Education: Funding

Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, the House will be grateful to the Minister for repeating that Answer—but whatever gloss he puts on school funding, the fact is that the amount of money per pupil is due to go down between now and 2022. As a result, class sizes will grow and schools will replace qualified teachers with unqualified staff. The Minister had nothing to say about this, yet it is worrying parents up and down the country—except, perhaps, in Northern Ireland. Can he confirm that there is now to be an increase in school funding of £150 per pupil in the Province?

The Minister said that no school would have its budget cut as a result of the new funding formula. Can he confirm that that is in real terms and not just in cash terms? His party’s manifesto promised £4 billion of additional money; £650 million of that was to be obtained by scrapping infant school meals. The Minister in the other place has said that that policy has now been scrapped, so where will that money come from? Is it still the Government’s intention to provide universal free breakfast in primary schools—and, if so, does he now have a proper costing of that manifesto offer? Furthermore, is the Government planning to fund new and expanded grammar schools, or has that also been abandoned?

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his questions. To be clear, first of all, on grammar schools, as the noble Lord will know there is no education Bill in the Queen’s Speech and the ban will remain in place, although we will keep working with the Grammar School Heads’ Association and good grammar schools to see how their excellent practice can be spread more widely.

As far as breakfast is concerned, we do not plan to introduce free breakfasts, although we will continue to work on a number of schemes for breakfast clubs, such as Magic Breakfast.

There has been a lot of talk about the expansion of class sizes. Despite the fact that, by this September, schools will already have experienced an increase of more than 3% in their cost base, the actual increase in class sizes in the last six years has been very marginal indeed. This is at a time when we have 1.8 million more pupils in good and outstanding schools and have created nearly 750,000 new places. I have already said that there will be no cuts in per-pupil funding as a result of the national funding formula. We will be responding in full to the consultation shortly and I am afraid that the noble Lord will have to wait until then for the answers to the rest of his questions.