Educational Performance: Boys

Judith Cummins Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. The educational performance of our children is a topic that deservedly occupies considerable time within not only this House but the other place. It is the most potent policy tool in the hands of Government to raise aspiration and improve social mobility, but today we are here to focus on a very specific aspect of this policy debate: the educational performance of boys. In turn, as a Member who represents a predominantly working-class constituency in the city of Bradford, I propose to narrow even further the focus of this debate to the underperformance of working-class boys within our school system.

Let me make it clear at the start that this is not a call for girls to level down but for boys—indeed, for both working-class boys and working-class girls—to level up. What does the desperate underperformance that is endemic across our country mean for the life chances of our working-class boys? Because of that underperformance, they are most likely to find themselves condemned to temporary, low-skilled and disjointed working lives that offer little career progression or job satisfaction. Perhaps more disturbingly, they will, beyond doubt, find themselves increasingly ill-equipped to compete in today’s dauntingly globalised world, where the rules of international commerce mean that my constituents are no longer competing with Leeds, Manchester or Sheffield, as in the last century, but increasingly with regional cities in Taiwan and Brazil and so on.

As ever, painting such bleak pictures must inevitably beg the question: what are this Government going to do? The answer is certainly not to rob Peter to pay Paul. Funding for other disadvantaged cohorts should and must be maintained. The real answer is to end the first real-terms cut in school funding—a policy of this Government—without delay. It is arguably the single most regressive policy of this Government. That is undeniable. I expect the predictable response from the Government to my call for increased funding will be—excuse me if I paraphrase—something about a “magic money tree”. We have all heard it before, but that is simplistic and little more than a diversionary tactic. There are always choices to be made about competing calls on hard-pressed public finances, and this Government without fail choose time and again to back the wrong side.

As a case in point, under this Government, a choice was made to continue the charitable status of private schools. That tax break at a time of the first real-term cuts in schools funding in over a generation is plainly wrong. It favours the privileged few over the disadvantaged many and prefers the entrenched élite over the undervalued majority. The hundreds of millions of pounds in lost revenue to the Exchequer could, if that tax break were ended, be easily and swiftly redirected to tackle the unfairly disadvantaged in our school system and, in particular, to help address the desperate underperformance of working-class boys and working-class girls. Perhaps the Minister in his response will kindly offer the Government’s justification for their continuation of this unjust and damaging tax break.

EBacc: Expressive Arts Subjects

Judith Cummins Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Westminster Hall

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) for securing this important debate.

Educational improvement is an issue close to my heart, as my constituency is among the worst performing educationally in the UK. When I speak about educational attainment, I cite two simple facts, without fail, that speak more than any other about what an uphill struggle my constituents face in remaining competitive in this increasingly fast-moving globalised world. First, in the league table measuring percentage of individuals with level 4 qualifications or higher, out of 650 constituencies in the UK, my constituency appears 609th. Secondly, when measuring those without any qualifications whatever, Bradford South comes in at 74th.

The task is stark. In simple terms, too few of my constituents boast the higher-level qualifications that they need to access professional and technical careers in the modern economy. To compound the problem, too many are making their way with no qualifications at all, destined for a working life in low-skilled roles typically marked by insecurity, low pay, and little to no opportunity for career progression. To face a fighting chance of accessing and forging successful careers in today’s economy, my constituents have to be better skilled with more qualifications under their belts and, just as importantly, their skills and qualifications must be aligned with today’s new industries.

These new industries, which increasingly drive economic growth, demand a highly skilled and creative workforce. Often they occur in the virtual world, facilitated through computers and sophisticated software—the knowledge economy in its rawest form. Front and centre among such new industries are those falling under the creative industries banner. To our credit, the UK’s creative industries are undeniably world-leading and, astonishingly, contribute more than £76 billion to the UK economy. The sector creates more than one in 11 UK jobs. Yet these industries are afforded little recognition, either by design or as an unintended consequence, in the Government’s policy on the introduction of the EBacc. That is what I wish to address in my remarks. Will the EBacc help or hinder my constituents’ ability to attain both a broad and balanced education and the specific skills that are key to careers in the new creative industries?

On the previous coalition Government’s watch, the uptake of creative subjects in our schools fell by 14%, and our creative industries face a skills shortage. Now, with the EBacc, the current Government are finishing the job of all but destroying the arts, culture and creative learning in our schools. Chief among my reasons for saying so is that the Government’s stated policy on the EBacc is unswervingly prescriptive on subjects and will become all but compulsory for our schools.

[Mr Gibb]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for allowing me to make an intervention. I just wanted to correct her hyperbole, because art and design entries in 2010-11 were 162,000 but by 2014-15 they had risen to 176,000; in music, as I have said before, the number of entries rose from 43,157 to 43,654 over the same period; and in the performing arts, the number of entries rose from 2,648 to 5,997 over the same period.

[Judith Cummins]

I thank the Minister for that intervention; obviously, he has his whole Department’s data at his fingertips. However, I will say that vocational arts qualifications and subjects have dropped.

Ministers’ ambition that 90% of 16-year-olds should take the full EBacc, alongside the Department for Education’s plan to make the EBacc a headline measure for accountability and to increase its prominence in Ofsted inspections, will effectively make the EBacc compulsory for secondary school pupils in England. The EBacc stipulates which subjects must be studied: maths; English literature; English language; double science; a language, ancient and/or modern; and history and/or geography. Where is the room for the new-found self-determination that apparently the brave new world of academisation is designed to offer localities? It is cast aside.

As a result of this prescriptiveness in the EBacc, there will be little or no scope for our children and young people to study creative subjects. Creative subjects are consigned by this new regime, wrongly, to a lesser category of subjects in which arts and creative learning are—by association—considered less worthy than other subjects.

I say to the Minister that that is wrong. Studying creative subjects is not only wholly meaningful and valuable to a broad and balanced education, but equally importantly creative subjects help to position our children and young people for future careers. The very subjects that are key to nurturing the skills critical to knowledge-intensive, highly skilled, well-paid creative industry careers are excluded from the EBacc. Jobs that are destined to become a cornerstone of our future economy are undervalued by the EBacc. That is shameful and short-sighted—negligent, even.

I urge this Government to reconsider their position, as they did with the forced academisation policy, and to do what is right for our future generations. There is no shame in rethinking; it is the mark of a mature democracy. The real shame would be for this Government to plough ahead with a widely discredited policy that is ill-considered to its core and rooted in an outdated educational view that promises to undermine our blossoming creative industries, which promise so much for my constituents and promise to deliver economic prosperity for this country in the coming years and decades.

National Living Wage

Judith Cummins Excerpts

Monday 18th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in this important debate. In opening, may I place on the record my sincere thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) for her efforts in securing this Back-Bench business debate? She is a fearless campaigner and a credit to this place. I wish her a speedy recovery, which I know she will achieve through sheer force of willpower. I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Joan Ryan) for stepping in.

When I sat in this Chamber alongside many other hon. Members not so many months ago and heard the Chancellor say that he was going to increase the pay of the lowest paid, I was speechless. The glib tagline was, “A pay rise for Britain”. Throughout my political life, I have fought for improved pay and conditions for the working people of this country, especially the lowest paid. One of the proudest moments in my political life was seeing a Labour Government, in this very place, introduce the national minimum wage as one of their first acts—a move that was strongly opposed by the Conservatives.

Despite my understandable cynicism, I was delighted that the Chancellor had undergone his own damascene conversion and had finally seen the light by belatedly understanding that every worker in this great and prosperous country, not just those at the top of the ladder, deserved to be paid fairly. But—and there is always a “but” with this Government—my initial delight soon dissolved as I rapidly discovered that my cynicism was not misplaced but very much spot on. As the now former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), recognised, the Chancellor’s glib tagline about giving Britain a pay rise was devoid of substance and nothing more than hot air and bluff. His Budget announcement was the stuff of fairy tales. When we scratch beneath the thin veneer of the so-called national living wage, it swiftly becomes clear that the low-paid workers of this country are being hammered, just as they always are by this Tory Government.

Despite the Chancellor’s embarrassing U-turn on tax credits, he has ploughed ahead with cuts to the successor scheme, universal credit. Cuts introduced this very month mean that tens of thousands of low-paid working families who are in receipt of universal credit are expected to lose up to £200 a month from their pay packets. That is the first attack by this Tory Government. The second attack, and the topic of today’s debate, is the Chancellor’s spectacular failure to ensure that big business funds his so-called national living wage off its own back and through its profits, rather than off the backs of workers.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden, the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers and the Daily Mirror newspaper, through its coverage in recent weeks, have shown that, when given the choice, big business has seized on the cheapest method to fund a pay rise for its workers by heartlessly cutting their overall pay and benefits package. That is simply shameful.

[Stephen Doughty]

My hon. Friend is making a very strong speech. Many businesses, particularly in the care sector, have got away with not paying the minimum wage and used all sorts of tactics such as clipping and not paying for travel time. An even greater number of them now use tactics such as cutting tea breaks and lunch breaks, in order to get away with it on an even greater scale. The Government failed to enforce the original minimum wage, and the situation is now being compounded further.

[Judith Cummins]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving that very good example. My right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North mentioned the glaring example of B&Q, which has asked its workers to sign a contract that reduces a number of their benefits. It is believed that the overall result will be that many will lose thousands of pounds. The company’s response has been to introduce a temporary scheme, for just two years, to protect the value of its workers’ overall packages. That is simply not good enough, particularly as it has been reported that the parent company of B&Q, Kingfisher, may pay its chief executive officer a total package of up to £3.6 million. The numbers are jaw-dropping, as is the hypocrisy. Once again, this Tory Government are presiding over the shameful exploitation of those who are least able to make ends meet, least able to make their voices heard and least able to stand up and tell the Government that what they are doing is simply unfair and unacceptable, and that it cannot go on.

The Chancellor cannot even plead ignorance and suggest that this shameful episode is an unexpected by-product of his noble and good deeds. A ministerial answer to a written question by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero) on 21 March revealed that the Government were aware of the possibility that big business would choose to fund their so-called national living wage through cuts to wider remuneration packages. The Government’s view was:

“It is for individual businesses to decide exactly how to respond to the introduction of the National Living Wage, appropriate to their circumstances. But any changes to contractual pay should be discussed and agreed with workers in advance.”

The Government simply do not get it. If the choice for workers is between unemployment and agreeing to changes designed to reduce their overall contractual benefits, most, if not all, workers—especially the lowest paid in society—will sign up.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that another group of workers, namely the self-employed, are also in a difficult position? I was recently contacted by a constituent whose partner works for a courier company. Once his petrol has been paid for, he is getting paid about £260 a month for working a 50-hour week. My constituent told me that she works on the minimum wage as a pizza delivery driver, and she earns about three times as much for doing half the hours that her partner works. Does that not show that a whole group of people is being forced into an invidious position?

[Judith Cummins]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that important point. Big business knows that the voice of the lowest paid is easily silenced, because the fear of unemployment is a powerful tool. The Government need to step up and legislate for big business to fund the so-called national living wage not through cuts to workers’ wider benefits but by, quite rightly, sacrificing a percentage of its own profits. That is not only fair but proper, given that tax on big business profits was cut in the Chancellor’s Budget. Soon, businesses will pay just 17% tax on their profits, down from 20%. I call on the Government to legislate to require big business to use the extra cash released through reduced corporation tax to fund the so-called national living wage, not to deliver larger dividends to its shareholders in the coming years, as I fear it will. The Government must step up. They must end this injustice. This simply cannot go on.

Educational Attainment: Yorkshire and the Humber

Judith Cummins Excerpts

Monday 18th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for permitting me to speak in this important debate. I will keep my remarks short. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Jo Cox) on securing this debate about education in our region, a topic that is arguably more critical than any other to the success of our constituents and, in particular, our region’s future generations.

As the Member of Parliament for Bradford South, I have raised on a number of occasions in this House, including in my maiden speech, the question of educational standards in the city of Bradford. Why? Because I know personally just how transformational education can be, and how it has the potential to broaden horizons more than any other tool available to us as a society. Very sadly, right across the board, too many of my constituents and their children do not have access to the high standard of educational provision that they rightly deserve.

I could illustrate the underperformance in the education system in my constituency with a raft of statistics, but I find that the following two most disturbingly reveal the position. First, of the 650 constituencies across the UK, Bradford South comes 609th when we consider the percentage of individuals with level 4 qualifications or above. Secondly, Bradford South is ranked 74th in constituency league tables for those without any qualifications whatsoever.

So what is to be done? The city of Bradford faces an almost unparalleled set of challenges, none of which can be solved easily. However, with cross-agency working by all those in the public sector and, importantly, with the help of those in our business community, we can at least begin to turn the tide. I want to touch on the important role of our business community in helping to improve standards in our schools. Why? Because at a time of the first real-terms cuts to school funding in well over a generation, help from our business community is becoming increasingly vital.

When I spoke recently at a session of the Bradford chamber of commerce, along with the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), among the headline issues was educational standards. Arguably, our business community knows how poor standards hold back my constituents, our communities and, by extension, business success. If the northern powerhouse is to mean anything at all, we need extra investment in education. I therefore look forward to working with businesses big and small, the Bradford chamber of commerce, my local authority and other partners in the coming months and years to tackle underperformance and low educational achievement in Bradford and the wider region.