Got a question for the Secretary of State for Education, Gillian Keegan MP?

[RhiannonEMumsnet]

Hi all,

We’re pleased to tell you that later this week Justine will be sitting down with Secretary of State for Education Gillian Keegan MP to ask her Mumsnet users’ questions.

If you have a question you'd like answering, you can post it below. Please stick to the usual guidelines - one question per user, keep it civil, and if one topic is dominating, please don't continue to post what's effectively the same question or point (we'll be deleting questions that are repeated multiple times). We'll be limited for time so please do keep questions as short as possible so we can ask more of them - as always, we'll try to make sure we cover the topics that we know are important to Mumsnet users.

We'll be closing this thread at 5pm tomorrow, so please do get your questions in before that - and watch this space to hear the responses. If you'd like a reminder of the format you can see our interview with Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves here.

Thanks,
MNHQ

How do you sleep at night, knowing the damage this government has done, and is doing, to an entire generation of children? Especially those with SEN?

My son starts his GCSEs in September, yet this academic year he’s had long periods of time without a qualified and specialist teacher in Maths, Science, Art and English. His ‘cover’ work for maths at the moment is the stuff he did in year 6 (I know, because we did it during lockdown 3 years ago) and no new knowledge at all, because his maths teacher left and hasn’t been replaced. Why don’t people want to teach?
What are your plans to solve the recruitment and retention crisis?

What proportion of 'ghost' children are medically vulnerable and/or live with medically vulnerable people? What is being done to address their concerns and make schools a safer space for them?

Rishi Sunak recently announced a plan for everyone to study maths till they are 18. There aren’t enough maths teachers to even teach the current requirements. When making this announcement was the government completely oblivious to the reality of the teacher shortage, or did it just hope that the electorate was?

Poverty can reduce life chances. The combination of cost of living crisis, lockdown (for a proportion) and current covid policy are contributing to poverty. Is it time to address indoor air quality in educational settings and also discourage infectious staff and children into school, rather than encourage large spread of illness? This could mean that less children, staff and their families suffer from longer term health issues and the knock on educational and financial impacts through inability to work or attend school for long periods. Indoor air quality has been addressed at government level - why not the same for our children and teachers?

1. Does she agree that the teaching of gender identity ideology to children at school is child abuse since they are encouraged to believe that they can easily change sex. 2. Many 'tomboy' girls begin to identify as lesbians in their early teenage years. But they are usually bullied, told they are really boys by other pupils and not supported by school staff, who will tell them they are really 'trans.'. Does she agree that these young lesbians who are same sex attracted should be supported by the school and they should comply with the Equality Act 2010 which recognises same sex attraction as a protected characteristic

Wrap around support services have been decimated in terms of funding.

Speech and language therapists in my LA have caseloads of 2000 children each. This means the S&L support has been pushed back to schools. Each teacher has been issued with a 30 page booklet, from which we're meant to devise a speech and language support programme for each child we identify with needs in this area. Speech and language therapy is a masters degree, yet this has been replaced by a 30 page 'flow chart' booklet, for non specialists to somehow apply without training or specialist knowledge.

Many children are starting school with speech and language difficulties, probably as a result of covid, some schools have a third of reception children as non-verbal. How are teachers meant to fill these gaps? Who is going to provide the actual therapy sessions once they have been devised? Are they the right therapies?

This is a timebomb of literacy difficulties. There's no point in having won the 'phonics war' (I think this is what Nick Gibb called it behind the Times paywall at the weekend), if a third of children can't speak.

I’m a primary school chair of governors. The budget is dire. Soon, I will refuse to sign off on a budget that cannot offer breadth of curriculum experiences, that cannot resource effectively, that compromises health and safety by not having the money for a 90 year old building that is unfit for purpose, that compromises safeguarding by leaving early careers teachers to work on their own with significant need in their class. We cannot restructure any further, and the last round dropped morale and resilience to rock bottom. The school is supporting children with complex needs and their families as well because the services around SEN, social services, social care are not there. I am sickened at how much children are being let down despite the unwavering commitment of staff who are doing their best in a broken system and are breaking themselves. The staff are amazing! The children are amazing! Even after being evacuated from their classroom because a classmate who needs specialist provision is throwing chairs again. In my school, senior leaders are considering giving up their holiday to run a holiday club to raise money. It was totally disingenuous for the government to make a case that the recent pay offer for teachers was funded. It wasn’t! You must pay teachers properly and you MUST fully fund school budgets.

I wish I could think of one question, just one succinct question that conveys all the above and that you won’t spin your way out of. I can’t. I just need you to know that you are failing children. You are failing them badly and they deserve so much bloody more than this.

What are you doing to ensure schools are properly funded so they can pay teachers and support staff and equipment.
How are you going to ensure retention and recruitment of highly qualified teachers in all subjects?
How are you going to ensure all pupils including those with additional needs meet there potential.

If you can read all of this from people on the frontline telling you how dire the situation is and respond with spin and waffle about 2billion over x years then I despair.

I hate that that’s what I fully expect you to do. That this is the state of uk government and the morality of our supposed representatives.

What are you going to do to reverse the damage caused by unregulated PSHE providers and activist teachers running amok in promoting contested and harmful beliefs about gender identity as fact?

Why didn’t the guidance on political impartiality in Feb 2022 address this explicitly?

My DD is doing her GCSE exams and she revealed something to me. She said, as long as she has the quotes/phrases/formulas in her head it's very possible to do well without really understanding the subject. She is predicted good grades in Maths & Science but says although she doesn't really understand it, she can just blag it. Whereas in English and R/S she has more understanding because she can apply all her knowledge of history behind it. (She's a history nut). Having not taken a GCSE since 1997 do you think her assessment is fair?

I haven't taken a GCSE since 1997, not the minister

Do you think that Sunak’s priorities actually are ‘the people’s priorities? Wouldn’t a General Election settle that point one way or another?

What has been the impact on children, schools and parents on the introduction of fines for taking children out of school during term time? What are the positive and negative effects? Have there been any studies carried out or is it just guesswork?

I would like to be able to take my children out of school for a week during term time at the discretion of the Head Teacher. Their attendance is otherwise generally very good. We would benefit as a family in so many ways, not least of being able to afford a holiday and getting away from the crowds (one child with SEN).

LAs often breach their statutory duties in relation to SEN. This disadvantages the most vulnerable whose parents don’t know the system and can’t, for a multitude of reasons, advocate for them. How is the DfE going to ensure the DBV in SEND programme doesn’t further exacerbate this problem?

Why do you ignore the experience and knowledge of school governors, leaders, teachers, TA's etc when they tell you the dire situation in schools (that is a direct result of underfunding for the last decade whilst the Conservative party have been in government)? These experienced professionals are telling you exactly what the problems are yet you treat them with contempt and suggest that they are either wrong or lying. The situation is schools is now critical, please use your power to help the current education of the future workforce

The childcare announcement in the Budget seemed to mainly build on a broken model - the 'free' hours for 3 and 4 year olds are currently underfunded and lots of providers charge for 'extras' or only allow you to have the funded hours between certain times. It comes a shock to lots of parents that they don't actually get thirty free hours at all, and extending this model to 1 and 2 years is only going to put more pressure on the system. Why does the government think that the 'free' hours model is the best way to help parents? Whats the evidence that shows it's working?

two questions. 1) how do you justify not raising teachers salary above inflation and that it should come out of the school budget rather than a centralised pot?

2. my children’s school has recently asked parents for a monthly donation of £5 per child to keep the lights on so to speak, the parent body has responded but schools in poorer areas don’t have this resource. We will all pay for the effect on these children’s education. As SoS, can you defend the school’s actions, and explain why schools are now in the position of having to do this?

When will you accept that there is a crisis in education? Funding is shocking, teacher morale is at an all time low. People are leaving teaching. Wake up.

Loads of these questions are about funding, and I think we all expect for the secretary of state to say, as she has previously, that parents shouldn't worry because the government is investing XYZ and reel off some figures. But it's clear from the stories being shared by teachers and parents that whatever those numbers are its not enough funding to retain teachers and ensure our kids are taught in safe buildings with adequate supplies.

So my question is, when the secretary of state tells us not to worry, does she really mean we should just lower our expectations? And that we should accept, in England, in 2023, that our kids might never be taught by subject specialists for GCSE subjects, and that teachers have to pay for classroom supplies out of their own pockets because the schools can't afford them, and parents will be asked to setup direct debits to fund basic resources? Because thats whats happening, and if you're happy with that being the case, then you should be honest about it.

When will you put children first?

What changes will you make to achieve this?

I do not have a 'Gender Identity' and do not want my child indoctrinated with 'Gender Ideology' in schools, as I believe this contributes to the epidemic in social contagion - What will you do to protect parents who hold the protected characteristic of NON-Belief in Gender Identity in the Equality Act 2010 and refuse to have their children be indoctrinated by schools?

Adding my voice to @Idontknowwhatmynameis ‘s post - why force good teachers out when there’s such a shortage. I know two excellent teachers to whom this happened.

“Why is the government accepting the use of ‘support plans’ to force more experienced, and thus more expensive, teachers out of their jobs?

If you do not know what a ‘support plans’ is, then I suggest that you spend some time with some of the thousands of experienced teachers who have left, or plan to leave the profession, despite not actually wanting to.”

What makes you think you are qualified to oversee Education? As far as I can see, your background appears to be business, and you've no real idea what it is like in state schools these days. What are you going to do about the fact that we are short of teachers, short of TAs, can't get supply staff and can't get cover supervisors. Nowhere near enough people are applying for teacher training (and 70% of them will drop out within 3 years).

Basically, no one wants to do the job anymore after years of Tory cuts and teaching through a pandemic. We're done.

What's your plan?