Marcus Fysh debates involving the Department for Education during the 2019 Parliament

National Tutoring Programme and Adult Education

Marcus Fysh Excerpts
Wednesday 9th March 2022

(2 years ago)

Commons Chamber
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Miriam Cates Portrait Miriam Cates
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I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. If children are not in the emotional and mental state to be able to learn, all the tutoring in the world will not get them to the place where they need to be. We do have a crisis in child mental health. Lockdown is one reason for that, but there are other reasons, too. We should not fool ourselves that any amount of catch-up spending will solve this crisis in mental health.

Marcus Fysh Portrait Mr Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)
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Does my hon. Friend agree that part of getting children in the right space to be able to learn well is about looking after them in the classroom, too? Even simple things such as making sure that they have had enough water to drink and that they get enough exercise during the day are a massively important part of that picture. It is not just about catch-up spending, but about how we treat them.

Miriam Cates Portrait Miriam Cates
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I completely agree with my hon. Friend. We need to distinguish between wellbeing and serious mental issues. The vast majority of teachers and schools do an incredible job at looking after our children’s wellbeing. I know that my own children probably drink far more water at school than they do at home. There are also programmes such as a Mile a Day. Many children in school also take part in regular mind exercises and mindfulness, which contribute to their wellbeing. However, some of the more sticky mental health issues cannot be easily solved by schools, which leads us into the wider issues. There has been a lack of effective family policy for many years now. There are severe financial pressures on many families not only because we have quite an unfavourable taxation system here, but because we have very high housing costs. There are financial pressures on families.

Miriam Cates Portrait Miriam Cates
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As a south Yorkshire MP, I grudgingly welcome my hon. Friend’s freeport, but I am afraid I do not agree that education is the answer to everything. It is incredibly valuable, and it is frustrating that the education budget has stalled while the health budget has exploded over recent years. That is an issue. However, I do not think education is the answer to everything.

Great education for everybody is clearly a target, but there are more important foundational issues, such as family life. Some of the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom), who is no longer in her place, has shown that those first two years of life are crucial in determining the outcomes of the rest of someone’s life. Academic education plays very little role in those first two years, although development does.

We should recognise the importance of education, but we certainly should not expect our schools to solve every social issue in our country, especially the mental health crisis. We must be realistic about what education spending alone can achieve and not expect Ministers, the Department or schools to be able to solve those deep, structural social issues, which we must address, but which are not the subject of this debate.

We must also look at our overall education budget and how it is weighted across different stages of a child’s life. According to the House of Commons Library, our higher education spend is £11.6 billion a year, but our early years spend is £1.6 billion a year. To me, that seems back to front. When is the best time to invest in a child’s life? It is at the beginning, in the early years, when those foundations are being laid. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow has said, 40% of the attainment gap that develops between the best-off and worst-off children develops by the age of two. I am not suggesting that we invert those two budgets, but we should certainly think about whether we should front-load our educational spend in the early years, when it could potentially have more impact.

We must also ask whether the higher education budget of £11.6 billion is money well spent. Some 50% of our young people now go to university, but five years after graduation 30% to 50% of graduates are in non-graduate jobs, and 77% never earn enough to repay their student loans. I welcome the recent reforms to make higher education spending fairer to the taxpayer and to students, but we need to go further. The cost to the taxpayer is £11.6 billion—I think it is more when we add in the local authority contributions—but only half our young people see the benefit of that enormous taxpayer spending.

We should ask whether we should more fairly distribute that £11.6 billion or more. I welcome the move to spend more on technical and vocational education, but that is not a fraction of the expenditure on higher education. Imagine if the schools budget was spent on only half the population: it would be a deep inequality, but that is what is happening in our higher education budget.

Many of our universities are phenomenal, world-leading assets to this country, but we must ask whether the massive expansion we have seen in the sector in recent years is helpful to either individuals or society. I certainly cannot find any evidence of increased social mobility as a result of the massive increase in higher education spending. I welcome the direction the Government are moving in by raising the priority, the status and the budget of vocational and technical education, because that is important, but we must go further. If we are really going to level up education and the education budget, we must look at distributing the post-18 education spending far more fairly and equitably between academic, technical and vocational routes.

Marcus Fysh Portrait Mr Fysh
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Does my hon. Friend know about the wonderful work being done in Somerset around Yeovil College to bring forward new T-levels and different vocational education paths, which are making a huge difference to local businesses and providing local opportunities to develop those skills? It is amazing, and I thank the Minister for how much focus there has been on that. A central plank of my election pitch last time around was getting that skills development put at the heart of Government, and this work is absolutely delivering on that.

Miriam Cates Portrait Miriam Cates
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I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I am not aware of what goes on in Somerset—it is quite a long way from South Yorkshire—but I agree that T-levels are a really important development. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow and I recently met to discuss some of the amazing work that university technical colleges are doing to roll out T-levels. I do think that we are raising the status of technical education, which is key, because half the battle is getting middle-class parents to see that there are alternatives to university. I really welcome that change in direction, but I think we need to go further.

In conclusion, I welcome the national tutoring programme, which I think has the potential to be transformational, but there are some key questions about its deliverability. I welcome the increase in the adult education budget and applaud Ministers for some of their spending decisions. But we must go further. We need real reform of our post-18 education spending if we are really to level up.

Political Neutrality in Schools

Marcus Fysh Excerpts
Tuesday 10th March 2020

(4 years ago)

Westminster Hall
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Marcus Fysh Portrait Mr Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)
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I beg to move,

That this House has considered political neutrality in schools.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I should declare some interests in this topic. I have two children of primary school age and my wife teaches. Clearly, I am also a Member of Parliament, and I am chair of the all-party parliamentary group on education. The APPG plans to do some work on the mental health and wellbeing of our children in the classroom, which I will come to later.

We are fortunate in Somerset to have brilliant schools and teachers, and measures to level up funding for rural schools are welcome. As elsewhere, we need to ensure that support for special educational needs makes a difference for the children involved—that is something else I would like the APPG to focus on—but in general we have dedicated and highly professional teachers and support staff in our part of the country.

I did not seek the debate to suggest that classrooms are a hotbed of radicalisation. However, I have been approached by concerned parents—I am sure I am not the only Member in that position—about incidents, in the run-up to December’s general election and at other times, that I am told included the airing of strong and aggressive political views.

The issue received attention in the national press just before Christmas, when the musician Stormzy was criticised for telling a primary school class of seven-year-olds that the Prime Minister is “a bad, bad man” and, like the big bad wolf, would blow their houses down. That was not the first time Stormzy had attracted controversy. Given his previous homophobic rants on social media and the language and themes of his music, it is not unreasonable to question whether he was an appropriate guest at a primary school in the first place.

Stormzy—or Michael, to use his real name—has well-known political views. Most of us will have seen him getting the well-heeled crowd at Glastonbury hot under the collar with his support for Jeremy Corbyn, but those views do not belong in a primary school. I would say the same if he had a strong anti-Labour message; this issue is not about political parties, but about the abuse of a position of influence.

In the last few years we have seen a coarsening of our political debate. In too many cases, reasoned debate has given way to name calling and abuse. Politicians are thick skinned, and we are increasingly used to people firing abuse at us from the comfort of their own homes. Our young children, however, will not understand that, and they should not be asked to.

Ruth Cadbury Portrait Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
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I am listening with care to the hon. Member. I absolutely agree that children, and particularly seven-year-olds, should not be subjected to the kind of language and approach that Stormzy was reported to have used, but is it not true that guest speakers who come into schools can be expected to be asked their political views? Certainly, whenever I go into schools I am asked what I think of the Prime Minister, of Brexit, of plastic and of climate change, and whether I have ever met the Queen. Is not the issue more about the appropriateness of the speaker’s response and the respect they give to the children and staff in the school than about their political position?

Marcus Fysh Portrait Mr Fysh
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I will come on to some of those issues, but the hon. Lady makes some valid points.

One of the big challenges facing us generally is why children are more likely than ever before to suffer from stress or have mental health problems. That is partly due to better diagnosis, which is a positive step, but there has undoubtedly been a rise in the number of young people with high anxiety. The role of social media and mobile phones in that is for another time, but being exposed to aggressive tribal politics and told that the country is being run by a very bad man certainly is not going to help.

This area becomes more complex when we consider that we want our young people to be interested in and engaged with politics. At a time when anything can be researched at the click of a button and the number of sources on any given subject is rising exponentially, it is more important than ever that children are taught the skills to make reasoned assessments and form balanced opinions. I am sure many of today’s politicians were inspired at school by certain teachers to choose the path of politics. The more people who choose to get involved and run for office, the better.

Julian Lewis Portrait Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
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I am surprised that it is necessary for my hon. Friend to raise this issue. In May 1986 a group of peers, led by Baroness Cox, successfully amended what was then the Education Bill to ensure that politically contentious material, if raised and discussed in schools, must be handled in a balanced way. In June 1986 the Government accepted that. My understanding is that that ban on political indoctrination has been carried forward in subsequent legislation, so I am surprised that this is even an issue today.

Marcus Fysh Portrait Mr Fysh
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I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. I hope my right hon. Friend the Minister will address some of those issues in his response to the debate.

Teachers often bring the same positive attributes to elected office that make them effective in the classroom. Many become councillors or Members of Parliament, and our democratic institutions are richer for having them, along with the skills and insights into education that they contribute. Whether they should remain in education while they do so, however, is a valid question.

There may be no straightforward formula for how to inspire and inform without exerting undue influence, or for where being passionate about an issue undermines reason and constructive debate. Measures intended to ensure political neutrality may lead to schools being less stimulating. An important lesson for young people is to be tolerant and understanding of the views of others. It is also the case that some of our educational institutions, particularly universities, have a reputation for a particular political slant. I am not necessarily against that, but we must look at the age of the pupils and the extent to which they are able to critically assess the information put in front of them.

I do not wish to stray too far beyond the topic of the debate, but I am also concerned that some young people are encouraged into activism on environmental issues in a way that may not be entirely healthy. They may be better served by learning to assess rigorously how they know what they know, to delve deeply into the factual and statistical bases for various claims and to judge between them.

Ruth Cadbury Portrait Ruth Cadbury
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The hon. Gentleman, whom I thank for bringing forward the debate, may be interested to know that research among young people involved in climate activism has shown that their mental health improved as a result of their undertaking appropriate but self-generated activity to support a cause they believe in. I thought that was very interesting.

Marcus Fysh Portrait Mr Fysh
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The hon. Lady makes a good point. I do not argue that activism should not be allowed; I just want people to be able to understand, on the basis of facts and statistics, why they might want to be activists.

It is hard to gauge the size of this problem and to compare it with previous times. The evidence tends to be anecdotal. I suspect there have always been teachers with strong views who have not held back in sharing them, although perhaps in the past those views were sublimated in interests in particular texts or topics. However, I can say that I have received complaints from constituents, and I doubt I am alone. I also know that those cases were less about the examination of political ideologies and focused more on personalities—an approach sadly reminiscent of Stormzy’s.

I sought the debate because I wanted to reflect the concerns of my constituents and to express my own views about the importance of our children’s mental health. Surely, learning that we can disagree with one other without using the language of hatred is one of the most important lessons there is. I accept that there is fault across the political spectrum, but we have only to look at Momentum’s contribution to Twitter to see how corrosive it can be when abuse becomes a normalised part of political discourse.

I hope my right hon. Friend the Minister is able to offer some reassurance that the Department is active on this issue. Parents should have a route to voice concerns in a way that does not affect their children, and teachers should have guidance that helps them to be confident in judging where the line is between passionate and coercive.

I have seen rather colourful comments on social media by teachers, who should be mindful that their pupils may be on the same platforms. Whether online or at school, teachers must inspire and equip our children to make up their own minds not just on politics but across a whole range of issues. I end by paying tribute to the overwhelming majority, who do just that.

--- Later in debate ---
Marcus Fysh Portrait Mr Fysh
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I thank my right hon. Friend the Minister for his response, and I thank everybody who has taken part in the debate. It is critically important that our young people are resilient to the impact of fake news and different types of propaganda, as he has set out. I thank him very much.

Question put and agreed to.