School Funding

Debate between Ben Bradshaw and Daniel Zeichner

Thursday 5th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

I hope to take considerably less than 10 minutes, Mr Walker, although I may take one or two interventions.

We all agree that every child and family deserves the same chance in life when it comes to state-funded education; but at present, as the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) has so graphically shown, that is not the case. He chose to give figures rounded up or down to zero, but I will give the exact figures produced by the Association of School and College Leaders, which show that, on average, the 10 best-funded areas received grants of £6,297 per pupil this year, compared with an average of £4,208 per pupil in the 10 most poorly funded areas. That means that schools in the best-funded areas get 50% more per pupil than those in the worst-funded areas. As he said, for secondary schools of typical size, the gap amounts to nearly £2 million, the equivalent of 40 full-time teachers.

Devon schools are among the worst funded in the whole of England. We receive £23.4 million less than the national average, and our three and four-year-olds receive £3.7 million less. That means that each individual Devon schoolchild receives £270 less per head than the average for England, and three and four-year-olds receive £620 less per year than the average for England.

The situation in Exeter is even worse, because it is the only urban area of any significant size within the former Devon education authority area. Because of the extra cost of providing school transport or of maintaining small village schools in rural areas, my schools in Exeter are, in effect, hit by a double whammy: they are in one of the lowest-funded counties in England, and they lose out again because they have to cross-subsidise the cost of providing education in what is a largely rural county. Places such as Oxford, Norwich, Cambridge and Ipswich suffer similar double discrimination.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving me a helpful cue. Does he agree that shire areas in the south-west and the east of England, such as mine, have long suffered from underfunding? That has seeped into the public consciousness, thanks to some powerful campaigns. In my county, the Cambridge News has run a fantastic campaign, and we are beginning to win the argument with the public.

[Mr Bradshaw]

I entirely agree, and I will come to some of the historical reasons for the underfunding in a minute, but first I want to mention one of my fantastic headteachers in Exeter, Moira Marder, who is the executive head of two of my high schools: St James school and Isca college. She has done comparisons of funding with two cohorts of very similar schools around England and found that St James and Isca are the worst funded of their cohorts in the whole of England. All Members’ local authorities will have suffered big cuts, but our local authority has suffered a 27% cut in funding—nearly 40% in real terms—and we still have to find £135 million over the next four years.