Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Angela Rayner and Justine Greening

Monday 20th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

We need to ensure that schools have more freedoms to be able to run themselves in a way that means they can deliver strong educational outcomes. I notice that the hon. Lady clearly does not want to talk about the fact that standards in Scotland are going backwards in science, maths and reading.

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to debate with the Secretary of State again, a few weeks after we both appeared on “Question Time”; but now it is answer time. The Prime Minister promised last week to expand selective education with 70,000 new free school places funded by £320 million in the Budget. Given that free school places cost more than £21,000 each to create, £320 million is not enough for 17,000 places, let alone 70,000. I set the Education Secretary a simple maths question last week, but she did not answer, so it is time for a resit. Just how many places will be created, and at what cost?

[Justine Greening]

I would have hoped that the hon. Lady welcomed the fact that we announced £500 million extra for school capital, and that is not just for ensuring that we have more places for children who need them. Part of that is £200 million to improve the existing school estate. She asks about the numbers. She seems to have misunderstood that the numbers relate to the amount that is being spent during this Parliament. Of course, there will be further investment in the next Parliament, which I would hope that she welcomed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Angela Rayner and Justine Greening

Monday 6th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

The introduction of the formula leads to different effects in different parts of the country. Obviously, we are putting in place a fair funding formula, but it has to work for all schools. We are having the second phase of the consultation to try to ensure that we get this right. We have particularly focused on helping small rural schools by relating an element of the formula to sparsity. There is also a lump-sum element. I am interested to hear all colleagues’ views in the consultation.

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State’s answers so far will give no comfort to schools in West Sussex, which will have had an 8% reduction by 2019, or anywhere else that is facing real-terms funding cuts. Does she stand by her party’s manifesto pledge that every school in Britain, including every school in West Sussex, will receive a real-terms spending increase per pupil during this Parliament?

[Justine Greening]

As ever, the hon. Lady is not clear about whether she even supports the concept of fair funding. I would have thought that all MPs would want to see all children getting fair schools funding across the board. A record amount of money is going into our schools budget and we have protected the core schools budget in real terms. There is record funding, but it is important that we ensure, through the fair funding formula, that it is distributed fairly.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Angela Rayner and Justine Greening

Monday 19th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

Thank you—sorry, Mr Speaker. The Secretary of State has two choices: will she cut the funding in 2020, or will she issue guidance to schools on what those cuts will be?

[Justine Greening]

We are consulting on proposals for a new national funding formula. I think everybody accepts the current system is unfair, untransparent and out of date, and it does not support our aspiration for all children to be able to reach their potential and succeed in adult life. There is often little or no justification for the differences that local areas and schools get at the moment. The consultation is now under way, and I have no doubt that hon. Members on both sides of the House will want to respond to it.

[Angela Rayner]

The former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne), is the most recent senior Conservative to say that the Prime Minister’s plans to include international students in migration figures are not sensible. Will the Secretary of State join the Opposition and commit to doing everything she can to reverse this foolish policy and to ensure that students are removed from the migration statistics?

National Funding Formula: Schools/High Needs

Debate between Angela Rayner and Justine Greening

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

After many delays, the Secretary of State has finally come forward with the Government’s so-called fair funding formula. I thank her for advance sight of her statement and the raft of documents she sent me just half an hour ago.

If only the fair funding formula lived up to its name. Does the Secretary of State recall the commitment in her party’s manifesto to

“continue to protect school funding”?

Does she accept that the National Audit Office has confirmed something that the Institute for Fiscal Studies had already told us, which she tried to ignore—that the Government will be cutting the schools budget by at least 8%, and that is not changed at all by today’s announcement? Does she remember that that same manifesto promised:

“Under a future Conservative Government, the amount of money following your child into school will be protected”?

The National Audit Office has made it clear that funding per pupil will also fall by 8%. Is the National Audit Office wrong, or is the new, unelected Prime Minister ripping up the manifesto that her predecessor put to the country?

The Secretary of State said that the so-called fair funding formula would mean that no school would lose more than 1.5% of its funding per year. How can she possibly reconcile that with the projections of schools facing actual cuts of up to double that and real-terms cuts of up to 10%? Can she tell the House how exactly a funding formula can be fair when it will mean that a third of local authorities and around 10,000 schools, serving more than 2 million children, lose money? In a period when pupil numbers and inflation are rising in tandem, the pressure on school budgets will continue to increase. The National Audit Office has told us today that school budgets are facing a “real-terms reduction”. Will the Secretary of State tell the House what percentage of the schools budget will be cut over this Parliament, and how much that cut will be for the average secondary school? Will she tell us how, at a time when pressure on schools is increasing, she can possibly justify that position?

The Department has said that schools will need to make £3 billion in efficiency savings over this Parliament, but the National Audit Office has said that schools are not prepared for the “scale and pace” of the changes, and that the Department has failed to make that clear to them. Will the Secretary of State tell the House how exactly the Department will ensure that schools are able to meet her demands? Is the suggestion that schools make £1.7 billion in savings by “using staff more efficiently” just a crude euphemism for cutting the jobs of teachers, teaching assistants and vital support staff, at a point when the workforce is already facing a crisis? The Department has said that the funding formula will be about targeting on the basis of pupils’ need rather than their postcode. Can she explain why schools up and down the country will be losing out, and why many in the most disadvantaged areas will lose the most?

The only new money being offered to English schools is to expand the few remaining grammar schools, 80% of which are in Tory-held seats, regardless of where the need for places is. Does the Secretary of State accept that that means that the only parts of Britain denied new funding are the comprehensive areas of England? Does she acknowledge that nearly 60% of secondary schools across the country already receive less in funding than they spend on teaching, and that they are already running at a deficit? Will she tell us her projections of the increase in pupil numbers over the spending review period, her forecast for the rate of inflation facing schools, and therefore the rise in costs facing schools? The Secretary of State seems to believe that all these savings and all these cuts can be managed without any impact on the education of our children. Will she tell the House how exactly she will ensure that that happens in practice?

You know, Mr Speaker, they used to say the Tories knew the value of nothing but the price of everything, but now they do not even know that. They have failed on the economy, failed on protecting our NHS and now failed on our children.

[Justine Greening]

I have to say that I am absolutely staggered at that response from the shadow Secretary of State for Education. There is cross-party support for reforming the national funding formula and, from representing our constituencies, we all know that it is impossible to justify the current approach. It would have been better if we had had a more thoughtful response, rather than just a diatribe of political rhetoric, from the Opposition Dispatch Box.

On some of the points the hon. Lady tried to make, the reality is that we have been able to protect the schools budget—the core schools budget—in real terms. That is because we have a thriving economy, which is generating the taxes that mean we can continue to invest in our public services. She talked about fair funding, but did not seem to understand or to have listened to my statement. Perhaps she had already written what she wanted to say, and was not actually interested in the reality. The funding formula absolutely bakes in making sure that we have the right amount of funding for children from more disadvantaged areas. In fact, we have taken a broader definition of disadvantage to make sure that it is not only the children eligible for free school meals who will get additional support. We have also made sure that the formula builds in a strong focus on low prior attainment, so that the children who have fallen behind—we need to invest in and support them to catch up—get additional resourcing. Schools with more of them will get more.

The hon. Lady seemed to fail even to hear the statement I made. I have to say that, based on the lack of engagement from the Labour Front Bench, I will sit down and give colleagues with more thoughtful questions a chance to ask them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Angela Rayner and Justine Greening

Monday 14th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

Yes, I congratulate Ellen Wallace and the team at the school that my hon. Friend talks about. They have done a fantastic job in achieving that award, showing that strong leadership in a school alongside collaboration between schools is a key way for schools to improve.

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State might have us believe that results in Northamptonshire have improved under this Government, but the fact is that the pass rate peaked immediately after the end of the previous Labour Government and has been falling since 2012. Nationally, this year saw the largest fall in GCSE results on record. If the Secretary of State had given us a breakdown of the data, it would have shown that those from disadvantaged backgrounds lost out the most. Last week, the Sutton Trust showed that people from white working class backgrounds face particular barriers at GCSE. Will the Secretary of State tell us which, if any, of the trust’s recommendations she will accept?

[Justine Greening]

I do not think that the Government need to take any lessons from Labour, who in government presided over grade inflation and young people leaving our education system who were simply unable to read or write. I remind the hon. Lady that, according to the CBI, on Labour’s watch the number of employers who were dissatisfied with school and college leavers’ basic skills remained stuck at around a third. In other words, it had not shifted at all. In fact, 42 % reported that they had had to provide remedial training for school and college leavers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Angela Rayner and Justine Greening

Monday 10th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I assure my hon. Friend that I am very conscious of the particular challenges that rural schools face. In fact, in the original first stage of consultation, the issues of sparsity and funding, and of looking at the percentages of children in schools, were on the table because they do matter. I am well aware of the issue, and we will try to do our best in the second stage of the consultation to ensure that the sorts of challenges that schools face and need funding for are met.

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

Given the cuts that have already been outlined by Members, can the Secretary of State tell the House whether she has secured new funds from the Treasury to meet the spending commitments outlined in the Green Paper?

[Justine Greening]

The Green Paper outlined additional funding from the Treasury in relation to setting up new grammars. The hon. Lady will be aware that, at the same time as steadily bearing down on the huge deficit that the previous Labour Government left us, we have managed to protect the real-terms core funding for schools, but that is no thanks to the legacy of financial disaster that was handed over to us.

[Angela Rayner]

I believe the word that the Secretary of State was looking for was “no”. Perhaps she can tell us how much has been spent on trying to find any facts to support the Government’s policy of segregated schools. Spending public money on policy without any evidential basis is simply wasting it. When she last came to the House, she could not cite a single piece of evidence that the policy would improve social mobility. Has she found any since?

[Justine Greening]

A lot of what the hon. Lady says is incorrect. She will be well aware that a report by the Sutton Trust clearly set out the improved attainment of free school meal children, in particular in grammar schools. It is totally untenable for her to set out her concerns about grammar schools while resolutely being opposed to any kind of consultation document that looks at how we should reform them. We want to look at how we can reform grammar schools. The education system has changed beyond all recognition over recent years, and it is right that we now look at what role grammars can play in a 21st century education system.

Schools that work for Everyone

Debate between Angela Rayner and Justine Greening

Monday 12th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Prime Minister promised on the steps of No. 10 to govern for the many and not the privileged few, and to be led by the evidence when making decisions, yet now we have a policy that is aimed at not just serving the privileged few, but entrenching that advantage over the rest of society. This is a disgraceful attack on opportunity and inclusion, and we will oppose it. I appeal to every single Member in this House to oppose it, too.

[Justine Greening]

I reiterate that this is the beginning of a consultation that sets out a debate that we need to have in our education system if we are going to make sure that we deliver on our manifesto commitment, which is to have an excellent school place available for every single child in our country. We set out very clearly that that would include more places at grammar schools.

The hon. Lady had nothing to say about how we can make independent schools play a stronger role in raising standards or how universities can play a stronger role in raising attainment. In spite of all the challenges and issues that she raises from a Labour perspective, it is worth pointing out that the leader of the Labour party, as I understand it, wants to scrap existing grammars. Is that correct? I cannot see a flicker of recognition of that policy from the Leader of the Opposition; perhaps he has been distracted over recent weeks.

In spite of all the challenges and issues that the Labour party raises over grammars, and in spite of the fact that the party was in power for 13 years, it took no steps when in government to ensure that grammars played a stronger role in raising attainment in their broader communities. What did we actually see under Labour in government? It was not education, education, education; it was grade inflation; children leaving school without even the most basic skills of reading, writing and adding up; a university system that had a cap on student numbers and aspiration; and youth unemployment that went up by the best part of 50%. We need no lectures from the Labour party on how to deliver opportunity for our young people.

If we are going to ensure that ours is a country where everybody can do their best, wherever they start, we have to be prepared at least to have a debate about how we will make that happen. It seems to me that the only distraction in this Chamber for the Labour party is, yet again, its own leadership contest. In the meantime, the ideas and the initiative to drive opportunity across Britain will come from Conservative Members.

New Grammar Schools

Debate between Angela Rayner and Justine Greening

Thursday 8th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

To ask the Secretary of State for Education to make a statement on the Government’s plans to lift the statutory ban on opening new grammar schools in England.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Justine Greening)]

As the Prime Minister has said, this Government are committed to building a country that works for everyone, not just the privileged few. We believe that every person should have the opportunity to fulfil their potential, no matter what their background or where they are from.

Education is at the heart of this ambition. We inherited a system from the Labour Government, however, where far too many children left school without the qualifications or the skills they needed to be successful in life. Our far-reaching reforms over the last six years have changed this, strengthening school leadership, improving standards of behaviour in our classrooms, ensuring children are taught to read more effectively and improving maths teaching in primary schools. As a result there are now 1.4 million more pupils in schools rated as good or outstanding than in 2010.

This means more young people are being given the opportunity to access better teaching and to maximise their potential. This is what we want for all children, and we are continuing our reforms so that every child can have the best possible start in life. It is why we are doubling free childcare to 30 hours for working parents of three and four-year-olds. As I said in July, on the issue of academic selection I am open-minded because we cannot rule anything out that could help us grow opportunity for all and give more people the chance to do well in life.

The landscape for schools has changed hugely in the last 10, 20, 30 years. We now have a whole variety of educational offers available. There will be no return to the simplistic binary choice of the past, where schools separate children into winners and losers, successes or failures. This Government want to focus on the future, to build on our success since 2010 and to create a truly 21st-century school system. However, we want a system that can cater for the talent and the abilities of every single child. To achieve that, we need a truly diverse range of schools and specialisms. We need more good schools in more areas of the country responding to the needs of every child, regardless of their background. We are looking at a range of options, and I expect any new proposals to focus on what we can do to help everyone to go as far as their individual talents and capacity for hard work can take them. Education policy to that end will be set in due course.

[Angela Rayner]

Wow! Despite that waffle, the cat is finally out of the bag. The Government have revealed their plans for new grammar schools in England, but not in this House—we did not even hear the word “grammar” just then. Instead, they did it through leaks to the press and at a private meeting of Conservative Members. So much for the one nation Government we were promised. Will the Secretary of State promise today that future such announcements will be made here so that we can give this policy the scrutiny it so badly needs?

Perhaps the Secretary of State can tell us the evidence base for this policy today. Has she read the Institute for Fiscal Studies report “Entry into Grammar Schools in England”? If so, perhaps she remembers the conclusion:

“amongst high achievers, those who are eligible for”

free school meals

“or who live in poorer neighbourhoods are significantly less likely to go to a grammar school.”

The OECD and the Sutton Trust, and even the Government’s own social mobility tsar and their chief inspector of schools, have all cited the evidence against this policy. In Kent, where we have grammar schools, the attainment gap is far wider than it is elsewhere. So can the Secretary of State tell the House what evidence she has to support her belief that grammar schools will help disadvantaged children and close the attainment gap?

At a time when our schools are facing a crisis in teacher recruitment and retention, with thousands taught in super-size classes and schools facing real-term cuts to their budget for the first time in nearly two decades, pushing ahead with grammar schools shows a dangerous misunderstanding of the real issues facing our schools. What will the Secretary of State be doing to address the real problems facing our schools today?

The Prime Minister has said this policy is justified because we already have social selection. Quite how making things worse by bringing back grammar schools as a solution remains a mystery. Perhaps the Secretary of State can tell us why she is not ensuring that all children get a decent education?

This policy will not help social mobility but will entrench inequality and disadvantage. It will be the lucky few who can afford the tuition who will get ahead and the disadvantaged who will be left behind—a policy for the few at the expense of the many. I was told that the Tories know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. I do not even think they know that anymore.

Finally, the Prime Minister promised to lead a one nation Government. She said that her policy would be led by the evidence, and she claimed that she would govern for the disadvantaged, not the privileged few, yet this policy fails on every single count. It may be a new Prime Minister, but it is the same old nasty Tories.

[Justine Greening]

The first thing I would say to the hon. Lady is that we have not yet actually made any policy announcements; they will be made in due course. She has given a commentary on what I guess she presumes the policy announcement will be. I would encourage her to wait. Broadly, we are interested in increasing diversity and meeting parents’ desire for choice in having a school near to them that matches the needs of their child. We also want to see capacity built into the system, in two ways. We want more good schools near to children where they need them. There are too many parts of our country where, in spite of all the reforms we have made and the improvements in attainment that we have seen, there are still children who cannot get good enough access to a good school. We also want to build capacity by having some of our best schools work with other schools in the system to help collectively to raise attainment and standards as a whole. We want to see all parts of our education system, not just the school system but universities as well, playing a stronger, better role.

The hon. Lady asked about evidence. She quoted a report by the IFS that does mention free school meals. However, I must say that I do not understand her argument. She seems to be criticising the status quo while resolutely defending keeping it in place. It was really interesting listening to her, because, in many respects, the words echoed the voices that I heard in my childhood—people having a dogmatic debate about the education system while I studied in my local comprehensive entirely untouched by that ideological debate. What we want to do, and what we think this Parliament and the country should do, is to be prepared to look at the practical ways that we can improve attainment for our children, and to leave no stone unturned to do that.

Complaining about one aspect of our school system and then saying that we should not even have a debate about that element is, frankly, an untenable argument. It is, in essence, politics and dogma coming before pupils and opportunity. It is about Labour Members prioritising, as we can see today, an ideological debate, while Government Members want a debate about the practical steps we can take to tackle generational failure and schools that still are not delivering for children who live near to them. It would be wrong to discount how we can improve prospects for those children, especially the most disadvantaged, purely because of political dogma. If Labour Members are not willing to ask themselves these difficult questions, how can they possibly come up with any of the solutions?

We do believe that selection can play a role, and we think there is evidence to show that it does for many children in grammar schools—but anyhow, we need to leave no stone unturned. We will set out our policies for consultation in due course, and I am sure that hon. Members will want to debate them thoroughly after that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Angela Rayner and Justine Greening

Thursday 21st July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

Yes, I do. We all have our own experiences of that at constituency level. My local Ahmadiyya Muslim community holds a peace conference every year, which brings together all faiths and all parts of our community, and it does a huge amount of fundraising, which also benefits our broader community. These are the kinds of examples of community leadership to which I was just referring. As MPs, we can play a real role in encouraging and supporting that when we see it happening in our own localities.

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome the Minister to her place. I am really proud to be one of the women on the all-women Front Benches. It seems that we might be taking over the world slowly but surely, which is fantastic.

We have heard from many Members on both sides of the House that there has been a dramatic wave of hate crime, hostility and intolerance towards EU nationals and members of the BAME community living in the UK. I have been encouraged by the many members of the public and people in high-profile positions who have challenged that behaviour and shown what a great multicultural Britain we are. However, like many across the House and the country I was dismayed and upset by The Sun columnist Kelvin MacKenzie’s disgraceful Islamophobic attack on the “Channel 4 News” presenter Fatima Manji. Will the Minister join me in making it clear that all parties in this House regard those comments as totally unacceptable? That being the case, will she also join me in urging Mr MacKenzie to make a full public apology, and The Sun and other media to be more responsible as to who and what they allow on their media outlets?

--- Later in debate ---

[Justine Greening]

As my hon. Friend points out, the recent decision enables women to serve in the Royal Marines, the Royal Armoured Corps and Infantry and the Royal Air Force Regiment, so they will be able to fill ground close combat roles. We are putting in place a range of activities, working through the Ministry of Defence, including improved community engagement and recruitment processes. There is a target for 15% of all recruitments to be female by 2020.

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

The Government took six long months to release their response to the Women and Equalities Committee report into transgender equality. LGBT campaigners have called the Government’s response

“lots of polite words signifying precisely nothing”.

Will the Minister explain why the Government rejected the Committee’s main recommendation that the protected characteristic in the Equality Act 2010 regarding trans people should be changed to “gender identity”?

School Funding

Debate between Angela Rayner and Justine Greening

Thursday 21st July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend is right that we want to strike a balance between moving rapidly towards a fairer funding formula while at the same time making sure we do so in a way that allows time not only for the details of that formula to be debated, because they will have a big impact on how it works effectively, but for local authorities, and indeed schools, to understand the changes and then prepare. That is the balance that I have tried to strike today.

I also want to act responsibly by ensuring that we do not rush into making changes without being fully sighted of their ramifications. I know that the debates in Parliament on the fair funding formula have resulted in long-standing frustration, and I am committed to resolving that, but I want to be sure that we do this effectively so that we do not have to revisit it because we have not got it right the first time.

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

This Government’s attitude to school funding is woeful. Talk about last minute! Schools are struggling to cope with a 5% funding shortfall as a result of the Chancellor’s decision to increase national insurance and teachers’ pension contributions. Does the Secretary of State not recognise that pupil numbers are rising and that the shortage of teachers is growing? Will she put money into helping schools in the new formula? Only this Government could have the audacity to deliver real-terms cuts to school budgets across the country and claim that it represented fair funding. Will the Secretary of State publish in the Library of the House the amount that each local authority has received under the existing funding formula and the amount that it will receive following today’s announcement?

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Lady has asked a range of questions. In summary, I have made it clear in my written statement today that no authority will lose funding either for schools or for high needs. This will enable us to give authorities a firm foundation on which to start planning for next year. The reality is that we have seen funding for schools and across education rising. This has been one of the areas that this Government and the coalition Government have sought to protect, and that has been evidenced in the results. We now have 1.4 million more children in good or outstanding schools, and we want that progress to continue.