School Exclusions and Youth Violence
Vicky Foxcroft Excerpts(7 years, 6 months ago)
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Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
I am grateful for the opportunity to bring this extremely important debate to the House. As I hope that the Minister and other hon. Members are aware, I am chair of the cross-party Youth Violence Commission. I established the commission in 2016 as a response to an alarming increase in deaths among young people in my constituency, in London and across the country. We published our initial policy recommendations in July 2018.
I have called many times in the House for the development of a public health policy to tackle violence, and I was pleased that the Government and the Mayor of London committed to that approach at the end of last year. The commission is now working hard to ensure that those words turn into action, and I am pleased that the Mayor of London has established a violence reduction unit similar to that adopted in Scotland to develop this approach. I am still waiting to see what the Government are doing. As part of its ongoing work, the commission is starting to flesh out some of its individual policy recommendations. I would like to use the debate to focus on recommendation No. 4 from our report, which is about boosting support in schools. More specifically, I will be examining the relationship between exclusions and violence, and the role of pupil referral units and alternative provision.
This is in no way intended to be an anti-PRU debate. During my time with the commission, I have seen some brilliantly run PRUs that achieve great outcomes for many of their students. However, I believe that we need a radical re-think of how funding is organised so that we can prevent the need for PRUs in the first place.
I hope that the Minister has had time to read the commission’s report for himself, as the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) clearly had when she responded to my Adjournment debate on the role of youth services in tackling violence. I was pleased to see in today’s press that she continues to stand up for vulnerable young people by criticising her Government’s delay in introducing a law to make it illegal for sports coaches to have sexual relations with 16 and 17-year-olds in their care.
The number of pupils being permanently excluded from schools is on the rise. Between 2012-13 and 2016-17, the number increased by 67%. Referrals to children’s services when gangs are identified as a factor at assessment rose by 26% between 2015-16 and 2016-17. During the same period, hospital admissions for under-18s who had been assaulted with a sharp object rose by 20%.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The hon. Lady has brought an important issue to the House for consideration. The stats show that 72% of parents think that when their child is excluded from school they are at risk from youth violence. This suggests that there is real concern among parents about the problems that follow exclusion from school. Does the hon. Lady agree that that concern must be addressed to ensure that there is life and a place to go after exclusion?
Vicky Foxcroft
I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. Therein lies one of our problems: when kids are seen to be excluded, they are not only excluded from school; they can sometimes feel like they are absolutely excluded from society as well.
To go back to my point about figures and statistics, I believe that this is incredibly concerning, particularly given that the Government’s own serious violence strategy recognises school exclusions as one of the risk factors for involvement in serious violence.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing the debate and her generosity in giving way. Analysis was done of 60 serious cases of youth violence in Croydon, and in every case, that child was outside mainstream school. We also have in Croydon a situation that is mirrored elsewhere: some schools seem to exclude huge numbers while others tend not to exclude at all. The disparity makes it clear that something has gone wrong, so does my hon. Friend agree that we need to consider what Ofsted and other organisations can do to try to stop so many exclusions happening in certain schools?
Vicky Foxcroft
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. The work in Croydon has been fantastic at identifying the need to follow the evidence, and the evidence clearly points to the link between school exclusions and youth violence. It is important that we continue always to follow the evidence.
I know of 10 young people in my constituency who have been killed as a result of youth violence since I was elected in 2015, and we know about those cases only because they have been reported in the press or the families have contacted me. It should not come as a surprise to Members that certain groups of children are more likely to be excluded and end up in alternative provision settings. According to the Institute for Public Policy Research’s 2017 report “Making the Difference: Breaking the Link Between School Exclusion and Social Exclusion”, excluded pupils are many times more likely to come from a vulnerable background compared with the general student population in England. They are 10 times more likely to suffer from mental health problems, seven times more likely to have a special educational need, four times more likely to qualify for free school meals, and twice as likely to be in the care of the state.
What about the outcomes for those young people? The commission’s research has shown that it is difficult to separate out pupil referral units from data on all alternative provision settings, which include those that provide education for children who cannot attend a mainstream school for other reasons. However, the data that we do have makes for depressing reading. In 2016-17, only 4.5% of children educated in alternative provision settings achieved a 9-to-4 pass—an A to C in old money—in GCSE English and maths. By comparison, of the mainstream school population in England, 72.4% achieved a pass in English literature and 70.7% in maths.
Reintegration into mainstream education may also be used as a measure of success. However, the Education Committee’s 2018 report “Forgotten children: alternative provision and the scandal of ever increasing exclusions” suggests that it
“is often not a possible outcome for pupils, with some schools being reluctant to reintegrate pupils.”
Although some PRUs provide support for pupils who are reintegrated, that does not apply across the board. When pupils are reintegrated without such support, schools can struggle to keep them in school, and they are likely to return to alternative provision. Once they leave the pupil referral unit, the picture remains bleak.
A 2012 Ministry of Justice study found that 42% of prisoners reported having been permanently excluded from school, with the figure rising to 63% for temporary exclusions. That provides a stark contrast when compared with the less than 1% of the general population in England who end up in prison. The same Education Committee report found that 94% of year 11 pupils from a mainstream or special school go on to sustained education or an employment or training destination, compared with 57% from alternative provision. That has had the knock-on effect that pupils from alternative provision face limited choices when they leave education.
Of course, it is not inevitable that pupils who have been excluded will go on to become involved in serious violence and crime. However, we cannot ignore the link between school exclusion and social exclusion. Once children and young people are permanently excluded, it is difficult for them to re-enter mainstream education. That means that they are more vulnerable to grooming by criminals and to becoming the victims or perpetrators of violent crime.
What are pupil referral units costing us? The answer is not entirely straightforward. Each place receives £10,000 of central Government funding, but that is topped up by local authorities to varying degrees, depending on each individual’s need. In answer to a written question, the Department for Education told me that it estimates the average per-pupil cost of alternative provision, including PRUs, to be £17,000 nationally. By way of example, the average cost of a place at Abbey Manor College, the PRU local to my constituency, is £18,000, which is £1,000 a year more than the average cost of a place at a private school in 2018, and almost three times the cost of a state secondary school place in the same year.
As part of our research, the Youth Violence Commission held five evidence sessions. At the third of these we heard from experts, teachers, practitioners and, most importantly, young people themselves about the vital role that education can play in the prevention of youth violence, but what shape should that role take? Our interim report made five recommendations in this area. The first, and perhaps the most important, was for a long-term aspiration of zero expulsions from mainstream education and a reallocation of funding away from PRUs towards support and earlier intervention in mainstream schools. In order to achieve that, schools must be properly incentivised to keep pupils on their books.
The launch of Ofsted’s consultation on its new framework for the inspection of schools and colleges offers some hope that things may be starting to move in the right direction. The proposals aim to address concerns that education has become too narrowly focused on exam results, and schools that push out less able children—a practice known as off-rolling—could now risk being punished by inspectors. However, it is clear that a great deal remains to be done if we are to achieve this necessary shift in focus.
The Youth Violence Commission’s report also recommends an overhaul of the way in which careers advice is delivered in schools to ensure greater inclusion, greater emphasis on high-quality sex and relationships education, and better integration of support services such as school nurses, social workers and mental health professionals.
Once we had our recommendations, we needed to test them on the professionals. Earlier this month I met representatives from five teaching unions. I have to admit that I had expected some push-back against the commission’s recommendations. Teaching, as we all know, is already a demanding and stressful job, and I feared that the unions would view the recommendations as putting more pressure on their already overworked members. Well, I am pleased to report that I could not have been more wrong. I learned that there is huge appetite and enthusiasm for teachers to be able to do more to help vulnerable pupils. However, they simply lack the time and resources.
Four main strands came out of our discussion, the first of which is that we need to learn from what worked in the past. In 2002, the Labour Government set up the behaviour improvement programme as part of their street crime initiative. The programme targeted 34 local authorities that had some of the highest crime rates, and worked with two to four secondary schools in each area and their feeder primaries. The programme’s behaviour and education support teams provided a full range of specialist support to vulnerable pupils.
The same Government’s “Every Child Matters: Change for Children” agenda was launched in 2003 to promote the wellbeing of children and young people. Ministers wanted to ensure that every child had the support that he or she needed to stay healthy, to be safe, to achieve economically, to make a positive contribution to society and to enjoy life. That is not unreasonable, as I am sure the Minister would agree.
Healthcare practitioners, social workers, early years practitioners and other agencies shared information about vulnerable children. The child was central to their plans, and partners regularly worked with them in an attempt to achieve the best possible outcomes. Sadly, the coalition Government brought those programmes to an end in 2010.
Secondly, the union representatives suggested that pupil referral units should play a greater part in early intervention and prevention. In the past, PRUs engaged in inreach work with mainstream schools to try to prevent exclusions from happening in the first place. Unfortunately, that is no longer happening due to funding cuts, which mean that PRUs are able to perform only their statutory minimum duty.
I made an intervention on last week’s Adjournment debate secured by the hon. Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) on funding for pupil referral units to raise this point about funding for inreach work. Although the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), went some way towards addressing it, I hope that the Minister for School Standards might be able to give a fuller response today.
The third point that came out of the consultation meeting was the need for inclusive accountability. It was suggested that schools should be held accountable for every student who walks through their doors in year 7. Although that might cause some problems with schools refusing to take perceived “problem” pupils in the first place, it would address the problem of off-rolling in GCSE years in an attempt to improve results. This clearly links with the proposed changes to the Ofsted framework I mentioned. Finally, the unions highlighted the need to build resilience in young teachers, especially regarding how to cope with behavioural issues and violence. Behaviour management should be a higher priority in teacher training programmes. At present, trainees are given inadequate guidance on how to support and manage behaviour.
In conclusion, I am asking the Department to consider conducting a fundamental review of how funding for alternative provision is best spent. As I stated earlier, the Youth Violence Commission’s findings ultimately point towards achieving zero exclusions, but we note that this is a long-term goal and that smaller steps need to be achieved along the way. Primary school teachers frequently tell me that they can identify which of their pupils are likely to be involved in future violence. The current system is failing too many of those children and simply has to change.
I will finish with a few words from one of the young people who attended our evidence session:
“I didn’t get a lot of support at school. I just got moved from place to place and I didn’t have a mentor to be able to talk about my problems with. I basically grew up in prison—I went when I was 15.”
I hope that the Minister agrees that that is categorically not the outcome we want for our vulnerable young people and that he will be able to address some of the points I have raised.
Pupil Referral Units
Vicky Foxcroft Excerpts(7 years, 6 months ago)
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Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
Could the Minister outline what funding is provided for pupil referral units and alternative provision in order to provide the important inreach work being done in mainstream schools to support kids so that they do not end up in a pupil referral unit in the future?
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that intervention. I hope that my remarks will continue to deal with the issue of funding and how much investment we are making.
As I was saying, the funding of £10,000 per place is supplemented by top-up funding from the commissioner of the place. Both the number of places to be funded and the amount of top-up funding are matters that are decided locally. Top-up funding is the funding that is required in excess of the £10,000 place funding to reflect the full cost of the provision needed, depending on how long the pupil is expected to be in the unit and on other local factors. It can also reflect costs that enable those units to remain financially viable, which goes to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West’s point. It is important that places are available when they are needed.
In our operational guidance, we have advised that commissioning local authorities and schools should carefully consider the top-up funding arrangements to ensure that there are no perverse incentives and that the funding achieves the intended outcomes. It is possible to develop a top-up funding system that more closely reflects the achievement of the desired outcomes, as a way of encouraging high-quality AP. For example, an element of the payment could be withheld from the pupil referral unit until the pupil returns to his or her mainstream school or achieves another outcome.
Funding for AP comes primarily from the high-needs block of the dedicated schools grant. Based on local authorities’ reports of their spending, the Department estimates that around 10% of the high-needs budget is spent on AP. The proportion of spend on AP from the high-needs budget has remained roughly stable in the past few years. Last year, local authorities reported approximately £632 million of expenditure on AP, including on pupil referral units. However, schools are also able to commission AP places and services directly, and when a school does this, it is funded from its delegated share of the school block, which the local authority distributes to it through its local formula. Last year, the core schools and high-needs budget was almost £41 billion. This is set to rise to £43.5 billion next year. While more money is going into our schools, including into the high-needs block, we recognise the budgeting challenges that schools face and that we are asking them to do more.
Acknowledging that and the cost pressures on local authorities, and because children only get one chance at a great education, the Government have prioritised and protected schools and high-needs spending even while having to make difficult public spending decisions in other areas. Last month, we announced £250 million of additional funding for high needs over this financial year and the next, bringing the total high-needs allocation to £6.1 billion this year and £6.3 billion in 2019-20. We have listened to the particular concerns expressed by many local authorities and others, including Members of this House, about high-needs budget pressures, and additional investment will help local authorities to manage those pressures.
However, while funding is important, which is why we have protected the core schools budget in real terms per pupil from last year to next, funding is just one part of the story, because what happens to the money and the quality of AP are both important. That is why my Department is committed to reforming alternative provision and set out its plans for doing so in a reform road map last March. The plan for reform set out the aspirations of strengthening partnership arrangements for commissioning and delivering AP and the steps we are taking.
We are providing a stable evidence base for the reforms. The Department contacted Isos Partnership to undertake research into local AP markets. The research, published late last year, looked at the range and efficacy of different AP commissioning and funding models. It sought to engage local authorities, schools and AP across the country and shows that some areas are developing effective commissioning and funding arrangements between local authorities, schools and alternative providers to ensure that suitable provision is made for children with additional needs.
In Bath and North East Somerset, for example, funding from the high-needs block is devolved by the local authority to six behaviour and attendance panels across the area. These panels of primary and secondary heads are responsible for co-ordinating in-year admissions, supporting children at risk of exclusion, and managing referrals into alternative provision. The vast majority of schools in Nottinghamshire belong to schools partnerships, which receive high-needs funding from the local authority for both alternative provision and SEN support. When a school in Nottinghamshire excludes a pupil, the cost of their placement in alternative provision is recovered from the school or partnership in question. That system has resulted in an inclusive school system, with a low incidence of permanent exclusion—less than half the national average.
To build on what we have learnt of such arrangements, the Department announced its intention last month to launch a call for evidence to understand better the financial incentives that can affect decisions within the wider high needs funding system, including decisions relating to alternative provision, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West rightly highlighted. We are also investing £4 million into an innovation fund for AP. This externally-evaluated fund is supporting nine innovative projects, from across the country, to understand more about how to improve outcomes for children in AP. The initiatives focus on supporting children in AP to make good academic progress and successful post-16 transitions, reintegration into suitable mainstream or special school placements, and increasing parental or carer engagement.
We are committed to protecting all children from exploitation and abuse, whether from county lines, gang activity, or sexual abuse, which is why this Government have invested £3.6 million in a new national county lines co-ordination centre as one of the key commitments in the serious violence strategy. The Department is also providing up to £2 million for a new national response unit to help local authorities to support vulnerable children at risk of exploitation by criminal threats. Good discipline in schools is essential to ensure that all pupils can benefit from the opportunities provided by education. The Government absolutely support headteachers in using exclusion as a sanction, where warranted. It is equally important that the obligations on schools are clear and well understood to ensure that any exclusion is lawful, reasonable and fair.
A review of exclusions, led by Edward Timpson, is under way. The review is considering how schools use exclusion and how it affects all pupils, but it is particularly considering why some groups of children are more likely to be excluded. The review will report its findings early this year, with the Department’s response to follow.
Vicky Foxcroft
The Minister said that he would return to the point about the inreach work that PRUs do with mainstream education and about how much funding is allocated towards that work. I have listened with great intent, and I do not believe I have heard that question answered.
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for coming back on that point, which I was about to address. Local authorities can make arrangements for the supply of specialist support for mainstream schools by staff working in pupil referral units. The Department’s innovation fund has funded projects that include such measures and links between AP and schools. If she is unhappy with my response, and if she writes to me about a specific case, I will be happy to look at that as well.
I thank the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft), my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West and the hon. Member for Strangford, who is no longer in his seat, for contributing to this debate. I also pay tribute to the hard work of schools and local authorities, which continue to give their best and to raise the standards of our education system.
Improving Education Standards
Vicky Foxcroft Excerpts(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
I agreed with what the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) said about exclusions, which I will touch on more later in my speech. Some Members may know that when I speak in the Chamber, I tend to speak about youth violence and I will be doing that in this debate because education is very much at the heart of the solutions to this. There is no doubt that some of the funding cuts have proven difficult in terms of tackling youth violence. In particular, it has put pressures on those working in education. I want to focus some of my points on that.
Improving education standards is a good thing, but it is not just about improving grades or about increasing the number of young people who go to university—although, obviously, that is a good thing. It has to be about ensuring that our schools develop our young people and present them with all the opportunities and skills for the future that they so desperately need and thus reducing the likelihood that they will ever be involved in violence. Schools are at the forefront of tackling youth violence. We do lots of school intervention programmes that say, “Don’t carry a knife as you’re more likely to be stabbed”, but we know that that message is not quite working. It is not quite getting through to them, because they are still carrying knives and getting involved in youth violence. We need to make sure we give them far more positive messages and training that says, “You are the future doctors, nurses, politicians. You can be what you want to be.” We need to have that, and the fear of losing it in the future, as the reason why they are too terrified to carry a knife.
The Minister may be aware of the recent research by The BMJ showing that children under 16 are at the highest risk of being stabbed on their way home from school. That backs up what the police, youth workers and teachers have been saying to me for years. I thoroughly believe that as policy makers we have a responsibility to intervene where we can. For example, could we consider keeping our kids in school until 6 pm, staggering their leaving hours or making sure we have youth workers in schools during those times, given that we have such convincing evidence before us? I asked tons of questions on this in the past, but the Departments do not actually hold this information. Perhaps the Government should look at that seriously in order to make sure we really can analyse it.
Other measures could help keep young people safe while they are at school. Over the summer, the Youth Violence Commission published its interim report. I urge the Minister to read it if she has not had a chance to do so yet. It takes only about 30 minutes and it is written in a brief way. If she is keen to read a lot more, she can look on the website, which also has a ton of information.
One of our recommendations was to attach a dedicated police officer to every school in the country. The idea was not to police our kids in school; it was very much about building trust between police and young people. We know that there has been a breakdown in the relationship between young people and the police, but if they see a police officer in school—they might even play football with the police officer—that relationship will start to build. Hopefully, they will feel able to speak to police officers if in future they have worries or troubles. When we went to schools that had dedicated police officers who did have that relationship with young people, many of those young people wanted to go on and become police officers in future, and quite often they were from backgrounds that we would not traditionally think would mean they would want to join the police.
The Youth Violence Commission recommends a long-term aspiration to have zero exclusions from mainstream education. We cannot ignore the link between school exclusion and social exclusion: once children are permanently excluded, it is very difficult for them to move back to mainstream education. Once in a pupil referral unit, a child has a very low chance of achieving five good GCSEs. PRUs have often been called pipelines to prison, which is hardly surprising when more than half the current prison population were excluded while at school. Worryingly, exclusions are on the rise, having increased by at least 40% in the past three years. When we know that something is not working, why are we still doing it? Why do we not invest the money from the PRUs and put that into school early intervention programmes? We should speak to primary school head- teachers about who they see as the vulnerable children who could perhaps do with that wrap-around love, care and support, be it from nurses or peer role models. Why are we not investing the money at that point to provide support for our young people?
Education standards are part of the problem. The Government’s narrow focus on improving grades has led to schools quietly off-rolling students in attempts to improve their overall results. As part of their work to improve education standards, I hope that the Government consider our rising exclusions problem. In fact, is it not time that the Government entirely reviewed the merits of implementing a zero-exclusions policy across the board?
When the commission was carrying out our research, we consulted young people across the UK, and the same issues with the curriculum were raised with us consistently. Young people told us they wished that basic life skills—from how to write a CV to how to budget and how they might apply for a mortgage—were taught in school. Indeed, when we teach some of these life skills, we can also teach basic maths and literacy and other parts of the curriculum.
Many employers look for social media skills in new recruits, so that they can promote their business or reach out to new audiences, so why not start teaching social media at school? Not only could these lessons help young people to become more employable, but social media is often pointed to as the reason for violence flaring up between young people, so lessons could also focus on keeping young people safe online in a way that is relevant to the platforms they use. When I met a number of young people, some children in that conversation did not know how to hide their location—ghosting on Snapchat. One child taught another child, who had been followed and beaten up because their location had been known, how to hide it. With that knowledge, they could hide their location, which was incredibly valuable.
We need an overhaul of how careers advice is delivered in schools, ensuring that diverse role models and relevant work placements are on offer for young people. The serious shortage of diverse role models involved in careers programmes must be addressed. Young students of colour and working-class students need to see people like them in a range of different job roles. They need to know these options are available to them, too. Perhaps we could consider diversity in our history and literature syllabus. History lessons can sometimes feel like most of the people worth learning about were white, rich or male. Is it not time that the curriculum reflected the true diversity of our history?
We need more emphasis on high-quality sex and relationship classes. Primary school students should be taught what healthy and unhealthy relationships look like, to build resilience from a young age. A diverse curriculum is so important. The Government have left cash-strapped schools with no option but to cut creative subjects from the curriculum. Art, drama and music should not be seen as nice but unnecessary. These subjects are equally important to a well-rounded education.
I think of my own background: I did not get any A to Cs when I was at school, for a multitude of reasons that I will not go into. But I then studied at college, where I did a BTEC in performing arts—some would say that is a natural thing for someone who becomes a politician, but hey-ho—and went on to do drama and business at university. My arts education did not just teach me about the creative subjects; I was taught about history, problem solving and team work, and it got me excited about learning and education.
I could go on. There is so much that I could say about how I think schools could play a greater role in tackling youth violence. But for schools to start truly playing a greater role, there needs to be much more dedicated funding. There needs to be funding for the arts and funding for school nurses and mental health support. There needs to be funding for school police officers and funding for special educational needs. The Government have claimed that austerity is over, but we are seeing no evidence of this on the ground. It will take years to reverse the impacts of the Government austerity agenda.
If we are to try to start to do something and truly look at how we can reduce violence, we must work with and listen to teachers, young people and parents, and all the different agencies that come into contact with young people. In short, we must seek to deliver a public health approach, diagnose the problem, and treat the disease. We need joined-up working among everyone who comes into contact with young people. I welcome the announcement today of a debate on Thursday 13 December on the public health approach to tackling youth violence. I hope that the Minister and her team will come to that debate and at least listen to the contributions, if not report back on it.
Oral Answers to Questions
Vicky Foxcroft Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Nadhim Zahawi
I do welcome the Home Office’s commitment to this, and I hope the Mayor of London will do the same for the schools of the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) in Croydon.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
Youth violence is up and the number of mental health issues among young people is up, yet the number of qualified school nurses is down. The evidence shows that they can be part of how we address the root causes of youth violence. May we have qualified school nurses in every school as one step to tackle this issue?
Nadhim Zahawi
The hon. Lady knows we are making further investment in mental health in schools to make sure that every school is able to deal with the issue in an appropriate way.
Oral Answers to Questions
Vicky Foxcroft Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Goodwill
We are of course well aware of the cost pressures that may fall upon nurseries, and we are keen to work with them to address some of the business management decisions that they may need to make in order to live within the funding that we are making available. As we have discovered, the mean cost of funding is £3.72 per hour, and our funding is £4.94 per hour and therefore allows for adequate funding, as the evidence has shown.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
Mr Goodwill
Local authorities make decisions about how best to address the needs of children from underprivileged backgrounds. Much has changed since 2010, including the early years pupil premium and the 15 hours of free childcare for those who would qualify for free school meals, for example. It is up to local authorities to decide how best to deliver that. Indeed, my local Sure Start centre raised with me the issue of the many children who should be at the centre who are not. That is a role for those who are going out to mentor people in their communities.
Oral Answers to Questions
Vicky Foxcroft Excerpts(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
T8. Lewisham has the highest level of hospital admissions in London for self-harm among 10 to 14-year-olds. With an average of three children in each classroom currently suffering from a mental health condition, how long will it be before we see the publication of the promised Green Paper on children’s mental health? When we will see real action backed up by proper funding?
Justine Greening
We will be publishing that paper later in the year. In the meantime, we have already committed to expanding the single point of contact plan, which is making sure schools have an identified point of contact within the NHS. We can learn and build on that excellent initiative.
Oral Answers to Questions
Vicky Foxcroft Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Gibb
I accept my hon. Friend’s comments. Schools in his constituency will gain about £300,000 of funding overall—a 0.6% increase. On the basis of illustrative figures for 2016-17, 70.6% of schools in his constituency will actually gain funding, compared with 29% that will lose a small amount.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
Mr Gibb
Because the hon. Lady’s constituency will remain one of the highest-funded areas of the country. She is right that the per pupil funding rate in Lewisham, Deptford will fall from £5,708 to £5,550 as a result of the national funding formula, but that is still one of the highest in the country. The prosperity of London as a whole has increased over the past 10 years, with the proportion of children on free school meals falling from 27% to 18%, but it still has some of the highest levels of deprivation. That is why, under the new national funding formula, London’s funding remains 30% higher than the national average.
Oral Answers to Questions
Vicky Foxcroft Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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The Attorney General
I am not going to comment on the status of other court systems. What I will say is that part of the engagement that this country has abroad on the rule of law, in a variety of different countries, is designed to ensure that the long experience that this country has in running effective, efficient and fair court systems is transmitted to others where they ask for our help, and I am sure we will continue in that enterprise.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
The Attorney General (Jeremy Wright)
I regularly meet the Director of Public Prosecutions to discuss this and other topics. The Crown Prosecution Service continues to prioritise rape and serious sexual offending and has taken steps to ensure that prosecutors are able to prosecute these cases effectively. Those steps include increasing the number of specialist staff in its rape and serious sexual offences units, providing specialist training for prosecutors and developing closer working arrangements with the police.
Vicky Foxcroft
A constituent of mine is a victim of rape. A complete lack of communication and action from the police has left her unable to move on and recover from the horrific ordeal. After a year and a half, the case—which the superintendent deemed “a professional embarrassment”—has finally been brought to the CPS. However, this might not be the end of my constituent’s torment. Does the Attorney General agree that communication with victims is vital in effectively prosecuting offenders and that the Director of Public Prosecutions should ensure that every victim is kept updated, that their views are taken into account on key decisions and that a high level of communication is upheld?
The Attorney General
Yes I do agree, and what the hon. Lady describes clearly does not sound acceptable or in line with the standards we would all expect. There are two things that I think are important. The first is that the prosecutors should be involved as early as possible, so that advice can be given to the police about the development of an investigation with a view to prosecution. The second is to ensure that when a case comes to court, we continue the communication that we should have had up to that point with victims and witnesses and that people are given to understand what is going on around them. Courts can be very confusing places, and we only add to the distress if we do not take the trouble to explain the process to those who are, through no fault of their own, suddenly involved in it. That is one of the things we will look to do better.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
The Minister for Women and Equalities (Justine Greening)
We want to provide all young people with a curriculum that prepares them to succeed in modern Britain. That is why I want to make sure that sex and relationship education really is fit for the world that children live in today. I agree that we need to look again at how schools deliver high-quality and age-appropriate sex and relationship education. We are carefully considering all the options, including updating our guidance, and I shall provide an update shortly.
Vicky Foxcroft
The Women and Equalities Committee has recommended that the Government amend the “Keeping children safe in education” guidance to include the issue of sexual harassment and sexual violence in schools. When do the Government plan to release the updated guidance, and will they consult the specialists working in the field of sexual harassment and violence against women and girls?
Justine Greening
I agree that we need look at ensuring how this guidance is brought up to date. From my perspective, the key is making sure that our young people have the right information and get the right advice, and that through this guidance and the quality of teaching in schools we produce the right attitudes for the young generation growing up in our country. The hon. Lady is absolutely right to highlight the need to get that done effectively; that is precisely what I intend to do.
Oral Answers to Questions
Vicky Foxcroft Excerpts(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Anna Soubry
I really do not think it is as simple as that. It is unfortunate that when bad news is delivered it is often turned into a party political football. There are all sorts of reasons why a number of high streets continue to have difficulties. Equally, there are all manner of solutions that can be used to turn them around. I would ask the hon. Lady to look at some of the successes of Conservative, Labour and indeed Lib Dem councils in helping and supporting their high streets. Most importantly I would suggest that, rather than talking down her high street, she should be talking it up.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
10. What steps the Government are taking to increase take-up of apprenticeships among (a) people with disabilities, (b) care leavers and (c) other disadvantaged groups.
The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and President of the Board of Trade (Sajid Javid)
We want to ensure that apprenticeships are accessible to the widest possible range of people. We are promoting reasonable adjustments for disabled learners and fully funding apprenticeship training for young people aged 19 to 24 with an education, health and care plan and for care leavers up to the age of 24.
Vicky Foxcroft
As the Government already have targets to increase the proportion of black and minority ethnic apprenticeships by 20%, does the Minister not agree that they should do the same for people with disabilities and for care leavers?
Sajid Javid
I agree that we should do all that we can, and we have made it a huge priority to help more individuals with learning difficulties and disabilities to take up apprenticeships. We have done this by providing guidance for individuals and working with employers to help them better to understand what more we can do. Our apprenticeship revolution will leave no one behind.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Vicky Foxcroft Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
Yesterday, the Chancellor stood at the Dispatch Box proclaiming that this is a Budget for the “next generation”. Beyond the headlines what we heard was that debt is higher than it has ever been; that growth forecasts have been cut; and that he is missing his own targets for reducing the deficit. What we heard is the Chancellor admit that he is failing. He may have tried to add some fizz to his speech, but we know it was just sputterings of more cuts, more cuts and more cuts. These are cuts to the police, cuts to youth services, cuts to support for disabled people and cuts to the fire service. He has been Chancellor of the Exchequer for six years and no matter how much he wants to, he simply cannot blame Labour any more.
The Chancellor was quick to proclaim his Budget for the “next generation” but there is one glaring omission with that: he has forgotten this generation. To be honest, he has even forgotten the next generation, too. Research by the World Health Organisation puts us way down a list of 42 countries, with only the children of Poland and Macedonia being less satisfied with life than the British. The report says that our teenagers are suffering high levels of stress and have big worries about their health. They feel pressured by school work, and school-related stress is on the rise. What is the Government’s answer? It is: turning every school into an academy; removing democratic control; extending the school day; removing collective bargaining for teachers; and getting rid of governors. In short, the Government are restructuring a whole system, adding to teachers’ concerns and stress. We know that the Government do not have a good track record in top-down reorganisations. Have they learnt nothing? Clearly they have not learned, as this is another top down reorganisation that nobody voted for; they have no mandate. These proposed changes will turn our education system into the wild west, with everyone doing their own thing and with the Department for Education running it all—it is ridiculous. Will academies be able to run selections? Will we see a mass return of the 11-plus? This reform will increase the cost of education, make our country more unequal and embed unfairness throughout our education system. This reform takes us backwards, not forwards. Let it go on the record now that I will fight this every step of the way.
It is not just in education where we find problems, as the Government’s failures are letting young people down all over the place, with one example being on housing benefit. The Government have said they will cut housing benefit for 18 to 21-years-olds, without any consideration being given to the needs of any of those young people, what they might be escaping and what their situation is. What are the Government doing? This benefit is an essential safety net. Removing it just increases the risk of homelessness and damages these people’s prospects of finding work in the future.
We are also seeing the death of youth services, which provide—or should I say provided— a vital safety net. Unison has reported that at least £60 million was cut from youth service budgets between 2012 and 2014, which meant that more than 2,000 youth workers have disappeared since 2010. But that is not all, because on top of this more than 350 youth centres have closed. What is going on? If we look at what happened from 2013 to 2014 alone, we see figures from the Department for Education showing a cut of more than £103 million from youth services. Children’s social care—cut; family support services—cut; adoption services—cut; youth justice teams—cut; Sure Start centres—cut; child protection services—cut; and looked-after children services—cut. The list goes on and on. More and more young people are falling through the gaps left by a lack of services. The choices that this Government are making are damaging young people’s life chances, worsening their mental health, and increasing the possibility of them getting into trouble, as they are open to abuse and potentially at risk of becoming involved in serious youth violence.
Quite simply, the impact of the Government cutting council budgets is putting children’s lives at risk. Children are dying on our streets because councils can no longer afford to fund crucial services. That makes me angry, but what makes me really angry is the fact that, in the eyes of many young people, all MPs are the same, and that cannot be further from the truth. This is a shocking Budget, as it harms the country’s young, but it does not have to be like that. Young people do have the power to change things at the ballot box. More young people need to register to vote and to use that vote. Labour will invest in our young people, and we will do so not because we want headlines, but because we know that they are the future.