Oral Answers to Questions Debate

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Department: Department for Education

Oral Answers to Questions

Desmond Swayne Excerpts
Monday 11th March 2019

(5 years, 7 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Damian Hinds Portrait Damian Hinds
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Of course we recognise the additional cost in high-cost areas, in particular in London. It is true that there are 200 more teachers in the Ealing local authority area than there were in 2010. However, it remains a very competitive recruitment market, particularly for graduate recruitment, partly because of the historically very low unemployment we have, and that makes our recruitment and retention strategy all the more important.

John Bercow Portrait Mr Speaker
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It is time for the right hon. Gentleman to issue his brevity textbook. Let us have an extract.

Desmond Swayne Portrait Sir Desmond Swayne
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We are spending more per pupil than any other G7 nation, but headteachers are complaining that they are cleaning the loos themselves. Something is going wrong. What is it?

Damian Hinds Portrait Damian Hinds
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On the first point, we are spending more than any other G7 nation bar the United States in per capita funding for state primary and secondary education, but there are particular cost pressures in the system. We were discussing high needs earlier, and we do need to address that particular set of pressures. There are others as well, such as the way we go about purchasing and so on, and some of the costs that are particularly rising. I want to reassure my right hon. Friend that we are looking at all of those factors.