Edward Leigh
Main Page: Edward Leigh (Conservative - Gainsborough)Department Debates - View all Edward Leigh's debates with the Department for Education
(9 years, 7 months ago)
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What better way to start a parliamentary Tuesday than with a debate on grammar school funding, in the name of Sir Edward Leigh?
Thank you, Mr Hollobone. It is a convention to say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, but in this case it is heartfelt.
This debate is about the funding not only of grammar schools, but of successful, well performing comprehensives with good sixth forms. I am proud to declare that one of my children attends a grammar school, and I am proud to have two excellent grammar schools in my constituency: Caistor grammar school and Queen Elizabeth’s high school. They are centres of excellence, and I salute the Lincolnshire county councillors who have always kept in mind the importance of our grammar schools and saved them.
The phasing out of grammar schools in most of the country was one of the greatest policy disasters of the post-war era. By the 1960s, grammar schools were so successful that we achieved an unqualified and unprecedented level of social mobility—it was greater than anything this country has achieved in its long history, before or since. Many of the nation’s poorest, most deprived people were given their first great chance to move up. Those schools were so successful that the independent sector feared that it would fade and decline into irrelevance, barring the odd Eton or Harrow. Across the country, we need to nurture those centres of excellence and learn lessons from them that we can apply across the state sector as beacons.
The purpose of this debate is not to honour grammar schools, but to ensure that they are not buried by stealth. A growing concern has emerged recently about the disparity of per-pupil funding for grammar schools, which also affects high-performing comprehensives with large sixth forms. Changes in the past three years have adversely affected grammar schools disproportionately in comparison with other state schools. The minimum funding guarantee of minus 1.5% gives the appearance of preserving per-pupil funding. However, as Mr David Allsop, the headmaster of Queen Elizabeth’s high school in Gainsborough, notes:
“Sixth form funding has been dropping much more significantly and we have managed to maintain our funding as flat by increasing the number of students in the sixth form.”
In 2013, Mr Allsop analysed Lincolnshire schools that were not academies, and looked at per-pupil funding. The grammar school that he heads was the least well funded school per pupil in the county. It receives £4,474 per pupil on average, while a similar sized comprehensive school in Lincolnshire receives £6,481 per pupil. Those figures are from the Government’s consistent financial reporting data. If we are to promote educational excellence, it is not a good idea to give the best school in Lincolnshire, which everybody tries to get into, only £4,000 per pupil per year, while giving the worst performing comprehensive in Lincoln, which nobody wants to go to, £7,000 per head per year. That is a daft way to run our education system.
We are asking only for fairness. Back in the 1960s, one of the criticisms of grammar schools was that they were treated unfairly well by county councillors. It is ironic that the reverse is now happening. Grammar schools are in a uniquely bad position, in terms of state funding.
My hon. Friend makes a compelling case. Is not the reason why grammar schools are so badly funded comparatively that they have disproportionately high numbers of pupils at sixth forms? Is not the real issue the way in which the Government have dealt with sixth-form funding, rather than with grammar schools funding per se?
That is exactly right, and I will come to that point in a moment. Mr Roger Hale, who runs the successful Caistor grammar school, wrote a heartfelt plea to me. Of course, he will struggle on and do his job—that is what teachers do—but he said:
“We were one of many schools who answered the call from Michael Gove to set off on our own as an Academy so that we would have better control over our resources. In the first few years, this worked very well. However in the last 18 months, the funding we receive to be an Academy has been sharply reduced.”
I have read letters from grammar schools from all over the country that say the same thing.
On the face of it, it seems fair that the Government equalised post-16 per-pupil funding between schools with sixth forms and further education colleges. A lot of the problems are due to the law of unintended consequences. I do not think for a moment that Ministers intended to hit grammar school funding adversely, but their laudable aims had unintended consequences. The funding for FE colleges and schools was equalised, which was fair enough. However, that ignored the significant further pastoral support and enrichment programmes for pupils in sixth forms. Sixth formers take on a broader programme of AS and A-levels, in addition to supervised study, sport and other programmes, in contrast to FE students. Per-pupil costs for sixth forms are in many cases higher than they are for further education colleges. Sixth formers, on the whole, have between 20 and 25 taught hours per week, while the figure for those in further education colleges is closer to 17. Furthermore, that equalisation was achieved not by choosing a figure in the middle of the previous levels of sixth-form and FE funding, but by brining sixth-form funding down to the same level as further education.
I am grateful for the argument made to me by Mr Önaç, the headmaster of St Olave’s school in Orpington. He said that the scale of the reduction that the change has brought has been huge, and that it often amounts to a whole fifth of the per-pupil budget. Although it has applied across schools, it has affected grammar schools, because almost all of them have sixth forms that comprise a much larger proportion of their total school population than other schools. That is why we have this problem. I am not sure that it was envisaged at the start of the changes.
It is a shame that the hon. Gentleman did not make the debate about 16-to-19 funding as a whole, because the same would equally apply to sixth-form colleges, which also have to pay VAT.
Although I wanted to talk about the problem affecting grammar schools—one should be absolutely honest—as I said at the beginning of my speech, the problem affects not only grammar schools, but successful comprehensives with large sixth forms. The hon. Gentleman is right to make that point. I hope we can look at this issue in a bipartisan way. It should not be about grammar schools versus other schools, but about fairness. All sixth-form pupils, whatever school they are in, should be funded as equally as possible.
Supplemental funding for the disadvantaged is widely welcomed, and we all accept it. Part of the reason why I and others are such passionate advocates for grammar schools is that they provide a superb helping hand for pupils from less-advantaged backgrounds.
I have a number of brilliant grammar schools in my constituency, but one of the reasons why they are comparatively underfunded is that, compared with the other schools in my constituency, they do not attract the pupil premium because they have fewer pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. The funding system, which is skewed towards disadvantage, has disadvantaged grammar schools, so the claim that grammar schools help disadvantaged pupils is belied by the statistics.
Grammar schools can help people, in particular those from ethnic minorities. In the school that my son attends, 60% of the pupils are from an ethnic minority background, which is high. I believe that, if there were more grammar schools, we could do more to help people from disadvantaged backgrounds. One of the problems is that there are not enough grammar schools. We are not going to get into this debate now, but I wish county councils had the freedom to set up more grammar schools if they want to do so. That is what localism is all about.
The way that the funding is worked out—there is an over-emphasis on pupils who qualify for free school meals—is not adequately grounded in the hard evidence of the additional costs associated with disadvantaged pupils. The Government have injected additional funding into four sections: pupil premium; special needs; pupils who have failed GCSE English; and pupils who have failed GCSE maths. As I have said, that intention is laudable, but unfortunately, in many cases, it means that the Government have perhaps unwittingly pumped four different funding streams into the same child.
We also need to recognise that that funding increase has a converse effect on the opposite end of the spectrum in grammar schools and sixth forms more generally. It would be counter-productive to unbalance the funding of education so much towards disadvantaged pupils that we undermine centres of excellence in the state sector that we want to protect. This is not a zero-sum game: we can help disadvantaged pupils and promote centres of excellence. Surely that is the right way to proceed.
The number of young people over the age of 16 educated on a full or part-time basis has increased in recent years as a result of raising the participation age to 17 in 2013 and 18 in 2015. Schools and further education colleges have come under pressure to expand to accommodate such increased numbers. That is fair enough, but at the same time, the funding pot for post-16 education has become fixed, and the method of distribution has changed from a model that included higher levels of funding for courses with large practical elements, and incentives for institutions with high levels of success and retention.
The simplification of the funding system—funding is attached to the student rather than the course—is welcome, but the impact on high-achieving academic schools with large sixth forms, including the grammar schools in my constituency and others, has become considerable. The funding system means that, in some local authorities, students receive more funding for education from 11 to 16 than from 16 to 18—can that be right?—even though it is widely recognised, and obvious common sense, that the cost of delivering the curriculum increases as a student gets older. That is why many universities feel justified in charging fees of £9,000 a year.
As students move through the school system, they can exercise an increasing level of choice over the subjects they study, which tends to reduce financial efficiency. More broadly, there is a bigger perspective, which I want to end on. We need to think about that point, which I want to emphasise. The world is becoming more and more globalised. As the Prime Minister keeps telling us, Great Britain is competing in a global race for excellence. For us to compete successfully, we need more scientists, more engineers, more mathematicians, more doctors and more innovators.
What evidence can the hon. Gentleman give to show that areas with selection at 11 produce more people in those professions than areas that do not have selection at 11?
I think I can establish that grammar schools provide real add-on value and are, in themselves, centres for excellence. I do not want to get into a wider debate about whether there should be more or fewer grammar schools in Lincolnshire, but the Government have decided that the existing grammar schools should survive. Nobody in the Government, or the Labour party, suggests that grammar schools should be phased out. Presumably, they accept that those schools have a contribution to make. All we are asking for is fairness. I am not saying to the Government that there should be more grammar schools, although I might well believe that. I am simply saying that I want fairness. The Government have decided that the schools should exist, so they should be funded fairly. The removal of additional programme weighting for sciences, technology and mathematics is particularly unwelcome.
I had thought that the grammar schools system controversy was found only in Northern Ireland, but it would seem to happen in England as well. The research notes we have received show that the Government gave a commitment as far back as 2010 that the disparity in funding would be addressed by 2015. Does the hon. Gentleman see any sign of that? Why the disparity?
The disparity exists for the reasons I have described, but we have a quite excellent Minister who has committed his whole life to education. We are all waiting for his response.
It is vital that our young people are equipped with the knowledge, understanding and skills that will enable them as individuals, and the United Kingdom as a nation, to compete successfully in a global marketplace. That is so obvious and we all agree with it. Changes to post-16 educational funding were examined in isolation from funding for 11-to-16 education, and therefore little is understood about the cumulative effects of decision making on particular schools.
Different types of school are affected in very different ways. Schools for 11 to 18-year-olds with large academically successful sixth forms—I cannot make the point too often that that category includes both grammar schools and high-performing comprehensives—have lost large chunks of money. Whatever one’s view on the grammar school debate, and whether one thinks they are good or bad, that is undoubtedly true. It is rooted in fact. Those are often the very same schools that are unfairly funded pre-16.
The sacrifices demanded of those schools compared with schools for 11 to 16-year-olds, in which levels of income have remained relatively stable, have been significant. As a consequence, the curriculum for students is narrowing, class sizes are increasing, teaching time is reducing and support staff are being withdrawn.
We are sleepwalking towards a future in which some of the country’s best performing schools—centres of excellence—will no longer be able to offer a broad and balanced curriculum to their students. Music and modern foreign languages will join Latin and Greek A-level to become largely the preserve of those whose parents can afford to pay for their education. Our nation’s brightest students will have access to fewer opportunities and resources than their peers. Is it fair that bright students whose parents cannot afford to pay are disadvantaged? Where is the fairness in that?
Christ the King College, the best school in my constituency for providing quality work for children—others schools are improving but that one is the best—is not a grammar school, but a good comprehensive.
The debate is about not just grammar schools, but good comprehensives. By the way, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) wanted to be here to make some of the points I am making, but she has to serve on a Committee elsewhere. I am grateful to all my colleagues who have turned up this morning. There is a lot of concern throughout Parliament about grammar school funding.
What we need is not 80% or 90% of funding allocated on pupil-led factors, but simply funding per pupil fairness between pupils. To that end, we need to achieve a meaningful, basic entitlement, and genuinely fair and transparent funding. That would ensure that all of our children, whatever background they come from and whichever kind of school they attend, can enjoy a broad, balanced education that will equip them for life in the 21st century.
Perhaps at the outset I should say that I was educated at a comprehensive school, I taught at a comprehensive school, and my daughter attended a comprehensive school. The hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) very deftly tried to change the terms of the debate away from the title on the Order Paper. He opened his speech by saying that the debate also applies to comprehensive schools. It is a pity that he did not actually put that in the title of the debate and say that it would be about sixth-form funding. I understand why he might have put it in the terms he did—the juxtaposition of the terms “grammar” and “school” is catnip to his Conservative colleagues. Had he said that the debate was about 16-to-19 funding, many other colleagues from areas of the country that do not have one of the 164 remaining grammar schools might have liked to attend and raise with the Government their concerns about 16-to-19 education funding in schools and sixth-form colleges in their constituencies. It may well be that another debate is needed to enable a broader cross-section of the House to participate.
In introducing the debate—I thank the hon. Gentleman for the advance copy of his speech, which he supplied to me prior to the debate, and wish I was that well organised—he said:
“Supplemental funding for the disadvantaged is widely welcomed”.
He then went off script and said “we all accept that”, and yet, towards the end of his speech, he said:
“What we need is not 80% or 90% of funding allocated on pupil-led factors”,
but simply “funding per pupil”. I do not know how the hon. Gentleman squares those two statements, and how he can achieve that without reducing funding to the other schools in his Lincolnshire constituency. He might want to explain to the head teachers of the other schools in his constituency how much of their budget he thinks should be cut to accommodate what he said in his speech.
The right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) went as far as saying that the current 16-to-19 funding system introduced by the Government is
“damaging the life chances of children.”
That is very serious, and I hope the Minister will respond to that charge in his summing up.
The hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) talked about grammar schools in Kent, but he did not talk about the overall impact of a selective system and how Kent overall gets poorer results than many comparable non-selective counties. That feature in defence of grammar schools was not entered into during the debate. The hon. Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) also criticised the effects of the Government’s policy on 16-to-19 funding.
The hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen), along with many others, said that what was happening was due to the unintended consequences of what the Government have done on 16-to-19 funding. He called for a re-examination of the policy of ring-fencing the schools budget for five to 16-year-olds because of the impact it is having on the 16-to-19 budget. I would be interested to know the Minister’s response to that suggestion. By the way, if it is an unintended consequence, that calls into question the competence of the decision in the first place, because if funding at 16 to 19 was going to be levelled down while protecting the five-to-16 budget, it was obvious that that would have significant impacts. Presumably Ministers, and the submissions they received from civil servants—we do not get to see those—went through fully and in detail the consequences of taking the decision and the impact it would have on sixth forms and sixth-form colleges.
The hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw), who, like me, is a former school teacher, pointed out all the other additional costs that are coming down the pipeline for schools. Again, the Minister should respond to that point. I recall from an earlier debate that the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood taught in comprehensive and secondary modern schools, so he has a full experience of both sides of that equation.
My hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) pointed out the impact of 16-to-19 funding on all post-16 providers, not just the selective ones—although all post-16 providers are selective in some ways, because that is the very point at which selection is permitted within our system overall. The hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) agreed that 16-to-19 funding was unfair and gave examples from his constituency.
I should say something about grammar schools, as that is the advertised title on the Order Paper. Overall, it is the Opposition’s view that a system of selection at 11 is not the way to raise school standards or to promote social mobility. In fact, that is currently the Government’s position. Instead, we should focus relentlessly on supporting schools to raise standards for all pupils regardless of their backgrounds. The most effective way to do that is through promoting great teaching and leadership in our schools. The evidence for that is absolutely clear internationally. Andreas Schleicher, who is often quoted by the Government and who oversees the OECD programme for international student assessment scores, has made it absolutely clear that the international evidence shows that systems with selection for children at the tender age of 11, and all that that entails, perform less well than non-selective school systems.
Far from promoting social mobility, selective systems entrench social division. The difference in the domestic average wages between the top 10% and the bottom 10% of earners is much wider in selective areas than in non-selective areas. Schools that select at age 11 are also highly socially selective institutions overall. Almost all the remaining 164 grammar schools in this country have fewer than 10% of pupils eligible for free school meals. In 2010, 96,680 year 7 pupils received free school meals from a total of 549,725 pupils in state schools. Of the 22,070 grammar school pupils in that age bracket, only 610 were receiving free school meals. It is undeniable that the poorest children are losing out, in part because in some areas almost everyone who passes the 11-plus has had private tuition of one sort or another.
I will not go into great detail about the evidence from the past—it is probably not where we should go in today’s debate—but suffice to say, the rose-tinted view of the selective system of the past is not true. At its height at the beginning of the 1960s, a third of grammar school pupils got only three O-levels, and only 0.3% of grammar school pupils at that time with two A-levels were working class. It is therefore a myth that grammar schools were great engines of social mobility. There are many reasons for the great surge in social mobility, but selection at 11 is not one of them.
That is why the current Prime Minister was absolutely right in 2007 when he said that those who wanted to expand the number of grammar schools were
“splashing around in the shallow end of the educational debate”.
He went to say that his party was in danger of becoming “a right-wing debating society” rather than
“an aspiring party of government”.
That is why the current Government have held on, largely, to the policy of not allowing more schools that select at age 11, although they have permitted a loophole to those that he said were
“clinging on to outdated mantras that bear no relation to the reality of life”—
they have created a loophole to allow the expansion of selective provision by stealth to locations many miles away from existing grammar schools.
Let us agree to disagree on grammar schools. In the last couple of minutes of his speech, will the hon. Gentleman focus on the fact that the Labour party presumably is committed to a fair funding formula for all schools with successful sixth forms?
Yes, I can do that, and I can confirm that. Labour policy remains that the remaining selective schools should be a matter for local parental choice. Our policy has not changed on that since it was introduced in 1998, and it has been reconfirmed by the current Government. In the course of the hon. Gentleman’s speech, he was right to point out that sixth-form or 16-to-19 funding is causing a great problem for many schools across the country. Of course, there is no different formula for grammar schools—I would like to make that point, so there is no myth about it. The difference in funding between grammar schools and others is largely because of the difference in their pupil intakes, because of all the factors we have heard about. However, he is right that many schools, including grammar schools, have been hit very hard by the severe cuts in sixth-form and college funding that the Government have imposed. As I said, it might have been more fruitful to have a debate under that broader title to allow others to introduce that subject.
Finally, there are a few questions that the Minister needs to address. Was the decision to slash 16-to-19 funding intended to impact hardest on sixth forms, colleges and, indeed, selective schools? What was the rationale for that decision? Was the result deliberate, or is it, as many hon. Members have suggested, an unintended consequence, in which case there would be an issue of incompetence in relation to the decision?
Since 2006, the Conservative party has said that it is against more selection at 11. Is that still the case? Will the Minister tell us what is happening with the decision about the satellite grammar school in Kent? Will he pledge to include financial data in performance data relating to academies, so that we can debate them?