Children from Low-Income Families: Education Support

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

It is pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. First, I would like to say a big thank you to my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) for securing this important debate and for his tireless work in Parliament to raise the issues facing children and young people. He made a powerful speech about the Government’s neglect of poor children in Slough and the impact on headteachers. The quote from the Slough headteacher, who said that communication is ill thought out, resonated with me because it is echoed by a lot of teachers in my constituency. The Slough parent who said that she feels let down by the Government reflected something that I have heard over and over again from parents in my constituency.

I thank all our colleagues who have taken part in the debate and spoken up for children from low-income families in their constituencies. The hon. Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe) spoke movingly about the shocking inequality and poverty among children in her constituency, and how poverty is limiting the life chances of her young constituents. That also applies to my constituency of Hampstead and Kilburn. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that parents simply want their children to do their best, and to do what is best for their children in life. However, that is very difficult to do.

My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) spoke in her passionate speech about the shocking 37% of her young constituents who live in poverty. If the odds are against people from the start, it is hard to do well in life, and it is hard for parents to ensure that their children do well in life. My hon. Friend was right to point out the enormous increase in the attainment gap for disadvantaged children in her constituency, and across the country. It is commendable, but in equal measure shameful, that organisations such as Luton Learning Link have had to step in, because that should be the job of the Government.

Perhaps the most shocking betrayal of children from lower-income families is the stealth cut to the pupil premium that the Government have pushed through. By moving the date for calculating the pupil premium back from January to October, the Government have cut funding for more than 100,000 children who qualified for free school meals in between, and that is shocking. The Department for Education’s own calculations show that that will mean schools losing out on £90 million of funding, with those in the most deprived areas being hit the hardest.

To put it in simple terms, the Government have directly withdrawn money that is intended to support disadvantaged children, who, as we have heard from contributions across the Floor today, have struggled most during the pandemic and who most need the support. That comes after a decade of Conservative Governments which have implemented a real cut of 9% to school budgets, not to mention slashing funding for local authorities, which has led to the decimation of services that children rely on to progress with education, among other things.

The Government’s woeful education recovery package will do little to address the funding gaps that have arisen as a result of those shameful choices, and the National Audit Office is concerned that even their national tutoring programme is not reaching enough pupils on free school meals.

The huge rise in eligibility for free school meals, which now totals 420,000 children since the start of the pandemic, shows that many more children are living with hardship and relying on the hot meal they get at school each day. The truth is that children cannot learn if they are hungry, yet Ministers have had to be shamed time and again into delivering food support to children at home, and making that available during the summer holidays in the pandemic.

All of us in the Chamber remember the shameful scenes of woefully inadequate food parcels being delivered to children who qualified for free school meals back in January. Unbelievably, the Government are set to repeat their mistakes by offering only 16 days of food support over the entire six-week summer holiday, with no guarantee that it will be given to every child who qualifies for free school meals. Ministers do not even appear to be listening to Labour’s repeated calls to offer all children breakfast clubs before school.

Children who qualify for free school meals are far less likely to have access to a laptop or internet connection, effectively preventing them from learning remotely when they cannot go to school. Despite over a million children not having the digital access they needed at the start of the pandemic, the Department for Education delivered just 600,000 laptops by Christmas. Government schemes ensured that only between a third and half of those who needed a laptop got one. Ministers slashed laptop allocations for self-isolating pupils by about 80% in October. As of January, one in five parents still reported not having access to enough digital devices for children to learn remotely—a shocking statistic.

This is not picking over ancient history. School absences have quadrupled this month. Last week, a shocking one in 20 pupils were forced to miss school for coronavirus-related reasons. Many of those are now at home unable to learn because this still has not been sorted. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) for her truly inspirational work over the past year and a half to highlight the digital poverty that many children on free school meals have been living in. My hon. Friend has relentlessly brought it up time and again, and my only hope is that the Government are listening to her.

I will briefly mention the Government’s chronic underfunding of early years education over the last decade. Secret documents, unearthed through FOIs by the Early Years Alliance, show that that was done deliberately in the knowledge that it would drive up childcare costs for parents, drive down the quality of education for young children, and destabilise the early years sector. We have already lost 2,500 nurseries, childminders and other early years providers in the first five months of this year. Research by the Sutton Trust shows that providers in the most deprived areas have been most likely to face financial difficulties in the pandemic, and be threatened with permanent closure—10% to 15% higher than in the most affluent areas.

Children from all socioeconomic backgrounds have faced huge challenges in the pandemic, whether trying to learn without the structure of a classroom for much of the year, or facing the mental health challenges of isolation. It is all too often the case that when problems arise, or a crisis such as coronavirus engulfs us, children from lower-income families fare the worst, whether through hunger, difficulties with digital access and access to tutoring, and all the other issues that colleagues have repeatedly and passionately pointed out.

The impact on educational outcomes is there to see. According to the Sutton Trust, more than half the teachers at the least affluent state schools reported lower standards of work during school closures, compared with 40% at more affluent ones, and 30% at private schools. The attainment gap had stopped closing before covid, after a decade of Conservative Governments, but is now set to widen without bold action straight away.

Labour’s £15 billion children’s recovery plan would reverse the stealth cut to pupil premium funding, double it for children in transitional years and more than quadruple the early years pupil premium, give more funding to schools to support tutoring for all children who need it, provide breakfast clubs for every child and deliver free school meals in full in holidays during the pandemic. Those measures would make a big difference to disadvantaged children in my constituency of Hampstead and Kilburn, and across the country. We have not heard anything remotely close to that level of ambition from the Government, whose catch-up proposals will support fewer than one in 10 children. It is no wonder that Sir Kevan Collins felt he had to resign over this.

I finish by asking Minster directly why she thinks the Government’s own education recovery chief decided to resign. Has she reflected on whether the Government need to rethink their approach to supporting children from lower-income families in the light of that vote of no confidence?

--- Later in debate ---

[Vicky Ford]

A few other Members mentioned free school meals, including the hon. Members for Leicester East and for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq). This Government have extended the eligibility for free school meals more than any other Government for the past 50 years. It is this Government who introduced universal free school meals and expanded free school meals to those in further education. During the pandemic, we also widened the provision to many children who normally have no recourse to public funds. The Government have also provided funding to local authorities during the pandemic to ensure that the hardest-hit families are supported with food and essentials through the covid local support grants. That has even supported them during the school holidays. Those grants have been extended through the coming holiday at a cost of more than £100 million.

I want to get back to the point that the hon. Member for Slough made about Slough. Slough children’s services have been enormously challenging for many years. The Department for Education has provided significant investment in children’s services in Slough—nearly an extra £7 million over the past two years. As the hon. Gentleman knows, it transferred the ownership of Slough Children First, the trust, to Slough Borough Council in April. I call on him to get behind the relationship between the trust and the local authority. I, as Minister, have signed off millions of pounds to give that support to Slough children. He should work with the trust to put Slough children first in his constituency.

[Tulip Siddiq]

The Minister is boasting about free school meals and how much the Government have done. Will she admit that her Government were forced, kicking and screaming, to extend free school meals because Marcus Rashford and the Labour party shamed them nationally, which is why they felt they had no choice but to extend free school meals? They resisted that until the very last minute.

[Vicky Ford]

The hon. Lady has said this again and again, and it is simply not true. Let us look at the facts, okay? This Government, when I became the Minister for children, and over the past 10 years, had already extended free school meals to more children than any other Government during the past 50 years. We set up the national voucher scheme during this pandemic—a thing that had never been done before—to make sure that, when schools were closed to most children, they could still access food at home.