Oral Answers to Questions
Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
Is the Minister of State surprised to learn that when I shared his latest response to my correspondence about teacher shortages in Slough with our local headteachers, they found it cynical and said that it failed to address the real recruitment and retention problems that they face? Will he meet me and those headteachers to discuss a practical arrangement to deal with the teacher shortages in our town?
Mr Gibb
Of course I will meet the right hon. Lady and the teachers from her constituency to discuss this issue, which we take very seriously. We are competing for graduates in a strong economy, and we have recruited 15,000 more teachers since 2010. There are 456,000 teachers in the teaching profession, and 14,000 more teachers returned to teaching last year. That is a higher figure than in previous years. Teaching is still a popular profession, but we are dealing with the challenge of a very strong economy and competing in the same pool for graduates. We take this issue seriously, which is why we have very generous bursaries to attract the best graduates to teaching.
EBacc: Expressive Arts Subjects
Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck. I apologise to the Minister for not being able to stay to the end of the debate because I am committed to celebrating youth theatre at the National Theatre’s Connections festival this evening.
At the Barbican last week, I saw the first performance of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s last opera, “The Hogboon”. Like many of Max’s works, it used the talents of professional and amateur artists, and involved children as performers. Seeing a chorus of London schoolkids perform the role of the monster, Nuckelavee, was an artistic triumph and for the children also a great personal achievement. What did they learn? Not just singing, but self-confidence, teamwork, timing, communication with an audience and the value of practising, rehearsal and listening to others. That is what performance can bring to anyone’s life.
I will never forget a prisoner who had just been in a performance of “Chicago” at Bronzefield prison. He grabbed my collar and said: “I’ve been a thief for years, but doing this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I see how I can change now. Every prisoner should get a chance to do this.”
George Kirkham, who runs the Creative Academy in Slough, described to me a conversation he had had with a recruiter from one of the biggest national recruitment agencies who told him that they would rather employ a young person with a performing arts degree than with an economics degree because they know that performing arts students have transferable skills. Thirty-five years ago, Brigid Beattie, who took over failing secondary schools in Wandsworth that had just merged and that had a very poor reputation, told me: “Fiona, I will make this an excellent school and I will do it through the medium of drama.” At the time, I was sceptical, but within a very short time it had become a beacon school with outstanding results.
I started my remarks with these anecdotes to show what expressive arts education can instrumentally bring to a young person’s education. We are in an era when claiming that experiencing creative arts subjects is valuable for its own sake, as the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton) rightly did, risks implying that absolute rigour and high standards of learning are not expected. Well, I do expect that. I was a teacher and I know that ensuring that young people experience creating and making things, as well as learning about what other people have made and developing skills such as numeracy, is vital to their emotional and intellectual development.
The problem at the heart of this debate is that we all know that what counts in public policy is what is measured and if what is measured is only EBacc subjects, only they will count. That is why, if we have a mandatory EBacc, we will betray the young people of Britain if it excludes all the expressive and creative arts.
Britain outperforms most countries in the number of Nobel prizes we have achieved. I am certain that is because our education system has traditionally included an emphasis on both science and creative subjects. If we abandon that combination, we will go backwards. It is disingenuous to claim, as the Secretary of State did in a recent speech, that the arts are
“the birthright of every child”
and that
“a young person’s education cannot be complete unless it includes the arts.”
She assured the arts sector that there is nothing to fear from the English Baccalaureate. I am sure that was her hope, but the evidence shows that she is mistaken.
The introduction of the EBacc coincided with a relative fall in the number of qualified teachers employed in schools to teach such subjects and the number of teaching hours devoted to them. According to a survey by the National Society for Education in Art and Design, 44% of secondary teachers said less time was allocated to art in key stage 3 and 34% of those working with post-16s said that courses had been cut. We have heard from my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) about the decline in the number of students taking GCSE subjects in art and design, media, music and so on. That fall coincides with a rise in the number of young people studying EBacc subjects. It is not an overall fall in GCSEs. The total number of GCSE entries in all subjects has increased this year by 0.3%, but over the same period the number of exam entries for arts subjects has fallen by 8%. The falling take-up of arts GCSEs is already spilling over into A-levels. There were 4,300 fewer candidates for A-level arts subjects this year—a decline three times bigger than the 1,500 recorded in 2015.
If the Government are determined to continue with an EBacc measure, it would be easy to fix the problem without in any way watering down the emphasis on the other subjects by simply requiring one creative arts subject within the EBacc portfolio. The qualities that almost all these creative subjects nurture are the qualities that companies know they need. The Government’s emphasis on so-called hard subjects, on factual learning, is old-fashioned and fails to recognise or nurture one of the traditional strengths of British education—that creativity has always been at its core. That is a reason why we are a world leader in creative industries, yet the Government’s approach to school education is putting that at risk.
John Kampfner, who leads the Creative Industries Federation, called the decline in students taking GCSEs in creative subjects “alarming” and said that it
“further confirms a longstanding trend that EBacc is clearly exacerbating...The impact will not only be felt by the creative economy but also by other sectors, such as engineering, that desperately need some of the same skills. Although it is possible to take up jobs in our sector without exam results in creative subjects, it is much harder and potentially more expensive…which obviously further diminishes the chances for young people from more disadvantaged backgrounds.”
He went further than that, but I want to deal with the point about disadvantaged backgrounds, because it is those young people who are losing out most. It is in their schools that there has been the fastest decline in qualified teacher numbers, while schools such as Eton, on the border of my constituency, still celebrate and develop excellent teaching in music, drama and art, as Tom Hiddleston, Harry Lloyd, Eddie Redmayne, Henry Faber, Harry Hadden-Paton, Dominic West, Damian Lewis and Hugh Laurie can all attest.
Fiona Mactaggart
My point is not that young people should study these creative subjects instead of the EBacc, but that they should be part of the mandatory experience of young people, which is the case at Eton. Eton has brilliant drama, music and art education. The facilities are extraordinarily wonderful.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
Is it not likely that the sort of people who go to Eton and other public schools have the sort of cultural background whereby they get taken to the theatre, they have books at home and they are exposed to classical music? That is precisely the point; that is why it is so much more important to teach these subjects in the sort of schools that I have in my constituency, where people do not have that advantage.
Fiona Mactaggart
Absolutely. Actually, the previous theatre teacher at Eton said:
“For me the importance the work has here in the boys’ lives is the reason they do such good work afterwards. That importance arises from many things. One is that we don’t do drama just for its educational value. We do a play as a work of art, to be explored at its fullest.”
It is rare for children to have that experience of creating, of making a work of art. They can do it if they learn these expressive subjects. The problem is that this Government view them as an optional add-on. When I asked the Prime Minister about this issue and referred to his experience at Eton, he said:
“It is essential that we get more children learning the basic subjects and getting the basic qualifications. It is then more possible to put in place the arts, the dance and the drama that I want my children to enjoy when they go to their schools.”—[Official Report, 4 November 2015; Vol. 601, c. 962.]
I do not see it as a question of the basics and then these frilly add-ons. In my judgment, these subjects are as basic as every other subject in the EBacc. That is why so many people have signed this petition. It is not saying, “Get rid of the EBacc.” It is saying, “Include expressive subjects in every child’s education, because if you fail to do that, you are letting them down.”
Key Stage 2 Tests
Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
I speak as a former key stage 2 marker, and I support efficient, effective testing of children, but I do not think that the Government understand what testing is for. The Minister’s statement said that it was for the accountability of schools, but it seems to me that what testing should be about is measuring and developing a child’s learning. That is why we should not put so much emphasis on a national test that is about school accountability and leads to this kind of appalling behaviour from one teacher. We should focus on ensuring that children understand what they are learning and that we get appropriate tests for individual children.
Mr Gibb
I do not disagree with the right hon. Lady. It is important that children are tested frequently, which helps with memory and practice. Schools use informal formative testing as part of the learning process. There is also another purpose of testing, as summative testing for public accountability and to hold schools to account. That is why the key stage 2 assessments, or SATs, were introduced nearly 30 years ago: to hold schools to account. In doing so, we can target school improvement resources on those schools that are not delivering the quality of education that we want for our young people. We need to be able to do that. Children have only one chance at an education and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is committed to ensuring that we have educational excellence everywhere, in every part of the country. To be able to identify those areas and schools that need the extra support, we need external assessment of children as they leave primary school.
“Educational Excellence Everywhere”: Academies
Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Nicky Morgan
My hon. Friend raises an important point. It has been a pleasure to talk to him and all colleagues on both sides of the House. I look forward to continuing that conversation.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
I am proud to represent a town that has some of the best schools in the country. My concern about the Secretary of State’s announcement is that it does not answer the questions that schools of all kinds—academies and local authority schools—and parents ask me. What parents say is, “How can we guarantee that there is a school place for my child nearby?”, and what schools say to me is, “How can I guarantee that there is a good quality teacher in front of every class?” We have not heard a solution to either of those problems. What does she offer?
Nicky Morgan
I think the right hon. Lady needs to read the White Paper. Let me also point out that we have the highest number of teachers ever in the profession, and we have created 600,000 more school places since 2010. When the Labour party was in power, it took 200,000 places out of the system at the time of a baby boom.
Graham Stuart
I think you have had your question. May I join colleagues in congratulating the Secretary of State on her statement and on the way in which she has engaged with colleagues on both sides of the House? The Education Committee described the healthy tension between local authority schools and academy schools, which has contributed to 1.4 million fewer children being at weak schools. Does the Secretary of State agree that if local authorities that do manage to deliver outstanding schools and excellent overview and intervention, they can continue?
Oral Answers to Questions
Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Nicky Morgan
I thank the Chair of the Education Committee very much for that question; I am looking forward to appearing before his Committee later this week. He is absolutely right to talk about the importance of STEM subjects. Of course, the EBacc includes modern foreign languages. I am sure that Members on both sides of the House will have been pleased to hear the announcement last week about securing the future examinations of all modern foreign languages and lesser-taught languages, including Gujarati, biblical Hebrew and Japanese, which is very important for the future competitiveness of our country.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
But I hope that the Secretary of State agrees that the critical thing in improving standards of education is good-quality teachers. Will she listen to the schools in Slough, 13 of which have been in touch with me about the fact that secondary schools in a small town have already spent half a million pounds in the past year attempting to recruit teachers, yet, as the head teacher at an excellent grammar school in Slough has said,
“we are now appointing teachers who we would arguably not have considered 5 years ago”?
What is the Secretary of State doing to help schools get high-quality teachers in front of children so that they can learn?
Nicky Morgan
I agree that the most important thing is the quality of the teachers in our classrooms, which of course is why we have more teachers coming back into teaching. In the White Paper we mentioned that we want to set up a website to save schools the high recruitment costs so that they can reward excellent teachers at the frontline. The most important thing from the recent TES global recruitment survey is that 31% of teachers said that talk of a recruitment crisis was doing their profession down. We want to focus on the important things that make a difference, talking up the profession, not always talking it down.
Oral Answers to Questions
Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Edward Timpson
My hon. Friend has, in many ways, highlighted the basic principle behind our consultation on a new national funding formula—it is simply about fairness. The old system has for decades been too complex, convoluted and unfair, with even disadvantaged children being disadvantaged by it. This change is long overdue, and it cannot be right to have anything other than a needs-based system. That is what we want to implement, and we want to work with everyone to make sure that we make it happen.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
But the Minister will be aware that children in schools in which a high proportion of pupils are on free school meals are much less likely than they were five years ago to be able to be taught by a qualified teacher in art, dance, music or drama. Two thirds of professional parents pay for additional lessons in those subjects, but parents on lower wages are much less likely to be able to afford them. Are working-class kids going to be excluded from the creative subjects in our education system?
Edward Timpson
The right hon. Lady has an admirable track record of pursing the more creative side of school life—I admire her persistence in doing so—but right across the country many schools with strong heads are recruiting heads of music, dance and drama, and providing many other extra-curricular activities. We have a basic strong curriculum, which all children need to be taught, and we are supporting disadvantaged children through the pupil premium, the pupil premium plus and special educational needs reforms to ensure that they get the support that they need, and the rounded and grounded education we want for all children. We need to make sure that schools are making such decisions and strong heads know exactly how to achieve that.
Children in Care
Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
I agree with the focus of this debate. Sadly, our care system in Slough has not protected children effectively, and I am particularly sad that the Children’s Services Trust, which the Government set up to improve services, has apparently not done so very effectively. The Minister will be aware of a case involving a two-year-old, about which I have written to the Secretary of State. I would like to see better monitoring of Children’s Services Trusts from the centre.
I wish to shoehorn into this debate the issue of children who are not in the care system but who are not able to remain safely at home with their family or extended family. If we do not include those children, we will fail to address some of the urgent issues in this regard. Specifically, I want to raise the matter of trafficked children, particularly children who are trafficked across borders, as, according to a recent Home Office commissioned report, they are more isolated from protective networks than their internally trafficked counterparts.
The Government published that report as a result of the pilot they introduced on child trafficking advocates. It was only after intense pressure from Members that they agreed to introduce any system of protection for trafficked children. These are not guardians with legal powers, and the Government only had a pilot of the advocacy system. Unfortunately, despite the fact that a report by the University of Bedfordshire made it quite clear that the pilot had been successful, Barnardo’s has not been commissioned to extend its service, nor has any subsequent service been provided.
I urge the Minister to speak directly to his colleagues in the Home Office to ensure that there is a continuing advocacy or better guardianship provision for these children. I gather that the excuse for not carrying on providing any protection mechanism for them that is worth the name is that children within the advocacy service still disappeared. It is clear from the university report that half the children who disappeared—overwhelmingly, they were Vietnamese children who were trafficked into cannabis farming—disappeared before they had been referred to the advocacy service.
There are clear examples in the report of how advocates worked very hard to protect children who were at risk of disappearing. The fact is that those advocates did not have legal powers and could be ignored by local authorities. In one case, they were unable to persuade the local authority to put a trafficked child in safe accommodation, and the child then disappeared into the hands of a trafficker. In another case, they were unable to persuade a local authority that a child was a child, and it was only because of the determination of the advocacy service that when that child re-entered the healthcare system they were discovered again and re-referred to the Home Office protection system.
I am very concerned indeed that this group of children is falling through the gap, and that the problem is being regarded as an immigration issue rather than a child protection issue. I urge the Minister, in responding to this debate, to say that he is not prepared to tolerate the one bit of the Bedfordshire report that suggested there was no enthusiasm for this process—certain social workers felt that they should have the money rather than child protection advocates. Will he also ensure that, within the month, he will speak to the Home Office about continuing to fund proper child advocacy services, preferably child guardians with legal powers to stop local authorities ignoring those children’s need for protection, so that they, like all other children in Britain, can be properly kept safe?
Oral Answers to Questions
Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Joseph Johnson
It is important that we clear up misperceptions in the Indian market about the openness of our offer. We are open to international students. There is no cap on the number of international students who can come and study here, or on the number who can come and stay here after they finish studying, provided that they get a graduate job. We want to make more Indian students feel welcome here, and that is what we will be doing during the visit of Prime Minister Modi later this week.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
The Minister says that we want to make more Indian students feel welcome here, but it is clear from the figures that they feel much more welcome in America, Canada and Australia—our competitor countries. Will this not have a substantial impact on Britain’s trade relations with India and other countries such as Pakistan where the figures have fallen, and what is he going to do about it?
Joseph Johnson
Overall international student numbers are up year on year. We have a competitive offer for international students. We have a world-class higher education sector, with 38 out of the world’s top 100 universities. It is not surprising that international students from all over the world want to come and study at our great universities.
Equal Pay and the Gender Pay Gap
Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Nicky Morgan
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. She might have seen an advance copy of my speech, because I am going to talk about careers advice. Perhaps I should just press-release it and then we could move on with the debate.
We are broadening the career aspirations of girls and young women by encouraging them to get into STEM-related careers through the “Your Life” campaign. As we have already discussed, we have also published new guidance for parents, “Your Daughter’s Future”, which we will continue to promote.
As hon. Members have said, support with careers is vital. That is why in December last year I announced a new careers and enterprise company, to be led by employers and independent of Government. That company will help to transform the provision of young people’s careers experiences. It will help to ensure that all young people, irrespective of gender or background, aspire to great things and know how to achieve them. I am delighted to inform the House that Claudia Harris, a former partner at McKinsey and a graduate of Harvard Business School, has been appointed chief executive. Claudia is exactly the role model schools and businesses need, with her passion for female leadership, her drive to excel and to make a difference. I should of course also mention the fabulous chairman, Christine Hodgson. As I always say, if you want something done well, ask women. That is nowhere more true than with the England women’s football team. I am sure we all wish them every success in tonight’s match.
Nicky Morgan
I welcome the hon. Lady to the House. I have seen that report. I do not agree with it, and think the figures are flawed, because it makes assumptions about household income and the way men and women—two people in a household—divide their income, and those assumptions are not always right.
Let me return to the motion. All of its suggestions, apart from the formal laying of the annual document before Parliament, can already be done by the EHRC without changes to legislation or instruction by Government. The motion also talks about an annual equal pay check. The critical point here is that I do not think the hon. Member for Ashfield is actually talking about an annual equal pay check; instead, she is talking about an annual gender pay check. An annual equal pay check implies an assessment of the extent to which companies are acting lawfully under the equal pay provisions of the Equality Act and that information would not be obtainable from companies’ gender pay data. I am not saying the issues are not important, but that is the reason for our queries about the motion.
Our aim is to create greater transparency on the gender pay gap. We know from Office for National Statistics data that pay gaps can vary widely by sector. Publishing the data will help companies to understand these differences.
Fiona Mactaggart
The Secretary of State referred to the narrowing of the pay gap for younger women, but it is still stubbornly wide for older women. Will she tell us what she is going to do for those older women who lose their jobs, get stuck in low pay and who are stuck as well looking after their families without proper support from the state?
Nicky Morgan
I talked about the position of older women and the Women’s Business Council. Its “Staying on” strand of work is about helping older women. She may be aware of steps such as the carers pilot that we launched in the last Parliament to help often older women who are juggling caring responsibilities—sometimes for both children and grandchildren while also looking after older relatives—to stay in the workplace, which obviously makes a difference to their pay. However, she is right to say that the gender pay gap is wider for older woman than for younger women. We are seeing the cohort effect, whereby the gender pay gap is even narrower for women who started working in the last decade. Things are changing but I take her point that there is an issue to address for older women, which is why have concentrated on it in the work of the Women’s Business Council.
Most employers recognise the need to attract and retain the best people, and developing and promoting talented women into higher paid, senior roles could help to make companies more competitive. Let me be clear: greater transparency on pay will be good for not only employers, but shareholders, investors and prospective female employees. There is an important point here, which is that we increasingly expect greater transparency from one another.
We are aware from the wide engagement we have already had with businesses that some employers have concerns about publishing gender pay information. We will consider these issues carefully in the consultation—we have established a business reference group to inform our proposals—but we believe that these concerns are largely unfounded.
Education and Adoption Bill
Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Nicky Morgan
Without going into the detail of all the schools in the hon. Gentleman’s area, I would say that sponsored academies are often the weakest schools in an area—they may have been failing or in special measures for a long time—and then a sponsor comes in and works with them to make improvements right across the school for the benefit of its young people. I will come on to talk about the moves that we make as a Department, working with regional schools commissioners, where there are issues relating to academies.
Academy status enables us to move quickly to replace poor governance in failing schools under the guidance of an expert sponsor, and it gives strong leaders the freedom to make decisions that will work for the young people in their care. That is why we have turbocharged the last Labour Government’s academies policy since 2010. When Labour left office there were just over 200 sponsored academies; there are now more than 1,400.
We backed the sponsored academy programme because we could see that it worked for parents, teachers and, most importantly, young people. It is a matter of profound regret that the Labour party now appears to have arrived at a position where it is prepared to deny young people in schools that are not up to scratch the benefits that we know academy freedoms can bring.
Nicky Morgan
No, I have given way sufficiently. I will make some progress.
The evidence shows that schools in sponsored academy arrangements improve their performance faster than maintained schools. By 2014, results in sponsored secondary academies open for four years were on average 6.4 percentage points higher than results in their predecessor schools. Over the same period, results in local authority schools were an average of 1.3 percentage points higher than in 2010.
Prior to academisation, the situation facing Manchester Enterprise Academy, for example, was bleak. A history of underperformance, falling rolls, financial challenges and weak leadership had put it at risk of closure. Becoming a sponsored academy has turned it around. From being the lowest attaining secondary school in the area, it is now the highest performing against all key measures. In 2009 only 30% of pupils achieved five good GCSEs, compared with 59% in 2014. All of that has been achieved alongside the recovery of £1.9 million from the school’s budget over the past three years. Sponsored academies are also increasing the rigour of education, with more pupils focusing on the key academic subjects that will prepare them for life in modern Britain.
Nicky Morgan
No, I am going to set out the results first.
The first sponsored primary academies had been open for two years by the time of the 2014 results. Their results increased by 9 percentage points during that time—double the rate of improvement in maintained schools during the same period. These are schools such as Great Yarmouth primary academy in Norfolk, which became a sponsored academy in September 2012, having had nine headteachers in as many years. The school was frequently in and out of special measures with performance below the floor standard. The community had lost faith in the school, but becoming an academy changed that. Performance has radically improved and the school has gone from strength to strength. Last year Ofsted judged the school good, with outstanding leadership.
We want more schools to achieve those rates of improvement. I was delighted to hear that the former Education Secretary, David Blunkett, will be directly contributing to that in his new role as chairman of the David Ross Education Trust, an academy sponsor operating more than 30 academies across the east of England, the east midlands, Yorkshire and Humberside. The former Secretary of State recognises that, in that role, he has the opportunity to
“help shape policy and collaborative improvement and directly impact on the education of over 10,000 young people.”
It is reassuring to know that there are still some in the Labour party who support the academy programme and put young people above partisan rhetoric.
Nicky Morgan
I wonder whether the right hon. Lady is going to offer her support.
Fiona Mactaggart
The interesting thing about the Bill is that it gives the Secretary of State powers to intervene where schools are failing pupils. I have four examples of pupils who have been excluded from academies and other schools without their parents being given a right to appeal. That is breaking the law. Will the Secretary of State amend the Bill in Committee to ensure that pupils who are excluded have their rights protected? That is one way in which she can ensure that every pupil has the right to an excellent education.
Nicky Morgan
The right hon. Lady is welcome to write to me about those specific cases. If those young people were not given the right to appeal, they certainly should have been. However, it is important to be on the side of teachers and those in charge of schools who make decisions about exclusions. It is also important to make sure that there is the right education provision for those young people who, for whatever reason, cannot be in mainstream schooling. We are seeing that provision as a result of innovations in our school system.