Oral Answers to Questions
Richard Graham Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Anne Milton
I had a delightful visit to a college in my right hon. Friend’s constituency of Harlow that does an excellent job. Many further education colleges are doing an excellent job in difficult circumstances. As I have made clear, we are aware that funding has not kept up with costs.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
The Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills (Anne Milton)
I am very aware of the number of apprenticeships, but comparing numbers before and after the reforms we have made is a bit like comparing apples and pears, because we have put quality at the heart of apprenticeships. The number of people starting on the new employer-designed standards in the first half of 2018-19 has increased by 79%, which is an indication of the quality. An apprenticeship must now last for a year, and there must be 20% off-the-job training. There has been an increase of 10% in apprenticeship starts in the first half of 2018-19, compared with the same period in 2017-18.
Richard Graham
I am grateful to the Minister for that answer, but chambers of commerce such as Business West do not think that the two-tier system is working as well as it could. Specialist Gloucestershire Engineering Training believes that more funding for small and medium-sized enterprises would enable them to train more engineering apprentices. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is something the Treasury should look at closely in the autumn spending review?
Anne Milton
We are determined to make the apprenticeship system work for small and medium-sized enterprises, and smaller businesses get 95% of their training costs paid. We will move smaller businesses on to the apprenticeship system: we want to do that well and smoothly to make sure that we make it work for them.
Further Education Funding
Richard Graham Excerpts(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered further education funding.
Good morning, Sir Roger. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship and to see colleagues from across the House come together to debate further education colleges. I do so with my co-conspirator, the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin)—165 colleagues signed our recent letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. This is a fantastic opportunity for hon. Members from all parties to come together without the need for indicative motions on alternatives and to reach a rare and much-cherished cross-party consensus on four simple propositions.
The first proposition is that further education is incredibly important to all of us, in every constituency in the land. The second is that our colleges need more funding to achieve important goals. The third is that the spending review and Budget are a great opportunity to make giant steps towards that objective. Lastly, today is an opportunity for many people to give a clear message to the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills, who has been very supportive throughout, and to the wider Government: please do more to help our colleges provide the skills our young people need for themselves and for our country.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
Well done to my hon. Friend for securing the debate. Peter Symonds College in Winchester is the largest in England. It has grown significantly in recent years. Student numbers grew by 19% between 2011 and 2018, yet in the same period the college’s overall funding grew by just 3%—the relevant factors are the rising cost base, changes to pension contributions, national insurance and the part-funded pay rise—meaning that, without a long-overdue increase in the base rate, it will have to make some very difficult and significant changes. Does my hon. Friend agree that the comprehensive spending review is looking increasingly like a seminal moment for this sector?
Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)
Order. Before the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) answers, may I put a marker down? An enormous number of Members wish to take part in the debate. I am going to insist that interventions be brief.
Richard Graham
The short answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) is yes.
Today, I want to set out briefly what the problem is—as you say, Sir Roger, many Members wish to speak—what the case for further education colleges is in more detail, what outcomes we would like to see from more funding going into the sector, what skills and productivity we should be looking for, and some of the key statistics, both locally and nationally, that are on our minds.
Let me start by outlining the problem. It is simply that education for 16 to 18-year-olds has, broadly speaking, not been funded as well as that for other age groups. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has done research that shows that. The chart we used in our letter shows clearly that, of the four main categories of education—primary, secondary, further and higher—further education is the only one on which spending has fallen in real terms recently. It is therefore the most deserving of the four categories, but let it also be said—
Richard Graham
I will give way in a second; let me just finish the sentence. I suspect that all of us here share the view that education in general is a good cause for the spending review and the Budget, so this is not to decry the other three categories but to highlight the importance of more funding for further education. Three colleagues wished to intervene—I think they were, in order, an hon. Friend and then two Opposition colleagues.
John Howell
I will be as brief as I can. Does my hon. Friend not think that FE colleges have the ability to improve the situation themselves by attracting good companies in to help fund apprenticeships? That is precisely what I am doing with the FE college in my constituency.
Richard Graham
My hon. Friend is always a great champion of these things, and he is absolutely right. Colleges can certainly help themselves by attracting great employers to offer apprenticeships, and we can help them by introducing some of the employers if need be.
Melanie Onn
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the restrictions on FE funding have directly damaged the ability of colleges to recruit very specialist skills at the highest level, such as in engineering, meaning that vacancies exist for long periods and that colleges are often cutting short those types of course?
Richard Graham
The hon. Lady has brilliantly anticipated a line in my speech, and I agree with her.
Mr Bailey
Notwithstanding the Treasury’s historical aversion to hypothecated taxation, does the hon. Gentleman agree that, given that the Government are making a substantial surplus out of the apprenticeship levy at the moment, there is a strong moral case for recycling that money into the 16-to-18 sector?
Richard Graham
Hypothecated funds are interesting. I am an advocate of them for the field of care. I will leave my right hon. Friend the Minister to comment on the huge surplus being generated; I have not yet seen much sign of that surplus coming through in my constituency, but the hon. Gentleman raises an interesting point.
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
The point about recruitment and retention has been raised. Does my hon. Friend agree that the sector desperately needs more funding? In a case I am aware of, there are staff who have not had a pay rise for 10 years. If that is the case, retention will become impossible.
Richard Graham
Yes. When it comes to pay rises, all of us will remember that take-home pay has increased by about £1,200 as a result of the tax-free allowance being almost doubled, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right on the wider point about being able to retain key staff. That point has been raised by other colleagues and is crucial.
Alex Chalk
Does my hon. Friend agree that FE is at its most successful when it is provided locally, in communities? Gloscol—Gloucestershire College—provides services in both Cheltenham and my hon. Friend’s constituency of Gloucester, but if the cuts increase, it will be at only one or other of those sites, and that will reduce the uptake of courses and damage FE provision in the county overall. Does my hon. Friend agree?
Richard Graham
Where my hon. Friend and constituency near-neighbour is absolutely right is that, in the case of Gloucestershire College, which provides those skills in Cheltenham, Gloucester and the Forest of Dean, there is only one provider, in effect, in the whole county. That is why further education colleges are crucial to the infrastructure of all our constituencies. I agree totally with that.
Sarah Newton
My hon. Friend is being very generous with his time. I commend him for securing the debate. There could not be a greater champion for this sector than our right hon. Friend the Minister. Our job is to give her strength to go forward to the Treasury to secure the funding, and it is great that so many of us will be on the record giving her that strength. On the point about more funding to secure better wages, Truro and Penwith College is outstanding and deemed to be so by Ofsted, yet it has not been able to give its staff a pay rise for eight years, which of course is making it difficult for the college to recruit and retain staff.
Richard Graham
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I think we can all agree that it is time that core funding allowed for a decent increase in salaries for staff.
Mr Dunne
My hon. Friend is exhibiting, if I may say so, an almost ministerial skill in handling interventions today. He was touching on geography. The FE college in my constituency is the only location for sixth-form and technical training within a 20-mile radius. Does he agree that if pressure is placed on isolated, rural FE colleges, we may well find ourselves in a situation in which no such provision is available in parts of the country, which would not be acceptable?
Richard Graham
My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct. The crucial point, as he implies, is that, in effect, his local college, like so many of our colleges, has a monopoly. If things were to go badly wrong, who else would provide what it does? Who would provide those opportunities for young people? My hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) was reaching for an intervention.
Julian Sturdy
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. He is right to highlight the importance of wider education funding, which has seen increases. However, York College, in my constituency, tells me that the big problem it faces is that while school sixth forms can cross-subsidise, colleges cannot. Does he feel that that issue affects all colleges?
Richard Graham
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is a significant issue, as is the issue of A-levels for those who went to schools without a sixth form, for whom further education is really important. I know that my co-conspirator, the hon. Member for Scunthorpe, will come on to that point.
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)
My hon. Friend deserves huge praise for bringing this debate to the House. The Minister also deserves huge praise, and I know she is listening and believes a great deal of what we are saying. In Taunton we have an outstanding sixth-form college, Richard Huish College, and an excellent university centre. However, those institutions tell me that, by 2021, they need at least £760 more per student to deliver the apprenticeship scheme, which delivers for business. Does he agree that we want to retain those students locally, because they have the skills we need for the future, and to deliver minority subjects, such as languages?
Richard Graham
I absolutely agree. The Minister, who is a former apprentice herself, is a huge champion for that, along with colleagues from across the House.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman is being generous with his time. Related to the suppression of pay in the sector is a casualisation of contracts, which are being put out to subsidiary businesses within college groups, and that has an impact on the morale and pay of staff. Next Monday and Tuesday there will be strikes at Warwickshire College Group in my area. That is not what students need, and the sector does not need it either.
Richard Graham
The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting question. He is absolutely right that that is not what students need, and I am not sure that it is what colleges really need at the moment. Perhaps the Minister will touch on that.
We are looking for more funding, which is needed to ensure that good staff are hired and retained. Unused space needs to be used. Interestingly, around a third of the space in the nation’s further education colleges is currently unused, so there is a capacity opportunity, which could provide more space for more students to get those key skills.
We need more quality apprentices to be hired and trained. We all have stories from our respective constituencies about the importance of that. Colleges can make a huge difference in terms of the life opportunities apprenticeships offer. The key output from that will be a leap in business productivity, which we know is one of our country’s big, outstanding challenges.
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, as well as funding for students, colleges face challenges with apprenticeships and, in particular, with the new non-levy apprenticeship scheme, of which the Minister is well aware? In my area, the Newcastle and Stafford Colleges Group has no funding for 18-plus, non-levy adult apprenticeships, and only enough funding until the end of September for 16 to 18-year-olds.
Richard Graham
The apprenticeship levy is an issue in itself, which I do not intend to address today, because it is slightly peripheral to what we can achieve in an hour and a half on the overall situation for further education colleges. The hon. Gentleman is right that there are ongoing issues, which I know the skills Minister is doing her best to tackle, and I am grateful to him for raising them.
More funding can achieve results in a couple of slightly softer areas, which are worth mentioning. The challenge around mental health is not unique to further education but exists across the education sector. There is no doubt about it: young students in general are facing more challenges than in the past. Funding to ensure that they get the support they need while at college is incredibly important and should increase their resilience and contribute to better results and opportunities. It is worth adding that to the checklist of things that could be achieved through more funding.
Richard Graham
Lastly, at the soft end of what could be done, there is a range of enrichment activities, particularly for students aged 16 to 18, where colleges have opportunities to demonstrate that they can compete with other, better funded institutions.
Before I turn to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), who is from the engineering sector and a great advocate for it, I will just touch on a few general facts, which it is useful for us to bear in mind. There are 266 colleges in England—almost one college for every two constituencies. They educate the majority of 16 to 18-year-olds and 2.2 million other young people and adults. On average, there are 1,200 apprenticeships in every further education college. Students who are over 19 generate an additional £70 billion for the economy over their lifetime.
Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Richard Graham
I will just make a bit of progress, then I will come to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and then the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss).
The average pay for a college teacher—a number of colleagues have mentioned salaries as an issue—is £30,000, compared to £37,000 for a school teacher. I find that a particularly interesting statistic because it implies that we put a lower value on further education teachers than school teachers, which cannot be right. It is also worth highlighting that in 2017 alone the turnover rate in further education was 17%—almost one in five—which is higher than the rate in schools. As a result of funding issues, 63% of colleges have been making compulsory redundancies. If this was a business, we would have to assume that it was in decline. I think we would all say that it is time that we halted and reversed that process.
Chi Onwurah
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to highlight the devastating impact that lack of funding for further education is having, particularly on young people. Colleges such as Newcastle College in my constituency are doing great work in really difficult circumstances. Does he agree that adult education and lifelong learning, such as that delivered by the Workers’ Educational Association in hard-to-reach communities in Newcastle—which has also been severely cut and is likely to be cut more in the future—provides the kind of opportunities that we need, particularly for productivity in the fourth industrial revolution, as jobs change in the future?
Richard Graham
The short answer is that I agree. Qualifications for workers in key sectors have dropped. Qualifications for construction workers have dropped from 98,000 to 62,000. For engineers, the sector from which the hon. Lady comes, including plumbers and electricians, the figure has dropped from 145,000 to 46,000. That is a huge drop in a relatively short space of time, precisely at the moment when we need more engineers in this country, to take forward our technology revolution.
Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)
My hon. Friend highlights precisely the relevant point, namely that at the very moment when we should be looking at vocational skills in our economy, we are squeezing funding in that area. This is critical to where our country is heading in the next 10 to 20 years.
Richard Graham
I do apologise—I will come to the hon. Lady in one second. Some statistics, which the Minister is well aware of, suggest that on a national basis we are in the bottom quartile for the numbers of higher apprenticeships, which are the ones that include the greatest numbers of skills and will drive forward our technology businesses. At the same time—the hon. Member for Scunthorpe may touch on this—it is worth remembering that the entry qualifications, levels 2 and 3, play a very important role in getting some of our youngest and least-skilled constituents on to the ladder of opportunity, so we need support at both ends.
Gill Furniss
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I applaud the work of Sheffield College in my constituency during these difficult times. Does he agree that we are taking away a vital support system for many in our working-class communities, and that we will rob them of vital opportunities for the future, unless we change now, and start giving further education colleges the support that they need and individuals the community support that they need to realise their potential?
Richard Graham
I agree with the hon. Lady’s general point that it is incredibly important to give our young people maximum opportunities. Everyone has highlighted the role of further education colleges in that.
Richard Graham
I will make a tiny bit of progress. I am conscious that a lot of hon. Members want to speak, so I will try to reach the end of my comments and bring the hon. Lady in before I finish.
It would be wrong of me not to mention the importance of Gloucestershire College—Gloscol—in my county of Gloucestershire, which I have known well for the last decade. The management have done their best to try to use resources to maximum effect and give our young people the opportunities that we are looking at across the country. Its 1,000 full and part-time staff serve some 3,500 students across the three campuses in Gloucester, Cheltenham and the Forest of Dean. It is clear, however, that even such a college, which has been rated good for the last three and a half years, is struggling to maintain the range of qualifications that my colleagues in Gloucestershire and I want it to provide.
I will not touch on South Gloucestershire and Stroud College, because the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) will want to, but I suspect that he will mention some similar issues. I also pay tribute to my fellow campaigner in Stroud, Siobhan Baillie, who has visited the college twice recently and has highlighted some of the issues that it faces, including—as is true for all colleges—the teachers’ pension increases that cost it £1 million a year. I hope that the Minister will comment on those pension costs, which are a real issue for many colleges across the country; she has spoken about them before.
Karen Lee
I have one brief sentence. I agree with the hon. Gentleman about young people, but colleges support older people and people of all ages as well. I left a grammar school with two O-levels, then went to college, got my A-levels and trained as a nurse—aged 39. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”]
Richard Graham
The hon. Lady makes a very good point, as shown by the warmth of approval purring through the Chamber. She is a fantastic example of what a further education college can achieve; perhaps we should have a colleges alumni group in Parliament.
Some of the comments that the Association of Colleges and other royal societies have fed in to me confirm the general picture that I and other hon. Members have painted so far, which is that we need more funding for teachers’ pay; more help to ensure that the range of subjects continues to increase rather than decrease; and more young people to get decent results in English and maths at A-level. We also need to tackle the shortage in science, technology, engineering and maths skills, which are vital for our country’s future, as several hon. Members have mentioned.
I will finish by alluding to a remarkable bundle of statistics. There are 171,000 16 to 18-year-olds doing A-levels in further education colleges—a huge army of young people who deserve to be taught well and given the resources they need—and 672,000 students taking STEM subjects in colleges, who also deserve the best teachers available from a sector where salaries are getting higher all the time.
For all the reasons mentioned, I hope that the debate encourages the skills Minister on her chosen path, which is to be the champion of further education colleges. I also hope it will ensure that, in this spending review and Budget, further education colleges finally get the increase in funding that they deserve, so that they can ultimately improve opportunities and productivity, and be the success that we all want them to be in our constituencies.
Several hon. Members rose—
Richard Graham
This debate has been 90 minutes of passionate appreciation of and support for further education colleges. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting it. I also thank the hon. Member for Scunthorpe, who is my co-skipper of the campaign for fairer funding for further education colleges, and all hon. Members who have spoken today for their huge message: “Let’s get the right resources for these national engines of skills, aspiration and social mobility.”
Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)
Order. Before we move on, may I thank all hon. Members for the courtesy with which this debate has been handled? In one form or another, all hon. Members who remained in the Chamber and sought to intervene got in—my congratulations.
Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).
School Funding: Gloucestershire
Richard Graham Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Dr Drew
I agree; we know our county has areas of deprivation, which I will touch on. The new national funding formula suggests that about half of Gloucestershire’s 40 secondary schools will receive the minimum per pupil spend of £4,600 in 2019-20 and then £4,800 in 2020-21. We are not really catching up. That does not take into account the broad spectrum of need across our county.
I will move on to the acute problem of SEND. Gloucestershire has a special needs crisis; I do not use that word in anything other than its genuine definition. Gloucestershire’s predicted overspend on SEND is now set to be £4.7 million, up from £3.3 million last year. The number of children with education, health and care plans in Gloucestershire has almost doubled since 2015. The Government’s announcement in December of extra funding for SEND resulted in £1.35 million for Gloucestershire and led the council to withdraw its request to transfer funds from the schools block into high needs, which had led to some controversy, as my Conservative colleagues will know.
However, that was only a sticking-plaster; it is not a long-term strategy for addressing high needs overspend. As Gloucestershire County Council’s lead education officer, Stewart King, told the schools forum in January, the overspend puts Gloucestershire in
“a very serious and challenging position”.
GCC has also now reduced the financial support it provides for individual children with SEND. Schools are forced to pick up the financial burden of SEND support and are using general funds to meet additional needs, or are unable to meet the need of individual children. Even the Conservative-run county council has identified the problem. Councillor Richard Boyles, in letters that I have now received, identifies how much of a problem this is, and the council continues to ask us as MPs to lobby for a fairer funding formula. The impact of this funding crisis is clear: increased class sizes; a reduction in the number of teaching assistants; less support for SEND students; and a reduced curriculum. Many schools will also not be able to implement the full 3.5% pay rise, or if they are able to, they will have to make redundancies.
The pressure on places and rising class sizes, particularly in special schools, is where the acute need is most felt, as the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) said. We have to be sympathetic to that. However, there is also an issue with inclusivity, with schools that have taken the most vulnerable children facing the most difficult consequences, because we do not fund those children. High numbers of SEND children are hidden in the system.
The reality, as we now know, is that the majority of our primary schools are likely to face an in-year deficit. Quite simply, Minister, the schools do not have enough money. We can argue about the distribution issue, but at the moment the acute problem is that we need more money, particularly for SEND education.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman makes several good points. We would all like to see more money for schools in Gloucestershire, and he is right that secondary schools have faced considerable pressures. He is also correct to mention the £1.35 million SEND funding that the Government have given for both this year and next year. Those two years are guaranteed, and the Minister will no doubt want to say more on that. However, I am a bit puzzled by my distinguished constituency neighbour’s occasionally rather strong language. He referred in a tweet to deep, unjustified and ongoing cuts. That is not actually true, is it? The amount of money per primary and secondary school pupil in Gloucestershire has gone up and will go up further. Would he like to comment on the language we use as we lobby for more money?
Dr Drew
I will comment on that. I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. Although Brexit has completely overwhelmed Parliament, I have been inundated with comments from headteachers, teachers, teaching unions, parents and even some pupils. Their message is that they face cuts. We can argue about how much those cuts are and how they came about, but the reality is that they face cuts. That is what they say. I have another page of quotes that I could read out that say what the situation is like.
I hope the Minister does not feel that we disagree in any way generally. We are saying that, specifically because of the SEND situation, we now face a very difficult problem in Gloucestershire, which is having an impact across all schools. We need to do something about it, and I hope that the Government are sympathetic.
I disagree with the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) about those people’s feelings. I suggest he talks to people from schools in his constituency, whom I presume feel very much the same as those in schools in my constituency: that is, that they have faced a lot of pressure, which is now beginning to feed into the system with dire consequences.
Richard Graham
The point is not what our constituents tell us. It is understandable that every parent, teacher and school should ask for more. The point is the language that we use. When the amount of money is actually going up, to talk about deep, unjustified and ongoing cuts is surely wrong. In a sense, the hon. Gentleman has confirmed that himself, because he removed that tweet within about four hours of posting it. Will he confirm, for the record, so that all our teachers and parents are clear, that there are not ongoing per-pupil funding cuts in Gloucestershire? That money is going up and will continue to do so, on which the Minister will no doubt tell us more.
Dr Drew
I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. There are cuts. He should go into schools in his constituency and see what is happening. I have now received hundreds of responses from people at the sharp end who believe, maybe wrongly, that there are cuts. We can argue about the figures—the absolute figures may look better than the reality—but the situation is that the schools that I represent face some dire situations. That is why I am here today.
The hon. Gentleman can secure his own Adjournment debate and defend what is happening. However, I think I have more of the moral high ground, and I defend what I say because I believe that there are cuts. I do not think that it is in any way justifiable to conclude anything other than that we face a very difficult situation. I came here to pinpoint a particular problem—SEND funding—but within the wider environment of a difficult funding outlook for our county.
I intend to give the Minister plenty of time to respond, so I will not say much more. I will make three points in conclusion. First—the point I have really concentrated on—increasing SEND need has demanded a funding response that Gloucestershire has not been able to meet. That is why, despite what the hon. Gentleman says, our SEND funding will still be in deficit. That may be because more people are applying for EHCPs, but the reality is that they have to be able to meet the genuine demands of people who see their children suffer.
Secondly, this is not about scaremongering but about the reality of the impact of what has happened over a long period. The unfairness of the system dates back to the previous Labour Government, which is why I have always supported the national funding formula. The difficulty is that we are not there yet, and we will not get there for some considerable time. The reality is that the differential is getting worse in the short run, and we stand to be worse off. The hon. Member for The Cotswolds is nodding. I hope the Minister will do something about that.
Thirdly, I have just come from a drop-in session on children’s mental health. Children’s mental health is having a real impact on what we need to meet additional needs in our schools. These issues are having a real impact on our children at the moment, whether on their mental health or through our inability to deal with their special needs.
I hope the Minister is listening and that we can move forward on this. Even though we might disagree on certain aspects, five MPs from the county are here to say that the funding situation is not right and that it is affecting our pupils, staff, and parents and so on. I hope that the Minister will pay some urgent attention to us, so that we can begin to deal with this. I hope he will give me some good news.
Nick Gibb
My hon. Friend raises a very important point. That is something that the Department is looking at very carefully. There are reasons for it, and we know what they are. They are to do with medical advances, the use of private schools—private special schools—and so on. We are providing capital funding to help particular local authorities that have much higher high needs expenditure to address those issues. There is a capital pot and also a development fund, to help them to make those important decisions.
We acknowledge that the national funding formula represents a big change to the funding system. We understand the importance of stability to schools and we want to ensure that there is a smooth transition. We have therefore confirmed that for the next two years, local authorities will continue to be responsible for setting school budgets at local level. I may have got my years wrong at the beginning of this contribution: 2018-19 is of course the first year of the funding formula and 2019-20 is the second year. We have also confirmed that, in 2020-21, we will allow local authorities to use their local funding formula to allocate the funds. But we will allocate the funds to local authorities on the basis of the national funding formula.
We are pleased to see significant progress across the system in moving towards the national funding formula in its first year. Many local authorities have chosen to move towards the national funding formula locally, with 73 local authorities moving all their factor values towards the NFF, and 41 matching the NFF factor values almost exactly. It is the case that 112 authorities, including Gloucestershire, have introduced a minimum per-pupil funding level factor in their local formula. I am very pleased that so many authorities across the country are showing such strong support for our national formula.
Alongside the local flexibility, we recognise that there needs to be a degree of discretion locally to change the balance between schools and high needs funding. Although we want schools to benefit from all the gains and protections afforded by the national funding formula, it will take time for spending to be aligned to the allocations calculated at national level. The ongoing flexibility will help to ensure that the transition to the formula takes place in a way that best meets the needs of local schools and pupils.
We are committed to supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities to reach their full potential, and we expect all schools to play their part. That is why we have reformed the funding system to take particular account of children and young people with additional needs, and introduced a new formula allocation to make the funding for those with high needs fairer. As mentioned previously, we have recently announced that we will provide £250 million of additional funding for high needs throughout England over this financial year and the next. We recognise that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham has said, the high needs budget faces significant pressures, and that additional investment will help local authorities to manage them.
Of course, the response to pressures on high needs budgets cannot just be additional funding. That is why we have also set out plans to support local authorities in their role of providing strategic leadership and oversight of the provision for children and young people with SEND. We have announced other measures to support local authorities: a £100 million top-up to the special provision capital fund for local authorities in 2019-20 for new places and improved facilities; the removal of the cap on the number of special and alternative provision free school bids that we approve in the current wave; reviewing current SEND content in initial teacher training provision; and ensuring a sufficient supply of educational psychologists to carry out the statutory functions in relation to the EHCP process, and to support teachers and families. We will continue to engage with local authorities, health providers, families, schools and colleges to work together to manage the cost pressures on high needs budgets and ensure that children with special educational needs and disabilities get the support that they need and deserve.
We recognise that schools have faced cost pressures in recent years. That is why we have announced a strategy setting out the support that we will provide—current and planned—to help schools to make savings on the more than £10 billion of non-staff expenditure across England.
Richard Graham
Does the Minister agree that the key thing is not that funding has been cut but that costs have increased and therefore the issue is how we can share best practice among schools in order to make savings that will help to reduce any deficit that they might have?
Nick Gibb
My hon. Friend is right. We do want to spread best practice. We have a cadre of school resource managers to help schools that are particularly struggling with their budgets to find savings. Other measures are national buying schemes for things such as printers and photocopiers and the roll-out of a free teacher vacancy listing website to help schools to find teachers and drive down recruitment costs, which are a big burden on schools at the moment. We have created a benchmarking website for schools that allows them to compare their costs with those of other schools.
I again thank hon. Members for their contributions to the debate. I reiterate our commitment to providing every child with the opportunity to reach their potential. The extra investment that we are making in our schools, the fairer distribution of school funding, and support to use those resources to best effect, will help us to make that a reality.
Question put and agreed to.
Improving Education Standards
Richard Graham Excerpts(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
It is a pleasure to take part in a debate on such an important issue and to follow the powerful speech made by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy).
I would like to start by praising the hard work of teachers, governors and support staff in schools in my constituency. I am deeply grateful for the work they do. As I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) agrees, we are very lucky in the borough of Barnet to have some of the best state schools in the country. I particularly commend Totteridge Academy, which I visited recently for its democracy day. I am always hugely impressed by the students I meet in schools in my constituency, including Totteridge Academy, which had an immensely successful democracy day, engaging students in a range of activities to encourage participation in politics.
I welcome the expansion of school places in Barnet as part of the Government’s delivery of around 800,000 more school places—the biggest expansion for well over 30 years. I very much agree that providing the best education for children and young people is a huge engine of social mobility. Great educational opportunities are essential if we are to give young people the chance to get on in life and make a success of their lives. A good education is crucial. That means that raising standards in education and improving schools are vital parts of delivering social justice and social mobility.
It is welcome that there are now so many more children—1.9 million—studying in good or outstanding schools than eight years ago, when the Conservatives returned to office. Under the last Labour Government, England slipped down the international league tables in reading, maths and science, but that trend has been reversed, as shown by a number of international benchmarks. For example, the progress in international reading literacy study shows that pupils in England are now outperforming their peers in many countries, including Canada, Australia and the United States.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is making an important point about how crucial it is that there are opportunities for our young in schools, more and more of which are rated good or outstanding. Does she agree that that can happen in areas that are described as deprived? Robinswood Primary Academy, Tredworth Junior School, Finlay Community School and Coney Hill Community Primary School in my constituency are all great examples of outstanding primary schools in difficult areas. With the right leadership and the right support from Government, it can be done.
Theresa Villiers
My hon. Friend makes a strong point. One of the impressive aspects of the improvements in education over recent years is that so many of them have been seen in areas with high levels of deprivation. The improvement of schools in London is an important illustration of that, with schools supporting children from diverse backgrounds and, in some instances, very disadvantaged backgrounds. They have been some of the really striking success stories of recent years. As he says, it is absolutely possible, indeed essential, to ensure that improvements in schools and school standards deliver for those communities.
Theresa Villiers
The hon. Lady anticipates something I am going to come on to—I am going to talk about the maintained nursery sector.
Across the board in early years provision, we need to ensure that we provide the best training and professional development opportunities for people working in the sector, to increase their ability to support children’s early speech and language development. While considering the important issue of early years, I would like to look at the issues involving the maintained nursery school sector. There are a number of maintained nursery schools in my constituency, which are grouped into the Barnet Early Years Alliance. As the Minister and others in the Chamber will know, when the early years national funding formula was introduced in 2017, the Government agreed to maintain level funding for maintained nursery schools up until 2019-20, through a block of supplementary funding of about £59 million a year. However, there is currently no certainty after 2020, which leaves the maintained nursery schools sector unable to plan and budget for the future, so its status is uncertain.
As the hon. Lady has just done, I emphasise that many maintained nursery schools deliver excellent education, including those in BEYA in my constituency. It is important for the Government to ensure that they find a new sustainable role for maintained sector nursery schools as centres of excellence and training. I know that work has been undertaken on this, but we are getting to the stage when decisions need to be made about the future status of these schools. I urge the Minister to consider that, as well, in responding to my remarks. We are getting perilously close to the point at which funding for the maintained sector is due to come to an end, and we need to ensure that we have a settled future for these schools.
I turn to vocational education and training. For many decades, successive Governments have tried to improve technical education, but I think we would all acknowledge that they have had pretty mixed results. For example, the Wolf review concluded that when Labour was in power at least 350,000 young people were let down by courses that had
“little or no labour market value.”
I think we would all agree that delivering excellence in technical education is crucial for any modern economy to be successful, but somehow this prize seems to have eluded us in this country.
I very much hope that the T-levels programme, which this Government are pioneering, will mark a turning point. The investment in these new qualifications runs to hundreds of millions, and I welcome that. I urge the Government to do everything they can to ensure that these new qualifications become high-quality, credible and successful alternatives to the traditional academic path in education. One of the most important tasks for our education system as a whole is to ensure that we provide the opportunity for young people to take on technical education and thrive as a result.
Richard Graham
I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend about the importance of vocational education. Does she agree with me that while we have had terrific success in driving up the number of people in our constituents who are taking on apprenticeships, the bulk of this work is being done through further education collages, which since 2010 have in effect had two cuts and a freeze? The recent increases to their teachers’ pay and pensions are not covered by the Treasury; they have to meet those costs themselves. Does she agree that it would be very helpful if the Minister addressed this issue, which I believe is one of underfunding in our further education colleges?
Theresa Villiers
I certainly agree with my hon. Friend that the further education sector is crucial, as we have already heard in the debate, and we need to make sure that it has the resources it needs. I am sure the Minister will have taken on board the points that he has made, and I hope she will respond to them in her concluding remarks.
My hon. Friend is right that further education colleges, working alongside employers, are playing an important role in the delivery of apprenticeships, which is another reason why it is an important sector. I will close by saying a few words about apprenticeships, because they are so crucial in giving young people the skills they need to get on in life. About 3 million have been delivered since 2010, and we need to keep up that record in the future.
There is general acknowledgment that the apprenticeship levy has had some teething problems, and I very much hope that the changes announced in the recent Budget will help to remedy them and give more young people the chance to participate in an apprenticeship. However, apprenticeships have been a real success story. They have become longer and better, and they include more off-the-job training to complement the learning that takes place in the workplace; hence the role for the further education sector that my hon. Friend has just highlighted.
Theresa Villiers
I agree that a successful apprenticeships programme is not just about quantity; it is also about quality, and we must ensure consistency in the training that comes with an apprenticeship. I would be delighted to read the report to which the hon. Lady refers. There probably is a case for stricter regulation in that area—the Minister will also have heard that point—and we must ensure good quality control so that young people thrive as a result of apprenticeships and are not in any sense exploited.
Richard Graham
This is a very interesting point. Those of us who have had apprentices, as I have for the past seven years, know that the minimum apprenticeship wage is exactly that—a minimum—and the vast majority of people will pay significantly more. My right hon. Friend was right to mention the number of employers with which some further education colleges engage on apprenticeships. I was amazed to hear the other day that Gloucestershire College is now working with 1,112 employers. I think the Minister visited that college last year, and she will be interested to hear that it has just launched a cyber-security apprenticeship, which is a further example of innovation by that sector. Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is no limit to how many new types of apprenticeship we can continue to create when there is demand in the workplace?
Theresa Villiers
I certainly agree with that last point, and I welcome the apprenticeship in cyber-security to which my hon. Friend referred. I am a member of the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, and we recently published a report that highlighted big skills gaps in cyber-security, so I am pleased that Gloucestershire College is helping to fill those gaps.
My hon. Friend emphasises the role of the further education sector, but we must also recognise the great potential for the higher education and university sectors regarding apprenticeships. Middlesex University, near my constituency, is pioneering degree apprenticeships that combine the academic and technical in an innovative new form that could appeal to many young people. Apprenticeships deliver the combined benefit of broadening opportunities for young people while also improving the skills base for our economy to make us more competitive in the global race for jobs and investment.
Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure and privilege not just to follow the hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) but to praise the high standard of the speeches from Back Benchers and, indeed, from my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane)—we will come to the Schools Minister shortly.
The hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) gave a thoughtful speech covering a wide range of areas. He was right to talk about the pressure from social media on teachers and students, 16-to-19 funding and soft skills—I prefer to call them enabling skills, because I have found that if we talk to officials and others about soft skills, they put us down the register a bit. However, I entirely agree with everything he said, including about readiness for work, although it would have been easier for many schools if the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when he was Education Secretary, had not scrapped the key stage 4 obligation on work experience as part of the curriculum.
I want to praise my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft), who cannot be in her place because she has a meeting with the Children’s Commissioner, but who made a passionate speech about the importance of tackling school violence. She talked about staggering hours in schools and the involvement of the police. From my experience in Blackpool, I can say only that the more we can get the police involved with young people out of school as well as in it, the more we will be doing the right sorts of things. She, too, talked about social media pitfalls.
The hon. Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien) rightly referred to the horrific incident in Huddersfield. He then talked about the importance of quick early interventions and I agree with him, but I do not always think that that means reaching for the test; it often means reaching for a decent teacher. I also want to praise—I am sure the whole House will agree—the poignant tribute that he paid to his principal. The hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) said that he did not have a single good teacher, but I think that most of us can remember, from some stage in our life, somebody who got that spark going, so all credit to the hon. Member for Harborough for that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) made a very powerful speech about the strong attachments and perverse incentives for schools to off-roll, and we heard that from others as well. She rightly raised the issue of SEN and disabilities. Incidentally, I have concerns in my constituency about the issue of off-rolling with regard to pupil referral units, as I am sure that many other hon. Members here do. She also mentioned, very importantly, pastoral support for teaching assistants.
The right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) talked about the importance of having opportunities for teaching language skills. She talked about the maintained nurseries sector and mentioned Middlesex University in the context of degree apprenticeships. A couple of weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to go to the Skills Show, at the same time as the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills, and I bumped into the people from Middlesex University, who of course brought their robot to the Education Committee. We were told by one or two members of the Committee that he had made more sense than some of the other people who had come before them previously.
Richard Graham
Just to go from robots back to excluded pupils for one second, does the hon. Gentleman agree that a really feasible quick fix on this would be to ensure that, if schools exclude pupils, they should be responsible for their results at the end of the year? Does he not agree that that would result in a sharp reduction?
Gordon Marsden
I hear what the hon. Gentleman has to say, but the fact is that we know that 10,000 people are off-rolled. At this stage in the proceedings, I think that we need to bell the cat, but I take his point.
The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) rightly drew attention to the different system in Northern Ireland, including the results in secondary school qualifications, and his concerns about small schools having to buy basic materials.
Finally, the hon. Member for Hendon talked about the diverse nature of his constituency and, very interestingly, about outer-London issues and tier 2 visas. I had the privilege of living in Golders Green for two years as a postgraduate. I am not sure whether that is in his constituency, but it is very near it, so I understand what he said about the difference between the Brent Cross and west Hendon areas, and I know, even after a long period, that those differences remain.
Educational standards are a priority across all ages and all sectors. They are not made in a day, but young people must be able to have a good start in life. That is why we need to focus on those early years, yet this Government have a hugely patchy record in that area. I am afraid that the Schools Minister did not even mention early years in his speech. My colleagues the shadow Education Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), and my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) have tirelessly argued against this Government’s record. Research by the Sutton Trust shows that over 1,000 Sure Start centres have been lost since 2010. More centres are operating on a part-time basis and the number of services has fallen. Parents are paying the price for that and for the Government underfunding the 30-hour offer. According to the Pre-school Learning Alliance, only around one third of childcare providers are delivering 30-hour places completely free.
On Sure Starts, in my constituency in Blackpool, where we have had huge cuts in local government funding, we have had to bear the brunt of this. I remember a Sure Start in Mereside where I met a young woman three times: the first time, she was using the Sure Start; the second time, she had graduated to being an assistant at the Sure Start; and the third time, she was training to be a primary school teacher. That sort of progression has been lost in the hollowing out of Sure Starts by the Government.
Oral Answers to Questions
Richard Graham Excerpts(7 years, 2 months ago)
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Anne Milton
I praise my hon. Friend and her colleagues from Somerset for promptly bringing this to my attention. We met last week, and we have a meeting with the Education and Skills Funding Agency later today. I should mention, although it is not pertinent to this particular issue in Somerset, that procurement in transitional arrangements represents only 13% of the budget. My hon. Friend and other colleagues have made strong representations about the work that is done in Somerset.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
3. What steps have been taken to increase the number of university technical colleges.
The Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation (Joseph Johnson)
There are currently 49 university technical colleges open or opening this month, and one is planning to open in 2018. We will publish information on new application arrangements in the coming weeks.
Richard Graham
The Minister and the Secretary of State are both aware of our great ambition in Gloucester to create a new UTC for pathways into health and care —the two biggest sectors of employment in Gloucestershire —but since the cancellation of the last bidding round, the question is how and when we can take this forward. The Minister has suggested it will be soon, but can he give us any further idea?
Joseph Johnson
We are committed to ensuring that many more young people have access to high-quality technical education, and UTCs have an important role to play in this. However, the experience of the UTC programme has been mixed to date. Our priority is to support existing UTCs, so that they are able to offer good education. We are learning lessons from those that are open at the moment, and we will publish application arrangements for new UTCs in the coming weeks.
Education and Local Services
Richard Graham Excerpts(7 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Harper
It is partly to do with skills and experience. Someone who comes straight from school into a job has to get some training, experience and skills. If the hon. Gentleman talked to businesses in his constituency, he would find it interesting to ask them how someone coming straight from school with no experience and no work skills should be on £10 an hour. He would find either that that young person would not get the opportunity to work or that the business would not be viable. If he does not believe me, he should talk to some of those businesses, as that is what they will tell him.
Let me return to the Government’s performance on unemployment. When we were elected, the unemployment rate among young people was as bad as it is in the EU and the euro area, at about 20%. Seven years later, in the EU and the euro area the unemployment figure has increased, whereas in Britain, under a Conservative-led Government, it has gone down by six percentage points. There are millions of young people who have the opportunity and social mobility generated by having a job, either when they leave university or when they leave school and college and train in an apprenticeship. Even more impressively, and despite what the Leader of the Opposition keeps saying—it is not true—during our period in power income inequality has fallen. The country has become more equal, not less equal, which says a lot about the opportunities that this party delivers in government. This party makes opportunities for our young people and gives them the chance to succeed.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is making a number of good points about the opportunities for young people. Does he agree that, in Gloucestershire in particular, we have seen a rapid rise in the number of apprenticeships? There have been 7,000 in the city of Gloucester alone over the past seven years. Does he absolutely support another great opportunity, which is to have a health university technical college serving the people of the whole of our county and beyond?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr George Howarth)
Order. Before Mr Speaker left the Chair, he did point out that interventions needed to be brief. If anybody finds themselves using the word “and”, it means that they are making one point too many.
Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) on making such a powerful, gracious and eloquent speech. It was a powerful reminder, if any were required, of the great talent that exists in our teaching profession, which I am pleased to say is now in this House.
I am sure the hon. Lady would agree with Benjamin Disraeli, who said:
“Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.”
What applied then applies now. There is no better vehicle for social mobility, social cohesion, cultural appreciation, tolerance, prosperity or, indeed, quality of life. As a nation we can take pride in acknowledging that there are now a total of 6.6 million young people in good or outstanding schools. That is up by 1.8 million since 2010—an increase of more than 35%. There are now 147,000 more six-year-olds on track to become fluent readers than in 2012. What a remarkable achievement by schools, teachers, parents and governors.
I want to pay particular tribute to teachers in my constituency. They work immensely hard. They follow their calling and give a huge amount of themselves. They include teachers in schools such as St Gregory’s, which takes an increasing number of school children from eastern European backgrounds and in doing so fosters a tolerant and unified society in Cheltenham; Balcarras, which now sends 50% of its pupils to Russell group universities; and Pittville, which successfully addressed challenges in the past and is now going from strength to strength.
What is so remarkable about those achievements is the funding context in which they have been made. For decades now, Cheltenham schools have been significantly underfunded compared with the national average—and not by a small sum, either. In 2014-15, the block allocation for Cheltenham schools was £4,195. The England average was £4,545—a difference of £350—and yet we have Opposition Members such as the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), who made a very eloquent speech last week, complaining that funding in her constituency is planned to rise from just over £5,400 to £5,500. Those are figures that in Cheltenham we could only dream of. They amount to just under 30% more. If I turned up to a meeting of my headteachers in Cheltenham with a promise of an additional 30% in funding, I would be welcomed like Moses.
All that might be tolerable if the cost pressures were manageable, but they are not. Schools are facing increasing cost pressures—salary increases, increases to employers’ national insurance contributions and so on. It is so welcome that the Government are facing up to that injustice. Unravelling the formula and starting from first principles is a task of almost unimaginable complexity. Lesser statesmen than my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education would have run a mile, but she has taken up the challenge and has already delivered meaningful improvements, with £390 million put into the baseline.
However, it is also the case that the current proposal that officials have come up with needs some surgery. Let me deal first with the impact. Although Cheltenham gains overall from the proposals, albeit modestly, the way in which the cake is divided creates distorted outcomes and risks fostering resentment. Some schools, such as All Saints’ Academy and Pittville, do very well, but others actually lose—and those are schools that are located near to each other. All that poses the risk that regional geographic inequity will be replaced by neighbourhood geographic inequity.
Richard Graham
My hon. Friend is making a good point about the way in which the funding system was going to work, but during the general election the Government made it very clear that no school would receive less money than it was currently receiving. Does my hon. Friend agree that that should give all our schools, in Gloucester and elsewhere, enormous confidence in the future?