Education: Funding

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for recognising that we have been the first Government for some time to grasp the issue of the anachronistic state of school funding. It was never going to be easy —that is quite obvious from the debates we have had. However, we are determined to press on and make school funding fair. As I have said, there will be no cuts per pupil as a result of the national funding formula.

I would invite the noble Lord to come into the department and see the extensive work we are doing on school efficiency and organisation to make sure that schools fully understand how to make the resources available in a more efficient way so that there are many more resources for the front line. I recognise the pressures that schools are facing, but it is a fact that under the Labour Government schools received a 5.1% per annum increase in their funding in real terms and that during that time we slumped down the international league tables in the performance of our schools. So it is not just about money; it is about the efficient deployment of resources.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister has been insistent on fairness in both the Statement and in what he has just said. I am sure that he is familiar with the work of the Education Policy Institute, which said in a recent report that:

“The most disadvantaged primary and secondary schools in London are expected to see an overall loss of around £16.1 million by 2019-20 ... In addition, the distribution of funding based on area deprivation … shows that pupils who live in the least deprived areas experience the highest relative gains”.


What is fair about that?

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness refers to the Education Policy Institute, with which I am very familiar as I attended its one-year anniversary event only a couple of weeks ago. It is a very excellent organisation, ably chaired by my ex-colleague David Laws. As I have said, we are determined to make the funding formula fair. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, it is clear from what we have said that we have looked at the issue of losers. We will redress that in the fact that no school will have its budget cut on a per-pupil basis as a result of these changes. Certainly, as part of the consultation—the 25,000 responses we have had—the point made by the noble Baroness has been made.