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Telegraph
41 minutes ago
- Telegraph
White working-class pupils ‘written off' by society, admits Phillipson
White working-class children in Britain are being 'written off' by society, the Education Secretary has admitted. Speaking ahead of A-level results day on Thursday, Bridget Phillipson said it was a 'national disgrace' that so many white working-class pupils were unable to get the marks needed for university. The Government is preparing a series of interventions to tackle the issue in a white paper to be unveiled in the autumn. Plans include publishing more data on how white pupils are performing, as well as harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) to identify schools falling short. It comes as Labour seeks to tackle claims by Nigel Farage's Reform UK party that it has abandoned its traditional working-class voters. Ms Phillipson said: 'It is a national disgrace that so many young people are written off and don't get what they need to achieve and thrive. 'Far too many young people, particularly white working-class British students, don't get the exam results that they need at GCSE or A-level to allow them to continue onto university.' Under the Education Secretary's reforms, ministers will for the first time publish data showing soaring school suspension and exclusion levels among white working-class pupils, The Telegraph understands. Attendance comparison tool The Government is also considering expanding its AI-powered attendance tool, showing schools how they fare against those with similar demographic make-ups. The wider rollout will inform schools with high levels of white working-class pupils about how they compare in areas such as school readiness and exam results. Just 18.6 per cent of white British pupils eligible for free school meals achieved at least a grade 5 – equivalent to a high C under the former marking system – in their English and Maths GCSEs last year. This compares to 45.9 per cent of all state school pupils in England, according to Department for Education (DfE) data. A Whitehall source said there was a 'chicken and egg' debate among officials over whether white-working class pupils were doing badly because they were frequently absent from school, or vice versa. The Government is understood to want to use data to highlight the scale of underperformance among these children as it draws up measures to tackle the issue. Writing for The Telegraph, Ms Phillipson said failure to get to grips with wider school absence levels risked stoking a worklessness crisis as children left school. She warned that a pupil who frequently missed classes 'might grow into an adult who sees no issue with skipping work or breaking commitments', adding: 'If children see school as optional, that mindset will continue throughout their life.' Earlier this year, Mr Farage claimed Reform had replaced Labour as ' the party of the working class ' and accused Sir Keir Starmer of imitating his policies on issues such as immigration, for fear of a voter swing to the Right. Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, told Sir Keir last month that the UK risked a repeat of last summer's riots unless 'the Government shows it can address people's concerns'. She said anger over high levels of illegal immigration was threatening social cohesion in the poorest communities. The Government is concerned that stubbornly high school absence levels following the pandemic may be a symptom of wider disengagement from society among young people, The Telegraph understands. Figures published by the DfE last week showed that the rate of severe absence in schools continues to worsen, with experts now warning the ongoing attendance crisis has become 'deeply entrenched'. More than 147,600 pupils were classed as severely absent in the autumn term last year, meaning they missed at least half their classes. This was a slight increase on the year before and the highest severe absence rate for an autumn term since comparable data began in 2016-17. The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), a think tank, warned that without urgent action, the absences would drive up the number of young people missing out on future education, employment or training by nearly 180,000. This would result in an estimated lifetime cost to the taxpayer of £14bn in lost earnings and from young people going on benefits, it added. The DfE currently publishes data showing school absence levels among minority ethnic groups, but is understood to be alarmed at figures for white working-class pupils. The Government also holds statistics highlighting increasing suspension rates and low attainment rates among poor white children, and hopes to publish them from next term. Speaking to the Press Association, Ms Phillipson said: 'The schools white paper we will be publishing in the autumn will set out an ambitious vision for how we can tackle this generational challenge of what many young people experience.' Students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will receive their A-level results on Thursday and will decide whether to study in higher education, do an apprenticeship or go straight into work. This year's A-level results are expected to show a continuing trend of boys performing worse overall than their female peers. The CSJ has previously highlighted figures showing boys are now 1.5 grades behind girls on average at A-level. Dame Miriam Cates, a former Conservative MP and senior fellow at the CSJ, said Ms Phillipson was 'absolutely right' in her focus on white working-class children, but suggested under-performance among the cohort was also the result of high rates of family breakdown. Recent research by the CSJ found that, among the wealthiest fifth of white families, 84 per cent of parents were married and 12 per cent were cohabiting, and in the poorest fifth this dropped to 12 per cent married, with nine per cent cohabiting. Dame Miriam said: 'There's a close link between male marriageability and jobs for men. They're all linked factors. and it just is the case that a huge, huge number of poor white children are growing up without a dad, and that's the biggest factor behind educational under-achievement.' Scandal of school absence risks weakening the bonds of society By Bridget Phillipson One thing was non-negotiable in my mam's house when I was little – when Monday morning rolled around, off to school I went. No ifs, no buts, no excuses. My mam knew the value of education. She knew how important every day in the classroom was to my future life chances, and she was damned if she was going to let me throw away a brighter future by skipping school. What my family knew then instinctively, we now know statistically. The strong foundations for children to achieve and thrive are rooted in the classroom – every school day counts. Children with good attendance have twice the odds of achieving strong GCSE results compared to their peers who miss just 10 more school days. And those early differences cascade into later life. By age 28, children who consistently went to school are earning £10,000 more per year than their classmates with poor attendance records during their GCSEs. But it's not just about grades or earnings – it's about habits and how children grow into adults. Laying the building blocks School isn't just where children learn facts, figures, to read and to write. It's where they learn habits that will shape them in life beyond the classroom, in the workplace, and in their relationships. It's where the building blocks of a healthy society are laid. If children see school as optional, that mindset will continue throughout their life. They might grow into an adult who sees no issue with skipping work or breaking commitments, weakening not only the relationships they form but also the bonds of obligation that tie us together as a society. It's why, 18 months ago, I said that attendance would be a top priority for me as Secretary of State. The urgency of that priority was laid bare when I took office last July – in the school year that was then coming to an end, 1.5 million children had been persistently absent, missing a day a fortnight or more. That's double the pre-Covid figure – 1.5 million life chances needlessly blunted. Since then, thanks to the hard work of the Government, schools and parents, we've begun to turn the tide through our Plan for Change. Now, the latest data shows that the approach is working with persistently absent children – almost 10 per cent of those children, over 140,000, are now regularly back in school. Overall, children have spent more than five million more days in the classroom this year than last. It's the biggest improvement in a decade, a huge achievement for government, schools and families. Behind that statistic lies the crucial extra learning that will translate into more than £2bn in higher earnings throughout children's lifetimes. And it is reaching the whole country – we're seeing improved attendance among children on free school meals, and the rates of attendance in the North-East and South-West are starting to catch up with better-performing regions. Nipping problems in the bud Our response to the absence crisis has been rooted in what works, harnessing the power of data to deliver promising results. We're helping schools to spot the early warning signs. Backed by AI-powered reports, school leaders can now nip problems in the bud before they escalate. Where more intensive help is needed, we are piloting mentoring and expanding whole family support to benefit the most vulnerable pupils. But I am not complacent. There's much more to do to get attendance where it needs to be, particularly for those who are severely absent. The latest data shows clear attendance challenges for children with Send, in particular when it comes to the children missing large chunks of school. It's one of the key reasons why our plans to transform the Send system are so important. We are also expanding school mental health support to cover almost one million more pupils by March next year, with access for all pupils by 2029/30. And from September, we're rolling out our new attendance and behaviour hubs, led by the nation's highest-performing schools that will, in time, see two million children benefit. More than 500 schools facing the biggest challenges will get intensive, personalised support. 4,500 more will benefit from practical resources as well as visits, so that staff can learn from great practice elsewhere. Time to redouble our efforts Be in no doubt – reversing the harmful attitudes towards school attendance that set in before, and were supercharged by, the pandemic will not happen overnight. But we are beginning to make progress. Now is the time to redouble our efforts; for the Government, parents and schools alike to take our share of responsibility to get more children back through the school gates, every single day. We will only continue to drive absence down and attendance up if we discharge our shared responsibility: that of parents, like my mam, to send their children to school, that of schools to create warm and welcoming classrooms, and that of government to provide support and accountability throughout the system. That's how we build a brighter future for our children, and for our country too.
The Independent
15 hours ago
- The Independent
Labour accepted £40k donations from criminal it kicked out of party
Labour has said it is returning more than £40,000 donated by a convicted criminal who the party had already expelled as a member. The donations came from businessman Abdul Sattar Shere-Mohammod, 55, known as Shere Sattar, who was convicted of actual bodily harm in 2022, and thrown out of Labour later that year. The money includes £10,300 given to the central party last June, a figure that is just below the threshold to be disclosed to the elections watchdog, the Electoral Commission, the Sunday Times reported. The revelations raise questions about Labour's procedures for accepting political donations, a hot topic in the wake of reports earlier this year that Elon Musk planned to give Nigel Farage's Reform UK party $100m. In its manifesto at the last election, Sir Keir Starmer 's party pledged to 'protect democracy by strengthening the rules around donations to political parties'. As well as the money given to the party, £15,000 was donated by Mr Mohammod to, in part, support the re-election of Portsmouth MP Stephen Morgan, the early education minister. The party said Mr Morgan was not aware of his conviction. His local party should have declared these, but blamed an 'administrative error' that it said was being 'rectified'. Mr Mohammod also gave £10,000 to the local party of Southampton MP Satvir Kaur and £5,000 to Amanda Martin, another Portsmouth MP. Both declared the money in their parliamentary register of interests. The paper said the donations to Mr Morgan and his local party only emerged when a reporter contacted Mr Mohammod. Asked about his conviction this week, Mr Mohammod said he had been present during a violent confrontation after his son's bike had been stolen. He said he had tried to prevent a 'bad situation' but that his sons had gotten into a fight. He denied personally assaulting the victim. Labour told the paper the £10,300 donation to the party was below the £11,180 limit set by the Electoral Commission, meaning it didn't need to be declared. In a statement, the commission said: 'Donations that have been reported late by parties and accounting units are considered in line with our enforcement policy. We can confirm we are currently considering this matter.' Labour said that because Morgan's crowdfunding page said that donations would also support other campaigns in Portsmouth, it could not be considered a direct donation to him and did not need to be declared in his register of interests. It added that the donations would be submitted to the Electoral Commission in the party's next quarterly return. A spokesman said: 'These donations were made to Portsmouth Labour Party. Action has since been taken to return them.' They also said that Ms Kaur returned her donation last year, Martin was in the process of doing so, while the national party did so on Thursday after being contacted by the paper.
Telegraph
19 hours ago
- Telegraph
Reform's crime tsar Colin Sutton: ‘I'll never forgive the Tories for what they did to policing'
Colin Sutton has policing in the blood and politics on the brain. He is one of four generations of his family who became coppers, but even before Sutton walked his first beat in uniform he was knocking on doors campaigning for Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party. He went on to become arguably Britain's most famous detective by putting away serial killer Levi Bellfield and 'night stalker' rapist Delroy Grant, before retiring to Norfolk where he re-engaged with politics as the deputy chairman of his local Reform UK branch. Little wonder, then, that Nigel Farage beat a path to his door when he decided Reform needed a policing and crime adviser who could come up with a strategy for halving crime in five years in a country that Farage has declared to be 'lawless'. At the age of 64, Sutton was settling nicely into what for many people would seem the perfect retirement on his police pension: living in a 16th-century farmhouse with his wife and their five curly-coated retrievers, travelling to dog shows, tinkering with cars and helping to raise three young grandchildren. It is not in his nature to sit on his hands when he can be useful though, and so it never occurred to him to say no when Reform made its approach. 'I suppose I tend to get involved, be it at the golf club or cricket club or, you know, anything I've been involved in I've ended up with a role,' he smiles as we chat in a living room dominated by a large stone fireplace and heavy oak beams. Organising sports club socials, though, is a rather different prospect from effectively writing the law-and-order section of what could be the next government's manifesto. There is a reason why Farage has decided to dedicate this entire summer to a PR blitz on crime and punishment: it is one of the public's top priorities, and he can see that a promise to slash crime, together with his long-standing pledge to cut immigration (two issues that are inextricably linked in Farage's mind), is an essential part of the offering to the British public that he hopes will make him prime minister. Whether he realises it yet or not, Sutton may well be one of the most important people in the whole Reform project right now. And there is no questioning his commitment. Before he had even been offered a formal role, he sat down and wrote a 6,000-word thesis on the future of policing, with a 10-point action plan for cutting crime. 'I'm never one to do things by halves,' he muses. 'I sent that up to them, and the next thing I know, they're saying, 'Would you like to be our police and crime adviser?' So I said, 'Well, yeah, OK, yeah, of course. You know, if I can make a difference, or I can help.'' The quietly-spoken Sutton is about as far removed from the stereotypical image of a hard-boiled murder cop as you can get. If you had to guess, you might place him as a retired head teacher. Rather than reaching for soundbites, he is a deep thinker, a grammar-school boy with a law degree to go alongside his high-profile collars during 30 years of service across three police forces. Anyone who hopes he and Reform will return Britain to the days of bobbies on every beat and police houses in every village is going to be disappointed. In truth, he is unsure whether the 'evenin' all' image of 1950s policing ever existed in reality. 'I don't think we're ever going to recapture it now,' he says. 'If it did exist, it's gone forever. 'We should look forward, not backwards, but in doing that, we have to say there were things that were done in the past that we need to start doing again. 'It's not saying we're trying to go back to Dixon of Dock Green, where nobody had a phone or a camera in their pocket and kids got a thick ear. We've gone past that, in many ways for the better. 'But that doesn't mean that the concepts of engagement with the community, policing the community, for the community, should be discounted. There are lessons to be drawn from the past that can influence how we can make the police service fit to do the things it needs to do in the 21st century.' Several of Sutton's 10 recommendations for halving crime do involve winding back the clock. He wants to reopen 300 local police stations (700 have been closed), focus resources on real-world crimes like burglary and away from online spats, and reduce police involvement in non-criminal matters. He also wants an extra 30,000 officers, though that is already Reform policy and so not one of his 10 points. Other recommendations are more political, such as: recruiting based on merit alone rather than quotas; scrapping diversity, equality and inclusion posts; making the police more independent from interest groups and rewarding strong leadership rather than rewarding compliance with liberal ideologies. He would also like to free up police time by potentially decriminalising online abuse (leaving people to pursue grievances through the civil courts) and would like to reform or review both the Independent Office for Police Conduct and the role of police and crime commissioners. You could summarise all of this as more resources, used far more efficiently, for what the public wants the police to be doing. He wants to return to the days of open community meetings where local people could speak directly to officers to give them their priorities, rather than senior officers taking their cue from 'community leaders' who all too often have an agenda that does not reflect the true wishes of the local population. 'It's about re-engagement with ordinary people,' he says. 'Saying, what do you actually want us to be doing? If you'd rather us be looking through Twitter and looking at things that may be offensive, then we'll do that. But if you'd actually rather we were there to respond to you when your house gets broken into and would investigate the crime, or patrolling down your street to make you feel safer, then tell us and we'll do what you want us to do, because it should be policing of the people, by the people.' A few years ago Sutton wrote in his blog that he did not believe beat patrols were a good use of resources, but he now says he is a 'born-again' believer in them, mainly because of the all-important issue of trust. Having started his career on the beat in Tottenham's tough Broadwater Farm estate a few years before the 1985 riots that culminated in the murder of PC Keith Blakelock, Sutton formed the view that people who were minded to help the police would always help the police, regardless of whether they knew a dedicated community officer or not, while those who were unco-operative (to put it mildly) would never be won round. But that was before the general levels of trust in the police plunged to their current all-time low. 'I'm not sure the Met does any foot patrolling at all now,' he says. 'So there's an opportunity to rebuild trust through proper engagement with the whole community, rather than just the people who decide they represent the community.' But he still maintains that foot patrols do not necessarily reduce crime, and that what people care about most is that if they are in trouble and dial 999 two well-trained, competent officers turn up quickly and help, regardless of their gender or ethnicity. Sutton might have seemed destined to join the police, given that his great-grandfather and father were both constables (he also has a son in the police) and that he grew up surrounded by uniformed officers. An only child, he would tag along with his parents to social events, 'so I guess I was kind of steeped in the culture and traditions of the Met Police from an early age'. His interests went far beyond policing though. He joined the Conservatives when he was 17 and helped them with the canvassing for the 1979 election in Enfield North, helping to overturn a Labour majority and get Tim Eggar (later a minister) elected as Margaret Thatcher swept to power. He did well in his A-levels at Latymer grammar school in Edmonton, north London, and headed off to Leeds University to study law. But he hated being away from London and in his second year he dropped out, the gravitational pull of the Metropolitan Police proving just too strong to resist. 'It was the idea of service,' he says about the attraction of policing. 'You know, on the side of the goodies and against the baddies.' He was a sergeant after two years, was fast-tracked to inspector rank by the age of 25 and showed such promise that the Met, ironically, decided he should take a law degree, which he did, at University College London. After transferring to West Yorkshire Police and then Surrey Police, during which time he married, had two children and got divorced, he ended up back at the Met as a detective chief inspector, working as a senior investigating officer until his retirement in 2011. It was during that time that he headed the team that caught Levi Bellfield, convicted in 2008 of the murders of Marsha McDonnell and Amelie Delagrange and then, in 2011, of the murder of Surrey schoolgirl Milly Dowler. Also in 2011, Delroy Grant, the so-called Night Stalker, was convicted of 29 offences over a 17-year period following the biggest rape investigation ever undertaken by the Met. Today, Sutton says his proudest achievement is 'leading the teams that meant Bellfield and Grant couldn't victimise any more women and girls. That's our legacy. We stopped people from being victims.' Farage would dearly love to be in a position to have his own legacy of cutting crime, and Sutton will be drawing on all his experience as a beat bobby, a leader and a detective to help him get there. As far as operational issues go, he believes that all front-line officers who want to be equipped with Tasers should be given them. He also has strong views on reducing knife crime, which surged by 58 per cent in London in the space of three years to 2024 and by 86 per cent in a decade – a 'horrific' statistic, Sutton says. In the same period stop and search has been on the decline – falling by 23 per cent between March 2023 and March 2024. 'Stop and search is virtually non-existent,' he says. 'If you oppose stop and search, you oppose enforcing anti-knife laws, because stop and search works and it is the only way you can tell if somebody's got a knife on them in a public place.' He has little time for community leaders who, he says, dishonestly use statistics to oppose stop and search when research has shown that, judged against the ethnic breakdown of the population on the street at any given time, rather than the resident population, young white men are marginally more likely to be stopped than young black men. 'I've spoken to more bereaved parents whose children have succumbed to knife crime than most people. Every single one of those, irrespective of their race, gender, their background, every single one wishes with all their heart that somebody had stopped and searched that assailant 10 minutes before they killed their child.' Sutton had to give up his Tory Party membership when he joined the police but he never lost his interest in politics. After he retired he rejoined the Conservatives 'simply so I could vote against Theresa May when she stood as leader, then I left again'. He adds: 'Like many police officers I will never, ever forgive them, and specifically her, for what they did to policing [by cutting police numbers by 20,000]. We're still paying for that now.' In 2013 when the Met first began closing its front counters there were nearly 140 in London. Closures took that firgure down to 37, and this week the Met announced plans for further cuts to just 20 Having turned his back on the Tories, and with no confidence in Sir Keir Starmer's chances of doing better, he joined Reform UK in May last year after bumping into the local parliamentary candidate and deciding he was saying all the right things about 'the sort of reset that I think is necessary'. Having volunteered to be deputy chairman of his local Reform branch (because 'nobody was sticking their hand up') it was only a matter of time before Farage latched on to the gift that had landed in his lap. Sutton was unveiled as Reform's new crime tsar in July at one of Farage's weekly press conferences, when Sutton marvelled at Farage's communication skills. 'The man's command of facts, the way in which he uses them, it's just amazing. And I thought I could talk! Then you look at others, you watch [Prime Minister's] Questions and look at the scripted questions and the scripted answers. Keir Starmer looks like a startled rabbit in the headlights. He's just not got that kind of ability, that kind of brain that works that way.' Sutton knows leadership when he sees it, and he certainly doesn't see it in Sir Keir. 'I think leadership is what I did best when I was in the police. People think I'm a great detective. In truth I had great detectives working for me, but I got the best out of them.' Leadership, he says, is key to getting the most out of the resources available to the police. Some chief constables have promised a return to investigating every burglary, a policy Sutton believes should be adopted nationwide, as burglary is 'one of the most invasive and destructive and horrifying' crimes there is. 'There are probably enough people there and enough vehicles' to do that, he says. 'What's missing is the leadership and the will to say you will go to every burglary, and you will not worry if someone's been offended or misgendered on Twitter.' What, then, does he make of the leadership of Britain's top policeman, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley? What would Sutton do differently? 'I'd be listening more carefully to the wider community,' he says, 'and I'd like to think I'd be a lot more firm with the mayor. I'm not sure how much Mark stands up to [Sir Sadiq Khan]. 'There's no legal limit on what the mayor can spend on policing. And he chooses to spend money on six-figure salaries for dozens of Transport for London employees. He spends money on nighttime economy tsars. He chooses to spend half a million on a piece of sculpture that looks like I don't know what and he doesn't choose to make that difference in policing.' Sutton agrees with Farage's assessment that crime is getting worse, despite official figures that claim it is lessening, and he also thinks there is merit in the theory that recent increases in sex crimes are linked to immigration. 'If you look at the figures, not just here, but the figures for Germany and Sweden, there is no doubt that there has been an explosion of sexual offences in those countries that coincides with their explosion in migration. So I think it's certainly a conversation worth having.' He thinks it is 'looking likely' that Reform will win the next election. Would he consider standing as an MP if Farage suggested it? 'I would give serious consideration to that,' he replies without hesitation. Might we be looking at a future home secretary? 'I don't think I would go that far!' he laughs. 'But who knows what happens in life?'
