Georgia Gould MP: speeches

Speeches

• 30 Jun 2026 · Draft Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 (Establishment of Schools) (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2026 · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 (Establishment of Schools) (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2026. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. The draft regulations were laid before the House on 20 May 2026. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 changes the legal framework for opening new state-funded schools. It ends the legal presumption that new schools should be academies, and helps to ensure that new schools can be delivered quickly where they are needed, by enabling proposals from local authorities and voluntary organisations as additional routes to delivery. That provides greater flexibility in the system, including in circumstances where suitable academy trust capacity is limited. The statutory instrument makes consequential amendments arising from those provisions. The amendments, which are to both primary and secondary legislation, are necessary to ensure that references to the legislative framework for opening new schools are correct and consistent across the statute book, and to update provisions to ensure that they are compatible with the new legislative framework. The amendments are minor and technical in nature and do not introduce any significant new policy. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act repeals section 6A of the Education and Inspections Act 2006, relating to the presumption that new schools should be academies. Arrangements for inviting proposals for new schools are now contained in an amended section 7 of the 2006 Act. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act also replaces sections 10 and 11 and of the Education and Inspections Act with an amended section 10. The draft regulations remove references to section 6A and section 11 in other primary and secondary legislation, and replace them with references to sections 7 and 10 respectively, where necessary, providing legal clarity. The amended provisions relate to land given to a local authority on trust for educational purposes, transfer of employment, proposers of new schools, governance of new schools and local government reorganisation. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act sets procedures for the establishment of new pupil referral units by local authorities. The draft regulations extend legislation to apply to newly established pupil referral units in two cases. Currently, where a new maintained school replaces an independent school, a teacher of the independent school transferring under transfer of undertakings legislation to the new school may choose to retain their existing terms and conditions or choose to opt in to the schoolteachers’ pay and conditions document. The instrument extends the provision so that it applies when an independent school is replaced by a pupil referral unit, affording teachers the same choice. Secondly, the statutory instrument applies and extends regulation 5 of the School Governance (New Schools) (England) Regulations 2007 to pupil referral units, when only one school proposal has been published under sections 7 or 10 of the Education and Inspections Act. A local authority is able to put in place governance arrangements for a maintained school in anticipation of proposals being approved. That will also apply where only one proposal for a pupil referral unit has been published. These amendments will ensure legal clarity and consistency.

• 22 Jun 2026 · Children of Military Families: Educational Support · Hansard source

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  Last week, I met a Minister from the Ministry of Defence and we discussed exactly that issue. I have heard from service personnel who have turned down jobs as a result of being worried about provision for their child if they move. This issue is a massive priority for the Government, and we are working on it.

• 4 Jun 2026 · Home-to-School Transport · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I thank all Members for an incredibly constructive and thoughtful discussion. It was particularly powerful that so many Members brought the lived experience of their constituents and some of the challenges that they face with home-to-school transport to the Chamber. I welcome the visibility given to those stories. I congratulate the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon) on securing this important debate. His passion for and commitment to this subject came across in his speech, as did the fact that he has been an avid campaigner who has widely engaged with families. We have heard today why this is such an important issue. We also heard why the support that is available through home-to-school transport matters to families. It is the mechanism through which many disadvantaged families, many children in rural communities and many young people with SEND are able to access education. We heard how the existing statutory rights are incredibly important. In addition, we heard about the particular challenges faced by rural communities, where the distances are greater and home-to-school transport costs are higher. That is why the Government made changes as part of a fair funding review, which included a distinct home-to-school transport relative needs formula, based on pupil numbers and home-to-school distances. The focus on distance deliberately supports those authorities with the longest distances and recognises the needs of rural communities. We heard about the statutory guidance and about the discretionary opportunities available to local authorities. Local authorities have a discretionary power to arrange free travel for children who do not meet the eligibility criteria, in recognition of specific local factors. We have heard about some of the challenges that areas face, and local authorities are best placed to make those decisions. We heard from the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough about the importance of data, and about the data that the Department holds, in holding local authorities to account. We have added a new absence code to reflect issues with local authority-arranged transport. Since September 2025, local authorities have been able to evaluate absences that are the result of home-to-school transport. Just 0.011% of the total number of school sessions that are missed is due to such transport; for special schools, the percentage is higher. That is really important data. Of course, any missed school session is one too many. Data helps with accountability, but I understand that the hon. Gentleman was referencing wider data and I would be very happy to have a follow-up conversation about that. We also heard from many other Members about the interaction between SEND and disabilities, and about the increase that we have seen in the need for home-to-school transport for children and young people with SEND. As I have engaged with children around the country, that is something that I have heard time and again. Sometimes, children have to spend up to two hours on transport to access education. For some children who sometimes have issues regulating and who can find change disruptive, as well as for their families, that can be an incredibly distressing experience, despite the best efforts of the providers. This also disconnects children from their communities. I always remember speaking to an 18-year-old who travelled a long distance to school every day. He said that when he returned to his community, he did not have friends or networks within it, so he felt very isolated going into adulthood. It is therefore incredibly important that children have access to SEND provision locally and closer to home, and Members today have agreed with that. Improving home-to-school transport is core to the SEND reforms. The hon. Member for Windsor (Jack Rankin), who spoke for the Opposition, rightly challenged me on how we can move as quickly as possible to deliver such improvement. As he knows, we are investing £3.7 billion into 60,000 new places. That investment has gone in last year and this year, so it is going into communities urgently to help them to address those challenges. We are supporting a large number of free schools to go forward. As we have heard, some local authorities have chosen to use their share of that investment to move faster in providing new places, at a cost of around £50,000 per place. The development of new places is critical, but it is also critical to make schools more inclusive for students—everything from improving school buildings and teaching—to develop the expertise around schools, so that local schools are accessible for children with SEND and every area has the right specialist provision available. This investment will transform children’s outcomes; it not only reduces travel time but, as we have heard, saves money, which is also important. And the money that is saved can go back into improving outcomes for children in some of the really critical issues that have been raised during this debate. We also heard a number of Members talk about support for young people post 16. There was a particularly powerful speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Kevin McKenna) on the topic. At the moment, local authorities have a statutory duty to make sure no young person is prevented from attending education post 16 because of a lack of transport. Local authorities must publish annual transport statements on this, and it is expected that local authorities will make reasonable decisions. Many local authorities do subsidise transport for young people post 16, but I have very much heard the passionate responses in the Chamber today. The issue also came up in the SEND consultation that we recently completed. We will look carefully at those responses. As the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Windsor, said, the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Josh Babarinde) made a powerful speech about an incredibly distressing story from his constituency. I will of course meet him and Lewis’s family to discuss it and look at what we can do to make changes in the future. I thank him for raising that—I am sorry that they got caught in that transition. The hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) also raised issues about safeguarding and an appalling tragedy that happened in his constituency. He will know that some of the measures in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 were very much a response to the lessons learned from that horrendous case, but again I am very happy to meet him to discuss this further. More widely on the national criteria and the statutory guidance, we heard a powerful speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft), who is a brilliant campaigner on these issues. I want to reassure her that there is no intention to look at means testing. We absolutely reject some of the calls we have heard from, for example, the Reform leader of Warwickshire county council to try to reduce those statutory distances. We are not in the business of reducing disabled children’s rights to transport. In conclusion, this has been a thoughtful and important debate. A number of issues have been raised that we must continue to look at. I hope we can follow up on conversations in relation to not only special educational needs and disabilities but the wider system and our shared ambition, which have been highlighted in this debate, to ensure that people have access to opportunity and education.

• 14 May 2026 · Getting Britain Working Again · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to close today’s King’s Speech debate on behalf of His Majesty’s Government. I thank everyone from all parts of the Chamber for their thoughtful and wide-ranging contributions. I will come to some of their comments in detail, but I start by saying that it is a shame the shadow Minister did not ask for the help of the work experience student who supported the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) in developing his statistics today. The shadow Minister might have been a bit more accurate if he had. As we have already heard, under his Government, apprenticeship starts for young people went down by 40%. Under this Government they have gone up. This year, we have seen more than 300,000 people get into work. Just this morning, we saw the UK have the fastest growth of the six G7 countries that have declared. We are taking action on employment, on apprenticeships and on growth, but I will come to those detailed questions later. First, I will talk about some of the issues that have been raised in the Chamber today. Members have shown the importance of growth and opportunity in every single community. We heard a powerful speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae), who talked about the importance of investment in towns. We heard from the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Alison Griffiths) about the importance of coastal communities, and from the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) about the importance of rural communities. It has been so powerful to hear MPs bringing the voices of those different communities into this Chamber. I also thank those who raised the critical issue of support for children with special educational needs and disabilities. I assure the shadow Minister that that is the purpose that the Secretary of State and I are focused on every day. I spent this morning speaking to special schools. Yesterday, I was speaking to families. We are listening to the voices of children and young people. We have a generational opportunity to get this right, and we will continue that work, led by the Prime Minister. It is a critical issue; we heard from a number of hon. Members how important it is for their constituents. I agree with the call from my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow and Gateshead East (Kate Osborne) that we must ensure that we really hear families’ voices. The Secretary of State and I and other Ministers have been travelling around the country talking to families. We have heard that too often they have to fight for the support their children need. The system that we have—a system that we inherited—is failing too many families; it needs to change. Support needs to go in earlier, and we need to ensure that we are supporting every child to develop their opportunities to the best of their ability. I thank my hon. Friend for sharing her diagnosis. Everyone across the House will agree that she is an important role model for people with neurodivergence. She shows how important it is that people with autism take up roles across our society and provide that leadership. I will commit to meeting her to discuss the issues she raised. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham) for her contribution on early intervention, the importance of Best Start hubs, support for breakfast clubs, and how critical it is to support families with children with special educational needs and disabilities at the earliest possible point. My hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) made important points about accountability. Again, we are talking about those issues with families. I welcome the promise of partnership and scrutiny from the hon. Member for South Devon. This is such an important issue, and our commitment is to work cross-party to ensure that we are getting it right.

• 14 May 2026 · Getting Britain Working Again · Hansard source

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  The Opposition have been remarkably silent for a long time about the failures in the system. They have been quick to ask us to take action, but less quick to set out what they would do differently. This is an issue that they failed to grip for years. We are tackling it head on, introducing legislation and putting investment right now into our communities. We had mention of the Experts at Hand service and the investment in new special schools that is making a difference today. Almost every single hon. Member talked about youth unemployment and how important it is to get behind our young people and support them into work. My hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland talked about the scarring impact of youth unemployment and my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) talked about the impact in his community. This is absolutely at the heart of the Government’s agenda. It is why we have introduced the youth guarantee, and it is why we are investing billions of pounds to support that. At the heart of the debate is how we restore opportunity to the British people after decades of that being denied to them. As we heard from so many hon. Members, a job is about more than just a salary; it brings choice, control, agency and freedom over our lives. That is what is at stake here. We want to build a country in which opportunity is open to all. Rather than a privilege of birth or background or the product of luck or circumstances, opportunity should be the right of anyone and everyone willing to work hard and grab it with both hands. That is what getting Britain working again means to me and to this Government, with the opportunities created by our modern industrial strategy open to everyone. That is the story we tell ourselves in Britain: if you work hard, you can get on, no matter who you are. Aspiration should be for all. It is a privilege to serve as Minister for School Standards in a Department driving that forward every day, led by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. It is in education that we can make that a reality, restoring opportunity to people of all ages in every village, town and city and building the economy and society of tomorrow. That is what this Government are doing, and it means reaching young people who are not working or in training. As we have heard today, there are almost a million of them—a million reasons why this Government’s youth guarantee is so important. I have been travelling around the country to speak to families and young people about SEND. I spoke to an 18-year-old who loved computing, who had been out of school and who had applied for hundreds of jobs, but they had been turned down for every single one of them. My hon. Friend the Member for North Northumberland (David Smith) talked about that feeling of hopelessness. [ Interruption. ] Sorry, I just need to take a second.

• 20 Apr 2026 · Supported Internships · Hansard source

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  I am incredibly grateful for the work of my hon. Friend in championing children with special educational needs and disabilities, both before and during her time as a Member of Parliament, and thank her for bringing her expertise to this discussion. I would be delighted to visit and see some of the work of supported internships in practice. As I have set out, we have invested £9 million and are continuing to work with colleges to support inclusion, as well as support into employment.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Student Loans · Hansard source

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  We want young people to have a choice: to go to university, to study, to take up an apprenticeship or to earn and learn. We want that range of routes to be available and for young people to have high-quality careers education, so that they know what the opportunities are in their local communities. We want higher education providers to go further to give their students the best course and employment outcomes, ensuring that the sector remains globally competitive. The Government are committed to ensuring that higher education is open to all who have the ability and the desire to pursue it. In the 2028-29 academic year, we will be reintroducing targeted, means-tested maintenance grants of up to £1,000 a year, increasing the cash in students’ pockets without increasing their debt. To help students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, we are already delivering on a commitment to future-proof maintenance loans by increasing them in line with forecast inflation every academic year to try to ensure that support keeps pace with financial pressures. In the academic year 2026-27, care leavers will become automatically eligible to receive the maximum rate of maintenance loans, which will provide vital extra support for one of the most vulnerable groups in society.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Student Loans · Hansard source

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  We have acknowledged the issues and the unfairness in the system. The Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Education have acknowledged that, and we have said that we will look at it. I will make progress. Under the last Government, the number of young people not in education, employment or training rose by 250,000. Today, nearly 1 million young people are not in education, employment or training. That is the legacy of the Conservatives, but this Government are turning that around. We are renewing the post-16 education landscape and celebrating routes into vocational education not by restricting university, but by opening up new high-quality vocational routes. We are introducing new V-levels and new foundation apprenticeships and supporting students to get excellent university education across the country. The Opposition talk a lot about higher education and suggest that too many young people go to university. It is interesting that they can never tell us who should no longer go or which courses they should not study.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Student Loans · Hansard source

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  I have made it very clear that we want to increase the quality of courses, and that is one of the conditions that we attached to increasing the fees in a fair way, but we want to do that by ensuring that those courses are of high enough quality, rather than scrapping the opportunity for young people to go on them. Looking further ahead, I can tell the House that the Prime Minister’s ambition is to see two thirds of young people in higher-level learning by the age of 25. With the lifelong learning entitlement, which will be launched in January 2027—a policy that the last Administration failed, year after year, to deliver—we are transforming higher education from a “one-shot” opportunity into a flexible and responsive system with learners at its centre. As was mentioned earlier, the LLE will allow learners to fund individual modules and reskill throughout their careers, at colleges and universities alike. We now have a responsibility to ensure that the benefits of higher education are maintained for future generations, and to clean up a student loan system in which interest rates have been allowed to spiral and students are confused about what is the right path for them. We absolutely recognise that there are failings in the system, but it is not a system that we built; it was a system that the Conservatives created. We know that student loan repayments are a concern for graduates, which is why we increased the plan 2 repayment threshold last year and why we are increasing it again next month, to £29,385. Borrowers who earn below that amount annually will not be required to make any repayments at all. This threshold is higher than the median graduate salary three years after graduation. Graduates generally go on to benefit from higher earnings, and it remains reasonable for those who gain the largest financial benefits from their degrees to contribute more towards the cost of their studies than those who have not gone to university, or graduates earning lower salaries. Lower earners will still benefit from the unique protections that student loans offer. Any unpaid loan balance, including interest accrued, will still be cancelled at the end of the loan term at no detriment to the individual, outstanding debt is never passed on to a borrower’s family, and having an outstanding student loan is not a barrier to accessing a mortgage. Student loan balances do not appear on borrower credit records, although regular student loan repayments will be considered, alongside other living costs, as part of the affordability check for mortgage applications. I want to say how seriously the Government take the cost of living challenges that young people face. Too often this generation have found their challenges ignored. We are working hard to tackle these issues by extending Government-funded childcare, reducing energy bills, freezing rail fares, rolling out free breakfast clubs, building new homes and introducing the Renters’ Rights Act 2025. Before Conservative Members once again line up to criticise the decisions that we have made, I would like to take a moment to remind them of their track record on this matter. Plan 2 student loans were designed and introduced in 2012 by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, with a repayment threshold of £21,000 per year and interest rates of up to 3% above inflation. Those are the very interest rates that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are now calling to be reduced. Having said that they would increase the plan 2 repayment threshold to reflect earnings, they froze it for four years. The Conservatives then froze it in 2016 and in 2017, and again from 2021 to 2024. In total, there was a decade of freezes by the opposition parties. It is their mismanagement that now necessitates a further freeze to the threshold. I do not remember any of this outrage from those Members when they created and built this system. As we have heard, the Opposition’s solution is to cut courses and cut opportunities. We will not make reckless and unfunded changes to student loans. Student finance and higher education funding is a complex, interconnected system. We are considering a range of options to make the system fairer, but we must be fiscally responsible and consider carefully how change would be funded. Politics is about choices.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Student Loans · Hansard source

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  We are absolutely committed to driving up the quality of all university courses, and we are acting on that. Conservative Members have attacked arts and creative courses as the areas where they would like to see a reduction. We have just seen the British talent at the Brits and the Oscars. This is one of our highest-growth industries. We saw this in our schools when there was a reduction in education in the arts, and we are seeing it now as the Conservatives attack those courses in universities.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Student Loans · Hansard source

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  Opposition Members were accusing me of talking about the past, but I think I was nine years old when that was going on. I do not regret the real focus on opening up access to university, because that opened it up to disadvantaged pupils who might never have had that opportunity. Today, we recognise that we need both those routes. There has not been enough investment or focus on vocational pathways. We absolutely agree with that, and we are putting that right. It is our ambition to have a more sustainable, more specialised and more efficient sector that better aligns with the needs of the economy.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Student Loans · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend makes an important contribution to this debate. The Government have taken the tough, immediate action that is required, including by making the difficult decision to increase tuition fees by forecast inflation, balancing the need to give the sector stability with fairness to students and taxpayers. We are also asking more of the sector: we expect higher education providers to demonstrate that they deliver the very best outcomes, both for those students and for the country, in return for the increased investment we are asking students to make. To achieve this, this Government will link future fees increases to university quality, as I have said. This will protect taxpayers’ investment in higher education and incentivise high-quality provision for students without taking away opportunities.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Student Loans · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. As she knows, increasing security for women on maternity leave is a really important part of this Government’s agenda, and that is why we are taking forward the Employment Rights Act 2025. It is important to note that in the system, if income goes below a threshold and someone is out of work generally, they will not have to pay. That is very different from a commercial loan, but I will absolutely take her point back. The student loan system delivers tuition fee funding—some £10.7 billion in 2024-25—to our world-class higher education sector, a sector that remains by any objective metric one of our nation’s greatest exports and a global beacon of intellectual excellence. It is important that we remember what is at stake here. From pioneering laboratories developing quantum computing and agritech to those at the forefront of advanced manufacturing and genomics, our universities are the primary engines of the research that will define the 21st century, and the impact of our universities goes beyond their pivotal contribution to the economy and the careers of individual learners. By exposing students to diverse perspectives and expanding their social horizons, these institutions help our young people to build the networks, resilience and life skills that define a person long after they have graduated.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Student Loans · Hansard source

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  We are lifting the threshold, which will make a difference this year for students. We have already announced that, and we have said that we will continue to look at this matter as we look at a wide range of issues. We accept that the system created by the Conservatives is not fair. More broadly, this Government are resetting the contract for young people across the landscape. Beyond our new deal for young people who do not go to university, we will support more young people into work and training through a £2.5 billion investment in the youth guarantee and growth and skills levy over the next three years and—this is incredibly concrete—we will support almost a million young people and deliver almost 500,000 opportunities to earn and learn.

• 2 Mar 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  We are committed to investing in schools. Our plans include an extra £1.6 billion going directly into schools and £1.8 billion going into the wider “experts at hand” service, on top of increasing funding to the schools core budget. In this Parliament, we will continue to grow our investment in both SEND and schools to ensure that every child gets the best start in life.

• 28 Jan 2026 · Education Funding: Distribution · Hansard source

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  We had to move quickly to bring extra funding into the system. Hon. Members will know that we have put an extra £1 billion into the high needs block, and we used the funding formula that was available. However, we will review that, to see whether it is in line with our reforms. We want to ensure that people get good-quality, consistent support, wherever they are in the country. Despite the dire situation that we inherited, the Government have prioritised education spending. We have invested £1.7 billion in additional education funding in 2026-27. That is critical to support schools to give young people a positive mainstream education, but we recognise that we need to continue to work to make sure that we meet the needs of the future. We will be setting out more in the schools White Paper. The issue of statutory override and the pressure on councils was mentioned. I am very aware of that, as I previously led a council. We need to recognise both the financial pressure on councils and the need for strong accountability for council performance. The size of the deficits that some councils are accruing may not be manageable with local resources alone, and we are going to bring forward arrangements to assist them as part of the broader SEND reforms. The Government will say more about that as part of the upcoming local government finance settlement in early February. The Government have been clear that SEND pressures will be absorbed within the overall Government departmental expenditure limit budget for 2028-29, such that the Government will not expect local authorities to need to fund SEND costs from general funds. We will set that out further in the future. I really appreciate the strength of feeling across the House and the cross-party working from everyone here.

• 28 Jan 2026 · Education Funding: Distribution · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Pippa Heylings) for securing this debate on this important matter. I really appreciate her taking the time to meet me and lay out her concerns in person. We had a very constructive conversation. I echo her thanks to all the brilliant teachers and staff who work so hard in her constituency. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham), who came to speak to me about similar issues, the work of the f40 group, and the need to support not just schools, but, more widely, the professionals who wrap around schools in communities around the country. I want to start where the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire ended, which is with the stories of families. I have travelled around the country speaking to thousands of parents and young people, and sadly, the experience she set out is all too common: parents’ fight for support, the exhaustion of having to navigate different systems, and parents having to give up their jobs to make a full-time job of trying to get support for their children.

• 19 Jan 2026 · SEND Funding Shortfall · Hansard source

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  I will make sure that that oversight is corrected as soon as possible—although, I am not sure that my hon. Friend has actually invited me to Harlow yet , but I know the Prime Minister has been. My hon. Friend has written to me with stories of parents fighting the system—I have heard many like them—completely exhausted and often having to give up their jobs in order to fight for support for their children. It is just not good enough. We recognise that support needs to be available much earlier, we are investing in it, and that is the basis of the reforms that we will be bringing forward.

• 19 Jan 2026 · SEND Funding Shortfall · Hansard source

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  The autumn Budget made it clear that future special educational needs and disabilities funding will be managed as part of overall Government departmental expenditure. We have subsequently set out new investment, including £3 billion for creating 50,000 new specialist places, and £200 million for SEND training for education staff.

• 1 Dec 2025 · SEND: Funding · Hansard source

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  We are committed to investing in improving the SEND system, and, as I said a moment ago, we have invested an extra £1 billion in the high needs block and £740 million in specialist places. The core schools budget for 2026-27 will total £67 billion, an increase from £65.3 million in 2025-26. That additional funding will provide an above-real-terms per-pupil increase in overall schools funding, which will take per-pupil funding to its highest ever level and help us to transform the SEND system.

• 1 Dec 2025 · Speech and Language Therapies · Hansard source

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  In this financial year we have already put £1 billion into the high needs budget and £740 million into specialist places around the country. We are committed to helping schools to provide an inclusive service, and we will be setting out more plans in the schools White Paper.

• 27 Oct 2025 · Holidays During School Term Time · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for making that point and all hon. Members who have done copious research on the various travel companies and prices at different times. I hope that those companies watch the debate and hear the strength of feeling. The Chair of the Education Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), made a suggestion that I welcome and will explore further, because it is important that they hear about the impact on many families. We have heard about not only the importance of family life, but how critical school attendance is for children and young people. Sadly, we still face an absence epidemic in this country. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti), has been collegiate today, so I will point out only gently that had the Conservative Government listened to their education recovery commissioner and invested what was needed to support children post covid, we might not be in such a perilous position, with one in five children persistently absent, missing the equivalent of a day each fortnight. We are committed to tackling the problem. As we have heard from many, absence is one of the biggest barriers to opportunity, damaging learning, health and wellbeing, future earnings and employment. Each day of lost learning can do serious harm. That is why we will not allow pupils to miss 10 days of school without good reason. However, that does not mean that we are not committed to working alongside families. This Government introduced the national framework for penalty notices, which defines a “support first” approach, working alongside families. The shadow Minister asked what the Government have done to reduce absence. Thanks to hard work and partnership, there has been progress: more than 5 million more days were spent in school last year than the year before. That is the biggest improvement in a decade, but we remain a long way off pre-pandemic levels of attendance. If children are not in school, it does not matter how effective or well supported teaching and learning are; they will not benefit. We are working hard to ensure that school is the best place to be for every child. We heard about some of the interventions on the cost of living crisis, free breakfast clubs, the extension of free school meals and the 30 hours of free childcare, which have made a meaningful difference for families. We are also supporting better mental health through access to specialist mental health professionals in every school, and inclusion for children with special educational needs and disabilities within mainstream settings right across age ranges. We want to continue to work with families of children with special educational needs. We heard about how those families face some of the biggest issues with persistent absence and about how important that partnership is. I am happy to meet my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Linsey Farnsworth) and her constituent, whose petition led to this debate, to talk about that in more detail, given the importance of hearing from families as we think about support for young people with SEND. I have to admit to being somewhat surprised to hear the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) championing the views of parents. I had wondered whether he agreed with the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) that SEND provision is “being hijacked by…parents who are abusing the system, taking it for a ride.” I wholeheartedly disagree with that and want to work with parents.

• 27 Oct 2025 · Holidays During School Term Time · Hansard source

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  I am very concerned by that. I welcome the fact that so many more young people are being diagnosed and getting their needs met. In previous generations, they might never have received that support. I am very concerned about that language. I also want to echo the points that have been made across the Chamber about the strength of the evidence on attendance. Recent research shows that just an extra 10 days out of school halves a pupil’s chance of getting a grade 5 in English and maths, compared with a similar child with strong attendance. We have also seen research showing that children who are persistently absent during their GCSEs earn £10,000 a year less by the age of 28. Based on the most recent census data, a child who misses 10 days of school each year for a two-week holiday, and also has the average number of days off for sickness and medical appointments, will have missed the equivalent of a full year of school by the time they finish year 11 at age 16. That is worth repeating: a child who takes a fortnight’s term-time holiday each year, and also has the average number of days off due to illness, will miss a full school year over the course of their education. We should be very concerned about that. My hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley also made a point about consistency of application. The national framework is designed to improve consistency. I hope that new data in January will tell us about our progress in removing the postcode lottery. In the year prior to the introduction of the framework, 26 out of 153 local authorities accounted for half of all penalty notices issued. Our work is intended to reduce that inconsistency. There were a range of questions about flexibility in term time. Schools and local authorities have flexibility to plan term dates and to hold inset days and other occasional days at less busy times of the year, which can help families plan breaks at times that suit them. I know, for example, of councils that have trialled a two-week half-term in October or slightly shifted their summer holidays. Those flexibilities exist at the moment. We also heard of concerns about the ability of young people with special educational needs to travel at busy periods. I am aware of steps taken by the travel industry to improve their experience, with airports and airlines increasing their autism awareness and producing procedures for affected families. That is an important area to explore further. I thank all Members for their contributions, and I hope we can continue this conversation. I acknowledge the strength of feeling expressed during the debate. The Government are determined to support children to attend school. As we heard, lack of attendance is one of the biggest barriers to supporting children to achieve and thrive, and it particularly impacts those from disadvantaged backgrounds. We will continue to work with parents, teachers, schools and local authorities to raise attendance levels and support opportunity.

• 20 Oct 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I, too, have heard from too many parents who have had to give up their jobs or fall behind on their health, as the hon. Member has set out, because they are having to fight in a very adversarial system. We are determined to reform the system so that support is available at the earliest opportunity for young people, so that parents can collaborate with schools and are supported, and we are rebuilding the support around families.

• 15 Oct 2025 · Educational Assessment System Reform · Hansard source

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  One of the really damning statistics is how many young people are not in education, employment or training at the end of the education system. We cannot afford to leave any child behind. Every child needs the best start and to achieve at school. That is what this Government are focused on.