Department for Education

Emma Reynolds Excerpts

Tuesday 26th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate. One of the reasons I decided to go into politics was that I saw in our country that inequalities later in life stem from the fact that a child from a poor background is less likely to go on and do well in school than one from a richer background. I will reiterate some of the figures that the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) used about that. Some families in our country are able to spend more on school fees for their children per year than many people earn in salaries. I know that many Members speaking in this debate are motivated by the same thing—they want to improve education across the board, but particularly for children from deprived backgrounds. That is why I want to start with the point made powerfully by the Chairman of the Education Committee—we are lucky to have him—about FE funding, because it is often overlooked in these debates.

We talk about schools and we talk about early years, and I want to talk about those two things as well, but I want to start with FE funding. The Institute for Fiscal Studies recently produced a report saying that further education was the “biggest loser” in the cuts to education. I know that the Secretary of State is very passionate about learning from other countries, such as Germany, but if we are serious about putting our mainstream education and our vocational education on the same footing and valuing both equally, we really need to look again at further education funding.

The principal of the City of Wolverhampton College tells me about the funding pressures he is under, as are the other Black Country colleges in Dudley and Walsall. We have some really fantastic colleges in our region, but we know that their funding has been frozen for far too long. National funding rates for 16 and 17-year-olds have stayed at £4,000 per pupil since 2014; they have not increased in line with inflation. For 18-year-olds, the rate has been frozen at £3,300 per pupil.

I say this because I think the Ministers sitting on the Treasury Bench know about the cost pressures. I served in a Committee on a statutory instrument with the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills, where we talked about how we could make provision for colleges that find themselves in a position of insolvency. Well, that tells us everything, doesn’t it? We have not had that until now, but the Government have felt they had to make provision for it. I really think we need to think again about the funding for these colleges.

I know that many of my constituents feel they do not want to stay at school, but want to go to college and perhaps study a more vocational course, and Wolverhampton college has some fantastic vocational courses. However, even though there are cost pressures on schools—the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), set those out very eloquently—they are nothing compared with the cost pressures on further education colleges. I am trying to strengthen the arm of Ministers, and I implore them to put more pressure on the Treasury and to make some different decisions about the amount of money going to these colleges.

My second point—I have in a way done this the wrong way around by starting off with the older category—is just to urge the Government for some clarity on the funding for maintained nursery schools. I have three maintained nursery schools in my constituency, and I am lucky that I have so many. They provide outstanding and good education, and they are a trailblazer for the rest of early years provision in my area. They can help children with special needs in a way that other early years provision is not able to do. I have seen at first hand some of the work they do with some of the most deprived children, and also with some of the children who have the most acute needs in my constituency.

It pains me to hear from those maintained nurseries that, because their teachers do not know what is going to happen beyond 2020, there is a real concern that some of the staff may well leave, as they have mortgages and things in their own lives they have to plan for. I really implore Ministers to hurry up with the assessment that I understand the Government are doing on the value for money of maintained nurseries. I can tell them that, in my own constituency, they are great value for money, and they will hear that from other Members across the House. Maintained nurseries need clarity, and they need it sooner rather than later. I hope that, at some point in the next few weeks or months, we will get that clarity.

My final point is about school funding. I am concerned about the real-terms cuts in school funding. I understand the Chair of the Education Committee when he says that we just argue to and fro, which I do not want to do, about figures and whether schools are really that badly off or not. I was very interested to hear his comparison with the NHS plan. I would certainly welcome a more long-term plan for schools in our country. Some primary schools in my constituency are telling me they are having to lay off teaching assistants and, in some cases, teachers because of pressures on their budgets.

I urge Ministers to look at this again, because unless we can provide a world-class education for our young children, we will not only fail to close the inequalities in our society; we will not thrive as a country because, as has already been said in this debate, this issue relates to productivity, to how we attract investment and to our overall prosperity.