Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete in Education Settings

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Monday 4th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

Of course, for parents and for children this was very difficult. I have said that if I could have done it any other way, I would have done so. But faced with the information I had, I thought that was the best thing to do to keep children safe in our schools. I know the timing was very difficult. On the repairs, yes, I can assure the hon. Lady that there will be support, first, to mitigate whatever the situation is at St Leonard’s, and then in future when we look at whether it is refurbished or repaired.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Thousands of parents will be concerned, at the start of a school term, at their children once again being locked out of school and not getting face-to-face teaching, because they know the consequences of this policy. We saw that during covid, when schools were closed down, and we are still living with the consequences for educational achievement, the disproportional impact on the poor, long-term school absence, mental health problems and so on. I hope this is not going to be the default position of the Department for Education every time it identifies risk in a school. Could the Secretary of State tell us what discussions she has had with Northern Ireland officials, whether a number of schools have been identified in Northern Ireland and whether the approach in Northern Ireland is going to be that if the schools are identified, then they will be closed?

[Gillian Keegan]

We have written to Northern Ireland officials and offered support. It is absolutely our priority to minimise remote learning as much as possible. The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: we still see the impact on our children today. For the critical 52 schools that were mitigated, remote learning was needed for, on average, six days, but we are trying to minimise that as much as possible.

Higher Education Reform

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

It is important. Young people have suffered already a lot during covid. They have invested in their degree and put all the hard work in. It is only right that they should have their degrees marked. This is a dispute between universities and their lecturers, but we are urging them to make sure they prioritise all those who will be graduating this year.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

I welcome the announcement today, because for far too long, some universities cynically sold courses to students even though they knew the outcomes were poor in qualifications and employment opportunities. Does the Minister accept that it was her party that allowed the increase in fees, was aware of the mismatch sometimes between courses and the needs of the economy, and did nothing to cap those courses? Does she not recognise that some people will be rather cynical that the tsunami of announcements we are getting now is more to do with the by-elections, rather than the ability to deliver between now and a general election?

[Gillian Keegan]

Absolutely not. I have been working on this policy with many former Ministers, even since I was the Apprenticeships and Skills Minister. We have been working on this for a long time to make sure we get it right. When a working-class kid who will come out with £50,000 of debt puts their trust in an institution, they have to put their trust in the system and it is vital that the system delivers for them. If they have £50,000 of debt and no better job prospects, that is not a system delivering for them.

Crisis in Iran

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend about the bravery of the women in Iran, which I am sure those in the diaspora in her area are proud of. We will continue to work closely with our like-minded partners to ensure that Iran is held to account for the death of Mahsa Amini, including via the Human Rights Council in Geneva. As I mentioned earlier, the FCDO has put £94 million over the next three years towards supporting the BBC World Service, which is a vital lifeline for people both inside Iran and at home here.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Harrow East on securing this urgent question. I know from the discussions I have had with the various opposition groups that lobby us here in Parliament that the profile that these questions give to the issues that concern them is important and heartening. I say to the Minister that it is clear that the Iranian regime not only tortures and abuses its own citizens but is now an exporter of terrorism across the world. I do not expect her to comment on what she is going to do in relation to proscription and sanctions against the likes of the IGRC, but what I think this House wants, rather than a statement about what she is going to do, is for her to just do it. We do not need her to tell us, and we do not need information about it—just do it!

[Gillian Keegan]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his instruction, gently delivered as always. Of course we keep everything under review, but as he has identified, it would not be appropriate to discuss any future actions at this Dispatch Box right now.

Government’s Education Catch-up and Mental Health Recovery Programmes

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the effectiveness of the Government’s education catch-up and mental health recovery programmes.

I thank the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) for coming to the Backbench Business Committee to secure the debate. The impact of covid-19 on education has been nothing short of a national disaster for our children. Lockdowns and school closures for most children have heralded the four horsemen of the education apocalypse: a widening attainment gap, a mental health epidemic, increased safeguarding hazards and damage to life chances. Even prior to the pandemic, disadvantaged pupils were already 18 months of learning behind their better-off peers by the time of GCSEs, and only yesterday The Times newspaper, as part of its education commission, reported that 25% fewer poorer pupils achieve English and maths GCSEs compared with their wealthier peers.

Today I would like to focus on three key issues affecting children’s recovery. First, I will start with the ghost children. On Sunday, the respected Centre for Social Justice published a new report, “Lost but not forgotten”, which continues to highlight the worrying situation of the over 100,000 children—and the number is increasing—who have mostly not returned to school since schools were reopened last year. Across the country, 758 schools are missing almost an entire class-worth of children. About 500 children are missing in half of all local authorities across the country. The Government want exams to go ahead, which I agree with, but 13,000 children in a critical exam year

“are most likely to be severely absent.”

As my Education Committee heard from a headteacher last week:

“Pupils need to be physically in school to even start to learn.”

However, the effects of persistent absence go well beyond academic progress. The CSJ again points out that while

“school attendance is not a panacea, it…offers opportunities to detect wrongdoing and intervene much earlier.”

This would prevent safeguarding concerns from escalating and would provide the families with the support they need when they need it. We only need to remember the tragic cases of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson to realise this truth.

Of course, I welcome the Government’s recent announcements

“to tackle the postcode lottery of avoidable absence”,

but this is no way near enough. The Department for Education must prioritise gathering live data about who and where these children are—the data is absolutely crucial—and I urge the Government to use any underspend from the national tutoring programme, as the Centre for Social Justice has recommended, to fund 2,000 attendance advisers to work on the ground to find these children, work with the families and get the children back into school. Charles Dickens wrote in “Oliver Twist”

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

We must do much more to save this “Oliver Twist” generation of ghost children, who are out in the streets and facing safeguarding hazards, including joining county line gangs, and facing online harms at home and possible high-pressure home situations such as domestic abuse. If we do nothing or we do not do enough, we will be haunted by these ghost children forever.

Secondly, we must consider the efficacy of the Government’s education catch-up programmes. I strongly welcome the catch-up programmes—I campaigned for them for literally the year during lockdown—and I welcome the £5 billion invested in education recovery, but my key worry is that the funding, however welcome, is not reaching the most vulnerable children in our communities.

The national tutoring programme is falling short of its targets: 524,000 children were supposed to start tutoring this year, but only 8% have begun. The Education Policy Institute has found that there has been a marked disparity in the take-up of the national tutoring programme between the north and the south. In the north just 50% of schools engaged with the national tutoring programme, whereas in the south upwards of 96% of schools engaged with the programme. In December, the Department published its own annual report evidencing that the Government believe the risk that their catch-up programme will fail to recover lost learning is “Critical/very likely”. That is a direct quote from the Department’s own annual report.

Headteachers and tutoring groups have described to us the inaccessibility of the hub, and the lack of quality assurance about the tutors on offer. Yesterday, I did a roundtable with heads from university technical colleges —an initiative I am incredibly supportive of—and the principal of Aston University Sixth Form in Birmingham said that, despite receiving about £60,000 of recovery funding and an offer of three NTP tutors, as of yesterday just one had started, and it is now forced to resort to expensive private tutoring. The NTP has the potential to be a really great intervention by the Government to support children’s recovery, but it is not going far enough or happening quickly enough. I strongly urge the Minister to look again at the contract and seriously consider enacting the break clause and working with Randstad to up its game or literally say goodbye.

However, recovery is not just about academic catch-up. We need to look at other measures to support pupils. I welcome the pilot scheme in Wales on extending the school day, in which 14 primary and secondary schools will trial an additional five hours of bespoke activities in art, music, sport and core academic sessions. Let me be clear: when I say we should consider extending the school day, I am not talking about pupils sitting through eight more hours of algebra, although the Minister would probably like that. Instead, as in Wales, a longer school day should be used to support enrichment and extracurricular activities, which have been proven to support academic attainment.

The Education Policy Institute found that a longer school day could increase educational attainment by two to three months. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport found that an extended school day can boost numeracy skills by 29%. Young people who participate in school clubs are 20% less likely to suffer from mental health problems. Why cannot the Government at least consider implementing a pilot for longer school days, as Wales has done, to help to give disadvantaged children in England the best chance of closing the gap with their peers?

Thirdly, we must address the challenges with children’s mental health. Like the Minister, I go to schools in my constituency and all over the place, and I am struck again and again, when speaking to students, that they talk about mental health in a way I have not heard over the past few years. That has been hugely caused by the damage of lockdown and shutting schools, which we must never, ever do again.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the important points he is making. On the issue of mental health, this week the all-party parliamentary group on pandemic response and recovery had evidence from psychologists of long standing in the field, indicating that one of the greatest causes of stress and mental health problems in young children at school was the continual testing that takes place for covid. Does he accept that, given the way the virus is now moving, we must look at whether such extensive testing is needed, evaluate its significance anyhow, and address this issue, which is putting many children off even wanting to go to school?

[Robert Halfon]

As so often, the right hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point. My view has always been that we seem to be putting burdens on children all the time, when they are at low risk—thank goodness—from covid, yet we do not do the same to adults. It is children who have really suffered during this pandemic. We have all let them down through some of the policies that have been implemented. I understand why that was done, but our children have really struggled, so I have sympathy for what he says.

Students’ Return to Universities

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 29th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

An amazing amount of work is done by every single university, but there has also been a recognition by the Office for Students that there may be gaps. That is why the Office for Students has stepped in to ensure that where students find that there is not that type of provision, something is provided for them, so that no student is in a position of not being supported. It is incredibly important that all students understand that support is available to them for them to be able to enjoy their time at university and succeed in their studies.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

The climate of fear deliberately created by Ministers and their advisers has done untold damage to individuals and to the economy as a whole, and has now hit students and universities, with lock-ups of students and students being denied face-to-face education and unable to engage in the activities we normally associate with student life. Yet they are expected to pay the full price for this substandard opportunity in higher education. Does the Secretary of State think it is fair that universities still hold on to the money paid by students when they are not offering the student experience that they promised? Will he clarify whether the direction that students can go home at Christmas was a result of Government guidance or a decision by universities themselves?

[Gavin Williamson]

As the right hon. Gentleman will know, it was guidance issued by Government and a decision of Government, because obviously any actions that are taken have to be taken in the context of dealing with covid right across the United Kingdom. I am sure that he will have taken the time to read the guidance that we issued on 11 September and studied it in detail. He will have seen the four tiers that we set out to ensure that students benefit from the maximum amount of learning face to face with their lecturers so that every student gets the very best experience that can be made available to them in all universities in England.

Relationships and Sex Education

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Initially, the regulations will not apply to Northern Ireland, although I suspect that eventually they will. However, even though they will not apply in my constituency, I nevertheless believe that there is a fundamental issue here that Members of Parliament, regardless of where they come from, need to address.

Many arguments have been made about the importance of relationships and sex education, and the benefits of it. One thing that strikes me is that the catalogue of increased domestic violence, sexually transmitted infections, domestic abuse and so on that we have faced has come against a background of increasing sex and relationships education in schools over the years. If anyone thinks that the regulations will be a panacea, we must disabuse them of that thought.

[Helen Jones]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sammy Wilson]

No, I will not take any interventions, because other people wish to speak.

The core issue is the freedom of individuals and families to make decisions about what the appropriate teaching for their youngsters is. There is an irony that, on the one hand, parents can withdraw their youngster from education totally and teach them at home, but when it comes to this one particular aspect of education the right to opt out is severely curtailed. That strikes me as very odd, especially for something so sensitive.

Many parents have written to me expressing concerns, and have expressed them in briefings that I have been given, that the state is taking away from them the responsibility that they believe ultimately rests with them. Parents may well decide that the relationships education that their children are receiving in school is appropriate; however, if they decide that it is not something that they want their youngster to be taught, the right to withdraw has been taken away from them.

It is also significant that most of the publicity surrounding this matter has been about lesbian, bisexual and gay relationships; when interviewed on Radio 4, the Ofsted chief inspector zoned in on that aspect. For some parents, those are not the kind of relationships that they want their children to be taught about by a stranger. If they are going to talk about those things, parents want the ability to teach their youngsters about that themselves. At least they would have control over what was taught in that instance.

[Hannah Bardell]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sammy Wilson]

No, I will not.

It is important that the state should not have a monopoly on such issues when it comes to the teaching of youngsters. I thought it significant that many Members who have talked about the importance of the regulations and expressed opposition to opt-outs are the very people who would, in many other instances, continually quote human rights obligations.

In a whole range of international rulings, including some by the European Court of Human Rights, and in international human rights law—I do not want to quote specific legislation or rulings—time and again the emphasis is that parents should ultimately have the right to know and decide what is taught to their youngsters, and should be able, where it is contrary to their beliefs, to exercise their right not to have their youngsters subjected to that kind of teaching. They should be the people who ultimately decide what values and beliefs are instilled in their children. It is significant that that aspect seems to have been missing from most of the speeches in this debate.

My final point is that the current rules either place a big burden on teachers or give far too many rights to headteachers. Nowhere are “exceptional circumstances” defined, so headteachers who particularly want their schools to push certain lifestyles in relationships education could refuse to allow parents to opt their children out. They may regard such parents as bigots, as people with funny views, as fundamentalists or as orthodox, which they do not like.

We have to remember that the secular trend in education can be quite aggressive at times: it gives headteachers who want to push an agenda a huge ability to say, “No, you cannot remove your children, whether you like it or not, because I want them to hear this.” On the other hand, the rules may place a burden on teachers and headteachers, because they will be left to make judgments without any specific guidelines or criteria. If headteachers are given no guidance, schools will inevitably make different decisions. I believe that that will put pressure on headteachers.

For all those reasons—individual freedom, the right for families to decide what they want their youngsters to be taught, and the ability for parents rather than teachers to make the final decision in the absence of clear guidelines—I believe that the only answer is to give parents the right to opt out in all circumstances where they decide, “This is not the kind of education that I want for my children.” I do not believe that children will be disadvantaged by that.

There are plenty of other, probably more effective ways for schools to deal with issues such as domestic violence or homophobic bullying. Having pastoral care, making sure that teachers know what is happening in the classroom and the playground—those are the ways to deal with it. I do not believe that the regulations will be a panacea or that they will deal with many of the issues that hon. Members have raised today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

13. What steps he has taken to improve social mobility since the publication of the Social Mobility Action Plan.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

18. What steps he is taking to improve social mobility.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Damian Hinds)]

Social mobility is at the heart of our programmes and my own priorities. We have announced a number of steps, including delivery plans for a further six opportunity areas, and a pilot scheme to help parents improve their children’s early language and literacy skills at home.

[Damian Hinds]

We absolutely come together in recognising the fundamental importance of the early years. I am afraid it is all too depressing a fact that, from what happens from age zero to five, so much is predictable of what will happen in later life. Addressing that involves a number of different strands, one of which is what happens in the home, and that is perhaps what has had least attention hitherto. The work of children’s centres is also important, and there are over 2,000 children’s centres across the country. It also matters what happens in childcare and early years settings, and we now have many more young disadvantaged children—71% of eligible two-year-olds—benefiting from the 15 hours at age two.

[Sammy Wilson]

I congratulate the Government on the additional funding that they have made available for the expansion of grammar schools, especially since grammar schools have traditionally been the mode by which many young people from disadvantaged backgrounds have been able to improve their education chances. To access funding, what steps must schools take to show that they are genuinely improving access to academically gifted youngsters from disadvantaged backgrounds?

[Damian Hinds]

That is an incredibly important question. Northern Ireland has a particularly strong record on educational outcomes when we look at the international tables. The right hon. Gentleman asks specifically what schools need to do to bid into the capital fund for selective schools. They would have to submit a fair access and partnership plan and, at a minimum, commit to prioritising pupil premium pupils in their admissions criteria. They would also have to re-examine their admission or testing arrangements and undertake outreach to support access for disadvantaged pupils.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Anne Milton]

As the hon. Lady will know, transport is the responsibility of local authorities. We are determined to make sure that there are no barriers to anybody taking up an apprenticeship. As I go around the country, it is amazing to hear stories about the programme. I am delighted by its success so far.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

It is always good if we can see a smiling Sammy at the end of questions.

[Sammy Wilson]

T-levels are being developed in England, but it is not clear whether they will be available in Northern Ireland. Even if they are, the regulatory body will be England-only and based here in England. That has the potential to disrupt higher education, routes to employment and the transferability of skills. Will the Secretary of State commit to working with Northern Ireland’s Department of Education and examination board to ensure that T-levels are made available in Northern Ireland?

[Mr Speaker]

I think that is the hon. Gentleman’s version of a one-sentence question.

Education and Social Mobility

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan). She and I have disagreed many times in the past, but I agree with much of what she has just outlined, and I hope that her successor is listening carefully to what she had to say. We do not have long so I shall try to canter through some of the issues as best I can.

Before we get into the meat of the debate, it is important to clarify what we all mean by social mobility. Too often in this debate, we talk about plucking the lucky few from the most disadvantaged to the very top, but that is not what the policy on social mobility needs to address. It is about economic and social progress for the many, not just for the lucky few. It is about making the distance between the rungs on the ladder shorter and pulling up the bottom rung altogether.

The challenges that we face in order to achieve that are, as many have said, deep seated and manifold, but they are particularly important in the world of work of today and tomorrow. Automation and digitalisation and the hollowing out of the low-skilled and many skilled jobs will mean that, for example, by 2022 there will be 9 million low-skilled people going after 4 million jobs, with a 3 million shortfall to fill the 15 million high-skilled jobs that will be available in that economy of the future. Those are the big challenges that our country faces today. The educational landscape needs to address those challenges, not hark back to the challenges of the ’50s and ’60s and the very different economy that obtained then by comparison with today. We thus need a coherent, whole and big bold strategy for tackling social mobility and narrowing the gap in educational disadvantage. As successive Governments have sought to do that, they have found that it is about dealing with the long tail of under-achievement—not, as this Government seem hell-bent on doing, creating an even more elite education for the already elite.

I see the Secretary of State shaking her head, so let me tell her that the Government could start by adopting in full the recommendations of her own Social Mobility Commission report, published just last week. If she did, she would get widespread cross-party support. There are three key areas set out in that report. I fully agree with them, and they have already been mentioned.

The first is about quality in the early years. I am afraid that when it comes to the early years, we are yet again seeing the Government not understand the policy question that they are being asked. Yes, they are putting more money into childcare—something that I very much welcome—but there are two reasons for investing in the early years: the first is to enable parents to get back into the labour market, and the second is to narrow the educational attainment gap that already exists for many by the age of five. To narrow that gap, we must have an absolute focus on quality, which must be available for the most disadvantaged children, not just for a few. The Government could be spending their money much more wisely in this area by driving up quality across the board.

We need a clear agenda as we go forwards, but I am afraid that many things have been going backwards under this Government. We need more support for parents through the Sure Start programme. We need quality provision most of all in the most disadvantaged areas, as we see with our maintained nursery schools and many classes in primary school, which are all under threat as a result of the new funding formula. We are seeing a levelling down, not a levelling up when it comes to quality in the early years. We could use the early years pupil premium much better. I say to the Secretary of State that she should leverage the extra money she is putting in to ensure that quality is at the heart of her strategy. All we hear about are working families and childcare, but that is not what the social mobility debate is about.

We need a pool of talented teachers everywhere, as we saw in the London Challenge, which was a fantastic achievement of the last Government. We need to see it rolled out to places such as Knowsley and the 10 most disadvantaged areas across the country—but that is not what is happening. Grammar schools will exacerbate the problems of getting quality teachers in the areas that need them most.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Lady not notice the irony in mentioning Knowsley, where the Labour council’s own report said that the introduction of grammar schools would be transformative, especially for the working-class boys who were under-achieving?

[Lucy Powell]

That was not a recommendation that the council took on board. What we need is to get the quality teachers into the right areas. We know what works—we know it worked in London—and we need to see the London Challenge rolled out to the 10 worst areas where we know that most disadvantaged children are not getting the schooling they need. There is much more we can do in the post-16 area as well, as the Social Mobility Commission also said.

Let me deal finally with grammar schools. Let us quickly remind ourselves of the evidence. The OECD found that selective countries do less well than those that are non-selective. In England, the highest attainment gaps are in selective boroughs, yet the highest performing local authorities are comprehensive. In Kent, 27% of free school meal children get five A to C grades, whereas in London it is 45%. The tiny number of free school meal children who attend grammar schools is not comparable with the tens of thousands of free school meal children elsewhere. There are just 3,000 of them.

David Willetts described grammar schools as

“an arms race of private tuition for rich parents”.

The inequalities that we have described get greater and greater in this system. That is why the chief inspector of schools, the Fair Education Alliance, the Social Mobility Commission, the Education Policy Institute, the Sutton Trust, the headteachers’ unions, all the heads in Surrey, Ruth Davidson and many Conservative Members are all opposed to the reintroduction of grammar schools. If the Secretary of State wants proper cross-party agreement on driving up social mobility, she should take forward her own Government’s report every step of the way and agree with its recommendations on grammar schools. If she did, she would get a consensus in this House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale West) (Con)]

I am pleased to follow the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden); I agreed with nearly everything he said until his last line.

I am particularly grateful for having the opportunity to speak in this debate given the inability of the shadow Secretary of State to answer the question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove) as to whether a future Labour Government would close existing grammar schools, which is a matter of immense importance to me and my constituents, and those of the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane), who is sitting next to the shadow Secretary of State on the Opposition Front Bench. I hope we will have an answer to that important question before the end of this debate.

Fundamentally this debate is about social mobility, of course, but it is also about who we believe should make choices in our society: do we believe the men in Whitehall and we in this House should be directing what is available for our constituents, or should we be listening to what they want? Wherever we have selection in our country—my constituents in the borough of Trafford are perhaps the best performing in the country—that system is immensely popular with parents. It is hard to find significant numbers of people who would like to change it because it works so well.

[Sammy Wilson]

Northern Ireland has nearly a quarter of the grammar schools in the whole of the United Kingdom, and its academic results are the best of all the areas in the United Kingdom. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that reinforces his argument?

[Mr Brady]

I am delighted the hon. Gentleman raised that, and if I have time I will return to some of the excellent results from Northern Ireland later in my remarks.

There are those in this House who think that it is all right to have a choice of school or type of school for those who can afford to pay fees for it, and there are those who think that it is all right to have a choice of school for those who can afford to buy a house in an expensive catchment area. It is instructive to look at the results of that approach. In the borough of Trafford, which has excellent state education, only 5.2% of pupils go to independent schools; for Manchester the figure is 6.7%, and for Stockport it is 10.1%. However, although we are told that in London state education has been revolutionised, in Camden 29.8% of pupils go to independent schools. We should open up opportunity to people regardless of their ability to pay, and that is exactly what we do in those areas that offer selection in the state sector.

Trafford is outstanding not just because of its seven grammar schools, but because of the outstanding quality of its high schools. The persistent myth from the 1950s and ’60s that if we have grammar schools, we have sink schools is an utter nonsense and should be rejected. Knowsley and the report produced for it have been mentioned, including by my right hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), the former Secretary of State. What has not been mentioned is that one of the so-called secondary modern schools in my constituency—we call them high schools—Ashton-on-Mersey, which spawned The Dean Trust, a very good, effective multi-academy trust, is so good that it has been brought into Knowsley, which was looking for excellence from outside the authority. It is to the high schools in Trafford that people turn, which gives the lie to the nonsense about low attainment in such schools.

We should also reflect on some of the damning evidence about the degree of social segregation elsewhere in the system. The record of the last Labour Government was mentioned earlier. In 2010 the Sutton Trust looked at the 100 most socially selective schools in the country, and 91 of them were comprehensives, selecting by catchment—by postcode, and therefore the ability to buy a house in the catchment area.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend rightly raises his concerns about ensuring that the young people and children in his area get the best possible start in life. We have published our Green Paper and are consulting on how we can achieve this. There are still too many parts of our country where good school places are not available to children, and that is unacceptable. We should look at all the measures that we can take to change that.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Is the Secretary of State encouraged by the fact that two thirds of those canvassed on this issue support the Prime Minister’s policy of increasing social mobility among those from poorer backgrounds through the increased provision of grammar schools? Will she assure us that she will not be deterred by siren voices or the barrage of criticism of this policy from those who are ideologically opposed to it even though they had the benefit of a grammar school education themselves?

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Gentleman sets out the situation very clearly. He points out that, for children on free school meals in particular, grammars are able to close the attainment gap because the progress that those children make is double that of their better-off classmates. Labour wants to close that opportunity down and we want to level it up—that is the difference.