Natalie Fleet

I beg to move, That this House has considered sixth form provision in Bolsover constituency. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. Residents of Bolsover must feel like they have déjà vu. My predecessor, Mark Fletcher, first raised the need for a sixth form in Bolsover in Parliament on 2 March 2020. On 7 March 2023, he spoke in this very Chamber about the need for Bolsover to have its own sixth form. On 6 September 2023, the then Prime Minister congratulated Mark on getting a sixth form. So the question that residents rightly ask is: why are we here today? Why have I raised this issue in Parliament five times in the past year? Why have I met Ministers and the Education Secretary to make representations? Why are Andrew Burns, the chief executive officer of Redhill Academy Trust, and Richard Pierpoint, the regional director, here with us to see this debate today? As one resident succinctly put it, getting the promise is one thing, but making sure that that promise is delivered is another thing entirely. Despite Mark’s determined campaign and the tireless work of The Bolsover school executive headteacher Matt Hall, who sadly cannot be with us today because he has an Ofsted inspection, the previous Government’s promises have not been delivered. Although I wish I was here congratulating Mark as new pupils enter North Derbyshire university academy, I saw as soon as I was elected that I needed to take up the baton. I will not rest until the young people of Bolsover, Clowne, Shirebrook, Creswell and the surrounding villages have the sixth form that they so desperately need. Why is this so important? For far too many of our young people, Bolsover today is a story of unfilled potential. Bolsover covers a huge area, from Pinxton to Whitwell, Shirebrook to Wessington, yet there is no sixth form. When it comes to barriers to opportunity, surely one of the biggest is that the closest sixth form is a 30-minute bus ride away at a cost of £25 a week. The inability to access any form of education past the age of 16 without getting on one or two buses and travelling for up to an hour is why so few teenagers attend a school sixth form—only 25% from The Bolsover school, 13% from Heritage high school in Clowne and just 8% from Shirebrook academy do so. For those who live anywhere else in the country, the average figure is three times higher than for Shirebrook.