School Places (Thurrock)

David Laws Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr David Laws)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) for her kind words and congratulate her on securing this extremely important debate for her constituents. I hope, Madam Deputy Speaker, that you and the hon. Lady will indulge me by allowing me to say that this is the first time since the recent ministerial changes that an Education Minister has appeared at the Dispatch Box, and I want to place on record my tribute to those who left the Department as part of the recent changes—my hon. Friends the Members for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) and for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes). They all made an enormous contribution to education policy, and many hon. Members will have benefited from the work that they did during their time at the Department.

I know, from my own time as a Member of this House, about the tireless efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock on not just education issues, but a range of things that are of great importance to her constituents. She has worked tirelessly on behalf of her constituents to raise the issue of school places in Thurrock. She has written to the Prime Minister, and I believe that she has received a response from the Education Secretary. She has also forwarded the local community’s petition on this matter. It is understandable that she is very passionate, as are her constituents, that children who live in Chafford Hundred should be educated in accessible local schools.

I will respond to the specific questions raised by my hon. Friend. I am grateful to her for giving me advance notice of her particular points. That has been extremely helpful for the departmental officials, who have contacted the council to get more detailed responses to them. I am grateful to those officials for engaging in that process over the past week and, indeed, for resolving some issues today after we discussed the matter this morning.

I hope that my hon. Friend will allow me to start by setting out the national picture, which is relevant to the circumstances in her area and to the requirements placed on councils and the ways in which the Government are seeking to address her concerns. I will then address directly the specific local issues that she has understandably raised about her constituency circumstances.

It is unfortunately the case that currently there are simply not enough places at good and popular schools in some areas of high demand. The Government have shown that they are determined to tackle that problem, whether by addressing underperformance in our schools, by expanding the academies programme, or by making additional capital available in the areas of greatest demand. The Government are determined to give more parents a real choice, and that can only happen when every local school is a good one. Let me say a bit more about the steps that we have already taken to tackle the issue.

On funding, we are facing, not just in the hon. Lady’s constituency, but in particular parts of England, a sustained increase in the number of children of primary school age. Since 2002, there has been a continuous rise in the number of births in England and some areas are facing significant pressure on places, as she described effectively. We as a Government have inherited a serious challenge in the problem of growing numbers and we are determined to address it.

That is why, despite the very difficult economic circumstances that we inherited when we formed the coalition Government in 2010, we have prioritised funding to support the provision of additional pupil places where they are needed. We have doubled the rate of annual spending on primary school places from the levels that we inherited and, in addition, we have allocated a further £1.1 billion over the past year, bringing to £2.7 billion the total that we have made available to support basic need. That funding is provided directly to local authorities to help them meet their statutory duty to provide sufficient schools to meet pupil need. As my hon. Friend pointed out, so far under this Government, Thurrock has received £8.7 million in basic need funding, which is more than double the £4.1 million that the local authority received over the entire period of the last spending review under the previous Government.

Local authorities should be best placed to decide how to use that funding and will deploy a range of solutions to create additional places, from reconfiguring existing space to finding temporary or permanent solutions. Where necessary, they will provide transport to ensure that children can attend a suitable place. We are working closely with local authorities and will continue to work to reduce costs so that every single pound goes as far as possible in providing long-term solutions.

Obviously, as my hon. Friend will understand, the Department’s capital funding is limited and it is crucial that we target it effectively. That is why the methodology that we now use to allocate funding is focused increasingly on the number of spare places in the system, rather than more bluntly on the growth in pupil numbers. We are going further. For the first time this year, we are collecting information from local authorities that will provide a greater understanding of the more localised place pressures within a local authority, including in my hon. Friend’s constituency. That approach will help us direct our limited capital funds to the local authorities where the demographic pressures are greatest, as she would expect.

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the importance of parents having a choice of good schools for their children. The law states that, where possible, parents will be offered a place for their child at their highest preferred school and have the ability to nominate at least three preferences. The Department for Education does not collect preference data on primary admissions. The 2012 secondary data showed that nationally 85.3% of parents were offered a place for their child at their first preference school, and 97.6% were offered a place at one of their preferred schools. In February this year, we published revised admissions and appeals codes that removed much of the bureaucracy that schools and local authorities previously faced in the admissions process. We have also ensured that they are easier for parents to navigate and understand.

It is, regrettably, a regular feature of the correspondence that the Department for Education receives from parents that they are unable to get their children into their choice of a good local school. The problem is that there are simply not enough places at good and popular schools, especially in areas of high demand. That means that local authorities need to make difficult decisions. It is essential that they do all they can to make reasonable offers to parents.

I am aware that many parents are offered the option of transport for their children when the school is a distance from home. Local authorities are responsible for ensuring that suitable travel arrangements are made for pupils who live further away from the school than the prescribed statutory walking distances, which are 2 miles for children under the age of eight and 3 miles for those aged eight or over. As my hon. Friend hinted, parents are of course nervous about using transport for young children, which is why we seek to increase the supply of places in local schools, as our constituents want.

As hon. Members are aware, regulations limit the size of an infant class during an ordinary teaching session to 30 pupils per school teacher. We have no plans to change that law, as the evidence shows that smaller class sizes can have a significant positive impact on the progress of pupils in that age group.

Parents can be given a real choice only when every local school is a good school. We are determined to tackle underperformance where it exists. This month, we are opening 282 new academies. International evidence shows that a more autonomous school system helps to drive up standards. We are also creating a system of school-to-school improvement. We expect all schools that are performing well and that apply for academy status to partner a weaker school.

Up and down the country, as my hon. Friend mentioned, free schools are being set up in response to parental demand for a school that meets the specific needs of the local area. They respond to a need for greater choice and better educational standards, and many of them are providing pupil places in areas with a shortage of school places as well as in areas of high deprivation.

I am aware that my hon. Friend is a strong supporter of the Gateway academy in its bid to open a new free school in the Tilbury area of Thurrock, and I congratulate all those involved in the successful Gateway primary free school development, which has opened as scheduled this week. I heard her other points and representations on the subject and will ensure that we keep the situation under close review. I believe that my colleague in the other place will lead on the free schools programme, but no doubt officials will note and pass on the comments that my hon. Friend has made.

On the other specific local issues that my hon. Friend raised, particularly those relating to the community in Chafford Hundred, I will address the concerns that she sensibly expressed in advance of the debate to enable me to look into those matters in more detail.

As I said, departmental officials have spoken to officers in Thurrock local authority to seek further information on the arrangements that they have put in place. They have told my officials that a significant proportion of the basic need funding that the council has received has been spent on providing additional places in Chafford Hundred. Some £2.6 million was spent on expanding Tudor Court primary school in time for the new academic year, and I understand that Thurrock council has undertaken a detailed piece of pupil planning work to examine demand over the next three to five years. It intends to publish it shortly for consultation, with the outcomes informing its spending plans. I fully expect it to engage with my hon. Friend in an early and constructive way to seek her views about those plans and ensure that they are informed by her views and her understanding of local priorities.

Of course, as we have heard, the priority for parents and children is securing a suitable place right now. I am certainly concerned to hear about the circumstances of some children who are not able to access schools. I am assured that all children in the area have been offered places to start school this September, although not necessarily in Chafford Hundred itself, as my hon. Friend indicated. Such decisions are always incredibly hard and must take into account local issues and circumstances, so it would be wrong to prescribe from the centre precisely what constitutes a reasonable offer. However, there is clearly a legitimate concern about what is reasonable in a local context, and it is absolutely right that she should have raised that issue today and that it should be a matter for debate. There should not just be an assumption that, provided a place can be offered within a particular area, that meets the definition of reasonableness.

I am concerned to hear that the parents of children in Chafford Hundred do not believe that they have had a fair opportunity to make their appeal. When parents believe that their appeal has not been heard in a fair and lawful way, there is a clear process for them to challenge the outcome on the grounds of maladministration. My hon. Friend mentioned the issue of parents getting only 14 days’ notice, which the Department’s officials have raised with the local authority. Our officials have been assured that the local council sent out letters offering the full 20 days of consultation, but I understand that council officials believe that the letters may have been held up in the post. I am sure the local authority will want to improve that situation in future following her powerful points on behalf of her constituents. As she said, it will now be for the local government ombudsman to investigate any outstanding complaints in this particular instance. The authority has stressed to my officials the steps that it has taken to comply with the statutory duties placed on it by the admissions and appeals codes.

In the case of documentation being issued late—another matter that my hon. Friend raised—the local authority has assured departmental officials of the steps that it has taken with affected parents to resolve the issue. Furthermore, the local authority has confirmed that checks are, or will be, in place to ensure—as far as possible—that such a situation does not happen again. The authority remains committed to engaging with the Department and with communities to ensure that best practice on admissions and appeals is fully incorporated, and to continue to improve the service that is delivered to communities.

I hope I have responded to some of my hon. Friend’s concerns. The key locally is to secure a proper, long-term solution that meets her reasonable expectations and those of her community. That is why the current detailed planning work is so crucial, and it is important that my hon. Friend engages fully with it once it is completed so that she can speak on behalf of her communities and express whether the work undertaken by the council meets expectations.

I assure my hon. Friend that I will take a keen interest in this issue, and I hope that she will contact me again if she feels in any way dissatisfied with how things progress.

Question put and agreed to.