Education Performance

Margot James Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) on securing this extremely important debate. I shall try to make my comments even briefer than you have asked us to, Mr Rosindell. The debate has been very interesting and we have touched on a lot of issues to do with aspiration, but I just want to say a little about education for excellent pupils, a matter about which the Minister and I had a brief exchange on the Floor of the House only yesterday.

It is, I think, in a bid to dampen some of the political furore over tuition fees that fresh debate has recently emerged over access to our best universities. As everyone has been admitting which university they went to, I should say that I, too, was at Oxford but, as I had the misfortune—at least in the eyes of the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan)—of coming from a grammar school, I did not do a Mickey Mouse subject such as PPE, but read law—[Interruption.] Yes, I know, it has been downhill all the way from there.

It has been suggested that the Government would grant permission to charge more than £6,000 a year in fees only to universities willing to widen their intake, and suggestions of measures to avoid penalties have included lowering grade offers and taking background into account when handing out places. We all know that, in practice, that could mean preferring a less-qualified pupil from an inner-city comprehensive over a student with top grades from an independent school. It is not clear how that might objectively be regarded as fair or evidence-based, but I suspect that it was hoped that the airing of such plans might take the sting out of any accusations that the new fees system was making our higher education system too elitist.

I have long contended, and will continue to, that our education system cannot be elitist enough. For far too long, the British attitude has been one of slight embarrassment and discomfort at the notion of high performance, excellence and the pursuit of academic rigour. I am not sure that the rest of the world feels the same, at a time when the likes of India and China are relentlessly pushing forward in global league tables. The two economic superpowers of this century have the pursuit of excellence and academic rigour at the heart of their thinking.

The domestic access-regulation plans have also betrayed an expectation that politicians seem to have had in recent years that our higher education system should somehow miraculously make up for the lack of genuine attainment by children in their primary and secondary-school years, particularly in the state sector. If universities fail to take in students who are not up to the mark, we blame not a child’s upbringing or education but the university itself for being too exclusive.

The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) and I were almost contemporaries at Oxford, and he will remember the outreach efforts that our colleges made almost three decades ago, which have continued—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman went up in 1985 and I went up in 1984, so it was almost three decades ago. Even at that time, tremendous efforts were made by the student union and, more importantly, by colleges via their tutors, to open up access. It is worth putting that on the record.

I do not believe that universities have an innate bias towards students from independent schools, but our top institutions are international leaders with worldwide reputations for excellence, which they aspire to maintain. In their admissions policies, they most pride themselves on recruiting the brightest and best globally. If the brightest and best have a tendency to come from a particular sort of school, we might be wise first to examine the deep shortcomings of the state sector.

That the private education sector has so flourished in recent years is a mark of how many parents have lost faith in the state’s ability to deliver their child a rigorous, thorough and excellent education. When articulate, active parents turn away, local state schools lose the key stakeholders that have traditionally helped to drive improvement. As a result, the poorest and most vulnerable children suffer, and they will not be helped by the state’s facilitating places for them at the best universities if they do not have the tools to make use of such places.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I cannot make a lengthy intervention, but my mind has been shifted somewhat, on the topic that my hon. Friend is addressing, by a visit to King’s College London, one of the universities in his constituency. I urge him to visit the medical department there and see for himself the fantastic work being done with state school students with lower grades who are enrolled on the extended medical degree. They struggle not with the science but with some lifestyle factors which, with additional support, they are able to overcome.

[Mr Field]

I very much accept that. I have visited King’s College on a number of occasions and get on very well with the authorities there. Funnily enough, a lot of the evidence suggests that medicine is one of the very few subjects in which a lot of the comparators about school performance and expected academic performance at degree level break down to a certain extent. I suspect that King’s had that very much in mind when it set up its very innovative and important programme.

It seems to me, however, that the relentless focus of the Minister, who I know has a passion for driving up standards, should be on giving state sector students the tools they need to compete on a level playing field with their peers in the independent sector, and I admire a lot of the work that he is doing in that regard. He instinctively understands the damage that has been done in recent years by the levelling down of standards and opportunities to the lowest common denominator that has so entrenched underachievement. I particularly praise him for his emphasis on phonics, which is an essential learning tool. Given my experience of day-to-day life with a three-and-a-half-year-old son, I can entirely vouch for what the Minister has said on that matter. In some respects, however, the Government could be more radical in promoting choice and competition in the state sector.

Yesterday, I spoke briefly in the House about the importance of looking after the special educational needs of the most gifted children in the state sector, in the same way as we strive to help children who are less gifted, because all too often their needs are ignored. My words provoked an e-mail later that afternoon from a teacher in Norfolk:

“What a breath of fresh air it was for me, as a retired educator, to hear your intervention. My wife and I are both graduate teachers who have experienced at first hand the consequences of an absence of special provision for the brightest of our pupils, to the serious detriment of their educational development and realisation of their full potential, not to mention that of wider society. The needs of the talented must be formally brought under the SEN purview and schools and Ofsted should be expressly required to give as much attention to these needs as to those of lower achievers.”

I ask the Minister to give greater consideration to that issue. We want to retain the most gifted students in our state schools, bring them to their full potential and use them as exemplars for other students, so that a golden thread of aspiration is sewn through each and every school, as has been suggested by a number of other Members.

I am the product of a grammar school, and I remember various episodes when I was there that allowed me to aspire to the university place to which my parents could never aspire, and also to running my own business, becoming professionally qualified and eventually becoming a Member of this House. We must push pupils upwards and not hold back their talents.

I finish this brief contribution by returning to a theme that runs through so many of my speeches, but which nevertheless is important to drive home once again. Our wont in recent years has been to tinker with our educational system to engineer particular social outcomes, but the attitudes of our competing nations could not be more different; my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk covered that matter skilfully and in great detail. It is that sense of being in a highly competitive globalised world that will, and should, remain an important element of all our thinking. One need look only at the high number of highly skilled school leavers and graduates, not just in India and China but in Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, to understand that the world is not waiting for Britain to churn out the brightest and best any more.

In my 10 years as a local MP, I have regularly visited primary and secondary schools and higher education establishments to talk to students. Contrary to the negative image of young people sometimes portrayed in the media, I am always impressed by students’ sharp and inquisitive minds. Our country is brimming with talent, including here in our inner cities. That talent exists to be developed and can compete with the likes of India and China in the decades ahead, but that will happen only if we pursue excellence relentlessly and equip our young people with the tools to take on their peers. We do everyone a disservice by suggesting that there are shortcuts in this world.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) and her colleagues on securing this debate.

I will not comment further on standards and international comparisons, because those points have been well made. The decline in standards in certain subjects and the decline in the study of foreign languages at GCSE level, to less than 50%, are worrying. The problem has many causes.

The first thing that strikes me from my experience as a school and university governor is that our expectations of students at independent and academically selective state schools are very different from our expectations of students educated in the state comprehensive sector. As politicians, we regularly congratulate our schools on increasing the percentage of pupils who pass five GCSEs with a C grade or above, including in English and maths, yet for those of us who aspire to send our own children to independent schools or pray that they get into state academically selective schools, that is an uncomfortable, almost hypocritical situation to find ourselves in.

We celebrate that standard, yet if it were applied to our own children, we would be aghast. For students in independent or academically selective schools, the standard is nine or 11 A grades, and we ask how many are A*. There will be a smattering of Bs, but not many. That division is intolerable. One would not expect the same standards in non-academically selective schools as in the independent and selective sector, but it is reasonable to expect them to be far closer than they are.

In my view, the league tables have contributed to the problem in a couple of ways. I recognise that there must be some externally validated way for parents to compare local schools, and I am mindful of the words of the former Minister, the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), about how difficult such problems are to solve. However, the obsession with C grades has led to far too much teaching emphasis on children who are borderline D-C achievers.

In addition, it is a statutory requirement for all children with special needs—not only statemented, but on school action—to have individual learning plans and a huge amount of support. I argue, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field), that too many schools put far more effort into children of lower ability than into stretching more academic children, who are on course for at least a B, so that they get A grades in the right subjects.

The second problem to which the league tables contribute is that too many children are encouraged to start studying vocational subjects at a young age, for no other reason than to boost their schools’ league table rankings. An ambitious boy aged 14 from one of the secondary schools in my constituency told me, while doing work experience for me, that he liked history. When I asked him what GCSEs he was doing, I was surprised to hear that history did not feature among them because he had been encouraged to take leisure and tourism instead. He was a bright boy. That is an example of how average schools, obsessed with league table rankings, have piled into BTEC qualifications.

That is the start of a slippery slope, as has been said. At age 14, many children, especially from families that have never benefited from higher education, make GCSE subject selections that narrow the choices available to them at A-level and finally divert them into a further education college or new university. I am not dismissing BTEC and other such qualifications, but we must be honest with students and their families—by taking such subjects, students set themselves on a vocational route in life.

In Stourbridge, just 25% of students now take history at GCSE level, and fewer than 20% take geography. I do not believe that only 25% of children in my constituency are academically gifted enough to be challenged intellectually and be candidates for top universities.

The prevailing culture militates against improving educational performance. Too many of us have talked in euphemisms about education. We have doled out excessive praise for mediocre performance, and we have eroded competitive sport by declaring no winners and prizes for all. Instead, we should stress that gain without pain is rare. Hard work, study, the pursuit of excellence and the productive use of time, including leisure time, should be imbued in all our children, as they are imbued in the children at our independent and academically selective schools.

The last of the myriad roots of the problem that I shall address is the restrictions on schools involved in contracts between schools and teachers, which I trust the academies and free schools will help overcome. Under the present system, it is virtually impossible for poorly performing teachers to be removed; at best, they are recycled to another school. As has been said, we all know that the important thing is quality of teaching and leadership by the head. I am pleased that the Education Bill will address that problem.

Other hon. Members have mentioned the length of the school day. When I was first selected in Stourbridge, I wondered what was happening when I saw children in school uniform milling around the streets at 3 o’clock, halfway through the afternoon. Then I realised that their day had ended. That was compounded when I toured schools and found that in the middle of the school day, children were playing football, netball and other such worthy pursuits and studying drama.

In independent schools, such things are studied between 4 and 6 o’clock and on Saturday mornings. Of course children taught in independent schools do better: they get hours more educational teaching work a week. It is no surprise that they come out with better grades and have time to pursue more academic subjects, as well as access to all the other pursuits that make up a good, rounded education. They are there for longer. It is almost as simple as that.

I am mindful of the time; I want to speak for only 10 minutes. I end with a plea for pupil referral units. I am a great believer in opportunities for late developers and children who go off the rails early in life, because I am one such. I think that I am the first speaker in this debate who did not go to Oxford. I am sure that there are some good PRUs, but provision in my area is patchy, they are not given enough priority and they can be seen as dumping grounds.

I know of one PRU in the black country where there is absolutely no discipline and no boundaries, which are precisely what children who end up in PRUs require. I suggest that that is an area where we need to encourage passionate voluntary sector providers to participate. We must not forget about those children. The same could be said for looked-after children, who also face many hurdles. We must ensure that voluntary providers are encouraged to come in. There are so many other things that we could discuss in this debate, but I end by congratulating those hon. Friends who helped secure it. I hope to hear so much more from other Members and hon. Friends.

Higher Education Policy

Margot James Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

rose—

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Willetts]

I am always in agreement with the Secretary of State. The position that he was describing related to options that would be necessary if the financial position was very different from the one that we estimated last autumn. On the basis of the evidence that we have, we do not believe that that will be the case.

[Margot James]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that university costs should be looked at very closely, just as with every other kind of public sector institution? Lord Browne found that the average fee was £6,000 if one took into account efficiencies that universities could make in relation to what would be the break-even point compared with what they currently enjoy in terms of funding.

[Mr Willetts]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We look forward to the report that Ian Diamond is preparing on precisely how we can improve efficiency in our universities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Bridgen]

I would need to check the hon. Gentleman’s figures, but the sum is considerably more than the current level. The bottom 20% of earners will pay back considerably less in total, and those earning less than £25,000 will pay back less than £1 per day for their university education. That is a progressive repayment system. The Government are working on ways to help students from the most economically disadvantaged backgrounds by reducing the fees that they will have to pay back.

In opposition to this, we have the puffed-up inaction of the Labour party and the support given by the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor to the idea of a graduate tax, which is not a solution to higher education funding. It would provide no guarantee that universities would receive the additional funding raised. There is no mechanism for former students to repay early, and it would not allow any differentiation between a student from a lower income background and one from a higher income background.

[Margot James]

Does my hon. Friend think that is why so many senior members of the last Labour Government disagreed with a graduate tax, including Alan Johnson, Lord Adonis, the former Prime Minister, Mr Blair and Lord Mandelson, as quoted by the Secretary of State?

[Andrew Bridgen]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The Opposition are split on the matter for obvious reasons. A graduate tax is not the solution. A considerable number of graduates would pay substantially more than the cost of their course. In addition, there would be a large funding gap in the short term. The Browne review estimates that if all new students from 2012 paid a 3% graduate tax which would start at £8,000, not £21,0000, the tax would not provide sufficient revenue to fund higher education until 2041-42.

With the reckless spending habits displayed by the previous Government, universities would have much to fear if they had to rely on a graduate tax, which would inevitably fail to raise sufficient money, in contrast to the up-front and stable tuition fee income, which will allow universities to spend money as they see fit, rather than being subjected to constant Government interference.

The policies of the previous Government discouraged part-time students from studying, as they are expected to pay tuition fees up front and had no access to student loans. The fact that part-time students will have equal access to student loans will give more opportunity to those who may wish to study later in life, and will give universities a more balanced age range of students. Hon. Members should be aware that more than 250,000 students are studying at the Open university, and they will all be better off under the present Government’s policies. Given the need to retrain in a rapidly changing world, I welcome this.

The changes being bought in by the coalition Government will result in a higher standard of teaching being maintained, a higher completion rate of degree courses as a result of an informed and considered decision-making process, and students from poorer backgrounds being given a better opportunity to make the right decisions. This can only help universities by having students on the right courses.

We should also consider what the Opposition would call the ideological argument—whether universities should be dependent on the Government for their finance. The Browne review argues that a graduate tax would weaken the independence of universities, which would become entirely dependent on the Government for their funding. It argues that its own proposals would force universities to improve standards to compete for students. Under the coalition policies, the relationship of universities with students would rightly become more important than their relationship with Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Margot James Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

The hon. Gentleman might be confusing the coming year with the year for which fee levels are being announced. However, as I said earlier, there is a wide distribution of proposed charge levels by the universities that have already made announcements—less than a quarter of all universities—and this reflects the policy that we introduced.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend assure the House that the Government will not attempt to reduce the number of places at universities charging the full rate of £9,000 a year in order to oblige a greater proportion of students to attend universities that charge less?

[Vince Cable]

We certainly wish to encourage providers that charge highly competitive fee levels, but we also wish to encourage high-quality universities of the kind my hon. Friend described. I do not think that the two are in any way incompatible.

Oral Answers to Questions

Margot James Excerpts

Thursday 17th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Prisk]

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is being slightly churlish. He spoke to me only two days ago, when I made it clear that my Department would check the facts. We have done that. The Department for Work and Pensions is already in contact with the company. We are ensuring that we understand both the job issues and the company issues. We are very happy to work with all Members, so I am sorry that he has chosen to be somewhat churlish on this occasion.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

T5. The UK dairy industry is in crisis, with farmers receiving from supermarkets 3p per litre less than the cost of production. This is leading to pressures to intensify dairy farming that are most concerning on grounds of animal welfare and the environment. Will the Minister update the House on plans to introduce a grocery code adjudicator, as announced in the coalition agreement?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Edward Davey)]

I certainly will. We hope to publish the draft Bill before Easter.

Oral Answers to Questions

Margot James Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather]

I repeat that we are encouraging local authorities to focus in particular on outcomes, rather than on inputs. That is why we are beginning the process of payment by results. Local authorities will need to ensure that their services are structured in such a way that they improve outcomes for the most vulnerable children and families, otherwise they will not benefit.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend investigate the activities of the Anti Academies Alliance, which is threatening a series of political strikes against any school seeking academy status?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing the House’s attention to the activities of the Anti Academies Alliance, a group that is sponsored by, among others, the Socialist Workers party. There are a number of politically motivated strikes that some have been contemplating. I hope that Members in every part of the House will condemn any politically motivated strike action that makes children a political plaything. I also look forward to hearing from the Opposition Front Bench a clear and unequivocal condemnation of such activity.

Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Performance)

Margot James Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Denham]

Not at the moment.

It is not as though the Government were not warned about what was coming. When the Tory-led Government took over, recovery was strengthening and unemployment falling. Since then, every decision they have made has made things worse. They stopped the loan to Forgemasters, showing that they had no plan to ensure that British companies gained from a new nuclear programme. When the emergency Budget was introduced in June, the Office for Budget Responsibility said that growth would be slower and employment down as a direct result of the Government’s measures. When they chose to make the biggest cuts in the most vulnerable communities, it was clear that the regions would need new growth and new jobs. When the Government published the comprehensive spending review in October, the Office for Budget Responsibility told them that growth would fall and unemployment would rise. Independent organisations from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development to PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Local Government Association warned that reckless cuts would destroy jobs in the public and private sectors, yet the Business Secretary did nothing.

We were promised a White Paper on growth in October. Then the civil servants said that there was not enough content to warrant one. Two months later, the Business Secretary was bundled aside and the Chancellor took charge, so now we are promised a Budget for growth on 23 March. This Tory-led Government will have been in office for 10 months and three weeks by then. That will be 321 wasted days of complacency, drift and inactivity. By the time any Budget measures are implemented, we will have had a wasted year that this country cannot afford.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

The shadow Minister’s accusations of inaction are not borne out by my area of the black country, which has already formed a local enterprise partnership and had it approved, and has submitted four bids to the regional growth fund, with a total of 12,000 jobs protected or created. Things are on their way in the black country, thanks to the policies of this Department.

[Mr Denham]

A year ago the black country had a functioning regional development agency. That agency has been destroyed. The hon. Lady is clutching at straws when she says that there may come a point when the Black Country LEP is fully functioning, but it will have no resources, no powers and no legal rights. That is not a step forward; it is a step backwards. That is typical of the damage that the Business Secretary and his Department have done to economic policy in the past year.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison McGovern]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. As Bill Shankly used to say, “I’m only surprised that people are surprised at the surprises.”

The Liverpool Daily Post said today:

“The scrapping of the Grants for Business Investment scheme will leave Merseyside companies seeking smaller amounts of investment aid with nowhere to turn…The flagship ‘regional growth fund’ currently only accepts applications for at least £1m—and its first round of bids was seven times oversubscribed. Local Enterprise Partnerships will have no funding.”

So if the companies in my constituency did not believe that when I said it, they have now heard it from our local media too.

[Margot James]

The hon. Lady mentioned the science base and investment. The Business, Innovation and Skills Committee heard evidence yesterday from representatives of the aerospace industry, who said that they wanted to continue to invest in the UK because of our skills base. It is not just me saying that the Government are supporting science; the president of the Royal Society has complimented the Government on recognising the importance of Britain’s standing in the scientific world. All savings from the science base will be reinvested back into science.

[Alison McGovern]

That is an interesting perspective, and I obviously have great respect for the learned people that the hon. Lady has mentioned—[Interruption.] Of course I have great respect for the Royal Society.

The Government cannot say that the corporation tax cut will enable investment. Ireland had one of the lowest corporation tax rates, and look what happened there.

Post-16 Students

Margot James Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

I am sure that I will respond when I get beyond the first paragraph of my comments. We are here to talk about a specific aspect of education, and as with the Secretary of State’s approach in all other aspects of education, particularly at this time of scarce resources, we are determined to concentrate as much as possible on the disadvantaged and close the achievement gap, which has widened too far, and for too long. We have to have that particular focus—it is why we have come forward with the pupil premium and other particularly well targeted schemes—to ensure that those who are left behind or need extra support have a chance to be on a level playing field with other students. I shall comment on that in a moment.

In the spending review, we had three priorities: protecting schools funding; early years; and ensuring that by 2015 every young person can continue in high-quality education and training, so that they are better prepared for the world of work or for university. The latter has not necessarily received the attention that it deserves.

We are spending more than £7.6 billion in 2011-12, a 1.5% cash increase over 2010-11, so that—

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Tim Loughton]

I will—mid-sentence.

[Margot James]

The Minister refers to a 1.5% increase in funding. Both colleges—the further education college and the sixth-form college—in my constituency place great store by enrichment activities, such as music and other absolutely vital elements of a rounded education. Is it not the case that colleges are to have greater freedom over how they spend their income in future years? Can he see any reason why they will not be able to use some of the increased spending to fund the much-needed enrichment programmes that everyone in the House is so keen to see continue?

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend is right to point that out, and again I shall come on to some comments in that vein.

Coupled with a focus on targeting the most disadvantaged and helping to close that gap is a Government priority to devolve greater powers, autonomy and freedoms to educational institutions at all levels—to ensure that principals, heads, teachers and governors are freed from so much of the prescription, bureaucracy and targets that went before, so that they can make the most appropriate decisions for their local student community. They, surely, are the people best placed to make those decisions. If it means concentrating more on enrichment activities, albeit with a tighter financial settlement, we must leave it to the judgment of those principals and others to make such decisions at the sharp end. My hon. Friend is right to raise the issue.

So, we are spending an extra 1.5% cash over 2010-11, so that a record 1.62 billion young people can have a place—[Interruption.] Sorry, I think that should say “million”. We are not quite China yet. Teenage pregnancy is part of my brief, but we have not quite reached that point.

Anyway, we are spending an extra 1.5% cash over 2010-11, so that a record 1.62 million young people can have a place in education and training. That is 23,000 more places than in the current academic year. Within that total, we are increasing the proportion of funds directed at young people facing disadvantage and deprivation in order to help schools and colleges attract and retain those 16 and 17-year-olds who currently do not participate in education and training at all. We are also increasing the amount spent on foundation learning, so that those young people who were failed by the previous Government’s school policies, which pumped in billions but still left many at 16 without the skills they needed to progress, can access the courses that suit their needs.

To do that, however, we have to take account of the economic situation. There is no getting away from that. Every decision that the coalition Government take is made against the backdrop of the difficult economic position that we inherited. Although Opposition Members would like to put those uncomfortable facts to one side, those of us in government have to deal with them, recognising that decisions on schools and colleges throughout the country need to take account of the dire position of public finances.

The enormous interest charges we are paying on our national debt, now standing at £120 million per day, mean that we spend more on servicing that debt than on all our schools and colleges put together, and that just cannot go on. Unless we bring the deficit under control, future funding for this critical phase of education will be endangered and future generations will suffer the consequences. That means we have to ensure that every penny we spend on 16-to-19 education and training brings real benefits to the learner, helps those who need help most and ensures young people are educated to higher levels than now.

We took the decision to reduce the requirement for enrichment activities for two reasons. The Government’s first priority is to protect the core education programmes offered by schools and colleges—the whole range of courses, including A-levels, vocational qualifications and apprenticeships. It is this core that delivers the real benefits to all young people and enables them to progress successfully into higher education or employment. That is not to say that I regard the enrichment activities that the hon. Member for Scunthorpe has so eloquently praised as unimportant—far from it.

Education Maintenance Allowance

Margot James Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

rose—

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

rose—

[Andy Burnham]

I will make further progress before giving way.

EMA is one of the few practical policies that has directly supported social mobility and equality of opportunity, so today I will set out a comprehensive case for its retention—the educational case, the social case, the economic case and the democratic case. The Government wanted to close down EMA quietly. They have closed the scheme to new applicants. They have not begun to replace it, as their amendment claims. We have called this debate because EMA has worked and is worth fighting for.

[Margot James]

Does the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that the enhanced learner support fund, which is the Government’s proposed replacement for EMA, will help many of the hard cases with which he illustrated the earlier part of his speech? Some 90% of students are telling us that they do not need EMA and will continue with their studies without it. If he does not accept that figure, what would he accept as the dead-weight figure?

[Andy Burnham]

The hon. Lady has just shown how hopelessly out of touch Government Members are. Is she telling me that nine out of 10 young people in her constituency who get EMA are saying they do not need it? If so, she has been speaking to some very different young people—although I am glad that she has at least been speaking to them, unlike those on her Front Bench. She needs to answer this question. The Government are proposing a scheme that is a tenth—

Oral Answers to Questions

Margot James Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Prisk]

I very much welcome the work that has been undertaken by businesses in the black country, and I pay tribute to them for that. Of course, the regional growth fund has to be based on merit, because it needs to be focused on making sure that the best cases come forward. Like the hon. Gentleman, I suspect that some excellent examples will come forward from his area, and from the west midlands as a whole. Cases must be judged on merit alone.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

The Black Country Reinvestment Society has a very successful record in arranging loans to micro-businesses and small and medium-sized enterprises across the black country. Does the Minister agree that a good way of getting regional growth fund money to small businesses is by enabling grants from the RGF to investment co-operatives such as the BCRS?

[Mr Prisk]

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend, who is also very expert in this area. We can do this not only through the regional growth fund but by ensuring that we work through, for example, the enterprise finance guarantee, so that small institutions such as community development finance institutions are able to participate, and the micro-loans to which she refers can be extended. I have changed the rules; they can now get involved.

Oral Answers to Questions

Margot James Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point, and I thought it uncharacteristically discourteous of Labour Members not to listen to him in silence. As the only Member of this House to have attended a special school, he speaks with a degree of authority that Labour Members would do well to pay attention to. He makes the point crystal clear: we need to ensure that there is sufficient discretionary support for students who are living with handicaps and who have suffered from disability. I am only sorry that Labour Members saw fit to greet his comments with the sort of grumbling and mumbling more appropriate to a student union than the mother of Parliaments.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I agree with the Secretary of State that the money paid as part of EMA should be much better targeted. The current arrangements for the learner support fund exclude payments for travel, so can he assure me that travel costs will be considered a legitimate part of the future discretionary learner support fund?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, describing one of the reasons for reviewing the travel entitlement for all students and learners. We want to make sure that any support we provide is to overcome barriers, which include travel to work costs, as well as paying for rent, subsistence or the supply of textbooks and other materials that are needed. It was striking that during the Labour leadership election the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) said that he would be happy to see EMA go if it were replaced by an allowance for travel, so there is a consensus that the current system is capable of reform. It is one that unites the two Front-Bench teams, even if it does not embrace everyone in the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Sarah Teather)]

The hon. Lady will be aware, especially if she has listened to the answers to previous questions, that when her party was in government it unfortunately spent all the money. We simply cannot fund everything at the same level as before; otherwise we will never be able to tackle the deficit.

By producing a flexible grant, we are responding to what local government has asked us to do. It has asked us, especially at a time when money is difficult, to create one large, flexible budget to ensure that it can prioritise based on local need. That means it will be able to fund things in a different way. If we tell local government that it has to fund things in one exact way, with certain priorities and in a certain order, it has no flexibility to focus on local areas. A flexible grant will allow it to prioritise funds and change the way in which it provides services locally.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

T4. I am currently representing two families in my constituency who have been unable to get their children into a primary school along with their older siblings, owing to infant class size legislation. That has caused considerable distress to the families involved. Will my hon. Friend review the impact that infant class size legislation is having on families who wish their children to attend the same primary school?

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

As my hon. Friend knows, the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 places a duty on local authorities and schools to limit the size of infant classes taught by one teacher to 30 pupils. It makes exceptions for exceptional circumstances, such as when a child moves into an area outside the normal admissions round and there is no other school within a reasonable distance. Under current legislation, however, siblings are not included in the list of permitted exception criteria. We announced in the White Paper a review of the school admissions framework so that it will be clearer for parents, and that review will consider the over-subscription criteria, including siblings and the important issue of twins and children from multiple births. In other words, yes.