Monday 4 April 2016

Education & Skills

Last Monday evening I was one of the sponsors of what turned out to be an interesting debate about Educational Attainment in Yorkshire and the Humber. The debate centred on a report from the Social Market Foundation that drew attention to the depressingly low levels of attainment in the region.
Although there was a certain amount of political point-scoring most contributors recognised that this was as serious issue deserving of serious consideration and that the statistics showing poor performance don’t just happen when one or other party comes to power; they are deep-seated and have come about over many years.
The report stated that “GCSE performance at age 16 across England and Wales reveals marked disparities between regions, with over 70% of pupils in London achieving 5 good GCSEs compared to 63% in Yorkshire & Humber.”
It goes on “Regional differences in attainment are already apparent by the end of primary school”. It also says: “Regional disparities persist, with some areas such as Yorkshire and the Humber falling further behind and London’s performance surging over the last three decades.”
Some of the political argument centred around the Government’s proposal that all schools should become academies. In North East Lincolnshire where all secondary schools are academies we are fortunate to have some excellent performing schools, with good sponsors, first-rate teachers and leadership of the highest quality. They score well in the league tables and yet we have, as the SMF report notes some extremely disappointing overall attainment.
I have raised this conundrum previously and in February the David Cameron wrote to me following a question I put to him at Prime Minister’s Questions. He made clear that the Government recognised the problem and said “…the Government is committed to educational excellence everywhere and we want to eradicate the pockets of underperformance where too few children have access to a good school.”
If our young people are not given a good grounding at school and shown what can be achieved then they may grow up lacking ambition. The truth is that from whatever background and wherever you live you can succeed. However hard governments work to ensure equal opportunity background and home circumstances make a difference and one of the factors that contribute to success is the active involvement and support from parents.
In the past the core industry in most towns be it fishing, steel, mining or whatever provided work for the youngsters coming out of school but nowadays you need qualifications even for low-skilled jobs. Around the area we have some excellent work being done by our Further and Higher Education colleges and by training facilities such as CATCH in Stallingborough where I was pleased to visit last week to open their new workshop.
Despite their hard work when I visit many local businesses they will tell me about the difficulty they have finding a sufficient supply of skilled labour. This isn’t just a local problem; major infrastructure projects struggle to recruit skilled people in the numbers required, often have to bring in workers from abroad.
I welcome North East Lincolnshire Councils decision to employ a Director of Skills and Learning. If we are to overcome some of the inherent problems facing the area we must be prepared to bring in top people to improve things.  
Parliament is often assumed to be a political knockabout akin to Prime Minister’s Questions from dawn till dusk day-in, day-out but anyone following these things closely will know better. Not only did we have the three hour education debate mentioned above but on Wednesday afternoon a debate about the genocide been perpetrated on the Yazidis, Christians and other ethnic and religious minorities.
My Conservative colleague Fiona Bruce initiated the debate saying that “Christians, Yazidis, and other ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and Syria are suffering genocide at the hands of Daesh; and calls on the Government to make an immediate referral to the UN Security Council with a view to conferring jurisdiction upon the International Criminal Court so that perpetrators can be brought to justice.”
Exactly why the Government seem to be resisting referring the matter to the International Court wasn’t entirely clear and when a vote was taken it was passed by 258 to none. The vote is not binding on the Government but it may, in time, well result in a change of policy.
After which we discussed continuing printing Acts of Parliament on Vellum – of course we should. Magna Carta wouldn’t have survived had it been on paper. Fortunately there was a large majority in favour.