Education Funding

Debate between Angela Rayner and Jim Cunningham

Tuesday 13th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

The hon. Lady makes a crucial and important point. As I have said, I really think the Secretary of State needs to listen more to headteachers and to teachers across the board, up and down England, who are desperately trying to ensure that the funding is available to support all children. Under the previous Labour Government, every child mattered; under this Government, segregation matters.

The Secretary of State was asked by my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper) if pupil funding was set to fall in real terms, and he simply said, “No”. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has found that per pupil spending will be falling again next year, so I give him the opportunity now to provide this House with the guarantee he once gave that not a single school will lose a single penny in per pupil funding. Unfortunately, his Government’s guarantees on funding have a habit of unravelling. The Secretary of State seemed bemused by my idea of segregation, and I understand why: the Secretary of State of course dropped the education Bill that would have brought in more grammar schools, but the Government are trying to do that themselves through the back door. The Government said that they would fully fund the pay settlement for teachers, but then offered less than the pay review body, for the first time in its 28-year history.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend raises a very interesting point. The Government are not prepared to fund in full the recommended increase to teacher pay. They are leaving that to the schools to find, which is a further cut in school budgets. That means that schools cannot deal with special needs or assist pupils with special language needs in particular. Schools cannot employ those teachers any more—that is the mess the Government have left.

[Angela Rayner]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Of course, one of the myths that keeps being spread by the Government and Conservative Members is that record funding is going into schools, but they do not talk about the record level of costs on schools, which means that schools are facing real-terms financial pressures, and the Government have done nothing to support schools in that regard.

Despite the Secretary of State’s concerns four months ago, he has left 250,000 teachers—most of the teaching workforce—facing a real-terms pay cut. Meanwhile, teaching assistant wages are pennies above the minimum, even as so many of them have had to dip into their own pockets for basic school supplies. Austerity is not over for teachers or their support staff.

Education (Student Support)

Debate between Angela Rayner and Jim Cunningham

Wednesday 9th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Once again it is women who are being hurt, particularly adult women who have brought up a family and want to take up a new career in nursing. They are being denied that opportunity or being forced into debt.

[Angela Rayner]

Forced debt for students and nurses of whatever gender is a really important issue, which I will come on to. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight that we need to encourage both genders to see nursing as a legitimate career.

I mentioned that there are 700 fewer students training to be nurses. That is the first fall in close to a decade.

School Funding

Debate between Angela Rayner and Jim Cunningham

Wednesday 25th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree. That is one of the travesties of this issue. Many parents up and down the country are angry and upset, particularly parents of children with high needs and special educational needs. They feel let down by this Government and their broken promises.

When the Institute for Fiscal Studies heard what the Secretary of State said about a cash-terms increase, it responded: “This is not true.” When I raised the matter with the UK Statistics Authority, it too said that the claim was not, as it stood, accurate. The fact is that the national funding formula does not guarantee every school a cash increase per pupil. In fact, it permits a cut.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Out of 103 schools in Coventry, 102 will face cuts. Put another way, over the next two or three years, education in Coventry will face cuts of just under £14 million. Put yet another way, there will be cuts of £249 per pupil. Is that not disgraceful? Is it not terrible for a party to entice people to vote for it through a manifesto, then cut their throats?

[Angela Rayner]

I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution. I remember visiting his constituency and seeing the fantastic work that teachers and support staff do in his area. I commend their work, but I say again that the Government have to listen to teachers and parents up and down the country who say that enough is enough and that the cuts to their budgets are not acceptable.

Universal Credit

Debate between Angela Rayner and Jim Cunningham

Tuesday 13th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I am sure that the hon. Lady does not believe that I am trying to mislead the House. Let me be absolutely clear: many people, including MPs, wrongly believe that all children in poverty already get free school meals. That is not currently the case. But under the transitional protections under universal credit, those 1 million children would be entitled to the benefit. Through the secondary legislation, the Government are pulling the rug from underneath those families.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this will make the working poor poorer and hit families deeply?

[Angela Rayner]

I am sure that my hon. Friend made an excellent point, but I am sorry to say that I did not quite catch it.

[Mr Cunningham]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this will make the working poor even poorer, in this day and age?

[Angela Rayner]

That is absolutely right—my hon. Friend did make a really important point. Those who currently get free school meals who were not part of universal credit were in households on out-of-work benefits. If these regulations were to go through, the people on whom they would have the most detrimental effect would be those in work.

The current system would help more than 1 million more children than the plans we are voting on today. The former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), once wrote that universal credit

“will ensure that work always pays and is seen to pay”,

yet under these plans, universal credit will mean that work does not pay for hundreds of thousands of families. Those just above the threshold would be better off earning less.

Higher Education (England) Regulations

Debate between Angela Rayner and Jim Cunningham

Wednesday 13th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

As I said, only this morning the director of the Conservative think-tank Bright Blue echoed a point that we have been making for months about increasing the salary threshold. That is one of many options that we have told the Government time and again they need to look at.

I had a group of young air cadets from my constituency down here yesterday, and I hope that they are watching today even though the debate is a bit later than I told them it would be. It makes me so angry to think of the opportunities that the Government are denying those young people and others across my constituency. Through their policies, they have left graduates in England with the highest level of debt in the world. Students will now graduate with an average debt of £50,000, and those from the poorest backgrounds will have debts in excess of £57,000.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I have two universities in my constituency, and further education colleges. As my hon. Friend knows, not only have the Government abolished the education maintenance allowance, but more importantly, they have been trying to sell off the Student Loans Company. Interest levels will go higher if that goes through.