaching.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

I was rather surprised to find that the number of children being home schooled in Warwickshire had trebled over the past three years. There are 452 such pupils in the current year. Will Secretary of State tell us what provisions exist to ensure that such children get a full and rounded education?

EBacc: Expressive Arts Subjects

Nick Gibb Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Westminster Hall

[Catherine McKinnell]

My hon. Friend makes a valid and important point.

The question that has been asked over and over again is: why? I hope the Minister will answer that question today. Why would the Government want to limit opportunities to study subjects such as design and technology? The Edge Foundation commented during last week’s EBacc Twitter debate:

“D&T teaches young people how things are designed, developed, made and improved”.

As the National Society for Education in Art and Design succinctly put it,

“In life ‘knowing how’ is just as important as ‘knowing that’.”

I am quite sure that the Minister will pledge in his response that the Government have no intention of restricting access to these subjects. Indeed, in the culture White Paper, the Education Secretary declared that

“Access to cultural education is a matter of social justice.”

However, warm words are simply not enough. What does the Minister really think will be the result of forcing all schools, which are already hard-pressed, to enter 90% of their pupils for the EBacc? A headteacher and member of the organisation SCHOOLS NorthEast has commented that the EBacc creates a “false hierarchy of subjects”. The National Association of Head Teachers has remarked:

“Given the pressures created by the Ebacc, there will be precious little time left for subjects outside the core.”

[The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)]

I did not intend to intervene, but I will do so on that point. The hon. Lady referred to a hierarchy of English, maths and science, so there is already a hierarchy. Does she want to remove that element of compulsion up to 16 in order to eradicate that hierarchy?

[Catherine McKinnell]

I thank the Minister for intervening simply because it shows that he is listening to the debate, which is good. However, those were not my words; they were the words of a SCHOOLS NorthEast member, who has said that the EBacc creates not a hierarchy but a false hierarchy. I said at the beginning of my comments that nobody questions the importance of maths, English and science as a foundation of learning, but the restrictive nature of the EBacc leaves no room for artistic subjects. I am pleased the Minister is listening so carefully.

Who could blame headteachers for wanting to focus all of their schools’ energies on delivering the EBacc’s results, whether or not the subjects studied are appropriate for their pupils? They hear repeated warnings, including in the Conservative party manifesto, that their school will not be able to receive the highest rating from Ofsted if they do not meet their EBacc targets. I know the Education Secretary believes that those expressing concerns about the EBacc are “adults writing off children”, but nothing could be further from the truth. They are seeing a Government restricting young people’s life chances by forcing them to focus on a narrow and restrictively defined group of subjects. They are concerned about a Government reducing the ability of schools such as Walbottle Campus in my constituency to deliver a balanced and creative curriculum tailored to each young person’s talents and needs and focusing on the overall experience and wellbeing of their students. Of course, this is a Government who are determined to impose a one-size-fits-all approach to GCSEs at a time when they claim to be introducing autonomy for all headteachers and local schools through academisation.

The Schools Minister has repeatedly claimed that there is no evidence the EBacc is having a negative impact on the arts, substantiating that with the argument that in the past five years there has been a 3% increase in the uptake of at least one arts subject. We may well hear that again in his response today, but the Bacc for the Future campaign has stated that those figures are flawed as they omit various BTEC qualifications, include early entry AS-levels and neglect design and technology, in which exam entries dropped by a staggering 19,000 last year. Indeed, new figures produced just last month show that entries for GCSEs in arts subjects have fallen by 46,000 this year compared with last year—a loss five times the one in 2015, when candidate numbers for arts subjects fell by 9,000. The ArtsProfessional website reported:

“The falling take-up of arts GCSEs has already started to spill over into A levels. There were 4,300 fewer candidates for A level arts subjects this year—a decline three times bigger than the 1,500 recorded in 2015.”

Of most concern is the claim by the Creative Industries Federation that schools with a high proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals have been more than twice as likely to withdraw arts subjects as those with a low proportion. So much for access to cultural education being a matter of social justice. Of course, that decline is taking place even before the EBacc has become compulsory in our schools. The chief executive of the Creative Industries Federation said that the decline is

“alarming and further confirms a longstanding trend that EBacc is clearly exacerbating.”

He went on to comment:

“For a sector already suffering skills shortages, undervaluing and excluding creative subjects has major ramifications. The impact will not only be felt by the creative economy but also by other sectors, such as engineering, that desperately need some of the same skills. Although it is possible to take up jobs in our sector without exam results in creative subjects, it is much harder and potentially more expensive to do so, which obviously further diminishes the chances for young people from more disadvantaged backgrounds. There are many people who are not academic in a traditional sense and who would struggle with the EBacc yet are thriving and excelling today in careers from fashion to video games. If creative subjects are increasingly painted as an ‘optional extra’ to a more traditional core curriculum, these are some of the people who could be lost in future.”

As the Chancellor highlighted in his 2015 autumn statement,

“Britain is not just brilliant at science; it is brilliant at culture too. One of the best investments we can make as a nation is in our extraordinary arts, museums, heritage, media and sport.”—[Official Report, 25 November 2015; Vol. 602, c. 1368.]

I agree. The Government’s own figures show that the creative industries are one of the fastest growing sectors in the UK economy, worth more than £84 billion a year or nearly £10 million an hour. According to the CBI, the creative industries employ some 2 million people, with around one in 11 jobs found in the creative economy. Critically, as the Creative Industries Federation highlights, those roles are broadly protected from automation.

This is an area in which Great Britain genuinely leads the world but one in which we have a significant skills shortage, so much so that a range of roles in the creative industries are included in the Home Office’s tier 2 visa shortage occupation list—for example, graphic designers, programmers, software developers, artists, producers, directors, dancers and skilled musicians. Nevertheless, this is the time when the Department for Education is determined to force schools down a path that will inevitably lead to even fewer British students taking up the subjects and developing the skills that the UK’s burgeoning creative industries desperately need. As has been made clear by Artists’ Union England—a relatively new trade union established by my constituent Theresa Easton—

“The new EBacc proposals will leave the creative sector without a future workforce.”

It is absolutely nonsensical.

Of particular concern is the evidence highlighted by the Creative Industries Federation’s higher and further education working group, which shows that many of the courses that need students to have studied art and design at school level also have high levels of students with special educational needs. The group cites remarks by the British Dyslexia Association that

“People with dyslexia are frequently successful in entrepreneurship, sales, art and design, entertainment, acting, engineering, architecture, I.T., computer animation, technical and practical trades and professions.”

It also cites the fact that more than 4,000 students at the University of the Arts London are disabled and/or dyslexic—24%, compared with just 4.7% at Cambridge University.

[Catherine McKinnell]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, because I know that she not only cares passionately about how well her own son does and has done, but cares and campaigns passionately for all children with special educational needs. This is an issue that the Minister must sit up and take notice of because by insisting on the implementation of EBacc for all or almost all pupils, the Government seriously risk restricting the life chances and future career opportunities of those with special educational needs. Not only does that do those young people out of their potential creative futures, but it does our creative industries out of their special skills and contributions.

Finally, I want to touch on concerns that have been raised with me about the EBacc by Studio West—a studio school established in West Denton in my constituency in September 2014. As Studio West has highlighted, studio schools have been established to bridge the gap between the skills and knowledge that young people need for success and those that the current education system provides. By design, a studio school’s curriculum embraces enterprise initiatives, innovative project-based and work-related approaches to learning and an emphasis on employable skills. Studio West feels very strongly that the EBacc judgment made of all secondary schools is too restrictive if studio schools are to fully embrace their ethos.

[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Lady is making a very good speech, and I wanted to intervene in order to demonstrate that I am still listening to her wise words. The EBacc consultation makes the point that there is no proposal—certainly set out in the consultation—to include studio schools in the requirement for the EBacc.

[Catherine McKinnell]

I thank the Minister for that intervention because I have already written to him about this issue and have been awaiting a response. I hope that we will receive a fuller response in his reply to the debate, or indeed in writing.

In conclusion, I introduced my remarks this afternoon by talking about the intrinsic value of the arts and arts education for individuals and wider society. Those points are echoed by Studio West in my constituency:

“Expressive arts subjects allow for intensive focus on essential transferable skills such as problem solving, working collaboratively, interpretive analysis, empathy, self-confidence, discipline, dedication and mastery, to name but a few.”

I was contacted by a large number of individuals and organisations ahead of this debate and I am conscious that I have not been able to mention them all; however, there is one that I want to make particular reference to in conclusion this afternoon. Last week, I received an email from Emma, an experienced secondary school teacher in West Yorkshire. Emma got in touch to ask me to raise her concerns about the EBacc not because I am her MP, but because her voice in Parliament was brutally taken away by the shocking death of our late friend and colleague, Jo Cox—sorry; it’s hard to speak about this—whom she had previously asked to attend this debate.

At a time when we know that there has been a significant increase in mental health issues in young people and at a time when we need more, not less, empathy, tolerance and co-operation in society, I strongly urge the Government to look again and consider the impact that the EBacc is having on the subjects that can help us to achieve that.

[David Warburton (Somerton and Frome) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) on her very powerful and meaningful speech. It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck, and to have the opportunity to speak on a subject that is very important to me.

I should start by declaring a bit of an interest. I am lucky enough to come from an arts background, having studied at the Royal College of Music for five years. As a former composer and musician, then a school teacher, and now vice-chair of the all-party group on music and chair of the all-party group for music education, I am extremely worried by the fivefold decline in the uptake of arts subjects at GCSE over the past year.

I share the belief often emphasised by the Minister for Schools, my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), that academic rigour is essential for social justice—that academic learning and social justice are complementary—but it is important that this does not become a false debate with high academic achievement in core subjects on the one hand and championing of the arts on the other. Both are possible, and indeed both are necessary. Social justice and opportunity must be at the heart of our vision for education and the arts.

With the introduction of the EBacc, as we have heard, schools with a high proportion of free school meals have been more than twice as likely to withdraw arts subjects. That will only exacerbate an already yawning gap between the 50% of students at fee-paying schools who get music tuition and the 15% in state schools. Richard Morris of the Mayor’s Music Fund rightly described this as

“perhaps the greatest single distinction in any aspect of independent/state educational provision.”

I am sure that Members from both sides of the House would want to see such damaging distinctions come to an end.

[Mr Gibb]

Again, I am listening very carefully but could my hon. Friend cite the proportion of pupils in independent schools who take the EBacc subjects?

[David Warburton]

I am afraid I do not have that figure to hand, although I am sure that the Minister can regale us with it. I am sure that he has it front of him and can come out with it later, and I look forward to that with great interest.

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[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck. I apologise to the Minister for not being able to stay to the end of the debate because I am committed to celebrating youth theatre at the National Theatre’s Connections festival this evening.

At the Barbican last week, I saw the first performance of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s last opera, “The Hogboon”. Like many of Max’s works, it used the talents of professional and amateur artists, and involved children as performers. Seeing a chorus of London schoolkids perform the role of the monster, Nuckelavee, was an artistic triumph and for the children also a great personal achievement. What did they learn? Not just singing, but self-confidence, teamwork, timing, communication with an audience and the value of practising, rehearsal and listening to others. That is what performance can bring to anyone’s life.

I will never forget a prisoner who had just been in a performance of “Chicago” at Bronzefield prison. He grabbed my collar and said: “I’ve been a thief for years, but doing this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I see how I can change now. Every prisoner should get a chance to do this.”

George Kirkham, who runs the Creative Academy in Slough, described to me a conversation he had had with a recruiter from one of the biggest national recruitment agencies who told him that they would rather employ a young person with a performing arts degree than with an economics degree because they know that performing arts students have transferable skills. Thirty-five years ago, Brigid Beattie, who took over failing secondary schools in Wandsworth that had just merged and that had a very poor reputation, told me: “Fiona, I will make this an excellent school and I will do it through the medium of drama.” At the time, I was sceptical, but within a very short time it had become a beacon school with outstanding results.

I started my remarks with these anecdotes to show what expressive arts education can instrumentally bring to a young person’s education. We are in an era when claiming that experiencing creative arts subjects is valuable for its own sake, as the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton) rightly did, risks implying that absolute rigour and high standards of learning are not expected. Well, I do expect that. I was a teacher and I know that ensuring that young people experience creating and making things, as well as learning about what other people have made and developing skills such as numeracy, is vital to their emotional and intellectual development.

The problem at the heart of this debate is that we all know that what counts in public policy is what is measured and if what is measured is only EBacc subjects, only they will count. That is why, if we have a mandatory EBacc, we will betray the young people of Britain if it excludes all the expressive and creative arts.

Britain outperforms most countries in the number of Nobel prizes we have achieved. I am certain that is because our education system has traditionally included an emphasis on both science and creative subjects. If we abandon that combination, we will go backwards. It is disingenuous to claim, as the Secretary of State did in a recent speech, that the arts are

“the birthright of every child”

and that

“a young person’s education cannot be complete unless it includes the arts.”

She assured the arts sector that there is nothing to fear from the English Baccalaureate. I am sure that was her hope, but the evidence shows that she is mistaken.

The introduction of the EBacc coincided with a relative fall in the number of qualified teachers employed in schools to teach such subjects and the number of teaching hours devoted to them. According to a survey by the National Society for Education in Art and Design, 44% of secondary teachers said less time was allocated to art in key stage 3 and 34% of those working with post-16s said that courses had been cut. We have heard from my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) about the decline in the number of students taking GCSE subjects in art and design, media, music and so on. That fall coincides with a rise in the number of young people studying EBacc subjects. It is not an overall fall in GCSEs. The total number of GCSE entries in all subjects has increased this year by 0.3%, but over the same period the number of exam entries for arts subjects has fallen by 8%. The falling take-up of arts GCSEs is already spilling over into A-levels. There were 4,300 fewer candidates for A-level arts subjects this year—a decline three times bigger than the 1,500 recorded in 2015.

If the Government are determined to continue with an EBacc measure, it would be easy to fix the problem without in any way watering down the emphasis on the other subjects by simply requiring one creative arts subject within the EBacc portfolio. The qualities that almost all these creative subjects nurture are the qualities that companies know they need. The Government’s emphasis on so-called hard subjects, on factual learning, is old-fashioned and fails to recognise or nurture one of the traditional strengths of British education—that creativity has always been at its core. That is a reason why we are a world leader in creative industries, yet the Government’s approach to school education is putting that at risk.

John Kampfner, who leads the Creative Industries Federation, called the decline in students taking GCSEs in creative subjects “alarming” and said that it

“further confirms a longstanding trend that EBacc is clearly exacerbating...The impact will not only be felt by the creative economy but also by other sectors, such as engineering, that desperately need some of the same skills. Although it is possible to take up jobs in our sector without exam results in creative subjects, it is much harder and potentially more expensive…which obviously further diminishes the chances for young people from more disadvantaged backgrounds.”

He went further than that, but I want to deal with the point about disadvantaged backgrounds, because it is those young people who are losing out most. It is in their schools that there has been the fastest decline in qualified teacher numbers, while schools such as Eton, on the border of my constituency, still celebrate and develop excellent teaching in music, drama and art, as Tom Hiddleston, Harry Lloyd, Eddie Redmayne, Henry Faber, Harry Hadden-Paton, Dominic West, Damian Lewis and Hugh Laurie can all attest.

[Mr Gibb]

Can the right hon. Lady tell me what proportion of pupils at Eton study the EBacc combination of GCSEs?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

My point is not that young people should study these creative subjects instead of the EBacc, but that they should be part of the mandatory experience of young people, which is the case at Eton. Eton has brilliant drama, music and art education. The facilities are extraordinarily wonderful.

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[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

I am grateful to have the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I will start on a personal note. Thirty-three years ago, in the wake of Aled Jones, who had just got to No. 1 with “Walking in the Air” and who sang in the choir at Bangor cathedral, some primary school teachers at a small school with an unfortunate name, Downhills, in Tottenham decided that a young black boy could be one of the first black cathedral choristers in the country. I wanted to contribute to this debate, despite all that is going on in our country and in this House at the moment, because I am clear that I would not be here as a Member of Parliament were it not for that opportunity to go to one of the country’s best state—I emphasise “state”—cathedral schools, the King’s School in Peterborough, attached to Peterborough cathedral. There I was able to express myself in the context of a fantastic music education, but I also learned the rigours and discipline of music, which is why I take umbrage at the idea that the performing arts, music or drama—I will come on to that—can be sidelined as somehow less than, not as academic as and not as important as other subjects.

I challenge anyone who has got to grade 8 in any part of the musical repertoire to tell me that it is not fantastically hard and difficult to do. If we have a future king, Prince William, who can go to St Andrews and study art history, why are we suggesting that these disciplines should be denied to so many young people in our country? I am hugely concerned at the direction the Government have taken. It is very important to have had the petition and to be having this debate in the House at this time.

In the Government that I was part of as a Culture Minister, there were intense arguments about the place of the arts and the performing arts—music and drama—in the curriculum. The truth is that there were some serious turf wars between the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Education, but fortunately we achieved great partnerships. We had something called Creative Partnerships—a fantastic scheme that got musicians, architects and performers of all kinds into schools. It was pioneering and much was learned from that scheme. Of course we had to go into the evidence-based arena and try to explain, defend and demonstrate the benefit, but it was a partnership between the DCMS and the Department for Education.

When we look at what is happening in the DCMS under this Government—the White Paper, policies on heritage and support for museums—we get the impression that that Department gets it. The problem is that the DCMS is losing out in the Whitehall turf war; the Department for Education is riding roughshod over it and saying, “No, we are utilitarian in this Department.” It is interesting because it is almost as though, in order to compete with China and India, we have to ensure that the basics—maths, English and science—are there in the curriculum to the exclusion of other subjects, yet ironically, when we speak to leaders in those countries, there is something missing, and that missing component is the British creativity that means that we have one of the most important creative economies in the world, and the intangible question of how we achieve it. We achieve it because of those fantastic—now I am going to get emotional, thinking of the music teachers who got me here—music, drama and performing arts teachers across our country who are really bringing that into the curriculum. For so many young people, particularly those from more deprived areas, that is sometimes their way through to other parts of the curriculum that feel remote.

I grew up in a home with only two sets of books. We had the “Encyclopedia Britannica”, which took a long time for my mother to buy, on loan, and Mills and Boon. It was my ability to excel at music that enabled me to access other parts of the curriculum. Time after time—we learned this through Creative Partnerships, the scheme we set up in those years of Tony Blair’s Government—the professionals say that that is how it works, so I look forward to hearing the Minister’s contribution.

There is quite a lot of evidence to suggest that 40% of the jobs that young people who are in primary school today will do when they grow up have not yet been invented, and those jobs will require a degree of creativity. Many of us have an iPhone. The iPhone is nothing as technology alone. Design is at its heart, but those disciplines are dropping out of the curriculum. Design and technology is really losing out in this new horizon.

I recommend the Diamond Fund for Choristers to the Minister, if he does not already know about it. Cathedrals are not struggling to recruit young people from all sorts of backgrounds—things have moved on a lot since I was one of the first working-class choristers, and there are now many across the country—but they do need support, so the Diamond Fund for Choristers has been launched. It is hugely important. Many cathedrals are concerned about what is happening with music.

The Ebacc decision is compounding cuts to local authority support for music across schools. With many schools becoming academies and the Department placing emphasis solely on the more utilitarian subjects, there is not only a collapse because of the EBacc; local authorities are moving away from funding music, local museums and local arts as well.

[Mr Gibb]

The right hon. Gentleman talks about music collapsing. In 2011-12, there were 40,761 entries for GCSE music. That went up to 41,000 and something the following year, then to 42,400, and then, in 2014-15, to 43,654 entries.

[Mr Lammy]

I know the figures game, as I have sat where the Minister is. When he replies to the debate, will he break those figures down into state schools, academies and private schools? If he does, I think we will find that the pattern is very different indeed.

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[Mrs Hodgson]

The hon. Lady makes a good point. Trips to theatres, cultural sites and museums are becoming increasingly difficult for various reasons, including safeguarding and cost—even though museums are free to visit, the children have to get there, which takes time and organisation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) said earlier, such trips will be lacking from some of the children’s daily lives, weekends and holidays, so it is important that that shortfall is made up for in school. For more privileged children, no matter whether they go to state or independent schools, it is just a normal part of their existence. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention.

In May 2014, the Cultural Learning Alliance found that the number of hours of art teaching and of art teachers had fallen in secondary schools since 2010. Design and technology faced the greatest decline, with 11% fewer teachers and less teaching time. The number of art and design teachers had fallen by 4% and the number of teaching hours by 6%, even though the number of pupils in secondary schools has fallen by about 2%. It is clear that provision of arts subjects is declining disproportionately.

As I mentioned earlier, the National Society for Education in Art and Design conducted a survey of teachers working across England in the academic year 2015-16 on the impact of Government policy on art, craft and design education over the past five years. The study found that 33% of art and design teachers at key stage 4, across all sectors, reported a reduction in time dedicated to their subject over the past five years. That figure rises to 44% in responses from academies. Of those teachers, 93% said that the EBacc was directly reducing opportunities to select art and design at GCSE level.

The reduction in provision for vocational creative qualifications is even more illuminating and concerning. Between 2011 and 2015, completions of art, craft and design level 2 vocational qualifications decreased by 43%. Although we are discussing the EBacc, which is only a performance measure at secondary school, it is having clear ramifications for other stages of young people’s education. Figures from the Cultural Learning Alliance show that between 2010 and 2015, dance AS-levels have declined by 24% and dance A-levels have declined by 17%.

As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on art, craft and design in education, I have heard anecdotally that primary schools are less free to dedicate time to creative education due to unprecedented pressure on the three R’s—reading, writing and arithmetic, which we all agree are extremely important. As the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) said, it should not be a case of either/or. Both are vital.

Secondary school teachers now report a fall in artistic skills and confidence when pupils arrive in year 7. Sadly, the ramifications of the curriculum changes are that secondary schools are putting less time and fewer resources into creative education in an understandable bid to climb the league tables. It is having a knock-on effect on other parts of the education pipeline. It means that pupils are being denied the opportunity to develop creative cognitive skills that are useful in other subjects, such as maths or science, and may become less confident and able to choose or pursue artistic GCSEs and A-levels.

A broad and rounded education is paramount to skilling our young people to enter the world of work in the 21st century. An art education can be vital to doing so, but if the Government insist on keeping the EBacc as a performance measure, in order not to weaken arts provision in our schools even further, the only way to maintain quality creative education is to include the creative arts in the EBacc. Excluding the arts subjects from the EBacc—

[Mr Gibb]

Which particular creative arts subject does the hon. Lady want to make compulsory to 16?

[Mrs Hodgson]

It could be left to the young person to choose, as with most subjects. We do not tell young people which language they must study, or which humanity. Let the young person choose; just put a list of creative arts there.

By excluding arts subjects from the EBacc, the Government have told our students that those subjects are not important and are a waste of their time and talent. The situation is simply not good enough. We need to be serious about providing a creative education that ensures that young people from ordinary backgrounds, as others have said, have opportunities to develop their skills so that they can become the next world-famous artist filling art galleries around the world, the next global superstar or actor packing out arenas or theatres or—I must declare an interest again—the next big games artist creating the next global game. The UK has world-leading companies in the games industry.

We should not limit young people’s life chances in this way. We need a forward-looking curriculum that provides a truly rounded education, remembering that subjects do not stand alone. Withdrawing opportunities from young people’s lives to express themselves creatively will not only ruin their chance to broaden their horizons and their understanding of what drives us as humans—our creativity—but affect the fledgling sectors that rely heavily on our nurture of the skills needed to make them soar.

Our human creativity is boundless, and studying creative subjects can harness it. That is why it is important that we ensure that whether or not the EBacc remains, the creative subjects have a place in our curriculum and do not face further and continual diminution by Government reforms. The arts are what we all do in our spare time, in one form or another. Why? They make our hearts soar. We are creative and artistic beings. Since the first caveman drew a buffalo on the first cave wall and danced around the fire singing, the arts have been how we express ourselves. They are intrinsic to being human. I ask the Minister: please do not make our education system a cultural desert for our children, as I fear the unintended consequences.

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) for securing this important debate.

Educational improvement is an issue close to my heart, as my constituency is among the worst performing educationally in the UK. When I speak about educational attainment, I cite two simple facts, without fail, that speak more than any other about what an uphill struggle my constituents face in remaining competitive in this increasingly fast-moving globalised world. First, in the league table measuring percentage of individuals with level 4 qualifications or higher, out of 650 constituencies in the UK, my constituency appears 609th. Secondly, when measuring those without any qualifications whatever, Bradford South comes in at 74th.

The task is stark. In simple terms, too few of my constituents boast the higher-level qualifications that they need to access professional and technical careers in the modern economy. To compound the problem, too many are making their way with no qualifications at all, destined for a working life in low-skilled roles typically marked by insecurity, low pay, and little to no opportunity for career progression. To face a fighting chance of accessing and forging successful careers in today’s economy, my constituents have to be better skilled with more qualifications under their belts and, just as importantly, their skills and qualifications must be aligned with today’s new industries.

These new industries, which increasingly drive economic growth, demand a highly skilled and creative workforce. Often they occur in the virtual world, facilitated through computers and sophisticated software—the knowledge economy in its rawest form. Front and centre among such new industries are those falling under the creative industries banner. To our credit, the UK’s creative industries are undeniably world-leading and, astonishingly, contribute more than £76 billion to the UK economy. The sector creates more than one in 11 UK jobs. Yet these industries are afforded little recognition, either by design or as an unintended consequence, in the Government’s policy on the introduction of the EBacc. That is what I wish to address in my remarks. Will the EBacc help or hinder my constituents’ ability to attain both a broad and balanced education and the specific skills that are key to careers in the new creative industries?

On the previous coalition Government’s watch, the uptake of creative subjects in our schools fell by 14%, and our creative industries face a skills shortage. Now, with the EBacc, the current Government are finishing the job of all but destroying the arts, culture and creative learning in our schools. Chief among my reasons for saying so is that the Government’s stated policy on the EBacc is unswervingly prescriptive on subjects and will become all but compulsory for our schools.

[Mr Gibb]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for allowing me to make an intervention. I just wanted to correct her hyperbole, because art and design entries in 2010-11 were 162,000 but by 2014-15 they had risen to 176,000; in music, as I have said before, the number of entries rose from 43,157 to 43,654 over the same period; and in the performing arts, the number of entries rose from 2,648 to 5,997 over the same period.

[Judith Cummins]

I thank the Minister for that intervention; obviously, he has his whole Department’s data at his fingertips. However, I will say that vocational arts qualifications and subjects have dropped.

Ministers’ ambition that 90% of 16-year-olds should take the full EBacc, alongside the Department for Education’s plan to make the EBacc a headline measure for accountability and to increase its prominence in Ofsted inspections, will effectively make the EBacc compulsory for secondary school pupils in England. The EBacc stipulates which subjects must be studied: maths; English literature; English language; double science; a language, ancient and/or modern; and history and/or geography. Where is the room for the new-found self-determination that apparently the brave new world of academisation is designed to offer localities? It is cast aside.

As a result of this prescriptiveness in the EBacc, there will be little or no scope for our children and young people to study creative subjects. Creative subjects are consigned by this new regime, wrongly, to a lesser category of subjects in which arts and creative learning are—by association—considered less worthy than other subjects.

I say to the Minister that that is wrong. Studying creative subjects is not only wholly meaningful and valuable to a broad and balanced education, but equally importantly creative subjects help to position our children and young people for future careers. The very subjects that are key to nurturing the skills critical to knowledge-intensive, highly skilled, well-paid creative industry careers are excluded from the EBacc. Jobs that are destined to become a cornerstone of our future economy are undervalued by the EBacc. That is shameful and short-sighted—negligent, even.

I urge this Government to reconsider their position, as they did with the forced academisation policy, and to do what is right for our future generations. There is no shame in rethinking; it is the mark of a mature democracy. The real shame would be for this Government to plough ahead with a widely discredited policy that is ill-considered to its core and rooted in an outdated educational view that promises to undermine our blossoming creative industries, which promise so much for my constituents and promise to deliver economic prosperity for this country in the coming years and decades.

--- Later in debate ---

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

Thank you, Mr Chope. You have confused me by not being Ms Buck, but I will carry on. As always in education debates, it is interesting to compare the picture in Scotland with that in England. As a former physics teacher, I never considered physics to be any more or less worthy than any other subject. It seems as though a hierarchy of subjects is developing.

At first glance, the principles behind the EBacc seem laudable enough—a solid grounding in core academic subjects makes sense—but the argument is about the key subjects. We are all individuals—not everyone can excel at maths and science. Likewise, arts subjects do not come easily to others, including me. Scotland had a similar system to the one we are discussing today, but forcing pupils to study subjects in which they have no interest is counterproductive and has implications for pupil behaviour, engagement and attainment.

[Mr Gibb]

Does that mean that if a pupil is not interested in maths, they should be able to drop it at any point?

[Carol Monaghan]

A pupil will need a certain grounding in maths, but how many pupils need to know how to do complex algebra or calculus? Basic numeracy and literacy are different from studying subjects in great detail.

[Mr Gibb]

I think the software-games industry would have a different view.

[Carol Monaghan]

In Scotland, we are looking at how we can prepare our students for the workplace. Calculus features in only a few, specific jobs, and we need to consider that.

In Scotland, the emphasis is no longer on a suite of specific subjects, but on personalisation and choice. That has led some students to specialise in science and technical subjects, while others enjoy success in music and the arts. Despite concerns that student numbers may drop in some subjects, the overall presentation numbers have not suffered, because students can take multiple subjects in a curricular area, such as three science subjects or three arts subjects. More importantly, pupil behaviour, engagement and attainment have all improved. Because students have opted into particular subjects, they are in charge of their own decisions and are full stakeholders. The current EBacc in England, rather than allowing students to flourish, is setting some up for failure. Surely a free choice of subjects gives students, especially those from a disadvantaged background, a far better chance of success.

The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) opened the debate by talking about the wide range of organisations supporting the debate, how society is enriched by the arts, and the job opportunities available in the creative industry. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton) talked about his experience as a musician and how music improved cognitive skills. I know something about that. In a very tough council estate in Raploch, Stirling, a music programme where primary school students were taught the fiddle saw attainment, attendance and general participation all increase as a result.

The right hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) talked about her experience as a teacher, the importance of science and the arts and how creativity is at the core of British education. I concur; as a science teacher, I know that science is not always considered to be a creative subject, but our top scientists all have creativity in common. The right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), who has left, gave us a wonderful vision of his angelic choirboy past. It was quite hard to imagine. He talked about academic rigour and the benefits of studying the arts for creativity. As a physicist, I know that of the courses that are now developing at universities, including the University of Edinburgh, physics and music is now a joint degree. It is good to see those two subjects coming together as well as the juxtaposition of the two.

My hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) talked about the importance of developing well-rounded individuals who can contribute and enrich society. The hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) talked about the unintended consequences of the current EBacc and how it could prevent creativity from flourishing. The hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) talked about the need to align skills to industry’s requirements. The hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) talked about the benefits of the arts to health and wellbeing. The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) talked about how we get students through the door and how different school activities can be the hook that draws them in, but she also raised concerns about pupils being forced to drop arts subjects because of the EBacc.

The hon. Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) talked about her experience as a former teacher and how theatrical experience allows some troubled students to express themselves in a different way. The Minister should consider seriously her point that the reduced value of arts subjects can contribute to low staff morale.

Scotland’s curriculum for excellence has eight curricular areas, all with equal status. The expressive arts is one of those areas. The Minister should consider the possibility of different flavours of EBacc, so that some students could have a science specialism while others had a language specialism or an expressive arts specialism, and others could do a general EBacc across a range of subjects. That would allow students both to flourish and to specialise in their chosen area.

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure and privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope. We have had a fantastic debate here this afternoon so far. The contributions from all parties have been, without exception, inspired, passionate and admirable.

I want to start by paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) for the passion and comprehensiveness with which she put forward the case so well represented by all the people in the audience today. She was absolutely right to do the roll call of organisations that support the petition; she has saved me that job. She was absolutely right to cite the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is not often cited in these matters. The Minister and his colleagues might wish to take that issue on board if they are revising this particular issue in any shape or form, were it to have financial consequences. She also drew attention to the DCMS report and the culture of disfranchisement, restricting young people’s life chances, one-size-fits-all GCSEs, the Creative Industries Federation’s concerns, and the 46,000 fall in GCSE entries in arts subjects last year. Of significant importance—this point was taken up by other speakers across the divide—is the impact on the disadvantaged and the socially immobile.

In a spirit of cross-partisanship I also want to praise the absolutely excellent and admirable speech made by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton) with his focus on music facilities, widening participation and the creative industries. It was a paean to the study of music. As someone who came to my interest in history in a significant fashion via music, I entirely agreed with him. My right hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) reminded us, as have others, that what counts is what matters in government, and she talked about the law of unintended consequences and the impact. I was delighted that she quoted Maxwell Davies’s new opera because, again, when I was a teenager, one of the first things that got me passionately interested in medieval history was the setting by Maxwell Davies of “The Fader of Heven”, which comes from one of the English mystery plays. It is appropriate at this time when the Orkney festival is in full swing and when of course we have sadly lost Maxwell Davies that she should have done that.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) not only drew on his own history as a distinguished member of the Government, but spoke movingly of his own experience as a black chorister at Peterborough cathedral and about the rigours and the discipline of the music. I can personally endorse what he said about the great partnership between the Department for Education and DCMS during what he described as the Blair years, because I was a Parliamentary Private Secretary in that Department at the time that that programme was being taken forward. It was a model of co-operation, with some financial tensions as always, but it was a model of co-operation across those two Departments, and it is a model of co-operation in getting out of silos that the Government would do well to emulate.

I want to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson). She has been a fantastic chair of the all-party group. She and I have had various conversations about the issue of unintended consequences. She was absolutely right to point to the need to get young people out and to get them experiencing things, as did the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Mims Davies), who has now left us. We can all probably remember school trips to theatres or music events that made an impact on us. My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) rightly brought us back not only to the aesthetic aspects, but the bread and butter aspects. If I might say so, one of Bradford’s most famous citizens, J. B. Priestley, would have been proud of her. She said that too many of her constituents did not have access to technical qualifications and she linked that to the need to develop new industries. I feel particularly strongly about this matter because it is second-level towns, if I can put it that way, in England and Britain today—the Bradfords, the Prestons, the Blackpools—that need a creative boost in their economies in the same way that our big cities got a creative boost in the early 2000s.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) talked about the impact of BBC MediaCity on schools and creative learning. Again, when I was first a shadow Minister with responsibility for further education and skills, I went there with my hon. friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) and saw some of the exciting work that was going on. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) rightly pointed out that it was investment from the Labour Government in her school arts facilities that had potentiated them academically, and she made the point about how many people in Bristol earn their living in the creative industries.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) talked about the healing qualities of the arts and also the impact on the morale of the profession. Finally, the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan), as well as making the very sensible point that strict hierarchies of subjects are not a good idea, also gave evidence of how a mix of subjects could have an impact on overall behaviour and commitment. So there was a string of experiences and arguments that the Minister would do well to ponder.

I want to talk about what some other organisations have said about their concerns in this area. I want to quote the response by the Edge education charity to the EBacc consultation, which some Members here may have had. It made the point that

“there has already been a significant shift away from creative and technical subjects in KS4. Entries for GCSE Design and Technology have fallen by 29% in five years…These trends would be severely exacerbated by imposing the full EBacc on 90% of KS4 students, because they would have to drop non-EBacc subjects to make room for foreign languages, history and/or geography.”

The statistics it cites are alarming:

“To get to 90%, 225,000 students will have to drop one of their current options and take a foreign language GCSE instead. The result will be a sharp fall in the number of students taking technical and creative subjects.”

I have already quoted what Edge said about GCSE design and technology. In the note it sent to colleagues today, it said:

“The 90% EBacc target will limit choices. Harm large numbers of students. Reduce the uptake of technical and creative subjects. Add to the country’s growing skills gap.”

It is that growing skills gap that the Minister needs to focus on in his response.

[Mr Gibb]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that one of the key skills gaps in this country is a lack of language ability? Some 77% of employers say that they need more employees with foreign languages.

[Mr Marsden]

I agree entirely with what the Minister says about languages but, as one of my colleagues said earlier, it is not our job to set up one choice against another. It is for the Minister to navigate that process accurately and correctly. Simply quoting individual statistics is not going to make much of a point for him.

I was about to say that there is a curious disconnect in this debate. When we finally see the much delayed skills plan, I hope we will be able to welcome it. We are told that it will be incorporated into the Minister’s portfolio in the Department for Education, or certainly into the Department generally. The work of the taskforce, which was chaired by Lord Sainsbury and included Baroness Wolf and the head of my own further education college in Blackpool, is crucial to the debate about getting all these things right. It is a question not of having either technical skills or expressive skills but of where we take them. Given that the Government have spoken about the importance of higher-level skills, it seems passing strange that their forthcoming Bill will not be associated with what comes out from the Department. The truth is that it is not a question of developing either technical and professional skills or expressive arts skills.

Catherine Sezen of the Association of Colleges wrote recently in the Times Educational Supplement that

“it is important that in striving to boost technical skills, this is not at the expense of creative skills”.

Many colleagues have made the connection between those two areas today, and I hope the Minister will think very hard about that. Catherine Sezen’s article continues:

“Failure to protect these subjects could leave another skills gap, but one that could be more difficult to fill…This, combined with the introduction of the more rigorous GCSEs graded 9 to 1, means it is more than likely that schools will offer a more limited number of optional subjects. This will have an impact on take-up of creative subjects”.

It should not be forgotten—I am well aware of this, as Member of Parliament for a seaside and coastal town where tourism is really important—that many occupations, including catering, hairdressing and architecture, combine technical and creative skills. It is a question of seeing where the joins are.

In April, I had the privilege of visiting the University of the Arts London’s new campus at King’s Cross, where I met many people who had come to the college as students through a combination of technical expertise and creative interest. As the Minister may know, UAL is the leading educator of talent in the UK’s creative industries, but it is very concerned about not being able to attract sufficient numbers of young people to London, not just because of the high cost but because of the increasing lack of coverage in schools. The danger is that that will also hit the expanding creative industries.

The combination of technical and creative skills in the creative industries is crucial. I will not cite the figures for the amount our economy depends on them, because that has already been done very ably by colleagues. However, I will make the point, further to what my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West said about students with special needs, that those students are often very strongly represented, not just at UAL but at other places. That is another area that should concern the Minister.

Other Members have already talked about MillionPlus’s briefing, so I will not go into it in any great detail, except to mention that it says that the role of modern universities, as a group, in supporting the creative industries is crucial. At a time when we worry in separate areas about the impact on modern universities of some of the proposals in the Government’s new Higher Education and Research Bill, the Minister might want to take that on board as well. We know the figures for the declining take-up of arts subjects at GCSE, and I will not go over them again.

I have two or three questions for the Minister about his progress on the consultation. First, when do the Government intend to respond to it? Will it be under this Government or a future Government? I think most Members present want to see a response from the Government in fairly short order. Secondly, the point about working across silos has been made very strongly, so what internal discussions has he had about the consultation with other Departments—the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills or the Treasury? Thirdly, what assessment has he made of the equality impact of the EBacc’s implementation? If he has not made one, will he include one in his response to the consultations?

We need to get that spark of creativity that fires up young people. That is particularly true for my own town of Blackpool, where schools have always been strong in creative areas, even as they have aspired to better skills and academic excellence. I think of photography and design at Blackpool and the Fylde College, and of the performances I see month in, month out, of what we might expect in a seaside town. Schools are very good at putting on musicals and things of that nature. Wordpool, the annual festival funded by Blackpool Council, involves schools and helps children to write stories and poems, most recently about their own school giant. We have been able to do that in Blackpool because of the support that local government, which we have not had much chance to talk about today, often gives to these projects, despite the cuts.

All this is summed up by a letter I received literally this morning from the librarian of Thames Primary Academy in South Shore, which the Minister should understand is an area of high transience. She said:

“I am the school librarian at the Thames Primary Academy. I also run an Arts Appreciate Club…But I also know how hard it is for schools to find the time for these subjects…I believe many leaders of the creative community”

are worried about

“how much these subjects are losing students at high schools and in further education, to the detriment of our creative industries…I was struck by the date of this debate. It is my late father’s birthday, he loved and was very knowledgeable about art, classical music and films…He worked in a factory all his adult life but never felt that art was not for him. I wish we could get back to that feeling in this country.”

I echo those sentiments.

As I have said, I am an historian and a medievalist. I got my interest in medieval history not just from the battles and the dates but from listening to the music, from seeing the Wilton diptych and other fabulous things on a day trip to the British Museum, and—stretching the period a little—from seeing as a teenager the fantastic performance of Glenda Jackson as Elizabeth I. Glenda Jackson, as hon. Members who heard her on Radio 3 recently might remember, was working in Boots and got her big break by getting a council scholarship to go to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Those are some of the issues that I urge the Minister to consider.

C. P. Snow famously wrote a book in the 1950s about the two cultures and the division between arts and societies. Let us not allow the consequences of the EBacc to perpetuate that division, however unintentionally. Denis Healey famously said that all politicians should have a hinterland. I think that the hon. Members who have spoken today have amply demonstrated their commitment to that hinterland, and I invite the Minister to do the same.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)]

It is a delight to be debating under your chairmanship today, Mr Chope. I congratulate the organisers of the petition and the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) on delivering this important debate. Hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber have made very good speeches.

I share the hon. Lady’s commitment to the arts, and I want to reassure her that the Government share it, too, as demonstrated by the quotation from the Chancellor that she cited. We want to ensure that every child has a high-quality arts education throughout their time at school. Like the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), I was a chorister, and equally angelic, although not in a cathedral but a large parish church— St Edmund’s church in Roundhay in Leeds. I regularly go to the theatre—the Donmar, the National and the Chichester Festival theatre—so I am as passionate as anybody here about the importance of arts education.

We are committed to ensuring that such an education is not the preserve of the elite, but the entitlement of every single child. That concern was also raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton) in his excellent and well informed speech. It is for that reason that, in maintained schools, music, art and design are compulsory in key stages 1, 2 and 3 of the national curriculum—between the ages of five and 14. This debate is not about all those years of education; it is about just two years after the end of key stage 3. Pupils must also be taught drama as part of the English curriculum and dance as part of the PE curriculum. Maintained schools also have a duty to offer key stage 4 pupils the chance to study an arts subject if they wish.

We have heard concerns today about the impact of the EBacc. It is important to set out why we are so committed to ensuring that the vast majority of pupils take the core academic curriculum subjects that the EBacc combination provides. Every child deserves to leave school fully literate and numerate, with an understanding of the history, geography and science of the world they inhabit, and a grasp of a language other than their own. Yet in 2010, many pupils—often those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds—were denied an education in that academic core. Only 31% of pupils took a GCSE in history and only 26% took a GCSE in geography. Only 43% took a foreign language GCSE—down from 76% in 2000. A flight away from a core academic curriculum was taking place, and the Government had to act.

In 2010, we announced the EBacc as a measure for the school performance tables. The EBacc measures the number of pupils entered for and achieving good GCSEs in a core of academic subjects: English, maths, science, geography or history, and a language. The success of the EBacc so far is clear. The proportion of pupils entering the EBacc combination has risen from just 22% in 2011 to 39% in 2015. Hon. Members talk about arts subjects as an add-on to that core academic curriculum, but only 22% took that core academic curriculum in 2011, and we reached only 39% in 2015.

Schools have made progress, but there is still further to go, not least because pupils who are eligible for free school meals are almost half as likely to be entered for the EBacc as those who are not. It cannot be right that where a child goes to school or the wealth of their parents determines whether they study the core subjects that will help them succeed in higher education and the job market. I wonder how many hon. Members in this debate have GCSEs or—more likely, given our ages— O-levels in all the EBacc subjects.

Last year, we set out our ambition for 90% of pupils in mainstream secondary schools to enter the EBacc. We are clear that the vast majority of pupils deserve to benefit from studying a core academic curriculum up to the age of 16. We will not apologise for having high aspirations for every child, but I would like to reassure hon. Members that that core academic curriculum can safely sit alongside a high-quality education in the arts. We have never said that pupils should study the EBacc subjects and nothing else. All schools will continue to offer a wide range of options outside the EBacc so pupils have the opportunity to study subjects that reflect their individual interests and strengths. The EBacc is limited in size so there is flexibility for pupils to take additional subjects of their choosing.

[Catherine McKinnell]

One of the key questions that people continue to ask is why the Government have differentiated between history and geography, and some of the arts subjects. Why are those subjects not simply included in the EBacc options? If they are run alongside the EBacc, as the Minister put it, students undertaking the EBacc who do not take subjects in addition to the eight will not get the opportunity to study those arts subjects.

[Mr Gibb]

Many subjects are not included in the EBacc, including religious studies, and a range of very important, high-quality vocational subjects such as economics, and music and art.

[Catherine McKinnell]

Will the Minister explain why?

[Mr Gibb]

Yes, I will come to that.

The issue is that English, maths and science are compulsory until the age of 16. Until 2004, a foreign language was compulsory until the age of 16. It would not be hugely controversial to reintroduce such a compulsion, although we are not doing that. What we are really talking about is one subject—a humanity—for two years in our schools at key stage 4. All this debate seems to be about is whether children should continue to study either history or geography—one subject out of the whole school curriculum—for another two years at school. This debate boils down to that and whether we think it is important for students to study a language.

Our view is that it is important that young people at secondary school study history and geography at key stage 3, take both subjects seriously, and take one or other of them through to GCSE. We took that policy decision because we believe it is important that young people learn the skills of writing essays and that they engage in understanding that part of our history. It is a tiny part of the curriculum. We were also determined to keep the EBacc small to enable pupils to study the arts, a second foreign language or vocational subjects in the one, two or three extra slots that the EBacc allows.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I think we all agree that the aspiration behind the EBacc is honourable—the Minister cited figures for children in some of our poorer schools who were taking it, as opposed to those who are achieving it now—but why are we seeing the unintended consequences that are highlighted by the NSEAD report, which I cited earlier? Is he prepared to do anything about them?

[Mr Gibb]

The evidence does not suggest that there have been any unintended consequences. We have had long debates with the religious studies lobby, which argued that the religious studies GCSE would fall through the floor. We have not seen that.

[Mrs Hodgson]

What about major industry and the arts?

[Mr Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Mr Gibb]

The entries for art and design were 162,000 in 2010-11 and 176,000 in 2014-15—the latest figures that I have. In drama, in 2010-11, there were 74,000 entries; they dropped in 2011 to 70,000 and then 69,000, but they went up to 70,000 and are now 70,800. In media, film and TV, there were 51,000 entries in 2010; they went down to 49,000 and then 48,700, but they went up to 51,000 and are now 51,570. So there is no evidence that the subjects are declining at GCSE.

[David Warburton]

Is it fair to point out that all the figures just given by the Minister are from before the announcement of the new EBacc and the consultation of November 2015, which is what has seen the drop in entries that we are all talking about?

[Mr Gibb]

No. Those figures are a consequence of the EBacc measure, which was taken seriously by schools—we have seen an increase in the EBacc performance measure. That is what we have seen—no fall in the figures. My assertion is that there will be no significant fall in the arts subjects as a consequence of the EBacc figure of 90%. The schools cited during the debate—the ones that have the strongest arts subjects, the choirs and the music GCSEs—are all doing the EBacc subjects right through to GCSE. They are not neglecting the arts. In fact, I assert that the schools that have the strongest arts education are also the ones that get the highest level in the EBacc performance measure.

[Catherine McKinnell]

Will the Minister acknowledge some disagreement about the statistics, the widespread concern that there is already a significant drop in the take-up of subjects and huge concern about a further drop in future take-up? The Government cannot simply reverse this easily, because we will have lost the teachers and the experts in the profession as a result of the drop in numbers. They would be difficult to recover. Will the Minister take on board those concerns and come back with a proper response about what the Government will do to take them into account?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

I will of course listen carefully to this debate and all the representations made to the consultation, but there is a problem in this country. All the participants in the debate have talked about the arts being in addition. No one said—I listened carefully—that a foreign language is unnecessary for the majority of young people. No one said that taking two or three sciences is unnecessary for most young people. No one said that maths is not important, apart from the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan)—

[Carol Monaghan]

I do not think I said—in fact, I know I did not say—that maths was not important, although I said that basic numeracy was a requirement. What I did say was that advanced algebra and calculus were not necessary for every student to make their way in life.

[Mr Gibb]

That is where we disagree: young people living in a modern, complex society need to have mathematical skills that go beyond simple numeracy. They need to be able to do maths to the level of GCSE, which is why we have insisted that a GCSE in maths and in English are part of further education studies for students without those GCSEs.

No one in the debate is saying that those subjects should be dropped—in so far as that is concerned, we all agree. Our contention is that there is ample room to study, in addition to the EBacc subjects, the arts, economics or a vocational subject, if that is what interests the young person.

[Mr Marsden]

I understand the point that the Minister is making, but does he understand the point being made by the Opposition and elsewhere—that what is measured is what is valued? Unless the Minister says that every Ofsted report will look in the same detail at other, non-EBacc subjects, or take them into account in the rankings, as the EBacc subjects will be looked at—or as future employers will do—his argument is on somewhat weak ground.

[Mr Gibb]

People will look carefully at a school’s EBacc performance measure. We want more young people—90% by 2020—to be taking GCSEs in those core academic subjects, which will provide the widest level of opportunities for them in future. That is what all the evidence suggests, and the policy in China, Finland, the state of Ontario in Canada, the state of Victoria in Australia, Germany and Poland is that all young people study those EBacc subjects. In fact, no one present has disagreed that all those subjects should be compulsory to the age of 14, or that English, maths and science should be compulsory to 16: all the debate is about is whether young people should study a foreign language, or history or geography, for two more years. The policy of the Government is that they should be, because that is what is needed to have a broad and balanced education.

We deliberately kept the EBacc small—we received representations from all quarters asking for a whole range of other subjects, in addition to the arts, to be included in the EBacc. It could well become 10, 11 or 12 subjects if we gave in to those requests, but we deliberately kept it small—to seven or eight subjects—to enable young people to take an eighth, ninth or 10th GCSE, or an equivalent, in addition to the series of core academic subjects. That is what everyone in the Chamber today, I thought, had agreed with—that this is about what is in addition to the core academic subjects, and not instead of them.

On average, pupils in state-funded schools enter nine GCSEs and equivalent qualifications, rising to 10 for more able pupils. For many pupils, the EBacc will mean taking seven GCSEs and, for those taking triple science, it will mean taking eight. That means there will continue to be room to study other subjects, including the arts, as I have just said. If we extended the EBacc by including an arts subject, as proposed by the e-petition, pupil choice would be restricted, not expanded. Such a measure would prevent pupils from taking additional non-arts subjects of their own choosing, be that design and technology, religious education or a second foreign language. They might wish to study both history and geography, or to take a high-quality vocational course.

[Mrs Hodgson]

Does the Minister not recognise and perhaps agree that that might squeeze out other subjects, but would show that the arts are important? Science, maths, English and a language are important, but including a creative subject would send a vital message.

[Mr Gibb]

Messaging is one thing—I have said this to those who have been arguing about religious studies—but actually the lobbying itself is the messaging. I have never said, and no one in the Government has said, that arts subjects are any less valuable than the subjects in the EBacc. We have never said that economics is less valuable than any of the EBacc subjects. We have never said that vocational subjects are less valuable. In fact, we have had a whole review of vocational education, so that the remaining vocational qualifications that feature in the performance tables—more than 100—are valuable, deliberately, for that reason. We have never differentiated in our messaging between what is in the EBacc and what is not in the EBacc.

The purpose of the EBacc is to ensure that all young people take the combination of GCSEs that are taken by young people in the most privileged schools in our country and in the best and most high-achieving schools in the state sector. That is what we want and it concerns us that young people from deprived backgrounds who are eligible for free school meals are half as likely to take that combination, compared with their more fortunate peers. Tackling that issue is the core reason why the Government introduced the EBacc measure.

It has been suggested today that arts are not valued in the school accountability system. That is not the case. The EBacc is one of several measures against which school performance is judged. Progress 8, which forms the basis for the school floor standard, measures performance across eight subjects: English, maths, three EBacc subjects and three other approved qualifications. Those other slots can be filled by arts qualifications, if a pupil wishes. In addition, the once sprawling selection of GCSEs that was allowed to develop over the years has been narrowed to ensure that the ones we have are of a high quality—in fact, 28 GCSEs have been discontinued—which will further strengthen the position of core arts qualifications in schools.

There is no reason why the EBacc should imperil the status of arts subjects. Both core academic and creative subjects can, and should, co-exist in any good school. We have seen a dip in provisional arts entries this year, but since the EBacc was first introduced the proportion of pupils in state-funded schools taking at least one GCSE in an arts subject has increased, rising from 46% in 2011 to 50% in 2015. At Whitmore High School in Harrow, where 88% of pupils entered the EBacc in 2015, pupils benefit from opportunities to take part in a wide range of art, music and drama clubs.

GCSEs and A-levels in arts subjects have been reformed to include more rigorous subject content. From September 2016, schools will be teaching new GCSEs in music, dance and drama, and new AS and A-levels in music and in drama and theatre. We are working with exam boards and Ofqual to make sure it is very clear that all students should see live drama in the theatre as part of their drama qualification, and we expect that to be in place from September 2017.

It is worth noting also that one of the distinctive virtues of arts subjects is that pupils can and are very willing to participate in them as a part of their extra-curricular school experience. Pupils can perform in a school orchestra, take part in a dance group or participate on stage or backstage in a school play without necessarily taking music, dance or drama GCSE. It is for that reason that, between 2012 and 2016, we invested over £460 million in a diverse portfolio of music and arts education programmes designed to improve access to the arts for all children, regardless of their background, and to develop talent across the country. That includes support for the network of music education hubs, national youth music organisations, the National Youth Dance Company, a museums and schools programme and support for the Shakespeare Schools Festival. Those programmes are having an impact on pupils across the country. The National Youth Dance Company is in the middle of a national tour, which started on 26 June in Nottingham and takes in Newcastle, Leeds, Ipswich and Falmouth among other locations.

Music education hubs are intended to ensure that every child in England has the opportunity to learn a musical instrument through weekly whole-class ensemble teaching programmes. They are also expected to ensure that clear progression routes are available and affordable, and many hubs subsidise the cost of lessons for pupils. Under that programme, any budding seeds of musical passion that young people have will not remain un-nurtured. We announced in December that funding for music education hubs would remain at £75 million in 2016-17.

Introducing primary school pupils to the arts early on is important and that is why I am so pleased that every primary school in the country now has free access to “Classical 100”, which is a new resource to introduce pupils to classical music. It comprises high quality Decca recordings of 100 pieces of classical music from the 11th century to the 21st century that I hope will stimulate children’s lifelong appreciation, understanding and enjoyment of music. Examples include Beethoven’s fifth symphony and Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on Greensleeves as well as children’s classics such as Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. That is something I was passionate about getting off the ground.

As well as programmes to ensure that all pupils receive a good arts education, we are continuing to invest in programmes ensuring the most talented can fulfil that talent. The music and dance, and the dance and drama awards schemes provide means-tested support to ensure that talented young people from all backgrounds receive the training they need to succeed in careers in music, dancing and acting. About 3,500 students a year benefit from that support, studying at world-class institutions such as the Royal Ballet School, Chetham’s School of Music and the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts.

We have heard today concerns that the EBacc will hurt our creative industries. We absolutely recognise how important the creative industries are to our economy and our identity, but we do not accept that academic subjects at GCSE should prevent pupils from taking arts subjects.

[Mr Marsden]

I am sorry to interrupt the Minister, who is—quite rightly—giving a heart-warming list of Government initiatives. I do not object to those in any shape or form, but can I bring him back to the specific questions I asked him? When do the Government intend to respond to the consultation, what internal discussions has he had and what assessment of the equality impact has been made?

[Mr Gibb]

The equalities impact will be published alongside the Government response to the consultation. Officials are working with officials from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The consultation response will be published—here is the date: in due course. I hope the hon. Gentleman is happy with that response.

[Mr Marsden]

Partly.

[Mr Gibb]

Partly—that will do for now. We believe that for too long pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds have been dismissed, missing out on the core academic curriculum that is taken as a given by their more affluent peers. Our EBacc policy will ensure that that is no longer the case.

[Catherine McKinnell]

I have been listening carefully to the Minister. I appreciate the argument he is making and the Government’s aspiration, but does he recognise that some young people will struggle with maths and English and the EBacc’s core curriculum? As my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) set out, including a broader range of optional subjects as part of that could keep some of those young people on board by allowing them to take more artistic, expressive and creative subjects, which help them to stay interested and focused on the core subjects in which they also need to achieve. By closing down those opportunities, the Government could be undermining the ability of more students to achieve the EBacc standard.

[Mr Gibb]

I could not agree more; we do not disagree on this. That is why those creative arts subjects remain compulsory from five right through to 14 and as options that schools are required to offer between the ages of 14 and 16.

We have kept the EBacc deliberately small to enable pupils to have time to study creative subjects. The pupils to whom the hon. Lady refers can and should be encouraged to take those subjects, to ensure that they are engaged. However, we also believe it is important for all young people to study a foreign language and to take sciences, maths, English and at least one humanity from the ages of 14 to 16. We believe they should be able to do that as a core, basic part of their education, in addition to arts subjects that they might want to study between the ages of 14 and 16.

I hope hon. Members are assured that in providing all pupils with a core academic education that will help them to succeed we are in no way preventing pupils from studying the arts. The EBacc is a powerful reform that has already led to more than 91,000 more pupils studying a core academic curriculum at GCSE in 2015 than in 2011. This vital component of the Government’s move towards more rigour in the classroom should not be diluted due to the idea that the arts and a core academic curriculum cannot co-exist within schools. They should, they can and they do.

School Governance (Constitution and Federations) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2016

Nick Gibb Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2016 General Committees

[The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I have listened with great pleasure to the opening comments of the hon. Member for Scunthorpe, although it would surprise many who are listening to know that we are debating the School Governance (Constitution and Federations) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2016, not the excellent education White Paper, “Educational Excellence Everywhere”. We are debating S.I. 2016, No. 204.

The regulations, which were laid before both Houses on 25 February, amend the School Governance (Constitution) (England) Regulations 2012 so that all governors in maintained schools in England are required to have an enhanced criminal records certificate from the Disclosure and Barring Service, if they do not already have one. The hon. Gentleman should welcome that, as I hope will all Committee members. He asked specifically whether all educational institutions will be bound by the same rules, and I can confirm that they will be. The rules apply to academies and maintained schools, and proprietors of independent schools are governed by the Education (Independent School Standards) Regulations 2014, which contain the same requirement.

[Nic Dakin]

While the Minister is being comprehensive, can he mention sixth-form colleges and further education colleges?

[Mr Gibb]

Yes. I will write to the hon. Gentleman about sixth-form colleges after the Committee, if I may.

The regulations also amend the School Governance (Federations) (England) Regulations 2012 to provide that the governing body of every federation of two or more maintained schools includes two parent governors.

The regulations bring maintained schools into line with current practice in the academies sector, where DBS checks are already compulsory for every person involved in governance. Similarly, academy trusts, however many schools they contain, have never been required to have more than two parents on the board. That allows governing bodies to remain at a workable size, enabling them to make sound and strategic decisions for their group of schools. We have consulted the Department’s advisory group on governance, which includes all organisations with a key interest in governance, and I emphasise that the National Governors Association supports both the measures.

Governors hold an important public office, and it is essential that we know that they are not unsuitable for their role. We have taken a number of measures to increase transparency in that area, including expecting governing bodies to publish their arrangements on their websites. Individuals should be disqualified from governance roles in maintained schools on a number of grounds, including if they have a criminal conviction involving certain sentences and imprisonment. Until now, the arrangements have relied on governors voluntarily disclosing such information or the clerk to the governing body requesting it, in contrast with the position in academies, where all members and trustees, and those on local governing bodies in multi-academy trusts, must be DBS checked.

[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

On the number of parent governors, if there are two village schools and one is a bit bigger than the other, I can see that there would be an advantage in having a parent governor from each of the villages. Is that something that should happen under this system, or is it entirely in the lap of the gods, in the sense that it depends on how many parents vote for a particular parent governor? If one school were quite a bit bigger than the other, the governing body might end up with two governors from one school.

[Mr Gibb]

We do not want to be too prescriptive. My hon. and learned Friend makes a good point and that would be an ideal way forward. We do not want to be over-prescriptive because, although he has set out one example, there is an infinite number of such examples out there. If we were to be prescriptive for every type of example, we would have a very long piece of regulation. Do not forget that those parents are not meant to be representative of the individual schools; they are meant to serve in the interests of the federation as a whole. We are trying to get away from the notion that they are there in a representative capacity and will only speak in the interests of the small school, and not be interested in what is happening in the larger school, such as in his example.

The current position contrasts with the position in academies, where all members have to be DBS checked if they are involved in a multi-academy trust. This more rigorous approach, we believe, should apply in the maintained sector, so that every governing body can be confident that none of its members is disqualified from holding office.

The amendment to the School Governance (Federations) (England) Regulations 2012, to which my hon. and learned Friend referred, was requested by the National Governors Association and the Churches. It was prompted by concerns that requiring the governing body of a federation of multiple maintained schools to have a parent governor from every school may result in a membership that is larger than they need or want. That can be a particular issue in larger federations or those that involve voluntary aided schools, where they need to maintain a majority of two foundation governors over all the other categories of governor.

The hon. Member for Scunthorpe cited an example of a federation of five schools. If those five schools were all voluntary aided, in addition to the five elected parent governors, they would have to have five headteachers, which would bring the governing body up to 10, a staff governor, which would bring it up to 11, and a local authority governor, making it 12. That means that the foundation itself would have to find another 14 foundation governors to maintain their majority of two, bringing the size of the governing body to 26. That would make it very unwieldy and could impact on its ability to operate effectively.

The amendment reinforces the principle that, as I said to my hon. and learned Friend, a parent governor’s role, like that of every other category of governor, is to govern in the interests of all the children in federated schools, not just in the interests of the pupils from their child’s school. In reducing the number of parent governors to two, federations have the freedom to retain or recruit any particularly skilled and effective individuals, for example, by appointing them under a different category of co-opted governor. There is nothing to stop a federation or a foundation asking parents to be a foundation governor of a foundation school, or indeed to fit in to any of the other categories of governor that make up the governing body, to a minimum of seven.

High-quality governance is vital to the success of all schools in an autonomous school-led system. Governing boards are responsible for some demanding strategic functions and their membership needs to be focused on the skills to do that well. Many parents do have skills that make them very effective governors. We expect that boards will continue to want to appoint parents for that reason. Parents should have a significant voice in schools.

As well as the provisions we are debating today, we have committed to empower parents further in the White Paper, “Educational Excellence Everywhere”. I will requote the line that the hon. Member for Scunthorpe helpfully quoted in his opening remarks from page 51 of the White Paper:

“We will also expect every academy to put in place arrangements for meaningful engagement with all parents, to listen to their views and feedback.”

That is the first time that that expectation will be imposed on academies. I do not believe it is patronising; it is the right thing to do to have that expectation on every multi-academy trust in the country.

The best schools demonstrate that parents can and should be involved in education in a wide variety of ways. We will always expect that one of those is governance. The provisions bring more rigour to ensure that those governing our schools are fit and proper people to hold office, and that federated governing bodies are not compelled to have more parent governors than they want.

Question put and agreed to.

Term-time Holidays

Nick Gibb Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Education if she will make a statement on the recent decision by the High Court on the right of parents to take their children on holiday during term time.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)]

The High Court oral judgment represents a significant threat to one of the Government’s most important achievements in education in the past six years: improving school attendance. For this reason, the Government will do everything in their power to ensure that headteachers are able to keep children in school.

There is abundant academic evidence showing that time spent in school is one of the single strongest determinants of a pupil’s academic success. At secondary school, even a week off can have a significant impact on a pupil’s GCSE grades. This is unfair to children and potentially damaging to their life chances. That is why we have unashamedly pursued a zero-tolerance policy on unauthorised absence. We have increased the fines issued to parents of pupils with persistent unauthorised absence, placed greater emphasis on school attendance levels in inspection outcomes and, crucially, we have clamped down on the practice of taking term-time holidays. Those measures have been strikingly successful: the number of persistent absentees in this country’s schools has dropped by over 40%, from 433,000 in 2010 to 246,000 in 2015, and some 4 million fewer days are lost due to unauthorised absence compared with 2012-2013. Overall absence rates have followed a significant downward trend from 6.5% in the academic year ending in 2007 to 4.6% in the academic year ending in 2015.

These are not just statistics. They mean that pupils are spending many more hours in school, being taught the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in life. It is for this reason that we amended the 2006 attendance regulations in 2013. Previously headteachers were permitted to grant a family holiday during term time for “special circumstances” of up to 10 days per school year. Of course, the need to take time off school in exceptional circumstances is important, but there are no special circumstances where a 10-day family holiday to Disney World should be allowed to trump the importance of school. The rules must apply to everyone as a matter of social justice. When parents with the income available to take their children out of school go to Florida, it sends a message to everyone that school attendance is not important.

The measure has been welcomed by teachers and schools. Unauthorised absences do not affect just the child who is absent; they damage everyone’s education as teachers find themselves having to play catch-up. Because learning is cumulative, pupils cannot understand the division of fractions if they have not first understood their multiplication. Pupils cannot understand why world war one ended if they do not know why it started, and they cannot enjoy the second half of a novel if they have not read the first half. If a vital block of prerequisite knowledge is missed in April, a pupil’s understanding of the subject will be harmed in May.

The Government understand, however, that many school holidays being taken at roughly the same time leads to a hike in prices. That is precisely the reason that we have given academies the power to set their own term dates in a way that works for their parents and their local communities. Already schools such as Hatcham College in London and the David Young Community Academy in Leeds are doing just that. In areas of the country such as the south-west, where a large number of the local population are employed in the tourist industry, there is nothing to stop schools clubbing together and collectively changing or extending the dates of their summer holidays or doing so as part of a multi-academy trust. In fact, this Government would encourage them to do so.

[Mr Speaker]

Has the Minister concluded?

[Mr Gibb]

I am about to conclude, Mr Speaker.

We are awaiting the written judgment from the High Court and will outline our next steps in due course. The House should be assured that we will seek to take whatever measures are necessary to give schools and local authorities the power and clarity to ensure that children attend school when they should.

[Steve Double]

I thank the Minister for his answer. However, there is another aspect to the policy which, sadly, has been ignored up till now—the economic impact of the policy on tourist areas, particularly in Cornwall. In 2014 a published report indicated that the tourist industry in Cornwall had lost £50 million as a result.

With respect to the Minister, there is no prospect of social mobility for a family if the parents lose their job or have their hours cut because of the downturn in the tourism industry and the way that that affects their jobs. Is it not the case that only 8% of school absenteeism is a result of family holidays? There is no drop-off in the attainment of those children. Family holidays are good for children. They widen their knowledge of the world and expose them to new experiences, and children whose family take them on a holiday often perform better as a direct result.

Will the Minister please look at the matter again? If he is going to bring forward measures to tighten the rules or strengthen them, can he assure the House that there will be a full debate in this Chamber, that the changes to the rules will not be made through secondary legislation, that this time a full impact assessment will be carried out that includes the economic impact on tourism-related industries, that the family test will be applied to the measures, and that a full public consultation will take place that considers the impact on all stakeholders—not just education, but the wider society and families especially?

[Mr Gibb]

Before 2013 authorised family holidays made up between 5% and 6% of pupil absences. That figure dropped to 2.3% in 2013-14 and to 1.2% in 2014-15. With the greatest respect to my hon. Friend, I do not believe that we should be returning to the Dickensian world where the needs of industry and commerce take precedence over the education of children. His constituency of St Austell and Newquay, in the beautiful county of Cornwall, has a hugely successful and thriving tourism industry that generates about £2 billion of income for the UK economy. I doubt that the Cornish tourism industry will be best pleased by his assertion that tourism in Cornwall is dependent on truanting children for its survival.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

Another week, another crisis for the Department for Education: Ministers really do need to get a grip. Their obsession with school structures means that they focus on the wrong issues and fail to deal with the bread-and-butter issues that matter to parents.

All the evidence shows that regular attendance at school is crucial to ensuring that children fulfil their potential, and 100% attendance records should be the ambition of all children in all schools. However, this problem is of the Government’s own making. When changing the guidance to headteachers back in 2013, they should have carried out a full impact assessment much earlier and acted to address concerns. Back in the autumn, the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) led a Westminster Hall debate on the 50,000-strong petition on this subject. The Government said then that they would look at the concerns raised, so they have known that this ruling was coming for a long time—they could have clarified the law and they have not.

This ruling is the worst of both worlds. It puts parents and headteachers in a very difficult position and is not in the best interests of children. By and large, the system up to 2012, with heads having a small amount of discretion, was working well. Parents and headteachers had a clear signal that children should be in school. It is right that headteachers who know their parents and school community well, and are accountable for their children and school, should have appropriate discretion. Will the Minister pledge to work with all interested parties across this House and outside this House to clarify the law in the interests of pupils, schools and parents? We pledge to work with him on that.

The reality is that Ministers have been asleep at the wheel, focusing on the wrong issues when we have teacher shortages and problems in primary assessment. It is time for them to take their head out of the sand and deal with these fundamental issues rather than fixating on school types at the expense of raising school standards. Will the Minister do that now?

[Mr Gibb]

I listened carefully to the hon. Gentleman, but I do feel that he is not on the same side as us with regard to raising school standards. Improving school attendance is absolutely key to raising academic standards. Under the previous Labour Government, it became accepted wisdom that parents could take their children out of school for term-time holidays for up to 10 days a year. Those numbers were causing an issue for us. We had to address the problem that we inherited from the previous Labour Government—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The Minister of State is going about his duty in the conscientious way that we have come to expect. A significant number of young children are observing our proceedings this morning, and I rather doubt they will be greatly impressed by the Front-Bench deputies on each side of the House conducting a kind of verbal tug of war from which each of them should desist, partly in consideration of the children and partly out of respect for the Minister of State, from whom we should hear.

[Mr Gibb]

I am most grateful to you, Mr Speaker.

Under the previous Labour Government it had become accepted wisdom that parents could take their children out of school for term-time holidays for up to 10 days a year. We had to address that popular perception, and that is why the regulations were changed in 2013. In 2012, 32.7 million pupil days were lost owing to authorised absences. That figure has fallen to 28.6 million in 2014-15—that is, some 4 million fewer pupil school days lost as a consequence of the changes to the 2013 regulations. That is a huge success, and I wish that the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) would support the change.

[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that taking children out of school to come to the mother of all Parliaments to learn about our democracy is one thing, but taking them to Orlando, Florida is another? I welcome the rigour that he has brought to the subject of education, moving away from the “playways” type of Labour approach. Does he agree that if this country is going to succeed, it needs to take education seriously?

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right. This is about social justice. When parents with income take their children out of school to go to Florida, that sends a message to everyone that school attendance is not important. There is no circumstance in which a trip to Disney World can be regarded as educational.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am very fond of the Minister and have always thought that he has a touch of the Dickens novel about him. Is it not a very serious and fundamental problem that we still squeeze the summer holidays into a six-week period, during which British Airways charges the earth to go anywhere and Center Parcs trebles its rates? We need to tackle that very serious problem, for everyone’s benefit. I have constituents who face great pressure from the Muslim community, especially from Pakistan, to take their children out, and they are the very children who have been suffering. I am on the side of being tough, but let us look at the issue in a more fundamental way.

[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Gentleman, for whom I have huge admiration for his work as the former chair of the Education Committee, is right. We need to look at these issues in a more fundamental way. That is why we have given academies the freedom to set their term dates. I say to the hon. Gentleman and, indeed, to my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) that they should be helping to co-ordinate schools so that they set different term dates that help their own tourism industries.

[Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that educational attainment is directly correlated to attendance and that narrowing the attainment gap and raising standards must be a priority for any Government who care about the future of our children?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is ample evidence that even taking a few days off school can have a serious effect on a child’s education, particularly in those secondary school years leading up to GCSE, but also in primary education, where the pattern of attendance is set. Charlie Taylor, our behavioural expert in the last Parliament, took the view that it is more important to set the precedent in primary school, so that when children enter secondary school they are already in the habit of attending school every day.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

The Government underline the importance of giving heads autonomy, which I support in almost all cases, perhaps with the exception of the unacceptable opt-outs in relation to sex education. On term-time absences, does the Minister agree that some holidays or attendance at, for instance, family funerals abroad can be informative, educational or necessary, and that heads should have the autonomy and discretion to decide whether, in those exceptional circumstances, children should be allowed term-time absences? Should not the law reflect that?

[Mr Gibb]

The right hon. Gentleman accurately reflects the law as it stands: headteachers do have the discretion to grant term-time absence in exceptional circumstances, including funerals, which he cited. However, a term-time holiday to take advantage of lower prices would not be regarded as an exceptional circumstance.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Following on the same theme, the Government have been consistent in saying that they believe that schools should have more freedom from the state in making decisions. Does the Minister believe that schools should not have such freedoms in this particular case, or have the schools asked him to relieve them of them? Whatever the rights and wrongs of the particular issue, it is clearly inconsistent with the Government’s belief in giving school’s greater freedoms.

[Mr Gibb]

The schools themselves will have increased freedoms if they adopt academy status, including over term dates and the curriculum, but there are rules that apply to individuals. There is no freedom for an individual not to educate their children: they either have to attend school or obtain education otherwise. That is the law. This is about the law that applies to parents. We want a society where education is compulsory for all children in our country.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

But the Minister must acknowledge the limbo that schools now find themselves in. Headteachers know precisely what the regulations say, but they also know what the High Court ruling was. Will he clarify for the benefit of the headteachers who might be listening what he thinks should take precedent—the High Court judgment or the regulations as they stand? If it is the High Court judgment, how quickly will the Government come back to the House to assert what they want to happen?

[Mr Gibb]

We are still waiting to receive the written judgment of the High Court, and as soon as we do we will revert to the hon. Gentleman and the House.

[William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

It is irrefutable that good school attendance is essential for both progress and achievement. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the High Court judgment used a 90% attendance threshold, whereas Ofsted criticises and penalises schools with attendance below 95%?

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. A 10% absence rate equates to one day off a fortnight, and I do not think we should encourage that type of attendance record in our schools.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

We have heard a lot from the Minister about tackling the symptoms of the problem, but I do not believe enough is being done to tackle the cause, which is companies getting away with charging astronomical prices in holiday time and ordinary prices in term time. When will the Government do something to tackle the rip-off culture that pervades our society?

[Mr Gibb]

That issue was examined some years ago, and it was determined that it is not a case of the holiday companies ripping off their consumers. Hotels around the world and in this country simply charge higher rates during the summer months and the peak seasons than they do out of peak, which is a matter of market economics.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Mr Platt is a resident of my island, and it is Isle of Wight Council’s unfathomable decision to take him to court that has brought about the current situation. It seems to me that the legislation is quite clear: it is for the headteacher to decide what constitutes exceptional circumstances. The head is undoubtedly in the best position to take account of the full picture of any request for absence. It is hard to envisage legislation, or even guidance, devised here or in Whitehall, that could properly take account of all possible exceptional circumstances. Do the Government intend to take the decision away from the person who is ultimately responsible for the performance of their school?

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend explains the situation accurately. It is for the headteacher to determine whether there are exceptional circumstances so that they can grant authorised absences.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

The situation obviously lacks clarity after this judgment, and I was concerned that there was a lack of clarity even before the judgment, which I hoped the Minister might turn his attention to. I had a constituency case in which children were denied the opportunity to go to Spain for the funeral of their Spanish grandmother. Will he consider providing headteachers with greater clarity to ensure that such travel is considered an exceptional circumstance?

[Mr Gibb]

I think the situation before the High Court judgment was clear—the headteacher has discretion on whether to grant authorised absence, and can do so only in exceptional circumstances. The National Association of Head Teachers has helpfully produced a two-page guidance note setting out what it believes its members should consider when determining whether an absence should be authorised. It makes it clear that funerals should be regarded as an exceptional circumstance.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

People in land-based employment feel frustrated by term times and holidays based in an agrarian past. Does my hon. Friend agree that communities in rural locations often have small village schools that stand to suffer disproportionately in the event of disruption in the classroom due to absences such as he has described?

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend makes a very valid point. This is about not just pupils’ education but the challenge presented to teachers as they seek to deliver catch-up lessons for pupils who have been absent. In a small school with small class sizes, that is doubly difficult for teachers.

[Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

What assistance and education can the Minister give parents who are deciding whether to take their children out of school? It seems that a minority of parents are making the wrong decision, so can he supply them with any more information on the impact of removing those children from school at the time they choose?

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and we must emphasise evidence that suggests that even small absences from school will have a long-term impact on a child’s education. As I set out in my opening remarks, a lot of education is linear, and children must learn one thing before they learn another. If a teacher is not able to provide a catch-up lesson for that child, they will permanently miss out on a crucial part of their education.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government have taken positive steps to reduce the cost of family holidays, and therefore the financial incentive to take term-time absence? By reducing air passenger duty for children’s tickets to zero, last year 4.5 million children under 12 flew tax free, and this year more than 7.5 million of those under 16 will fly tax free.

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend made that point better than I could have done.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

Although I agree with the thrust of the Government’s response and their determination to raise standards, I have some sympathy with my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double). When a number of schools have a high concentration of parents who work in the tourism industry and on relatively low pay, and when there has not been a significant enough change in the cost of holidays and there is no momentum around changes to term times, a number of factors come together. I urge the Minister to enter into more constructive dialogue about what can be done for regional economies where this issue will have a significant effect.

[Mr Gibb]

I am happy to enter into a constructive dialogue with my hon. Friend, and with my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double). We have given academies discretion to set their own term dates, and I urge all hon. Members who represent areas with high levels of tourism to work with their schools, the local authority, and other local authorities, to find a way to set term dates that reflect the needs of their local communities.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

My hon. Friend will know that when children are absent from school, it is disruptive to the child who misses school but also to the class when they try to catch up. One experiment currently being tried is to extend the school day by 30 minutes, and extend half term from one week to two weeks in certain areas, to allow parents to take their children on holiday for two weeks. What does the Minister think of that idea?

[Mr Gibb]

That is precisely the kind of idea that we hope and expect will come from the discretion that we have granted academies in this country, and many schools are taking advantage of that freedom.