Oral Answers to Questions

Pat Glass Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I must say that as a quick learner, the Secretary of State is proving to be exemplary, and the House is grateful to him.

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

Every head teacher and teacher I have spoken to dislikes and has enormous disrespect for the E-bac. I have not come across a single educationist who supports the Secretary of State. It is causing chaos at key stage 4 and in our schools. Is that what he meant by giving more power and autonomy to teachers?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady is assiduous, but she has not yet talked to the head teacher of the best school in County Durham, Durham Johnston comprehensive school, who backs the E-bac, as do all the great head teachers to whom I have spoken recently.

School Closures (Thursday)

Pat Glass Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. and learned Friend has made a good point, but notwithstanding the dreadful financial situation that we inherited, teachers, and all public sector workers, will retain a defined-benefit pension scheme. Defined-benefit pension schemes were the norm in 1979, and indeed in 1997, but I am afraid that after what happened with the Labour Government, they became a rarity in the private sector. That is why we are so anxious to ensure that they are reformed in the public sector so that they can be secure for the future.

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

The Secretary of State asked what Labour Members were doing to help to resolve the strike. Unfortunately I am not the Secretary of State, but if I were, I would be ringing those general secretaries, bringing them together, and trying to resolve matters before Thursday. What is the Secretary of State going to do between now and Thursday to prevent the strike and the disruption to children’s education?

[Michael Gove]

I have met, and enjoy meeting, the general secretaries of all the trade unions, and I am glad that I enjoy cordial relations with them. As I told the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson) earlier, I am talking to all the general secretaries of all the trade unions later this afternoon. I made sure that yesterday’s negotiations and discussions were concluded so that the general secretaries had a chance to reflect on them before I contacted them today. I think that that is the wise and moderate way in which to proceed, and I am sorry that there are Labour Members who believe at this stage that anything else is appropriate.

Early Years Assessments

Pat Glass Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to be under your chairmanship once again, Mr Havard. I also take particular pleasure in welcoming the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), to Westminster Hall today, because I have the chance to put on record my thanks to her and her officials for the tremendous help I have had with the two reviews on early intervention that I was asked to do by Her Majesty’s Government. I am very pleased with the personal and the official co-operation, which have made my job much easier. My first report was on what an effective early intervention strategy is and my second report, which is due out shortly, is on how we pay for it.

Early intervention is about giving every baby, child and young person the social and emotional capability—the bedrock—that we all need to lead effective lives, so reducing the massive costs of failure to the individual and to taxpayers. All of us in this Chamber, I imagine, are early interveners. We were either intervened upon early by our own parents or, almost naturally and unconsciously, intervened early with our children, but many families do not do that, and in our debate we want to assist those people.

Today’s debate is about assessing the social and emotional capabilities of the nought to five-year-olds. The issue is as close to the Minister’s heart as it is to mine. Such assessment is key to early intervention. If we do not have that knowledge, intervention is much more difficult, and we therefore intervene only when problems have become deep-rooted and much more intractable. Assessment is also the key to the concept of school-readiness, which has thankfully gained favour recently.

In that context, one of the most important things we will see in the next year or two will be the Government proposals on the early years foundation stage, which I understand might even be published before the recess. That statement will be of immense significance, and I wish the Minister well in getting those judgments right, because they will impact on every child and their life chances and for the rest of their adult lives. Getting it right for the nought to fives also means—a bonus for the Minister—that she will probably do more to reduce the structural deficit in this country than any host of Treasury Ministers, by attacking the massive, multi-billion-pound costs of failure, such as educational underachievement, low work aspiration, lifetimes on benefit, high crime levels, poor parenting, drink and drug abuse and teenage pregnancy. All of those are reduced by effective early intervention. The evidence now, not least in my report for Her Majesty’s Government, is absolutely incontrovertible: those consequences flow from effective early intervention. The Minister would not be the person I know her to be if she did not have a long list of useful items on which the gigantic pool of savings could be spent when we can monetise and realise those savings in due course.

It is possible to wait. We can wait until school begins, and we can have a booster programme, but I believe that a far better approach is to help children to achieve the milestones as they grow, giving a little extra help as it is needed, rather than just before going to school. Therefore, regular and effective assessment of nought to five-year-olds is crucial. It should not be necessary to say this, but I am not asking for babies to sit examinations or any of the other tripe that people misinterpret in some lower-grade newspapers. Assessment should be gentle, and not intrusive. It should gauge levels of attainment and school-readiness much earlier in the life of a baby, child or young person, and identify and then support those who are not school-ready.

Just as we can barely believe that tiny children were once sent up chimneys, I believe that in years to come future generations will be aghast that we let children enter school when they were not ready, and often subjected them to 11 years of humiliation and underachievement before spending billions of pounds picking up the pieces. Now, with what we know, we no longer have an excuse. We know that it is much cheaper and more effective to provide an alternative: evidence-based programmes that produce real results. They are available to all of us, and will help to overcome the barriers that have become commonplace in many constituencies, including yours, I suspect, Mr Havard, and mine. They put in the early filters that good parenting normally puts in so that our public services and voluntary sector are not swamped with a tsunami of dysfunction, but can focus on the really tough problems that people thought they had become teachers, local beat officers, doctors or health visitors to deal with. We must filter out the vast majority of people whose needs are not as serious and can be dealt with by early intervention.

The key to doing that is for the Department for Education and Department of Health, who separately do so much excellent work on this issue, to work together, and I know that the Minister is working extremely hard on making those connections and working with ministerial colleagues. If we can do that, and create a single strategy for nought to five-year-olds, instead of one that breaks off or changes criteria halfway through, we will have effective assessment, and be able to identify the individuals who need it.

In my first report, I recommended that all children’s development should be regularly assessed from birth up to and including the age of five, with a focus on social and emotional development so that they can be put on the path to school-readiness, which many, not least those from low-income households, would benefit from. Accountability is confused and divided, policy is incomplete, and there is an unnecessary separation between the healthy child programme reviews and the early years foundation stage assessments. It is timely that several external reviews have taken place, and that a more integrated programme of assessments for all children should explore the opportunities for national measures based on those suggested not only in my first review, but in the almost identical proposals in the reviews of the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) and Dame Clare Tickell, as well as Professor Eileen Munro.

There have been four serious and significant reviews in this area. This issue is one of the many—I would argue that it is the most important issue—on which all four independent reviewers agree. The culture of early rather than late intervention should be central to the policy not just of the present Government, but of all future Governments. This is an intergenerational problem. It is not the property of one party or one Government. We all have to sign up to this. I am very grateful to the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition for their kind words in support of my first report and the kind words that they have allowed me to attach to the second report, which will be in the public domain shortly.

The Government have the opportunity to act swiftly to ensure that the nought to fives are helped at the earliest and most cost-effective point in their lives, so that they can develop that social and emotional bedrock and thrive. I hope very much that that is the direction that we will see from the Government in the early years statement, which I believe is to be published in the not-too-distant future.

My next point is about evidence. I do not want to go into that in too much detail. There is lots of it around now. There is a great deal of it in my own review and the other reviews. However, there is one important connection that I want to raise with the Minister. It is of concern to many of us, not least, if I may say so, the Deputy Prime Minister. I am referring to social mobility. If we are to have the levels of social mobility that all parties would subscribe to, it is vital that the groundwork is put in place as early as possible. Schemes that are produced late on in the life cycle are very gallant but highly ineffective when compared with early intervention. The Department for Education’s internal analysis of the national pupil database underlined that when it said that children who perform badly at the start of school tend to perform badly throughout and that a good start in life is hugely important to later educational attainment.

There are those who say that this is a choice; we have only so much money and we have to figure out whether we spend it on this, that or the other, because there are discrete, hermetically sealed primary results, secondary results and further and higher education results. Nothing could be further from the truth, as underlined by the Department’s own findings.

If we can give the little ones a great start, we are giving them the most fantastic advantage. We all know from our constituencies what the response is when we say to a secondary head, “Why aren’t your numbers better? Why aren’t your people getting more GCSEs?” They say, “You ought to see the people who come to us at age 11. Some of them can’t read and write.” If we ask a primary school head why their children aren’t doing quite so well, they say, “You should see the children when they arrive. They are not potty-trained. They can barely speak. They think a pencil is an implement to inflict pain on their nearest neighbour; they don’t understand that it’s used for writing. They can’t speak in a sentence. They don’t recognise letters or numbers.”

All the things that I have just mentioned are from Ofsted reports about schools in my constituency. Let us get this right early on, and those kids will then be open to all the fantastic potential that Governments of all political colours have created throughout the education system. However, they need to have the social and emotional bedrock in place first, or nothing else can go forward. That, too, remains a key to social mobility.

Assessment is vital, but there are two key points about assessment. First, it must be regular and comprehensive. Secondly, the content of the assessment must measure the right stuff. That has to include social and emotional capability—not just how much baby weighs or whether baby looks as though he or she is thriving, but some of the measures of social and emotional capability that we have the science to do now. That way, we will ensure that individuals who need help can be found and helped. We can then track their progress and as soon as the young person, child or baby is back on track, we can leave them alone. They are self-starting and they will do well in life. Then we are out of their life.

People sometimes talk about the nanny state. There is no bigger nanny state than not giving people help when they need it, because later on there will be the mega-nanny state of policing, drug rehabilitation, drink abuse, magistrates courts, a lifetime on benefits, welfare advisers and remedial teaching. You want nanny state? That is what we have now, whereas early intervention can actually free people to make the best of themselves and free parents to make the best of their children. So I get a bit annoyed about people who say that early intervention is part of the nanny state. It is actually the opposite of the nanny state and the response to too much state intervention, too late, in someone’s life, when it is not effective.

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this incredibly important debate.

I have spent a lot of years in education, some of them at the hard end of the scale with the young people that my hon. Friend is talking about—the young people who will cost the state millions of pounds throughout their lives. And yet, whenever I go into nurseries, and I still go into nurseries, nursery teachers will tell me exactly—well, not exactly, because things do intervene, but generally—which children, in years to come, will be the children who will be excluded from school, who will be part of the prison system and who will cost the state a fortune. It is incredibly important that we can move things forward so that we can identify those children early on. Whenever that has happened, it has happened successfully. It is just about shifting the resources down to those children and at the earliest point, even below the age of three.

[Mr Allen]

My hon. Friend speaks with great personal experience and she deserves to be listened to with great respect. I imagine that the Minister would not disagree with the sentiments that she has just expressed. In many ways, the arguments about early intervention have now been won. We all now “talk the talk.” What will be very important about the paper in the summer will be seeing what the Government will do. Having said that, they will need the support of the Opposition Front Bench too. I hope that there will not be sniping about this issue. I hope that this is an issue about which people will say, “This is so important that we all have to get behind this and we all have to go forward together”, because it is about inter-generational change rather than a quick snapshot and a quick media opportunity. That is why the Government statement will hopefully contain some things that my hon. Friend and I will relish.

At the moment, there is the early years foundation stage framework for assessment, which is very useful, and the healthy child programme, which is also very useful. However, they have to be combined and they must go further. I hope that the Minister will take that point on board.

Clare Tickell, in her report, strongly recommended that the Government work with experts and services to test the feasibility of having a single integrated review between the ages of two and two and a half. I think that my report goes a little further than that.

The second thing that I mentioned about assessment is content. There is a vast range of other possible means of assessment out there, which can make assessment more effective. Rather than taking time in this debate today, I will write to the Minister separately about those means of assessment. But they include assessments of infant attachment behaviour; the assessments of the incredible years programme; the assessments of the social and emotional aspects of learning, or SEAL, programme, although I know that programme starts at primary level; the parental attitudes surveys; and the ages and stages questionnaire. There are lots and lots of other possible assessments from which inspiration can be drawn for a light-touch but none the less effective set of regular assessments.

So what next? First, I welcome the Government’s commitment in this area. I particularly welcome the recruitment of 4,200 extra health visitors. I also welcome the extension of the family nurse partnerships and the fact that developmental checks will be made on children at six weeks, six months, one year and two years. What I would press the Minister on, in the most friendly way, is to ensure that those checks are reliable and standardised, and that they include social and emotional checks, not just those for physical well-being. That includes a check at six weeks to assess the degree of attunement between parents and baby—the interactivity and development of empathy upon which all social relations form a base—and an assessment of the relationship between the parents. It is a tragic statistic or fact that most domestic violence and child abuse often begins in this very early period of a child’s life.

At six months and one year, there should be another check on the attunement and attachment between parent and child, and at two to three years there should be a check on parent-child interaction, warmth, authoritativeness and the child’s level of personal, social and emotional development, as described in Clare Tickell’s review, supplemented by the questionnaire on strengths and difficulties at the age of three. At the age of four, there should be a light-touch assessment of how the child is doing and how they might be helped to be school-ready and to make the best of themselves. Will the Minister also confirm that, at five years, there will be an assessment of a child’s level of personal, social and emotional development, as described in the Tickell review?

I also press the Minister to confirm that data on children’s personal, social and emotional development at age two, three and five will be available to hold Government, local authorities and children’s centres to account, as recommended by my fellow reviewers, Clare Tickell and my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field). I understand that some in government might not want to collect or use data from the review of ages two and three, because they see it as too prescriptive or as requiring bureaucracy, but I hope that my tirade earlier about the nanny state will expunge any remaining view that this is part of some immense bureaucracy. This is actually designed to defeat and counter that sort of bureaucracy and to reduce the need for any state intervention in someone’s later childhood or adult life.

[Pat Glass]

I want to support what my hon. Friend has said. When we have assessed the academic capability, particularly in things such as maths and science, of the many young people aged 14, 15 or 16 whom I have worked with, we have found that they are age appropriate. However, when we look at their personal and social development, we see that they are in the P scales, well below what we would expect a child to have at two and three years old. If we could tackle those things at three, four and five years old, before allowing those children to get to 15 or 16 without being able to talk to one another or hold a conversation without hitting each other, and without being able to go into a shop without causing trouble, we would make their lives, and our own, much better.

[Mr Allen]

Again, I agree strongly with my hon. Friend. I am sure that the Minister also agrees with, and will respond positively to, her sentiments. Time is running out, so I will move on quickly and put down markers about the new health visitors. I hope that the early implementer sites for delivering health visitor commitment will be able to test some of the things that I have talked about. My final marker is about children’s centres. They already provide very good and effective outreach and family support, and I hope that the Minister will be able to ensure that they include the social and emotional development along the lines recommended by the Munro review.

Rather than continuing and taking up the Minister’s time, I would like to repeat my thanks to her and her officials for all the support she has given this issue during her time in office. It has made a difference and I hope that it continues to do so. The forthcoming review provides the Minister with an opportunity, which I am sure that she will seize, to make a difference to the lives of not only someone we meet on a casework basis or some group, but literally millions of children, babies and young people. She can help them realise their potential and see what they have to do to make their lives much more rounded and capable, and not many of us in this place ever get a chance to do that. It is a fantastic opportunity that has fallen to the Minister, and it could not fall to a better person.

Education Bill

Pat Glass Excerpts

Friday 13th May 2011 Ministerial Corrections

The following is the response given by the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb) to a question from the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) during the debate on the Education Bill on 11 May 2011.

[Pat Glass]

Local authorities have 14 days in which to comply with the decision of a special educational needs tribunal. Therefore, why is it unreasonable for schools to have 14 days to comply with the decision of the schools adjudicator, who is also a statutory body?

Education Bill

Pat Glass Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dan Rogerson]

I am pleased that Labour Members have raised some of these issues, because it is right that we explore them in detail and in depth. We began to do that in Committee and it is right that we continue the process. Given the time available today, I am sure that those in another place will continue the exploration.

It is important for us, as legislators, to examine what the Government are trying to do, which is free up schools to get on with providing the best education that they can. At the risk of boring those who were present at the discussions, I can tell the House that we had an extensive debate in Committee about the level of trust among different members of the Committee for those involved in education, be it head teachers or teachers, and about the extent to which the state or local authorities ought to step in and not trust them to exercise the powers and freedoms available to them.

We have to examine the evidence. I absolutely accept that some of the charities to which the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) referred have concerns and have discussed potential scenarios. However, we are dealing with hypothetical situations and although I very much respect what the former Chair of the Select Committee had to say—

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

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dan Rogerson]

Gladly.

[Pat Glass]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who was a fellow member of the Public Bill Committee. I can remember saying to the Secretary of State that he would get the benefit of my experience and that at the end of the six weeks of the Public Bill Committee he would be sick to death of the benefit of my experience. I do not accept that these are theoretical cases. I have 25 years’ experience in education, many of them in dealing with admissions. Time and again, very good head teachers—nice people—did things that I thought, and which parents thought, were completely unacceptable. They did so because they were driven down the route of targets, obtaining a certain numbers of GCSEs and so on. One hon. Member on the Government Benches said that good people can do bad things and that does happen. It is our most vulnerable children—children with special educational needs, looked-after children and children on free school meals—who will suffer and their parents who will lose out if this code is simplified.

[Dan Rogerson]

The point that the right hon. Member for Leigh raised is that we do not have the code in front of us, and so the hon. Lady is raising the issues that she fears may result. We will have to wait and see the code and examine it then.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

No, they would not be wasting their time, because I am not convinced that these issues are deterring good independent selective schools from coming into the state sector. That is certainly not the case with Batley grammar school, and I am sure that it is not the case for other good independent schools, selective or otherwise, that wish to come into the state sector.

New clause 10 would amend the general duty on the Secretary of State to promote the education of the people of England and Wales to include a duty to

“ensure fair access to opportunity for education and training.”

Equity coupled with excellence is at the heart of the schools White Paper, the Green Paper on special educational needs and this Bill. Fair access is about more than admissions; it is about ensuring that every school is worthy of parents’ consideration, that every school is able to raise standards free from red tape, and that every school supports the most vulnerable children. Everything we are doing in the Department is geared to support that aim: the pupil premium allows funding to follow disadvantaged pupils, we are spending £800 million in 2011-12 to meet the pressure for places at good schools, and our behaviour reforms are intended to make every classroom a safe place to learn.

It should be absolutely clear that we do not disagree with the thrust of new clause 10. Of course it is the job of all those involved in education to ensure that all children have the opportunities they need to succeed, but local authorities already have that duty, and that is where the duty is most appropriate. Local authorities have the duty to secure the provision of education for people in their area, and they have the levers to achieve that. Localism is about ensuring that powers are given at the right level, and it is right that duties go alongside that. Fair access is and should be driven locally, not by a Whitehall-focused duty. I therefore urge hon. Members not to press new clause 10.

[Pat Glass]

Surely localism is about supporting parents and their rights. Anything that weakens parents’ rights, such as not allowing them access to the adjudicator or the ombudsman, is not about raising standards in schools.

[Mr Gibb]

I think the hon. Lady and, in particular, the shadow Secretary of State overstate their case. We are not just extending the right to access the adjudicator to parents of children attending academies, who can now complain to the adjudicator about admissions arrangements, we are also changing the rules on which parents and members of the public can complain to the adjudicator about a school’s admissions arrangements. We are saying that any parent from anywhere can make such a complaint. We are widening the ability of parents and members of the public to complain to the adjudicator.

I turn to amendment 9. Although, again, I agree with the aim of ensuring fair access, I do not believe that the amendment is necessary. The admissions code is entirely about fairness, which is why we have an admissions system for schools. I can assure hon. Members that in our work to revise the admissions code and make it more straightforward, we have not in any way removed the focus on fairness.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pat Glass]

However much the Minister values schools forums, they are the only mechanisms through which parents have any input into their local admissions agreements. Surely it cannot be right that parents in one local authority have access to a forum when parents in the neighbouring authority do not. That will create a postcode lottery. The local authority can effectively cut out the parents whose needs are greatest by not having a forum. Surely that cannot be right.

[Mr Gibb]

There is a philosophical difference between the Government and Opposition. We do not believe that the Whitehall-constructed approach, which means that things are identical throughout the country, is right about how to deal with anomalies that might occur. We think that a more localised approach is better. Of course, parents can object to admissions arrangements via many avenues. They can take part in the consultation or lodge an objection with the independent schools adjudicator, for example. In addition, as I said earlier, we are expanding parents’ right to object via the schools adjudicator to schools that are not within their area. That, rather than the top-down, prescriptive, bureaucratic approach, is the right approach. Those are very real problems, and we want to address them. We want to ensure that parents can comment on admissions arrangements and that those arrangements are fair, but we also want to reduce bureaucratic burdens.

On amendment 13, one perceived problem with making admission forums non-mandatory is that concerns about admissions will go uninvestigated. However, that is not true. In fact, admission forums never had a power to make decisions on admissions. That role remains with the Office of the Schools Adjudicator, and the Bill will extend his role so that in future, he can investigate and adjudicate on complaints about admissions at academies and free schools. The Bill also gives power to schools and local authorities to put things right for themselves when the adjudicator judges that their admissions arrangements are non-compliant.

Amendment 13 would provide for a wide-ranging local authority power of scrutiny and direction over admissions authorities following a binding decision by the adjudicator, and offer a mere two weeks’ grace in which such authorities can act to comply with the decision. When I first read that proposal, which was tabled by Opposition Front Benchers, I was in two minds about it. On the one hand, I was reassured by their acceptance of the principle of allowing schools the freedom to implement decisions—although they would have to do so within two weeks. On the other hand, the amendment completely misses the point about the purpose of that freedom.

I sought in Committee to reassure hon. Members that schools cannot simply ignore the decision of the adjudicator: he is a statutory post holder, and his decisions have the force of law. Schools must implement change to comply with the adjudicator’s decision. Although at first glance a fortnight seems reasonable, on closer examination it looks less reasonable. Admissions policies must be locally consulted on for at least eight weeks to allow all parties to consider proposals or amendments. Many changes subsequent to an adjudicator’s decision can be swift and simple, but others take time, because they are inherently complex or because they seek to address coherently a number of issues.

More often than not, the timing of decisions means that they cannot easily be adopted for the coming admissions round without risking frustrating parents and others. That is why adjudicators try to ensure that their changes can be included when appropriate, and not just immediately.

[Pat Glass]

Local authorities have 14 days in which to comply with the decision of a special educational needs tribunal. Therefore, why is it unreasonable for schools to have 14 days to comply with the decision of the schools adjudicator, who is also a statutory body?

[Mr Gibb]

The example that the hon. Lady gives applies to one individual, but an objection to admission arrangements applies to an entire school, and therefore to a wider range of people, which means that consultation is necessary before those changes are made. That is the difference between the two examples.[Official Report, 13 May 2011, Vol. 527, c. 11MC.]

There is something else wrong with Opposition Front Benchers’ amendment 13. It would give the 152 local authorities a power to direct, but those local authorities are themselves the admissions authorities for about 19,000 schools in England, and it cannot make sense to give them the power to direct themselves, which in essence is what the amendment would do. Nor is the amendment consistent with our general thrust to allow schools the flexibility to put matters right themselves. Adjudicator decisions carry the full weight of law, and any attempt to thwart them through undue delay risks further legal challenge and possible direction from either the Secretary of State or the courts. All admissions authorities, including academies and voluntary-aided schools, must comply with binding decisions, and we believe that exactly how they do so is best judged by the schools themselves. However, when they do so will be just as important in ensuring that we do not create chaos in our admissions system. I believe that we have struck the right balance between national parameters and local pragmatism, so I ask hon. Members not to press their amendments.

I turn to amendment 40, in the name of the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy). She and, through an intervention, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn) explained that they were seeking to ensure that the impact of the changes made by the Bill to the exclusions process were clearly understood. I agree that it is important to understand what is happening in schools on such an important issue, and as I set out in Committee, extensive statistics have already been published on the number of permanent and fixed-period exclusions, including for each local authority and ethnic group, as too have national and local authority-level statistics on SEN exclusions, both statemented and non-statemented. In collecting information, however, it is important to eliminate the risk of revealing the identities of individual children, and in some instances, numbers are likely to be far too low to deliver the level of detail sought by the amendment. If there are fewer than five exclusions in a local authority area, the numbers are not published.

We collect information on the review panels, and will continue to do so for the new panels, including on how many cases are reviewed, the outcome of a panel’s decision and whether the pupil is reinstated by the school. I can confirm that we will also have details of when an adjustment of a school’s budget share is directed. However, I am happy to meet the hon. Member for Walthamstow to discuss the precise data that she seeks to see whether we can accommodate her request, bearing in mind the fact that we have to ensure that we do not inadvertently publish very small numbers, which could inadvertently reveal the identities of individual children.

Post-16 Education Funding

Pat Glass Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point succinctly and well.

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

We have already heard that students on EMA attended at a higher level than their peers and made disproportionate progress. Given that the Secretary of State has said many times that he wants to narrow the gap for those children, what measures will he put in place to monitor whether the children from the poorest families continue to have higher attendance and disproportionate progress, or will that be left to individual colleges? My question is about the specific monitoring proposals.

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point. One thing that I am unhappy with is the system of accountability for post-16 education that we inherited. I believe we need a sharper system of accountability post-16 and, in particular, that system needs to focus on outcomes for the very poorest. One problem we inherited from the previous Government was that we did not have the information necessary to see how institutions were performing. It is only now that we know, for example, that only 16% of students, in the last year for which we have figures, managed to secure five good GCSEs including English, maths, science, a modern foreign language and a humanities subject. The fact is that those students eligible for free school meals did not succeed at anything like the same level as their wealthier contemporaries.

Building Schools for the Future

Pat Glass Excerpts

Monday 14th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a very strong point. I note that while he was talking about dilapidation and making the case for reform of how we allocate capital with passion and urgency, Opposition Front Benchers were laughing. They might consider that this is an appropriate subject for levity, but I believe that they should reflect on their record in office and consider why, after 13 years and after they inherited a golden economic legacy, so few schools were in a fit state. Was it anything to do with any of the mistakes that might have occurred on their watch?

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

To return the Secretary of State to the judgment, which was about consultation, will he give us details now of what consultation he will carry out with the six local authorities involved? Will it include children and young people themselves and their families?

I noted from the Secretary of State’s response to my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) that the judgment does not rule out other local authorities that incurred expenditure also taking legal action. Will he consult those local authorities?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her point. The judge was clear that it is only with regard to the six local authorities in question that I have to consult, and that no other local authorities are either in time or entitled to mount a judicial review. The manner of the consultation with those local authorities is very much a matter for them to outline in conversation with me and the Department, but I want to ensure that the process is as fair and expeditious as possible. With respect to other local authorities, such as those in Durham, I have of course had the opportunity to visit her constituency and that of the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) to see the specific case for investment outside BSF, which I know may be necessary.

Education Bill

Pat Glass Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I do not have those figures to hand, but special schools closed in my constituency and in my local authority area because we pursued a vision of inclusion within state schools. That was the right thing to do, because some of those young people are now educated alongside other children in their community, and it is human and social progress to teach those young people in that way. The question I put to the Secretary of State, which he did not answer, was this: how can he ask any Member to be sure that the Bill will not harm vulnerable children in their constituencies when we have not seen his proposals on special educational needs? What ability will anyone have to place obligations on academies or free schools to look out for their children? We do not know whether he is creating them as self-sufficient islands that can do whatever they like, so how can we be sure that children with special educational needs will not get second best from the schools system he is creating? He cannot answer that question tonight because we have not seen the Green Paper. It should have been published before the Bill was brought before the House.

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

The Secretary of State knows very well that under the Labour Government some special schools closed because they were just not good enough, but special school places were created, and there were more when we left office than when we came into office.

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend, who knows more about these matters than anyone in the House, has put the Secretary of State straight.

I have one final comment about parents. We support the extension of free early years provision for disadvantaged two-year-olds, but we are deeply concerned that that is undermined by the Government’s failure to protect Sure Start. Furthermore, giving the Secretary of State the power to define early years provision, who gets it and when they get it places question marks over the universal free entitlement for three and four-year olds. I ask him to make it clear that he does not intend to cut such provision or to introduce means-testing, particularly as fears have also been raised by the Bill’s introduction of powers to charge.

--- Later in debate ---

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

I share the aspirations and passion of the Secretary of State to improve standards for all our children and young people, and I welcome the proposals to improve discipline in our schools, to tackle bullying of all types and to protect teachers from false allegations. Of course I also feel that head teachers need the freedom to exercise their professional judgment.

The Bill contains some welcome proposals, and some others that merit close scrutiny at later stages. For me, the most important part of improving standards is investing in early years in order to get the foundations right. I hope that the commitment to, and funding for, free pre-school provision for disadvantaged two-year-olds will be welcomed across the House. Research shows that good quality early-childhood services have wide-ranging benefits for children, particularly disadvantaged children. That obviously helps disadvantaged children with their development, and speech and language skills, which are vital as they progress through later schooling.

In 2010, the latest findings from the effective provision of pre-school education research project were that children aged 11 still showed benefits from attendance at high quality pre-schools, which emphasises the importance of high quality provision. With the cutbacks, however, we have to keep the focus on driving up the quality of pre-school education. I also agree with Save the Children that local authorities should be asked to publish the proportion of free early places for disadvantaged two-year-olds taken up in good or outstanding settings.

I commend the Labour Government for achieving the universal free entitlement of up to 15 hours for three and four-year-olds, and for achieving that very high take-up. However, we still face the conflicting problems of cost, quality, quantity and sustainability—we will face those challenges throughout. It is important in early years to establish the joy of learning, so I hope that any reforms we make will encourage it throughout schooling—and through life, really.

I want to comment, however, on a few clauses that concern me and on which I would like reassurance. I am particularly concerned about the removal of the duty to co-operate with local authorities. I have been involved in many Bill Committees concerned with legislation for children and young people, and I have always felt that schools have to be included—I think that my coalition partners felt that too. I can understand that people might be concerned about unnecessary bureaucracy for schools and colleges, and I can see a case for reviewing how that provision is working in practice, but a repeal with no obvious measure to fill the gap concerns me greatly.

Like the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn), I am deeply concerned about child protection. When I read through a serious case review that went back some years, I noticed that spattered throughout were cases in which teachers had not reported incidents. I worry, therefore, about taking away that duty, about the possibility of child protection being overlooked and about teachers not taking on their full responsibilities. I am also concerned about removing the duty to co-operate in respect of looked-after children, young carers, children with parents in prison and children with special needs. How can we ensure co-operation between schools, local authorities and other vital services for our vulnerable young people without something being put in place? I hope that the Minister will tell us what that something is.

[Pat Glass]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the number of middle-years serious case reviews in this country—those from the point of starting school until the mid-teens, when other factors come into play—has reduced significantly because of the duty on schools to co-operate?

[Annette Brooke]

I am afraid that I do not have the hon. Lady’s professional knowledge, only that of the limited serious case reviews I have had the opportunity to see. It is vital that everybody concerned with children is looking out for their protection.

I am equally concerned about removing the requirement on maintained schools in England to have regard to the children and young people’s plans. Obviously, the provision for vulnerable children within the plans is really important. I have even greater concerns about special educational needs. The National Autistic Society points out that where services are not co-ordinated, children may undergo tens of assessments, and essential support can be delayed. Parents have reported the constant battles they face to get all the services that their children need. I believe that by working together we can reduce bureaucracy and costs, but I remain concerned about the removal of duties on schools to co-operate and to have regard to the children and young people’s plans.

During the passage of the Autism Act 2009, which was sponsored by the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), and which I was pleased to support throughout, the previous Government committed themselves to ensuring that the needs of children with autism would be supported locally through children and young people’s plans. How will the Government ensure that these needs are recognised and met locally?

The shadow Secretary of State for Education challenged the belief of Liberal Democrats in local authorities. I believe strongly that local authorities should play an important strategic role in the provision of high quality education in their local areas, and that they should play a pivotal role in ensuring that other related services necessary for a child’s well-being work together effectively.

I am concerned not only about removing the duty to co-operate but about the abolition of admissions forums and the reduction in the role of the schools adjudicator. I welcome the extension of the adjudicator’s role to academies, but I think that the ability to look at a whole school admissions policy when responding to a particular complaint has brought many benefits. I would hope that we all want to promote fair admissions to schools, but I seek reassurance from the Minister: if we are to reduce the role of the adjudicator and get rid of admissions forums, how are we to monitor the situation and ensure that admissions policies are administered fairly at a local level? I sincerely seek answers from him, because these are important aspects of the Bill—they are important across the board for disadvantaged young people, children with special educational needs and looked-after children.

With those comments, I would like to emphasise that local authorities have a strategic role to play. I would not want to return to the old-style model for local authorities, but I do think that they have a role to play, and if we are to take away some of their powers, we need to know what will be put in their place.

--- Later in debate ---

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

There are elements of the Bill that I welcome. I like the parts that are intended to ensure that full funding follows an excluded child from their school. Too often, some schools have simply washed their hands of children with difficulties and problems, and hopefully the Bill will make schools think carefully, and financially, before doing so in future.

I also like the plans that will, we hope, ensure that schools remain responsible for the educational outcomes of children they exclude. I have visited very many schools over very many years, from the smallest nursery schools to the highest-achieving grammar schools to the most specialist behaviour schools, and eventually the conversation always gets round to behaviour. At almost every school, I have been told at some point, “If you could just take away the five most difficult children, everything would be wonderful.” But teachers know, and I know, that if they took away the five most difficult children, the next five would simply rise to the surface.

Only when schools start to deal properly with their difficulties in the quality of teaching and learning, and introduce consistent approaches to behaviour and staff training, do they begin to feel confident in their ability to manage behavioural problems. I hope that preventing schools from simply washing their hands of the difficult children will make all schools begin a proper internal dialogue about those issues. I also welcome plans to provide anonymity to teachers accused by pupils until they are charged, and I hope that the Government will consider extending that to all school staff.

Given that I welcome some clauses in the Bill, I hope that Members will see that my remarks today are not about opposition for opposition’s sake but about making the Bill better for all children and young people, their schools and their families.

I wish to focus for a while on early intervention. We all know that there is an enormous body of evidence to support it, not least that provided to the House in recent months and years by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field). As we all know, early intervention means not just intervention in the early years but intervention with children and young people as soon as a difficulty becomes apparent, whether that is when a special educational need is suspected, when other barriers to learning become clear or when the safety and well-being of a child or young person is suspected to be at risk.

The Bill is full of good intentions about early years and early intervention, but it cannot be separated from the reality of, in some cases, biblical-sized cuts facing local authorities. In the early years, Sure Start is widely recognised as a distinctive and increasingly important service that plays an essential role in helping our children get the right start in life and ensuring that they are ready to learn when they start school. Both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister have made personal promises to keep Sure Start centres open. Even since the election, they have said that they do not want any to close, yet there are to be significant budget cuts that will mean the removal of funding for Sure Start and the ring-fencing that would have protected those centres.

The Government have said that they are safeguarding Sure Start funding, but they have cleverly rolled together 10 separate and previously ring-fenced budgets, including that for Sure Start, into their new early-intervention grant. That budget will increase to £2.2 billion in 2014, but they have dictated that that money has to support not only Sure Start centres but the cost of extending free education to two-year-olds; the cost of short breaks for disabled and vulnerable children; all support programmes targeted at preventing children from engaging in crime; all support programmes targeted at tackling substance misuse; all teenage pregnancy support programmes; programmes for children with mental health problems and learning difficulties; and all transition arrangements. It also has to support all behaviour support services in schools and local authorities; child and adolescent mental health services; children’s community paramedic services such as speech therapy; special educational needs services; and youth services.

For the Government to say that they are providing funding to support Sure Start and early intervention is not only wrong, given the current financial situation facing local authorities, but insulting. They are tying the hands of local authorities by slashing their budgets, while at the same time washing their hands of any proper support. Closures in the children’s centre network are inevitable.

Although I welcome some things in the Bill, some matters are missing from it that would have benefited it. I urge the Secretary of State to include measures to ensure that all schools take their fair share of pupils from poorer homes and those with special educational needs. All that we have had so far is a promise to simplify the admissions code of practice, but for many parents there are real concerns that “simplify” will mean “make opaque”, and that it will therefore be easier for schools regarded as good or outstanding effectively to exclude those groups of children through their admissions policies.

I also urge the Secretary of State to amend the Ofsted framework to ensure that all schools are properly held to account for all children’s outcomes. That can be done by including a limiting judgment that ensures that no school can be designated an outstanding school if it cannot demonstrate, first, that it takes its fair share of pupils from poorer homes and pupils with SEN, and secondly, that it is narrowing the gap between the achievements of those children and the most able in the school. In my view, that is what makes an outstanding school. Those would be real sanctions, and I recommend them to the Secretary of State if he is serious about improving outcomes for vulnerable children and those from poor homes.

As well as clauses that are missing from the Bill, there are those with which I disagree outright, including the ones that reduce the powers of independent exclusions panels. They will have a direct detrimental effect on children with SEN, particularly those with hearing impairments, autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Tourette’s syndrome, epilepsy and diabetes. There is a known link with behaviour when those conditions are not properly addressed. The Select Committee on Education looked at that in some detail recently, and I recall that not even one witness from across the educational divide felt that the reduction of those powers was a good thing.

I disagree with the measures that seek to remove the requirement to give 24 hours’ notice of detention. That is at best disrespectful to parents, and at worst a child safeguarding issue. I also disagree with the measures that repeal the duty on schools to co-operate with local authorities and those that repeal the duty on schools to have regard to children and young people’s plans. As I said in an intervention, those duties have had a significant impact in reducing the number of serious case reviews in the middle years—from when a child starts school to the middle teenage years.

Finally, there is much in the Bill to recommend it, but there is much that I ask the Government to reconsider.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

Oral Answers to Questions

Pat Glass Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the Minister.

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

Can the Minister tell the House what evidence—the operative word is “evidence”—supports his decision to limit the curriculum so severely and thereby exclude many thousands of young people from accessing the curriculum successfully?

[Mr Hayes]

The evidence is that we have commissioned a report on vocational learning, we have put in place funding for apprenticeships, and we are determined to ensure that the status of those vocational courses is maintained and grown. The evidence is simply the evidence of the Government’s commitment and record so far in office. That is good enough for me. It should be good enough for the hon. Lady.

Financial Support (Students)

Pat Glass Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Lisa Nandy]

The hon. Lady is passionate about this issue and has raised it many times. I would like to echo her comments.

There is compelling evidence that the EMA pumps millions of pounds into local economies throughout the country. In my Wigan constituency, where people are losing jobs and homes, and particularly in former coalfield areas, where, despite significant investment, the legacy of those times remains, the EMA could not be more important. The policy is short-sighted from that perspective.

I draw hon. Members’ attention to the IFS study published yesterday. It points out that savings in the short term simply do not make sense, because if we invested in our young people in the short term, we would more than recoup that in the long term.

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

I was very interested in what my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) had to say about the pilot in Hackney, because as a young education officer 25 years ago in Gateshead, I was managing a service that was delivering EMAs. It was paid for by the local authority. The young people who received EMAs then are now the parents of the schoolchildren in Gateshead, who, as the Secretary of State often points out, are outperforming similar children under similar authorities across the country. The EMA is not only about student support. It is a gateway to higher education. It is about investing in the local community. Indeed, it is a long-term investment in standards.

[Lisa Nandy]

I agree with my hon. Friend . Many hon. Members want to speak, so I shall end by saying that it is precisely in such difficult economic times that we should be investing in our young people and sending a very strong signal to them that they matter and their futures matter. I urge the Minister to think again.