Safety of School Buildings

Debate between Caroline Johnson and Bridget Phillipson

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful case for the impact we can all see in our communities when we bring together services to support children and families. We, all of us, know the difference the last Labour Government made around the Sure Start programme in making sure all our children got the best possible start in life, and the evidence around that is even clearer now than it was then.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

I think it was last week that the figures came out on children’s reading and it was discovered, on international assessment, that our young children are the best readers in the western world. Does the hon. Lady welcome that news?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I looked very carefully at all the data that was published, and I pay tribute to our amazing teachers and school support staff who have been involved in making sure that our children get the best possible start in life. I will always be led by the evidence on what is right for children and what is best for their futures. The one area that, I have to say, did slightly trouble me was that, sadly, we see too few of our children enjoying reading. I think all of us want to ensure that as well as getting that really strong foundation, all our children leave school with a love of reading too. There is much there we can welcome and much to praise when it comes to the amazing staff in our schools, but I do not think any of us can be complacent, coming out of the pandemic, about the scale of the challenge that so many of our children and young people are facing.

There is a real lack of ambition for our schools. While the crumbling structures of too many of our schools are all too real, they double as a metaphor for wider problems. Our schools face a recruitment and retention crisis, as teachers and school staff leave the profession in their droves. At the same time, initial teacher training—the pipeline for newly qualified teachers into the classroom—fails to meet recruitment targets in key subjects year after year. It would be laughable were it not so tragic that the Prime Minister believes that ever more children can be taught maths for longer, with even fewer maths teachers. Perhaps the Minister can answer a question on that: if the Government are responsible for the education system, one in 10 maths lessons is already taught by teachers with no relevant post-18 qualification, they want every young person to learn maths until they are 18 and they have no plan to attract more maths teachers, how many more of our young people will end up being taught maths by non-specialist teachers?

It is not just maths. Too many young people face a narrow curriculum, missing out on creative and enriching opportunities. Too many leave school neither ready for work nor ready for life, but why? Because the wider school system is not delivering for our children. We have an accountability system that simply is not delivering the high and rising standards our children need. It is a system that tells us that almost four in five of our schools are good or outstanding according to Ofsted, in a country where tens of thousands of our children do not get the qualifications they need to succeed.

Either the Government have the wrong idea of what good looks like, or the system they have built is not working to deliver it. Some of our children get good schools, great teachers, rewarding opportunities, the opportunity to achieve, the chance to thrive and the knowledge that success is for them, but too many of our children do not get that start. Labour is determined to change that. Excellence must be for everyone—every child in every school, in every corner of our country.

Although the strengths and weaknesses of our schools are at least public, sadly, the state of their buildings is not. The strengths and weaknesses of so much of what goes on in our schools tend to be clear to parents. They can see when teachers keep leaving. They know when their children no longer get to go on trips to museums and when they are asked to pay for stationery or books. They can see that there are almost no music lessons. They know that their kids do not get the same chances for drama as others. But the fabric of the buildings is something that they generally do not see, because the Government are determined to shroud it in darkness. That cannot be right.

It is 13 years since the Government, led by the Conservative party, cancelled the ambitious programme of the last Labour Government to deliver modern, first-class schools for all our children. In those 13 years, not once has capital spending for the Department of Education matched in real terms the level that it was when the Government entered office. But the test is not the money that the Government put in but the state of the buildings in which our children learn. That tells its own story of how unwilling the Government have become to come clean on that.

Making Britain the Best Place to Grow Up and Grow Old

Debate between Caroline Johnson and Bridget Phillipson

Monday 16th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

The last Labour Government transformed the life chances of people across our country—child poverty down, investment in our schools, schools rebuilt, teachers properly supported. That is a record of which we are very proud.

This is a generation of children let down from primary school right the way through to university, a generation of children failed by the Conservatives. I can tell you why they have been failed. The Government have stopped thinking in terms of children, people, parents and families. They have been too long in power, and they are mistaking changing institutions and regulations for improving the lives of our people.

Look at the Schools Bill, published last week. I had genuinely hoped for better, but what did we find? It is narrow in scope, hollow in ambition and thin on policy. It has 32 clauses on the governance of academies and 15 on funding arrangements. On funding, what a sorry sight it is to see a Conservative Chancellor and Secretary of State seeking plaudits merely for aiming to restore, by 2024, a level of real-terms school funding achieved by the last Labour Government, when their Government have spent a decade slicing it away.

The newspapers this weekend made it all too clear that whichever children the Secretary of State cares about, they are not always the children in England’s state schools.

We learnt that he is concerned that the success of our young people in accessing their first choice universities from England’s state schools—the schools which the vast majority of children attend and for which he is primarily responsible—is evidence of “tilting the system” away from private schools, of which, he tells us, he is “so proud”. What an extraordinary remark by the Secretary of State for Education about the success of students in state schools in this country.

If that were not enough, the next day brought further clarification. Not only does the Secretary of State appear concerned by the growing success of state-educated children in entering the universities of their choice, he is not bothered that their schools are crumbling around them. His own officials, within the last two months, have said:

“Some sites a risk-to-life, too many costly and energy-inefficient repairs rather than rebuilds, and rebuild demand three times supply”.

Children are being educated in schools that are a risk to life, and the Government have not lifted a finger.

The children of this country are being failed by an Education Secretary more interested in appealing to Conservative party members than in ensuring the success of our young people.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

The hon. Lady has made two points in the last few minutes about school funding for buildings and about children from private schools. May I address both? Does the hon. Lady welcome the more than £1 million given to Carre’s Grammar School in Sleaford to improve the school buildings and facilities? I went to a comprehensive school in Middlesbrough until I was 16. Just before I was 16 I was on a walk in the hills when I met somebody who went to Gordonstoun, a brilliant public school. They gave me, an ordinary working-class girl from Middlesbrough, a scholarship, for which I am eternally grateful. Were I to have applied for Oxford University, should I have been penalised for that scholarship?

Working People’s Finances: Government Policy

Debate between Caroline Johnson and Bridget Phillipson

Tuesday 21st September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who did so much in government to tackle issues of poverty and of child poverty in early years, in particular.

Conservative Members will have heard the same from their constituents as I have heard from mine, which is that life is getting tougher and they just cannot understand why, in the face of rising cost pressures, the Government are putting up their taxes, cutting the support that is available and making life harder. My constituents simply cannot understand why the Government are prepared to stand by and allow that to happen.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. You are making the case for why you do not agree with the Government’s position, but I have been listening very carefully to hear what your position is. You have criticised the removal of the uplift in universal, but no Labour politician on the news or interviewed by the press has committed to keep it if you were to be elected.

[Dr Johnson]

I did not mean to, of course, Madam Deputy Speaker. The point I am trying to make is that there is no plan from the Opposition. They are not giving any plan on what they would do instead; they simply criticise. They simply say we must spend more and tax less, but how does the hon. Lady propose to do such a thing?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention. The single biggest difference that all of us could make right now would be to cancel the cut to universal credit. That would make the biggest difference to her constituents and to mine, who are facing the single biggest cut to social security since the inception of the welfare state. That is not a choice that a Labour Government would be taking in the aftermath of a pandemic.

[Dr Johnson]

The hon. Lady says that she would not wish to remove the temporary uplift, which we had always planned to be temporary throughout the pandemic. Does that mean that she is making the commitment that a Labour Government would reinstate that £20?

[Bridget Phillipson]

We would not be cutting it in the first place. We would replace universal credit with a better and fairer system that supports people into work. If the hon. Member wants to have a discussion about semantics, I suggest she has a chat with her constituents and sees how she gets on, arguing about the distinction between a temporary uplift and a cut. It is more than £1,000 a year from families’ budgets—that is what really matters.