Oral Answers to Questions

Flick Drummond Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Skidmore]

Philip Augar and his independent panel have made thoughtful recommendations on tuition fee levels, loan repayment, and the balance of funding between universities and further education. We are considering the report carefully but have not yet taken decisions on the recommendations. I can now announce that the Government will conclude the review alongside the next spending review, which will allow government time to consider the recommendations thoroughly and to respond in a way that provides the sector with clarity about the future of post-18 education and training.

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)]

Will the Minister update us on what support children with special educational needs receive, in respect of improving inter-agency co-ordination in order to provide prompt support and interventions?

[Michelle Donelan]

We totally understand the importance of inter-agency working, which is why we established the education, health and care plan system in the first place and why we are undertaking a SEND—special educational needs and disability—review. Ofsted and Care Quality Commission inspections look at the effectiveness of joint working in local areas, and we are strengthening our support and the challenge for areas where SEND services do need to improve.

Budget Resolutions

Flick Drummond Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

We cut the taper rate on universal credit at the last autumn statement. As I said, the strong economy that this Government’s policies have helped to create means that more women are now in work than ever before. I was talking about how skills and plugging skills shortages for employers is so important. Top employers and businesses are telling us that the skills they need, particularly in science, technology, engineering and maths, are in too short supply.

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)]

On the point made earlier about women returners, is my right hon. Friend aware that just 5% of women returning to work would generate an extra £750 million in the economy—a very good return?

[Justine Greening]

Absolutely. Women’s economic empowerment is one of the most powerful levers we have to help drive growth in our economy and, more broadly, around the world over the years ahead.

Looking at how we are going to plug the skills gap, only 10% of adults in our country hold a technical qualification as their highest educational achievement. Germany currently produces twice as many science, engineering and technology technicians. Driving these skills will power innovation and growth and, in turn, our economy. That benefits everyone, so we cannot afford to wait. Other economies have been ahead of us in developing the skills of the future, and this Government are clear that we will not fall further behind. We should recognise that globalisation and automation are changing the modern workplace. Thirty-five per cent. of our existing jobs are at a high risk of being replaced in the next 10 to 20 years, not through competition but by technology.

International Women’s Day

Flick Drummond Excerpts

Thursday 2nd March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)]

I am delighted to speak in this important debate and to follow the very powerful speech from the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), who can count on my support for her campaign.

The UN’s theme for International Women’s Day this year is

“Women in the Changing World of Work: Planet 50-50 by 2030”

and the global theme is “Be bold for change”, but 2030 is only 13 years away, and there is still much to be done. The Prime Minister has called the gender pay gap—the difference in earning power between men and women—a “burning injustice”. I could not agree more.

We still have some way to go in the changing world of work in the UK. British women still have 71% of the economic opportunity that men have. Yes, there are other countries that are doing much worse, but the UK should be a leader in this area. Sadly, we are not.

UN sustainable development goal 5 describes gender equality as a world issue. It is a sad statistic that between 1995 and 2015, global female labour force participation decreased from 52% to 49%. Only 69% of women are employed in the UK, compared with 78% of men. The global gender pay gap is 25.5%, but the UK gender pay gap is 19.2%. That is not something to be proud of. We cannot lecture other countries around the world that we have it better. If the current trends continue, it will take 70 years to close the global gender wage gap, but the Government have vowed to reduce it within a generation.

If we are going to be bold for change, we will have to look very hard at where we can make a difference. One way to address that is by looking at older women in the workplace. I want to focus on women returning to work, particularly older women. One of the findings from the gender pay gap inquiry by the Women and Equalities Committee, on which I serve, was that women who have been out of the workplace for more than six months find it difficult to get back into employment. The longer they are out of work, the harder it is.

I set up the all-party group on women and work with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) to look at the barriers to work. Our group has proved to be incredibly popular—we have standing room only at most of our meetings. There is still a definite need—I wish it were not so—to help women in the workplace. Our first all-party group inquiry was about women returning to work. We published our report in January, and it seems to have struck a chord with employers and women up and down the country.

There are some very good examples of companies that are already doing it, but we need to do much more to get people on board and to see the wisdom of tapping into the life experience and work-related experience of older women employees who are keen to get back into work. In my view, companies that cannot see the potential are missing a big trick. To put it quite simply, there is a huge pool of talent out there.

People take time out of the workplace for all sorts of reasons. The biggest reason is caring responsibilities, whether for children or for elderly relatives. Some people, including me, took time out because we think that parenting is the most important job in the world and we wanted to take responsibility for bringing up the next generation—there is absolutely nothing wrong with that view. For others, childcare costs are an enormous barrier for women who want to return to work. Having 30 hours of free childcare will help, but I fear that too many men and women are not taking time out to look after their children because they are worried about getting back into work. Taking time out of the workplace is a huge financial commitment, but more would be prepared to make that choice if they knew that they would not struggle to get back into work at a later date. Families would be in a better place to budget, too.

The more social investment and measures that Governments can put in place to balance work and family commitments for both men and women and to recognise the importance of looking after children, the better. I am pleased that the Government have recognised many of those points in their policies, but we need to take it further. For instance, our group’s report found that few people were taking up shared parental leave—just 1% of men are taking it up. It is considered complicated and unwieldy.

There is little recognition of the work that women—it is predominantly women—do when they are at home. We have to stop this idea that just because someone has taken time out of the workplace, they are any less capable. My heart sinks when people dismiss mothers or fathers who are staying at home; what is more important than bringing up the next generation? It should be treated as equally important as going back to work.

Many women who have been out of the workplace for some time have lost confidence and do not know how to start, but several organisations are addressing this. We are incredibly grateful for people such as Julianne Miles, the co-founder of Women Returners, who contributed to our report. Companies need to be flexible in their approach and in their conditions. They must not see a gap in a CV as a barrier and show a reluctance to employ someone. Employing older women and men is a huge economic opportunity, especially if we are going to live until we are 90, as the predictions are for South Korea. I challenge all companies: be bold for change and lead the way.

Children and Social Work Bill [Lords]

Flick Drummond Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 5th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)]

It was my choice to be last today, so I am very pleased to be speaking now. It is a great honour to follow my very hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst), who made an excellent speech, and I completely agree with her on the support for adoptive parents; I have a close relative who has adopted three children and it really is not easy, so I completely agree.

I am very pleased with this Bill, and particularly welcome some of its measures, including on decision-making support for looked-after children, and especially the raising of the age of care leavers to 25 in respect of local authority services. I know that young people in their 20s still need looking after, having four of my own in their 20s. There is plenty of evidence to show that the brain does not fully develop until 25, and the state needs to keep its parental responsibility until young people are firmly launched.

In March 2016 there were 70,440 looked-after children in England, and based on the 2016 data there were 26,340 care leavers aged 19, 20 or 21, of whom 40% were not in employment, education or training, compared with 14 % of all 19 to 21-year-olds who did not go through the care service. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said, 4% of these care leavers end up in the criminal justice system.

The role of the corporate parent is to safeguard the young, but there is a resource aspect to it. Portsmouth children’s services estimates that if a young person is kept out of a single involvement in the criminal justice system, it saves the state £100,000 in various ways, for instance in avoiding the need for probation services, the cost of the criminal justice system and social services for rehabilitation.

I also mentioned the increase in age on Second Reading of the Homelessness Reduction Bill a couple of weeks ago. Many twenty-somethings are still living at home, and therefore we need to look after the housing of our care leavers, too. That protection should follow the care leavers around the country, so, like any other young person, they are looked after by either the local authority where they have settled or their original local authority. I welcome the amendment of the Earl of Listowel for a national offer for care leavers. Independent living is very different from living in the care environment in terms of budgeting and looking for jobs, and there is also the question of setting up home, including dealing with bills and council tax. I hope that the national offer will be accepted and personal advisers are clearly identified.

On social workers, I welcome the establishment of Social Work England as an independent non-departmental public body. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham mentioned, I worked with him on a commission on children’s social workers in 2007, called “No More Blame Game”. Some of the recommendations were adopted—for instance, that of the chief social worker—but the General Social Care Council, which was the regulator, folded in 2012, and the new regulator, the Health and Care Professions Council, looks after many other jobs. It is important that social work is seen as a unique job, and therefore we must recognise that it is a separate profession, on a level with other professionals such as doctors and nurses.

Some of the other recommendations have already been accepted, but I thought it would be a good idea to remind the Minister in case he has not read the report. The first recommendation is that the generic nature of social work must be maintained and resources better targeted to enable social workers to work with families in a preventive role. That is largely happening already. There is also the role of the consultant social worker, which I think is what the sister of my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood does. That senior practitioner has been introduced to keep experienced social workers on the frontline, rather than putting them into management. That requires an appropriate career and pay structure to be put in place to support them, because if they do not want to go into management, there is no other way of going forward.

Thirdly, every social worker should be encouraged and have an opportunity to become a member of a professional body similar to the British Medical Association or Royal College of Nursing, which could advocate on their behalf, negotiate on salaries and conditions of services, provide good public relations on behalf of the profession as a whole, and influence future Government policy. Consideration should also be given to a requirement that employers, including agency employers, fund this membership for the first post-qualifying year to ensure that all entrants to the profession can become members.

We also recommended that there should be a chief social worker—an idea we took from New Zealand, where it works incredibly successfully. This person would work across Departments, and with Unison, the British Association of Social Workers, other representative bodies and, in particular, the media. Again, my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood mentioned that the attitude some people take to social work is appalling, because it is an incredibly tough profession. We need to get the media to look at the health of the profession, and provide good news stories and cases. I do not know whether anybody is watching “Damned”, but it shows how hard the profession works, although it is made to be amusing. It would be nice if we could also have positive stories coming out in the media.

Our next recommendation was that the social work degree must continue to be generic to allow social workers a good foundation in all aspects of social work, so that they can get a good grasp of all the different aspects of looking after children in the care service. The content and the length of the degree course might be reviewed, to equip them with the right knowledge and skills for rewarding jobs—I believe that is in the Bill, too. That is beginning to happen. We also considered that the course should extend to four years, so that they have a year out in practice and get a good grasp of what they are getting themselves into.

Our next recommendation was that multi-agency training should be incorporated into the qualifying degree and should continue to be part of continuing professional development. In many professions, be it teaching or medicine, professional development is incredibly important. Social workers need that continued professional development and support throughout their career. We also recommended that the Department of Health and the Department responsible for children’s services work with local authorities and other employers of social workers to ensure that resources, both course fees and replacement time, are available so that all social workers can undertake the level of post-qualifying education and training necessary for the roles and tasks they are employed to undertake. Again, that goes back to the point about continued development.

There should be a combination of a national recruitment campaign and local headhunting to encourage more people to enter social work. As we have heard, there are a lot of vacancies and social workers are incredibly overworked. It is an incredibly rewarding profession and we need to ensure that we get more people into it, so we need a national recruitment campaign. One way of doing that is through high-impact advertising, similar to what we see for the Army, the police and teaching. We need it to send a clear message that the role of social workers is important in society and should be respected.

Another recommendation was for the establishment of the newly qualified social worker status, which is essential to supporting and retaining inexperienced social workers. Often they were coming out of university and going straight into work in harrowing circumstances and were not getting the support they needed. I hope we will also look at apprenticeships in social work. I know we are doing those in nursing and it would be great if that could extend to social work. Social workers need to have protected caseloads and guaranteed post-qualifying study and training time, so that we retain the social workers we already have. There also needs to be a flexible pay structure that corresponds to those of other similar professions working in multi-agency teams and that recognises the difference in living costs around the country.

We said that the numerical adoption targets and other targets that are not in the best interests of the child should be phased out, and I am pleased that has already been adopted. We also suggested that better targeted funding should go into research and development in social care.

Some of our recommendations have already been accepted, but this very good report is now nearly 10 years old, so if the Minister has not read it I insist that he does so. I ask him to look at anything that we have not done already, with a view to putting it into practice. I hope that the new regulator continues the improvement that has been happening in the social work profession. It is a tough job at the front-line but it is a very necessary and rewarding one. I look forward to seeing this Bill go into Committee.

Oral Answers to Questions

Flick Drummond Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I am sure that the hon. Lady welcomes the Government’s ambition to double the amount of childcare from 15 to 30 hours during this Parliament, which is why we are putting in more funding. We have consulted on that, and we will respond to the consultation shortly.

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)]

One of the social mobility issues is about encouraging teachers to get pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds to apply to Russell Group universities. What are the Government doing to encourage young people, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, to apply to the top universities?

[Justine Greening]

I met the vice-chancellor of Exeter University only last week to talk about some of the work that he and, indeed, the broader Russell Group are doing. It is important that we push this even more in the future than we have in the past. Alongside the proposals on selective education, some of the work we are doing in specific areas, such as on areas of opportunity, will make a massive difference over time.

Apprenticeships Funding

Flick Drummond Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. I also congratulate the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) on securing this important debate.

Apprenticeships provide a fantastic opportunity for young people to get on in life, while at the same time raising the productivity of the businesses that they join. On visits to schools around Bolton West, I hear concerns raised about getting that first job and having the required experience. That is obviously a great concern upon leaving school or university, but it is less so if someone chooses an apprenticeship because practical experience is built into the course. Businesses often raise the same concerns about people’s preparation for the world of work. Apprenticeships are key to solving that problem, because the potential employee not only will have the practical skills but will have been trained with a specific job role in mind, and will therefore be job or industry-ready.

It is really important that apprentices go into an improving and increasingly successful economy. The continuing economic recovery in Britain over the past six years is a fantastic achievement by the coalition Government and the present Government, and means that anyone doing an apprenticeship or any other course will have a job to go into afterwards.

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)]

Is it not also true that there is a significant return for the taxpayer—especially when compared with universities, where the return is much less—of £26 to £28 for every £1 that the Government put into apprenticeships? Promoting apprenticeships is a good thing for the taxpayer.

[Chris Green]

I agree entirely. Apprenticeships are a fantastic investment in the economy but also a great investment in the individual.

There is still a problem with the perception of apprenticeships; I sympathise with the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) in that regard. We need quality apprenticeships. It seems that companies often find resistance within the school system when trying to recruit people for apprenticeships. That could be to some extent due to the recognition of apprenticeships—their reputation has become tarnished over a period of time—or to the fact that schools need to achieve academic targets to be recognised as successful, rather than targets on the number of people going into an apprenticeship.

Training providers and employers in my constituency, such as Alliance Learning in in Horwich and MBDA in Lostock, are working to change those negative perceptions with the delivery of superb apprenticeship programmes. MBDA delivers fantastic apprenticeships, but people are often unaware of the level to which they can be taken. For example, someone can be paid to study and gain a full bachelor’s or master’s degree in subjects such as advanced systems engineering.

I am delighted that the Government are continuing to support young people in moving into work by allocating £1 billion to the youth contract and ensuring that apprenticeships for under-25s incur no national insurance costs for employers.

Schools that work for Everyone

Flick Drummond Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

In the end, it is both. At the moment, many parents do not have the choice of a grammar school, so it makes sense to see what we can do to rectify that. I disagree with the underlying premise of the hon. Gentleman’s question, which is that if a child cannot get into a grammar, there are no other good schools around for them. We want to make sure that there are. In many parts of the country, grammars and non-grammar schools coexist very well together and, indeed, work very effectively together. We would be wrong not to respond to parents who want more good school places and the option of a grammar school for their child.

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)]

May I take the opportunity to ask my right hon. Friend to congratulate Portsmouth schools, both academy and comprehensive, on another improvement in their results this year; and to congratulate St Edmund’s Catholic School on becoming an outstanding comprehensive? Will my right hon. Friend assure me that whatever structures we have, be they academies, grammars or comprehensives, the Government will concentrate on the quality of teaching, because that has the most crucial impact in raising standards?

[Justine Greening]

I congratulate the schools in my hon. Friend’s local area on their recent results, which are down not only to the hard work of the children, but to the dedication of the teachers in those schools that has enabled the children to do so well. As she points out, in the end this comes down to improving the quality of teaching—that is how we get good schools—and we believe that grammars can play a role in that.

Educational Performance: Boys

Flick Drummond Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)]

Thank you for allowing me to speak, Mr Walker. I will be as fast as I can. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Karl MᶜCartney) for securing this important debate.

It is disappointing that the gender gap starts before children go to school and goes all the way through to university. In 2014-15, 56% of all British students were female, which represents a major reversal over the past three decades and corrects centuries of male domination. I am not saying that female domination is a bad thing. I do not have a problem with women ruling the world for the next few centuries as men have done in the past, but I think we are prepared to be more equal.

What to do? We need to stop the blame culture in which higher education blames secondary schools and secondary schools blame primary schools, which in turn blame early years and the parents. We need to look at education as a whole, which is why I am so pleased that higher education is back in the Department for Education.

In Portsmouth South, 73% of boys met the standard for language development last year, compared with 87% of girls. Falling behind at the early stage puts children at a disadvantage, so interventions need to be put in place early. Language begins as soon as children are born, and I would like to see every pram and pushchair designed with the child facing the parent so that they can be talked to. Good childcare is crucial and needs to be well funded. Get it right at that stage and money will be saved in the future.

Boys and girls have the capacity to learn exactly the same subjects. There should be no difference in what girls and boys learn, but there is a difference in how they learn. According to the OECD report, boys are 8% more likely to regard school as a waste of time. Boys learn in short phases and need more breaks. They need to be able to move around more than girls. Thirty-five minutes has been identified as the best length of lesson for boys, so they need short, specific, focused activities. More sport is needed in schools.

Some very good schools have embraced pedagogy with a range of teaching approaches. Using different intervention strategies is proving effective, and good practice needs to be widespread. Each teacher will have a different style, and I am glad that the Government are encouraging teachers to develop their own style rather than forcing them to teach in a particular way. Literacy strategies should include a holistic approach to reading, writing, speaking and listening as an integrated whole. Children also need to be competitive. Target setting and mentoring are crucial. The Portsmouth education business partnership is proving incredibly effective in working with pupils one to one.

Lastly, children need to be challenged and praised. Many boys appear to be full of confidence but are not. Bad behaviour is often a cover for a fear of failure. Good teachers will adjust their attitude to encourage boys to get more involved in activities. I think this is a temporary blip, but we need to work hard quickly to ensure that no boy is left behind.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

I thank the hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston) for his selflessness. Everyone in Westminster Hall owes him a great debt of gratitude. I ask the Opposition Front-Bench spokespeople to be brief and to leave the Minister nine minutes at the end.

SATs Results

Flick Drummond Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart]

As I said a few minutes ago, all new assessments and tests go through, and create, additional volatility. Members will remember the changes to the English GCSE. They were called a fiasco; I would call them a furore. The unions said they were a disaster and a disgrace, and the schools said it was nothing to do with them, but when they went to court they lost on every single count. It was a new test and it took time. The following year, with pretty much the same test, the schools that had done badly had learned how to do it better. They read the spec in a way that they had obviously failed to do previously, and other technical changes were made.

This is a new assessment. It is not a disaster. We need to unpick its components and look at them carefully to find out whether there is the right balance between raising standards, having high standards and not creating something that is negative in the way it is perceived by children and schools.

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)]

This year, of course, it will be very difficult to embed the new assessment. Does my hon. Friend agree that the new curriculum assessment gives children a mastery of the subject before they move on? That is far preferable to them moving through the system without having that grasp of the subject.

[Graham Stuart]

I agree with my hon. Friend. If the answer to my first question—about whether we are doing a good enough job—is no, it is not because we have lazy teachers. Fundamentally, if we are not doing a good enough job or as good a job as our neighbours and competitors, we need to raise standards, and when that happens, there is going to be a shock to the system. That is partly because of the volatility and adjustment and partly because the system needs that shock. It needs to be told.

I sometimes clashed with the hon. Lady’s predecessor on the question of what simply raising the bar did to raise standards. It is a mixed answer, but I have seen standards in the system raised partly because the bar was raised and there was clarity about what was required. Whatever the difficulties—there are all sorts of issues and complexities, including academisation—and notwithstanding some of the downsides, we have fundamentally better schools now than we did six years ago, and that is partly because we have stated clearly what we want and asked schools to meet the challenge. I have absolute confidence that next year, as schools learn to adjust to the challenge and headteachers work out how better to use their people and their funds, including the pupil premium, more than 53% of children will meet the standards.

Oral Answers to Questions

Flick Drummond Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)]

2. What steps her Department is taking to assist teachers in managing their workload.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

8. What steps her Department is taking to assist teachers in managing their workload.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)]

First, I add my welcome to the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner). I look forward to engaging with her on our mutual interests: education and, I understand, women and equalities. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) for her work as shadow Education Secretary. I think it is fair to say that we did not agree on everything, or perhaps even much, but I do pay tribute to her hard work, and that of the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), who I have also worked with over the years.

We are continuing our extensive work to remove unnecessary workload for teachers. As part of my commitment to taking action in this area, we established three independent review groups to tackle workload relating to marking, lesson planning, and data management. We have accepted all their recommendations to Government. We urge school leaders and others in the education system also to act on those recommendations, and we will continue to work on this.

[Mrs Drummond]

Has my right hon. Friend considered lengthening the school day to allow teachers the space to plan and mark during the school day, rather than during evenings and weekends? That would also give pupils the opportunity to engage in subjects such as art, music, drama and sport that may not be part of their curriculum at the moment.

[Nicky Morgan]

My hon. Friend will remember that in the Budget the Chancellor mentioned support for a longer school day. Many schools already offer extra activities as part of a longer school day. We are keen to support this, and hope that they will broaden their range of activities. However, if we have a longer school day, there is no requirement for teachers to increase their workload to accommodate that. We will come forward with more details in due course.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nicky Morgan]

The hon. Gentleman raises a really important issue, and we of course want to see more young people studying STEM subjects. My first boss in the House in the last Parliament, now Lord Willetts, told me that there were two ways to engage young people in science—space or dinosaurs.

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)]

T2. Following a rather poor Ofsted report for the local authority in Portsmouth, will the Secretary of State outline what support her Department can give to help schools in Portsmouth to become centres of excellence?

[The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)]

My hon. Friend is a strong promoter of educational excellence in Portsmouth. Centres of excellence in initial teacher training will be designated on the basis of criteria such as the quality of trainee teachers recruited, the quality of training courses, the outcomes for trainee teachers and training providers’ effectiveness in recruiting. We expect to confirm the schools and universities that have been designated as centres of excellence for the 2017-18 academic year when the allocation of training places is made in the autumn.