16-to-19 Education Funding

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), I wish to shine a spotlight specifically on sixth-form colleges. Many hon. Members have discussed them in this debate; some have one in their constituency, while others do not, due to the distribution of colleges around the country. I have one in my constituency; there about 90 unequally distributed around the country, but in Hampshire they are an integral part of sixth-form education, with nine colleges in the county.

I often think that sixth-form colleges are the poor relations of the poor relation, because they are classed neither as technical education nor as continuing education in the more traditional sense. They will not get much assistance, for example, from the proposals to increase investments in technical courses, because most students there are studying for academic qualifications such as A-levels, and their distribution means that it is easy for Whitehall to forget about them entirely.

I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), who criticised the failings of the 16-to-19 education system generally and its funding gaps and discussed the need for review. I fully support the campaign being mounted to close those gaps, but I think that sixth-form colleges need all that and more.

Let me turn to the problems faced by my local sixth-form college in Southampton. It is a first-class college. It certainly does not seek to lose students who do not match an ideal profile, unlike certain places; on the contrary, it welcomes and nurtures students who need some remedial help to pass their A-levels, and it hosts several hundred students in that position. As my hon. Friends have mentioned, that leads to numerous instances, in a three-year sixth-form, in which the college receives not £4,000 per student, insufficient as that is, but £3,300. Nevertheless, the college achieves outstanding results in more than half the Southern Universities Network’s “widening participation” categories, and gets twice the estimated level of university places.

It is, by any reckoning, a great place to study and a caring, nurturing environment in which to do so, but it battles constantly to maintain its standards and curricular opportunity due not only to the per capita funding formula but to a number of other specific disadvantages. I will briefly mention two. Sixth-form colleges, unlike school sixth forms, cannot claim back VAT, as we have heard. That costs my local college in Southampton £300,000 a year, which is absurd. I have been lobbying for that to change for some time. The other issue is that colleges are funding on a rolling basis. That is not a problem if the school can roll out its funding across the years, but in the case of a two-year intake it can be difficult to sustain.

My view of my sixth-form college and its redoubtable principal is that they are miracle workers who battle on to make a deeply flawed system work for the benefit of the students, but something has to change. They desperately need an uplift in per-capita funding. They desperately need to be seen as having a place in the system and a secure future in it. I hope that the Minister will respond positively to that plea.

Education and Local Services

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the maiden speech of my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Ruth George). She is the most forceful, eloquent and committed school run mum I have ever heard in this House, and she will clearly be a great asset not just to our party but to the whole House. I congratulate her on an outstanding maiden speech.

I also associate myself with the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), who mentioned the plight of local authorities as they try to do the right thing about their tower blocks and other housing assets in the light of the terrible tragedy that has engulfed the nation and has led to such heart searching on what we do about our tower blocks and on who funds them.

Southampton has been tremendously responsible in its approach to its tower blocks. A number of programmes for installing sprinklers are already under way, and it wishes to progress them to the rest of the tower blocks, but, given the desperate cuts to local government over a considerable period, it simply will not have the resources—or if it does have the resources, it will be at the expense of many other basic services in the city. It is imperative that we get clarity as soon as possible on what funding will be forthcoming from central Government and the Department for Communities and Local Government to support authorities such as Southampton that are trying to act responsibly and carefully on the safety of their tower block residents. Hopefully those authorities will have Government support in making that happen in a way that allows local government to continue while providing the best safety for residents.

I find it odd that, in this Queen’s Speech, the Government of the day, who were allegedly the victors in the general election, have fled from their manifesto faster than any Government I have heard in this House. The Conservative manifesto’s chapter on education is headed, without any trace of irony, “The world’s great meritocracy”. That chapter does not seem substantially to exist as far as the Queen’s Speech is concerned. That gives me some pleasure, as grammar schools are not to be imposed upon us in the future and school lunches will not be cut. However, that world’s worst manifesto, which was

“a long list of punishments for the public,”

to use not my words, but those of the right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), who is not in his place—I am sure inquiries will be made by his own side about that description shortly—still puts in place a number of changes that are inadequate for school funding. That is what I wish to emphasise in the seven seconds I have left available. It needs more than the distribution of the cake; it needs a larger cake. That is the fundamental point about school funding for the future.

Al-Madinah Free School

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

I can give precisely that assurance. I can assure my hon. Friend that those of us on the Government Benches will not ignore and run down the achievements of the vast majority of free schools, which have done an absolutely fantastic job in the last two years.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

The Minister says he wants to ensure that teachers are qualified and supervised, but last year his Department announced that teachers in free schools and academies did not need to be qualified to be appointed and never did. As a result, Al-Madinah school appointed virtually all its teachers on an unqualified basis. Does he think that is any cause for reflection on the announcement he made last year about unqualified teachers being acceptable?

[Mr Laws]

The governing body and the school leadership have a clear responsibility to recruit teachers who are fit to do the job, and if they are failing to do that, we will act against them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)]

My hon. Friend might know that more resource has been made available to UK Export Finance. It is important now to ensure that more and more SMEs understand that export finance assistance is not just something for the large companies, such as Rolls-Royce and BAE, but available to SMEs up and down the country. We will market our efforts there more intensively.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

T7. Does the Business Secretary agree that the target, set by the Treasury on a moving basis, to be met before the UK Green Investment Bank can actually become a green investment bank—that public sector debt must be falling as a percentage of GDP—presents serious challenges for people planning green and low-carbon investments for the future? If so, will he take the opportunity of the recess to seek an urgent meeting with the Chancellor to see whether he can change that formula, so that the UK Green Investment Bank can actually become a green investment bank in the not-to-distant future?

[Vince Cable]

I think the hon. Gentleman might have missed some recent announcements. The UK Green Investment Bank is now succeeding and expanding rapidly, having already committed £700 million or more. In the spending reviews for 2015-16 and 2017-18, the Treasury has committed to providing an extra £800 million of funding and to beginning borrowing, initially through the national loans fund, in order to meet the objective I think he wishes to achieve.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Monday 29th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I would be delighted to meet the hon. Gentleman.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

T8. Bearing in mind that the Secretary of State has already said that the results of the GCSE fiasco this year were unfair, who would he advise the 137 pupils in my city who have had manifest injustice done to them as a result of the marking fiasco to put their faith in—him, to put the matter right, or the legal action against Ofqual?

[Michael Gove]

It is anyone’s right to pursue action through the courts if they believe that is the only way to secure a remedy, but the point that I would make, and have consistently made, and a point which was reinforced by the Chairman of the Select Committee, is that the design of those qualifications was flawed from the start, and it was not this Government who designed them.