Education Recovery — House of Lords, 2021-06-08
Topic: Education
Michael Goodall Watson (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am afraid there is simply no disguising the fact that the resignation of Sir Kevan Collins as Education Recovery Commissioner is a huge blow to the Secretary of State’s hopes of delivering on support for school pupils. I have to say that the Secretary of State’s response to the shadow Secretary of State yesterday was inept. He seems to regard all scrutiny and questioning as opposition, ignoring that all Governments need scrutiny to improve policies and their delivery At this time, young people and their families are looking to the Government for urgently needed help; a siege mentality will do very little to meet those needs. The mean-spirited plan outlined in the Statement is the one brought forward after the Prime Minister rejected Sir Kevan Collins’s own proposals to provide pupils with extra time and teaching to catch up on lost education over the next three years. The commissioner used his years of experience to produce plans that were simply cast aside by the Treasury. It is probably stretching things to imagine that the Prime Minister even cast his eye over them. The paltry scheme the Government are willing to fund was described by Sir Kevan as "a half-hearted approach" that "does not come close to meeting the scale of the challenge" and "risks failing hundreds of thousands of pupils." It is no wonder he resigned Sir Kevan’s proposals were costed at £15 billion over the next three years. Last month, the Education Policy Institute published a full set of proposals for education recovery—a package of £13.5 billion over three years, required to reverse learning loss and support pupil well-being. Last week, Labour published our children’s recovery plan; it was costed in detail and totalled £14.7 billion over the next three years. So, in the past month, there have been three proposals, all within the same ballpark in their costings. Yet the Government reckon they have a monopoly on wisdom and believe that around 10% of that amount will get the job done. I know the Minister will say that some support for the recovery has already been committed and more will follow in the spending review, but the Government are so far short of what the experts—and I am not placing the Labour Party in that category—think is required that they effectively inhabit a different world It is not simply academic recovery we should be concerned about. Cases of probable mental health disorders have increased from about one in every nine young people to one in every six because of the pandemic, and we are only now beginning to understand how their well-being has suffered as a result of isolation and anxiety. Yet, there was not a single mention of "well-being" or "children’s mental health" in the Secretary of State’s Statement. Even when asked directly yesterday by the shadow Secretary of State, Kate Green MP, he had nothing to say on those areas, which are vital to children’s recovery The Statement does mention the national tutoring programme, and that has failed even to meet the target set by the Secretary of State. He promised that a minimum of 65% of tutoring provision would reach pupil premium children, but the National Audit Office recently found that only 44% of those accessing tutoring could be classified as disadvantaged I want to ask the Minister questions that may be familiar to her. They were put to the Secretary of State yesterday by Kate Green, but did not receive answers. I am confident that the Minister can do rather better than her boss. Where is the bold action needed to boost children’s well-being and social development, which parents and teachers say is their top priority and is essential to support learning? Where is the increased expert support to tackle the rise in mental health conditions among young people? Where is the targeted investment for those children who missed most time in class, struggled most to learn at home and were left for months without access to remote learning? Where is the funding needed for the pupil premium to replace the stealth cut to school budgets that the Government imposed when they changed the date of the census recently As she left office in February, Children’s Commissioner Anne Longfield revealed that she had encountered what she termed "institutional bias against children" in this Government, especially in the Treasury. That was an astonishing claim, yet the parsimony of the education recovery package announced certainly reinforces that view. It is one that the Government will need to work hard—much harder, I suggest, than they have done in the past week—to overcome. In this, their hour of real and urgent need, our young people are being failed by this Government.