Children from Low-Income Families: Education Support

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

I remind hon. Members that there have been some changes to normal practice in order to support the new hybrid arrangements. Timings of debates have been amended to allow technical arrangements to be made for the next debate. There will also be suspensions between each debate.

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Members attending physically should clean their spaces before they use them and as they leave the room. I would also like to remind Members that Mr Speaker has stated that masks should be worn in Westminster Hall

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered support for the education of children from low-income families.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I rise to speak on this issue as a parent and, like all of us here today, as someone who wants the best for our schoolchildren, and to ensure that they are not limited by their background or their parents’ income.

I stand in awe of the incredible work teachers, school staff, parents and early years practitioners have put in over the past 15 months to ensure that children in school do not miss out. They have adapted to social distancing measures in classrooms, regular testing and isolation periods, all while ensuring that children feel safe and can learn. Sadly, we have not seen the same commitment from the Government.

In common with almost all other Government Departments in their response to the pandemic, there has been a catalogue of Conservative failures in education, including school closures without an effective plan for distance learning; a promise to primary schools that they would return before the summer holidays last year, then backtracking on that promise; and preventing families from accessing food vouchers during school holidays, only to do a screeching U-turn after outrage and condemnation from across our nation. How could we forget the exams fiasco for both A-level and GCSE students, leaving thousands distressed about their future? In addition, the Conservatives presided over legal action to force schools to stay open, only to shut them weeks later; in their catch-up plan, they provided less than £1 per day when children were out of school; and they ignored the advice from the expert adviser, Sir Kevan Collins, to allow children to properly recover from the pandemic, forcing him, unfortunately, to resign. As one Slough headteacher, commenting on Government behaviour on education, noted:

“Communication is last minute, it’s ill thought-out and it hasn’t included our voice in the whole process.”

Schools have had to cope with all that in the space of just over a year. It would be almost comical if the impact of this incompetence was not on our children’s futures. Each delayed or poor decision has resulted in worse outcomes for a generation of schoolchildren who have been left to suffer. The impact of these decisions is real, and the consequences are even more severe for those who were already disadvantaged and come from low-income families.

The most recent figures show that since October 2020 the number of pupils eligible for free school meals has increased by over 100,000. At the same time, support and funding for such pupils has fallen, with the Government moving eligibility for pupil premium support back from January to October. Schools, which have already been left bruised by cuts to their resources since 2010, therefore miss out on additional funding for any child who began claiming free school meals after 1 October 2020, leaving them short-changed to the tune of millions.

As the Lawrence report proved last year, children on free school meals are already at an economic and educational disadvantage. That factor has a real and profound impact on pupil attainment across all ethnicities. In 2019, just 25% of pupils who had been eligible for free school meals, or who had been in care or adopted from care, received grades 9 to 5 in GCSE English and maths, compared with 50% of other pupils. After brutal cuts and the cynical moving of deadlines, is it any surprise that disadvantaged schoolchildren are struggling?

One Slough parent who lost their job and was reliant on food vouchers expressed their turmoil to me, saying:

“My daughter has been left out by the very government that we rely on to keep us and our loved ones safe.”

Instead of investing to ensure that families in Slough have adequate support to ensure that their children are clothed, fed, and can attend school, the Government have continued to cut the support on which they rely so heavily. The move from legacy benefits to universal credit means that just half of the children in the poorest fifth of our population are able to get free school meals. Sadly, this Government seem intent on savings, rather than on investing the potential of future generations.

While that neglect of our poorest families continues, the gap between them and their peers widens. In my constituency of Slough, the learning gap between disadvantaged pupils and their classmates is 2.4 months for early years, almost six months in primary schools, and in our secondary schools it has reached more than 11 months. Those tragic facts were set in motion way before the onset of the pandemic, and we have yet to see the long-term impact that the pandemic may have on our children. Researchers from the Education Policy Institute have identified that the increasing proportion of disadvantaged children who are in persistent poverty has contributed to the lack of progress in narrowing the learning gap.

Ensuring that parents get the proper financial support that they deserve is essential to children’s attainment and achievements in later life. A Slough mother contacted me recently to attest to that. She was living on just £120 a month and was unable to properly feed or clothe her children. She was desperate for empathy from the Government and adequate support to better the lives of her family. If children experience difficulties at home, they are in no position to be ready to learn.

We must give children the resources to thrive, not leave them to struggle through a pandemic, like the thousands who were unable to get the devices that they needed to access their schooling when the Government’s laptop allocation promise was slashed by 80%. Back in January, Labour’s calls to get every child online fell on deaf ears. As I mentioned earlier, 100,000 pupils have not returned to school full-time following schools reopening. All along, there has been no plan for the education of the most vulnerable in our society.

I am a great believer in the power of education, and in Slough we have some of the best schools in the country. Without support from the Government in what has undoubtedly been the most difficult time for education and disadvantaged families in recent years, the opportunities that a good education can deliver are being missed. We should be realistic about the dire and lasting impact that continued Government inaction will have. A Royal Society report suggests that the impact of school closures on 13 cohorts of students has the potential to affect a quarter of the entire workforce for the next 50 years, and disadvantaged pupils are particularly at risk of falling into poverty.

It is possible to turn the tide with a properly funded catch-up plan, not one that will reach just 8% of pupils, less than half of whom are on free school meals. We need action proportionate to the serious times ahead to ensure that children from low-income families do not miss out even more and to improve the outcomes of future generations, ensuring that they are better off than their predecessors and that they can access and achieve their ambitions, not be held back. The Government will never improve the prospects of our nation by leaving disadvantaged children behind

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

The debate can last until 4 pm. I am obliged to call the Front-Bench spokespeople no later than 3.27 pm and the guideline limits are 10 minutes for the Scottish National party, 10 minutes for Her Majesty’s Opposition and 10 minutes for the Minister. Then the mover of the motion will have three minutes to sum up the debate at the end. But until 3.27 pm, we are in Back-Bench time and our first contributor will be Siobhain McDonagh.

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[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) on securing today’s important debate.

Over the past decade, the Conservative Government have inflicted the largest cut to school funding in 40 years. As a result, they are failing to tackle poverty and ensure that a quality education is accessible to all. According to End Child Poverty, 37% of children in my constituency are living in poverty—the Government should be ashamed that that figure has increased by 3% since 2014—and this is having a real impact on their learning. In 2019, a National Education Union survey found that more than three quarters of respondents stated that their students had demonstrated fatigue or poor concentration. That is because of poverty.

The fact is that the Government are failing children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Children eligible for free school meals are 28% less likely to leave school with five A* to C GCSE grades than their wealthier peers. Before the pandemic, the estimated learning gap in Luton between disadvantaged students and their peers in early years was three months; in primary school, it was seven months, and in secondary school it was 17 months. The pandemic has exacerbated inequality and the attainment gap.

By the end of the pandemic, and as a result of the lockdowns, most children across the UK will have missed more than half a year of in-person schooling. We know that lost learning disproportionately impacted children from disadvantaged backgrounds who did not have the necessary digital equipment or study space for remote learning. It was the Government’s responsibility to prevent disadvantaged young people from suffering digital exclusion due to the restrictions. Instead, excellent charities such as Luton Learning Link had to step in to make up for their failure to distribute enough digital devices.

Learning from home has also increased the economic burden on low-income families. Additional outgoings, such as high bills for electricity or mobile data, have hit families at the same time as economic insecurity in the labour market has increased. In Luton, as a consequence of the pandemic and the particular impact on the aviation and hospitality industries, the claimant count has increased from about the national average to the fifth-highest in the country, and the proportion of children receiving free school meals has increased from 21% to 27%. Those children deserve to have the same education as those in wealthy families.

Tackling the educational attainment gap as part of our recovery must be the Government’s top priority. No child should be left behind, but the Government’s current measly offer will not provide the ambitious recovery that is needed. Although others have spoken about the level of funding required, I will focus my remarks on where the funding should be allocated.

Children’s ability and confidence in spoken language is the bedrock of their learning and social and emotional wellbeing. The pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on oracy—speaking well. A report by the all-party parliamentary group on oracy found that two thirds of primary teachers and nearly half of secondary teachers say that school closures have undermined the spoken language development of their most disadvantaged students, compared with one in five teachers saying that it impacted their most advanced pupils.

An increased focus on oracy is an opportunity to accelerate the academic progress of children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Education Endowment Foundation states that

“pupils who participate in oral language interventions make approximately five months’ additional progress over the course of a year”,

rising to six months for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. I have seen examples of this, such as the impact of the Level Trust’s SMASH summer scheme on building the confidence and creativity of children in Luton, and I was lucky enough to give out those awards last summer. Alongside a comprehensive strategy to fund schools properly and expand support services, Labour’s education recovery plan would contribute to developing children’s oracy by expanding school facilities to deliver breakfast clubs and after-school activities, from arts and sports to book clubs, board games, learning through play and communicating.

Expanding access to creative education for children from low-income backgrounds would also help to reduce the attainment gap. Creative subjects can improve a young person’s cognitive abilities by up to 17%, supporting their development in other subjects, such as English and maths. Young people who do not have access to arts and culture are disadvantaged both economically and educationally. The arts should not only be for privileged young people from wealthy families, so will the Minister explain in her closing remarks how the Government intend to fully integrate oracy into all stages and phases of education to help close the educational attainment gap, and whether she agrees that the Government should urgently invest in improving access to creative education, in order to contribute to reducing that gap?

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

It would not be a Westminster Hall debate without Strangford’s finest, Jim Shannon.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone. You are always very kind, and I appreciate your kind thoughts. First of all, may I say how pleased I am to make a contribution to this debate, and that I congratulate the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) on having secured it? He is a very active MP in this House. Certainly when it comes to questions in the Chamber or debates in Westminster Hall, he is always there, so I wanted to come along and support this debate and my Opposition colleagues.

As a father, I feel very strongly about this issue. My boys are now young men in their 20s and early 30s, and the education of my own children was always very important to me. We as parents know that we would do all we can to see our children succeed, because that is what parents do: we want to see our children do well. We want to see them settled and in a job, and we want them to have happy lives. I am very fortunate that my three boys have achieved that, although I must give credit to my wife Sandra for the rearing of the children and the supervision of their education. I was not there often enough to have the input that I should have had, but certainly my wife was.

Although circumstances can sometimes get in the way of this happening, it is crucial that as policy makers in this House, we do all that we can to support those families who are struggling. The education of children should be a priority for us, and we should not forget about low-income families—that is what this is about. I always think that my job—I believe that others subscribe to this as well—is to look out for those who have no one to look out for them. In this House, we bring forward issues on behalf of our constituents in such a way that the Government can perhaps respond and help in all the ways we would like them to, and take additional steps to make our constituents’ lives easier. As the Minister knows, I am pleased to see her in her place: she has a deep and sincere interest in this subject, and I am very confident that she will be forthcoming with the responses that my Opposition colleagues hope to receive.

I understand that the Minister does not have responsibility for Northern Ireland, and therefore any comments I make are not for her to respond to, but I want to add to this debate a perspective on life in Northern Ireland, and perhaps reinforce and replicate the issues to which hon. Ladies and Gentlemen have already referred. I want to highlight the struggles that many have faced, especially in my constituency of Strangford. Over the duration of the covid-19 pandemic, those struggles have been at an all-time high. I am very fortunate to have the former Education Minister Peter Weir in my constituency back home, so I have been able to work alongside him to try to address some of these issues, but it has been difficult throughout the covid-19 pandemic to know how to respond and know what the right things to do are.

I want to highlight some of the things that the community has done to help, in partnership with others. Many residents have contacted me about the struggles of at-home education, a feeling of helplessness because of lack of income, and the pressures of having to stay at home either because they have to self-isolate or because the rules mean that they are not able to got out as often as they would like. I am not quite sure whether that is a sign that not enough has been done. I think that the Education Minister back home probably did try to respond wisely, ever knowing that the covid-19 coronavirus and how to respond to it was a complete unknown. However, the education of the children of our nation should be at the forefront of our priorities.

I acknowledge the work that has already been done by the Departments for Education here on the mainland and back in Northern Ireland. Free school meals and uniform grants have been instrumental in helping parents. More than 1.4 million children in England are eligible for FSMs. We have to give credit where it is due, and I give credit to the Education Departments for the things that they have done correctly. I also gently encourage them to address other things in the same way. They have allowed for additional nutritional meals for pupils during school time. I am very pleased to say that that has been extended in Northern Ireland until Easter 2022. We are taking it into next year back home, which is an indication of the importance we attach to the issue.

I would like to make hon. Members aware of the work done by my colleague back home, former Education Minister Peter Weir MLA. He introduced the “A Fair Start” report, which examined the links between educational underachievement and socioeconomic background. The Chair of the Education Committee referred to that issue last week when discussing his Committee’s report, which I was very impressed with. I am sorry but I cannot remember the name of his constituency—I referred to him yesterday in the education debate.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Harlow.

[Jim Shannon]

Thank you for reminding me, Mr Hollobone. I was just trying to remember that while on my feet. The right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) has grasped the issue. We have that problem in Northern Ireland and it is very clear that it has become a problem for education here as well. I thank him for raising it.

In today’s Education questions in the Chamber, it was encouraging to hear the Secretary of State thank the former Education Minister Peter Weir for his work back home, and to hear that the Secretary of State has a good, strong relationship with the regional and devolved Administrations—in particular with my colleague Peter Weir.

“A Fair Start” wholeheartedly engages with teachers and pupils to focus on early education, while maximising the potential for all pupils across Northern Ireland. A recent report has shown that £180 million will be needed to tackle underachievement in Northern Ireland over the next five years. I know that the Minister cannot respond to that, but money for education is given out across the United Kingdom and we get a part of that through the Barnett consequentials. It is vital that additional funds are allocated to the devolved nations in order to tackle this issue, as there is little more important than the future of our children.

I praise the work of our local food banks, an issue that other hon. Members have also mentioned. I have a wonderful working relationship with the food bank in my constituency, which has been instrumental in supporting low-income families who are going through difficulty. They tell me that the first Trussell Trust food bank in Northern Ireland was in Newtownards in my constituency and that it has received more referrals than any other in Northern Ireland.

In the financial year 2020-21, more than 1.5 million emergency food bank parcels were distributed across the United Kingdom—48,000 of those in Northern Ireland. The Trussell Trust, which works through the Thriving Life Church in Newtownards, has done incredible work. It has worked very closely with my office throughout the pandemic to provide food parcels, as well as other assistance. It also does debt assistance and has a clothes bank and a toy bank. Do you know what that shows me, Mr Hollobone? It shows me that the crisis of the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic has brought out the good in people. That is what I have noticed. I can see the negatives and the problems, but I also see the positives, and the positives are that good people came together. The churches, community groups and Government bodies came together, and collectively they were instrumental in ensuring that assistance for struggling low-income families was available. Notably, most were struggling financially because of the pressures of furlough and job losses. I want to put on the record my thanks to the Thriving Life Church food bank for all it has done.

It is crucial that action is taken to maintain a level of support for the education of children from low-income families, whether it is through free school meals or underachievement strategies. The children of this nation are the future. I say that as a grandfather of five. It is a good generation to deal with because at 7 o’clock at night you can give them back and not have them for the rest of the night, which is probably an advantage. At different periods in our lives we have children and then grandchildren. I have become very conscious of the future in the past few years as the grandchildren have come along. We want them to succeed and to have the opportunities that my boys had. I want them to have opportunities for the future as well. We are really privileged to have the job here in this place to plan strategies and lobby Government and Ministers to ensure that these things can happen.

I again thank the hon. Member for Slough for initiating this debate. I very much look forward to engaging with Ministers and Members on further action that we can take to improve the education of our young people. As I said earlier, they are our future and we have to do our best for them.

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[Vicky Ford]

Mr Chairman, let me please set the record straight, because I personally—[Interruption.]

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Order. The Minister has taken interventions and, given the amount of time we have left, will probably take more, but Members must not keep repeating requests for interventions, which become an interruption of the Minister’s speech.

[Vicky Ford]

The holiday activities and food programme, which we had already been trialling for three years, is going live across the country this year. It was a manifesto commitment to increase this holiday and wraparound childcare, which we are doing.

I have huge respect for Marcus Rashford and his great passion to make sure that children are properly fed and cared for. I am enormously grateful to him for shining a light on this issue and indeed for the video he made just last week supporting the Government’s holiday activities and food scheme and encouraging children to take part, because it is a great scheme. However, using language saying that I personally was dragged kicking and screaming to care for children, when caring for children is what I do every day and what my Department does every day, is not appropriate, and it scares children.

Let me just get back to the point. We have made many interventions over the past decade to support children, and especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, and it has made a difference. It is not just us saying that; the OECD recognised our progress. The latest programme for international student assessment, or PISA, results show that the proportion of pupils from low-income households who succeed academically in England is well above the OECD average. Since 2011, the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and others has narrowed by 13% in primary school and 9% in secondary school. And, yes, it has remained broadly stable in the past couple of years; it widened by 0.5% in primary between 2018 and 2019, but it narrowed by 1% in secondary between 2019 and 2020.

However, we know that the pandemic will have widened that attainment gap. In order to minimise the pandemic’s impact, we kept schools open for vulnerable children, as well as for the children of key workers. We have also announced three further funding packages—a total of more than £3 billion—to provide extra resources to help pupils to make up ground. I remind Members that that comes on top of the £14 billion of extra investment in education that had already been announced by the Government over a three-year period.

In this £3 billion package, we announced—first in June 2020 and then in February 2021—£1.7 billion to support education recovery. That included £930 million in flexible funding for schools to use as they see best, while another £200 million was weighted so that schools with more disadvantaged pupils receive more funding. There was £550 million for tutoring, £200 million for summer schools and another £22 million to scale up evidence-based practices. We also invested in over 1.3 million laptops for disadvantaged children and young people. I know that Labour Members often call for more, but let us remember that this was a massive procurement effort at a time of unprecedented global demand.