Damian Hinds MP: speeches

Speeches

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I think this is where the whole House comes together. The best of all worlds is to have someone who is both a subject specialist, with their own excellent academic record, and QTS, and who is also a really inspirational practitioner. Of course, those three things come together on many occasions, but sometimes there are choices that have to be made.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Lady give way, on a point of fact?

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Yes, but that does not change the fact that individuals, perhaps including the hon. Lady’s son—I do not know her son; I do not know his circumstances or his school career—may be perfectly capable of helping kids learn how to play football without having a PGCE, and it happens—

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am starting to attract a little bit too much attention from Sir Edward, who I think may be becoming impatient with me for the length of my speech, but I will give way one last time.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  First, I will ask the Minister a bit about process. The questions we ask in Parliament are often rhetorical; we do not expect answers to them from Ministers, and nor do we get them, but this is the Committee stage of a Bill’s passage, known as line-by-line scrutiny, where quite often he questions we put are questions about facts or the intent of the legislation. I have asked a number of questions at different points in this Committee stage that have not been answered, but nor has the Minister necessarily been saying, “I will write to the hon. Member in response.” Does he intend to do that, or, if any questions have been left hanging, are we required to put down a written parliamentary question to which the Minister will respond? For the avoidance of doubt, what I am about to say is not in the category of question that requires a factual response or note of intent. The misconduct regime covered in the clause is clearly exceptionally important for the protection of children, public confidence and maintaining the very highest reputation of the profession. I welcome what is new in the clause, because it is right and proportionate that we should be able to take action regardless of when the incident took place and whether the individual was a teacher in the profession at that time. I also welcome online education and independent educational settings being brought into scope, as well as the ability to investigate a suspicion or an incident regardless of how it came to light. I want to ask the Minister about something related to the regulatory regime. It would not technically require primary legislation, but there are quite a lot of things in the Bill that do not require primary legislation to be effected. I am referring to the matter of vexatious complaints. In the world we live in, particularly with the influence and prevalence of social media, we have heard teachers express the feeling that sometimes, in a small minority of cases, complaints may be made against a teacher neither for the right reasons, nor because of a genuine safeguarding concern. Of course there should not be barriers blocking people from any background raising concerns; the ability to do so should be available to everybody. Equally, however, there is a concern sometimes that when seeking to remove barriers, we risk going too far the other way. We must ensure that there is a process to go through so that all genuine concerns and complaints do come through, but that we do not end up with an excessive volume of vexatious complaints. These are, I am afraid, sometimes fuelled by social media.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I think the hon. Lady makes my point for me: it is possible to train children to play football without a PGCE.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I do—I am so glad the hon. Lady asked that, because I asked the same question that she rightly did. Presumably, most of the 3.2% were on a journey towards qualified teacher status. I have the spreadsheet on front of me: the proportion of full-time equivalent teachers without qualified teacher status who were not on a QTS route in 2010-11 was 85.6%.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  No, it is not.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  The points that the hon. Members for Southampton Itchen and for Morecambe and Lunesdale made lead me to—you will be pleased to know, Sir Edward—the concluding section of my remarks, which is to pose the same question that all Opposition Members have posed: why? What is driving this? As with so many other aspects of the Bill—we heard about in the evidence sessions on day one—what is the problem we are trying to solve? So I did a little research. I wondered—after 14 dark years of Conservatives in government, people being able to recruit teachers willy-nilly, a race to the bottom, blah, blah, blah—how huge the proportion had become of the teaching workforce without qualified status, which is something that Government Members, I and all of us know has such huge value, but which can also be complemented by people with other types of expertise and experience, who may help to augment those brilliant teachers with their qualified teacher status. What do you suppose the proportion was, Sir Edward?

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Look at this! How do I choose? I will go to the hon. Member for Portsmouth North.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  You’re not.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am very happy to let that comment sit there. Of course, the hon. Lady is right: there are many things that come from a PGCE, but being a top-five footballer may not be one of them. For that kid, having in their school, with other PE teachers, someone with personal experience playing at a high or high-ish level might really bring something. That does not negate the hon. Lady’s point, but I think it stands on its own.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Colleagues and friends, forgive me; it happens all the time in clubs and in schools. It happens in after-school football clubs and before-school football clubs. If the club starts five minutes after half-past 3 or finishes five minutes before half-past 3, I am not quite sure I understand how that individual’s ability to help kids to learn how to play football is materially affected.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  No, no, no; he may be well aware of many things, but he is certainly not well aware that what he is saying is not correct. He is totally aware that what he just said is correct: that people who do not have a PGCE or QTS may still form a valuable and useful part of the staff at a school to help kids to learn in a variety of disciplines, including non-academic ones such as sport and art.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  The Minister said she had updated them.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Not now.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Does the hon. Lady know what the attainment gap was at key stage 2 and key stage 4 in 2010, and how it compares with right now?

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It was 3.2%—so the proportion in fact shrank slightly over those 14 years. I therefore wonder what verdict Government Members, in their bid to avoid a race to the bottom, give on the Labour Government from 1997 to 2010, which left us with 3.2% of the teaching workforce not being qualified.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Just to ask a factual question that I should know the answer to, are those regulations published?

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Of course, and for many people that is the right thing to do. There are mid-career and later-career programmes for coming into teaching and I want people to do those more and more. Sometimes, however, people come from abroad, and it could be from a country with which we do not necessarily have mutual recognition, or they might come from the independent sector, so they might have taught for many years and be an outstanding practitioner. The hon. Gentleman also said if he went to the mechanic, he would not want someone who is just fascinated by engines, and I understand that entirely. However, if someone wanted to learn football, and they had the opportunity to learn from a professional footballer, although not as the only PE teacher—

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thought I was doing the questions. My question is: what is the thing that has changed and got worse over this period, which the Government think they are going to address? What is driving the inclusion of these provisions in primary legislation? What problem are Ministers trying to solve?

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I did not realise we were going to spend today talking about football.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  She makes my point for me.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am at liberty to reveal that, after those 14 years, the proportion of the teaching workforce without qualified teacher status was 3.1%. [ Interruption. ] Then I thought—like the hon. Member for Lewisham North, the Whip—that it might have been from a low base and that there must have been huge growth in those 14 years. So I looked back to see what the proportion was in 2010. Last year, it was 3.1%. Can you guess what it was in 2010, Sir Edward?

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Southampton Itchen. I enjoyed his speech and I think he made several very good points, a number of which the Opposition would agree with. We certainly agree with the importance of the foundation of qualified teacher status, and a lot of work rightly went into reforming the core content and framework of initial teacher training, as well as the early career framework. Those are incredibly important foundations for a successful career in teaching. With the present Government’s plan to recruit just 6,500 teachers over the next five years, which is a material slow-down compared with the Parliament just ended, it should be more straightforward to hit those recruitment targets, but I do not think this discussion is really about the numbers that we can recruit into the teaching profession. It is about getting the right people, which the hon. Member for Southampton Itchen also said. It is not about obsessing over having the structures but getting the right people, and this is about getting the right people in front of children in school settings. By the way, presuming we are not just talking about academics, that also applies to sport, music and art.