Funding and Schools Reform

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman is obviously going to explain why he thinks that the reforms proposed by the coalition Government are incorrect, but is he no longer one of the reformers on his Benches? If he is still a reformer, will he say, however briefly—I know that he quite rightly wants to focus on the Government—how he would seek to reform and improve an education system that lets down too many children?

[Andy Burnham]

As the hon. Gentleman sees more of his Government, he will perhaps come to understand the difference between real reform and reckless reform. Indeed, the House has just been hearing about the achievements of a reformed national health service under my watch and I can tell him that I am very proud of them.

Let me start with Building Schools for the Future and the charge that I lay at the Secretary of State’s door. He has got into a mess and the allocation of capital is no longer driven by educational need but by ideology. Building Schools for the Future was a needs-led approach to the allocation of capital. Instead, he wanted to use capital as bait to lure schools into his new structural models, but then came the spending review.

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[Michael Gove]

Absolutely not. Schools spending will rise in real terms over the lifetime of the coalition Government. That was not a promise that the Opposition were able to give; they could promise only to increase spending over two years. As I say, we are also extending 15 hours of pre-school learning to all disadvantaged two-year-olds—the Government of the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath were not able to deliver that. We are also giving £150 million to help disadvantaged students from poorer backgrounds to make it to university.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

The Opposition are complaining about any possible changes to areas of deprivation, but it is not areas that we need to be concerned about—areas of Sheffield that were some of the wealthiest in the country were getting additional money. What we need to do is ensure that money follows the pupil. The gap between children on free school meals and the rest is wider in the East Riding of Yorkshire, including my constituency, than in any other part of the country. We need a pupil premium that follows children wherever they live, so that we have a more just system that does narrow that gap, which sadly widened under the previous Government.

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a good point and we need to narrow the gap. The gap between children who are eligible for free school meals and other children across the country is far too wide. We need to ensure that disadvantaged children receive additional funding, and under the coalition Government they will receive such funding on top of the dedicated schools grant that was not going to be delivered by the Opposition.

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[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to take part in the debate, although I must express some disappointment with the opening speech by the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), the shadow Secretary of State. It lacked a contribution on how to improve our school system. There were improvements in our education system under the Labour Government; there is no question about that. In general, we have a motivated and high-calibre teaching work force, although of course they too could do with further improvement. There was nothing constructive in the right hon. Gentleman’s speech.

When a party is thrown out after 13 years in government, there is a real opportunity to think again. One of the first things Labour Members should do is put their hands up on some of the issues. For Labour to have presided for 13 years over a widening of the gap between the educational outcomes for rich and poor, and a widening of the gap in the overall educational performance of the UK against its key competitors, is not something about which to be complacent or self-satisfied. Collectively, as a political class—although I was on the Opposition Benches—we failed to turn the vast increase in expenditure on education under the previous Government, and the political will that existed then, into sufficient progress for the poorest in our society, which one would have hoped would be delivered by Labour, and for the country overall.

Wrestling with the issues of bringing about improvement in our education system is what we should all be involved in, rather than trying to score points, especially as it is likely that the coalition Government and this Parliament will run for some years. Every party, not least the Opposition, should be dealing with the real issues, and should have a platform for improvement.

[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman speaks about the good will of the Opposition and their desire to reduce inequality in education. Is it not true, however, that we do not yet know how successful our expenditure on reducing such inequality might be because, for example, children who started in a Sure Start centre when those first opened in my constituency are not yet 16, so we do not know what choices they will make?

[Mr Stuart]

The hon. Lady makes a fair point. Many of those initiatives, such as Sure Start, are being supported by this Government. The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) has been an ardent champion of early intervention and has helped Members in all parts of the House to recognise the need to intervene early in order to make sure that children arrive ready for school, and that they have a decent vocabulary so that they can engage with learning. There is merit in what the hon. Lady says, but even the most ardent supporter of the Labour Government would hardly suggest that the improvements that were wished for have genuinely been delivered.

I am pleased to follow my predecessor, the highly distinguished former Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), who said that he could not see an ideological base. I hope it is a practical evidence-based approach by the Government. It is clear that they believe that giving greater trust, responsibility and control to front-line professionals is more likely to lead to an improvement in standards than central prescription, however well-meaning. It is as obvious to me as the River Jordan that that is the key insight of this Government.

We must ensure that that process is well thought through, that we support front-line professionals, that capability is developed where it does not currently exist, and that it is put in place in time to match any withdrawal of support from local authorities or others who may previously have delivered it.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman is speaking about the Government’s wish to push more resources towards the front line, but in his opening remarks the Secretary of State talked about some of the most intractable areas of poverty and deprivation in the UK. Does the hon. Gentleman believe that directing resources to the front line and reconfiguring budgets alone will solve those problems, or that bigger, bolder schemes such as education maintenance allowances are required to tackle the deep-rooted poverty that causes that deprivation?

[Mr Stuart]

That, too, is a fair intervention. This is not the Government’s sole policy area. They are also considering doubling the size of Teach First over the next three years, and have been in negotiation with Teach First about that. The essence of improving education standards is higher-calibre, better supported, better motivated, better led teachers in the classroom. That is what it is all about. That is the prism through which we should look at every decision that we make—which is why I welcome the Teach First approach.

It is not necessarily contradictory, though I can see that it may look hypocritical, to talk about reducing central prescription on what teachers may have, on the one hand, and on the other, raising the bar to those whom the state supports to go into teacher training so that the people coming in are better qualified.

The hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) is right to ask those questions. Tools alone will not deliver. What is needed, and what we have heard from head teachers and from the profession over the years, is that too much prescription, too much teaching to the test, too much narrowing of the curriculum—in other words, too much of what want on under the previous Government—took away the joie de vivre and the empowerment of front-line professionals. If we can bring that back, plus Teach First, put the tools in place, encourage ever better school leadership and school governance, which I hope the Select Committee will examine over time, we can move our education system on to a higher plane, and deliver what Members in all parts of the House want.

Knockabout—trying to suggest that Tories eat babies, or whatever those on the Opposition Front Bench seem to suggest—is not helpful. I believe that everyone in this House, regardless of party, came into politics because they would like to create a more just and fair society. This is not only about social justice. The forces of globalisation, which we cannot stop, and the suggestion in the Leitch report that there will be fewer and fewer jobs for people who do not have skills, make it an absolute economic necessity that we improve the skills of our young people. In response to the hon. Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman), the truth is that we failed to make the progress that we should have done, and this Government feel that autonomy, plus their other measures, represent a better way to achieve that.

I want to make some brief remarks about Building Schools for the Future. My predecessor, the hon. Member for Huddersfield, who is chatting at the moment, knows full well that there is not the evidence to show that capital investment in schools leads to educational transformation. There is a link, but it is pretty small. Obviously, we all regret the fact that we cannot have brand-new schools where schools are not in an ideal state, but under BSF the allocation of money was out of proportion to the benefit given. Under this Government, more money will be spent on capital in schools in this Parliament than in the first two Parliaments of the Labour Government. Let us keep this in perspective. We need to recognise that nobody wants children to be in a school that is not in a good condition, but equally there is no evidence to show that the building itself, however inspiring the children may initially say it is when it opens, leads to the educational transformation that is at the real heart of improving outcomes, particularly for the poorest.

I should like to touch on the education maintenance allowance, which many other Members have mentioned. In the case of the EMA, unlike BSF, there is material evidence to show that it has helped young people from certain backgrounds to stay in education. I hope that Ministers will take that evidence very seriously and ensure that whatever they put in place does not artificially stifle that opportunity for people.

On the move from the current position to autonomy, we need to consider issues such as school sports trusts. I hope that Ministers, while generally believing in giving autonomy to schools and passing it down, will be careful to ensure that transitional arrangements, and sometimes funding, are in place so that things of value are not unnecessarily lost before they grow again from the grass roots.

Most of all, what we must have for this country is aspiration—aspiration to raise standards overall, and aspiration in believing that we can do so much better. So far, the shadow Secretary of State has been far more of an expert on health than on education, but I hope that he can start to express that Blairite aspiration of looking upwards, improving and challenging all the time, rather than simply defending the status quo, which is indefensible as it stands.

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[Dan Rogerson]

rose—

[Mr Graham Stuart]

rose—

[Kevin Brennan]

I will give way to the Chairman of the Education Committee.

[Mr Stuart]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way in what is a witty and well-presented speech, although he is using paltry facts to great effect. The truth is that with funding for the NHS protected—unlike under Labour—along with funding for international aid, the threat to education was significant. People were talking about cuts of 10%, 20% and possibly higher. Therefore it must be seen as a good result that, in an extremely tough overall financial round, the education and schools budget, including the pupil premium, is being increased in real terms.

[Kevin Brennan]

The hon. Gentleman knows that it is not increasing in real terms per head over the next few years, but that is not the point. I would accept that if that were the Government’s explanation for what they are trying to do, but they are trying to con people into believing that the pupil premium is truly a premium, an additional sum of money. That is what they promised; that is what the Prime Minister promised, but it is not what is being delivered.

What else do the Lib Dems get out of this?