Oral Answers to Questions

Vikki Slade Excerpts

Monday 14th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Georgia Gould]

Over the past two years, that £3.7 billion investment that I have mentioned has started. That money is going into local authorities today, so that they can start building schools, creating places, and taking the action that the Conservative Government failed to take.

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

Barely a day goes by without hearing from a new family whose child is struggling or—worse—does not have a school at all. Given the long delays in autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder diagnoses and the length of time it takes to get packages in place, what consideration has been given to screening for neurodivergence at a very early stage so that we can plan properly for those schools?

[Georgia Gould]

I hear the same stories from families about long waits. The new system that we are proposing is all about identifying needs as early as possible. Through the national inclusion standards, which the independent panel is working on, new tools will be developed to support schools to identify needs early, and then work will be done with the Experts at Hand service to put in place interventions to support those young people.

Education and Skills Reform

Vikki Slade Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell]

I thank my hon. Friend for all the teaching he did in his former career. He is absolutely right. Degree apprenticeships and apprenticeships are becoming increasingly popular. As with T-levels, when we have good vocational and technical qualifications that combine those things, they become really in demand as people can see the value of them. I do want to see an expansion of degree apprenticeships across higher education. I also want to see more level 4 and 5 apprenticeships being offered, so we have clear pathways and lines of sight that help young people get confidence and get into the world of work.

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

Will the Secretary of State commend the staff at specialist schools such as Summerwood in Dorset, where my son George goes, who pick children up after they have been failed by mainstream education, give them the confidence to sit exams such as GCSEs that they never believed they would sit and, when they do not actually make it, give them the resilience to have another go? It is so important to give these children hope. Will the Secretary of State explain how parents, young people and the teaching staff themselves can influence which qualifications children will take, because so often it is based on “the funding says no” and the children then cannot take the qualifications that suit them best?

[Lucy Powell]

The hon. Lady raises a really good point and I am happy to join her in praising the staff of Summerwood school, which her son attends. This is about ensuring that the mainstream offer is also more inclusive. If I had a pound for every parent or child who said to me that school just had not worked for them and that they had had to leave the school system because it was not designed for them, I would be very rich indeed. Sitting alongside our important SEN reforms are the curriculum and inclusion reforms that we will be bringing in. Of course, people will be able to help design those and she should not, hopefully, worry too much about some of the issues.

Oral Answers to Questions

Vikki Slade Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

Yes, and I encourage the hon. Lady to share with her constituents not just our SEND consultation but the draft profiles that we have established for specialist provision packages, which will be developed by an independent national panel with health and education expertise. I encourage her constituents to look at that and share their views, so that we can deliver a better support system, including for children with the most complex needs, who are being badly let down by a system that is just not working.

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

Unlike maintained schools, independent special educational needs settings are not required to respond to consultation requests from local authorities, leading to long delays, children being out of school for extended periods, and conflict when parents believe that their children are not in the right setting. What assurance can the Secretary of State give parents in Mid Dorset and North Poole and elsewhere that any school receiving public money will be required to work with local authorities?

[Bridget Phillipson]

We will set much clearer overall expectations of local authorities, not least given the huge grant funding investment to bring down their deficits. With that money must come better outcomes for children. That is also true of the independent specialist sector. Although it offers much fantastic provision and caters well for children with complex needs, I am afraid that we cannot continue along this path of allowing money meant for education to be sucked into fuelling the profits of private equity.

Education Funding: Distribution

Vikki Slade Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Pippa Heylings]

My hon. Friend makes a hugely important point, and we have just heard agreement from across the Chamber about the importance of both the geographic distribution of funding and to which age groups it is distributed.

The underfunding interacts directly with the crisis in special educational needs and disabilities provision. Funding has been historically low in our county, and it cannot meet the rising demand. While there has been a 72% increase in high needs block funding since 2017, the demand for education, health and care plans has risen by 91% in Cambridgeshire over that same period.

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

I got some data this week that told me that our local authorities are spending £60,000 a child extra on independent special schools versus maintained special schools. In the south-west of England, only one third of children can go to state maintained schools. Does my hon. Friend agree that as schools are having that money taken away from them to support the councils, the problem is just getting worse?

[Pippa Heylings]

I could not have put it better myself. That issue is symptomatic of and a causal factor in the problems. We are seeing the gap between funding and spend widening year after year. In my area, that is compounded by rapid population growth. Cambridgeshire and Peterborough are forecast to grow by a further nearly 17% between 2023 and 2041. Schools are expanding quickly to meet demand, yet funding lags behind reality. Growth funding is limited and tightly constrained. Section 106 funding supports buildings, not staffing or ongoing SEND provision. While Cambridgeshire growth is seen as the golden goose for the national economy, local families, schools and councils are being penalised for that growth.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vikki Slade]

A few weeks ago, I raised some of these very excessive charges, although I had a bit of pushback from some residents saying, “My child needs this very expensive school.” Can the Minister confirm whether the Government are looking at companies that are coming in and making profit at the expense of our children? We are talking about children who have very complex needs. For 78 children in one local authority in my constituency, the charge is more than £100,000 each. Thirty of those children are from one school alone.

[Georgia Gould]

We have put £3 billion into specialist places to ensure that there is high-quality provision across the system. Independent specialist schools play an important part in the system, but excessive profits should not be made from the care of children. We want the money that is going into the system to go into supporting children.

We also want to ensure that every child has the right to an education within their local community. I talk to too many children who have to travel, sometimes for two hours, to get an education. As I travel around the country to look at the system, I see two things. First, the system is absolutely in crisis; there is failure in every single part. I hear that from every single part of the system and we have heard some examples today. Secondly, there are dedicated people who are trying to make it work, including those mentioned by the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire. There are special educational needs co-ordinators and local partnerships who go the extra mile. There are schools that are thinking deeply about how to provide an inclusive education. That makes a difference; parents who are having a positive experience tell us that they can finally breathe because the support is in place. There are green shoots of that change—such as partnerships between special schools and mainstream schools—which we can build on.

We take this responsibility for generational change very seriously. My commitment is to work in partnership with everyone who cares about this issue. I appreciate the opportunity to continue these conversations and to continue to talk about the work we are doing. When we bring forward the schools White Paper, there will be a full consultation on the work we are setting out, and we have heard this evening, very powerfully, how important that work is. We cannot continue to fail children with special educational needs and disabilities and their families, and we need to give the right resources to the teachers, teaching assistants and health professionals who are trying to support them every day.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Vikki Slade Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Olivia Bailey]

I have answered the hon. Gentleman’s question already, so I will simply say that this Government are completely committed to ensuring that every child gets the best possible start in life, including by repairing the broken system of family support services, which were decimated by the Conservatives, and by ensuring that every single child has the opportunity to read, to talk to their friends, to play, to communicate, to get ready for school and to have the best possible start in life.

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

20. What steps her Department is taking to make school classrooms more accessible to children with SEND.

[The Minister for School Standards (Georgia Gould)]

I have seen the difference that fully accessible schools make for young people. Pupils have proudly shown me the sensory spaces that they use to self-regulate, and schools have helped create inclusion hubs, supporting young people to thrive. The Department has invested £740 million in high needs capital to support children and young people with SEND, including through adapting classrooms to improve accessibility.

[Vikki Slade]

Over the last 16 months, I have visited most of my 42 schools—some more than once—so I have seen some really effective use of occupational therapy principles, such as removing sensory triggers and updating lighting and layouts. At Colehill first school, the staff have simplified and rectified the décor throughout the school, and are looking to invest in wooden and natural materials to create a calming environment. However, schools in Mid Dorset and North Poole receive over £2,000 per pupil per year less than those in other parts of the country, so there is little left for this sort of project. Given the focus on inclusion, what can the Minister offer in terms of smaller capital grants to fund this work?

[Georgia Gould]

I thank the hon. Member for sharing those wonderful examples of best practice. That is the work we want to do to ensure that all our schools are inclusive, and there is obviously a lot to learn from her constituency. The Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), will bring forward an estate strategy, and we will continue to invest in specialist places within mainstream schools.

Oral Answers to Questions

Vikki Slade Excerpts

Monday 20th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Olivia Bailey]

Absolutely—I thank the brilliant team at Mousehold, who are so dedicated to giving every child the help and support they need. This Government want every child to have the best start in life, which is why we have expanded childcare entitlements, are supporting schools to open new nurseries, and—after the Conservative party dismantled them—are bringing back family hubs in every community in our country.

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

My constituent Seb told me how pleased he was when the Government extended the role of free childcare, but his nursery changed the rules so that the free hours can be taken only after 1 o’clock and have to be spread over four days a week. That means that the previously paid-for care is not now free, but costing £500 more than before. We know that this is happening across the country as nurseries struggle with the jobs tax and other excessive costs, so what are the Government going to do to help those families get what they are entitled to?

[Olivia Bailey]

I encourage the hon. Lady to write to me with the details of that case, because we are absolutely clear that in this rapid expansion of childcare—which half a million children have been able to access this September—those 30 hours should be available, and it should not be the case that extras are charged or anything else. I am happy to look at the specifics of the case.

Educational Assessment System Reform

Vikki Slade Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. I thank the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Josh Dean) for securing the debate.

The current assessment system is failing our children, our teachers and our society. A combination of factors is at play: the focus of school inspections and parental choice on arbitrary pass rates; the narrowing of the curriculum, which devalues creative and vocational subjects; the failure to maintain school funding, which leaves headteachers little choice but to run schools on a shoestring; the explosion in poor mental health and additional educational needs; the long-term impact of the pandemic on children and learning; and the move to digital, which is increasing the pace of life and risks leaving so many children behind.

I should be clear that assessments of progress are important. There is value in benchmarking our children against age-related expectations, using their progress to assess the quality of teaching and helping parents to find the right schools for their children. For most children, it is also reasonable to feel some level of stress. That is a natural part of life, and understanding how we respond to it helps us with our own coping mechanisms and helps us to deal with bigger stressful life events as we grow up. However, it is fairly obvious that some children are not going to meet the so-called normal expectations.

Let me tell the story of a very special child. To protect their identity, I am calling them Taylor. They could not do their alphabet when they started school; they failed their phonics, their key stage 1 test and their key stage 2 SATs. They were finally placed on the SEN register at around 11, but they were not supported. They were assessed as having a reading age of seven years and nine months at age 14, yet the school forced them to continue with a full eight GCSE programme. The school forced them to progress in English and maths knowing they were destined to fail. The mental health impact of failing everything throughout their whole childhood was so devastating, on top of covid and the other pressures on their young life, that they ended up out of school and out of hope. They ended year 11 with no qualifications and no school.

Their story is far from unique—500 children a day are referred to mental health services for anxiety and four in five education leaders say that reformed GCSEs have created greater levels of stress and anxiety. Just under half the children who fail to make the grade at 16 were judged as falling behind at the age of just five. Those children, when identified early, can be stopped from failing throughout their life. They are not stupid; they learn differently, and they need a more inclusive school, a better curriculum and a system that is based not on remembering stuff, but on applying their skills and talents to help them to meet their potential.

[Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)]

I recognise that my constituency has a bad name in this area, because it was largely my predecessor MP who introduced the kind of memorising curriculum that my hon. Friend refers to. Does my hon. Friend agree that to preserve the mental health of our young people, and to maximise their human capacity, there is no point in just testing their ability to remember and regurgitate after two years? Instead, we should engage their creativity and critical thinking skills, and go back to some element of continuous assessment.

[Vikki Slade]

I absolutely agree. I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and allowing me to pause in my emotion. My constituent Kaisey did not pass her English and maths GCSEs. She got close, but she was forced to resit them at college where she went backwards. Now she is being blocked from progressing on her chosen course in animation, and her mum is being told that her daughter cannot access functional English and maths until she is 19, despite her passing the level 2 creative courses that would allow her to progress. A special school would allow her to take those functional courses. Her mum said:

“The resit crisis is leaving students feeling failures and is demoralising, especially to SEN students who may never be able to achieve a Grade 4”.

There is no reason why these children should be forced into a cycle of doom.

To go back to Taylor and what happened to him, he has now been scooped up by the brilliant special Linwood school, where the staff have rebuilt his self-esteem. He flew through his functional English, he is now on to maths, he has passed a home cooking BTEC, and he aspires to be a teaching assistant in a school for autistic children. I want to challenge the Minister on removing the forced retakes of English and maths GCSEs, having a more holistic range of courses and, as some of us just heard in the Dingley’s Promise roundtable, having reasonable adjustments in classrooms to help every child to learn and achieve better outcomes, and to improve their happiness.

--- Later in debate ---

[Saqib Bhatti (Meriden and Solihull East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I thank the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Josh Dean) for securing this important debate and for his opening remarks. By almost any metric, the English education system is one of the best performing in the world. In the latest programme for international student assessment results, English pupils have continued to score significantly above the OECD average for mathematics, reading and science. England’s average PISA scores were significantly higher than those of SNP-run Scotland and Labour-run Wales. Assessments and exams have led to that. That is what is at stake here—that is what we are discussing, and we should be clear about that.

That success is owed to the foundations of a knowledge-rich curriculum and rigorous and thorough assessment across all stages of a student’s educational build-up. That success story means that the suggestions from Government Members of reforming the educational assessment system—or, alarmingly, scrapping it—need close scrutiny. When launching their review of the curriculum and assessment system in England last year, the Government made it clear that they were taking aim at the examination and assessment system.

[Vikki Slade]

I am just wondering whether the hon. Member was listening to all the speeches about the massive increase in mental health issues for young people. Does he acknowledge the link between that increase and the tightened restrictions and curriculum that he seems to be promoting?

[Saqib Bhatti]

I can assure the hon. Lady that I listened to every speech. As I make progress, I hope to answer her question; if I do not, I will happily take another intervention from her.

The examination and assessment system has ensured that children are learning the basic skills and knowledge needed to succeed in life, that children are improving their understanding in a knowledge-rich curriculum, and that England’s position as an educational world leader in international league tables is secured. The wealth of evidence showing the benefits of exams as a means of assessment is clear, even in the very review of the curriculum and assessment system that the Government commissioned. The interim report, published earlier this year, highlighted that national assessment and qualifications are “working well”, and that examinations such as GCSEs play an important role in driving high standards and ensuring fairness,

“reducing the risk that assessment of students’ performance is influenced by their gender, ethnicity or background.”

Even more encouragingly, polling conducted for the interim report made it clear that students themselves value the role of exams as an

“opportunity to demonstrate everything they have learned in their studies”.

That students themselves recognise the value of exams shows that they understand what this Government seemingly struggle to: that exams offer students of all backgrounds the very best chance to succeed. Our educational system is designed to be a tool of social mobility and to allow the most disadvantaged children to demonstrate their potential—something that replacing exams with coursework would fundamentally undermine. In an instant, every advantage that some children have, such as access to a laptop at home, a tutor or a subscription to an artificial intelligence service, and some children from other backgrounds do not would be baked into our assessment of educational attainment. Students would no longer be rewarded for hard graft in the classroom, which they demonstrate in answering an exam question, but rather for the perks that can access outside school and pass off as their own work.

Children with SEND: Assessments and Support

Vikki Slade Excerpts

Monday 15th September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan. The SEND crisis is destroying the life chances of children—not only those with additional needs, but their classmates, whose education also suffers as teachers struggle to cope with an unmanageable range of needs. Families are failed and unable to work or enjoy family time as negotiating SEND consumes all their energies. Teachers are leaving the profession in record numbers, and nearly half cite SEND-related stress as a key reason.

Local councils are overwhelmed. One caseworker I spoke to had 200 families on her books, each requiring annual reviews, school searches and funding decisions. The backlog in NHS diagnosis is forcing families to go private and get into debt, and transport providers and some SEND schools are profiting from desperate families and desperate councils. But most tragically, the system is stealing our children’s childhoods. Every child has a right to an education that nurtures their personality, talents and abilities. The current system fails everyone.

Like the lead petitioner, Rachel Filmer, whom I met on Friday, I fear that if we do not raise our voices now, we risk eroding children’s rights. Children must be at the heart of reform. Some children will always need a specialist school, but every school should be special, because every one of our children deserves an education.

Early Education and Childcare

Vikki Slade Excerpts

Thursday 4th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Morgan]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. Of course, these issues are devolved, but I look forward to hearing her thoughts and views on them. I encourage her to write to me, and I can certainly raise her points with the relevant teams across the Department and across Government.

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

I know that Ministers are probably sick of hearing about national insurance increases and my repeated calls for business rates exemptions, as they have in Scotland. However, the strain of costs is leading to practices that are affecting families—for example, a nursery chain in my constituency that has numerous branches only allows families to take their funded hours in the afternoons, forcing them to pay for the mornings that they actually need. Those families are now worse off than when they had fewer hours. What is the Minister going to do to help such families?

[Stephen Morgan]

I have mentioned the investment that we are putting into early education—£8 billion this year and £9 billion next year. We have announced the largest ever increase in the early years pupil premium, and case studies from across the country are demonstrating the difference that this programme is making. However, as I mentioned, we want to make the process simpler for parents and learn lessons from the past, and we will set that out in due course as part of our wider reform agenda.

Oral Answers to Questions

Vikki Slade Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

I too recently met the chief executive of the Early Years Alliance, and I will always be open to discussing the challenges faced by the sector; but let me convey to the right hon. Gentleman the points that I made to the chief executive. We are investing £8 billion in early years education, as well as almost doubling the early years pupil premium and providing a £75 million expansion grant to support settings ahead of a further roll-out in September. The right hon. Gentleman and the Conservative party made a load of promises to parents at the time of the last general election, but they did not fund them, they did not ensure that the workforce would be there, and they left us with the black hole in the public finances that this Government are turning around.

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

In the last couple of months, I have been speaking to lots of nursery providers across my constituency about these issues, and the thing that comes up again and again is small business rate relief. The Secretary of State’s Department has already replied saying that nurseries can claim the relief, but a nursery has to have fewer than 18 children to qualify, and the average number in my constituency is 75. Those nurseries are not eligible, and the national insurance and consumables changes are crippling them, so they are now considering not taking on Government-funded children. What should they do?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I know that the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan), has been in touch with the hon. Lady recently to discuss this matter further, and I personally will happily look further into the case that she has raised. We are investing record sums in early years education and working with the sector to deliver the places that are needed. That is a big challenge, because the last Tory Government did not leave behind a plan to deliver those places.