Education Recovery

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

The hon. Lady talks about vision. Let us be blunt: the Labour party has opposed every single one of the education reforms that this Government have brought forward, with the one exception, I believe, of T-levels. Every time that this party and this Government strive to drive quality and standards, making sure that there is discipline in the classroom, what does the Labour party do? It turns round and looks to the press releases of the unions and their paymasters. This party believes in delivering a revolution and change in what we actually do. That is why we have always delivered a laser-like focus on what benefits children, what makes a difference and what means that a child will be able to get a better job on leaving school. That is what this party does. The Labour party merely parrots what the union paymasters ask it to do.

At every stage in our recovery plans over the last 12 months, we have set out investment worth over £3 billion aimed and targeted to deliver the very best results for children. We recognise that children have missed out, but we have made sure that where we spend that extra money, it will make a real difference to children. We have looked closely at what will deliver for those children, and that is where we have focused our investment, and that is what we will continue to do.

As we move forward over the next few months, we will face significant challenges. We talk about the school day. We have seen too many schools going down a route of restricting the things that children can do—restricting the things that they could benefit from doing. The school lunch hour is being increasingly restricted to a school lunch half-hour. We want to ensure that, as we carry out this review, we look at all the options, so that children benefit not just from better academic attainment and extra support in English and maths, but from enrichment and the other activities that they can get from being at school. I very much hope that the Opposition will support that, but I very much doubt that they will; they have always failed to support any reform or any change that delivers real results for children.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for securing the £3 billion for catch-up; it is a significant amount of money. Does he agree that the heart of levelling up must be education and getting young people to climb that ladder of opportunity?

What more evidence is needed to convince the Treasury to implement Kevan Collins’ proposal to extend the school day? Do we need pilot programmes? Do we need evidence from the 39% of pre-2010 academy schools that successfully implemented longer school days? Do we need more from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, as extra school activities have been seen to increase numeracy by 29%, or from the Education Endowment Foundation, which has shown that extending the school day increases educational attainment by two months? Will the Secretary of State bring about longer school days and complete the programme that he started once the comprehensive spending review has been completed?

[Gavin Williamson]

I share my right hon. Friend’s views: there is a body of evidence that can be collected that shows that extra time in the classroom can deliver real benefits for pupils. It is about getting the combination right. As we have seen from the evidence, parents are very concerned about what their children have missed out on in terms of English and maths. We want to see how we can boost those subjects, as well as some of the additional enrichment activities that go on in schools.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and I are working with some of the great sporting bodies in this country to see how we can bring more enrichment activities into schools. A number of schools have piloted something called session 3, which enables them to run these activities as additional add-ons to the school day, delivering real benefits to children. I think of Thomas Telford in my neighbouring county of Shropshire, which has pioneered the scheme and delivered real benefits to children not just in terms of sporting activities, but in terms of academic activities. We want to compile this evidence as we approach the spending review to see what interventions deliver the best results for all our children.