Infant Class Sizes

Baroness Bray of Coln Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. As I shall explain, it is the misallocation of funding—building more places where there are surplus places—that is producing this crisis in English schools.

The class size and pupil-adult ratio project undertaken by the Institute of Education has shown a strong relationship between small classes and greater achievement. The researchers identified a clear effect in literacy and numeracy attainment, even after adjusting for other, possibly confounding factors. Pupils entering schools with low literacy levels progressed the most in small classes.

[Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)]

rose—

[Tristram Hunt]

I am delighted to give way to the hon. Lady, who is ready to explain to her constituents why class sizes are ballooning in her constituency while money is being misallocated to the free school programme.

[Angie Bray]

I think that people in my constituency and right across the country are only too aware that immigration was allowed to run out of control by the previous Government. It puts enormous strain on infrastructure of all sorts across the country, and clearly schools are not immune. One reason class sizes are going up is the chaotic immigration policy exercised by the previous Government.

[Tristram Hunt]

We all look forward to the Government achieving their target on migration—something, I think, that will be very far away.

Why have the Government allowed class sizes to increase and to damage the education of children in English schools? Because they have spent the money that should be used to keep class sizes down on their discredited free schools programme—the programme that has brought us the Al-Madinah free school, the scandal of the Kings science academy and terrible results at IES Breckland.