Department for Education

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon]

If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I will come on to those points later, and if he does not feel that I have responded to them, I would be happy for him to intervene again.

In truth, the £1.3 billion should never have been necessary. While the introduction of a national funding formula is an entirely logical and necessary process of structural reform, for many schools the question is one of sufficiency just as much as of equity. The concept of fair funding may, I fear, be just too subjective to be delivered, so I want to see a change in the debate in this Chamber and elsewhere about school funding. The two supposedly competing accounts—one from the Conservative side of the House about record levels of overall investment going into schools, and the counter-argument that schools face real-terms reductions in per pupil funding—are both true, partly because there are simply more pupils in the system. We badly need to accept that reality, and move towards a practical solution not just for schools, but for further education, which has, without any sense or logic, been chronically underfunded for many years.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I strongly support the point that the right hon. Gentleman is making. Do not the Government figures released last week—an extra 137,000 pupils in England’s schools, but a loss of 5,400 teachers and almost 3,000 teaching assistants—further underline and support his point about the insufficiency of the total quantum going into schools budgets every year?

[Robert Halfon]

I think those are mixed figures, because if we look at this in the round, the number of teachers has gone up by a significant amount since 2010. Again, this is part of the argument I have been making.

Such arguments are why the Education Committee has launched an inquiry into school and college funding. We have no intention of unpicking the huge public consultation on the national funding formula or its sister consultation on high needs, but we must talk about the long-term sustainability of education. This is about delivering the outcomes we need as a nation and how we can move towards a longer-term vision, with a 10-year plan coupled with a future-proof five-year funding settlement.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Craig Tracey). I join him in his praise for teachers not only in his constituency and mine, but across the country. I also join him in his praise for headteachers and the enormous contribution they make to the future of our country. Given that so many areas of our country are finding it difficult to recruit and retain teachers, and many schools are finding it difficult to get a headteacher on the first recruitment exercise, he may well want to reflect on whether his party’s policies are having quite the positive impact he claims.

If I may, I would like to go back to the opening remarks by the Chair of the Education Committee, the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon). I praise his request for the message from this debate to be that we want investment in textbooks not tanks and a 10-year plan for education. It does feel that education is the public service that is not receiving sufficient attention around the Cabinet table in the negotiations with the Treasury. He was too polite to say so, but perhaps I can say that it is a pity the Secretary of State for Education is not here in person to hear the call for a 10-year plan for education. What I am sure he would not want to say at this stage is what my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) rightly said, which is that there needs to be more support, investment and pride in the contribution that comprehensive schools make, and more praise for the efforts of local councils to support high attainment and good standards in our schools. The idea that councils and local education authorities were ever a dead hand hindering high standards was always a nonsense and it is particularly a nonsense at the moment, given the huge cuts in funding to local authorities that LEAs have to deal with.

I want to make the rest of my remarks unashamedly parochial. I am fortunate to represent an area, the London Borough of Harrow, that has been deemed by the Education Policy Institute as offering the best education in terms of the increase in standards from when a child enters school to when they leave. While all the teachers and headteachers in Harrow are delighted with that accolade from the EPI, none would say they have sufficient resources.

My local schools work extremely closely together. The headteachers pride themselves on their co-operation and collaborative spirit. It is led in particular by the high schools. In my constituency, Whitmore High School, Nower Hill High, Harrow High and Rooks Heath work particularly closely together. All have very strong academic reputations. In particular, I want to single out the heads of Rooks Heath and Whitmore High School. The head of Rooks Heath was named not so long ago as the London headteacher of the year and the headteacher at Whitmore has a particularly good reputation, having led the school through a period of refurbishment and redevelopment.

Bentley Wood, Park, Canons Salvatorian and Sacred Heart are schools just outside my constituency—not quite as well politically represented as the four I have already named. All have strong reputations, all have effective leadership and all show good academic performance. However, all are crying out for more investment in funding. They have noted, as the heads of primary schools in my constituency have, that they are having to cope with an increase in employers’ contributions, an increase non-teaching pensions, teachers’ pay awards not being fully funded, non-teaching pay awards not being fully funded and the apprenticeship levy. Those pressures amount on average to an extra £54,000 in costs per primary school in Harrow and an extra £159,000 per secondary school. Similarly, schools in Harrow are having to cope with reductions in income from the way in which the minimum funding guarantee works and from reductions in their pupil premium grant. On average, primary schools are losing income. In 2017-18, £37,000 was lost per primary school and every secondary school lost £79,000. In terms of the additional school funding pressures facing every headteacher and governing body, the average overall in Harrow last year was almost £100,000 per primary school and £238,000 per secondary school, and that urgently needs to be addressed.

[Nick Gibb]

I am listening very carefully to the points that the hon. Gentleman is making, but he should be aware that no school in his constituency will lose funding. In fact, they will gain funding under the national funding formula, once we reach the end point, of 2.4%.

[Gareth Thomas]

I gently say to the right hon. Gentleman that he is very welcome to come to Harrow, and I would be very happy to organise a roundtable for him with headteachers of primary schools and secondary schools, because the experience that he describes is not the one that they have to face on a daily basis in managing their funding needs. He is sitting next to his colleague, the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills, who I was glad to meet to discuss the funding needs of a sixth-form college that faces significant additional financial pressures.

More funding needs to be put into the school education system. Harrow needs it and every other school needs it—

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Gareth Thomas]

Much as I would be delighted to invite the hon. Gentleman to join the Minister for School Standards in visiting Harrow, I hope that in the light of what Madam Deputy Speaker said, he will forgive me for not allowing him to intervene. Finally, there needs to be a 10-year funding plan and crucially, more investment next year in funding for schools across England and particularly, if the House will forgive me, in Harrow.