Core School Budget Allocations

Debate between Nick Gibb and Daisy Cooper

Tuesday 17th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his kind comments. He is absolutely right: as soon as we knew about the error, I wanted to make sure that we were doing everything we could to rectify it and find a solution to the problem that officials and the Department had caused. That was my approach, and that is why we recalculated the whole of the national funding formula notional allocations as soon as we could and published that detail on 6 October.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

For far too long, the Department for Education has been plagued by a litany of failures that have had a devastating impact on children, their parents and teachers. We have had the mutant algorithm and the RAAC roofs, we have a crisis in our SEND system, and now we have a bit of good old-fashioned incompetence. Does the Minister agree that it is high time that the Secretary of State offered an apology to the British public for all this, or does he think that—in her words—we should thank her for doing a flipping good job?

[Nick Gibb]

The last flippant comment was not necessary; these are all serious issues. Issues such as RAAC have been around in our school system since the 1950s and 1960s. When we discovered new facts and new evidence, we took swift action. There will always be almost no notice; when we have evidence, we cannot just sit on it until a more convenient time to announce it. We had to announce it straightaway. Every school with confirmed RAAC has a caseworker allocated to make sure that we are keeping children safe and keeping them in face-to-face education. So far, we have identified 174 schools with RAAC and in the vast majority of those—all but 23 schools—all the children are still in face-to-face education.

In terms of special educational needs, we published a Green Paper and an implementation plan to improve the experience of parents and children with special educational needs in our school system.

Awarding Qualifications in 2021 and 2022

Debate between Nick Gibb and Daisy Cooper

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I ask all Members to focus on shorter questions, as we have two other pieces of business before we get on to the general debate.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD) [V]]

Last month, the Secretary of State said:

“We very much hope and intend for exams to go ahead in 2022”.

That was a statement not exactly brimming with confidence. As the school year draws to a close, more than 1 million school pupils in England, including a third of all secondary school students, are absent because of covid. Are the Government confident that the decisions they have made recently will not affect the ability of schools to reopen safely in October or to stay open safely for the whole academic year, and that young people sitting exams will not be let down for a third year running?

[Nick Gibb]

There is a clear plan that exams will go ahead next year. A large proportion of the pupils who are not in school at the moment are out as a consequence of self-isolating because they have been a close contact of somebody who has tested positive for covid. From 16 August, anybody under the age of 18 will not have to self-isolate as a consequence of coming into such contact. They will be asked to take a PCR test, and when students start school in September they will be asked to take two lateral flow device tests on school premises in that first week of term.

We are determined to do all we can to identify asymptomatic cases of covid, and all the measures in schools—including ventilation and hygiene—will remain in place despite the move to step 4 to ensure that we minimise any risk of transmission of the virus on school premises. As I mentioned in my opening statement, we are also working on contingency plans should it be necessary to cancel exams next year because of the direction of the pandemic. Our very firm plans are to proceed with exams, because they are the fairest way of assessing young people.

Educational Settings: Reopening

Debate between Nick Gibb and Daisy Cooper

Tuesday 26th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I pay tribute to all staff who work in our special schools. They remain open for vulnerable children and do a wonderful job. For children with special educational needs and disabilities, attending their educational setting is crucial so that they can receive high-quality teaching and the specialist professional support they need. He makes an important point about vaccines. The priority for the first phase is on mortality, but in the second phase the JVCI will be looking at different occupations. The Department for Education will be pressing the case for the education workforce.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD) [V]]

For months, parents, teachers, unions, MPs and local authorities have been calling for: rotas in schools; school transport that is ring-fenced to a single school to reduce transmission; laptops and internet access for children; vaccinations for teachers; mental health funding for young people and the myriad costs facing schools; directly employing supply teachers for one-to-one catch-ups; and trusting local public health directors and schools to decide how best to reopen. The ideas are there on how to reopen schools safely, so why is there still no plan?

[Nick Gibb]

As I set out, there is a very clear plan for reopening schools, based on the fact that schools are part of the national lockdown. There are clear criteria for how and when we emerge from that national lockdown, which will depend on vaccinations, mortality and tackling new variants and, most importantly, on the pressure that the NHS is facing.

On all the other issues the hon. Member trotted out, we have been working on them. In May, we entered into a contract to purchase 200,000 laptops; we increased that in August, September, October, and November. These computers are built to order—there is a long lead time, but we anticipated and prepared for every contingency, which is why we have orders in place for 1.3 million devices, 876,000 of which are now in the hands of young people and schools.

On rotas, they are difficult for secondary schools to implement at the same time as providing full-time education for vulnerable children and the children of critical workers. Rotas do not prioritise exam years. We only ever restrict education as a last resort where transmission is exceptionally high, and rotas are a less effective means of reducing transmission risk than the approach set out in great detail in the contingency framework.