Department for Education — House of Commons, 2019-07-01
Topic: Education
Timothy Paul Loughton (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that the situation is not just confined to coastal areas. However, the problem is that there tend to be more deprived communities in coastal areas around the country. Seemingly affluent shire counties such as West Sussex disguise pockets of deprivation. We have high special educational needs in many of our schools and we need to focus more on bringing the funding up to at least the average in the rest of the country to give those children a better chance I have spoken in numerous debates on the problems that schools in my constituency face. I wrote my notorious eight-page letter to the Secretary of State last year after I had summoned all the heads of all the schools in my constituency and all the chairs of governors and asked them to tell me not what they thought might happen and their fears, but what was actually happening now. That included the reduction in teaching assistants and the fact that, with 90% of school budgets in many cases being spent on staffing, any cut means that non-staffing expenditure on, for example, maintenance and buying new computers, does not happen, and real reductions mean fewer staff, or, as happens in many cases, less qualified staff being taken on to replace experienced staff who have left to take others jobs, retired or gone on maternity leave I was particularly concerned about the cuts to counselling services in schools. As the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston said, we need a much more joined-up approach to that. I welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment to additional funding to deal with mental health needs in schools, with mental health first aiders and training for teachers and others, but we need to do so much more before children get to school. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on conception to age 2 and the 1001 critical days campaign—I should also declare my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—I stress that the biggest impact on a child’s brain happens in the first 1,000 days between conception and age two. That is when a child forms attachments to a parent and the brain grows exponentially. If there is not a good attachment with a parent—if the parent does not have good mental health—that child will be at a disadvantage when they get to school. It is a truism, but if we consider a 15 or 16-year-old who suffers from depression, as is now common in our schools, there is a 99% likelihood that their mother suffered from some form of mental illness during pregnancy or soon afterwards. We need to do so much more preventively earlier so that fewer children experience the mental health pressures to which too many succumb in our schools, with all the challenges that they face I want everything I have said in previous debates on schools funding to be taken as read. However, today’s debate is on education estimates and we neglect the fact that education funding includes provision for children’s social care. Although more than three quarters of the Department’s budget goes on day-to-day school funding, this year, some £9.1 billion will go into children’s social care through local authorities Children’s social care is in a state of crisis. I want to spend a few minutes dealing with that subject. Before doing so, I endorse the comments of the Chairman of the Education Committee on the problems that face further education. I know about that from colleges in my constituency and I endorse his frequent calls for a 10-year education plan to allow teachers and lecturers to plan ahead in the same way as the national health service There have been so many reports in recent months. The all-party parliamentary group on children, which I chair, produced "Storing Up Trouble", which gave an alarming account of huge variations in the experiences of children coming into the care system, or not reaching the threshold for coming into the care system. In Blackpool, 166 in 10,000 children are likely in to end up in care, whereas the figure for Richmond is only 28 in every 10,000. There are differences in deprivation between Blackpool and Richmond, but by a factor of seven? The Department is not properly assimilating that sort of information and data, which our report revealed. That is one ask from our report There have been several reports, for example, by Action for Children, the Children’s Society and the Education Policy Institute. The Children’s Commissioner for England recently found that England now spends nearly half of its entire children’s services budget on the 75,000 children in the care system, leaving the other half for the remaining 11.7 million. The Children’s Commissioner will produce a further report at the end of this week, identifying the percentage of children in need, constituency by constituency, and asking why we are not doing more to focus on those children at an early, preventive stage The evidence is there. Local authorities say that they face a shortfall of at least £2 billion by 2020 in children’s social care. We have a recent record of the number of children in care at the moment. There are other issues around the funded 30-hour childcare entitlement, of which I am a big supporter. However, many of my independent providers tell me that the remuneration they get is not nearly enough to cover the cost. There is a danger of losing places, and the least well off, who most need them, will not be able to access places for their children I have concerns about social worker recruitment. Despite the Munro report and everything we did for the social work profession some eight or nine years ago, too many social workers are being driven out of the profession early. I also make a plea for the troubled families programme, which has its origins partly in the Department for Education. It was one of the Cameron Government’s most successful initiatives. It was about joining up the different Departments because, in a family with problems, the problems are not limited to mental health, physical health or school truancy. It is usually a combination of those and they need to be dealt with holistically. When the funding comes to an end in 2020, it is absolutely essential that the project is continued. I would like to see a pre-troubled families programme to deal with families much earlier on—from, as I said, perinatal mental illness stage onwards—so that they are less likely to express those symptoms, which then cost us so much as a society. Child neglect in this country costs £15 billion a year. Perinatal mental health problems cost some £8.1 billion a year. We are spending £23.1 billion a year on getting it wrong and dealing with the problem. That money could be used much more effectively earlier on My final point is to ask what has happened to the inter-departmental ministerial group, which was being chaired by the former Leader of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom). That was a great initiative which brought together Ministers from six different Departments, including the Children’s Minister from the Department for Education and the Chief Secretary to Treasury, who will be conducting the comprehensive spending review. It is all about having a joined-up approach and pooling funding to make sure we put investment in to support families where they need it early on to see them through those challenging early years. That work is groundbreaking and it is absolutely essential that it continues. Perhaps the Minister can update us on where it has got to. It is essential that it is a major component of the comprehensive spending review, so that we stop wasting money dealing with the symptoms of failure and start investing upstream to prevent the huge social problems that bring about huge financial problems. If we get that right, it will be better for all our children and young people We need more money for our schools. I am glad that all the leadership candidates and the Prime Minister recognise that, but please do not forget children’s social care. If we do, the problems of dealing with children with problems when they arrive at school will be far higher and far more challenging than if we sorted them out before they are even born.