Dedicated Schools Grant

Dawn Butler Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Westminster Hall

[Joe Morris (Hexham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I congratulate the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Cameron Thomas) on securing this important debate.

For far too long, the state of rural and semi-rural schools has been forgotten, particularly in my part of Northumberland, where Northumberland county council, which is still run by the Conservatives, treats my part of the county with what I can only describe as tender contempt. The previous Government thought so little of my constituency that eight and a half years ago they built a school that is already deemed structurally unsafe. Students have had to be transported to another part of the north-east to continue their education. That is the context in which I situate my remarks.

Generations of rural students have been left behind. I thank the hon. Member for Tewkesbury for his circumspectness in his comments about the awful circumstances that the Government inherited. It is not possible to start any discussion of any policy without recognising that we received a generational hospital pass, as I think he put it.

Having grown up in a rural area, I know that there are foundational characteristics. I confess to not knowing too much about Gloucestershire, having not had the chance to go there much beyond, I think, one family funeral when I was about 10, but I am sure it is lovely. From what I can tell, Northumberland has a lot that is similar, including large distances to travel and restricted access to opportunities and services. I went back to my old high school recently to discuss some of the access to work schemes that staff there try to provide and some of the opportunities for younger people to get employment skills. The teachers are working every hour they get, but they are hamstrung by the lack of local bus routes and appropriate public transport, and the lack of employers with the capacity to take on apprentices or students who are in need of work experience.

For far too long during the 100 years my constituency had Conservative representation down here, the challenges were not given voice or addressed. That was the challenge, dare I say it, of being considered a safe Tory seat: people could vote for their MP but not get a voice as part of that. We need to do more to engender stronger ties between communities and schools, to ensure that those growing up in our communities do not have to search too far outside them to find the opportunities and jobs that they want to progress in life. Unfortunately, the reality for many students is that they do have to.

I will direct the remainder of my remarks to two particular schools. First, Haydon Bridge high school is an incredible school in a beautiful location—and I get to visit a lot of schools. Haydon Bridge is a wonderful town on the Tyne Valley railway line—although the railway could do with running on time a bit more—and it has a fantastic school with genuinely fantastic teachers. Unfortunately, when I visited I had to discuss the funding issues with the headteacher.

I would dearly like to see the new administration at Northumberland county hall put their hands in their pocket to do something about the state of the school, which has been underfunded for a long time. There has not been the political will, nous or leadership among the Conservative group in Morpeth to stand up for students in the west of Northumberland. The teachers at Haydon Bridge could not work any harder, nor put on more opportunities. They are always looking at how to make the school more attractive and at how they can drive employment and employability, but for far too long the voice of rural schools has been shut out of the national debate.

Prudhoe community high school was opened eight and a half years ago. It was built under a Conservative Secretary of State and Education Department, but it was closed due to cracks in the infrastructure. I have been working on that with the staff and the community in Prudhoe. It would be a struggle to find a more inspiring group of people, particularly the headteacher and the teaching staff there. They had to deal with cracks appearing in the structure just months before GCSEs and A-levels—an incredibly challenging situation—and did so to the best of their ability. Everyone accepts that the ultimate, best outcome would have been for the students to be able to go back into the school to receive their education on site, but that would not have been safe. People had to work incredibly hard to find an appropriate site that did not involve travel and enabled the students to continue their education safely.

I urge the Minister not just to look at the matters raised in this debate but to consider—as I know she has many times, because I have chased her down corridors about this—the circumstances of those at the community high school. I also put that point to the exam boards, because the students had a black swan event with their school being deemed unsafe so close to exam times. Some of the boards have said that it falls under the definition of a school with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, but I do not believe that—I want to put on the record. For far too long schools in my constituency in the west of Northumberland have been forgotten about and done down. It is beyond time that those responsible, particularly at county hall, stand up and take note.

[Dawn Butler (in the Chair)]

I remind Members that if they want to speak in the debate, they should please stand. We have calculated that Members will have about five minutes per speech.