Educational Outcomes
Damian Hinds Excerpts(6 years, 2 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Education (Damian Hinds)
This Government are committed to ensuring that every child—regardless of their circumstances—can benefit from their education, ensuring they have the knowledge and skills to fulfil their potential, and the resilience they need for future success.
Since 2010, thanks to Government reforms and the hard work of teachers, we have made significant progress in raising standards in the education system. There are now 1.9 million more pupils in good or outstanding schools compared to 2010 and last year 154,000 more six-year-olds were on track to be fluent readers than in 2012.
Today, I am announcing a programme of work to improve our understanding of the educational experiences and outcomes of all children with additional needs, and those who live in challenging circumstances.
These children perform less well at school on average, are at greater risk of being excluded and are overrepresented in alternative provision. This is an overlapping cohort whose needs are often complex—many have special educational needs and disabilities, or are children in need of help and protection and so are supported through the social care system. This work is about understanding what works for these children and spreading effective practice to ensure they can fulfil their potential.
This programme of work includes:
An external review of school exclusions, led by former Children’s Minister Edward Timpson CBE. It will help us to understand how and why schools use exclusion, what drives the variation in exclusion rates and, particularly, the disproportionate exclusion rates of some groups—including black Caribbean boys, children in need, looked after children, and those with special educational needs;
Taking forward reforms to Alternative Provision (AP). AP educates children who are unable to attend mainstream or special schools, for example due to illness or exclusion. Today the Government are publishing “Creating Opportunity for AH: Our Vision for Alternative Provision”; it outlines our plan to ensure consistently high quality education is provided to all children in AP, across the country, and determine a clear role for AP as an integral part of the education system. This package includes a £4 million innovation fund to develop effective practice;
Reviewing the outcomes of and support for children in need, as set out in our manifesto. We are already reforming children’s social care to improve children’s safety and stability, but our ambition must be for children in need to achieve their full potential. New data published today sets out the challenges they face, and their outcomes through school. The review will develop evidence to understand what works to improve these children’s educational outcomes in practice. This starts today with launching a call for evidence.
I will respond fully to the recommendations of Dame Christine Lenehan’s review of residential special schools, “Good Intentions, Good Enough?”, later this year. I will take that opportunity to set out how the Government will continue working to achieve the vision of a reformed special educational needs and disabilities system, underpinned by the Children and Families Act 2014.
We will focus on what is effective—using evidence to implement successful policy, and to spread best practice. These measures should help to ensure that all children and young people benefit from their education, transforming their experiences and outcomes.
“Creating Opportunity for All: Our Vision for Alternative Provision” and terms of reference for the exclusions review will be placed in the House libraries, and published on the Department for Education’s website. The website will also contain links to supporting documents for both the exclusions and children in need reviews.
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Education
Damian Hinds Excerpts(6 years, 2 months ago)
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Damian Hinds
There is more money going into our schools in this country than ever before. We know that real-terms funding per pupil is increasing across the system, and with the national funding formula, each school will see at least a small cash increase. [Official Report, 29 January 2018, Vol. 635, c. 536.]
Letter of correction from Damian Hinds:
An error has been identified in the response I gave to the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) in Education Questions on 29 January 2018.
The correct response should have been:
Damian Hinds
There is more money going into our schools in this country than ever before. We know that overall real-terms funding per pupil is being maintained between 2017-18 and 2019-20, and with the national funding formula, each school will see at least a small cash increase.
Post-18 Education
Damian Hinds Excerpts(6 years, 3 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Education (Damian Hinds)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the review of post-18 education and funding. While I am not announcing new policy today, I welcome the opportunity to confirm to the House details of a major review across post-18 education and funding, as announced by the Prime Minister yesterday.
Before I discuss the specifics of the review, I should highlight some of the strengths and successes of our existing post-18 system. We have a world-class higher education system. Sixteen British universities are in the world’s top 100 and four are in the top 10. We have record numbers of young people entering university, including from disadvantaged backgrounds. Our student finance system removes up-front financial barriers and provides protections for borrowers so that they only have to contribute when they can afford to do so. A university degree provides significant financial returns to the individual: graduates on average benefit from their university education by over £100,000 over their lifetime.
The Higher Education and Research Act 2017 sets the foundation for further improvements, with the Office for Students a strong voice for students and to ensure minimum standards. The director for fair access and participation will help to drive social mobility. The teaching outcomes and excellence framework measures are in the legislation as well, as is the facilitation of further diversity with new providers and shorter degrees delivered at a lower cost to students.
The Technical and Further Education Act 2017 extends the responsibilities of the Institute for Apprenticeships to include technical education, as well as introducing degree-level apprenticeships. New institutes of technology will be established, which will focus on higher-level technical skills and will be eligible for access to loans and grants for their students. T-levels are in development—a true, equal-standing alternative to A-levels.
We will build on those important reforms in this review. We will also look at parts of the system that are not working as well as they could be. Although we have seen further growth in three-year degrees for 18-year-olds, the post-18 system does not always offer a comprehensive range of high-quality alternative routes for the many young people who pursue a technical or vocational path at that stage. In universities, we have not seen the extent of increase in choice that we would have wanted. The great majority of courses are priced at the same level and three-year courses remain the norm. Meanwhile, although the funding system is a progressive one with built-in protections, those elements are not always well understood.
It is for those reasons that the Government are committed to conducting this major review to look further at how we can ensure that our post-18 education system is joined up and supported by a funding system that works for students and taxpayers. The review will look at four key strands: choice and competition across post-18 education and training; value for money for graduates and taxpayers; accessibility of the system to all; and delivering the skills that our country needs now and in the future. This means identifying ways to help people to make the most effective choices between the options available at and after 18, so that they can make more informed decisions about their futures. It is also about ensuring that there is a more diverse range of options to choose from beyond the classic three-year or four-year undergraduate degrees.
We will look at how students and graduates contribute to the cost of their studies, to ensure that funding arrangements across post-18 education are transparent and do not prevent people from accessing higher education or training. We will examine how we can best ensure that people from all backgrounds have equal opportunities to progress and succeed in post-18 education, including considering how disadvantaged students receive maintenance support, both from the Government and from universities and colleges. We will look at how we can best support education outcomes that deliver our industrial strategy ambitions by contributing to a strong economy and delivering the skills our country needs.
We are clear that we must maintain and protect key elements of our current post-18 education system that work well already. We will maintain the principle that students should contribute to the cost of their studies, and we will not place a cap on the number of students who can benefit from post-18 education. We will not regress to a system like that in Scotland, where controls on student numbers continue to restrict the aspirations of young people.
The review will be informed by independent advice from an expert panel from across post-18 education, business and academia chaired by Philip Augar, a financial author and former non-executive director of the Department for Education. To inform its advice, the panel will carry out extensive consultation and engagement with the sector, with business and with, among others, people currently or recently participating in post-18 education. The panel will publish its report at an interim stage, before the Government conclude the overall review in early 2019.
The UK is truly a world-leading destination for study and research. Record numbers of young people, including those from disadvantaged backgrounds, are entering university. However, we recognise the concerns and we must look at how we can go further to provide choice, to open up access and to deliver value for money for students and taxpayers. We must ensure that the system as a whole is delivering the best possible outcomes for young people and the economy, joining up the vocational, technical and academic routes and supported by a fair and sustainable funding system. I commend this statement to the House.
Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for giving me advance sight of his statement.
I welcome the Prime Minister’s admission yesterday that the system is not working. She rightly talked about the choices facing a working-class teenage girl today. I faced those choices as a working-class teenage girl myself, but every part of the education system that helped me has been attacked by this Government. I want to ask the Secretary of State first to clarify one simple point. He has claimed that there are now record numbers of students from disadvantaged backgrounds, but the House of Commons Library has confirmed today that, when we include part-time students, there are now 10,000 fewer students from under-represented areas than there were before the Government raised tuition fees to £9,000 a year. And as usual, the rest of the Secretary of State’s announcement leaves us with more questions than answers.
Let us start with the most important question. Will the review be able to recommend extra funding for education overall? The terms of reference state that it cannot make recommendations on tax and that it must follow the Government’s fiscal policies. Does that mean that the review cannot recommend anything that would increase spending? If so, can the review consider restoring maintenance grants, reducing interest rates or increasing the teaching grant? Can the Secretary of State also confirm that the terms of reference make it clear that it is not an independent review at all but one directly run by his Ministers? Given that, will he ensure that the review’s recommendations are put to this House and implemented in primary legislation that we can properly discuss and amend?
The Prime Minister admitted that the current system
“leaves students from the lowest-income households bearing the highest levels of debt”.
Does the Secretary of State acknowledge that that will always be the case with a system entirely based on loans? Does he agree with his predecessor, who has admitted that this Government were wrong to scrap maintenance grants?
Speaking to The Sunday Times, the Secretary of State said that he wants differential fees, with higher prices for subjects with the greatest earning potential. Is that policy, or was the Government’s Education Secretary not speaking for the Government? Does he understand that charging higher fees for the very courses that lead to the highest-paid jobs makes no economic sense and only widens inequality? So much for social mobility.
The Conservative party manifesto promised a review of tertiary education across the board, yet further education colleges form no part of this review, despite the hundreds of thousands of people aged 16 to 18 studying in them. Have this Government abandoned yet another manifesto commitment?
Can the Secretary of State also tell us whether student nurses are covered by the review? If not, will he give this House a debate and a vote on the regulations he is trying to sneak through to abolish their bursaries? He said that he wants funding arrangements to be transparent. The Treasury Committee, chaired by another of his predecessors, found the funding arrangements to be anything but. The Committee highlighted the “fiscal illusion” at the heart of the system, with up to £7 billion of annual debt write-offs simply missing, allowing the Government to artificially reduce the deficit by saddling young people with debt. Perhaps he can tell us whether he will take up the Committee’s recommendations. Will he finally tell us the latest estimate of the resource accounting and budgeting charge and about how it will be written off?
The truth is that a year-long review is an unnecessary waste of time and energy when action is needed now. Let me offer the Secretary of State a simple conclusion to his review: a fully costed plan to scrap tuition fees, to bring back maintenance support and to reverse the rest of the Government’s cuts to education. It is called “For the many, not the few” and that is exactly what our education system should be.
Damian Hinds
I thank the hon. Lady very much indeed for her response. She asked a number of questions and I will try to get through as many of them as I can. She is right to identify the issues of part-time participation in higher education. One of the things the review will look at is the ways in which it is possible to carry on earning in the labour force while studying. The decline in part-time study predates the 2012 reforms and indeed the change of Government in 2010, so we need to look at some of the underlying causes.
The hon. Lady asked what the review will cover. The review will cover the complete range, but the Government also believe in a framework of fiscal responsibility, and rightly so. It is only when we have a strong economy that we can have a strong education system and that we can carry on investing in our public services in the way that we are doing.
The hon. Lady asked whether it is an independent review. It is a Government review and the Government are ultimately responsible to this House and democratically. We make the decisions, but those decisions are informed and advised by an independent panel, the composition of which she knows. The legislative requirements that would follow from any changes would follow the normal processes. The same goes for the statutory instrument she asked about.
I do not want to take up too much time, but I want to set one important thing straight. When we talk about having different fees for different courses, it is about ensuring diversity and choice in the marketplace. That exists along many different axes, including shorter courses, more part-time courses and courses delivered in different ways. It is absolutely not the same as saying that there is some distinction of worth to be drawn between arts courses and science courses. With how the world economy is changing, it is also true that we are going to need more STEM graduates and more people with expertise in coding and so on, but that is a different point.
I will finish by observing that there is no such thing as “free” in higher education. Somebody must pay, and there are only two types of people who can fund higher education: those who have benefited from it and will typically earn much more over their lifetimes, and those who have not. There is a public subsidy that goes towards higher education that rightly reflects the societal benefit, but it is also right that the people who benefit contribute to the cost. The Labour alternative is to have the tab picked up entirely by other taxpayers, many of whom will not have benefited from the advantages. That is a regressive policy that would mean less money going to universities and fewer people going to university. It would be a policy for the few, not the many.
Justine Greening (Putney) (Con)
Like many Members of this House, I was the first person in my family to go to university, and wonderful universities, such as the University of Roehampton in my constituency, are now giving many young local people the same opportunity. I welcome the fact that the panel will talk to young people, which is vital because they need certainty to be able to start making informed decisions about whether to go to university. I have two points. First, does my right hon. Friend agree that social mobility must be at the heart of the panel’s thinking? Secondly, does he also agree that probably one of the worst things we could introduce would be the regressive tuition fee policy proposed by the Labour party, which would simply benefit the better-off at the expense of the worse-off in our society by introducing a cap on student numbers?
Damian Hinds
My right hon. Friend is of course completely right about the alternative policy proposed by the official Opposition, which would benefit the best-off. In contrast, as she says, we should be focusing on what we can do to promote social mobility and build on the strides that we have made in terms of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds going on to study full-time at age 18. She also mentioned the requirement that young people, or indeed older people, applying to university have certainty now. It is important for us to keep stressing that university is a good deal. If you are someone who can benefit from a university degree, we have a progressive system with plenty of protections in place, and if you can make the most of that, you should.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. The Prime Minister’s speech yesterday had plenty of platitudes and good intentions, but there has been absolutely nothing of substance. We have had an admission that the current system in England is not working for students. Admitting that it is wrong is one thing, but failing to correct the situation is simply incompetent. In Scotland, the Scottish National party has restored Scotland’s tradition of free higher education while maintaining the education maintenance allowance for those at school or in further education and the bursary for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds in higher education—[Interruption.] Contrary to the comments from the Government Benches, that support package works. Scottish 18-year-olds from the most disadvantaged areas are now 67% more likely to apply to higher education than 12 years ago, and they graduate with the lowest debt in the UK. Is it not time that we stopped the nonsense and abolished the fees, and matched not just Scotland but the rest of the developed world? Going to university should be based on the ability to learn, not the ability to pay.
If the fees for some less expensive degree courses are lowered, as has been rumoured, has the Secretary of State considered how he will encourage young people to study the more expensive STEM subjects that are so desperately needed in the UK? We have already seen the impact of removing the nursing bursary, with applications to study nursing in England down by 23%. How will the Secretary of State ensure that that does not happen in STEM?
Both the Government and the Labour party are trying to rewrite the history of their responsibility for the tuition fees fiasco, and it is clear that Scotland is leading the policy debate in the UK. With the average debt on graduation in England now at £50,000, how will the Secretary of State ensure that a flow of talent from all backgrounds will continue? How will he ensure that the industrial strategy is supported? Is it not time that fees were abolished?
Damian Hinds
Additional support is already provided in England for some of those key subjects that have a higher cost attached to them, and the review will consider how to incentivise the take-up of such courses. As for the broader point, I said to the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) that, if there were to be a policy along the lines that she suggested, that would mean fewer people being able to go to university, less money going to universities and disadvantaged students being impacted. She only has to look to her left towards the SNP to see exhibit A of how that works.
Several hon. Members rose—
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
How few students actually pay 6%?
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.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
I welcome the review and the direction of travel, but my right hon. Friend will know that a fifth to a third of graduates are not getting graduate jobs and that the number of state school graduates has decreased in the past year. Is it not the case that our higher education system is not providing value for money for many disadvantaged people? That is why the review must focus on skills and on addressing social injustice.
Damian Hinds
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right about the need to focus on skills and to have social justice and equal opportunity at the heart of things. I should also mention that those who do not earn above the threshold do not repay their loan, which is an intrinsic part of the system.
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, three quarters of graduates will not repay their loans, so is it not the case that the system is not working for the taxpayer, let alone students? Therefore, would the Secretary of State have welcomed a more radical review that could have considered some of the deep-rooted problems of the current system?
Damian Hinds
I can understand why the hon. Lady asks that question, but part of the point of the system is that if someone does not earn up to a certain level, or if by the time 30 years have passed, someone has been out of the labour market, they are not expected to pay back the loan. That is deliberate, to ensure that the system is progressive and fair.
Neil O'Brien (Harborough) (Con)
Thanks to the expansion that fees have enabled, the most disadvantaged students are now nearly twice as likely to go to university if they are in England than if they are in Scotland. I am in the first generation in my family to go to university and I want my constituents to have the same opportunity. Although I welcome the review, will the Secretary of State reassure me that we will not put that progress at risk?
Damian Hinds
I absolutely reassure my hon. Friend that ensuring equal and fair access will be at the heart of what we do.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
The Conservative party manifesto promised a review of tertiary education, so I welcome the Secretary of State’s review. However, when will he fulfil the promise to review the most underfunded part of our education system—16 to 18?
Damian Hinds
The internationally recognised definition of tertiary education is largely post-18. The hon. Gentleman is right about some of the challenges in post-16 education. A moment ago, I mentioned T-levels, for which considerably more funding will come forward. There is also the great expansion in apprenticeships.
David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement and strongly support his review. It is essential that we deliver the skills that our country needs, and give opportunities for all. Will he ensure that the concerns and views of business and industry are taken into account in the review?
Damian Hinds
It is vital that the views of industry and business are taken fully into account. I know that the independent panel will listen to them carefully.
Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
The terms of reference that the Secretary of State published say that the review cannot make recommendations on tax policy and that it must make recommendations in keeping with the Government’s fiscal policies. Does that mean that there will be no new money for higher education regardless of the review’s recommendations?
Damian Hinds
As I said, we have a framework of fiscal responsibility, which we will stick to. The announcements on tax and spending are made at fiscal events, but the review has a wide remit to consider all the different aspects of the system and make recommendations.
Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)
The Secretary of State rightly stated the principle that those who benefit must contribute. Does he agree that the alternative is regressive and means a cap and a reduction in student numbers?
Damian Hinds
My hon. Friend is right and he has only to look north of the border to see how that works.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
The Secretary of State spoke about choices made at and after 18, but he will know that many students make those choices at 13 when they choose their GCSEs. The National Audit Office report on the higher education market identified high-quality careers advice and financial education as part of how we can fix the system. Will the review include that?
Damian Hinds
The hon. Lady is right to talk about the choices that are made early. That is why drawing attention to the so-called facilitating subjects can be useful for keeping people’s options open for higher education. The point also highlights why we need to make clear early in school the routes to technical and vocational as well as higher education.
Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)
Does the Secretary of State agree that high-quality apprenticeships are key to addressing the UK’s skills shortages?
Damian Hinds
I agree entirely. That is why we have such bold ambition for what we will do on apprenticeships—not just the numbers, but with the Institute for Apprenticeships, and moving from frameworks to standards to ensure that they deliver what business needs.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
The creative industries generate more than £90 billion for the UK economy. Assessing the value of a university degree course on graduate salary or outcomes risks undermining that important sector. What will the Secretary of State do to ensure that we support universities in producing world-class arts graduates?
Damian Hinds
The hon. Lady makes an important point and, of course, we do produce world-class arts graduates, and we have some of the finest institutions in the world doing that. On what she calls valuing degrees, I have said that at least three different considerations need to be taken account of: the cost of putting on the course, the value in earnings to the individual, and also the value to our society as well as our economy.
Michelle Donelan (Chippenham) (Con)
I am delighted that the review will address value for money for graduates. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the system does not currently have the transparency for students to make informed choices, and that that needs to be addressed?
Damian Hinds
My hon. Friend makes an important point. We have moved forward with what is called the LEO—longitudinal education outcomes—dataset to help students make those analyses directly, and indeed to help those who provide information on courses.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
The madness of the current system is that it costs students and taxpayers a fortune. Student debt is spiralling up to £55 billion, nearly half of which will be written off and picked up by general taxpayers. I urge the Secretary of State to look forensically at how we knit together further education and higher education so that we radically expand the number of earn-while-you-learn degree places, which are collapsing in great cities such as Birmingham, where they have halved in the past 12 months alone.
Damian Hinds
That was a question of two halves. In the first half, I think the right hon. Gentleman was describing what is called sharing the cost, which we do. We believe that it is right that the individual who benefits should take on part of the investment, and the taxpayer also picks up part of it. I agree entirely with the points in the second half of the question: we should have proper join-up between HE and FE. Many universities already do important technical education, and many FE colleges also conduct very good HE. We want more of a join-up.
Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)
Many of us, from both sides of the Chamber, come from modest backgrounds and were the first in our families to go to university. Any kind of cap on numbers could seriously jeopardise the system. Will the review therefore ensure that the unintended consequences of popular but ultimately disastrous policy options are highlighted?
Damian Hinds
The review will look at a range of issues, but highlighting the downsides of some policies that may appear outwardly and initially attractive is an important part of that.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State guarantee that there will be no reduction in funding for widening participation and fair access programmes as part of the review?
Damian Hinds
As the hon. Gentleman will know, there has been some great progress in widening access in terms of social class and, for example, in terms of people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds going on to university. The access programmes that universities run are part of the reason for that. The director of fair access enables us to strengthen that further, learn from what works best and ensure that we spread best practice.
Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)
We need to build 300,000 houses a year in this country. Does my right hon. Friend therefore agree that a high-quality apprenticeship in construction is an excellent alternative to incurring any debt through a university course?
Damian Hinds
Different people have different talents and orientations and enjoy different things, and it is important that we present a range. My hon. Friend is right to mention the particular requirement for construction skills, and the apprenticeship route is an important part of fulfilling that.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
The review does not touch on the excessive salaries and pension pots that many vice-chancellors claim. Does the Secretary of State think that that is an insignificant factor in the current culture?
Damian Hinds
The overall remuneration of senior staff in institutions that have public support must also enjoy public confidence. The Office for Students will look at how we can ensure that that confidence is maintained.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
I welcome the mention of apprenticeships and T-levels. Will the Secretary of State confirm that the review will cover the potential of institutes of technology to deliver them, particularly if one was built in South Devon College in Paignton?
Damian Hinds
I am not at this exact moment in a position to go into detail about Paignton, but I can confirm that institutes of technology are an important part of the piece.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Further to the answer that the Secretary of State gave my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) on the international definition of tertiary education being post-18, I point out that the Conservative party manifesto included 16 to 18 education as tertiary. Although it is the Secretary of State’s prerogative to choose his timings for inquiries, will he give an actual date for the FE review, because colleges in Stoke-on-Trent want to know?
Damian Hinds
We are constantly improving things. The level 4 and 5 review that is going on will feed into the review that we are discussing. As I have said to several Members, we want to ensure that the two sides are joined up.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Yesterday, when I looked, there did not seem to be a readily accessible link on the website to the review team. If members of the public want to share the benefit of their views with Mr Augar, will the Secretary of State ensure that there is an accessible, emailable link?
Damian Hinds
I will indeed ensure that it is possible to do that. There will of course be a call for evidence as part of the process.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
The Secretary of State has simply criticised the Scottish Government and not taken the opportunity to learn from them. Will he join me in welcoming the 2017 UCAS figures, which show a 13% increase in students from Scotland’s most deprived communities going to a Scottish university, and the overall 2% increase in applicants to universities this year from the 20% most deprived areas compared with last year?
Damian Hinds
The gap in opportunity between the disadvantaged and the advantaged in Scotland is well known to all, including the commentators who look at it, and no plucking from the air of a favourite statistic is going to change that. The fact is that the system we have in England has been effective in helping disadvantaged people to make the most of their talents if they want to go on to higher education.
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
Student living costs are the most pressing issue at Keele University in my constituency and certainly elsewhere in the country, where it is much more expensive to rent and simply get by. Rather than waiting an age for the conclusions of this review, should the Government not simply address this issue now, as well as the sliding scale of access to maintenance loans and the reintroduction of maintenance grants?
Damian Hinds
Bringing in maintenance loans meant it was possible to get access to more cash, and we know the cash-flow question was an important consideration, especially in enabling disadvantaged students to stay at university. I confirmed in the statement that the review will look at all the different aspects of the system.
Oral Answers to Questions
Damian Hinds Excerpts(6 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP)
The Secretary of State for Education (Damian Hinds)
We have agreed with the EU that we will continue to benefit from EU programmes until the end of the current budget plan. We have also reached an agreement on citizens’ rights, allowing EU citizens to continue to live here broadly as now, which helps to provide certainty to current staff.
John Mc Nally
The Secretary of State will be aware of the comments made by Professor Andrea Nolan when she told the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs that Brexit
“will have a significant impact on the HE sector, on the staffing profile, and on the student profile, in Scotland.”
Does the Secretary of State understand those concerns, and does he agree with the convener of Universities Scotland?
Damian Hinds
Of course people working in the university sector in Scotland, as throughout the United Kingdom, will be thinking about the future in what will be a time of some change, but it will remain the case that the United Kingdom, including Scotland, has an exceptionally strong message to give to the world on the strength of our institutions, on the attractiveness of coming here to study and on the attractiveness of partnering with our institutions on research.
Chris Law
Scotland’s universities have so far been awarded almost €400 million from Horizon 2020, an 11% share of all funding secured by UK institutions. The University of Dundee in my constituency, for example, has received €21 million from the scheme. Given the scheme’s huge importance, when will the Government tell universities how they plan to square the funding circle after the current Horizon 2020 programme finishes?
Damian Hinds
These are indeed important matters, and officials from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy have spoken to academics from Scottish universities—including, I think, from the University of Dundee—about the future. It is important that we have a guarantee until the end of the Horizon 2020 programme. Of course, what happens with future programmes will be a matter for us to agree with the other nations.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his new position. Has he had a chance to read the Social Market Foundation report, published today, on the problems of snobbery between higher education and technical education? Does he agree that universities need to do a lot more to embrace technical education students and degree apprenticeships and that financial incentives should go towards those universities that encourage degree apprenticeships and encourage students with BTECs into technical education?
Damian Hinds
I confess that I have not yet read this morning’s report, but I look forward to consuming it when I have the time to do so with proper attention. My right hon. Friend mentions something on which he has consistently campaigned throughout his time in Parliament, and it is so important that we do not have some sort of wall between the academic and the technical and vocational. Things such as degree apprenticeships are a great opportunity for more people to benefit from certain types of education and to make sure that we widen participation as much as possible.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend join me in echoing the phrase used by the BBC and, despite Brexit, welcoming this year’s record number of international students in our university system?
Damian Hinds
My hon. Friend is correct that the United Kingdom remains an exceptionally attractive destination for international students. As he says, the number of non-EU international students is at a record high, and of course we want that to continue.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
What conversations has the Secretary of State had with the Home Secretary on the contribution made by international students and staff to our British universities and about their classification in immigration statistics?
Damian Hinds
I, the Government, the Home Office and everyone else totally recognise the value of the higher education sector to our country. The Migration Advisory Committee will be looking at the question of international students, as well as the question of migration in general, so that we can consider those things fully.
Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)
Since the introduction of Horizon 2020, Welsh universities have received more than €83 million in funding from the programme, enabling their participation in more than 2,000 international collaborations. Will the Secretary of State confirm whether the UK Government intend to negotiate association with Horizon 2020’s successor programmes, so that universities in Wales can continue to benefit from and contribute to such programmes?
Damian Hinds
Horizon 2020 has worked very well for UK universities. In fact, we have the second-highest number of participants in those programmes of any EU state. Of course, it is vital and in everybody’s interest that we continue to work co-operatively with our near European neighbours on many things, including university research.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
I welcome the Secretary of State and his team to their places. He will no doubt be aware of the challenges of getting young people, especially girls, into STEM careers. Given the importance of those subjects to our economic development, does he agree that the UK’s immigration policy for prospective academic and research staff from the EU should not be restrictive?
Damian Hinds
I alluded a moment or two ago to the Migration Advisory Committee and the work it will be doing. This country has always been clear that we want to remain attractive to and welcome the brightest and the best. We have a very successful and very international, outward-looking higher education sector, and I anticipate that continuing.
Carol Monaghan
The Royal Society of Edinburgh said in its evidence to the Migration Advisory Committee that the UK risks undermining the Scottish Government’s efforts on developing interest in and the uptake of STEM subjects if restrictive immigration policies are put in place. What discussions has the Secretary of State had in this area with the Home Secretary and with university principals, to commit to looking at a tailored immigration policy for Scotland?
Damian Hinds
As I say, we will be looking at all aspects of this, with regard to both students and academics. More widely, the Migration Advisory Committee is looking at immigration and the role it plays in different sectors of the economy. We continue to discuss with our European neighbours what will happen in the future, and my hon. Friend the Minister for Higher Education will be speaking to EU Science Ministers later this week. It is in everybody’s interest that we work for the good of the whole United Kingdom to ensure that we continue to have such a highly successful higher education system.
Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
The Secretary of State for Education (Damian Hinds)
Since 2010, the proportion of pupils taking a language GCSE has increased from 40% to 47%. In December, we outlined plans to improve the quality of language teaching in England, where schools with a good track record in teaching languages will share best practice and pedagogy.
Jamie Stone
I also welcome the Secretary of State to his place. I listened to his answer with great interest. North of the border, Scotland’s future economic prosperity will clearly be dependent on young people having the very best language skills. Would the Secretary of State’s Department be good enough to share—[Laughter.]Would his Department share best practice with the Scottish Government? I think that the Scottish Government would be very grateful.
Damian Hinds
Language skills are important for young people in Scotland, as they are for those in England. In England, we have looked across the world for examples of best practice in various subjects, and we are happy to share that information with others. I am keen to work collaboratively with the Scottish Government, so that we can both see what we can learn from one another.
Mr Speaker
Order. May I remind Ministers that there is no obligation to provide multi-sentence replies? There is no prohibition on single sentence replies. In fact, some people think that they are quite desirable.
Damian Hinds
That is very fortunate, Mr Speaker, as I do not quite know where to go after that. My hon. Friend makes a very good and interesting point about the value of languages.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
We were all suitably impressed when Emmanuel Macron spoke flawless English in his candid interview with Andrew Marr the other week. That is no surprise given that 80% of children in EU member states start learning a second language in primary school. What is the Secretary of State going to do to ensure that children in the UK do not fall behind their European counterparts?
Damian Hinds
It starts with an international outlook and learning about other countries. Of course, it is also about encouraging more teachers to go into teaching modern foreign languages, and we are working hard on that.
Alan Mak (Havant) (Con)
The number of entries for GCSE Mandarin has increased by nearly 50% since 2010. Will the Secretary of State continue to support that language and other languages spoken in the world’s fastest-growing economies?
Damian Hinds
My hon. Friend is exactly right about the importance of Mandarin. Of course, this is a hugely important economy. That is why things like the Mandarin excellence programme are so much in focus at the Department for Education.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Education (Damian Hinds)
Since 2010, the number of open academies and free schools has increased from 203 to almost 7,500. The numbers of primary schools converting to academies has grown significantly. As of the first day of the year, there were 4,592.
Stephen McPartland
Herts for Learning is the only local authority-controlled multi-academy trust in the country. Records at Companies House demonstrate that the local authority has more than 25% of shares in it and is an organisation of significant control. It has been converting primary schools in my area since September. Will the Secretary of State clarify the Government’s position with regard to local authority-controlled multi-academy trusts?
Damian Hinds
Our position is that we limit local authority representation on academy trust boards to 19.9% to help maintain the independence of academies, while ensuring that boards can benefit from the right mix of skills and experience. I am of course very happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss whatever concerns and wishes he may have.
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
May I welcome the new Secretary of State to his position? Since taking up office, has he had a chance to read and reflect on a letter that the Education Committee wrote to the Minister, Lord Agnew, following our evidence-hearing session with the Minister and the National Schools Commissioner about what we feel is a lack of oversight, accountability and, critically, transparency with regard to multi-academy trusts?
Damian Hinds
We have a framework in place around multi-academy trusts. Academies have been a fundamental part of the improvements that we have seen in schools. Multi-academy trusts, in turn, are a fundamental part of making sure that good practice can be spread more widely across the system. We have the good practice guidance that is published. There are audited accounts and various processes. Ultimately, as Secretary of State, I am accountable to Parliament for the performance of the schools system. In turn, the regional schools commissioners are accountable to me.
Sir Patrick McLoughlin (Derbyshire Dales) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend, in promoting multi-academy trusts, also show the role that secondary schools can have in leading primary schools that become part of those trusts? That is very important for people attending primary schools and then going on to the secondary school in due course.
Damian Hinds
My right hon. Friend, with his great experience, makes a very important point. The different phases of education, working together, can share a great deal of expertise.
Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)
All the focus on structures is taking us away from the real issue, which is that this weekend even Tory party donors and academy chain heads were talking about real-terms cuts to funding. That is what I am seeing in the schools in my constituency. Will the Government face up to the real crisis, which is the real-terms cut in school funding?
Damian Hinds
There is more money going into our schools in this country than ever before. We know that real-terms funding per pupil is increasing across the system, and with the national funding formula, each school will see at least a small cash increase. [Official Report, 5 March 2018, Vol. 637, c. 2MC.]
Michelle Donelan (Chippenham) (Con)
Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Education (Damian Hinds)
This Government are committing to providing a world-class education for all our young people, raising attainment and narrowing the gap between the affluent and the disadvantaged. Working with our dedicated teachers and professionals throughout education and beyond, we must continue to raise standards, from early years through to further and higher education, and ensure that the right care and support are always there for society’s vulnerable children. I will work to make sure that our education system offers opportunity to everyone, in every phase and in every place. The successes are clear, with 1.9 million more children in good or outstanding schools, and the latest figures showing the attainment gap narrowed by 10%, but there is more to do to spread opportunity, particularly in areas of the country historically left behind.
Emma Reynolds
I recently visited Ashmore Park Nursery School in my constituency, which provides outstanding education, as do 60% of nursery schools across the country. Unfortunately, the future of their funding is now in doubt. Will the Secretary of State guarantee their sustainable funding beyond 2020?
Damian Hinds
I join the hon. Lady in paying tribute to her local nursery school. This Government are spending more on childcare and early years than any previous Government, with not only the 30 hours commitment but the extra provision for disadvantaged two-year-olds, and of course there is also the work being done on the hourly rate.
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
Damian Hinds
Yes, it does. Before “Never again” comes “Never forget.” Every young person should learn about the holocaust, which is why it is the only historic event that is compulsory within the national curriculum. I commend the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust and other such organisations.
Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)
The Secretary of State’s predecessor this morning admitted that they were wrong to abolish maintenance grants, that the student finance system is regressive, that variable fees will punish the poorest and that their review is intended to kick the issue into the long grass, rather than make decisions. Apart from that, she is very supportive. But she is right, is she not?
Damian Hinds
We have a system of higher education finance in this country that means unprecedented levels of disadvantaged people can go to university and our universities are properly funded. In October, the Prime Minister said that we would be taking quick action, raising the threshold for repayment and freezing the top fees for the next academic year. It is also right that we have a full review, looking at all aspects of value for money for young people and others going to university, and at the alternatives to university, such as taking a degree apprenticeship, as we discussed earlier.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
Damian Hinds
I thank my hon. Friend for that important question. I value greatly the contribution that Church and faith schools make to our education system; they are consistently generally high-performing and popular schools. Every child deserves a good school place, which is why the “Schools that work for everyone” consultation set out proposals to enable a wider group of providers, including the Catholic Church, for example, to set up new schools. I am carefully considering the proposals.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
Damian Hinds
Quite simply, the proposals will involve more children being eligible for free school meals than under the previous system. We have a short-term arrangement for the very early days of universal credit, which is different, but we estimate that around 50,000 more children will be eligible for free school meals than under the old system.
James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)
What is the Department doing to help children with special educational needs on their pathway to adulthood and, where appropriate, into the workforce?
Damian Hinds
My hon. Friend has been consistent in campaigning on this issue for a number of years, and I will of course be happy to meet him to discuss his comments.
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
The desperate rush to convert schools into academies does not appear to be matched by any rush to ensure adequate financial oversight and value for money. Will the Secretary of State please investigate why the academy trust United Learning received £150,000 to support Sedgehill School in south London, despite the school remaining maintained and United Learning not even becoming its sponsor?
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
I very much welcome the steps the Government are taking to improve the mental wellbeing of school pupils, but does the Secretary of State agree that extracurricular activities such as sport are also vital in ensuring good wellbeing and mental health and that we should promote them at every opportunity?
Damian Hinds
Mental health among our young people is indeed an issue of paramount importance—and something, of course, the Prime Minister has given particular attention to—and the Green Paper is an important indication of the way forward, but my hon. Friend is also right to mention that active lives and sport play a very important part.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
Not all children arrive at school equal, and those who are homeless and in temporary accommodation have the worst set of circumstances. Mrs Sheridan, a headteacher in my constituency, recently wrote about her pupil Jack, who has become an absentee student since going into temporary accommodation. What does the Minister’s Department say to those children in temporary accommodation?
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
Wirral Metropolitan College failed to secure funds for non-levied apprenticeships from April this year, despite a positive Ofsted report in October 2017, which highlighted the fact that it is a key player in economic and social development in the region. Concern has been expressed about a number of colleges that are currently meeting the needs of employers but have missed out in the procurement process. Will the Minister ask the Education and Skills Funding Agency to look again at the application from Wirral Met, to ensure that the college can continue to work with employers to deliver vital skills training in Wirral?
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Damian Hinds Excerpts(8 years, 2 months ago)
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The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Damian Hinds)
Today’s young people can look forward to some of the most exciting opportunities that a generation has ever faced, but also to a much more uncertain world. They face a changing world order, where the economic and political dominance of the west is increasingly challenged by developing and emerging economies. They face a changing labour market, with a growing premium on high value added jobs and the knowledge economy. They are unlikely to stay in the same job for life, they are much less likely than their parents to have a defined benefit pension, and they face much higher house prices, albeit that those are greatly mitigated by the low interest rates that have come about from our sound economic stewardship.
That comes on top of long-standing issues that the Government inherited in 2010 but that, to be fair, have existed for much longer. There is a productivity gap between the UK and other major global economies, an educational gap between rich and poor and between different parts of the country, and a lack of financial resilience in many parts of the population, without even the cushion of a small savings account.
The Government have been facing up to those structural issues through our educational reforms, the revolution in apprenticeships and the national living wage. This Budget puts the next generation first. It builds up our young people’s skills, and builds the infrastructure for a modern economy and higher productivity. Alongside all that is rightly being done to increase housing supply, it also helps young people to save for their retirement and for owning a home, with all the security that that can bring. For many, the Budget makes possible a rainy-day savings cushion for the first time.
The Budget also commits £1.6 billion extra over this Parliament to education in England. Academies are a key part of our education reforms, as the Education Secretary outlined earlier, and research from the OECD, the European Commission, and others, has repeatedly shown that more autonomy for individual schools can help to raise standards.
The right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), my cloakroom neighbour, rightly talked about the performance of London schools and the London challenge. Many factors have gone into improving the performance of London schools. In fact, the improvement in performance predates the London challenge—the year the London challenge started is the year that the GCSE performance in London caught up with that of the rest of the country—but one of the factors in London’s outperformance was the school mix, including the disproportionate contribution to improvement made by academy schools.
Alex Cunningham
I am grateful to hear the lovely compliments for my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms). The Secretary of State could not tell us where the extra money was coming from to fund the forced academies programme. Can the Minister do so?
Damian Hinds
The money announced in the Budget comes on top of what was announced in the spending review.
The right hon. Member for East Ham asked how the national funding formula would be done. We will consult on the principles through which it will work, but the intention is to ensure that it is fair and that it reflects need, unlike the rather arbitrary system we can have currently.
Damian Hinds
I am sorry but I am going to make some progress.
A number of hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), talked about post-16 maths. There is a massive premium on the study of maths and maths qualifications, as the report by Professor Alison Wolf identified. Maths will become more important as time goes on, but it is right that we ask the question and work out the best way to have further maths study, including by taking into consideration the questions that a number of hon. Members raised.
Hon. Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) and for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow), raised the importance of sport in school. My hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) rightly mentioned in an intervention that the difference in opportunity in sport and other extracurricular activities is part of the gap in opportunity between children in state schools and children in public schools. It is therefore very important for social mobility.
A number of right hon. and hon. Members talked about the levy on manufacturers and importers of sugary soft drinks. My hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan) movingly spoke of her own family and reminded us of the health benefit that is at the centre of the policy, which was also mentioned by my hon. Friends the Members for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) and for Faversham and Mid Kent, and the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis). Of course, we would rather not collect that much of that tax. The reason for the delay before it is introduced is to allow the manufacturers to change the formulation of their drinks or change their marketing so that they are pushing and promoting more the lower-sugar variants and products. We hope they will do so.
Rightly, a number of times in the debate, the important subject of the support that is given to people with disabilities has come up. I reassure the House that real-terms spending on the personal independence payment and its predecessor, the disability living allowance, has increased by more than £3 billion since 2010. The PIP budget will continue to increase from now until 2020. The reforms announced last week will bring spending closer to the level forecast in November and ensure that increased spend is targeted on those who need it most.
Damian Hinds
I am sorry but I will not give way.
We are exempting disability benefits from the uprating freeze and exempting recipients of them from the benefits cap. We are aiming to halve the massive employment gap between those with disabilities and those without. Over the past year, the number of disabled people in employment has risen by 150,000, but there is much more to do, hence the increase in the Budget for the Access to Work programme, the expansion of the Fit for Work scheme, and the increase in funding for dedicated employment advisers in IAPT— improving access to psychological therapies—services, among other programmes.
As today’s theme is education and young people, I should mention the replacement—it comes from the previous Parliament—of statements for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities with educational health and care plans, which for the first time bring together the care, health and education needs of some of our most vulnerable young people from the age of zero right up to 25. It is too early to measure the full effect of the programme, but most hon. Members would welcome it—I hope so.
On some of the other issues raised in today’s debate, the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) talked about the catapult proposal. I am not in a position to comment on that in detail, but I am very happy to hear more about it. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) talked about tax simplification. We have eliminated the carbon reduction commitment part of the tax system, and there is also the zero rating of petroleum revenue tax. We are making the filing of taxes easier and making sure there are more people in HMRC call centres to take calls.
On the carer’s allowance, raised by the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford), the spend has increased by almost half since 2010. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole rightly mentioned the increased funding to deal with homelessness and the attention being given to provide second stage accommodation for people leaving hostels and refuges.
The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) and the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green)—it is a pleasure to speak opposite the hon. Lady from the Dispatch Box for what I think is the first time—suggested that inequality was rising due to the Government’s policies and the Budget. Inequality is actually coming down. The simple fact is that, if we look at the effect of policy over the period, the pattern of how public spending goes to different income groups in society remains broadly flat, while the incidence of taxation has shifted towards the top end.
My right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) and my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent reminded us of the Government’s employment record. I remind the Opposition that the bulk of those jobs have been in full-time and higher-skilled occupations. My hon. Friends the Members for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), for Reading West (Alok Sharma) and for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher) reminded us that only business can create the wealth that gives security to families, and affords us the excellent schools and our world-leading national health service. We are therefore right to reform small business rate relief; fuel duty, which is an important cost for many businesses; and corporation tax to make sure that investment is incentivised, while at the same time introducing a further £8 billion package on tax avoidance by multinationals. We say that we are going to have a very competitive tax system and that we want to attract investment to this country, but when companies operate in this country we expect them to pay the full tax that is due.
Yesterday, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor was candid with the House about the challenges facing the global economy. They are challenges from which no economy is immune, particularly a globally connected, trading economy such as ours. That is why it is so important to make Britain fit for the future, whatever challenges may lie ahead. It is why we focus on stability, employment, enterprise, innovation and opportunity. It is why we put in place policies helping people at every stage in their lives: from early-years childcare, to financial security and dignity in old age.
The reforms in education announced in this year’s Budget take that agenda forward. They help our aim of creating a society where everybody can achieve their aspirations and fulfil their potential—for children to get the best start in life, regardless of background; for them to be able to go to work in businesses as committed and skilled employees, companies that are incentivised towards productive capital investment; for young people to get on to the housing ladder; for our towns and cities to prosper, and to attract investment; for families to save for their retirement; and for everyone in our society to have a stake in the prosperity that, through this Budget, this Government are continuing to deliver.
Childcare Bill [Lords]
Damian Hinds Excerpts(8 years, 3 months ago)
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Jenny Chapman
Well, I am glad that’s as simple as it gets. I said at the outset that I supported the Bill reasonably enthusiastically, but it is a bit arrogant of the Minister to suggest that it is a perfect Bill and that it has no complexity. As he just demonstrated incredibly well, there is huge complexity. Somebody on low earnings and working fewer than 16 hours a week will not qualify, but someone on higher earnings—
Jenny Chapman
The Minister says that universal credit will help improve the system. I venture to suggest that it might well further complicate the situation.
The new clause is designed to ensure that these perceived and anticipated complications do not have unintended consequences. As I have said, I accept that they are unintended, but the Minister would be rather naive to think that these consequences could never occur.
Technical and Vocational Education
Damian Hinds Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)
I am very pleased that the shadow Secretary of State called for this debate, because we have to make education and skills this country’s No. 1 priority. The biggest question that we face, as a country, is how we can bring new, better-paid and more secure jobs to places such as Dudley, which have lost their traditional industries. The only way our country will pay its way in this century, let alone prosper, is by equipping the British people with the skills that they need to compete. There is no more urgent priority or task.
Children who are at school today will spend their adult lives working with technologies that have not yet been invented, and that we cannot even imagine. On average, those who leave school today will have more than a dozen jobs over their lifetime. The key thing that they have to learn is how to adapt and acquire new skills. However, the CBI’s education and skills survey in 2013 found that nearly a third of employers were dissatisfied with school leavers’ basic literacy and numeracy. Too few students have good English and maths GCSEs by the time they reach 18.
Germany has three times as many apprentices as the UK. The number of young apprentices—those who are under the age of 19—is falling, as is the number of apprentices in information technology and construction. It is good that the Minister has introduced degree-level apprenticeships, but they account for less than 2% of apprenticeships.
Britain is also falling behind our competitors in basic numeracy and literacy. In basic skills, we now lag behind not only countries such as Finland, South Korea and Germany but even Estonia, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. England is the only country in the developed world where the generation approaching retirement is more literate and numerate than the one entering the work force.
Ian Austin
If I may say so, that is a narrow party political point. I believe that the last Government took many great steps in education and skills, and if the hon. Gentleman bothers to listen, he might discover that I am saying some things that he and his party’s Front Benchers actually agree with. He ought to sit down, listen carefully and then perhaps contribute later to a serious debate about what I am saying should be the No. 1 priority for every political party.
We should agree as a country—all parties, Government, schools, universities, the teaching profession and businesses—clear long-term targets to transform education and ensure that we have the skills that we need to compete. We should set an ambition for Britain to produce the best-educated and most highly skilled young people in the world. Someone is going to do that, so why can it not be us? We have to drive up standards in our schools and get behind head teachers and teachers who are working to improve standards. If we recruit good teachers, motivate them, set high aspirations and tough targets, focus on standards and discipline and make the kids believe in themselves, the sky is the limit.
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
ATMs and self-checkouts have already taken over jobs that we assumed would always be there. It is difficult fully to take in the potential structural change that will come from driverless vehicles and 3D printers, let alone from cleaning robots and Amazon drones delivering what is left and cannot be transmitted through the ether. More and more markets become more contestable, and more and more things can be offshored. We will never again make T-shirts cheaper than China can.
As we look to the future, we need to focus not only on high-value sectors, but on areas where we have competitive advantage. Those are things for a debate on another day, but we need to note that those two forces—technological change and globalisation—are accentuating the hollowing out of the labour market that we are already seeing, with more jobs at the bottom of the scale, more at the “knowledge economy” top and fewer in the middle. That has serious implications for social mobility and progression.
We know that the way in which those forces impact on people will depend on whether the particular job is enhanced by technology and the computer or competes with them, and there are major social justice questions attached to that. There will, of course, always be jobs that have little or nothing to do with technology—in care, retail, hospitality and so forth. For all employment sectors, however, we need a significant improvement in skill levels in the economy.
What skills will be required? We are going to see a merging of the academic and the vocational, the intellectual and the practical, and a further emphasis on some skills that we are not used to considering in either group. The Wolf report was right to talk about the primacy of English and maths—the skills for which employers look before all others. We need more attention, as the shadow Secretary of State mentioned, on character and resilience skills and on workplace skills. They are not the same thing but they overlap. Character and resilience skills are about what is in you—self-belief and the ability to set realistic goals, for example. Workplace skills are primarily about how people interact with others—customer empathy, including the ability to smile and make eye contact, teamwork, organising tasks, leading and motivating others. At the intersection of the two are perseverance and the ability to bounce back, which is, of course, so important throughout life.
Our success as an economy will depend on how we adapt to those new realities, and on how quickly we adapt. One benchmark is probably South Korea, whose story of change is dramatic. The youngest people in its work force have materially better basic skills than those approaching retirement. It is a shame that this country must currently contend with the opposite position.
I fear that a great error in the first decade of this century was the overriding obsession with the “five-plus C-plus” target for GCSEs. I say that not just because this is an Opposition-day debate and this is what happens in the House of Commons, but because we owe it to young people not merely to file recent history, but to learn from it. The system found increasingly clever ways of helping schools and helping itself—the system as a whole—to find their way up the league. Half-courses, double awards, modularisation, early sits and retakes all helped, but the daddy of them all was “equivalents”, which helped to perpetuate the diet of low-value qualifications. The 350,000 young people of whom Alison Wolf spoke were let down by courses with little or no labour market value, and that in turn contributed significantly to the terrible rise in the number of young people who were not in education, employment or training.
The other big target was the 50% target for the number of people who should go to university. The Opposition now talk about the “forgotten 50%”, but we only talk about that 50% because of the first 50% target which they introduced. Actually, I am not sure that 50% is a bad target. I think it is the rest of the sentence that we need to look at. The target should be not just about the proportion of young people who go to university, but about the proportion who finish university courses that will be of use to them later in life. An increasing number of those courses—degree courses—will be vocational, and many careers that used to involve a vocational route straight after school have themselves become “graduatised”. The number of people embarking on undergraduate degrees more or less matches the number of occupations that now require people to have degrees and did not do so previously.
I rather welcome what the Opposition have been saying about tech degrees. I think that that is a direction of travel that we see on both sides of the House. However, it is the Government who are grasping the nettle and doing what it takes. The importance that my right hon. and hon. Friends attach to vocational education and training is exemplified by the fact that the Wolf report was commissioned at the very start of the Government’s tenure, before the completion of some of the other reforms that we have had plenty of opportunities to debate in the House. I think it right to move away from that “one target that trumps all others”, the “five-plus C-plus”, and towards measures that reward and value the progress made by all young people, whatever their abilities. I also think that we should take into account not just the results those young people achieve at the end of their time at school or college, but where they go after that, and where they end up.
This Government are determined that all qualifications will have rigour, because with rigour come respect and value. I welcome tech levels that involve local employers, and I welcome the tech bac, including the core maths qualification and the extended project. I also welcome the massive increase in the number of apprenticeships—it is up 86% in my constituency—the higher apprenticeships fund and the huge growth in UTCs. This goes further than that, however. It is about employers being in control of apprenticeship training budgets, it is about more young people studying maths after the age of 16, and it is about getting 3D printers into schools and enabling more young people to study coding and app design.
You are indicating that I should stop at this point, Mr Speaker, so I shall do so. Let me end by saying that, as we heard from the shadow Secretary of State, this is a matter of social justice and economic efficiency.
Social Mobility/Child Poverty Strategy
Damian Hinds Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing time for this important debate, and I congratulate the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) and my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) on securing it. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work that his Committee has done on crucial aspects of social mobility, including most recently the report on poor white children, and to the right hon. Lady for not only talking about these things but doing them in a practical way, not only in her constituency but more broadly. She is to be commended and thanked in particular for the Speaker’s Parliamentary Placement Scheme. I benefited from having one of the fantastic young people on the scheme, who has gone on to work for the civil service.
For so many of us, opportunity for the many, making society fairer and relieving poverty are the things that brought us into politics in the first place, and they go to the heart of today’s debate. Bringing up the rear of the debate, as I do, there is the tiniest danger that I might repeat some of the things that have gone before, but I see that as positive as it reflects the commonality across the House on some of the challenges that we face.
There are big challenges today. We have entrenched multigenerational poverty in parts of our country, massive geographical differences, and social mobility that is low by international standards and seems to have been stagnant over a number of decades. For the avoidance of doubt, none of these issues has arisen since 2010, or indeed since 1997, and will not be solved within the term of any one Government. But we have to get our act together and work together because whatever the problems are today there are more difficult headwinds coming tomorrow in the form of globalisation, the further effects of technological change and the differential effect that has on people, whether their job is enhanced and enabled by the computer or is in competition with the computer. Those effects are partly responsible for the hollowing out of the labour market that the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain) referred to, where there are more jobs in the so-called knowledge economy at the top of the scale, lots of jobs in the low wage service sector at the bottom of the scale and relatively fewer in between.
We must think about mobility, fairness and distribution within our society, but we must also think about those things collectively on behalf of our society, relative to the rest of the world. The two go hand in hand, because unless everyone’s talents are optimally deployed, economic efficiency is impossible.
I think that the Government are on the right track. The child poverty strategy is right to focus on the root causes of poverty, because although cash transfers can alleviate and mitigate poverty, they cannot cure it. Curing it, of course, is about many things, including regulatory measures, such as the national minimum wage, and tax, but it is also about bearing down on the extra costs incurred as a result of being poor. It is about building more homes, because the single biggest cost in most people’s lives is rent, and we will not solve that issue structurally until we have more housing. It is about affordable credit and trying to help people to save and build up a cushion of resilience against the nasty shocks that life inevitably brings. Most of all, it is about work: getting into it and getting on in it, and building up the skills required to do that. I am proud to support a Government who are grasping the nettle on welfare reform, especially through universal credit, and addressing the crucial issue of work incentives.
I am also proud that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness said, everything that the Government are doing on education—I pay tribute to the Schools Minister, who is sitting in front of me, and his colleagues—is about both raising the average level of attainment and narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor. We see that most obviously in the pupil premium, but it is in so many other measures as well, such as the early-years extensions. We also see that in measures, such as the English baccalaureate, that act as signalling devices to give young people a clear message about which subject choices will keep their options most open in case that advice is not forthcoming from other directions.
I will focus the rest of my remarks on social mobility. When people talk about social mobility, they are generally talking about one of three subjects. They often assume that everybody else is talking about the same thing, but they are distinct subjects that are in danger of being conflated. The first subject is what I call breaking out, meaning breaking out of severe poverty. That is the link between social mobility and child poverty. The subject at the other end is what we might call stars to shine, which is about nurturing outstanding talent. My hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness talked about how that sometimes develops into an obsession with a relatively small number of people who do amazing, stellar things, going from very humble backgrounds to running the world. The danger is that we forget the third group, the 70% or 80% in the middle, where social mobility is about helping everybody to get on, to be the best they can be, to make the most of their talents and to achieve some security in life.
The three policy areas that I want to focus on cross-cut those three subject areas. I want to focus on teachers, parents and character development. We know that education is fundamental to social mobility. At the heart of the social mobility debate is a close correlation between the circumstances, social class and income of parents and the eventual circumstances, social class and income of their children—but it is not a direct causal link. Rather, disadvantage among parents tends to be associated with low educational attainment, and it is that which drives the child’s eventual circumstances. If we can break that link between poverty among parents and low educational achievement we can achieve a good degree of social mobility.
The pupil premium is the structural measure that enables many of the initiatives for doing that, but it does not actually tell us what to do. The right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles alluded to that, as did the hon. Member for Norwich South (Simon Wright).
Thanks to the Educational Endowment Foundation and others, we now know more about the things that can make a difference. We also have to face up to some of the things that apparently do not make a difference but are favoured policy areas of lots of people in this House and elsewhere, such as reducing class sizes a little, which, according to the data, does not seem to make a huge amount of difference, or the deployment of additional teaching assistants, which again, according to the data, does not seem to make a lot of difference. I can see people looking at me as though I must be mad to suggest that. These are still controversial things to say in such debates.
What we do know, and I think everybody can agree on, is that the most important thing in education is the person standing at the front of the room. When the Secretary of State says that we have the best generation ever of teachers in this country, he is absolutely correct. A number of things have raised the status of teaching, one of which is Teach First. The figures are remarkable, even compared with when I was at school. A couple of years ago, 6% of Russell Group graduates and 10% of Oxford graduates applied to be teachers. Teaching has become one of the top graduate employers at our great universities. That, in itself, is a good thing.
It is also true—this is another controversial thing that one sometimes finds it difficult to say—that qualifications alone are not a great predictor of who is going to make a great teacher. When I served on the Education Committee, we produced a report on attracting, training, retaining and developing teachers. When we tried to address the question of what makes a great teacher, we kept finding ourselves unable to answer it, except to say, “You know it when you see it.” In having great teachers, we need to start with the premise that we have to see it in order to be able to know it.
Teaching is a very high-stakes profession. It is one of the few occupations left where the assumption is pretty much that someone who starts in it at 21 will still be doing it in their 60s. It is a massive decision for someone to go and do an undergrad degree in teaching or a postgraduate certificate in education. I think we need more auditioning in teaching. If we know it when we see it, we have to be able to see the person have a go at teaching, not just at the stage of interview for a post in a school but in pre-initial teacher training. People also need more opportunity to see it in themselves. It is very difficult for anybody to know whether they would make a great teacher—I am pretty sure I would not—and they need opportunities to see that in themselves. I would welcome more taster sessions for undergraduates who might think about doing a PGCE or sixth formers who might think about doing an undergrad degree in teaching.
There is another side to this, I am afraid. People say quite readily and easily, “Everyone remembers a great teacher.” The truth is that we can all also remember someone who really was not a great teacher. We cannot just wait a generation or two generations for brilliant teachers to come through. There is a big challenge today in making sure that continuing professional development is good. Slightly more controversially, there is the issue of performance pay for teachers—not as a way of punishing those who are not so good but encouraging those who are good to stay in the profession and rewarding them accordingly.
One of the lessons from the London Challenge, which we do not see so much in the reports but always hear from the people who ran it—who were absolutely at the top of it—was that a key aspect was the attitude of not quite ruthlessness but an intense focus on quality of leadership in London schools in saying, if it was not working out, “There’s another job for you somewhere, but this one is not quite the right one for you.” We need to have a great focus on making sure that we have the right people in place.
There is a group of people who are far more important even than teachers, and they are, of course, parents. Everybody who has ever looked at social mobility knows that the earlier the involvement in a child’s life, the more impact—the more leverage—it is possible to have on where they end up. Between years zero and five, children are not with teachers, nursery workers, the early-years work force, or whomsoever, all that much—they are with parents. Studies of children who succeed against the odds—who are born into backgrounds and circumstances where all the academic literature would predict they are not going to do well but manage to break out from that and do, in fact, do well—suggest that that has a lot to do with parenting style. We can define that to the nth degree and in a very complicated way, but I would use “books and boundaries” as shorthand for the parenting style that emerges.
As the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles has said, Alan Milburn has called parenting the last taboo in public policy, and he is right. It is a scary thing to talk about and I think that everybody is reticent to do so. There is good reason for that: nobody wants to try to tell parents how to bring up their children. Many people probably feel qualified to advise other parents on how to do so, but it is dangerous territory for the state or, indeed, anybody else. It is vital, however, that we somehow start to take steps to break through the taboo, do more work in this area, build up knowledge and find new ways to provide support to parents when they want it.
Speaking of parents and parenting, I am reminded of another vital factor in social mobility—character. We all know of kids from among those we grew up with who got either no or one or two GCSEs—or, from my generation, O-levels—and have gone on to do brilliant things. We also know of people who had A grades to spare who have ended up doing nothing that exciting. The difference between them tends to come down to self-belief, drive, tenacity and, admittedly, a little bit of luck. There is a big overlap between those things and the employability skills that firms are looking for and that we hear about so much these days. It is claimed that they are less prevalent now than they used to be—although it is difficult to say whether there was ever a golden age for such things—but in the new world economy they are more important than ever. However, our education system now and ever since I was born has been all but exclusively focused on young people’s exam results.
The all-party group on social mobility’s character and resilience manifesto was written by a think-tank, along with Baroness Tyler of Enfield. We had a simple definition of character and resilience: people need to believe they can achieve; understand the relationship between effort and sometimes distant reward; stick with the task at hand; and bounce back from life’s inevitable setbacks. That is easier said than done, but if people can master those things they will have a very good shout in doing as well as they can in life. The key question is: are those things inherent, or can they be taught? As has been said, the evidence tends to suggest—although we have to be careful about being dogmatic about this—that they can at least be developed and enhanced through life. That can be done through all sorts of things, including volunteering and Saturday jobs, which have been in massive decline, and the National Citizen Service, competitive team sport and the scouts, the guides and the cadets.
The question for public policy is how to institute those character development strands into the social mobility strategy. The process has to start early, so thinking about character should be part of how we think about school readiness. Schools have a key role to play. When our all-party group asked the headmaster of one of Britain’s leading public schools what it was about his school that meant it apparently did so well on character, the first thing he said was, “We teach boys how to fail—the ability for things to go wrong—and then how to bounce back.” I think there are lessons to be learned from that, not only by individual schools but by the system as a whole.
Perhaps the most obvious thing of all is extra-curricular activities. It seems that the gap in extra-curricular activity between better-off and worse-off kids is more about take-up than availability: a lot of programmes are made available, but they are not used that much. I would like to see more emphasis on extra-curricular activities not necessarily happening in schools, but being led, driven and encouraged by schools. That could be a legitimate use of pupil premium money, given how important we know such activities are for how young people get on in life, and I would like Ofsted to pay even more attention to the issue in future. The Government are looking at this in earnest and I hope it will end up becoming a key part of the social mobility strategy.
I want to talk about some of things that we do not know. In many public policy areas, we think that if we know the facts we need only to have a bit of a barney to find solutions or ways forward. On social mobility, we still do not know many of the facts and the situation is still evolving.
We are blessed with one example of a place in Britain that has gone from zero to hero in educational attainment, and probably in wider social mobility measures as well, which is London, particularly inner London. When we look at the data, it is striking to see how far inner London in particular has moved. Today, disadvantaged children growing up in London do half a grade better per GCSE than those growing up elsewhere; they appear to be twice as likely to go to university as those growing up elsewhere; and they are even more likely than that—the maths becomes quite difficult because the numbers are small—to go to a top university than disadvantaged kids growing up elsewhere.
The stock answer that rolls off everybody’s tongue when we say that is, “Oh, yes, but those children had the London Challenge.” Hon. Members should not get me wrong, because the London Challenge was good and positive, and it is difficult to argue against elements of it, but there are several reasons for believing that it was not the sole or primary cause of the change. The first reason is that the improvement predated the London Challenge: the London Challenge began in 2003, which was also the year in which GCSE results in London caught up with those elsewhere. The second reason is that the improvement was in primary schools as well as secondary schools, but at that time the London Challenge covered only secondary schools, and from the limited data we have, it appears that disadvantaged kids in London do better even in nursery, before their schooling has even begun. The third reason is that the improvement was very concentrated among poor kids. The fourth reason is that when the London Challenge was tried in Manchester and Birmingham—again, hon. Members should not get me wrong, because there was some success—the results were not replicated in nearly the same way.
We now have to cope with or come to terms with the strange situation that coming from an ethnic minority and/or having English as an additional language is a predictor of doing better at school, which challenges policy makers a great deal. Given the massive population change in London during the past 20 years, we must at least entertain the possibility not just that that situation is related to the fact that schools are now different and have got better in London, but that it has something—not entirely, but partly—to do with the population make-up of people living in London. That brings us back to questions about parenting.
Mr Graham Stuart
Has my hon. Friend seen the articles by Christopher Cook, who is now the BBC’s education correspondent, which suggest that there is a link between the London effect and graduates, particularly graduate teachers, marrying?
Damian Hinds
I have not seen the marrying study, although I have seen several of Chris Cook’s articles in the Financial Times. There are another two reports. At one launch, the Minister for Schools rightly said, “Londoners are used to this sort of thing. You wait a long time for a report about schools, and two come at once.”
Damian Hinds
Three reports have come along at once.
Lots of different effects are taking place, and we need to understand them much better. What we can be sure of is that there is no one simple and obvious answer, because it would have been found by now. More generally, we do not know enough about the patterns of uneven opportunity in this country. We know that some big areas are worse than others, and we can identify pockets of poor schooling, sometimes in affluent wider areas, where school results are not good enough. However, we do not understand enough about our country as a whole in relation to who stands to do better than others, why that should be the case and what we can do to mitigate it.
In the United States, a recent study on equality of opportunity, led by Raj Chetty of Harvard, has helped us as never before to understand inequality of opportunity and the patterns of inequality in the United States. It found that the chances of achieving the American dream are two and a half times higher in Salt Lake City than in Charlotte, North Carolina. To put that in context, average social mobility in the UK is about halfway along the range for cities in the United States. There is every reason to believe that there will also be quite a range, perhaps for different reasons, in this country. The Chetty study has some challenging findings on the potential causes of inequality, including the de facto segregation that still exists in some American cities and the family structures in different places, as well as dealing with the more obvious issues that we might expect: income inequality, school quality and social capital.
That study was carried out by linking tax data to school records to track how people did through life and look at the differences—seeing how someone was affected if they moved to a different area, and so on. I do not know whether I am the only Member in the House today to have had the benefit of some e-mails from 38 Degrees this week on whether it is legitimate to use data from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs for other purposes. I totally recognise and share the massive data security concerns about that, but I hope that the Government will look at the potential of using the data to understand this issue better so that we are able to do something about it.
Social mobility alone will not solve poverty or child poverty, but it can solve a part of those problems. It is a huge issue for both social justice and economic growth. It is self-evident that every person in our land should have equal opportunities to fulfil their intrinsic potential. It is also true that maximisation of national income requires optimal deployment of resources, including human resources. It could bring an extra £150 billion a year of national income, or a one-off 4% rise in growth, and that is an opportunity that we as a country cannot afford to miss.
Rushanara Ali
I referred to the failure to close the gap. The hon. Gentleman is right that there have been improvements, but that is not enough. It is not satisfactory. As the Education Committee’s commendable work highlights, the position of white working-class children—boys and girls—is deeply disturbing. As a society, we have failed them. Most of them are in that category of having free school meals, so the position is not good enough. The Government should take seriously the hon. Gentleman’s work, which has cross-party support, on the plight of white working-class children. We need to step up and address the challenge.
It is clear from the speeches that we all want children to do well, regardless of background. We want their talents to be maximised, not wasted, so that their abilities are recognised and they can contribute to our economy and our society.
The Government’s policy of scrapping the education maintenance allowance has had a direct impact on social mobility. I know that from the experience of several groups. More than 80% of ethnic minority children, for example, from Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds, relied on that grant. Young people from parts of the country where they spend money on transport now struggle to commute to their further education colleges. Many have highlighted the challenges they face because they do not have the support that they need. Some go to their further education colleges not being able to feed themselves. In a climate of high levels of poverty and deprivation, provision such as an education maintenance allowance was a great help and its removal has contributed to taking away the ladders to progress.
I know from direct experience with young people that other changes, such as the proposal to scrap support for young people under 24, are deeply troubling. Without support and access to benefits, one young woman whom my charity supported would not have made it from a broken family and having been made homeless to what turned out to be an incredible opportunity: she got a place at Cambridge.
She would not have had that ladder of opportunity if the support system offered by the state had been removed. We must consider many welfare changes to ensure that the barriers to young people being socially mobile are not added to, and that we all work hard to remove them.
The hon. Member for Norwich South (Simon Wright) highlighted the importance of qualified teachers and the need for a royal college of teaching. I am delighted that he emphasised the importance of qualified teachers, and his party’s support for that. It is a great shame that the Government, the Secretary of State and the Conservative party do not support that provision, but I hope we can get agreement on that.
Rushanara Ali
I did not give way to the hon. Gentleman, but if he insists—if I am allowed to continue then I am happy to, but I will give way.
Damian Hinds
The hon. Lady was talking about London a moment ago. Can she tell the House which region has the highest proportion of unqualified teachers?
Rushanara Ali
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will say why his Secretary of State said that there is no need for qualified teachers, when evidence suggests that qualified teachers play a profound in role in young people’s attainment. On his point about London, I suspect he is referring to the last Labour Government. We increased the supply of teachers by introducing teaching assistants who then got qualifications. We have called for teachers and for those who are not trained to be able to work towards training, and that is what we did. Perhaps the Conservative party will address that point given that the Conservative Chair of the Education Committee has said that qualified teachers make a massive difference to young people’s potential to achieve.
Rushanara Ali
I will not give way any further because I have already given way twice to the hon. Gentleman—[Interruption.] A number of times to his colleagues then. I would like to make progress because I know the Minister will want to address some of these points.
British Values: Teaching
Damian Hinds Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Bone. I congratulate my fellow Hampshire MP, the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham), on securing the debate and on his interesting and challenging speech, in which he made a number of important points. It is also a pleasure, of course, to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry).
I welcome the debate on this issue, both here today and more generally, and I welcome the consultation that the Government have launched. The debate would be useful and important even without what we have learned through the Trojan horse revelations. Clearly, there are some shared British values, but in a time when young people can be exposed to all sorts of influences, particularly as a result of technological change, it is important to restate—or, in some cases, just state—what those values are.
We have a more diverse society than we have ever had, and I think all of us here welcome the richness that that has brought. However, we also need to think about the word “multicultural”, which means different things to different people. We need to think about its positive connotations, but also about its drawbacks.
On the great seal of the United States is inscribed “E pluribus unum”, a compelling phrase. However, the United States has had a lot more time to think about what it means and to put it into practice. We, in our country, need to address what can be—indeed, what we love being—“pluribus” and what we need to be “unum”, and how wide that list should be.
We tend to be quite reticent about discussing Britishness. We are patriotic, but we tend to be reserved about expressing that. In America, people occasionally have debates about the pledge of allegiance to the flag, but our schools often do not have the flag to pledge allegiance to. Today’s debate turns on three important questions. First, what is in the core set of British values? Secondly, how should we express them? Thirdly, should we teach them, and, if so, how should we teach people about not just their existence, but their primacy in British life?
There are at least four—possibly more—different expressions of Britishness, which should not be conflated, although they sometimes are. The first relates to true core values: things such as tolerance, freedom of thought, freedom of religion, respect for the law, and a belief in the democratic ideal and the equality of citizens. Just because those are British values, that does not, of course, mean they must be uniquely British values; we share them with a number of other countries. It is also true that how they are manifested is not immutable. The values stay constant, but, as the right hon. Gentleman said, how they are expressed and what they imply changes over time.
Secondly, there are the principles that underpin our society and its operation. I will come back to this, but it includes things such as representative liberal democracy and an organic constitution, and the role of independent institutions, a free media and the rule of law. Those are fundamental, but they are not necessarily that widely understood; indeed, aspects of them are not even always entirely welcome—for example, the way in which liberal democracy, as opposed to pure majority democracy, can work.
Thirdly, there are things that are clear majority views, which are sometimes talked about as British values, such as a belief in our national health service and in public service broadcasting through the BBC. However, those are beliefs, not core values, and people’s views on them can change. I would suggest that just thinking that the Belgian health care system is worth looking at does not make someone un-British.
Fourthly, there are all manner of traits and characteristics, such as a sense of humour; a distrust of power; respect, but not undue respect, for others; and a love of a rich and permeable cultural base in music, film and food. We cannot promote those things in school, and nor should we try to, but they are still an important part of being us and of our shared destination.
What, then, should we do in schools? The first and most important thing to say is that it is a journey, rather than a destination. We can all easily agree about the negative side: we can agree about keeping extremists out of schools and about girls not being disadvantaged in their learning in class. We can also agree that public funds clearly should not be used on school trips available only to members of one faith.
What we do on the positive side, however, to promote British values is a lot harder. I have found no better description than that in the academy model funding agreement, which talks about
“respect for the basis on which law is made…support for participation in the democratic processes...equality of opportunity…liberties for all within the law…and tolerance of different faiths and…beliefs.”
I welcome what the Government propose to do to strengthen what is called the “spiritual, moral, social and cultural” standard and actively to promote such values. However, there remains the big question of how. At the sharp end, I certainly welcome what the Government are doing on no-notice inspections, removing school leaders who fail to protect their pupils and strengthening the rules on barring teachers who have knowingly brought extremism into school.
More generally, turning to the idea of positive promotion, there is a need for a big national conversation. That will not happen overnight. There is a debate to be had about the extent to which such things can be taught rather than caught. Personally, I am a bit of a sceptic about the idea that someone can stand at the front of a class and say, “Today we are doing British values.” Those are things that permeate in other ways.
Damian Hinds
The right hon. Gentleman is right, and one should not underestimate the importance of space in class for discussion, as well as more formal debates in schools, and other things of that kind.
There is much more that I want to say, but I will just talk about history in the curriculum. What I say will echo, a little, what the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen said. We should tell the great British story and face up to the parts of it that we are not so proud of, but I would like more appreciation of the development of the institutions in and of our democratic system. Those are not British values per se, but they reflect and reinforce them. I am less bothered about young people learning about the mechanics of voting or which competencies are reserved for the devolved Administrations versus the UK Parliament, but I am bothered about a greater, broader understanding of the nature of representative liberal democracy and its superiority not only to autocracy—which is pretty obvious to everyone—but to the tyranny of the majority. With it go the freedom of the media and independent institutions, the protection of minorities and the rule of law. Those things need not be dealt with as an add-on; they can be understood through history taught in a rigorous academic way.
I have two concerns: the first is that we should not conflate the issue with a general debate about secularism. The “Trojan horse” schools were not faith schools. Faith schools in general get above-average results and are popular with teachers. Having attended one, I can confirm that its ethos and what we did there did not inhibit my inquiring mind or stop me appreciating and valuing the differences in others; if anything, it enhanced those things. Faith schools can also be incredibly diverse. There is a Catholic primary school a mile from here and 95% of its pupils are of one faith, but they speak, between them, 32 different mother tongues. More than nine tenths of them have English as an additional language. It is fine to have a debate about faith schools, but it is a different debate from today’s.
There is a second concern on which I would like reassurance from the Minister, and that is the inherent danger in having someone—anyone—in charge of defining British values, not just now but 10 years from now. I call this the Semmelweis question. If anyone present does not know who Semmelweis was, it is because we are all over 40. Our children all know, because he is taught in every school in the country. I will not go into it now, but he was an Austrian who found out that hand washing would stop infections from spreading in hospitals. Someone decided that that would be taught in every school in the country; but it is not on the national curriculum. Whoever that person is, they have an awful lot of power. We need adequate ways to make sure that it is not the courts or politicians who are left to deal with such matters.
I welcome the debate and the swift action of the Secretary of State, but we must also allow an approach to evolve, and be alive to the dangers.
Free Schools (Funding)
Damian Hinds Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Michael Gove
It is important to bear in mind that the Building Schools for the Future programme was not the most effective way of allocating resources to local authority schools. We have increased provision for additional school places in Coventry, compared with the last Government: they spent £25 million and we are spending £41 million. Coventry is also the area that has benefited fastest from our new Priority School Building programme. Whitmore Park primary school was one of the first to open, just a couple of weeks ago, and there are other schools in Coventry in desperate need of maintenance money which we are now helping at a lower cost and faster than under Building Schools for the Future.
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
Was not the real vanity project the Building Schools for the Future programme that my right hon. Friend has just alluded to, which was hugely costly? Are not this Government now picking up the pieces of the last Government’s unbelievable lack of planning at primary level, and in a way that guarantees quality, diversity and choice to parents?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Again, it is important that the House recall that under the last Government the provision of primary school places was cut, and under this Government it has expanded. At the same time as increasing the quantity of school places, we have raised the quality.