School and College Funding: The Midlands

Ben Bradley Excerpts

Tuesday 9th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Gullis]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her fantastic intervention. Of course, her area faces challenges different from those faced by the city of Stoke-on-Trent, given that hers is a much more rural constituency with, I assume, higher rents and house prices in some areas than the average of Stoke-on-Trent.

When I was at the Department for Education, albeit for only 51 days under a certain former Prime Minister, I was delighted that one of the briefs was the recruitment and retention of teachers. In my very brief time there, I signed off on the 5% pay increase, as put forward by the independent pay body review, which was accepted in full—the highest increase in teacher salaries in 30 years—as well as on the manifesto commitment to deliver a £30,000-a-year starting salary, which is so important if we are to drive recruitment.

Of course, recruitment and retention have been an issue for many years, particularly in science, maths and certain other subjects. One of the challenges is that, rather than getting into the game of “Who’s going to give more grants, and to which subjects?”, we need to have a frank and honest conversation.

Ultimately, the Labour party says that it has a plan to recruit and retain more teachers. I would be delighted if Labour Members could reveal the specific details. They have told me where they will get the money from: they are going to remove the non-dom status—that is fine; that is their entitlement. What they have not said is what they will do differently. Are they going to increase salaries, including starting salaries? Are they going to increase the grants? Are they going to give more grants to more subjects? Are they going to nick talent from around the world by paying people to come here from other countries? That is their prerogative if they so wish, but the detail has yet to be supplied, despite the fact that I have repeatedly asked for it on the Floor of the House and been given some brush-off answers designed to get some Twitter clip—I seem to trend on Twitter quite successfully, almost as successfully as the hon. Member for Coventry South.

The devil is always in the detail, and I look forward to hearing from the shadow Minister about what the non-dom-status money is specifically going to do. If that money drops year on year, how will the funding be covered by any loss incurred by people moving outside the country? These are harsh realities that we have to address and accept.

I go back to the issue of the midlands area. It sometimes feels as if Stoke-on-Trent is rather unfairly treated as the ugly duckling of the west midlands, but we are the gatekeepers to the northern powerhouse, based on where we are located geographically. In the midlands, £6 billion has been allocated for in-forecast schools with higher needs funding—a 7.4% increase from 2022-23. There has been a 5.7% per pupil increase in the west midlands, but the city of Stoke-on-Trent is getting 6.8%, so we are getting 1.1 percentage points more than other parts of the region. That is great news for our schools and, most importantly, for our pupils, because local authorities will have the teachers and resources they need to invest in their local communities and schools, and to deliver the world-class education that, ultimately, is so important.

Of course, it is important to remember that there is a £5 billion education recovery fund, which includes £400 million for teacher training, £1.5 billion for tutoring and, thanks to the Education Endowment Foundation, £2 billion for evidence-based interventions that we know make a difference on the ground. The tutoring was indeed a problem. When I was on the Education Committee, I was as critical as anyone else about the fact that the Government needed to introduce reform and give the money directly to headteachers, who could either bring in their own tutors or pay teachers additional money to work beyond their normal hours.

When I was the Minister for School Standards and spoke to teachers on the ground in Sandwell, Wolverhampton, London and elsewhere about why they had put themselves forward, I heard that it was because they knew the pupils, their background and the support needed. They felt that they were able to deliver the best. The Government legacy has to be a long-term plan for tutoring. If we do not get that right, the gap between advantage and disadvantage will, sadly, continue to grow after all the hard work that the Government did between 2010 and 2019, when the attainment gap narrowed drastically. That is something I was certainly proud of when I was in the classroom and working day in, day out on the frontline.

It is also important to remember that we have to look at teacher numbers. We know that there are 465,500 full-time teachers in the workforce—up 24,200 since 2010. That is more teachers in the classroom, which is a good thing for us all. As I say, there are all the grants that we are handing out, including around £28,000 for some science-based subjects, in order to bring in more people. There is also the new starting salary and, in education investment areas, the levelling-up premium: an additional, tax-free, bonus salary given to the subject areas where we struggle most, so that someone in Stoke-on-Trent and possibly Mansfield—I am guessing that Mansfield is an education investment area.

[Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)]

indicated assent.

[Jonathan Gullis]

It is—fantastic! I am glad to know I got the right place. Those are the types of areas that can offer something unique—something to put on the job advert that says to people why they should come to our area.

Of course, there is also the PE and sport premium for primary schools. I keep referring to my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield because I enjoyed watching him from 2017 being a doughty champion for education when I was in the classroom. That £600 million, two-year funding settlement means that more primary schools can better plan for what they are going to do to invest in young people. I thank the Lionesses and Baroness Sue Campbell for their incredible diligence in leading that campaign. I thank the fantastic local companies in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, such as Bee Active, which delivers the high-quality PE lessons that young people truly deserve—not just in Stoke-on-Trent, but across Staffordshire. That is fantastic, and it again shows that the further investment going into our schools is creating healthier bodies and minds.

There is also the holiday activity food programme, which has been excellently led by the Hubb Foundation. Former Port Vale football player, Adam Yates, has been leading the charge, ensuring that nearly a million meals have been provided across the city to those who need them. In nearly every single school holiday, that programme has been providing thousands of opportunities for young people, working with local schools to target the pupil premium and the free-school-meal students who most deserve those opportunities. That is education at its finest, which is why we should be using the school building more. We should use the building when it is holiday time. We should see the building used to its full potential.

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[Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate the hon. Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) on securing this really important debate. It is a pleasure also to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), whose constituency includes Kidsgrove and Talke—we have to ensure we get all of them in or he tells us off. His passion for this subject is visible for us all to see. I thank him for his kind words about my advocacy around education. You will be pleased to hear, though, Mr Pritchard, that I will be significantly briefer than he was. He managed to talk for 20 minutes, and still I agree with every single thing that he said, so I am grateful that he did.

The first thing for me to say is that I never intended to be in this place. If anyone has ever listened to any after-dinner speech that I have given, they will know that I never wanted to be an MP. I always wanted to be a teacher—that was my intention all the way from primary school, in fact. It is only by pure accident that I have ended up in this place instead. Therefore it is absolutely clear to me that education should be the biggest priority of any Government. I have always said that if I had just £1, I would put it into schools; that would be my first priority. I had the privilege of serving on the Education Committee when it was under the chairmanship of the Minister and I know his passion for education, too.

I have been in this Chamber many times advocating around teacher recruitment and retention in particular. I think my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North is absolutely right when he says that teacher workload is so important and often overlooked. We always talk about pay, but actually most of the teachers I speak to recognise that we have some of the shortest school days in Europe but some of the longest teacher working hours. That cannot be right. There must be something that we can do to reduce that workload and give teachers back autonomy and the ability to be in the classroom and to teach, instead of dealing with paperwork and data. That must be an absolute priority for the Minister.

I want to highlight some of the positive progress in my constituency, because there has been positive progress. There has been a particularly positive trajectory in the number of schools that are rated good. Certainly we could count the number of those secondary schools on one hand prior to my election in 2017, but we have made good progress. We have had a Government agenda on education that benefits constituencies such as mine—not least the shift towards technical and vocational qualifications and towards what I often call cultural capital, as opposed to just the academic. It will take time to embed it in our schools and our education systems, but so often it is the most disadvantaged children who just do not have that life experience to be able to achieve more, to be ambitious and to understand all their options and opportunities in life. I am grateful that Ofsted has started to shift slowly in that direction as well.

I am grateful also for the early years funding budget, which was increased in the Budget earlier this year, because our education system is not just schools and colleges; it starts right from day one of a child’s life. Thinking of some of the most disadvantaged estates in my Mansfield constituency, I know that our early years provision in particular is the key to ensuring that children have a fair shot in life.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer confirmed in the autumn statement that schools will receive an extra £2 billion over the next two years. School budgets will rise by £3.5 billion next year, which is absolutely massive. That is why this Labour rhetoric around school cuts winds me up. The language of “school cuts, school cuts”, the websites with misleading figures, and all the rest of it suggest that somebody in Government has taken a decision and said, “No, we’re not going to give money to schools anymore,” but that could not be further from the truth. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North listed the figures: since 2010 education budgets have been increased by about 60%. There has never been more money in our education system.

It is not fair to suggest that Ministers have decided to cut schools. Saying, “We can’t keep up with 12% inflation when our public services are massively squeezed,” is not a school cut. Ministers have not decided to take money away from schools. Highlighting that difference in intention is really important to our public conversation. It is just not true to suggest that Conservative Ministers are not willing to invest in our schools.

As my hon. Friend pointed out, Ashfield and Mansfield are education investment areas. The aim is to improve outcomes in parts of the country where, unfortunately, literacy and numeracy are poor. Eleven local authorities in the midlands are part of that programme. More local funding is good, but I say to the Minister—I want to drive the Government to do this—is that it is always best when there is local autonomy in how funding is spent. In my constituency, some of the funding has been spent on structures, supporting the governance of academy trusts and things such as that, but I would love it go to classrooms. I would love it to be given to schools so that teachers and heads can use it at their own discretion, as that is the most effective way to spend schools funding.

I am pleased, therefore, that there is local autonomy when it comes to the new budget uplifts. Mansfield is getting just over £3 million in extra funding for schools in the next academic year, as part of the £2 billion uplift. I think the first payments are landing this week, which is excellent news. Schools will have the freedom to choose whether to spend the money on extra staff, better pay or whatever else they decide. It has always been my view that it should be for schools to decide.

In my part of the world, there has also been significant capital investment in school buildings and facilities. Over £13 billion has been invested since 2015, but we are always playing catch-up, because the schools estate in much of the country is very old. I have always found it very frustrating that when I when I take some of the most difficult examples to the DFE, I am told, “You think that’s bad? Go have a look at X down the road. There are so many examples.” That is frustrating, but there has been significant capital investment in the schools estate around the country.

I was delighted when, in December, three Mansfield schools—the Meden School, the Garibaldi School and All Saints’ Catholic Academy—were selected to be among the 239 to be rebuilt or substantially refurbished. That was brilliant news, but I urge the Government and the DFE to help us accelerate that programme, because the sooner that investment is visible on the ground, the better. I have spoken to the schools about their plans and they are good to go; they are ready. They are applying for planning permission, and as soon as they get the word from the DFE, they will start to build.

That programme is so important for students and communities, not just because of the state of school buildings and because they will get new classrooms, but because of the feeling it generates that somebody is investing in the community, particularly in areas of significant disadvantage. There are levelling-up outcomes when people can say, “Somebody has put millions of pounds into my community, and invested in my children’s futures.” That is so meaningful and powerful for communities. It demonstrates a commitment to Mansfield and communities like it.

In the recent local elections, I spoke to a lot of people on the doorstep who said, “Look, there are lots of conversations about this stuff and I hear about the figures, but show me the buildings and the outcomes.” That is what we need to achieve by the next election. We need to grow our communities’ confidence so that they support us for another term. Let us get those schools built.

Across Nottinghamshire, two new primary schools are opening in September, and new extensions and secondary places in existing schools have been funded in no small part by central Government. I am also grateful for the energy price support provided to help us to face this difficult economic challenge: £500 million has been shared out for energy efficiency measures.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North mentioned facilities, and in particular sports facilities. I am a huge advocate of opening up school facilities to our communities. Our schools are not just education providers; they are hubs of our communities. That is particularly true of primary schools. Engaging parents in education when their children are of primary age is so important. For many estates in my constituency, the school and school fields are the only sports provision and community buildings, so let us get them open for as many hours as possible. Let us get partners, councils, community groups in there, delivering more on evenings and weekends. Let us use those taxpayer-funded facilities to their maximum. I am grateful for the additional funding for that.

I mentioned the direction of travel on skills and technical and vocational education. I am a massive believer in work-based learning. For many people, technical and vocational qualifications—apprenticeships and similar such qualifications—will provide far better outcomes and life opportunities than university. The key thing for many students in my constituency is choice and having the right information to help them get the best outcome. The Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022 has started to drive things in the right direction, getting more careers advice and third-party organisations into schools. That is hugely important.

I want to highlight the good work of West Nottinghamshire College in Mansfield. When I became a Member of Parliament six years ago, the college was in financial trouble and was really struggling. Under new leadership it has grown and developed into an incredible asset for our community. It is important to recognise the good work of the principal, Andrew Cropley, who has turned a failing college into a huge asset by opening the facilities for the community. It is not just about our young people, their learning and what can they deliver; it is about wider investment and regeneration work. Andrew leads the place board, delivering on levelling-up fund and towns fund outcomes.

The college has become a centre for growth and change in our community. It has also become a university campus, which is game changing for the young people in my constituency. These figures are a few years out of date now—they are pre-covid—but used to be that only 11% of people in Mansfield went to university, and typically they went to university somewhere else and never returned to Mansfield. That is hugely damaging to our economy, our culture and our fabric, and has massive, wide-reaching implications. I lead the council, so I know this means that there is nobody to look after older people, which is hugely problematic.

We are providing education locally, not by setting up a “University of North West Mansfield” and delivering junk qualifications that will not get people anywhere, but by working with the award-winning Nottingham Trent University via a local campus, where people can earn and learn and get on with their higher education while staying in Mansfield. We are building pathways from school through college into higher education, so people can get their qualifications and then go to work at the hospital next door. These opportunities are amazing and game changing for young people in my community. Both Andrew Cropley and Edward Peck at Nottingham Trent University deserve a lot of credit for their commitment and investment in Mansfield. It is hugely important.

The colleges get significant capital investment as well as the NTU presence, which means better access to higher education. We are delivering new centres for advanced manufacturing and automation and training for aerospace roles in Newark, just down the road. There is a Mansfield knowledge exchange, which provides training opportunities for science, technology, engineering and maths and innovation through the levelling-up and towns funds. It is not just Department for Education funding that is going towards these outcomes; there is a wider range of Government support through the levelling-up agenda.

I have not even had a chance to talk about lifelong learning, the change it will deliver for many people in Mansfield and the opportunities it will bring for jobs and growth. There is also the STEP fusion energy programme, which is a £20 billion investment in creating jobs in clean energy in my constituency. Those kinds of jobs and opportunities have not existed for decades—since the pits shut, quite frankly. It means that I am confident that young people in primary school in Mansfield now will have better opportunities than their parents and their grandparents. That is hugely important in the wider levelling-up agenda.

We all recognise that there are significant economic challenges right now. I am sure everybody in this room would agree that our pounds should be put into schools and our young people. They are the future, and we need to deliver opportunities for them. It is not always easy. We have to balance all the other services we deliver. I am a local authority leader, and I see that we are trying to deliver children’s services, which is my passion and the area I want to work on and deliver in, as well as adult social care and trying to sort out the roads and everything else. These are not easy equations to balance, but it is clear from the figures that the Government have sought to support and invest in schools.

I hope I have highlighted some examples of positive things going on in my constituency. I know the Minister agrees that education and schools and colleges should be a huge priority for the Government. I look forward to working with him to deliver on that. For some of these projects, capital builds in particular, the money has been announced and we have 18 months or so to get things built in our constituency. I hope the DFE will drive forward those outcomes and help to accelerate things like the school rebuilding fund, not put barriers in the way of schools delivering. That will be hugely important as we get into the second half of this Government’s Administration.

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[Mr Perkins]

I was in the process of answering precisely that question. As I was saying, it is not that if there were simply a little bit more money and we had these extra teachers, everything would be resolved. The entire approach that this Government have taken to schools has led to a massive decrease in morale that has meant lots of teachers leaving the profession and has led to a reduction in the number of teaching assistants, while the Government’s social policies have led to far more children turning up hungry than there were 13 years ago. All those additional pressures end up diminishing the morale and experience of schoolteachers—they all add to the problem. Frankly, if the hon. Member does not mind my saying so, the very transactional approach that he suggests misses the point about this Government’s failure on schools.

It is a great pleasure, however, to say that there was something I agreed with in the hon. Member’s contribution, which was about the use of buildings in school time—a really important point. In the all-academy world that we largely inhabit in terms of secondary schools, there are pressures that make that different when they are run by local government. None the less, he made that point well.

I will return to the point on which we had a debate. The hon. Member rather missed the point with the tone of his rhetoric on free school meals. I checked again what he said: he said that he would be “embarrassed” if he could not put food on the table with his salary, then created the straw man that his family receiving a free school meal would take it out of the mouth of another child. That is not what universal free school meals do at all. The hon. Member needs to reflect on his language if he genuinely does not want parents and children to feel that free school meals are something to be embarrassed about.

The hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) spoke about teachers he had met who recognised that they had short days and long holidays. It almost beggars belief to suggest that the reason that lots of teachers leave the profession is that they think they do not work hard enough and their holidays are too long. That does not bear any relationship to the schoolteachers I have met, who suggest that the huge workload outside their teaching time is one of the reasons that they are leaving the profession.

[Ben Bradley]

rose—

[Mr Perkins]

I am very happy for the hon. Gentleman to correct my understanding of what he said.

[Ben Bradley]

I will seek to correct the hon. Gentleman on what I said. I do not wish to chastise the hon. Gentleman, who I like very much, but in a similar way to my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North, I am afraid that he has inadvertently misrepresented what I said. I said that it was a travesty that schools in our country have the shortest days while teachers work the longest hours in Europe, that that is not right, and that we should seek to reduce that bureaucratic burden on teachers to allow them to spend more time in the classroom with our children. I do not know many teachers who would disagree with that point, but it is not what the hon. Gentleman said my comments were.

[Mr Perkins]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman was able to set the record straight on that.

There can be no doubt that 13 years of Tory Government have left England’s school and college buildings crumbling, left many teachers and their support staff demoralised and left our schools robbed of the funding needed to support the opportunities that all our children deserve. I see that in the facilities every time I attend a school in my constituency. One of the very first things I recall from when I came to this place as a new MP in 2010 is the chaotic announcement from the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) about the cancellation of the Building Schools for the Future projects.

Every single month at Education questions, it seems that there is another Conservative MP coming to their feet to reflect on how appalling the school building is in one of their schools, and saying, “If only the Minister could take the time to address that,” without recognising that it is the entire system of capital funding, not the individual case, that is a failure under this Government. There is a stark difference between the facilities that children have at Outwood Academy Newbold and Springwell Community College in my constituency, with brand-new buildings secured under the last Labour Government, and the 13 years without a single new secondary school building in my constituency, which have meant schools such as Brookfield Community School and Parkside Community School soldiering on in inadequate facilities despite the best efforts of their staff.

It is not just school buildings that have been left to rot. The Conservatives also cut off the fledgling Building Colleges for the Future programme on their arrival in government. Both statistically and anecdotally, the failure under this Government is there for all to see. The attainment gap between disadvantaged secondary school pupils and their better-off peers has widened to its largest level in years. Under the Conservatives, teacher vacancies have risen by 246%, with the Government missing their teacher recruitment target again this year, recruiting just 59% of their target for secondary schools.

In late 2021, research published by the headteachers’ union, the National Association of Head Teachers, found that schools across the west midlands have been forced to cut staff or activities because of a lack of funding. One in three schools said that they had made cuts to balance their budget, while 38% expected to make cuts in the following year. Last November, similarly, a Unison report revealed that councils across the east midlands faced a collective funding gap of £181 million in the next financial year, forcing them to cut essential services including early education. The extent to which schools have felt totally unsupported with the increase in energy prices is just one example.

Inasmuch as there has been any recovery in funding in recent years, it does not begin to address the shortfall over which the Government presided in the previous 11 years, and it comes in the context of huge cost of living crisis pressures, which mean that it has been swallowed up. Only last week, the Sutton Trust found that essential school staff and activities are being cut as a result of funding pressures inflicted by central Government. Such measures can only have a detrimental effect on our children’s futures. The IFS analysis to which the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North referred showed that schools in England still face a significant budget squeeze.