Catholic Schools (Admissions)

Debate between David Laws and Edward Leigh

Wednesday 30th April 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Laws]

My hon. Friend raises an interesting issue. I do not have those data to hand, but I am happy to look into the statistics that the Department has. I suspect that we probably do or could access such statistics, and I will write to my hon. Friend to let him know whether his hunch is supported by the data.

I know that the Catholic Church feels a strong sense of mission to provide a high-quality education through its schools. That stretches right back to before the Reformation, but was confirmed and strengthened more recently, following the reintroduction of Catholic bishops in 1850. Catholic schools do extend opportunities to pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. As I said, it is true that Catholic schools have slightly lower proportions of pupils on free school meals, who are eligible for pupil premium funding, but at both primary and secondary levels, poorer pupils in Catholic schools are doing better than their peers nationally, resulting in smaller attainment gaps.

In 2013, 49% of pupil premium pupils in Catholic schools secured five or more A* to C grade GCSEs, including English and maths, compared with 41 % of their peers nationally. That is a healthy advantage in favour of Catholic schools. It equates to an attainment gap of 24 percentage points in Catholic schools. That is lower than the national average of 27 percentage points.

Catholic schools continue to serve high numbers of children from immigrant families—as my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire said—both old and new, and from deprived communities. According to the Catholic Education Service, with which we meet and engage regularly, 30% of pupils in Catholic maintained secondary schools are from ethnic minorities, compared with 24% nationally, and 17% live in the most deprived areas, compared with 12% nationally.

My hon. Friend asked whether we had made an assessment of some of the trends in demand for Catholic schools recently. We have not made such an assessment. Obviously, there is an issue about active participation in religion, which is declining in our society, but he is right to point out that we have had an influx of immigrants from communities with strong Catholic representation abroad. That has put pressure on Catholic school places in some communities in the country.

The Education Act 1944 brought many Church schools, including from the Catholic sector, into the state education system, and we continue to benefit from that settlement today. There are nearly 2,000 Catholic schools in England, serving more than 700,000 children—more than 400,000 primary school children and about 300,000 in secondary schools. The notable involvement of the Catholic sector also extends into higher education, particularly through the teacher training colleges, such as St Mary’s.

There is a lot more for us to do, however, and a lot of scope for Catholic schools to play a big role in the education system. Many parents want to see more school places, particularly in parts of the country where there has been that bulge in the primary population since the increase in the birth rate in 2004. That is why the Department has allocated a total of £5 billion for local authorities between 2011 and 2015 to meet basic need.

To support the expansion of schools across the country, we have also allocated large amounts of basic-need capital beyond the existing Parliament, which will help to fund those school expansions. I urge Catholic schools to play a full part in expanding, to help us in those areas with a shortage of school places to meet basic need. I think that that will provide some of the opportunities that my hon. Friend has been seeking, but it is also, in many communities, a responsibility that those who are engaged in state education should want to meet.

Our free schools programme is also helping to meet parental demand for good local school places. Once they are full, the 173 open free schools will provide a total of around 82,000 additional places, with around 23,000 of those places at primary school level. There are two open Catholic free schools. One of those cases was not uncontroversial with the Church, and I will say something later in my speech about the potential involvement of Catholic schools in the free schools programme.

The free schools programme offers new opportunities to groups of all faiths and none to set up new schools in their community. However, faith free schools and new provision academies must be open and welcoming to the communities around them. Where the Government fund new Church or faith school provision, it is right that such new schools cater for local demand in the faith, but the needs of children in the broader local community must not be overlooked. We want all local children to have the same opportunity to access high-quality state-funded education. The fact that it is state funded is the point.

One of the fundamental principles of our education system is the idea of parental choice, something that is important not only to Liberals but to Conservatives and members of other parties. Parental choice is particularly important in the context of new Church and other faith provision. Creating new Church and faith schools gives parents who want their children to have a Church or faith education the opportunity to choose to seek a place at a Church or faith school. However, the Government and I are clear that parental choice also means that all parents should be able to exercise choice and apply to suitable state-funded schools. That includes parents of another faith or not of the faith who may choose to seek a place in their local faith school. It is vital, when we establish new academies and free schools, that we balance those two elements of parental choice. The schools must be set up to serve the needs of the wider community, not simply the faith need. That is why we pledged in the coalition agreement to ensure that all new academies follow an inclusive admissions policy. We followed that up by saying that we wanted to ensure that at least 50% of places in new provision free schools and academies with a religious designation are not allocated on the basis of faith but are accessible by the local community to children who are of the faith, of a different faith or of none.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I apologise for being delayed because of other commitments. I had two sons at the London Oratory school, and I never knew why Tony Blair drew up the ladder after him and stopped the school interviewing. The school made every effort to make its intake very socially diverse, and it was. The Minister says that he went to an independent Catholic school. Why can we not simply let independent schools do what independent schools do, and give them freedom of admission? Of course they will try to create a socially diverse system. They will admit who they want. Why do we have to tie their hands?

Secondary Schools (Accountability)

Debate between David Laws and Edward Leigh

Monday 14th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

The hon. Lady makes a good point. Sadly, over the past decade or so there was a movement by students away from taking serious single-science subjects towards broader subjects that sometimes had an unrealistic equivalence. I am pleased to say that since the changes made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in that area, we have seen a big increase in students taking some of those subjects at GCSE and A-level. We need to ensure that the number goes up even further in the future.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

What discussions has the Minister had with the private sector? Is there not a danger that in moving to a progress measure we are moving from absolute standards to relative standards because we are taking account of where people come from as opposed to where they are? Parents want a measure of how good a school is now and the rigid academic standards it is achieving, and nothing else.

[Mr Laws]

We have had a broad welcome for the proposals in the consultation and the statement, including from many employer organisations, but my hon. Friend is right to highlight that, ultimately, results and attainment are crucial to any young person doing well in future. I believe that, through the best eight measure—an average we will publish as part of the new accountability framework —we will send out the clearest signal ever about how a school is performing in a large range of subjects and for every single student in the school. I believe that that will improve the focus on attainment in every school in the country.

Government Spending Cuts

Debate between David Laws and Edward Leigh

Wednesday 26th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

The right hon. Gentleman is simply wrong if he thinks local government is incapable of making efficiency savings. All the people I know in local government believe that significant efficiency savings can be made. He does not allow for the significant change that the Government have announced, which will mean that by ending ring-fencing, there is more freedom for local government to decide where those cuts fall, and to make sure that they fall in the areas that are not priorities. I should have thought that as a former Education Secretary, he could have brought himself to congratulate the Government on the way that they have managed to ring-fence the schools budget and the Sure Start budget.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I welcome the return to the Treasury of stern, unbending Gladstonian Liberalism. Will the Chief Secretary confirm that if we are to restore the nation’s finances, all Departments, including Health, Education, International Development and Defence, must play their part? For instance, such has been the catastrophic decline in productivity in health over the past 10 years that we can make significant efficiency savings without endangering front-line services.

[Mr Laws]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his kind comments about Gladstonian Liberalism. I hope that this is not only Gladstonian Liberalism, but liberalism tinged with the social liberalism about which my party is so passionate.

In the savings that we make, we are seeking to ensure that we cut with care. We have demonstrated this week that we can find efficiency savings and also put money into the areas that many of us in the House are passionate about—protecting education and putting more money than the previous Government did into social housing. We have shown that we can deliver both of those, but I agree with my hon. Friend that we must make sure that even those areas where the overall budgets are protected are driving out efficiency savings. There are considerable efficiency savings that can be made in the Ministry of Defence, in health and in education, and we must make sure that even as we protect the totality of those budgets, we shift money to the front-line services that matter most.