Speech, Language and Communication Education

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Wednesday 19th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Buckland]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman and hope that the work of the communication council will include consideration of the devolved nations, Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland.

I want briefly to consider low-incidence, high-cost specialist need, and approaches that can help with communications. One such approach is augmentative and alternative communication. It is estimated that about 0.5% of the population may need that approach at some point in their lives: that is about 260,000 children and adults. In addition, it is estimated that 0.05% of the population need access to regional specialised augmentative and alternative communication services, and communication aids. I am talking about the sort of technology that you may have seen, Mr Dobbin, when meeting speech and language therapists. It would include iPads, and apps developed to assist with communication. I have had a go at some of them; they are incredible, and, frankly, rather fun to use, to begin with. They are a great tool for young people, who are extremely adept at using the touch technology that is now available. The technology is evolving all the time, of course, and the problem for local commissioners is that often they make expensive decisions that quickly become obsolete. We must address that, and I would welcome support for local health and wellbeing boards to deal with such problems.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his speech so far. Does he share my concern that many education authorities give children quite complex and expensive AAC equipment, which is removed when they leave the education system, leaving them bereft in adulthood? What thoughts does he have on how we can ensure a better transition for them from school to adult life?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

It is as ever a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dobbin, just as it is to debate matters with the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) and the Minister, which is just as well given how many times we have done so over the past few months. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Swindon on securing the debate and for his comprehensive and passionate speech. He is becoming a real expert on the issues we are discussing, for which he is becoming the go-to Member in the House, and he is to be commended for that. We had some good-quality discussions on this area of policy when the three of us served on the Children and Families Bill, with other Members—no longer in their place—who also served on the Bill Committee.

Today’s debate allows us to go into further detail, with specific reference to children and young people with speech, language and communication needs. The topic—to be more specific, speech and language therapy—was the subject of the first parliamentary debate that I spoke in as a shadow Minister, way back in 2010. That debate, which was secured by the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), who is present this morning, was oversubscribed, as he might remember, but we heard a lot of personal stories about the need for and the value of speech and language therapy, including from the hon. Gentleman and me.

I have a son who had speech therapy until the age of seven. Sadly, that therapy did not cease at seven because he was cured, but because we moved south to a London borough that decided his speech was within the normal realms. It was not, but that is what we call the postcode lottery, which we hope will be addressed to an extent by the local offers, especially if they are underpinned by a national framework, as we called for in Committee. I will return to that point in more detail.

Since I have been a Member of the House, there has been a small number of opportunities to debate and discuss this important topic, not least the excellent debate on the Floor of the House in the previous Parliament following the outstanding Bercow review into speech, language and communication needs. As we all agree, it was a seminal report on the situation throughout the country of children and young people with speech, language and communication needs and on the support, or lack of it, available to them. I am interested to hear an update from the Minister on where we are with regard to the recommendations made in the Bercow review and whether they have all been met or are under way. Once again, we have had an excellent debate, with a great deal of interest from Members in all parts of the House and some excellent contributions.

I am pleased that the hon. Member for South Swindon mentioned augmentative and alternative communication aids and equipment, because that area is often not discussed in the House, perhaps because it is so specialist. For the children, young people and adults who rely on such AAC equipment, however, it is fundamental to their lives and to the quality of their lives.

[Paul Maynard]

I recently had an Adjournment debate on that very subject, which was replied to by a Health Minister. Does the hon. Lady agree that part of the problem is the lack of clarity in Government about where AAC should sit? Should it be a Department of Health or a Department for Education priority?

[Mrs Hodgson]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. As the name suggests, the education, health and care plans are a combination of education, health and social care. The Minister must be commended for his excellent work in that regard, to get the involvement of the Department of Health and that collaboration and cross-departmental working that in the past has been lacking, leading to confusion about whether AAC sits under Education or Health. I am sure that the Minister will respond to that point when he winds up. Under the new plans, I hope that things will become clearer, if only in the sense that the different parts of government work better together to meet the needs of the child or young person. The right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) asked for assurances from the Minister that the new system will bring improvements and not make it more difficult for parents to access the support that their child needs. We all agree that that is what we want to see from the new system, which I hope will be the case.

Speech, language and communication needs are highly prevalent: more than 30% of those on school action plus schemes have been identified as having speech, language and communication needs, and around a quarter have statements. Only 44% of pupils with speech, language and communication needs achieve their expected progress in English; as we heard from the hon. Member for South Swindon, even fewer—35%—do so in maths by the end of their school life. Even by age 19, little more than half those young people have achieved level 2 qualifications, which means a C or above at GCSE. Obviously, fewer still go on to get A-levels: just one in five young people with speech, language and communication needs has achieved a level 3 qualification by the age of 19.

Shockingly, those statistics suggest that speech, language and communication needs hold back children and young people more than other special educational needs and disabilities that we might otherwise think have a bigger impact on educational outcomes. The proportion of children achieving level 3 qualifications is lower for those with speech, language and communication needs than for those with hearing or visual impairment, multi-sensory impairment, physical disability, autistic spectrum disorders and specific learning difficulties. Such statistics clearly indicate that we have a real problem with how we provide support for such children and young people. It is therefore little surprise that they are so over- represented in exclusions from school and the youth justice system—about 65% of young offenders have speech, language and communication difficulties, according to the Communication Trust.

[Mrs Hodgson]

The hon. Gentleman has made an excellent point, which we discussed at length in Committee and on Report. Noble lords will return to the issue in the other place, and Lord Ramsbotham will be seeking some commitment from the Government, specifically to amend or even scrap clause 69 of the Bill. The area is vital, and I am sure that we and others will return to it time and again until that figure of 65% comes down to a more representative level.

[Paul Maynard]

I am afraid that my point might be slightly political. Will the hon. Lady put some pressure on her Front Benchers about the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill? They are opposing abolition of the antisocial behaviour order—ASBOs trap many young people with speech and language needs in a cycle of breach that ends up in imprisonment—and its replacement with the injunction to prevent nuisance and annoyance or IPNA, which will enable a positive requirement to be imposed on the individual and might help to tackle some of the conditions. Will she have a discussion with her shadow Front-Bench team, please?

[Mrs Hodgson]

The hon. Gentleman has made his point, but I will not test the Chair during this debate by expanding on antisocial behaviour or on my discussions of the subject with Front-Bench colleagues. The hon. Gentleman has made his point, however, and it will have been heard by my colleagues.

That failure—all those young people being excluded and ending up in the youth justice system and then adult prisons—is a significant cost to the public purse, through lost productivity and taxes from children not reaching their potential, and the cost of welfare or of keeping the young person in youth justice or in the prison system, if it comes to that. Therefore, early intervention and getting the right support in place as soon as possible are important not only to the individual child or young person, but to the whole of society. That is why I pushed the Minister so hard, as did everyone who spoke on these matters during Committee consideration of the Bill, on the provisions that will be in place under the new system, and particularly on the role that early years settings and early years area special educational needs co-ordinators working across those settings will be expected to play.

The Minister resisted my calls for local authorities to have a duty to co-operate with private, voluntary and independent child care providers with regard to children in their settings whom they believe to have special educational needs, saying that he believed it would place a burden on those providers. However, as I have heard from such providers, the problem is that they are often completely ignored by local authorities when they try to refer a child for an assessment or some other form of help. That is the problem that I was trying to solve with an amendment. I hope that our noble colleagues can address it in more detail in the other place.

I would also like early years area SENCOs to be given a statutory role to ensure that PVI child care settings are given the support that they need to identify and adequately cater for such children. As we discussed in Committee, the draft code of practice includes a heading on that role, which I welcome, although there is no content yet. I am sure that the Minister and his officials are working on that now, so I would be grateful if he could tell us what progress has been made on developing that guidance since our discussion in March.

Obviously, the vast majority of children and young people with identified SLCNs do not qualify for a statement at present, and will not qualify for an education, health and care plan when the new system is rolled out. At present, their teachers and parents have school action and school action plus as a graduated response to meeting their needs, which will become a single SEN category under the new code of practice. We are still not sure exactly how that will look in practice, but the Minister assures us that the 1.4 million children on school action and school action plus will continue to be supported, and we must take him at his word.

Clearly, though, the level of support that children receive will owe much to the quality of the local offer in their area, which is why I have sought at every stage of the Children and Families Bill to strengthen the wording of the legislation on that issue. In particular, the Minister and I, along with the hon. Member for South Swindon, have had many debates about what standards we should expect from local offers in terms of provision and accountability. I am sure that such debates will rumble on as the Bill continues its passage through the other place.

I reiterate a point made in last week’s debate by the Chair of the Select Committee on Education, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart). The success of this raft of reforms rests on getting local offers right. I do not believe that the Department for Education can afford to take the chance that 152 flowers will blossom if cash-strapped councils are left to their own devices.

Finally, teacher training is crucial in making every school a good school for children and young people with high-incidence SENs such as speech, language and communication needs; the hon. Member for South Swindon mentioned that as well. Every teacher is a teacher of children with speech, language and communication needs, but not every teacher knows how to be. Fewer than half of newly qualified teachers surveyed by Ofsted had good skills and knowledge of language development, and about one third did not have sufficient training to enable them to plan how to give such children extra help in the classroom. That is clearly not satisfactory.

Again, I feel that the Department for Education should be leading on that issue by requiring improvements to teacher training and continuing professional development so that every teacher has the skills needed to teach the class in front of them rather than just the subject. The Department is going in the opposite direction, saying that people do not need a teaching qualification to teach, or even to head a school in some instances. Labour Members restated our opposition to that idea this week.

That said, I hope that the Minister, outside the Children and Families Bill process, will consider our calls to make such improvements to the quality of the work force. He has made a lot of improvements to the Bill during his relatively short time in office, for which Members from all parties are grateful. During his remaining time in post, however long or short it may be, I hope that he will continue to listen to the concerns of parents and practitioners and take the actions needed to ensure that the unacceptable outcomes for children and young people with SLCNs that the hon. Member for South Swindon and I described will be improved in the years to come.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Timpson]

The hon. Gentleman will know that the Secretary of State is always delighted to speak to people and professionals in Sheffield to see how the early intervention grant, which is rising from £2.3 billion to £2.5 billion, can be best spent in the Sheffield area. I am sure that is a discussion he will be happy to have.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

In Blackpool North and Cleveleys, we eagerly anticipate the new statutory duty that will see 15 hours of early learning made available to two-year-olds from low-income backgrounds. Can the Minister speculate on the impact that should have on achievement levels for primary pupils in areas such as Blackpool and Cleveleys, which are deprived seaside towns?

[Mr Timpson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who highlights a key component of our early years intervention programme, which will see a rise from 20% to 40% in the number of two-year-olds from low-income families benefiting from the statutory duty. We anticipate that it will ensure that they get high quality care at a much younger age so that their future outcomes will be much more positive. That can only be a good thing for the people and children of Blackpool and across the country.

Children and Families Bill

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Timpson]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important issue, and I thank him for alerting me to it prior to the debate. I am of course happy to meet him and discuss the implications of the reforms for him and his constituents as the Bill moves through both Houses of Parliament.

The Bill requires local authorities to publish a local offer giving parents and young people clear, accessible information about the support that is available to them from education, health and social care bodies. The local offer will outline how they can get an assessment for an education, health and care plan and where they can get information, advice and support. Local agencies will be required to co-operate in developing that offer. We will set out in regulations a common framework for the local offer and give further guidance in the new birth to 25 special educational needs code of practice.

Many hon. Members will know from their constituency surgeries that it is a common occurrence for children and young people who need support to have to tell the same story over and over again to myriad different professionals. The measures in the Bill will lead to better, more co-ordinated assessments across education, health and care that involve children, young people and parents from the very start and focus on their goals and aspirations. Along with a new approach to assessment, we are introducing education, health and care plans.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

What can the Minister say to reassure those who are concerned that children with a specific disability and health need, but with no identifiable educational need, will not have access to an education, health and care plan and so will not be able to benefit from the local offer? Is there are a simple and straightforward answer that I can give such families?

[Mr Timpson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I know from having paid a visit to his all-party group on young disabled people that many of that group of people are wrestling with the issue. Through the local offer and the joint commissioning of services, there will be much more transparency about what services are available for all children with special educational needs and disability, which will put them in a stronger position to hold the providers of those services to account. I am sure he will examine that as we take the Bill through Committee.

Education, health and care plans will have a new and important focus on outcomes, including employment and independent living, and they will be clear about the support to be provided to enable the child or young person to achieve those personal goals.

There is an unhelpful divide between school and college in the current system for young people over 16. They keep their statement and the legal protections that it brings if they stay in school, but they lose it if they go to college. The Bill will change that. SEN statements and learning difficulty assessments will be replaced with the new EHC plans, which will be for children and young people from birth to age 25. For the first time, young people with special educational needs will be able to enter further education and training with the same rights and protections as pupils in school, including rights to appeal to the tribunal.

I have already spoken about how we plan to give children, young people and families a much greater say in shaping local policies. We will also give those with an education, health and care plan much more say in how their support is provided and where they are educated. Parents and young people will have the option of a personal budget, enabling them to be much more involved in deciding how support is provided. They will not have to take up that option, but their entitlement to it, combined with the new approach to assessment and the EHC plans, will mean that agencies will be clear about the level of support that a child or young person should be getting and why.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and to welcome the Bill, which covers such a broad range of areas. I hope Members will forgive me if I focus on special educational needs, as so many others have done.

I know from my own life story how important it is to get this right. I was one of the pre-1981 report children whose parents had to fight to get me into a special school, and then fight again to get me back into a mainstream school a few years later. The special school was not far from the Minister’s own constituency, in Hebden Green. When I was in the mainstream school, my parents had to fight to get the speech therapy I needed to make the most of being in that mainstream school.

It was with some distress and dismay that when I first got elected to this House, I found that the first three cases of my very first constituency surgery were all about parents fighting for their children to get the special educational help they needed from their schools. Thirty years on, nothing much seemed to have changed. That is why I welcome the Bill, as it starts to introduce some level of change. I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), who is sadly no longer in her place. What she did with her Green Paper was to raise expectations, perhaps even to create a rod for the Government’s own back in a strange way. None the less, she needs to be congratulated on that.

I know not just from my own life story, but from what I see on the ground in Blackpool, how important this issue is. When one of our council officers—the head of inclusion and access—gave evidence during the Education Committee’s pre-legislative scrutiny process, she explained why this matters so much in Blackpool, where we have such a high transient population, with four times as many young people than the national average entering the town already having a statement—9.8% versus 2.8%. Yet Blackpool manages not to make it an adversarial experience; in fact, it has fewer tribunals than the national average. I can see that situation working itself out in my constituency surgeries and in my casework.

As always with legislation, the temptation is to focus on the elements that one is not completely happy with. I will try to resist that temptation and look at the wider picture. I am very privileged to chair the all-party group on young disabled people. What strikes me in that role is that society no longer puts a lid on expectations for our young disabled people and tries to limit what they can achieve. If anything, the only lid that is placed on their expectations is the bureaucracy in the system. Society is changing, but the structures of governance need to change as well to enable them to keep pace. That is why the Bill is so important.

When I meet groups of these people, I am struck by the fact that so many of them do not just want to go into work when they reach 18—they want to go on to university, to go and live their lives. I welcome what the Education Committee and the Minister have said about those who are in apprenticeships or are not in education, employment or training having access to EHC—education, health and care—plans. However, I have a twinge of disappointment about the fact that apparently those who want to go on to university will not have access to those plans. I share the Committee’s concern that we need greater clarity over what this provision should look like for the 19 to 25 age group and how the local offer should be structured in this regard. We have made great efforts in the draft Care and Support Bill to ensure that those who wish to attend university can take their social care package with them from their home local authority to where they seek to go to university. That was a bold and ambitious move that excited many young people, and I want to make sure that what we do in this Bill has the same level of sophistication.

Equally, I urge Ministers to look again at the issue I raised in an intervention—how we treat disabled young people who have a health need but no specific educational need. I realise that it is very difficult to place duties on the NHS. None the less, having had such a revolutionary Bill that is going to change the landscape, it would be a shame if we missed this opportunity to get it right for all our young people.

One of the big things that excited me about the Green Paper was that it finally tackled the issue of transition—the cliff edge that many young people, and their families, come to when they transfer from child services to adult services, whether they be wheelchair services, community and mental health services, or so many other services. As people reach the age of 16, child services start to tail off and there is never any confidence that adult services will then kick in. People get very concerned about that. I urge Ministers to embrace this opportunity to resolve that cliff edge. Families have a fear of the unknown because of the threat of uncertainty and fragmentation. On my reading of the Bill, children with health needs but not educational needs will not get an EHC plan. That is wrong given the spirit of the Green Paper.

I support charities such as Together for Short Lives, which represents the children’s hospice sector, and the Communications Trust, which represents people with augmentative and alternative communication, where interaction between health care and education is not just important but crucial to the role played by the machines that assist them.

I should like finally to focus on clause 69, which seeks to exclude a particular group of people for whom we, as legislators, have responsibility—people in custody in the youth justice system. Again, on my reading of the Bill—I am happy to be corrected—those in youth custody will be specifically excluded from having an EHC plan and will be frozen in a no man’s land.

[Debbie Abrahams]

Is it not the case that children who are in detention are more likely to have special educational needs than those in the population as a whole, and so denying them access to support in the Bill is a real discrimination against that group?

[Paul Maynard]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention; she is right. We must recognise that the Minister has moved substantially on the issue, but it is still important that clause 69 specifically recognises this group. Communication delays and speech and language needs lie at the heart of the offending behaviour of many of these young people, and it seems perverse to exclude them, because that will not help their rehabilitation.

Having picked out every bit of the Bill that I do not like or disagree with, it is important that I emphasise how important it is, how much I welcome it, and how pleased I am that this Minister will pilot it through, because he has a very strong personal commitment to and excellent understanding of these issues. I have great confidence that as the Bill goes through Committee much of what I am highlighting can be teased out, made clear and made fit for purpose. I want us to remember that the Green Paper raised such hopes among disabled charities, organisations and young people, who thought that it was the moment to make sure that Warnock was built on and, indeed, that many of Warnock’s inadequacies were corrected.

I welcome what the Minister has been trying to do and what I know he will continue to do. I even welcome the constructive comments from Labour Front Benchers and the shadow Secretary of State. This should not be a partisan issue—an opportunity to bash political parties over the head—because it is too important for that. I am sure that all of us in this Chamber have parents coming to our surgeries to try to get the support that their children need. This is our chance to work together to solve these problems so that in 30 years’ time we do not all have to come back again to try to make it right.

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

rose—

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I fear I must now call the Minister—I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Gentleman.

[Matthew Hancock]

In the very short time available, I shall first deal with the previous two speeches. I agree with every word spoken by my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) and am grateful for his intervention, but I disagree with almost everything that the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) said, not least because the Government’s measures will make his situation easier, and because changes other than where there is a special interest will no longer require consent in the same way. That will make his life easier.

[Paul Maynard]

The Twentieth Century Society has asked me to point out one of its concerns. There is no obligation to any planning authority to consult it, as an amenities society, rather than English Heritage. As the Minister may know, they have very different views on modern buildings. Will he reflect on that?

[Matthew Hancock]

I shall respond to that and to the questions from the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) in the same way, if I may.

Enforcement, local consultation—this deals with my hon. Friend’s concern—and the system for calling in are unchanged by the new clauses. There will be no addition of formality. That is unlikely—[Interruption.] That is not the intention. The new system will be less cumbersome than the current one.

On the question of what “conclusively presumed” until there is a “material change” means, “material change” means exactly what it says.

I echo what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare and add that there were 400 responses to the consultation, not least because of the amount of face-to-face discussions with Ministers at the time and the amount preparatory work.

On capacity, we will work with local planning authorities, but overall, the measures will reduce the burden on them. Currently, local planning authorities do not put a named individual in charge. In most cases, there is an IT system to ensure that proposals go through to somebody in good time.

Let me give the House an example of how the measures will help. British Waterways carried out 353 works to designated heritage assets in 2010-11. Some 164 required full applications, and 189 were performed after clearance to proceed without consent through correspondence with the local planning authority. We certainly do not want to water down the communication with local planning authorities that makes things easier.

I shall give some examples of the sorts of things that the provision will help. Technically, grouting within a listed property requires consent. I am sure that we can all agree that grouting is good and is the sort of thing that could be covered by a national agreement. Lock replacements—

History Teaching

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) on his well-chosen topic to start off the year. I am slightly in awe of the two fantastic historians in the room. It makes me rather nervous to offer any contribution, but in for a penny, in for a pound is the only attitude to take.

People with an interest in history cannot help realising that discussions about why we study it and what we should study inspire more vitriol among the historian community and more ink on the pages of our opinion magazines and newspapers than almost any other subject. My hon. Friend has set his topic commendably wide, but rather than rehearsing the undergraduate essays on “Why study history?” that I wrote for my Oxbridge preparations, I will focus on why and how we should study it.

We all have a personal view on what history is, why we study it and why we learn it. After 10 years of studying it, just as I was about to leave university, it finally taught me how to think properly—a useful lesson that I like to think that I have carried with me into this place, although opponents may disagree. History is also a study of the consequences of human nature. As a subject, it is not unique in teaching us how to think properly, form an argument and judge and assess evidence—other topics can do that, too—but it brings an additional benefit: it comes with a body of knowledge that allows us to understand why we are where we are, which is fundamental.

I realise that there are some, perhaps wishing to make mischief, who define the Conservative party as a bunch of conservatives with a small c obsessed by our narrative history and constantly seeking that golden thread. That does not interest me. I would far rather focus on what history should not consist of. I have no desire to see children sitting in a classroom chanting their regnal dates as though they were times tables. It is like having a wardrobe full of coat hangers with no clothes hanging on them. I am not sure that I could recite the kings and queens of England with any great accuracy.

Sir Lewis Namier identified elections as the locks on the great canal of British history. He was right, but there is no point in being able to recite every significant general election if we cannot talk about the water that flowed through those locks and the changes that came with them. I would love to see Sir Lewis Namier applying his comparative biography techniques to the current Government and Opposition Front Benchers. He might show some interesting comparisons with what we occasionally read in the press.

Nor should history be only about entertainment—horrible histories, blood and gore, and who killed whom in the Tower of London. That is entertaining, but what does it teach us? I am not sure that it teaches us much, other than how to have fun. History is not about teleology, a national story or just a narrative, and it is certainly not about emoting. I despair when students who visit the House of Commons are asked to write essays about what it might have felt like to be a roundhead, a cavalier or a soldier in the trenches and so on, but have no idea of the context of what they are being asked to empathise with. If they are writing as a soldier in the trenches, they do not know why they are there, what led them there or the end result; it is all about empathising. I sometimes suspect that it is almost an excuse to go on a day trip to the Imperial War museum.

History can be a useful tool. It should not just be about great men and personalities. I hold my hand up as being guilty of studying Weimar Germany for GCSE, A-level and my degree. By the time I took my degree, I could almost recite the name of every Reichstag member in 1932. That was not exactly helpful; it simply showed that it is possible to end up as an anorak, knowing more and more about less and less.

What we admire in good history writing or a good university history course is not necessarily what we should admire in a school syllabus. Often, it is hard to throw off what we acquired in our later years when thinking what we should be trying to achieve in our school system. I spent a happy Christmas indulging myself in the 24-hour existence of Carpatho-Ruthenia, which lasted for most of my Boxing day reading. Although it is a fantastic piece of historical research from Norman Davies, it is not something that I would want to inflict on a group of 11-year-olds.

The question then becomes: should we compel certain periods or topics on a history syllabus? Do we believe that history has a didactic purpose? It is fair to say that many people who teach history have strong, often political views and that, naturally, part of what they want to communicate to their pupils is an enthusiasm for the topic and the period. I cannot remember a single one of my history teachers who did not allow a slight degree of political opinion to sneak out in whatever period they were teaching. Perhaps that is understandable, and it is not always a bad thing, but there are dangers in trying to use school history teaching to communicate values. That is my big fear. Ultimately, history is not about communicating values; it is about communicating skills.

The first, last and only time that I ever studied Anglo-Saxon history was during my first week at secondary school, when we spent a week trying to work out who was buried at Sutton Hoo. I think I came down in favour of King Raedwald. I was probably wrong; we still have no idea, I am sure. I have no desire to go back and read anything more about Anglo-Saxon history, but that one week reminded me that what we are trying to do is assess evidence, reach conclusions and construct an argument. Those are the basic and essential skills that we must absorb when we teach history in schools.

[Rehman Chishti]

I support my hon. Friend’s point. In society now, a fundamental concern is the failure in literacy over the years. Does he agree that history provides a vital opportunity to develop a sustained, lengthy argument, which helps improve literacy?

[Paul Maynard]

I entirely agree. One of my great frustrations in life is that I discovered how to write an essay only in my last term at university. Unfortunately, it came a bit too late to enhance fully my learning experience during my entire education.

We have to be careful that we do not turn our history lessons and our final history exams—after all, what matters ultimately is what we test—into some sort of quiz or series of multiple choice questions. I have grave reservations about some A-levels. It is to my eternal shame that I got a grade A at A-level politics by just walking in off the street and sitting the exam. I failed to study the subject during the sixth form; I just took it for the fun of it and thought I might get a grade E. It seemed like a fun thing to do. I shocked both myself and the school’s head of politics by getting an A, largely because the exam was based entirely on general knowledge as far as I could make out. It asked questions like, “Tick next to the date of the last general election,” but I do not think that that was something that needed to be studied.

I think that the skills that history teaches us should be made compulsory up to the age of 16. I support my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood entirely on that point. It is a tragedy that far too many children miss out on the opportunity to study history. We do not need to make history frightening or scary, or obsess about the clichés and the grand narrative of the golden thread of British history.

I represent two seaside towns, the history of which, if we tried to comprise the whole of British history, would not start until 1800, because before that not much was built on Blackpool North and Cleveleys, other than a few mud huts here or there. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) is pulling a face at me as though to say that I am wrong—that would not surprise me—so perhaps the correct date is 1730. None the less, there is immense enthusiasm in Blackpool for local history. We have community heritage champions who, although they are often older people who did not have the chance to study history in the way that we would all perhaps like to do so, get really excited at the chance to learn new oral history techniques.

My constituency has a Jewish cemetery. We no longer have a Jewish community to speak of, but people are fascinated by the cemetery and what it tells them about the sort of people who were active in Blackpool in its heyday. It would be a fantastic tool for local children to learn about the area in which they live. I am a strong supporter of using local history as a way of making history interesting for those who study it.

As ever, however, we cannot look at just the baubles on the Christmas tree. There is no point in teaching children about the things that interest and entertain them unless they understand those lock gates on the canals of both British and European history. Until we understand how it all links together, I do not believe that history will achieve the goal that it should be setting itself. We should interest people, but we should not exclude them from fully understanding what makes the country in which they live what it is today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for making those points. She is absolutely right that the wider provision not just of trained music teachers, but of musical instruments will ensure not just that more children have access to the greatest of all art forms, but that more children as a result do better in every other subject.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

I am sure the Secretary of State is aware of the excellent Blackpool Music Service, which has won national awards for bringing music provision to children who would otherwise not be able to afford it. As we debate the role of local education authorities alongside the new aims of academies, does he not agree that such co-ordination is a role that local authorities can still play, adding value to the work of all schools in their local area?

[Michael Gove]

That is a typically acute point by my hon. Friend; he is absolutely right. In many cases, though not all, county music services do a superb job. One of the reforms that will be central to our national music plan is a way of making sure that the best county music services can do more while those that are weaker can have the service they provide supplanted by someone who is in a better position to raise standards for all children.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather]

We recognise that local authorities throughout the country are having to make difficult decisions, just as the Government are. However, money is not always well spent at the moment. For example, much money is wasted on the adversarial system, with parents unnecessarily going through tribunals. There is often a real push to get expensive independent provision that can be a drain on local authorities’ resources when, if we could get some of the necessary health care delivered earlier, parents would not necessarily push to go all the way to the expense of independent provision. A lot more can be done to spend the money that we have better.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for the Green Paper, which is a wonderful document. However, may I draw her attention to Tourette’s, which appears to have been lumped in with many other developmental disorders, when it is specifically a neurological disorder? That perpetuates many of the concerns of people with Tourette’s about how society treats them.

[Sarah Teather]

The issue of Tourette’s and ensuring that we provide for children and young people with that condition is extremely important. If my hon. Friend has specific concerns about the way in which the Green Paper tackles it, I would be grateful if he wrote to me. I will ensure that that is taken into account as we move on.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman has the brass neck to quote the PISA figures when they show that on his watch the standard of education which was offered to young people in this country declined relative to our international competitors. Literacy, down; numeracy, down; science, down: fail, fail, fail. I am surprised that he has the brass neck to stand here and to say that working-class children should not study modern foreign languages, should not study science, should not study history and should not study geography. If it is good enough for the likes of him, why should it not be good enough for working-class children elsewhere? Why is he pulling up the drawbridge on social mobility? Why is he saying that they are only fit to be hewers of wood and drawers of water rather than university graduates like you and me, Mr Speaker? Rank hypocrisy!

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

While I entirely accept the Secretary of State’s point that RE is compulsory, it is not obligatory to sit the GCSE. Does he agree that the very many faith schools where RE is compulsory are thereby penalised in the calculation of their English baccalaureate achievement?

[Michael Gove]

I appreciate the care with which my hon. Friend puts his question. I also appreciate the fact that he has been a very strong advocate for faith schools in his own constituency, including St Mary’s, whose cause he has championed with particular eloquence. Many schools will want to offer RE as a GCSE, and indeed we would encourage them to do so, but the core element of the English baccalaureate relates to five subjects which we believe are the essential academic knowledge that students should be able to master. The news from the Russell group of universities last week that the subjects that we have chosen for the English baccalaureate are the subjects that they expect students to have if they are to go on to leading universities ensures that there is an appropriate match between schools and universities in advancing social mobility rather than seeing it decline, as happened over the past 13 years.

Education Maintenance Allowance

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

rose—

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

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend represents a constituency with one of the highest take-up rates of EMA in the country, and he is absolutely right. Some of the sneering comments about recipients of EMA show a complete failure to understand what their lives are like and underestimate the determination of those young people to make a success of themselves and to get skills that will stand them in good stead throughout the rest of their lives.

[Paul Maynard]

rose—

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend brings me back to the point that I was making: EMA is not just about participation, as the Government say, but about helping people to make the best of themselves when they are in education and bringing out their full potential. The Government’s one-sided argument about a 90% dead-weight cost fails to acknowledge that it helps young people with one of the biggest challenges in life—to shine academically. It is very hard to put a value on that. It might open doors that would otherwise have remained closed.

Crucially, EMA supports the important principle of student choice for all in post-16 education. It means that the best sixth-form colleges, which are often some distance away, particularly in rural areas, are within the reach of young people. In most places, they do not get help with travel and transport costs, so EMA means that the doors of those fantastic institutions are opened to young people from ordinary working-class backgrounds.

[Paul Maynard]

It is kind of the right hon. Gentleman to give way, I am sure. I listened carefully to the powerful case studies of people he has met over recent weeks. I am concerned, however, that he might be out of touch with some of his constituents, and that he does not fully understand the needs of those with complex needs. Is he seriously arguing that a capped payment of £30 a week will fully meet the needs of the people he described? In that case, why does he not support a discretionary learner support fund that would allow individual schools to tailor provision to the needs of their students? Why is he so scared of that?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We must have shorter interventions, because many Members want to speak.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

It ought to be a pleasure to discuss in the Chamber ways in which we can overcome barriers to access to further and higher education. It ought to be a pleasure to discuss how I can tackle the deprivation in my constituency, but sadly, having sat here for most of the afternoon, I can conclude only that debate in the House has ceased to be a pleasure. The discourtesy and personal rudeness from Opposition Members demonstrates why Parliament and this Chamber have lost credibility in the eyes of people outside.

It is extremely important that we discuss how to overcome barriers to accessing further and higher education, whether we believe that scrapping education maintenance allowance is the right way to do that, or whether there are alternatives that we can look at. EMA was introduced in 1998 in the comprehensive spending review as “an incentive” to encourage more people to stay in education. It was an experiment—a new departure for this country—and one I watched with interest.

After a few years, the then Government decided it was time to try something else—to introduce compulsory education from 16 to 18. Young people were to be obliged to stay in education until the age of 18, so why would we want to continue with an incentive to do something that would become compulsory? Indeed, we are supporting the aspiration of the previous Government to expand compulsory education. We have increased the budget for 16-to-19 education by 1.15%. We are funding an extra 62,000 places in the 16-to-19 sector. I am disappointed that the Labour party does not feel able to support that and would rather retain EMA—an instrument that I believe, the more I discuss it with people in my constituency, is a blunt one.

I object strongly to EMA for a number of reasons, which I hinted at in my intervention on the shadow Secretary of State. The allowance is capped at £30 a week. It is related solely to household income, yet I speak to many people in my constituency who are eligible for EMA but whose needs far exceed £30 a week. If we listened to the Opposition, we would think that EMA was the answer to every social problem.

[Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

If £30 is not enough for people in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, why is the solution simply to take it all away? I am not sure that I follow his line of argument.

[Paul Maynard]

The hon. Gentleman’s intervention demonstrates why he should have been in the Chamber earlier to listen to the debate—[Interruption.] He was not here when I made my intervention. The hon. Gentleman asks a question, however, so I am happy to explain. Rather than having an education maintenance allowance that is capped at £30 a week, it would be far better to have a discretionary learner support fund sited in the college that the pupil attends, where the principal and teachers best understand the needs of that pupil and can therefore address their particular barriers. I do not accept that household income has any meaningful correlation with the barriers to accessing further education that someone faces.

The hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) pulls a face at me, so let me explain why. Blackpool and Fylde college is on Ashfield road in my constituency. Right at its front door is a large council estate where some of the most deprived residents in my constituency live. Do they have the same needs as someone in a slightly higher income bracket living two or three miles further up the road? They do not. Household income is not the indicator that must be examined when determining the barriers that must be overcome.

The hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) who, like me, is a passionate defender of young carers, was right to point out that there are groups of young people who face complex hurdles if they are to access further education. I do not accept that the education maintenance allowance is the magic wand that Labour Members seem to believe it is. I join other Government Members who have asked for further information about what form the discretionary learner support fund will take and how it will enable those with complex needs to access further education, because it is vital that they do so.

Labour Members cannot keep simply backing structures rather than people. It is horrifying that, in a modern democracy, we have a Labour party that still likes to think that it can keep people under its thumb, say, “You’ll get £30 a week and no more; we’re going to keep you where you are,” and then expect people to be grateful. I want a further and higher education system in which all people can participate without being restricted by a barrier of £30 a week and no more. The discretionary learner support fund will enable an individual student’s needs to be properly assessed and met, because we will focus on what the need really is, not on the mythical universal provision for which the Labour party hanker, albeit not because Labour Members wish to support their constituents any more. I have never before seen a political party further from the people whom it seeks to represent or that has so forgotten the people from whom it allegedly came.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

Who is being rude now?

[Paul Maynard]

I am sorry that the hon. Lady says that, but I can say only what I observe in the Chamber. I am saddened that democracy has reached such a level.

I am running out of time, but I leave hon. Members with this thought: in this day and age, we need to ensure that every person who wishes to go into further education is able to do so, and this Government will enable that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

The Welsh position with respect to regional development is different from the position in England, but I will be going to Wales shortly, together with the Secretary of State for Wales, to talk about how we can promote manufacturing and enterprise there.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

T3. Last night I had the pleasure of meeting three community learning champions from Blackpool at an event promoted and organised by NIACE—the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education—but funded by this Department. Does the Minister of State agree that money spent on informal adult learning needs to be valued and assessed for the benefits that it brings, because of its life-changing impact, and that money spent on informal adult learning is money that does not need to be spent on either the welfare system or social care?

[The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning (Mr John Hayes)]

I think it was Yeats who said that education is lighting a fire, not filling a pail. I want the light of adult learning to burn brightly across the whole of Britain, which is why, against expectations and the predictions of our critics, we protected the adult learning budget, of more than £200 million, in the spending review. That light will burn as long as we are in government, and as long as I am the Minister.