Education

Debate between Jim Cunningham and Nick Gibb

Wednesday 20th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

I do understand my hon. Friend’s concerns. We worked very hard during and after the consultation process to ensure that we could assemble the widest possible consensus on the new draft guidance. We accept that it contains some very sensitive issues and I understand that some parents have legitimate concerns about their involvement in their child’s education, particularly in primary schools. We have considered that very carefully.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for giving way. I think he knows what I am going to ask him, because he has been very helpful prior to this debate. What can he say to reassure, for example, the Muslim community in relation to these proposals? Can he provide some reassurance to them?

[Nick Gibb]

I can give the hon. Gentleman, the Muslim community and other communities who share those concerns outside this House the assurance that schools will be required, for example, to consult with parents on their relationships education, and on relationships and sex education policies. One key purpose is to help to minimise any misconception about the subjects and what might be taught, and to enable parents to decide whether to request, for example, that their child is withdrawn from sex education. We encourage schools to engage proactively with parents to set out how and when they plan to cover topics included in relationships education and RSE, so that parents can understand what is going to be taught. This means ensuring that parents know what they can and cannot withdraw their children from, that they can have an input into policies, and have sufficient time and notice to make an informed decision about whether to withdraw their children from sex education.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jim Cunningham and Nick Gibb

Monday 25th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

T7. Does the Minister realise that more than 300 pupils were denied their first-choice school as a result of the Government cuts to local government education budgets in Coventry? What is he going to do about it?

[Nick Gibb]

If the hon. Gentleman looks at the national figures, he will find that, at primary, something like 97% of families received an offer of a place in one of their top-three schools, with 91% offered their first choice. At secondary, 94% of families received an offer of a place at their first-choice school. We have created 825,000 school places since 2010, following on from a Labour Government who actually cut 100,000 school places from the system.

Leaving the EU: Student Exchanges

Debate between Jim Cunningham and Nick Gibb

Thursday 30th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) on securing this debate. I join her in thanking the language teachers up and down the country who teach our young people to speak, write and read in a foreign language. As I will mention later, I was at school this morning with a commendable group of language teachers, who do wonderful work in that school.

This debate gives me the opportunity to emphasise again the Government’s commitment to remaining open to the world after we leave the EU and to becoming even more global and internationalist in our outlook. Improving the take-up and teaching of modern foreign languages in our schools and ensuring that there continues to be international opportunities for students, young people and teachers to participate in exchanges is an important part of achieving that goal. I also agree with my hon. Friend that there are business, cultural and educational benefits to learning a language

The level of take-up and proficiency in foreign languages in England is not yet what it should be—my hon. Friend was right to point that out—and we have taken steps to address that. In 2010, we introduced the English baccalaureate. To meet this measure of performance for state-funded secondary schools, pupils have to be entered for GCSEs in English, maths, science, history or geography and an ancient or modern foreign language. In July, we announced our ambition for 75% of year 10 pupils to be taking the EBacc by 2022 and for that to reach 90% by 2025. It was 37% this year. That represents a significant step-change for schools, particularly in relation to the uptake of languages GCSEs, which is often the area that has prevented schools from achieving higher EBacc entry rates. Our expectation is that the uptake of these GCSEs will increase over the coming years, widening the potential pool of students with the ability to continue studying languages to a higher level.

In September 2014, schools began to teach the new national curriculum that we introduced. It requires local authority-maintained primary schools to teach a modern or ancient foreign language to pupils at key stage 2. Schools can choose which language to teach, and must ensure that pupils make substantial progress in one language by the end of primary school. It is also mandatory for maintained secondary schools to teach a foreign language to pupils at key stage 3. Although there is no requirement for every pupil in such schools to then take a language at GCSE, there is a statutory entitlement for every pupil to take a course leading to a recognised qualification, if they wish to do so.

The fact that pupils often have the choice of whether to continue to study a language to GCSE makes it especially important for their earlier experiences of being taught the subject to be positive.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

The Minister may or may not be able to answer this question. How popular is Chinese—how interested are people in this country in taking up the language? The Chinese have lots of markets and we should not forget that we trade with China.

[Nick Gibb]

If the hon. Gentleman is patient, I shall come to that. One of the purposes of my visit this morning was to see the Mandarin excellence programme that is happening in a number of schools throughout the country.

In a 2015 report, “Key stage 3: the wasted years?”, Ofsted reported that many pupils chose to discontinue studying languages at the end of key stage 3 because of a lack of enjoyment in their lessons or a feeling of not making enough progress. That was despite many of the same pupils recognising the value of languages. Prompted by that, the Teaching Schools Council carried out a review of modern foreign languages pedagogy in key stages 3 and 4. The review was carried out by the experienced headteacher Ian Bauckham and reported in November last year. It set out key principles for delivering effective language teaching and produced a number of sensible recommendations for teachers and headteachers in schools.

We have improved the standard and quality of qualifications. We worked with Ofqual, subject experts, universities and teachers to design new GCSEs and A-levels, which were introduced for French, German and Spanish in 2016. The level of demand of these qualifications matches those of the highest-performing countries, and they will better prepare pupils for the demands of further education and employment. They are robust qualifications in which students, employers, colleges and universities can have confidence. French, German and Spanish remain the top three most popular foreign languages taught in our schools, although Mandarin is coming up fast. As the British Council “Languages for the Future” report highlights, Mandarin is one of the top five languages of crucial importance for the UK’s future prosperity, security and influence in the world.

My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury and the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) might be interested to know that the Department has established and funded the Mandarin excellence programme since 2016. The programme offers intense study in the language, which is not only personally enriching for students but will give them a significant advantage when they enter the world of work. We want 5,000 young people, ab initio, to study the language and become fluent by 2020.

Pupils on the programme study Mandarin—listen to this—for eight hours a week, at least four hours of which are teacher-led in classrooms, with the remaining four hours in their own time. Over the next four years, I hope that we will see a significant increase in the numbers of pupils on the programme. The programme started with 14 secondary schools in September 2016, and 23 additional secondary schools joined in September this year.

I was delighted earlier today to see the programme in action and meet some of the pupils during my visit to Alexandra Park School in Haringey. At Alexandra Park, 27 pupils started in the year 7 cohort in September last year. They scored a very impressive 95% average mark in progress tests across reading, writing, listening and speaking last summer, and they have all progressed to the second year of the programme. A new year 7 cohort of 30 pupils started Mandarin lessons at Alexandra Park in September 2017, and I am sure they will do equally well. Incidentally, all year 7 pupils at that school study Mandarin and a European language.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

Once again, I am not sure whether the Minister can answer this question now. Perhaps he can write to me on it. Are any schools in Coventry teaching Mandarin?

[Nick Gibb]

I will have to write to the hon. Gentleman about that. We want to have a spread of Mandarin excellence programmes across the country, but the initial schools were chosen because they already had a track record of teaching Mandarin very well. The project is led and driven by the excellent Katharine Carruthers of the UCL Institute of Education. The pupils I met this morning were hugely impressive, very ambitious and had high expectations. They want not only to take a GCSE and an A-level in Mandarin, but to go on to HSK 4 and HSK 5, which is essentially fluency in the language. Interestingly, I asked them all what they wanted to do when they left school and none of them wanted to go on to study Mandarin at university. They wanted to be lawyers, doctors and business people, but they also wanted to be fluent in Mandarin.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jim Cunningham and Nick Gibb

Monday 30th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Will the Minister for Schools meet me to discuss funding for the new Ernesford Grange school in Coventry?

[Mr Gibb]

I am very happy to have such a meeting.

Education Capital Programmes (Coventry)

Debate between Jim Cunningham and Nick Gibb

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Gentleman has raised a good point, which I am about to come on to. We have allocated £800 million of basic need funding for 2011-12, which is actually twice the previous annual level of funding, to support the provision of increased places, particularly in primary schools, as a result of the increasing birth rate. In addition, we expect similar levels of funding to be allocated from 2012-13 until 2014-15, which will address some of the concerns that he has raised.

[Mr Cunningham]

How much of that £800 million will actually be allocated to Coventry? That is what my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East and my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West were getting at when they talked about the two schools.

[Mr Gibb]

The capital allocation for 2011-12 for Coventry city council and its schools was announced on 13 December last year, and it was in excess of £13 million. It is now for the council to prioritise how it will spend the available funding, taking into account the building needs of its schools and its own responsibilities to fulfil its statutory duties.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

I understand that, but £13 million, which is the amount of capital allocated to Coventry, is a very significant sum. It is not as high as we would like it to be, or indeed as high as it has been in recent years, but it is high historically compared with spending in other Parliaments in recent times. We face a difficult budget deficit, and we want to ensure that any capital available is spent where the greatest need exists. That applies to schools such as Richard Lee primary school in Coventry. That case is a classic example of how we are trying to target the funding at the schools that need it most.

[Mr Cunningham]

What the Minister is actually doing is asking the local authority to use the wisdom of Solomon, when it needs just more than £40 million to properly resource its schools. He is putting the local authority in a terrible position, so it is no good blaming the local authority.

[Mr Gibb]

I am not blaming the local authority. What I am saying is that we took a decision that it was better to give the bulk of the funds available for capital spending to local authorities to decide how to allocate them rather than to maintain the levels of the devolved grant formula to schools in this spending review period in which we are encountering these very difficult decisions on the budget deficit. That is because local authorities, rather than the man or woman in Whitehall, are best placed to decide which schools in their area have the greatest need for capital to be spent on them, and that applies to Coventry. That is the decision that we took.

Officials at the Department have been working—

Education Expenditure (Coventry)

Debate between Jim Cunningham and Nick Gibb

Tuesday 7th September 2010 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

It is always a sign of age when the Chairman is younger than oneself. Having celebrated a significant birthday last week, that has been brought home to me in stark terms, but it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I congratulate the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) on securing this debate. On behalf of his constituents, he is an assiduous advocate on these issues in written questions, on the Floor of the House and in the debate.

The Government’s ambition is to raise academic standards in our schools and to ensure high-quality education for all children, particularly those from poorer backgrounds. Education is the key to social mobility and the Government's key objective is to close the attainment gap between those from the wealthiest and poorest backgrounds, so we put the Academies Act 2010 on to the statute book to enable us to expand the academies programme. During the past two weeks, 100 new academies have opened, one of which is the Sidney Stringer academy in Coventry, which is where the former Education Secretary, Lady Morris, was once deputy head.

The Academies Act 2010 enables primary and special schools, for the first time, to become academies and to enjoy the greater freedoms that academy status brings. We are considering the national curriculum with the intention of restoring it to its intended purpose—a minimum core entitlement built around subject disciplines. We are enabling parents, teachers and other education providers to set up free schools so that parents have a real choice for their children.

School buildings, of course, need continuing investment, but it is vital that future spending represents the best possible value for money. The Building Schools for the Future programme was a flagship programme of the previous Government, of which the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) was a prominent and distinguished member. The programme aimed to rebuild or to refurbish every secondary school in the country by 2023. Where it has delivered, some impressive new buildings have been built, and no one would deny that a good working environment can only aid achievement and help to improve behaviour. But the BSF programme was not the most effective way to deliver new school buildings.

Rebuilding a school under BSF is three times more expensive than constructing a commercial building and twice as expensive as building a school in Ireland. During the five years of the BSF programme, a scheme that was intended to improve the entire stock of the nation's 3,500 secondary schools benefited just a 175 schools.

[Mr Cunningham]

The important point for my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr. Robinson) and for me is what will replace BSF, because we badly need those schools.

[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Gentleman raises a good point. If he will be patient for a few minutes I will come to exactly that point.

Just 103 schools have been completely rebuilt under BSF. The budget bulged from £45 billion to £55 billion for a variety of reasons, some of which were legitimate, but the projected time scale rose from 10 years to 18. Of the £250 million spent before building began, £60 million was spent on consultants or advisory costs. In short, because of its structure and the way in which it was put together, BSF became a vast and confusing edifice of process within process and cost upon cost. It represented poor value for money. No one comes into politics to cut public spending, but the Government were faced with a £156 billion deficit, and it is our responsibility, difficult and painful as it may be, to tackle that problem lest we delay our economic recovery and cause further economic problems. We announced that the BSF programme is ending, but that does not mean the end of capital spending on schools.

I come now to the concern expressed by the hon. Member for Coventry South. When determining which projects would go ahead and which would cease, the Government developed a single set of criteria and applied them nationally. Those school projects that were part of the initial BSF schemes and had reached financial close would go ahead. Of the so-called sample projects that were part of an area’s initial BSF schemes and where financial close had not been reached—the sample schools to which the hon. Gentleman referred—only those with a selected bidder after close of competitive dialogue in the relevant local authority went ahead. Coventry had not reached close of dialogue in those sample schools. Some planned school projects, in addition to a local authority's initial scheme, were all allowed to continue. Unfortunately, the BSF projects in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, and in Coventry as a whole, were not additional projects, had not appointed a preferred bidder, and had not reached financial close. As none of the criteria applied, the projects in question could not go ahead, with the exception of the Sidney Stringer academy.

In a meeting during the summer with the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues, the Secretary of State indicated that he is keen for the Department to learn from Coventry's experience with BSF, and capital spending outside that review. The Secretary of State has made it clear that the end of BSF does not mean the end of capital spending on schools. Money will, of course, be invested in school buildings in the future, particularly with a rising birth rate and increasing demand for school places, but it is imperative that money is spent on buildings and not on process. To that end, a group headed by Sebastian James, and with other professionals, began a comprehensive review of all capital investment in schools—early years, colleges and sixth forms—and will consider how best to meet parental demand, to make design and procurement cost-effective and efficient, and to overhaul the allocation and targeting of capital.

The hon. Gentleman will know that officials working for the review team visited Coventry on 26 August and explored in depth the capital needs of the city's schools and the plans for tackling those needs. A further visit is planned for later this month when the capital review team will meet councillors, representatives of schools and city council officers to discuss the needs of the city’s schools including, in particular, the requirements of the city's special schools. I have taken on board the comments of the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West about the state of those schools, particularly issues such as scaffolding holding up a building’s roof. Such issues will be taken into account by the capital review team, and I assure both hon. Members that the Department will continue to make capital allocations on the basis of need, particularly based on dilapidations and levels of deprivation. However, I am sure that both hon. Gentlemen will understand that I am unable to make any commitments today about how much money will be allocated, or exactly when. That will depend on the outcome of the spending review and the capital review.

[Mr Gibb]

The capital review will report by the end of December, so it will not coincide exactly with the end of the spending review. The hon. Gentleman will have to be a little more patient. There will be an interim review before that, but the answers to his specific question will not be available by that specific date.

[Mr Cunningham]

When the capital review has been completed, and when the Minister has met the councils and so on, will he meet the MPs again to discuss the outcome?

[Mr Gibb]

The capital review team will be delighted to hear from the hon. Gentleman—now is the opportunity to raise specific issues regarding the fabric of school buildings in his constituency and in Coventry—but it will not be able to report in public until it reports finally at the end of December.

In the time remaining, I want so speak briefly about the planned closure of the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency, which employs some 446 staff in Coventry, with another 43 staff working from home. The QCDA's remit is inconsistent with our vision for school improvement driven by school leaders and teachers, with as much of the education budget as possible going to schools. That is why many of the QCDA's centralising functions will be stopped, and others will be made more clearly accountable to Ministers. We are considering how vital work such as the national curriculum tests can best continue when the QCDA has been abolished. It is too early to assess the scale of any job losses, but we are working with QCDA carefully to plan the winding down of its functions, and the proper and sensitive handling of the implications of those changes for QCDA's staff.