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.

Re-posting what @IWantToGetOffHelp said because I absolutely agree:

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.

I can afford to give my kids breakfast. Yet you want the taxpayer to pay for it. How much will that cost per child per year? I'd rather a poor pensioner got money to cover their heating bill.

Our state primary makes money on breakfast and after school clubs which is clearly shown in the accounts, which they have to use to fund extra TAs to deal with all the additional needs coming through Reception and KS1 and from the Covid hangover. Will you be compensating schools who lose you? How much are you going to fund the “breakfast clubs”?

Class sizes in KS1 and KS2 are too big. Other European countries have smaller class sizes! Children’s needs have changed, not least because most now have 2 working parents. They deserve better. They all deserve to be around happy adults who are less stressed and less thinly stretched. If you were to reduce class sizes and increase funding for TAs substantially, now that would make a huge difference to a whole generation. We are being told the birth rate is falling - well those DCs when they grow up will have to work extra hard and be extra efficient to grow the economy so let’s start investing in them now!

Why have you not mentioned the following parts of your bill? (Also not mentioned on the Gov.uk summary). It seems you are trying to hide this within the guise of safeguarding children overall:

Imposing statutory pay conditions for Academies for teachers will not help the current teacher retention crisis, it will add to it.

Reducing the freedoms to school management that academies have.

Increased impositions on home education and attendance orders will be severely damaging to children who are not fine in school.

Safeguarding vulnerable children is vital, however, although there are measures within this bill that may assist with that, the hiding of additional controls on a wide variety of education options is going to limit choices and likely cause further damage to children's education across the board.

Hiding the details of this as well is underhand politics. This bill will not improve education for children and is likely, in many cases to worsen standards. You cannot make a one size fits all approach for education. It will not help the current crisis in education.

Schools need to be adequately funded, teachers need to be properly renumerated and resources in place for students with SEND.

This.

Teachers are dropping like flies. We need to retain them-with pay and a reasonable workload. BUT... budgets are so tight that heads end up bullying experienced teachers at the top of the pay scale out 'on capability' (very difficult to defend that you are a good teacher when someone with a clipboard is observing you weekly and ripping apart everything you do and say). This is so that they can employ two new teachers for the same price! Those same teachers will reach top of the pay scale in a few years though (or never allowed through threshold so leave teaching for better pay elsewhere!)

Breakfast clubs seem to be where you think you are making a massive difference but that's childcare NOT education. Our breakfast club is hard to staff when we can charge parents for it-nobody wants to work in it on minimum wage. How much are you going to pay schools for this if they are forced to offer it free for all? Can you imagine the practicalities?! We currently have 20/30 children with toast and cereals in the hall with one TA. If the whole school can suddenly come in, where do you think they will go!? We have to have staggered lunchtimes to fit them in! If you fund this (in a totally inadequate way) like the government funded nurseries, it will be a disaster-loads closed round here as they couldn't make ends meet. Schools have no wriggle room in the budget to mop up any shortfall and pay for staffing and teachers and heads can't run breakfast clubs on top of doing their own jobs.

Oh, and the previous government forcing schools to stop using 'letters and sounds' (a free phonics scheme produced by Labour), and I stress spends thousands on a new scheme was a bloody disaster. Write and release a good scheme and give it to schools free. Most children can learn through phonics, but not all. Scrap the y1 phonics test and stop bloody alien words. If children don't 'get' phonics, let schools use other methods-some thrive with a sight word approach-let them do that if it works! Let teachers teach-they know what the children need. Not move phonics year after year-we are failing our children.

Are you reading any of these comments?

Lose the breakfast club idea, as other people have said it's mostly a waste of tax payers' money.

Get rid of VAT on school fees, why shouldn't people who can afford it gave the choice to privately educate their children? It does feel like spite and pointless as it pushes more children into state schools.

Ban unisex toilets. Dealing with periods is already daunting enough for young girls without the total nightmare of having to share facilities with boys. They will self exclude if they don't have toilets they can feel comfortable using.

Reduce teacher burn out, we can't afford to lose good teachers and the pressures they are under are too much.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

I ask you to ban mixed toilets, as a PP suggests.

Mixed toilets potentially decrease the health and wellbeing of girls. My daughter’s friends won’t use the toilets at their school now. They won’t drink fluids at school so they don’t need to go to the toilet. This is terrible for their health, and psychological state. I wonder how many other girls are the same? Do you care? What will you do about this?

There’s also often members of staff who have to sit outside the toilets all day, to try address any issues which arise. Another cost / waste of staff time, that wasn’t there before. Do you think this is a good situation?

Also, why are you trying to “feed” the nation when it is exercise that is lacking in kids and many are obese. If you are going to do a morning club, make it exercise driven too and provide extra funding for that. Your colleague has jetted to China - they do morning exercises.
Many kids cannot concentrate because of a lack of exercise and screen addiction. Those are the two most important issues, as well as the SEND crisis. There is no short cut to the SEND crisis.
And where are the school dentists? Another urgent health matter.
Physical and mental well being and academic achievement is all connected. Kids from broken unstable homes need mentally stable & happy teachers to compensate for the chaos at home. Support teacher wellbeing first and foremost.

The branded uniform is a red herring. Every single PTA second hand uniform sale churns a ton of branded stuff that then funds school iPads and similar. The rest of cheap supermarket uniform ends up in the dump, at huge ecological cost. Don’t encourage throw away culture if the rest of your Party is trying to go green. It is inconsistent.

Also, what is with the postcode lottery? Free school meals for all in London and now even some with uniform, yet not elsewhere? Offer the same in state education consistently, across the whole country.

Instead of adopting Sir Sadiq Khan's meals policy why not get your colleagues in government to put in measures that mean families can actually afford to feed themselves? That we feed a good proportion of people at the food bank is a national disgrace! People don't want handouts! They want to feel they can provide adequately for their families. Yet many adults in full-time work are having to claim UC. Essentially the State is subsidising company wages. It shouldn't be allowed to continue.

Also the uniform thing is BS. When my DD attended school I could only buy uniform from one shop, and this shop had the monopoly on most secondary schools in the area (South East London). If any child wasn't wearing the "correct" uniform she was put into detention. I had to make the uniform last because it initially cost me around £400 not including shoes and a coat. You need to break these uniform shop monopolies Bridget and force schools to set their uniform standards to stock bought on the high street. One school near me only makes the jumper obligatory, everything else can be bought at M&S, as it should be. Do something about that, please.

“Essentially the State is subsidising company wages. It shouldn't be allowed to continue.“
Labour just raised NI and national insurance and it sent Government borrowing costs much higher - so we now have to borrow at a higher rate and will all be paying more for mortgages, for longer, which means rents go up too.
There is healthy competition between supermarkets in this country and whilst it looks like food prices have rocketed, they are still lower comparatively speaking to wages in most other countries. It is rents and house prices that are out of control here. Successive Governments keep pushing up house prices by not working on the supply side of things. If population grows due to immigration and family break downs, there is a supply issue and couple that with not enough building and training people to build, that is the recipe for disaster we have faced for a long time now.

The high street uniform shops aren’t raking it in. They are just like other small businesses that will go bust without the branded uniform. That is a simple economic fact.

The free breakfast club will benefit us as a family as I need to get to work by 9am and pay for the privilege. We currently can’t access the school provided wraparound care as it’s only till 5:30 so I have to pay 5 x the price to access a wraparound care that is till 6pm as I finish work at 5pm. So £10 extra per day for the sake of 30 minutes.
If I were to reduce my hours I would face sanctions on Universal credit so Labour need to think about after school provision too.

I'd love to see quality research into how many secondary aged girls (female children, to be clear) spend all day at school without drinking or going to the toilet where there are inadequate (including mixed sex) toilet facilities. I have no doubt it will be vast numbers. Anecdotally, girls train themselves to do this no doubt to the huge detriment of their education and health.

Many female children also stay off when menstruating for the same reason.

Yes. The detrimental effects of mixed sex toilets on girls is a public health disaster. Thank goodness my DD didn't have to cope with mixed sex toilets in her secondary school. She would have had a complete breakdown.

There is no such government proposal. Nobody is stopping schools arranging museum and theatre visits. Stop falling for propaganda

Any response Bridget ?

Guest posters never respond. I’ve got a thread in Site Stuff asking MNHQ to start adding a disclaimer to guest posts explaining this.

We once managed to get someone to come back on a guest post around 2016, but only by chasing them on Twitter.

@EmpressaurusKitty thank you for the reply probably would be a great idea if she did even just to see how unpopular her and her punitive decisions have been received

It seems very on brand to do a “guest post” where you can make vague, pleasant sounding promises about the things you’ve decided are most important, without taking any questions or engaging in any dialogue.

so far nobody seems to think you’re tackling the issues that matter to them in the right way. Some listening might be helpful, no?

I approve of all these proposals. They were in the Labour manifesto which was tested in a democratic election.

@AncientAndModern1 can you point me in the direction of any published evidence, consultations with head teachers, cost/benefit analysis which supports labours claims that these policies will benefit children and their wellbeing and eduction. Genuine question not being facetious.

This is going well isn’t it. I encourage both Mumsnet and your communications team to honestly evaluate how well this has gone and include the feedback from the very people that you believe you are positively impacting. You are not. I’ve just finished reading the LBC report on your determination to break the Academy system which outperforms by far the very structure you are imposing. Why are you wanting to break what is working (independent schools, academies) beyond trying to spite both different sections of society and the conservative party just so you can rock a box and say you’ve changed something. Change should be for the better, not just because. While you’re at it, means test every family accessing state school and if their income is above £120k make them pay for state education or enter independent to make space for those on lower incomes. And make grammar schools only for those in the local area, not for kids who commute for miles and take the places of the very kids from families who pay tax for that school. For your interest, we can’t afford independent school but there are no places in state otherwise that’s exactly where my kids would be, and we’re, up until aged 11 when we didn’t get into any schools. Your policy has pushed me into heavy debt and frankly ruined our lives, both mine and the children who are sitting on a knife edge knowing they will be pulled out of school at some point with little notice and plonked somewhere miles away with no friends. Oh, and you want us to take them out of independent school with no place to go to, because we can’t request a space more than a few weeks ahead for in year moves. Oh, and what about those doing GCSEs? How do you propose that works? Great work. Rather than breakfast club, take it back to those in receipt of free school meals, and teach the rest of parents to get out of bed and give their kids breakfast before they get to school. Like many people do, who will no doubt not be eating a second breakfast despite it being free because their parents have made sure they eat before they go to school.

@Squeezeoflime no they can’t as it wasn’t tested anywhere
@Pollyhic its a total disaster and I’m truly sorry for your children and you

@Pollyhic I try to feed my son breakfast before we leave but like me he doesn’t like to eat first thing. Breakfast club at 8am is the right timings for him to eat something and allows me to get to work on time.

I wish there was more in the bill about protecting pupils physical and mental health at school and safeguarding their rights.

Safeguarding a child’s right to not be barred from using the toilet, for instance, or subject to mass punishment or made to miss medical appointments because it impacts on their attendance. What about schools that push neurodiverse pupils to the brink with their insane regime of micromanagement (e.g Michaela/all of the SLANT stuff that focussed on eye tracking and sitting still). What about those who don’t get diagnosed with SEN because they are well behaved and academically able but struggle socially and mentally until they eventually crash and burn? What about sexual assault in schools?

I do applaud your efforts to tackle academies though and hold them accountable. Having profit making bodies in charge of our schools was always going to end badly and not be in the best interests of children or teachers.

Yes, they wonder why attendance is getting worse and more parents choosing to home educate (or feeling forced to out of desperation to safeguard their child's mental and physical health).