Education Recovery

That, for the year ending with 31 March 2022, for expenditure by the Department for Education:

(1) further resources, not exceeding £53,229,742,000 be authorised for use for current purposes as set out in HC 14 of Session 2021-22,

(2) further resources, not exceeding £16,078,449,000 be authorised for use for capital purposes as so set out, and

(3) a further sum, not exceeding £56,969,129,000 be granted to Her Majesty to be issued by the Treasury out of the Consolidated Fund and applied for expenditure on the use of resources authorised by Parliament.—(Nick Gibb.)

Before I call the Chair of the Education Committee, can I say that, as Members will notice, Back-Bench contributions are for up to six minutes? I remind all Members, whether they are physically here or speaking remotely, that if they are going to withdraw for whatever reason—and I understand there are competing loyalties for people on this day and some may wish to withdraw—I hope they will notify the Speaker’s Office in the usual way. We all wish England well in the match tonight.

I do not intend to detain the House for too long with my remarks, given what, as you have just reminded us, Mr Deputy Speaker, is happening not long after this debate.

I thank the House for agreeing to this debate on the estimates in relation to the Department for Education’s recovery package. It is right that Members should consider the amount and distribution of funding allocated to lost learning. I want to talk about the damage to our children and young people’s education and progress, and about how Department for Education funding can be put to its most effective use to mitigate this damage, to encourage innovative methods to recover the learning lost as a result of this dreadful pandemic and to enrich the lives of those truly disadvantaged in this country.

Of course, we should all recognise that schools remained open to disadvantaged and key worker children even when closed to other pupils. For that, we pay tribute to the school leaders, teachers and, of course, all the school support staff, who are often forgotten, but who actually make the running of schools possible.

We are all aware that pupils at all stages of their education experienced lost learning as a result of national lockdowns, school closures and the need for individuals, classes and whole year groups to self-isolate. The impact of each of these periods of absence from school continues to be a significant and ongoing issue. Research commissioned by the Department in May 2021 found that all year groups experienced a learning loss of between two and three months in reading and mathematics. We also know that there are regional disparities in the level of learning loss in reading, with pupils in the north-east and in Yorkshire and the Humber seeing the greatest losses.

Even more alarmingly, while the pandemic has impacted on children and young people differently—for example, remote learning was especially difficult for children with special educational needs and disabilities—disadvantaged pupils have, overall, experienced greater learning losses of as much as seven months in both reading and maths.

I thank the Chair of the Education Committee for bringing the debate forward and for his knowledge. I followed him last week on young Protestant males’ underachievement, which is important for us in Northern Ireland and certainly here for the Minister as well. Does he agree with me and, I suspect, many others inside and outside the House that there is a big crisis coming in relation to the mental health of children who are unable to cope with life as a result of covid-19 in the last year and its impact on life at home with all the restrictions? Does he feel that the Minister needs to have a strategy in place along with Health Ministers to address children’s mental health from primary school all the way through to secondary school and college?

The hon. Gentleman, whom I regard as a friend, gets it exactly right. People often focus just on the loss of academic attainment, but there are also the mental health problems facing children during the pandemic. We know that eating disorders have gone up by 400% among young people, which is a pretty horrific figure. We also know that one in six children has mental health difficulties when it used to be one in nine. The Minister is putting a lot more money—many millions of pounds—into mental health, and I welcome that, but I would like to see a mental health practitioner or counsellor in every school in the land, with proper time not just for the kids but for the parents and teachers as well. We have almost a mental health epidemic sweeping through the younger generation because of covid and many other factors that are much more complex.

To go back to the ghosted children, we must implement rigorous methods for tracking where each of these children is and assessing what educational standard of learning they are receiving. I applaud the investment that Ministers and the Government have made so far to address lost learning. The £3 billion of additional support for children to make further progress in the curriculum after a significant amount of time away from school during the pandemic is a genuine commitment to this generation—it is a significant amount of money that should not be sniffed at—but we need to ensure that there is further funding down the track. Let me tell hon. Members about two wonderful schools in my constituency to showcase how that funding can translate to on-the-ground catch-up offers in schools. Abbotsweld Primary Academy has allocated the additional funding to allow for four days of 8 am starts for year 5 and 6 pupils. The start of the day includes a free breakfast alongside physical education lessons, and there is additional time for English and mathematics during the school day. Burnt Mill Academy is using £5,000 of its catch-up funding to offer summer schools to support students’ literacy and numeracy skills, ensuring that the gaps in learning are closed through enrichment activities. Our teachers and support staff all around the country are working hard to put the money to good use so that it has the most significant impact possible, and we give them our thanks.

I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way on that point. During the last education debate, he intervened on me and the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), in his characteristically inquisitorial way and pressed us to say whether we agreed with the extension of the school day and, if so, whether we agreed to an academic focus in that extension. I responded that we did support the extension and out-of-hours activity, but we wanted it to be more creatively focused and used quite imaginatively.

I noticed that Kevan Collins said today, in response to the right hon. Gentleman’s questions, that he wanted to create a space for children to be involved in a much broader range of experiences—the things they have missed, such as sports, drama and art. I know that the right hon. Gentleman is a reflective person. Does he now agree that the approach for any extended time at school needs to be along those lines, rather than the purely academic lines that he was proposing before?

If the hon. Gentleman looks at everything that I have said in the House, in the Select Committee and in newspaper articles, he will see that I have made it very clear from day one—the Minister will vouch for this, because I have nagged him about it often enough—that I absolutely believe in a longer day. It should be not just for academic catch-up, but for enrichment activities, mental health support and sporting activities; I have made the case and cited statistics to show that those also increase educational attainment. The reason I said what I did to the Opposition was that Opposition Members had been in the media giving quite confusing messages about whether they supported a longer school day. If they support a longer day now with both academic and enrichment activities, I strongly welcome that.

The mental health of young people has sustained worrying damage as a result of extended social isolation during a critical stage of their development. A longer school day provides opportunities to socialise and interact with many more peers than just having lessons can offer. The Department should leave no stone unturned to find underspend in its budget and re-channel the money into catch-up to make Sir Kevan’s vision a reality.

I present a proposition to the Minister. Schools and teachers have carried out the marking and assessment that exam boards normally undertake and are paid handsomely for. Of course, exam boards spent money on exams before they were cancelled, such as on creating and printing exam papers, but substantial refunds to reflect the lack of exam marking are likely to be given to schools and colleges. Last year, OCR gave back a total of £7.9 million, while AQA—the UK’s largest provider of academic qualifications—returned £42 million to schools and colleges, a rebate of approximately 25%. It is suggested that as much as 50% will be refunded this year. There is a strong ethical argument for that rebate to be used to fund pilot schemes in secondary schools to extend the school day, which will help to make the case for funding from the Treasury. Given that the Minister and the Secretary of State have said that the Government are seriously looking at this, I hope that something will come out of the comprehensive spending review.

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), who chairs the Education Committee, of which I am a member. This is an important debate. I thank all the school caretakers, secretaries, heads, support staff and teachers who have maintained our education system and educated our pupils throughout this very difficult time.

There have been major challenges, compounded by an unforgivable lack of planning by the Department for Education that often left children high and dry, without being able to go online for months. There was such confusion over reopening and exams in the first two terms of the year. Children across London have missed an estimated 103 days of in-person school—more than half a normal school year.

The Conservatives’ catch-up plan is not only woefully underfunded; it includes nothing on children’s wellbeing or social development, despite parents saying that this is their top concern for their children after the isolation of lockdown. The failing tutoring programme currently reaches less than 2% of school pupils. Of course we need the tutoring programme, but it must reach all the pupils who need it. Across the country, there is a large and growing disadvantage gap between children, and that must be the focus of the funding. A disadvantaged child in Wandsworth will be an average of four months behind others in the early years, before they start school; six and a half months behind in primary school; and 10 months—a whole school year—behind in secondary school.

Schools in Putney, Southfields and Roehampton have already suffered massive real-terms cuts since 2010, with a shortfall of more than £15.1 million in Wandsworth schools. That is £519 per pupil. One secondary school, for example, has a shortfall of more than £880,000, which is £841 per pupil. Schools really want to rise to the challenge of the catch-up. They do not want to see any child left behind, but they cannot do it without the funding.

I am pleased to participate in this important debate on the education estimates. I have in the past worked as both a teacher and a lecturer, so I know from personal and professional experience just how important a good education is. On a personal level, education and social mobility have characterised my life. My family originated in the east end of London and moved out to Essex. Fortunately, they understood how vital education is to obtain the knowledge and skills required to succeed. Education gives us an understanding of the world around us and changes it into something better. It develops in us a perspective on life, it helps us to build opinions and points of view and it is very important for improving social mobility.

Since 2010, this Conservative Government have made excellent progress on education standards and opportunities. We should be proud of what has been achieved so far. However, as reported by the Chair of the Education Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), there are still some serious areas of concern, including the underperformance and underachievement of white working-class children. The Government need to address that. I fear that that group and others will have been further disadvantaged by school closures. I also fear that the attainment gap has increased because of the pandemic, with so many children’s education damaged by lost learning. An extension of the school day, with academic and non-academic content, should be seriously considered.

I am proud of the Government’s approach to skills and training, as well as the levelling-up agenda, which will unleash an individual’s full potential and increase job opportunities. I look forward hopefully to the levelling-up White Paper, which I am sure will include bold policy interventions and increase and spread opportunity throughout the UK. The Skills and Post-16 Education Bill will also transform access to skills throughout the country, ensuring that people can train and retrain at any stage in their lives, supporting them to move into higher-quality, higher-skilled jobs, and equipping the workforce with the skills that employers need. This will be vital as we deal with the consequences of the ongoing covid-19 pandemic and for the future, post-Brexit Britain.

The pandemic has had a profound effect on not only our health but how we learn, work and live. School closures over the past year have had such a huge impact on all students, and a number of children are at risk of falling further behind and facing additional barriers. There is, of course, the issue of children being deprived of physical learning opportunities and a lack of facilities at home—whether in respect of limited access to IT equipment or a lack of study space—to enable adequate learning. I welcome what the Government did to increase investment, with more than £400 million to provide internet access and more than 1.3 million laptops for disadvantaged children. Young people have been helped during this pandemic and, hopefully, those in need have been helped the most.

The pandemic has generated unprecedented financial demands on the Government, but time and time again they have drawn a red line when it comes to supporting children and young people. The former Children’s Commissioner, Anne Longfield, calls it

“an institutional bias against children”,

and Sir Kevan Collins today described the Government’s response as “feeble”. When will this Conservative Government wake up and realise that they are failing an entire generation of young people?

Let us start with those living in poverty. Some of the poorest families had to fight the Government to get free school meals during holidays, not just once but twice. Children living in digital poverty had to wait months and months to get a digital device because the DFE could not get its act together. After receiving independent advice from Sir Kevan Collins that the Government needed to spend £15 billion on educational catch-up, they committed to just a tenth of that. Just last week, the Government confirmed that they would go ahead with a planned cut of some £90 million to pupil premium funding, which helps the most disadvantaged children. That is not levelling up; it is a crushing blow. Why are the Government ignoring their own education advisers? When will they commit to a serious catch-up package? When will they take child poverty seriously?

Let me turn to school budgets more broadly. I welcome the fact that the starting salaries of newly qualified teachers will increase to £30,000 by 2022, but schools are being asked to meet those costs from their already overstretched school budgets. One school in my constituency tells me that 91% of its budget is already committed to staff salaries at existing levels. Simply put, it needs more funding to pay staff what they deserve while still investing in other areas of the school. We already know that the increased work pressure on school staff is leading to a retention crisis and a real fear of burnout. What will the Government do to address the chronic shortfall in schools funding?