Early Years Development and School-Readiness

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. The way in which a child develops in their early years has a huge influence on every aspect of their lives, including their future economic wellbeing, educational attainment and health. More poignantly perhaps, a child’s early years development is key to their emotional development and their ability to sustain positive and meaningful relationships. Yet according to the Department for Education’s most recent early years foundation stage profile results, one in three children starts school without having achieved the expected level of early development.

To our shame, but perhaps not to our surprise, the likelihood of falling behind is much higher among the poorest children. In my constituency of Rotherham, 38% of children—almost four in 10—are not reaching a good level of development at the age of five. In fact, Rotherham ranks in the bottom 25%. How can four children in every 10 in my constituency be arriving for their first day of school unprepared to learn, socialise and thrive? It is appalling that we have a system where the postcode a child is born into can determine their readiness and preparedness on their first day of school. How can we have failed children to such an extent that their future chances of success have already been determined even before they begin formal education? I find the situation deeply frustrating, because it is something that this House could prevent with the right interventions.

Parents are the first mentors and role models for their children. They have a strong influence on their learning and play a fundamental role in helping their child develop. For a number of reasons, however, some parents simply need a bit of extra guidance on how to positively interact with their child. Through my Dare2Care campaign to prevent child abuse, I know that parents from all backgrounds are calling for support. There seems to be an assumption that people innately know how to be parents and have all the necessary parenting skills and that a parent is inherently skilled and ready to deal with even the most serious issues their child could face, such as sexual or online abuse.

During my roundtables, I heard from parents, charities and academics, and they all asked for support, including well-funded Sure Start centres at the core of every community, providing flexible, trusted parenting support; targeted support for parents who may be struggling to cope or may not be confident in their own abilities; and reviews of every existing point of intervention in a child’s development, including using the personal child health record or red book.

[Michelle Donelan (Chippenham) (Con)]

I completely agree that parents need much more support to break cycles and give young children much better opportunities and life chances. Does the hon. Lady also agree that in certain areas support is available, but is not promoted or accessible? In my county, there is a lot of support, but the courses are too expensive, the hours are not appropriate and nobody knows about them.

[Sarah Champion]

I completely agree with that, and it goes back to my original point about the postcode lottery, which cannot be fair. Every child in this country needs the best start.

The Government also need to run awareness campaigns highlighting the tell-tale signs of abuse. Tomorrow evening we may have a new Prime Minister, but can the Minister please tell us whether he still plans to take forward the Government’s life chances strategy? Will the strategy include action to provide parents with the support they are asking for to protect children from physical, sexual and online abuse? Will the strategy look at giving parents the tools to enable them to face the challenges their children have to endure? Will he look at every available existing opportunity, from Sure Start centres to health checks to free childcare, and outline how each intervention can be used to support parents? Finally, will he please tell us today whether the Government will use the opportunities created through the strategy to take action in the early years and improve the life chances of all children? The strategy should especially focus on the most disadvantaged children, because every child should have the opportunity to be the fully empowered citizen they deserve to be.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Edward Timpson]

I commend my hon. Friend for launching his inquiry. I know that there is a debate later in Westminster Hall on the EBacc, and I am sure many of these issues will be discussed. In many ways, schools provide the best protection from radicalisation by ensuring that pupils are encouraged to explore and debate ideas, and to test each other and themselves, so that they leave school with the resilience and critical thinking skills they need to challenge extremist views. To that end, we have launched the educate against hate website to provide practical advice to parents, teachers and school leaders on how to protect children from extremism and radicalisation.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

18. Child abuse is rife in the UK, and I welcome the comments about character. Will the Secretary of State support my call for all primary school children to have statutory resilience and child protection lessons to prevent child abuse?

[Edward Timpson]

The Secretary of State is very aware of the hon. Lady’s campaign, as well as of the need to ensure that children are as resilient as they can be to the greater dangers that face them in the world in which they live. Those matters remain under review as part of personal, social, health and economic education, and we will return to them in future.

Educational Attainment: Yorkshire and the Humber

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Monday 18th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I should like to echo my colleagues’ congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Jo Cox). This is exactly the kind of debate that we need to have in this Chamber, and exactly the kind of debate that we need the Government to listen and respond to. Along with everyone else who has spoken today, I am deeply concerned that when it comes to education, Yorkshire and the Humber lags behind the other areas of the country, but I do not see this simply as a Yorkshire and the Humber issue. As the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) said, if children from our region are not allowed to reach their full potential, it will have a devastating economic impact on the entire country. That is why we need the Government to respond to this debate.

Sadly, it is becoming more and more clear that a child’s prospects depend on not only their ability but on their economic circumstances and their postcode. The north and the midlands achieve persistently lower GCSE results than the south. As the report from the Social Market Foundation shows, in 2013-14, Yorkshire and the Humber had the lowest percentage of pupils achieving five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C, at only 63% compared with more than 70% for London. The chief inspector of schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw, commented in Ofsted’s most recent annual report that there is a “deeply troubling” north-south divide in secondary school performance, and that the consequences of failing to address it would be profound. Does anyone believe for one second that the disparity is down to the children’s ability?

Income inequality and deprivation of course play a huge part. The north and the midlands are more economically deprived than the south. In Yorkshire and the Humber, 19.9% of children are classed as being in poverty; that is significantly higher than the UK average. The SMF report clearly demonstrates the impact of deprivation on achievement at school. Only slightly more than 40% of children entitled to free school meals achieve five good GCSEs, compared with almost 70% of those not entitled. Furthermore, evidence shows that even the highest-achieving primary school leavers from economically deprived backgrounds are failing to reach their potential. Research from the Sutton Trust shows that one in three boys eligible for free school meals who got top marks at key stage 2 fail to achieve among the top 25% of marks at GCSE. That is more than double the proportion for those not on free school meals. For girls, the figure was only slightly better, at one in four.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that teachers in deprived schools are likely to be significantly less experienced than those in more advantaged schools. Teachers in the most advantaged 20% of schools have an average of 1.5 years’ more experience than those in the least advantaged. However, the underperformance of Yorkshire and Humber cannot solely be explained by economic deprivation. London has some of the most deprived areas in the country, yet academic achievement, as my hon. Friends have mentioned, soars above that of Yorkshire and the Humber.

The chief inspector of schools argued that there is nothing inevitable about the correlation between poverty and underachievement at school, pointing out that 84% of primary schools in the north and midlands are good or outstanding, which is virtually the same as in the south. In Yorkshire and the Humber, 80% of primary schools are good or outstanding, but only 66% of secondary schools achieve that rating. Indeed, 10% of secondary schools are deemed inadequate—another measure in which Yorkshire and the Humber sadly leads the field, or rather fails. While income inequality has long been recognised as contributing to underachievement at schools, we must acknowledge that geographic inequality is a crucial factor.

Successive Governments have not tackled the problem; indeed, it has got worse over the past 30 years. The SMF report states that where a child lives is a significantly more powerful factor in academic success for those born in 2000 than it was for those born in 1970. Yorkshire and the Humber has in fact fallen further behind, dropping from being the fourth-lowest performing area in 1985 to being the lowest in 2013. It cannot be acceptable for a child’s postcode to limit their chances in life in Britain in the 21st century. The Government must urgently tackle the problem.

Far from tackling inequality, the Government have instead overseen a crisis in education. Britain faces an overwhelming teacher shortage, rising class sizes and an exam and assessment regime that is in chaos. Capital spending on education has fallen by 34% in real terms under the Tories. The Government have missed their recruitment target for new trainee teachers for four years. The number of teachers leaving the profession ahead of retirement has risen by 11%. How can we seriously address inequality when the education system faces such strains? Rather than tackling the crisis, the Education Secretary berates children—sorry, I meant teachers; I do not know what she says to children. She berates teachers, accusing them of talking down their profession, but teachers are raising real concerns about the future of education in this country.

The Government’s much-vaunted White Paper contains not a single measure that will address any of the problems. Instead, it proposes the forced academisation of all schools, though there is no evidence whatever that it will improve standards. Indeed, the chief inspector of schools has made it abundantly clear that becoming an academy will not automatically lead to improvement, arguing that without strong teaching and leadership, standards will inevitably drop,

“whatever type of institution the nameplate on the door proclaims the school to be.”

It cannot be acceptable that children in Yorkshire and the Humber have their achievement limited because of their address. We need urgent action to ensure that all children are able to reach their potential. Instead, I am sad to say that we see a Government utterly unable to tackle the crisis they have created, seemingly oblivious to the problems we face, and completely out of ideas to enable all our children to flourish.

Equal Pay and the Gender Pay Gap

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

My speech today is about equality. Equality is not a women’s issue; it is a society issue. I say this because, if a woman is unable to reach her true potential, the whole of society is worse off, and that is exactly why we need this debate. It is exactly why, when people ask me if feminism still has a place, I can stand up and say, “Yes, definitively, it does,” because feminism is about equality, and that is still a long way off.

In the last Parliament, I was extremely fortunate to be supported, guided and helped by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero) and her team. I tabled a ten-minute rule Bill on gender pay equality. I wanted companies with more than 250 employees to publish their figures on the gender pay gap. A voluntary scheme had been in place since the Equality Act 2010, but under the scheme, only four companies released figures to show how much women were paid compared with men. I am delighted that 300 companies now do so—but just 300. Why would companies be reluctant to publish those figures if they have nothing to hide? Why should a woman have to carry out her own research to see whether she is receiving the same pay as her male counterpart? We need a mandatory requirement for companies to publish those figures, so that those that pay women equal pay for equal work can be celebrated and those that do not can be challenged.

In my constituency of Rotherham, women earn just 77p for every £1 a man earns. That is £200,000 over her lifetime—£200,000 that her family are missing out on. That simply cannot be right. I am proud that my Bill was overwhelmingly voted through its first stage in the previous Parliament, but I am still incredulous that eight Members voted against. I expect that the Government will take that mandate and look at putting it into practice. Today, I ask the Secretary of State to make a commitment to that effect, clarify the timetable and put her weight behind it.

However, pay is not the only area where women are still struggling to gain equality. In politics, the figure for women leading local authorities is only 13%. The Prime Minister has filled only one Cabinet post in three with a woman and the Chamber has limped up to 29% of women MPs. In the media, there is only one female editor of a national daily newspaper and only 24% of news stories are about women. In work, only 17% of directors of FTSE 100 companies are women and 70% of minimum wage earners are women. Women are consistently underrepresented throughout society, and until we tackle that head on I am afraid that little will change.

There are also direct links between the Government’s austerity programme and the disproportionate effect on women. Women’s unemployment has recently peaked at a 24-year high. Cuts to public sector jobs disproportionately affect women, as we make up two thirds of the public sector’s workforce. Cuts to benefits disproportionately affect women too, as benefits typically make up a fifth of women’s income, whereas they make up a tenth of men’s income.

Let me give an example of how we systematically discriminate against women. A recent survey of more than 2,000 working mums found that more than half would be forced to stop work or significantly reduce their working hours as a result of a cut to support for childcare costs. From politics to media, work to childcare, women are being systematically pushed down.

We are almost 100 years on from the suffragettes winning their fight for votes for women. We are approaching 50 years since the women of Ford Dagenham put down their tools and walked out in their fight for equal pay. We should be doing better than this by now, but if we think our fight for equality in the UK is hard, we should look to the rest of the world and know that we are not alone and that we are fighting this cause together.

That is why we must give our full commitment to the sustainable development goals. Those 17 goals can change the world we live in by 2030. The fifth goal is to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. It sounds ambitious, but it needs to be if we are to achieve a world where women can live freely, are empowered to make their own voices heard, can live the life they want on their own terms and reach their full potential.

One of the biggest blocks to women and girls reaching their full potential is violence. Since my election, I have been working on tackling child sexual exploitation, in my constituency and nationally. That exploitation is disproportionately of girls, and we see the same pattern with all forms of child abuse and domestic violence. Those crimes have a direct bearing on the economic potential of women due to the mental, physical and health issues involved, but there is also an effect on their confidence—their ability to ask for a pay rise and to put themselves forward.

The grim reality is that, in the UK, on average, two women a week are killed by a violent partner or ex-partner, and up to 3 million women and girls experience rape, abuse, domestic violence or stalking each year. In 2011, the forced marriage unit advised more than 1,450 people relating to possible forced marriage, 78% of whom were women or girls.

I have been trying to grasp the root causes of violence against women and girls, rather than focusing on the outcomes. I have spoken to countless survivors of abuse and met approximately 60 young Rotherham women to try to understand what needs to be done to tackle this escalation in violence. I am of the firm belief that there has been a shift in cultural norms, with young girls now accepting their “commodification” and violence from a partner, or indeed viewing it as normal.

How do we move on from that? Our first step is in empowering young children with the knowledge that they need to understand when things have crossed a line. We need to help them, from an early age, to understand what a respectful relationship is and is not, and how to speak out if they find themselves in an inappropriate relationship. I am a passionate advocate of the NSPCC’s PANTS scheme, which teaches little children that their privates are just that—private. Every child, once they reach school age, should be taught this for their own protection, and so that they do not grow up and perpetuate abuse of others because they do not know any better.

[Ms Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)]

The hon. Lady is making some excellent points and I am enjoying her speech very much. How can we tackle abuse at the young age that she is talking about, among children in school? Would it be worth while trying to introduce a scheme to normalise female leadership from a very young age in schools and beyond?

[Sarah Champion]

I completely agree. This is about empowerment, enabling all children to reach their potential both at a young age and as they grow up, and the direct impact that being treated with disrespect has on their potential to reach their full financial and economic growth, which directly affects their immediate family.

I am not advocating teaching little children about sex, but I am saying that every child at key stage 1 should understand about valuing themselves and others. They should understand their rights to respect and privacy, and understand what to do if those rights are violated. We cannot protect children 24/7 from abusers, but we can teach children to protect themselves.

Violence against girls and women is not a problem that can be fixed overnight, but perpetrators do not reach adulthood and decide one day that they are going to abuse a girl. It is not an on/off switch where one day they are fine and the next day they are a perpetrator of domestic violence or child abuse. It is a slow erosion of boundaries that happens over years. Instead of waiting to deal with the crime, we need to empower our young people with positive examples of relationships, using their years in education for positive interventions in an attempt to prevent violence occurring. Building on that, I intend to work with a number of the leading charities to try to engage the country and decision makers in challenging the stereotypes that are repressing women.

[Angela Crawley]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the key is the education not only of young women, but of young boys and men?

[Sarah Champion]

I completely agree, which is why I spoke about educating children, and why at the very beginning I said that this was not a women’s issue, but a society issue. Unless we address it at that level, we will not move forward at all. We need to empower all children, but young girls in particular need to be given support and encouragement so that they can reach their full potential.

Equal Pay

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Emily Thornberry]

I agree completely. While I am pleased that, at last, the Government have now said that they will introduce that section of the Act, we have wasted a large amount of time on arguing over this matter. That minimal change could and should have been implemented much earlier than it will be. However, progress is progress and that should be recognised. I think that leaving it to the good will of companies to do audits led to only five of them doing them. Clearly that is not anything like sufficient.

To go back to Second Reading of the 1970 Act, Barbara Castle was prescient in asking, “What, then, of evasion?” She knew that there were circumstances—foreseen or unforeseen—that could allow the spirit of the law to be undermined. At the time, she said:

“I have no doubt that some employers will try it on…undoubtedly, pockets of discrimination will remain—unless women organise to put a stop to it.”—[Official Report, 9 February 1970; Vol. 795, c. 928.]

A number of women have followed on from Barbara Castle. Her fighting spirit has lived on through the generations of Labour women who succeeded her and in such a debate it is only right that I recognise them. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), who joined Parliament when it was 97% male in 1982, has led the way in fighting for many changes that we take for granted today, such as a national minimum wage; longer maternity leave; higher maternity pay; the Equality Act, as has been referred to; and measures to promote pay transparency, which are a vital tool in tackling pay inequality.

Transparency must be the bedrock of a renewed effort to close the wage gap. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) said when making the case for her Equal Pay (Transparency) Bill:

“Pay transparency would push companies to focus on why the pay gap still exists”.

Further, she said that it

“places the responsibility on employers to be actively conscious of the law on equal pay, and to have policies to address the gap.”—[Official Report, 16 December 2014; Vol. 589, c. 1301.]

She is absolutely right. Perhaps it is a call to action.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I apologise for being late, and I am really grateful that the hon. Lady has secured this debate, because we need to challenge this situation all the time. Was my hon. Friend surprised, as I was, by just how big the pay gap is? Before researching it, I expected it to be 2% or 3%, but I find the fact that it is nearly 20% genuinely shocking.

[Emily Thornberry]

Perhaps I am not as much of an optimist as my hon. Friend. I was not at all surprised. Although the landscape is more complex, the effect is essentially the same: women and women’s work are still systematically undervalued in our country, and we have to be on our toes and be prepared to be imaginative and think laterally to tackle that. We have learnt, as was highlighted in the debate on my hon. Friend’s Bill, that we simply cannot leave it to good will; we need to be radical and brave and be prepared to tackle the situation head on. The change that the Government have agreed to, pushed for by my hon. Friend and many others, is a good start, but we need to go further. As I said, it is a shame that Ministers have dragged their feet, but I will not go any further than that. There is a lot that I could say, but I will be more generous.

As my noble Friend Baroness Thornton pointed out last week, of the 7,000 companies employing more than 250 people, just 270 have signed up to Think, Act, Report, but of those—this is what matters—only five have opted to publish data on their employees’ pay. It is clear, as she put it, that

“a voluntary approach on its own will not deliver the transparency needed to achieve a change in companies’ behaviour”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 11 March 2015; Vol. 760, c. 668.]

It will seem like an obvious point to make, but when only five out of 7,000 companies—that is 0.07%—opt for transparency, we have to change the law. It took the Government some time to drop their opposition to the idea, but nevertheless, things have moved to a certain extent. However, now we have that, we have to look at what we are going to get in detail, because pay transparency and pay audits are good as slogans, but we need to know what they really mean. We should be celebrating the victory, but we need to go further and get rid of some of the more ridiculous loopholes that I have pointed out.

The law has moved since the 1970s in many ways, including the fact that instead of it being reactive—in other words: “If you don’t do this, you will get sued or taken to court”—Acts of Parliament have taken a more proactive role, beginning with the Human Rights Act 1998. I will not spend time going on about it, but that Act is a living, breathing legal document that puts obligations on organisations to comply with it, and to see their obligations under it and act accordingly. It seems an entirely different type of legislation from the type we have had in the past—and an entirely good one.

We can read across from that to the Bribery Act 2010, which said that if an individual in a company bribed officials, either abroad or at home, unless that company could show that it had systems in place to manage those employees, and therefore the employee was acting wholly outside the way in which the company expected their employees to behave, the company could be liable. We could read across from that to doing the same thing in relation to fraud; so if an individual behaved dishonestly for the benefit of a company, then unless the company could show that it had good management structures in place, the company should be liable.

What has happened with bribery has been really interesting. Experts have been going into organisations and making sure that those organisations have the correct management structures in place and are behaving in a proper way. To use a quote from the leader of my party, it is “responsible capitalism” in action. We can have legislation that brings in responsible capitalism and says to companies, “We expect you to behave in this way. Use your initiative, and get on with it. Stop being complacent and stop saying, ‘Well, it’s not against the law,’ or ‘You can’t take us to a tribunal,’ or ‘You can’t take us to court as things currently stand, so we are not doing anything about it.’”

We could do the same with an equal pay Act, which we should begin with a positive obligation on us all to ensure that equal pay is brought in over the next few years. Women have been waiting for long enough; the obligation should not just be on individual women taking their individual complaints to a tribunal and chipping away at the system one by one, piecemeal by piecemeal. We should all be obliged to ensure that if these women take their cases to a tribunal, they are treated like whistleblowers. If they take a case to a tribunal and they can show that on the face of things, they are a whistleblower, and that, in fact, there is systemic discrimination in that company, action should be triggered by that case. We should then have a more proactive law to ensure that the tribunal can say, “We want a pay audit.”

I know that the Government have changed the law, so that at the end of a tribunal there could be a pay audit, but what does the pay audit mean? It is not sufficient for a pay audit simply to be: “We’ve got 15 women doing the typing, and we’ve got 10 women doing administration, and we’ve got six directors and they happen to be men, and we’re publishing that.” We do not want that. What we want—what I want—is a skills audit to be done under that, so that we look at what skills the women have, in what way they are doing those jobs and what skills they are using. We compare jobs and do a proper jobs and skills audit, so we get under the skin of the box-ticking and look at how there may be a difference between the way in which men and women are paid in organisations.

A tribunal could trigger that after an individual woman has taken out a case. It could be done at the end of a hearing as part of the tribunal’s decision making, or—perhaps even better—at the beginning, when legal action is contemplated. At that point, as part of pre-litigation negotiations, a company or organisation might say, “Yes, we’ll do a proper, profound skills audit.”

Oral Answers to Questions

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Buckland]

I agree that it would have been nice to have made some of the amendments in the Commons, but I understand that in the other place there is more time for deliberation and for votes, so the fact that we reached this stage in that way does not trouble me. We are in the right place and the legislation is now in good order. Let us not forget that the process that got us to this stage predates First Reading, because there was an extensive consultation process. A consultation paper was issued in 2011, followed by many months of proper consultation not only with education providers and the third sector, but with children and young people themselves, whose views have been brought to bear in large measure in the Bill.

Only this morning I visited one of the special schools in Swindon, the Uplands secondary school, where the Uplands Educational Trust was holding its annual general meeting. It is a new organisation that has been set up purely to start offering post-19 provision for young people who have gone through the school system and hit the cliff edge of transition, which is still a problem that bedevils parents, carers and young people in the education system and beyond. It is an admirable and excellent initiative that I fully support. I believe that such organisations will be the mainstay of enhancing and developing post-19 provision right up to the age of 25 and beyond for many young people with disabilities and special educational needs. Without the input of such organisations, I worry that the aspirations in the Bill for extending provision to those crucial years will not be met.

The message that came home loud and clear from parents and carers today was that although they warmly welcome the Bill, the implementation will be key. Once again I heard from many parents who find the transition period the most difficult one of all, despite the good intentions and the good work of local authorities, such as Swindon borough council. The message that they wished me to convey to the House is that in many cases, involving the parents and carers—the greatest experts when it comes to their children and young people—is vital to making transition work.

If we are to get that right, the code of practice that will be brought into force later this year, as set out in the Bill, will be crucial. I am glad that the code will be approved through the affirmative procedure in this House in its first iteration, with subsequent revisions made using the negative procedure, which should allow for frequent updating. The existing code has not been updated since 2001—hardly the embodiment of the living instrument that I and many others expect the code of practice to become. It is my sincere hope and fervent wish that the Government take on board the failure of that code to keep up to date with modern practice and to ensure that it truly is a living and adaptable instrument that reflects not only the aspirations of children and young people with special needs and disabilities, but the reality of experience on the ground. Implementation is everything.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman is speaking about the very important issue of transition. I share his thoughts and concerns and thank him for raising it.

[Mr Buckland]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. She and I have spoken about these issues in the past, and I know that she shares on behalf of her constituents the aspirations that I have for mine.

Other hon. Members have mentioned implementation, but it is important to reiterate the point. I stress the importance of the pilot scheme for the single point of redress as regards the appeals mechanism for parents who have met with a refusal or a decision that is not, in their view, in the interests of the child they look after. I argued long and hard with my hon. Friend the Minister for a streamlining of the system. My worry was that despite the proper attempt to bring health, education and social care together, the courts and tribunal system would still be fragmented in the sense of people having to launch and lodge appeals in different formats.

My hon. Friend has rightly placed great emphasis on mediation. I support the provisions that relate to the use of mediation for parents, because we do not want more of the adversarial combat that has bedevilled the fight that many families have had to undergo to obtain SEN provision. It is important that the pilot becomes a reality, that the intentions in the Bill are not left to lie gathering dust, and that there is a proper evaluation of the pilot so that, if it proves necessary, we can go down the road of having a single point of redress provided by the first-tier tribunal. That is important in making the system user-friendly, simple, streamlined and clear.

Some of the most important amendments deal with the extension of the duty on local authorities to identify not only children and young people with SEN but all children and young people with a disability. That is a hugely important concession that goes a long way towards satisfying the concerns of those of us who were worried about what happens to children and young people who are, for example, on school action or school action plus and would not be caught by the provisions. These amendments, which are replicated throughout the Bill, will make a huge difference to the lives of young people with a disability. They also give added impetus to the need for early identification of a health issue. Leaving these matters until full-time education is not good enough when there is so much more we can do during the early years and, indeed, the very early years to identify disability so that, way before the child gets to school, action is taken not only to diagnose the condition, whatever it may be, but to assist them and their family with its consequences.

I warmly welcome the whole-family approach that is now being taken in the context of carers. Together with other hon. Members, I supported amendments on young carers. I was very pleased that the recommendations about parent carers made by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, on which I serve, were also taken up in the other place. We now genuinely have a whole-family approach to the assessment of carers, and that is absolutely vital if we are really going to make a change on the ground.

My hon. Friend the Minister mentioned the position of young people in detention. The glaring deficiency in the Bill as originally drafted has now been amply dealt with by the very comprehensive amendments that were accepted in the other place. My friend Lord Ramsbotham deserves huge credit for the tireless work that he does on this and other matters. Particularly important is the fact that the disability of difficulty with speech and language communication will now be identified as a health issue at the earliest possible stage, and I think that will have hugely positive consequences for those young people affected.

I think we can say that this is a Bill of which we can be justly proud and that we will be able to look back on it in the same way we look back on the Education Act 1981, which first legislated on the SEN concepts with which we are now so familiar. That Act is now being succeeded by a Bill that takes on those concepts for a new generation and develops them in a humane, comprehensive and effective way. As I have said, however, if we do not get the implementation right on the ground, and if the local offers I expect to appear across the country are no more than mere signposting, we will have failed. To use a well-worn phrase, this is not the end or the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning when it comes to judging the effectiveness of this historic Bill.

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.]

Apprenticeships

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Not every young person wants to go to university, or indeed can afford to. From a young age, we should be promoting the range of options available post-school, but the Government have seen fit to scrap work experience at key stage 4 and career guidance. Insufficient apprenticeships are available for those who want one, particularly for 16 and 17-year-olds. Rotherham college of arts and technology faces a cut in its funding that means that it will lose 280 places for this age group, despite 14.7% of young people in Rotherham being unemployed—twice the national average.

In Rotherham, we are particularly short of apprenticeship places for engineering, even though we have the advance manufacturing park in the area. The main obstacle employers cite when looking to take on an apprentice aged under 21 is the perceived bureaucracy involved. However, this week, Tata Steel in Rotherham has announced 29 apprenticeships, and other organisations there are also proactively looking to increase the number of apprentices they support. I understand that some employers are nervous about the investment that they will need to make in a young person before seeing any return. However, my experience is that this initial investment pays off tenfold, as employers have a worker who understands their systems and is keen to demonstrate commitment.

I urge the Government to use public procurement to boost apprenticeship numbers. For a company bidding for a public sector contract worth more than £1 million, part of its contractual obligation should be to provide apprenticeships. This recommendation was supported by the cross-party Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, but to date has not been acted on. I mentioned the lack of placements for engineering apprentices in Rotherham. If the Government adopted this policy in public procurement, High Speed 2, which will come through Rotherham, would create 33,000 new apprenticeships throughout the country, immediately making obsolete the problem of the lack of engineering places.

For me, the only way out of a recession is to work our way out. I urge the Government to support apprenticeships more fully to enable our young people to do that. Because of that, I support the motion.

Children and Families Bill

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I begin by supporting the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey). In Rotherham, a prosecution for child sexual exploitation collapsed because the young person found that the horror and trauma of going to court outweighed their desire for justice to be served. I am deeply sympathetic to that young person’s choice, but I urge the Minister to use the Bill to make reforms that prevent other children from having to go through similar horrors.

I broadly welcome the Bill. However, I will focus on how it will impact on life-limited children and children with cancer because I am concerned that they might be overlooked in such a large Bill.

From my experience of working with such children, the care system is often disjointed and baffling. Families routinely deal with more than 30 professionals from education, social care, health and other services. It was standard for families to tell me how frustrated they were that they had to say the same thing over and again to different professionals because the information was not shared between departments, let alone between other agencies. Communication between agencies is generally inadequate, leaving families burdened with the stress of having to navigate their way through an unco-ordinated system. All that happens at a time when many families are overwhelmed by their child’s situation. Unfortunately, that experience is common among families of all disabled children.

If a child’s life is likely to be shortened, the time that is wasted negotiating through the system can be particularly distressing. The Bill must prevent that. As one constituent said:

“Unless you shout and fight you don’t get anything. And, to be honest, I’d rather be spending that time with my child instead of battling the system that should be helping us.”

All the evidence suggests that the best outcomes for children with life-limiting conditions are achieved when there is an effective partnership between parents and the services. As many Members have said today, it is imperative that care is co-ordinated around the needs of the child.

The Bill includes a series of clauses that aim to reform the provision for special educational needs and disability in England. The original SEND proposals were included in the 2011 Green Paper, which set out a vision of improved outcomes for children and young people who are disabled or have SEN. The aim was to reduce the

“adversarial nature of the system for families”.

The Green Paper offered an opportunity to join up assessments and services for all disabled children. However, the draft SEND clauses that followed focused too heavily on education-related services and did not provide an adequate framework to draw health and social care services into the system of support for children with SEN. The Education Committee recommended that the Government broaden the scope of the clauses to reflect the aspirations of the Green Paper. Ministers have not taken its advice. As a result, it is unlikely that the Bill will bring about the integrated assessments and care that the Government have promised. Unless that is addressed, the Bill will simply replicate and reinforce the fragmentation in the current system.

Research has estimated that about 25% of disabled children do not have SEN. Similarly, there are children who have specific health conditions such as cancer who would benefit significantly from a single plan and jointly commissioned services. However, those children would not meet the requirements for an SEN statement. At a time when local authority budgets are under increasing pressure, I seek assurance from the Government that they recognise the impact of local cuts on SEND services.

Local authorities will need considerable support and resources to ensure that the reforms can make a practical difference at a local level. To ensure that the Bill realises the aims of the Government’s original Green Paper, its focus should be widened to include all disabled children, including those without a statement of SEN. It should make clear what disabled children can expect from local services, through a duty to provide and a national framework for local offers. The entitlement to education, health and care plans should extend to all disabled 18 to 25 year olds, including those no longer in education. The duties on the health service to contribute to integrated assessment and delivery need to be clearer and more explicit, and the Bill’s focus should be widened to include all disabled children.

Despite the Education Committee’s recommendation, the Government have chosen not to include disabled children without an SEN statement in the scope of the Bill. That means that disabled children who do not require support in school, or who are not in education or training, and their families, will not benefit from more integrated services despite the significant time and effort that many have to commit to securing the care and support that they need. I urge the Government to adopt the measures that I have suggested, as they would have a considerable positive impact on a vast number of families.