Coronavirus: Education Setting Attendance and Support for Pupils

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Education if he will make a statement on the impact of coronavirus on attendance in education settings and support for pupils to catch-up on lost learning.

Mr Speaker, I am terribly grateful to you for granting this urgent question during my first week in the job. We would all like to thank school staff for their ongoing dedication to pupils at what has obviously been an extremely difficult time.

Regular school attendance is vital for children’s education, wellbeing and long-term development. I am pleased to report that attendance last week was higher than at the same time last year, with 91.9% of students attending and 99.9% of all state-funded schools open. We know that the impact of coronavirus has been felt strongly in schools. The evidence is clear that being out of education causes significant harm to attainment, life chances, mental health and physical health. Data from the autumn 2020 school census showed that 60% of pupils had some period when they did not attend school in circumstances relating to covid-19 during the autumn term. That represents 33 million days missed, and analysis shows that every day of education missed matters.

That is why this Government are rightly focused on reducing the disruption to education: we have put an end to the self-isolation of whole bubbles; under-18s no longer need to self-isolate after contact with a positive case; secondary pupils were tested on their return, to help limit transmission, and will continue to test this term; and just last week this Government announced the roll-out of vaccinations for all 12 to 15-year-olds. Our communications programme has promoted the importance of attendance and we continue to monitor the data closely.

We are also fully committed to helping pupils to catch up. Our £3 billion investment in recovery includes more than £950 million for schools to best support the most affected children. That will have a material impact in closing gaps that have emerged. We continue to work closely with local authorities and schools to help them re-engage pupils. The Government’s Supporting Families programme continues to work with families where attendance is a significant concern, and we are providing support to tackle mental health issues, which will improve attendance further. That includes £7 million for local authorities to deliver the wellbeing for education recovery programme, and £9.5 million to train senior mental health leads in up to 7,800 schools and colleges. We are also recruiting a team of expert attendance advisers to work with local authorities to help them improve their services and the consistency and quality of their attendance interventions.

Thank you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker. Although I am sorry that the Secretary of State is not in his place, I warmly congratulate the Minister on his appointment. I know he will agree with me that nothing is more important than our children’s futures. But during the pandemic the Government have treated children and young people as an afterthought, failing to take the action that teachers, parents, pupils and the Labour party have been calling for to keep children in school. Some 122,000 children were out of school last week. Yesterday, the chief medical officer warned that covid is spreading fastest among secondary-age pupils. When will the Government act to improve ventilation in schools, colleges and universities? Will the Minister explain the Government’s rationale on masks, which saw them required in schools in March but not now, when covid rates are more than 400 times higher?

We welcome the advice of the chief medical officers to roll out the vaccine to 12 to 15-year-olds, but already there are reports of pressure on school nursing services. Will the Minister guarantee that all first doses will have been administered by October half-term?

Shockingly, there are reports that some schools are experiencing anti-vaccination protests. What action is being taken to ensure that no school faces threats and intimidation?

In Education questions on 6 September, the then Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson), hinted that the Government may cease recommending twice-weekly home testing at the end of this month, even though covid continues to spread. Will the Minister reconfirm the plans on testing? How will he ensure that testing at home is carried out, after the drop-off we saw last year?

Even before the latest surge in absences, children had missed an average of 115 days of school. The Conservatives’ paltry recovery plan comes nowhere close to tackling what is needed. Labour’s plan commits to extending the school day to give time for breakfast clubs and new activities, small-group tutoring, expert mental health support, and training for our world-class school staff. Will the Minister commit today to matching Labour’s ambition?

I thank the hon. Lady for tabling the urgent question and for her opening remarks. I am sure we will not always see eye-to-eye, but we both have a great concern for children in this country and I look forward to working with her on that score. Nevertheless, I do not want to take too many lectures from the Labour party on this subject. We all clearly remember how last year Labour consistently refused to say that schools were safe for children to go back.

The challenges that we currently face are obviously substantial, but great improvements have been made. At the end of the previous term, attendance in school was at 75%; as of Thursday last week, attendance was at 91.9%, with 99.9% of all schools open.[Official Report, 19 Octoberber 2021, Vol. 701, c. 4MC.] That is a tribute to the very hard work done by our health service and the very hard work that is currently being done in schools. I am sure the whole House pays tribute to that work.

Our Department has an absolute determination to be led by the best evidence, and that determination is shared across Government. Probably no one in the Government understands data and evidence bases better than my new boss, the Secretary of State for Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi). When the evidence changes and the situation changes, so we change our policy.

The hon. Lady asked about face masks; at some stages in the pandemic we have had face masks in corridors, strict social distancing and bubbles, but the evidence now says that we can move away from that.[Official Report, 19 Octoberber 2021, Vol. 701, c. 4MC.] That is much to the good, because anyone who has ever worked in schools, as I have, will know that it is difficult to conduct proper education when children have their faces covered. I strongly welcome the fact that we have been able to make a change on that score.

I call the Chair of the Education Committee.

I am pleased to see the Minister, my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour, in his place.

As I understand it from our discussions with the chief medical officer at the Education Committee yesterday and from the Government, the key purpose of the vaccination programme is to keep our children in school. However, I have been sent a letter by parents about the Teddington School in Middlesex, run by Bourne Education Trust, that shows that all students will be sent home on Friday 24 September, after a day of vaccinations today. Therefore, despite Government guidance, there are examples of schools doing this, or of whole year groups being grounded at home or even closed down completely. Will my hon. Friend make sure that schools follow Government guidance to the letter and do not send children home? He should ring the headteachers himself to make sure that we keep our children learning. Will he also ensure that the catch-up fund reaches the poorest and most disadvantaged students, because we know that 44% of students receiving the pupil premium are being missed, and that there are huge regional disparities as well?

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question, and I look forward to working with him in his role as Chair of the Education Committee and as a venerable defender of the needs of children and of the voters who follow.

It is extremely important that schools follow departmental guidance. I am sure that my officials will have heard the example that my right hon. Friend has just given. The message is clear: the best place for children is in schools and there are very clear criteria that tell us when children should be there.

The Minister rightly recognises the toll on the mental health of children in this country over the past year. In Waltham Forest, many schools dug deep and paid for external counselling services for the children and are now facing big gaps in their budgets. Having said how important it is that no school in this country should be out of pocket, will the Minister commit today to fully reimburse those schools for the cost of counselling over the past 18 months to help our children get through the pandemic?

I thank both the hon. Lady for her question and the school in her constituency for the work that it has done to look after its pupils; it sounds as though it has gone above and beyond. As I said in answer to the shadow Secretary of State a few moments ago, the Department has invested considerable amounts of money in supporting children’s mental health. There has been £79 million across the piece, and £17 million for training for mental health and wellbeing in schools. We are fully aware that this is one of the lasting consequences of the pandemic, and we will step in to support schools every inch of the way.

I find the irony of this urgent question being called by those on the Labour Front Bench somewhat mystifying, because they went missing throughout the pandemic, and there was silence on the issue of schools. It is not just me who thinks this. Let me quote:

“Labour’s silence on closing schools is completely ridiculous.”

That was Corbynista Owen Jones saying that, so it is not just we on the Conservative Benches who think it. The NEU—or the “not education union” as we should refer to it—continually wanting to shut schools, and Labour keeping silent despite the donations running into its party coffers tell us everything that we need to know. Can my hon. Friend confirm to me that, no matter what happens this winter, schools will be kept open, pupils will be learning face to face and, in that way, they will catch up exactly as they need to.

I thank my hon. Friend for his passionate question. He has first-hand experience of working in schools, and I look forward to leaning on his expertise while I am in this job. It is absolutely the Government’s intention to keep schools open. We are clear that schools are the right place for children. The cost of children not being in school is extremely serious, so it is very much our hope that schools will be open from this point on.

Erdington is one of England’s poorest constituencies, but it is rich in talent. I pay tribute to the headteachers, who do an outstanding job in the most difficult circumstances. In a survey I conducted of schools in my area, I found that 60% expect to set a deficit budget next financial year, and 100% said that they do not have sufficient support for their pupils with special educational needs and disabilities. Of the schools that applied for exceptional costs funding, 75% received funding amounting to less than half the costs. Is it not the simple reality that school spending by the Government is still lower than in 2009-10, and that after tearing up the catch-up recommendations made by their own adviser, they have allocated to schools a fifth of what was asked for? Is it not the simple truth that a whole generation of children and young people are growing up without the support that they deserve from their Government?

The hon. Gentleman is a doughty defender of pupils on his patch. The Government have already spent £3 billion on helping schools to get through the pandemic. As I have said, we have invested £1.5 billion in evidence-led programmes, and we have a high degree of confidence that they will help children to catch up some of the time that they have lost in school. Since the Prime Minister took over two and a half years ago, he has been clear about his ambition to return per pupil spending to what it was in 2010. Obviously there is also an imminent spending review, in which other things are being considered.

Will my hon. Friend confirm that keeping children in school and educational settings is an absolute priority? Does he agree that children with special educational needs and those on education, health and care plans should be given the bespoke support that they need to maximise attendance and thrive in the school environment—a shining example being Hoyle Nursery School in my constituency?

My hon. Friend is right that we have to help the most vulnerable children to overcome the problems of the pandemic. Children with special educational needs are very much on our radar. We have consistently prioritised children who attend specialist settings by providing additional uplifts in the 2020 catch-up premium and the 2021 recovery premium. Specialist settings will receive an uplift to deliver summer schools and will have the flexibility to deliver provision based on pupils’ needs. I understand my hon. Friend’s concerns; for about eight years, I was the vice-chair of governors at a special school in west London, so I have seen the remarkable work that such schools can do to change children’s lives. We absolutely have our mind on this agenda.

We know how important good ventilation is to protect staff and students from the spread of covid, and to keep schools safe and open. The Welsh Government are funding better ventilation in schools. Why are this Government not doing the same?

I am delighted to hear that the Welsh Government are improving ventilation in schools. The Government in Westminster are doing precisely the same. We have spent £25 million on installing CO₂ monitors, with 300,000 monitors going out right now. We are starting with special schools and then rolling them out across the estate.

I recently met the impressive young people from Milton Keynes Youth Cabinet, who highlighted to me the difficulties with mental health that children suffered during the pandemic, and of course we discussed catch-up. It is great that the Department have announced the consultation on discipline and behaviour in schools. Does the Minister agree that discipline, behaviour and structure are key to good mental health, and to catching up on what we have lost over the last few months and years?