Young People (Barnsley Central)

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to speak in tonight’s debate on an issue that is extremely important for Barnsley and the country.

In these times of austerity, there is huge pressure on my constituents, including young people. This is a tough time to be growing up. Barnsley is a great place to live and raise a family. It is an exciting place to work and a good location to set up a business. It is a place to build a life. It is a town with a proud history and what should be a bright future, and the young people of Barnsley Central are key to unlocking our town’s potential. Prospects for young people are uncertain, however, and many are concerned that we risk wasting a generation of talent.

There is no shortage of talent among young people in my constituency. I see this in the Barnsley youth choir, which will perform a concert later this month alongside the world-famous Hungarian Aurin choir; at Carlton community college, where four pupils were recently awarded the prestigious Diana anti-bullying award in recognition of their commitment in tackling bullying; and at Holy Trinity school, which I visited on Friday and met some outstanding pupils. I felt privileged to meet Calum Barnes, Alex Haycock, Alexandra Ryan-Moss, Callum Mitchell, Jessica Knowles, Eleanor Coles, Lucy Towers and Tariro Munega. I came away inspired by their ambition.

I know from my time in the Army that young people can and will do the most amazing things. I have seen at first hand young people demonstrating outstanding courage, professionalism, dedication and commitment, but the potential that young people possess must be encouraged, cultivated and celebrated. Developing young people’s potential ensures not only that every individual feels valued in society, but that the UK has a bright future. Young people must be given the chance to make this future a reality, however, and my concern is that the Government run the risk of letting this wealth of potential fall by the wayside by failing to put policies in place that protect young people from the worst effects of the economic crisis.

Although I intend to focus this debate on young people’s education and training opportunities, it is important to understand the context of the challenges facing young people at the beginning of their lives. The beginning of a child’s life should be filled with hope and happiness. Instead, children and their parents face real financial challenges, at an already difficult time. In 2011, the Prime Minister assured the House that

“The money for Sure Start is there, so centres do not have to close.”—[Official Report, 2 March 2011; Vol. 524, c. 295.]

However, the budget has been cut by a third, and there are now 400 fewer centres nationally compared with May 2011. In my constituency there has been a significant reduction in funding, with a cut of £6.9 million since 2010. The Prime Minister also promised “a major step forward” on child care in the recent Budget. In reality, many families are set to lose up to £1,560 a year, at a time when wages are stagnating.

Recently I visited Darton college, a brand new Building Schools for the Future school, like all the secondary schools in Barnsley. There I met some hugely talented students who were researching the impact of child poverty. Like me, they were struck by the statistics. Twenty-two per cent of children in Barnsley Central live in poverty—a completely unacceptable figure in this day and age—so children and their parents need all the support we can give them. By supporting them in their early years, we can provide families with a stable emotional and financial platform from which they can get the best possible start in life.

I would like now to focus this debate directly on education and training opportunities for young people in Barnsley Central. I acknowledge that some of the issues I will raise sit outside the Minister’s brief and are the responsibility of other Departments. Although I do not expect the Minister to respond on all these matters, I would like to make it clear that they affect education policy and are relevant to the debate.

Everyone deserves the best possible start in life, and equal access to a high quality education should provide this. After all, education is the key to success. Young people have a range of options open to them when they reach further education, from the study of A-levels and BTECs to apprenticeships and other vocational courses, but the Government are making it harder, rather than easier, for young people to access further and higher education. The decisions to abandon the education maintenance allowance, treble tuition fees and remove the Barnsley-inspired future jobs fund have delivered a triple whammy for young people in Barnsley Central hoping to get on the career ladder. Consequently, the number of young people in my constituency in further education is falling. In 2011-12, 8,600 young people from Barnsley Central started a further education course of one kind or another. This was 400 fewer than in 2010-11 and 1,400 fewer than in 2009-10.

Proposed reforms to the way in which A-levels are studied also threaten the future prospects of some of our young people. The restructuring of exams to make assessment linear rather than modular is likely to affect the provision of education and skills needed by young people in later life. I believe we must encourage children to develop skills in school that will enable them to adapt and respond to situations and opportunities they will face in life, not simply to regurgitate remembered facts for an exam—facts that are quickly forgotten. Surely we should be equipping our young people with a more rounded and flexible education, which will better prepare them for the modern work place, rather than resorting to the old “exam conveyor belt” system in an attempt to boost league tables.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Last week I visited Newman school, which is a special needs school. I was struck by the vigour with which the school encourages young people to be empowered to have a voice and take an active role in society. Does my hon. Friend agree that these are also skills that children need?

[Dan Jarvis]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. It brings me on neatly to what I was about to say about the impact of some of the Government’s proposed reforms on special schools, which also echoes the point she has just made. I have two such schools in my constituency: Greenacre and Springwell. Both are excellent, well-led schools, with hugely committed teachers. I share the concern of my hon. Friend and many others about the impact of some of the Government’s reforms on the delivery of education, particularly in the context of assessment and examination in special schools. I am sure the Minister would agree that we must do all that we can to support young people with disabilities and additional needs.

The educational opportunities open to young people in Barnsley Central include an outstanding tertiary college. In the words of the Ofsted inspectors,

“Barnsley College provides an inspirational resource for the Barnsley community and a transformational one for many learners.”

However, I believe that, in order to create a level playing field for post-16 schools and colleges, we need to remove the basic funding differences. One issue that has been debated by Members in this House is the fact that the entitlement to free school meals in schools and academies does not extend to colleges. Another significant difference is that colleges have to pay VAT out of the money they receive for teaching and learning. The principal has informed me that if Barnsley college was treated the same as an academy for VAT, he would have around £1 million a year more to spend on teaching students.

Barnsley college also has a successful programme of encouraging community groups and school-age children to use its new building in the evenings and at weekends. The latest addition to this programme will be additional classes in English and maths, held on Saturday mornings. The principal has informed me, however, that he cannot grow that valuable work any further because Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs regards teaching children in colleges as a business use, and he will run the risk of receiving a huge bill if he tries to grow classes or activities for the community beyond their current level.

It seems reasonable that parents and politicians should be able easily to compare the performance of post-16 provision in schools and colleges. To enable this to happen, there needs to be a level playing field in the production of the data in the Department for Education league tables. We must also ensure that Ofsted applies the same standards and judgments to all post-16 providers, including the awarding of a clear separate grade at inspection for school and academy sixth forms. May I ask the Minister or a ministerial colleague to write to me about these specific issues relating to Barnsley college?

Leaving school or college is a time of fresh challenges and tough decisions for our young people. Those pupils who opt to go to university will face the daunting prospect of high tuition fees. Those young people who feel they cannot afford to do so face missing an opportunity to further their study. The rise in tuition fees has also had a significant impact on the number of young people applying to university. According to the latest figures from UCAS, university applications are down for a second year running—[Interruption.]