School Funding (London)

Debate between Helen Hayes and Nick Gibb

Wednesday 29th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Helen Hayes]

I agree with my right hon. Friend entirely. The level of pressure our schools are being asked to bear would be unacceptable in any circumstances, but in order to understand exactly how damaging the proposals are, and why parents in my constituency and across London feel so strongly about them, the Government must understand the journey that London schools have travelled in the 14 years since the Labour Government introduced the London challenge programme of improvement for London schools in 2003.

I moved to London in 1996. At that time, parents in the same situation as I am in now, with their oldest child approaching secondary school age, were often trying to do one of three things: move close to a high-performing state or church school; move out of London to a part of the country where schools were better; or educate their children privately. Children whose parents were unable to make any of those choices often attended local schools, which despite the best efforts of their teachers substantially failed generations of children. In my constituency at that time, we had William Penn boys’ school and Kingsdale school, both of which were failing schools that became notorious. William Penn subsequently closed and successfully re-opened as the co-educational Charter School, and Kingsdale was completely remodelled under a change of leadership. Those are now outstanding and good schools respectively.

I have spoken with many parents in my constituency who attended failing schools as children. They remember the crumbling buildings, leaky roofs, shortages of books and materials, very large class sizes and poor discipline. They tell me that any success in their educational outcomes was due to the hard work that they and their teachers put in and happened despite, not because of, the funding and policy environment in which the schools were operating.

The situation could not be more different across London now: 94% of London schools have been judged to be good or outstanding by Ofsted. While London schools were the worst in the country in the 1980s and 1990s, they are now the best. That transformation was achieved through a combination of political leadership, appropriate resourcing, stringent accountability and—most importantly—the hard work of teachers, governors, support staff and parents. I think I speak for all London MPs from across the House when I say that we are deeply proud of our schools and everything they deliver for London children.

Our schools in London deliver for every child. They are not reliant on selection, and as a consequence London children also benefit from being educated in a diverse environment, which helps to build understanding and community cohesion. My children are receiving an excellent education alongside children from every possible walk of life, and their lives are enriched as a consequence. It is that approach, not grammar schools, that delivers the social mobility the Government say they want to see.

London schools are the best in the country, despite having the most complexity among their intake. They have the highest levels of students with English as an additional language, special educational needs and children from deprived households, and they have very high levels of churn, in part due to the large numbers of families now living in the private rented sector, who often have to move when short-term tenancies come to an end.

London schools are able to deliver in that context when they have the teaching and support staff to provide the help and support that every child needs, so that those who need extra help in the classroom can receive it, those who need to be stretched more to fulfil their potential can thrive, and a rich, imaginative curriculum can be offered to all students. The headteachers in my constituency increasingly talk about the new challenges their students face. Chief among them are mental health issues, which are growing in part as a consequence of the pressures children face on social media. They feel the need for additional support in school that students can access, but they are already unable to afford that.

I wrote to every headteacher in my constituency to ask about the impact that they anticipate the national funding formula will have on their school. I want to share just two examples of their feedback today. A primary head wrote to me and said,

“in order to balance the budget this year we had to lose six members of staff. Prior to this academic year we employed one Teaching Assistant per class. This year we have a Teaching Assistant per year group. I can see a time when schools will not be able to afford Teaching Assistants at all. Our building is shabby because we cannot spare the funds to redecorate and carry out minor repairs. Cuts in funding will mean that Headteachers will become more and more reluctant to accept pupils that put a strain on the budget.”

[The Minister for School Standards (Mr Nick Gibb)]

I am listening carefully to the hon. Lady and, as I did at the meeting with her and her colleagues, I have paid careful attention to what she is arguing. Is she interested in knowing that in Lambeth, under the new national funding formula, the funding per pupil is £6,199 and in Southwark it is £6,271, whereas in Waltham Forest it is £5,129 and in Surrey it is £4,329? It is that discrepancy that the national funding formula tries to go some way to dealing with.

[Helen Hayes]

I thank the Minister for his intervention. If he bears with me a little longer, he will hear that I am not arguing that schools elsewhere in the country—or indeed in outer London—should lose out as a consequence of the funding formula; what I am interested in is a funding formula that is fair for all schools.

A secondary headteacher wrote to me and said:

“Effectively our budgeting will be reduced by £500,000 in real terms in the next three years...it will make it very difficult for us to continue to provide a high quality education for our students, and will undoubtedly affect our ability to support student achievement and wellbeing. It will also have a negative impact on the workload of our staff who already work incredibly hard day in day out to support our students.”

Those are experienced headteachers, looking at a spreadsheet in the cold light of day and working out the choices they will have to make to accommodate the Government’s funding cuts.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Hayes]

My argument is about the cumulative impact of unfunded cost pressures in recent years, and some still to come because of the apprenticeship levy, in addition to the impact that the new funding formula will have.

Seventy per cent. of schools’ budgets are spent on staff, so it will be teaching assistants, speech and language therapists, learning mentors, family support workers, school trips, sports clubs, music specialists and teachers that will have to be cut. Heads across my constituency say that the formula does not work. London schools also face a recruitment crisis, fuelled by the high cost of housing and childcare in the capital, as well as the Government’s failure to meet teacher training targets. More than 50% of London heads are over the age of 50, and the current budgetary pressures, combined with the new inspection regime and changes in the curriculum, are making it harder and harder to recruit. Further reductions in funding will only exacerbate the situation, making it harder for schools to retain experienced teachers and creating a level of pressure in the profession that will cause many hard-working teachers to look elsewhere.

The Government’s stated aim in revising the schools funding formula is fairness. I agree with that aim. There are problems with the current formula in some parts of the country, because of the embedding of resourcing decisions made by local authorities many years ago and their use as the basis for calculating future increases. However, there is nothing fair about a proposal under which funding will be cut from high-performing schools in deprived areas. A fair approach would take the best-performing areas in the country and apply the lessons from those schools everywhere. It would look objectively at the level of funding required to deliver in the best-performing schools, particularly in areas of high deprivation, and use that as the basis for a formula to be applied across the whole country.

London schools should be the blueprint for education across the whole UK, but school leaders in London are absolutely clear that quality will inevitably suffer as a consequence of the funding changes that the Government are implementing. It is simply irresponsible for the Government to put the quality of education in London at risk. Children are growing up in a time of great global change and uncertainty. We feel that today perhaps more than ever, as article 50 is triggered. They need to be equipped with the knowledge, skills and confidence to navigate and compete in a post-Brexit economy. Our schools are essential to that, and to ensuring that children make the maximum possible contribution to the economy and public services in the future.

I ask the Minister this morning to think again and, as he reviews the 20,000 consultation responses that have been submitted, to consider the impact that the changes will have on London schools. I have two specific asks. When I met the Minister last week, it was not clear from what he said that he had recently visited high-performing London schools, so I invite him to visit a primary school and secondary school in my constituency to see at first hand the great work that our local schools do and to understand the current financial pressures that they face.

[Mr Gibb]

I visit high-performing London schools all the time. Most recently I have visited Michaela Community School in Wembley and St Michael’s Church of England School just south of the river in Battersea.

[Helen Hayes]

I thank the Minister; I would dearly love to welcome him to high-performing schools in my constituency, so that he can hear at first hand about the pressures that headteachers are talking about.

Secondly, I ask the Minister to go back to the Treasury and to negotiate again. Spending on schools is an investment that the Government make in the future of our economy. It would take just 1% of the education budget to ensure that no school loses out through the introduction of the national funding formula. I ask him please to think again and not to put the success of London schools and their ability to deliver for future generations of London children at risk.

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[Mr Gibb]

Thank you, Mr Hanson; I want to respond to all the points that were made in the debate.

We launched the first stage of our consultation on reforming the schools and high needs funding systems in March last year. We set out the principles for reform and proposals for the overall design of the funding system. More than 6,000 people responded to that first stage of our consultation, with wide support for those proposals. I acknowledge the support that the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) has given to the principles of this formula.

We have just concluded a 14-week second stage consultation, covering the detailed proposals for the design of both the schools formula and the high needs formula. Our proposals will target money towards pupils who face the greatest barriers to a successful education. In particular, our proposals will boost the support for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, and for those who live in areas of deprivation but who are not eligible for free school meals—those ordinary working families who are too often overlooked. We are also putting more money towards supporting those pupils in both primary and secondary schools who have fallen behind in their education to ensure that they have the support they need to catch up.

Overall, 10,740 schools would gain funding under our proposals, and the formula will allow those schools to see those gains quickly, with increases of up to 3% per pupil in 2018-19 and of 2.5% in 2019-20. Seventy-two local authority areas will quickly see an increase in their high needs funding, and no local authority will see a fall in its funding.

As well as providing those increases, we have listened to those who highlighted in our first stage consultation the risks of major budget changes for schools. That is why we have proposed to include significant protections in both formulae. No school would face a reduction of more than 1.5% per year or of 3% overall per pupil and, as I have said, no local authority will lose funding for high needs. The proposals will limit the otherwise quite large reductions that some schools, including many in London, would see as the funding system is brought up to date.

The real-terms protection of the core schools budget underpins these proposals. As a result, we are able to allocate some £200 million to schools in both 2018-19 and 2019-20, over and above flat cash per pupil funding. That will combine significant protection for those facing reductions with more rapid increases for those set to gain under the fairer funding formula. High needs funding will see an equivalent real-terms protection.

London will remain the highest-funded part of the country under our proposals. Schools in inner London will attract 30% more funding per pupil than the national average, which is right. Despite the city’s increasing affluence, London schools still have the highest proportion of children from a deprived background and the highest labour market costs, as has been acknowledged in the debate.

We are using a broad definition of disadvantage to target additional funding to schools, comprising of pupil and area level deprivation data, prior attainment data and data on English as an additional language. No individual measure is enough on its own. Each factor reflects different aspects of the challenges that schools face, and they work in combination to target funding. Where a child qualifies for more than one of those factors, the school receives funding for each qualifying factor. For example, if a child comes from a more disadvantaged household and they live in an area of socioeconomic deprivation, their school will attract funding through the free school meals factor and the area-level deprivation factor—the income deprivation affecting children index.

The additional needs factors in the formula are proxies for the level of need in the school. We are not suggesting that the funding attracted by an individual pupil must all be spent on that pupil, but that schools with high numbers of pupils with additional needs are more likely to need additional resources. Using the proxy factors helps us target funding on schools that are more likely to face the most acute challenges. I will give way to the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), who introduced the debate, if she wants to come in on that point. If not, I will press on.

[Helen Hayes]

I will come in at the end.

[Mr Gibb]

Very good. In addition to the formula, schools will continue to receive additional funding through the pupil premium to help them improve the attainment of the most disadvantaged pupils. We have also included a mobility factor in our formula to recognise the additional costs faced by schools, many of which are in London, where a high proportion of pupils arrive at different points through the year. We were influenced by the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) in making that change. London schools will receive additional funding to reflect the higher cost base they face from being in London, which is particularly important given that so much of schools’ spending goes on staffing costs. The higher funding for London schools will support them to continue their success in recent years, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

I understand the reactions of those Members who are disappointed by our formula’s impact on their constituencies. The formula is not simply designed to direct more money to historically lower-funded areas or areas with the highest levels of deprivation. It is designed to ensure that funding is properly matched to need using up-to-date data, so that children who face entrenched barriers to their education receive the support they need. That includes pupils who do not necessarily benefit from the pupil premium but whose families may be only just about managing.