Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Grant]

I thank my hon. Friend for his wonderfully positive remarks. We are of course aware of concerns, but we remain confident that this will be a great event and that tickets will get into the hands of genuine supporters and fans.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

15. What recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of children’s access to the creative arts; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

Between 2012 and 2015, we are going to invest £15 million in cultural education and we are investing hundreds of millions of pounds in music education.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Yet his own Department’s survey shows that a third of secondary boys and a fifth of secondary girls do not access arts activities outside schools. In a recent speech the Secretary of State for Education said that arts were not the basis for a successful career, yet the creative industries provide 6% of our national wealth. What is the Minister doing to increase children’s access to arts beyond school?

[Mr Vaizey]

The Secretary of State for Education was not saying that. She was simply making the point that a lot of people said that doing a maths or science degree narrowed children’s career opportunities. She was correcting that impression; it was not an either/or. Both channels are good ways to get wonderful career opportunities after leaving school.

We are working with Into Film, providing film education for hundreds of thousands of children. We are working with English Heritage on the new heritage schools initiative, which has massively increased engagement with heritage already. We are funding the Sorrell Saturday clubs, and we are working with the Arts Council on arts awards and the pioneering Artsbox.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

Very briefly—Fiona Mactaggart.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I am very grateful for the measures in the Modern Slavery Bill. Will the Minister meet companies to make sure that they understand their responsibilities, because the Bill could end this exploitation of workers in UK supply chains?

[Jo Swinson]

First, I pay tribute to the hon. Lady, who has done so much work on this particular issue. I am glad that she welcomes the measures brought forward in the Modern Slavery Bill. We are engaging with business on these issues. Indeed, next week I am going to a United Nations event, where there will be many very senior representatives from different businesses who are looking at these exact issues. As I have said, we are also working specifically with retailers on the British Retail Consortium guidance.

Free Schools (Funding)

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 12th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I take my hon. Friend’s point, and I read with interest and appreciation his article in The Daily Telegraph today. Sir Michael Wilshaw is an outstanding chief inspector—the best ever to hold that post—and he inspects without fear or favour. He has also been responsible for ensuring that the quality of inspection during his time has increased. He has led an academy and seen the benefits that academies and free schools can bring to parts of London, so I know that Sir Michael will bear in mind my hon. Friend’s words and ensure that Ofsted continues to do a highly effective job inspecting all schools and holding them to the highest standards.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I am surprised by the Secretary of State’s description of this report as “praising” his free school programme, because it raises more questions about that programme than he implies. I represent a town with many free schools. I have welcomed them because, as mums who were visiting Parliament said to me today, what we need is enough school places. The problem with the free school programme in a town as diverse as Slough is that it lacks planning and a community cohesive approach to free school places, to ensure that every community in my town has sufficient educational places. What will the Secretary of State do about that?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, and she is right to say that Slough is one of the hot spots in the country where a significant increase in the population has placed pressures on the local authority. We have been able to fund the local authority’s school provision, and augment it with the provision of free school places. It is also striking that many of the applications for free schools in and around Slough have come from different communities, who at last have an ethos and a level of aspiration for the schools that they felt had not existed before. If the hon. Lady wants to bring me any specific examples of inconsistencies of provision, I will of course look at them. I am grateful to her for pointing out that she, like many Labour MPs, welcomes free schools in her constituency and is prepared to work with the Department for Education in the interests of young people.

Child Care (London)

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Heidi Alexander]

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend, whose constituency neighbours mine in London. She will know the significant problems that exist for families, particularly for parents in work, when they have to take children to different locations, whether it is for primary school or child care. Despite having met the Minister for Schools at the Department for Education last year to discuss this issue, I am not convinced that enough funding is being made available to London to meet the rising demand for school places, not only at primary but at secondary level, where the demand for places will soon feed through.

In December, the Government announced extra money to help to stimulate the supply of flexible child care in London, but I am simply not convinced that that money will go far enough to deal with the problem. I am also not convinced that this week’s announcements make up for the reductions in support to parents that the Government pushed through earlier in their term of office. We know that in April 2011, changes to the child care element of working tax credit led to a reduction in the amount of help that parents get with child care costs. For example, in December 2013, average weekly payments for those benefiting from that element of working tax credit were around £11 less than they were in April 2011. The Government’s changes also led to a drop in the overall number of families receiving such support. In April 2011, 455,000 families were benefiting from that support, but that dropped by 71,000, and in December 2013 only 422,000 families were benefiting. Given those clear figures, it is not unreasonable to suggest that the Government are guilty of giving with one hand while taking away with the other.

Many of those who struggle most with the cost of child care in London are lone parents on low incomes. My constituency in Lewisham has approximately 9,000 single-parent families, and it is estimated that in London as a whole there are more than 325,000 single mums or dads. Contrary to media stereotypes, the single mums I meet are often desperate to find work, but they find it hard to organise their life in a way to make it possible for them to work. Child care is central to their difficulties.

The need to make work pay for those single mums and dads cannot be overstated. One of my big concerns, before yesterday’s announcement, was that the Government were set on a course with universal credit that would have made work not pay but hurt for some of the poorest single parents, who are struggling to get back into low-paid, part-time work. The Government’s U-turn on the amount of child care costs to be covered by universal credit is welcome, but it is fair to ask whether they instinctively understand the issue when their flagship welfare policy was initially designed with such flaws.

The truth of the matter is that the Government have been forced to promise action on child care costs because they know that Labour’s commitment to increase the amount of free child care available to the parents of three and four-year-olds makes complete sense to increasingly hard-pressed families.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Slough is very like London and our child care market is very similar to London’s. Recently, I have been out talking to mums about child care. The demand that I regularly hear from mothers who want to get back into work is that they need access to training and upskilling with child care. What if they cannot find that either at their original workplace or in a new job if they need to change their career, as was the case with a flight crew member I recently spoke to? Does my hon. Friend agree that we should be trying to ensure that training opportunities for those mums enable them to have their children looked after and to get qualifications and skills?

[Heidi Alexander]

My hon. Friend makes an important point and I agree with her remarks entirely.

Before I bring my remarks to a close, I shall press the Minister on two further policy areas. First, what specific plans do the Government have to ensure that there is greater flexibility in the provision of child care? Ministers have stated that they would like children’s centres and schools to be open for longer, but it is not clear what direct support those centres and schools would receive to help them to achieve that aim. Would the Government consider, for example, giving greater powers to local authorities to influence the decisions of individual schools with regard to extending opening hours? We know that academies and free schools fall outside the control of local authorities, and if we are to give parents the ability to work it seems to me that they need a guarantee of wraparound care, at least in primary schools. It is right that the Labour party has committed to legislate for that, but it is sad that the Government do not seem to see it as a priority.

Secondly, while there is an urgent need for more flexible child care, there is also a need for the Government to encourage employers to offer better paid and more flexible work opportunities. As someone who regularly fights to get a seat on a train into London Bridge in the morning, I know that a move to more flexible working hours could also benefit London’s creaking public transport system.

I acknowledge that some steps have been taken to encourage employers to offer more flexibility to staff who are parents, but as I understand it such flexibility is still heavily biased towards existing employees and comes with the caveat of a six-month waiting period after starting a job—parents must wait six months before they can make a request for flexible work. Does the Minister have any plans to extend rights for flexible working? I would be interested to hear about the discussions that she has had with her colleagues in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills on that.

In conclusion, I simply say that London is the wealthiest city in the UK and yet 25% of its children live in poverty. Currently, parents in London face exorbitant child care costs, which drain household finances and leave some of them unable to work when they want to. This is clearly a cost of living problem, but it is also about people’s quality of life and opportunities for their children. Ultimately, what we should all be striving for are children who are well provided for and happy, and more productive parents who enjoy more freedom of choice. As I have said, I am not a parent myself, but it has always struck me that happy and fulfilled parents are more likely to have happy and fulfilled children. Tackling the cost and supply of child care in London is undoubtedly a big task, but it would have equally large rewards. I am not sure whether the recent spate of Government announcements provides the radical solution that they claim. What I do know is that Londoners are impatient for action, and that neither parents nor the Government can afford to allow the current situation to continue.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

That is exactly the sort of anomaly that we have put right by making sure that resource funding is exactly the same per student for 16 to 18-year-olds, no matter what type of institution or where in the country.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

One of the reasons for differential funding has been students who have experienced less education before they get to the sixth form than other students, perhaps because of illness, absence from school or being refugees, for example. The changes in funding for 18-year-olds in further education are hitting those people. What is the Minister going to do about it?

Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The more that teachers take control of their own destiny, and the more the profession is in charge of improving education, the better. I think the best thing about a college of teaching is that the Government stand well back and wish it well.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

One of the discoveries in the OECD PISA research is that Britain is one of only five countries in that study where a child’s achievement in reading is more closely connected to their parents’ education and achievement than to any other factor. What will the Secretary of State for Education do about the poor achievement in reading by children of poorly educated parents?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right, and that is one reason why we are working with schools across the country to ensure that children have the chance to decode fluently through the phonics screening check highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb). That is why I have encouraged every primary school to expect that children will read at least 15 if not 50 books a year, and why I believe we must ensure that the scandalous level of educational inequality to which the hon. Lady draws attention is at the heart of everything the Department for Education does. Whether it is the pupil premium, which was drawn up and brought into Government by my hon. Friend the Minister for Schools and the Deputy Prime Minister, or the academies and free schools programme that we are highlighting, everything we do is intended to erase the scandalous level of educational inequality that we inherited and to which I know the hon. Lady objects.

Child Care

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

The Minister referred to the child care survey on increasing costs and pointed out that between 2002 and 2010 there had been an increase of 46% in a period when wages were rising. The same survey shows that the present increase from the baseline is 77%, at a time when wages have fallen. Should she not take some responsibility for taking a bigger bite out of the family budget?

[Elizabeth Truss]

That 77% starts in 2003, and I believe that the Labour party was in government then.

The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central claims that we are not supporting school-based child care. On the contrary, the most recent data show a 5% increase in the number of after-school clubs. The difference between our view and his is that we think that school-based child care actually takes place in a school. The Labour party alleges that more than 90% of schools were offering an extended day in 2010, but I do not think that any parents with schoolchildren at that time would recognise that number. A school did not have to provide child care onsite, but could fulfil the requirement by linking to a child care provider on its website. That is what the Labour party meant by “extended day”.

It turns out that the Opposition’s new offer is no different. The shadow child care Minister, the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), wrote recently that

“if a school chooses not to stay open longer hours because they do not need to offer this provision on site – they will not be forced to stay open. Schools can…facilitate out of hours childcare elsewhere for pupils”.

The shadow Secretary of State has a vision of children playing sport after school, but this after-school provision would not have to be on the school site and would be paid for by parents. How is that different from the current situation, where people pay a childminder after school? I am not sure how Labour’s so-called primary school guarantee, which need not take place in school, which schools would simply facilitate and which parents would pay for, would be any different from the current situation. It is a child care mirage: the closer one walks to it, the less certain it seems.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

All parents want the best for their child’s early years. They want a safe, stimulating and secure environment, an environment that provides the best possible foundation for the child’s future success at school and in life. I do not think we should forget that, for many parents, that means early years at home with mother or father; but for many others who, like me, are working full or part time, it means relying on child care. What we all want is the best-quality child care, which will promote the best possible development for our children in those early years. It is not just parents who are committed to that; the Government are absolutely committed to supporting families by providing quality child care, to meeting the costs of that care, and, importantly, to meeting parents’ need for flexible child care choices in an era of increasingly flexible work.

I speak from considerable experience. During my working life, I have probably accessed every possible type of child care: a small private nursery, a pre-school nursery attached to my son’s state school, a childminder, family support, after-school clubs and breakfast clubs—and dad helped. I received wonderful support from friends, neighbours, and families whom I knew from church. However, I knew what it took to make that work for my children: it took an enormous amount of co-ordination. Without the network of support that I was fortunate enough to have, many families struggle. That is why it is so important for us to give as much support as we can to families and parents who want to work.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

One of the sources of that kind of family support, which a quarter of families depend on, is grannies or grandparents. I am sad that we have not heard in this debate about how we are going to help working grandmothers cope. There was a study by a building society a couple of years ago which pointed out that grandparents save the taxpayer about £4,000 a year through every piece of child care they offer.

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right, and we should pay tribute to grandparents. I was very fortunate in having four wonderful grandparents without whom I could not have developed the business I did develop in those early years, when I could not have afforded the quality of child care that I could, perhaps, have afforded in later years. It is important that we strengthen family life, and I will come on to talk about some of the initiatives we need to put in place to support family life more widely. Many people cannot access that in their locality, however.

Pupil Premium

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

I welcome the comments of the Chairman of the Select Committee. He is absolutely right that we need to aim for greater continuity in education policy. After all, we are talking about young people who, even individually, will take a considerable number of years to go through the education system. We want to ensure as much cross-party consensus as possible on some of the changes, so that they last.

My hon. Friend is also absolutely right that the additional money will give primary schools the opportunity to bring in greater subject specialism, which will help to boost the quality of teaching not just in English and maths, but in all the other subjects, which are so crucial and which the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) mentioned earlier.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I welcome the focus on primary education in the statement, which is a good thing. It is time we had that focus. I also welcome the extra spending on primary education, but I am worried about the proposal for national examinations at the age of three as well as at 11. May I urge the Minister to drop the exams for three-year-olds? As someone who represents a town where most of the pupils already do the 11-plus, let me tell him that the consequences for children—as well as for parents—of knowing that they are at the bottom of the list need to be examined. It breaks my heart every year when I have children in my constituency surgery—hauled in by their parents—who do not have the bicycle for passing the 11-plus and are going to a school that they never applied to as a result.

[Mr Laws]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for the early comments she made. I should point out that what we are talking about is on entry to school, not at a ridiculous age. [Interruption.] Frankly, many schools—to which I would be happy to take the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), who is shouting from a sedentary position—are already doing that type of assessment. They are doing it to inform their education and also to measure progress. We have descriptors at the moment that classify some young people as the lowest performers. That information is available at the moment; it is just very difficult for anyone to understand. Why should we impede parents in understanding more what their pupils are doing in schools?

I am particularly grateful to the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby, who leads for the Labour party on these issues, for being pragmatic. Although I quite understand the concerns about assessing youngsters at an early age, the logic of measuring progress, which is not in dispute in this House or among head teachers, teachers or parents, means that it is rational to measure progress right across the educational experience. It is not rational simply to pick an arbitrary date at the end of key stage 1 and to measure progress only from there. That is why we think it is sensible to have this debate.

National Curriculum

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 8th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments. It is vital that we assert, across the political divide, our determination to ensure that our country becomes a world champion in English, maths and science, alongside generating world champions in tennis, rowing and other great activities.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

May I warmly welcome the remark that the Secretary of State just made? Instead of just learning to use programs created by others, it is vital that children learn to create their own programs. Where else, apart from computing, will that be the approach in the new curriculum?

[Michael Gove]

I should say that, in both art and design and music, it is clear that students will be encouraged to create—there is an emphasis on drawing at an earlier stage in the art and design curriculum, so that people can become familiar with one of those foundational skills. It is also the case that the design and technology curriculum will include everything from the use of 3D printers to the most sophisticated methods of contemporary design. I was inspired visiting a school in the hon. Lady’s constituency to see exactly how high-quality computer science can be delivered to a range of students who were enjoying their teaching, thanks to the support that she has consistently championed.

Children and Families Bill

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

I am proud to be a patron of Devon Rape Crisis, which, like all of us in this House, is deeply concerned about sexual violence against women and girls. All of us in this House are particularly concerned about the extent to which young people are accessing their information about sex from violent pornography. The influence of violent pornography is to normalise distorted relationships. It teaches some young men that it is normal for women to enjoy violent sex, and to have a total lack of understanding about what constitutes consent. Disturbingly, many young women are being pressured into accepting deeply abnormal and often very violent relationships.

I completely accept that many parents wish to take on the role of delivering sensitive teaching on relationships in a home environment, but let us be absolutely clear that that is not happening for many young girls. The recent outrages in Oxford and in too many of our towns show that young women are being predated on by violent and often much older men. Young women have had no training in how to say no, or an understanding that it is okay to say no. Too often, there is no one for them to confide in. I put it to the House, therefore, that we need to have sex and relationships education in our curriculum: if it is not there, it will not happen. Too often when we teach sex in schools, it is about plumbing and prevention.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady’s words echo those of Ofsted, which pointed out that the secondary sex and relationships curriculum is not only too focused on plumbing but does not build on the skills that young people need to decide whether they want to enter a relationship—the skills to say no.

[Dr Wollaston]

It is about teaching girls to say no, and teaching young men to understand that no is no. That needs to be delivered in an age-appropriate way. It is not about frightening young people or taking it out of the hands of parents. In fact, many parents feel relieved that other people are delivering it.

There are very competent peer educators out there, ready to deliver these programmes in schools, but I am afraid that if it cannot be counted, it often does not count. It is important, then, to establish the principle that these programmes should be happening; then, of course, we would need to discuss the matter further, because it would need to be delivered in an evidence-based way. I get the message from teachers that they often do not feel they have the skills to deliver these programmes. Let us make sure that this is delivered in an age-appropriate way and by the right professionals, but first let us make sure that it happens, because this is about reducing violence against women. We can send out the message that this is important and deliver it well.

National Plan for Cultural Education

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Wednesday 17th April 2013 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Howarth.

On 28 February 2012, the Government, in their response to Darren Henley’s excellent review of cultural education in England, identified 10 issues to be addressed immediately. The first three were a joint ministerial board; a national plan for cultural education, made together with the sponsored bodies; and work to improve the quality of cultural education in schools.

Progress seems to have been made on some items in the list—for example, the new national youth dance company—and many items, such as Saturday clubs, already existed on the day that the report and the Government’s response were published, but those initiatives are not universally available and they do not guarantee that all our young people get the rich cultural experience at school that they deserve. My purpose in initiating the debate is to demand what young people have been promised, which has not yet been delivered.

I served with the Minister on the Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families in the previous Parliament—he was one of the more sensible members of his party on that Committee—and I hope to learn from him whether there is a functioning joint ministerial board. The antecedents of that promise go back to a speech by the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in November 2010 at the Big Link-Up. He announced that the measure would involve not only the Departments for Education and for Culture, Media and Sport, but the Department for Work and Pensions. More than two years later, does that board exist? Perhaps the Minister will tell us who the board is working with, how often it has met and, if it has met, who has attended. We were told in the response to the Henley review that the board would be established to work with the sponsored bodies to help them to deliver a vision for effective cultural education across the country, but when I talk to obvious candidates among the sponsored bodies, they report no such ministerial involvement.

The other important part of the response was a national plan for cultural education, and I initiated the debate to draw attention to the plan’s continuing absence. The promise of a national plan for cultural education had already been outlined by the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, in a well argued speech to the Yehudi Menuhin school in 2010, where he described the need to bring national coherence to the plethora of local cultural education initiatives.

The promise was repeated in a Government response signed by two Secretaries of State and described as an immediate priority, yet five weeks after the first anniversary of that announcement, we are still waiting to see it. I am optimistic that the Minister, after nearly 60 weeks, might be able to promise to the Chamber today that the national plan is imminent. Frankly, it takes only nine months to make a baby, and the national plan has now been promised for 14 months.

The promise has been repeated since it was first made, so it is not as if the Government are trying to run away from it. The then Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, the right hon. Member for South West Surrey (Mr Hunt), promised in a speech on 26 June 2012 that the national plan would be published “later this year.” That would have been in 2012, and we are now four months into 2013.

Without a governing board or a plan—the plan has still not been formally created, detailed or properly consulted on—how do the Government expect to fill the vacuum in cultural learning that has grown since 2010?

We have seen a reduction in both uptake of creative subjects and funding for people seeking to teach them. An Ipsos MORI survey commissioned by the Department for Education found that 15% of schools have withdrawn one or more arts subjects, and it was suggested that that was a consequence of the debate we had on the EBacc. People reading and listening to this debate will know that one of the consequences of the EBacc’s description, which did not include those subjects, was a real fear that the school curriculum would continue to be constricted.

I am glad that the Department rowed back from the extreme end of those proposals—that was an improvement —but the consequence of the way that debate was conducted is that fewer schools are offering those subjects. Worse, because the retreat from those subjects is higher in schools in deprived areas, the survey found that 21% of schools with a high proportion of pupils on free school meals withdrew one or more arts subjects, compared with only 8% of schools with a low proportion of pupils on free school meals.

Things are going to get worse, because the number of funded teacher training places in creative subjects has fallen dramatically. Between 2010 and 2012, the number of places fell by 38% for art and by 33% for music, compared with, for example, 6% for geography. The number of places for history remained broadly the same.

The narrowing of the curriculum at the expense of creative subjects will lead to a loss of the leaders relied on by our creative industries, which will have consequences for our economy. The United Kingdom has the largest creative sector in the European Union. According to UNESCO, the sector is, in absolute terms, the most successful exporter of cultural goods and services in the world—we are the world leader in the field—ahead of even the US. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development reports that the UK’s creative share of gross value added is 5.8%, compared with France’s 2.8% and the USA’s 3.3%. The export figures confirm the United Kingdom’s strength, but they also show that our competitors are catching up, which should be a cause for concern, yet companies in creative industries are unable to recruit the skilled staff that they require.

Arts Council England says that between 20% and 25% of employers in the UK’s creative industries are unable to recruit the staff they need who have the skills they need. The CBI knows that that is important, and it has urged the Government to push ahead with

“reforms to school ICT and ensure sufficient teacher training courses are in place to successfully roll out the new curriculum and deliver digital skills, alongside art training, that the UK’s creative industries need.”

New technology requires an emphasis on creating knowledge. We need strong academic foundations, but creative leaders need to be able to make products that deliver their ideas. If Britain does not maintain a focus on creativity in schools, we will risk our position as one of the leading creative industrial nations. James Dyson puts it well:

“Creativity is creating something that no one could have devised; something that hasn’t existed before and solves problems that haven’t been solved before. Making something work is a very creative thing to do.”

The previous Government understood that to a significant extent when they established the creative partnerships programme, which brought together artists, inventors and school pupils.

“This Much We Know”, published as a result of that programme, pointed out that educating and involving young people in the arts and culture is not just the mark of a civilised society, as research and experience in this country and abroad show that that benefits the economy and society by increasing employability, raising skill levels, improving motivation, cutting truancy, bringing the worlds of learning and business closer together, tackling social exclusion and helping young people to play a constructive role in their schools and society at large.

Some countries lead the UK in fact-based learning areas, but the UK’s international achievements set it apart from most industrial competitors. We are world leaders in the creative industries. Teaching creativity to our children will always be vital to that national success and to intellectual and industrial growth. The UK averages 19 Nobel prizes for every 10 million of its population. The USA averages 11 prizes per 10 million, and the EU just nine. We are leading the world because we combine excellent scientific education and a tradition of creativity and learning. We have done better than most competitor countries in securing new patents, although we are beginning to slip down the list.

When the Secretary of State for Education announced the Government response to the Henley report in 2012, he said—and I agree—this:

“Learning about our culture and playing an active part in the cultural life of the school and wider communities is as vital to developing our identity and self-esteem as understanding who we are through knowing our history and the origins of our society.”

When children can play such an active part, it makes a difference to what they can achieve.

The other day, I visited Mulberry school for girls, a comprehensive in Tower Hamlets that aims to develop confidence, creativity, leadership and a love of learning in young women. I saw a team from the National Theatre working with the girls in preparation to make a film of a piece they had developed with a National Theatre writer. Not every school can have access to such wonderful input, but every child deserves an opportunity to learn in that way. That is what a national plan for cultural education should guarantee. However, the direction of travel in curriculum reform is towards a narrower model of education.

In December, in response to a question that I asked, the Secretary of State said:

“The arts are mankind’s greatest achievement”,

a point that I support. However, he continued:

“Every child should be able to enjoy and appreciate great literature, music, drama and visual art.”—[Official Report, 3 December 2012; Vol. 554, c. 579.]

I do not believe that watching—not making—is all that a child needs to develop creatively. Learning to enjoy and appreciate is not sufficient; children should have the opportunity to make. The process of making is one of the most important ways to expand children’s thinking.

That is why I want to see a draft and to have a public debate and argument about a national plan for cultural education. If it is a good enough plan, it will challenge profoundly what is happening in much of education today. Ken Robinson, who has made the argument more profoundly than any other thinker, said in a speech in 2012:

“The dominant systems of education are based on three principles—or assumptions, at least—that are exactly opposite to how human lives are actually lived. Apart from that, they’re fine. First, they promote standardization and a narrow view of intelligence, when human talents are diverse and personal. Second, they promote compliance, when cultural progress and achievement depend on the cultivation of imagination and creativity. Third, they are linear and rigid, when the course of each human life, including yours, is organic and largely unpredictable.”

He summed up what I think all of us know: if education does not allow children to develop their creativity and give them a chance to understand and make things, we will continue to slide down the slope of international competitiveness in the creative industries, and we will deny our young people, particularly the most deprived, the wonderful opportunity to become creative, which ought to be given to them as an absolute entitlement within their education.

It has taken too long for a plan to be announced; I hope that the Minister will say that we shall have it immediately. I hope, too, that he can reassure me that it is not merely a “watch and hear” plan, but a “make and do” plan.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I congratulate the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) on securing this important debate, and I acknowledge her strong advocacy over a long period for cultural education and the eloquent contribution that she has made to this debate. I am sure that she will agree that children in England—and elsewhere, but in England for the purposes of this debate—can lay claim to a rich cultural heritage. It should be our collective aim to ensure that they all have the chance to take part in it, supported by high-quality and engaging local opportunities that help to ignite the lifelong love of culture that we all want to engender in every young person.

We know that local authorities already provide extensive access to cultural activities through their investment in libraries, museums, galleries, arts centres, archives, public art and so on. Cornwall, for example, has a vibrant arts offering including 150 festivals, 300 private galleries, 10 theatre and dance companies, 72 museums and 1,000 village halls regularly used for cultural activities. There are many other examples across the country. Alongside that, the arm’s-length bodies of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport—the Arts Council England, English Heritage, the Heritage Lottery Fund and the British Film Institute, among many others—invest their grant in aid and national lottery funding in substantial educational activity.

Against that backdrop, we asked Darren Henley to conduct a review of cultural education. I understand the hon. Lady’s impatience and frustration. She has secured a debate a year on, and she wants to see the plan up and running. I am in a position to tell her that that plan will be published very soon indeed, and will set out our ambitious programmes to support the arts and recognise the huge contribution made by many charitable, philanthropic and voluntary organisations, local authorities and other arts and cultural organisations to the fantastic wealth of provision out there.

In the past 12 months, an enormous amount of work has been undertaken. The hon. Lady acknowledged in her contribution that the Government’s commitment was not a shallow one; we have set up new programmes and brokered new partnerships. It is an opportune time to reflect on progress thus far and make clear our expectations for the future. The plan will do so, and will affirm our commitment to ensuring that all pupils have access to a rich and fulfilling cultural education. That commitment is backed by £292 million in funding for cultural educational activity over the three years to 2015.

The plan will highlight the many examples of partnerships and initiatives supported by investment from schools, local authorities, voluntary organisations and bodies such as the Arts Council, and the Government also support a host of programmes designed to strengthen access and the take-up of provision, which will enhance the quality of the local and national cultural education available to schools and help to achieve greater opportunity for young people. I am afraid that the volume of those programmes does not allow me to go through the whole repertoire in the short time available for this debate, so I will draw attention to a core selection, some of which she referred to. Some are aimed at children with a special interest or promise in the arts; some are broader and focus on improving provision for all children.

In his review of cultural education in England, Darren Henley recognised that despite the magnificent talent that we are lucky to have in this country in both contemporary and classical dance, there was no centrally funded national youth dance company, so one has been set up, jointly funded and overseen by the new Arts Council England and managed by Sadler’s Wells Trust Ltd. The first annual company of talented performers aged 16 to 19 has been recruited, and its members are training and performing with the help of world-leading choreographers.

In art and design, together with Arts Council England, we are providing funding to scale up the Sorrell Foundation’s national Saturday art and design clubs. They are free and give young people aged 14 to 16 the opportunity to participate in inspiring classes every Saturday morning, with activities ranging from drawing to sculpture, printmaking, stop-frame animation and so on.

We have formed a unique partnership with the BFI, investing in the innovative BFI film academy, specifically for 16 to 19 year olds, which aims to give a diverse group of young people from all backgrounds the ability to be part of the film industry by providing them with opportunities to develop new skills and to build their career. It builds on the BFI’s existing education scheme for five to 19 year olds. We have the first fully integrated, nationally co-ordinated programme of developing young film talent ever established in the UK.

Since our response last April to Darren Henley’s review of cultural education in England, we have set up a museums and schools programme to increase the level of engagement in 10 regions of low participation. By January this year, more than 4,000 visits had been made as a result of the programme. In music, In Harmony is jointly funded by the Department for Education and the national lottery through Arts Council England. It aims to inspire and transform the lives of children through community-based orchestral music making. We continue to fund two original In Harmony projects in Lambeth and Liverpool, for three years from 2012 to 2015. In May 2012, an expansion of the scheme was agreed for four additional projects in areas of exceptional deprivation.

To celebrate and commemorate our culture and history, we are supporting the heritage schools programme. English Heritage is working with schools to help them to make effective use of their local historical environment and to bring the curriculum to life. Two thousand teachers will participate in training programmes to support their development in 190 schools. Additionally, we are planning a lasting educational legacy in remembrance of one of the most significant events in our history, the first world war. The flagship scheme announced by the Prime Minister at the Imperial War Museum at the end of last year—I was privileged to attend that event—will give thousands of schoolchildren and teachers the opportunity to visit the great war battlefields; pupils will learn first hand about the sacrifices made and the personal stories of those involved, with schools encouraged to establish commemoration projects such as collecting photographs and uncovering local stories.

To support teachers, we are funding a network of teaching school alliances that specialise in the cultural aspects of the curriculum. I am happy to provide the hon. Lady with more details, because I know she has a particular interest in that. The network will play a leading role in developing and disseminating professional development materials and resources for teachers. Those programmes are additional to the music education activity under way following the publication of “The Importance of Music: A National Plan for Music Education” in November 2011. On its publication, we announced funding for a national network of music education hubs, building on the existing music education provision and bringing together partnerships between music services, schools, education and arts organisations. A total of 123 hubs, managed by Arts Council England on our behalf, began work in September 2012 and they are already delivering innovative projects throughout the country, including access for all pupils, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, which is crucial, and they are working to augment and broaden the range of music activities on offer. That is just one example of the new partnerships that we are brokering in cultural education.

Darren Henley’s review concluded that, despite some excellent examples of collaboration between arts organisations and schools, a more systematic approach was necessary to develop a coherent and educationally sound cultural offer for young people. Some schools can be overwhelmed by the provision on offer, while some might struggle to find support that meets their needs. In response to the review’s recommendations, a strategic partnership between Arts Council England, the Heritage Lottery Fund, the British Film Institute and English Heritage has been brokered as the cultural education partnership group. The group is working to ensure that the priorities for cultural education are more than a sum of parts. It has identified three areas in which to test a shared approach, with a greater alignment of group members’ activities and resources: in the city of Bristol, in Barking and Dagenham, and in Great Yarmouth.

To reassure the hon. Lady about a joint ministerial board, a cross-Government group will start next month, with my Department and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on the board, which will be chaired jointly by the Ministers; it will oversee progress in this complex field of activity. It will bring together Ministers from both Departments and include arm’s length body delivery partners and school representatives to support and challenge the development of the national cultural education offer. I am happy to write to her with more details of exactly how the group will operate and about the involvement of the various participants.

We support the Arts Council in extending the reach of its bridge organisations, whose role is to improve the delivery of arts opportunities for children and young people by bringing together schools and cultural organisations. That encourages consistency and coherence across an often complex arts and education landscape, helping young people and local communities to benefit from the wide range of high-quality creative and artistic experience on offer. With additional investment from my Department, bridge organisations will increase engagement with schools, in particular teaching schools, and partnerships, with a wider range of cultural organisations, encompassing the arts, museums, libraries, film centres and heritage sites.

Schools clearly have an essential role to play in introducing cultural experiences to their students as part of a broad and rich curriculum. The most successful schools put culture at the heart of their curriculum. Our aim is to enable all schools to match the achievement of the best. The new national curriculum has set out the essential knowledge that all children and young people should know between the ages of five and 16. As the hon. Lady knows, we have completed the consultation, and I am sure that she made her views known. It will ensure that all pupils have the chance to read books, sing, make music, film or animation, dance, draw, design and perform, and be given opportunities to attend art galleries, museums, cultural and world cinema, theatre and concert performances. Creativity is not an optional add-on but is fundamental to our whole approach to education. If we provide teachers with the freedom to innovate and design their own curriculum, rather than being over-prescriptive, schools will be able to provide a rich and creative experience for their pupils.

The hon. Lady has emphasised on the Floor of the House and elsewhere that she wishes to ensure clear accountability for schools on how they are delivering the creative element of their education through the measures to be put in place. According to recent announcements by the Secretary of State, the new accountability measures, on which we will be consulting, are to be broadened in range; the hon. Lady welcomed that and, I think, was slightly surprised at the time that she had been so successful in persuading the Secretary of State of the right approach. Those arts subjects and creative areas of education will form part of the accountability measures that schools will have to take into consideration when deciding on what to do to provide a rich and broad curriculum.

GCSEs will be comprehensively reformed, with more challenging subject content and more rigorous assessment structures. The changes will initially apply to subjects such as English language and literature, and changes to other subjects including cultural ones will follow as soon as possible. The aim is for the new qualifications to be in place for teaching from September 2016. Increasing numbers of pupils have chosen to study vocational arts, and we have already taken steps to improve vocational qualifications. Following the Wolf review, we have ensured proper assessment and tighter quality controls on vocational courses. We have recognised, too, concerns about the EBacc and, specifically, whether the accountability system includes the right incentives to encourage and recognise achievement in arts subjects. I hope that some of the movement in recent weeks has reassured the hon. Lady that we are not trying to remove the importance of a rich cultural curriculum; in many respects, we are trying to enhance it.

We are looking at how we can improve the way in which secondary schools are held accountable, and we are consulting on proposals. The proposed changes will mean a more balanced and meaningful accountability system that includes a progress measure based on eight qualifications, as opposed to the qualifications within the EBacc. That will enable arts subjects to receive full recognition in secondary school accountability, encouraging a broad and balanced curriculum at key stage 4. The cultural education plan will reflect those developments in accountability, qualifications and the new national curriculum, and that is one reason why we have taken time over it; we should see the plan very soon.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

If the reduction in the offer of arts and creative subjects reported in the MORI survey I referred to continues, what will the Minister do about it?

[Mr Timpson]

As the hon. Lady knows, that reduction goes back over a four-year period and it is not a new problem. It needs to be looked at in the context of the increase in the vocational take-up. We need to look at that in the round and consider whether we are providing the best possible offer in every educational and vocational setting available. I am happy to convey her concerns to the Minister responsible for seeing this through as the programme develops and the plan comes online to ensure that they are taken into consideration. Clearly, we are in the early stages of any new accountability measures, but they will be a helpful way of monitoring how schools are performing in fulfilling a curriculum that takes cultural education as seriously as we all want it to be. I look forward to the hon. Lady seeing the plan very soon, and I hope that she will be satisfied that it does what she wants it to do.