Schools: Funding

Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Morris for her passionate, inspired and concerned introduction to this important debate. She is a true champion of true education, as is my noble friend Lord Knight. True education, as someone—maybe one of them—once said, is rounded and grounded. I share their concerns and those of others about larger classes, a narrow curriculum and total school funding per pupil, which has fallen by 8% since 2010, with sixth forms taking a huge hit.

Like my noble friend Lady Morris, I worry about special educational needs, and I salute initiatives such as the London Challenge. I salute schools with hard-pressed head teachers who nevertheless work with classroom teachers on the whole ethos of their schools, trying to preserve art, languages, sport, drama, music, libraries and personal, social and health education. All these are so important to a rounded and grounded education. These schools also spend money on counsellors and pastoral support. But real funding is a depressing problem.

My commitment to education comes from having been a teacher in secondary schools—the best job I ever had—a governor in various schools and the co-founder of a preschool playgroup when my own children were small. I now suddenly see disintegration and an unreasonable focus on passing exams, to the detriment of children and teachers.

In a debate in my name two weeks ago, we addressed life chances and social mobility, including early intervention. I and others put forward the point that early intervention did not just mean in the early years. Adolescents can take advantage of intervention. They undergo massive brain development as well as social and emotional development. This can make them more knowledgeable and aware of the importance of health, education and developing positive relationships. According to the World Health Organization, adolescence stretches from the age of 10 to 19. Schools and higher education institutions can intervene to develop not only adolescents’ academic skills and achievement but social and emotional skills, which employers say they value so highly.

We have a patchy education system, and things are not changing fast enough for many young people who have poor parents, live in deprived areas and go to below-average schools. Successful intervention models such as Sure Start and youth services have been decimated. Between 2012 and 2016, around 600 youth centres and one children’s centre closed every week—a poor record for a Government who say that they care about education and social mobility.

I shall focus mainly on the funding of early years education today. This is not, strictly speaking, about schools, but we all know that education happens in places other than schools, and it happens early. In 2014-15, I was involved in the Select Committee on Affordable Childcare. We carried out a comprehensive review of childcare, which involved a number of providers, both in schools and in the private and voluntary sectors. Government ministries and academics also supplied responses. Some of our findings are still relevant today. Funding systems were complex and often difficult to understand; it is still the same. Provision was piecemeal, with the best being in affluent areas with well-trained staff, and often in school settings; it is still the same.

We know from the Department for Education’s own research that 25% of families earning under £20,000 use their 30-hour free entitlement, compared with 58% of families earning more than £45,000. Only 40% of two year-olds qualify for this provision, yet research shows that two year-olds who have attended nursery have larger vocabularies, are more socially skilled and achieve better in primary school.

My noble friend Lady Morgan spoke in the debate that I have mentioned and highlighted the strange funding disparities in childcare. Government support seems to now focus more on the wealthier: they have moved from supporting vulnerable children to supporting affluent families. Less-advantaged parents, earning under £16,000 a year, are entitled to 15 hours a week of free childcare, and those parents earning £100,000 a year get 30 hours a week of free childcare. Where is the logic in this?

It is rightly pointed out that providing early support to families and children can contribute to preventing anti-social behaviour and crime and support school attainment and good mental health. It makes sense to have the best possible early years education universally, with simple and effective funding mechanisms. Such interventions save enormous costs around later problems. It has been argued, and is mentioned in the report on affordable childcare, that increases in maternal employment of 1% could have a net positive impact on public finances of around £200 million.

We have a great deal of information on all aspects of early intervention, both for children and adolescents. Our superb voluntary sector does a splendid job working with children and provides research that identifies good practice and bears out the need for funding. As I said, funding in early years and adolescence saves later, enormous costs around truancy, delinquency, unemployment and imprisonment. Professionals strive to overcome these problems, but they have a tough job later on.

On 13 November, a debate took place in another place on education funding, and there were many excellent speeches from all sides. I was particularly interested in one from the MP for Burnley, Julie Cooper—I was born, bred and educated not far from Burnley. She pointed out that, in her constituency, the average reduction in school funding is £300 per child, and that the Burnley FE college has had its funding cut by 30% since 2010. She too spoke of early years, and gave examples from her own constituency of deprivation affecting choices and chances. Like me, and like my noble friend Lady Morgan, she is aware of variations in provision and the potential savings for the economy from good-quality provision. Every £1 spent on early years is worth £15 in later years, yet many children have no access to good early years education, and this will get worse unless the Government show a real commitment to sustained support for this vital age group that continues throughout primary and secondary school, and into higher education.

We read in the press regularly, and we have heard today, about per-pupil funding not being protected, and significant cuts so that schools cannot balance their budgets. Schools and further education colleges are having to make dramatic cuts, and local authority funding for the provision of children and family services and youth services is suffering. They are having to focus instead on crises and safeguarding, rather than on creative work with children and families.

The Government have created a volcano and it is beginning to erupt. Teachers are angry, parents are angry and too many young people are feeling the effects of overtesting and stress at school. I am particularly concerned about mental health issues in children and young people. It is a growing problem, and schools are one of the reasons for this. Yet schools should be able to play their part in preventing or defusing such situations. Many do a very good job but, in an insecure early years system, with poorly funded schools and FE colleges and cuts to services for families, it is difficult to perform that function. How will the Government remedy these conditions and do their duty by all our children?