Education After Covid-19

Emma Hardy Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. Provision and support for children with special educational needs and disability was broken before the pandemic. During the pandemic, those children have been forgotten. My plea to the Minister is, now that we are looking at how to improve education, let us put those children back at its heart.

The Select Committee on Education report of October 2019 took 18 months, heard more than 70 witnesses and received 700 pieces of written evidence. To quote from the document, these were the problems found pre-pandemic:

“There is too much tension between a child’s needs and the provision available…a general lack of accountability within the system…Parents and carers have to wade through a treacle of bureaucracy, full of conflict, missed appointments and despair…many local authorities are struggling with the reforms, and in some cases this has led to unlawful practice…struggling against the tide of unintended consequences of policy decisions.”

The report states:

“This generation is being let down—the reforms have not done enough to join the dots, to bring people together and to create opportunities for all young people to thrive in adulthood.”

It adds:

“We are seeing serious gaps in therapy provision.”

The summary concludes by saying:

“Special educational needs and disabilities must be seen as part of the whole approach of the Department’s remit, not just an add-on.”

During the pandemic, they have not even been an add-on; they have been an afterthought.

The Government’s response to the report was to commission their own review, which they promised would be published in January 2021. After I submitted a written question to the Department, I was told that it would be published in spring 2021. I hope the Minister will be able to tell us when we can expect to see that document.

That report led me to set up the all-party parliamentary group for special educational needs and disabilities, now chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake), which is looking particularly at the impact of covid on these children. The situation during covid has got worse for these families, with many families pushed to breaking point, because the children have been an afterthought. As the Government and the Minister were promoting the use of technology and laptops for school pupils, no thought was given to assisted technology for our pupils with special educational needs and disabilities.

Although all those children were allowed to attend school, because they had their education, health and care plans, little thought was given to what would happen when more than 90% of children in a special school attend at the same time; or to when we introduce a policy saying that these children have to be tested, knowing that some of them have serious sensory conditions and cannot administer the tests themselves, leading to many parents feeling extremely worried about the idea of a teacher having to forcibly test their child. That left headteachers in the impossible situation of wondering what to do if all the children decided that they could not take the test because they find it too distressing. Again, the children were an afterthought. No thought was given either to the staff working in these special schools, who need to be prioritised for vaccination to keep these pupils safe.

Families have been desperately worried. I am so worried about, and hope the Minister will look into, the number of parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities who have started home schooling and who now inform me that they have no intention of sending their children back to school when the risks of the pandemic have eased. It is not only the parents and the children, but the special educational needs co-ordinators, three quarters of whom say they are experiencing challenges in providing support for children and young people with EHCPs during lockdown. Any question or debate about improving the education system after covid-19 has to put these children back at the heart of the conversation, because a system that delivers for these children is a system that can deliver for all. I still believe that every child matters.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

It is a pleasure to serve for the first time under your chairing of a debate, Ms Rees. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) on securing this short debate, albeit one on a very important subject matter, and the passionate way in which he opened it.

Covid-19 has presented the education system with the educational challenge of the decade. I take this opportunity to thank, once again, all the teachers and support staff for the truly remarkable things they have achieved over the last year, and to echo my hon. Friend’s thanks to the teachers and support staff on the Isle of Wight. I also add my thanks to Brian Pope and Steve Crocker, who have both been working tirelessly with the Department for Education as we tackle the consequences of the pandemic on the island, and, of course, elsewhere in the country.

Our response to this unprecedented situation must be to build on the successful reforms this Government have introduced since coming to power in 2010. Over the last decade, we have worked tirelessly to drive up academic standards for all pupils, especially the most disadvantaged. We want every child to have access to a great school, where they can gain the knowledge, skills and qualifications they need for a prosperous future.

My hon. Friend raised the issue of higher education, and I would be happy to talk further to him about higher education courses on the island, and how they can and should be provided. He also raised digital technology, together with my hon. Friends the Members for Barrow and Furness (Simon Fell) and for North Devon (Selaine Saxby).

Digital technology has been essential in supporting high-quality remote education during the coronavirus outbreak. In the long term, it also has the potential, as my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight pointed out, to support teacher workload and flexible working, and to improve pupil outcomes. We are building on the Department’s significant investment in laptops, tablets, training, and digital services, to create a lasting legacy from that investment.

My hon. Friend also asked about teaching school hubs on the Isle of Wight. These are large-scale organisations operating in areas covering, on average, about 250 schools. The Isle of Wight is therefore covered by the hub area that also covers the districts of Eastleigh, Fareham, Gosport, Havant, and Portsmouth, and the teaching school hub lead is Thornden School in Eastleigh, which is an outstanding school.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) raised the important issue of children with special educational needs, and she will know, as she pointed out in her speech, that we have prioritised the most vulnerable children throughout the pandemic, including those with education, health and care plans, and special schools have remained open during that period for vulnerable children.

The hon. Member will also know that the Government have increased high needs funding by £780 million this year and by £730 million next year, so, over the course of two years, we will have raised high needs funding by 24%. The SEND review, which she referred to, is important, and we will publish it in due course. The delay has been caused by the challenges of the pandemic, and we want to get this very important review absolutely right.

My hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness and the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) raised the important issue of outdoor education and the importance of such activities for a child’s education, development, mental health and wellbeing. The Government continue to work with industry bodies and sector representatives to address the issues arising from the pandemic, and we will help outdoor education centres plan for the safe reintroduction of educational visits and outdoor education in line with the Prime Minister’s road map.

The covid pandemic has presented one of the greatest challenges to our society in recent times. It is undoubtedly true that extended school and college restrictions have had a substantial impact on the education of children and young people, and we are committed to helping pupils make up the education that they missed during the pandemic. In February, the Prime Minister outlined the road map out of lockdown, and reopening schools was one of the first steps on that road map.

We have evidence of the extent of education lost during the covid-19 pandemic, which shows that there is an impact on all children and young people, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight pointed out, those from the most vulnerable and disadvantaged backgrounds are among the hardest hit. As part of the Renaissance Learning data, on 24 February, we published interim findings based on more than 400,000 assessments taken in the autumn of 2020, which show that in reading, pupils in years 3 to 9 were, on average, between 1.6 months and two months behind where we would have expected them to be.

[Emma Hardy]

I have a quick question: has the Department done any analysis of how many children are now choosing to home educate, and have not returned to either mainstream or special educational needs schools? It is of considerable concern to me, especially when considering parents of children with SEND.

[Nick Gibb]

The hon. Member will be pleased to know that attendance is very high in primary and secondary schools since we returned to school on 8 March, and of course, attendance in secondary schools increased over the course of that first week. I will write to her with the details of special schools’ attendance rates, and about the proportion of children with ECHPs and children with a social worker—we have attendance rates for those children as well. Again, the figures are good, but of course, they could always be improved. I will write to her, and we can then discuss further her views about that.

In January 2021, the Prime Minister committed to working with parents, teachers and schools to develop a long-term plan to help schools support pupils to make up their education over the course of this Parliament. As part of this, we appointed Sir Kevan Collins as education recovery commissioner in February to advise on the approach for education recovery and the development of a long-term plan to help pupils make up their education. Last June, we announced a £1 billion catch-up package, including a national tutoring programme and a catch-up premium for the current academic year, and in February 2021, we committed to further funding of £700 million to fund summer schools, expansion of our tutoring programmes, and a recovery premium for the next academic year. That funding will support pupils in early years, in schools and in colleges.

The £1 billion catch-up package for 2020-21 includes a £650 million catch-up premium to support state primary and secondary schools in making up for lost teaching time. The package includes £350 million for the national tutoring programme to deliver one-to-one and small group tuition to hundreds of thousands of pupils, which the evidence says is an effective way of helping disadvantaged children, in particular, to catch up. Building on this £1 billion catch-up package, a further £700 million for the 2021-22 academic year was announced in February, and that includes a one-off £302 million recovery premium and £22 million to scale up well-evidenced programmes, building on the pupil premium. That funding also includes an additional £83 million for the national tutoring programme, and a £102 million extension to the 16 to 19 fund.