National Funding Formula: Schools/High Needs
Andy Burnham Excerpts(7 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
It slightly pains me to call an Everton supporter today, but I do so nevertheless.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
I will keep the gloating to a minimum, Mr Speaker. The Secretary of State is dressing it up very well, but the reality of what she has announced is that some schools in the most deprived parts of the country, which face the biggest challenges, will have money taken away from them and given to schools elsewhere. Would it not have been much fairer for her to have asked the Chancellor for more money to bring the gap up that way? Instead, she is making schools in the toughest areas make teachers redundant to pay for this change.
Justine Greening
Again, there is a lot of rhetoric, but in the end the right hon. Gentleman does not seem to have listened to my statement, which was very clear that this funding formula absolutely reflects issues of deprivation and lower prior attainment, as well as local cost issues. It is a step forward in making sure that we have a much fairer approach than in the past. I do not think he would be able to justify the current situation to many parents who simply cannot understand why their children get less funding than other children purely because of where they grow up.
Education and Social Mobility
Andy Burnham Excerpts(7 years, 5 months ago)
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Angela Rayner
I want to make some progress, because I will wrap up shortly.
In the consultation document launched in November, the Government have already pledged £50 million to help existing grammar schools to expand. The same Green Paper made a series of substantial, uncosted pledges to schools that want to become grammars or to academy chains that want to open them. Now, just this weekend, Government sources briefed The Sunday Times that there will be “tens of millions” more to help grammar schools to expand.
The idea that this is the way in which the Government should spend taxpayers’ money is simply baffling. When nurseries across the country are facing closure because the Government will not deliver the investment needed to deliver on their manifesto pledge to provide 30 hours of free childcare a week and our schools are facing deeper cuts in their budgets than at any time since the 1970s, why is this money being taken away from them?
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an outstanding speech. Have we not seen the problem with Tory education thinking this afternoon? Government Members think that some types of schools are better than others and that some children deserve better opportunities than others. That is what is so entirely wrong with what they are arguing today.
Angela Rayner
Do you know what? That is the real rub: that is the difference between Labour Members and Government Members. We believe that teachers are invaluable in making sure that our schools are the best they can possibly be, rather than focusing on the vehicle in which those teachers and drivers take forward that mission.
We know that Members across this House agree that this is not the way we should spend school budgets. Members in the devolved nations will want to know the implications for their own school budgets, too. I know that many Government Members share the view of Labour Members that education is the key to social mobility, and that for all our differences on policy, they would not want the Government to waste the Department for Education’s budget on an ineffective vanity project. That must be the key test of every spending commitment made by the Secretary of State.
Justine Greening
I have seen that report. It shows that when people look at the evidence and are prepared to step away from political ideology, they see the reality that grammars can have a transformational impact in some of the most deprived communities in which we want to see the biggest changes.
Justine Greening
No, I will make some progress because I have given way to a lot of Members.
As I was saying, we want to improve teacher training. We have therefore started the teaching and leadership innovation fund so that the most challenged schools can build more capacity to have excellent teachers and leaders.
It is vital that the standards and quality of our technical education in this country mirror the excellence that we have been embedding in the academic routes. We have focused on academic routes, so it is time for us to focus similarly on improving technical education for young people. We will work hard to put technical and further education on a level footing with the academic route that other young people already take. Through the Technical and Further Education Bill, we are slimming down the system of qualifications and putting employers in the driving seat regarding how they are designed and delivered so that there are a smaller number of routes that are much easier to understand and lead directly to career pathways for young people.
We have also focused on apprenticeships so that young people get direct work experience as they learn. We plan to create 3 million new apprenticeships by 2020 and, for the first time, British business is investing through the apprenticeship levy to make sure that those apprenticeships are of a high quality. Yesterday, we had the Third Reading of the Higher Education and Research Bill, which will put in place a new teaching framework to drive up teaching quality, to make university outcomes more transparent than ever and, through the planned Office for Students, to promote equality of opportunity throughout our universities.
We have to recognise that one of the biggest challenges faced by the education system is the growing need for more good school places. Despite the progress that we have made, too many children still do not have a place at a good school. There are 1.2 million children in schools that Ofsted says are not good enough. That was why we published the “Schools that work for everyone” consultation, which asks important open questions about how we can use the educational expertise that exists in our country’s independent schools, faith schools, universities and selective schools. We cannot afford to leave a single stone unturned as we drive up opportunity.
Andy Burnham
The Secretary of State rightly spoke about building a consensus across the House on education policy, but I put it to her that that will be more likely to happen if the Government stick to their mandate on education. Will she read out the precise section of the Conservative party manifesto from the last election that gives her a mandate to lift the bar on the creation of new grammar schools?
Justine Greening
We talked about excellent school places and expanding the very best schools in our country, including grammar schools. I just do not think it is viable for the Labour party to say that it does not like the grammars that we have, but to be equivocal about whether it is still its policy to shut those grammars. I will give way to the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) if she wants to confirm the position. There is a gaping hole in the official Opposition’s policy on grammars. I do not think that it is tenable in a country that has grammars and selection for the Opposition to say they do not like that situation, but that they do not want us to take any steps whatever to see how we can deliver more strongly on social mobility through the schools already in place.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
I begin by declaring an interest: I was a physics teacher and spent 20 years working in the comprehensive sector.
My father sat, and failed, the 11-plus exam. He ended up in the local secondary, St Roch’s, in an inner-city area of Glasgow. Pupils at St Roch’s were not expected to achieve. School was simply a holding area until they were old enough to enter the workforce. My dad set out on the path that was laid in front of him. Most of his classmates went on to work in the shipyards, but he went on to work in the Glasgow parks department, where he remained for over 40 years. He has some good memories, but work was simply something he did to provide for his family. There was no element of choice: you were grateful you had the job, and he was grateful.
By the time my siblings and I went to school, grammars had been completely abolished in Scotland. We also attended the local secondary, but now it was comprehensive and there were no preconceived ideas or restrictions placed upon us. My father watched with pride as one by one his five children went on to university—possible, of course, because we paid no fees and were awarded maintenance grants.
By coincidence, early in my career I taught in my father’s old school. It was, however, transformed. By now, St Roch’s was a comprehensive and a much happier place. The walls were a celebration of past pupils’ achievements—some academic, some business and some vocational—but the real difference was the expectation of achievement. Every young person entering the school was seen as a human being with potential and every young person felt the weight of that expectation. The real problem with selective education is not that we end up with good schools and poorer schools, and not that one set of teachers works harder than another; it is that whole swathes of our young people will be labelled—wrongly, of course—as having failed. With that, social mobility falls.
It might be argued that for those who have the intellectual maturity, or whose parents can pay for the tuition to pass the 11-plus exams, grammar schools offer a more sheltered experience, but the Government should be concerned with every single child. With grammar schools on the horizon, that is simply not the case.
Andy Burnham
Does the hon. Lady agree that the major flaw in the Secretary of State’s speech was that she could not bring herself to acknowledge that if she pursues this policy it will lead to the creation of more secondary modern schools? That is the truth that Government Members will not face up to.
Carol Monaghan
Absolutely. I actually think there was another flaw in the Secretary of State’s speech. Listening to her speaking in such glowing terms about grammar schools, I wondered why we do not just make every school a grammar. That would solve the problem.
Many secondary schools choose to set their pupils according to academic ability. However, the educational evidence for the benefits of setting is scant. Certainly when pupils are working on the same curricular content, the evidence is clear: mixed ability classes are far more successful in raising attainment. The most able pupils succeed in whatever class they are in. The least able pupils do a bit better in mixed ability. The massive advantage, however, is for the swathes of average attainers who, within a mixed ability class, have no ceiling placed on their ambitions. In fact, when the Government use one of their buzzwords, “aspiration”, it is indeed this large group of middle pupils who embody and can embrace that idea. Conversely, when decisions based on ability have been imposed on pupils, it sends out strong signals about what that particular group is expected to achieve. In other words, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Rolling this out on a much larger scale, as is being considered with the return to grammar schools, means that we have young people who have had decisions made on their future attainment before they even have a chance to attain.
The damage that that does cannot be underestimated. To be told at age 11 that you are not good enough is an incredibly difficult thing to overcome. Despite the best efforts of teachers, that labelling is a blow to confidence and self-esteem that can remain throughout a person’s life.
Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)
All Members can agree that a first-class education is the greatest investment we as a country can make in our next generation. I have no doubt about the Secretary of State’s commitment to increasing social mobility, having heard her speak around the Cabinet table over the past few years. I think we can also all agree that post-Brexit it is more important than ever that all our young people leave education well skilled and well educated, particularly if we are to have a new immigration policy in the next few years.
We want excellent education everywhere. As I said at our party conference a couple of years ago, that “everywhere” is fundamental. What is missing from the Green Paper is that sense of a strong and consistent whole system. That might be because it only talks about schools, rather than some of the other issues facing our education system, such as the quality of teaching and the need for more great teachers and for announcements on fairer funding. That said, I was pleased to hear the Secretary of State talking about her commitment to the EBacc.
I should also recognise the Secretary of State’s announcements on opportunity areas. In the White Paper published earlier this year, we identified areas—the achieving excellence areas—that really needed attention, and last week the Social Mobility Commission picked that up. We have heard already about the ResPublica report on Knowsley commissioned by the Knowsley education commission, to which we should pay tribute for recognising the entrenched educational under-performance in its own area and the need to ensure that children and families have choice when it comes to schools.
For me, there are two tests for new schools policies. First, do they specifically tackle areas of underperformance? Secondly—this is at the heart of the debate on selection—is every child being offered an academic, knowledge-rich curriculum? I know that that knowledge-rich curriculum is also of fundamental importance to the Minister for School Standards.
We have to acknowledge that the Government’s Green Paper sets out the dangers of change in selective schools. Paragraph 4 on page 21states:
“while those children that attend selective schools enjoy a far greater chance of academic success, there is some evidence that children who attend non-selective schools in selective areas may not fare as well academically – both compared to local selective schools and comprehensives in non-selective areas.”
The Education Policy Institute published a report in September. It wrote:
“Analysis of educational performance across OECD countries has concluded that a higher proportion of academically selective schools is not associated with better performance of a school system overall, according to results in the international PISA tests taken by pupils at age 15 in 2012.”
I would like to hear more from the Minister about the evidence the Government are relying on in making the proposals in the Green Paper.
We talk about being a one nation Government, so our focus has to be on tackling those areas of the country where school underperformance is still entrenched, where families do not have a choice, where there are no good or outstanding schools and where the opportunity to travel outside the borough boundaries just does not exist. If the Government seriously believe that having more selective schools will raise standards across the board, they would have proposed introducing those schools only in pilot areas where there was underperformance, but the Green Paper talks about local demand being a driver. What if those areas most in need of higher standards opt out of having new schools? Given the inherent problems in the proposals, the Green Paper has to talk about mitigating measures.
My other concern is that the proposals will distract the Department and the Government from the issues really facing our education system. Let me again mention fair funding, which I know colleagues of all parties, and particularly on the Conservative side, take incredibly seriously as an issue that has to be sorted out.
The second test is whether we think all children can benefit from an excellent, academic, knowledge-rich curriculum, which I think is what our future workforce of the 21st-century needs. True social mobility requires that every child be given the same opportunity.
Andy Burnham
I am listening carefully to what the right hon. Lady is saying. Does she agree with me that this policy is a distraction, and that if we wanted to make the biggest difference to education in our country, we would do that by focusing on the 0 to 4 age group and ensuring that more children arrive in reception classes ready to learn, with the language and social skills that they need?
Nicky Morgan
The right hon. Gentleman is right in the sense that early education is, of course, critically important. One of the issues surrounding more selection is that the attainment gap is already wide by the time children get to the age of 11, and often even before they have reached primary school. The right hon. Gentleman has been a Secretary of State, and he knows that Departments can do more than one thing, so we can focus on early years at the same time as focusing on making sure that every child has an excellent academic education.
As I was saying, true social mobility requires every child to be given the same opportunity, and it is not for other people to make judgments about what children are entitled to. I will always remember my visit to a primary school in Lancashire, whose headteacher informed me that the children in her previous school, a city centre school, were only ever going to be assessed as “requires improvement”. If children are being written off by some even before they have reached the age of 11, that tells me that there is a problem and that it needs to be tackled first.
I will be honest: when it comes to knowing how to vote, I have struggled with both the motion and the amendment before us today. What is being proposed in the Green Paper was not in our manifesto. I really hope that Ministers will listen to the responses to the consultation and to what Members of all parties say today. Let me suggest that if the Government are determined to take forward these proposals, they must set out how the proposals will lift standards in the underperforming areas, and they must start with those underperforming areas.
Andy Burnham
That is a completely useless analogy. Education is about life. It is about the skills that people need to get through life—the basic literacy and numeracy. Sport is not about the entirety of life. That is why education is different, and that is why it is wrong for any child to be labelled second class at the age of 11.
John Redwood
The right hon. Gentleman simply does not understand. If a young person from a poor background becomes a top footballer, that is a transformational event in their life, and good luck to them. Why do the Opposition not understand that exactly the same arguments apply to art, ballet and music? We take the children who we think are going to be the most talented musicians, at quite a young age, and we give them elite special training so that they can play to the highest standards in the world.
Autism
Andy Burnham Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Buckland
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I pay tribute to the work that he does in his constituency of Ilford North, through a joint initiative with local businesses, to obtain sponsorship and support to help young adults and adults with Asperger’s or autism into the workplace. We need to send out the message loud and clear that, far from looking at people with autism as a problem, we should be celebrating the great gifts that they have and their potential to be constructive members of the workplace.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I want to ensure that I did not misinterpret him when I heard him imply that the previous Government were forced to do something. There was a debate about the Bill promoted by the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), but in the end she persuaded the Government and we brought forward the first autism strategy. That has led to improvements on the ground. It is important to say that this has been a cross-party drive, and it is much-needed because there are huge gaps for children and adults with autism. I just want to be clear at the beginning that the right hon. Lady’s drive had full Labour party and cross-party support.
Mr Buckland
I want to ensure that today’s debate takes place in that cross-party spirit. Members from all parts of the House warmly supported the provisions of the 2009 Act. I appreciate that Governments have conflicting priorities and pressures on their time. It was through the support of all parts of the House that that private Member’s Bill became law. There is a common purpose in the Chamber today, in relation to both the progress that has been made and our aspirations for our constituents who have autism and their families.
Mr Buckland
The hon. Lady has great experience in this field and it has been a pleasure to work with her since we entered Parliament together. She is right. The category of behavioural difficulty is so often used as a repository for children who, in another context, would be treated differently. That is why, when it comes to diagnosis and identification of need, we have to do it better. We have to get better and better to ensure that children are in the right stream, the right school and the right environment. My worry—I know that she shares it—is that in labelling too many children in a behavioural category, we end up with children side by side in an inappropriate environment and in an unsuitable way that can be damaging to the child. I am grateful for her intervention.
Andy Burnham
The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. I just want to say that I am sorry that I cannot stay much longer, but I wanted to be here to show my support for what he has said.
Following on from the previous intervention, does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a role for educating health service practitioners to understand the early signs of autism, particularly Asperger’s? Is he as shocked as I am to hear of cases in my constituency of people being diagnosed with Asperger’s in their 50s, 60s, and even in their 70s? As my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) said, that is an indictment of a system that is not working at the moment.
Mr Buckland
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. Like him, I know of many cases of people who have been diagnosed in late middle age. What a missed opportunity for those individuals. That is not just a waste for them, but a waste of resources when it comes to how Government agencies plan provision for autism and related conditions.
Careers Service (Young People)
Andy Burnham Excerpts(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House believes that the Government should act urgently to guarantee face-to-face careers advice for all young people in schools.
The motion is in my name and that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham). The House this afternoon debated the challenges facing the coming generation; this evening, it is right to consider how, as a society, we help all young people to face up to those challenges, and how we give them the advice and support that they will need to find their way in a changing and highly competitive world.
It would seem that our debate is well timed. After today’s bombshell from the Boundary Commission, perhaps a few more of us all of a sudden have a keener interest in preserving a good-quality careers service. However, our woes are nothing compared with the dejection, disappointment and sheer hopelessness that many of our young constituents are experiencing. Jobs are getting harder to find, with close to 1 million young people now unemployed. Many are struggling to stay in education or training with the loss of education maintenance allowance and local authority travel grants. For a growing number, university is quite simply no longer seen as a realistic option.
Not surprisingly, some young people are feeling lost and do not know where to turn. Some are able to fall back on strong families and family connections to open doors, but that is not available to all young people. Those who feel lost need good careers and life advice more than ever.
What is the Government’s answer? Having kicked away the ladders of support—the EMA, the future jobs fund and Aimhigher—they are now pulling up the drawbridge, leaving young people alone in the dark to fend for themselves. Let me say at the beginning that this debate is not about preserving the status quo, and nor is it special pleading for the Connexions service. The previous Labour Government commissioned a report that highlighted problems with that service and we accepted that there were areas where it needed to improve. I have not come to the House tonight to say, “Nothing must change.”
The Opposition have previously said that we have no real disagreement with the Government over their vision for an all-age careers service. However, with every day that passes, it becomes less likely that the Government’s vision will ever become a reality, because careers services are disappearing, advisers are being made redundant, and young people are being left in the lurch. Schools are being given the statutory responsibility to provide careers advice, but no money to do so. It is a complete mess. Ministers promised a transition plan months ago, and tonight we ask them this simple question: where is it? They are treating dedicated careers professionals with contempt, and owe them the courtesy of some answers. That is why the Opposition have brought Ministers to the House this evening.
We appreciate why the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning is not here today—the Opposition wish him well—but why is the Secretary of State for Education not leading this debate for the Government? Where is he? I say this to the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb): what is more important when young people all over the country face the difficulty of finding a job, uncertainty about their futures and worries about the cost of education? What could be more important than the Government ensuring that those young people have access to good advice? Why is the Secretary of State not here to answer those concerns?
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)
My right hon. Friend sends his apologies to the House, but he is meeting 100 outstanding head teachers in Nottingham who have travelled there to meet him to discuss the opening of the first 100 teaching schools. That is why he cannot be here. If it had not been for that, he would have been here.
Andy Burnham
I thank the Minister for his reply, but debates in the House used to be more important than that. This is an urgent situation facing the careers service in this country. This is more urgent and it needs to be addressed by the Secretary of State. We need him to provide leadership. Frankly, he has provided none to date on this important issue. On his watch, the careers service in England has gone into meltdown, which is unforgivable considering all the pressures on young people today. He has shown next to no interest in this subject and has his head permanently stuck in an ivory tower. Instead of obsessing about Oxbridge, he needs to start engaging with the real world and the challenges that young people face in trying to get on in life.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend is right to pay tribute to dedicated careers professionals, who do a superb job, but is there not complete confusion over who provides advice to young people and those not in education, employment or training? Also, where has the money gone?
Andy Burnham
My hon. Friend asks a good question. In opposition, the Conservative party produced a manifesto for careers that spoke of £200 million being allocated to an all-age careers service. As well as asking this evening where the transition plan has gone, we might pick up the question that my hon. Friend has just asked: where has the money gone? Schools have not been given any extra money to provide a new careers service and to fulfil the statutory responsibility that the Government want to place on them. How can it be right at this time to ask schools to do more and then not give them the money to do the job for young people? It is utterly disgraceful.
Alok Sharma
I was rather hoping that the right hon. Gentleman would apologise, as his colleague the shadow Chancellor did yesterday, for the mess that the Labour party left this country in. The right hon. Gentleman asked where the money has gone. His Government managed to spend it. As he knows, his colleague, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne), left a note at the Treasury saying, “There is no money left.” There he has his answer. He should talk to his own colleagues, not lecture the rest of us.
Andy Burnham
The Conservative party has to change the record. The hon. Gentleman stood for young people’s votes—
Andy Burnham
He is nodding. He promised them the education maintenance allowance, did he not?
Andy Burnham
He saw his Prime Minister make a personal promise to those young people that they would continue to have their EMA. He also stood on a manifesto promising £200 million for an all-age careers service. If he could not deliver those promises, should he not now apologise to the House for seeking the votes of young people in his constituency on a false premise? That speaks for itself.
Our motion is deliberately broad so that we do not get drawn into a debate about the merits of one service versus another. I have said that we are prepared to support the Government in their vision for an all-age careers service. We want to work with the Government to make that service as good as it can be so that it is fit for purpose in these times and for the challenges facing young people. The motion is simple, then, and makes two requests. I might say in passing that it is drawn directly from the report, published in the summer, to the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister from the advocate for access to education, the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), who I am pleased to see in his place. In fact, the motion repeats the words of his recommendation verbatim. I hope, therefore, that he can support us this evening, given that the motion is his own recommendation—but I know now not to come to any such conclusions where he is concerned.
Our motion makes two simple requests to the House. First, as Members of Parliament standing up for young people in our constituencies, we ask the Government Front-Bench team to get a grip on this mess—[Interruption.]—to stop messing around on their BlackBerrys and to stop going off to attend other events around the country. They need to get a grip on this mess, publish the transition plan, show some leadership for once in their lives and get on with the job of standing up for young people. Secondly, we want the House to send a clear message that we have high expectations of what we expect all young people in this country to get and that we want them to have face-to-face advice.
We hear that the Government want to downgrade the quality of careers advice to a phone or web-based service. The national careers service will be a phone or web-based service! It seems that this cost-cutting drive has been partly driven by the raid on the careers budget, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) alluded, which the Government made having been forced to make a partial U-turn over EMA. I want every Member to ask themselves whether they think that a remote and impersonal phone or web service is good enough. Would that be good enough for their own children when they are making life-changing choices and considering their options?
Mr Redwood
I have a lot of sympathy with the idea of high-quality careers advice, and I am listening with great interest. However, could the right hon. Gentleman tell us exactly how the Secretary of State could guarantee face-to-face advice and what it might cost?
Andy Burnham
The Secretary of State could guarantee it by amending the Education Bill, which is in the House of Lords at the moment—
Andy Burnham
I will come to that in a moment.
The Secretary of State could guarantee it simply by inserting the words “face-to-face”. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright), the shadow young people’s Minister, introduced such an amendment to the Bill on Report. I find it extraordinary that Government Members can troop through the Lobby to vote against face-to-face advice for young people. [Hon. Members: “And the cost?”] As I said a moment ago, the cost was put forward by the Conservative party. It costed its own all-age—[Interruption.] I am trying to answer the question. The Conservative party promised and costed a fully funded, all-age careers service which maintained those currently employed in the Connexions service. It promised £200 million.
Andy Burnham
Exactly, what have the Government done with that money? Where have they spent it? Those are questions for the hon. Gentleman to answer, not me.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
May I correct my right hon. Friend? Is it not a fact that face-to-face careers advice will be available? It will be available in the public schools, the independent schools and the most elite and privileged schools in the country; it just will not be available to most schools.
Andy Burnham
That is the point, is it not? This well-connected Cabinet think that everyone’s lives are like their own and that everyone can just call on a friend, uncle or whoever in a law firm or in the City. Sure, they will open a door—ring them up and they will give the advice. They live in a world, and constituencies sometimes, where that advice is readily available through informal family networks. They probably do not see the need for careers advisers. They have used them themselves, but do not see the need for them. However, there are many young people in the constituencies that we represent who cannot draw on those family networks and connections, who do not have role models to whom they can go and who perhaps have never had family members in the professions. They are the ones who need help to enter these closed worlds run often by a self-perpetuating elite.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
Is my right hon. Friend getting a bit sick and tired of Government Members talking about money issues, given that they will be wasting £3 billion on an unnecessary reorganisation of the NHS and £100 million on unnecessary unelected police commissioners? If they can find money for that, why can they not find a few hundred million pounds for these services?
Andy Burnham
My hon. Friend puts her question very well. The Government have got their priorities completely and utterly wrong. If I were a young person watching these proceedings tonight, I would be asking why since the coalition Government came to power they had singled out young people for this barrage of cuts. Do they think that young people are an easy touch? I do not know, but that is what I would be asking if I were them. I would also be asking what an elected police commissioner was going to do to improve life in the community. Very little, I would suggest. I return to the point that I was making earlier. If Government Members do not think that an impersonal, remote service is good enough for their children, they should not accept such a service for anyone else’s children in their constituency.
Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) said, everyone in the House would like to see high-quality careers advice, but a little humility might be required all round, not least from representatives of the previous Government, under whom the number of young people not in employment increased in this country despite the fact that it fell in other OECD countries. Furthermore, as their own report showed, at the end of their term in office, the standard of careers advice for young people was palpably poor. Does the shadow Secretary of State agree with the Government’s intention to take the decision making down to school level and let the school decide what is most appropriate? In many cases, that will involve face-to-face advice, although I do share his desire to see greater resources allocated to that.
Andy Burnham
I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for his question. He calls for humility, but I acknowledged at the beginning of the debate that we did not get the Connexions service perfect and that we were prepared to work with the Government. I pay tribute to him in leading the Select Committee’s production of a very good report that comes to the right conclusions on this issue. It is possible for schools, with sufficient support, to provide face-to-face advice, although I do not think that he or I would want to go back to the days when the PE teacher or some other member of staff was responsible for giving careers advice and did not do a particularly good job of it. We need independent, good-quality, face-to-face advice.
There is an important point to be made about conflicts of interest. At 16, young people face choices about whether to go on to further education college or sixth-form college, or whether to stay at their school. It is important, in the highly competitive world that the Government are creating, that the careers adviser in the school should not have a vested interest in advising the young person to stay there if that would not be the best option for them. That needs to be thought through, but, without a transition plan, we have no means of judging what will happen. The Government have simply not provided us with any detail.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I agree with what my right hon. Friend is saying. Is he aware that a generation of young people will get no support or advice this year or next year? In particular, children whose parents’ first language is not English have no opportunity to talk to them about their options. What those children need is not a school-based service but an independent, professional service that can assess them in the round and give them support, help and, above all, inspiration. They will not get much inspiration from trawling a website.
Andy Burnham
My hon. Friend speaks with customary clarity on these issues, and tells us what life is like for the young people he represents, many of whom might be new arrivals in this country who do not understand how young people can open the doors to education, training and jobs. He has put his finger on the problem. The Government take the view that schools can do everything, and that everything can be pushed down to the schools. Some things need to be organised across the whole local authority, however, if we are to maintain quality and expertise.
I am prepared to believe that schools could provide the necessary advice, but the transition process needs to be managed so that the experts who are currently working for the local authorities can be brought into the schools to provide the advice from those schools. Instead, this lot are allowing those people to be let go and made redundant, even though they have many years experience in the careers service. They are being lost to the profession, and in a few months’ time the schools will be expected to subscribe to a phone or web-based service.
Government Members might think that this is funny, but I do not. We are talking about young people’s life chances, and those young people deserve better than what the Government are giving them. We owe them more, because the world that they are facing is far harsher than the one that we lived in 30 or so years ago. Young people today can expect to have at least 10 different jobs throughout their careers—probably more. Unlike their grandparents, who did specific jobs in large industries, they will be most likely to work in smaller companies. They will need to be all-rounders, able to adapt quickly to new situations. It is also more likely that they will be employers as well as employees.
The harsh truth is that it is getting harder for everyone to get on, but the odds are being stacked much more heavily against those who have the least. If we do not act, this century will see us return to a world in which the postcode of the bed that people are born in will pretty much determine where they end up in life. In today’s world, as traditional structures break down, social networks and connections are becoming the key to jobs and opportunities. In some industries—sadly, we can count Parliament among them—it has become almost expected that a young person will have to work for free before they can get their first foot on the ladder. That is wrong; it is the exploitation of young people’s determination to get on.
If we allow the situation to continue in which there is no careers advice and in which the only way in is through having a connection with a company or organisation and moving to London to work for free, we will limit the job opportunities in the most sought-after careers in the country to less than 1% or 2% of the population. That is not a situation that I am prepared to accept. Parliament needs to step in and level up the playing field, to ensure a fair distribution of life chances around the country. We need to help those young people who have the least.
A statutory careers service is important because not all young people get the same support and advice at home. Dame Ruth Silver, chair of the Careers Profession Task Force, says of the Government’s approach:
“It will further deepen deprivation, because some people come from families who have never worked; the ones who need it most are those who don’t have successful adults in their lives.”
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
The shadow Secretary of State rightly talks about levelling up the playing field. Does he acknowledge the concerns expressed by Dr Alison Wolf about courses leading to no employment, or leading to a “road block” because they are not allied to any specific employment prospects?
Andy Burnham
I have some sympathy with that argument, but it is an argument for more and better careers advice, not less. We have some sympathy with the view that we need to ensure that all qualifications should be of a decent standard and should lead somewhere. We accept that view and we will support the Government in that regard, but that is not an alternative; we still need good quality careers advice alongside those routes. I feel passionately that, collectively, the whole lot of us here have failed the 50% or more of young people who are not going to go down the university route. We have not done enough to provide them with a proper structure or a proper route through to good qualifications and a good job, and it is about time that we addressed that balance. It is about time that this House, rather than focusing on the top 20% and the English baccalaureate, thought about a pathway for all children, so that they can all fulfil their potential.
Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)
If the right hon. Gentleman thinks it important that all students have a pathway, why did the Labour Government remove the modern foreign language requirement in 2004?
Andy Burnham
The hon. Lady was not here at the start, and I am not sure whether she has heard the whole debate. Her point does not quite fit. We want young people to make the right choices for them. We should strongly encourage the teaching of foreign languages, particularly in primary schools, but they will not be right for all young people. The question I would ask her is this: why are young people who want to do engineering, information and communications technology, business studies, economics, music, art or other creative subjects being told that they are somehow second best because those subjects are not in the English baccalaureate? What is it that justifies the Government ranking some subjects above others—and, by definition, ranking some children above others?
Neil Carmichael
Following the right hon. Gentleman’s response to my previous intervention, will he shed some light on his view on the need to involve employers in creating the courses and qualifications that lead to outcomes for young people? One thing Professor Alison Wolf made very clear is that employers should be much more involved in the FE sector and in the formation of courses and qualifications.
Andy Burnham
The hon. Gentleman makes another good point. I agree with him, but urge him, perhaps when the Minister is speaking, to stand up and ask his Front-Bench team what discussions they had with the CBI before they introduced the English baccalaureate. What is the CBI’s view of it? Does it respond sufficiently to the needs of employers. I see the hon. Gentleman nodding and I hope he will direct those questions to his Front-Bench team. Quite frankly, we risk preparing young people for a world that no longer exists and we need to ensure that young people have the crucial skills—good communication skills, critical thinking and good presentational skills—that they will need if they are to survive in a workplace where much more is demanded of them.
The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning is not in his place this evening, but when we last debated these issues he said:
“Let us once and for all kill off the bourgeois, left assumption that working-class people do not aspire to the same things as their middle-class contemporaries. Their ambitions are the same; what they lack is the wherewithal.”—[Official Report, 11 May 2011; Vol. 527, c. 1257.]
I agree with that statement. Let me share a shocking statistic with the House; I genuinely find it appalling. It is that 39% of 16 to 19-year-olds who went to a state school say that they do not know anyone in a career in which they would like to work. This rises to 45% among the poorest young people who receive free school meals. What Ministers fail to recognise is that if someone does not know a single person in a career in which they would like to work, they might not be able to fulfil their aspirations in the same way as others.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
What my right hon. Friend has just said ties in entirely with what I am about to say. Three of my nephews came to do their work experience here; they are mixed-race lads from council estates in Luton. One of their friends—they did not have an aunt who was an MP—spent the night as a security guard in a factory where his dad sat watching telly all night, walking around the building once an hour to check that no one else was in the building. Another friend did his work experience at Costa Coffee. That was because they did not know anyone who worked in professions to which they could aspire. It is important for career advisers not just to try to get people into internships, but to encourage young people through early work experience placements to stretch their horizons and make connections with people in the professions.
Andy Burnham
My hon. Friend makes an excellent contribution; she puts her finger on the problem. I hear anecdotally that, increasingly, schools are saying to young people, “Can you sort out your own work experience? Is someone in the family able to give you an opportunity?” I understand why they might say that because there are lots of pressures on schools, but that highlights the dangers of what is being created. If we live in a world where people say, “The schools do it; we’ll leave it up to them”, that can reinforce low expectations. It is basically telling kids that they cannot break out from their family circumstances because they will dictate what they have experience of and where they will set their expectations. That is what is so wrong about that approach—this random laissez-faire approach to this crucial issue.
My hon. Friend and other Opposition Members will remember a report by Alan Milburn on fair access to the professions during the last Parliament. He made the point that we need to do the reverse—take those young people who have no connection with the powerful worlds of the professions and transplant them into those worlds. We need the highest quality careers advice and work experience for those young people. As the Opposition develop our policy, that is exactly what we should aspire to deliver—alongside excellent careers advice, of course, which has to be impartial, independent and personalised.
Andy Burnham
I agree, just as I did with the Education Committee report, with much of what the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark said in his report. I look forward to hearing what he has to say and to his support for our motion.
Simon Hughes
May I absolutely endorse the comments of the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy)? All the evidence from my conversations around England in the early part of this year showed that there was not only very poor careers advice for many young people, but really poor work experience. In a difficult economy, the chances of getting a job from 16 onwards are, to put it bluntly, reduced horribly for those who do not have work experience.
Andy Burnham
I agree completely, but the right hon. Gentleman is in a position to do something. I say that not to make a party political point. In some ways, this is not the most headline-grabbing of debates. We are raising this issue out of a genuine concern about what is happening to the careers service and what it might do to damage the life chances of some young people. He has produced what I consider to be a very good report for the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, but if Government Members troop through the Lobby against this motion tonight, where does that leave the advice he is giving to the Government? Is he happy about that? There has to be a change.
Simon Hughes
I will obviously wait to hear the Minister and I hope to be called to speak. My hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle) said to me earlier that this is exactly the sort of issue where we should avoid party politics and seek a consensus. I commit myself again, as I have said to the right hon. Gentleman and to ministerial colleagues, to doing so, even if it is sometimes very hard work to get us all in the same place. Careers, work and work experience seem to me to be issues on which there is much more than a party interest in getting to that right place.
Andy Burnham
I agree again with what the right hon. Gentleman says. If there is some passion in my voice tonight, it is because I am standing up for people to have a careers service that is under attack. It is quite simply going before our eyes. It is no good saying complacently“let us find consensus” complacently; we need to say that the issue is urgent and it needs to be got a grip of right now. Otherwise, the damage will not be reparable. That is why I continue to point out what I consider to be unacceptable complacency on the part of the Government Front-Bench team. It promised us a transition plan on how this responsibility would be managed as it moved from local authorities to schools and on how we would ensure that we do not lose professionals. This plan has been promised for weeks and weeks and weeks. Every day that passes, more and more damage is being done to the careers service. I say to Government Members who worry about these issues that the time has come for them to start holding their own Front-Bench team to account.
I agree with much of what the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning said when we discussed the Education Bill on Report:
“I find it inconceivable, or at least unlikely, that best practice will not include face-to-face provision.”—[Official Report, 11 May 2011; Vol. 527, c. 1257.]
If that is the Government’s view, why do they not guarantee it for all young people? The aim must be to give a basic minimum to all young people. I have to say that the Government are in danger of looking seriously isolated on this issue. The Education Select Committee—I mentioned its report a few moments ago—highlighted the need to protect face-to-face guidance. When a Committee is chaired by a Conservative Member—the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) is no longer in the Chamber—and it makes that direct recommendation to the Government, one would expect them to do him the courtesy of making a proper response.
The hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey) put it this way when we last debated these issues:
“We must not lose the knowledge on the internet, but we must also not lose those people and their personal knowledge. We cannot let something so vital slip through our fingertips when it was within our grasp and when we had the ability to save it.”—[Official Report, 11 May 2011; Vol. 527, c. 1249.]
Voices are speaking from the Conservative Benches, which I do not think Ministers can or should ignore, but the careers service is slipping out of our grasp.
Research conducted by the university of Derby and Unison reveals that just 15 councils are retaining a substantial universal careers service. More than 4,000 careers advisers have already lost their jobs and 50 councils have closed their Connexions centres completely. This expertise is being lost. According to the university of Derby,
“the current environment is having a potentially disastrous impact on the careers profession.”
In a speech in November 2010, the Minister said:
“As we go about this, it’s important to recognise that we’re not starting from scratch. On the contrary, we will build on Next Step and on Connexions because we must not lose the best of either.”
But that is exactly what is happening. We are losing the best of what we have, and this gross mismanagement is simply unforgiveable. It could damage the life chances of up to 2 million young people, as the Association of School and College Leaders has estimated. Young people appear to have been sidelined from the Government’s plans for a national careers service; the Education Bill transfers the responsibility, but not the £200 million that they were promised. Ministers need to tell us tonight what has happened to that money, what is available for the new national careers service and when it will be made available to save these services. Schools have a statutory responsibility to provide a service, but it is absolutely clear that if they are not given the guidance or the money, these services will be of a substandard quality.
The Government have provided no transition plan, no funding, no clarity and no guarantee of face-to-face advice. If they vote against our motion, they will be completely isolated. They have not tabled an amendment—an alternative—which in itself illustrates their sheer absence of ideas on how to take this issue forward. If their own advisory group cannot support them, what does that say about the position the Government are in? In August, the entire careers advisory group considered resignation, because it wanted to protest at the situation that it had been left in. These people did not resign, but they must now be listened to if the Government are to retain any credibility on this issue.
In conclusion, I am proud that it is Labour Members who have spoken up for young people and for a service in crisis. I know that many careers professionals will have been watching this debate, and I am sure that many feel utterly demoralised and undervalued right now. If nothing else, I want them to know tonight that, on this side of the House at least, we appreciate what they do for our young people. A bit of recognition is due, and Labour is proud to give it to them.
However, we also know now what we are up against. This is a Government who have a brutal approach to public service reform, and who are too lazy or too arrogant to produce a transition plan for the careers service. We have Education Ministers who like to focus on the elite—on Oxbridge—when the kids who have least are left to fend for themselves. The fact is that some young people cannot call on well-connected families to open doors. When a family does not have role models or where there is little family experience of what it takes to break into the professions, young people need youth workers, careers advisers and personal advisers to help them open those doors.
Just a few short weeks ago, this House reconvened to discuss the summer disturbances. Many theories were put forward on that day to explain what had gone wrong with our young people to make some of them act in that way. Of course we will continue to debate those things, but I suggest to the House something simple that all young people need, regardless of their circumstances—hope. They need hope of a job and hope of a better life, but that hope is being taken from them. So my appeal tonight goes beyond the Government Front-Bench team and to the House as a whole: is it not about time that this Parliament started standing up for young people? How much longer will we tolerate this attack on aspiration? Let us say tonight that enough is enough. That is why I urge the House to support our motion.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)
I am delighted to be able to respond to the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham). I had thought that this might be a policy area where the differences between us were slight enough and that he would not feel the need to overstate his case. Alas, that hope has been dashed. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State would have liked to respond to the right hon. Gentleman but, as I mentioned earlier, he is in Nottingham meeting 100 head teachers to discuss the future teaching schools. I hasten to add that 100 people is more than the number of Labour Members in the Chamber right now, and this is an Opposition day debate. The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning would also have liked to have responded to the right hon. Gentleman, but he has just undergone minor surgery and is recovering in hospital. He sends his best wishes and wanted me to pass on his apologies to the House for the fact that a lesser orator than he is responding.
It is hard to listen to the right hon. Gentleman when he clamours for £200 million here and £200 million there, given that he was in the Cabinet of a Government who left this country with the largest budget deficit in the G7 and interest payments of £120 million a day, leaving the country on the brink of financial collapse. That is why we have had to take some very difficult decisions. Until Opposition spokesmen acknowledge that point, nothing they say on public spending will have any credibility.
Mr Gibb
I will make this final point and then I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman. I dread to think of the damage that would have been done to young people’s prospects had Labour won the last election and plunged our economy into a crisis such as those that Greece and Ireland have faced.
Andy Burnham
This evening, will the Minister at least tell us where the money has gone? Was the careers budget in the Department raided to pay for the patched-up version of the successor to the education maintenance allowance that the Government were forced to cobble together?
Mr Gibb
As I just mentioned, the £200 million to which the right hon. Gentleman is referring would pay for two days’ interest on the debt left by his Government. In addition, we have put extra funding into tackling post-16 deprivation and providing help for those who need additional support: we increased that by a third, to £750 million. That is how those sums have been prioritised by this Government.
Mr Gibb
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the service is very patchy.
Our starting point was that careers advice needed to improve, and I think that there is unanimity across the House on that. We decided to split the provision of careers advice from the provision of advice to vulnerable young people. They are very different disciplines requiring different skills and different knowledge bases, so the decision was taken to provide an all-age careers service—the national careers service. That is the responsibility of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and the service will be up and running from April 2012. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning for the work that he has put in to delivering that service.
The duty to provide careers advice to young people will therefore be removed from local authorities and transferred, subject to the passage of the Education Bill, to schools from September 2012. That duty will require schools to secure access to independent impartial careers guidance for their pupils in years 9 to 11. As part of the consultation process, we are also considering whether there is a case for extending that duty down to year 8 or up to the age of 18.
Andy Burnham
Will the Minister confirm that it might be independent and impartial advice, but it will not be face-to-face advice? That is to say, the Government’s plan is that it will be delivered over the phone or via the internet.
Andy Burnham
I agree very much with the right hon. Gentleman, and I welcome the spirit in which he is speaking. He would probably agree with Labour Members that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) said, work experience is so important that it should not be left to random chance. We have to find a way of offering structured opportunities, particularly to those young people who have the least. With that in mind, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman to comment on the Government’s intention of removing the requirement on schools, at key stage 4, to offer work-related learning, which essentially is work experience? Is it not the case that if they remove that requirement, provision will be completely random? Some schools will offer it, and some will not.
Simon Hughes
Let me be absolutely straight with the right hon. Gentleman: I understand the Government’s wish not to burden heads and schools with over-prescription. I am chair of governors of a primary school, and a trustee of a secondary school, so I understand that completely. However, some things have to be guaranteed, and in my view we have to guarantee the opportunity of work experience during secondary school time, and we have to guarantee face-to-face careers advice. I say that not because I have some theological view about it, but because the evidence that we have heard, and that I collected, is that youngsters are overwhelmingly saying, “We’ve had bad careers advice and bad work experience.”
In a tight economic situation, people even more need both careers advice and work experience. The figures that I collected show that there are more than 4,000 different qualifications that a young person can gain between the ages of 14 and 18. There are millions of combinations of qualifications that they can end up with. Navigating a way through that requires more than a person’s ability to go online and discover what they think they might want to know; that, bluntly, is different depending on how bright the person is, what family support they have, and other things. It is about more than having some books to look at; it is about speaking to somebody who can relate to them where they are, and engage with them.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle) said to me when the debate began, in the end what is required may be more than one half-hour session; there may need to be follow-up—mentoring, support, and continuous commitment. That might mean a local employer—PricewaterhouseCoopers could step over the river to my constituency—coming into a school to continue to support somebody as they work things out. It might mean working out how somebody who fluffs some exams, and does not start very well academically, can recover and be told, “You haven’t lost everything just because you had a terrible year when your parents separated and your family situation was a disaster.” We have to understand that people have only one school time in which they can do work experience.
Public Disorder
Andy Burnham Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
We meet today as the country reels from the senseless and sickening scenes that it has seen. People’s feelings are raw, and the full enormity of events is only just sinking in, but at least Parliament has today begun to give voice to people’s concerns. It has articulated clearly the majority feeling in the country that this was a mindless spree of violence for which no excuses can be made, and which must be dealt with severely.
We have made a start on the long and difficult task of rebuilding communities shattered by the experience, bridging the divide between the generations, and bringing the country back together. For thousands of people, this has been the worst and most terrifying week of their life. Some have seen homes and businesses lost or damaged; others have felt real fear on the streets where they live, perhaps for the first time. Many of them will have been watching our debate today. They will have heard powerful contributions from my right hon. Friends the Members for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), and for Croydon North (Malcolm Wicks); from the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell); and from my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood), for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), for Manchester Central (Tony Lloyd), for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger), and for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), to name a few.
I hope that in the powerful words of those speeches, the people watching our debate have heard echoes of their own thoughts—things said that they feel needed to be said. It is small comfort, but perhaps they will end today with at least some sense that somebody is listening—that they are our priority. They must remain so over the coming weeks until Parliament resumes.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend share my hope that when Parliament resumes, those hon. Members whose constituencies have been affected but who have not been able to engage in this debate due simply to lack of time today will have a chance to revisit the issue and put on record their constituents’ concerns, including about their livelihoods, which have been threatened?
Andy Burnham
It is vital that hon. Members have that opportunity, as my hon. Friend suggests. The issues will not go away once the media crews depart, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington said. People in the communities concerned will live with the issues for some time, and it is vital that we follow the matter through. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) said, we need to stand side by side with the communities affected. She spoke for not just her constituency, but every proud and right-minded person in Greater Manchester, and I thank her for what she said.
For the most part, the contributions have been well judged. They have avoided political point-scoring, self-serving or simplistic arguments, or excuses; people quite simply do not want to hear that. Instead, we must all focus on the job in hand, on a practical response, on lessons learned and on serious reflection on the deeper reasons why this happened. We have made a good start today on that task, and have sent a number of unambiguous messages. The first, to the courts and the legal system, is that all Members of the House expect them to bring the perpetrators to justice quickly and without leniency. The second message today, which is to the police, fire and ambulance services—and indeed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington said, to unsung public servants such as council workers and youth service workers—is that we deeply appreciate their efforts in recent days to protect our communities, and that they will have full backing from across the House for an uncompromising response, should problems recur. Thirdly, we have sent a message to the victims of the appalling crimes.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is the fear that has been so shocking—the fear felt by my constituents in Mitcham and Morden and people across London? Now is not the time to withdraw those police, fire and council officers; they need to stay in their places and bring back reassurance for many of our communities.
Andy Burnham
My hon. Friend is right. Communities that have been affected will only just be coming to terms with what has happened, and they need to see people standing with them in the days and weeks to come to ensure that they can rebuild their lives and their communities. We need to send a message from here today to those people who have been the victims of crimes, and have felt that fear. The message is that this House is united in ensuring that they receive practical and financial help without delay to rebuild homes, businesses and communities. Encouraging statements have been made today by the Prime Minister. We thank him for what he said, but he will expect us, as the Opposition, to ensure that these words are followed through, and we will indeed do that.
Today has been important because, one after another, Members on both sides have sent a message to the young people of England—a message that may not always come through to them from the media debate on these issues. Every single Member of the House meets decent and conscientious young people week in, week out. The vast majority are making a positive contribution to their communities. Indeed, they have been doing so this week, helping with the clean-up operations around the country. We simply will not allow a senseless minority to sully the reputation of our young people, divide the generations one from another or make them fearful of one another. We must also pledge to work hard to ensure that the voices of young people are heard in this debate as it unfolds. Perhaps with the inquiry that the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee has announced, we must ensure that their voices are heard in shaping the response to these events.
In the aftermath of any serious event, it is right that we all reflect on the circumstances and, where necessary, learn lessons. A number of issues have been raised today on which we hope that the Government will reflect. First, questions relating to the operational resources and guidelines for the police have been raised by many hon. Members, including the hon. Members for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray) and for Battersea (Jane Ellison) and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden).
Acts of mob violence or vandalism are not new. I saw them myself at football grounds in the 1970s and 1980s. What is new is the speed with which crowds can gather and copycat violence can spread across a city and into other cities. That is a modern phenomenon made possible by the misuse of communications technology. Policing needs to change to respond to it. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles said so powerfully, we simply cannot have a situation in which police officers have to stand by and thugs take control of the streets. So we urge the Home Secretary to work with ACPO on this, as she said she would in her speech. We also ask her to think again on the question of police numbers, which was raised by so many hon. Members this afternoon, and not in a point-scoring way. We heard these points raised by the hon. Member for Croydon Central and in a powerful speech by the hon. Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley), who called for a review of this issue.
People in London will have noticed the divergent statements made by the Mayor of London and Ministers. It seems premature for Ministers simply to rule out any extra funding. It is not just about the Met. Cuts to frontline policing are happening all over the country, and people in other parts of the country know that shortages in the Met are filled by forces elsewhere. Rather than dismissing calls for funding to support police numbers, would it not make sense for the Government to reserve their position until they have received a detailed report from the acting Commissioner of the Met and from chief constables of other forces affected on the operational challenges that they faced in the nights earlier this week?
My appeal to the Secretary of State, the Prime Minister and his Cabinet is not to announce a U-turn here, but at least to have an open mind on the question of police numbers and to consider looking again at the resourcing of our police forces when they have a clearer picture of the pressure they have been under this week.
Secondly, there are questions about the resources and capacity of our courts and prisons. We appreciate the efforts of court staff to hear cases—indeed they have sat through the night, as many hon. Members have mentioned. We want that to continue. There must be no return to business as usual or long delays before people stand trial. We welcome the report in the Manchester Evening News which shows how the courts are cracking on with the job of delivering instant justice. That is indeed what the public want and we urge the Government to find the resources to make sure that people are brought to trial. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) said today, the Government need to look again at the number of prison places, and at sentencing policy to ensure that it reflects the mood of the House, and indeed the mood of the whole country. We urge them to do that.
Thirdly, points have been raised today by my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary about the Government’s approach to tackling antisocial behaviour and the use of CCTV. In the early days of the Government, a change of policy was signalled, away from the use of CCTV, antisocial behaviour orders and the DNA database, but, as we have seen, CCTV is being used extensively to bring the perpetrators of violence and vandalism to justice. Listening to the Prime Minister today, I detected a different tone on these issues, and I welcome that change of tone. We welcome his recognition of the value of CCTV and the reassurance it can bring to many of the communities affected this week. We will continue to seek assurances that the Government will not hinder its use by local authorities. The Government need to take care that they do not send mixed or confusing signals in the whole area of tackling antisocial behaviour.
Fourthly, concerns have been raised today about the advice and support available to young people. Let me be clear: nobody rioted because of cuts to youth services, Connexions or the careers service, yet all those services have an important role to play in the response on the ground to rebuilding shattered communities. Youth workers are front-line prevention in many of our communities. The Home Secretary mentioned the work she wants to put in place to tackle gang culture, and I welcome what she said. However, it is important to recognise that youth services in parts of London and other cities have been working painstakingly for many years to prevent young people from falling in with gangs, yet as the Select Committee on Education recently reported, there is a significant loss of youth service support on the ground, with cuts of up to 100% in some areas. I urge the Secretary of State for Education to look carefully at what the Select Committee said.
Questions were raised in the debate about parenting, which is an issue that unites the House. We support parents, particularly young single parents, in giving the best possible support to their children. Following the Allen and Field reports, I urge the right hon. Gentleman to be vigilant about changes to the support offered through Sure Start and other early intervention services so that we ensure that valuable services for parents are not lost.
Schools have an important role to play, as many hon. Members said today. I again assure the Secretary of State that we will continue to support the measures in his Education Bill that improve the tackling of discipline in schools. I give him my word on that, but I ask him to look at some of the things we did that are working, such as the use of school-based police officers, who are very important in building links with young people to ensure a steady flow of information between them and the police. I urge him to reflect on that.
As our debate has revealed, the challenges we face are complex and must be approached on many levels. My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) was right to draw a comparison with the early 1980s, when Michael Heseltine went around the country to engage deeply with the issues that affected people. I hope the Government will think about that and about the calls they have heard today for a deeper commission of inquiry on the issues, alongside the Home Affairs Committee inquiry.
That will help us all to avoid simplistic solutions to fit a preordained political narrative. For the left, it means not blaming everything on cuts. For the right, it means not demonising an underclass. It also means taking care in the language that is used. I do not think any part of this country is sick or broken. Every community has solidarity, decency and neighbourly spirit in it, with people trying to do the right thing. Every community has the capacity for self-improvement. We should support them, not knock them down and label them.
As the hon. Member for Northampton South said, addressing the deeper challenges means a deeper assessment of our society. In a powerful contribution, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham spoke about challenging the “Grand Theft Auto” culture that glamorises violence, and I entirely agree. We need a culture of responsibility in our schools, but we also need to face up to the fact that for all the progress we have made, our country is still scarred by serious inequality of opportunity, where life chances are unevenly spread and young people without social networks and connections often struggle to make their way in the world.
We need to consider those questions, but they are for another day. It has been a dark week, but the country should draw strength from the unanimity that the House has found today and, indeed, our dedication to respond collectively in the right way. At the close of the debate, it is right to pause for a moment to think of those who are recovering from injuries sustained, and particularly the families of Mark Duggan, Haroon Jahan, Shahzad Ali and Abdul Musavir. As we go away from here this evening, back to our families, we should do so with the words of Haroon’s father at the front of our minds and the hope that we will find in the days and weeks ahead the same unbelievable strength, understanding and courage to deal with these events as he has shown.
School Funding Reform
Andy Burnham Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)
With your permission, Mr Speaker, I should like to make a statement on our plans to reform school funding. As Members across the House will know, the current systems for funding schools—both their revenue and capital needs—are too complex and lack transparency, which is why I want to make the way we fund all schools fairer, simpler and more efficient.
I want to turn first to capital spending. Capital investment is crucial to education reform, but at a time of economic difficulty we need to ensure we are getting the maximum value for every penny we spend, and we must ensure that tight resources are targeted on those most in need.
In order to ensure that we could target money on those areas in absolutely greatest need, last year I had to take the difficult decision to stop a number of school rebuildings planned under the Building Schools for the Future programme. In areas where planning was most advanced, more than 600 projects will go ahead, but other projects were stopped. I recognise the deep disappointment that was provoked in communities where hopes had been raised, but we had to ensure money was spent efficiently, and the design of the old BSF scheme was not as efficient as it could have been. Specifically, it did not prioritise schools in the worst condition and it did not procure new buildings as cheaply as possible.
In order to ensure that we spent money properly, I asked Sebastian James of Dixons store group to review the entire Department for Education approach to capital funding. His report makes compelling reading and I commend it to the House. He found that the whole capital system was bedevilled by a complex allocation process with multiple funding schemes, a lack of good- quality building condition data, inefficiency in building design, a lack of expertise in improving new buildings, a failure to make procurement as efficient as possible, a lack of clarity on maintenance, and overly complex regulatory and planning requirements. I am grateful to Sebastian James for his exceptionally thorough work, and I wish to accept the majority of his recommendations, subject to a thorough consultation process over coming months.
Specifically, I have accepted the recommendation to conduct a full survey of the school estate. The last Government stopped collecting any data on school condition in 2005, which has made fair distribution of funding much harder. I have also accepted the review’s recommendation significantly to revise the school premises regulations, so that a single, clear set of regulations applies to all schools. I intend to consult fully on this in the autumn. In addition, I have accepted the recommendation to move towards greater standardisation of design. One of the aspects of the BSF programme that Mr James criticised was that each school was separately designed, costing unnecessary millions in consultancy fees and often resulting in buildings that were not fit for purpose. Greater standardisation will reduce costs, improve quality, and limit the opportunity for error.
However, I recognise that in the short term schools around the country are facing real and pressing problems. The most pressing problem is ensuring that every child has a school place. In some local areas, there are simply not enough school places to meet rising demand. Local authorities have told me that insufficient attention has been given to this issue in the past, which is why I have already doubled the sums available to meet this pressure, announcing £800 million of additional spending given directly to local authorities to meet the demand for school places. Today, thanks to efficiencies and savings that we have identified, including in BSF projects, I can announce an additional £500 million to fund more new school places in the areas of greatest need.
Funds will be allocated this financial year to the local authorities with the greatest demographic pressures so that they can provide enough places, especially at primary schools, in September 2012. Details of those allocations will be provided over the summer and finalised in the autumn. But that is not all. I am also aware that many of our existing school buildings across the country are in desperate need of repair. I am grateful to hon. Members from all parties who have shown me and my colleagues schools in their constituencies that desperately need investment. The energy and skill with which so many colleagues have lobbied underlines how effectively so many hon. Members across the House represent the most needy in their constituencies.
We have already made £1.4 billion available this year to deal with maintenance problems. Overall, we are spending more on school buildings in every year of this Parliament cumulatively than the previous Government spent in every year of their first two Parliaments. But I want to do more, which is why today I am launching a new privately financed school building programme to address the schools in the worst condition, wherever they are in the country. The programme will be open to local authorities and schools that had been due funding via BSF but, critically, it will also be open to those which, despite real problems, had never been promised BSF funding. I believe strongly that those in genuine need should receive the funding they deserve and that no part of the country should be favoured over any other. Individual schools and local authorities will all be able to apply, and I am launching the application process today. The scheme will be rigorously policed to ensure that we do not incur the excessive costs incurred by previous privately financed schemes. The programme should cover between 100 and 300 schools, with the first of these open in September 2014, and is expected to be worth about £2 billion in up-front construction costs.
Some of those local authority areas that had experienced the termination of their BSF projects asked for a judicial review of my Department’s decisions. In February, Mr Justice Holman found in favour of the Department on the substantive matters in dispute, but he found against me on procedural grounds and asked me to look again at the decision in six local authorities. He stressed that the decision to restore all, some or none of the projects was a matter for me. Over the past few months, Ministers and officials have listened carefully to the case made by the six local authorities and I am very grateful to them for the timely and constructive way in which they have presented their case. I have today written to those authorities to let them know that I am minded to indemnify them for contractual liabilities resulting from the stage their projects had reached but I am not minded to restore their specific BSF projects. They now have a further opportunity to make representations to me before I take a final decision.
I appreciate that the local authorities and their representatives will be disappointed, but let me also make it clear that this decision, if confirmed after any representations have been made, does not mean an end to new school buildings in their areas. These local authorities will all be eligible for support from the new programme that I am establishing to cater for population growth in the areas most in need and the new programme to cover the worst dilapidation. That is central to my reasoning on why I am minded not to restore their specific projects. I want to ensure absolute fairness in the distribution of the resources at my disposal. Because the previous Government chose to not to collect data on the condition of school buildings after 2005, I do not have the facts to judge how the needs of these schools compare with the needs of other schools around the country. The fairest thing that I believe I can do is to help to meet the costs which might arise from the stage these projects had reached and then to invite the affected schools to apply to the new school rebuilding programme and be assessed on an equal footing with everyone else, on the basis of need. Of course, should any of those local authorities have severe population pressures, they are likely to receive a portion of the £500 million fund that I have announced today.
I would now like to turn to schools revenue funding. The current system is of course extremely complex, opaque and often unfair. Most colleagues will have lived with the inconsistencies for years now, as similar schools in different parts of the country received widely differing and inequitable levels of funding, and the problem with the system we inherited was recently underlined by concerns expressed over academies funding. Under the system set up by the previous Government, academies received money in lieu of services that would previously have been provided by their local authority, but local authorities continued to receive the same funding as they would if they were still providing those services. That meant that local authorities were, relatively speaking, overfunded for duties they no longer discharged, so at the spending review we announced that from now on we would deduct money from local authorities to take account of the fact they no longer provided services to academies.
The huge success of the academies programme, with 803 open and more than 800 more in the pipeline, has meant that we need to reconsider the issue, and a number of local authorities have asked us to reconsider the amount of money deducted, so today I am publishing a consultation document for local authorities explaining the basis on which it is intended that the money will be deducted this year and next.
This area, however, is only one of those in which the funding system that we inherited is failing to meet the needs of the 21st century. Much wider reform is needed, so today we are also publishing a consultation proposing a fair and comprehensive reform of the way in which schools revenue funding is calculated overall. At present, similar schools in different areas can receive very different amounts of funding for their pupils. That is not fair on head teachers, teachers or pupils. That is why I am proposing a new, fairer national funding formula, with appropriate room for local discretion, in order to have a simpler, fairer and transparent system.
The problems with the current system run very deep, and we will not be able to solve them overnight. We want to consult and take everyone’s views so that we know how much change schools can cope with. We will not introduce change until we are confident in the new approach, and certainly not before 2013, and we will ensure that there are substantial transitional arrangements, but we are determined to start moving as soon as we can towards a system which ensures that all children are given the right level of funding to meet their needs. If that is taken together with our investment in 100 new teaching schools, announced last week, our investment of an additional £300 million in the early years, and an extra £2.5 billion in the pupil premium, I believe we can now begin to ensure that our schools are funded in a way that is modern, fair and just.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and wish him the best of British in securing media coverage for it.
Let me begin on the subject of revenue. Across the House, we share a responsibility to ensure that the £35 billion budget for schools in England is spent as fairly as possible, giving every young person the best start in life, and I can assure the Secretary of State that we will work constructively with him to achieve that. The current system is not perfect, and the principles he has set out are a good basis on which to build, but the devil really is in the detail, and changes need to be considered very carefully.
With that in mind, may I welcome the Secretary of State’s conversion to the merits of consultation before imposing change that affects the lives of young people? Three times he has failed to consult and then been forced to change course under the threat of legal action: on Building Schools for the Future, on the education maintenance allowance, and on academy funding. Today, we have some grounds for hope that he has learned his lesson, with one major caveat. Is it not odd timing, to say the least, to start a 12-week consultation just as schools and colleges start the long break? Will the practical effect of that not be that it is a rushed six-week consultation that will coincide with the start of term, when people’s minds are elsewhere? Given that his announcement has far-reaching implications for every school in the land, and given that these changes are planned to come in only from September 2013, will the Secretary of State agree to a 12-week period of consultation from the start of the school year?
On a national funding formula for schools, the Secretary of State will know that that has been considered in the past and there is considerable scepticism about the ability to deliver it fairly. Does he accept that a rigid national funding formula could bring lots of winners and losers and remove local government’s ability to ensure fairness across an area? Will he commit to retaining as much flexibility as possible and will he ensure that any changes are carefully managed so that we do not see wild swings in school budgets?
As I have said, the changes will take effect from 2013-14, but we know that the Secretary of State was recently forced to agree to an interim review of academy funding. Will he update the House today on the progress of that review and how it will link to the consultation he has announced? Equally, can he assure the House that this review of funding will take account of responses to the special educational needs Green Paper, as parents of children with SEN will have concerns that giving more direct funding to schools will give them fewer guarantees over the funding available for their children?
The Secretary of State was silent today about 16-to-19 funding, which is perhaps not surprising, as it is the subject of a devastating report today from the Education Committee. Is it not the case that changes to post-16 funding, and reductions in funding to school sixth forms, could see some forced to close their doors? He has promised a review of post-16 funding. Would it not make sense to conduct this review concurrently with the consultation that he announced today?
The Secretary of State mentioned progress on academies. It is clear that we are moving at pace to a very different school system. An all-academy world where schools are directly contracted to London under a national funding formula will feel very different from the world we have known. It also raises the question of what happened to localism. Can he tell us what, if any, ongoing role he sees for local authorities in education? His consultation talks ominously about “chains of academies”. Can he tell us today how big he expects these chains to become, and whether he will place any limits on their expansion?
On capital, we will look carefully at the announcements that the right hon. Gentleman made today. Let me set out the context. At the spending review, the schools capital budget was left in tatters. His own officials briefed the Financial Times that the Secretary of State had folded too early in negotiations with the Treasury—possibly the understatement of the year. From that much-reduced budget he is funding his pet projects and giving them priority. There will be deep disappointment in the six local authorities that were forced to take legal action because he failed to consult them first. He says he has listened carefully to them. He made a promise to visit Sandwell, for instance, which I believe he has never carried out, so how can they have any confidence that he has properly looked at the condition of schools in Sandwell, and that this is not just a hollow exercise that has been ordered by a High Court judge?
The Secretary of State said today that he would meet the costs—that he would indemnify the six local authorities concerned. How much will he now have to pay to those schools? Is that not money that could otherwise have been properly spent on schools and children? It is a waste of public money in the current climate. How much money has he spent on legal costs since he became Secretary of State? He has never been out of the dock since taking on that job. We need to know how much money he has wasted.
In my constituency, the Secretary of State is funding free schools, having terminated the Building Schools for the Future programme. That has led to concerns that existing schools are trapped in crumbling buildings while the Secretary of State is funding one of his pet projects. It raises the question whether he can live up to the fairness and transparency about which he spoke today. Can he explain to the House how it is fair to fund the creation of surplus school places in cities such as Bristol, when he is failing to fund basic need in primary schools up and down the country? Is that not ideological rather than fair? With a much reduced budget, should he not be prioritising basic need? And can he tell us what is transparent about a free school programme where cheques are handed out around the country, but parliamentary questions from Members on all sides about the costs of that programme go unanswered?
The statement comes on a day when the Conservative-chaired Education Committee has delivered a devastating end-of-term report on the Secretary of State’s conduct. The education world has learned through bitter experience to be extremely wary of his announcements on funding. As ever, we will be watching closely to see whether the reality matches his rhetoric.
Michael Gove
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the broadly constructive tone of his response. He asked a series of detailed questions, which I shall do my best to reply to in the time available.
On the timing of the consultation, plans to move towards a national funding formula were outlined in the education White Paper, “The Importance of Teaching”, which was published last autumn. There has been extensive engagement on the ground with local authorities and school leaders, not least through the task and finish group of the ministerial advisory group on local government finance. This consultation is a step towards ensuring that we can move in the right direction, but judging by the response that we have today, I know that there are many people who are impatient for us to proceed. We will make sure that in the consultation there is, as the right hon. Gentleman requests, appropriate room for local authorities to stress the importance of flexibility.
In the consultation documents, which are available in the Vote Office now for all Members, we emphasise that there are a range of options, and it is clear that we want to ensure that there is appropriate local flexibility—not just room for local authorities to allocate resources to those schools most in need, but greater transparency, for example, over the operation of schools forums. I hope the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues will engage constructively in making sure that those decisions on the ground can properly balance school autonomy with local accountability.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about the interim review on academies and LACSEG—the local authority central spend equivalent grant. We are specifically consulting today in a way which can ensure that local authorities are funded fairly, and that we do not have the double funding that has arisen under the complex funding system that we inherited. As a result of that consultation, I hope we can provide a reassurance to all students in all schools.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about special educational needs. In the consultation overall on schools funding, we make it clear that high needs pupils are a specific priority. There will be a block of funding in the overall dedicated schools grant which is for them and which will be disbursed at local authority level. The central role of the local authority in protecting vulnerable pupils will be protected, and I am sure he will want to work with us in ensuring that that is successfully implemented.
On 16-to-19 funding, it is critical that we ensure that we align any reforms with the Wolf review, which the right hon. Gentleman so warmly welcomed just a few months ago. Wolf argued that we need to ensure that when we reform the funding of 16-to-19 education, we do not recreate the perverse incentives in the old system of 16-to-19 funding, so we aim to align that reform with the broader reforms to improve vocational education.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about progress on academies. Like him, I am delighted that so many schools have now become academies. He asked about the sustainable level of growth of chains. I believe that chains such as the Harris group, Ark or the United Learning Trust are doing an amazing job on the ground, working with local authorities and turning round schools in the worst condition. As far as I am concerned, they should grow at the fastest sustainable rate. That is why we are making the reforms that we can. Our aim always is to help those children most in need, and those academy chains have helped those children most in need.
On negotiations at the spending review, I am proud of the fact that at the spending review we were able to secure the best revenue settlement for any domestic Department, apart from the Department of Health. I am proud of the fact that as well as guaranteeing fat cash payments for all schools for the rest of the spending review period, we secured additional money for the early years and for the pupil premium. I am particularly proud that we have since then ensured that on our capital budget, we have driven forward efficiency. The James review and the associated steps that we have taken have meant that we have liberated an extra £500 million for basic need.
The right hon. Gentleman asked if I would listen carefully to representatives from Sandwell and other local authorities. I shall. I appreciate the particular concerns in every local authority, but the vital thing is that we need to be fair to all local authorities. There are local authorities represented across the House that were not in the BSF scheme and have not had their case heard, and we need to ensure that they receive the funding that they deserve.
Finally, the right hon. Gentleman asked me about basic need and the importance of prioritising it. We are spending 62.5% more on basic need than the previous Government. They were specifically warned in February 2010 that local authorities were saying that basic need funding was far from adequate, and they were invited to undertake an urgent nationwide review. No action was taken. The lead member for children’s services in the London borough of Newham, the Labour councillor Quintin Peppiatt, said:
“We gave warning for the last five years through various deputations that this was a real problem, and I have to say it was not taken with the seriousness that it should have been. At last, serious action is being taken and not a moment too soon.”
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for making those points, but we must agree to differ on EMA. I think that the new learner support fund that we are introducing with the discretionary capacity that local colleges and schools will have to support students will effectively meet needs. On university technical colleges, I do not believe that they are an experiment; they are on the ground and working well already. I was pleased to read a speech by the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) only last week in which he reflected on his visit to a university technical college that JCB helped to establish.
Michael Gove
In that speech, the right hon. Gentleman paid tribute to the success of the Conservative donor, Sir Anthony Bamford, in helping to establish that school. I, too, should like to pay tribute to Sir Anthony Bamford, who is a great man. May I underline the fact that that is a cross-party initiative? Lords Baker and Adonis are heroes and their work deserves to be supported.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andy Burnham Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Gibb
The NATRE study cited by my hon. Friend suggests that around one in six schools anticipate a drop in religious studies entries at GCSE related to the E-bac, but it is not clear what overall effect that might have on take-up. Well over half of schools specifically indicated in that survey that there would not be a drop in GCSE entries in RS; indeed, a proportion said that there would be an increase in entries. That bears out the fact that the English baccalaureate does not prevent any school from offering RS GCSEs, and RE remains a statutory part of the curriculum.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
I do not know whether you are a fan of films of the ‘80s, Mr Speaker, but you might remember one called “Back to the Future”. It starred a man called Michael who was trapped in the 1950s—an echo, perhaps, of someone else in modern politics. Ministers are hopelessly stuck in the past: they drop work experience at key stage 4 and promote Latin above engineering, ICT and RE, yet we know religious education helps young people understand the world today. Ministers tell us that the E-bac is what parents and students want, so will the Minister tell us what percentage of year 9 students who have recently chosen their GCSE options have opted for the English bac?
Mr Gibb
We do not collect the figure centrally. We will see the effect of the English baccalaureate when we see the GCSE results this year, next year and the year after that. If the right hon. Gentleman wants a modern curriculum, he should be aware that we need modern languages to be taught in our schools. Under his watch, the numbers entering for GCSE in modern languages plummeted from 79% in the year 2000 to just 43% last year, while the proportion taking geography fell from 44% in 1997 to 27% last year. The range of subjects in the English baccalaureate is mirrored elsewhere in modern emerging economies such as Singapore, France, Japan and Alberta. [Hon. Members: “Alberta?”] In Canada. Those are the most successful education jurisdictions.
Andy Burnham
It is just not good enough that the Minister does not know about the impact his policies are having on student choices in schools. In my constituency, about 30% of young people are opting for the English bac; what does the Minister have to say to the other 70% who have chosen not to do it? RE teachers, music teachers and art teachers are at risk of redundancy because of the English baccalaureate. No wonder nine faith leaders wrote to The Daily Telegraph this weekend to say that they were
“gravely concerned about the negative impact current Government policies are having on RE in schools”.
Ministers promised freedom, choice and autonomy in education; is it not time that they started living up to those words?
Mr Gibb
If we were to take advice from the right hon. Gentleman, we would have a cap on aspiration for young people from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. He should be ashamed of the fact that his Government left this Government a legacy whereby only 8% of pupils on free school meals were even entered for the English baccalaureate subjects, and these are subjects that the Russell group of universities regards as the facilitating subjects that give rise to progression. Only 4% of those pupils actually achieved the results in comparison with 15.6% nationally. The right hon. Gentleman had a cap on aspiration; we want to raise aspiration right across the abilities and backgrounds of young people.
School Closures (Thursday)
Andy Burnham Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Education to make a statement about the school closures on Thursday and advice to parents worried about the situation.
The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)
The Government are currently in discussion with trade unions representing public sector workers to reach a fair deal on pension reform. Our proposals draw on the widely praised report from Lord Hutton, who was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions under the previous Government. The state of the economy that we inherited and major demographic changes mean that reform is vital. We want to ensure that all public sector workers enjoy pensions that are among the best available, but we need to balance that with fairness to other taxpayers. Talks between the Treasury and the TUC yesterday made real progress, which is why it is so regrettable that two of the classroom unions are planning industrial action this Thursday. This action is unnecessary while talks are still going on, will cause massive inconvenience to hard-working families and will hit working women particularly hard.
In order to minimise the impact of the strike on working parents, I wrote last week to all local authorities, as the employers of teachers, and to all schools, emphasising their duty to keep schools open wherever possible. In response to requests from governors, I also laid out the flexibilities at the disposal of schools to ensure that they stay open. Schools can vary staff-pupil ratios, they can depart from the national curriculum and they can draw on voluntary support from the wider community, with those who have been checked by the Criminal Records Bureau able to provide particular help. Nothing can replace the great teaching offered by gifted professionals, but I would far rather see schools staying open and offering a restricted curriculum than see hard-working families having to lose a day’s pay or paying for ad hoc and expensive last-minute child care.
When I wrote last week, I also asked local authorities and academy heads to let me know which schools they knew would be closing. We collated data from them last Friday, and these data were updated yesterday. At that stage, 118 out of 152 local authorities, and 379 out of 707 academies had replied. The initial returns suggested that 2,206 local authority schools would be partially open and that 3,206 would be closed, while the situation with a further 10,872 was not known at that stage. The figures showed that of the 707 academies, 158 would be fully open, 128 partially open and 84 closed. Nine were still uncertain and 328 had not yet responded. I asked last week that those figures be updated as of 3 pm today, and that exercise is ongoing. Once the provisional data are examined, we will provide updates tomorrow and on Thursday.
It is the responsibility of individual schools to inform parents if they are closed, but the ability of individual heads to determine if and when a teacher has decided to strike—and therefore their ability to make contingency plans—is governed by the employment law that we inherited. Individual teachers have no obligation to tell their school or employer of the intention to strike in advance. Of course, we always keep the law under review.
I remain committed to discussing pension reform with all the teacher unions openly, honestly and constructively. The current generation of teachers in our schools is the best ever, and I want to see them properly supported; but this strike, at this time, will not help our schools, as those unions that are not striking this Thursday know. This action is unnecessary, premature and disruptive. I hope that all parts of the House will join me in working constructively to support those hard-working families who are the victims of this action.
Andy Burnham
Let me start by making one thing clear: on Thursday, children should be in school and their parents at work. Opposition Members have said consistently that these strikes are a mistake. We support reforms to make public sector pensions sustainable, and it is wrong for action to be taken now, while talks are ongoing. However, the Government cannot evade their share of responsibility for the disruption that millions of families will suffer on Thursday. We are worried that the Secretary of State has once again not properly thought through the consequences of his statements and has left parents in the dark, because it is we who have brought him here today. For the first time, Members have some information about the likely scale of disruption. Will he give us a commitment that he will keep Members in all parts of the House regularly updated from here on in?
Secondly, what reassurance can the Secretary of State give to parents today that where schools are open, children will be properly looked after, and remain safe and secure at all times? His letter to head teachers urged them to keep schools open, but was silent about children’s safety. We want schools to stay open, but will he say more about what roles he considers it acceptable for parents to perform? What is a safe balance between trained and untrained staff? Are advanced checks advisable or necessary? He has said today that those with CRB checks may be able to do particular jobs, but will he spell out exactly what those roles are? This is not an area where he can afford to look like he is making it up as he goes along, so I would be grateful if he could answer those specific points.
Thirdly and most importantly, what steps are the Secretary of State and the Government taking over the coming hours to try to avert the strike? His letter acknowledged the
“very strong feelings in the teaching profession about teachers’ pensions”.
Does he not accept that those feelings have been inflamed by the Government’s reckless and provocative handling of the issue from start to finish? In retrospect, does he believe that it was wise or fair to pre-empt the Hutton report by slapping a 3% surcharge on pensions, costing some teachers an extra £100 a month, or for the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to announce a raising of the retirement age at a crucial moment in the negotiations? Does the Secretary of State recall saying this to the Association of Teachers and Lecturers’ conference while in opposition?
“I…think that, for people who’ve been in the profession, we shouldn’t alter the terms on which they entered. I think that’s part of the sort of broad contract that you expect.”
Is not that exactly the point? Pensions are a contract, and they should not be changed unilaterally in this high-handed way.
During the Labour Government, the number of days lost through industrial action fell to its lowest level ever. Will not parents take a dim view if this Government return us to the 1980s so that the Secretary of State and his friends can rerun the battles of their youth? Do not those parents want a Government who play fair with the professionals who teach their children, rather than one who play politics with people’s pensions?
Michael Gove
I was grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the constructive way in which he began his response, but I think that, on reflection, he will consider the way in which he concluded it to be irresponsible at this time. The whole House wants to see people keeping level heads and maintaining an even temper at this time, and the fact that he chose to ratchet up the rhetoric in that way was not appropriate.
I am grateful to him for supporting the direction of Lord Hutton’s reforms and for his initial words about the responsibility of all local authorities and heads to keep schools open in order to ensure that we do everything possible to minimise disruption. Because teachers are employed by local authorities and individual heads, individual local authorities and heads have to depend on teachers telling them whether they will be on strike before making contingency arrangements. That is a direct consequence of the labour laws that we inherited from the right hon. Gentleman’s Government. If he believes that those laws should change, and that we should reform trade union laws, I should like to know about it.
The right hon. Gentleman asked us to update Members of the House with data, and we will do so. At the first available opportunity when the data are reliable, we will share them with hon. Members, with local authorities and with individual parents. He also asked us to do everything possible to keep children safe and secure. The safety of children is always my first concern, and that is why I want to see schools remain open, and why I have written to local authorities and outlined the flexibilities that they have. It is also why I have drawn their attention to the statutory guidance that covers health and safety and child protection.
The right hon. Gentleman referred to the 3% surcharge that is being placed on pensions. As a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, he should be aware that every aspect of the pension reform that we are bringing forward is a direct result of the dire mess in which he and his colleagues left our economy. If people want to know why our pensions have to be reformed, they need only look at the financial mess that was made—[Interruption.] I am afraid that the intemperate response coming from the Opposition Benches reinforces the guilty consciences on that side of the House.
The right hon. Gentleman also quoted from a speech that I gave to the Association of Teachers and Lecturers. It is important that he not mislead the House or anyone listening—[Hon. Members: “Oh!”] I am sure that he would never do so intentionally, which is why I hope that he will stress that the proposals that we are putting forward respect the accrued rights of all those who have been in state pension schemes up until this moment—[Hon. Members: “Withdraw.”] I know that he would wish to make that clear.
The right hon. Gentleman also said that, in the last year of the Labour Government, we had the lowest number ever of days lost to strike action. The truth is that, in the past year under this coalition Government, we have lost even fewer days to strike action. If we are to maintain that record, we need calm on both sides of the House, and not the pandering to the union gallery that we heard at the end of the right hon. Gentleman’s comments.
Academies (Funding)
Andy Burnham Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Education to make a statement on funding for the academy programme.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)
The errors reported in the Financial Times today relate to mistakes made by local authorities in their returns to the Department for Education, which relies on local authorities to provide accurate information about their spending. Occasionally, individual local authorities make errors that can lead to academies getting too much, or indeed too little, funding. The system for funding academies, which was set up—I have to say—by the previous Government, is unclear, unwieldy and, in our view, unfair. It is no surprise, therefore, that some errors occur, which is why we are proposing changes to the school funding system to ensure that all schools and academies are fairly funded. We are proposing a system without the complexities that lead to these types of problems.
It is slightly odd for the right hon. Gentleman to ask these questions and attack us for the failings of a system created by the previous Labour Government, of which he was a member. We are the ones sorting it out, just as we are sorting out this country’s historic budget deficit. The question for him is: does he agree that we should raise the bar for secondary schools from 35% achieving five good GCSEs including English and maths, to 40% next year? Does he agree that we should further raise it to 50% by the end of this Parliament? Does he agree with our announcement today—[Interruption.] I do not know why the Opposition do not want to hear this. Does he agree with our announcement on extending the academies programme to underperforming primary schools, particularly the 200 worst-performing primary schools, many of which were in that state for a decade while his party was in government?
Andy Burnham
When will the Government learn that they cannot just bat away the question and always blame somebody else for the things that go wrong? Today’s Financial Times writes that the Department has given a large number of academies in England more money than they were entitled to. The news comes just days after the Secretary of State caved in to a legal claim from 23 councils that too much money was taken from their budgets to pay for academies. This raises a simple question: do the Secretary of State and the Minister have a grip on the budget?
But where is the Secretary of State? On a day when serious questions are being asked about whether the rapid expansion of his academy programme is backed up by a properly funded plan, only this Secretary of State could be in Birmingham announcing another major expansion of it. Why is he not here making that statement to the House of Commons? Should he not be here to reassure Members that he can proceed with his academies programme fairly and efficiently without penalising other schools in Members’ constituencies? Will the Minister tell the House how many schools have been overfunded, and what is the total amount paid in error? Will this money be clawed back from schools? It is not good enough for the Minister to stand there and blame everybody else. When will he take responsibility for the budget of his own Department? If it did not spot the mistake before the Financial Times reported it, why not? When will it put in place a proper accounting procedure?
Under threat of legal action, the Government have announced a U-turn on academy funding. Can the Minister set out the details and timetable for a review, and does he accept the need for urgency? Is it not the case that the Secretary of State repeatedly finds himself in these positions because he rushes ahead and fails to consult people on changes? We have been here before on school sport, education maintenance allowance and Building Schools for the Future. The only way people can make him listen to them is to launch a legal action. That is no way to run a Department. We hear that he will pay the councils’ legal costs. In the past year, he has spent more money on solicitors’ fees than Ryan Giggs and Fred Goodwin put together. How much has he spent on legal costs, and is this not a scandalous waste, when every penny is needed for children’s education?
The Secretary of State is today raising the floor targets for secondary schools and focusing the academy programme on struggling schools. These are Labour policies, and we are pleased at his dramatic conversion to them. We support raising standards in our schools; it is the standards of the Secretary of State we worry about. Perhaps the plan we needed to hear today was for poorly performing Departments to be taken over by successful ones. The only trouble is—there are no successful Departments. On the radio today, the Secretary of State tried pathetically to blame Labour for his latest blunder. Is it not time that he took responsibility for his own serial incompetence before people lose confidence in him altogether?
Mr Gibb
Yet again, the right hon. Gentleman overstates his case. First, the Secretary of State is in Birmingham today speaking to the National College for School Leadership, which is a very important part of our system of raising standards, and I am sure that his predecessors spoke every year to those conferences too. We are taking action to tackle the problems, although I should remind the right hon. Gentleman that the problem highlighted by the Financial Times occurred every year under the last Labour Government. The difference between the former Government—his Government—and this one is that we are taking action to sort it out. That is why we announced a fundamental review of the school funding system. That review is already taking place, and we will be making further announcements and holding a further consultation on the details later this year.
The right hon. Gentleman also raised the issue of the LACSEG—the local authority central spend equivalent grant—which is about double funding, where central Government are funding both the local authority and the academy for the same central services. Again, that is something that occurred under the last Labour Government, and we are sorting it out. That is why the Department for Communities and Local Government top-sliced £148 million off the funding to local government—to deal with that double funding. We are now looking at the issue again, as a result of the action taken by the 23 local authorities, and sorting it out. I would like to know from the right hon. Gentleman whether he supports us in our review of the funding system, so that we can create a simpler and clearer system that all can understand, and one that is similar for schools and academies. We want to achieve a per-pupil funding system that is fair and that all can understand, rather than the system over which his Government presided where schools in some local authorities received some £4,000 more per pupil than other schools with the same problems. Those are the problems that this Government are seeking to sort out, and I hope that he will support us in those plans.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andy Burnham Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Michael Gove
I am delighted not only that there are free school applications from Brighton, Kemptown, but that Brighton college is playing a part in helping to establish a new free school in the east end of London which is setting out specifically to target talented children from poorer backgrounds. When that is combined with the innovation being shown by the Durand school in Brixton, for example, which plans to establish a state boarding school for disadvantaged children from that area, I have to say that the coalition Government are unleashing a wave of radicalism the like of which will not have been seen since 1944.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
That confidence is clearly not shared in No. 10 Downing street, because last week it gave a distinctly lukewarm end-of-term report on the free schools policy. Let me quote a No. 10 source from The Independent:
“I guess you'd give Michael a six out of 10. The problem with Free Schools is that the scheme was designed to fill gaps in areas where there are poorly performing schools. But that’s not where the applications have come from.”
Can the right hon. Gentleman tell the House how many of the 26 approved free schools in England come from the 10 most deprived local authority districts?
Michael Gove
May I say, in terms of statements emanating from the centre, how delighted we were on this side of the House to read just last week that the Labour leadership has full confidence in the right hon. Gentleman? We are absolutely delighted that he is where he is, and we hope to see him there for many months to come.
All the free school applications that we have received are either in areas of deprivation and educational underachievement or in areas where pupil numbers are rising fast and there is a desperate need to see new school places. Whether it is Bradford or the east end, Slough or Tower Hamlets, in every single one of those areas poorer children are benefiting as a result of our radicalism.
Andy Burnham
My son has been doing standard assessment tests—SATs—recently, and I have been saying to him, “Read the question and answer the question.” I am tempted to say the same to the Secretary of State. The answer—the answer he would not give—is two, so it is clear that his policy is based on ideology, not on need.
I am more pragmatic than the Secretary of State. I have always said that each local proposal should be judged on its merit, and there is nothing to stop a free school being truly comprehensive if it is set up in the right way. What I object to is the unfair way in which he is siphoning off resources from other schools to pay for his free schools. Will he confirm today that the average maintained school is this year going to get an 80% cut in its maintenance budget to pay for free schools? If that is true, how on earth does he justify it?
Michael Gove
I hope the advice that the right hon. Gentleman has given to his son on how he sits his SATs includes doing his revision and his homework, because I sat open-mouthed as the right hon. Gentleman unveiled his latest position on free schools. It is very different from the answer he gave on “The Andrew Marr Show” on 10 October when he was asked:
“So you are against free schools?”
and he said, “Yes I am”; very different from the answer he gave in The Guardian on 9 November when he said that under Labour
“there would be no more free schools”;
and very different from the answer he gave on 31 January when he said:
“Free schools mean a free-for–all”.
Over the past year, he has been consistently opposed to free schools, and now he says he is in favour—