Oral Answers to Questions

Layla Moran Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

Given the success of the two maths schools so far, we are committed to opening more maths schools as we continue to drive up academic standards and social mobility. There are four more in the pipeline, including the Surrey mathematics school, which should benefit young people in North East Hampshire. My hon. Friend will also be pleased to know that, due to the large increase in school funding announced last week, 100% of secondary schools in his constituency will benefit from the new minimum of at least £5,000 per pupil.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

11. What assessment he has made of the effect of VAT applied to college spending on the financial sustainability of those institutions.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Gavin Williamson)]

We have announced a £400 million increase in 16-to-19 funding in 2020-21; this is the biggest year-on-year increase since 2010 and will have great benefits for FE and sixth-form colleges. Colleges are independent organisations and are responsible for managing their own financial sustainability, which includes their liability for VAT.

[Layla Moran]

I thank the Secretary of State for his response, but does he believe, as I do, that no matter where a 16 to 19-year-old student studies they should have the same funding, resource and status, and if he does why do school sixth forms and 16-to-19 academies get their VAT refunded and the teacher pay grant but FE institutions, such as the brilliant Abingdon and Witney college in my constituency, do not?

[Gavin Williamson]

I am very conscious that this has been a long-running issue, and I remember from when I was a governor at a further education college the impact that this has. We are always looking at how we can reduce the impact, and that is why we have the funding settlement that we have achieved this year of £400 million plus £100 million for pension liability costs.

Education Funding

Layla Moran Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is a critical point and the reason we were so keen to secure such a significant increase in funding for the 16-to-19 sector. The FE sector provides us with many opportunities to look at how we can invest more, create more opportunities for young people and ensure that people understand that pursuing a vocational career is just as important as pursuing academic interests.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has described the Education Secretary‘s figure of £14 billion extra for schools as

“somewhere between meaningless and misleading.”

It calculates that the real-terms increase will be more like £4.3 billion by 2022-3. That is just enough to reverse the cuts that have been made since 2015, so eight years later schools will, in essence, receive nothing. Given the importance of numeracy to the national curriculum, does the Secretary of State regret not doing his sums properly?

[Gavin Williamson]

I know that the hon. Lady has long campaigned in the f40 group for changes in school funding, and I thought that my statement might give her an opportunity to welcome the changes that we have implemented, which will benefit her constituents so much. We have been very clear about the amount of money that we are providing: a total of £18.9 billion for schools, of which £4.5 billion will cover pension costs, with the additional half a billion pounds going to 16-to-19 education. We will of course work closely with the Institute for Fiscal Studies in explaining our figures.

Early Years Family Support

Layla Moran Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Gentleman tempts me to launch off in a completely different direction. He is right that, all too often, troubled families who have further children go on to have further problems, but the whole point of early intervention is that it can turn around the outcomes for all the family’s children, not just the new one. The programme is vital.

Insecure attachment in the early years has a cost to society in terms of not only human happiness but the financial cost to individuals, families and the public purse. As Professor James Heckman, a winner of the Nobel memorial prize in economics, has demonstrated, the return on every dollar invested in the 1,001 critical days delivers an exponential financial benefit in later life. Not only is early years intervention good for human happiness; it is also good for the public purse.

There are two profound areas of impact on the foetus and, then, the infant during the 1,001 critical days. The first is the level of cortisol, the stress hormone, and the second is the extent of the development of the infant’s prefrontal cortex. We know that a pregnant mother who suffers from stress produces more cortisol, which is easily transmitted via the placenta to the unborn child. The more stressed the mother, the more frequently the foetus is exposed to higher levels of cortisol.

The mother’s stress levels could be due to insecure employment, financial instability, the worry that her partner might leave her or the difficulties of being a single mum living in temporary or unsuitable housing, and so on. We know that exposure to high levels of cortisol can lead to modifications in gene expression while the foetus’s brain is still developing. Even in the womb, the potential for lifelong emotional and physical health is being determined.

We also know that maternal stress can lead to low birth weight, which can lead to all sorts of later complications, including diabetes, obesity and congenital heart disease. Once he or she is born, a baby left endlessly to cry themselves to sleep, or who is neglected or abused, will experience higher cortisol levels, which can over time lead to a lifelong higher tolerance of stress and an increased likelihood of being attracted to high-risk behaviour such as drug abuse, violence, criminality and so on.

We also know the critical role that the prefrontal cortex plays in developing the social and empathetic capacity of human beings. The prefrontal cortex is hardly present at birth, with the greatest growth spurt happening between six and 18 months, largely stimulated by the attention of a loving adult carer. Games like peekaboo, gazing into the baby’s eyes, smiling and mimicking them, and saying, “I love you. Aren’t you gorgeous?” [Interruption.] That is not directed at you, Mr Deputy Speaker. [Hon. Members: “Ah.”] I take that back, as it was mean. You are gorgeous. It is just that you are not in my arms. All that, in those 1,001 critical days, acts to jump-start the growth of the prefrontal cortex and the development of that vital human empathic capability.

However, if mum or dad is depressed, or if the baby suffers adverse childhood experiences, such as witnessing domestic violence, sexual abuse or substance misuse, that can have a significantly damaging effect on the development of the prefrontal cortex and the baby’s ability to regulate their own emotions. That, extraordinarily, can affect the ability in later years to cope with life’s challenges and opportunities, to form strong relationships and even to hold down a job. At the extreme end, the impact will be disastrous for that baby’s own future life and therefore for society at large. So love—a secure early bond—is what we want for all babies, although that is far from what is happening today.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

The right hon. Lady is giving a powerful speech on why early intervention is so important. One of the things I most regret from the past few years is the demise of children’s centres and of their ability to reach out into families—help educate parents about all the positive things that she is talking about. Saving money in the long term could well mean a small investment up front in these families, and children’s centres could be an easy way of achieving that. Does she agree with me on that?

Relationship Education in Schools

Layla Moran Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

As I have said, we have had widespread support—from the Catholic Education Service, the Church of England, the Office of the Chief Rabbi and the Association of Muslim Schools—and we believe that the guidance strikes the right balance between a wide range of views. That is why we have achieved consensus in this House and in the other place. Had we not taken this approach, I do not believe that we would be where we are today in terms of the widespread acceptance of the need to teach children about LGBT relationships in 23,000 schools up and down the country.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

Of course I welcome this guidance and have done all along, but I find myself frustrated by the answers from the Minister. I have met the head of Parkfield, who came to speak to a cross-party delegation just the other day, and she was very clear: the chink in the guidance—the word “encouraged” rather than “expected”—has essentially put her and her colleagues in the firing line of these parents. To state that changing the guidance would not make a difference contradicts what that head was saying. Has the Minister been to the school and spoken to the head, and if he hasn’t, will he?

[Nick Gibb]

The issue in that particular school is not to do with the relationship and sex education guidance—that comes into force in September 2020—and we are making very clear in the supplementary guidance the processes that are needed in terms of consultation. Consultation with parents is hugely important, not so that parents have a veto over the curriculum—they will not have a veto over the curriculum—but because it helps to dispel myths, and it helps to deal with the very misinformation that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) has raised this urgent question to discuss. That consultation is hugely important, and I believe that as and when schools do consult up and down the country, this new policy will attract widespread support from parents.

Oral Answers to Questions

Layla Moran Excerpts

Monday 24th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

I am not just saying this, but as it happens I last did one of the SATs papers—SPAG, or spelling, punctuation and grammar—on Thursday or Friday last week. As I said in an earlier answer, the point of the assessments is to assess schools and make sure that wherever children grow up they get the standard of education that they deserve. The SATs are not about testing children, and they are not public exams that will stay with children into their adult life. They are not like GCSEs: nobody in a job interview will ever ask, “What did you get in your SATs?” We trust schools and teachers to administer SATs in an appropriate way so that stress is not put on to children. I meet many teachers who do exactly that.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

I also offer my congratulations on your decade in the Chair, Mr Speaker. Interestingly, it is children born since you started sitting in the Chair who are coming up to taking SATs. I have heard countless stories from teachers up and down the country that they have kept children in during break times or sacrificed time that they would have otherwise spent on other subjects to prepare for SATs. Does the Secretary of State take no responsibility for that stress put on teachers, which inevitably filters down to children? Frankly, is it not just time to scrap SATs?

[Damian Hinds]

No, it is not. Notwithstanding the hon. Lady’s clever linking of your decade in the Chair with the age of children doing SATs, Mr Speaker, it is common practice around the world to have standardised assessment of one sort or another in primary schools. That was not always the case, but more and more countries—including most of the high-performing ones—recognise that they need a standardised way to assess children’s progress in different parts of the country. It was Government policy when the Liberal Democrats were in coalition with the Conservatives and, of course, it was policy when Labour was in government.

Murders in Northamptonshire: Serious Case Reviews

Layla Moran Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My hon. Friend raises a very powerful point. All I can say to him is that my Department triggered our intervention powers immediately when those concerns in relation to children’s services were raised with me. I hope that, after his meeting with Malcolm Newsam, he will be reassured that we have the right commissioner in there. We are taking those steps, and I have mentioned the direction I have made to the local authority.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

It is impossible not to be moved by these stories. As the saying goes, it takes a community not just to raise, but to protect a child. Surely, early intervention must also be at the heart of all these stories. In Oxfordshire, over 30 children’s centres used to exist; now there are just eight hubs, many of which are far too far away from the most deprived communities. Given how important these centres are and the fact that groups such as Abingdon Carousel have needed to raise funds from county and town councils to keep centres open for a very limited period, will the Minister robustly make the case in the upcoming spending review for why children’s centres are so important to prevent children from getting into this situation?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The hon. Lady raises the issue of children’s centres. I hope that she would commend the troubled families programme, which has reduced by a third the number of children needing to be taken into care. We have announced the strengthening families programme, in which we are scaling up the whole-system approach to children’s services and childcare from Leeds, North Yorkshire and Hertfordshire and investing £84 million to scale that up to another 20 local authorities. They have made it very clear to me that very much part of that whole-system approach is the troubled families programme work that they do.

The hon. Lady also mentioned children’s centres. I am looking at how local authorities make best use of their infrastructure, including children’s centres. Local government—local authorities, local leaders—is best placed to decide how it does that. Staffordshire, which chose to close more than 60 children’s centres, but keep 14 in the areas most promising for reaching the most difficult-to-reach families, has delivered much better outcomes because it has used that resource. It has not taken it away; it has used it for outreach, to go and knock on the doors of families who would never think of coming into a building run by a local authority. There are different models, but we are looking to learn from the best models, including some of the family hubs in places such as Westminster.

Oral Answers to Questions

Layla Moran Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

Today’s announcement of 37 new free schools to deal with exclusions is all very well, but the fact is that the reason why headteachers feel that they have to exclude pupils is that there is simply not enough money in special educational needs and disability provision in the first place. More is not enough from this Government. When will the Secretary of State finally fund SEND provision properly?

[Damian Hinds]

As the hon. Lady knows, there is more money going into high needs provision—£6 billion. However, it is also true—this is implicit in what she says—that there are greater demands on the system. That is why we brought forward as a first stage the package that I announced a few months ago, including the extra revenue funding and extra capital funding, but we know that there is more to do.

Relationships and Sex Education

Layla Moran Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. I do not think I can do any better than read word for word from the guidance:

“Once those discussions”—

that is to say, those on the request to withdraw—

“have taken place, except in exceptional circumstances, the school should respect the parents’ request to withdraw the child, up to and until three terms before the child turns 16. After that point, if the child wishes to receive sex education rather than be withdrawn, the school should make arrangements to provide the child with sex education during one of those terms.”

But the right continues to exist up until the three terms before the child reaches 16.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

I too wholeheartedly welcome this guidance. When I was a teacher, these were the lessons that I loved teaching the most. However, without good training, without a full understanding of the full evidence behind them, these lessons are really quite difficult to teach, and not all teachers are adept at doing that. What assurance can the Secretary of State give to all teachers that, if they are going to be teaching this, they will get proper training, not just online tools? Furthermore, will they have the time to be able to engage not just with that, but with the conversations that come naturally after these lessons as well?

[Damian Hinds]

I am glad to hear that the hon. Lady really enjoyed teaching these lessons. That is not true, of course, for every single teacher. Some can find it quite difficult, which makes the provision of good training and materials even more important. There are lots of third party organisations that produce high quality materials. We want to make sure that schools are easily able to access them, but I can give her the commitment that we will make sure that good training is in place.

Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Funding

Layla Moran Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Sir Vince Cable]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: those are both key parts of the solution. For example, I have discovered that there are children whose need for wheelchairs—clearly a health requirement—is treated as an educational need. There are many such cases in which the finance sits in silos and is not sensibly dealt with.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

My right hon. Friend is being very generous with his time, and I congratulate him on securing this debate. My constituent Sally Foulsham, who runs a parent group called SHIFT, is in contact with more than 100 parents. She reports that what most frustrates them is the lack of funding for child and adolescent mental health services, which is a major block to unlocking the funding that should be available for EHCPs in the first place. Does my right hon. Friend agree?

[Sir Vince Cable]

Yes. The decline in CAMHS has led to a lot of children not being properly helped at an early stage and requiring greater special needs provision as a result.

To conclude my point about finance, a large number of local authorities are in serious financial trouble, and not just in London—even those that are doing their best and are perfectly competent. Consequently, they have a large financial deficit sitting on their balance sheet. One of their main sources of anxiety is what will happen with respect to Government legislation that treats them as requiring special measures if they do not sort out the problem. At the moment, they are not sure whether to deal with the problem immediately. Perhaps the Minister could advise us what conversations her colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government have had about how to deal with the problem.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Vince Cable]

It is a shocking indictment, but it brings to the surface the dilemmas that many local authorities face when they are forced into a position of rationing. They are not allowed to describe it as rationing, because they would be admitting to a legal offence that could be held against them in a tribunal, but we all know that rationing takes place.

Rationing happens in several forms. One, which relates to the hon. Lady’s intervention, is that local authorities drag their feet with what were once called statements but are now called healthcare plans. I believe that the National Autistic Society says that 50% of parents with autistic children wait more than a year for those plans to appear. In other cases, provision is cut to well below the necessary standard: the Young Vision Alliance draws attention to the fact that one of the casualties of the recent rationing has been the issuing of aids to children with visual impairments, which is becoming a serious problem.

Another device that authorities resort to, although of course they do not present it as such, is refusing residential places. In most cases, inclusion in mainstream schools is much the best course of action, but in other cases residential schools are more appropriate. Yet, authorities refuse to agree to them, so the parents have to become carers while the children sit at home, become socially isolated and are never able to develop properly into adulthood.

The main consequence of the conflict between supply and demand is that more and more parents are having to go to tribunal. There has been a 20% growth in tribunals in each of the past few years, and 86% of parents win them, although perhaps “win” is not the right word—in some ways it is a lose-lose situation. Nevertheless, that is an extraordinary figure. It indicates that many local authorities are pushing parents to tribunal, knowing that they themselves will lose, incurring significant costs—about £34 million a year, I believe—simply as a way of holding off demand that they are legally required to meet.

My concluding section is about solutions. How do we deal with this? First, there is a broad acceptance that children should be kept, as far as possible, in mainstream and maintained schools rather than in more demanding provision elsewhere. That is true for educational reasons—inclusion is a good philosophy and has good results—but it is also more economical. The figures are striking: in mainstream and maintained schools, the cost is about £6,000 more for SEND pupils than for non-SEND pupils, while for maintained special schools the cost is about £23,000 more, and for private special schools it is about £40,000 more. In many cases, the private special schools perform a very important function and are of very high quality, which is clearly why people seek them out, but there is certainly some evidence that those schools are exploiting monopoly provision and taking advantage of local authorities. In some cases, they should be referred to the Competition and Markets Authority.

Notwithstanding that issue, the differential suggests an enormous demand for specialist provision that the maintained sector should cater for, but the trend is in the opposite direction. Last year, for the first time, the majority of special needs pupils were not catered for in mainstream maintained schools—a big backward step that reflects the pressures that I have described.

The second clearly undesirable mechanism being used is shifting the burden to other schools, which unfortunately is happening in my own borough. The council is deeply regretful, but it has had to ask the Department for permission to raid the schools budget because the special needs block is grossly insufficient. That is bad not just in itself, because schools are under financial pressure, but because it sets mainstream pupils against special needs pupils. It is quite wicked, actually—it creates resentment in an area in which we should be united in compassion.

[Layla Moran]

Is my right hon. Friend aware that the practice is now ubiquitous throughout the country? In Oxfordshire, we have a bizarre situation in which the heads board has refused the extra transfer of money, yet the council is now going to the Secretary of State to override what the heads of local schools believe is the right thing for everyone else. There is an inherent tension around where the money will come from. In the end, it should just be more money.

[Sir Vince Cable]

Indeed. My hon. Friend graphically highlights the dilemma that I am describing: people acting with very good intentions are now being forced into conflict, in a very damaging way.

That point brings me to the crux of the problem: the Government’s role via the high needs budget. I acknowledge that the Government have taken some action—I do not want to be completely grudging. There was an increase of £250 million in the 2018-19 and 2019-20 budgets, part of the special provision announced last year, and that is welcome. However, the LGA has run its ruler over that and has computed that it accounts for about a quarter of the deficit. It is a small step forward. A much bigger step is required.

The second thing the Government can do within existing budget constraints was raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton. Some money should be diverted to special needs school provision from within the large increase in cash that is being made available to the health service.

We cannot avoid the conclusion that, in the spending review ahead, the Government are simply going to have to review the weight they give to special needs provision as opposed to the normal school funding block, and to be substantially more generous in respect of special needs provision. They have announced that we have come to the end of austerity. Some of us are a bit sceptical, but this is one area where they can prove it.

Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy

Layla Moran Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The early career framework is built on best evidence of the approach to teaching. It is a welcome framework and focuses on those issues that teachers need to be trained in to be effective as teachers. I was struck by how different it is to enter into the teaching profession compared with other professions, such as chartered accountancy. There is a lot of support in the first few years of training to be an accountant, once one is in work. In the teaching profession, there is a steep learning curve in those early years, and we have been concerned about the high drop-out rate in the first few years of people’s careers.

The strategy seeks to give more support to teachers in those early years, because it is not just a recruitment strategy; it is also about increasing retention of those highly able people so that they stay in the profession—a profession they almost certainly love when they come into it, and which they can be driven out of by excessive workload and a lack of support.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

Having done both that job and this one, I can absolutely agree that starting out as a teacher is harder than starting out as an MP. Although I welcome this strategy, which is long overdue, it does nothing to stem the real reasons why teachers are leaving: the toxic culture created in large part by this Government, the reduction of children to data points, and cuts to school budgets that have spread teachers’ good will as thin as it can get. The strategy will not fix that. We need to tackle the core issues, for example by abolishing Ofsted and putting in place something that teachers absolutely trust and by increasing massively the amount of high-quality professional development. What are the Minister’s plans to tackle the real reasons why teachers are leaving in the first place?