School Places (London Borough of Harrow)

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries, as we debate a very pressing need for new school places in the London borough of Harrow. The Minister and I have had previously a debate in this Chamber about providing new school places on a specific site, but I want this afternoon to debate the principal issue of the need across the borough for new places. They are urgently needed, as I will outline.

The key point is that although Harrow is unique, it is not unique in requiring new school places. The birth rate across the country has increased dramatically in the past 10 years and therefore the demand for primary school places right across the country has increased. In the 10 years between the last two sets of census figures, the birth rate increased by some 688,000, so places are required across the country. Even with existing capacity, by next September there will be a further need for 256,000 new school places across the country. The vast majority of those are of course primary places, of which 37% are in London, so London has the principal problem. However, the situation in Harrow is even worse if that is possible. The population rise in Harrow has been 15.6%, compared with the national increase of 7.9%. That is just for the general population. Our increase has been double the national increase. Harrow is also ranked 23rd out of 326 local authorities in the country for density of population.

Right now, nearly half of all the youngest pupils in Harrow are being taught in overcrowded classes. That is more than anywhere else in England. It is clearly a disgrace that that is the position, and we need to put it right urgently. Across the borough, there are some 107 reception classes with only one teacher that are larger than the Government limit of 30 children per class. That is the largest number for any local education authority in England and it affects 3,332 pupils in Harrow. That, to me, is something that stands out and needs to be addressed straight away.

That is the current position. There is also a problem in relation to the roll and the increase expected next year. We will need places for an additional 1,639 pupils in reception, but if no action is taken, by 2022 we will need an additional—this is across the education sphere—4,555 pupil places. The position is quite stark in Harrow because of the population growth. Of course, I have been talking just about primary places, but as the primary bulge progresses, so those children will go on to require secondary education as well. At the moment in secondary schools, there are 100 oversized classes, affecting 3,108 children at key stage 2. That is not the worst figure in England, but it is still extremely high and it will get worse.

In terms of responding to the demand, there have been agreements for funding, which I will outline in a minute—I am referring to the additional funding for additional classes, which are taking place right now—but they only put a sticking plaster over the extent of the problem. I think at this point it is worth remembering what happened under the previous Government. The Labour Government, despite the fact that our population was increasing and the number of births was increasing, cut the number of primary places across the country by 200,000, and they cut the funding for extra school places by one quarter. They made no attempt to control immigration, and the fact of live births plus immigration exacerbates the position in boroughs such as Harrow, where large numbers of immigrant communities come to live. They are very welcome. They work—they work hard—and they expect to have school places for their children when they are there.

The other issue that I think is important in this process is that in 2012, when the coalition Government were looking at the expansion programme for primary and secondary places, the Labour administration running Harrow council were so incompetent that they could not even get a bid in for additional school places for Harrow, so in the past two years the problem has got progressively worse. Fortunately, we now have, from last year, a boost of nearly 3,000 places across 15 Harrow schools, including seven in my constituency alone. That is welcome news, but once again it only starts to deal with the particular problems.

Some of the schools have received funding, and that is very welcome, and additional funds have gone in to top up the number of places—some £20 million in Harrow over the three years of the plan. The Minister will be aware of Avanti House school. That will provide an additional 1,600 places from reception through to sixth form once it is in place. We look forward to planning permission being granted for that Hindu free school in the borough. We have a proposal, which I believe Ministers or least officials are considering this week—I do not expect this Minister to give any view on it—for a new bilingual primary school in Harrow, which will be a free school. The interview takes place this week, and I wish the school every success. It will be fundamentally supported by the London diocese and will have a Christian ethos, but will not be limited to Christian admissions. That will help to answer the problem, but of course it does not deal with the problem overall.

Finally, we have the Whitefriars school expansion, which will be a unique arrangement. That multi-academy trust was formed last year. It brings together two primary schools, but—blessed by the council—it will now expand to ensure that we have a secondary school together with those two primary schools. However, that brings a problem. The new 750-place secondary school, with 150 places in the sixth form, will be a new state-of-the-art building in an excellent area. It will be sited in Wealdstone, which is the most densely populated ward of any area of Harrow. It has more than double the density of population compared with the rest of Harrow. The problem relates to the fact that the local schools forum has been allocated money for the start-up process. This is a unique case. It is the only academy where we are expanding from being primary to include secondary. Including secondary has start-up costs, and the start-up costs will relate to specialist teachers as it starts to take pupils in. The funding gap between what it has been allocated and what it requires is £800,000 in the first year of expansion, reducing to £400,000 in the second year, and to £200,000 in year 3. The only way in which currently that can be funded is by taking money away from other schools and other expansion programmes.

As I have outlined, the problem is that in Harrow the range of increases suggests that the increase in population will continue and that we will need an additional 20 reception forms on top of the current planned phase 1 and phase 2 permanent places that are funded at the moment. There is an enormous need for the expansion, right up to the 2022 period. We will then need secondary school places, and so it will continue.

The real problem for the London borough of Harrow is that at the moment we are expanding existing schools and that process has reached capacity. There is no real room for adding an extra year on to an existing site, so the council will have to look for new sites in the borough to meet the ever-increasing need. That increases the cost and the difficulty, because building new schools takes a lot longer than expanding existing ones. Thanks to the rapidly developing crisis, in my view caused by the Labour Government and exacerbated under a Labour-run council in 2012, we have this extended problem, which at the moment is being marginally addressed. Not a week goes by without someone coming to me in my surgery and saying that they cannot get a place for their child in a school, and asking what I will do about it. It is a serious problem.

I end with a plea on behalf of the Whitefriars school expansion. The school was given undertakings by the Education Funding Agency that it would get the additional funding, but the EFA subsequently changed the rules and the school was told that it could not have the funding and would have to apply to the local schools forum. The schools forum essentially told the school, “We are very sorry, but you cannot have the money unless we take it from someone else.” We are talking about £1.4 million, which is a significant sum of money on revenue. At the moment, there is no problem on capital, but there is clearly a problem on revenue.

I invite the Minister to visit and see the development of the project at first hand, to hear about the excellent work that is going into improving schools in extremely challenging conditions and to take a view on what can be offered to assist the Heathland schools development, in particular. I invite him to meet me, members of the council and possibly my other colleagues in Harrow to see what can be done to meet the enormous demand, which is increasing year by year. Although we are taking steps jointly, we have a serious problem that will only get worse unless we take prompt action to put it right.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries, for what I think is the first time. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for securing the debate and setting out so clearly his concerns about the situation in his constituency. I know that he has been a champion of schools in his constituency and has worked hard to make sure that problems relating to basic need are dealt with.

I believe that this is the first debate since the change in responsibilities within the Government, so I would like to take the opportunity, if you will allow me, Ms Dorries, to pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove). He was an outstanding Secretary of State for Education under the coalition Government, and he focused a great deal on the need to improve standards of education and to narrow the gap between young people from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds. He will be much missed in the Department for Education, and we wish him good luck in his new and considerable responsibilities.

I would also like to pay tribute and send best wishes to my hon. Friends the Members for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) and for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock), who have also gone on to important roles in government. I welcome back to the Department the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), who was an outstanding Schools Minister in the early years of the Government.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East for giving me the opportunity to set out some of the crucial work that the Government are doing to deliver new school places across the country and in his constituency. I also want to respond to the points that he raised. During this Parliament, the coalition Government will have invested more than £5 billion to create much-needed school places, which is a considerable increase on the amount allocated under the previous Government. As a result, last year there were more than 250,000 more places in English schools than at the election in 2010, when the coalition Government were formed.

That extra investment is necessary, as my hon. Friend has explained. The number of pupils in English schools is rising, and is set to continue to rise well into the next Parliament, first in the primary sector and then on into the secondary sector. The London borough of Harrow anticipates a 26% rise in primary pupil numbers between 2009-10 and 2015-16. London authorities face a particular challenge given the scale of population growth in our capital city and in the south-east, the mobile population, the challenges of finding suitable sites for new schools and expansions, and the high costs of building in our capital city. From 2011 to 2015, London has been allocated £1.6 billion of funding from the Department, which is more than a third of all the money available in England for new school places.

Ensuring that every child can attend a good or outstanding school in their local area is at the heart of the Government’s comprehensive programme of reform of the school system, and it is a key requirement of every parent across the country. To achieve our aims, we have announced an additional £2.35 billion to support local authorities in planning and creating the new school places that will be needed beyond the end of the Parliament, from 2015 to 2017. That is, of course, on top of the £5 billion that I mentioned for 2011 to 2015.

Funding for school places is allocated to support local authorities in their statutory duty to ensure that there are sufficient school places where they are needed, and local authorities have responsibility for determining how that funding should be invested in the schools across their area, and whether they should expand any of the schools in the area, including academies, free schools and voluntary aided schools, or establish new schools. To make it easier for local authorities to carry out their duties, we have extended the basic need allocations to cover a three-year time horizon, rather than local authorities having to plan a year at a time. That gives them more certainty and allows them to plan strategically for the additional places that they may need.

We have listened to representations about the particular challenges faced by London authorities, including Harrow. The methodology used to allocate funding for 2015 to 2017 has taken into account, for the first time, the higher cost of building in our capital city. There is a special uplift for London authorities, which London Councils has welcomed. We are targeting funding more effectively, based on local needs, using data that we have collected from local authorities about the size of schools and forecast pupil projections. We have also taken account of some of the specific pressures in local authority areas, rather than looking at those areas as a whole and possibly missing pockets of local need.

Along with other authorities, Harrow faces challenges because of increasing pupil numbers, as my hon. Friend clearly set out. As I have said, Harrow anticipates a 26% rise in primary pupil numbers between 2009-10 and 2015-16. Under the previous Government, between 2007 and 2011, some £11.1 million of basic need funding was allocated to Harrow. The coalition Government have allocated £57.5 million in basic need funding to Harrow over this Parliament—including through the targeted basic need fund, which I think my hon. Friend mentioned—and we have announced a further £12.5 million for basic need between 2015 and 2017. That will amount to almost £70 million of basic need funding for Harrow during this Parliament.

Although I fully accept my hon. Friend’s suggestion that the previous Government were rather slow to identify the trends in pressure on primary school places, I hope that he will accept that the coalition Government have really stepped up efforts to address the problem and put much more money into areas such as his constituency. The Department wants to continue to roll forward the basic need allocation for an additional year each year to allow local authorities to plan over a longer time horizon. If we can do so and collect the data from local authorities on time, we expect to make another allocation at the end of the year or the beginning of next year.

[Bob Blackman]

On the potential allocation of additional funding, will the Minister clarify whether a bidding process will be involved, or whether the allocation will be based on existing data that have been provided? If there will be a bidding process, what is the cut-off time by which the local authority must apply, so that there are no excuses about being unaware of the need when the money is allocated? I hope that Harrow will get its fair share of money.

[Mr Laws]

It is not a bidding round on this occasion. We will take a similar approach to the one we took last year. We will ask local authorities to supply us with their school capacity data, which show trends in pupil and population figures in their local area. We will look at the pressures across the entire country and at the costs of school building in different parts of the country, as we did last year, and we will review the assumptions we make in our planning process. Based on the pressures that we identify, which we will carefully reconcile with councils, we will make an allocation of moneys to councils across the country, but we do not require councils to bid on this occasion.

The money allocated during this Parliament includes the £34 million from the targeted basic need programme to expand the 15 existing schools. Those projects will create more than 2,800 new places and will be complete by 2015. The targeted basic need programme means that more places will be available at popular and high-quality local schools, which is part of the criteria. Successful expansion bids had to demonstrate a strong need to provide more places that would help to address high levels of over-subscription. Additionally, the places had to be in good or outstanding schools, based on Ofsted ratings.

As my hon. Friend mentioned, one of those schools was the Whitefriars community school, which received £15.9 million through the targeted basic need programme. That money will create an additional 210 primary places and 825 secondary places. I carefully note what he said about start-up costs for the project. Officials have been in touch with the school to support it through the conversion process, and they explained to the school that any start-up or growth funding costs would need to be met by the school or the local authority, which we would expect to manage and resolve those issues locally. That is the usual procedure for all these arrangements, and I look forward to hearing about the school’s progress.

My hon. Friend set out his concerns on that issue, and if he is not satisfied with my answers, or if he feels that inconsistent information has been given, I would be willing to meet him and people from his local area. Before he considers whether that is necessary, I undertake to write to him after this debate to set out clearly my understanding of the issue in detail.

[Bob Blackman]

I thank the Minister for giving way once again. My understanding is that the school, as a multi-academy trust that is expanding to provide secondary places, is a unique case that was not considered by the Department in that round. Equally, and most importantly, when the board of governors embarked on the mission to expand, one set of rules was in place, which was that funding for start-up costs would be provided directly by the EFA. It appears that the rules changed during the process to require the funding to be from within the schools forum allocation, which the board of governors regards as a potential breach of trust—that is how I would frame it—in the sense that it was told one thing and the rules changed as the process went along. I do not expect a response now, but I would appreciate it if the Minister considered that when he writes to me.

[Mr Laws]

I have carefully noted what my hon. Friend says. Of course, I cannot make any commitments today on which I might not be able to deliver, but I will look into the details. I will write to him after the debate to set out clearly the Department’s view. If he is not satisfied with that response, he should communicate with me or come to see me. I would be happy to discuss the matter with him.

Harrow council has assured us that it has good plans in place to ensure that all children in the borough will have a school place for this September, and that it has plans to secure sufficient school places in the long term. Given the pressures across the country, we are obviously looking closely at the delivery in each part of the country, and we will keep those things closely under review, particularly in areas where there are pressures.

The Department is also rebuilding the four schools in Harrow that are most in need of repair through the Priority School Building programme. Those projects represent an investment of some £39 million in Harrow schools. A number of the projects will include an expansion of the school’s capacity, thereby increasing the number of children who can learn in a safe environment. We have also announced a second round of Priority School Building programme bids. The deadline for applications is next Monday, and we will announce the bids that have been successful later in the year.

The London borough of Harrow has two open free schools. Free schools are making a major contribution to delivering basic need, and they are delivering good quality in areas where they are needed. Seven in 10 open mainstream free schools have been set up in areas where additional school places are needed. Those free schools are in addition to the £5 billion provided for basic need, and the Government have funded 174 new free schools, thereby massively increasing resource in areas where it is needed. Some 24,000 pupils are currently attending free schools, and all open and planned free schools will eventually provide 175,000 new places overall.

I thank my hon. Friend for the support he has consistently given to Avanti House school and for his tireless work in supporting the search for a suitable site for the school. I am delighted that the Whitchurch playing fields site is suitable for the permanent secondary site. The school only opened in 2012, but it is already proving popular with local parents. When it reaches capacity in 2018, the school will provide 1,680 much-needed local school places. The local authority supports the school, and its sister school, Krishna Avanti, is also popular—so much so that it is doubling in size to provide places to meet demand.

I also thank my hon. Friend for supporting the application for the Harrow bilingual primary school. I am sure he understands—he indicated that he did—that I cannot comment on applications that are under consideration until the assessment process is finished, but in the Department we have carefully noted his support for the project. The Department hopes to be able to announce the successful applications by the end of September 2014. If the group is successful, the Department will of course write to let him know.

In addition to the investment of basic need funding in Harrow, Krishna Avanti primary has been awarded more than £700,000 through the academies capital maintenance fund to expand by 270 places. I understand, however, that there have not been any applications from Harrow schools in the current round of applications to the ACMF. The fund can help academies to expand, and I suggest that Harrow academies may want to explore that option in future.

Although Harrow is fractionally below the London average on the wider issue of first-choice preferences, the vast majority of parents, despite the pressures that my hon. Friend carefully set out, have been offered a place at a preferred school—the figures are 94.6% for primary and 94.7% for secondary. We should not be complacent about that, however, as we know that a number of parents were not offered their top preference school, and we know about the demand pressures in the system. That is why we are working at pace to reform the supply of places at good schools through a rapid expansion of the academies programme, and by creating the additional free schools that I mentioned.

I am glad to have been given this opportunity to update the House on our progress in delivering sufficient school places across the country, and particularly in Harrow. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s work in his part of London. I will write to him about the specific issue that he raised with me.

Question put and agreed to.