Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Halfon and Tom Hunt

Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon]

UK Visas and Immigration will consider exercising discretion, and will hold graduate route applications made before the applicant results have been received, provided that the results are received within eight weeks of the application being made. Students who do not know when they will receive their results due to the boycott will be able to extend their permission while they wait for their results. They will be exceptionally exempt from meeting academic progression requirements. I will write to the hon. Lady with fuller details.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

Recently I visited Rushmere Hall Primary School in Ipswich, which is doing a fantastic job to support all neurodiverse pupils, particularly dyslexic pupils; however, its head spoke of a need for all regular teachers to have a better base understanding of neurodiversity, not just new specialists. In the special educational needs and disabilities improvement plan, the Government committed to that. I would like an update on how far we are getting with delivering that in practice.

White Working-class Pupils

Debate between Robert Halfon and Tom Hunt

Thursday 24th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Robert Halfon]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her question. If she reads through the report, she will see that we discuss concepts such as the London Challenge. The London Challenge was very successful, and I am glad that London schools are now some of the best in the country. The problem is that investment has been thrown at the cities and policy reform developed for them, but often the towns have been left behind. We have a significant section in the report, which I mentioned in my opening remarks: funding should be tailor-made. We need to reform the pupil premium and ensure that the funding goes to the neighbourhoods and areas that need it most, particularly in towns where disadvantaged white communities may live.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to have played a part in this report and I congratulate the Chair of the Select Committee on putting it together in the way that he has.

I have been slightly surprised to see comments made by certain Opposition colleagues that this is all to do with austerity and that it is all to do with poverty in a general sense. If that were the case, surely all disadvantaged groups would be impacted in exactly the same way. A key issue here is the disparity when it comes to a certain disadvantaged group of pupils performing a lot less well than other groups.

Why does the Chair of the Committee, on which I sit, believe it is the case that, even when the facts are there in front of us, some people seem determined to ignore them? Is it wilful ignorance, or is it a sense that they believe that this group is less deserving of attention and support than other disadvantaged groups?

[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.