Kinship Carers

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Wednesday 13th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Alistair Strathern]

I thank my hon. Friend for his powerful point. He rightly highlights that financial support is a crucial part of the package that kinship carers need. I am really excited that the Government are finally bringing forward the £44 million needed to get on with the pilots. However, it is important that we do not just put an arm around kinship carers, but provide a wider range of therapeutic support and advice. Both financial and non-financial support will be crucial.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the £44 million and the 10 pilots are a groundbreaking initiative on the part of this Government—something that kinship care families have long awaited and campaigned for? This is just the start, but we cannot have everything that we might want right now.

[Alistair Strathern]

Absolutely. Since they took office, we have seen from the new Secretary of State, the Minister and the Government an urgency that, finally, is starting to meet the needs of the moment, and the needs of young people in kinship care and their carers. Whether it is making sure that we finally have a kinship care ambassador to actively champion the role of kinship carers and take to task local authorities that do not always provide the support they need, as some kinship carers in the room might be able to attest to; bringing forward statutory guidance and a framework to ensure that we have more in place to recognise the values of wider family networks in planning decisions for young people, and to do everything we can to remove the barriers to placing young people in kinship care; or—

--- Later in debate ---

[Janet Daby]

I will not repeat what I have said—it still stands.

[Melanie Onn]

I congratulate the Minister on securing the DFE as a kinship-friendly employer. There are other employers in the country, such as John Lewis, B&Q and Card Factory, that have done amazing things around kinship care leave. Is any consideration being given to bringing some of those best practice examples together, so that we could roll out, through our Government structures, support to employers to become kinship-friendly?

[Janet Daby]

My hon. Friend makes a significant point. There is lots more that needs to be done in this space, and her point demonstrates that much more work is needed.

Educational Opportunities

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Wednesday 13th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) on securing this important debate.

I want to take the opportunity to highlight an issue that affects the future of many children in our communities—the barriers to educational opportunities faced by children in kinship care. In my constituency, 450 children are living in kinship care, placing us in the top 10% in England and Wales. Those children being raised by relatives or close family friends often face significant challenges that can hinder their educational progress. Many have special educational needs or disabilities, including social, emotional and mental health issues. More than one in 10 have been diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder.

Those challenges mean that kinship children are much more likely than their peers to attend SEN schools. Kinship children in England alone are over three times more likely to have an EHCP than all other pupils. Despite their needs, kinship children often do not receive the same level of support as those in local authority care. The lack of support can leave them struggling to cope in the classroom and with their post-school opportunities, impacting their ability not only to learn but to thrive. Kinship carers want educators to be better trained to understand the unique challenges that kinship children face, and to provide the support that these children need throughout their lives. It is crucial that we address the barriers and ensure that kinship children receive the support they need to flourish in their educational journey, just to give them a fair crack of the whip. That means improving access to special educational services, providing targeted training for educators and recognising the unique challenges faced by kinship families. By doing so, we can create a more inclusive and supportive educational environment for all children, ensuring that, as we have said in our mission statement, every child, regardless of background or circumstances, has the opportunity to succeed.

I want to finish by asking the Minister a couple of questions, including whether the Government are considering taking any specific actions to support the children in kinship care and whether an assessment has been made of the gap in SEND provision disproportionately affecting children in kinship care.

Special Educational Needs and Disabilities

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Catherine McKinnell]

The hon. Lady raises an important point. We will be looking at the system as a whole, and at any legislation that needs to be amended or brought in to achieve our vision for an inclusive mainstem education that not only provides education for all children regardless of their special educational needs and disabilities, but provides specialist places for those with the most complex needs that cannot be met within mainstream education. We know the evidence shows that, where those needs are being met within the inclusive mainstream education system, the need for EHCPs is significantly reduced.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

Last year alone, my local authority of North East Lincolnshire spent £1.3 million sending 114 children out of area to special educational needs settings. Could the Minister reassure constituents across North East Lincolnshire and in my constituency of Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes that the actions she is taking will not only support local authorities and reduce these additional costs, but provide the kind of education their children need closer to home?

[Catherine McKinnell]

My hon. Friend sets out very well the vision that we are seeking to achieve for all children. The purpose of all the changes we are making in our education system is to ensure that inclusive mainstream education is available to all children and that there are specialist places for children with the most complex needs.

Free Schools

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Wednesday 19th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck. I congratulate the hon. Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman) on securing this important debate, and I look forward to reading her report.

It is fair to say that I wholeheartedly disagree with just about everything the hon. Lady said. Her comments about the concept of people getting a financial return from investing in local education establishments make me fearful. Education should not be considered as a business. The money-making, business and enterprise element of even the academies programme has served only to put additional pressure on schools and families. Parents have to finance so many of their children’s additional activities in the education environment. That simply did not happen to the same degree prior to the academisation programme.

I am delighted that Kavit, whom the hon. Lady mentioned, has had such an enriching educational experience, but I deeply believe that Kavit’s experience should be everyone’s experience, and that the responsibility for education lies not with a few well-meaning local residents or capable parents but with the state. It is our responsibility. We in this place should take responsibility for ensuring the very highest standards in our state education system. For that and many other reasons, which I will come to, I cannot understand the enthusiasm for the free schools programme. Some £15,000 more per primary school pupil and nearly £20,000 more per secondary school pupil goes into free schools compared with those in the state system. That is a ridiculous amount of money.

The hon. Lady talked about “undeniable success”. Sir Peter Lampl, who founded the Sutton Trust, said:

“Free schools were supposed to bring new and innovative providers into the education sector, to drive up standards and improve school choice. But as our research shows, very few are fulfilling that original purpose.”

Carole Willis, chief executive of the National Foundation for Educational Research, said that the Sutton Trust report

“shows that the government’s free schools programme has not been very successful at bringing innovation to the education system and encouraging more parents and teachers to set up new schools. What it does highlight is that those new free schools that are opening are increasingly set up and led by multi-academy trusts and are used as a way to meet rising pupil numbers. So, if the government is still committed to the programme’s original purpose then it should review and clarify the mission of free schools.”

Can it really be an undeniable success that a trust set up by a Conservative peer and former so-called policy supremo of David Cameron’s was given £340,000 for two free school projects that never even got off the ground? Is that really the definition of success for the education of our children? I do not think it is. The Floreat Education Academies Trust, which was founded by the now Health Minister, Lord O’Shaughnessy—I do not know whether that is still accurate—received cash to set up new primary schools in London, but the plans were abandoned in March 2018. Those primaries were among 44 free school projects that were cancelled without teaching a single pupil between 2013 and 2017. What an utter disgrace of a waste of taxpayers’ money. That money should be going to our kids in the education system now, not on the fanciful ideas of people sitting in the other House who cannot even deliver.

There simply is not enough scrutiny in the application process for free schools. I had the same concern about the level of accountability and transparency in academies, but free schools, particularly under the umbrella of multi-academy trusts, are increasingly becoming completely unaccountable and untransparent fiefdoms at the heart of our communities. There is nothing that local people can do to challenge them when they are failing. And what happens when they do fail, having had all that money put into them? The state picks up the pieces.

[Suella Braverman]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Melanie Onn]

I will not, because the hon. Lady had a good 20 minutes to set out her case. I am sure she will cover these things extensively in her report or in summing up at the end of the debate.

Cancelled schemes were given £8.7 million of funding by the Department for Education. That money has now been written off. It could have been used to help struggling state schools, or even to reward schools in the state system that are succeeding and excelling and that deserve to expand, rather than being funnelled into these local community projects run by well-meaning individuals. The idea that improved financial self-management will in any way resolve those problems is for the birds.

In Great Grimsby, we have been fully academised at secondary school level for about five years. Even in that academised system, there are concerns about the level of exclusions, temporary and permanent. Some schools—if they are in the wrong area—feel they are a dumping ground for other schools that cannot cope with the diverse needs of their student body. We have also seen an increase in provision through pupil referral units.

I went recently to Phoenix House pupil referral unit in my constituency. I saw young people who would have struggled in mainstream education—whether a free school, an academy trust or the comprehensive system—but who are now in an environment that works well for them. Where they might previously not have gone on to sit their GCSEs, they are now sitting them and engaging with their school community. They are forming friendships and respecting their local community. That school is going round begging for and borrowing facilities. It has a fantastic workshop where the kids can work on a car chassis, build it up from scratch and take it apart again. The school has to go to local scrapyards and car dealers to beg for things for that facility, yet we are wasting hundreds of thousands of pounds on free schools that often do not deliver for their pupils.

There are all kinds of statistics on the representation of young people in free schools who are eligible for free school meals, compared with those in academies, and that goes to the heart of the matter. If the Government really want to improve education, they should not turn the system even more into a marketplace. Education is not a marketplace; education is about the future of our young people and our country. We should give headteachers who are already in the system the flexibility offered to those in free schools to deliver well for their students, pupils and wider community, and we should properly fund them, rather than diverting cash to vanity projects that do not work for the local community. I therefore do not support the idea that we should introduce free schools all around the country.

Further Education Funding

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

rose—

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend is always a great champion of these things, and he is absolutely right. Colleges can certainly help themselves by attracting great employers to offer apprenticeships, and we can help them by introducing some of the employers if need be.

[Melanie Onn]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the restrictions on FE funding have directly damaged the ability of colleges to recruit very specialist skills at the highest level, such as in engineering, meaning that vacancies exist for long periods and that colleges are often cutting short those types of course?

[Richard Graham]

The hon. Lady has brilliantly anticipated a line in my speech, and I agree with her.

Education

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I rise to speak as the ambassador for youth drug charity Mentor UK. One of the most important steps we have not talked about so far today is the regulations that will make drugs education mandatory in all primary and secondary schools.

Drug usage permeates society, and it can have a devastating effect on our communities and young people. Children can be exposed to parents’ drug usage, be exploited by criminal gangs through county lines and, ultimately, end up developing life-ruining habits. It is critical that young people know the effects of drugs so that they can rationalise and understand abnormal behaviours related to drug usage and be aware of all the risks, such as addiction and long-term health effects, before they end up taking drugs themselves. Unfortunately, the effect of cuts has been to limit our schools’ ability to train teachers to deliver comprehensive drugs education, and to drive them away from these added-value lessons in favour of core performance-targeted subjects, so there has been a lack of the frequent, high-quality, early drugs education that is sorely needed.

According to charities such as VolteFace, there are a few steps the Government could take to improve the guidance further and make drugs education better across the whole country. Schools should start to build and develop drug programmes—with pupils, parents and local partners such as the police, substance misuse services and youth community hubs—that take local and personal vulnerabilities into account. These sessions should not be one-offs, but the guidance does not stipulate how often these lessons should be delivered, which means that schools could still provide basic lessons as long as they tick the boxes relating to what children should be taught by the end of primary and secondary school. This should be clarified in the guidance to mandate for yearly comprehensive drugs education, with an expansion of what is expected of this education. For example, the current guidance does not stipulate the need to teach awareness of child criminal exploitation, which could be vital in preventing children from falling into extremely dangerous situations.

Special Educational Needs

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered SEN support in schools.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, I think for the first time. Before discussing the policy that I wish to address, I will take a moment to emphasise why special educational needs support in schools is such an important topic. I secured the debate because of a number of constituency cases that have come through my surgery. Constituents raised the issue with me and brought me to the point at which I felt the need to discuss it in Westminster Hall. I will not talk specifically about constituency cases, because I want to speak to the wider issue, which affects not just cities such as York but the whole country. That is reflected in the number of Members attending the debate this morning.

I will touch on the importance of SEN and why it is worth taking the time to ensure that the system of support works for all children with SEN. Our starting point should therefore be to see SEN as something that informs mainstream education policy, rather than a specialist area relating to a minority of pupils. More than 1.2 million pupils in England—that is 14.6%—have an identified special educational need, of whom 250,000, or one in five, have either a statement of SEN or an education, health and care plan in place. We should also be conscious of the fact that the SEN of many more students are likely to remain unidentified. For me, that is the wider issue of real concern.

New research by Professor Lucinda Platt at the London School of Economics and Dr Sam Parsons of University College London has helped to inform us about the short, medium and long-term effects on people’s lives of being identified with SEN at school. While the findings are alarming, they serve to underline the obligation on us all to ensure that the next generation of children do not experience their special educational needs as something that impacts negatively on their prospects at school and future life chances.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this incredibly important debate. SEN support has an impact on children throughout my constituency. I am outraged on their behalf and that of their parents when I hear that some students who have an EHCP are left without any education, some for up to a year, or just having it for an hour a week. He mentioned the long-term impact of an SEN diagnosis and schools that cannot cope with the needs of those children, and that is incredibly important. I look forward to hearing him expand a little on that.

[Julian Sturdy]

The hon. Lady makes a good point. Members will mention different examples of constituency cases in the debate, which shows that this is a wide issue. However, I completely accept the point that it is about not just diagnosis but the next steps. I will come on to that, and I will put a few questions to the Minister. I hope that she will be able to respond to them accordingly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julian Sturdy]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point, which I accept, and it is certainly what I have seen in the evidence before me. I will develop this further, but the wider point is about schools and local authorities actually identifying all children with SEN—if they identified them all, there might be a financial impact on those specific schools. For me, that is the wider concern in the process.

The study by LSE and UCL found that children with SEN at school are three times more likely than their peers to lack a close friend and to experience bullying most days. Sadly, problems experienced at school have long-term consequences, and the study found that by the time those children are young adults, those with SEN are nearly twice as likely to see friends only once or twice a year and to feel that they have no one to listen to their problems. There is also an impact on relationships and family life in middle age. Adults who had SEN at school are four times as likely to be single and twice as likely not to have children.

The report also suggests that the pressure that children with SEN face at school to perform socially and academically is having a detrimental impact on their long-term mental health and wellbeing. They are twice as likely as their non-SEN peers to feel that life’s problems are too much. There is also a significant concern that a disproportionate number of those caught up in the criminal justice system have a special educational need—the relevant studies find that they represent between 25% and 50% of offenders. All that is extremely alarming.

Addressing the disparity in outcomes for SEN children has been a priority of successive Governments of all political persuasions and colours. There is evidence that policy changes have made a positive impact on the lives of a new generation of SEN children. The reforms brought in by the Children and Families Act 2014, and the introduction of education, health and care plans—touched on already by hon. Members—were welcomed as positive step towards providing more reliable and individually tailored support for those with the greatest needs.

Last week the Government talked about creating 37 new SEN schools. Although I welcome the 3,400 extra high-quality school places that could be created, I am not convinced that will address the need for early intervention in mainstream schools, as other hon. Members have mentioned. It is possible that will further contribute to the social marginalisation of SEN children.

[Melanie Onn]

What does the hon. Gentleman think about the role of teaching assistants in schools? For children with SEN or EHCPs, one of the fundamental support mechanisms in school is teaching assistants, but their numbers have been drastically reduced; they are often the first to lose their jobs when there is restructuring and school budget cuts.

[Julian Sturdy]

The hon. Lady makes an important intervention. Teaching assistants and teachers have a huge role to play—I will touch on that later in my speech—because it is about spotting SEN at an early age. If we can tackle it at the beginning, it will be easier to tailor support for those children. The first port of call has to be teachers and teaching assistants at school.

The Government’s announcement last year that they would invest an additional £365 million from 2018 to 2021 is to be welcomed. However, I am not convinced that funding alone can address the disparities that children with SEN face. Far-reaching policy changes are required. The first of those that I want to touch on is exams. By far the largest query that I receive from constituents in relation to SEN is about assessment concessions—extra time in exams. Although I understand that the recent move towards an exam-based system in schools, from the perspective of academic rigour, is probably the right way to go, I am concerned that has had the undesirable side effect of limiting the potential of SEN students.

Constituents tell me time and again that their children’s two biggest problems in exams are the anxiety that they inevitably generate and the unfair concentration on one small aspect of that child’s ability: namely, the ability to memorise facts. The GCSE religious studies exam includes a requirement to learn 64 quotations. I do not think I could do that; perhaps a number of Members could, but it would be beyond my ability. The GCSE physics exam requires the ability to memorise 24 formulae—I might find that slightly easier.

The default response to the disadvantages that SEN students face in exams is to offer extra time, but no amount of extra time will address the fact that exams as a means of assessment are intrinsically unsuitable for some types of students and learners. The solution has to be to revisit the place of coursework, which once made up 40% to 50% of GCSE assessment. Coursework does not discriminate against SEN children with high cognitive ability but for whom memorising facts does not come that easily. Coursework has the additional benefit of alleviating the anxiety of one assessment and spreading the pressure throughout the year, rather than concentrating on the examination period.

Oral Answers to Questions

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

On the first point, we are spending more than any other G7 nation bar the United States in per capita funding for state primary and secondary education, but there are particular cost pressures in the system. We were discussing high needs earlier, and we do need to address that particular set of pressures. There are others as well, such as the way we go about purchasing and so on, and some of the costs that are particularly rising. I want to reassure my right hon. Friend that we are looking at all of those factors.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Damian Hinds)]

I am pleased to confirm that we are providing £24 million of supplementary funding to local authorities to enable them fully to fund maintained nursery schools for 2019-20. Last week marked National Apprenticeship Week, celebrating apprenticeships and their positive impact on people, businesses and the economy. We have recently confirmed plans for reforms to the relationships and sex education and the health education curricula, to be implemented in schools from September 2020, so that children can be taught about mental and physical wellbeing, as well as about online safety, subject of course to parliamentary approval.

[Melanie Onn]

For how many more years can my Great Grimsby constituents expect Great Coates and Scartho state-maintained nursery schools to remain open?

[Damian Hinds]

As I said earlier, we recognise the particular place that maintained nurseries have in our system. They often provide additional, high-quality services, which we value. Work is ongoing to assess that value and of course we will make announcements about future spending as part of the spending review.

Relationships and Sex Education

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

I am always pleased to meet my hon. Friend and to get her particularly expert view. There is a long list of things that we could include in this guidance, and we have already included a lot. We have tried to make sure that the guidance is quite comprehensive, but we have to set some limits.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

Nearly 750 children across my borough of north-east Lincolnshire have been exposed to domestic violence in the past year, and it is essential that all children understand what constitutes a healthy relationship and recognise unduly coercive and violent behaviour so that they do not go on to repeat it. Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating North East Lincolnshire Council, Women's Aid and the NSPCC on the work they do, day in and day out, in my constituency and across my borough in schools and family hubs to protect, inform and support Grimsby’s children and families?

[Damian Hinds]

I absolutely join the hon. Lady in commending those organisations. As she will recall, I had the opportunity some time ago to visit her constituency and to meet some of those involved in safeguarding children to hear about some of their strong and innovative work.

College Funding

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) for getting the debate off to such a good start, and I congratulate the students from Brockenhurst College on their work to ensure that the debate took place.

We need not only to love our colleges, but to treasure and invest in them, because they are at the heart of our communities. They have connections to industry and commerce, help to power our communities, and are also engines of social mobility. All the evidence shows that colleges—more than any other institution—transform social mobility. For those reasons alone, we should do everything that we can to support them.

With the rise of the participation age, it is absolutely nonsensical that a youngster at the age of 16 to 18 should be funded 23% less than a youngster at the age of 15. That makes no sense at all, and the debate draws attention to that. I am really pleased to see the strength of opinion from across the House and that hon. Members know and understand the importance of the colleges in their communities. Today, that message has come through loud and clear to all of us.

The Minister really cares about colleges and is a passionate advocate for them, which we welcome, but she needs to deliver. In her response, she must tell us where the underfunding of colleges sits in the Department for Education’s priorities with the Treasury—is it first, second, third, or 27th? We need to be honest about that. I think people in this Chamber would agree that it would be the No. 1 priority if the Department really cared about social mobility and delivering the skill agenda that we need as we leave the European Union.

Skills are central. One of people’s main concerns during the referendum was the issue of migrant labour. If we are to tackle that problem, we need to invest in skills. Who better to invest in those skills than our colleges? They make the difference. For my pains, I ran a college for a number of years, which was probably a more challenging job than being a Member of Parliament. The challenges that principals face today are much greater than those that I confronted in 2010.

Principals can only balance certain things and manage certain variables. One of those variables is the curriculum. Hon. Members have talked about how the curriculum is shrinking, and that includes student support and enrichment, as well as the breadth of curriculum and the disappearance of STEM subjects, languages and so on. Another variable that we have talked about is the workload of teachers, who have to teach more periods, and therefore have larger classes. Class size is another variable. Only a certain number of variables can be played around with: class size, teacher workload and the curriculum. Principals handle and manage all those things. We are reaching breaking point.

Although we welcome the action on T-levels and additional support for maths, T-levels will not come through until 2022 and will not affect young people now, and the other changes are small beer. We need to ensure that the rate is raised for those doing the central work.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I echo my hon. Friend’s comments. I say on behalf of my colleges—Franklin College and Grimsby Institute—that his points are exactly right. The additional cost burdens of things such as general data protection regulation, which have not been factored in, all add to the costs pressures on colleges.

[Nic Dakin]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. One the great colleges in my constituency, John Leggott College, which I was proud to lead, contacted me this week and said that the staff pay increases would be a real challenge for colleges. If the pension increases remain unfunded, that will represent the equivalent of six teacher posts. North Lindsey College also raised the issue of support for apprenticeships. It has had a massive 30% increase in apprenticeships this year to deliver on the Government’s priority of apprenticeships. It is concerned, however, about the potential cap to the funding of apprenticeships, which would really damage the investment that has been made in them.

I hope the Minister will give us reassurances that the strength and development of apprenticeships will not be badly affected by those changes. We need to raise the rate, treasure and invest in our colleges, and recognise that they are a key part of our future.