Department for Education

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Robert Halfon

Wednesday 6th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon]

I very much hope so. The hon. Gentleman will look at this forensically and he will know, because we have done an extensive report on the underachievement of white working-class boys and girls, that they underperform at every stage of the education system and worse than almost every other ethnic group. Those white working-class boys and girls on free school meals do worse than every other ethnic group, bar Roma and Gypsy children, on going to university. This is where funds need to be directed. The money should be concentrated on such cohorts. It is not just white working-class boys and girls; just 7% of children in care get a decent grade in maths and English GCSE and 5% of excluded children get a decent grade in maths and English GCSE. This is where the resources, in my view, should be concentrated. We need to address these social injustices in education.

Secondly, I turn to the social injustice of disadvantage. In May, the Government announced a new Schools Bill, following the publication of the schools White Paper. Media attention and discussion has centred around the appropriate levels of departmental intervention, and I know that the Department has gutted a significant part of that Bill, but I question whether this is simply dancing on the head of a pin. Of course, academies should have autonomy—I do not dispute that—but my question, and this refers to my answer to the hon. Gentleman a moment ago, is whether the Bill misses vital opportunities to address baked-in disadvantage among the most disadvantaged pupils in our communities.

Disadvantaged groups are 18 months behind their better-off peers by the time they take their GCSEs. White working-class boys and girls on free school meals underperform at every stage of the education system compared with almost every other group. Moreover, only 17% of pupils eligible for free school meals achieve a grade 5 in their maths and English GCSE. This figure expands to just 18% of children with special educational needs, just 7% of children in care and 5% of excluded children.

Exam results are of course important, and every August they understandably hit the headlines, but I am just as worried about the impact of covid-19 on younger children. We cannot afford for our most disadvantaged children to miss that first rung on the ladder of opportunity. The building blocks for achievement must be in place well before critical exam years and, indeed, before school. I am pleased to see that resource expenditure for early years has increased by 10.6% in these estimates, although capital funding has slightly decreased.

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

I am grateful for the focus on disadvantage by the Chair of the Education Committee in this part of his speech. Another aspect of disadvantage is experienced by Grange Primary School in my constituency, which sees huge mobility in the young people it educates as the cost of living crisis and, crucially, the cost of renting property in my constituency—and, I suspect, across London more generally—has rocketed, leading, unfortunately, to many families moving regularly. That creates huge pressures on school staff and school budgets. Will he encourage the Department for Education to look at whether there needs to be more focus on mobility as part of the funding formula, to help what I think is a good school with great staff trying to do a particularly tough job because of that mobility issue?

[Robert Halfon]

The hon. Member makes a powerful point. We want to ensure that everyone has the same opportunities to go to “good” and “outstanding” schools. The cost of living pressures that he mentions are powerful, and I am sure that the new Secretary of State is listening.

Department for Education

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Robert Halfon

Tuesday 26th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon]

My right hon. Friend is right. As he will hear in my remarks, I agree with much of what he says. We have to praise the Government for the good things that have happened but identify the funding problems.

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

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, and I commend his Committee’s decision to launch the inquiry that he just referenced. Can he ensure that the inquiry takes a brief but particular look at the plight facing Catholic sixth-form colleges? Many do not see themselves as having sufficient funding in the long run, as is the case for many other further education colleges, but they do not have the option of converting to an academy—a route that there are incentives to take—because of their religious character. There is not yet a solution other than to increase funding for all. Will he particularly reference the plight of those 17 English Catholic sixth-form colleges?

[Robert Halfon]

The inquiry covers schools and colleges, so that issue will form part of it. I note the hon. Gentleman’s point and will ensure that we address it in some way or another in our Committee.

We should welcome the introduction of a national formula as the latest step in almost 20 years of reform in education funding. There are serious problems with the way that schools are expected to budget, not least being asked to do so over three years without the information to make reliable forecasts more than a year ahead. I hope the House will forgive me if I take the opportunity to give my strongest support to the plight of further education. I know that the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills is passionate in her support and is lobbying the Treasury for more FE funding.

FE has for too long been the poor relation between secondary and higher education. By 2020, we will be spending the same amount in real terms to educate and train 16 to 18-year-olds as we were in 1990. I was shocked to discover that that is not an accident of history, but the result of a conscious policy choice of almost a decade ago. FE is a great example of why a national funding formula in and of itself is not a panacea. Without enough money to go around, it does not matter.

The time has come for a completely different approach to how we think of schools and colleges in this country. Rather than the Department for Education being one of many Departments scrapping it out every few years for the meagre rewards of the political cycle, Ministers need to take a leaf from the book of the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England and make a bold bid for a 10-year long-term plan that starts to close the gap between inputs—broadly, in this context, the money—and outcomes at both an individual level, in the form of emerging from school a well-rounded person with prospects, and the wider economic level of having young people ready and able to fulfil the productivity part of the picture. We do not fully recognise the potential value of getting our education system right, and the DFE should make as much as it can of that in its negotiations with the Treasury. As a country, we have recognised the long-term necessity of funding the national health service, but without, it seems, the prior necessity of getting school and college funding right as a vital public service.

What would that mean in practice? For a start, we have to move beyond the rhetoric of school cuts versus more money than ever going into schools. That was the starting point of our inquiry and will be an important starting point for our report this year. The truth is that both characterisations are only very partial accounts and keep us talking about inputs rather than outcomes. The relationship between those inputs and outcomes is not simple and causal, as Mr Schleicher told the Committee this morning, but that is emphatically not the same as saying that schools can magically deliver world-beating results at the same time as moving from savings in their non-staff budgets to savings in their staff budgets. When we learn that students in Poland perform at the same level at age 15 as those in the United States, but with per student expenditure that is around 40% lower than in the United States, we need to consider whether simply asking for more money without a plan will get us where we want to be.

We need to take a long, hard look at some flagship policies and be open to questioning whether they are delivering against our stated policy objectives, especially when they engage social justice. Disadvantaged pupils perform a lot worse at school. Just 33% of pupils on free school meals get five good GCSEs, including English and maths, compared with 61% of their better-off peers. The Committee has already expressed its concern that the Government’s policy of funded childcare for three and four-year-olds is entrenching disadvantage and preventing the closure of the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers from better-off backgrounds. I know that the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), is passionately supportive of our maintained nurseries and is working incredibly hard to persuade the Treasury to guarantee the transition funding that maintained nurseries desperately need.

The consequences of not making the most of the time for which a child is at school last a lifetime, and the pieces are picked up by many other Departments across Government. If schools are increasingly being looked at to prevent some of these problems from occurring, it seems only right that schools receive the resources necessary to do so. I hope that Ministers will use the support in this House for a 10-year, truly long-term plan to secure the best possible deal from the spending review. The logic is inescapable—if the NHS can have a 10-year plan, why cannot education too?

I hope that this will be the start of a different sort of planning for schools and colleges. If education really is to be a ladder of opportunity for everyone, so that people can get the education, skills and training to climb to the top and get the jobs, skills and prosperity that they and our country need, surely there should be proper strategic overview and a long-term plan to ensure that everyone has the tools and support necessary to climb that ladder.

Department for Education

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Robert Halfon

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.

Opportunities for the Next Generation

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Robert Halfon

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Commons Chamber

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

We have, as ever, had an interesting debate, with the first Back-Bench contribution coming from my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey), who rightly raised concerns about young people being deterred from going to university.

My hon. Friends the Members for North West Durham (Pat Glass) and for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), in powerful speeches, rightly outlined the huge mistake that the Government have made in axing the education maintenance allowance.

My hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) set out the stark difference between a Labour Government in Wales, committed to EMA and keeping tuition fees down, and the Government here in Westminster.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) rightly raised concerns about what axing Aimhigher means for the delivery of better access to university, and again she rightly pressed Ministers to look afresh at the case she has been making for the use of public procurement to drive more apprenticeship places.

My hon. Friends the Members for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) and for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) highlighted the absence of a clear and coherent growth strategy—a point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham) clearly highlighted in his opening remarks.

My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) dwelt on concerns about the impact on future social mobility of the measures from the governing parties.

My hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) quite rightly exposed the Government’s failures on Bombardier, offering a devastating indictment of the Government’s approach to manufacturing industry and of the future opportunities for young people not only in that business but, as other Members have said, in other firms such as Sheffield Forgemasters.

My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop raised the fears that young people in his constituency will be deterred from going to university, and he also highlighted the growing concern about rising unemployment among women, particularly in his area.

My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) joined in the concern about the impact on future mobility of the Government’s measures, but she also highlighted the need for more social housing funding in her constituency in particular, but also nationally.

We also heard from the hon. Members for Wirral West (Esther McVey), for Worcester (Mr Walker), for Solihull (Lorely Burt), for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) and for Harlow (Robert Halfon), but, apart from the hon. Member for Harlow, who joined the call from Opposition Members for a far greater effort by the Government to use public procurement to secure still more apprenticeships, we heard little from Government Members, including little sadly from the Minister for Universities and Science, who opened for the Government, that will encourage Britain’s next generation to believe that this Administration are not playing fast and loose with their prospects.

We had no apology for the decision to treble tuition fees, no apology still for axing the future jobs fund; no apology for scrapping education maintenance allowance; no apology for an economic policy that is cutting our deficit too far, too fast; and no apology for its devastating impact on prospects for the next generation.

The Government instead claim that the impact of their deficit reduction plans will be shared, but the truth, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies revealed this week, is very different. It is the next generation in particular who are bearing the brunt of the Government’s misplaced economic plans. When almost 1 million young people are out of work and Government policies are having little or no positive impact, it is surely time for the Government to come up with a plan B. Leaving young people on the dole is a waste not just of talent but of money, because it is pushing up the benefits bill.

One would have hoped that the current generation of Conservatives had learned the lessons of the 1980s. For years back then, even when recessions were officially over, youth unemployment continued to rise, and that is why action is needed now to prevent another lost generation of young people. Thanks to Labour’s youth jobs programme, youth unemployment was falling. Now, with the future jobs fund axed, youth unemployment is rising.

We have also had to listen to the complacent assertion from Conservative and Liberal Democrat Back Benchers that trebling tuition fees will not discourage the brightest and best of the next generation from going to university. Never mind that independent analysts, such as London Economics, advisers to Lord Browne’s inquiry, or the London School of Economics’ centre for the economics of education, both predict that the numbers of those going to university will drop.

[Robert Halfon]

The hon. Gentleman says that youth unemployment was falling under Labour, but Office for National Statistics figures show that from 1997 to 2010 it increased by 39.2%. Will he explain that, please?

[Mr Thomas]

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen pointed out in his opening remarks, youth unemployment was actually falling for the vast majority of our period in office. Of course, there was a global recession, and youth unemployment rose during that time, but thanks to Labour’s jobs fund youth unemployment was actually coming down when we left office.

Perhaps we need also to dwell on the quality of the higher education that will be available to young people. Before the summer recess, the Minister for Universities and Science presented a White Paper that could have meant a dynamic future for universities and their students, that could have been the centre of our country’s plans to rebalance the economy and that could have helped to drive the growth of new jobs in the new industries; instead, we had little more than a Coulson-esque smoke and mirrors exercise to try to disguise the coming auction of places to the lowest bidder in order to help close the funding hole that trebling tuition fees has created in the Government’s higher education budget.