Education After Covid-19

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

That is very kind; I appreciate it. It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees—even more, now I know that you are feeling benevolent. I congratulate the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) on securing the debate, and thank him for sight of his speech in advance. I was expecting to have to express my admiration for his optimism that we might, in one hour, address the many areas of improvement required in our educational system. However, as he made clear, he did not propose to have all the answers in his speech or even to address all the questions. He very sensibly identified some of the issues that a royal commission might look at, and he made some practical suggestions for consideration.

This debate is timely, and the need for substantial action is acute, as we heard from many contributors. The hon. Member for Isle of Wight understandably spent some time on the specifics of the education challenges on the Island. He also identified three national areas for consideration—term and holiday periods, the use of technology, and the coherence of the DFE’s wider approach to education. On term times, he raised some interesting issues. There are many challenges that come with the kind of approaches that he outlined, but I agree that it is useful to discuss them.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) spoke passionately about the remote support scheme and the digital divide. She said that each click had increased the attainment gap. Notwithstanding the number of schools that have struggled to access devices and the number of colleges that have been completely left out, on technology, I echo the endorsement that the hon. Member for Isle of Wight made of the fine work done by many schools and colleges to address the academic vacuum that existed in the first lockdown and ensure that things were much improved in subsequent ones. I agree that, at a time when we need young people to leave our educational establishments totally tech savvy, this crisis has opened opportunities that must not simply be set aside in a return to business as usual, post covid.

On the coherence of the current system, I could not agree more on schools, further education, the closing of Sure Start, the huge growth in different apprenticeship standards, and the extent to which so many academies leave parents feeling they have no voice. We feel strongly that this Government have removed the sense of a systematic approach to education. I go further than the hon. Member for Isle of Wight and say that, while there are good providers in all areas of our educational system, there has to be a more systematic approach that empowers learners and their parents, supports educators, and involves employers and local decision makers. I am afraid to say that the skills White Paper offers little hope that the Government’s approach is likely to become much more systematic in the future.

I would like to touch on the contributions of many hon. Friends and Members. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) spoke passionately about the forgotten children with special educational needs and posed a challenge that we look forward to the Minister responding to. The hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) was right about the pressures on our further education system and the need for a more holistic approach that recognises the need for FE and HE to work together. The hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) described this as a watershed moment for education and spoke of the need, which a lot of us feel, for a Government response that matches the scale of the moment. My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden was excoriating in her analysis of the Government’s education record over the covid crisis. The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) focused on the challenges facing our outdoor education centres, and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) spoke about the number of children falling behind, the pressure throughout the education system and the need to recognise that in the response post covid.

The Labour Party recognises that a decade of underinvestment in our educational system in general—and, as the shadow skills Minister, I would say in further education and skills in particular—has left our nation less well prepared for the challenges of the next decade. Covid has simply exposed many of those challenges more graphically. Labour also recognises the need for an evidence-based response to these challenges post covid and recently launched the Bright Future taskforce, with a dazzling array of contributors who have agreed to take part. I think they will provide an excellent piece of work to address this area.

The taskforce aims to identify the causes of the academic attainment gap, as it pertains to poverty, economic disadvantage, race, and many other areas. It will identify measures that a future Labour Government could take to address those causes. Specifically, the Government must acknowledge that there is a race attainment gap, which goes wider than class disparities, and set specific targets and positive steps to address the number of black, Asian and minority ethnic students who go from outperforming white students at level 2 to getting worse university and work offers and outcomes at level 3 and beyond.

We also identify many systematic failings with the Government’s approach to skills. Many of these have been caused by the missteps of the last 10 years, but we are anxious that the skills White Paper will continue to envisage an approach to education and skills that is far too corporate, and continues to leave thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises and young people on the side lines.

Apprenticeships must be the gold standard, and the Government should recognise that their failure on apprenticeship incentives and on Kickstart means that they need a fresh approach. I urge the Minister to look again at Labour’s apprenticeship wage subsidy proposal.

This has been a welcome debate, Ms Rees, and I share the view of the hon. Member for Isle of Wight that the Government need to move with real urgency and at scale if, after all their hard work, our educators are not to be left facing an uphill challenge in giving English youngsters the opportunity to compete in the global race with the very best in the world.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Perkins]

The Minister has announced many different pots of money. One of the things that really concerns us is that he will allocate money, but these chunks of money will not end up getting spent because the mechanisms, or systems, to get them utilised will end up with those funds not being used. What assurances can he give us that the amounts he is announcing will actually be spent on the things he is announcing they will be spent on?

[Nick Gibb]

The £650 million, of course, is allocated to schools on a per pupil basis—£80 per pupil—and most of that money has now been distributed. For the £300 million that we announced as part of the £700 million, again, the recovery premium is being allocated to schools on the basis of the pupil premium eligibility in those schools, so that will be allocated to schools to use at their discretion. The national tutoring programme is run by the Education Endowment Foundation, and we have approved 33 tutoring companies: we wanted to make sure that the quality of tutoring was there. So far, 130,000 pupils have been signed up for the programme, but we envisage reaching significantly more—something like three quarters of a million students—in this coming academic year.

Through the get help with technology programme, the Government are investing over £400 million to support access to remote education and online social care services, including making 1.3 million laptops and tablets available for disadvantaged children. The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) raised this issue today, as she has done in other debates. She will be aware that we are procuring 1.3 million laptops that have to be built from scratch. They have to be ordered, shipped in, checked and have software added. On top of the 1.3 million that we have acquired and procured, there are the 2.9 million devices in schools ready to be lent to pupils that schools had before the pandemic.