Catch-up Premium

Katherine Fletcher Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

I have not yet had an opportunity to pay full tribute to the teachers in schools in South Ribble, who did such a stunning job during the pandemic, including inspirational educational leaders such as the guys at the multi-academy Endeavour Learning Trust—my thanks to them.

In her opening remarks, the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) questioned the decisions made about massive sums of money, national changes and big-ticket items. Was the idea that such big decisions would be made quickly, with no evidence on what works? Personally, I support the idea of a longer school day, which I think has huge advantages, but I would not like to see it implemented nationally without evidence of its effectiveness. Without such evidence, Government Members do not support commitments to spending billions.

In her opening remarks, the shadow Minister described wanting to ensure that vast sums of money are spent effectively as misguided dogma. No, not really. She asked to see the working-out. Let me step back a little in history to show what Labour’s version of working-out looks like in the education space. As a snotty young IT coder, I was in the Department for Education and Skills back in the early noughties, working on the independent learning accounts recovery programme. The first programme had been put out to achieve a headline—get Mr Tony Blair’s grid.

What happened? Millions of pounds went out the door in fraud. The National Audit Office report from the time is on the record. I assure Members that having seen the data, my little, snotty IT coders and I reckon that about 10 times that money went out the door. It went out the door because Labour was chasing a headline. It was throwing millions at an idea without having a plan, without having thought it through and without having evaluated it. That is not what we are doing here. We all care about children; it is hugely important. The Opposition are proud of “Education, education, education”, but that should not be at any cost, not at unlimited and uncontrolled cost and not producing ineffective outcomes that have not been evaluated.

There is no knee-jerk headline chasing on these Benches, because what we want is the effective use of Government money, in the best way to target and help children. I see a game-playing motion here today, and I will not support it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I am very grateful to all colleagues who have contributed to today’s debate. Sadly, however, they did not include the Chancellor of the Exchequer or a single Treasury Minister. It is always a pleasure to hear from the schools improvement Minister, but Labour did not call this debate for a repeat of what he said last week. I do not doubt the importance that he attaches to children’s educational recovery, but he and, more importantly, the nation’s children and young people have been let down by a Prime Minister who, despite claiming that children’s education was his priority, has not lifted a finger to help them as they recover from the pandemic, while a parsimonious Treasury and a Chancellor of the Exchequer so economically illiterate that he cannot make the connection between children’s education and our country’s success and prosperity have refused to invest in their future. My hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) asked where was the Secretary of State for Education, but the question to which we ought to have an answer this afternoon is, “Where is the Chancellor of the Exchequer?”

The contributions made by my Opposition colleagues are a reminder of what the Leader of the Opposition has said—that education is the Labour party’s No. 1 priority. It has never been more important. The disruption of the past year has seen pupils miss half a year of face-to-face schooling; they have had half a year of time away from friends and teachers. That is of concern to every Member in the House. Every Member recognises that if we do not do anything to address the impact, the consequences will be huge for our society and economy, but most of all for our children. That is why Labour proposed a bold, multi-year, £15 billion plan to give children time to socialise, learn and develop, and so that we can invest in the children who need it most and support a world-class teaching profession.

[Katherine Fletcher]

Given that the hon. Lady has a multi-year plan, and that we need to give children more time in school, would she be willing to support an extension to the school day if properly costed and evaluated for effectiveness?

[Kate Green]

I do not think that there is an argument between us about the extended school day. We all agree about extra time; we all agree about the importance of a range of activities to boost social and emotional development, as well as learning. We all understand that those activities could include art, music, sport, homework clubs, reading groups, cooking and coding; some of those things were suggested by the hon. Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) in last week’s debate. The Chair of the Select Committee on Education said last week that we needed to use the time for a combination of catch-up and extracurricular activities to improve mental health and wellbeing. The problem is that we do not have that plan or those activities from the Government. All that we have, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) pointed out, is, despite all the noise, a promise of a review.

All that the hon. Member for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher) is suggesting is that we review whether an extended school day would be a good idea and how we should deliver it. It is hardly surprising that Sir Kevan Collins himself complained that the Government were acting too slowly. Indeed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson), the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, pointed out, they were acting so slowly that more than 300,000 children will have left school altogether before they have the chance to benefit from any proposals.

I am appalled by the complacency of the Government’s claims, beginning with those made by the Minister for School Standards, for whom I have the utmost respect. His complacency on the attainment gap was profoundly shocking. There has been no progress on narrowing that gap in the past five years; indeed, as we heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi), for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) and for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson), the pandemic has exacerbated it. There is utter complacency about regional disparities in school attainment, as my hon. Friends the Members for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) and for Easington (Grahame Morris) pointed out. My hon. Friend the Member for Easington also rightly pointed out the loss that schools have suffered as a result of the Government’s pupil premium stealth cut.

On free school meals, for all the boasts of the Conservative party, it was only when Marcus Rashford stepped in—as my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) pointed out—that we saw action from a Government and a party that had previously suggested that supporting families with free school meals during the holidays would simply lead to mums going down the crack den. That was utterly disgraceful. Even now, the Government’s plans will cover only 16 of the 30 weekdays this summer.

We heard from Conservative Members that the Government had supplied digital resources, yet we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) that families were having to study on mobile phones, so slow was the roll-out of laptops. As for the claims of a significant increase in school funding, with the £14 billion that we have heard about—following a decade of austerity that means that schools are now 9% worse off in real terms, the abandonment of the Building Schools for the Future programme, and a situation in which schools have been required to meet covid security costs out of teaching budgets, the Conservative party frankly has a nerve to suggest that schools are now doing fine financially. That is certainly not what headteachers are telling us.

The national tutoring programme, another boast from the Conservative party, is reaching fewer than 2% of children. As the Chair of the Education Committee, the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), pointed out this afternoon, it misses a substantial proportion of the most disadvantaged children.

In the Government’s plans there is nothing at all for disabled children, as my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) pointed out. There is little—other than something in the teacher development package—for the early years, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) pointed out. My hon. Friends the Members for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) and for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) and the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) also drew attention to the failure to invest in the school sports premium.

It is therefore hardly surprising that so many of my hon. Friends had to complain this afternoon that what we have seen from the Government, far from being generous funding for schools and for a recovery package, amounts—shockingly—to only 10% of what not only Labour, but the Government’s own education recovery tsar, Sir Kevan Collins, said was needed. My hon. Friends the Members for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins), for Slough (Mr Dhesi), for Feltham and Heston, for Newcastle upon Tyne North, for Coventry North West, for Leeds North West, for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin), for Bermondsey and Old Southwark and for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) all pointed out the massive shortfall in what is needed. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth), perfectly correctly, asked why, if the funding that the Government are bringing forward is sufficient, Sir Kevan Collins felt the need to resign. He, at least, was extremely unhappy.

By contrast, Labour has a plan to invest in children’s recovery and life chances, in their mental health and wellbeing, in their education and in the teaching profession. We have proposed billions of pounds of investment in breakfast clubs and in creating new opportunities and more dedicated time for children to play and learn at the end of the school day.

Children are optimistic and ambitious about their future and excited to be back with their friends and teachers. Their recovery from the pandemic deserves to be supported by the Government. That will be the defining challenge for Ministers, but tragically, from what we have seen so far, they are unwilling and unable to rise to it. After a year of unprecedented disruption, the Government’s response, as Sir Kevan said,

“is too narrow, too small and will be delivered too slowly.”

The Conservative party ought to be ashamed of the paucity of its ambition for our children, but today we are not even asking for a change in its policy or a U-turn on its inadequate plans; we are simply asking for transparency. We are asking the Chancellor, who has not seen fit to attend today’s debate, to come clean with Parliament and the public about why he blocked a plan for significant investment in children’s recovery. That is all that today’s motion does. I commend it to the House.