Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Halfon and David Evennett

Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. We have good land colleges and we are doing everything we can to support them. There are two institute of technology colleges in Yorkshire, although not in his area. I am sure that he will be pleased with the investment of £88 million in his area into FE, sixth form and the university technical college, as well as a grammar school. We are doing a lot of work on agricultural T-levels as well.

[Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)]

What steps is my right hon. Friend taking to work with employers, local authorities and jobcentres to ensure that as many adults as possible are aware of the opportunities available to them to learn and upskill?

[Robert Halfon]

My right hon. Friend speaks with huge wisdom. We are transforming careers advice through the National Careers Service, which is advising people on adult skills. We are spending hundreds of millions of pounds on boot camps and on more than 400 free level 3 courses. Our apprenticeship scheme offers hundreds of different apprenticeships. Through careers advice and our skills offer, we are ensuring that adults get the skills they need.

Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill

Debate between Robert Halfon and David Evennett

2nd reading
Monday 27th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir David Evennett]

Does the Minister agree that the Bill will be transformational? By enabling people to change careers, change skills and develop talents throughout their working lives, it will make people’s lives better and their opportunities much greater?

[Robert Halfon]

My right hon. Friend, who made a brilliant speech, is absolutely right. We will also be resourcing this in the way that my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) wanted with our extra spending on skills and further education colleges. I also thank her for her important speech.

White Working-class Pupils

Debate between Robert Halfon and David Evennett

Thursday 24th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Robert Halfon]

I thank my hon. Friend. He is another active and hard-working member of the Committee, and he did a lot of work on proposing important amendments to our report. He makes a very important point. Sadly, people read what they want to read. The section on white privilege is just a few pages of a report of 90-odd pages.

Lord Blunkett, a respected former Education Secretary and a senior Labour figure, said that our Committee is “entirely right” to highlight the “decades of neglect” of white working-class kids in schools:

“The report is about neglect, it is about aspiration whatever your race and ethnicity and background.”

And this is absolutely relevant to the point made:

“I just think we have got to stop these knee jerk reactions and examine the reality.”

Sadly, there have been a lot of knee-jerk reactions to our report, and people have not read it from cover to cover. I hope the debate on the statement gives people an opportunity to look at the report again.

[Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con) [V]]

I welcome the report and congratulate my right hon. Friend and his Committee on investigating the issue of the underachievement of so many white working-class children. Does he agree that it is vital that we encourage and help those pupils; that we need to recruit talented and inspirational teachers; that we must present role models to the children; and that we must get parents and families who have experienced poverty and disadvantage more engaged in their children’s education?

[Robert Halfon]

My right hon. Friend has been a champion of white working-class communities since he became a Member of the House of Commons. He is absolutely right. Two core elements of our report are about that issue. We have suggested not only that teachers should be given financial incentives and bursaries to go to disadvantaged areas, but that we should introduce teaching degree apprenticeships. We have nursing and policing degree apprenticeships, and we should encourage more teachers. We have a recruitment issue anyway. We should set up local training providers in areas of disadvantage and encourage teachers to be in those areas.

On parental engagement, the report includes evidence from Reach Academy Feltham, which has an incredible parental engagement programme and which works on parents who have been disengaged from the education system from generation to generation. It has had tremendous success, and we suggest not only that the Government should put family hubs in every town, but that they should work on and develop parental engagement programmes just as Reach Academy Feltham does.

Department for Education

Debate between Robert Halfon and David Evennett

Tuesday 26th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Members for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) and for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) for going to the Backbench Committee together to request this debate.

I want to concentrate my remarks on the Department’s expenditure on schools and colleges, into which we are currently conducting an inquiry. The Education Committee wants to support the DFE in making the strongest possible representation to the Treasury as part of the spending review. Last year we launched our inquiry to look at the Department’s plans to introduce a national funding formula for schools and the role of targeted support for disadvantaged pupils alongside the influence of the spending review process. Our initial concern was that the three-to-four-year spending review period had far too little in common with the educational experience of young people who start primary school at around five and now participate in some form of education or training until they are 18. School and college funding is inextricably linked to both social justice and productivity, as I will set out in this short contribution.

It is not at all clear that the Department or the Treasury takes a sufficiently strategic approach. The last spending review settlement failed to foresee the cumulative impact of rising pupil numbers and several smaller factors—some of them explicit policy initiatives—that led to the 8% of unmet cost pressures on school budgets over the following year or so. It is also deeply regrettable that the debate around school and college funding has become so polarised. Schools are under pressure, but, as we heard this morning from Andreas Schleicher from the OECD, simply asking for more money will not necessarily lead to better educational outcomes. The debate on education funding needs to move away from one about an abstract concept of equity—the principle underpinning fair funding—towards one of sufficiency, where schools and colleges have the money they need to do the job asked of them.

[Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)]

I am listening with great interest to my right hon. Friend’s analysis. Does he agree that this Government have a proud record on education spending and achievement and should be congratulated? However, there are particular areas where we would like to raise issues, as he is doing. In addition to what he is saying about utilising resources, I advise him that in the Borough of Bexley, we saw an increase in the number of education, health and care plans of 14% between 2017 and 2018, and yet there has been only a 1.9% increase in the high needs block allocation this year.

[Robert Halfon]

My right hon. Friend is right. As he will hear in my remarks, I agree with much of what he says. We have to praise the Government for the good things that have happened but identify the funding problems.

Technical and Further Education Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Robert Halfon and David Evennett

Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 29th November 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Robert Halfon]

I will provide one, but I am always against very formulaic structures; things need to be flexible. The fact is that we give the opportunity for the apprentice to feed back at every step of the way, and the agreement has to be signed by the employer and the apprentice when the latter starts.

On the representation of small businesses, the hon. Gentleman will know that the trailblazer groups—there are roughly 10 employer organisations altogether—have to have a minimum of two businesses with fewer than 50 employers. We envisage that the employer panels will be the same. I am happy to reflect on that being included in the remit letter for the institute. We are also investing taxpayers’ money in huge incentives to encourage small businesses to hire apprentices and to encourage providers to take people on. We are doing everything possible to use taxpayer investment to ensure that small businesses hire apprentices and that providers do provide.

I would like as much as possible to be done by FE colleges, and I would be delighted if they took on more apprenticeship training. That is happening slowly, but I think they would be very willing. I have seen it happening in my own constituency of Harlow: whenever there is an issue to do with a company wanting an apprentice, Harlow College will be there, ready to advise the employer on what should be done and to offer training if it is required.

On the wider issue of the technical routes, I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. I shall set out the context of the problems we face. I have been quite open in admitting that we have a huge skills deficit in this country. The OECD said in 2012 that 20% of young people lacked basic skills. By 2020, the UK is set to be 28th out of 33 OECD countries for intermediate and technical skills. We are way behind.

The whole purpose of the reforms and the legislation—this is why Lord Sainsbury has supported them—is to ensure that we have state-of-the-art technical education for young people that transforms our skills deficit. People who do not want to do one of those 15 state-of-the-art routes, for technical and professional education, will have different options through other applied general qualifications and the academic route. The reforms focus on occupations that require the acquisition of a substantial body of technical knowledge and a set of practical skills that are valued by industry and that address employers’ needs and our huge skills deficit. I am glad that the hon. Member for Blackpool South quoted the Centre for Vocational Education Research, which my Whip guarantees is a blue-chip organisation.

[David Evennett]

The best!

[Robert Halfon]

Indeed. The centre says:

“We welcome the Report…led by Lord Sainsbury…the subsequent Post-16 Skills Plan”—

by the Government—

“and the measures contained in this Bill. The recommendations are consistent with our findings”.

It continues, and this is the whole point of the argument:

“Part of the problem is undoubtedly the confusing array of options, with uncertain pathways, that are on offer for young people after age 16. There must be a system that students, teachers, parents and employers…understand. Otherwise it is difficult for young people to be matched up with courses that are suitable for them and for employers to understand what qualifications actually mean.”