Infant Class Sizes

Baroness Morgan of Cotes Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. Let me begin by paying tribute to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), because it shows a huge amount of courage for a Labour politician to call a debate on this of all issues. Perhaps I should address the historian in him by comparing him to Lord Cardigan at the battle of Balaclava: brave but leaderless, charging ahead on a kamikaze mission when everything around him was lost. We all remember the record of the previous Government—the hon. Gentleman’s party—and that makes it very brave indeed to raise this issue now.

As we have heard from Government Members, we remember how Labour cut 200,000 primary school places at the very time that this country was facing a dramatic baby boom. We remember how it cut the funding for basic need places by £150 million at the very time it was needed most, and how they penalised those councils with the foresight to refuse to meet their demands. And we remember how Labour made this all so much worse by allowing immigration to spiral out of control, adding further pressure to the system and leading to so many of the concerns we are talking about today.

[Toby Perkins]

The right hon. Lady is comparing the situation now with that under the previous Government. She will be aware that in Leicestershire, the county she represents, there were 2,376 children in infant classes in January 2014, compared with just 1,000 before. The figure has gone up by 121%. Does not that show that, under this Government, things have got significantly worse since 2010?

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman very much indeed for his intervention, but in terms of basic need funding, which is what we are debating today, Leicestershire’s has gone up from £13 million to £51 million, while between 2007 and 2011 Chesterfield got £9.3 million, but now it will be getting £30 million up to 2017.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

May I ask the right hon. Lady about an issue specific to Leicester with which she will be familiar, namely the Falcons primary school, which is a Sikh free school that was due to open this week? She will know that the Department effectively pulled the plug on it last Friday and 69 pupils were supposed to start there today. Can she give us an explanation as to why it got to this late stage before the Department pulled the plug, and will she undertake to send officials from the Department to meet Leicester city council and the wider community to discuss an urgent way forward?

[Nicky Morgan]

I hope you will bear with me for a moment, Madam Deputy Speaker, while I answer this very important question. The hon. Gentleman will know that I spoke to the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) about this matter on Monday evening. It is a serious situation and not something that the Department would do lightly, but it became very clear that there were serious governance issues in relation to the proposed school. I think that hon. Members on both sides of the House know—this is at the heart of schools—that we have to make sure that the right school and schooling are available for the pupils in question. We have been working very closely with local authorities to make sure that all the pupils have places. The hon. Gentleman will also know that departmental officials offered to attend the community meeting on Sunday, but that was not welcomed, and that I have set up urgent meetings between the Under-Secretary of State for Education, Lord Nash and the community. We have offered to discuss matters and I very much hope, as do other Ministers, that there will be a Sikh-ethos school in Leicester. Applications are open until October for another wave of free schools and I very much hope that there will be an application along those lines.

[Mr Rob Wilson]

I welcome the sensible and measured way in which my right hon. Friend is responding in this debate, in contrast to the shouty and rather juvenile way in which the shadow Secretary of State spoke. He refused to take an intervention from me. I would have asked him to correct the record. In response to interventions, he said that basic need funding has gone down under this Government. In fact, it has gone up. Perhaps he would like to intervene on the Secretary of State to put that right.

[Nicky Morgan]

I do not see the shadow Secretary of State leaping to his feet to correct the record, so for the benefit of the House, let me set out some of the other mistakes he made in moving the motion.

As I have said, we would now be facing a crisis in school places given everything that did not happen under the last Government, but fortunately—as with the economy, immigration and welfare—this Government had a plan to clear up the previous Government’s mess. We had a plan to reverse Labour’s cuts in school places by investing £5 billion, which is more than double the amount spent by the hon. Gentleman’s Government during their last years in office, to create 260,000 new places by the summer of 2013.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

I am conjuring up a picture in which everything is doubled, but capital investment in schools is halved, because that is actually the reality. Will the right hon. Lady reflect on this paradox? We have a situation in which, as we have learned, tens of thousands of youngsters in infants school are now in classes of over 30 at a time when the Government are spending £1 billion to subsidise free school meals for the most wealthy parents of those same infants. Is it not a paradox that they can get a free school and a free meal, but they cannot get a place in an infants school with a class size of fewer than 30?

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but he will not be surprised that I disagree with its sentiments. I realise that he, as one of my predecessors, has expertise in this area. Let me remind him, however, that in his local authority the funding for basic need has risen from £22 million to £71 million over the past few years. In fact, this Government are spending £18 billion on school buildings during this Parliament, which is more than Labour spent in its first two terms combined. We are absolutely investing in the school estate.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Nicky Morgan]

I will make some progress.

We had a long-term economic plan to get the economy back in shape. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central yawns, but if, after the note left by the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury saying that there was no money left, he does not think that getting our economy back on track was important, he has missed the entire point of this Parliament.

We wanted to invest an additional £7 billion to fund a further 500,000 school places by 2021, and we had a plan to help teachers and parents open an unprecedented number of new schools. More than 300 new free and technical schools have been opened across the country since this Government came to office, and a total of 400 new schools have been opened or approved that would simply not exist if the hon. Gentleman was standing at the Dispatch Box instead of me.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

May I tell the Secretary of State about a free school that has opened? The Hawthorne’s free school in Sefton, which was opened in an area that had surplus secondary places in 2011, has had a knock-on effect on two neighbouring secondary schools, which have seen their rolls decline, and is now less than half full. At the same time, primary schools across Sefton have had 500 more pupils in classes over 30 in size, which is an increase of 321%. How can that possibly be the best use of such money?

[Nicky Morgan]

Let me tell the hon. Gentleman that investment in Sefton has gone from £2.6 million to £3.6 million in the course of this Parliament. The fact is that seven out of 10 free schools have opened in areas of basic need. I wonder whether he has listened, because free schools are opened in response to parental demand. The parents and the local community wanted a free school to be opened.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

If everything is going so well, will the Secretary of State explain why almost one in five parents thinks that schools are squeezing too many pupils into classes and have deep concerns about class sizes? They will find her response in this debate incredibly complacent.

[Nicky Morgan]

The hon. Lady and I had a great sparring relationship when I was in my previous role and she often tried to use the word “complacent”. She will know that I am never complacent about the concerns raised by MPs across the House. This debate is about airing the issues, but parents might not be quite so concerned if the shadow Secretary of State were honest and open with the figures that he is bringing to the House today.

[Richard Fuller]

The Secretary of State has faced a number of confusing interventions from Opposition Members, one of which repeated something that was said in The Guardian today, which was that she was about to announce a policy of compulsory setting. Will she take this opportunity to say whether she is going to do that?

[Nicky Morgan]

Let me confirm for the benefit of the House that there is absolutely no truth in those rumours. There are some people outside this House who have a rather unhealthy interest in speculating about what I am or am not about to announce. They would be better served if they spent less time on Twitter and talking to journalists, and more time reflecting on the importance of the policies and reforms that have already been implemented by this Government.

[Mr Sheerman]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Nicky Morgan]

No, I am going to make a bit of progress.

The figure of 400 new schools that I have given includes 251 free schools, with 79 opening this month alone and about 70 more in the pipeline. Those are schools that pupils, parents and teachers want, but that would not exist if it were down to the shadow Secretary of State. The figure includes 30 university technical colleges, which are working with employers to give young people the skills that they need to succeed in key industries such as engineering and science, and 37 studio schools, which prepare young people for work by offering a rigorous academic education alongside employer-backed technical and vocational qualifications.

None of that has been easy. It took this Government, working in partnership with teachers and parents up and down the country, to get it done. However, as a result, young people who are going back to school this week have more chance of going to a good or outstanding school than at any time since Ofsted was established.

I give way to the former Chairman of the Select Committee.

[Mr Sheerman]

Education is a partnership. When the Secretary of State was appointed, I had high hopes of her. I hope that she will not disappoint me. I know that her party is under pressure from UKIP, but three times in this debate on education, immigration has been prayed in aid when discussing the problem with our schools—once by a Government Back Bencher and twice by her. I have not heard that in an education debate before. Is it a UKIP-inspired point? It is. Two times she has mentioned immigration. Will she please not do it?

[Nicky Morgan]

I had high hopes of a better intervention from the hon. Gentleman. If he does not think that that issue has affected public services in this country, he absolutely encapsulates why the Labour party will remain on the Opposition Benches after May 2015.

I have set out the record of this Government. Let me compare it to that of the Labour party.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Secretary of State on her performance so far at the Dispatch Box. Surely when the National Audit Office says that two thirds of the places created by free schools are not in areas of need, it raises serious questions about the Government’s spending priorities.

[Nicky Morgan]

I respect the hon. Gentleman very much and enjoyed working with him when we were Whips on opposite sides of the House, but I do not recognise those figures. Seven out of 10 free schools that are currently open are in areas of basic need and eight out of 10 free schools that are planned to open will be in areas of basic need. Free schools are a response to the need for places and to the demands of parents and teachers for more good schools in a local area.

[Mr Marsden]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Nicky Morgan]

No, I am going to make some progress.

I have set out the record of this Government. Let me compare it to that of the Labour party. It took four years for Labour to open the first 27 academies, seven years to open the first 133 academies, and five years to open just 15 city technology colleges. I am a generous person, so I can see that not everything Labour did was wrong. There were some good initiatives. Some Labour Members understood and even helped to inspire the academy and free school programme that this Government have made such a success. Let me make it clear that, unlike the shadow Secretary of State, who has spent the past 11 months distancing himself from the policies of those brave reformers in the Labour party who came before him, I will make no apologies for the work of my predecessor, who was one of the most successful, passionate and committed education reformers of the 21st century.

We could have a genuine debate about some of those things. Indeed, I am sure we would all be fascinated to know the latest views of the shadow Secretary of State, given how often they change. He has flip-flopped from free schools being a

“vanity project for yummy mummies”

which he said on 18 May 2010, to 13 October last year when he apologised for that description and said:

“I regret those comments because I think any parents, be they yummy mummies or faddy daddies, involved in the education of their children is great”

He also said that he would put “rocket boosters” under parents who wanted to set up schools, but two days later he U-turned again, describing free schools as a “dangerous ideological experiment”. Which one is it? His position is completely inexplicable.

[Mr Rob Wilson]

Is it my right hon. Friend’s understanding that the Labour party will close free schools; indeed it will try to close them on the basis of a bogus review of free school buildings? I wrote to the shadow Secretary of State and his deputy nearly a year ago, and neither have replied to me about the bogus review of school buildings. Through my right hon. Friend’s good offices, perhaps she will get the truth out of the Labour party.

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his point and I shall certainly try to get the truth from the Labour party. Would the shadow Secretary of State like to intervene to tell the House what he thinks about free schools today, and whether he will provide clarity? Parents and children attending schools need clarification and to know whether he would keep them open were he—heaven forbid—in government.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

I do not want to detract from my right hon. Friend’s litany of disastrous Labour failures in the 13 years to 2010, but I will add my penny’s worth to it. The Education Committee recently found that under the Labour Government the performance of white working class children in receipt of free school meals plummeted and was among the worst in the western world. That is a badge of shame for the Labour party.

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and I know he is passionate about this issue. The fact of the matter is that by 2010, one in three primary school age children were leaving school unable to read and write properly. Anyone who is a parent, godparent or who has a relationship with young children and visits schools will know that if someone cannot read and write they cannot play a full part in modern Britain. It is deeply unfair on any education system to leave its children poorly educated.

Let me turn to class sizes as they are mentioned in the Order Paper today. The motion claims that

“the number of infants taught in classes of over 30 has risen by 200 per cent”,

but as we shall see, the shadow Secretary of State based his entire case on one snapshot of the school year, which he has used—whether knowingly or not—in an opportunistic way. I know hon. Members will find that hard to believe, but let me set the hon. Gentleman right. The truth is that despite everything we inherited, the proportion of infant pupils in classes of more than 30 has gone up by just three percentage points, while the number of pupils requiring a place has risen by 11%.

[Bill Esterson]

rose—

[Nicky Morgan]

I will make some progress. In fact, the proportion of primary school pupils in very large classes has fallen under this Government. How has that been possible? How have we managed to keep class sizes down despite the huge rise in the number of pupils requiring a place? It is because we have added almost 4,500 infant classes since 2010, which means that there are more infant classes today than at any time in the past decade. The motion notes that

“the Government relaxed the rules on infant class sizes”.

That is true. We have made it easier for parents with twins and multiple births, the children of members of our armed forces, and looked after children, to get a place in their chosen school.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Give us a break.

[Nicky Morgan]

The hon. Gentleman says, “Give us a break.” If he does not think that helping vulnerable children in that way is important—

[Kevin Brennan]

It’s a smokescreen—

[Nicky Morgan]

Well, we hear it all now. What is best for these children is a stable start to their school life. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will take the opportunity to tell us which of those categories of people he would like to take a school place away from first. When he does so, perhaps he could explain it to some of the 83% of parents and others who supported this change when we asked them their view.

The motion mentions the Conservative party’s manifesto pledge to

“create smaller schools with smaller class sizes”

and we are delivering on that. Despite everything, the average number of pupils in an infant class is 27.4, which, as the shadow Secretary of State will know, is considerably less than the specified limit. But here is the difference: we chose to trust head teachers and local authorities to make good, sensible decisions that are best for them, their pupils and their schools. If he wants me to apologise for doing that, he will be waiting a long time.

Then, the shadow Secretary of State makes his boldest claim, the one he has been making a lot lately, on television, in the media, wherever he can—the claim that pupils are regularly being taught in classes of 70 or more. Like many right hon. and hon. Members, I have just returned from a short break, and I took with me a little light reading. Here it is—available in all good, and not so good, bookshops. Before I looked at it, I checked out some reviews—this one, for example:

“It’s profound stuff from Hunt, whose book Ten Cities That Made An Empire has a number of inaccuracies, including calling Viscount Powerscourt ‘Powerhouse’, and getting the wrong date for the Corn Laws.”

As a result, I have learned to be wary of the hon. Gentleman’s claims, and apparently rightly so, because the claim that children are routinely being taught in classes of 70 or more is simply wrong. The evidence actually shows that these pupils are taking part in activities such as swimming or arts and crafts while being supervised by adults. It is hardly unexpected to find this in a normal primary school on a Thursday during the year when the census is taken. It is not, however, how they would normally be taught in a classroom. He apparently has as good a grasp of school census figures as he does of 19th century history.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Does the Secretary of State agree that there could well be more than 30 pupils, for example, in assembly, on a school trip or during physical education or sports events?

[Nicky Morgan]

My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head.

Every time the shadow Secretary of State makes the claim, he ought to think about the impression he is creating on teachers and head teachers, who roll their eyes in frustration. Mr Andrew Smith, executive head of White Hall academy in Essex, says that his claims are not only wrong, but potentially damaging to his school, and he wants the record put straight. So let us put this to bed once and for all: the hon. Gentleman has misread the facts. There is absolutely no foundation to his claim, and it is nothing but scaremongering of the worst kind. He is not just wrong about children regularly being taught in classes of more than 70, but wrong about them being taught in classes of more than 60, 50 and 40, and it is doing him no favours with teachers and head teachers up and down the land. I give him the opportunity to withdraw his claim, strike it from the motion and commit to never using it again.

[Bill Esterson]

rose—

[Nicky Morgan]

Will the hon. Gentleman withdraw the claim on his hon. Friend’s behalf?

[Bill Esterson]

The Secretary of State talks about facts. Will she confirm the fact—stated in evidence to the Education Committee—that £400 million of basic need money has gone into the Government’s free school programme, and that that money, as I demonstrated earlier, has been spent in areas with surplus places, not areas of need?

[Nicky Morgan]

I will touch on that point in a moment, but I dispute that evidence. I note, however, that the hon. Gentleman did not dispute what I was saying about classes of 70 and more. It was just a snapshot. He thinks it perfectly acceptable to upset teachers like this. We can have a legitimate debate about school places, we can disagree about how we got into this situation and what we are doing to sort it out, but there is no place for scaremongering on such an emotive and important issue.

We have learned today that the shadow Secretary of State is opposed to free schools, although I am not sure because it is hard to keep up. It is Wednesday. It could be anti-free school day on the Opposition Front Bench, but he had better ensure that the 21 Labour MPs and his three shadow Cabinet colleagues who have publicly backed free schools in their constituencies get the memo.

[Richard Fuller]

Is it not depressing that the Opposition motion is premised on division? It divides teachers in free schools from teachers in other schools, parents from parents and children from children. Would my right hon. Friend not like to see a more positive education policy that can inspire the next generation, not set one against the other?

[Nicky Morgan]

In order to have a positive vision for education, one needs a plan for education, and that is what the Government have in our drive for high academic standards, high-quality teachers and the best schools possible. All that is absent in Labour’s education plan.

The shadow Secretary of State is fond of claiming that free schools divert money from areas of basic need, but it will come as no surprise to right hon. and hon. Members to learn that he is wrong again. Seven in 10 mainstream free schools have been opened in areas of basic need. That figure is higher still for the free schools opening this month, and higher again for those approved in the most recent application round. Free schools are also helping to provide good school places in some of the most challenging parts of the country. Half of free schools have been established in the 30% most deprived communities and they have to abide by the same admissions code as all state-funded schools. In total, open and planned free schools will provide 175,000 new places, with the vast majority in areas facing a shortage or areas of deprivation. This is an amazing story of success, but it is not just our story. None of it would have happened without the hard work and dedication of the parent and teacher groups that made it possible.

However, free schools are just part of the story—a vital part and one that is helping to raise standards in all schools, through the new ideas and approaches they bring and the support they provide to other schools and institutions, but only one part of our plan for education, which is delivering real results. What is the shadow Secretary of State’s plan? What would he do? What would a Labour Government offer to young people in education today? It is no good looking to him, because his view changes all the time. As we have heard, he was for free schools before he was against them, and against AS-levels before he was for them. Once he makes up his mind, he is full of indecision.

Let us look not at what the Labour party says, but instead at what it does. An all-out pursuit of mediocrity; subjects dumbed down; exam grades inflated; many young people leaving school barely able to read and write properly, with the most disadvantaged young people suffering most; and, as we know, slashing the number of school places by 200,000 at the same time as the number of people demanding a school place was rising—that is the Labour party’s record. That is what Labour Members offer, because they have not learned their lesson. They never do, which is why today the shadow Secretary of State has set his face against everything that has been achieved in the past few years.

The shadow Secretary of State has set himself against the changes that have given more young people the opportunity to go to a good or outstanding school than ever before, against the reforms that have given every child the chance to get a good grounding in the core academic subjects, and against the changes we have made to get children off the exam treadmill and to ensure they spend more time in education and less time in exams. Above all, he has set himself against the progress that has been made, not by me or my predecessor, but by thousands of the hard-working and dedicated teachers who have quietly got on with the job and put the Government’s plan for education into action.

We know what the shadow Secretary of State is against; we just do not know what he is for. However, we do know that, like Lord Cardigan before him, he has been sent out on this hopeless mission by a weak and confused leader who, devoid of any plan of his own, can do nothing more than send his troops forward to inevitable defeat. Let me make it clear again. We would indeed be facing a crisis of class sizes in this country today—we would indeed be seeing children struggling in classes that are too big to work—if it were not for this Government’s plan to clear up the mess the last Labour Government left behind.

The shadow Secretary of State spoke for 24 minutes, but he did not mutter the one word that parents and children need to hear from the Labour party on this subject perhaps more than any other: sorry. He is fortunate that, as so often, we have picked up the pieces, so that young people do not have to suffer for his Government’s mistakes. Let us resolve today never to allow the future of our children to be placed in Labour’s hands ever again. I urge the House to reject the motion.