School and Early Years Finance (England) Regulations 2018

Debate between Catherine West and Mike Kane

Wednesday 21st March 2018 General Committees

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the School and Early Years Finance (England) Regulations 2018 (S.I. 2018, No. 10).

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Owen. I can feel the palpable energy in the room, among Members and officials alike, from being in the House this early for a Statutory Instrument Committee.

The context for the debate is the Conservative manifesto statement:

“Under a future Conservative government, the amount of money following your child into school will be protected. There will be a real terms increase in the schools budget in the next Parliament.”

That pledge was repeated, and the previous Prime Minister was clear about what it meant:

“I can tell you, with a Conservative Government the amount of money following your child into school will not be cut.”

But the Government are not keeping that promise to the British people. Under the present Government, schools face the first real-terms cuts to their budgets in nearly 20 years, despite the Secretary of State’s having inadvertently claimed the opposite in the House last week.

The National Audit Office has said that under the current spending settlement there will be

“an 8 per cent cut in pupil funding”

between 2015 and 2020. The same conclusion was reached by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. That means that every school in every region and town will lose money because of the Government’s failure to protect funding in schools. The so-called fair funding formula—there we are at last—is simply a redistribution of a sum of money that is already inadequate to support schools and provide children with the excellent education that they are entitled to.

The National Audit Office has also said that the Department for Education expects schools to find a total of £3 billion savings in the course of the Parliament, yet it has failed to communicate to them how to achieve it. Of course I support the principle that all schools should receive fair funding, and there are progressor elements in some of the regulations before the Committee, but the answer is not to take money from schools and redistribute it when budgets are being cut across the country.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that some schools now tell parents that they have to close at 1 o’clock? They give various reasons, but we all know that they do not have the money to pay teachers in the afternoon. Does he agree that although that may not be unlawful, specifically, it takes vital study time away from young people?

[Mike Kane]

I could not agree more. Schools are having to make heinous decisions. In the Minister’s county, West Sussex, some are already threatening a four-day week because of the budget cuts.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Kane]

The solution is to invest, to help every child receive an excellent education. The Government’s stated aim in revising the schools funding formula is fairness. There should be fairness in the formula, and there are good things in it, such as the emphasis on high need, a deprivation index—albeit using a crude measure—and a focus on prior attainment. Why would the Opposition not welcome those things? However, there is nothing fair about a proposal under which funding will be cut from high-performing schools in deprived areas.

A fair approach would take the best-performing areas in the country and apply the lessons from those schools everywhere. It would look objectively at the level of funding required to deliver in the best-performing schools, particularly in areas of high deprivation, and use that as the basis for a formula to be applied across the whole country. Unfortunately, though, the Government are not listening to the voices of schools, teachers or parents. Evidence from the general election suggests that 750,000 people switched their votes to Labour because of the impact of school funding cuts on their local communities.

We only have to look at the impact already being played out. Under this Government more than half a million infant schoolchildren are in super-sized classes, and new research by leading education unions shows that class sizes are rising in the majority of secondary schools in England as a result of the Government’s underfunding of education. There is a particular problem in secondary schools because of the shortfall in funding of £500 million a year for 11 to 16-year-olds between 2015-16 and 2019-20, plus the deep cuts to sixth-form funding of more than 17% per pupil since 2010.

[Catherine West]

My hon. Friend is being generous with his time. Subjects such as music are now offered at A-level only in one school in a large area. Is it therefore any surprise that under 44.1% of the Royal Academy of Music’s intake come from state schools?

[Mike Kane]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I am a product of the Manchester music service, and the music education that I received as a child is nowhere near what we now provide in our schools. We now have secondary schools in Yorkshire charging parents for music GCSEs. My final point on class sizes is that 62% of secondary schools in England have increased the size of their classes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Kane]

Again, that is a sophist argument that some schools will receive an increase, but not in terms of the general level of cuts since 2015; and it is nothing in comparison with what the Minister rightly pointed out about budget pressure and inflation. All the schools in his constituency will be taking a cut over the next few years.

[Catherine West]

A similar problem has been mentioned to the one in my constituency, where schools are cutting the school day, and I hope that the matter will be raised again, to prevent a domino effect that might lead to a four or four-and-a-half-day week. That would have a huge impact on productivity in the economy, as much as anything.

[Mike Kane]

My hon. Friend is a passionate advocate on behalf of schools in her constituency. The way she stands up for them will be on the record.

There is only one party represented here today that has had a reprimand about dodgy stats on schools: the Secretary of State received one from the UK Statistics Authority last week. The Opposition will not take lectures on statistics at the moment. The funding formula has been a colossal waste of time and effort and has not got to where the Minister wanted. I can see from the reactions of some Conservative Back Benchers that the same situation will continue. Schools in their constituencies will be under enormous pressures, and what has been done has not ended the situation.

The Minister talked about having to rescue the economy. The Government have led us to a nearly £2 trillion deficit in the economy.[Interruption.]

School Funding (London)

Debate between Catherine West and Mike Kane

Wednesday 29th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) on securing this debate and on her impassioned speech.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) said, under this Government we are seeing the largest real-term cuts for 20 years. The schools budget will not be protected in real terms and will not rise during the Parliament, and funding will be protected only in cash terms. No planning for budgets has been put in place by the Department for Education to cover the cost pressures that have been articulately pointed out by hon. Members today, such as inflation, the living wage, pension provision and the apprenticeship levy, which the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) mentioned. There has already been a sharp rise in the proportion of secondary schools in deficit, which has risen to nearly 60% in 2014-15, according to the National Audit Office. The NAO has also confirmed that there will be a real-terms reduction in funding per pupil because of a failure to increase funding in line with inflation. That, I am afraid, is a clear breach of the Conservative party’s manifesto commitment.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this is, in essence, an attack on all young people, regardless of whether they live in London or anywhere else in the country? This is an attack on the future generations of this country.

[Mike Kane]

My hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood pointed out that it would take 1% of the education budget to level up in London—about £500 million. Some £380 million was clawed back from the Department for Education for its failure to convert enough schools to multi-academy trusts. This can be done—it can be achieved—but, as with their U-turn last night to downgrade GCSE passes to grade 4, we can only hope that the Government will see the light on the key issue of the £3 billion of funding cuts that we face between now and 2020. The funding formula amounts only to redistributing a small sum of money while we face cuts across the board. Instead of moving an inadequate sum of money around, what is required is investment in all our schools, for every child.

The Library briefing states that

“inner London constituencies are expected to see the biggest fall in funding under the consultation proposals.”

There are particular pressures on London from the fair funding formula, as has been pointed out. The number of children on free school meals has declined in London, partly because of gentrification in particular areas, but also because of benefit changes, which mean that fewer children are eligible. That is having a disproportionate impact on school budgets in London.

The Secretary of State has said that no school should lose more than 1.5% of its funding as a result of changes to the funding formula. However, it has already been shown by the IFS and the NAO that, given the budget cuts, cuts to schools will be far more severe. Those are the figures on the union’s website.