Infant Class Sizes

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes that the number of infants taught in classes of over 30 has risen by 200 per cent since 2010, to over 93,000 children; also notes that the Government relaxed the rules on infant class sizes; further notes that the Conservative Party manifesto in 2010 pledged to create small schools with smaller class sizes; believes that the Government’s decision to prioritise capital spending in areas without shortages of places through the free school programme has led to chronic pressures on primary school places and has created classes of more than 70 pupils; and believes that capital spending for school places should be prioritised to areas with the greatest pressures on places.

I should like to open the debate with a quote from a great work of fiction—not “North and South”, which I will come to later, but the Conservative party’s 2010 election manifesto:

“A Conservative government will give many more children access to the kind of education that is currently only available to the well-off…smaller schools with smaller class sizes with teachers who know the children’s names”—

a point underlined by the Prime Minister himself, who said that

“the more we can get class sizes down the better”.

That, we were told, was a task absolutely crucial to raising school standards. As the once, twice, three times a Tory schools spokesman, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), the boiled cabbage himself, said back in 2009:

“The other thing”—

on standards—

“is getting class sizes down. Particularly at primary school level. It is really dramatic how big our classes still are compared with other countries”.

More than that, he said that smaller schools were important too

“so that no child can wander around corridors of a school anonymously”.

I know that this Government do not take their manifesto commitments particularly seriously—trebling tuition fees, cutting Sure Start, cutting the education maintenance allowance, top-down reorganisation of the NHS. However, make no mistake: the abject failure of the Conservative party when it comes to infant class sizes is right up there with the most brazen of its broken promises.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

rose—

[Tristram Hunt]

I am delighted to give way.

[Mr Jackson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. I am not sure the Lord Snooty act is working that well. Would he like to take the opportunity to apologise for the 200,000 primary school places that the Government of the party he represented took out of the capacity in the middle of the largest baby boom since the second world war? It inflicted grave difficulties on local education authorities, including my own in Peterborough.

[Tristram Hunt]

For the record, between 1997 and 2007 the Labour party built more than 1,100 new schools, the vast majority being primary schools, and there are now nearly 200 fewer primary schools than in 2010. The record speaks for itself, and the people of Peterborough will hold the hon. Gentleman to account for his votes.

The figures are truly shocking. The number of primary schools with more than 800 pupils has rocketed by 381%, so we can forget about the smaller schools with no anonymous pupils and we can forget about knowing every child’s name. More and more so-called titan primary schools are struggling to educate their pupils, with assemblies in shift patterns, multiple lunch hours and expanding class sizes. Head teachers and teachers are doing their best in the most difficult circumstances. The number of infants taught in classes bigger than 30 has soared to 93,655, a staggering 200% rise since 2010.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his point and I shall certainly try to get the truth from the Labour party. Would the shadow Secretary of State like to intervene to tell the House what he thinks about free schools today, and whether he will provide clarity? Parents and children attending schools need clarification and to know whether he would keep them open were he—heaven forbid—in government.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

I do not want to detract from my right hon. Friend’s litany of disastrous Labour failures in the 13 years to 2010, but I will add my penny’s worth to it. The Education Committee recently found that under the Labour Government the performance of white working class children in receipt of free school meals plummeted and was among the worst in the western world. That is a badge of shame for the Labour party.

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and I know he is passionate about this issue. The fact of the matter is that by 2010, one in three primary school age children were leaving school unable to read and write properly. Anyone who is a parent, godparent or who has a relationship with young children and visits schools will know that if someone cannot read and write they cannot play a full part in modern Britain. It is deeply unfair on any education system to leave its children poorly educated.

Let me turn to class sizes as they are mentioned in the Order Paper today. The motion claims that

“the number of infants taught in classes of over 30 has risen by 200 per cent”,

but as we shall see, the shadow Secretary of State based his entire case on one snapshot of the school year, which he has used—whether knowingly or not—in an opportunistic way. I know hon. Members will find that hard to believe, but let me set the hon. Gentleman right. The truth is that despite everything we inherited, the proportion of infant pupils in classes of more than 30 has gone up by just three percentage points, while the number of pupils requiring a place has risen by 11%.