School Funding

Debate between Angela Rayner and Tim Loughton

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I would go so far as to say that the meritocracy that the Prime Minister talks about is already in tatters.

The National Audit Office has said that the Secretary of State expects schools to make £1.7 billion of savings by “using staff more efficiently.” Can she guarantee today that those so-called efficiencies do not mean fewer staff? A £1.7 billion cut could mean up to 10,000 redundancies for teaching staff in our schools. She has resolutely failed to give us figures on the impact of the planned cut, but her own analysis of the research conducted by the education unions shows that, for example, the cuts in my region—the north-west—would amount to well over £400 million, requiring the loss of more than 2,000 teachers. Given that the Government have failed to meet their own teacher recruitment targets for the past five years in a row, I urge her to think again before she tries to solve school budget crises on the back of hard-working staff.

Make no mistake, this is a crisis. Indeed, schools are already resorting to staff cuts in order to cope. A Unison staff survey conducted last year showed that, even then, more than one in 10 respondents were reporting redundancies in the past year and in the coming year. More than one in five said that their school had left vacant posts unfilled over the past year or had cut maintenance. Nearly a quarter had seen increased class sizes, and over a quarter had experienced cuts to budgets for books and resources over the past year.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. I am sorry that she does not agree with fair funding. How can she possibly justify a child in the constituencies of the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Home Secretary receiving, on average, £6,229 a year and £6,680 a year respectively while a child in my West Sussex constituency, which has deprived wards, will receive less than £4,200?

[Angela Rayner]

The Labour party is for fair funding, but this is not fair funding; this is unfair funding for every school in our nation. The hon. Gentleman should take heed of what that might mean for his constituency. Pulling people down is not the way forward. If we want to make the best of our economy post-Brexit, we must ensure that we invest in all our schools, not take from one school, robbing one group of young people, to give to another, leading to an overall cut in distribution.