School Attendance
Debate between Vicky Ford and Helen Hayes(10 months ago)
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Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) on bringing this important debate and on her work in this area. I am glad to have the opportunity to respond on behalf of the Opposition.
I am grateful to all hon. Members who have contributed today. We have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) on the importance of support for parents who struggle with their children’s attendance. She also mentioned the impact of RAAC and the disruption that is causing to children’s education in her constituency. I hope she is able to meet the Minister tomorrow as planned. We heard from the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) about the impact of persistent absence on the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people. He also told of the impact of the lack of SEND support on attendance and the very great difficulties that that presents.
I know that everyone in the House will agree that one of the most important things we can provide to children and young people across the country is an excellent education. Education opens up the world to them, not just in terms of jobs or training but in discovering interests and passions and fulfilling their aspirations. However, we cannot give children and young people the foundation they need for later life if they are not in school. New research from the Centre for Social Justice reveals that more than one in four parents think that school is not essential every day; not one in four adults but one in four parents. That is an extremely worrying statistic.
A recent report by the Children’s Commissioner found that pupils who are persistently absent in years 10 and 11 are half as likely to pass five GCSEs as their peers with good attendance records. Absence figures have reached historic levels under the Conservatives, increasing by more than 40% since 2010. The number of pupils severely absent has nearly trebled in the same period, with more than 88,000 secondary school pupils missing at least half of their education last year. School attendance should not and must not be seen as optional, or something that can be dipped in and out of. However, unfortunately for at least some parents and carers, the relationship between schools, families and the Government has broken down after years of neglect.
School attendance is one of the most urgent challenges that the Government must tackle in the education system today. The figures on school attendance have been moving in the wrong direction for years. In the 2016-17 academic year, the rate of persistent absence was 10.7%, and that has increased year on year ever since under this Government. By 2022-23, the rate stood at 21.2%—double that of just six years ago. It is unacceptable that the Government have been sitting idly by, letting the rates of persistent absence rise and giving no real thought or effort to the solutions to tackle the issue. They must start working to get children back in school, and they must start with urgency.
Labour has a plan to reduce persistent absence. We would introduce free breakfast clubs for every primary school pupil in England to boost attendance across the country. We know that breakfast clubs improve children’s learning and development, helping to boost performance in maths and reading, but they have also been shown to improve behaviour and attendance. They not only take pressure off parents in the morning but give children a chance to play and socialise, and, importantly, make sure that no child has to start the school day hungry. We would legislate for a new register of home-schooled pupils to keep track of those not in mainstream schooling. For many children, their home is a safe and enriching learning environment, but it is right that the Government take action to ensure that if a child is not in school, local authorities are clear about where they are and what education they are receiving.
Vicky Ford
My hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) is not present. I know that she wished to be, but she has been in the debate in the main Chamber. Much as many of us try to be in two places at once, that is not possible. She has a piece of legislation already going through this House to legislate for a register of home-educated children. Will the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) support that legislation so that it can go through swiftly? Will she also encourage the Members of her party to support my Bill to make the best practice guidance on school attendance mandatory? I know that she will want to look at every single word of it, but it would be brilliant if she could give her support in principle because then we could do both these things now.
Helen Hayes
We agree that there should be a register of home-educated children and that there should be measures to tackle persistent absence. It is bizarre that Government Members chose to vote against the measures before the House this afternoon, which they agree with. Those measures were simply intended to accelerate the process of delivering a commitment that the Government have already made.
Helen Hayes
I will not give way again. The right hon. Lady will also know that private Members’ Bills progress if the Government give them time. It is not the Opposition who are holding up those measures, and she would do well to turn her attention to the shocking record of her own Government on this issue, which they have been allowing to slide for 14 years, and the question of why action has not been taken any sooner. If the Government allow time for the Bills to be debated, the Opposition will support the measures with which we agree. Frankly, that is a matter for the Government. The right hon. Lady’s obsession with the Opposition’s position when our position has been set out really clearly is bizarre.
SEND Provision and Funding
Debate between Vicky Ford and Helen Hayes(10 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis) on securing this important debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time. I pay tribute to the teachers, support staff, educational psychologists, speech and language therapists and all who work with children with special educational needs and disabilities.
I am grateful to every right hon. and hon. Member who has contributed to today’s debate. We have heard heartbreaking stories from across the country of the desperate situations facing the families of children with special educational needs and disabilities, and we have also heard about the impact on local authorities and professionals of a system that simply is not working. The sheer number of contributions this afternoon speaks to the magnitude of the issue and the depth of the crisis.
We have heard from the hon. Members for Worcester (Mr Walker), for Mansfield (Ben Bradley), for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson), for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart), for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Steve Tuckwell) and for Aylesbury (Rob Butler), and from my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), about the funding crisis in SEND.
We have heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) and for Selby and Ainsty (Keir Mather), and from the hon. Members for Gedling (Tom Randall), for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) and for Bracknell (James Sunderland), about the pressures on school places.
We have from the right hon. Members for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) and for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), and from my hon. Friends the Members for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) and for York Central (Rachael Maskell), about the terrible battles that parents face.
We have heard from the hon. Members for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), for Bracknell, for Waveney (Peter Aldous) and for Torbay (Kevin Foster) about the intolerably long waits that families face for diagnoses and EHCPs.
We have heard from the right hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Sir Jake Berry) and my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) about the intense shortage of staff to support children with special educational needs and disabilities. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) and others about the financial impact on families of a system that cannot deliver the support that they need.
After 13 years of Conservative Governments, the system of support that children with SEND and their families rely on is beyond breaking point. Far too many families of children with SEND face a battle for the support their children need. It is often a battle that has to be fought many times over throughout a child’s life: a battle for recognition and diagnosis in the early years; a battle for support in primary school; another battle to find the right secondary school and ensure that support is put in place; and a further battle to secure a place in further or higher education.
The consequence of this failing system is heartbreak for families; precious children being made to feel that they are the problem; and, ultimately, attainment of children with SEND going backwards. That leaves families increasingly reliant on going to the courts to get the support to which their children are entitled. It cannot be and is not right that the Government’s failure to provide an efficient courts system is now rationing access to the entitlements children have. We each get only one childhood, and support delayed is support denied.
This issue should be an urgent priority for the Government. The current system is failing children and their families, and it is an increasingly prominent factor in the number of councils issuing section 114 notices—in effect, declaring bankruptcy—because they can no longer balance their budget. This issue is on the national risk register for the Department for Education. So what has been the Government’s response? They delayed their SEND review, first announced in 2019, three times. Much of the SEND and alternative provision improvement plan will not come into effect until 2025, six years after the review was announced. During that time, 300,000 children with SEND will have left secondary school having spent the entirety of their school education under an increasingly failing system of SEND support.
The Childhood Trust has found that families of children with SEND are disproportionately affected by the cost of living crisis and are more likely to be living in poverty than families of children without SEND. That is in no small part driven by the great difficulty that families of children with SEND have in finding a suitable childcare place throughout the early years; for before and after-school care; and, for older children, during the school holidays. We know that one in four parents across the board have had to give up work due to the cost of childcare, and the figures are much higher for parents of children with SEND.
Our education and childcare systems should deliver for every child in the country. Children with SEND deserve so much better than the complacency and neglect they have suffered for the past 13 years, and the piecemeal, sticking-plaster measures that are now being proposed. Labour believes in high and rising standards for every child. We will work with parents and carers, local authorities, health services and professionals to deliver for children with SEND. We will work to make mainstream schools inclusive for children with SEND. We will ensure that teachers and support staff have the training they need to work with the diverse range of children who are in every classroom throughout the country.
Vicky Ford
I am pleased to hear of the number of things the hon. Lady is suggesting, but will she also support my private Member’s Bill to tackle the issue of school attendance?
Helen Hayes
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for her intervention. She will know that it is not the protocol for Front Benchers, on either side of the House, to support private Members’ Bills. She will also know that my colleague the shadow Education Secretary comprehensively set out this week the priority that Labour places on school attendance and the package of measures we will put in place to start to improve a situation where we have a dire crisis across the country. The right hon. Lady is right to bring that issue forward through the means available to her—her private Member’s Bill—and I wish her success with her attempts to raise the priority of the issue and to seek action from the Government to address it.
We will ensure that teachers and support staff have the training they need to work with the diverse range of children who are in every classroom across the country, with a new annual continuing professional development entitlement. We will ensure schools are inspected on their inclusivity as well as the attainment of children by changing the Ofsted inspection framework. We will roll out evidence-based speech and language interventions for the youngest children, because we know that unlocking communication is an essential foundation for learning. We will increase mental health support in every school and we will join up records to reduce the exhausting battles parents face as they have to retell their child’s story to every professional they meet.
Helen Hayes
I will not. It has been a long debate and the Minister needs to come in shortly.
We will build an early education and childcare system that works for children and families, from the end of parental leave to the end of primary school. And we will put money back in parents’ pockets, with free breakfast clubs in every primary school, ensuring no child has to start the school day hungry, and by placing limits on the cost of school uniform.
This Government have been failing children and families for 13 long years. Labour will put children first again and we will work to rebuild the support for children with special educational needs and disabilities, which has been so badly broken on this Government’s watch.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Vicky Ford and Helen Hayes(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Vicky Ford)
The catastrophic floods in Pakistan and appalling droughts across the horn of Africa are just two examples of where a destabilising climate is threatening the lives and livelihoods of tens of millions of people. In this context, the COP26 President, my right hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma), Whitehall teams and our diplomatic network are working with Egypt as COP27 host, and with partners across the global south, to accelerate global climate action ahead of COP27.
Helen Hayes
The Minister references the deadly drought in the horn of Africa and the catastrophic floods in Pakistan, which clearly show the reality and urgency of the climate emergency. Last November, at COP26, developing countries across the global south were promised further discussions on loss and damage climate compensation. In the context that she has described this morning, why was the UK backtracking on the promises made at COP26 in the Bonn talks this summer? What message does she think that failure of leadership sends to our allies and partners in the global south?
Vicky Ford
At COP26 in Glasgow, we led a global commitment that kept 1.5° alive, and it is vital that countries across the world hold up the promises that they made there. We in the UK, and Ministers from across this Government, always raise climate change on every single diplomatic visit. I do not accept the premise that we are backtracking: just before recess, I went to South Africa to work on the just energy transition partnership, which is the landmark deal for the entire world in helping developing countries. We are leading that work and we are focused on that as a priority. As regards the work on the $100 billion delivery partner, our friends in Germany and Canada are also helping to lead that work, including on how to scale up on adaptation. It is a priority and we will continue to lead.
Violence against Religious Groups: Nigeria
Debate between Vicky Ford and Helen Hayes(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
My thoughts today are with the families and friends of the worshippers brutally killed in St Francis church in Owo yesterday, on a sacred day for Christians around the world. Constituents who are members of the Nigerian diaspora have been raising their grave concerns about escalating religion-based violence in Nigeria for a long time. I tabled a written question on this topic a year ago, and I looked at the answer again today: it is the same as the one we have had from the Minister today, which is that the Government are encouraging the Nigerian Government to take urgent action.
Although we have had warm words from the Minister, I am afraid that the response does not meet the scale of the horrific loss of life and escalating violence that we are seeing in Nigeria. What measure of success is the Minister using for the programmes that she has talked about today? How will she know when those interventions have achieved the impact she is looking for? What engagement is she having with members of the Nigerian diaspora in the UK to help inform the Government’s approach and to make sure that it really is helping to stop this terrible violence?
Vicky Ford
I thank the hon. Lady, because she is asking really important questions. This is a tragic situation. This is one of the most violent countries in the world, and the violence is coming about for many different reasons in different parts of the country. That is what I have heard when I have visited, but also when I have spoken to different leaders on the ground, different community groups and different stakeholders. One of the huge tragedies about Sunday’s awful attack is that it was in a part of the country that has historically not seen this type of attack, so it is even more shocking and concerning that the problem is potentially widening.
We continue to be concerned about the increase in this violence, especially in a country that is so significant and that has so many brilliant things happening in it. That is why we have worked with the Government to see where we can support what needs to be done. We work with community leaders. We take different actions in different parts of the country. We often work with different state governors on projects to try to increase stability and prosperity—for example, by investing in education, entrepreneurship and so on. That is all part of creating stability.
On attacks against different religious groups, these attacks can sometimes have a religious link, but at other times they do not. That is why we work not only to support voices from different religious communities to come together, but to tackle the causes of instability.
Ofsted Review of Sexual Abuse in Schools and Colleges
Debate between Vicky Ford and Helen Hayes(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Vicky Ford
The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise the issue of consent. It is important, when we look at the testimonials on Everyone’s Invited, to understand that not all of them involved illegal or criminal acts, but some did, and when there is a criminal act, it should be reported and acted on. The victim should have the confidence that it will be safe to report it and that it will be acted on. On the issue of consent, it is very much part of the RSHE curriculum. The curriculum starts at primary school age, where we teach about issues such as healthy relationships and talk about what an unhealthy relationship is and how to report it. Issues such as consent are built in as the child gets older through the period, but it is built into the curriculum, as are issues to do with unacceptable behaviour, harassment, misogyny and sexism. This is all part of the curriculum. I agree with the hon. Lady that it should be taught, and it is being taught.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
The figures in this Ofsted report are shocking, and behind each one is a young person—most often a young woman—whose childhood and experience of education are being blighted by the fear, misery and mental harm of sexual harassment and sexual violence. It is important that schools are supported to deliver culture change, but will the Minister accept that schools that fail to make meaningful progress to change their culture and keep young people safe from sexual harassment and sexual violence should no longer be considered to be providing an outstanding educational experience for their students? Will she act to ensure that when schools are inspected by Ofsted, the progress on delivering change in culture and practice to tackle sexual harassment is a formal part of the assessment framework and contributes materially to the Ofsted rating?
Vicky Ford
The hon. Member is absolutely right to say that where a school’s safeguarding regime is inadequate, the school is inadequate. That is a core part of the Ofsted inspection, which it will look at and report to us, so where there are concerns about safeguarding, action will be taken. Action is being taken in a number of cases, but I agree that we need to strengthen the Ofsted regime with respect to this element of safeguarding. That is what the proposals suggest, and they will be actioned to ensure that where a school is not acting in a way that safeguards children appropriately, action will quite correctly be taken. This is at the forefront of a school’s responsibility. They are responsible not only for education but for our children’s safety.