Schools White Paper

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

One of the most morale-destroying assignments that I have had in this House has been to read this White Paper. It is riddled with jargon, with ungrammatical structures and with split infinitives. For this to come from the Department for Education is particularly unacceptable. I come from a family of education. I taught for a short time after I left university, and two of my sisters were teachers all their working lives. I know the challenge of education at first hand. Having read this White Paper, I do not believe that the Department knows what that challenge is.

This 122-page White Paper contains a huge number of issues that we could deal with today, but it is inevitable that we shall concentrate on the forced academisation policy. There is no justification for it, and that is illustrated by the fact that it started in my constituency during the last Parliament. An effort was made to force Wright Robinson College in my constituency to become an academy, and the only reason that that did not happen was that the then Secretary of State—now the Secretary of State for Justice—ordered the withdrawal of a warning notice that would have forced Wright Robinson to become an academy.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree with my constituent Glendra Read, a governor at a school that has fought academisation before, when she says that

“If schools and parents are meant to have ‘freedom’, then our freedom of choice is to remain within”

local authority control?

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

That is a valid point.

Wright Robinson College was rebuilt under the Labour Government at a cost of £47 million and is a model structure. I quote from a letter that I received from the headteacher last month:

“On the evening of Tuesday 2 March 2016, I attended a meeting with my Deputies and the Ofsted Team, to receive their detailed feedback on the Section 5 Inspection that took place on 1 and 2 March 2016. I then experienced the proudest moment in my entire professional career when we were told that the College had received the full five ‘Outstanding Judgements’ against the criteria of the new and challenging Ofsted Framework.”

That would not have happened if the Government had had their way.

There was an attempt to turn Birchfields Primary School in my constituency into an academy, but I worked with the staff and governors to prevent that and we won. We do not always win. Not long ago, another school in my constituency, now Cedar Mount Academy, was forced to become an academy in a particularly odious manner because it was obliged to merge with schools that are not even in the city of Manchester. From that came a person called Dana Ross-Wawrzynski, who turned the whole situation into what she called “Bright Futures” for which she pays herself more than £200,000 a year. That is what academisation is about: people making money out of an unnecessary structure that does not benefit pupils.

We read in the White Paper that the agglomerations of schools that would be put into academy groups are in some cases not even in the same county. It is nothing to do with locality, local feeling or local sentiment, and parents will have no voice at all. The Government are to create something called “Parent Portal” through which it is alleged that parents will have a voice, but they will not. They will have no voice in the decision as to which school their child will attend or in the quality of the child’s education. The White Paper offers remedies, one of which is to go to the Department for Education. However, if I write to the Secretary of State, she will send me a courteous letter, but she will not deal with the issue that the parent has raised, because she will say that she deals only with policy, not individual or family issues. Another course parents can take is to go to an ombudsman. I worked for Harold Wilson when he created the ombudsman system, but can anyone tell me when somebody went to an ombudsman and actually got a result that improved the situation?

The structure the Government are setting out in this White Paper is compulsory. It is not going to give local authorities any voice. It contains a section about the voice of local authorities, but if we actually read it, we see that local authorities do not actually have any voice, except that they are assigned the role of making sure that kids get to a school. Well, that is not going to happen with an independent academy run by people who are paid hundreds of thousands of pounds—they will tell the local authority to get lost.

This is not simply about the local authority; it is also about the fact that the Government are going to create 500 free schools. We have free schools in my constituency. We have free schools run by the Church of England, and they are very good. We have free schools run by the Catholic Church, and they are very good. The Muslim community wants to be involved as well, but it will not get involved in this because we will be faced with an edict from this Government, who do not care about public education at all. That is the issue: academies are not about public education; academies are about giving a small number of people authority over millions of people.

Three-tier Education

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered three-tier education.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I would also like to express my gratitude to Mr Speaker for granting this debate.

I called for this debate because, since being elected last May, I have been contacted by many parents asking for my advice and guidance on the advantages and disadvantages of middle schools; by parents lobbying either for or against their local first school’s attempt to change its age range; and by teachers and headteachers of middle schools concerned about the long-term viability of their own schools, especially if feeder first schools are adding years. There is a lot of confusion about the value and long-term viability of the three-tier system.

I hope to use this debate, first, to raise those issues and to seek the Minister’s guidance on the Government’s position on whether a two-tier or three-tier system is best for our children. Secondly, if an area or individual school wishes to move away from a three-tier to a two-tier system, I seek guidance on how that can best be achieved and to confirm what processes and consultations are considered best practice, based on the experience of transitions elsewhere in the country. I should clarify that by “three-tier system”, I mean a system that contains first schools, middle schools and high schools, and by “two-tier system”, I mean one that contains primary and secondary schools.

By way of background, middle schools in the United Kingdom have had something of a chequered history. Until 1964, education authorities were required to provide for just primary and secondary schools, with a transfer at the age of 11. The Education Act 1964 changed that and made provision for schools to allow for different ages of transfer, which led to the creation of middle schools. Although the Government did not specifically encourage the introduction of middle schools, they did not discourage them either. The schools appeared in a variety of forms, as suited each authority. By 1981, more than 1,800 middle schools were open in nearly 50 local education authorities, from Devon to Northumberland. The patchy way in which the schools developed led to the variety of provision that exists today.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. He is making an interesting speech. He mentioned 1964 and 1981. When I asked the House of Commons Library for background on this issue, it said that there is virtually nothing. Is he aware of the 1967 Plowden report? That was the one source that the Library found for me, and it is inconclusive. I congratulate him on clarifying this matter, as it is a mystery to us all.

[Nigel Huddleston]

I, too, reached out to the Library when researching for the debate. There is not a huge amount of information. The hon. Lady is right. One of the issues that we face is whether the three-tier or the two-tier system is better. The evidence is inconclusive, which is one of the reasons why I called for this debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nigel Huddleston]

I could not agree more. Some middle schools are thriving—there are raving fans of middle schools up and down the country—but their long-term viability is in question. There is also the issue of transfers into secondary schools. Again, I hope the Minister can provide guidance on that.

The confusion that I mentioned earlier led to the development of all sorts of middle schools with different age ranges. There are currently six different types of middle schools based on age range alone. During the past two decades, there has been a clear move away from middle schools towards a two-tier system, and the number of middle schools has fallen from more than 1,800 in 1981 to under 200 in recent years. Today, there are not 50 but 17 education authorities that have middle schools, including my county of Worcestershire. The first middle schools in Worcestershire opened in 1969, and there are still 20 in the county. That is the third highest number of middle schools of any local education authority in the country; only Northumberland and Central Bedfordshire have more. There are 14 local authority maintained middle schools and six middle school academies in Worcestershire, including five in my constituency.

There is also a two-tier system of Catholic primary and secondary schools, which serve Droitwich, Evesham and Pershore. I should declare that my own children attend a local Catholic state school—St Marys in Evesham, which is a great school. It is a primary, rather than a first school, which feeds into a secondary school, so I am familiar with this system. I went through a two-tier system in Lincolnshire and attended a local primary school before going on to the local comprehensive. Although I am personally a product of a two-tier state system—a system that served me well—I am not biased one way or the other. Academic and other reports extol the virtues of both the two-tier and three-tier systems.

Since moving to and representing Worcestershire, I have met many raving fans of both the two-tier and the three-tier systems, and many parents express great affection for the middle schools in my constituency. Many went to middle schools themselves and are enjoying their own children’s experience at the very same schools. Many say that it was a more comfortable segue into secondary education, because it was less intimidating and more friendly than the otherwise potentially intimidating jump to a large secondary school with more than a thousand pupils. Most middle schools have just a few hundred pupils and benefit from nearly everyone—both pupils and teachers—knowing one another.

The National Middle Schools’ Forum said:

“Middle Schools occupy the formative central ground in the education process. They are uniquely placed with their opportunities for creative flexibility of organisation to meet the needs of pupils through a time of considerable and wide ranging intellectual, physical and emotional development.”

On results, it said:

“A distinctive and valuable feature of Middle Schools is that they span Key Stages Two and Three. This way of organising children’s education is unique in that the assessments at the end of Key Stage Two and the work which follows them all take place within one school, rather than at the point of transfer.”

That is another valid point.

[Dr Huq]

In an adjournment debate in 2009, my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) stated that there is no clear link between a particular school organisational arrangement and educational attainment. It might be useful to note that in our quest to find the best model.

[Nigel Huddleston]

Again, I could not agree more. I seek additional guidance from the Minister. After all, one of the Department for Education’s responsibilities is to give guidance on the best options for our children’s educational outcomes. The academic and other research is confusing for Members of Parliament, including me and the hon. Lady, and also for parents.

I have talked about the advantages of middle schools, but some parents in my constituency told me that they are concerned that transferring schools during key stages can be disruptive. In particular, transferring as late as 13 to a high school leaves less time to make informed GCSE decisions. Other parents told me straightforwardly of the logistical challenges of having to drop their children of different ages off at two or three different schools that are often quite far apart. There are clearly many arguments for and against a three-tier system, and one’s personal experience comes into play. I would appreciate it if the Minister can clarify the Government’s current preference.

There is also discussion about transitions. The issue of whether a two or three-tier system is best has come up again recently in my constituency, specifically because of moves by some first schools to add a year 6. The first schools have perfectly rational reasons for wishing to expand and do that, but an inevitable, if unintended, consequence of such moves is to undermine the long-term viability of the middle schools, as their pupil head count will inevitably fall. I would therefore ask for the Minister’s guidance on the Government’s recommendations on how best to manage any transitionary process. If the head count at the remaining middle schools falls, they may seek to convert to a secondary school, so I would also seek the Minister’s guidance on how the Government will support such moves, both financially and otherwise.

In areas where some schools are maintained schools, controlled by the local authority, and others are more independent academies, that mix of statuses and processes can sometimes add to the confusion in the debate about adding years and converting. From talking to parliamentary colleagues, the consensus seems to be that an open debate, proper co-ordination between schools in and across pyramids, and good consultation, engaging parents and teachers from all impacted schools, are all key elements of any successful transition.

In Worcestershire, we are currently not having a full and open debate on the long-term viability of the two-tier system versus the three-tier system. Perhaps we should be, because I fear that more and more piecemeal changes may lead to some middle schools closing without us having a proper debate about whether that was intended.

I am aware that the Government publish advice and guidance for schools that wish to expand or change their age ranges, and that a full business case is required for significant changes, such as changing the age range of a school by three years or more. I understand that the processes are slightly different for academies versus maintained schools, and that the guidance for maintained schools is currently being reviewed. I am very interested to hear from the Minister what changes may be made as a result of that review. Given the Government’s announcement in today’s Budget of the academisation of all schools, I also suspect that further guidance may well be forthcoming.

As part of the review, however, I would respectfully ask the Minister to consider the protocols on consultations carefully, particularly when an area contains a mix of both academy and grant-maintained schools. I am keen that the wishes of parents of children in schools both directly and indirectly impacted by any changes are considered. At the end of the day, the wishes of local parents should play the key role in deciding on significant changes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huq]

In the Budget just now, we heard about devolution. The Minister says there is a role for local authorities, but if I understood correctly, schools are going to become academies, which seems to contradict the principle of devolution. Perhaps he can help me understand this better.

[Mr Gibb]

Yes, of course. The announcement today in the Budget—we will be saying more about this tomorrow in the White Paper—is that all schools will become academies, or be in the process of becoming academies, by 2020. Until then, a large number of schools will still be maintained schools, and if the hon. Lady can be a little patient, I will come to the position regarding academies in a moment. None the less, we still need guidance about the position of three-tier systems when a number or some of those schools are maintained schools.

Where organisational change is proposed, we expect the local authority to agree with schools how any changes will be funded. The Department’s role is to hold schools accountable for the quality of education they provide and not to mandate any particular configuration of tiers. Supporting local authorities to create sufficient school places remains one of the Government’s top priorities. Local authorities are responsible for ensuring that there are enough school places for children in their area. We are spending £23 billion on school buildings in this Parliament to create 600,000 new school places— we created nearly 500,000 in the last Parliament—and we intend to open 500 new free schools and to address essential maintenance needs with that money. That delivers on our manifesto commitment to invest a further £7 billion to create new school places between 2015 and 2021.

Through the free schools programme, we are creating greater local choice by allowing existing schools and other groups to be able to establish new schools, in particular where additional high-quality places are needed. Those include not only traditional primary and secondary schools, but 55 university technical colleges, 72 all-through schools and 25 16-19 free schools that are either open or in the pipeline.

The three-tier system—in which school provision is organised into lower, middle and upper schools rather than the primary and secondary model—has been established, as my hon. Friend said, in areas of the country such as Worcestershire for many years. The number of groups operating the three-tier system has reduced in recent times, mainly because local authorities have restructured their provision as need dictates. There are still, however, over 68,000 children currently being educated in middle schools in England.

The Secretary of State only has a role in decisions to change the age range of a school when that is proposed for an academy. She will only make such a decision at the request of an academy trust.

When a local authority decides to move from a three-tier to a two-tier structure, it is important that careful plans are in place to minimise any negative impact on the performance and viability of other schools in the area, which is something that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire expressed concern about. Local authorities proposing such a change must follow the established statutory process set out in schedule 3 of the School Organisation (Prescribed Alterations to Maintained Schools) (England) Regulations 2013. In practice, an authority-wide reorganisation often involves months of informal consultation and research before the formal statutory process is undertaken. That process ensures that such decisions are widely consulted on and the views of stakeholders and others are valued.

There are four separate stages of the statutory process. First, local authorities are required to publish their proposals in a local newspaper and at the school site. Secondly, a period of formal consultation has to take place for at least four weeks. Thirdly, a decision is usually made by the local authority. Only after those three steps have been taken can the proposal be implemented.

Student Maintenance Grants

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

Until my election in May, I had spent all my adult life in universities, from being the recipient of a full grant, with my fees entirely paid, in 1990 at Cambridge University to teaching at Kingston University until my election. I have also taught at a red-brick university. I contend that at all these categories of university—all seats of learning in this country—the student bodies will be poorer as a result of the abolition of grants, both socio-culturally and financially. The kind of students we are talking about in respect of this measure are not the “Brideshead Revisited” ones, they are not Neil from “The Young Ones” and they are not even Student Grant from Viz; they are people such as my constituents at the University of West London. They are people such as Josh Goddard, its student union president, who has been here since 1 o’clock today and who has told me that he is the first person in his family to go to university and he would not have done it without a maintenance grant. He said that he represents the students of the present but he also wants the students of the future all to have the chance to go to university. As well as the NUS, the Sutton Trust has condemned these changes, as they narrow the talent pool of who will be able to participate in higher education in the future.

I think of the students I taught at Kingston University—this was before the changes—who seemed often to be coming in between the burger-flipping shifts. The Conservative party puts great store by being the party of fiscal responsibility, but how does it reconcile that with saddling young people with £53,000 of debt? We have heard about the words of Martin Lewis, who was tasked with leading the taskforce in 2011. He is normally a financial man, and he is not a politician. He says:

“The regulator would not allow any commercial lender to make a change to its terms this way.”

It is surely bad governance. We are dealing with a case of double standards here. These people signed up to one experience and even after they have signed their loan agreements they are seeing the goalposts moved.

The Minister has a lot of explaining to do. Where was this on page 35 of the Conservative manifesto? None of us has seen it in the small print. What will the transitional arrangements be? What happened to the review promised in 2014 for Muslim students who want sharia-compliant student finance, given that this measure is coming in now? As we know, this has been done with no proper debate. It is only because Labour Members have forced this debate today that we are discussing it at all. The Government want to shunt it through using their new favourite toy, the statutory instrument. If their sums are wrong, the books should not be balanced on the backs of students. We have seen that the NHS bursary for nurses has gone and the education maintenance allowance has been removed. If the Government have a shortfall, it should not be students who are taking on that burden.

Feminism in the School Curriculum

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

Last year’s AQA board A-level exam paper for politics included the question:

“‘Legislation has failed to deliver equality of outcome in respect of gender and ethnicity.’ Discuss.”

Given that the Department for Education’s draft revised version of the A-level politics course was published quietly last year with sections on feminism and gender equality removed, there is a real danger that the issue will be more significant than ever before for future students and, paradoxically, banned in a future version.

I declare an interest, having taught at universities: I taught humanities and social sciences in the red brick and ex-polytechnic sectors between 1998 and my election in May. In my experience, feminism, in all its different varieties—first wave, second wave, radical, black, post-feminism—was always one of the most popular topic options for students, both men and women. The apparent abolition of the whole lot of them in politics courses—how odd that sounds—and their hasty reinstatement, if we are to believe what we are hearing on the grapevine, demonstrates confusion in Government thinking.

As an educator as well as an MP and a woman, I say that any dilution of feminism from the intellectual armoury with which young people need to be equipped to face the modern world should be strongly resisted. In fact, there is an argument to embed and entrench it much more deeply across the whole breadth of the curriculum, beyond the obvious disciplines of sociology and politics.

This tinkering arose in the other place before the Christmas recess. The Education Minister there declared that exam boards were sifting through responses to a public consultation. We still do not know and are none the wiser about where we are with that. The shadow Education spokesman, Lord Watson, noted a “pattern developing”. Earlier this year, we saw women composers put on the A-level music syllabus for the first time, because of a campaign by my constituent Jessy McCabe, who has travelled here to witness the debate tonight. Lord Watson cheekily asked whether

“the Government have any plans to drop the female reproductive system from the biology syllabus”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 22 December 2015; Vol. 767, c. 2448.]

There is a serious point, however, because we must not write women’s perspectives and contributions out of our political history.

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing tonight’s debate, which matters greatly to her. Does she agree that the fact that the Secretary of State for Education, who also holds the women’s brief, has ignored the place of women in the curriculum is a travesty, especially as she sits at the very heart of Government policy making?

[Dr Huq]

I completely agree. You couldn’t make it up. “Minister for Women abolishes feminism from politics” does not make for a very good headline.

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. I discovered feminism through doing my A-levels—not A-level politics, but A-level sociology—which opened my eyes to the inequality that women face. Does she agree that women’s voices are often silenced in political debates, and that seems to be a way to silence the women from the past as well as those of the future?

[Dr Huq]

My hon. Friend makes a very correct point, and anticipates part of my speech. Women’s studies should not just be for women; this matters to all of us.

The proposed syllabus implies that women do not belong in politics and that their contributions are not significant. That toxic message has been condemned roundly by loads of people, including the girl guides, whom one would not usually think of as a dangerous radical group. The Daily Telegraph, which is normally a loyal, cheerleading Conservative paper, has reported that there will be concessions after, in its words,

“plans to drop feminism backfire”.

I am encouraged by the story in The Independent on Sunday that feminism will be taught at A-level, and by a tweet from The Telegraph today saying that it will be made compulsory.

I would like assurances from the Minister about what is actually going on—to quote Donald Trump involuntarily, “What the hell is going on?”—because this should not be left for us to make inferences from press rumours and the Twittersphere. The Government must now be clear and confirm the number of women thinkers on the new syllabus, their names and whether feminism will be fully reinstated. This is not the first Government U-turn in matters curricular that I have witnessed since becoming an MP.

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

I must declare an interest as a strong feminist and as a member of the Fawcett Society. I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Does she agree that it is totally unacceptable that only one female political thinker is identified among the 16 political thinkers mentioned by name in the curriculum? Does that not clearly demonstrate the need for the continuation of feminism, particularly with a clear identification in relation to political education?

[Dr Huq]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. One out of 16 means 94% are men, which implies that women account for 6%, which is shameful and shocking given that we are 50% of the population. As I say, there is a strange sense of déjà vu, because the Government have also caved in over women composers on the music syllabus, so this has happened twice. On this particular feminist issue, another petition with close to 50,000 signatures has been organised by another constituent of mine. I am blessed to have such gender warrior constituents, both of whom are teenagers, but it should not be left to teenagers to write Government education policy. School kids should not be pointing out the error of the Government’s decisions again and again.

What are we talking about? Any good answer to an essay question should start with a definition of terms. The noble Lord Giddens from the other place calls feminism

“the struggle to defend and expand the rights of women”.

He traces its history back to the eighteenth century, citing the 1792 volume “A Vindication of the Rights of Women” by Mary Wollstonecraft. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) mentioned, she is the one female thinker who has survived on the key list in the draft syllabus.

Removing feminism from the curriculum is entirely incongruous with the claim the Prime Minister made across the Dispatch Box at Prime Minister’s questions to me only a few weeks ago that he is a feminist.

A-level politics covers other concepts that include sex and gender, gender equality and patriarchy. It covers a knowledge of the core ideas, doctrines and theories of feminist thought, traditions and distinctive features. When the Government announced plans to revise the politics A-level curriculum, that section had been completely removed, as had the ideologies of nationalism and multiculturalism. As the Minister is here, I would like to know the status of those concepts as well. The supposed compensation for the axing of feminism was the inclusion of a section on pressure groups. On a generous interpretation, feminism survives there in a reference to suffragists and suffragettes as examples of pressure groups—a lot of lateral thinking and mental gymnastics are needed there.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne mentioned the Fawcett Society. It has come out strongly against the proposals. It dates from Millicent Fawcett, whose work as a suffragist goes back to 1866. The Fawcett Society made a submission to the consultation to which the Government are yet to respond.

When this question arose in the other place, the Minister replied that those who want their feminism fix should do A-level sociology. It is unacceptable to think in that compartmentalised way. Feminism should be widened, not narrowed, within and between disciplines.

The mooted rewriting of history is nothing short of sinister. It is deleting women. The e-petition at Change.org, which has received close to 50,000 signatures, was started by my constituent June Eric-Udorie—another 17-year-old. It states:

“We must show women to be inspired by and be taught that the ideas of feminism and gender equality are important.”

It says that otherwise,

“we only get half the story.”

This is by no means the first time that the Conservative party has caved into sixth formers or the first time that Labour has held the Government to account on gender blindness and something has had to be cobbled together retrospectively.

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

I am delighted to be in a minority as a man participating in this debate. Recently on the Treasury Committee, we doubled women’s representation from one to two. That tells us something about this problem. Does my hon. Friend agree that when school groups visit Parliament, one of the things that we all need to do—I certainly do this—is to encourage women, people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, and people from other under-represented backgrounds to put themselves forward? Does she agree that the absence of feminism from A-level politics sends the worrying message that somehow politics is not for women?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huq]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. He makes an excellent point. Whenever I have school parties in and we do the Q and A session afterwards, the first thing they say is, “Why are there so few women here?” In some senses, we internalise this and treat it as normal because we work here every day, but to the outside world, the gender imbalance here is bizarre.

In 2016, women’s representation in politics and public life is still, as my hon. Friend points out, woefully inadequate. The contribution of women to our political history is vital. Some people argue that it should be much more her-story than history—get it? Learning about that is vital so that young people grow up knowing that it is not bizarre and far-fetched that women can contribute to our society and our country and can make history.

The Fawcett Society submission points out that the figures that my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne quoted equate to 94% of key thinkers being men. It states:

“Presenting men as the default political thinker…contributes to gendered stereotypes which limit women’s participation in politics. Only 29.4% of MPs are women, as are 33% of councillors, 35% of MSPs, 40% of AMs, and 19% of MLAs.”

As Labour Members have cautioned and as the noble Lord Watson has said, this proposal is part of a pattern. The Government’s policies are hugely unbalanced and damaging, with women bearing the brunt of the cuts. Some 81% of the “savings”—that euphemistic term—have been made from tax and benefit changes since 2010, for which women have paid the price. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) pointed out that his Committee has a good record of women members, but the Department for Education has only two women on its board and is one of the worst in Whitehall.

Over the Christmas break there were indications that the Education Secretary was considering adding more women to a list of political thinkers, but we need clarity on that. If what looks like a U-turn has occurred—we are in the dark about that—it has been forced to happen only because of Labour pressure. Last year my hon. Friends the Members for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) and for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) jointly wrote a letter to the Education Secretary, and co-signatories to that letter included Frances O’Grady from the TUC, Laura Bates of the Everyday Sexism project, and the president of the National Union of Teachers, Christine Blower—I believe she is a constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter). They urged the Government not to scrap feminism in the A-level politics syllabus, and stated:

“The new draft syllabus has all but erased any reference to feminism…This sends a very worrying message to both young men and young women that feminism has little to no place in politics”.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I thank my neighbour and hon. Friend for securing this debate. Does the fact that Edexcel has bowed to pressure from 17-year-old Jessy McCabe to include more women composers in the music curriculum send a strong message to the exam boards of other subjects—in particular politics and history—that we need more women on the curriculum and across the board?

[Dr Huq]

My hon. Friend puts it well. Jessy McCabe is with us this evening, and her e-petition—a very modern way of petitioning the Government—obtained nearly 4,000 signatures. When I pointed that out to the Prime Minister during Prime Minister’s questions, he congratulated her. However, that should not have been an afterthought. Why do these things go so far that they have to be brought back from the brink?

Last month, the Department for Education said that feminism could still be studied as part of the reforms to the A-level sociology curriculum, and that the proposed move

“tied in with school autonomy and trusting heads”.

It is not good enough to leave it to chance in that way. Teaching and learning strategy should enrich students because, as many Members have pointed out, feminism informs history and globalisation. This is not just one of those theoretical “isms” as many of these things are; feminism affects us all every day. As young people go on to study at university across different disciplines, having the compass of feminism and an understanding of unequal gender relations to navigate their path is critical, and we must make the classroom responsive to, and representative of, society. The syllabus should not be gender-blind, because that is denying reality. We could also include world thinkers on an expanded list, such as Simone de Beauvoir from France, or the American black feminist, bell hooks.

In the December debate in the other place, Lord Nash declared that the proposed new content for politics A-level was an improvement on the last one because for the first time it contained political ideologies. However, feminism was not one of the named ideologies, so that is a little inconsistent. The Department for Education justified the move on the grounds of giving more choice to schools, but to us it looked like freedom to downplay the historical contribution of female thinkers. It took reports on the website “BuzzFeed” over Christmas for us to have some inkling that movement was taking place, and such unofficial, if positive, statements, need substantiation tonight.

Today I tried to get clarity from the Department, and I rang up the parliamentary affairs section, which over Christmas was asking me, “What is going in your speech? ”—this is hot off the press, so I did not entirely know the content. I did, however, ask whether the rumours in The Independent on Sunday were true, and I was given the classic response, “The Minister will be laying out the Government’s position in the course of the debate.”

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

With the article in The Independent on Sunday, I did what one should not do and looked at the comments underneath. Some said, “Feminism equals hate”. I would not like to hazard a guess, but I suspect that those comments came from men. Does my hon. Friend agree that we really need to educate men as well as women about feminism? It is not just a women’s subject, and we need to clarify to men what feminism really means.

[Dr Huq]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. When The Guardian had a women’s page, I often wondered whether that meant the rest of the newspaper was for men. When academic departments teach women’s studies, it makes me think, “Does that mean everything else is for men?” She makes a powerful point very well. It is true what they say: one should never go below the line, where the comments from all the crazy people are. [Laughter.] Not that I am empowered to make a diagnosis. Sorry, where more exuberant people sometimes post before they have engaged their brain. No, before they have thought of the consequences of their exuberance. [Laughter.] Anyway, we are nearing the end.

An opinion piece in November in The Times Educational Supplement, the in-house journal for the teachers of our nation, advised readers to:

“use the topic of feminism in the delivery of subject content. In maths, look at the pay-gap. In science, explore the work of female scientists. In PE, explore the notions of ‘female’ and ‘male’ sports. Make gender an explicit part of teaching…Make them cry and make them angry. Then tell them your generation has failed them and it’s now on them to go out and change it for the better.”

This is all sound advice—from a male head of history at a school in Hertfordshire.

Any curriculum needs to be inclusive, balanced and pluralistic to foster mutual understanding between people of all backgrounds, genders, sexualities, ages, ethnicities, and all faiths and none. Sadly, this sorry shambles where a change is shelved—if that is what is going to happen; we are still waiting to hear—after it should never have got to the advanced state that it did in the first place, is not an isolated incident. A-level music has already been mentioned. A petition with nearly 4,000 signatures pointed out that out of 63 composers, there were zero women. That is even worse than one out of 16, which meant that 94% were men. We do not need a calculator to work out zero out of 63, even if my constituent Jessy McCabe reversed that situation.

On GCSE religious studies, Members may not have noticed—it slipped out at the very end of last year—that in November a landmark High Court judgment ruled in favour of three humanist families who challenged the Government’s removal of non-religious world views in their rewritten syllabus for that subject. In the judgment, a High Court judge stated that that was:

“a breach of the duty to take care that information or knowledge included in the curriculum is conveyed in a pluralistic manner.”

The British Humanist Association called it “a stunning victory” and pointed out that

“continuing to exclude the views of a huge number of Britons, in the face of majority public opinion and all expert advice, would only be to the detriment of education in this country and a shameful path to follow.”

I hope—dare I say pray, as we are talking about religion?—that history repeats itself in this House tonight and we see a U-turn. Women’s voices have in the past all too often been silenced. That was meant to have happened in the bad old days, before the right to vote and before the Equal Pay Act 1970. In 2016, we cannot allow women’s voices to continue to be silenced. As Mary Wollstonecraft, the one surviving woman from the draft syllabus, put it:

“I do not wish”—

women—

“to have power over men, but over themselves.”

How can women have power over themselves if they do not know the voices that have created the foundations on which they stand?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

Yes, and I will come to that in more detail shortly.

In addition to the reformed national curriculum and GCSEs, our reforms to A-levels are aimed at equipping all pupils with the knowledge and skills they need to progress to higher education. The proposed new content for the politics A-level will require for the first time that all students study some core political theories in detail. Students will be required to study liberalism, conservatism and socialism—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Yes, we left that in mainly because it is likely to become even more important as the Labour party struggles to find its heart. Students will be required to study those theories and the ideas of their key thinkers, which will enable them to understand these fundamental political theories and provide a foundation for the study of politics at university.

We recognise that the work of female political thinkers was not given due weight in the draft content. The final content will set out clearly those female political thinkers whose work should be studied. Suggestions have included Simone de Beauvoir, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton, as well as Hannah Arendt and Rosa Luxemburg, to name but a few.

There is always a balance to be struck in designing qualifications between establishing breadth of study, making sure that each of the areas to be studied can be covered in sufficient depth, and avoiding qualifications becoming unmanageably large. Feminism is an optional area of study in current specifications. It was never our intention to exclude the study of feminism from the reformed A-level. We said we would listen to the consultation, which opened on 3 November and closed on 15 December. We have seen the strength of feeling about this issue among those who have responded to the consultation. The Secretary of State for Education, whom the hon. Lady mentioned and who is also the Minister for Women and Equalities, has also taken a close interest in this issue.

As was recently mentioned in the other place, feminism can also be studied within other A-levels. For example, in the reformed sociology A-level, students must study issues of gender. Exam boards are responsible for setting the detailed content of qualifications in their specifications, and schools are free to decide which figures they teach about in their classrooms. Following the consultation on the politics A-level, exam boards are making changes to the final content to respond to the concerns raised. We will publish our response shortly, but I can assure the hon. Lady that the final politics A-level will give all students the opportunity to study the core ideas of feminism.

Promoting the goals of feminism means that we have to go further than teaching pupils about justice and equality. That is why the Government are determined to increase the number of young people studying science, technology, engineering and maths subjects post-16. In particular, we want to encourage more girls to take those subjects.

[Dr Huq]

Before the Minister moves on to the sciences, will he say how many replies there were to the consultation? I am curious to know how many there were, if the figures of 50,000, and 4,000 on the other petition, are any indication, given that the Minister referred to the weight of opinion.

[Mr Gibb]

We will respond to the consultation shortly. At the moment, officials are going through all the responses. We have seen a number—[Interruption.] I was hoping for some in-flight refuelling on the precise number to answer the hon. Lady’s question. On the basis of the responses so far, I believe a large number of people have responded on this point. [Interruption.] Unfortunately, it was not very helpful, so I will have to pass on that. The fact remains that the issues will be made public once we have responded to the consultation document. We will set out fairly soon, in great detail, a summary of all the responses, so the hon. Lady will not have to wait long for a full answer to the very reasonable question she asked.

We are funding programmes such as the Stimulating Physics network and the Further Mathematics Support programme to support schools to increase take-up of maths and physics A-levels, with a particular focus on engaging more girls. The national network of maths hubs is also leading a national project aimed at increasing participation among post-16 students in A-level mathematics and further mathematics courses, and other level 3 courses, such as core maths. In this context, many hubs are exploring ways of increasing the proportion of girls studying maths at this level and beyond.

The STEM ambassadors programme raises awareness among children of the range of careers that science can offer. It is worth noting that 40% of the 31,000 STEM ambassadors are women. We funded Engineering UK to deliver a programme of Big Bang Near Me activities—local versions of the national Big Bang fair—that reached more than 100,000 young people, half of whom were girls, in 2015.

Excellent teaching is, of course, vital if we are to engage more girls in STEM subjects. We are undertaking a number of initiatives to support this, including supporting maths and science teachers through the National Science Learning network and the national network of maths hubs; attracting top STEM graduates into teaching through generous bursaries and scholarships; investing £67 million to train an additional 2,500 teachers and upskill 15,000 non-specialist teachers in maths and physics over the next five years; and the triple science support programme, which supports schools to offer three separate science GCSEs.

The Government are also backing the excellent Your Life campaign to increase significantly the numbers taking A-level physics and maths, particularly girls. This is a digital campaign to demonstrate the range of opportunities that maths and science can lead to. Positive signs are now beginning to emerge. Similar numbers of girls and boys take science and maths at GCSE, and achieve similar results. Although fewer girls than boys progress to maths and physics at A-level, we have worked hard in recent years and made some progress. Provisional 2015 results show that since 2010 the number of girls taking maths A-level has increased by just over 3,500 and physics by just under 1,000. Overall, there have been 12,000 more entries for girls in all maths and science A-level subjects.

Our education system has an essential role to play in creating a fair society with opportunity for all. We are confident that our world-class knowledge-based curriculum and other changes that we are introducing will contribute to this goal. I am enormously grateful to the hon. Lady for raising this issue today. She has made some important and compelling points, and I hope she recognises that the Government understand these concerns, and feels that they are being addressed.

Question put and agreed to.

Trade Union Bill

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Monday 14th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ms Eagle]

It is wise to remember that trade unions defend not only their own members. Over the years, trade unions have created a process that has given us holidays, weekends and reasonable working hours. It is right that the benefits that trade unions bring to our society are recognised and extended to those who are not members of trade unions but happen to be at work. Any attack on those rights that weakens those powers threatens the progress made over many years in democracy at work.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend mentioned the CIPD, and it is not only the usual suspects who oppose this Bill—there are some unlikely bedfellows because the Bill goes beyond party politics. As we have heard, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) called it redolent of Franco’s Spain. The Secretary of State pooh-poohed Vince Cable, the former Business Secretary, for calling it “vindictive”. A letter has been signed by 100 academics, mostly from business schools which are not usually seen as hotbeds of radicalism in our country. Will independent-minded Conservatives join us and our new leader in the Lobby tonight to oppose this draconian legislation?

[Ms Eagle]

I would like to live in a world in which the Tory party did not have this kind of blood lust against trade unions, but alas we are not there yet.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

The teacher supply model takes into account the national position. There will, of course, always be areas of the country that find it more challenging to recruit than others, particularly rural areas or some coastal areas. We are also faced with the challenge of a strong economy. If you really want to make recruiting graduates into teaching easier, you need a weak and stagnant economy, with low growth, recession and high levels of unemployment, but for that you need a Labour Government.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

8. What assessment her Department has made of recent trends in teacher retention; and if she will make a statement.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)]

Statistics published earlier this month show that teacher retention has remained broadly stable for a number of years. Eighty seven per cent of teachers who qualified in 2013 were teaching a year later; this figure has remained roughly constant in each year since 2005. Seventy seven per cent of teachers who qualified in 2011 were still teaching three years later; and 60% of teachers remain in the classroom 10 years after qualifying.

[Dr Huq]

Various recent polls have shown that up to 68% of teachers have considered leaving the profession altogether in the next 12 months. In my constituency, the prohibitive cost of housing contributes to that figure. Heads say that that prevents teachers from staying beyond their initial teacher training. What steps will the Department take to head off the coming teacher crisis in London?

[Mr Gibb]

I do not recognise the hon. Lady’s figures. Our figures show that 52% of those who qualified in 1996 are still teaching 18 years later. We are doing an enormous amount to encourage teachers to stay in the profession and graduates to come into the profession. We are tackling the workload problem and poor behaviour in schools and we are improving teacher training.