Georgia Gould
MP for Queen's Park and Maida Vale · Labour · United Kingdom
“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 current system means that there are real geographical discrepancies, and sometimes there is not a trust available to set something up quickly, so we want local authorities to have the flexibility to respond quickly to demands and to offer that provision where it is needed. The hon.”
“I thank Members for the range of important questions, although I think they are broader than the individual draft regulations we are discussing today. I will start with the question about special places in specialist schools and how we can ensure that there is consistency.”
“We want to have really strong standards and consistency in critically important areas. We know some of the real challenges that young people face in misinformation and the need for digital literacy in a changing world.”
“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…”
“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.”
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“We know that too many children are forced to apply to get an EHCP because their needs are not being met in mainstream schools. The majority of children with special educational needs and disabilities in our school system do not have an EHCP, but are on the SEND register. They are the children who are often being badly let down. Our reforms will extend rights for those children, including new statutory duties on schools to develop inclusion plans and individual support plans. There will be new layers of support with targeted and targeted plus, new national standards, and new duties on teacher training. My hon.”
“Let me turn to the points made by the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon. First and most importantly, our intention in these reforms is to improve outcomes for children. That is our guiding principle—our No. 1 outcome. The hon. Member mentioned the long waiting lists to which so many families are exposed. Addressing those waits is the point of the reforms. We are putting in place educational psychologists, speech and language therapists, and so many others, so that schools can draw on them and children can access that support without a lengthy wait or a battle for an EHCP and a diagnosis. Under our reform plans, that provision will be available as part of the mainstream system. Critically, education, health and care plans will remain, and they will be available for children who need them.”
“I agree wholeheartedly with everyone who has raised the importance of early intervention and of putting in as much support as possible as quickly as possible. So many families have told me that if support had been available much quicker, their needs would not have escalated—they would not be out of education and would not have needed to leave their local schools. We have also heard about the importance of inclusion. My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) spoke powerfully about why it is so critical that children with special educational needs and disabilities are at the heart of the education system. They have so much to offer, and every school should be an inclusive school, but that does not mean that we do not also need special schools, and the £3.7 billion of investment I have talked about will create new specialist places.”
“The investment we have been talking about is going into our communities straightaway, whether that is the £3.7 billion that we are already starting to invest in specialist places around the country or the £4 billion that we are investing in the services we have talked about today: Experts at Hand, the educational psychologists and speech and language therapists who will now be available to local schools; and the inclusive mainstream fund, which will be going directly into schools. Those are huge investments that this Government are making. The OBR made its projections before it had seen our reform plans and the huge investments we are making, including new investment going in during 2028-29, which I know the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East will have seen.”
“However, I will not apologise for taking longer to develop these reforms, because that time has been spent talking to thousands of parents, young people and teachers around the country to make sure their voices were embedded in what we put out for consultation. I also make no apology for taking time to transition into these reforms. As we have heard from so many Members across the Chamber, trust is low, and it is really important that we build the new system with children and families. That does not mean, though, that we are not acting now.”
“I do not have much time, so I am not going to take interventions. I want to be able to answer the points that have been put to me. Too many children have been left without provision, and parents try to explain to their children why they are not at school alongside their friends. Too many parents are having to battle—we have heard the word “fight” time and time again in this conversation. I say to the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) and to everyone else in the Chamber that I am committed to working constructively and on a cross-party basis on this issue. It is too important to not take all views into account and work together, so I really welcome opportunities to talk to individuals about the issues that have been raised in the debate.”
“I am pleased that the House has the opportunity to scrutinise this broken system devised by the Conservatives, who tripled tuition fees, introduced plan 2 loans and presided over a decade that saw a 40% drop in young people starting apprenticeships.”
“I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to the end of the Question and add: “recognises that the Government inherited the current broken student loans system, including Plan 2, which was devised by previous administrations; welcomes the Government’s commitment to make the system fairer and financially sustainable; further welcomes the support the Government is providing to young people through the Youth Guarantee; supports the Government’s target for two thirds of young people to achieve higher level skills by the age of 25, including reversing the decline in apprenticeships under the previous Government; and further supports the reintroduction of maintenance grants, which had been scrapped under the previous Government, to help ensure that background is not a barrier to opportunity for young people.” I welcome the Opposition’s focus today on opportunities for young people, student loans and apprenticeships.”
“I think it is really relevant to make sure that the public know who created this system—and not only created it, but froze those loans 10 times over the last 12 years— [ Interruption. ] I know that it is inconvenient for the Conservatives to be reminded of these truths, but we have lived through them. [ Official Report , 23 March 2026; Vol. 783, c. 1WC.] (Correction)”
“I was talking about plan 2— [ Interruption. ] The debate today that has been called by the Opposition is about plan 2 loans—a system that was created in 2012 by the Conservatives.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for his advocacy on this issue. I know that he represents a number of students, and this is something that he has raised continually. We have heard the concerns about student finance, and it is something that we will be looking at. I am really happy to take that conversation forward.”
“I think that the past is really relevant. I was a council leader during the last Government and I saw the cuts to local youth services, to early years support and to all our public services. We lived through that time when young people really were at the back of the queue, and we are rebuilding from that through investment in tackling child poverty, in youth services and in schools, and through the historic investment in special educational needs and disabilities provision. Those choices that we are making really matter, and are relevant to the discussion we are having. In terms of what we are actually doing, we are increasing the threshold to £29,385 this year, which will help to support people this year after the threshold was frozen for four years by the previous Government.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Did the right hon. Member tell me who should not go to university? I can tell the Conservatives that when they close the drawbridge, it is pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds who will end up not at university. That is the consequence. We are opening up access to apprenticeships and vocational routes not by closing down university routes, but by opening up other routes.”
“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.”
“I have spent the last few months travelling around the country talking to young people about the investment that Labour is putting in to support young people with special educational needs and to support schools and youth clubs. That is what the Labour party is doing in power, and there is huge hope that comes from that. Those are the areas where we need to prioritise investment. The chance to study in higher education for those who want to and who have the ability to changes lives. We are determined to support students who want to go to university to fulfil their aspirations. We must not lose sight of the value that student loans provide in enabling that and levelling the playing field at the point of access. They remove the up-front financial barriers to study and enable students to repay when they are earning.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Of course I recognise the critical role that FE colleges play in supporting children into the creative industries. That is why this Government are backing FE colleges after the previous Government failed to do so. However, we do not believe that closing down routes to university is the best way to support our creative industries. We can have both, and we can have opportunities for both.”
“We saw a 40% reduction in young people’s apprenticeships over a decade. That was the legacy of the Conservative party. While the foundational principles of our higher education funding and student finance system might be solid, they are straining after more than a decade of neglect and mismanagement, on top of the structural flaws baked into the system by the Conservatives. First, a legacy of seven years of frozen tuition fees has contributed in no small part to a significant and growing number of English higher education providers facing financial challenges. Analysis published last autumn by the Office for Students indicates that without mitigating action, some 124 providers—45% of those included in the OfS financial sustainability report—could face a deficit in 2025-26.”
“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.”
“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.”
“My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point. We need to open up access to apprenticeships. That is why the Government are making this investment, and it is why we have set that ambitious target for young people to go to university and to access apprenticeships.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I think it important to make it clear—some people watching the debate will be worried about this—that these are not normal loans, in that young people who are not earning, or are earning below the threshold, do not have to pay anything. In the long term, if they have not earned enough by the end of their careers, they do not have to pay the whole amount, and they do not have to pass that on to future generations.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I thank the hon. Member for that comment, and that is why we are supporting maintenance grants to help students with the cost of living. I will conclude by saying that our approach to further reform of the system will be deliberate, evidenced and fiscally responsible. We are here not to tear down the house, but to repair the roof that was left to leak.”
“I thank the hon. Member for Dorking and Horley (Chris Coghlan) for his powerful and sobering speech, and for securing the debate. He and I have talked before about his research, which is heartbreaking and demonstrates powerfully the need for change. We have arranged a date for me to visit and speak to some of the families he is working with, and I am happy to make time after the debate to talk with the families who are here today. This is just unimaginable loss. The hon. Member set out that he has gathered 200 stories, but I understand that there are thousands more stories in which children and families have been failed. I have travelled around the country to talk to families, and I have also heard so many stories.”
“I thank the hon. Member for inviting me to speak to families in her area. The conversations that I have had have so often been about parents battling for years to get the support that they know their children need, as the hon. Member for Dorking and Horley said, and about the powerlessness they feel as they watch their children struggle and fall behind.”
“I very often hear that exact story: too much support is locked behind a diagnosis that takes years, or behind a bureaucratic process. The reforms that we have set out move investment directly into schools and services that wrap around schools. We are introducing two new layers of support—targeted and targeted-plus—that will be available to children, without that battle for external validation. Teachers will be able to draw on that to support children in their classrooms. That is backed up by two new pieces of investment: £1.6 billion going directly into schools; and £1.8 billion into a new “experts at hand” service, to pay for speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, educational psychologists, specialist teachers and others who will support schools.”
“It is really important to say to families that we are expanding their support and their rights. There will be new legal duties on schools to develop these new layers of support, which will mean that support is available earlier.”
“Any individual who feels that their child is not getting the support they need through the targeted or targeted-plus offer will be able to have a needs assessment. If they are unhappy with the needs assessment, they will be able to go to the tribunal to challenge that decision, so there will be individual redress in the system. But it cannot just be for individual families to hold the system to account, because that is the system we have at the moment, with families having to take on legal battles, and for those who do not have the resource, it is not possible to do that. We in the Department for Education and Ofsted have to hold institutions to account. We are really clear that we will provide more support for councils—we are supporting them with 90% of their deficits—but with that support comes much stronger accountability.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for sharing that tragic story. Of course I would be willing to meet him to discuss it further. These are stories of failure, and we need to do better for these families and change things. We need a system in which every school is set up to support children with special educational needs and disabilities. We are making it mandatory for every teacher to be trained to support children with special educational needs and disabilities, investing directly in schools to provide that support and setting out new national standards and new accountability for schools. The hon. Member for Dorking and Horley made a really important point about families still being able to apply for specialist support.”
“As is set out in the schools White Paper, we are strengthening what we are able to do in a number of areas. We are very clear that if there is repeated and long-term failure, we will take SEND from local authorities. Working with the Disabled Children’s Partnership, we are setting out new conditions under which local authorities will need to learn from tribunal judgments, publish action plans on the back of them and show much greater transparency and action.”
“Following the letters that the hon. Member and others wrote to the Secretary of State, she instructed further intensive activity in Surrey, including a number of deep dives into the issues that were raised, which will report back shortly. There are SEND advisers going in, and there is very close monitoring of what is happening in Surrey and the progress being made, but I take the wider point that families have made to me and Members across the Chamber that there needs to be greater accountability for local authorities. We recognise the challenging circumstances that local authorities have been in, but more investment is going in, and with that investment has to come stronger monitoring, accountability and intervention when there is failure.”
“I refer colleagues to the draft annexes that set out the specialist provision packages. I hope that those annexes reassure them that, as well as looking at children who have physical disabilities and complex learning difficulties, two of the specialist provision packages focus on social and emotional needs, and the interface with mental health.”
“As I set out, we have appointed a SEND adviser who is offering that challenge to Surrey county council. We will continue to monitor the situation very carefully and I await the outcomes of the deep dives. I will be meeting parents, along with the hon. Member for Dorking and Horley, to hear directly from them. I am committed to continuing to work with all the relevant MPs to ensure that children are getting the support that they need in Surrey. More generally, I am committed to ensuring that there is strong accountability and monitoring of performance, as well as putting in new investment and support. I want to address the concern mentioned by the hon. Member for Dorking and Horley that some young people who had previously had support will no longer get that support under the new system.”
“Attached to the schools White Paper and the SEND consultation document is our own analysis of children’s rights and all the areas where we are strengthening them. I want to be really clear that the intention of the reforms is to bring in more support earlier and to extend the rights that children have access to.”
“Secondly, we are clear that any child transitioning from an education, health and care plan must move on to an individual support plan, with the wraparound support I have mentioned.”
“In some models, parents who have been through the system are paid to support other parents, and the special educational needs and disabilities information advice and support service already exists. We want to look at all the different models, and I would welcome insights from across the House. I want to provide some important reassurance to those parents who the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) talked about who are concerned about the changes. First, any child at a special school will remain there for as long as they want. We have deliberately taken a careful and staged approach and are putting investment up front, so we are building a new system before we look to transition into it. We are also asking the Children’s Commissioner to take an independent view of system readiness.”
“However, we are committed to working with Health colleagues on improving the whole system, and the SEND consultation document is clear about that further work on accountability —not just for local authorities, but for integrated care boards. The hon. Member will know about the review of some of the inequalities in access to diagnosis. The point about care co-ordinators and parental support is well made—that is something I have heard a lot from families. Within the consultation, we have asked a question about how that can be better delivered, and we are committed to doing more in that space. Lots of different ideas have come forward from different disabled children’s organisations and from parents, but I want to use the consultation to hear directly from parents about what is most helpful for them.”
“I confess that I think I have committed to go to every constituency in the country, but I will do my best. [ Laughter. ] I cannot promise that every single ask will be responded to quickly, but I want to get to every community, and we will also be doing a number of online events as part of the consultation to ensure that everyone has the chance to feed in. To respond to the hon. Member’s questions, first, it is important to make clear that we are not saying that children do not need a diagnosis. Diagnosis plays an important part in the system for children and young people, but it cannot and should not be a barrier to accessing support in the education system. Schools must have the tools to identify and respond to need, and the resource and well-evidenced interventions to wrap support around children without a diagnosis.”