Education Funding in London
Debate between Rushanara Ali and Graham Stuart(8 years ago)
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Rushanara Ali
I thank my hon. Friend, and I hope the Minister listened carefully to her powerful insights about what will happen both within and across local authorities. It will be schoolchildren who suffer, and the improvements in performance in London schools will be put at risk. That improvement is the envy of the world, with many studies showing how London has progressed. It has taken a generation to achieve that, and I hope the Minister will recognise the concerns being expressed today and the dangers of the changes, which risk having a negative effect on the performance of London schools.
I want to highlight some of the challenges that exist and the backdrop against which London has transformed its schools. As I said, that has taken a generation, and the danger is that the change will set us back in a very short time. London faces some of the highest child poverty levels in the country, and, as the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst pointed out, the highest inequality. The extremely high cost of living, and especially of housing, has a detrimental effect on teachers’ ability to find accommodation.
Despite those challenges, local education authorities across parties—Labour councils as well as Conservative councils—have worked tirelessly to improve education in London. As a result, nine out of 10 schools are good or outstanding. I hope the Minister will think carefully about the impact of the reforms on that progress. If we are not careful, we will set schools in London back.
Other regions see London as an exemplar. People point to the London Challenge, which the last Labour Government introduced, and which was supported by people across parties and recognised for its achievements. Other regions have tried to emulate it. It is really important that we build on the successes of our regions rather than pit them against one other, which I fear will happen as a result of the changes. It is wrong to put educationists in competition with each other for the wrong reasons. We should be looking at how to improve the achievement of all our children, across the country.
Graham Stuart
It is worth saying that it is important to have a fair system across the country. Certain parts of London—and it is only parts—have disproportionately benefited. A Lambeth school can have more than £1,500 a head more—for a class of 30, that is £45,000 more—than a school half a mile away in Croydon. We have a broken system, and we need to fix it.
Rushanara Ali
We have very good results in London. Nine out of 10 schools across London are good or outstanding. We should build on that, not pit schools against one other. The hon. Gentleman served on the Education Committee so should know better than to make that argument.
Social Mobility/Child Poverty Strategy
Debate between Rushanara Ali and Graham Stuart(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) on securing this important debate, and thank the Backbench Business Committee for providing time for it.
Throughout her time in Parliament my right hon. Friend has made an outstanding contribution on improving the life chances of young people, as I know from direct experience. I established a charity called UpRising, which has the support of the three party leaders. It works on empowering young people to get into politics and public life, promoting social mobility and supporting young people with regard to skills and employability. When I was working to establish that charity, she was Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and her Department supported UpRising through the empowerment fund; the current Government have continued in that effort. Her work on the Speaker’s parliamentary placements scheme has been outstanding in providing excellent support to young people who want to find an opportunity to work in Parliament and join us here in this Chamber in the future.
My right hon. Friend spoke powerfully about the inspiration her mother provided to her in everything she has achieved. The phrase, “The world is your oyster if you work hard,” is one that I can associate with my own experiences. It echoes the message I received not only from my mother and the rest of my family but from my teachers, who had a profound effect on what I went on to do and the opportunities I had to get a great education in Tower Hamlets, where I then lived. Other Members have talked about their own direct experience of how education has provided the critical chance for them to achieve their aspirations and make a contribution.
That is the context for this debate on the importance of making sure that young people today do not do less well than their parents’ generation. We all have a duty and a responsibility to make sure that the next generation does better than the current one, as has been the case previously. All Members who have spoken have highlighted the grave position that we are now in as a society. The twin challenges of tackling child poverty and powering social mobility should demand the most urgent attention from this House, the Government, employers and wider society.
Figures that came out this week show that, on this Government’s watch, 2.6 million children are now living in absolute poverty. That means that almost one in five young people face profound threats to their childhoods, aspirations and life chances. Many Members across the political divide represent constituencies in which child poverty is a widespread reality. In my constituency, 42% of children are living in poverty. That is one of the highest levels in the country. I was a commissioner on the London Child Poverty Commission for a number of years and we highlighted the dangers of the stubbornly high level of child poverty in this city, which results from the high cost of living, including the cost of housing, and the level of worklessness.
The hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) said that we must build homes and create opportunities for people to work. He is absolutely right. That is what we must do to help children in poverty not only in London, but in other parts of the country. He was particularly right about work. Parents must have the opportunity to earn a decent wage so that they can provide a decent living for their children.
What is coming into sharper focus is that more than two thirds of children in poverty are growing up in families in which someone works. Not only is early intervention, such as support for child care and Sure Start centres, critical to children’s development; it enables parents, especially mothers, to secure work and contribute to the family income so that their children do not live in poverty. Labour’s proposals to link the minimum wage to average earnings and to address insecure work are badly needed to tackle low pay and the child poverty that occurs as a consequence.
Last year’s landmark report by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission condemned the Government’s failure to produce a credible strategy to tackle in-work poverty. The Child Poverty Action Group has rightly highlighted the importance of promoting second-earner employment among couples with children. It points to the Resolution Foundation’s estimate that 1 million women are missing from the Labour market. We will never meet the child poverty target without addressing that problem. That means that we must address the serious flaw in the proposals for universal credit that makes second-earner work incentives worse than under the current system. The universal credit rescue committee submitted its report to the Labour party last week. On second-earner work incentives, it said that
“Universal Credit will weaken the incentive for second earners in couples to work. One in five children in poverty now lives with a single-earner couple, and ensuring that more second earners, principally women, are able to take up employment will be critical to reducing child poverty rates.”
The last Labour Government reduced the number of children in poverty by almost 900,000. In the final years of the last Government, child poverty went down to its lowest level since the ’80s. However, there was much more to do and this Government needed to continue that trend of reducing poverty. This should always be a collective effort. What we have seen is an increase in poverty that threatens to obliterate that progress. Save the Children, the End Child Poverty campaign and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation have warned that the Government will miss their own 2020 target by a staggering margin. That cannot be acceptable, whichever end of the political spectrum one is on.
The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission gives us no reason to hope that the Government can turn the situation around. It says that, despite the Government’s decent intentions, their recent work on child poverty reads like a “list of policies”, rather than the coherent strategy that our children and young people need; lacks any
“clear measures to assess progress”
over the coming years; and fails to “engage with independent projections” of rising poverty. Experts are united in the belief that the strategy simply lacks any credibility. The commission goes on to say that the strategy is a “missed opportunity” to create momentum towards securing a high-mobility, low-poverty society. We desperately need decisive action to support young people in realising their aspirations and talents. I hope that the Minister will address the concerns that have been expressed by the commission and hon. Members.
That analysis underpins much of the discussion today about declining social mobility. Family background, educational attainment and later life chances remain closely bound together in the UK. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development research shows that intergenerational mobility in the UK is weaker than in most comparable nations, including France and Germany. The Government have so far unfortunately failed to close the attainment gap between those who have free school meals and those who do not.
The hon. Member for East Hampshire talked about the success of the London Challenge and I am grateful for his remarks about that. He is right to point out that some areas were already doing much of what the London Challenge did. In my constituency, head teachers led the way, along with those in Newham and other parts of the country. It is clear that the lessons learned from specific examples, such as in my borough throughout the late 1990s and beyond, were pulled together to promote collaboration, joint working, good management and leadership by head teachers and other teachers working with the wider community. That was an important way of driving up standards in London, which has experienced the most improvements in the country. It is a great shame that the Government are not speaking up for those sorts of initiatives, trying to ensure that educational standards are improved throughout the country and that lessons are learned from what has worked, whoever happened to introduce it.
Mr Graham Stuart
The shadow Minister is being a little churlish, which is not in her nature, so I am sure she will want to correct what she has said. After all, the results for children who have free school meals have improved against a tougher level, and that is worth celebrating. One of the interesting aspects of our report was looking at the gap between free school meals children in inadequate schools and those in outstanding schools. That gap stayed roughly the same, but doubling outcomes for them is something to celebrate, regardless.
Rushanara Ali
I referred to the failure to close the gap. The hon. Gentleman is right that there have been improvements, but that is not enough. It is not satisfactory. As the Education Committee’s commendable work highlights, the position of white working-class children—boys and girls—is deeply disturbing. As a society, we have failed them. Most of them are in that category of having free school meals, so the position is not good enough. The Government should take seriously the hon. Gentleman’s work, which has cross-party support, on the plight of white working-class children. We need to step up and address the challenge.
It is clear from the speeches that we all want children to do well, regardless of background. We want their talents to be maximised, not wasted, so that their abilities are recognised and they can contribute to our economy and our society.
The Government’s policy of scrapping the education maintenance allowance has had a direct impact on social mobility. I know that from the experience of several groups. More than 80% of ethnic minority children, for example, from Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds, relied on that grant. Young people from parts of the country where they spend money on transport now struggle to commute to their further education colleges. Many have highlighted the challenges they face because they do not have the support that they need. Some go to their further education colleges not being able to feed themselves. In a climate of high levels of poverty and deprivation, provision such as an education maintenance allowance was a great help and its removal has contributed to taking away the ladders to progress.
I know from direct experience with young people that other changes, such as the proposal to scrap support for young people under 24, are deeply troubling. Without support and access to benefits, one young woman whom my charity supported would not have made it from a broken family and having been made homeless to what turned out to be an incredible opportunity: she got a place at Cambridge.
She would not have had that ladder of opportunity if the support system offered by the state had been removed. We must consider many welfare changes to ensure that the barriers to young people being socially mobile are not added to, and that we all work hard to remove them.
The hon. Member for Norwich South (Simon Wright) highlighted the importance of qualified teachers and the need for a royal college of teaching. I am delighted that he emphasised the importance of qualified teachers, and his party’s support for that. It is a great shame that the Government, the Secretary of State and the Conservative party do not support that provision, but I hope we can get agreement on that.
Rushanara Ali
I will not give way any further because I have already given way twice to the hon. Gentleman—[Interruption.] A number of times to his colleagues then. I would like to make progress because I know the Minister will want to address some of these points.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. It might be helpful to say that it is up to the shadow Minister whether she wishes to give way. It is in the hands of Rushanara Ali whether she gives way or not.
Mr Stuart
I am grateful to the hon. Lady since she mentioned me. As she has made clear, qualified teachers can do a great job, but I trust heads to make that decision. Given the accountability they are subject to, the idea that heads would take on people who they do not think will improve the education of their children is false, and there are fewer non-qualified teachers than when the Labour party left office. I just throw that in—it is a bit of a distraction when such a tiny percentage of the work force do not have that particular piece of paper, which is not all that indicative of quality.
Rushanara Ali
I am rather disappointed that the Chair of the Select Committee is taking such a partisan view. The point is that if a policy is introduced and a message sent that there is no need for qualified teachers or to invest in their qualifications, that is wrong. It means that the supply of qualified teachers in the future will decline, which is a huge concern. Evidence shows that qualified teachers make a massive difference, particularly when they are dealing with large class sizes, as is the case in most state-funded schools—unlike in private schools, which is often the comparison made by the Conservative party.
Let me move on to the point about professions, which I hope Government Members might agree on. Institutions, whether Parliament, the legal or financial professions, journalism, and many others, all have a major job to ensure that young people from working and lower middle-class backgrounds have the opportunity to access those professions. Those young people’s chances of being able to access those professions remain much lower than for those from upper middle-class backgrounds, and there remains a massive disparity between those who are privately educated and those who go to state schools, although progress is being made. There is a role for ensuring that private schools, which have to pass a public benefit test, make more effort to work with state schools, and share not only their physical assets and facilities, which many do, but their social capital, which they have in abundance. Such sharing could support and promote learning in both private and state schools—private schools have much to learn from the work of state schools and vice versa. My right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles mentioned the work on resilience and on how young people adapt and learn in the state sector. That is an important aspect of shared learning.
A number of hon. Members, including the Chair the Education Committee, referred to careers guidance in education, which is a deep concern for all hon. Members. As the Committee report points out, major challenges need to be addressed. Changes made by the Government have led to massive problems in what schools offer to young people. We need to rectify that quickly. The CBI’s verdict is that the Government’s changes mean that careers guidance in our country has been left on life support. The Chair of the Committee highlighted some of the conflicts of interest that can arise. Schools have been given a statutory duty, but they might not be in a position to provide independent advice and guidance to young people, which is important if they are to keep their options open and have the broadest awareness of what is on offer, whether that is university or training and apprenticeship opportunities, and of the institutions they will go on to.
Furthermore, the removal of the entitlement to work experience means that many working-class parents—the majority—are struggling to find placements for their children, whereas those from professional backgrounds are better placed to use their networks to provide work experience opportunities for their children. We need to ensure that schools and other educational establishments can work together to provide work experience opportunities, mentors and a ladder for recognising, and learning about, professions that are not accessible to many young people in our country because of their social class background. Enabling that requires Government action. The careers co-ordinator role and careers support are critical in helping to orchestrate and provide such help and support for young people. Families are being left to their own devices, which is creating more disparities, not only in work experience—horizons are either opened or left closed for people from working-class backgrounds—but in careers information and guidance, which are limited in some places and virtually non-existent in others.
There are many great examples of great work—all hon. Members know of it in our constituencies—but we need to be concerned about those who do not have access to independent guidance and advice. I hope the Minister takes on board the concerns raised by hon. Members of all parties. The lack of independent guidance and advice blocks young people from realising their aspirations, whatever their background.
Youth unemployment remains incredibly high—850,000 young people are still unemployed. We need to ensure that, in future, young people who are unemployed get the support they need. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain), highlighted the importance of ensuring that the 16-hour rule is flexed so that young people can get the appropriate training and skills to get into the labour market. That is critical.
I hope the Government reconsider the Opposition’s proposal for a youth jobs guarantee. The Labour Government introduced the future jobs fund, which showed dramatic and positive results. The current Government’s Work programme has had limited success. In constituencies such as mine, only 14% of those on the Work programme have gone into a job, and the numbers nationally are much worse. I hope the Minister and his Government will be pragmatic and look at what works, learn from it and reform proposals to ensure that young people’s life chances are not further worsened.
School Governing Bodies
Debate between Rushanara Ali and Graham Stuart(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell, on an entirely different brief from my previous one. I congratulate the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), and the hon. Members who serve on that Committee for this welcome contribution to a very important subject.
As the Chair of the Committee and other hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), have said, 300,000 volunteers serve on governing bodies—probably the largest group of volunteers working in a particular field in the whole country. I, too, pay tribute to them for the work that they do. Like a number of hon. Members in the debate, I had the opportunity to be a governor, not of a school but of a further education college, and I know how valuable that is. Hon. Members bring expertise and practical experience to the debate.
When Labour was in government, we gave greater responsibility to governing bodies. We reduced local authority interference in how governing bodies operate and made changes relating to their composition. We also started the academy programme—a targeted intervention to try to lift the performance of the worst-performing schools in the country, which were often in deprived areas, and to raise standards. Governing bodies played a very important role in that arena.
I want to take the opportunity to tell the Minister that what I have described is different from simply rebadging a school as an academy and expecting school improvement to happen automatically. It will not happen without effective interventions to try to improve standards, including having strong governance arrangements, encouraging the effective leadership and management of schools and ensuring proper accountability of governing bodies.
This report is therefore welcome and timely, particularly as we are seeing so much reform in the education system. There is so much change, including the proliferation of free schools and of course more academies, and we need to ensure that governing bodies play an effective role in this rapidly changing environment.
I shall focus on a number of the themes on which the Select Committee report makes recommendations. The Chair of the Select Committee, in particular, highlighted some of these points. First, the Select Committee recommended mandatory training for governors. This is a crucial issue. As I said, it is crucial in this time of change that we ensure proper accountability. At a time when local education authorities are losing powers of oversight and there is no clarity about what the role of a middle tier would be, it would be helpful for us to make sure that governing bodies play an important role in ensuring that accountability.
Mr Graham Stuart
On a point of clarification, we did not recommend that training should be mandatory. We said that that should be looked at again if it turns out that the input from Ofsted and other Government inputs do not lead to the improvement in training that we hope to see brought about in the system. That improvement would be brought about in a non-regulated way ideally.
Rushanara Ali
Okay; we are talking about non-regulatory training. The point is that appropriate training is vital. According to The Times Educational Supplement, 93% of the respondents to the joint survey said that this would be helpful; they supported training. That reinforces the Select Committee’s recommendation. The Government should examine the issue closely, genuinely to ensure that governors have the appropriate support and that schools get the kind of governing body that they need to respond to the challenges of running their institutions. Governors need to feel equipped and able to perform their role effectively and work towards building achievement and raising standards in schools. In the end, that is what motivates people in communities to take part in this work as volunteers. They give their time and make that contribution to see a transformation in their schools.
I therefore hope that the Minister will recognise the importance of training—other hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North, highlighted this issue—and explain how the Government will seek to address the Select Committee recommendation and ensure that governing bodies get the training that they need. The National Governors Association has also given evidence and pushed for that recommendation to be implemented.
Rushanara Ali
The exemplars clearly do that. All of us will have seen schools taking on this role actively and ensuring that proper training is provided. I certainly benefited from training as a governor of a further education college. The charitable organisations that provide training to governors, not just of schools and colleges but of charities, charitable organisations and social enterprises, are vital. The question is about those schools that currently are not able or willing to provide training. How do we ensure that they step up and apply the appropriate mix of encouragement and pressure, to extend the training that is needed to get their governors to perform the kind of role that they need to perform?
Mr Graham Stuart
Does the hon. Lady agree that one way to encourage more training for governing bodies is to have clerks as professionals, facilitating, raising aspiration, sharing best practice and not being a member of staff from the head teacher’s department? Does she agree that the role of a clerk should become a professional role?
Rushanara Ali
I do, and I will come on to that point shortly, but before I deal with clerks, I want to focus on federations and multi-academy trusts. In their ideological drive to force schools into academy status regardless of the views of parents, governors and school communities, the Government have been ignoring the benefits of federations of schools as drivers of school improvement and as an opportunity for governing bodies to work more strategically. A number of hon. Members have highlighted the need to examine that area. In many cases, working together in that way—sometimes through co-operatives—can bring all the benefits for teaching and learning of a more strategic partnership, without unnecessary and sometimes painful organisational upheaval.
In my constituency, when schools have come together and worked together collaboratively—governing bodies, as well as teachers of different subjects—standards have been radically improved. We need to ensure that that happens and that the role of governing bodies is considered in that context. Will the Minister commit to supporting those local initiatives, rather than imposing models that are not necessarily fit for purpose or appropriate for local areas? Will she commit to giving groups of small schools that federate to improve outcomes the same sort of grants as multi-academy trusts receive?
On profile and recruitment, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North and the hon. Member for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker) pointed out, governors are fulfilling a vital role voluntarily. Recruitment is a major challenge in many areas, so we must take urgent action to ensure that employers can provide the flexibility—day release or time away from work—that their staff require to make a contribution. Particularly where we want to bring in expertise from professions that may be pressured, it is vital that employers support their staff to make a contribution as a governor.
When the previous Labour Government were in power, civil servants had the scope to take a few days’ leave for their work as school governors or in similar roles, with the permission of their employer. I hope that the Government will consider how that might be done appropriately, without burdening employers and recognising that the role of school governor is crucial and that people need to be given flexibility to fulfil it properly and effectively. I hope that the Minister will set out in her response how such measures might be introduced.
As the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness has said, the Education Committee highlighted the importance of having professional clerks. The National Governors Association is campaigning for their introduction and is disappointed that the Department for Education has not set out its intention to make that happen. I hope that the Minister will reconsider and support the Education Committee’s recommendation, which will be good news to the hon. Gentleman and to me.
On accountability, there is a worrying trend in the reforms introduced by the Secretary of State. We have observed in previous debates on governance that there was an unexploded ordnance in the system and the lack of accountability would result in scandals. As we have seen in the case of the Al-Madinah free school, the Kings science academy, Barnfield federation in Luton and others, there are real concerns, and we must ensure that such incidents do not occur again.
There is concern about several other schools, and we must make sure that the school governing bodies have the appropriate power. Where the governing bodies are at fault, the system must be effective enough to intervene to ensure that the relevant action is taken to address such problems. At a time of reform when there are concerns about accountability, we must ensure that school governing boards are properly held to account and given appropriate support if they have to take action against school management to improve matters, as happened in the examples that I have given.
Performance is clearly a major issue. A balance must be struck between attracting the best possible people and ensuring that they are rooted in their communities. Recently, the Secretary of State described governors as
“Local worthies who see being a governor as a badge of status not a job of work.”
I hope that the Minister will emphasise that we should not be using such language to refer to governors, who play a vital role. I hope that she recognises the important work done by governors, the need to support them to make their contribution and the need to improve their skills and capacities, so that they can continue to make a vital difference to our education system. I hope that she will take into consideration the questions that have been raised and the points that I have made and that she will take on board the importance of improving accountability and the status of governors in schools.