Department for Education — House of Commons, 2022-07-06
Topic: Education
Munira Wilson (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I welcome the new Secretary of State to her place and congratulate her on her promotion. I also congratulate the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) on securing this debate; I have always admired his passion and commitment on all issues relating to education and social mobility. He speaks from the heart most of the time, but I thought that he made a valiant case for the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), given what we know about what went on in Downing Street last night During their time in secondary school, a year 11 pupil who finished their GCSEs in the past couple of weeks will have seen five—yes, five—Education Secretaries in charge of policy and spending that have a significant and lasting impact on their lives. Any state school that got through that many headteachers in such a short period would certainly have been put into special measures by now, yet this chaotic Government limp on. Time and again, we see the Department for Education, sadly, notched up as a temporary staging post on the climb up the greasy pole for ambitious Ministers That is a depressing and damning indictment of the way in which the Government view children and young people and their education. It is indicative of the short-term thinking that pervades a Government who are focused on campaigning, rather than governing. However, with our children being our most precious resource—the future of our nation—on whose shoulders our future economic success will be built, not only should the Department for Education be viewed as the most coveted brief, to be mastered and championed relentlessly over many years, but it should be funded as a long-term investment Former Conservative Prime Minister John Major told The Times Education Commission that education expenditure should be seen "as capital investment, on the basis that its effect will linger for a lifetime" I could not agree more, so as we consider the education estimates, I ask: where is the ambition for our children and young people? Why is it—as the right hon. Member for Harlow said—that according to the IFS, by 2025, over a period of 15 years, we will effectively have seen less than 3% growth in education spending while health spending will have risen by 42% in the same period It is time that we viewed our children’s future in the same way that we view key infrastructure projects. Human capital—for want of a better phrase—invested in properly, will deliver a significant return for our economy and society. However, it does not fit into three-year spending cycles or four to five-year parliamentary cycles—although we seem to be on two-year parliamentary cycles at the moment, and who knows? We might be in a general election this time next week. Turning to catch-up funding, the long-term economic impact has been laid out starkly by the Education Policy Institute. It calculates that without sufficient investment and support, children could lose up to £40,000 of income over their lifetimes, equating to about a £350 billion loss to the economy. With pupils having missed out on millions of days of face-to-face teaching, and with the Department for Education, frankly, failing to act swiftly to support schools or put a proper catch-up plan in place quickly, the attainment gap is widening The National Audit Office said in its report last year that the Government did not take action to enable vulnerable learners to attend school and to fund online resources quickly enough. They could have done more in some areas. The NAO recommended that the Department "takes swift and effective action, including to learn wider lessons from its COVID-19 response, and to ensure that the catch-up learning programme is effective and reaches the children who have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, such as those who are vulnerable and disadvantaged." Just yesterday, we saw the first set of SATs results since the pandemic, showing a steep decline in the number of children achieving the expected standard at key stage 2. Alongside the educational gap, children have paid a very high price in terms of wellbeing and mental health. That is a top priority for headteachers in my constituency. Parents are at their wits’ end. I have talked about this month in, month out in the Chamber, and we all know the NHS statistics that show that the number of children with a mental health condition has risen from one in nine to one in six since 2017 Despite all that, we barely hear any mention of catch-up support for our children and young people. The Government want to stop talking about covid—sadly, covid is still with us, although the Government want to move on—but our children and young people will bear the scars of their sacrifices during the pandemic for a very long time. As the EPI suggested, many will pay the price for the rest of their lives, so we owe it to them to heed the advice of the Government’s adviser, Sir Kevan Collins, who felt compelled—like many Ministers now—to quit in his capacity as a Government adviser because they would not take his recommendations seriously and put in the investment in children and young people that I have mentioned. He said that he did not believe "that a successful recovery can be achieved with a programme of support of this size." I remind the House that he recommended that £15 billion be invested in education recovery, but we have seen a commitment to only a third of that We know that children and young people fare better when parents are empowered to engage with their education. That is one reason why the Liberal Democrats have called not just for the £15 billion commitment to be made immediately, but for some of that money to go towards vouchers to be put directly in the hands of parents to support their children, whether that is with tuition, sport, art or music, with whatever they need for their physical wellbeing and social engagement with their peers, or with counselling to tackle mental health issues with the advice and support of their school. Our children and young people are suffering a double whammy: they have felt the impact of the pandemic, and now they are at the sharp end of the cost of living crisis.