Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Angela Rayner and Justine Greening

Monday 11th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I would be happy to meet, or for a ministerial member of my team to meet, my hon. Friend. This excellent Bill came through Parliament at an important time, and I am happy to talk to him about how we can make sure that young people coming through our education system are connected up with the great career opportunities that await them when they leave.

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

Given what the Secretary of State just said about our excellent teachers, I hope that we can all agree that it is time to end the real-terms pay cuts for teachers. However, the Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that this will lead to schools squeezing non-pay spending and reducing the workforce without extra funding. The Chancellor wants us to believe that he has ended the public sector pay cap. The Secretary of State wants us to believe that she has ended cuts to schools. They cannot both be right, so which one of them is putting the “con” into the Conservatives?

[Justine Greening]

Obviously the School Teachers’ Review Body will be getting its remit letter shortly, but what I have tried to set out is a much broader strategy for teaching as a profession, and not just in relation to financial incentives and making sure that they are in the places where we particularly want teachers to teach. Later this week, we will issue our consultation on strengthening qualified teacher status, which I hope will be welcomed. Of course, we are working hard to remove unnecessary workload. Earlier this year, I held a flexible working summit with the professions and unions to talk about how we can make sure that teachers stay in the profession.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Angela Rayner and Justine Greening

Monday 6th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

Most parents would be staggered that the hon. Gentleman is so against my looking across my Department to make sure that I challenge it and its officials to work as efficiently as we are now challenging schools to be. That is quite right, and I am now able to put the fruits of that initiative into the hands of headteachers, providing them with more money on the frontline. We will be making effective savings, which is actually the way to get more out of our education budget.

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

Can the Secretary of State confirm the National Audit Office assessment that £2.7 billion has been cut from the schools budget since 2015, and that the £1.3 billion she mentioned earlier will protect budgets only until 2020, after which she will either need new money from the Treasury or she will need simply to deliver another cut to school funding?

[Justine Greening]

As the hon. Lady should know, the next spending review process is yet to get under way. Of course school budgets, alongside every other budget across government, will be agreed as part of that. We had a question earlier about the fact that money and results are not necessarily correlated, and I have to say that if there is one part of our United Kingdom where a Government are failing their children, it is Wales—where Labour is in charge—not England.

Schools: National Funding Formula

Debate between Angela Rayner and Justine Greening

Thursday 14th September 2017 Commons Chamber

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

Once again on the last day before a recess we see the Secretary of State sneak out new policy. [Interruption.] I would hardly call that once in a national debate, but I wonder whether this statement has been put out today to try and hide and to distract from the fact that the Government are ripping up the rulebook on democracy, as they did yesterday in the debate on tuition fees. But of course, if this is a genuine change of heart, it is welcome. After all, the Secretary of State will be taking her policy directly from the pledges in the Labour party manifesto. Ever since she took office, we have been urging her to keep the promise her party made in 2015 to protect funding in real terms for every pupil.

Will the Secretary of State guarantee to the House that no school will be even a penny worse off in real terms—not cash terms—as a result of this funding formula? Will the proposal apply from this year or from 2015? The National Audit Office has found that schools have already lost nearly £2.7 billion since her party made that pledge. Members across the House have heard from schools that are already facing those cuts and that have had to beg parents to help them to find money and resources. Will she admit to the House that her announcement today does nothing to reverse those cuts and keep that promise?

The Secretary of State has said that her funding formula will increase per pupil funding by 0.5% a year until 2020, but the Education Policy Institute has found that in that period, inflationary pressures are over 2%, so will she admit that her funding formula will in fact mean a real-terms cut in school budgets? In today’s statement she says that the formula provides “a per pupil cash increase in respect of every school and every local area”, so will she admit that there will be pupils, schools and local authorities that see a real-terms cut in funding by 2020? She has referred to transitional protections offered to schools. How long will the transition period last? Will it include protections against losses during that transition, and for how long will those protections last?

The Secretary of State said that the basic amount allocated to each secondary school pupil will be “at least £4,800 per pupil”, but the Education and Skills Funding Agency guidance describes this an “optional” part of the funding formula. Will she guarantee that all secondary schools will now receive £4,800 per pupil? Can she tell us how much this increase in the basic per pupil funding rate will cost each year, and how she will fund it? Today’s announcement says that the minimum funding per primary school pupil will be £3,500. In December, the proposed basic per pupil funding in primary schools was £2,712, so again I ask: how much will the increase in basic per pupil funding cost, and how will it be funded?

None of the money announced so far is actually new money for education. Instead, the Secretary of State is simply cutting elsewhere to fill the black hole that the Government have created. Can she confirm that over £300 million of the supposedly new funding for schools has actually come from cutting the healthy pupils fund by over 75%? That money was meant to be ring-fenced for school sports, healthier meals, facilities for disabled pupils and mental health provision, and it is only days since the Prime Minister claimed that this would be her new priority. Only in February this year, the Secretary of State promised in a statement that the fund would not fall below £415 million. Will she now apologise for breaking yet another promise?

This leaves another £100 million that must come from her main capital budget. Where will that come from? She has said that she will “reprioritise” £250 million in 2018-19 and £350 million in 2019-20. Where will those cuts fall? She has also said that she will “redirect” £200 million from “central programmes that support schools on relatively narrow areas of their work”. Will she tell us what those programmes and those narrow areas are? Or is the truth that she simply made up that number, hoping that her civil servants can find more cuts?

The July announcement went no further than 2020. What happens then? I will be glad if the Secretary of State has listened to us, and to parents and teachers across the country, and looked again at the funding formula, but the fact is that this does not meet the promises that she has made. When will she return to this House with the funding that her party promised the electorate?

[Justine Greening]

I want to start by adding a massive thank you to the Department for Education officials who have worked on this for many years. It has been a complex piece of work, and it has been looked at under many Governments. I want to put on record my thanks to the team.

On the points raised by the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), I had hoped, given the cross-party recognition of the need for school funding reform, that there might be a warmer welcome for this announcement. It is not just schools represented by Government Members that will gain from it; many in Opposition Members’ constituencies have been equally underfunded. This is not a political issue; it is a question of ensuring that we fund children, wherever they are growing up in our country, in a consistent, transparent and fair fashion. That is what we are shifting towards today. This is not an uncomplicated thing, and we have worked really hard to make sure that schools that were already well funded will continue to remain well funded. However, this is also about making sure that schools that have traditionally been underfunded for a very long time can now start to catch up.

The hon. Lady asked a few questions. I think she misunderstood my point about ensuring that there is a minimum per pupil funding rate of £4,800 for secondary schools and £3,500 for primary schools. There are not many schools that are not at that minimum funding rate, but it is important for those that are below it that we address those issues through the consultation response. That is what we are doing today—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady asks what the guidance says. That guidance is for local authorities, as I have explained and as I hope she will understand. Local authorities currently set local formulae. We had already said, and I had hoped she might have recalled, that that will continue for 2018-19. When I came back to the House in July this year, I set out that that would also continue for 2019-20 because we believe that the right way to bring in a significant change in school funding is to work with local authorities. As part of the setting out of the final funding formula, we also set out a small but important element of flexibility for local authorities to respond to the changes as they come through and to nuance them to take account of local issues. That is where the optional element comes in. We are simply saying that it is right to give local authorities a modicum of flexibility to ensure that they can use the funding effectively on the ground.

We are being clear-cut about what the funding formula allocates to every single school in this country, and Members will be able to see those allocations. They will be able to sit down with their local authorities, and if they want the funding to go to those schools they will be able to ensure that it does. I expect that some local authorities will feel that the right thing to do is to get on with putting the funding formula in place at local level and that they will simply pass the money straight through to the schools. That is something that I would support, but it is important to have a small amount of flexibility while the formula comes in.

The hon. Lady asked about the fact that we are putting an extra £1.3 billion of additional funding into the core schools formula and budget. I felt it was important to do this. Over the past few years, we have challenged schools to try to find efficiencies, because we want to get the most out of every pound we put in. However, it is also important that I challenge the rest of my Department to do the same kind of exercise that we are asking schools and headteachers to do. I believe that doing that has enabled us to free up some additional resourcing that we can now push directly to headteachers in the frontline. Frankly, I am staggered that the hon. Lady thinks that that is a bad thing to do. Anyone in my role should be challenging their civil servants to try to work smarter and more efficiently to get money directly through to the frontline. That is yet another example of the hon. Lady doing nothing other rant and produce rhetoric, and there is not a lot of thought behind that rhetoric about what is the right thing to do.

With that, I will sit down. I look forward to the contributions from hon. Members.

Higher Education (England) Regulations

Debate between Angela Rayner and Justine Greening

Wednesday 13th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

The Labour party is increasing them. It is doing the very thing that Labour Members are expressing faux anger at in the Chamber today. I will come on to that in a second, because I have not quite finished—

[Angela Rayner]

rose—

[Justine Greening]

No thank you. I have taken lots of interventions.

During the election, the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) said that he would “deal with” student debt. I think he meant that taxpayers would deal with it. Then he ditched that promise after the election. It was snake oil populism at its worst. I have to say, however, that this debate represents a new low in Labour’s integrity-free politics. The hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne stands here today and opposes a fee increase in line with inflation, yet this is a core part of the fee regime that Labour put in place in 2004. Frankly, it is laughable that they are trying to be taken seriously on this. It is also an insult to everyone’s intelligence.

Schools Update

Debate between Angela Rayner and Justine Greening

Monday 17th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

Conservative Members are in full retreat from their own manifesto. We were promised £4 billion only a few weeks ago, and now we are getting only £1.3 billion. Can schools expect anything else in future, or is this yet another broken promise?

The Conservative manifesto promised a free breakfast for every primary school pupil. First, the Secretary of State said it would cost £60 million, leaving parents across the country wondering how you can provide breakfast at under 7p per meal. Then she said that it would be £180 million, but that it would go only to the most disadvantaged pupils. She has had plenty of time to get her figures straight, so can she tell the House whether this is still her policy? How many pupils will benefit, and how much it will cost?

The Secretary of State said that the full funding formula has been delayed again, with local authorities playing a role in setting budgets until 2020. Is this because she has finally acknowledged the role local authorities have to play? Or has she simply realised that to implement her plans fully she would need to pass primary legislation, and that her Government are so weak and wobbly that they cannot even get new money for schools passed through this House?

What the Secretary of State has announced today is nothing more than a sticking plaster. Per pupil funding will still fall over this Parliament unless further action is taken urgently. I will welcome the opportunity to protect budgets for our schools, but this statement alone will do nothing of the kind.

[Justine Greening]

There is only one party that is in full retreat from its manifesto, and it is certainly not the Conservative party. We heard over the weekend that the promise to students was not worth the paper it was written on. I think it was one of the most dishonest pieces of electioneering I have seen in many, many years. Our young people deserve better than to be peddled some snake oil propaganda that proves to be not true.

I am pleased that the hon. Lady recognises this extra investment. I am shocked to hear that the Labour party has now turned its head on fair funding and suggested it might have voted against introducing the fair funding approach of a hard formula. I think many schoolteachers will be deeply concerned by that change of stance—yet another one.

The hon. Lady talked about getting through to the Conservative party in relation to school funding, but we have been funding schools. I think the message that has not been getting through to the Labour party is that simply loading up more taxes on people and more debt on our country for the young people of the future is not a sustainable way to run the public finances. What the hon. Lady’s response shows is that Labour has learned nothing in its time in opposition and has, in fact, gone backwards.

The hon. Lady asked some questions. I can confirm to her that we are, indeed, saying that we are going to have per pupil, real-term protection for the next two years. In relation to the free schools programme, what I was actually setting out—I do not think she properly understood it—was that we are protecting it, but we think we can finance it in a more cost-effective way. She then talked about the £4 billion, not realising, I think, that it was £4 billion over four years. I have set out £2.6 billion over two years. I think she will recognise that that is bringing the process forward at a faster pace, which is something to be welcomed.

One of the hon. Lady’s few questions—she did not have a lot of questions to ask—related to the approach we are taking to local authorities. She may have realised—I am not sure from her question—that we were always going to have local authorities use an approach involving a local formula in 2018-19, as it was due to be a transition year anyway. We are simply saying that we want that to extend for a longer time period. Given the historic nature of this change, it is right that we take the time to make sure that we work at local level to allow local authorities to adjust their funding to start matching the funding formula. However, schools locally will of course be able to see what amount they should be getting. I have no doubt that teachers, parents and governing bodies will raise questions for local authorities that deviate significantly away from the formula settlement that schools think they are entitled to have.

This a strong announcement of additional money combined with making sure that our schools budget is, for the first time in a generation, spread fairly across our schools and our children wherever they are growing up in this country. I hope that the House will broadly welcome it.