Education Funding: Devon 9.30 am Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon)
(Con) I beg to move, That this House has considered
education funding in Devon. It is a great pleasure to serve
under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. The situation for
schools in Devon that will result from...Request free trial
Education Funding: Devon
9.30 am
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Sir (East Devon) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered education funding in Devon.
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr
Hanson.
The situation for schools in Devon that will result from
the proposals set out in the Government’s consultation is
of great concern to us all. As a member of the f40 Group,
Devon has historically been one of the lowest-funded
education authorities in the whole of England. At the
moment, in education funding, it stands in 143rd place out
of 150 local authorities. Devon received a schools block
unit of funding allocation of £4,346 per pupil in 2016-17.
The national average was £4,636, which means that there is
a shortfall for Devon of £290 per pupil, or £25.5 million
for all 88,065 pupils in the local authority. For those
listening to the debate who are not as informed as you are,
Mr Hanson, it is worth pointing out that, when I speak
about Devon, I exclude the unitary authorities of Torbay
and Plymouth, but no doubt Members who represent both
places will want to contribute to the debate.
The current situation is manifestly unfair, not only for
pupils in Devon but for teachers and headteachers, whose
performance will be judged against that of other schools
throughout the country. Devon Members of Parliament have
been campaigning for a fairer funding settlement for many
years, so this is not something new. I have been a Member
of the House since 2001, and other Devon MPs have served
for longer. I think it is fair to say that we have all been
campaigning, throughout the Labour years when money was
channelled away from rural areas into Labour heartlands,
under the coalition Government and under the Conservative
Government. Quite frankly, under this Government, we expect
better.
Cost pressures, combined with the necessary fiscal
consolidation, have had a significant cumulative effect on
school budgets. Let me give a few examples of such
pressures—other Members will cite others. Areas such as my
own, East Devon, have experienced significant population
growth because of the often required growth in
housebuilding and the incentives for it that there are now.
The inevitable resulting growth in pupil numbers has had
and is having a huge impact. The education services grant,
which previously gave authorities and academy trusts money
to fund their schools’ services, has been cut. The national
living wage, which has absorbed much of the increase in
social care funding—we have debated how much in the
House—has had the same effect on education, with an
increase in staff costs. Initial analysis suggests that the
apprenticeship levy could cost Devon County Council as much
as £424,000. The change in the SEND—special educational
needs and disabilities—code of practice, which enables
people with special educational needs to remain in
education up to the age of 25, has added huge pressure,
especially considering the increase in the average cost of
specialist independent provision. Of course all Members
welcome the change, but it needs to be properly funded.
Devon County Council proposes to reduce funding to all
schools by £33 per pupil for two years to make up for the
high needs block shortfall; Devon’s high needs block has
increased from £53 million in 2014 to £61 million in
2017-18.
It is not that some of those measures and developments are
not welcome—we are very positive about some of them—but it
is important to recognise that schools are now expected to
do more with less, which inevitably leads to cuts,
redundancies or increased class sizes.
The effect of these pressures on contingency reserves is
being seen in the level of carry-forwards being forecast
for maintained schools in Devon. We have a huge backlog,
particularly in respect of the maintenance of many of our
primary schools. In 2015-16, contingency reserves were
£21.1 million, but in 2016-17 the figure is estimated to be
£9.6 million. That is hardly much of a contingency reserve,
given the number of schools we have across the county.
A number of headteachers in my constituency of East Devon
have said in letters to me that, as a result of these
pressures, there is
“a very real probability that our schools can no longer
continue to sustain high quality provision of education and
essential support for every pupil without the urgent
necessity to take some very undesirable as well as
far-reaching decisions to reduce costs in order to balance
the finite resources available. Sadly, the implications of
these decisions will undoubtedly impact upon the children
in our care, including those from some of our most
vulnerable families, and these will ultimately manifest
further into the wider community.”
Since they are in one of the lowest-funded education
authorities in the country, schools in East Devon were
looking forward to the new funding formula, especially
considering the year-long delay. The review and the
subsequent public consultation are certainly welcome, and I
encourage constituents to respond to it. It is important to
emphasise that the proposals are not final and that they
are subject to the consultation, which I understand runs
until the end of March; the Minister may wish to enlighten
us further on that.
I do not want to get into a bidding war between different
authorities, but I would like to highlight some of the
misunderstandings about funding that have arisen between us
and our neighbours in Cornwall. The foreword to the
Department for Education’s consultation on the national
funding formula notes that
“a primary school in Cornwall teaching a pupil eligible for
free school meals with English as an additional language
would receive £3,389, whereas if the same child was at a
school in Devon the school funding would be £4,718.”
That difference is mainly explained by the amount allocated
directly to schools by each authority to support
disadvantaged pupils or those with additional educational
needs. Devon County Council delegates a much larger
proportion of funding directly to primary schools. For
example, using the free school meals deprivation factor
alone, Devon allocates £1,378, compared with Cornwall’s
£340. However, Devon still trails Cornwall in funding per
pupil; Cornwall’s average funding per pupil is £4,355,
which is £9 more than Devon’s average of £4,346. If Devon
got the same rate as Cornwall, we would receive an
additional £792,000 for education across the county.
If implemented, the national funding formula proposals will
result in 212 Devon schools, or 62%, gaining; 129 schools,
or 37%, losing; and two schools, or 1%, remaining the same.
The proposals will reduce Devon County Council’s overall
schools funding by £500,000 for the first year, when the
Department for Education proposes transitional arrangements
to prevent schools from gaining or losing considerably in
one year and to ensure that the national budget can cope
with the changes throughout the country. When the
transitional arrangements are removed, the proposed changes
will result in a relatively slight increase of £1.4
million, or 0.38%, in Devon’s overall funding for schools.
The Minister may point to that and say that Devon will be a
net winner, but a 0.38% increase is woefully insufficient
to meet the rising cost pressures. It will not even meet
the 0.5% increase in the apprenticeship levy. We need to go
beyond the headline figures.
Illustrative funding under the national funding formula in
the first year of transition would see 15 schools in East
Devon gaining funding but 20 losing out. On average, that
would mean a 0% change in the amount of school funding for
East Devon. That includes all my secondary schools in East
Devon losing funding: Sidmouth College, Exmouth Community
College, Clyst Vale Community College, the King’s School
and St Peter’s Church of England Aided School. How can it
possibly be fair to reduce the level of funding available
to schools in East Devon, a part of the country that has
been historically underfunded?
The headteacher of the King’s School, Rob Gammon, has said
that these cuts would have a “considerable” impact,
especially considering the other rising costs. The chair of
governors at Exmouth Community College, the excellent
Councillor Jill Elson, has also expressed concern. The
school is already one of the biggest in Europe. It is
certainly—I hope the Minister will confirm this—the biggest
secondary school in England; if it is not the biggest, it
is the second biggest. It has an excellent headteacher in
Tony Alexander, who has done magnificent things in that
place. The school has found savings of more than £l million
per year over the past five years, and it has now been
asked to increase its pupil numbers to 2,900 by 2020.
Similarly, the headteacher of Sidmouth College, James
Ingham-Hill, has expressed his “bitter disappointment”
following the publication of the proposals. He said that
“without a significant rise in funding over the next few
years, class sizes will need to rise to unprecedented
levels and standards are bound to fall in all underfunded
areas of the country.”
He also said that the proposed formula
“leans heavily towards measures of prior attainment. Devon
has a high standard of pupil attainment in primary schools,
so the county’s secondary schools will also lose out from a
formula that penalises this success.”
This Government talk about reintroducing or expanding
grammar schools to allow those who are good to get on, but
at the same time they seem to be introducing a national
funding formula that penalises at secondary level parts of
the country that have high levels of achievement at primary
level. That seems to contradict entirely what we, as a
Government and a party, are seeking to do. What they are
saying is that the less an area achieves at primary school
level, the more money it will get at secondary school
level—in other words, let us tell all our primary
headmasters in Devon to lower standards, lower attainment
and lower the exam results because more money will be made
available to secondary schools. That is a perverse
incentive that has no place in any kind of logical,
joined-up thinking.
Currently, schools in Devon face a triple whammy. One is
the historical underfunding. I look forward to the speech
by the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw). I hope
that he will not be too party political, otherwise
Conservative Members will need to point out the educational
gerrymandering that went on under Labour and the expensive
private finance initiative that has saddled primary
schools, particularly in Exeter, with an almost
unsustainable weight of debt. That went on for many years
under “old Labour”, as we must now call it, so I hope that
he will approach this in the spirit of being a Devon MP,
not the only, rather diminished red beacon in the
south-west.
I think that we would all agree across the House that the
Minister needs to go back to the drawing board and look
again at the national funding formula in order to get this
right. The Government must take a holistic approach to the
issue and fully consider not only the historical funding
factors—I have not yet said anything about the huge amount
of money that Devon County Council has to come up with
every year just to get children to school. I think that
Yorkshire’s bill was a bit higher than ours, but it must be
about £25 million that we have to come up with to get
children to school. I have not even touched on that cost
this morning. I have been talking about what happens when
pupils actually get to school, if there are going to be
schools.
Therefore, the Government must take a holistic approach to
the issue and fully consider not only the historical
funding factors but the current pressures on education
budgets in order ultimately to give schools in areas such
as mine a real financial boost. Fairer funding has been
promised by many Governments, of all persuasions, many
times, and it is my hope and belief that this will be the
Government who finally deliver.
Having been a Minister in the Government from 2010 to 2016,
I am acutely aware of how easy it is for Back Benchers of
all parties to demand more funding from the Government. I
am equally aware of the quite appalling financial situation
that we inherited in 2010. This country simply cannot go on
a financial spending splurge, which would saddle our
children and our children’s children with ever more debt,
particularly at the same time as we are renegotiating our
relationship with the world outside the European Union. It
would be absolutely wrong, counterproductive and
irresponsible in the extreme to adopt some of the spending
proposals, which seem to change fairly regularly, that Her
Majesty’s loyal Opposition come up with from time to time.
So I am not suggesting that.
What I am saying is that, within the spending envelope that
the Government have set out, we want fairness. I believe
that all Members in this Chamber this morning, across the
party divide, would agree that, for too long Devon, as a
county, has lost out in terms of educational funding. We
have waited and waited and waited for the new review of the
situation, in the expectation that finally that will be
recognised and our children, our teachers and the other
staff in education will receive a fair and properly funded
settlement. On the face of it, I have to say to the
Minister that that does not appear to be the position we
are in. I say to him gently, as south-west MPs come
together perhaps more regularly than we have in the past,
that it was the south-west that delivered a majority for
this Government in 2015. It is the south-west that often
considers itself to be an overlooked part of the country in
terms of spend and infrastructure. It is the south-west and
south-west MPs who, together, will not put up with being
overlooked any more. We have come together this morning to
say, “Let’s look again at the review, let’s get it right
and let’s get a fair deal for Devon.”
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Several hon. Members rose—
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Mr (in the Chair)
Before I call other right hon. and hon. Members, we appear
to have an abundance of time, but I intend to call the
Opposition Front Bencher at 10.35 am. Five right hon. and
hon. Members wish to speak, so I hope that you can
self-regulate in that 45 or so minutes.
9.45 am
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Mr (Exeter) (Lab)
I congratulate the right hon. Member for East Devon (Sir
Hugo Swire) on securing this debate. However, although it
is very important that we discuss and focus on the
Government’s new proposed funding formula and its impact on
Devon, we should not lose sight of the big picture, which
is that funding for all schools in England will fall
dramatically in this Parliament. The National Audit Office
has confirmed that by 2020 English schools will suffer
overall a cut of 8% in real terms in their funding.
As the right hon. Member has already said, huge
expectations were raised when the Government said they
would consult on the new formula. At the time, I warned
Ministers in a meeting with them that changing any funding
formula when overall funding levels are falling is a risky
business, because it inevitably creates more losers than
winners. My assessment of what is being proposed for Devon
rather mirrors that of the right hon. Gentleman, namely
that we are just fiddling around the edges here. Overall,
Devon would gain a tiny amount—a 0.38% rise in overall
schools funding—but many schools would lose out. As he has
already pointed out, that minuscule improvement would be
more than wiped out by the cost to our schools of the
increase in the apprenticeship levy, although that is only
a 0.5% increase and is dwarfed by the overall cut of 8% in
school funding in this Parliament that I referred to a
moment ago.
The right hon. Gentleman talked about a “triple whammy”. If
Devon faces a triple whammy, Exeter will suffer a quadruple
whammy, because—like many cities in shire counties—we are
already at a double disadvantage. Devon schools are already
among the worst funded in England, receiving £270 per pupil
less than the England average, but Exeter schools lose out
even more badly because they subsidise the huge cost of
providing school transport in a largely rural county and
the cost of keeping open small rural schools. Two of my
high schools, St James School and Isca Academy, have each
lost £300,000 a year since 2014.
Despite Exeter’s position, under the Government’s new
proposed formula we will lose out by 0.14%. All the
Government seem to be proposing for my constituency is to
take money away from primary schools, the majority of which
would lose out in the new formula, to give a tiny bit more
to most, but not all, of my high schools. That is not
robbing Peter to pay Paul; it is more like robbing Peter to
pay Peter. The overall impact will be that by 2020 the
average student in Exeter will suffer a £420 cut in annual
funding compared with 2015-16, and that is after seven
years of coalition and Conservative Government. That will
have very serious consequences for children’s education in
my constituency.
Two of my primary schools in the least well-off parts of
Exeter will actually lose funding. I have been told by a
headteacher that one primary school in Exeter is planning
to move to class sizes of 45 to cope with the funding
squeeze. Under the Labour Government, we got class sizes
down to a maximum of 30. We are losing teaching assistants,
school counsellors and support for children with complex
and special needs at a time when the Government claim they
are concerned by the deterioration in young people’s mental
health and wellbeing.
Since the Labour Governments of and invested
significant extra resources in all our schools, attainment
in Exeter’s schools has risen significantly. We have also
benefited from five brand-new high schools, which replaced
the dilapidated schools that I inherited in 1997, and new
and improved primary schools. That has given a huge boost
to the life chances of my constituents’ children, and that
progress has been maintained despite the funding freeze
since 2010. However, that quality will not survive the sort
of cuts our schools now face. As the right hon. Gentleman
has already said, Conservative-run Devon County Council is
proposing to raid the schools budget even further, to the
tune of £2.22 million, because of the big deficit it faces
in the budget for children with special needs. I am sure we
all agree that Devon must fulfil its legal obligation to
some of our most vulnerable young people, but that will
mean a further cut of £33 per pupil cut to schools funding
across the county.
There is widespread reporting in the media and discussion
in this place about the crisis in our health and social
care system, but we are also seeing the beginning of if not
a crisis, then a serious deterioration in education. We
have a recruitment, retention and teacher morale crisis,
even in an attractive place like Devon, where people like
to live and work. But the Government, as the right hon.
Gentleman acknowledged, focus on irrelevancies, such as
their ideological obsession with free schools, forced
academisation and the reintroduction of selection. I hope
that we see real opposition from Devon’s Conservative MPs
to some of those damaging Government policies, rather than
just warm words. They should stand up and fight for the
interests of Devon’s children and families and vote against
their Government’s damaging policies.
9.52 am
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Mr (South West Devon)
(Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr
Hanson. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for
East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire) on securing this timely debate.
After his many years on the Front Benches, it is very good
for the rest of us in Devon to have him back on the Back
Benches, because we face a number of challenges. His
experience, energy and expertise will help us try to tackle
some of these long-term challenges.
I am delighted that the Minister is in his place. He knows
that I think he is a tremendous Schools Minister. In all
seriousness, his rigour and commitment to increasing the
academic achievements of young people in this country are
appreciated up and down the country. He is making a
difference, and that is tremendous. I also know that the
consultation exercise on funding is genuine. I expect him
to nod vehemently here. The reality is that if the funding
stays as it is, it will not attract the support of a number
of us here in this room, because it is unfair.
It is true to say that we have been waiting for years in
Devon for a revision to the national funding formula. When
the Secretary of State came to the House just before
Christmas and announced that a new funding formula was
about to be unleashed on the world, it seemed to be
extremely good news for us in the far south-west. The
expectation was that some of the overfunding of schools in
other parts of the country would be corrected to improve
things for those of us living in the west country. Everyone
thinks it is just a place to go on holiday and have cream
teas and so on, but it has genuine challenges of
infrastructure, connectivity, education, social services
and health that we need additional investment to help us
with.
We were like thirsty men and women crossing the desert,
approaching the oasis. The end was in sight. Good news was
just around the corner. Sadly, when we started to look at
some of the details, it was not an oasis at all—it was a
mirage. That was disappointing. In the Secretary of State’s
statement at the Dispatch Box, I heard her say, “Isn’t it
great that over a number of years we will correct the fact
that pupils in Plymouth”—I will explain the difference
between Plymouth and Devon in a second—“currently receive
£500 a year less than pupils in Coventry?” Coventry and
Plymouth are very similar places, as they were both
devastated by Hitler in the second world war and rebuilt.
We were encouraged to think that a long-standing grievance
and injustice would be corrected. Even though it is true
that many Plymouth schools are doing well, and I thank the
Minister for that, unfortunately when we start to look at
the numbers, we see how illogical they are. Schools face
similar challenges with similar pupils from similar
backgrounds and, as my right hon. Friend said, have
transportation issues and costs on top of that, so it is
crazy to learn that in many Devon schools the situation
will go backwards.
My constituency is two thirds Plymouth and one third Devon,
so I am partly encouraged by some of the news that the
Minister has brought in recent weeks, but I am concerned
about some of the outcomes in the consultation document. He
will remember coming to Ivybridge Community College just
before Christmas to open a new maths block. Unfortunately,
I could not be there, but the reaction from the school was,
“What a great man! He spoke very positively and inspired
the young people.” He perhaps neglected to say that as part
of the national funding review, the college—an outstanding
beacon of excellence in Devon—was about to receive a cut of
£203,000 from its budget. That would not have gone down
quite so well in the new building opening ceremony.
Ivybridge Community College is outstanding and has been
brilliantly led for many years. It is in a multi-academy
trust. Three of the primary schools involved in that trust
are: Stowford School, which faces a 2.75% cut, representing
£37,000; Woodlands Park Primary School, which faces a 2.57%
cut, representing £28,000; and Yealmpton Primary School,
which faces a 1.35% cut, representing £9,000. In total, the
multi-academy trust faces a cut of £277,000. It is being
penalised for being outstanding and teaching kids in a most
remarkable way. That simply is not good enough.
It is rumoured that the Minister carries around with him—he
possibly even takes it to bed at night—a list of all the
education authorities in the country, showing where they
are in relation to each other and what the baseline is. It
may even have different colours in it, with green for those
doing well and red for those at the bottom. If he looks at
that list, I think he will find—if the list exists at
all—that Devon appears about an inch from the bottom of the
second page. Our baseline is right down at the bottom
compared with all the other education authorities in the
country. We were expecting to come up his list. We were
expecting to come towards the top of at least the second
page, if not the first. What has happened? We are either
standing still or going backwards. We are staying right at
the bottom of his list of education authority funding. I am
sorry to say that that simply is not good enough.
The Minister will be pleased to hear about one thing that
is happening in my area at the moment. My four secondary
schools in Plymouth—two in Plympton and two in
Plymstock—and Ivybridge Community College in Devon are
consulting with parents, staff and everyone else about
becoming a large multi-academy trust over the next 12
months or so. That is what the Government are seeking to
inspire. It is all very exciting and I fully support it,
but the four schools in Plymouth, which are having their
budgets increased, are coming together with an outstanding
school in Devon that is having its budget slashed. It
teaches children from similar backgrounds who are from
exactly the same golden triangle of Plympton, Plymstock and
Ivybridge. It makes no sense and there is no logic or
reason to it.
I am afraid that the Minister, of whom I am a great fan,
must look again at the formula and tweak it in some magical
way. I realise it is difficult when applying such a
formula. For years no one has understood what either the
local government or the education funding formulae are all
about. I know it is very difficult. One cannot just take
£100 and put it there. I urge the Minister to look again at
the formula, because the formula that we have seen and the
proposed education settlement for the next two years are
simply not acceptable.
I want to conclude on this point. I had a meeting with my
Whip yesterday. He is a very fine man and we talked about
the future and how well the Government are doing. Of
course, this was on the back of a most outstanding speech
by the Prime Minister yesterday, setting out a clear,
strong and coherent vision for this country, which many of
us can get behind. However, I said to my Whip, “There are a
number of things coming down the track about which I need
to give due notice.” It is wrong for any colleague to say
to the Government, “I don’t like what we are about to do
tonight; I am going to vote against it.” Proper notice
needs to be given. That is the mature way forward, but I
wish to send a clear notice, if I may, Mr Hanson, to my
Whip, to the Government and the Minister, and perhaps the
Parliamentary Private Secretary can take a little note and
send it to the Education Whip. If the education funding
settlement does not change in relation to Devon schools and
if there is no significant uplift in whatever format it
comes in six, nine or 12 months’ time to be voted on by the
House, whether in a statutory instrument Committee or
wherever else it might be, I will vote against it.
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Mr Bradshaw
Hear, hear!
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Mr Streeter
The settlement that is being proposed for Devon schools is
simply illogical and unfair.
10.01 am
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(Newton Abbot)
(Con)
Previous speakers, particularly my right hon. Friend the
Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire), have set out
clearly Devon’s underfunding predicament and its history. I
want to delve a little more deeply into some of the causes
and the action that the Government need to take now.
I was fortunate. Prior to the start of this parliamentary
Session, I had a meeting with the Devon Association of
Primary Headteachers and the Devon Association of Secondary
Heads. Their input was illuminating to say the least. The
current funding formula is unfair and the proposals for the
future funding formula are equally unfair. But why? The
heads are concerned that the consultation is one in which
they are not really being listened to. It is far from clear
to them what assumptions the Government have made in coming
up with the new formula. My headteachers would be delighted
to meet and help the Minister in Westminster or in the
constituency. Unless we can help him really understand the
issues and make sure his assumptions are right, we will
always get a second-rate result. We cannot simply take the
old and fiddle with it. We have to fundamentally look at
what it is that we need to do differently.
Part of the problem is the decisions made by central
Government and those made by local government. When I sent
one of my many letters to the Minister, which he swiftly
replied to, he explained that I should draw comfort from
the fact that the school block was ring-fenced. That sounds
great, but unfortunately it does not really work. As my
right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon has pointed
out, it is for the local authority to determine what goes
into each school. The approach taken by Devon, as has
already been explained, is very different from the approach
taken by Cornwall. Partly for that reason, the statistics
appear to show that Cornwall gets better funding than
Devon, but that is because the local authority has chosen
to adjust in a different way.
I do not think our children should be the victims of a
postcode lottery, depending on which council does what. I
am not in favour of prescription, but I am in favour of
guidance, and we need to make sure that every child is
fairly funded, whichever county they are in. So we need to
look again at the school block and exactly how that is
calculated. We also need to look at how the local authority
distributes it. If we look at the proposed new formula, it
gives some strange results. The small rural schools do
better, as do the large schools, but the ones in the middle
lose out. There is something strange about a formula that
comes up with such results.
We also need to look again at the high needs block, because
the mental health challenges—not just in our county, but
across the country—are growing exponentially. As my right
hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) has
explained, there is no counterbalancing increase in the
social care budget to meet the need, so we are really
challenged. In my constituency, 17% of the cohort are in
the high needs group. That is a very high number, so the
high needs block needs to be carefully thought through.
Some things need to be addressed now, and we cannot wait
for the new funding formula. My headteachers tell me that,
come April this year, if nothing changes in the cost base
that they face, they have got to the point where they will
have to make teachers and teaching assistants redundant.
They will also have to do away with any form of counsellor
support for some of the children who have mental health or
family issues, and that gives rise to a real concern not
only about finance, but about the basics of safeguarding.
So how can the Minister help us here today? First, he
should abolish with immediate effect through a statutory
instrument the application of the apprenticeship levy to
schools. It is utter madness that a public body such as a
maintained school, whose wages are paid through the local
authority, hits the employment legislation’s minimum level.
As a consequence, the council, because it pays the wages,
has to pay the apprenticeship levy, which it then passes
down to the school. As has already been mentioned, that is
now just short of £500,000. Spread between the schools,
that is a huge problem and a challenge that could be easily
resolved. The Minister should think about that. The concept
of the apprenticeship levy was about commercial businesses
and trying to ensure they invested properly in apprentices.
Teachers are not apprentices. There could be apprentices in
the administration area, but, given the pressure on
schools, is that really where we want schools to spend
their money? It is like having a tax credit that cannot be
spent, so the levy has to be scrapped. It deserves urgent
attention because the crunch point is soon: April 2017,
which is not many days and weeks away.
Secondly, I want the Minister to look at the special
education needs extension to those aged 25. It is right
that those with special education needs should be given all
the support that they need. Because of the peculiarity of
the way in which the system works, an individual parent
whose child is entitled can nominate the school to which
they will go. The school, even if it goes above the
published admission number, has to provide the support that
is needed, which is extremely expensive and difficult for
schools to meet, so there needs to be a way of supporting
schools that are faced with that.
Although the local authority makes some provision, it is
not adequate and does not work. So will the Minister look
at whether the local authority should dig not just into the
education pot but into the healthcare pot when trying to
fund some of the new costs hitting schools that are
effectively having to become social care workers at the
same time?
My right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon referred to
the removal this year of the education services grant. We
should all try to live within our means, but that removal
is a straight cut. It is not as if the schools are suddenly
finding another way. They cannot raise business rates.
Where will they find the extra money to provide those
services? They can of course work together, and work
differently, but a complete cut is not a viable way
forward.
The coalition Government could be praised for introducing
the troubled families programme, through which local
authorities could help families identified with multiple
social and educational problems. Under this watch, that
funding now only comes into play when a child is over 11
years old. I wish I did not have to say this, but in my
constituency we have to make extreme interventions for a
large number of children—in some schools, up to 85%.
Children coming to school today are often not
toilet-trained; many of them have real challenges with some
basic reading skills. In part, that is a result of changes
in our society. The Minister cannot change society, and we
cannot change the fact that children are glued to iPads
instead of conversing with their parents and their peers,
but we need to recognise the consequences, budget
accordingly and ensure support is there for those troubled
families.
I urge the Minister to look at the issues now. We cannot
wait until the new funding review. This is crucial; it is
about our children today, our children tomorrow and our
country tomorrow. I urge him to consider the issues now.
10.11 am
-
(North Devon)
(Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr
Hanson. I, too, congratulate my right hon. Friend the
Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire) on securing this
important debate. While I am doing thank yous, I want to
say a personal thank you to the Minister, who just a few
weeks ago accepted my invitation to come to North Devon to
meet in a roundtable setting with a delegation of
headteachers representing pretty much every education
sector in Devon. The Minister came, I know that he listened
and I am grateful that he did so.
Let us continue this positive start. I welcome the
Government’s commitment to the new national funding formula
and the principle that we must eradicate the unfairness of
the current system. Good; that is a tick. The Government’s
additional funding of £390 million to the least funded
authorities in 2015-16 made a real difference, with an
increase in funding per pupil in Devon of just over 4.5%.
Good; that is another gold star for the Government. As I am
sure the Minister will be pointing out, under the
indicative figures for the new funding formula, more
schools will gain funding than lose it in my constituency
of North Devon—so it seems like we are getting gold marks
all round for homework at the moment. However, I am afraid
I have to move gently to a position where we are
potentially putting the Minister in detention.
The Government are moving in the right direction—that is
true—but under the indicative figures very little will be
done to correct the fundamental, historical unfairness of
funding in Devon, especially in my constituency of North
Devon. That inherent and historical underfunding has
existed for many decades, under Governments of all colours,
and it needs to be put right. I thought that the national
funding formula would put it right. From what I have seen
of the indicative figures, I am disappointed.
As right hon. and hon. Members have said, Devon is a very
poorly funded local education authority. Under the current
system, funding is £290 less per pupil than the average
across England, which means that North Devon schools
receive just under £4 million less per year than the
national average. If the proposed national funding formula
changes were brought in, the cumulative change to North
Devon schools funding—these figures are provided by the
House of Commons Library, which is a neutral and always
accepted source of facts, as everyone here knows but I note
for those outside of this place—would be between 0%, no
change at all, and a 1% increase across the board.
Crunching the figures, that means that, at best, across all
its schools, North Devon would receive an extra £40,000.
Clearly, that does not rectify the imbalance and historical
unfairness in the current system. North Devon would
continue to receive an unfair level of funding. The
principle of a national funding formula is sound only if it
rectifies the imbalance that sees my constituents and those
of other hon. Members here lose out. What is currently on
the table does not do that for Devon, and certainly not for
North Devon.
Not only does the proposed formula fail to correct the
unfairness between Devon and the rest of the country, but
it throws up some perverse variations between schools
within North Devon. There are 52 schools across all sectors
and all age ranges in my constituency. I have visited a
great many of them in my 18 months as Member of Parliament
for North Devon, and it is a pleasure to do so. They are
fantastic schools doing tremendous work, with teaching
staff and managers working really hard to get some
excellent results. Six of those schools are secondary
schools.
If we put those 52 schools in a league table ranked in
order of the percentage change to their funding next year
compared with this year, something rather worrying happens.
The three schools at the bottom of that league table, which
lose the most under the proposals, are the three secondary
schools with the most rural catchment areas in my
constituency: Chulmleigh, South Molton and Braunton. I feel
sure that that was not the intention when the formula
started to be cooked. It needs to be recooked, because that
is the result under the indicative figures, and that cannot
be right. These are schools where the teaching staff,
managers, pupils and parents are already struggling because
of the historical unfairness. I had hoped that the national
funding formula would do something to correct that, but on
the indicative figures at present, it does not.
I have been written to by the headteachers of many schools
across Devon and they are all saying the same thing: “We
don’t get it. We don’t understand why this historical
unfairness is being allowed to continue.” Most make the
extremely reasonable point that the national funding
formula is a fine idea in principle and congratulate this
Minister and this Government on the principle of wanting to
correct the historical unfairness, but the devil is in the
detail and I am afraid that the detail my headteachers see
does nothing to address the historical problems.
I want to draw out two specific points that headteachers
have raised with me. The first is high needs educational
funding in Devon. High needs expenditure has grown rapidly,
from £53 million in 2014 to an estimated £61 million in
2017-18. To meet the forecast overspend, Devon County
Council has been forced to approve transferring more than
£2 million from individual schools budgets to the high
needs budget in 2017-18, just to bring the expected deficit
down to zero. Someone else used the phrase, “We are robbing
Peter to pay Paul.” That cannot be right.
The second issue, which has been raised by a number of my
colleagues, is the personalised transport budget in Devon.
In a largely rural, sparsely populated area such as the one
I represent, that is a real challenge. The personalised
transport budget for children with special needs accounts
for 34%—more than a third—of the total schools transport
budget in Devon. That is £21 million, and an overspend of
more than £1.2 million on that budget is forecast for this
year. The cost of transport cannot be taken from the high
needs budget. It must be funded from county council
budgets, and we all know that local authority budgets also
face challenges. Those are two areas that I believe we need
to look at.
Let us look again at the overall position. Devon is one of
the lowest-funded local authority areas in England for
education. In 2016-17, Department for Education funding per
pupil in Devon is £4,346. That is £290 per pupil less than
the English average, which means that DFE spending on
education in Devon is more than £25 million a year less
than the English average. I am afraid that the proposed
indicative figures do nothing to correct that fundamental
unfairness. As I am sure the Minister will tell us, this is
a consultation and those are only indicative figures. I
say, good, because we need to change what is being
proposed. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for East
Devon, I am sure that it is a real, genuine consultation
and that the Minister and the Government are listening. It
seems to me, to the people who run, teach in and manage the
schools in my constituency, and to the parents whose
children go to those schools that the current proposals are
unfair.
I wish I could be more elegant in my language. I wish I had
a more sophisticated argument and could indulge in some
fine Churchillian parliamentary oratory, but I cannot. It
comes down to three words: this is just not fair. Devon was
hoping for a fairer slice of the funding cake. Instead, it
seems to the schools community that we have received only a
few crumbs. I say gently and helpfully to the
Minister—-please get on the hotline to Mary Berry and
rebake this cake.
10.22 am
-
(Plymouth, Sutton and
Devonport) (Con)
It is a pleasure and a delight to serve under your
chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I congratulate my right hon.
Friend the Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire) on
securing this debate. I am delighted that he was my mentor
when I got elected to this place, and my hon. Friend the
Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter) was also
brilliantly good at looking after me and keeping me on the
right track.
I enter this debate with a certain amount of trepidation,
because my constituency has done rather well out of this
process, but there are some issues that I want to raise.
Let me set out the context. I am one of the very few
Members of Parliament on the Conservative Benches who
represents a totally inner-city seat outside London. I have
only one rather muddy field, called the Ponderosa pony
sanctuary, in my constituency, and everything else is very
much inner city.
I declare an interest: I am a governor of St Andrew’s
Church of England Primary School, and in the 1980s and
early 1990s I worked for a woman called Angela Rumbold, who
was the Member of Parliament for Mitcham and Morden and a
Minister at the Department for Education. She was very much
responsible, with Kenneth Baker, for introducing the local
curriculum, local management of schools and things like
that. My constituency has high levels of deprivation. There
is an 11 to 12-year life expectancy difference between the
north-east of my constituency and the south-west. I am very
concerned indeed about that. We must ensure that children
who are at school in a low-wage and low-skills economy have
a good education and can end up going on to university and
other schools.
I am delighted that Government have provided greater
education choice in my constituency. I have not only three
grammar schools, which I will talk about in a second, but
the creative arts school, which is doing incredibly well,
and a university technical college. I thank my hon. Friend
the Minister for his interest and for taking the time
yesterday to have a conversation with me and some people
from the UTC about some of the issues they face. Plymouth
does not fall within Devon county’s remit. Therefore, I
feel somewhat of a fraud. My right hon. Friend the Member
for East Devon pointed out to me earlier that my
constituency has done very well out of this. Therefore, I
am very grateful.
We need to ensure that children are able to read, write and
add up when they leave school. I do not think we talk
enough about standards. I sit on school governing bodies,
and I think we should spend more time talking about how we
are going to help children to achieve, rather than
reviewing policy. Indeed, I occasionally feel that, when I
go to school governing meetings, we end up spending more
time reviewing policy than people spend reviewing west end
plays. I am always slightly concerned about that.
Schools in Plymouth are likely to receive a 3.9% increase,
but there is an issue. I understand why the Government’s
position has changed and why they are looking at
deprivation, because it is an important issue. The majority
of my schools have done quite well, although there are some
up in Compton that have some concerns. The grammar schools
have also written to me, because they do not fit into the
deprivation issue, so they do not get as good a deal as
possible. I am very grateful indeed to Dan Roberts, the
headteacher of Devonport High School for Boys. He said that
he recognises that public services need to shoulder their
fair share of the burden of public debt, but he has real
concerns that the latest proposals will cause serious
damage to the one type of school that our current Prime
Minister believes has the potential to transform education
in our country. He said that this is not all children in
Plymouth but
“If you happen to be an able child attending Devonport High
School for Boys we are actually receiving a reduction of
2.9%.”
Other grammar schools have said that, too.
I would be grateful if the Minister were willing to meet me
and some of the grammar schools to talk about how we could
ensure that they can make savings and so that he can hear
the case from the grammar schools, too. I think that the
Government are on the right lines in talking about
deprivation, but then I would because I represent a totally
inner-city seat with high levels of deprivation. However,
there are some issues that most certainly need to be looked
at and tweaked. I very much look forward to meeting him
with my school governors from the grammar schools in the
near future.
10.28 am
-
(Wythenshawe and Sale East)
(Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr
Hanson. I congratulate the right hon. Member for East Devon
(Sir Hugo Swire) on securing the debate. He said recently
in the Exmouth Journal that he would raise his concerns in
Parliament, and it is good to see politicians keeping their
promises—he has certainly done so today.
Under this Government, schools are facing their first real
cuts in 20 years. My right hon. Friend the Member for
Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) summed it up. We have to look at the
big picture, because many rural schools are affected. We
had a similar debate about the Minister’s county of Sussex,
which is very poorly underfunded, a few weeks ago, and
Members had exactly the same concerns. Their hopes were
raised by the proposed introduction of the manifesto
commitment of a national fair funding formula, but up and
down the land most people’s hopes are being dashed. We must
put this in the context of what was announced in the
Budget: £3 billion will be taken out of our education
system by 2020. That is an 8% cut. In my constituency, it
is an 11% cut, so no matter what we do with the fair
funding formula, it will be insignificant, given the
situation that schools face.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies initially predicted the
real-terms cuts of 8% that I mentioned, but the Office for
Budget Responsibility predicted sharply rising inflation
over the course of the Parliament, so the cuts will get
even worse. The right hon. Member for East Devon spoke
eloquently about fairness, but nothing is fair about that.
The funding formula was supposed to redistribute a sum of
money to help schools where help is inadequate and to
provide our children with the excellent education to which
they are entitled, as pointed out by the hon. Member for
North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones).
The National Audit Office has said that the Department for
Education is expecting schools to find a total of £3
billion in savings over the course of the Parliament, but
the Department has failed to communicate to schools how to
do that, given the pressures pointed out today, such as the
apprenticeship levy and rising costs and national insurance
costs.
The Opposition support the principle that all schools
should have a fair funding formula, but the answer is not
simply to take money away from some schools and to
redistribute it in different budgets across the country.
The solution is to invest in education and to help every
child to receive an excellent education, as pointed out by
the hon. Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter). He
talked about an education oasis so, with an Oasis reference
and my being a Mancunian, I should ask him not to “look
back in anger”. He spoke with passion about his concerns
and the consequences of Government action. A whole range of
both Conservative and Opposition Members are
extraordinarily disappointed.
Given cost pressures, inflation and an increase in pupil
numbers, schools budgets are facing real-terms cuts. There
has already been a sharp rise in the number of secondary
schools that are in deficit, reaching nearly 60% of the
total in 2014-15, according to the National Audit Office.
According to the North Devon Gazette, only three schools in
Devon are set to gain extra funding under the proposed
national funding formula, as announced by Secretary of
State. The changes to education funding have been branded
“ridiculous” and “a shambles” by Devon headteachers. The
hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) rightly
pointed out that the Government are simply not listening at
the moment, and while they are still in consultation, we
have to plead with them to start listening.
Michael Johnson, the headteacher at Chulmleigh Community
College, said he had received calls from other headteachers
who simply did not know what they were to do. He said:
“Early indications are that all or most Devon secondary
schools will receive less through the new funding formula.
I have had other secondary school headteachers telling me
today ‘I don’t know what I am going to do now’.
Nationally, this formula offers the same money for more
children and we have now got increased costs that we have
had imposed upon us.
With the limited information available to us at this time,
we believe that most secondary schools in North Devon will
not be better off and will continue to face budgetary
shortfalls.
So far, this exercise looks to me like the same budget has
been through a hot-wash to present it differently. It looks
like a shambles to me.”
That is a headteacher in one of our schools.
Mr Glenn Smith, the principal of Honiton College, said that
Devon is one of the lowest-funded education authorities in
England:
“Whilst the announcement in the…2015 Autumn Spending Review
of firm proposals for the introduction of a new fairer
national funding formula from April 2017 was most welcome,
this promise of ‘jam tomorrow’ has since been delayed by 12
months and we still await further information around the
detail, timing and implementation of any such policy.
Meanwhile the legacy of an unsatisfactory funding
settlement has been further worsened for schools by rising
expenditure demands owing to national policy decisions
beyond our control, notably those associated with staffing
costs.”
Mr Smith sent a stark warning to the Department that harsh
cuts in Devon might see some of the smaller schools not
able to produce a balanced budget, in effect putting them
into special measures, so they might therefore be lost
altogether. He worried:
“Maybe, when some Devon schools start to buckle under the
increasing financial pressures, the government will start
to make education a priority once more.”
The right hon. Member for East Devon said that we should
not be too political, although he was critical in quite a
party political way of the and Governments. Mr
Smith of Honiton College, however, said:
“’s top three
priorities for government were: Education, Education and
Education—God knows how far down”
the importance and fairness of education policy have gone.
Schools did extraordinarily well under that Government:
schools were rebuilt and they got more money than they had
had in a generation.
I was beginning my teacher training in 1997, and I spent
most of the time going around with buckets to collect the
rain. By the time I left education, 10 or 15 years later,
after the Labour Government, if the roofs had not been
rebuilt, it was only because the school had been rebuilt.
The only thing going through the roof were standards and
attainment, so Labour Members will not stand for any
lectures about our record.
On top of that, the hon. Members for Newton Abbot and for
North Devon rightly pointed to the requirements for special
educational needs in Devon, where there is a particular
problem. “Schools Week” has done an analysis of local
authorities’ high-needs budgets, which are given a set
amount by the Government depending on how many special
needs pupils each council caters for. Many heads are
already struggling to cope.
Devon faces a £4.5 million shortfall this year, and the
council is proposing to move £55 per pupil from its schools
block funding—the money for pupils in mainstream schools—to
its high-needs budget. Lorraine Heath, headteacher of
Uffculme School, said that the reallocation would cost her
school £56,265,
“which I have not budgeted for”.
That was her reaction. She said that the only way to meet
the cut would be to reduce staff numbers and to increase
class sizes.
In conclusion, may I praise the Devon MPs who are holding
the Government’s feet to the fire on the issue? They are
standing up for their constituencies and their county. I
also remind them, however, that it is their party’s
Government that is doing this.
-
Mr (in the Chair)
Before I call the Minister, I remind him that the right
hon. Member for East Devon should have a couple of minutes
to speak at the end of the debate.
10.37 am
-
The Minister for School Standards (Mr Nick Gibb)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr
Hanson, and to follow the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and
Sale East (Mike Kane). The hon. Gentleman, as a Labour
shadow spokesman, defended his party’s legacy, but since
this Government came to power, 1.8 million more children
than in 2010 are in schools graded by Ofsted as good and
outstanding—1.8 million more children receiving a higher
standard of education. This year 147,000 more six-year-olds
are reading more effectively as a consequence of the
reforms implemented since 2010.
I also congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for
East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire) on securing his important
debate. I am sure he agrees that we share the same ambition
to see a country that works for everyone, where all
children receive an excellent education that unlocks talent
and creates opportunity, regardless of where they live,
their background, ability or needs.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Peter
Heaton-Jones) referred to the funding levels for schools in
his constituency. He is assiduous in visiting the schools
in his constituency, as I saw at first hand when I joined
him on one of those visits. We had a roundtable discussion
with a number of his local headteachers. Overall, his
schools will receive an increase of 0.7% in funding as a
result of the national funding formula. As I said at that
meeting, however, we are paying close attention to the
responses to the first-stage consultation and to the
second-stage consultation on the detailed proposals. The
latter consultation closes on 27 March.
The Government are prioritising spending on education. We
have protected the core schools budget in real terms so
that as pupils numbers increase, so will the amount of
money for schools. That means that schools are receiving
more funding than ever before, totalling more than £40
billion. The existing funding system, however, prevents us
from getting that record amount of money to where it is
needed most. Underfunded schools do not have access to the
same opportunities to do the best for their pupils, and it
is harder for them to attract the best teachers and afford
the right support. That is why we are reforming the funding
system by introducing a national funding formula for both
mainstream schools and high-need support for children with
special educational needs. That will be the biggest change
to school and high-needs funding for well over a decade,
and means that we will for the first time have a clear,
simple and transparent system that matches funding to
pupils’ needs and the schools that they attend. This is a
once-in-a-generation opportunity to introduce a national
funding formula.
The right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) is right
that introducing a national funding formula when we are
still tackling the historic budget deficit that we
inherited from his Government is challenging. We have
protected core school spending in real terms, but I accept
that there are cost pressures on schools. We believe that
it is nevertheless important to use this one-time-only
opportunity to introduce a fairer funding system.
In the current system, similar schools and local areas
receive very different levels of funding, with little or no
justification. For example, a primary-age pupil who is
eligible for free school meals attracts an extra £1,378 for
their school if they live in Devon but an extra
£2,642—£1,264 more—if they live in Brighton and Hove. Those
anomalies will end once we have a national funding formula
in place. Introducing fair funding was a key manifesto
commitment for this Government, and it will mean that the
same child with the same needs will attract the same
funding regardless of where they live.
We launched the first stage of our consultation on
reforming the schools and high-needs funding system in
March last year. We set out the principles for reform and
proposals for the overall design of the system. More than
6,000 people responded, and there was wide support for the
proposals. Building on that support, we were able in
December to proceed to the second stage of the consultation
and set out detailed proposals for the design of both the
schools and high-needs funding formulae. The consultation
period will last until 22 March, and the issues raised in
this debate and others are part and parcel of that process.
Under our proposals, money will be targeted towards pupils
who face the greatest barriers. In particular, support will
be boosted for children from the most deprived families and
those who live in areas of deprivation but are not eligible
for free school meals—those whose families are just about
managing. We are putting more money towards supporting
pupils in both primary and secondary schools who have
fallen behind, to ensure that they, too, have the support
they need to catch up.
Overall, 10,740 schools—54% of all schools—will gain
funding, and the formula will allow them to see those gains
quickly, with increases in per-pupil funding of up to 3% in
2018-19 and 2.5% in 2019-20. Some 72 local authority areas
are due to gain high-needs funding, and they, too, will see
that quickly, with gains of up to 3% in both those
financial years. As well as providing for those increases,
we have listened to those who highlighted the risks of
major budget changes for schools during the first stage of
our consultation and will include significant protections
in both formulae. No school will face per-pupil reductions
of more than 1.5% per year or 3% overall, and no local
authority will lose high-needs funding.
My hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Mr
Streeter) mentioned my visit to the outstanding Ivybridge
Community College in his constituency. It was a pleasure to
see such high academic standards being delivered in that
school. He referred to a list. I do have such a list, which
says that under the new national funding formula, schools
funding in Devon as a whole will rise from £377.2 million
in 2016-17 to £378.7 million—an increase of 0.4%. Some 213
schools in Devon—62% of all Devon schools—will gain
funding. I recognise that the proposals would result in
budget reductions for some schools in the constituencies of
my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon and other
hon. Members, but I believe that the formula strikes the
correct balance between the core funding that every child
attracts and the extra funding that is targeted at those
with additional needs—both children in areas of deprivation
and schools that serve rural communities.
Our proposed protections will mean that schools in Devon
that do not gain funding can manage these significant
reforms while continuing to raise standards. All schools
need to make the best use of the resources they have and
ensure that every pound is used effectively to improve
standards. To help schools, we have put in place and
continue to develop a comprehensive package of support to
enable them to make efficiency savings and manage cost
pressures while continuing to improve the quality of
education for their pupils.
Although Devon will not receive any additional high-needs
funding as a result of the new formulae, I hope that my
hon. Friends understand that the funding floor will allow
underfunded local authorities to gain funding and go a long
way to protect the local authorities that spend the most,
in recognition of the fact that their spending levels are
the result of decisions on placements taken in consultation
with parents. We are also providing £23 million of
additional funding this year to support all local
authorities to undertake strategic reviews of their
high-needs provision.
As a member of the f40, Devon has played a significant role
in campaigning for fair schools funding, as have my right
hon. and hon. Friends. The Government’s proposed formula is
based on our assessment of needs across the whole country;
it is not designed around the interests of any one area or
group in isolation. None the less, and reflecting the
underfunding that several f40 members have suffered for
many years, most of the areas represented by the f40,
including Devon, will gain: overall, funding for their
schools will increase by £210 million. I understand that
some f40 members are disappointed with the formula’s effect
on their area. Funding reform is always difficult—many
competing demands have to be balanced—and it is
particularly difficult in an area as complex as education.
That is why we are holding such a long consultation to
gather views.
I am aware of the concern that my hon. Friends and others
have raised that fairer funding for schools in Devon and
other parts of the country is overdue. We agree that these
reforms are vital, but they are an historic change, which
is why we have taken time to consider the options and
implications carefully. The new system will be in place
from April 2018, but in the meantime we have confirmed
funding for 2017-18 so that local authorities and schools
have the information and certainty that they need to plan
their budgets for the coming year.
-
Will the Minister give way?
-
Mr Gibb
I will give way in one moment. I was just coming to my hon.
Friend’s point about funding levels in 2017-18, the year
before the new national funding formula comes into effect.
We have confirmed that no area will see a reduction in
their schools or high-needs funding in 2017-18, and areas
such as Devon that benefited from the £390 million that we
added to the schools budget in the last Parliament will
have that extra funding protected in their baseline in
2017-18, as they did in 2016-17.
-
That is helpful, but it does not address the cost issue
that I raised. For any institution, what comes in and what
goes out need to balance. I respectfully ask the Minister
whether he will undertake to consult his fellow Ministers
in the Department for Communities and Local Government and
the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
about these costs and how they fall on schools—particularly
the apprenticeship levy. Clearly, it is not for him to
slash that on a whim, but it is incumbent on him to discuss
it.
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Mr Gibb
We recognise that schools face cost pressures, including
salary increases, the introduction of the national living
wage, increases to employers’ national insurance and
pension scheme contributions, and general inflation, as
well as the introduction of the apprenticeship levy. The
current, unfair funding system makes those pressures harder
to manage. The new national funding formula will not only
direct funding where it is most needed but give schools
greater certainty about funding and allow them to plan
ahead effectively. The Government are also providing a wide
range of tools and other support to schools to improve
their efficiency, and we will soon launch a school buying
strategy to support schools to save more than £1 billion a
year by 2019 on non-staff expenditure.
I appreciate what my hon. Friend says; in addition to those
pressures, schools will pay the apprenticeship levy. The
apprenticeship levy has real benefits for schools. It will
support them to train and develop new and existing staff.
It is an integral part of the Government’s wider plans to
improve productivity and to provide opportunities for
people of all backgrounds and all ages to enter the
workplace. That is why we encourage all schools to employ
or designate apprenticeships, whether or not they pay the
apprenticeship levy.
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Does the Minister recognise that—as I understand it—there
is no such thing as an apprentice teacher? Does he agree
that the most important thing to spend money on, for any
school facing the pressures they are facing, is teachers,
not administrative staff?
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Mr Gibb
There is an employers’ group that is preparing and working
on the introduction of a graduate-entry apprenticeship
scheme for teachers, so there will be opportunities for
schools to use that funding and indeed spend more than the
money from the apprenticeship levy on training teachers and
also support staff and other technical staff that help
schools operate.
My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and
Devonport (Oliver Colvile) described his constituency as in
part inner-city, where there are significant areas of
deprivation. The Government are seeking to tackle that, not
least through improving education. Social mobility lies at
the core of the Government’s objectives, and that is one
reason why schools in his constituency are seeing an
overall increase of some 4.4% in funding, which he was
magnanimous enough to acknowledge.
We are using a broad definition of disadvantage to target
additional funding to the schools most likely to use it,
comprising pupil and area-level deprivation data, prior
attainment data and English as an additional language data.
No individual measure is enough on its own; each addresses
different challenges that schools face. When a child
qualifies under more than one of those factors, the school
receives funding for each qualifying factor. For example,
if a child comes from a more disadvantaged household and
they live in an area of socioeconomic deprivation, their
school will attract funding through both the free school
meals factor and the area-level deprivation factor. That
helps us to target funding most accurately to the schools
that face the most acute challenges.
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Mr Streeter
The Minister has said that this is a genuine consultation
exercise, but I am not hearing too much in terms of a
willingness to amend the national funding formula. I
understand that that will be tricky, but will he confirm
that if a sufficiently strong case is made he is prepared
to look again and that changes might be made?
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Mr Gibb
I am seeking to explain the reasoning behind why we place
such emphasis on deprivation and low prior attainment—that
is something that will affect the grammar schools in the
constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth,
Sutton and Devonport—and why we place such emphasis on
helping children with English as an additional language.
This is a Government driven to improve social mobility.
This is a genuine consultation. I have set out the
explanation as to why we produced the formula for
consultation that we did. We are listening to the
responses—we will be going through and reading the written
responses and we will listen to debates such as this one in
the consultation process—and where we can make changes that
address unfairnesses revealed through that process of
course we will make changes to the approach we are taking.
The decisions we are taking are driven principally by
social mobility and ensuring that children from the most
deprived parts of our country are properly funded at their
schools to ensure that they make progress and fulfil their
potential.
I acknowledge the concerns about the schools block ring
fence and the level of flexibility between schools and high
needs raised in the debate, given that Devon has in the
past moved funding from the schools block to the high-needs
block to support its high-needs pressures. We recognise
that some continuing flexibility between the schools and
high-needs blocks will be important in ensuring that the
funding system is responsive to changes in the balance of
mainstream and specialist provision.
I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon for
the important work he and the WESC Foundation do for
children and young people with visual impairment. The
reforms of high-needs funding and the additional funding we
are providing this year and next year support the most
vulnerable children in the country who are supported by
high- needs funding.
In order to give my right hon. Friend time to respond, I
will conclude. I am enormously grateful to him for raising
this issue and to other hon. Friends and right hon. and
hon. Members for airing their concerns and issues about
funding of schools. I hope that my right hon. and hon.
Friends are reassured that the Government are committed to
reforming school funding and delivering a fair funding
system for children in Devon and throughout the country.
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May I thank the Minister very much for his response? Will
he be willing to meet the grammar schools in my
constituency? Would he like to comment on why grammar
schools did not feature in the speech made by the
Opposition spokesman?
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Mr Gibb
I will be delighted to meet the grammar school headteachers
from his constituency either in the constituency or at the
Department. To be fair to the hon. Member for Wythenshawe
and Sale East (Mike Kane), this debate is about funding,
but we as a Government want to create more good school
places, whether those are more good grammar school places
or more good school places in non-selective schools, helped
by the independent sector and universities, and by having
more faith schools. We want more good school places, and
that is what drives our continuing education reforms.
I hope that hon. Members will be reassured about the
Government’s commitment to reforming school funding. It is
a system where funding reflects the real level of need and
where every pupil has the same
opportunities—[Interruption.]
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Will the Minister give way?
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Mr Gibb
If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I would like to give
time for my right hon. Friend to respond.
A fair national funding formula for schools and high needs
underpins our ambition for social mobility and social
justice. It will mean that every pupil is supported to
achieve to the best of their potential, wherever they are
in the country. I hope that while recognising the
challenges that lie ahead, my hon. Friends will give their
support to working with us to achieve that vital aim.
10.56 am
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Sir
The first thing on which we can all be agreed is that we are
delighted to see the Minister back in his job. At one point
he had an enforced holiday from the Front Bench; his proper
place is on the Front Bench, doing what he is doing for
education. It may not seem like it, but he can be assured
that he is largely among friends this morning.
The Opposition spokesman referred back to the halcyon days of
the Governments of Mr Blair and Mr Brown. I gently point out
to him—he was not in the House at that time—that Devon
certainly did not prosper in terms of schools funding in
those days. He talked about how a Labour Government stopped
water coming through the roof. Unfortunately, they did not
stop the economy going through the floor. We are picking up
the pieces, and, as I said at the beginning, we must be
realistic as to what we can afford, given the appalling
legacy we inherited.
I think the debate has been constructive, thoughtful and
indeed insightful. I agree with the Minister that we all have
the same eventual aim. This is an extraordinarily challenging
time for the United Kingdom, given the great educational
achievements of Asia, for instance, especially in mathematics
and science. If we are to turn out a generation of British
people who can compete in a highly competitive world, we will
have to do that better. That is informing the Government’s
thinking, but we must ensure that that is fair as well as
ambitious.
I say to my hon. Friend the Minister that west country
Members of Parliament have a history of being fairly
independent-minded, and I think he will have learned from
this morning that that tradition continues. Indeed, there are
those of us who will be looking carefully at the Government’s
proposals to see whether we can back them in terms of
representing the best interests of our teachers and
constituents.
This is one of the rare occasions in Parliament on which we
want to hear more of the C-word—that is, of course,
consultation. If the consultation is genuine, the Minister
would do well to meet the Devon Association of Primary
Headteachers—we would like him to come to Devon, or we can
bring them all here—to hear at first hand how the changes
will affect us in the county of Devon. With that in mind, I
will end a few seconds early to give the Minister extra time
to go back to his Department, consult his officials and come
up with a deal that is fairer for the people of Devon.
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Mr (in the Chair)
We have about 30 seconds until the next debate and I hope
that the Minister for that debate will arrive shortly. May I
say it has been a pleasure to listen to the debate? As a
former resident of Plymouth and an employee of Plymouth and
South Devon Co-op many years ago, I found it interesting to
hear the debate.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered education funding in Devon.
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