Education and Local Government

Alex Norris Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis). That was an excellent maiden speech, joining a series of excellent maiden speeches made across the House. I wish all new Members well in their time in Parliament.

This is my first speech since returning at the general election, so I would like to take this opportunity to thank my neighbours for electing me again and giving me the privilege of being our voice here in Parliament. I stood for election on a set of promises, and I intend to make good on them. Uppermost of them was to fight for our schools and for the best resourcing for our schooling, so it seems apt to start there.

I was pleased to see in the Queen’s Speech talk of more resources for schools, but we have to understand the context in which we have that conversation. Austerity has harmed Nottingham in very many ways, but nowhere more than through cuts to schools. Since 2015, £20 million has been lost from our children—nearly £400 per head. Those are cuts that will not heal. Over the past 10 years, Ministers have come to the Dispatch Box to say, in very much the same triumphal spirit in which the Secretary of State started this debate, that there will be more money for schools. However, the reality has not matched that. Growing costs, whether through the growing number of pupils or the growing complexity by which some of those pupils need educating, have hoovered up that extra money and the reality has been real-terms cuts. We need to keep a laser focus on that. I certainly will, particularly in two regards. The first relates to what the funding does for class sizes.

Ministers on the Treasury Bench argue that more money is going into schools and those on the Opposition Benches say there is less, so we get into that sort of political back and forth. The reality on the ground in my constituency is that in pretty much every primary school, school class sizes have increased. At Bulwell Saint Mary’s, there have been an extra two and a half pupils per class between 2015 and 2018. At Rosslyn Park, where I have been chair of governors for the past decade, it is also two and a half. It is nearly two at Henry Whipple as well. This is the story across my community. Until that number starts going down, we are going to continue to talk about it. Any new money seems to go to better-off communities. Over the past five years, the average cut in poorer communities has been nearly £400, but for the best-off it has been only a third of that. If the new money goes into schools that are already doing better, it will only widen inequalities.

I do not want to spend my time solely talking about money, because we have to get on to other issues, too. I want to raise something that does not get talked about very much at all. It is one of the unspoken disparities in our education system: the outcome for boys, particularly white British boys in working-class communities. All primary school governors know that rush at key stage 2 to try to get to 65% in combined reading, writing and maths. In challenged communities like mine, that is really difficult. We have worked really hard and achieved that: we are broadly in line with the national average. However, hidden within that is a real disparity.

In my community, 70% of girls are meeting the target but only 59% of boys are making it. Let us look at some of the poorer schools. I will not name them, because this is not about picking out those schools for criticism; it is a broader problem. Nevertheless, in some of our primaries we see the following: 76% of girls meeting the age-related expected standard as against 35% of boys; 79% playing 40%; and 92%—what an outstanding achievement for the girls in one of my primary schools—as against only 56% of the boys. In all, boys have worse outcomes in 26 of the 29 primary schools in my constituency that I can get data for, and in 17 of the 29, the difference is greater than 10%. In general, the poorer and less diverse the ward, the bigger the gap. This is not a Nottingham North or a Nottingham peculiarity and we have to do something about it.

The Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, who is in his place, was on the Education Committee in 2014 which identified this problem and the root causes—low expectations of these children, poor absence rates and discipline, and curriculums that do not appeal to them. When we read that Education Committee report, it is striking that nothing has changed in that time, so I call on the Government to pick up the cudgels on this critical issue and have better curriculums based on international best practice; specific, targeted resource to augment the pupil premium; a focus on catching up for boys who fall behind at key stage 1; and the deployment of the best teachers in the most challenged schools, incentivised to work in the hard environments. Of course, we also need the full reversal of the per-head cut for each pupil that every school in my community has experienced.

[Several hon. Members rose—]