Sarah Dyke - Department for International Development debates

Sarah Dyke debates involving the Department for International Development during the 2024 Parliament

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Sarah Dyke Excerpts
Wednesday 8th January 2025

(1 week, 6 days ago)

Commons Chamber
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Helen Hayes Portrait Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
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Our education system and the wider network of services that support children and families offer unparalleled opportunities to make a critical difference to the life chances of the next generation. If Governments get the policy framework right, they can support every child to thrive in their education, close the disadvantage gap and lay the foundations for good mental health and wellbeing, which will set a child up for life. However, the situation that this Government inherited in July was overall very far from that.

There are, of course, many schools, teachers and other professionals who work with children and young people who are doing an exceptional job and achieving good results. As we consider this important legislation, I want to pay tribute to everyone who works to give our children and young people the best possible start in life—a great education, support where they need it and access to opportunities—and those who do the very difficult work of keeping the most vulnerable children safe. The challenges in our system are not down to them; they are the consequence of layer upon layer of policy decisions taken since 2010 that have made the context in which they work immeasurably harder.

I shall mention just a few of those policy decisions. The decision to cut the funding for early help and support for families, resulting in the closure of 1,300 Sure Start centres, stripped away vital support that can prevent families from reaching a crisis. While funding for early help and support has reduced, expenditure on child protection and on children in the care system in crisis situations that can often be prevented has gone up.

The decision to make academy schools directly accountable to the Secretary of State and responsible for their own admissions policies, and to make free schools the main delivery method for new schools, has left local authorities, which retain the statutory duty for providing a school place for every child who needs one and for SEND provision, without the tools and levers to deliver them, creating an unaccountable and unmanageable wild west of admissions in many areas. The neglect of the SEND system has allowed it to reach breaking point, and children are routinely let down; the capacity of schools to meet their needs has been eroded, and there is a lack of accountability for the role of health services. Local authorities are being pushed to the edge of effective bankruptcy; school attendance has been falling at a completely unacceptable rate; and our children and young people have the worst mental health and wellbeing in Europe.

Where we should have a system of many parts all working together in the best interests of children and families, we have a broken system where some parts are missing entirely and others are buckling under the pressure. Far too many children—particularly those with SEND—are being let down. In too many cases, either children are not protected from harm as they should be, or the outcomes of the attempts of the system to protect them are shamefully poor. We need only to look at the shocking over-representation of care-experienced people who are homeless or in the criminal justice system to know that our systems are failing. We need only to reflect on the names of the children who have been tragically killed at the hands of those who should have protected and nurtured them—Star Hobson, Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Sara Sharif, among others—to know that child protection urgently needs to be strengthened.

I welcome the Bill, which begins the work of stitching back together a support system for children and families and places children once again at the heart of Government policy. Measures such as the creation of a single child identifier and a register of children not in school, restoring the ability of local authorities to deliver new school places and intervene on admissions, tackling profiteering by providers of children’s homes, delivering free breakfast clubs, reducing costs of uniforms and many other measures in the Bill will make a big difference to children and their families.

The Education Committee is taking a close interest in this legislation, which is relevant to our ongoing inquiries on children’s social care, SEND and many other aspects of our work, and there are a number of areas on which I would like to press Ministers today. The measures to improve children’s social care are welcome, but it is well established that local authorities face huge cost pressures, which means that the system does not function as well as it should. Local authorities that are currently trapped in a cycle of spot-purchasing residential places for looked-after children from expensive out-of-area providers will need support and funding to make the transition to more positive ways of working, even if those new ways of working can bring down costs in the longer term. What investments will the Government make in children’s social care to ensure that the changes in the Bill can be fully delivered with the maximum impact?

The £30 million of funding for breakfast clubs provided in the autumn Budget will extend the existing breakfast club scheme from around 2,700 schools to around 3,450 schools, but there are more than 16,700 state-funded primary schools in the UK. Can I therefore press the Government on the need to set out the costs and funding for delivering this policy in every primary school, and for a clear timescale for doing so?

Parents of children with SEND often find it hardest to find childcare for their children. Many have expressed concern at a clause in the Bill that will allow for exemptions from the requirement to provide breakfast clubs for disabled children. Some disabled children will also be able to access a breakfast club only if they have home-to-school transport to arrive at school earlier. Will Ministers confirm that the Bill will ensure equal access to breakfast clubs for children with SEND in mainstream and specialist settings, with support where needed to enable children to attend them?

Breakfast clubs ensure that no child has to start the school day hungry, which will be transformative. However, school lunches also really matter, as the most effective way to ensure access to a nutritious hot meal for the most disadvantaged children. Will Ministers therefore consider whether auto-enrolment of children already eligible for free school meals can be incorporated into the Bill? As a minimum, we should ensure that all children who are currently eligible receive a free school lunch.

Sarah Dyke Portrait Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)
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The hon. Lady mentions school breakfast. Child obesity is up by a third and diabetes is up by a fifth. Does she agree that, while free breakfast clubs are a great opportunity to ensure children are fed, we must also ensure that school meals are healthy and nutritious; and that, alongside the Bill, school food standards need to be updated in line with the most recent nutritional advice, making it clear that they apply to breakfast?

Nusrat Ghani Portrait Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
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Order. We have a very long speaking list, so interventions must be short.

Children’s Social Care

Sarah Dyke Excerpts
Monday 18th November 2024

(2 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Bridget Phillipson Portrait Bridget Phillipson
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I know that my hon. Friend, from her professional expertise before coming to this House, understands better than most how important social work, early intervention and support for families are in this area. She is right to identify that we see an increasing number of children in unsafe and unregistered placements. They are illegal to run, but Ofsted found 887 unregistered homes, up from 370 in 2022-23. We will give Ofsted the powers it needs to tackle unregistered provision. We need to hit providers who are behaving in this way where it hurts, as the threat of prosecution clearly is not working.

Sarah Dyke Portrait Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)
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Somerset council is facing a £7.5 million overspend on children’s services this financial year, with an increased number of children coming into care. I welcome the pledge to provide early interventions, as they provide better outcomes for children while keeping costs down for councils. Will the Secretary of State provide more detail on how a joined-up approach will be achieved, so that local authorities can provide the best possible care for children?

Education and Opportunity

Sarah Dyke Excerpts
Wednesday 24th July 2024

(5 months, 4 weeks ago)

Commons Chamber
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Sarah Dyke Portrait Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)
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Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I welcome you to the Chamber, as I do the Secretary of State and her team. I congratulate the hon. Member for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey) on his maiden speech. He joins two other Darrens. I am one of many Sarahs in the House; until recently, we formed nearly 30% of the Liberal Democrats. I am happy to say that we are now more diverse in our names.

I welcome the opportunity to speak about education and opportunity, but the sad reality is that many children across Glastonbury and Somerton are missing out on the opportunity to have an education, as they have additional requirements that their schools are simply unable to accommodate. After the Conservative Government’s cuts to school and council budgets, education, health and care plans have become the only avenue for families seeking to access support. They face a postcode lottery and are forced to wait months to get the support that they need. Demand for EHCPs has tripled since covid, and local authorities are struggling to meet demand. Only half of EHCPs are issued within the statutory 20-week timeframe. At this point I must declare an interest as a serving Somerset councillor.

Tom Gordon Portrait Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)
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Today, North Yorkshire council has moved to restrict the services that it offers for home-to-school transport, which will have a disproportionate impact on rural schools and families. The Conservatives have been swept from power in Parliament, but they are still having a damaging impact on local government in areas such as mine in North Yorkshire. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should provide rural families and schools with more support, not less, to tackle the challenges that they face?

Sarah Dyke Portrait Sarah Dyke
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My hon. Friend makes a really powerful point. Likewise, Somerset council is forecast to spend £140 million this year on children and family services, including on special educational needs and disabilities provision—a 14% increase on last year. The increase in EHCPs has also increased the cost of home-to-school transport. The high costs are further exacerbated in Somerset because it is such a large, rural county, like Yorkshire. The average cost to Somerset council of travel for one passenger with SEND is over £7,000 a year.

Cumulatively, the local authority high-needs budget deficit is estimated to be £2.3 billion, and the figure is ever increasing; the latest estimate is that the deficit will increase to £3.6 billion by 2025. There are many local authorities working with the Department for Education through interventions such as the safety valve programme. Those programmes demonstrate that local authorities, despite employing best practice, are still struggling to cover the deficit, and any savings made are likely to be lost through inflation.

The Liberal Democrats want to end the SEND postcode lottery that families face by giving local authorities extra funding to reduce the amount that schools pay towards children’s EHCPs. This is urgent, because children are suffering. They are unhappy, they are missing their friends, and they are missing their education—and as a result, their families are suffering, too.

I spoke recently to the parents of a child in Wincanton who had an EHCP that needed an urgent review. It did not happen, and the child’s school could not meet their needs. That resulted in them being absent from school and missing months of crucial education. I have also been working with a group of parents of children with SEND, and one mother from Curry Mallet told me that she believes our education system will see a rise in attendance problems and adverse mental health, and an increased need for SEND support, due to the inflexibility of the system and its inadequacy for meeting the needs of young people in modern times.

It is a total disgrace for any child to be left without an education, because—if I may return to the title of this debate—it strips them of opportunity. Children with SEND will continue to suffer as a result of the lack of places at special schools. Government statistics from earlier this year revealed that around two thirds of special schools are full or over capacity, with Department for Education data showing that there are around 4,000 more pupils on roll in special schools than there is reported capacity. In Glastonbury and Somerton there are two special schools, and I hope that a third will be ready to open near Ash for the start of the new school year, providing much needed extra provision.

Children and their families across the country face a crisis caused by the lack of specialist provision, and it will not go away. Cuts to council budgets under the Conservatives have made the situation intolerable, and we must act urgently to reverse them. Liberal Democrats will work with the Government to ensure that all children can access the tailored learning and support that they need. I believe that we must set up a dedicated national body for SEND, to act as a champion for children with complex needs and ensure that they receive tailored support.

Jim Shannon Portrait Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
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I commend the hon. Lady for what she has said. She is right to focus on SEND. In the press last week, it was indicated that if children who have autism have early diagnosis and treatment, and an education system put in place, the autism, no matter how severe, can be reduced to a level that means that the child can have an education and a job. If we get it right early, we prepare that child for the future.

Sarah Dyke Portrait Sarah Dyke
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I thank the hon. Gentleman for that important and valid point.

I briefly shift my focus towards the forthcoming curriculum and assessment review. I have been speaking to the principle of Strode college in Street, which has around 550 students on BTec courses that will be de-funded following that review. I know that the Government’s policy is to pause and delay the defunding of applied general qualifications; I encourage the Secretary of State, who is no longer in her place, to ensure that that remains the case, to prevent any unnecessary interruption to students’ education.

I believe that every child, no matter their background, can achieve great things, and we must give them the opportunity to do so.