School Funding: Gloucestershire

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 30th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered school funding in Gloucestershire.

I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I welcome the Minister to his place, and I welcome my Gloucestershire colleagues; I am sure they will have things to say, but I know they will be very brief, because I want to make some points.

I will start with the caveat that this debate is about schools funding. There was an excellent debate on a petition on college funding a couple of weeks ago, so I have restricted my remarks to schools funding, but many of them also apply to the college situation in our county. I will begin with four quick quotes:

“We are no longer at the ‘reduce your photocopying stage, provide your own pens and pencils’ stage in Gloucestershire. We are at the ‘don't expect a TA but do expect a class size of 35 and certainly don’t expect a payrise’ stage.”

Secondly:

“Inclusive schools like ours have to use 85% of the money intended to support vulnerable children with additional needs, to top up the Per Pupil Funding just to reach the same level as local selective schools. This is resulting in a two-tier education system where inclusive schools receive less money.”

Thirdly:

“One of the more tragic results of the cuts for our more vulnerable pupils will be the financial disincentive to give these children places. In an increasingly ‘competitive’ climate there will, sadly, be schools actively finding ways to turn these children away so they become someone else’s problem.”

Finally:

“Like many schools, we have had to set a deficit budget to protect the education of the children in our school. We are finding more children with significant complex educational needs are being placed with us who must be supported from existing budgets with a knock-on effect for the rest of the children within school.”

Those quotes were from a teacher in Gloucestershire, a headteacher of a comprehensive in Gloucestershire, a headteacher of a village primary school and, lastly, a governor.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, my neighbour, for giving way, and I have a lot of sympathy with the people he is quoting. Does he agree that we are spending a record amount on education, but the distribution system is totally unfair, and the difference between the highest-spending local authority and one of the lower-spending local authorities, such as Gloucestershire, is completely unfair?

[Dr Drew]

It is unfair. I will outline my own views on that; as someone who supported the f40 group for a long time, as did the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members, I think we have a distribution problem as well as a problem of how much money is in the pot.

The national background is a lack of funding. The Minister might have something to say about the 3.5% pay award, which is having a dramatic impact in all our schools. Staffing costs are rising, and we have faced particular downward pressure on pupils aged 16 to 18, with a 20% cut since 2010-11. I emphasise the cuts to special educational needs and disabilities provision, which mean that it has in no way kept pace with rising demand.