Education Catch-Up Programme

Debate between Robert Halfon and Karin Smyth

Thursday 17th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I thank you and the Backbench Business Committee for giving me a chance to make a statement on the Committee’s new report, entitled “Is the Catch-up Programme fit for purpose?” I also thank the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker). It seems a bit like groundhog day, because we have spent the last few weeks debating this subject, and we did so in the Committee just last Tuesday. I want to give a special mention to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson), who is an incredibly hard-working member of the Committee, and to thank her for being here today.

Let me begin by paying tribute to all the teachers and support staff, not just in my constituency but around the country, who have done everything possible to keep children learning, and to the children and young people themselves, who have had to deal with extremely difficult circumstances. I only wish that the chair of the covid inquiry had not forgotten to mention the word “children” in the draft terms of reference; I hope that that will change.

To date, the Government have spent almost £5 billion on the catch-up programme, which I warmly welcome, but, as our report points out, more targeted efforts are needed to help our children to recover from the pandemic. The impacts of school closures were devastating for most of them. Many now face an epidemic of educational inequality, a widening attainment gap, worsening mental health, an increase in their safeguarding risks, and an adverse effect on their lifetime chances. One study found that children locked down at home spent an average of two and a half hours each day doing school work, but one fifth of pupils did no learning at home, or less than one hour each day.

Our report sets out four key findings. First, it notes that disadvantaged pupils have been the worst hit. The Education Policy Institute told us that disadvantaged pupils could be

“five, six, seven—in the worst case scenarios—eight months behind”

their most affluent peers. There are regional inequalities too. By the second half of the autumn term in 2020, the average learning loss in maths for primary schools was 5.3 months in Yorkshire and the Humber, compared with just 0.5 months in the south-west.

By March 2021, the national tutoring programme, the Department’s flagship programme, had reached 100% of its target in the south-west, but just 58% in the north-east, 59% in the north-west, and 60% in my region of the east. These regional disparities should not be occurring.

Secondly, rates of persistent absence remain high, but without up-to-date data from the Department we do not know how many “ghost children” continue to experience severe levels of absence. In December, the Department announced that rates of persistent absence had risen to 16.3% in secondary schools in the autumn of 2020. That equates to almost 502,000 of the 3 million secondary-age pupils. I strongly support the work of the Children’s Commissioner in this regard. Her new report suggests that 124,000 children were severely absent last year. However, we do not yet have the Department’s official absence figures even for the summer term of 2021. Without that data, we risk creating an Oliver Twist generation of children, lost to the system forever.

Thirdly, Randstad and the national tutoring programme are not delivering for the most disadvantaged pupils. Our inquiry found that the NTP had reached just 15% of its overall target. Some headteachers described the “bureaucratic nightmare” of navigating Randstad’s tuition hub, and said that there was a “lack of communication” with schools about the programme. Concerningly, Randstad has also reportedly removed the requirement to reach 65% of children eligible for the pupil premium from its tutoring contracts with providers.

On Friday, the Secretary of State announced that the Department had agreed to publish mid-term data on the performance of the NTP, and that the £65 million originally allocated to the tutor and academic mentor NTP pillars would now go directly to the school-led tutoring arm. We strongly support that move, which we called for in our recommendations. I believe that all the money should have gone to schools, because they would have known how best to spend it, and could have been judged on the outcome.

Figures published by Randstad, mentioned by the Department, suggest that more than 1 million young people have now started tutoring courses, but there are questions to be asked about those figures. For instance, 311,000 of these new starts were made in the previous academic year, when the previous contractor, EEF, was leading the roll-out of the NTP. In total, only 720,000 new starts have been made this academic year, according to the statistics. Moreover, Randstad has revealed that about one in six pupils are enrolled on multiple courses, and are therefore double-counted. Of course I am pleased that more young people are accessing the help and support that they need to catch up on their lost learning, but much greater effort is required to target that support at those who need it the most. The Government must ensure that Randstad shapes up. They have made some changes, but if things do not improve dramatically they must cancel the Randstad contract.

Finally, the Department needs to do more to support young people’s mental health. Our Committee heard that the number of children referred for mental health support in 2020 represented an increase of nearly 60% in comparison with 2018. The impact of social media was especially concerning. Research shows that, just last year, 16.7% of 11 to 16-year-olds using social media agreed that it had had a negative impact on their wellbeing. One in three girls said that they were unhappy with their personal appearance by the age of 14, and 78% of Barnardo’s practitioners reported that children aged 11 to 15 had accessed unsuitable or harmful content through social media. These are worrying trends. Our report asks an important question: how can we ensure that the catch-up programme delivers for the most disadvantaged?

First, we need more reliable and up-to-date data to establish the full effect of the pandemic on children and young people. This data must include regional breakdowns, and must pay due regard to disadvantage and special educational needs. Greater statistical transparency is also needed on the performance of Randstad and the NTP.

Secondly, we need to end the spaghetti junction, as we call it, of catch-up funding. It is a fragmented catch-up programme with complex and bureaucratic funding applications that schools have to navigate. Teachers know their pupils best, and our report recommends that the funding schemes are simplified and merged into one pot for schools to access and spend where the recovery need is greatest. Any future initiative should direct funding to schools using existing mechanisms for disadvantage, such as pupil premium eligibility. Then, schools should be held accountable for how they spend the funds on improvements for the children.

Thirdly, the Department should launch a pilot scheme in the country’s most disadvantaged areas to explore the benefits that a longer school day—in terms of extracurricular activity such as sport, music and drama—could bring to pupils’ educational attainment and mental health recovery. The Minister will know that there is a wealth of statistics to show that such extra activities improve both the mental health of children and their educational attainment. This is topical, given that we have heard mention of the online harms Bill. The Government should introduce a social media levy on the profits of social media companies. That could be distributed to schools to support better online harm and mental health resilience training. For example, from a 2% levy, the Government could raise £100 million, which could be spent on resilience for children. It would certainly concentrate the minds of the social media companies.

Finally, the Department for Education should take really urgent steps to address the issue of persistent and severe absence by working with schools and local authorities proactively and appointing attendance practitioners to work with parents, local authorities and schools to return these children safely and quickly into school. There are 13,000 children missing in year 11, a crucial exam year. The most disadvantaged schools have the equivalent of a whole classroom missing. Dramatic action must be taken by the Department to get these so-called ghost children back into school and learning again.

Education catch-up must be for the long term. If the Department is to make the case to the Treasury that the programme is making a difference and if it is to get more funding for the future, it has to prove that the programme is providing value for money for the taxpayer with the existing funds and also, most importantly, that the catch-up programme is really working for the most disadvantaged pupils. Education should be the cornerstone for levelling up, and every avenue should be taken to extend the ladder of opportunity to every child. Charles Dickens wrote of

“so many things forgotten, and so many more which might have been repaired”.

If we are to ensure the catch-up is fit for purpose and to the benefit of every child, we must act to fix it now.

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for his statement. We have often worked on issues in our constituencies that share similarities. I agree with him about the spaghetti junction of the funding. How does he think we can support the Government in unravelling this spaghetti junction and recognising, as he said, that schools are the only people to be able to lead this recovery, with the proper governance structures? Can we do more to help?

[Robert Halfon]

I was pleased to visit the hon. Lady’s constituency when I was the Skills Minister and to go to her wonderful FE college. As I said earlier, and as we say in our report, the Government say that they believe in school autonomy, so why not ensure that the funds go direct to the schools so that they can spend them on the catch-up programme as they see fit? The Government need to look at long-term reform of the pupil premium to ensure that it reflects the long-term disadvantaged, but why not give it to the schools and then look at the metrics to see how the children are improving in terms of the catch-up? When they need to intervene and offer support, they can do so. At the moment, there are different funding streams and it is incredibly difficult and bureaucratic for the schools to deal with these funds. It just makes life complicated. As we know, the Randstad part of these strands is not working properly, despite significant amounts of taxpayers’ money being put into it.

Higher Education (England) Regulations

Debate between Robert Halfon and Karin Smyth

Wednesday 13th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. The Labour party bears a responsibility. There is no doubt in my mind that, in my constituency of Harlow, young people thought Labour was going to scrap student debt. [Hon. Members: “No, they didn’t.”] They did. The leader of the Labour party said it was going to “deal with” student debt. Whatever the small print said, the impression was given. We have problems enough with trust in politics in our country. I urge Labour Members not to repeat that exercise.

On the general subject, I am not against student fees because, as the Secretary of State said, we have a clear duty of fairness to the taxpayer and to those who do not go to university. The taxpayer should not shoulder the burden alone. A number of principles need to be clear when it comes to tuition fees, the most important of which is value for money.

What does value for money mean in terms of a university education? Why can universities charge the same high fees when there is such variation in both the quality of education and the jobs secured on graduation? Surely the time has come to consider the level of fees compared with graduate destinations. People go to university to climb the ladder of opportunity to prosperity and to improve the productivity of our nation. I was amazed when one vice-chancellor said that I am wrong to say universities are about people getting jobs at the end of it, and also that universities are really more about the experience. If people want an experience, they can go to Alton Towers. Between a fifth and a third of graduates end up in non-graduate jobs. If they are paying £9,250 a year and coming out with a good, well-paid job, the university has done the right thing. If they are not, what is the £50,000 debt for?

I welcome the new longitudinal education outcomes data that the Government have introduced and the opportunity they provide to look at graduate outcomes and earnings after one, three and five years. Closer monitoring of graduate outcomes is essential to this debate and to the conversation on value for money. It is encouraging to hear that the Government are considering linking tuition fees to graduate outcomes, one of which should be a university’s success with degree apprenticeships. The Minister with responsibility for apprenticeships, my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Anne Milton), who is on the Front Bench, has done a huge amount of work on that issue.

Yesterday, the Chancellor said there is a significant difference between leaving university with debt but with a good degree and employment prospects, and leaving with the same debt but with a poorer qualification and no job. I strongly support those words, and I am aware that the Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson) is actively working to support these measures.

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman talks about the need to use both university access and degree-level apprenticeships, and we worked together on this when he was in his former post. The issue of accessing degree-level apprenticeships is fundamental. Does he agree that some sort of UCAS system to help people move between those two things, to advance opportunities for young people, is a good policy to pursue?

[Robert Halfon]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right on that, and I was pleased to visit her excellent local college when I was in my previous role. Of course she is right to say that we need a UCAS for apprenticeships and the skills system. That was in the Conservative manifesto and I believe the Government are working hard to achieve it.

Over the summer, the issue of vice-chancellors’ pay has consistently been in the headlines, and we need to examine the salaries of the senior management of universities. It cannot be right that 55 universities are paying their vice-chancellors more than £300,000 and yet a recent survey found that just 35% of students believe their higher education experience represented “good” or “very good” value for money. I am worried about the seemingly Marie Antoinette approach taken by some vice-chancellors, who are living in their gilded palaces and saying, “Let the students eat cake”, as they receive almost obscene amounts of pay.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Halfon and Karin Smyth

Monday 6th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

What does the Secretary of State say to my constituent Catherine Foster, who received funding in April 2015 for a health and social care diploma with a provider that has now gone into administration? She has no access to her portfolio and no qualification, but a mountain of debt. Will the Secretary of State look into this case and meet me to help Catherine and thousands of other students in this situation?

[Robert Halfon]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. I am very happy to meet her. I know that the Skills Funding Agency is doing everything possible to make sure that anyone affected by such issues has alternative education provision. I have asked the SFA to offer every possible assistance as well.