Grammar School Funding

Eric Ollerenshaw Excerpts

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), who secured the debate.

I do not particularly want to enter into the “grammar schools or not” debate. I declare an interest as a product of that social mobility of the 1950s, related to grammar school education, that my hon. Friend mentioned. However, I also spent 38 years of my teaching career in very large comprehensives, and want to mention, as he did, the fact that large, successful comprehensives with large sixth forms face some of the same issues as grammars.

Call me a conservative, Mr Hollobone, but I start from the principle that I do not want any child’s education today to be sacrificed for a possible nirvana in 20 years’ time or for something that our education system has constantly failed to bring about since 1945. We are where we are, however.

I am in the great position, for a Member of Parliament, of representing a constituency with no particularly bad school, secondary or primary. There is a mix, which includes two large grammar schools—Lancaster royal grammar school for boys and Lancaster girls’ grammar—and, also in Lancaster, an extremely large Church of England comprehensive, Ripley St. Thomas, which has a large sixth form. I am beholden to their heads, who have raised the problems, including the decision in 2013 to bring payment for sixth forms on to a level with that for further education colleges, without taking into account the cost of the extras provided by school-based sixth forms. That reduction, by about £1,000 per pupil, has a massive impact, as other hon. Members have said, on schools that have large sixth forms.

In addition, the sum in question is the maximum. I am told by Mrs Nicholls, the head teacher of Ripley St Thomas, that per sixth form pupil

“£3700 is the maximum we can receive but it is almost unattainable as it reduces depending on attendance, hours of study, completion and success factors.”

The grammar schools I mentioned raised similar issues. Mrs Nicholls reports that, as other hon. Members have said:

“A level classes, once typically 10-15, are now increasingly over 20 with sets of 25+ not uncommon. Sadly, subjects which do not recruit in large numbers are, out of financial necessity, being dropped”.

The head teacher of Lancaster girls’ grammar school, Mrs Cahalin, says:

“Traditionally we have always looked to allow external students to join our sixth form so that they can benefit from an outstanding sixth form education and very few girls leave, so our sixth form has been very large and so we will be hit far more.”

So schools must now take into account the people who want to join. Mrs Cahalin added:

“We also offer a large number of science courses which are more expensive to teach”,

as other hon. Members have mentioned. Dr Pyle, the head teacher of Lancaster royal grammar school, says:

“Class sizes are increasing, and we share some teaching with the girls’ grammar school”—

to allow for that—

“but the real threat is to the breadth of the curriculum. At the moment we are practically the only state school in the north of England to offer Latin and Greek A-level. We still offer German and Music to A-level—but we know that all of those subjects have been cut elsewhere.”

Those problems are in the system because of the decisions made in 2013. However, I want to consider the future, too, because costs are coming down the line. As to the teachers’ pension scheme, the Government have confirmed that they are introducing changes to the employer’s pension contributions for teaching staff from September. Making up the difference for that change alone will increase the employer’s contribution that schools need to make for their teaching staff to 16.48%, from 14.1%. That is a 2.47% increase. Salaries are the biggest cost that schools have, and that change will come down the line in September. Teaching staff have received a 1% pay award for 2015-16. Support staff have recently agreed a pay increase of 2.2%. All those things are at present unfunded in the grant system to schools. On top of that, the introduction of the single-tier state pension from April 2016 has implications for the employer’s national insurance contribution.

What that means, I am told by Mrs Cahalin in particular, is another increased cost—of 3.4%, for salaries and pensions. She says that in her budget for 2015-16 she expects a drop in income of at least £100,000, with increased costs of £100,000. That means taking £200,000 out of the school’s budget—and the prospect of many subjects disappearing. As Dr Pyle and Mrs Nicholls say, there is now the prospect that grammar schools, which were, as hon. Members have said, looked to as centres of excellence, will provide just the minimum. They will provide the minimum three A-levels, whereas they used to provide courses with four A-levels, and they will restrict entry by other people to their sixth forms, because of cost.

That serious issue affects children’s education today. I have mentioned my professional life in education, trying to turn around state comprehensives, and have also described the incredible institutions that are to be found in my constituency, alongside successful comprehensives. Dr Pyle says:

“Our proudest boast has been that pupils from exceptional state schools like ours can take on the independent sector and win!”

It seems to me ironic that under a coalition Government with a Conservative majority, we may lose that. I hope that the Minister will address the problems raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough, and the serious concerns expressed by head teachers about funding problems coming down the line for the future, because of salary and pension decisions taken by the Government.