Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Barry Sheerman and Damian Hinds(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)
Supporting teacher wellbeing is crucial to our commitment to a supportive culture in schools, and for encouraging teacher retention. That is why we co-created the education staff wellbeing charter with the education sector, and we have invested over £1 million in school leader mental health and wellbeing support.
Mr Sheerman
Is the truth not that retention is down, recruitment is down and early retirements are up? What is the Minister going to do to boost the morale of teachers? They say to me, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a Cabinet who had been through a state sector education and sent their children to state schools?”
Damian Hinds
I think the hon. Gentleman needs to do some research before he starts asking questions in Parliament. On recruitment and retention, I join him in stressing the importance of retention, which we are absolutely focused on, including through our workload programme. We have a good set of scholarships and bursaries for encouraging entry and a range of different routes into teaching to get the full range of talent that can benefit our children and young people.
Damian Hinds
I regret that, as education is a devolved matter, the Labour party is in charge of education in Wales. It really saddens me to hear of children in my hon. Friend’s constituency suffering from its mismanagement of that system, despite the great work of brilliant and inspiring teachers in Wales. He is absolutely right that in England, under this Government, funding is at a record level. Meanwhile, in Wales, I am sad to say that education standards are not only the lowest in the UK, but lower than the OECD average. I am afraid it is clear that every time Labour gets into power, children’s education suffers.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State loves plans. What is her plan to reinvigorate and change the course of Ofsted?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Barry Sheerman and Damian Hinds(3 months ago)
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Damian Hinds
We have extended eligibility for free school meals on three occasions, mainly with universal infant free school meals, the extension of further education students and, most recently, by extending the protections for people in transition on universal credit. I say gently to the hon. Lady that we think it is important to target free school meals, but that it is just as important for children in secondary school as in primary.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Books in Primary Schools
Debate between Barry Sheerman and Damian Hinds(3 months ago)
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The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)
It is a pleasure, once again, to see you in the Chair, Ms Elliott. It is nice to be in a Westminster Hall debate in which we all overwhelmingly agree. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) on securing the debate, and it is good to have others taking part. We have particularly benefited from hearing about the hon. Lady’s experience. She mentioned her early childhood experience as a user of libraries, and then her experiences throughout her life as an employee, a professional and an academic in the library service.
The hon. Lady said that we should improve children’s access to books. The Government wholeheartedly agree. Reading is the cornerstone of a brilliant education, an important part of growing up and adult life, and a core focus of this Government. She talked about being in competition with video games, consoles, phones and tablets. In the old times, we might have said that television was top of that list. There are good arguments and practical, useful roles for all those pieces of electronica, but there is nothing quite like a book for the physical, mental and emotional experience.
Mr Sheerman
Does the Minister agree that one of the real problems we all have—I have it in Huddersfield; everyone has it in their constituency—is early stimulation? We see so many parents now pushing their small child in a pushchair, with their headphones on; they are not talking to the child. That early learning of the language, then reading at night and taking them to the library to get their books is crucial, is it not? That is why this debate is so important.
Damian Hinds
What can I say? The hon. Gentleman is ahead of me, and not for the first time. I do not think he has seen my handwritten notes, but if he had, he would know that they say, “It starts with being read to.” I remember previous debates we have had in this Chamber, particularly with our former colleague Baron Field, who was the right hon. Member for Birkenhead. For example, we used to talk about how those early experiences of being read to are so important, not only because of the reading experience, but because it is quite difficult to read to a very young child without holding them, and that early attachment is part of it.
We have a focus these days on the home learning environment, and some of the ways we can make everyday experiences—little moments—matter. Everyday experiences at a bus stop, on a train or in a supermarket are all part of that early literacy experience. Ideally there should be books at home, and I pay tribute to some of the organisations that have tried to make that more widespread, particularly in disadvantaged communities or for people on lower incomes.
Of course, there should also be books at school. School should be the great leveller. I have visited a lot of schools in my time. Like the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), I am a former member of the Education Committee. I am now and have been previously an Education Minister, and, like all of us, I am a Member of Parliament. In those three roles, I have visited a lot of schools. I am always struck by the prominence that schools give to books and reading. They are an important part of school life, and that is true for reading time in school and for children taking books home to enjoy them there.
All pupils deserve to be taught a knowledge-rich curriculum that promotes extensive reading both in and out of school, and reading is a principal way to acquire knowledge. The texts that our young people read play a big part in their wider development, too, by broadening their horizons and introducing new ideas and perspectives.
We have strengthened the national curriculum to focus on developing reading. To encourage the development of a lifelong love of literature, we are requiring pupils to study a range of books, poems and plays. The national curriculum also promotes reading for pleasure, as the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough rightly says, with evidence showing that that is more important for children’s educational development than even their parents’ level of education.
Charities such as BookTrust and the National Literacy Trust work tirelessly to raise the profile of reading for pleasure, and I thank them for their work. Of course, such organisations also do important work to raise awareness of the vital role of libraries, and we recognise the particular importance of libraries in increasing children’s access to books and promoting reading for pleasure, whether in school or in the community library. I am grateful to the organisations and authors who are currently shining a light on the difference that libraries can make, such as Julia Donaldson, Michael Morpurgo, Philip Pullman, Cressida Cowell and others.
I also recognise the important work undertaken by a range of organisations to promote the work of libraries to children, families and schools. For example, Schools Library Services assists schools with everything from developing whole libraries to book stocks and staff training, and the Reading Agency’s summer reading challenge, which I think many MPs also take part in directly or indirectly, motivates more than 700,000 children of all abilities to read for enjoyment over the summer holidays through their local library. It is for individual schools to decide how best to provide and maintain a library service for their pupils, including whether to employ a qualified librarian. Our reading framework provides guidance on that, including how best to engage children with the books that are available in school.
Public libraries have a strong offer to support children’s development as readers beyond school, not just through books and resources, but through events such as Rhymetimes. The experience of visiting a public library these days is quite different from when we were children: there is so much more going on, and it is much more inclusive and welcoming.
Damian Hinds
Well, I am pleased to hear of the good ending to that story. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for all the work that he does locally and for his championing of these causes.
In 2022, my noble Friend Lord Parkinson, the Minister for Arts and Heritage, appointed my noble Friend Baroness Sanderson to review the public libraries sector to help inform future work. Her review of public libraries was published last week and makes a number of recommendations, which will inform the development by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport of the new Government libraries strategy for England.
For children to develop a love of books, we need to build a strong foundation in reading early on, and the Government have introduced a range of measures to support the effective teaching of reading right from the start.
Mr Sheerman
The Minister is making some very good points, but this is not just about books, surely—it is about what those books are. I had the honour of knowing Benjamin Zephaniah, who opened the John Clare cottage, which I am chairman of, but we are struggling to get children to come out of school into places such as that to learn about poetry and to hear and read poetry. Reading poetry at school has diminished. Trips outside of school have diminished. This is holistic. Would the Minister not agree that many children in our country from more deprived backgrounds are missing out holistically, not just in terms of libraries?
Damian Hinds
I am not quite sure how the hon. Gentleman would or could know that. I certainly know that when I visit schools, I see and hear poetry being read, discussed and being written by children. I agree with him entirely that poetry is a really important part of our literature, and it is a really important thing for children to be exposed to. Like the study of music and learning a musical instrument or to sing, they can find ways to express themselves in ways they did not know existed. It provides ways to understand the world in ways they had not previously appreciated. I agree with him absolutely on the importance of poetry.
I was talking about the earliest years, and in particular the early years foundation stage. As the hon. Gentleman will know, we introduced landmark reforms in the early years foundation stage to improve early years outcomes for all children, particularly disadvantaged children, in those critical areas that build the foundations of later success, including, importantly, language development and reading. The reforms will ensure that children receive the best start and develop a love of reading from early on. We have invested in early language intervention and are supporting parents through the home learning environment campaign that I mentioned a moment ago, which has been backed by further investment.
To drive up the standard of literacy teaching in primary schools, we have followed the evidence and focused on ensuring high-quality systematic synthetic phonics teaching for every child. Since 2010, we have turbocharged the effective teaching of phonics by placing it at the heart of the curriculum and introducing the phonics screening check in 2012 to assess pupils at the end of year 1. We have incorporated phonics into the teachers’ standards, the baseline of expectation for teachers’ professional practice. We have placed a greater focus on phonics and the teaching of reading in Ofsted’s inspection framework and supported schools to choose good phonics programmes by publishing a list of schemes validated by the Department.
In 2018, we launched the English hubs programme, which is dedicated to improving the teaching of reading. The programme has so far supported over 1,600 schools intensively, with a particular focus on helping children making the slowest progress in reading, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds. It includes schools in Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough, which are supported by two of the hubs, Learners First and Saint Wilfrid’s. The programme is having a measurable impact. Schools supported intensively as partner schools by English hubs outperform non-partner schools by around seven percentage points when comparing the change in year 1 phonics screening check results between just before the pandemic and 2022.
Mr Sheerman
May I make a final intervention? The Minister’s colleague, the hon. Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson), has rudely left him on his own.
Mr Sheerman
My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) wants the Government to say that every school must have a library. Is the Minister for that, or is he against it? When is he going to introduce it? He has not got much time before the election.
Damian Hinds
Look: schools have books. I do not know what schools the hon. Member may have visited that do not have books on shelves, but schools have books. Sometimes libraries these days get called “learning resource centres” and all sorts of different things. Sometimes they are laid out in different ways and not necessarily laid out as a set-aside room, but schools have books. We trust schools, headteachers, boards of governors and trustees to know what is right for their school and how to provide best for their children. We want reading and books to be at the heart of that and, in my experience of primary schools in England, that is indeed what happens.
The hubs that I mentioned are about more than phonics. In 2021, we rolled out the “Transforming your school’s reading culture” programme, which was developed by hub schools and sector experts to support reading for pleasure. Reaching around 600 schools last year, English hubs is now into the third year of delivering that research-based continuing professional development programme, which trains teachers in schools across the country to ensure that every pupil develops a love of books.
We know that the hub programme cannot reach every single school, so to ensure that all teachers had clear guidance to support their teaching of reading, we published a reading framework. Updated last year, the framework offers non-statutory guidance on best practice in the teaching of reading from reception to year 9. It recognises the importance of encouraging a love of reading, including the vital importance of pupil choice and access to a wide variety of books. More than 90% of schools have taken our first reading framework published in 2021 and 66%, or two thirds, have made changes to their practice as a result.
Our clear focus on reading is making an impact. England came fourth out of the 43 countries that tested children of the same age in the 2021 progress in international reading literacy study, which is an assessment of the reading abilities of primary-age children across the world. I am grateful to all the primary school teachers, teaching assistants and everybody in our brilliant school system whose commitment to reading and to our children has made that possible. The strongest predictor of PIRLS performance was the year 1 phonics screening check mark, with higher marks predicting higher PIRLS scores.
The Department is committed to improving literacy for all pupils because we cannot knock down barriers for children if we do not teach them to read well. We are determined to drive progress further still and ensure that all children can benefit from high-quality teaching, giving them a solid base on which to build as they progress through school.
Question put and agreed to.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Barry Sheerman and Damian Hinds(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Damian Hinds
That is a mischaracterisation of how the education service runs in prison. There are an extraordinary number of very dedicated people working in that service, and three of the four providers, as I say, are essentially further education college providers. We can and must do better, because we know that education and the acquisition of skills help to keep people out of trouble and from returning to jail once they get out.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Post-18 Education and Funding
Debate between Barry Sheerman and Damian Hinds(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Damian Hinds
My hon. Friend is right that we need to evolve the way we do further, continuing and adult education so that it fits with the realities of the economy today and—perhaps more importantly—with the unpredictable change that we know is coming, and part of that is about the national retraining scheme, for the development of which we have already committed significant resources.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
As I learned from the 10 years I chaired the Select Committee, we make most progress in higher education when we find a cross-party consensus, as anyone who looks at the Robbins report or subsequent reports, such as the Dearing report, will know. There is some good stuff in this report. Some of the people on it were special advisers to my Committee when I was Chair. We have to build a consensus. There are good things in the report and some things I really would not like. Our universities and colleges are the most important institutions for most towns and cities in the country, and we endanger their existence at our peril, so let us build a cross-party consensus. I love the part about a new fund for lifelong learning. Tony Blair introduced one in 1997. It failed, but everybody knew we should bring it back to secure the future of further and higher education. So I say well done in part, but if the Secretary of State could keep a higher education Minister for more than a few months we would do a lot better.
Timpson Review of School Exclusion
Debate between Barry Sheerman and Damian Hinds(4 years, 11 months ago)
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Damian Hinds
With respect, the right hon. Gentleman has made something of a leap. It is correct that off-rolling is not legal, and through the Ofsted framework we will make sure that a light is shone on that, but that does not mean that every child in an analysis of unexplained exits has been off-rolled. There are a number of different reasons why children might be leaving school—emigration, for example—and it is important not to conflate them all.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister might be aware that in the 10 years that I was the Education Committee Chair, Edward Timpson was one of the most thoughtful and hard-working members of that Committee, so I expected a good report, and this has some very good elements. May I take the Minister on to the central call for early intervention? The fact is—I hope he will agree with this—that early intervention depends on good data on what is going on in schools: how much bullying there is, how much absence, how many attacks on teachers and so on. The data is there; the problem is who acts on it. Much-weakened local authorities find that hard because they do not have the resources to act quickly or effectively. Ofsted has fewer resources than it had before to take action. That means that the central Department that he heads up has more and more power. If a school is badly managed, we get these problems, so the necessity to get it back on track with good management must be our responsibility.
Damian Hinds
The hon. Gentleman is right about the usefulness of data, but it is also true to say that data has its limits. School management teams use other ways that are at least as important to really understand what is going on in a school. However, he is right to talk about the quality of leadership and management because, as with so much else in education, that is fundamental. He asked about early intervention. I mentioned early years literacy, but also, in a different sense of early intervention, we have recently made some announcements about a behaviour support network backed by £10 million of funding to make sure that good practice on behaviour policy and behaviour management within the school system—there is some fantastic practice out there—can get propagated throughout the system.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Barry Sheerman and Damian Hinds(5 years ago)
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Damian Hinds
I have not ruled that out, as the hon. Gentleman will know. I am sure he will join me in welcoming the consultation we have put out on children not in school and on maintaining a register of children not in school, including the duty to make sure that extra help is provided for home educating parents, where they seek it. There have always been absences from school, as he will know. We have made great progress over the years on absence and persistent absence from school, but we need to make sure that more is done.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Barry Sheerman and Damian Hinds(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Damian Hinds
I thank the hon. Lady for her kind words about the schools Minister. [Interruption.] I mean the children’s Minister. Did I say schools Minister? He is also very good. I do recognise the particularly important place that maintained nursery schools have. With this recent announcement, local authorities can plan with confidence for the full academic year. As the hon. Lady knows, we are also doing further work to look into the value added and additional services that maintained nurseries provide.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Secretary of State listen to a little bit of advice? A lot of people in the educational world want him to be a big beast. They want to know what he stands for and what he is passionate about. If he cannot be passionate about identifying which little children have talent but are lost to the system by the time they get to 11, he will be nothing. Why does he not take it seriously, bring back children’s centres and early years support, and do something about underprivileged children as early as possible? Be a big beast!
Damian Hinds
Wow. I believe my commitment to social mobility and closing the disadvantage gap is strong. I used to chair the all-party group on social mobility before I came into this job, and believe that social mobility is at the very heart of what we do. It is the core purpose of the Department for Education to ensure that every child, whatever their background, has the maximum opportunities available to them. I gently remind the hon. Gentleman that since the party of which he is a member was last in government, we have narrowed the disadvantage attainment gap at every stage—from nursery to primary, through secondary and into higher education.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Barry Sheerman and Damian Hinds(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State for Education (Damian Hinds)
The Department, of course, measures the progress that pupils make between the end of primary education and their GCSEs, and those data can help schools to identify where and when to put additional support in place.
Mr Sheerman
This is nothing short of a national scandal and a national disgrace, because we all know where we lose these talented children. We lose them in this transition period, and who do we lose? Poorer children from deprived backgrounds. When will we have a big beast on the Government Benches who will see this as a national disgrace and do something about it?
Damian Hinds
I assume the hon. Gentleman means the transition between years 6 and 7, to which I acknowledge we have not paid enough attention—both before and after 2010. That is one of the reasons why we are looking at this in the Opportunity North East programme, and in other piloting opportunities, but it is not the only thing to look at. I am pleased to be able to say that the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers has shrunk both at key stage 2 and key stage 4, but there is much still to do.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Barry Sheerman and Damian Hinds(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Damian Hinds
I agree with the hon. Lady about the essential importance of music. That is one reason why music is the second most financially supported subject in our school system, after PE. We have invested £300 million in funding for music hubs and other music programmes between 2016 and 2020.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Barry Sheerman and Damian Hinds(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State for Education (Damian Hinds)
Schools must provide a broad and balanced curriculum that prepares pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of adult life.
Mr Sheerman
The team on the Front Bench could not beat Panama or any other country in terms of effort and talent. Is not it a fact that the earlier young children are able to use both their academic and technical skills, the better, and that this Government have cramped the curriculum? Is not it also true that we can only deliver T-levels with the support of the further education sector, which is being destroyed by Government policies and underfunding?
Damian Hinds
In a wide-ranging question, as they say, the hon. Gentleman presents a number of different aspects, ranging from the World cup to T-levels. He is right about one thing, and that is the earlier children acquire skills and knowledge the better. That is why it is so important we have managed to narrow the attainment gap both in the early years and in primary school.
Post-18 Education
Debate between Barry Sheerman and Damian Hinds(6 years, 2 months ago)
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Damian Hinds
The interest rate, to which I think my right hon. Friend is referring, is currently 6.1%, but it varies with inflation. Critically, it means that those who earn more in their 20s and 30s will pay more—[Interruption.] It applies throughout the study period, as the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) should know. Thereafter, the rate varies depending on earnings. It does serve an important purpose, but it cannot be considered in isolation from all the other aspects of the system.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the Secretary of State to his post, but will he take this matter seriously? Something is deeply wrong with higher education funding. Much has been achieved, but much needs to be reviewed. Will he concentrate on skills in our country? We are not producing the right skills or giving incentives to further education colleges and private trainers—all those who are struggling at the moment.
Damian Hinds
Much achieved, but things to look at again—I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman, because that is precisely what we are doing. As for skills, some of the ones that we are looking for are being delivered extremely well, but we need to do more. That is why we have had the big expansion in apprenticeships, the Institute for Apprenticeships, the raising of standards and, of course, the introduction of the T-levels, which he will welcome.
Catholic Schools (Admissions)
Debate between Barry Sheerman and Damian Hinds(9 years, 12 months ago)
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Damian Hinds
I will happily do so: I contend that the ethos and character of Catholic schools, although they are not the only factors, are key contributors to the performance of such schools in all senses. It is categorically not the case that Catholic schools get better results by being some sort of middle-class filtering service.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I, too, congratulate the hon. Gentleman on introducing this debate. I associate myself with his remarks on the tragedy in Leeds, which is close to my constituency. It is an awful thing to happen.
I press the hon. Gentleman on the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello). When I chaired the Select Committee on Education, we found real evidence that many Christian schools, both Catholic and Anglican—I am an active Christian myself—manage to get far fewer people from poorer backgrounds than one would expect from any interpretation of the population both inside and outside the Catholic community. There is evidence, and surely the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) must worry about that.
Damian Hinds
That would be a worry. I never had the privilege of serving under the hon. Gentleman’s distinguished chairmanship of the Education Committee, although when I subsequently served on the Committee, we had a session on similar matters, and we did not find that to be the case. Depending on our point of view and the point that one is trying to make, we can draw boundaries around schools in different ways. We can draw an immediate boundary or a wider boundary. A little later, I will go through some of the actual statistics on the intake of Catholic schools.
Mr Sheerman
The hon. Gentleman is being kind in giving way again. The Education Committee’s report—I am looking at the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner), who was a member of the Committee at the time—recommended a mandatory code for admissions, which made a difference. Under the mandatory code, schools have to obey a fair admissions policy. That is why, when the Education Committee returned to the matter, many of the problems had been resolved.
Damian Hinds
Catholic schools and all maintained, state-funded schools are, of course, subject to fair admissions procedures, which I will address later.
Damian Hinds
I will tell the hon. Gentleman what I acknowledge: there are 2,000 Catholic schools in this country, and one of them is the London Oratory school. When these stories come up, they always centre on literally a handful of schools, virtually all of which are in west or south-west London. They are in no way representative of Catholic education as a whole, whether in location, resident population or type of school and so on.
Mr Sheerman
We all know why London Oratory became so well known: Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister, sent his children there. I always defended that, because he was, as I understand it, the first Prime Minister ever to send his children to a state school. To put the record straight for anyone reading the report of this debate, before the reforms, when I was Chair of the Education Committee, the crucial thing was not just the number of children on free school meals, but the numbers of looked-after children and children with special educational needs. Things have not much improved, but I have to put on record, as a lay canon at Wakefield cathedral, that we often found that Anglican schools were worse than Catholic schools.
Damian Hinds
That is probably a road that we do not want to go down today. Overall, notwithstanding the poster child cases that can be found on occasion—
Early Childhood Development
Debate between Barry Sheerman and Damian Hinds(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Damian Hinds
Clearly, there is a link—a range of studies suggest different ways in which that link manifests itself—and I do not think that any commentator argues about its existence, but there is nothing inevitable about that; it ought to be possible to equalise children’s life chances. Of course, there are examples of both brilliant and awful parenting in every income bracket. Children’s development is no respecter of the home they happen to have been born into. As the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) says,
“it is primarily parents who shape their children’s outcomes—a healthy pregnancy, good mental health, the way that they parent and whether the home environment is educational”.
As he and many others say, what parents do is much more important than who they are.
Home life is difficult territory for the state. I suggest that we need to think harder about how to communicate what is known about successful, positive ways to parent—a quite substantial body of evidence—in a way that does not come across as, and in fact is not, telling people how to bring up their children.
Geography, as well as income group, reveals other interesting differences in early child development. There is a particular difference in London. When people are told this, they assume that child development is worse in London than elsewhere, because of all the issues in a big city like this. However, that is not so. There was another report last week about the different school results of children growing up in London, versus those growing up elsewhere. That is often attributed to the London Challenge, which started in 2003. There are a number of reasons to believe that the London Challenge was not the sole or primary cause of those improvements. One reason to disbelieve that is that the difference in attainment scores for disadvantaged children is apparent way before they get to secondary school; in fact, it is apparent even in pre-school assessments: on average, disadvantaged children in London seem to do about 20% better on the “good level of development” scale than disadvantaged children in the rest of the country. A bunch of things are different about London children and families.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Excuse my missing the beginning of the hon. Gentleman’s speech, Mr Weir. As someone who was involved in the London Challenge, I should like to know what the relationship is. I am not clear about that. If it was not the London Challenge, what made the difference?
Damian Hinds
The hon. Gentleman asks a big question. I do not want to test your patience, Mr Weir, by debating the London Challenge, rather than early child development. I will talk in a minute about societal differences that may or may not be driving factors. The honest answer is that we do not know, but there are reasons to disbelieve that the simple explanation for London’s improvement is the London Challenge. First, the differences are apparent long before children reach secondary school, and the hon. Gentleman will recall that it only started in 2003. Secondly, when translated from London to the black country and Manchester, there were not the same results. Thirdly, so many other things that are different about London are worth looking into.