National Funding Formula: Schools/High Needs

Angela Rayner Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

After many delays, the Secretary of State has finally come forward with the Government’s so-called fair funding formula. I thank her for advance sight of her statement and the raft of documents she sent me just half an hour ago.

If only the fair funding formula lived up to its name. Does the Secretary of State recall the commitment in her party’s manifesto to

“continue to protect school funding”?

Does she accept that the National Audit Office has confirmed something that the Institute for Fiscal Studies had already told us, which she tried to ignore—that the Government will be cutting the schools budget by at least 8%, and that is not changed at all by today’s announcement? Does she remember that that same manifesto promised:

“Under a future Conservative Government, the amount of money following your child into school will be protected”?

The National Audit Office has made it clear that funding per pupil will also fall by 8%. Is the National Audit Office wrong, or is the new, unelected Prime Minister ripping up the manifesto that her predecessor put to the country?

The Secretary of State said that the so-called fair funding formula would mean that no school would lose more than 1.5% of its funding per year. How can she possibly reconcile that with the projections of schools facing actual cuts of up to double that and real-terms cuts of up to 10%? Can she tell the House how exactly a funding formula can be fair when it will mean that a third of local authorities and around 10,000 schools, serving more than 2 million children, lose money? In a period when pupil numbers and inflation are rising in tandem, the pressure on school budgets will continue to increase. The National Audit Office has told us today that school budgets are facing a “real-terms reduction”. Will the Secretary of State tell the House what percentage of the schools budget will be cut over this Parliament, and how much that cut will be for the average secondary school? Will she tell us how, at a time when pressure on schools is increasing, she can possibly justify that position?

The Department has said that schools will need to make £3 billion in efficiency savings over this Parliament, but the National Audit Office has said that schools are not prepared for the “scale and pace” of the changes, and that the Department has failed to make that clear to them. Will the Secretary of State tell the House how exactly the Department will ensure that schools are able to meet her demands? Is the suggestion that schools make £1.7 billion in savings by “using staff more efficiently” just a crude euphemism for cutting the jobs of teachers, teaching assistants and vital support staff, at a point when the workforce is already facing a crisis? The Department has said that the funding formula will be about targeting on the basis of pupils’ need rather than their postcode. Can she explain why schools up and down the country will be losing out, and why many in the most disadvantaged areas will lose the most?

The only new money being offered to English schools is to expand the few remaining grammar schools, 80% of which are in Tory-held seats, regardless of where the need for places is. Does the Secretary of State accept that that means that the only parts of Britain denied new funding are the comprehensive areas of England? Does she acknowledge that nearly 60% of secondary schools across the country already receive less in funding than they spend on teaching, and that they are already running at a deficit? Will she tell us her projections of the increase in pupil numbers over the spending review period, her forecast for the rate of inflation facing schools, and therefore the rise in costs facing schools? The Secretary of State seems to believe that all these savings and all these cuts can be managed without any impact on the education of our children. Will she tell the House how exactly she will ensure that that happens in practice?

You know, Mr Speaker, they used to say the Tories knew the value of nothing but the price of everything, but now they do not even know that. They have failed on the economy, failed on protecting our NHS and now failed on our children.

[Justine Greening]

I have to say that I am absolutely staggered at that response from the shadow Secretary of State for Education. There is cross-party support for reforming the national funding formula and, from representing our constituencies, we all know that it is impossible to justify the current approach. It would have been better if we had had a more thoughtful response, rather than just a diatribe of political rhetoric, from the Opposition Dispatch Box.

On some of the points the hon. Lady tried to make, the reality is that we have been able to protect the schools budget—the core schools budget—in real terms. That is because we have a thriving economy, which is generating the taxes that mean we can continue to invest in our public services. She talked about fair funding, but did not seem to understand or to have listened to my statement. Perhaps she had already written what she wanted to say, and was not actually interested in the reality. The funding formula absolutely bakes in making sure that we have the right amount of funding for children from more disadvantaged areas. In fact, we have taken a broader definition of disadvantage to make sure that it is not only the children eligible for free school meals who will get additional support. We have also made sure that the formula builds in a strong focus on low prior attainment, so that the children who have fallen behind—we need to invest in and support them to catch up—get additional resourcing. Schools with more of them will get more.

The hon. Lady seemed to fail even to hear the statement I made. I have to say that, based on the lack of engagement from the Labour Front Bench, I will sit down and give colleagues with more thoughtful questions a chance to ask them.