Autism

Pat Glass Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Buckland]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I am reminded of the famous quotation from F. E. Smith about the world offering glittering prizes to those with stout hearts and sharp swords—I think “sharp elbows” was the phrase my hon. Friend used. He is absolutely right. We need to move to a system where parents do not need to shout at the top of their voice to obtain provision for their child, or bang on the nearest door as loudly as possible or kick out at the authorities to get what they believe is in the best interests of their child. He is absolutely right about that.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

Is it not a sad indictment that, in my experience and the experience of many who work in this field, our behavioural schools are packed full of children from families that do not have sharp elbows? Those children are labelled behavioural, whereas children from families that have the ability to get a diagnosis are labelled autistic.

[Mr Buckland]

The hon. Lady has great experience in this field and it has been a pleasure to work with her since we entered Parliament together. She is right. The category of behavioural difficulty is so often used as a repository for children who, in another context, would be treated differently. That is why, when it comes to diagnosis and identification of need, we have to do it better. We have to get better and better to ensure that children are in the right stream, the right school and the right environment. My worry—I know that she shares it—is that in labelling too many children in a behavioural category, we end up with children side by side in an inappropriate environment and in an unsuitable way that can be damaging to the child. I am grateful for her intervention.

Oral Answers to Questions

Pat Glass Excerpts

Thursday 8th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)]

13. What assessment he has made of the latest construction output figures; and if he will make a statement.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

15. What assessment he has made of the latest construction output figures; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)]

The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that construction output fell by 2.5% in the last quarter, but overall gross domestic product increased by 1%.

[Michael Fallon]

There are various surveys; another construction survey shows that output increased in October. In September, we announced a housing and planning package that will deliver up to 70,000 new homes and 140,000 jobs, with a £40 billion guarantee for infrastructure projects and £10 billion for new homes. We have also introduced the Growth and Infrastructure Bill to speed up the planning system and unlock new investment in housing and infrastructure. I am surprised the hon. Gentleman voted against it on Monday night.

[Pat Glass]

Given the importance that the Government placed on the national infrastructure plan just a year ago, why has the value of new construction orders for infrastructure fallen by more than 40% in the first two quarters of this year?

Higher and Further Education

Pat Glass Excerpts

Tuesday 11th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

I wanted to speak in the debate because I feel very strongly about this issue. I have listened to several debates on tuition fees and was a member of the relevant Bill Committee in 2010, so I have heard the Government’s arguments a number of times and have heard them again today. I did not accept them then and do not accept them now.

I remember being lobbied by some young people from my constituency at the time of the vote on tuition fees in 2010 and being joined by one brave Tory MP. I must say that there were not many Lib Dems around at the time, but some Tories came out and argued their case. That MP said he had concerns that people who had not had the advantage of a university education were being asked to pay for the education of others who would not only get a good education but benefit financially from better earnings. He felt that that was not fair and I accept that argument, but I recall one young person coming back quickly and, taking that argument to its natural conclusion, asking why we ask well people to pay for the NHS and the sick and why we ask single people without children or childless couples to pay for the education of other people’s children—an argument I think we all recognise. As a community, we all contribute to the education of other people’s children because ultimately we all benefit from a better educated and skilled work force that makes this country richer. For me, it is simple: I believe that paying taxes to educate our young people is not a waste of money but an investment for the future not just of the young people themselves but of all of us who benefit from an educated, knowledge-rich, competitive society that leads to an entrepreneurial economy.

We do not have a lot of time, but in the time I have I want to talk a little about what is happening in further education now. I sat this morning in the Education Committee, as did colleagues on the Government Benches, listening to evidence on the GCSE English language fiasco this year. I thought I understood what had happened. I thought that there was some leniency in marking in January, so that there had to be some bringing into line of the marking in June. But that was not what happened. I was pretty stunned by what I heard.

It appears that under Ofqual’s policy of comparable standards, whereby whatever the cohort got at key stage 2 they have to get at key stage 4, irrespective of better teaching or improvements in learning—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order.

[Pat Glass]

I am going on to talk about further education.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Well, will you get on to it please?

[Pat Glass]

Okay.

As a result, young people who should have been enrolling on level 3 courses in FE are now enrolling on level 2 courses, and many more are simply disappearing from the system. This will have an impact on our number of people not in education, employment or training. It is not just that there was some rigorous marking in June; there has been clawback, as the pupils in June are compensating for over-lenient marking in January. I think it goes against the principle of natural justice that one group of young people is doubly punished for what happened with others.

The young people I am talking about are C-D borderline pupils. There are not many such pupils in grammar schools or independent schools. These are kids from comprehensive schools from less well-off homes. These are the kids from whom the Government have already taken the education maintenance allowance. They are the kids who can least afford to have a kick in the teeth like this. It simply illustrates the fact that the Government’s education policy from higher education to further education and right through to the key stages in schools is chaotic; it is damaging our children and ultimately it will damage our economy.

Secondary Education (GCSEs)

Pat Glass Excerpts

Tuesday 26th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

I think that we must give the Secretary of State’s speech eight out of 10 for style, but nought out of 10 for content. It was a very good speech which, I am afraid, did not deal with the issue in hand at all. The Secretary of State was asked on numerous occasions whether the Daily Mail had reported him correctly, and he was completely evasive. He was asked again and again how the abolition of GCSEs would raise the bar, and I have to say that his responses were divisive, evasive and at times even destructive.

What is so important about GCSEs is that they are examinations for all pupils of all abilities. They were introduced in 1988 by Margaret Thatcher and Kenneth Baker in response to huge unhappiness, largely among parents. Those of us who were in the education system at that time will remember that it was middle-class parents whose children were sent to underfunded secondary moderns and forced down the route of CSEs who brought about the abolition of CSEs and the introduction of the GCSEs that we have now, which have brought together the best of what was in the CSEs and the old O-levels.

That approach was welcomed by the whole education community, but it seems likely that it will be abolished on the say-so of the Secretary of State, who has apparently not consulted anyone on his proposal. As far as I am aware, there has been no consultation with pupils, parents, teachers or the wider education community. The Secretary of State convened a two-year curriculum review group consisting of the great and the good to consider the issue of the curriculum, but appears subsequently to have completely ignored everything said by that group, choosing instead to develop an education policy that has no evidence base and is founded on personal prejudice.

So what is the evidence behind the Secretary of State’s review? We have heard a lot from him about our cascading down the OECD PISA scales for English, maths and science. I am sorry, but no matter how many times he says that, it is simply not true. In the three years leading up to 2007 many more countries entered their data in the PISA tables, so the outcomes in 2007 did not measure like with like. When the Secretary of State talks of cascading down the scales, what he is really talking about are a couple of percentage points in a table that would now include many more countries than it did at the time when it was last drawn up. That is not measuring like with like. If the Secretary of State were a teacher instead of a journalist looking for the best negative headline, he would understand that.

The Secretary of State used Singapore for his evidence base. The Education Committee visited Singapore last year just to see what was happening there. It must be said that there are many good things in the Singapore system, but what he failed to tell us was that in Singapore education is not free, and is not compulsory for children beyond the age of 11. When PISA measures the outcomes of 16-year-olds in England against those of 16-year-olds in Singapore, it is measuring the outcomes of all 16-year-olds in England against those of some 16-year-olds in Singapore. Again, like is not being measured with like.

In Singapore the curriculum is restricted to English, maths and science, and there is no creativity whatsoever. Here we have a broad, advanced curriculum. Again, like is not being measured with like. The Secretary of State failed to tell us that in Singapore seven out of eight children have up to three hours of additional tuition every day paid for by the parents, over and above the tuition that is received in schools. So again, like is not being measured with like. He also failed to tell us that the Singapore system is one of the most centralist education systems in the world, where the Minister for education dictates what is taught, how it is taught and when it is taught. It goes so far that head teachers do not even apply for places in schools; they are allocated a school and they are moved on every three years—and they have no say whatever about which school they move on to.

In using Singapore to provide evidence for his plans, the Secretary of State is comparing our state-funded, diverse, teacher-led, innovative, autonomous system with a broad and balanced curriculum that caters for all children up to the age of 16 and beyond with an almost Soviet-style centralised system where education is not free, compulsion ends at 11 years of age and there is a highly restrictive curriculum. That is not measuring like with like.

The Secretary of State also looked for his evidence base to polls telling him that parents want to see a return to O-levels. He may well cite the recent YouGov poll that shows that 60% of those who are old enough to have sat the old O-level want to see a return to a two-tier system. However, that is what we would expect from any poll that asked questions of people over 40; they hanker back to what they know. The YouGov poll also shows, however, that 40% of those who sat O-levels do not want to see a return to a two-tier system, and that 65% of those who took GCSEs do not want to see a return to a two-tier system either.

I accept that the system we have is not perfect, but I do not believe that the answer is to return to qualifications that were designed a lifetime ago for a world that no longer exists in which children without qualifications were able to find jobs in low-skill industries—in factories, mines, shipbuilding, steel-making and agriculture. That world no longer exists. Today’s young people need skills that were not previously taught: resilience and reasoning skills, negotiation skills, team-working, speaking skills, interpersonal skills. Those are the skills that employers are telling the Education Committee that they need. They are taught in private schools; we should be making time for them in our state schools.

In designing our state education system, we should say, “If it’s not good enough for my child, it’s not good enough for your child.” That should be our guiding principle in designing an education system, rather than, “Outcomes for some at the expense of others.”

Safeguarding Children

Pat Glass Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg]

That is absolutely right, and I shall come on to one or two of those themes. As a principle, that makes sense, and not only in social work—there are similar lessons in other areas of public service.

As well as integrated services, I want to emphasise the importance of leadership. Professor Munro has said that local authorities should protect the role of director of children’s services and the lead member for children’s services, as established in the 2004 legislation. There is evidence from some authorities of those roles being combined with other functions, typically adult social care responsibilities. Professor Munro made it clear that she opposed that, and I urge the Minister to respond to her concerns.

If the Government are to meet their aim of improving professional expertise and flexibility, there is a need, as I have said, to improve the status of the social work profession. The British Association of Social Workers has warned that the proposals set out yesterday do not address sufficiently social workers’ concerns about issues to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) referred—unmanageable case loads, stress, plummeting morale and cuts to administrative support staff. We need to ensure that there is sufficient flexibility and professional expertise in the system, including on the important issue of neglect. Given that extreme, high-profile cases have, understandably, been well publicised, occasionally there is a tendency for the system to, as it were, neglect neglect. Professor Munro has said that the processes are

“better designed to deal with an urgent concern about an incident of physical or sexual abuse, so neglect, which is about a chronic pattern of parenting, does not come up as a serious case.”

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend will be aware that the Select Committee on Education is carrying out a detailed inquiry on child protection. Although many issues have emerged—and the report has yet to be drafted—there is clear concern about neglect, the inconsistent thresholds across the country for services to families, and the fact that in cases where older children are clearly at risk they do not necessarily get access to the services that they need. Those are three areas of serious concern for the Select Committee.

[Stephen Twigg]

I know that my hon. Friend raised those matters directly with the Minister when he gave evidence to the Select Committee yesterday. I wish to put on record our appreciation of the detailed work that she and other members of the Select Committee have done on this important subject. I am sure that all Members look forward to that report, including its recommendations.

Services such as ChildLine have done an immense job in identifying the problems facing children and young people, but the increasing work load for its staff—similar to the increasing work load for social workers and council staff—and the fact that the processes for dealing with referrals are often bureaucratic, is something that the Government should address.

On early intervention, Labour supports the Munro recommendation that a statutory duty should be introduced on local authorities and relevant agencies to secure the provision of early help. Early intervention is vital in the prevention and detection of abuse. These services need to be expanded, but are under a great deal of pressure, not least from spending cuts. I wish to put on the record my thanks to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) and my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) for the excellent work they have done on this very important area of early intervention. They have outlined the importance of early work in identifying challenges and managing to tackle them at an appropriate stage.

Services for Young People

Pat Glass Excerpts

Thursday 22nd March 2012 Westminster Hall

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

I am not entirely sure how to follow that last speech, but I will definitely get a copy of Hansard tomorrow and read it. I am sure that it will be even better the second time round.

I have never spoken in a Westminster Hall debate on a Select Committee report before, and I was not sure what to expect. So far, however, it is exceeding even my wildest imaginings. I am pleased to speak in this debate. Having seen what happens, it is now clear to me that the purpose of such a debate is not for members of the Committee to get together—in a sense, we could have had this debate in a bar—but for us to duff up the Minister verbally, and hopefully get a response from him that will satisfy some of the recommendations that came out of an incredibly well researched and evidence- based report.

It is difficult, particularly in my part of the country, to speak in a debate about youth services without seeing them in the wider context of, for example, youth employment and unemployment. The timing of this debate is particularly opportune, given that youth unemployment currently stands at more than 1 million.

In my constituency of North West Durham, unemployment has doubled in the past two years, and 13% of all jobseeker’s allowance claimants are aged between 18 and 24. In human terms, that is 1,290 young people aged between 18 and 24 in my constituency who are not receiving any form of education or training and are not in employment. That is a human tragedy for them, but from my point of view, it is a case of déjà vu. It is like a rerun of the 1980s. We are in danger of creating yet another lost generation, with all the costs that that has for society.

I know that the Government are concerned about the issue. They talk about families living in dependency and they launch initiatives to deal with the most complex and costly families, who collectively, across the country, are costing us billions of pounds in benefits and in terms of health. They take up the vast majority of the time and resources of housing services, the police and justice services. Much of that has its roots in mass youth unemployment—what we saw in the ’80s and ’90s.

I see families in my constituency who do not work, and my constituency is not so different from many others. It is a large rural constituency, with an urban population in one corner—

[Mr Graham Stuart]

The hon. Lady is very fair-minded and will want to recognise the fact that mass youth unemployment has been a reality for the entirety of the time that we are talking about. From the beginning, it was pretty solid. It did not move in the boom years of the previous Government. After the financial crisis, it went up. Although there was a temporary drop before the last election, the upward movement was there. It is a systemic issue, which we need to tackle. It is certainly not the result of any immediate policies of a Government who have been in power for 22 months.

[Pat Glass]

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point. Youth unemployment was not invented by the current Government, but it clearly has not been helped in the past two years.

[Lisa Nandy]

My hon. Friend is right to place the issue in the wider context. Does she agree that when youth unemployment rose in the mid-2000s, that was because there was an increase in labour supply—more young people were looking for the same number of jobs—whereas the skyrocketing of youth unemployment since the current Government came to power has been caused by a collapse in labour demand? The jobs simply are not there. The Minister needs to take that seriously.

[Pat Glass]

I agree. In my constituency at the moment, 12 young people are chasing every vacancy. However, I want to look back to what mass unemployment causes and to look at what we will face in the future. I see people in my constituency who do not work. Their parents did not work and in all probability their children will not work. They place no value on education. They see schools as convenient baby-sitting services when their children are younger, but have no interest in whether they attend school when they are older. They have no investment in the present and no hope in the future, and they certainly do not vote.

However, the situation was not always as I have described. In communities such as mine before the 1980s and the early ’90s, those people had work. They worked in steelworks, in mines and in all the industries surrounding those big beasts, but all that has gone and we have not put anything in place for them. The cycle of depression and waste is costing the country billions of pounds, and it starts with youth unemployment. Depressingly, I can see the cycle beginning again.

As a member of the Education Committee, I was therefore very keen that early on we should take a look at services for young people and particularly services targeted at vulnerable and challenging young people. As we have heard, the Select Committee examined those services, particularly in the context of rising 16-to-19 participation in education, and we found several issues that worried us greatly, not least the major cuts in youth services and careers services.

We made a number of sensible recommendations, based on the evidence that we heard. We did not think that the Government response was adequate. I hope that the Minister can make a better showing today. In response to the Government response, we highlighted our recommendations again. We are looking for an endorsement of the outcomes framework. I know how hard it is to focus Governments on outcomes. That is very difficult for Governments. I could entertain hon. Members all afternoon with accounts of the attempts that various Governments have made to focus on outcomes and that have gone wrong.

However, we think that it would be worth while for the Government to consider an endorsement of the outcomes framework. We have recommended that the Government set out the grounds on which they will judge a local authority to have failed to provide sufficient services for young people and the ways in which Ministers will act to secure improvement, so that it is clear across the piece, for local authorities and for young people, when local authorities have failed to deliver services and what Ministers will do to secure improvement.

We underlined our finding that some local authority youth services had already closed and urged Ministers to intervene before it was too late. We told the Government that it was not good enough to dismiss our estimate of public spending on youth services, which is based on their own figures, and demanded that they provide us with their own assessment of annual public spending on youth services for each of the 10 years before introduction of the early intervention grant, so that we and others can see clearly exactly what has been spent on young people’s services in the past, what is being spent now and what is being cut and where. We raised concerns—we have discussed this already—about the potential impact of charging for the national citizen service and the impact of the NCS on youth services generally.

Most of all, we highlighted the fact that services for young people—education funding, careers services, youth services and home to school and college transport services—were at risk. Indeed, some were disappearing before our eyes—some as a result of direct Government cuts and some indirectly, through cuts to local authority funding.

[Mr Clive Betts in the Chair]

Like the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) and the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), I spent six weeks serving on the Committee considering the Bill that became the Education Act 2011. In fact, I think that we spent about eight weeks together; we entertained one another for eight weeks. The hon. Gentlemen will remember, as I do, that the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning gave an undertaking when we made it clear to him that day that careers services were disappearing. He said that he would take action “imminently”. When we asked what “imminently” meant, he said that it would be when he left the room. However, despite his good intentions, what has happened on the ground is that careers services have disappeared.

I go into schools all the time. The responsibility has been transferred to schools, and when I ask schools what is happening with careers services, they tell me, “Oh, Miss So-and-so does it as part of PSHE”—personal, social, health and economic education—or that sixth formers have access to support when filling in UCAS forms. That is what careers services for young people in schools today have been reduced to. It is simply not good enough.

Youth services—both universal services and targeted services for vulnerable young people—have been cut or have disappeared. My hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) gave a very good description of how that is happening. There have been job losses in these services, with specialist, experienced, difficult-to-replace staff leaving. I have some experience of having to replace specialist staff after a specialist service has closed down, and it is not easy. Those people do not hang on the backs of doors; they are highly qualified, flexible and often mobile. They are hard to train and incredibly hard to replace.

Doug Nicholls, of the union Unite, has estimated that some 3,000 specialist youth service staff face losing their jobs and 20% of youth centres in England and Wales are closing down. My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), when she sums up the debate, will give more details on it, but she has made this estimate:

“A massive £200 million worth of cuts will have been made to youth services by April this year hitting young people and damaging chances of getting the economy back on track.”

All that has happened not just because of the cuts in services, but because the ring fencing around these services has been removed. That has hit young people living in Tory and Liberal Democrat-run council areas the hardest. Research shows that 60% of Tory and Lib Dem councils are making significant cuts to their youth services, whereas Labour local authorities, which are often those facing the greatest cuts in their funding, are at least targeting that funding at those whom they consider most vulnerable and are seeking to protect services for young people. That means cuts to youth service centre hours and sometimes closures. Less help is being given to young people through useful activities that lead to work and training and away from negative influences leading to crime, alcohol and drug abuse and gang involvement.

In my constituency, the local YMCA in Consett, which does tremendous work, often with the least able and most challenging young people, is struggling to find funding. Billy Robson, who has run the YMCA for as long as I can remember, tells me that two years ago, he was confident that the YMCA could improve the life of even the most difficult and challenging young person. Nobody knows more about supporting young people than he does.

However, he tells me that he now feels unusually gloomy, particularly about the dwindling opportunities available to the large numbers of young people who are not in education, employment or training. There are a few jobs, but they are usually short-term and sometimes part-time factory jobs. Even then, 12 young people are queuing up for every vacancy. Billy tells me that it is soul-destroying listening to young people who cannot get work. Their sense of despondency goes deeper and deeper. He says that it is the biggest struggle that he has faced since the closure of British Steel in 1980. He wants to be upbeat for the sake of the young people, but when he has to pay off his own staff, on whom those young people depend, it is hard to be positive.

Over the past year, he has applied for about £1 million in funding from organisations such as the Northern Rock Foundation, Greggs and the National Offender Management Service, but has not been successful in any of those applications. He says that because local authority funds have been cut, charities are competing for available private sector money. The Prince’s Trust runs numerous fantastic programmes from the YMCA in Consett that support young people into training and hopefully employment, but the Prince’s Trust seems to be one of the few organisations that have any funding left.

The Government, at a sweep, abolished the education maintenance allowance, which did more to improve 16-plus participation and narrow the gap between the richest and poorest students than any other scheme that I saw in my 25 years in education. To justify abolishing EMA, the Government relied for their evidence on one report, commissioned for a different purpose by a different Government, involving a group of young people, many of whom were ineligible for EMA on the ground of age. The author of that report, who gave evidence to our Committee, was clearly angry about how the Secretary of State had manipulated his figures and his report to justify abolishing EMA.

As a result, 16-to-19 participation has fallen back to levels not seen in this country since the early 1990s. When I asked the Secretary of State about it, he told me that participation had not fallen at all colleges, only at some. It would be good to hear from the Minister exactly where participation by 16 to 19-year-olds has increased. I am not a betting person, but I am happy to bet next month’s salary that participation is up in the south and down in the north, up in the wealthy shires and down in the inner cities and up among the highest earners and down among poor people.

I turn to the Liberal Democrats’ famous flagship policy, the pupil premium. There are probably a couple of dozen education funding geeks around the country, and I am one of them. It was actually quite exciting once I got into it. I know that pupil premium money is not new; it is recycled money. For all its good intentions, it has been recycled from schools with concentrations of the poorest children and young people and siphoned off to richer parts of the country with fewer poor children.

[Neil Carmichael]

rose—

[Pat Glass]

I am happy to give way and to challenge you afterwards on whatever you have to say.

[Neil Carmichael]

I was going to say what a great speech the hon. Lady was making. I was just wondering where EMA and the pupil premium fit in the context of youth services. They are associated more with the question of getting young people into education, keeping them there and supporting the people most in need in the most appropriate way when they are in education.

[Pat Glass]

Given the speech that you just made, I find it difficult that you are asking me to justify—

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

Order. May I say to the hon. Lady that I am not asking for anything?

[Pat Glass]

Sorry, Mr Betts. I am discussing services for young people, and EMA and its abolition are as much a part of that as services through youth centres or careers services.

There is clear evidence that the pupil premium, for all its good intentions, recycles money from schools with concentrations of the poorest children and young people and siphons off resources to richer parts of the country with fewer poor children. That is because the pupil premium has largely replaced additional education needs funding, which, although it was called different things in different local authorities, was needs-based funding for schools to support their least able and most vulnerable pupils. The AEN formula in each local authority was made up of different factors, but was legally required to include a deprivation factor. Some local authorities used the index of multiple deprivation while others used free school meals, but the basis of AEN funding was a needs-based deprivation factor.

AEN also had an accumulator effect. Schools with fewer than 15% of children on free school meals got nothing in most local authorities, on the basis that that was the norm and that need could and should be met from existing school funding. Schools with between 15% and 24% had a basic level of AEN funding, but then the level escalated massively between 25% and 35% in acknowledgment of the need for additional resources to deal with more complex issues in driving improvement. Any school where more than 35% of children received free school meals was given a huge step in funding, in recognition that those schools were dealing with complex issues needing additional capacity.

The pupil premium gives a basic amount per pupil, drawing money from schools and areas with the highest concentration of free school meals and of poorer children and giving it to wealthier areas with fewer free school meals. If anybody wants evidence of what is happening in their local authority and whether they are winners or losers when it comes to the pupil premium, I can give them a breakdown, courtesy of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), who has researched the matter in detail.

[Tessa Munt]

Would the hon. Lady like to comment on the fact that a large number of schools are rural and very small? For example, I have a school in my constituency with 68 children. Surely, in that situation, if two families are not so well off, the school will quickly come to its 15% threshold. The pupil premium is directed precisely at those individual children suffering from deprivation, as opposed to thinking that it was fine to mash them in with everybody else if there were fewer than 15%. It only takes nine or 10 children—a few families with multiple children—for such a school to have a significant number of young people with difficulties, without being over the 15% threshold where something would step in under the old system.

[Pat Glass]

As an education funding geek, I have an answer for that. There was an element for small schools. For small rural schools, most local authorities had an element of funding for vulnerable and poor children that was separate from AEN funding. Those schools were already catered for by other parts of the funding formula.

[Mr Stuart]

The East Riding of Yorkshire was, for a long time, the fourth lowest funded authority in the country and is now the eighth lowest, despite the demonstrable increase in the cost of delivering education in a sparsely populated rural and coastal area. It is not obvious, however one looks at the complex formula, how to work out whether it properly recognises the needs of an area. The pupil premium has the elegant benefit of directly targeting an additional sum to help schools provide educational support for children on free school meals.

[Pat Glass]

The beauty of the education funding formula—it is complex and if we tweak one end of it we cause a huge tsunami at the other end—is that it was locally driven. Each local authority looked at its funding formula and had the opportunity to take into account things such as small schools, rural schools and small areas of deprivation. No one, I think, would accept that it is good to take money away from schools in which more than 50% of the kids are on free school meals and share it out among schools in which only 2% or 3% of the children are on free school meals; it does not make sense and it is certainly not what was intended. The scheme was well intentioned, but it is driving money from those schools that have high concentrations of poorer children and moving it to schools with small concentrations.

Everything that is happening in youth services and careers services, and everything that has happened with EMA, young people’s funding and higher education, where participation from poorer young people from the poorest regions has collapsed in parts of the country because of the tripling of tuition fees—when the Chairman of the Select Committee gave the audience in the Guildhall in York the benefit of the Government’s policy on this, it was clear that people had glazed over and were not listening—has a cumulative effect, and it will take a generation to replace and restore services for young people.

[Neil Carmichael]

rose—

[Mr Stuart]

rose—

[Pat Glass]

My greatest fear is that we are creating for ourselves and our young people a further legacy of long-term unemployment and what comes from that—welfare dependency and its massive cost to the country for generations to come.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton]

We could not possibly come out with a total figure for complete roll-out because we have not remotely reached total roll-out. We are getting economies of scale. We spent approximately £13.5 million. In addition, some philanthropic and other money came in. We are being approached by people who want to add money, on top of the Government money. We are considering converting it into a contractual scheme. We will then start to have some long-term estimates of the amount of money involved. Simply to do an extrapolation of the costs in the first year, which are likely to be the highest and will gradually come down, and come up with a figure of 50%, and then come up with this figure is, I have to say, disingenuous. It is also slightly disingenuous and unfair of the Chair to say that I am dwelling disproportionately on NCS. The point I made earlier was that his press release, the headline, how this report, which contains some really good stuff, was launched, was all about NCS affecting one year out of the 13 to 25-year-old cohort.

It is also not fair to say that, at the time my hon. Friend mentioned, the Government had no other youth policies. Let me remind him that in the teeth of the toughest spending round that we have had, we secured for the Department for Education £141 million of capital to fund the remainder of the 63 Myplace projects, which is an excellent scheme started by the previous Government. We ensured that the outstanding projects had financial sustainability, which some earlier ones did not have. That important youth policy, again, did not feature greatly in the report, which is a shame, because it is doing some fantastic stuff.

Last week I was in Lincoln, speaking at the Myplace network conference, seeing some fantastic examples of how Myplace centres are being used as hubs of youth activity in local communities and, particularly, focusing on how we deal with what are commonly called NEETs, which is a derogatory term. I prefer the term GREETs: getting ready for education, employment and training. Those will be centres for the youth contract, for organisations to come in and do their training, and where we can get some of the more difficult-to-reach young people into some form of employment, education and training.

Myplace centres are key to the Government’s youth—and Positive for Youth—policy. I should have liked them to feature in this report. If the Chairman of the Select Committee would like to rectify that by doing a study into Myplace centres, I should be more than happy to co-operate and give him all the resources he needs.

[Pat Glass]

I am sure that the Minister would like to see those things, but he is misrepresenting the purpose of the Select Committee. I understand that its purpose is to scrutinise Government business, not publicise the things that the Government want us to publicise or even to report on things that the Minister would like us to.

[Tim Loughton]

I have said that I respect the Select Committee and that I encourage it to study youth services and anything to do with young people. In my opening remarks I said that, whatever I may like, or not, in the Committee’s report, I welcome it. However, the report was about out-of-school activities for 13 to 25-year-olds. Myplace centres cater for out-of-school activities for that cohort and more; they were in place in part under the previous Government and money was secured for their expansion under this Government when the report was being prepared. Why did they not feature in the report? That is my point. Whether the Committee wanted to criticise them or be positive about them, they should have featured as another example of what the Government are trying to do, then the Committee could have said whether the Government needed to do better or to do it differently. Are we wasting £141 million? Why just talk about wasting £13.5 million on the national citizen service when we are wasting more than 10 times that—if that is the Committee’s view—on Myplace?

Oral Answers to Questions

Pat Glass Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Prisk]

We have changed the guiding principles from those that we inherited. That means, first, that we are not going to tie British business down by implementing early, as we have in the past. We will implement on the last legal day, under transposition rules. Secondly, my hon. Friend is absolutely right about interpretation. We will ensure that we copy regulations out and do not embellish them, as was sadly all too often the case under the last, Labour Government.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

Higher education applications in this country have collapsed, although not across the board—I think applications to Oxford, Cambridge and Durham have increased. However, in the universities that ordinary people go to, they have collapsed.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. With reference to the red tape challenge.

[Pat Glass]

I just wanted to ask a question about—

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Lady will have her opportunity another time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Willetts]

It is very encouraging that when we look behind the 1% fall in applications overall, it looks as though the fall in applications from prospective students in the most disadvantaged areas is actually only 0.2%. That tells us that the message is getting across, and I pay particular tribute to the efforts of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) and the advice we have had from him, and to the work done by OFFA to get that crucial message across.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

Higher education applications have collapsed. In teaching, we have a simple way of measuring whether children are learning by rote or are actually learning and understanding: we ask them what would happen next. When the Minister tripled tuition fees and abolished education maintenance allowances, what did he think was going to happen next?

[Mr Willetts]

I thank the hon. Lady for the advance notice of her question. Contrary to the stories of collapse and disaster, we believe that the fact that applications have fallen only by 1% is evidence that the message that students do not have to pay is getting across, and this summer I shall once more sadly be in the position of having to explain why young people applying to go to university do not have a place. In other words, we have succeeded in explaining the truth about our proposals, contrary to the misleading allegations of the Opposition.

Education System (Dance)

Pat Glass Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) on securing this important debate. I know that he is a strong advocate for dance and for the promotion of dance for its health and social benefits and educational value. He pointed to the creativity and physical discipline involved in learning to dance, and, for some dancers, teamwork.

Dance is important to the cultural life of a country, and it is enjoyed by performers and audiences alike, be it classical, traditional or contemporary. Dance has something to offer to people of all ages, and if the popularity of “Strictly Come Dancing” is anything to go by, it is never too late to learn to dance. I just wish that my right hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Vince Cable), or indeed the former Member for Maidstone and The Weald, Ann Widdecombe, were here today; they could certainly contribute to the debate. It is also never too early to start to dance. Young children have a natural instinct for movement to music, and that should be encouraged along their path to adulthood. The hon. Member for Aberdeen North also alluded to that in his opening remarks.

The Government believe that every child should experience a wide variety of high-quality cultural experiences, including dance. In April, we commissioned an independent review of cultural education led by Darren Henley, managing director of Classic FM, who also led the review of music education. Mr Henley will be reporting on how we can realise the ambition of giving high-quality cultural experiences to our children while ensuring the best use of public money. That will include experiences within and outside the school day. I know that the main cultural groups have not only responded to the call for evidence, but taken the opportunity to meet Darren Henley to contribute to the review. His report and our response to it will be published later in the autumn. Dance has an important place in schools and I am confident that that will continue.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

Does the Minister accept that by introducing the English Baccalaureate, which introduces a hierarchy of subjects and excludes subjects such as dance and drama, and by cutting quotas for drama teachers for universities such as Durham, the Government are placing dance and drama in a serious situation for the future?

[Mr Gibb]

I do not accept that argument. I will come to talk about the English Baccalaureate in a moment. The E-bac has always been kept at a small enough range of important, facilitating subjects to allow scope within the school curriculum timetable for students to take a wider range of subjects, such as vocational ones, music, art and economics.

We know from previous surveys that dance remains the second most popular activity, after football, among young people. However, something that interested me, and probably many other people, was the statistic about Scotland that the hon. Member for Aberdeen North mentioned. Perhaps it is the prevalence of Scottish dancing that is the key there. It is true also that 97% of all schools provide dancing activity. The popularity of dance is not limited to primary schools, where dance is a compulsory element of the current PE national curriculum; it is also a feature of secondary school education, where it is optional.

As we set out in our White Paper “The Importance of Teaching”, we are embarking on a new era of freedom for schools—freedom from unnecessary bureaucracy and from an overly prescriptive national curriculum. The review of the national curriculum was launched in January and is being conducted in two phases. Phase 1 will focus on the overall shape and nature of the new national curriculum and will also consider new programmes of study for English, mathematics, the sciences and physical education. Those subjects will continue to be compulsory in all four key stages. The programmes of study will be finalised in autumn 2012, with first teaching in schools from September 2013.

Central to the Government’s educational philosophy is the view that not all that is good must be centrally mandated or managed. We believe that the new curriculum will allow schools greater freedom to teach beyond what children should be expected to know in core subjects. We are looking to create more room for excellent innovative teaching and curriculum design. We want more time available for teaching in areas such as dance, and the ability to create a broad and balanced school curriculum to meet pupils’ needs.

The hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) raised the issue of the English baccalaureate and her unease that dance is not included within its subjects. Although the English baccalaureate will give pupils the opportunity to study a core of academic subjects, it does not mean that we wish to restrict their choices or opportunities for wider study and the core of subjects is small enough to allow for that. We know that study in other subjects will be just as valuable to pupils, depending on what they go on to do after 16.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Gentleman raises a good point. If we go through the English baccalaureate subjects—English, maths, science, one of the two humanities and a modern foreign language—all of them, apart from a modern foreign language and a humanity, are already compulsory to 16. We are talking about two GCSEs: history or geography, and a modern foreign language. Modern foreign languages were compulsory until 2004, and there is a body of opinion that says that they should be made compulsory again. The debate is about history and geography, and there has been a significant decline in those subjects over recent years, which is a cause for concern. None the less, if we add up all those GCSE subjects and add on a humanity, it is still small enough for pupils to study one, two or three more GCSEs beyond those core academic subjects, depending on which combination of those subjects they take. That is right because the Russell group universities and others say that those subjects are the facilitating subjects that keep options open for young people to make decisions about their career choices later in life. International evidence has shown that countries around the world in high-performing jurisdictions are delaying young people from making decisions over career choices. They keep options open for longer so that young people can make the right choices.

[Pat Glass]

Clearly, if the Minister and the people around him feel that that is possible within key stage 4, they have never put together such a timetable. Moving back to dance, is the Minister aware that the highest increase in dance, movement and drama is among disaffected young girls who have a history of non-attendance? Given the Government’s view about the importance of behaviour and attendance, surely there is a good argument for including dance and drama at key stage 4 as a core subject.

[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Lady makes a good point, and I do not disagree with anything that she has said. At the moment, about 2.5% of the cohort are taking GCSE dance. I do not see why those figures will not continue, even with the popularity of the E-bac as a concept. I do not believe that the introduction of the new performance measure will have dire consequences for those selecting dance GCSE, any more than it will for those choosing other subjects that are not included in the E-bac combination.

When young people choose their GCSE subjects at key stage 4, it is important that they base their choices on what they need to progress. We recognise the wider benefits that studying subjects such as dance can bring. All pupils should be encouraged to study non-E-bac subjects alongside the core English baccalaureate to benefit from a well-rounded education.

To encourage talented young dancers, I am pleased to say that the Government maintain their support for low-income families through the music and dance scheme. The scheme represents the top of the pyramid for performing arts education and training and is the Government’s main vehicle for funding the training needs of exceptionally talented young dancers and musicians. Although small—the scheme is funded at £29.5 million this year—the scheme, its beneficiaries, its participating organisations and its patrons have a significant impact on the performing arts world. Although we have not made a formal evaluation, we know that MDS-aided pupils go on to become leading members of their profession in ballet and dance companies at home and abroad, some as soloists with international recognition and renown, such as prima ballerinas Darcey Bussell and Lauren Cuthbertson. Royal Ballet School students regularly win major competitions such as young British dancer of the year and the Lausanne international ballet competition in Switzerland.

In September, when I visited White Lodge, the Royal Ballet school, I could see that the standard of our young dancers is world class.

New Schools

Pat Glass Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

It is very good point by my hon. Friend. The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) is new to the job, but, on the basis of everything that he has said so far, I think that there may be a real change in the Labour party’s approach towards the issue, so I encourage him on the path of virtue and say no more than that.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

May I clarify the Secretary of State’s response to my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound)—that head teachers and teachers in free schools will not be subject to the public sector pay freeze? Will there be any upper limit at all, or will governors and trustees be able to pay those people whatever they want? Will there be a limit so that such teachers cannot pay themselves 20% more than the lowest-paid member of staff?

[Michael Gove]

Not just free schools and UTCs, but all academies have the freedom to depart from national terms and conditions, and, as a result, teachers in academies, even though they are younger on average than teachers in other maintained schools, are paid on average £1,000 a year more. I personally think that, notwithstanding the real problems we have in dealing with the poisoned economic legacy of the previous Government, we should do everything we can to reward great professionals. Paying teachers more at every level is something that we, across the House, should aspire to do as resources allow.

School Funding Reform

Pat Glass Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Yes. All schools—academies, community schools and voluntary-aided schools—and local authorities that are responsible for the maintenance of a number of schools will be able to apply this autumn.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

As a member of the Education Committee I was recently invited to a meeting with Lord Baker and Lord Adonis, who told me they had managed to secure £150 million from the Treasury for an experiment in university technology colleges. That £150 million would go a long way towards reinstating the education maintenance allowance, which is the one big thing I have seen in 30 years of working in education that has made a real difference to the participation of poor pupils and to narrowing the attainment gap. The Secretary of State tells us that we cannot afford EMA, which we know works, so how can we find £150 million for an experiment, when we have no idea whether it works or not?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for making those points, but we must agree to differ on EMA. I think that the new learner support fund that we are introducing with the discretionary capacity that local colleges and schools will have to support students will effectively meet needs. On university technical colleges, I do not believe that they are an experiment; they are on the ground and working well already. I was pleased to read a speech by the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) only last week in which he reflected on his visit to a university technical college that JCB helped to establish.