Education Route Map: Covid-19

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con) [V]]

The full return of schools on 8 March is much more than a waypoint on a road map. I very much welcome it and the safety measures in place. Can I congratulate my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) on how he, at no notice, opened this debate? I join him in noting the can-do attitude of local school leaders and in thanking teachers in East Hampshire, as elsewhere, for all they continue to do.

This is not just about a cohort of children; it is about our children and about the future of our country. As we rebuild for those children, obviously schools and teachers will be in the lead, but we cannot put all the responsibility on them. It is a shared national endeavour in which everyone is responsible. Of course, it is about schools, but it is not only about schools. We need to think of a plan with children. In Government terms, that takes in the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and others, but it also goes far wider. I welcome the money announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State yesterday, but it is also not all about money. Partly, it is about time, but we cannot just cram our way through this. There are limits on how much we can lengthen days. Attention spans themselves have limits, and holidays are important, too. However, there is a role for those, and there are plenty of things that can be done outside the normal school day that are an equally important part of development and growing up.

My right hon. Friend is quite right to leave the discretion to individual schools, but there are things Government can facilitate to get everyone talking about how everyone is involved. I would like to propose a few areas. First, there will need to be more people to help on things such as the tutoring programme. It has been hard recently finding supply teachers, let alone those for additional tutoring. There are lots of people in this country who have a postgraduate certificate in education already but are not currently teaching, and I hope the Department can work out a simplified route for those who want to to be able to come back to the profession, including some refresher training.

Secondly, alongside the professionals, we need a volunteer army. A lot of course happens in schools already with volunteer readers, STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths—ambassadors, mentoring programmes and so on. We do not need to replace those things, but we need to see how we can grow them and be yet more ambitious. I would like every organisation and company in this country to have a board meeting item to discuss how they can support this great endeavour for our children. It might be giving staff time for mentoring or careers advice, but it could also, as with the Hungry Little Minds campaign, be where companies work out how they can, in their business activity, help support early literacy development.

This is about much more than classwork; it is about mental health, as my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester said. It is about activities to make children active again, working with national governing bodies and local clubs. It is not just to catch up on schoolwork, but to get children back on track to rebuild opportunity, broaden horizons and get back to enjoying childhood at the same time. It is a big task and a big ask, and one we all have a role in.