Guest Post: Bridget Phillipson MP: "How new laws are putting you and your families first"

[SophiaCMumsnet]

For too long, baked-in inequalities have been left to fester in our education and care systems.

Every day, families are battling to get their first-choice school, forking out for costly uniforms – and even more costly childcare, or seeing children fall through the cracks of a care system that is supposed to support them.

I know it’s not good enough.

My driving force is breaking the link between a child’s background and the success they achieve, and our Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, currently going through Parliament, will do exactly that.

The laws within it are integral to our Plan for Change, which aims to improve protections for vulnerable children, drive up standards in schools and put cash back in working parents’ pockets.

Here are just some of the ways our plans will benefit you and your family:

Better access to high-quality education
Trying to get a place at your first-choice local school is an all-too familiar challenge for so many parents.

Of course, a place at any one school can’t be guaranteed, but that shouldn’t mean children going without a brilliant education.

Our new laws will enable councils and schools to work together better to make sure there are enough school places in the local area and that children without a place can get one quickly.

Councils will also be able to open all types of school, not just academies, so they can meet the needs of local parents.

We are making sure that every child is taught by a fully qualified teacher, and that all schools use the national curriculum. Many currently don’t need to. These changes will create a stronger, more accessible school system, with higher standards, focused on delivering the best local offer for local children and families.

But we know that some children may still be at risk of falling through the cracks. That’s why we are introducing registers of children not in school, to give us a better understanding of which children are consistently absent and whether they might need additional support. Each child will be given a unique identifying number, in order to join up systems and put a stop to children vanishing from education.

Breaking down financial barriers
Every day, some children arrive at school without having eaten breakfast, leaving them unable to focus and not ready to learn.

Meanwhile, sky-high branded uniform costs have put financial pressure on parents and forced children to arrive in ill-fitting or worn-out clothes, leaving them feeling self-conscious and uncomfortable throughout the school day.

These laws will change that.

Our new breakfast clubs will be free and universal in every primary school, saving parents as much as £450 a year, with 30 minutes of free childcare and a nutritious meal to start the school day.

The benefits of breakfast clubs are huge, from helping with flexible working for families, to improving behaviour, attendance and attainment. That’s why we’ve already started this vital work, with 750 schools due to kickstart the rollout from April.

On top of this, a new cap on expensive branded uniform items will make sure you have as much flexibility as possible to shop around and save.

From next year, primary schools will be able to require a maximum of three branded items, and secondary schools will have the option to include an additional item if one of those is a tie – which could save you over £50 per child during the back-to-school shop.

Supporting families to stay together
For some families, the most important and valuable support any government can offer is protecting their children during times of crisis.

We’ve inherited a cycle of crisis intervention that is letting too many families down. We must be better at preventing issues before they escalate to crisis point.

Under these new laws, families will be able to rely on accessing the help they need to keep their family together.

We are making it a requirement for local authorities to offer all parents of children who are at risk of entering the care system the chance to attend ‘family group decision making’ meetings.

These meetings will give all families an opportunity to come together and make a plan, working alongside professionals, prioritising the wellbeing of the child.

These changes will mean disjointed services will no longer stand in the way, and earlier intervention will mean more families can be supported to stay together.

And for families who have no other option but entering the care system, the bill will also support the government’s crackdown on excessive profit-making by children’s social care providers, including introducing a backstop law to potentially cap the profit providers can make.

No more words, and no more lessons learnt.

This is a child-centred government, and we are taking action to put your children, and your family, first.

You’re not putting the children at private schools first… often those with SEN like ours who were failed by the state system and now aren’t able to stay due to the VAT. I’ve got to come out of the workplace now to home school my DD as she refuses to return to the state system that destroyed her mental health…so that’s my tax you’ve lost!

Pus, what about all those wealthy families who will now receive free breakfasts and childcare that they could well afford. Why is that OK when it wasn’t Ok for wealthy pensioners to get the winter fuel allowance. My 12 year old could create more sensible, consistent policies.

If you’re changing uniforms I hope you require the schools to grandfather old uniform out - or they’ll only insist everyone throws away the perfectly good old branded PE jumper for the new unbranded one (which will be at the same cost from the same supplier) and will exclude perfectly good second hand uniform from the second hand sales

Over the last few years academic standards in England have improved as measured on the usual International Index.
In Wales and Scotland by the same measurements standards have dropped. According to some reports it is expected that The Government is willing to allow pupils at English schools to reach lower standards because it will impose ideological topics like 'de-colonising subjects' in the new curriculum.
Will maintaining the improved standards so far achieved be a priority?

"a new cap on expensive branded uniform items will make sure you have as much flexibility as possible to shop around and save"

Please will you define "branded"? If an item is a specific brand, but can be bought from many outlets (and doesn't have school branding), is that "branded", or not?

Bridget you are an absolute disgrace. You have penalised private school children with your punitive tax break which wasn’t even a tax - anyway right now you’re looking better Than Rachel from accounts but your time is coming

Ok, so I found the definition in the bill.

Still not 100% clear, but it'll do.

Ms Philipson,
I'm sorry, but all of these policies will have little to no impact if there are insufficient qualified subject specialist teachers in schools.

Too many schools have unqualified teachers or are reliant on supply teachers. Or students are being taught by non specialists. This is hugely detrimental to their progress and wellbeing.

Teachers are leaving the profession at a rate far higher than they are being replaced. Recruitment targets have been missed again.
I note there is no mention of the previous pledge to recruit 6500 more teachers (which I might add, equates to 1/4 of a teacher per school).
Schools need to be adequately funded, teachers need to be properly renumerated and resources in place for students with SEND.
And until that happens the rest of your policies are worthless.
I've got 25 years of teaching experience in schools. What experience do you have?

“But we know that some children may still be at risk of falling through the cracks. That’s why we are introducing registers of children not in school, to give us a better understanding of which children are consistently absent and whether they might need additional support. Each child will be given a unique identifying number, in order to join up systems and put a stop to children vanishing from education.”

This is such a basic overview of what is actually written in the bill for home educators. You make it sound so innocent and nurturing but what you are proposing is such a power grab and an overreach. You do realise that LAs already keep registers? What you are actually proposing (that you don’t state here) is giving (unqualified) LA staff the authority to come into our homes (& don’t forgot many HE children are traumatised by school) and make a snap judgement on the quality of our education (with very little knowledge of the different styles of home education or the myriad ways HE is NOTHING like school) and deem it ‘unsuitable’ and slap a school attendance order on us. Have you any idea how open to misinterpretation this is? We need more information and more specifics rather than vague threats to send our kids back to school and us to prison. Will these people be educated in the differing styles of HE? What if they are badly behaved? Who will do checks on them? What will the recourse be if we don’t agree with their decision? Do you have ANY idea how intrusive this is and as a result will you be sending LA staff into the homes of all preschool children and schooled children during weekends and holidays?

I have some suggestions instead.

Rather than penalising (threatening) home educating families (who statistically are LESS likely than non HE parents (even adjusting for the variation in numbers) to be a safeguarding risk;

1. How about you look at the failings of social services and family court system at keeping at-risk children safe? Focus on that first I’d say.

2. How about you look at WHY so many children are “vanishing from education” ie why parents are removing their children from schools? What is it about schools that is repelling so many teachers and students? Do some self-reflection before you come checking up on my family and threatening us in this bill with registers, SAOs and prison.

3. How about you look at keeping children safe who feel unsafe IN schools (I refer you to the many many examples in the press about bullying in schools and worse).

We know your game. We know you are using the recent tragedy of Sara Shairff to detract from your own failings (& those of many governments before you) and to make it look like you are doing something to help. HE families se such an easy target to you and a great distraction. Shame on you.

Reading /literacy.

Look at stats of prisoners in how literate they are.

You must introduce flexible reading schemes and drop the phonics test. You must.

Children must learn to read and phonics is a huge barrier to many many children.

Reading is reading you must help schools open up to different stragety and break this cult like hold phonics has on reading.

I've seen it myself with my own dd she flew when I stepped in with old fashioned Peter and Jane books.

I was an exceptional early reader but I know had phonics been forced on me it would have become about phonics not simply reading.

As for sen, until teaches are taught sen until Senco are actually made to learn sen, as usual it's the blind leading the blind.

, * I work in education and simply see ignorance everywhere and a culture of disbelief that a child can't sit still or is emotionally distressed or can't do phonics.
Until you start to look behind the curtain at oz you will perpetuate the cycle myself as an education worker and a mum of a sen child live in every day.

We need more teaching assistants not less.

And I did consider home schooling for a time because she was locked out of education because she couldn't read and her self esteem was according to an Ed pysc as low as she and ever seen

One issue that I think hasn't really been picked up at a national level is the impact of parents, usually mothers, having to take time out of work to navigate the frankly baffling and barrier-strewn SEND support system to get the help their children need.

I am not one of these parents, so I'm not speaking from first hand experience, but I have several friends, most in professional roles, who have recently ended up taking time out of work on sick leave because they are nearing breaking point in trying to get the support that their SEN/autistic children need. These children are academically very capable, but they cannot thrive in the massive classes, and often draconian discipline systems that most state schools now have and end up being suspended, or refusing to attend.

These parents having to take time out, to fight for their children's needs, and battle with local authorities to get the right support, I think are being overlooked. And I also think the cost to the economy in them doing so is also underestimated.

Like I say, I'm not one of them, but in the last few months several friends of mine have had this exhausting and upsetting experience, and are still a long way from resolving support for their children's needs. It might cost the country to get adequate support for children with SEND, but it's already costing the country in parents being forced out of work either short or long term!

Where’s the Gender Questioning Children’s Guidance and new RSHE guidance?

Why haven’t you acted to get gender identity ideology out of schools?

I have never in my life witnessed a more destructive, invasive ideological “Education” Secretary. The wreaking ball this bill takes to the gains made in education standards. The pathetic attempt to court opinion with “free” (they’re not) breakfast clubs & feeble waffle about the cost of uniforms. The invasive accusatory insinuations regarding your (initial) assault on homeschooling. The destruction of, and erosion of standards in, our outstanding academies. Maybe it will take a few years for everyone to see the damage - perhaps when we’ve slid back down the PISA rankings or parents are up in arms as average class sizes balloon. You are a danger and a destructive force to our education system.

The chip on your shoulder shines through in everything you say.

Quite. Absolutely ludicrous inconsistency.

What are you thinking Labour? Do you realise millions of families don’t need you to pay for breakfast. Why are you using taxpayers money for that but not for older people who need heating in winter?

‘This is a child-centred government, and we are taking action to put your children, and your family, first.’

No no you’re not. You’ve not put my children, or my family, first at all. In fact all you’ve done is put us last. Us and millions of others.

The sooner your hypocritical shambles has left the building the better.

You’re not putting children first by proposing that museum and theatre visits are too middle class and should therefore be stopped as school activities. You’re a bunch of spiteful philistines who want to keep everyone in their place.

Any response Bridget seems to be a complete census of opinion you are an imbecile join the queue of Starmer and Reeves

Bridget, given you delete any comments that don’t support your narrative from Facebook, I implore you to please read and take heed of these comments before it is too late. As a parent I am genuinely sad and fearful for the future of our children. Your ideological, uncosted and poorly researched policies are damaging to all children. I literally cannot understand why you would want to destroy a system (both state and independent) that has demonstrably improved the eduction of children over the last 15 years.

When you read the thousands and thousands of negative comments to each and every post you make on social media surely you must start to question whether you are doing the right thing? Surely you can’t be so arrogant not to consider there might be another way? A way which does actually put ALL children first..

@Squeezeoflime oh yes I forgot that censorship

For the sake of our children and of education in this country I implore you to take a step back and consider why you are implementing ideological policies without any consultation or analysis. Without doing this you do not know whether they benefit children or parents, or whether they are harmful. Regarding breakfast clubs, I think that the main beneficiaries of this policy - those who will save money through free breakfasts clubs - are rich parents who currently pay for breakfast clubs but now will be subsidised by the taxpayer. Why should we pay for your children’s breakfast?

Instead of demonising private schools why not look at what they do well and replicate it in state schools - smaller classes, more TAs, respectful rather than disciplinarian atmosphere, engaged parents etc. Many private schools do a lot for their local community - make them do more to keep their charity status. But after the VAT, many are not even giving bursaries anymore, let alone letting local state schools use their pools for free. Parents are pissed off and will not want the school spending their money this way now.

i wouldn’t choose to live going into my overdraft each month to pay school fees if I didn’t have to! No one would! Why not make ALL state schools so good that people don’t want to use private? Wouldn’t that be a more positive way to approach things?

You will never get rid of privilege. Most of the Labour MPs are wealthy enough to live near outstanding school so don’t need to buy a good education. Some of us live in scummy towns near failing schools but we are expected to just sacrifice our children’s education because of it. Starmer sending his child to ‘study for his GCSEs in a calm million pound flat’ stinks of privilege. Why is that OK? Why is paying for tutors OK? Why is private health insurance OK? But private school is not.

I am a teacher in a state school who now has to leave to homeschool my daughter as we can’t afford the VAT - we already live on beans on toast for a week before payday due to the fees. So that’s one less teacher you need have.

The spiteful imposition of VAT on small independent schools has denied many, many children with SEN a safety net before any kind of safety net has even been designed, let alone introduced into state schools.
One child in my family ( severe autism) has only just got into a state funded specialist school after 4 years of very expensive and exhausting legal battles. Child is so damaged by struggling in the state system they will never recover.
Another child, brain damaged at birth by NHS incompetence, is thriving in a small private school, will never cope in a state secondary, but there is no other option that will be affordable going forward.
There are so few places in the state system for children who need extra support. The money you get from VAT is just a drop in the ocean compared to the cost of the numbers of children forced out of small independent schools. Parents will end up coming out of the work place to home educate.
One of my dc has HFA.
She was being driven insane by the chaos and noise in her primary school.
We took her out for year 5 and 6 and put her into a small local independent.
The first day she came home so happy.
" We had proper lessons"
" We sat facing the teacher and I could hear what she said"
"Everybody listened".
" No pushing and shoving".
She passed the exam for the local grammar school. Very disciplined and calm. A☆ results all the way through to Alevels. ( Before all the grades were renamed)
I am so thankful we managed to pay for those 2 years. We put it on the mortgage and we are still paying it back.
This is such a short sighted policy.

None of these changes would have made the slightest difference to how badly the state education system let down our family.

Nothing about tackling the enormous varriers and disgustingly long-winded processes involved in getting a struggling child an EHCP.

Nothing about giving schools more resources to support children who have an EHCP or are in the process of getting one, leaving SEN staff too overwhelmed and unable to actually make a difference.

Enforcement of a more one-size-fits-all approach, reducing schools' abilities to do things differently thus making it less likely that parents will be able to find a school that works for their individual child if the one-size-fits-all pattern doesn't work for them.

and you spitefully demonise the families who have the ability to escape this mess, recategorising the children who have been thoroughly failed by the state system as not being among "our children" and actively sabotaging their education further despite their families helpfully having relieved the state of the burden of that education, saving the state many thousands of pounds a year. Rushing through this sabotage so quickly that there's not even enough time to make plans to minimise disruption for children who are in the midst of GCSE courses.

Your changes to school places allocations will do nothing to address the enormous differences in opportunities and aspirations in schools serving poor areas compared to those in neighbouring wealthy areas which less well off families can't access due to the differences in house prices in good and bad catchment areas being actually greater than the cost of five years of independent education. Yet the well-heeled residents of leafy suburbs are encouraged to consider those schools to be their reasonable right rather than an enormous state-granted privilege that the less well-off are locked out of.

We would gladly pay significantly more income tax if it would deliver a state education system that was fit for purpose and created schools where all children can thrive. Breakfast clubs, school uniform changes and a more draconian enforcement of the national currilculum will do nothing for the myriad of children with ASD and ADHD and other neurodiversities for whom a typical mainstream inner city comprehensive is utter hell.

Schools need way more staff. The pathetic target of 6500 more staff is woefully inadequate, anounting to barely half a new staff member per school when what is needed is about a 20% increase - but making teaching a more attractive career choice and stemming the flow of burned-out teachers leaving the profession doesn't seem to even be on your radar.

Honestly. So much ridiculousness over uniforms.
My older dc's secondary school had a very simple uniform policy.
Black trousers, blazer, shoes. White shirt. Grey jumper.
Any brand.
Buy a sew on badge from the school and put it on the blazer. £3.
When you buy a bigger blazer, remove badge from old blazer and sew it on the new one.
Any uniform outgrown but still wearable goes into the second hand store and goes on sale cheap in the school hall at the end of each term.