Technical and Further Education Bill
Tristram Hunt ExcerptsMonday 14th November 2016
(7 years, 5 months ago)
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Justine Greening
I believe that we are. Not only have we seen investment in more effective mathematics teaching—through some of the Mathematics Mastery work, for example—but we have tried to widen participation by making sure that girls do maths and science courses, thereby better balancing our engineering careers between men and women. Alongside that—this is why the Bill matters so much—we must recognise routes into such professions that are not purely academic which, for many of our young people, will take the form of technical education.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
Do the Government still want young people who do not achieve a C or above in maths and English to repeat their GCSEs, rather than having a more useful level 2 post-16 qualification?
Justine Greening
We have been clear that we do not want children to be left behind by not getting a GCSE in maths or English when they could have achieved one, so we want those who score a D to take resits. For others, however, there is the option to study for functional skills qualifications, and it is important for employers that we make sure those functional skills qualifications work effectively.
Angela Rayner
I will make progress and let the hon. Gentleman in again later.
Even then, the Government did not announce new investment, nor did they abandon the cuts. Instead, cuts of 40% have become cuts of 20%, and cuts of 50% have become cuts of 30%. So although we welcome the Institute for Apprenticeships, now to be renamed the “Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education”, we are concerned that changing the name is the extent of the progress made in the Bill. For example, there is no role for apprentices or learners on the institute’s board. First, the Government gave us an office for students with no students, and now we get an Institute for Apprenticeships with no apprentices. There is no inclusion of further education providers, colleges, universities, the relevant trade unions or local authorities either, and I cannot help but wonder whether anyone in the sector will actually be allowed on the board. Despite that, we have long welcomed the institute in principle, as the body to implement a plan to improve both the quality of apprenticeships, and access to and participation in them. We will now have the institute, but where is the plan? Why is there so little mention of the institute’s need for a strategy to promote participation among care leavers, learners from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, and learners with disabilities? Why have the Government not used the Bill as an opportunity to enshrine in law the recommendations of the Maynard review on apprenticeship accessibility? We simply know too little of the Government’s plans for what the institute will do, and how it will help providers and students in the years to come.
However, that is not really a surprise. After all, the Government do not seem to know what the capacity of the institute will be. In a recent written answer, the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills said:
“We are currently developing the detailed structure of the Institute for Apprenticeships, and therefore we are not yet able to set out initial staff numbers”.
So the Secretary of State and the Minister can come to this House with a Bill to set up this institute, but they cannot tell us how it will be structured, staffed or operated. We can only hope that the institute will fare better than every other body this Government have set up to help them deliver their policies in further education.
Tristram Hunt
Is my hon. Friend also aware that the Minister for School Standards, having said at the Dispatch Box that the royal college of teaching was up and running and had full Government support, has said in answer to my parliamentary questions that there have been no meetings with the Secretary of State, no meetings with Ministers of State, and no effective funding? The royal college of teaching is something we should all support in this House, and I would hope those on the Treasury Bench were behind it. [Interruption.] That is what the parliamentary answers said.
Angela Rayner
I will be interested to see what the Secretary of State has to say about that. I find it absolutely shocking—
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson).
I do not see many exciting opportunities arising from the UK’s decision to exit the European Union, but if we are feeling optimistic, as I always try to be, a rebalancing of educational provision and opportunity is one of the elements that we need to look to as we think about a new political economy for the United Kingdom, and part of that has to be a more effective technical and vocational education system.
In his great work “Our Kids”, which I urge the Secretary of State to read if she has not already done so, Robert Putnam charts the decline of social mobility in rust belt America, hinting at what has happened in recent days. He is clear that if people are interested in tackling inequality and promoting social mobility, the two areas to focus on in respect of Government provision are high-quality early years support and an excellent system of technical and vocational education. Those are the two elements that really make a difference in terms of inequality.
Kelvin Hopkins
My hon. Friend mentioned Brexit. Since the referendum, the pound has depreciated to a much more sensible level, such that manufacturing is starting to grow. Does he agree that it is vital that as manufacturing returns to its previous strength, as we hope it will, we have a good technical education system so that we can provide industry with all the skills it needs?
Tristram Hunt
I knew I would not get away with my Brexit comment with my hon. Friend sitting there. Yes, we need to provide the human capital to revive our manufacturing industry and to make sure that we succeed, but in the modern era of manufacturing, with components coming from across the single market, we are going to take a hit on inflationary pressure in relation to some of the manufacturing competitors—
Tristram Hunt
But we are not going to go down that road too quickly.
I welcome large parts of the Bill. It is good to see the focus on technical and vocational qualifications. I pay tribute to the work of Lord Sainsbury, and in so doing alert the House to what is in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. He has been a passionate supporter of technical and vocational education, and his time as science Minister taught him that one of the blocks for achieving excellence in British science was making sure that we have not just top-flight research chemists, physicists and biologists, but high-quality technicians in our science-based industries. We are not producing those level 4 or 5 qualified technicians who are fundamental to the success of the science base.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris) pointed out, productivity and economic growth demand that we invest more effectively in technical and vocational education. We should also see it as an opportunity. The Edge Foundation has shown time and again that we are going to see a huge growth in jobs in science, engineering and technology, and we need to provide the professionals to fulfil those opportunities. Much of our education system works against that. Whether we think of Progress 8, EBacc or the Ofsted inspection requirements, we have on the one hand a demand for an education system almost on the model that the British set up in Germany to provide our technical and vocational system, and on the other hand every element of incentive in our education system working strongly against that.
I am excited by the addition of the technical component to the Institute for Apprenticeships. I urge the apprenticeships Minister to visit the institutes of technical education in Singapore, which are doing a phenomenal amount on cutting-edge technical and vocational education, as that economy, too, begins to think about the kind of provision it needs to fill the skills gap and about the very demanding requirements on the sector.
My reservations are as follows. First, having the divide at 16 is a missed opportunity. My passion in the next few years will be to see whether we can create a consensus in this House on committing ourselves to ending GCSEs by 2025 and to getting rid of a school leaving qualification for people who do not leave school. We should strip out an examination that is an anomaly across Europe and America and that is not providing our education system with the academic or technical, vocational learning it requires. I urge the House to think much more creatively and imaginatively about having a 14-to-19 framework that includes an academic baccalaureate and a technical baccalaureate. That would get over some of the criticisms levelled at the Bill about having too narrow a focus on educational provision from 16 to 19. A broadly constituted baccalaureate between 14 and 19 would work, so I urge the Secretary of State to think big and to set up some kind of bipartisan thinking about how we—in exactly the same way that countries such as Singapore and Finland manage their education systems—can reach a national consensus in a decade that the GCSE model, having served its time, is no longer necessary. The introduction of differing pathways at 16 in the Bill is interesting, but I urge us to think now about how we put that upstream and have some of those differing pathways from 14 to 19.
Secondly, following on from my comments to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth), careers guidance is so important in this. When we think about accessing UTCs or further education colleges, having decent and effective careers guidance is really significant. The last Secretary of State had a clever plan —a sort of careers guidance and business thing—that was going to work. I do not know what has happened to it, or whether it is coming under review by the new Secretary of State, and I more than accept that there was no great golden age of careers guidance, but if we want technical and vocational education to work, we must have effective careers guidance. We have to make sure that parents and young people not only have the career immersion in primary school, but have effective careers guidance early on in secondary. That is the way they can access FE and UTC provision.
Thirdly, the Secretary of State valiantly defended retakes for English and maths GCSEs. I want English and maths to continue in education until 18, but—I see this in my constituency, and I think colleagues see it in theirs—young people are retaking and retaking GCSEs on a highly academic syllabus, which the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) introduced. We can debate its merits, but it is really not useful or effective in terms of young people’s career pathways. What these young people need is a good level 2 post-16 qualification that gives them the English and maths skills they need, but does not give them an academic syllabus that they do not necessarily require. I am all for people pursuing the academic pathway, just as much as the technical, vocational pathway, but if we are forcing them to do that at great expense, and causing them to be frustrated about their learning, that is one element of the previous Secretary of State’s system that the current Secretary of State might want to think about.
When it comes to technical and vocational education, we create a lot of institutions: UTCs, FE institutions and career colleges. As I understand it, UTCs were not part of the FE review, so we have divided up the review of further education colleges without taking account of UTC provision, even though there is a lot of crossover between UTCs and further education colleges. In Sheffield, for example, the further education college sponsors the UTC. If the Secretary of State is looking for savings, overprovision and institution-building are prevalent in the English education system, and a bit of co-ordination among those institutions would be a good idea.
That leads me to my final point, which is that the best way to achieve that aim is to devolve educational provision. We are beginning to devolve skills policy to combined authorities and directly elected mayors, but we need to think much more creatively about devolving schools policy to directly elected mayors and combined authorities. The needs of the Cornish economy are different from the needs of the Birmingham economy, which are different from the needs of the Northumbria economy. If we devolve some of the authority to a local level, we will end up with a more effective technical and vocational education system.
I admire some of the principles in the Bill, and I admire the direction of travel, as we now say. I urge the Secretary of State, as she begins to think big, to push this upstream and think about the 14-to-19 technical and vocational pathways.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
No, indeed. The hon. Gentleman is technically absolutely correct that the debate can continue until 10 o’clock.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Mr Hunt is excited at the prospect of another three hours from the Minister, but it is incumbent on every Member of this House to judge the mood of the House, the pace of the debate and the necessity of taking up the time of the House. From my observation and experience, a speech of between 10 and 15 minutes from a Minister winding up is usually appropriate and welcomed by most Members of the House.
Oral Answers to Questions
Tristram Hunt Excerpts(7 years, 5 months ago)
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Justine Greening
As my hon. Friend recognises, as a Department we have worked very hard with his local authority to try steadily to increase and improve results. In addition to the work that is already under way, we want to see stronger school improvement via schools collaborating more effectively and by ensuring that more of the UK or England-wide programmes, such as Mathematics Mastery, are properly rolled out in his local area.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
One way to improve GCSE attainment in schools in Northamptonshire is through school libraries. Is the Secretary of State as disturbed as I am by the report from the School Library Association about the collapse in the number of librarians and library facilities in our schools, and will she ask Ofsted to make school library provision one of the inspection criteria?
Justine Greening
Of course, this Government have spent much time and resources on improving reading and literacy in our schools. We have protected the core schools budget across the course of this Parliament and it is up to schools where they want to spend that money, but we certainly want to see continued improvement in literacy and reading results across England.
Oral Answers to Questions
Tristram Hunt Excerpts(7 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Gibb
We have protected the core schools budget in real terms, but the system for distributing those funds, as my hon. Friend pointed out, is outdated, inefficient and unfair. That is why we consulted on the principles and the building blocks of the formula in the spring of this year. That will include sparsity as a concept, and also a fixed sum, which of course helps small schools. We will issue our detailed proposals on the design and impact of the formula for consultation in the autumn.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
The key to successful educational provision in rural areas is the quality of teaching. The Labour party has long believed in having qualified teachers in our schools. One area of cross-party agreement in the last Parliament was on having a Royal College of Teaching. Will the Minister update the House on how far the Government have enacted that?
Mr Gibb
There is a Royal College of Teaching. We are meeting the initial funding costs of the Royal College of Teaching, and it is going to be a great success. I should point out that 95% of all teachers in our system have qualified teacher status and that 93% of all teachers in academies have QTS.
Schools that work for Everyone
Tristram Hunt Excerpts(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Justine Greening
I think Norwich provides an excellent example of a place where we could see attainments raised by the University of East Anglia doing more in local communities. I would like to pay tribute to the work my hon. Friend is doing locally with her young people to help to ensure that that happens. We are at the beginning of understanding how universities can work effectively further back in the education system. The more we can work out how to do that successfully, the more we will see how it can dramatically improve children’s prospects so that they can reach the levels of educational attainment that make going to university become an option.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
If the Government were serious about social mobility, they would focus on the early years and on technical and vocational provision. The one thing I welcome is the Secretary of State’s acceptance of the Labour party’s 2015 manifesto commitment on independent schools. Of course they should be doing more to earn their charitable status. I think we are entering into a consensus view on that. Rather than going down the blind alley of the Charitable Commission, I urge the Secretary of State to amend the Local Government Act 1988 so that the business rate relief of private schools is dependent on a hard partnership, as determined by the independent schools inspectorate. It remains a scandal that our sixth-form colleges are paying VAT and private schools have business rate relief. That has to end.
Justine Greening
As I understood the hon. Gentleman’s policy, it was simply to scrap charitable status, but what we want to do is to make sure that our independent schools actually earn that charitable status and truly deliver more public benefit taps than some are currently doing. It is fair to say, however, that the overwhelming number of independent schools already do much in their local communities.
Higher Education and Research Bill
Tristram Hunt ExcerptsTuesday 19th July 2016
(7 years, 9 months ago)
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The Minister for Universities and Science (Joseph Johnson)
This has been a terrific debate, in which there has been very strong consensus across the House that our universities rank among the very best in the world, our research base is a global envy and our higher education sector is generating the knowledge and skills that are fuelling our economy and providing the basis for our nation’s intellectual and cultural success.
However, there has also been an acknowledgment in all parts of the House that we can do better still. The world of higher education has changed fundamentally since the last major legislative reforms of 1992. With student number controls now lifted, we are in an era of mass higher education that is no longer limited to the academic elite within a small and primarily Government-funded set of institutions. The majority of funding for undergraduate courses now comes from the students themselves, via Government-backed loans.
The sector has long acknowledged that the current regulatory framework is simply not fit for purpose. We must do more to ensure that young people from all backgrounds are given the opportunity to fulfil their potential and the information they need to make good choices about where and what to study. The Bill provides stability and puts in place the robust regulatory framework that the sector itself agrees is needed. It joins up the very fragmented system of regulation across the current sector, giving us what will be a best-in-class regulatory framework.
Joseph Johnson
I will not give away for the moment, because I have a significant amount of material to get through in a very limited time.
The Bill creates a level playing field, making it easier for new high-quality providers to compete with established degree-awarding universities. This will drive up innovation, diversity, quality and capacity, ensuring we remain attractive internationally. It will give students better access to information, empowering them to make the best choices about where to study. It ensures incentives are in place for providers to focus on the quality of the teaching they offer to students.
This Government are committed to equality of opportunity for all. The Bill delivers on that commitment, with a renewed focus on access and participation for disadvantaged students. The new office for students will be required to consider equality of opportunity across the entire student lifecycle, and our reforms to the research landscape will deliver a system that is more agile, flexible and able to respond strategically to future challenges.
This afternoon, we have often heard concerns that now is not the time to proceed with the Bill and that we should press the pause button. That is wrong: the time is right to press ahead, and important sector representatives agree. As Maddalaine Ansell, the chief executive of University Alliance, put it in an article just the other day, the Higher Education and Research Bill
“is a raft that can take us to calmer waters”.
I urge Opposition Members to get on board.
The Bill delivers on pledges in the Conservative manifesto on which we were elected. It will provide stability for the sector, putting in place a robust regulatory framework. The sector has been calling for this legislation since the tuition fee changes were put in place during the last Parliament, and it welcomes the stability and certainty that the Bill will provide. As GuildHE, another representative body, has put it:
“Pausing on the Bill and risking further damage to our international reputation for quality through regulatory failure would be a mistake”.
Tristram Hunt
I am very grateful to the Minister for giving way, because I appreciate that it is so annoying when someone interrupts your lecture. As we know, this is a Brexit Government, and many of the leading Cabinet Ministers promised not only £350 million a week for the NHS, but security for all our science funding. Will the Minister at the Dispatch Box give assurances to Staffordshire University and Keele University in my constituency that all their science funding will be secure by Brexit?
Joseph Johnson
I encourage Opposition Members to be optimistic about our future as a global leader in higher education and science. The UK has been at the centre of scholarship and science for hundreds of years. Many universities were powerhouses of scholarship long before the European Union came into existence, and I am confident that they will continue to be so for years and years to come.
Our universities are world leading and, although it is too early to say what the new EU settlement will be for science, I am confident that we will continue to thrive following the referendum result. That is why I have been engaging closely with Commissioner Moedas in Brussels and many other people in Governments across Europe, including my Italian counterpart. I welcome their commitment to ensuring that we will not be discriminated against in the period we find ourselves in. I welcome this morning’s statement by the League of European Research Universities that British universities should not be viewed as a risk to research projects and that they will continue to be “indispensable collaborative partners” in the months and years ahead.
Turning to our rationale for opening the market in the Bill, it is generally accepted that competition between providers in any market incentivises them to raise their game and offers consumers a greater choice of more innovative and better quality products and services at lower cost. Higher education is no exception. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling) said in her excellent remarks, there is certainly room for improvement. Students’ perception of value for money is continuing to fall. In the Higher Education Policy Institute student experience survey published last month, just 37% of student respondents felt that they received good value for money. That was down from 53% in 2012.
We need to address the fact that many students are starting to ask whether university is worth it. Many employers have similar questions when they look at the labour market mismatch in our economy. While employers are suffering skills shortages, especially in high-skilled STEM areas, at least 20% of graduates are in non-professional roles three and a half years after graduating. If the students who are paying for the system and the taxpayers who are underwriting it are not completely satisfied, the market needs help to adapt. This we will provide as a Government. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), who made an outstanding speech, I make no apology for seeking to expand higher education provision and give students more choice and more opportunities at every stage of their lives.
Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field), I welcome the contribution that alternative providers are making and that they will be able to make all the more easily in future. There is no longer a one-size-fits-all model of university education. Students have a sharper eye for value than ever before and they are calling out, as my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) said, for pioneering institutions offering alternative educational models and an increased focus on skills that will prepare them for the future with the mindset and agility needed to fulfil roles that may not even yet exist. I welcome his engagement with the Milton Keynes institute of technology, which is a flagship for the challenger institutions that we want to come into the sector.
Critically, as other Members have stressed, it is vital that no institution is able to enter our system and access student finance without meeting the very high academic standards that we expect of the sector, as set out in the White Paper. On longevity, we expect institutions to meet the same financial sustainability rules that exist for incumbents. The Bill makes no changes to those demanding requirements. The reforms will, however, make it easier and quicker for new providers to enter the HE market. They will drive innovation, promote choice for students and increase opportunity, but they will also ensure that new providers can enter the market only when they demonstrate that they are able to deliver academic services of the quality that we expect.
The Bill reflects our determination to accelerate social mobility in this country through higher education. When we reformed the student finance system in 2011, some, including Labour Members, said participation would fall. In fact, the opposite has happened. We have a progressive student finance loan system that ensures that finance is no barrier to entry. It is working as a system. Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are going to university at a record rate—it is up from 13.6% of the bottom quintile in 2009 to 18.5% in 2015. I am afraid Labour Members were wrong then and they are wrong now. Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are 36% more likely to go to university than they were in 2009, but we can and must go further. Our new Prime Minister has rightly prioritised a country that works for everyone and not just the few.
Our reforms in the White Paper and the Bill support that ambition. The Bill introduces a statutory duty on the office for students to promote equality of opportunity across the whole higher education lifecycle for disadvantaged students, and not just at the point of access. That includes Oxbridge and other elite institutions, exactly as the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) would want us to ensure. We will bring together the responsibilities of OFFA and HEFCE for widening access into the new office for students. As part of that body, the new director for fair access and participation will look beyond the point of access into higher education and across disadvantaged students’ entire time in higher education. We will also require higher education providers to publish application, offer and progression rates by gender, ethnicity and socio-economic background.
I welcome the cross-party support for our focus on teaching excellence. We are committed to introducing a teaching excellence framework in our manifesto because we want to drive up teaching standards throughout the sector. The Bill delivers on our pledge to drive up teaching quality and to provide students with robust, comparable information on where teaching is best in the system. It will rebalance the priority given to teaching and learning compared with research, and will mean that the funding of teaching is based on quality, not just quantity—a principle long and successfully established for the funding of research.
On the link between tuition fees and the teaching excellence framework, it is worth noting that the previous Labour Government raised tuition fees in line with inflation in every year from 2007 to 2010, regardless of teaching quality. We will allow fees to rise with inflation only for those institutions offering the highest-quality teaching. Maximum fee caps will be kept flat in real terms. We will allow them to increase only in line with inflation each year, as provided for by the Labour Government. Both Universities UK and GuildHE—expert sector groups—have made clear that allowing the value of fees to be maintained in real terms is essential if universities are to continue to deliver high-quality teaching.
Our reforms go well beyond education and also cover our research base. We have heard comments about our outstanding research base. Its strengths in adding to human knowledge and improving our lives are not in doubt. They will continue to be protected, but we have the opportunity to maximise the benefits of our investment through a strengthened strategic approach, removing the barriers to more inter- and multidisciplinary research, and ensuring that we capitalise on links between our research base and business. We have long recognised the contribution of science and research to our wellbeing and wider economy. Our reforms build on those strengths, placing research and development at the heart of a national industrial strategy.
We have heard many passionate voices from both sides of the House today. The House can unite in support of the excellence of our universities and our research, but the Government are not willing simply to celebrate the excellence already achieved—we want it to continue and to build on it further. Our reforms will create a level playing field for new providers and increase competition in the system. We will encourage innovation in the higher education sector, transform the sector’s ability to respond to economic demands and the rapidly changing graduate employment landscape, and ensure that we remain attractive internationally for decades to come. I commend the Bill to the House.
Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
EBacc: Expressive Arts Subjects
Tristram Hunt Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Catherine McKinnell
My right hon. Friend makes a key point, which a number of people have put to me in strong terms; he puts it very well. I do know how hard it is to pass those subjects, partly from personal experience and that of people close to me, but partly from the people, including teachers, I spoke to ahead the debate. Frankly, they feel insulted by the tone of the Government’s proposals.
We are all aware that the education sector is going through a period of significant and seemingly never-ending change and reform, of which the EBacc is a part. It was initially planned as a formal certificate, but that idea was dropped. It was first applied by the coalition Government in 2010 as a
“headline measure of secondary school performance”.
It judges all schools according to the number of pupils who have achieved grades A* to C across English language and literature, maths, double science, history or geography and a language—subjects that, when studied at A-level, are defined by the Russell Group of universities as “facilitating”. In other words, they are the A-levels most commonly required for entry to the UK’s leading universities, which are attended by 11% of young people.
Following a consultation in November 2015, the Government now want at least 90% of students in mainstream secondary schools to be entered for the EBacc by 2020, thereby taking up at least seven of those students’ GCSE options. The Bacc for the Future campaign has raised concerns that, given that the average number of full GCSEs taken by pupils is 8.1,
“a compulsory EBacc will leave little, if any, room for rigorous, challenging creative subjects which have been approved by the Government’s own Wolf Review of vocational education.”
Nobody doubts the importance of young people’s gaining a solid foundation in English, maths and science; that is why those subjects have always been compulsory. However, the petition objects to the exclusion from the EBacc all creative, artistic and technical subjects, which sends a clear message to young people, parents, teachers, school leaders and society at large about the value that the Government place on subjects that help to create expressive, communicative, self-confident and well rounded human beings. For many young people, those may be the only subjects at which they excel.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a superb speech. Is it not ironic that what we need for the economy of the future and the digital revolution of the future is the breaking down of rather traditional arts and science silos? Creative subjects provide exactly the kind of skills and training that will let young people succeed. We would be mad to strip those subjects out of our education system, not least because we are rather good at them.
Catherine McKinnell
My hon. Friend makes a valid and important point.
The question that has been asked over and over again is: why? I hope the Minister will answer that question today. Why would the Government want to limit opportunities to study subjects such as design and technology? The Edge Foundation commented during last week’s EBacc Twitter debate:
“D&T teaches young people how things are designed, developed, made and improved”.
As the National Society for Education in Art and Design succinctly put it,
“In life ‘knowing how’ is just as important as ‘knowing that’.”
I am quite sure that the Minister will pledge in his response that the Government have no intention of restricting access to these subjects. Indeed, in the culture White Paper, the Education Secretary declared that
“Access to cultural education is a matter of social justice.”
However, warm words are simply not enough. What does the Minister really think will be the result of forcing all schools, which are already hard-pressed, to enter 90% of their pupils for the EBacc? A headteacher and member of the organisation SCHOOLS NorthEast has commented that the EBacc creates a “false hierarchy of subjects”. The National Association of Head Teachers has remarked:
“Given the pressures created by the Ebacc, there will be precious little time left for subjects outside the core.”
David Warburton
I am afraid I do not have that figure to hand, although I am sure that the Minister can regale us with it. I am sure that he has it front of him and can come out with it later, and I look forward to that with great interest.
Tristram Hunt
The hon. Gentleman is making a very powerful point. Does he agree that for fee-paying schools that enjoy charitable status and do not pay business rates—receiving business rates relief based on it—sharing music facilities and music teachers might be one way to justify that charitable status?
David Warburton
I think that sharing music facilities and facilities generally is often a good way forward. That could certainly be considered, but schools need to work individually and to have the right facilities to look after their own pupils without having to look elsewhere—without having to run across the road and make sure that somebody else can help them out.
An EBacc that fails to make room for the arts can only entrench the inequality that I have described. Last week, I chaired a meeting of the all-party group for music education where we heard some very passionate views. We heard about a report from the charity Sound Connections, and Wired4Music, in which young people in London described the transformational impact of music education on their lives and careers. From the report, it is important to highlight the unanimity, strength of feeling and uneasy sense of shrinking opportunities for those in this generation, and succeeding generations, who might otherwise go on to careers in the creative industries.
I have to say, however, that the Government have made significant advances in supporting the arts. We have seen the first culture White Paper for 50 years, the Cultural Citizens Programme and the new heritage action zones. Alongside those headline initiatives, we have seen £15 million-worth of tax breaks for theatres this year and the welcome orchestra tax break, but widening participation in the arts must begin with education.
The debate this afternoon pivots on what a core curriculum is and whether an EBacc without the arts can ever be seen to provide that. The chief executive of the Incorporated Society of Musicians said in a recent speech that this
“Government certainly seems to understand the importance of culture and creativity”.
It is because I believe that to be true that I urge them either to include the arts within the EBacc or to define a more balanced curriculum.
I will not quote figures because we have all heard plenty of those, but in 2014 the creative industries grew at twice the rate of the UK economy as a whole. Governments should play their strongest hand. We lead the world in music and the creative industries, but it is not just the utilitarian argument that is important—the arts are also important in themselves. Of course, this is not easy to prove, or even to quantify, but the broadening effect of the arts is very real.
It is not easy to show that people benefit from exposure to the mechanics of the arts, whether that is an understanding of the beautiful mathematical imperatives in four-part harmony or the experience of seeing Brunelleschi’s dome for the first time, in ways that they can take forward into other aspects of their lives. However, research has been done and a highly comprehensive study by the German Socio-Economic Panel in 2013 said:
“Music improves cognitive and non-cognitive skills more than twice as much as sports”.
In addition, it found that children who take music lessons have
“better school grades and are more conscientious, open and ambitious.”
The study of music strengthens the motor cortex—although obviously not in every case. It improves working memory and long-term memory for visual stimuli. It helps people to manage anxiety and enhances self-confidence, self-esteem and social and personal skills. Studying music improves reading and verbal skills, and helps children to get good marks in exams. It raises IQ, encourages listening and helps children to learn languages more quickly. Some studies have even suggested that it slows the effects of ageing, just as being a Member of this House has precisely the opposite effect.
The moral effect of the arts is also critical. Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees. It is testimony to the unifying moral power of music that both the Taliban and ISIS, or Daesh, have banned it, just as one or two past Popes banned polyphony, then the interval of the tritone, and then excessive musical decoration.
I understand the pressure the Minister is under from all sides to add everything from Esperanto to den-building to the national curriculum. As an ex-teacher, I also understand that more of one subject must mean less of another. However, as the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North said, warm words butter no parsnips. The Department’s welcome focus on the ways in which education can form character makes it more important than ever that its place at the heart of the curriculum must be protected.
Oral Answers to Questions
Tristram Hunt Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Gibb
I agree with my hon. Friend and the excellent Councillor Mike O’Brien, whom I know well and wish all the very best, that parents play a very important role in the governance of our schools. I fully expect that to continue as more schools become academies. High-quality governance is vital for the success of our schools, and boards need governors with the right skills to perform the role well. Many parents have the skills to make them effective governors, and boards will continue to appoint them as governors for that reason. There is nothing in the White Paper proposals to prevent academies from continuing to have elected parent governors if they wish to.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
The Secretary of State sought to ban parents from becoming school governors. She has blocked Ofsted from inspecting academy chains, and she refuses to have any democratic oversight of regional school commissioners. In her final days in office, with school improvement stalled, according to the chief inspector, has she not realised that the command-and-control, “Whitehall knows best” approach to schools and education does not work?
Mr Gibb
This seems like an upside-down House: the Labour Front Benchers are on the Back Benches, and its Back Benchers are on the Front Bench. We intend to increase academy engagement with parents by creating an expectation that every academy will put in place arrangements for meaningful engagement with parents and for listening to their views and feedback.
Education, Skills and Training
Tristram Hunt Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Neil Carmichael
I completely agree, and my hon. Friend was a member of the Education Committee when we did that early work. The whole point is to ensure that those children do not fall over that cliff edge. Children who are looked after by the state are particularly vulnerable to that, and we must do all we can to stop it happening. The Committee also covered regulation in its early inquiries. I will not comment in detail on what that framework should look like, but we agreed that we need an improved regulatory offering for social work.
On the education for all Bill, I first note that “for all” means for absolutely all children. However, there are some unregistered children in unregulated schools, and we need to think about them, too. How will the Secretary of State respond to the thought, expressed not least by Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector of schools, that there are ineffective schools beneath the radar which are not doing a good job? We need to ensure that when we say education for all, we mean all.
The White Paper talks about a school-led system, as it absolutely should. Those of us who support the academies programme welcome its continued growth. Obviously, it is important to be sure that academies feel comfortable once they are out there. The Education Committee will be considering what a good multi-academy trust looks like precisely with that thought in mind. We need to encourage academies to come together to support each other in partnership and co-operation—schools taking the initiative to help other schools. I believe that combination will work to drive up standards, especially in areas—we know there are pockets—where standards are not high enough..
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
Is the hon. Gentleman therefore in favour of Ofsted inspecting academy chains? At the moment, the Government prevent it from doing so, so we do not know what their overheads are, we do not know how much they are putting into each school, and we do not know what they are spending on the chief executive’s salary. Is he in favour of Ofsted inspecting academy chains?
Neil Carmichael
The Education Committee was quite forceful on this matter in the previous Parliament and I expect it will comment on it again. I am personally in favour of multi-academy trusts being inspected. The Committee will look into it when it conducts an inquiry and comment on it in due course. I will not pre-judge what that inquiry will say.
It is important to recognise that in some areas—for example, in Yorkshire—some local authorities have not delivered adequate education for young people. It would be helpful if the Department set out data and maps, so Members and others can see where the problems are and calibrate the need for more academies. That would be really useful.
We need an improvement on fairer funding. This is, rightly, implicit in the White Paper. Schools in Gloucestershire need to be confident about fairer funding. I say Gloucestershire because I represent Stroud, but the point applies to a whole range of shire counties and to urban areas, too. Fairer funding is essential. I am pleased that the Education Committee will have the opportunity to check the Department’s proposals. That is extremely helpful and we will conduct an inquiry in due course. It is very good of the Secretary of State to enable us to do that, effectively through the timescale she has set out, just as she responded when the White Paper was launched and there was something of a furore over the scale of ambition in relation to academies.
It is in the same vein that I make my next point about co-operation and the opportunity to consider the Bill. It would be really helpful if the education for all Bill is published soon, so that we can have pre-legislative scrutiny. It would be useful to look at the detail behind the definition of a failing local authority, one that is beneath capacity threshold and would be fined or cease to be a provider of schools. That opportunity would help all Members to understand more clearly the direction of travel and perhaps see a way forward. I invite the Secretary of State to consider that proposal. I know the legislative programme is tight and that there are few opportunities for delay, but I think this would be a good contribution to the debate.
I want to end on something I think is very important. I was reading with interest the thoughts of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, an independent and authoritative organisation, on whether we should be in the European Union. It noted that if we left the EU our economy would be smaller by about £15 billion within about two years. These figures are bandied about frequently and understood by many, and the IFS is not the only leading authority to point out that our economy is doing well precisely because we are a part of the European Union. I mention this because the legislative programme set out in the Queen’s Speech depends on public expenditure. If we are to deliver an education system that is as ambitious and as successful as the Secretary of State intends it to be then we are going to have to pay for it. It will be harder to pay for it if we kick ourselves in the shins by leaving the European Union and reducing the size of our economy. That would make it harder to meet pledges on public expenditure in future.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I am very grateful to have the opportunity to speak in the debate. I am pleased to follow the Chair of the Education Committee. I agree with much of what he said—on our membership of the EU and on his invitation to the Secretary of State to publish the education for all Bill in time for the Committee to undertake pre-legislative scrutiny. That would be very valuable. It is on the education for all Bill that I want to focus my remarks.
I start by warmly welcoming the abandonment of the pledge of universal academisation by 2022. That is a very welcome U-turn. I am pleased that the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) is in his place. He and I had a debate about this on the radio. I made the point that it was clear there was not the support on the Conservative Benches to get the proposed legislation through the House. He is the Secretary of State’s Parliamentary Private Secretary and he assured the listeners to the programme that it was all absolutely fine, but I am delighted that the Secretary of State recognised that I was right about this and her PPS was not. I pay tribute to her for at least executing the U-turn with commendable speed and not dragging out the agony over a long period, as we have sometimes seen in the past. I do not think it was ever her idea that we should force all schools to become academies by 2022. I am glad she has dropped it.
It is disappointing that the Bill still has the aim, according to the documentation alongside the Queen’s Speech, to move towards a system where all schools are academies. Ministers really should be listening, not least to headteachers on this very important subject. The National Association of Head Teachers said of that declared aim of the Bill that
“it will mean that good and outstanding schools can still be made to convert, regardless of the professional judgement of school leaders, the opposition of parents and the best interests of local communities.”
The Government ought to listen to headteachers, parents and local communities, rather than continuing with their view that every school should become an academy, regardless of whether it is in its interest. Academisation can be a good thing—there are plenty of examples of where it has turned around a school’s fortunes—but forced academisation is not.
Ministers have not been able to provide any evidence that academisation necessarily raises standards, because, in reality, it does not. Areas identified by Ofsted as having problems with low educational standards include areas where most of the schools have already become academies. It would be helpful if there were a panacea, such as academisation or some other reorganisation, to overcome the problem of underperforming schools, but there is not; raising standards is a long, tough haul. Ministers are looking for a shortcut, but there is not one. To quote the NAHT again:
“Targeted support is what’s needed, rather than forced, top-down reorganisation”.
Tristram Hunt
My right hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Does not the history of his part of east London, including Tower Hamlets and Newham, show that academisation, in and of itself, is not the answer? What transformed educational prospects in his community was the London Challenge and schools working together and collaborating to raise standards.
Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend is right about what happened in east London, where we have seen a remarkable transformation of educational standards over the last 20 years owing to the consistent application of the tools he identifies, including academisation, in some cases, as well as other levers. I am worried that that progress could now be at risk, but I will say a little about that in a moment.
There are costs to academisation, including legal costs. When the Government’s policy was one of forced academisation, we had a debate about how much it would cost, and the Secretary of State told the Select Committee that she would let it have the Department’s robust estimates of the cost of academisation. I checked this morning but I understand that the information has not been provided yet. I would be grateful if she could make sure that her Department delivers on the commitment she made.
As the Chair of the Select Committee pointed out, the role of multi-academy trusts will be very important. The Sutton Trust has pointed out that, on achievement among disadvantaged pupils, some multi-academy trusts are doing an outstanding job and delivering very high standards but that the majority are not. In fact, its analysis shows that the majority are doing less well than the average across the school system as a whole—they are underperforming—and a big part of the reason is that many have expanded too fast. Everyone in the House will recognise that it is difficult to maintain good standards while managing rapid expansion, and that problem will get a lot worse if, as appears to be the Government’s intention, many hundreds and thousands of schools are forced into multi-academy trusts over the next few years.
It is worrying that we are starting to see some of the practices we used to deprecate in poor local education authorities cropping up in some of the multi-academy trusts. Under the reforms of the last 20 years, local education authorities have been transformed. Maintained schools now enjoy a high degree of autonomy, whereas academies are frequently not allowed very much autonomy from their multi-academy trust. One primary headteacher told me that he did not want to academise specifically because the multi-academy trust his school would likely join would not allow the degree of autonomy for his school that his local education authority does. We are starting to see some bad old practices creeping into education administration through multi-academy trusts, and the Sutton Trust is absolutely right to point out that the speed of their expansion makes the problem worse.
I welcome the Secretary of State’s assurance to the Select Committee that multi-academy trusts should be allowed to expand only when they have a track record of success and improvement at their existing academies. I hope that that will be reflected in the Bill, when it is published, and that she will tell us that that will be the case. When she came before the Committee, she also recognised the importance of parents being able to secure an academy’s transfer to a different trust, where the existing trust has demonstrably failed to deliver adequate standards and improvement in a particular academy, as is starting to happen in some instances. If, with the appropriate standards, parents were allowed to do that, it would be an important protection. She fully recognised the value of such a provision in her evidence to the Committee. Will that be in the Bill as well?
Finally, the Bill will also deliver the national school funding formula. The House recently discussed the impact of that on schools in London in a debate initiated by the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) and my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed). Ministers seem to have given exclusive access to their deliberations on this topic to a group of largely rural authorities, and I am worried that we might end up with an unfair formula as a result. In particular, no London authorities at all were included in that group. I am particularly anxious that the high rate of pupil mobility in some authorities should be included in the formula.
Trade Union Bill (Discussions)
Tristram Hunt Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
I do not think that there was anything so grubby as a deal, but if an agreement was reached I congratulate the Opposition Chief Whip on showing how politics can be done. May I urge the Minister now to ask the private sector to follow the leadership of the trade unions and contact their employees to make the case for Europe and the terrible threats to jobs, investment and growth if we leave a single market of 500 million consumers?
Nick Boles
I am not sure, Mr Speaker, whether you would count that question or my likely answer as directly relevant, but I will venture on until you stop me. It is clear that the overwhelming majority of businesses, small and large, have many beefs about the European Union—I do, too—but ultimately think that it is in our interests to stay. I agree with the hon. Gentleman to this extent, that I think all of us should be doing all we can, whether financially or in other ways, to encourage the people we represent to see that their interests are best protected by staying in.
Oral Answers to Questions
Tristram Hunt Excerpts(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Gibb
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Government recently set out an ambition to see a 20% increase in the number of girls’ entries to science and maths A-levels by 2020. We established, with industry, the Your Life campaign, which is designed to encourage young people, and especially girls, to choose maths and physics. We have seen a huge increase in the number of girls taking A-levels in physics, from 5,800 in 2010 to 6,800 this year, and in maths, from 28,000 in 2010 to 31,000 this year. However, there is still more to do.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
In Stoke-on-Trent, we have decided to do something about the crisis in maths teaching. Will the Minister congratulate inspiring head teachers Roisin Maguire and Mark Stanyer, along with the city council and the Denise Coates Foundation, on establishing the £1 million maths excellence partnership, which was opened by Sir Michael Wilshaw last week to attract maths graduates to Stoke and to support the continuing professional development of current classroom teachers?