Post-18 Education and Funding

Peter Kyle Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

There are no spending implications today. This is an independent panel review report which feeds into a wider Government review, and—as I have mentioned a couple of times now—we will finalise it later in the year. The funding for the devolved Administrations, including funding through the Barnett formula, will apply in the normal way, as per the statement of funding policy. It will then be up to the Government and the devolved Administrations to decide on the allocation of that money in the light of competing demands.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on further education and lifelong learning, I can welcome and celebrate many parts of the report. However, as someone who went to the University of Sussex as a mature student, experienced for the first time in my life an institution that saw potential in me, and worked hard to fulfil that potential—whether it has been successful or not is up for debate—I am worried about the possibility that we will enter a world in which further and higher education will be pitted against each other in a zero-sum competition. Can the Secretary of State reassure the House that whatever the recommendations are, he will never allow that to happen?

[Damian Hinds]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman and the work of his all-party parliamentary group. We must not allow different parts of our education system to be pitted against each other, and I can give him an absolute commitment not to do so. In fact, as he will know through his work, there is already a great deal of cross-over between what higher education institutions do and what further education institutions do, but they are both incredibly important parts of the overall system.

Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Kyle Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

Indeed. Schools, and education more broadly, are a unique case in our national life because they are all about bringing up the next generation and social mobility, and ensuring that our economy works at its full productive potential.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

Ofsted has proved to be one of the most effective regulators in the country, but with cuts of almost 50%, inspections are too short and inspection teams are too small, and many schools simply do not get the inspections they need—some should require improvement or be in special measures and are not; and some good schools should be outstanding but are not. Will the Secretary of State commit to putting more resource into Ofsted so that parents can have faith that their schools are delivering for their students?

[Damian Hinds]

I have faith in the Ofsted system, which is an incredibly important part of our system alongside performance measures and so on. It is a vital part of what parents use to select their school. The new Ofsted framework, which is due to come in next year, is a further opportunity to develop that, but we want a proportionate system.

Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Kyle Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

The Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), talked about the maintained nursery sector earlier. I can confirm that we greatly value the role played by maintained nurseries, and will continue to work with them to ensure that they play that role as effectively as possible in our diverse early-years sector.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

Children are not safe when they are being taught in schools where water pours through the ceiling when it rains, as happens in one school in my constituency. What is the Secretary of State doing to end the drought in capital funding for schools, particularly those like the one I have just mentioned?

[Damian Hinds]

I should of course be happy to look into the case that the hon. Gentleman has raised. We have allocated a total of £23 billion of capital for school buildings, but it is difficult for me to comment on that specific case from the Dispatch Box without knowing the details.

Schools That Work For Everyone

Peter Kyle Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

My hon. Friend is right, and we must look at all groups of children. The most important fundamental underlying reform is to how we measure what happens in secondary schools, and it is not possible to overstate the importance of moving to the progress measure in ensuring that the progress and performance of all children is taken fully into account.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

If we are to have more investment in grammar schools, will the right hon. Gentleman at least treat them according to the same standards as other schools? Will he start by amending the Education and Adoption Act 2016 so that if a grammar school is deemed to be coasting, it will, just like any other local authority school, be converted to an academy instantly?

[Damian Hinds]

Recently I was able to make an announcement on our future direction of travel on the accountability system. We must clarify it—[Interruption.] Yes, including that. I set out the direction of travel in my recent speech to the National Association of Head Teachers.

Social Mobility Commission

Peter Kyle Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Let us take a good, honest, reliable citizen—there are so many to choose from on both sides. I call Peter Kyle.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker—that is an introduction I will struggle to live up to.

Alan Milburn has said that he resigned because of dysfunction in the Government and the lack of implementation. The Minister’s response gives the impression that he resigned because all the work was already done. Once again, can the Minister give us a clear explanation: why did the board resign, from his perspective?

[Mr Goodwill]

Mr Milburn was told on 22 November that, although the post would be readvertised, he would not be expected to apply. On the resignation, as the hon. Gentleman described it, we were looking to refresh the board and bring some new blood in. I hope that that will give us a good opportunity to improve the functioning of the board. As I say, that is no personal reflection on Alan Milburn or the work he has done—he has been very good over the five years he has done this job. He has held us to account and held our feet to the fire, as the commission was designed to do.

Global LGBT Rights

Peter Kyle Excerpts

Thursday 26th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

When we talk about these abuses around the world, it is best to speak with a sense of humility about the challenges we still face with homophobia in our own country. In the Brighton and Hove area—which I am proud to represent as one of its three MPs—we saw a savage homophobic attack in May last year against two young people, Dain Finney and his partner James. They were visitors to Brighton, but they were savagely attacked that night.

Just this week, we have also seen how somebody who ended up as a Member of Parliament, having been elected this year, used a type of homophobic language before first coming to this place that was really quite extreme and quite offensive.

There are three things about the response to both those cases that set us as a country apart from those countries that we are talking about and that we aim to tackle in this debate. First, in the case of Dain and James—the two men assaulted in Brighton—the men who assaulted them were arrested and convicted, and they are currently serving a five-year custodial sentence. The state was on the victims’ side, but in some other countries—from Russia to Uganda—the police and the judiciary are often the ones carrying out the homophobia in the first place, whether through violence or the use of laws that are homophobic. They are not protecting the citizens they should be protecting.

After the assaults in Brighton that left Dain Finney with both eye sockets broken, both cheekbones broken and his nose broken, he said:

“I hope that what happened to us reminds people that discrimination of any kind isn’t acceptable and we need to be challenging it when it does happen or when we see it. No one should live their lives in fear and I would just urge people to be themselves and walk out the door each day with their heads held high.”

I know that those words, coming from a 22-year-old victim of hate crime, will be inspiring to Members across the House. However, this debate concerns people who live in countries where victims cannot hold their heads high because they suffer the fear of arrest, torture and even execution. Their own states will not protect them, so we as a country have to deliver some of the change that their own states are incapable of delivering themselves.

In the recent instance of the appalling words used by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Jared O’Mara) to describe gay people, it is noticeable that both Parliament and the media were convulsed with revulsion by his words and the sentiment that lay behind them, even though they were in his distant past. It is right that he has been suspended from the Labour party, while these words and actions are being investigated, but in Parliaments in Tanzania, Chechnya, Russia and too many countries of Africa, offensive homophobic rhetoric is not challenged —it has become the norm.

The excellent report from the APPG on global LGBT rights makes sobering reading. The work put into by parliamentarians and campaigning organisations was intense and immense, but really worth it. I was particularly struck by the legislative assault on same-sex relationships by the state in Uganda and in Nigeria. Legislation was introduced in both countries that strengthened the penalties for same-sex activity and drastically limited the ability of LGBT people to organise in defence of their rights. Nigeria’s Same Sex Marriage (Prohibitions) Act contains provisions that criminalise the formation, operation and support of gay clubs, societies and organisations, with sentences of up to 10 years’ imprisonment. The curtailment of the ability of LGBT communities to organise themselves, to receive funds and to provide services to and advocate on behalf of LGBT people goes beyond mere homophobia—it is a direct assault on civil society itself. In terms of finding ways to deliver change in these countries, the erosion of civil society worries me the most.

In Britain, the transformation from a country with section 28 in statute to one of equal rights and gay marriage was not conceived, led and delivered solely within the four walls of this Parliament. Most of the leadership came from outside—from within our communities and our remarkable voluntary and campaigning sectors. It was one of the best examples of civil society and legislators working together, almost in partnership, to deliver positive social change. It is notable that many of the countries we have talked about today have suffered an erosion or curtailment of wider civil rights first as part of a programme of eroding the rights of gay people. This makes people more vulnerable to abuse, both state-sponsored and from within the institutions of family and community that surround them.

I urge Minsters to act unrelentingly in this area to support lawyers trying to challenge abuse in-country by using the expertise and resources not just of DFID but of the Ministry of Justice, to train our ambassadors appropriately in the issue, to ensure that this is a priority of our whole Government and to use our position in every multinational and multilateral body—from the UN to the Commonwealth, to the monetary and banking organisations—to make sure that in the case of any country that chooses to repress rather than support people who want the basic human right to be gay and to be happy, Britain is always on the side of those people.

16-to-19 Education Funding

Peter Kyle Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[Nic Dakin]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. The reality is that the squeeze on funding for education for 16 to 19-year-olds puts pressure on special needs support not only in colleges but in school sixth forms. This issue covers sixth-formers wherever they end up in the system.

Recent research from the Institute of Education describes sixth form education in England as “uniquely narrow and short” compared with the high-performing education systems elsewhere in the world in places such as Shanghai, Singapore and Canada. Our sixth-formers are now funded to receive only half the tuition time of sixth- formers in other leading economies. As my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Thelma Walker) pointed out, as little as 15 to 17 hours of weekly tuition and support has become the norm for students in England, compared with 30-plus hours in Shanghai. Students in other leading education systems receive more tuition time, study more subjects and in some cases benefit from a three-year programme of study rather than two.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making some incredible points. Students are rightly now staying at school until 18 and those extra two years are important in tackling the country’s skills challenges. Does he agree that we need to invest properly because otherwise we will be reduced to a core curriculum rather than the expansive experience that young people need to prepare them for life beyond school?

[Nic Dakin]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The tragedy is that already the post-16 curriculum has shrunk so we are already in danger of getting to where my hon. Friend describes, and there is concern about where we might be going in future.

The funding that schools and colleges now receive to educate sixth-formers covers the cost of delivering just three A-level or equivalent qualifications, and little more. As a result, the wider support offer to students has been greatly diminished. That means it is increasingly difficult to address properly the concerns expressed by employers that young people lack the skills to flourish in the workplace. The CBI’s 2016 education and skills survey, for example, expressed concern about the current education system, with its emphasis on grades and league tables

“at the expense of wider personal development”.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we need to continue to commit and invest more in the sector to ensure that it does not shrink further.

I think everybody would agree that programmes of study in which students have too much free time are not effective at getting the best out of them. The students are in transition from a fairly directed pre-16 learning environment to the independent learning of HE and the world of work. That transition needs to be properly and appropriately supported.

On a recent visit to Scunthorpe’s brilliant North Lindsey College, the excellent principal, Anne Tyrrell, remarked on how the demands from students with mental health problems had grown exponentially in recent years. Many schools and colleges lack the resources to address the sharp increase in students reporting mental health problems. That is a real issue that has been compounded by cuts to NHS and local authority budgets. The charity Mind recently found that local authorities now spend less than 1% of their public health budget on mental health. We know that students with better health and well-being are likely to achieve much better academically and that participation in extra-curricular activities has a positive effect on attainment. Such things are interlinked and related.

It is clear that the student experience in schools and colleges is deteriorating as a result of the funding pressures that hon. Members have drawn attention to in their own constituencies across England. For example, two thirds of sixth-form colleges have already shrunk their curriculum offer; over a third have dropped modern foreign languages courses; and the majority have reduced or removed the extracurricular activities available to students, including music, drama and sport.

Even more concerning, almost two out of three colleges do not believe that the funding they receive next year will be sufficient to support students that are educationally or economically disadvantaged. So the underfunding of 16-to-19 education is fast becoming a real obstacle to improving social mobility.

As costs continue to rise, the underfunding of sixth- form education is becoming a major challenge for all providers. Schools increasingly find themselves having to use the funding intended for 11 to 16-year-olds to subsidise their sixth forms, which risks damaging the education of younger students. Small sixth forms in rural areas are increasingly unviable, lacking the economies of scale to provide students with the rounded education that we all believe in.

Grammar schools are increasingly raising their voices in serious concern about the underfunding of 16-to-19 education.