Oral Answers to Questions

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Monday 11th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

It is a concern when any particular group is significantly underperforming compared with the national average. One big priority for the Government is to close the attainment gap between those from the wealthiest and the poorest backgrounds. We are focusing on that in a range of education policies from academies to free schools, and also in our focus on improving behaviour in schools and reviewing the curriculum.

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

17. What recent assessment he has made of the merits of year 3 play pathfinder projects in Blackpool.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

All local authorities, including Blackpool, have provided financial information on their 2010-11 play programmes and this is being considered by our Department. However, as I said earlier, the Department is not making judgments on the relative merits of individual sites, and does not hold this information. Local authorities will be notified within the next month of their revised play capital allocations. It will then be for local authorities to decide which play areas go ahead, based on local needs.

[Mr Marsden]

Eleven play pathfinder projects in Blackpool are waiting with bated breath for those allocations. That includes the Fishers Field project in my constituency, which is a highly imaginative but complex project involving new playing fields and a natural park. I hear what the Minister says, but his colleague the Secretary of State, in reply to me earlier in the summer, said he was clear about the needs of Blackpool in terms of deprivation, mobility and general problems in that area. Will the Minister pass on the message that the people of Blackpool would like to see such projects go ahead?

[Tim Loughton]

As I said before and as the hon. Gentleman would have heard, we are very much in favour of promoting play as much as possible because of the many social health benefits that it brings. When the allocations are determined after the spending review coming up, I hope the local authority in Blackpool will decide its priorities according to local needs—we have given local authorities that power—and proceed to promote the play schemes that it considers most appropriate for the local area.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Of course, the big increase in the number of children coming into care in the aftermath of the baby Peter case was alarming. It is therefore absolutely right that the ongoing Munro review makes suggestions for freeing up the bureaucracy, which holds back social workers from doing the sort of preventive work—keeping families together when possible and working with other professionals on an early intervention basis—that can be so profitable financially, but, more important, socially, for those families later.

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State has just said that he is keen to promote initiatives in the study of history in schools. Does he remember the rather sterile debate in 1990, when Lord Baker introduced the national curriculum, between skills and content? Does he agree that skills Learned in the study of history are as important as narrative? We cannot have one or the other—we need both.

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s point. He was a distinguished editor of History Today, and his voice in these debates is important. It is critical that we ensure that every child has a proper spine of knowledge—the narrative of the history of these islands. Without that, the skills of comparison and of examining primary and secondary sources and drawing the appropriate conclusions, are meaningless. Without that spine, history cannot stand up and take its place properly in the national curriculum. One of the problems in the past 13 years—indeed, since 1990—is that national history has not been taught as it should be in our schools. Under the coalition Government, that will change.