Education Recovery — House of Commons, 2021-06-29
Topic: Education
Richard Michael John Ogilvie Graham (Conservative, Centre-right): This debate has some big themes, and it seems to me that the two biggest ones are, first, whether the Government are responding to the huge impact that the pandemic has had on pupils, their education and their life chances; and secondly, whether the additional resources pledged by the Government will be enough to make a difference to those who need help the most I want to focus first on the response. There is a big package of help that should be incredibly useful to quite a large number of our constituents, but the big issue at the moment for so many families is undoubtedly the business of bubbles having to self-isolate. I saw this at first hand last Friday when a secondary school called off a visit that I was going to make. A primary school has also called off a visit that I was going to make this Friday. My caseworker’s daughter has had to self-isolate four times in the past few months, and my chief of staff—my senior researcher, if you like—is also off again today and for the next few days because one of her children has had to self-isolate I have been trying to get the precise figures for the whole of Gloucestershire, but I am in no doubt that the figure has increased hugely over the past two to three weeks, and that many children are self-isolating for an average of a week each as a result of being in a bubble—often a large bubble—with someone who has tested positive. This is thoroughly unsatisfactory, particularly for younger children, on whom the pandemic does not have any considerable effect. It is disruptive to pupils’ progress, and given that we have now changed the rules somewhat for quarantine for business meetings, we should be able to do the same for our pupils, to give them the best possible chance to catch up at school by having regular lateral flow testing and being able to carry on until they test positive. That, therefore, would be my first big ask of the Minister today. I appreciate that it is not entirely in his control, but a rapid decision on all those in school bubbles having to self-isolate would be incredibly helpful On the second point, about resources, the Opposition have made great play of the fact that Kevan Collins asked for £15 billion and the Government came up with £1.5 billion, but actually, if we take into account all the additional parts of the package, we see that it comes to rather more than £3 billion. Clearly, the more money we throw at a particular issue, the better the results we should be able to get, but that seems to be a very large sum of money by any standards. The key to the exam question, therefore, is who will determine who is going to meet the classification of "disadvantaged" schoolchildren, so that the money goes to the right places In this context, words such as "disadvantaged", "poor" and "deprived" are all incredibly sensitive, and they often ignore the fact that some of our poorest communities are actually the most resilient in terms of community strength. I refer here to some of the wards in my constituency, including Matson, Coney Hill, Podsmead and Tredworth. The schools in those wards are often rated outstanding, or have been outstanding and are now good. That just shows that the success of a school is not wholly contingent on how well-off the families of its pupils are. Great things can be achieved in some of our poorest communities, and the phrase "white privilege" is just very odd to anyone living in three of those four wards. The fourth one is Tredworth. The ward of Barton and Tredworth is entirely multicultural, and there is not a great deal of privilege there. Everyone is just getting on with their lives as best they can. Let us not try to pit one community against another. Let us recognise that there are lots of people who need help, often in very similar ways, in schools today That is the key to what I want to mention today. I want to give the Minister all encouragement to allow pupils to get back to school without self-isolating in bubbles for too long, and to give us some idea of how the term "disadvantaged" will be defined so that we can be sure that pupils in our constituencies get that extra help.