Webchat with Conservative Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, TUESDAY 28 April at 11.30am

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello

We're pleased to announce the second of our three politics webchats this week with Nicky Morgan, who was Secretary of State for Education and Minister for Women and Equalities until Parliament dissolved earlier this month. She will be joining us for a live webchat on Tuesday 28 April at 11.30am.

Nicky is the Conservative candidate for the Loughborough seat. She has done a couple of webchats with us before; in one of them she made some headlines after saying that 'no option is off the table' when questioned about whether the Conservatives should consider all-women shortlists to improve women's representation in Parliament.

Since becoming Secretary of State for Education, Nicky has been perceived by some as taking a less combative approach to teachers and the education sector than her predecessor, Michael Gove. She has emphasised the importance of 'freedom' for schools, and has said that tackling unnecessary workload is a priority. There has been some controversy about her vote against the Equal Marriage Act; she has also announced plans to include issues like consent in sex education lessons.

Do join us at 11:30am on Tuesday 28 April to talk politics, education and other important issues with Nicky. As ever, if you can’t make it then, do leave a question for Nicky on this thread. And please remember our webchat guidelines.

Thanks
MNHQ

[bemybebe]

I have a summer born daughter. I want her to start school at compulsory school age (CSA) in September after she turns 5. She does not have SEN and she is not premature. My local authority believes that children like her should go straight to Year 1 missing a whole year of education that DFE described as "crucial" and "critical", yet a county next door approves almost every request to enter Reception at CSA. As a former lawyer and Secretary of State for Education do you recognise this situation as a problem and are you planning to finally amend the Code to stop this legal debacle and regional lottery. Thank you!

[RDutton]

Nicky Morgan

In a recent webchat you stated:

'every day a child takes out of the classroom is a day that they will have to catch up at some other point, making their life difficult and increasing the pressure on teachers who have to help them catch up...good attendance starts early"

It seems the Department for Education has taken a different stance when summer born children are starting school at compulsory school age, as they can be forced to miss a WHOLE year of education (at any point) for purely starting 'on time'. Does Nicky Morgan believe it is in any child's best interests to miss a WHOLE year of school and have no right to a continuous national curriculum? What will she do to ensure this doesn't happen?

Thanks

[Natgaff]

I have been working on intervention for various LEAs for fifteen years now, a HUGE percentage of these are summer born. The DfE report in 2010 proves summer born infants are 90% more likely to be diagnosed with SEN than their peers, this gap never closes throughout education. So what will you do to enable parents to defer entry to reception? at present the majority of requests are being refused...

[justonemorethread]

Good morning.

I am living overseas and my children are attending in international school that delivers the International Primary Years Programme. This is mostly enquiry lead.

It definitely has its own downfalls in terms of providing good foundations for lower primary children, as well as other weaknesses that I won't go in to here.

However it has made me question the validity of how the British Curriculum is delivered. I have noticed that children in this school are more independent learners and are interested in what they are learning. They are not stifled by the idea of SAT results and achieving the 'right' level.

I acknowledge that there must be some way of assessing children's progress during their school life, but don't believe it is necessary to make it so stressful for the children and teachers.

I have worked in both systems and I am proud of what children in UK schools achieve and learn, but think this can come at a cost : Children being levelled at 4 years old (They've only been talking for half of their life!!), pressure on parents to pay for private schools if they can't get in to the good catchment school, pressure on teachers to teach to the test instead of exploring topics in depth, the class division it invariably causes when whole 'undesirable' schools are created by default, because those parents can't afford a house in a catchment area or private schooling?

My question is this - How do you justify the need for testing and levelling children to within an inch of their life, and at such an early age? The time spent by teachers pouring over 'creative writing' trying to find that extra full stop or time connective that will enable them to show half a level of progress?

[SugarPlumTree]

You dismissed Mr Hunt's allegations regarding Ofsted and Academies ' “And I have had Ofsted inspectors tell me that they have come under pressure from the DfE to fail a school so it could become an academy'

However this is exactly my of what has happened at my Daughter's school. The School tried to fight it but in the end the Head (who had turned the School plus a local Estate around in his time in the area) resigned. After a number of could do better interim monitoring reports (the last in January, a year after full insoection) the School announced they are to be an Academy in March, an Inspector was back in a few weeks later describing a School I now no longer recognise, full of praise for the massive progress made since last inspection and recommending full Ofsted carried out as in his opinion the School is back to good.

No harm done in theory apart from it has been. Teachers are so stressed they are literally walking out in tears. My Daughter has gone from being told to take the Ebacc route to now being told she is borderline to getting 5 C's this summer and being able to go onto a L3 course in 6th form. Friends with children in 6th form are finding their children approaching AS exams with chunks of syllabus uncovered, morale is at an all time low and the school is in chaos.

As parents we do not blame the staff but the Departmemt of Education and consider our children to be victims of politics. Do you stand by your dismissal of Mr Hubt's comments about Osfted and Academies?

[StephieDoug]

I live in Richmond Borough and we got NO school place (along with 113 other families in this Borough) for my son 2 weeks ago. The more I learn the more I find that the system is a mess, there are not enough school places for the number of kids and schools that are being introduced are in the wrong areas, with the expectation that those of us in 'black holes' will all travel, which has implications on traffic, working hours, health etc. I don't want to hear blame between LAs and Gov - I want to know what your party are proposing to do about what is becoming a crisis (and set to get worse as all these kids hit secondary school age where there is less provision)

[YBR]

Like many people I live in an area with increasing pressure on Primary School places. Not only is there the general population increase but in the ward where I live there is a large proposed development - thousands new houses with no new schools planned.

All the primary schools in the town are academies so the LEA cannot expand them to provide places.
I hear that it is not possible for local government to start new schools because they must be Free Schools - is this true?
Is there any plan in place to ensure there are sufficient school places?

I live in Loughborough.

[portico]

I am a parent of a child at grammar school, and possibly my other child will be fortunate to attend one, too. True Conservatives who value hard work and meritocracy should naturally be advocates of grammar schools. What will you do to increase grammar school coverage across the country.

[Pico2]

What will you do to address inequalities in school funding across the country? We live in one of the worst funded counties in England and our village school could employ at least two more experienced teachers if it was funded at the average rate per pupil.

[Quiero]

I work with 16 and 17 year olds and have seen a real dip in their abilities as they leave compulsory education. I see young people with B and C grades at GCSE who are unable to grasp basic spelling and maths. They have few life skills and resilience. Do you think this is partly due to schools being forced to teach to the test rather than actually educating children in a way which will benefit them for years to come?

[Isitmebut]

Hello Mrs Morgan … my old dad used to say ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, so what frustrates me, are all the arguments against change, when in Mr Miliband overly simplified terms ‘the education market in the UK wasn’t working for the people’ – especially the 16-24 year olds, mostly of whom had attended their formal education under a Labour government.

According to BBC unemployed 16-24 year old figures, in pre EU freedom of movement employment 2004 there were 580,000, before the financial crash 711,000 - and that trend naturally increased afterwards right up until the election, passing the Coalition 921,000.

That unemployment rate, the negative anecdotal evidence by employers on their skill levels leaving education and the international comparison below, would dismiss and UKIP type claim that they were unemployed solely due to economic migrant numbers.

October 2013; “Young adults in England have scored among the lowest results in the industrialised world in international literacy and numeracy tests.”
www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24433320

”A major study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows how England's 16 to 24-year-olds are falling behind their Asian and European counterparts.”

”England is 22nd for literacy and 21st for numeracy out of 24 countries.”

”The OECD's Andreas Schleicher warned of a shrinking pool of skilled workers.”

”Unlike other developed countries, the study also showed that young people in England are no better at these tests than older people, in the 55 to 65 age range.”

Clearly we were placed in a ridiculous EU worker freedom of movement situation, where through lack of basic UK school leaving work skills, never mind the dropping of Languages by Heads focusing on School League Tables – this ‘freedom of movement’ in the main, could only come one way.

My questions are; clearly just throwing money at educations wasn't the answer, so what are you doing to improve the basic work skills our children receive now and for the future.

And secondly/secondary as it appears we will have no option to leave the EU and their core cross borders policy, what has the government done to reinstate European (or other) Languages into the curriculum of the majority of State schools, as I doubt the Private Schools never dropped them?

[OwlBeeBack]

Could I ask a question relating to your constituency (in which I live )?

I am concerned about the recent proliferation of planning applications for large housing estates tacked on to the fringes of many of the villages in your constituency. I appreciate that houses are needed but feel that brownfield sites in the town centre would be a much better place for these. Villages do not have the employment opportunities, transport facilities, or the infrastructure (school places, doctors etc) to make these developments sustainable.

The local council seem to be fairly powerless to stop the big property developers in their tracks.

What is your view on this and will you and any future Conservative Government be doing anything to oppose this?

[JustineMumsnet]

@LineRunner

Oh and Q to MNHQ. How will you be selecting questions for the MP to answer?

Usually what happens is that the webchat guest freely picks what to answer but we tend to flag questions or themes that have been raised by a few people or that we know are important to Mnetters. Usually the guest will then be happy then to address those questions (but not always). If you're anywhere near Kentish Town, do come in for one - you'd be very welcome and we'd ply you with biscuits .

[BoffinMum]

A question about international tests such as PISA.

The Coalition government appears to obsess about PISA to the exclusion of all else, and uses the results to paint a picture of a country undergoing rapid educational decline and in need of wholesale reform (I will gloss over the fact that our PISA candidates are nearly a calendar year younger than candidates in other countries when they sit the test, as we haven't got long).

The only problem with this line of Coalition rhetoric is that there are also other international tests where we tend to do really well, and from those results it is clear that we are consistently a top 10 country internationally in terms of education, and doing rather better than many of our Western European cousins. I am thinking about TIMSS (Trends in International Methods and Science Study) and PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study). These tests are different from PISA in that they assess the context of the curriculum (e.g. language) rather than just relying on factual recall, by the way.

Yet this achievement is consistently underreported by the Coalition. In the report about the 2011 PIRLS results, for example, it said this:

---

The top-performing countries in PIRLS 2011 were Hong Kong SAR, Russian Federation, Finland, and Singapore. In addition to the four Finland top-performers, Northern Ireland, the United Singapore States, Denmark, Croatia, and Chinese Taipei had high average achievement, followed by Ireland and England who also performed very well and rounded out the top eleven high- achieving countries. The US state of Florida and the Canadian province of
Ontario also did very well.

---

Glowing, right? yet this is how the DfE reported it to us at the time.

---

Results in key international tests in maths, science and reading demonstrate the urgent need for the government’s reforms, Education Minister Elizabeth Truss said today.

In a speech this morning, she said it was only when England’s education system matched those of the world’s leading performers that standards would rise for all children.

---

Now Nicky, I am not saying that we wouldn't all like to be able to strut around saying that England was Number 1 in the world, and so on, but all I can see from the results from PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS is that a) results have got slightly worse since the Coalition came into power (I am thinking of Science Fourth Grade results here) but that overall, despite the fact the Coalition has spent £8.35 billion earth pounds, we are pretty much trying to throw money at something that was in a reasonable state anyway.

So here's the question. Why don't we report all of these measures equally rather than privileging the findings of one test over others?

[BoffinMum]

Plus I think we would all like to know of anyone who has been Secretary of State for Education or aspires to the post ...

Did you ever think of training to be a teacher? If not, why not?

[Letseatgrandma]

Nicky-do you accept that teachers have been leaving the profession in droves over the last three or four years? Why do you think this is?

What do intend to do to help keep good teachers?

[Letseatgrandma]

Sorry, of course that should have read

What do you intend to do to help keep good teachers?

What will you change about a profession that is clearly currently causing thousands of teachers unecessarily stress and unhappiness?

[JustineMumsnet]

Hi all,
Nicky Morgan is ready to go and will kick off shortly.

[NickyMorganMP]

Hi Everyone,

Looking forward to answering your questions. Looks like we've got a few good ones in already.

[SJMcCormick76]

I requested my previous question as it was posted on behalf of a friend who then managed to post the question herself. Tristram Hunt answered my question yesterday with respect to summer born children saying that "it is something that any incoming Secretary of State for Education will have to take a look at". If you're fortunate enough to be in that position yourself will you address these issues? You have stated previously in answer to this that there is no statutory barrier to admitting children out of their normal age group yet currently there is no statutory right to this either. The two don't quite yet balance up and parents of summer born children are not able to win a delay.

[wildpoppy]

How do you teach your own son about politics? Is he interested? Or does he think it's something boring that his mum does? My kids love spotting posters in the windows at the moment.

[NickyMorganMP]

@sickofsocalledexperts

Would you consider a root-and-branch review of autism education in this country? It's all a bit lacklustre, delivering poor results for our kids and we lag behind the US 30 years eg in our use of behavioural methods like ABA, which are pretty mainstream over there now. I am not talking about the mechanisms and legal framework, which I know you have revamped, but the actual teaching methods (which remain stuck in the dark ages, little more than childminding in some schools)

Hi sickofsocallexperts,

For starters I'm very keen that initial teacher training should cover special needs, and cover it well. I'd like to see that training done by people who really understand those needs. I'm very aware of how brilliant special schools can be based on my visits to Ashmount School based in my own constituency. It's also why I'm so pleased that 17% of new free schools are special schools or alternative provision.

But more broadly I think you're right that as our understanding of autism improves we should expect our approach to educating young people with autism to improve as well.

[Maladicta]

I'm a mature student just about to start a Primary PGCE. I'm deeply concerned by the number of newly qualified teachers who drop out of the profession - the figure I've seen most recently is 40% within the first five years.

What are you doing to stem this?