Schools: Funding

Lord Storey Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and a patron of Careers Connect. I know some people think that if a debate does not have dozens of speakers, it is not quite as important, but I think it is better when we have smaller numbers because we have longer to speak and can appreciate the arguments being made. I should like particularly to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, for whom I have huge respect from my days as leader of Liverpool City Council. She came to the rescue of our education service and that debt has always been in my mind.

This debate is being held against the background of the BBC programme “School”. The series follows the pupils, teachers, parents and leaders of different secondary schools in a multi-academy trust. It shows a head teacher, Mr Pope, struggling to improve standards at his school, a rural comprehensive in Gloucester which has been put into special measures, while at the same time trying to find £1 million of cuts from his annual budget. Teaching, leadership and support staff are being decimated. Class sizes are increasing. Morale is falling as pupils and teachers struggle to shake off the label “inadequate”. Last week, in episode three, after a poor Ofsted report, Mr Pope is seen handing in his resignation. He said:

“I started my headship with a vision of what I wanted to achieve and I came to realise that increasingly, I was making compromises … the more you have to compromise, the more you sit there thinking: this isn’t what I wanted to do. This isn’t what I thought my headship would be about”.


What wise words those are.

My noble friend Lord Addington, who is in his place behind me, has been purring because of the number of speakers who have mentioned special educational needs. He is less angry and more content than I have seen him for a long time. For example, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester talked about special educational needs. I began to purr when the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said, “Let’s cut testing”. Hallelujah to that. I think that my party said in its manifesto that we should do away with key stage 2 testing and with league tables that play one school off against another.

I am sure that when the Minister, for whom I have huge am respect because I know he always does his best—whenever there is a problem, he is the first to say, “Come and talk to me and let’s try to sort it out”—gives his reply, he will baffle us with facts and figures about how much is being spent: this or that amount of money and this pot of money. I am sure that, unlike the Minister of State for School Standards, when it comes to blinding us with figures, he will make sure that his statistics are correct. I do not want to talk about the statistics, although I, too, have had all the briefings. I thank the House of Lords Library and many other people who have written in. Sometimes you can be almost blinded by the statistics and they become meaningless. When I thought about how to approach this debate, I wanted to ask what it feels like for an individual school. We have talked about the BBC series, but that is slightly different.

One of my former teachers, Mr Carl Roscoe, is now the head of a successful one-form-entry primary school in Lancashire. I emailed him and said, “I am speaking in a debate. Can you tell me what it is like to face budgetary constraints”—I will not use the word “cuts”—“in your primary school?” He emailed back earlier today, and what he has to say is probably my speech:

“We are now eating in to any money we have held back in case the boiler packs in or there is any roof damage. The site supervisor patches up any problems—as we haven’t got the funds to pay the appropriate people. If teachers are absent I cover … as we can’t afford the supply teacher rates. Our Two Year Old Nursery currently has a number of portable heaters as it would cost too much to repair or replace the old heating system.


“The Children’s Centre has closed so a lot of families are struggling before children attend school so we are seeing more four year olds attend school in nappies. The teacher and the teaching assistant are spending time changing nappies rather than”,


improving their learning. He goes on:

“We are seeing more children struggling with anxiety—so we have used funds to pay for mental health training—I am now the Mental Health Champion. Teachers are spending more time providing pastoral care. The school appears to be the main community hub for everything—including social care support/advice. Teaching Assistant time is being cut so children are missing out on valuable interventions that the class teacher hasn’t got the time to provide on a one to one or small group basis.


“Children who need SEND support are waiting longer to be diagnosed so the school has to find ways to manage the behaviour issues without too much disruption to the learning that should be taking place. There are no places in local behaviour support schools to accommodate these children—even on a temporary basis. Teachers then feel unsupported and are growing more anxious in a job that should be highly valued.


“I still enjoy my job and feel very privileged to be in the job, but I know of other Head Teachers who are feeling the strain and as a result, they are contemplating taking early retirement or walking away from their career”.


That is a bit like Mr Pope.

The Minister, speaking at the School and Academies Show in Birmingham, likened himself to “a pig hunting for truffles” when it comes to finding waste in schools. But the reality is that schools do not have the luxury of trying to find waste; it is about trying to make massive budget savings. It does not take a bottle of champagne or whatever it might be to find these savings because, rather depressingly, they are happening right at this moment. How are those savings being made? We have talked about special educational needs. One of the ways that savings are being made is by trying to ensure that you do not have children with special educational needs in your school because—guess what?—they cost money.

Increasingly, qualified teachers who used to lead nurseries are being taken out as the head puts in NVQ level 3 staff members, excellent though they are. We see schools going through restructuring and, in that way, structuring out their expensive, experienced teachers. Schools are using teaching assistants to teach lessons. Secondary schools are scrapping subjects that are not part of the EBacc because they are expensive. As we have heard, those include music and drama. Perhaps it is easy to make those savings, but they are going on throughout our education system.

By chance, I met a group of people from an organisation called The Key. I believe its representatives have met the Minister. The Key provides information for schools on anything they are concerned about. It has produced a very good study of education in rural schools entitled The Challenges of Leading a Rural School: A State of Education Series Report. It surveyed the head teachers of some of the 5,000 rural schools across England, which comprise 20% of our schools. However, there is a dearth of information published on the unique challenges they face. The research shows that the top problem for the heads of rural schools is not being in a small community, lack of pupils or problems in staffing; rather, half of them said that the problem is not having enough money. Again, some of the comments are quite alarming. One head, Tim, reported:

“This year I need to save £64k from a £285k budget”.


Another, Richard, said:

“My top 3 challenges are finance, finance and finance. We’ll get an additional £200k in the national funding formula but it just means our projected deficit is less than it would have been”.


Liz said:

“People bang on about academies being a business, but our hands are tied—you don’t see the police out there fundraising for their own salaries”.


Simon said:

“We have already cut the number of TAs to the bone”.


Mark said:

“Things like music and drama are expensive to run … We have had to make some tough cuts to the arts”.


All that is happening in rural schools in this country.

For an increasing number of children and their families, the reality before they even start school is that, in their communities, Sure Start centres—a valuable resource for young children and parents—have closed. Local libraries that provide books and toys—an essential part of a young child’s life—have closed. We know the importance of children’s centres. For older children, sports centres, swimming pools and youth centres have also closed. All those things have gone.

Noble Lords may be wondering what that has to do with school funding. Early years settings, primary schools and secondary schools are often picking up the pieces from our social policies. We heard the Prime Minister tell us that austerity is over. If it is, let us celebrate by ensuring that Tim and his colleagues from those rural schools are not saying, “The problem is finance, finance, finance”, but, “We can educate, educate, educate”, to coin a phrase.