Leaving the EU: Student Exchanges

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Thursday 30th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the subject of foreign exchanges in the Chamber this evening. In my own family, exchanges are an integral part of growing up. I was packed off to Holland at 10 years old, and to a family in France at 11. As my linguistic skills improved, Germany and Hong Kong followed. During my undergraduate studies, I was lucky enough to go on an Erasmus programme at Caen University.

The pattern repeats itself, as in so much of what we do as parents: at home we rarely have a holiday without a foreign exchange student. In the past few years we have welcomed Anne-France and Philippine from Paris; Anya from Moscow; Yining Le from Beijing; Julius and Johanna from Dusseldorf, whose mother was an old friend of mine from university; Eleanor from Loches; and we are just starting to get to know a girl from southern Italy. With two linguist daughters, a great deal of our family time is spent applying for visas for my girls, and entertaining and providing regular meals for visiting teenagers. The experience is not simply about improving the ability to communicate in a different language; the children come back confident and buzzing with new experiences, as well as with a desire to learn better language skills. We have all learnt from Anya and Yining Le, who taught us so much about their different cultures and traditions. We really value the wider network of family and friends we have made as a result of getting to know them.

The same was true for year 6 pupils at Hook Norton Primary School, whom I was proud to see win a British Council international school award earlier this week. Their teacher told me about 18 years of exchanges with Sweden and how much the children gain from it. Bure Park Primary School, which I also visited this week, exchanges annually with Italian and German children. I want such opportunities to be available to all our young people.

We must give greater consideration to language learning. The Government have been laudably keen to promote STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering and maths—and are making efforts to ensure that modern foreign languages are part of the EBacc. Nevertheless, language learning is on a downward spiral. The number of GCSEs taken in modern languages fell by more than 7% this year, and this summer’s A-level results show that the number of British students taking languages has almost halved over the past two decades. Applications to study a European language at university have fallen by 20% over the past four years. Those figures show why we do not have enough new teachers leaving our universities to encourage language learning in children at school today and tomorrow.

Earlier this week the Foreign Secretary spoke of his vision for a global Britain:

“The driving purpose of this Government is to strengthen Britain’s global role, to raise our level of national ambition and to prepare for the opportunities before us”.—[Official Report, 27 November 2017; Vol. 632, c. 54.]

How can foreign exchanges help? The international language of business might be English, but the language of selling goes so much deeper. Soft diplomacy involves much more than just talking. We are fortunate that English is widely spoken, but our success in achieving a truly global Britain depends on our ability not only to speak to people abroad but to understand their culture—shouting loudly will not sell our products worldwide.

The recent “Languages for the Future” report by the brilliant British Council makes it clear:

“Without language skills we lose out not only through the restricted ability to communicate internationally, but even more importantly through the closing down of opportunities for overseas work experience, a lack of international business sense, a failure to appreciate that other cultures have different ways of doing things and a potential tendency to overestimate the global importance of British culture.”

Young people who have spent time immersed in the domestic life of another country are so much better equipped for selling global Britain, global justice and our values and opportunities.

Another great advantage of student exchanges is that they are a comparatively cheap way to travel. The cost is that of the fare and, where appropriate, the visa. It is important that the Government think seriously about how they deal with young people on exchanges, because when my daughter visits her Russian exchange, she has to fill out a new visa application each time and come up to London to have her biometrics taken. We put up barriers on both sides, because her 17-year-old Russian exchange was charged almost £500 for her UK visa application, which had to be expedited as her initial application was refused—all this to allow her to come on our family holiday to Wales. Although I realise this goes beyond the Minister’s remit, I hope he will work with his colleagues in the Home Office to ensure that teenagers such as those two, as well as the young people who take part in programmes such as Erasmus, are encouraged in their exchanging, particularly after we leave the EU.

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

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. Another dimension, as I am sure she knows, is that schools often go on visits abroad—not necessarily exchanges—and again there can be obstacles. Does she agree that schools sometimes find it difficult to recruit language teachers?

[Victoria Prentis]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. The type of foreign language exchanges I am talking about involve living with a family abroad and the depth of understanding that can be gained only in a domestic setting. That is what I am so keen to promote. Of course it is difficult for schools to arrange such exchanges, but it is worth it.

I thank all teachers who put themselves out and often spend their own holidays travelling with groups of teenagers—not everybody’s cup of tea—to far-flung places to enable deep, worthwhile experiences for our children. I hope the Minister will join me in encouraging that.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

Higher Education (England) Regulations

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Wednesday 13th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

As I said, only this morning the director of the Conservative think-tank Bright Blue echoed a point that we have been making for months about increasing the salary threshold. That is one of many options that we have told the Government time and again they need to look at.

I had a group of young air cadets from my constituency down here yesterday, and I hope that they are watching today even though the debate is a bit later than I told them it would be. It makes me so angry to think of the opportunities that the Government are denying those young people and others across my constituency. Through their policies, they have left graduates in England with the highest level of debt in the world. Students will now graduate with an average debt of £50,000, and those from the poorest backgrounds will have debts in excess of £57,000.

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

I have two universities in my constituency, and further education colleges. As my hon. Friend knows, not only have the Government abolished the education maintenance allowance, but more importantly, they have been trying to sell off the Student Loans Company. Interest levels will go higher if that goes through.

Social Mobility

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Lucy Powell]

We have seen some great progress and I will come on to that. In my constituency most of that progress has come from local leadership as well, and I will mention that later.

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

What the Minister says is belied by the fact that in further education in Coventry there have been cuts of roughly 27% and in the youth service there will be no funding for youth leaders, which does not exactly help the situation. Does my hon. Friend agree that if we are not careful we will create another lost generation?

[Lucy Powell]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Post-16 and youth service funding is critical to the debate and I will touch on that later.

I urge all colleagues to read the Social Mobility Commission’s powerful report. It highlights the fact that the challenges we faced in 1997 are very different from those we face in 2017. It rightly calls for social mobility to be at the heart of all Government policy, decisions and actions, because it is only through a prolonged, determined and comprehensive Government-wide strategy that we may actually start to change the entrenched inequalities and the lack of social mobility for the many. The social mobility agenda is about the many, not the tiny few we often hear about who manage to get themselves from the council estate to the boardroom or around the Cabinet table. The Prime Minister says that she is looking for a national purpose that brings all parties and the country together, and I say to her that if she made tackling social mobility her calling and the key test for her Government, against which all her actions were tested, she would get wide support from across the House.

Before looking at some of the policy areas where more needs to be done, let us remind ourselves why tackling the divides in Britain is so important. The Sutton Trust has found that failing to improve Britain’s low levels of social mobility will cost the UK economy a staggering £140 billion a year by 2050, or the equivalent of 4% of GDP. On current trends, by 2022 there will be 9 million low-skilled people chasing just 4 million low-skilled jobs, yet there will be a shortfall of 3 million higher-skilled people for the jobs of the future. The economic divides are even starker when we look at the regional disparities. Output per person in London is more than £43,000 a year, yet in the north-east of England it is less than £19,000. London and some of our renewed cities, such as my own city of Manchester, are increasingly the home of graduates and have vibrant growing economies.

Education and Local Services

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2017 Commons Chamber

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

I have listened to those on the Government Benches trying to have a go at Labour Members about the cost of our manifesto, but, very interestingly, during the general election they certainly did not give us any figures or cost their manifesto. They must have had a premonition that they would not have a majority after the election; that is the only reason I can think of. The message has not got across to them yet that people are fed up with austerity.

I have visited a number of schools in my constituency, and the message has been the same at each one: they may have to make teachers and classroom assistants redundant. I believe that every child should receive every possible opportunity to succeed in life, regardless of their background. I am therefore disappointed that no clear education legislation is outlined in the Queen’s Speech. There are only vague commitments to allow children to attend good schools.

I hope that the Government have finally dropped their vanity project of introducing more grammar schools. That policy would have served only to increase the divisions in society. Instead of trying to create new schools, we should be focusing on our existing schools to ensure that they are sufficiently funded. That is what will give our children the best opportunities in life. However, despite having pledged to ensure that every child gets the education they deserve, the Government proposed in their manifesto to remove free school meals. I am pleased that that policy has been scrapped, but we must not forget that they tried to introduce it in the first place.

It is under proposals from this same Government that schools are having their funding cut for the first time in 20 years, which will mean teachers losing their jobs and our children being taught in supersized classes. In Coventry, over £29 million will be cut from the local authority’s education budget, which will mean, on average, £600 less per pupil. One school in my constituency is facing a reduction of £1,600 per pupil. That is simply not good enough. Our children deserve better.

We have seen time and again that this Government are failing the people of this country, whether children at the start of their lives or people at the other end of their lives—for example, by threatening to scrap the pensions triple lock, or by letting down the women who have seen their state pension age increase but received inadequate transitional arrangements.

I will now move on to local services. We have seen a shift in focus, with responsibility moving from central to local government. It is important that local authorities can shape their service provision, but they are having to do so in the face of constant budget cuts. Since 2010, Coventry Council has lost £106 million a year, which represents a 50% cut in Government grant funding. By 2020, the Government will have cut £655 million from the council’s budget. When people have increasingly complex needs, especially in areas such as adult social care and mental health services, Coventry and Warwickshire local authorities expect a deficit of £33 million by 2020-21 in social care. Although we have, I hope, seen the back of the Government’s proposed dementia tax, more must be done urgently to tackle the crisis in social care, and there was no specific mention of that in the Green Paper.

The Chancellor said in his Mansion House speech that,

“people are weary of the long slog”

and that the Conservatives are listening to people after the election. But is he really hearing what the people of this country need? It is simply staggering that the Government are continuing to pursue an agenda of austerity. Other vital local services are still being cut. The Department for Work and Pensions has announced the closure of 108 sites by March 2018, including the Tile Hill jobcentre in Coventry, which means that claimants will now have to travel for up to an hour to get to a jobcentre. That will be incredibly difficult for many of the more vulnerable users of the jobcentre.

At a time when the gap between rich and poor is widening, it is more important than ever to ensure that we are caring for those who need it the most. Therefore, while I welcome the mention in the Queen’s Speech of the very important issue of domestic violence, let us not forget that 17% of specialist women’s refuges have closed since 2010. That means that women will have been unable to get the help and support they so desperately need. Some 20,000 police officers have been cut, and much has been made in the national press of the consequences. While the Government say one thing, their policies seem to do the exact opposite.

[Several hon. Members rose—]