Education Route Map: Covid-19

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con) [V]]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the proposal for a national education route map for schools and colleges in response to the covid-19 outbreak.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving me this debate, and pay real tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) and the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson), who have been relentless campaigners for getting our children learning again and who went with me to the Backbench Business Committee. I wish to pay tribute to all the teachers and support staff in my constituency, many of whom have worked day and night to keep children learning, in early years provider schools and in our excellent Harlow College.

Why is this debate so important today? It is because this past year has been nothing short of a national disaster for our children and young people. The—[Inaudible.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. There is a problem; I have to stop the right hon. Gentleman, as we have a technical hitch. It must be a serious one, because Mr Halfon clearly cannot hear me and cannot see that I am standing up. I hope that something is being done behind the scenes to try to get through to him. I think we must have a two-way problem, as we cannot hear him and he cannot hear me. As he is introducing the debate, this does give us a little difficulty, so I am taking the decision to suspend the House for three minutes until we can sort out the technical problem.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. It seems that the technical difficulty has been overcome. I will just check with the right hon. Member for Harlow that he can hear me.

[Robert Halfon]

I can hear you perfectly; thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

And wonderfully, Mr Halfon, we can hear you. I am afraid that all but the first sentence of your speech was lost, so let us start again from the very beginning.

[Robert Halfon]

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving me this debate, and pay real tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester and the hon. Member for Twickenham, who have been relentless campaigners for getting our children learning again, and who supported me in my Backbench Business application. I pay real tribute to all—[Inaudible.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I am afraid we have another problem. I am so sorry. Once again, the right hon. Member cannot hear me. I am going to stop him immediately. Instead, I am going to ask the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), to whom the right hon. Member for Harlow has just paid tribute for his support, to open the debate—with no notice whatever.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Halfon [V]]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your kindness and patience.

The four horsemen of the education apocalypse have galloped towards our children: a loss of learning, meaning that the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their better-off peers has widened considerably; dangerously fragile mental health; a new frontier of safeguarding vulnerabilities; and now, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a predicted loss of £40,000 in lifetime earnings. Despite the efforts of teachers and support staff, the gulf between the haves and the have nots has deepened. I pay tribute to the UsforThem parent groups, which have done so much to highlight those issues.

The first step must be to establish a long-term national plan for education. Education should be part of a trinity of energy that the Government put in, along with the NHS and the economy. This week’s announcement of a cash boost for catch-up, taking total spending to over £1.7 billion, is a really important building block in the road to recovery, but we need to ensure that the catch-up is directed mostly to disadvantaged pupils and disadvantaged schools, which have been disproportionately affected by closures.

We were told this week that 125,000 children are enrolled to benefit from the national tutoring programme, but more than 1.4 million children were eligible for free school meals. We need to ensure that the pupil premium really does target the disadvantaged. The funding currently applies to all pupils eligible for free school meals at any point in the last six years. The formula does not make any distinction between the disadvantaged and the long-term disadvantaged. The Government should look at reform, and consider a mechanism that helps the long-term disadvantaged—easily achieved by cross-referencing data from the Department for Work and Pensions.

We need to know that catch-up is working. Of course, I credit the Department for its delivery of more than 1 million laptops, the Oak National Academy, the expanded national tutoring programme and much more, but catch-up cannot be just about the input; it is the output that matters. If this programme of support is to benefit children and convince the Treasury that it is value for money, it will require proper assessment of the outcomes.

During my almost weekly visits to schools in Harlow in normal times, I have been moved by how mental health issues, even before coronavirus, have become so widespread, and they have been exacerbated by the pandemic. The Government’s plan to address that needs to be rocket-boosted. We need to ensure that the Department for Education gathers data on the extent of the damage of lockdown on children and young people’s mental health. Special funding should guarantee a mental health counsellor in every school and college.

Tacking on a few extra weeks to the school term for catch-up could go some way to help, but what will really make a difference will be extending the school day, not by placing an additional burden on teachers and school staff but by inviting in civil society, sporting groups and community associations to provide pupils with much needed physical activities and mental health support. There are 30,000 STEM ambassadors, for example, up and down the country—volunteers, ready and willing to be mobilised. Some 39% of academies founded before May 2010 have chosen to lengthen their school day, and in Harlow, my constituency, five schools, part of the NET Academies chain, already offer extended hours. We know that it makes a difference to possible educational attainment; children make two additional months’ progress per year from extended school time.

A national long-term plan for education will require some self-reflection. Ministers should consider the make-up of the school year and the school day, the lay-out of the classroom, behaviour control and the nature of the curriculum and assessment—for instance, whether students should narrow at 16 or study a wider baccalaureate that blends technical, vocational and academic learning, as they do in many other countries.

I would like to conclude by noting that, all through this speech, I have used the language of “catch-up” and “recovery”, “left behind” and “disadvantage”, but I have spoken to parent groups such as UsforThem, and they make a powerful point that we must be careful about the words we use, so as not to stigmatise children. We should be ambitious for them, and although I started the debate with a gloomy prognosis, I believe that pessimism is a luxury that no person in education should allow themselves. If we make sure that the catch-up programme helps the most disadvantaged, and if we use this opportunity to look at education across the board, we can help get the covid generation back on that life chances ladder of opportunity.