Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Bowie Excerpts(2 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Walker
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Government guidance sets out the powers that local authorities have and the actions that they can take. He is right that the adult education budget has funding to support literacy and, with the new numeracy programme, to support numeracy. There is a role for stepping up in that space. Local authorities already have powers to specify levels of literacy and numeracy on a case-by-case basis, and having the statutory register will encourage them to use those powers.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
The Minister for Higher and Further Education (Michelle Donelan)
We have asked the Office for Students to refocus the access and participation regime on real social mobility by getting students on to courses that they complete and that lead to graduate jobs, not just getting them to the door. We have also committed up to £75 million to a national state scholarship to support high-achieving disadvantaged students.
Andrew Bowie
In the Secretary of State’s statement on the Augar review last month, he said:
“Access to higher education must be dependent on attainment and ability to succeed, and not inhibited by a student’s background.”—[Official Report, 24 February 2022; Vol. 709, c. 489.]
Will the Minister expand on how the Department will ensure that that is the case, so that we avoid the situation overseen by the Scottish Government where people from a deprived background are now less likely to enter higher education than when they took office?
Michelle Donelan
Under our Government, disadvantaged 18-year-olds in England are now 82% more likely to go to university than in 2010. We want universities to play an even greater role in improving access for those who are disadvantaged, however, so we are asking them to raise standards in schools and colleges; offer flexible and skills-based courses; tackle drop-out rates; and support students throughout university and on to graduation.
Higher Education Reform
Andrew Bowie Excerpts(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Nadhim Zahawi
I remember our time on the Business Committee when Lord Browne made the initial proposals and we scrutinised them. It is only right that one is able to go back and refine the system and get it to work sustainably, and that is exactly what we are doing in this case. On disadvantaged students, the investment of £75 million in scholarships will make a huge difference. But also, when the hon. Gentleman and I sat on that Select Committee, there was no lifelong loan entitlement where students had a different path to gaining those skills and that career path to university. It is only right that we get the balance right between students and the taxpayer.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
On behalf of the many thousands of Scots studying at English universities and of the many parents of Scots currently at university in England, I thank the Secretary of State and the Minister for Higher and Further Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan), for engaging with those of us who had concerns about how the Augar report, the review and the announcement today were proceeding. I specifically welcome the abolition of interest rates above inflation and the extension of the freeze on maximum tuition fees, but there will be those who are worried about the lowering of the repayment threshold. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that in this country and under this Government it will always be about ability and never about background when determining someone’s access to some of the best educational establishments in the world?
Nadhim Zahawi
That is absolutely right. I could not have put it any better.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Bowie Excerpts(2 years, 4 months ago)
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Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful for the hon. Member’s question. I hope that he backs the record investment in education—£86 billion—that the Chancellor provided in the Budget. The Sutton Trust—I hope the hon. Member appreciates its research—suggests that, in 2016, the 300 schools that had increased EBacc take-up were more likely to achieve good GCSEs in mathematics and English, with pupil premium pupils benefiting the most. That is real levelling up from this Government.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
The Minister for Further and Higher Education (Michelle Donelan)
We are considering reforms to continue to drive up the quality of higher education, promote genuine social mobility and ensure better value for money for both the taxpayer and the student. I will not comment on speculation, but we remain committed to a fairer funding model for students in higher education and will conclude the post-18 review in due course.
Andrew Bowie
I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. I know that she is as aware as I am of the effect of lockdown on the education of the current generation of students, so may I urge her, whatever decision she and the Department come to regarding the threshold for student loan repayments, to ensure that we do not do anything that would be perceived as punishing this generation—a generation that feels so hard done by as a result of the necessary decisions taken over the past two years?
Michelle Donelan
My hon. Friend is an assiduous campaigner on behalf of students. I reassure him and the House that we are committed to a funding model for higher education that is fair for students and the taxpayer—a system that enables those with the ability and the ambition to go to university, complete their course and get a graduate job.
Michelle Donelan
As the hon. Member knows well, we will not comment on speculation. We will shortly respond in full to the Augar review, and the best interests of students, taxpayers and universities will be at the heart of that report.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
Michelle Donelan
Ensuring that everyone, regardless of their background, has the opportunity to pursue STEM subjects is a key priority of this Government. We fund multiple programmes to boost STEM uptake, particularly among girls—that includes providing £84 million to improve computing teaching and participation at GCSE and A-level and £76 million for maths teaching for mastery—and we have more than 20,000 STEM ambassadors, of whom 40% are women.
Investing in Children and Young People
Andrew Bowie Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) this afternoon.
Before I go on, I, like everybody else this afternoon, pay tribute to the amazing work done over the past year and a half by teachers, support staff and everybody else involved in delivering education in my constituency of West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine and across the entire country.
It is incredibly interesting that the SNP have chosen not to have any representation in this debate—its Benches are deserted. That could be because today’s Opposition motion deals entirely with investing in young people in England; the SNP may have decided to take a principled stand in not involving themselves in matters that do not affect their constituents—unlike me and my Scottish Conservative colleagues, who care just as much about a child’s welfare in Penrith as we do about that of a child in Perth.
However, that SNP principle is allowed to lapse from time to time, as we have seen on such important issues as foxhunting, in which the SNP does feel it has a role to play in deciding what goes on south of the border. So I do not think it is that. I think that, as when the SNP removed Scotland from international league tables on educational performance, it is terrified of having to defend its shameful record of supporting children and young people in Scotland.
Today’s motion talks about the Government’s plans to support children, investment in targeted support and additional funding in England, and it is usually at this point that a separatist would jump up from the Benches opposite primed with their SNP HQ briefing points—sent, by the wonders of the internet, from Murrell towers in Edinburgh—to opine to the world on how much better things are in Scotland, but not today, and why? Because while this Conservative Government are committing £1.4 billion to education recovery, £1 billion for tutoring courses to help students recover from lost teaching during the past year, £400 million for training and development of teachers, £700 million on a catch-up funding package, raising the pupil premium, eliminating digital exclusion—including £3 million for laptops and tablets for students in need—and extending our holiday food and activities package, the SNP is failing Scotland’s children.
The Scottish National party Government claim to have invested £400 million in catch-up funding and, per pupil, that would appear on the face of it to be more generous than the UK Government, but take a look at how that money is being spent: the vast majority is being spent on increasing ventilation in classrooms. That is very important in getting kids back into the classroom of course, but it does not help the children and young people of Scotland catch up. More than half of children and young people in Scotland had no contact at all from teachers over the first lockdown, a fact not helped by the roll-out of tablets and laptops in Scotland last year being a complete and utter shambles, and I will not even go near the situation regarding exams and assessments.
That is even before we examine the record of the SNP in education before the pandemic hit, with the attainment gap widening, children from less advantaged households in England now more likely to get a place at university than those from similar backgrounds in Scotland, and the trumpeted and ironically named curriculum for excellence leading to a situation where in the poorest parts of Scotland one pupil in five—one in five—leaves school without achieving a single pass at national 5 level, and where across Scotland one in 10 children fails to meet the required standard for national 4 in literacy and numeracy.
So what is the plan in Scotland? What is the SNP’s grand plan—the ambitious project to help children and parents catch up for lost time? It is a £20 million summer of play. Of course, encouraging and providing opportunities to socialise and play and to improve the mental wellbeing of children is vital, and I actually think we should be looking towards the Scandinavian model of education and examining how the model there is based much more on putting the health and wellbeing of children first, but our young people need so much more than the derisory £25 per head that is being pledged by the SNP on this. If the Labour party is criticising us for not investing enough—that is its position today, and that is completely respectable—to help young people get back on track in England, what on earth are we to make of this laughably poor situation in Scotland? Except that it is not laughable, because this is incredibly serious.
Our Government—any Government—have a duty to the next generation to provide them with the skills and education needed for them to get on in the world of work. In this duty—this sacred duty—the SNP has failed and are failing the young people of Scotland. Today’s students in Scotland will pay the price for SNP failure. Scotland will pay the price for SNP failure. I oppose the motion today because this Government are doing the right thing by children and young people in this country. I only wish that our ambition was matched by the Government in Edinburgh.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Bowie Excerpts(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
The Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation (Mr Sam Gyimah)
We want our universities to be bastions of free speech where a free and robust exchange of ideas thrives. I am very encouraged that the Office for Students has made it very clear that, as a regulator, it will be encouraging free speech in our universities and that, if it intervenes, it will never be to restrict it.
Mr Gyimah
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We want free speech, diversity of opinion, diversity of thought and civility in debate, where people do not easily take offence or give offence too easily. That is why I am working with the Equality and Human Rights Commission and key stakeholders to come up with new guidance on free speech to deal with the dizzying array of regulations that wreckers on campus can exploit to frustrate free speech.
Andrew Bowie
My hon. Friend will agrees that many of us in the Chamber would not be here today were it not for the culture of free speech and our ability to engage in it on our campuses to develop and hone our political philosophies and arguments for right or wrong. Does he agree that we in this place who have benefited most from that right have a duty to stand up for it wherever we see it under threat on far too many of our university campuses?
Relationships and Sex Education
Andrew Bowie Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Damian Hinds
The hon. Lady is right about the importance of financial education, and both the maths and citizenship curriculums include financial education content, such as practical aspects of the sort that she outlined. Another thing in the consultation document, although it is not in the headlines of the description, is a question about what more we might do for 16 to 18-year-olds. Now that the participation age is up to 18, when record numbers of people go away from home to university and have to budget and so on for the first time, we are asking what more could be done for 16 to 18-year-olds.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
As has been said, education is a devolved area, but across the UK there is concern that in 2018 one in three young people made new friends online and that, sadly, one in four pupils reported being bullied online, and in the online world there is no respect for devolved or reserved boundaries or indeed for national borders. Does my right hon. Friend agree that keeping children safe online must be a priority of effective relationships and sex education?
Damian Hinds
I agree with my hon. Friend. The danger is that we grown-ups talk about helping children to make the distinction between the online and offline worlds, and how a social media friend is not the same as a proper friend, but for children growing up today I am not sure that there is a dividing line between the online and offline worlds—they are both an integral part of self. That makes it even more important to talk, right from the start, about the things that he mentions. From the very beginning, therefore, the curriculum includes online issues.