Oral Answers to Questions

Stuart Andrew Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Stuart Andrew (Daventry) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It has been a while since I have spoken!

Those at Buckton Fields school in my constituency were delighted when they had a newly constructed building, but that delight was sadly short-lived, as there were defects. As a consequence, with interim arrangements, the school’s roll has gone up and down, and now it has a £45,000 shortfall in its budget. Will the Minister meet me and representatives from the school to discuss the issue?

[The Minister for School Standards (Catherine McKinnell)]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman back to his place and would be more than happy to meet him to discuss the challenges in his constituency.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stuart Andrew Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

We welcome student mobility schemes in both directions: the ability of international students and EU students to come to this country and the ability of our students to go and experience the higher education systems of other countries. Clearly, our membership of Erasmus will be part of the broader discussions on our future relationship with the EU.

[Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)]

On Friday I met Futureworks Yorkshire, which has been successful in supporting apprentices through shared apprenticeships, particularly in small and medium-sized enterprises in the construction industry. It seeks assurances about what provision has been made for that in the levy. Will my right hon. Friend meet me and Futureworks to make sure that this successful scheme continues?

[Robert Halfon]

Of course I will be pleased to meet my hon. Friend and the organisation he mentions. We are investing heavily in skills and construction and doing everything we can to improve the quality and quantity of apprenticeships.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stuart Andrew Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

We are not putting people off joining the profession, and we are expanding the early years sector. We acknowledge that when we have a strong economy it is a challenge to recruit highly qualified and highly able people. That is the case in this country, and it is the same in other successful economies around the world. We are doing a huge amount to encourage more professionals to come into the profession. We have a very effective advertising campaign. We have very generous bursaries right across the system; we are spending £1.2 billion on those bursaries. This is working, because we recruited 94% of our target to teacher training last year and we have record numbers of people in teaching. What we do not do, as the hon. Lady and Labour Members are doing, is talk down the profession, because, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, teachers tell us that talk about a recruitment crisis helps to deter people from coming into the profession; it does not encourage them to do so.

[Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)]

5. What steps her Department is taking to ensure that parents have more influence in the running of their children's schools when those schools become academies.

[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

11. What steps her Department is taking to ensure that parents have more influence in the running of their children's schools when those schools become academies.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)]

Many parents are governors and make a significant contribution to our schools, and we want this to continue, but that is not the only way we want parents to engage in schools. That is why our White Paper outlined our intention to place a duty on academies to engage meaningfully with parents, introduce parental satisfaction surveys, and set up a new parent portal to help parents to navigate the school system.

[Stuart Andrew]

I am extremely fortunate to have many parents in my constituency who are engaged in local schools. Many have approached me recently because they have been concerned by recent reports that their voice, position and influence may be diminished if all schools are turned into academies. Can my right hon. Friend assure me that that is not the case?

[Nicky Morgan]

I pay tribute to the many thousands of parents who already play a valuable role on school governing bodies. It is vital that schools and governing bodies listen to the views and the voices of parents, and we want academies to engage meaningfully with them. I know that that is happening, for example, in my hon. Friend’s constituency at Crawshaw Academy, where parents are invited to half-termly information evenings to comment on academy policies and to share their views with senior leaders. In a recent parent survey, 78% of respondents reported that they felt consulted and able to contribute to the academy’s development.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stuart Andrew Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

As the right hon. Gentleman will know, the consultation is about to close and we will carefully look through its responses, as we always do, but I am sure the right hon. Gentleman agrees with choice, so that local authorities can decide if it is the right thing for them. If, for example, there is a local area with higher unemployment than elsewhere and the local authority thinks the changes will help to create jobs for local working people, that will clearly be a good thing. There was a time when the Labour party was the party of working people; what has happened?

[Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)]

T5. Is my hon. Friend aware of the example mentioned last week in the Science and Technology Committee of a £2 million Innovate UK investment leveraging a further £44 million from the private sector? Does he agree this shows the importance of Government supporting science?

Oral Answers to Questions

Stuart Andrew Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

Given their proximity to schools that are underperforming and their local knowledge, regional schools commissioners will act far more swiftly in taking failing schools to academy status than we have seen to date. That is the purpose of the regional schools commissioners, and I am confident that we will see a faster and smoother process of conversion to academy status.

[Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)]

18. What progress her Department has made on tackling bullying.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

This Government take bullying very seriously. We have strengthened teachers’ powers to tackle bullying, we have provided anti-bullying advice for schools, we have provided approximately £4 million of funding to anti-bullying charities and announced a further £2 million to address homophobic bullying, and we have included internet safety in the national curriculum. According to our longitudinal study of young people published in November last year, around 30,000 fewer young people are being bullied than 10 years ago in England.

[Stuart Andrew]

The ultimate consequence of bullying can be that the victim takes their own life, as a friend unfortunately did when I was at school. Given that these days cyber-bullying is an additional pressure for victims, what advice and support does my hon. Friend’s Department offer to teachers to deal specifically with that problem?

[Mr Gibb]

It is always tragic when young people take their own life for whatever reason, but particularly when that is linked to cyber-bullying. As this is a particular worry for parents, we recently issued advice on how they can help protect their children from cyber-bullying, the signs to look for and what to do if children are being cyber-bullied. We also produce advice for schools on how to support pupils facing cyber-bullying.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stuart Andrew Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Timpson]

I agree with the hon. Lady. It is important that newly qualified social workers get as much support as possible when we bring them into the profession, so that they see it as a legitimate career to remain in and so that too many of them do not leave it too soon. That is why the chief social worker, Isabelle Trowler, recently proposed an approved child and family practitioner accredited status, and said that we must ensure that we have accredited supervisors and a practice leader in all children’s services to lead practice from the front. On top of that, there has been better collaboration across the local authorities in areas such as the north-east, where the hon. Lady’s constituency is based, to look at social worker need in the region and keep vacancy rates as low as possible.

[Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend expand on the contribution that programmes such as Frontline and Step Up to Social Work are making to bring high quality people into social work? What plans does he have to continue with them?

[Mr Timpson]

Frontline and Step Up unashamedly attract the brightest and best graduates into social work, making them very much the Teach First of social work. They have been extremely successful, with 25 people applying for every place in Frontline. We have just announced the fourth cohort of Step Up to Social Work for January 2016 and we are supporting a third year of Frontline. That will ensure that high-quality graduates go into social work and will be its future leaders. It will also help to improve the status of social work across the country.

Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

Stuart Andrew Excerpts

Tuesday 18th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jo Swinson]

I would like to finish my answer to my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) before I take another intervention.

In Committee, we had the opportunity to hear from and to have these discussions with the industry, as well as with campaign groups—we must recognise that both sides are important in this. Since then, written correspondence has taken place, to which I have responded to deal with some of the issues raised. Of course, as Minister, I will continue to do so.

[Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)]

rose—

[Andrew Griffiths]

rose—

[Jo Swinson]

I give way to the hon. Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), who has not yet intervened.

[Stuart Andrew]

Our concern is that a lot of pubs could close over two years. We want assurances that there has been lots of dialogue with the industry and with pub owners who are going through these difficult times to make sure that they are happy with the proposal that the Minister is now bringing forward.

Improving School Leadership

Stuart Andrew Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Metcalfe]

I completely agree with the right hon. Gentleman that it is about the team. Successful schools tend to have a good head teacher with a good team around them, which is often down to the head teacher’s inspirational leadership. I agree that, where a school faces particular challenges, it is not a bad idea for it to be able to be flexible in the pay and conditions that it offers staff.

Speed is paramount, which is why the achievements at Woodlands school are so important. Students mostly get only one chance of an education, and for every day, week or month that they are not receiving a good education, we are doing them an incredible disservice, potentially damaging their future prospects and hampering their chances of reaching their full potential. We should celebrate the fact that Karen Kerridge has set the school back on the right path in less than a year, and we should thank her.

I would like to celebrate all the schools that are doing well in my constituency, but I am conscious of time and I want to hear what the Minister has to say. I am fortunate to have some great leaders who are helping to ensure that education in my constituency is improving, but unfortunately that is not the case everywhere. Unfortunately, there are too many schools that may not have the right leader with all the right skills and talents to deliver the kind of education that our children need, and often that is not the leader’s fault.

More than ever before, we have to deliver a world-class education, and we need able leaders to do that. It is a tough, difficult job that is not suitable for everyone. The job is different from any other in our education system. As the system is currently designed, however, if someone wants career progression, the obvious path is to head towards taking up a management role and, ultimately, their own headship.

But, as I said, being an inspirational, dynamic and consistent head teacher is like no other role in our education system. Head teachers have to manage complex and large budgets, perhaps a large staff body, premises and a range of other challenges. They are running medium-sized businesses, and they have to be able to deal with that fairly, consistently and in an orderly and professional manner, and many, many do. Despite all the training available and all the mentoring that can be given, we occasionally find that the wrong person has found themselves in an unsuitable job.

I suspect it is a bit like being an MP. Whatever a person imagines the job to be, it is not until they are actually in the hot seat that they fully understand everything it involves and know whether they are personally suited to it. However, an MP can step down at an election and pursue a different path without it being the end of their working life, but head teachers who feel they are in the wrong role have nowhere to go, which can cause problems both for them and for the school.

There are three options when that happens, none of which is a satisfactory solution. First, if the governors recognise that the wrong person is in the job they can initiate capability proceedings, which is a painful, devastating and destabilising experience for all involved, including the staff and students. It may force out of the profession an otherwise excellent teacher, which is a loss both for them and for the wider education system. Nobody gets to be a head teacher without being a good teacher and an asset to the system, and it would be a shame to lose all their talents simply because they lack some of the talents required to do a specific job.

Secondly, there is the “do nothing” option: the school coasts along, slowly declining, because the issue is put on the “too difficult to tackle” pile. Supporters of the school increasingly have to defend the declining performance and prop up the senior management team until finally a devastating Ofsted report is published that presents incontrovertible evidence that the school is not performing as it should. Suddenly, the head teacher is vilified and forced to leave the school and probably the profession, possibly to retire. Again, the damage done can be incalculable for the school, which may have failed students for years; for the head teacher, who has left a profession they probably love; and for the community they served, which feels let down.

Finally, there is the “hope and pray” approach: the governors hope the individual will move on or retire while they try to support those around the head until things get better. Unfortunately, that rarely happens, so one of the other options is usually adopted.

The problem with all those approaches is that even if the ultimate outcome is good, it can take years to deliver. However, there is no time to waste when delivering education. We need a system that supports great teachers, and encourages and nurtures fantastic leaders, but is fleet of foot enough to act rapidly if somebody finds themselves in a role they are not suited for and does not result in their having to leave the profession.

I turn to the role of the governors and the governing body. Having been a governor, I know how dedicated, selfless and hard-working they are. The role is becoming ever more demanding and requires a high degree of professionalism to be carried out well. Governors are the unsung heroes of our education system, and I want to thank them personally for what they do and apologise if they feel my earlier remarks were critical of them. The problem is that, as schools’ independence increases, the role of the governing body grows in importance, and it falls to the governors to hold the head and the school to account more than ever before.

[Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. He is making an important and excellent point about the impact of not taking action. I want to strengthen his point by saying that if governing bodies do not make that decision early, it becomes a much bigger problem for them, the school and the wider community.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

I thank my hon. Friend for his excellent point. I was just coming to that issue. He is entirely right that speed is important, but that means that governors have to make some difficult decisions.

Skills and Training Facilities

Stuart Andrew Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Stephen McPartland]

I am happy to agree with my hon. Friend about Manchester, but with my accent I cannot agree about Liverpool. Lancaster is close to my heart—my sister-in-law went to Lancaster university, which is a great institution. Many people are interested in Lancaster and Fleetwood, where there are good companies employing apprentices. My hon. Friend is doing a great job to ensure that they are pressing ahead with that.

Another reason why we are lucky in Stevenage is that we are so close to London—only 26 minutes from King’s Cross on the fast trains. For many employees that means that it is easy to move jobs and to get a pay rise of £3,000 or £4,000 just for going into London. It is easy to obtain quick career progression by popping into London. Many of my local companies recognise that by employing young people with strong roots in the area, they tend to stay with the company and build a career with that company. The retention rate among apprentices locally is incredibly high, and I am sure the Minister will be able to inform us of the average retention rate of apprentices and time served with a company. In some of my local companies, people who were apprentices many years ago now serve on the board, and some of those are multinational companies.

Schools and local colleges accept that they have a role and responsibility to help their pupils into work and to develop the skills they will need to enable them to compete in the workplace.

[Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. What is important about apprenticeships is that we are moving away from the obsession with everyone going to university, and creating a work force that people need. Winder Power in Pudsey has a young apprentice who designed a new power supply that will save that business billions of pounds over the next 10 years. Is that not the sort of thing we should be encouraging, instead of telling people to go off and get a degree from some university?

[Stephen McPartland]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. I am about to come to the fact that nationally, there is a lot of pressure on young people from parents and teachers to go to university. If that is right for the person and they want to pursue that option, that is their decision, but they should be given a choice. I have had some issues in my constituency with parents pushing their children towards university. Those 18-year-olds, who are old enough to fight for their country, are pushed into university because their parents feel that that is what is best for them, but it is often not best for them.

Birmingham Schools

Stuart Andrew Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I understand the hon. Lady’s point. She has taken the opportunity of this statement to raise one or two other questions. I believe absolutely in the importance of openness and transparency. I also think that it is important that the advice that is given by officials in confidence to shape ministerial decisions is protected as a safe space. I also agree that it is vital that when we discover things that have gone wrong in the education system, as is shown by the reports today, we publish in full.

[Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)]

As co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Islamophobia, may I say that we have heard time and again from the community about its desire to tackle extremism? We have also heard evidence that the news coverage of issues such as this one, if they are reported wrongly, can increase feelings of insecurity, suspicion and alienation. In some instances, the wrong type of language has been used. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we need to do everything we can to help the community, and that accurate reporting of the established facts is really important?

[Michael Gove]

I could not agree more. We must proceed on the basis of facts and evidence, and ensure that that evidence is rigorously assessed and judged fairly. My hon. Friend makes an important point about Islamophobia. I tried in my statement, and I will try on every platform I am given, to emphasise the fundamental difference between Islam as a great faith that brings spiritual nourishment to millions and inspires daily acts of generosity by thousands, and the narrow perversion of that religion, which is extremist Islamist ideology.