Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. We all admired your agility in mental maths at the beginning of the debate.
Nick Gibb
I am sure that that is the case.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) on securing this important debate. It is always interesting to follow a Labour spokesman talking about school funding. It was the Labour Government who left the coalition Government with a record public sector deficit of £150 billion, which is equal to 10% of GDP—on the brink of collapse—an economy in recession and high unemployment. We have reduced that deficit to under 3%, we have the lowest level of unemployment since the 1970s and we have halved youth unemployment to record low levels. The hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) should be more careful when he talks about public finances.
This debate is timely, given the looming Budget next week. I am sure that everybody has listened carefully to my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans and other hon. Members who have spoken. We are determined to create an education system that offers opportunity to everyone, no matter what their circumstances or where they live. That is why we have delivered on our promise to reform the unfair, opaque and outdated school funding system by introducing the national funding formula for schools, which previous Governments had shied away from doing, including the previous Labour Government.
The introduction of the national funding formula means that this year, for the first time, funding was distributed to local authorities based on the individual needs and characteristics of every school in the country. This historic reform is the biggest improvement to school funding for a decade and it is directing resources to where they are needed most.
This Government want to ensure that all children receive a world-class education, and we have made significant progress. More schools than ever before are rated good or outstanding; 86% of schools are now rated good or outstanding, compared with—
Nick Gibb
I will not give way.
That figure compares with 66%, which is what we inherited from the previous Government. The attainment gap is beginning to close and we have launched 12 opportunity areas to drive improvement in parts of the country that we know can do better. Children’s reading ability is also improving. We have risen from joint tenth in the reading ability of nine-year-olds to joint eighth in PIRLS, the progress in international reading literacy study.
However, we have made those achievements against a backdrop of inheriting an unfair method of distributing funding, which has hindered and not helped progress. Across the country, schools with similar pupil characteristics used to receive markedly different levels of funding for no good reason, meaning that the right resources did not reach the schools that needed them most. That is why it is so important that we have delivered on our promise to reform the unfair school and high-needs funding systems and introduced a national funding formula.
Schools are already benefiting from the gains delivered by the national funding formula. The formula has allocated an increase for every pupil in every school this year, with increases of up to 3% for underfunded schools. Next year, those schools that have been historically underfunded will attract increases of up to 6% more per pupil compared with 2017-18, as we continue to address historic injustices.
The constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans will attract gains of 2.5% per pupil under the formula next year compared with 2017-18, which is an extra £3.1 million for schools in St Albans when rising pupil numbers are taken into account. Of course, how that money is allocated will depend on the local authority. Special needs funding in Hertfordshire will rise by £4.4 million this year, rising to some £107.9 million.
I listened very carefully to the hon. Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas), and of course I would be delighted to accompany him on a visit to schools in his constituency and to meet headteachers.
My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) has attended many of these debates on school funding, as he pointed out, and made calls for a fairer funding system. He has been successful in that respect; he should acknowledge his own success in putting the case for schools in West Sussex, because they have seen an increase in the funding allocated to them. How it is allocated on a school-by-school basis will depend on West Sussex, but the funding that it has received for schools in my hon. Friend’s constituency for 2019-20 has risen by 5.5% compared with 2017-18.
My hon. Friend and constituency neighbour the Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan) was right to point to improving standards in her constituency and she was also right to refer to special needs funding, which I will come to. Under the national funding formula, the amounts allocated to schools in her constituency will rise by 3.4% in 2019-20 compared with 2017-18.
I was interested to hear about the “Politics and Pastries” roundtable that the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) held. I would love to have been there; nevertheless, I would be delighted to meet headteachers from his constituency at some point very soon. Pupils in Plymouth will be funded on the same basis as in the rest of the country, despite what he said, under the national funding formula. That is the whole purpose of the national funding formula: based on the same needs, those pupils will receive the same amount. The hon. Gentleman referred to the gains cap, which ensures that changes in funding can be smoothed over the years under the national funding formula. Approximately 75% of schools that gain under the national funding formula—those that were historically underfunded—will be fully on their national funding formula figure by 2019-20.
The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) raised the issue of York’s position in the national league tables of school funding, but I should point out to her that the amount allocated to schools in her constituency will rise by 5.4% in 2019-20, compared with the baseline of 2017-18. We have made a significant—
Nick Gibb
We have made a significant investment in our schools by providing an additional £1.3 billion across this year and next, which is over and above the funding confirmed in the 2015 spending review. The additional money means that core funding for schools and high needs will rise from almost £41 billion in 2017-18 to £42.4 billion this year, and to £43.5 billion in 2019-20. As the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies has confirmed, funding for five to 16-year-olds will be maintained in real terms per pupil across this year and next year. The IFS has also pointed out that by 2020 real-terms per pupil funding will be some 70% higher than it was in 1990 and 50% higher than it was in 2000.
Of course we recognise that we are asking schools to do more and that schools are facing cost pressures. That is why the Department is providing extensive support to schools to reduce cost pressures. We have recently launched “Supporting excellent school resource management”, a document that provides schools with practical advice on savings that can be made on the £10 billion of non-staffing expenditure in schools. It summarises the support the Department is offering to help schools to get the best value from their resources, including things such as buying equipment more cheaply and the new teacher supply agency framework, which ensures that fees paid by schools to agencies are transparent and that people are aware of what they are signing up to.
Another issue that was raised was, of course, high needs. We are firmly committed to supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities to reach their full potential. That is why we have reformed the funding for these children by introducing a high-needs national funding formula. We have invested an extra £1 billion in funding for children with high needs since 2013 and next year we will provide local authorities in England with over £6 billion in high needs funding, which is up from just under £5 billion in 2013. We recognise the challenges that local authorities face with their high needs budgets, which is why we have provided them with support to deliver the best value from their high needs funding. We are also monitoring our national funding formula for high needs and keeping the overall level of funding under review.
The issue of teachers’ pay and pensions was also raised. We have responded to the recommendation made by the school teachers’ review body to confirm the 2018 pay award for teachers, which will see a substantial 3.5% uplift for the main pay range, a 2% uplift for the upper pay range and a 1.5% uplift for the leadership pay range. That will ensure that schools are supported to continue to attract high-quality staff members and retain them.
Nick Gibb
I will not give way, because of time.
We are funding the teachers’ pay award above the 1% that schools will already have budgeted for, by providing a teachers’ pay grant worth £187 million in 2018-19 and £321 million in 2019-20. This funding will be over and above the funding that schools receive through the national funding formula.
I want to give time to my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans to respond briefly to the debate, so I will conclude by thanking all Members who have contributed to this important debate. It is a key priority for this Government to ensure that every child receives a world-class education, to enable them to reach their full potential. I believe that the significant extra investment that we are making in our schools—both revenue and capital, and distributed more fairly through the national funding formula—will help us to achieve that.