Safety of School Buildings
Laura Farris Excerpts(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
No Member of Parliament would dispute the crucial importance of safe and secure school premises—or indeed all vital premises, whether those are hospitals, courts or prisons—or the fact that they require adequate Government investment. Implicit in the Opposition motion, however, is an allegation that the Conservative Government have failed on education, and failed children more broadly, and that is a charge that I do not accept—nor, in fact, do some of Labour’s most revered figures. Philip Collins, writing in The Times on Monday, said:
“The core case for the government would be in education. Its emphasis on academic knowledge has been salutary.”
He goes on to say that the Conservative
“free school programme created productive experiments in school improvement.”
I can attest to that, because I sent my kids to a free school. He continues:
“The stress on phonics to teach reading”—
introduced in 2010 by the Schools Minister—
“has worked. In 2012, 58 per cent of Year 1 pupils achieved the expected reading level. By 2019, that had risen to 82 per cent.”
Members must be familiar with this by now, but in this year’s progress in international reading literacy study, an international five-yearly assessment, the UK ranked fourth globally and first in the western world for child literacy. The proportion of schools rated good or outstanding by Ofsted has increased from two thirds in 2010, when we came to office, to 90% today. Time is limited, so I will not go on, but the fact is that the quality of children’s education has never been higher because of the reforms introduced by this Conservative Government.
Let me now deal with the issue of buildings. There were good aspects of Labour’s Building Schools for the Future programme. St Bartholomew’s School in my constituency was rebuilt as a result of that programme, and I give Labour credit for that. However, the private finance initiative programme was badly lacking. The National Audit Office noted that the building was a third more expensive than it needed to be, and that is not in dispute. The independent James review said in 2011 that Building Schools for the Future had been “time consuming” and
“had an approach that, with hindsight, was expensive and did not get to schools with the greatest need fast enough.”
Given the dire state of the public finances when we came to office, it was right to shelve that scheme. I know that that the note left by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), does the rounds on social media, and Labour Members will groan, but it still blows my mind that a senior member of the last Labour Government thought it was a joke that they had run down the public finances in that way. To them, the interests of the public were somehow derisory, and secondary to the primary objective of thumbing their nose at the incoming Conservative Government who had just won a general election.
I entirely disagree with the claim that the Conservatives have put nothing in place of that programme. In the three and a half years in which I have represented my constituency, a brilliant new primary school, Highwood Copse, has opened in the south of Newbury. Two more, Francis Baily Primary and Whiteland Park Primary in Thatcham, have received significant funds for badly needed overhauls. Three secondary schools, Trinity, Park House and Kennet, have also received significant funds; in fact, only one secondary school has not received money. John O’Gaunt, a secondary in Hungerford, was one of the 239 schools selected for funding from the Government’s £1.8 billion school rebuilding programme in September. I have watched school premises in my constituency improve significantly, so I know that the money is there.
Finally, I want to align myself with what was said by the Chair of the Education Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker). I know from working closely with my local headteachers that they need information and transparency. I respect the Secretary of State for taking a difficult decision in the light of information that became available, but I would also say that the information published today reveals a more positive picture than was first feared. More than 100 of the 156 schools affected—less than 0.5% of the total of 22,000 in the country—are already back in operation, and running face-to-face teaching. Only four are currently online. I do not like online teaching; it did not work very well for my kids. I understand from what the Prime Minister said that we are talking about a matter of days or weeks, so I ask the Secretary of State for transparency and a clear timeline for those schools.
The shadow Secretary of State for Education said that the symbol of 13 years of a Conservative Government was children cowering under concrete blocks, but the enduring image of 13 years of a Conservative Government is higher levels of academic excellence than have ever been achieved by any Government, and that would be impossible under anyone other than the Conservatives.
Nurseries and Early Years Settings
Laura Farris Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) on securing the debate.
When we and the Government talk about childcare provision, it is usually in the context of enabling parents to go to work, and secondarily as a development tool in getting children ready for school. We say less about the critical impact of the early years education system on reducing inequality. That point was powerfully made by Dr Laura Jana when she presented to the all-party parliamentary group on women and work a week or so ago. She found that the primary determinants of a person’s life outcomes as an adult were linked to whether they completed school, formed a loving relationship, held down secure employment and avoided the criminal justice system.
All the childcare providers in my constituency would agree with that, and would say that, to deliver that, they need high-quality, qualified staff. It has struck me in my nearly one year as an MP how difficult they have found it to deliver that. I have done some quite granular work, which time will not allow me to elaborate on. In essence, even when taking into account the money that they are allocated through the free hours programme and the top-up that they receive from West Berkshire Council, those providers struggle to meet an appropriate wage rate for qualified staff, taking into account national minimum wage obligations, a desire to provide good resources, and inflationary pressures. The point was illustrated by one nursery’s saying that a qualified member of staff retired and it could only afford to replace them with a zero hours contract.
The other huge driver on the finances of nurseries, and the reason why they entered the covid crisis in such a serious deficit position, is the lack of certainty—not knowing, term by term, what funds would be available. I regret to say that I speak on behalf of nurseries such as Ladybirds in Newbury, a PVI nursery that is literally on the brink. If it closes the doors—I sincerely hope that it will not—it will follow another three that have de-registered in the past six months. It tells me that it has been hit hard by the covid crisis, particularly by parents withdrawing children unexpectedly, and that projected profits for the year have turned into a loss of somewhere around £12,000. Hungerford Nursery School and Victoria Park Nursery School, two maintained nurseries, report a decline in income of £35,000 and £57,000 respectively. Taken together with the extra cost of making their premises covid-secure, the implications for their future are serious.
What are the solutions? Every MP always requests more money. I am so grateful to the Minister for the work that she has done with the Treasury in getting more money in the spending review. However, I looked into the funding system—the tax-free entitlement, the 15 free hours, the 30 free hours, the tax credits and universal credits—and it is fair to say that different thresholds and entitlements have added up to a fragmented and piecemeal system. Some form of streamlining would be the best way of getting the money to staff.
I will make one other point, which I make in my capacity as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on women and work. We are on the brink of a bloodbath in terms of female employment. We know what is happening in hospitality and retail, and we know that those jobs are predominantly occupied by women. If childcare providers go out of business, there will be such an incentive for women to remain at home, looking after the kids, not finding new work. The Chancellor’s guiding principle has been to avoid long-term structural unemployment, but without a childcare solution we risk that.
Oral Answers to Questions
Laura Farris Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Sara Britcliffe (Hyndburn) (Con)
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Vicky Ford)
High-quality childcare supports children’s development and helps parents to work, and we are therefore continuing to bulk-buy childcare hours from the sector at pre-covid levels, even if providers had closed due to the pandemic. Some 708,000 children attended an early years setting on 1 October, which is an increase of about 300,000 compared with the end of the summer term. We have also encouraged schools to ensure that after-school and breakfast clubs are reopening.
Vicky Ford
I thank my hon. Friend for raising such an important question. We know that families want to be able to access affordable out-of-school childcare, and that is particularly important during the school summer holidays, so our manifesto commitment is to establish a new £1 billion fund from next year to help to create more accessible childcare, including before school, after school and in the summer school holidays. As with all future commitments, this is dependent on the outcome of the spending review, and I hope to be able to update the House with further details following the spending review.
Laura Farris
Nurseries in west Berkshire suffered a loss of fee income during the lockdown, and they are now anxious about a reduction in parental demand. They are grateful for the guaranteed funding until the end of this year, but what assessment has my hon. Friend made of the recovery of parental demand, and what assurances can she give the sector for the rest of the academic year?
Vicky Ford
May I start by thanking childcare providers in west Berkshire and across the country for providing such essential support for our very youngest children? This term, we have committed to block buying those hours from providers, provided that they are open, regardless of how many children are attending, and local authorities should pass that funding on. We are obviously looking closely at the situation from next term, and the future funding will be dependent on the funding review, but the really good news is that attendance is increasing and, on 1 October, the numbers showed that it was about 80% of the pre-covid usual daily level of attendance.
Free School Meals: Summer Holidays
Laura Farris Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
I would like to start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford) on an excellent maiden speech and his lyrical description of his constituency. I also congratulate him on the arrival of his daughter.
I warmly welcome the Government announcement of the covid summer food fund to provide meals through the school summer holidays, and I am grateful to know that, as a new MP, when I raised my voice, the Government were listening. There are three reasons why I felt this was the right thing to do.
The first is the simplicity of the implementation process. I know there is a convenient narrative that the Conservatives were going to keep children hungry through the summer holidays, and I know that that was not the case. I am grateful to the Minister for taking time with me yesterday to explain what the plan was for families who are facing extreme difficulty during the summer, and I considered very carefully what was suggested—the £63 million that was being made available to local authorities to fund families in need, and the £9 million to fund holiday camps where lunch would also be provided.
Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that there is an excellent opportunity here for voluntary sectors to get involved over the summer and beyond? Organisations such as Passion in Shepshed look after children on a day-to-day basis, offering them food, but also places to do homework and extra work, and support and assistance in every way. Does she agree that there is an opportunity there?
Laura Farris
There is an opportunity, and in fact an imperative, to involve wider civil society in getting kids back into school.
While I saw the force in the Minister’s plans, the simple truth to me was that they introduced a layer of bureaucracy and administration, and I was concerned that there was a risk that some of that funding would be delayed, or it might vary or be uneven between local authorities. The fact of the matter is that 1.3 million children are eligible to receive free school meals. They have been identified; their eligibility has been confirmed. They are already receiving the meal or a voucher if they are not in school at the moment. If we have the capability and the will to help children through this period, it is incumbent upon us to find the most direct and accessible means of doing so.
My second point is that it is absolutely right that 12 weeks into the lockdown, we fix our focus very firmly on children. I have thought about the sequencing of how we proceeded through this period. The Government’s starting point, which was absolutely right, was the extremely clinically vulnerable and their protection, and, in fact, the provision of food was an integral part of that. I think that 2 million food boxes—I may be wrong; it may be more—have been distributed in the last 12 weeks.
We then turned our focus to workers and the unprecedented package of support for the 9 million people benefiting through the furlough scheme and the 2.5 million people benefiting through the self-employed income support scheme. We then looked at charities and businesses across every sector, whether it was in terms of grants, business interruption loans, bounce-back loans, future funds or discretionary loans. There was such an array of options, and yet the category of people that we know the very least about are children, and particularly, disadvantaged children, because the fact is that their emails do not fill our inboxes.
Patricia Gibson
To refer to the points that were made in the previous intervention, we all have very important charitable groups in our constituencies. We could all reel off their names and they do fantastic work, but does the hon. Lady agree that essential services, particularly regarding children’s hunger, cannot be contracted out to charitable groups? That is surely the Government’s job, and the reason that these charitable groups have grown up is that the Government have failed.
Laura Farris
I thank the hon. Lady for her contribution. I do not agree that the Government have failed, but I do agree that it is desirable that we provide free school meals, and I hope that she has understood that that is the tenor of my speech this afternoon.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s Department made arrangements for vulnerable children to attend school, but we know that take-up has been relatively low. Arrangements were made for children to learn from home, but the evidence suggests, certainly from heads in my constituency, that this has been quite patchy. Although the Government took unprecedented steps in relation to domestic abuse, the truth is that we do not really know what happens behind closed doors. None of this is a criticism of the Government. The lockdown was an imperative and it was right that schools closed when they did, but in my view it underscores the urgency of prioritising the needs of particularly vulnerable children going forward, and I see continuing to fund free school meals during the holidays as a fundamental part of this.
To turn to my final point, I think that the provision of free school meals places a value on many of those parents whom, historically, we have not really valued enough. I think of my children’s friends at schools they have attended, who have received direct support from the Government, either in the form of the pupil premium or through free school meals. Those children’s parents have been cleaners, bus drivers or hospital porters—what we now call frontline staff, but even six months ago we might not have used that term about a cleaner. They are people who have been doing low-paid and sometimes, in the context of covid-19, dangerous work. That is my experience of one school in one city, but I think that we can transpose those families’ stories across the country.
I know that when the summer holidays come, they are challenging at the best of times, particularly for families on low incomes, and particularly when you do not have the resources of perhaps grandparents to pick up the slack of childcare or camps in the usual way. In my view, it is right that we get on the front foot by providing direct support for families like that at this exceptional time.