Department for Education

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

I wonder whether the Minister has any idea how hard schools in Birmingham are finding things these days. It does not really matter if we are talking about LEA schools or academies, because they are all beset by the same funding problems. In Birmingham, the base rate per primary is down by £250. One local school that has made a virtue of catering for youngsters with special needs has lost three experienced teachers, who have been replaced by one newly qualified teacher, and the same school has had to lose five teaching assistants and three dinner ladies.

Let us just look at what is happening to schools in my constituency. In Billesley Primary School, which has been totally transformed thanks to the efforts of one of our most talented heads, the pupil to TA ratio has halved. At Cotteridge, the pupil to TA ratio is down, and it is the same at Colmore Infant and Nursery School, Hollywood, Tiverton Academy, Woodthorpe Junior and Infant School, and Yardley Wood Community Primary School—to name only a few.

Headteachers and experienced teachers are having to vacate their schools for several days a week and tout themselves around as specialist leaders in education, earning £300 to £400 per day just to keep their schools ticking over. That £300 to £400 comes of course from the budgets of failing schools. We are seeing a vicious merry-go-round in which a school that is failing has to sacrifice part of its budget to pay for support from a specialist leader in education, and that specialist leader has to sacrifice the time they should be spending in their own school, teaching the children there, just to earn enough to keep their own school afloat. That is the reality of this Government’s education funding.

The Government’s own workforce census shows that schools in Birmingham lost more than 600 teachers and teaching assistants last year. Just this morning, I received an email from a teacher at a very highly rated primary in my constituency, imploring me to speak out in this debate and tell people how bad things really are. We now find ourselves in a situation where schools are sacrificing ancillary staff, teaching assistants and experienced staff because they cannot afford their salaries, pensions and national insurance contributions. Welcome though any pay rise is, for the head and governors, it of course means another round of redundancies, because this Government have no intention of funding the pay settlement, pension and national insurance contributions. All this is happening against a backdrop of rising pupil to teacher ratios and a shortage of qualified teachers, with more leaving the profession than entering it.

In secondary schools, we have probably yet to see the worst effects, but they are already subject to a shortfall of £500 million per year in funding for 11 to 16-year-olds from 2015 to 2020, with huge cuts to sixth-form budgets for schools in my constituency. Schools have had to scrap the sixth form because of the detrimental impact the funding shortage was having on children in the lower school. The projected loss of income from 2015-16 to 2019-20 for King’s Norton Boys School is £126,195; for Bournville Secondary, the figure is £359,201; for Dame Elizabeth Cadbury, it is £303,606; for King’s Norton Girls School, £182,261; for Allens Croft Primary, £174,347; for Billesley Primary, £178,959; and Yardley Wood Community Primary School, £166,243.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Steve McCabe]

I will not give way at the moment because other people want to speak.

Those are good schools, with excellent leadership teams and committed staff who want to do the best for our children. They are prepared to go the extra mile, working evenings, holidays and weekends. Linda McGrath, the head of Woodthorpe Junior and Infant School, recently found herself thrust into the role of project manager as she attempted to put her school back together following the devastating floods only a few weeks ago—supervising the cleaning and rebuilding work, ordering the necessary materials and finding alternative classroom provision at other schools for her children. She deserves a medal for her efforts, not the budget cut that this Secretary of State is planning to impose on her. That is the reality of school funding today. That is what the Government are trying to disguise. The lesson of this debate should be that the Government have to do much better by our schools.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

I first declare an interest: my wife is the cabinet member for children and young people at Cheshire West and Chester Council and two of my children attend a local school in the constituency.

The recently published University College London Institute of Education report showed a relationship between inspection grades and changes in the socioeconomic composition of pupils. That means, certainly to my mind, that there is an element of good schools becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. I do not think we should be surprised by the finding; parents, of course, want their children to have the best education possible, but an inevitable consequence is that the parents with the most resources will use them to maximise their chances of getting their child into what they consider to be the best school in the area. Where does that leave others? Where does it leave the challenge of improving social mobility? Surely, that can only go backwards in this scenario? Is there a risk that schools not performing as well in the area could get into a downward spiral that they will struggle to get out of?

I have seen for myself the risks, with the University of Chester Academies Trust; as a multi-academy trust, it has been underperforming for some time. Ofsted first raised serious questions about the whole chain’s performance some 18 months ago. In May, the trust announced that it was cutting staff and trying to offload four schools due to a £3 million deficit. That left three schools still in the trust, including the Ellesmere Port Academy in my constituency, which has itself been in special measures for a year. It was pretty clear to me that the trust did not have the capacity or the resources to survive, let alone drive through the changes needed to turn the school round.

Now, thankfully, a decision has been reached—that it is unviable to allow the trust to continue—but it has taken a long time to get to this point, and there has been a lot of uncertainty for parents, staff and pupils alike. That uncertainty will continue until there is a new sponsor. I hope that one can be found swiftly and I am pleased that we are finally addressing the issue. I find it incredible that the situation was tolerated for so long. Had the MAT been a local authority or any of the schools been under council control, I have no doubt that there would have been action long ago.

As we have heard today, claims that every school in England would see a cash increase in their funding have been challenged—not only by Labour Members, but by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the UK Statistics Authority. Given that all but one of the schools in my constituency face a funding cut, the true situation is clear: local schools will lose about £3 million between 2015 and 2019. Pupils in my constituency will receive £300 per head less over the next three or four years.

[Andy Slaughter]

I do not want to indulge in a hierarchy of misery, but every single one of the schools in my constituency will lose money in the five years to 2020—£50,000 to £150,000 for primaries and £300,000 to £600,000 for secondaries. That is more than £500 per child. This is an extraordinary situation. I know that the Minister does not accept these figures; if he does not take them from us, perhaps he should take them from the headteachers in our constituencies.

[Justin Madders]

I thank my hon. Friend, who is absolutely right. I know from talking to parents, teachers and heads in my constituency that schools are already facing very tough choices. The National Education Union survey told us that 55% of schools that responded said that class sizes had risen in the past year and that more than three quarters had reported cuts in spending on books and equipment. The headteacher survey on the state of our schools post the national funding formula found that 90% of schools are now using pupil premium funds to prop up their basic core budgets. That money is meant to be spent on the most vulnerable pupils rather than as part of the sticking-plaster approach that we are seeing at the moment.

The cuts to school funding also extend to council support. Changes to central support grants will lead to about half a million pounds being lost to my local authority in the next decade, which will further emasculate its already diminished ability to support schools—not that it could help most of them even if it wanted to, thanks to the acceleration of the academies programme. What is that programme actually achieving now? Well, the words of David Laws the other day were quite interesting. He said:

“What we know is that the most successful part of the academisation programme was the early part of it… Those early academies had absolutely everything thrown at them. They were academised school by school, with huge ministerial intervention. The new governors were almost hand-picked. They often brought in the best headteachers to replace failing management teams. They had new buildings. Sponsors had to put in extra cash. Our research shows that much of the programme since then has had little impact on standards.”

In other words, early improvements under a Labour Government have been lost to an ideological drive to create a market and to denude local authorities of a role.

The logical conclusion of the mass academisation of recent years is that the local authority is still the admissions authority, but in name only. Because of the difficulties we have had in one of the schools I referred to, as well as one or two other factors, we have ended up with a totally lopsided admissions process this year, which has led to record appeals, many parents sending their children to schools miles away that were not one of their original three preferences and some parents sadly feeling that they will have to home educate.

Nationally, the number of children being home-schooled has risen by more than 40% in the past three years, according to figures obtained by the BBC. That increase is not just about a broken admissions system, but schools perhaps suggesting that a particular child should be home-schooled to avoid an exclusion or that the school environment might not be the best place for a child if they have special educational needs. Yes, of course some parents are simply exercising parental choice, but for me the rise in the numbers of academies and the rise in numbers of those being home-schooled is surely no coincidence.

Who is monitoring and evaluating this explosion in home-schooling? Has there been a 40% increase in resources to do that? Are we confident that the legislation and guidance in this area is as up to date as it needs to be? Are we comfortable that so many children are being educated in this way? Is this a great example of how parental choice operates, or are parents being forced down this route because they have no real choice? What efforts are being made to ensure that children are able to return to school if they can? What scrutiny is taking place of schools or areas that have higher than average levels of home-schooling? Has any analysis been done on why this is the case?

Those are not easy questions to answer, but they should be asked. I fear that the fragmented system we currently have means that once a child becomes home educated, they become somebody else’s responsibility. That is the wrong approach. We owe it to all children to ensure that they get the very best education, no matter where they take it.