Technical and Further Education Bill

John Pugh Excerpts

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Wednesday 19th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Gordon Marsden]

My hon. Friend makes a very important and valuable point, as he did earlier to the Minister, and we certainly need to think very hard about those things.

As I have said, the National Careers Service process has migrated substantially, which may not in itself be a bad thing. I genuinely want to know from the Minister what connectivity there is between the National Careers Service and the Careers & Enterprise Company if the coverage starts as early as age 13. I would really like to know what the connectivity is in that process.

The very disappointing fact is that, as the impact report says, researchers were

“unable to identify a positive impact of the National Careers Service on employment or benefit dependency outcomes”.

Arguably, those outcomes are its main purpose. This is another example of why it is essential for the Government to act on the careers strategy, and of why their failure so far to do so makes Lords amendments 2 and 6 so important. With the expansion of apprenticeships and the addition of technical education to the institute, it will be even more important for students and apprentices to have all the information that they need to make informed decisions.

Young people who get the best careers advice in college or schools are more likely to be able to seek out the better apprenticeships. That is why I warmly welcome Lords amendment 2, Lord Baker’s amendment, which had our support and cross-party support. It would ensure that schools have to provide access to advice about apprenticeships. Why does that matter? It matters because, as my hon. Friend has said, knowledge in general is power, and unbiased knowledge is very important indeed. Incidentally, that is also why my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) introduced a ten-minute rule Bill to require schools to give access to their premises to representatives of post-16 education institutions to enable them to provide pupils with advice and guidance.

All of that is why Lords amendment 6 is also important. I am encouraged by the fact that the new chief inspector, Amanda Spielman, to whom I have spoken recently, is sympathetic to Ofsted making a much stronger case for ensuring that apprenticeships rate more highly in the information provided in schools. Incidentally, the Lords have already pointed out that that will require Ofsted to have more resources; my noble Friend Lord Watson pointed that out on Report on 27 March. If we do not get integration between the Careers & Enterprise Company and the National Careers Service, what we ask Ofsted to do will not work. Just what is the Minister’s response to these arguments? Why are the National Careers Service and the Careers & Enterprise Company apparently working on different lines? If he does not want to accept Lords amendment 6, what guarantees can he give to this House or to noble Lords that the necessary work will be done?

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I want to speak very briefly on the Government motion to disagree with Lords amendment 6 and Government amendment (a) in lieu, as much as anything else to probe what amendment (a) will achieve. As a preface to that, let me give an impression of what the noble Lord Storey sought to achieve with Lords amendment 6. We have all acknowledged during the course of the debate so far that careers advice is incredibly variable and has been for some considerable time. Lord Storey tried to set in place a mechanism for monitoring careers advice so that we know precisely how good or how bad, and how valuable or useless, it actually is.

In Committee stage in the Lords, Lord Nash described careers advice as always having been “pretty poor”. There was, of course, an Ofsted report in 2013 that established that three quarters of schools were not providing effective advice or, as the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) pointed out, impartial advice. It said that the guidance given to schools was not sufficiently explicit, employers were not engaging in many cases and the National Careers Service was not effectively promoted. A key conclusion of the Ofsted report was that schools’ advice should be assessed when taking into account general school leadership, or sector leadership in the case of further education—Lords amendment 6 also applies to the FE sector.

I think that the Minister accepts all that, and I know that he has produced a variation on Lords amendment 6. I would like him to satisfy me and the House that it complies with what the Lords intended in their amendment.

[Robert Halfon]

I thank the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) and the shadow Minister for their speeches. I understand that the hon. Member for Southport is stepping down. He is an experienced Member of the House, and I send him every good wish for the future.

To answer the hon. Gentleman we are essentially accepting de facto Lords amendment 6, which was suggested by Lord Storey. We have just made it tighter for legal reasons and, in fact, stronger. Ofsted will now be required to comment on college careers offers in its reports. However, we accept the principle of Lords amendment 6.

I set out earlier the Government’s position that the majority of the Lords amendments serve to strengthen the measures in the Bill and ensure their success in practice. I urge hon. Members to accept all the amendments made in the Lords, with the exception of Lords amendment 1. As I explained earlier, that amendment is subject to financial privilege and I ask Members to reject it on that basis, while noting the work I have set out, which demonstrates our commitment to finding the most effective ways to address barriers and support the disadvantaged into apprenticeships.

The shadow Minister said, in essence, that we should put our money where our mouth is. It is worth remembering that we have 900,000 apprentices at the moment, which is the highest on record, and that 25% of apprentices come from the poorest fifth of areas. The Careers & Enterprise Company has more than 1,300 enterprise advisers going into schools, and they are set to target something like 250,000 students in 75% of the career coldspots in the country. The National Careers Service is there to give careers advice and CV advice, and to provide personal contact either face to face, over the telephone or on the internet. The bodies have different roles.

I ask Members to accept our amendment in lieu of Lords amendment 6, on which many noble Lords spoke. I spoke earlier of the positive activity at Derby College. It is by no means the only college taking active steps to provide high-quality careers advice to students. I have seen incredible work in my own college in Harlow and in Gateshead in the north-east of England. We want to ensure that all young people can access such support, and I ask Members to support that ambition by accepting the amendment in lieu.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Pugh Excerpts

Monday 20th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. This is a £250 million package that was recently announced, and it is part of a capital spending commitment by this Government to ensure that we have the right fabric of schools in our system. Again, that was possible only by our having a strong economy.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

Has the removal and treatment of asbestos been prioritised within that programme? Many buildings of the ‘60s and ‘70s are riddled with asbestos, and we do not know the exact extent yet.

[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Gentleman is right. In March 2015, we published a comprehensive review into how asbestos is managed in schools. In February, the Department for Education published revised guidance on how to manage asbestos in schools, and it is our aim, over time, to eliminate asbestos in schools as schools are replaced or refurbished. In the meantime, schools need to ensure that asbestos-containing materials are undamaged and not in locations where they are vulnerable to damage.

Budget Resolutions

John Pugh Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Lady raises a profound and important point. There are parts of the country where, for far too long, young people’s educational attainment has simply not been good enough. I know that the situation she highlights is part of the much broader challenge that her local community faces in seeking to raise educational attainment steadily. It is important that alongside the investment in technical education that we have set out in the Budget, we make sure through approaches such as opportunity areas that we zone in on the places that most need additional support so that we can shift outcomes there.

The Government’s focus on opportunity does not end when someone leaves full-time education. In a dynamic, modern economy we need to foster a culture of lifelong learning, in which all of us—adults from every walk of life—are passionate about continuing to upskill ourselves.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

Before the Secretary of State moves off the issue of the fabric of schools, may I say that although the money from the Chancellor for school repairs is welcome, there is a £6.7 billion backlog of repairs to bring schools up to satisfactory condition? What does she think that backlog will be by the end of this Parliament?

[Justine Greening]

The investment that we have brought forward in the Budget will enable us to go further and faster on that backlog, but as I said earlier, it is also important that we plan ahead. We need to make sure that the demographic bulge of people who have been in our primary schools and are moving through to our secondary schools have school places and classrooms to go to when they need them. That is why balanced investment was announced in the Budget, not just in refurbishing existing schools and school places, with a particular focus on those that need it the most, but in ensuring that we have the extra good school places that our country will need in the future.

I touched briefly on why lifelong learning and the investment in it in the Budget are so important. Lifelong learning needs to become the norm in our country, and I want to ensure that people have the tools to do it. The reality is that many of us will never study again after leaving school, yet we know that in the economy of the future, readapting to new skills and continuing to learn will be vital. That is why we are making available up to £40 million over the next two years to fund lifetime learning trials. That will help us to ensure that we know what works, where it is needed and how we can change our country so that we have a culture in which more adults seize opportunities to upskill and take control of their lives.

As I said earlier, we have the highest level of female employment on record, which is a fantastic achievement, and the gender pay gap is at a record low of 18.1%, but there is still a gap. The Government are implacable in our commitment to close that gap to zero within a generation, and we know that some women find it hard to return to work after taking time out to care for young children. Many feel that they come back to work at a lower level or have to expect less progression in their work and pay. That is not good enough, and our economy cannot afford to miss out on that talent. Some employers are already running schemes to help women return to work, and we want to learn from those businesses and work with them to support more women to be able to do so. We also want to apply the same lessons in the public sector, together with improving people’s ability to take up lifelong learning.

I want to see people coming back to work better skilled than when they left to take a career break, rather than somehow having to struggle to get their career back on track. That is why I have announced that my Department will work with business groups.

Children and Social Work Bill [Lords]

John Pugh Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Edward Timpson]

My understanding is that Wales took part in the consultation and, as I said a few moments ago, I have written to the Children’s Commissioner for Wales to update her on the progress we are making. Of course we want to work with local authorities to ensure that as many children as possible can benefit, through our combined efforts.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I welcome what the Minister is saying, but I am struggling to find anything in it that is inconsistent with new clause 14. Can he point it out to me?

[Edward Timpson]

The hon. Gentleman is going to have to be more specific about what his objection is. I would be happy to take it up with him at another time, but I am not in a position to answer a question that has not been formulated in a way that allows me to provide an answer.

I want to turn briefly to the question of sibling contact for looked-after children. I am sorry that the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) is not here today, and I am sure that the whole House will send her their best wishes. We both agree that allowing reasonable contact between looked-after children and their siblings is absolutely right, where that is in the best interests of the children involved. This is reflected in the current law. However, the hon. Lady has helpfully pointed out an anomaly in the current legislation whereby the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010 provide for sibling contact with a sibling who is also looked after but do not refer to contact with siblings who are not looked after. I will therefore ask my officials to start the work needed to amend the regulations to address that question, and I will happily keep the hon. Lady informed of progress.

Finally, I should like to mention the support provided to care leavers who have their own children removed from them. Hon. Members are right to emphasise how important it is to support young parents who have had a child taken into care. They need the right kind of intervention to help them to cope with this challenging situation, so that they can be effective parents to any children they might have in the future. Statutory guidance is already clear about the arrangements that must be followed to ensure that the needs of children in care and care leavers are assessed and that appropriate support is put in place. The statutory guidance includes the need for comprehensive assessment of a young person’s needs in relation to their emotional and mental health, including whether they need access to specialist health and therapeutic services. So, given the existing statutory guidance, I do not believe that it is necessary or appropriate to incorporate the proposed new clause into the Bill. I do, however, understand the importance of the issue, and I can confirm that I will ensure that the statutory guidance is strengthened to make clear the importance of providing appropriate support in the specific circumstances when a looked-after child or care leaver has a child of their own taken into care.

School Funding

John Pugh Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

This week, the Public Accounts Committee reviewed the National Audit Office report on the financial sustainability of school funding, and the most helpful thing I can do now is to give the Chamber some flavour of how that went. Present were officials from the DFE, including the permanent secretary, Jonathan Slater, but the session with them was preceded by a panel made up of headteachers and Russell Hobby of the National Association of Head Teachers. Understandably, they spoke of the current severe financial pressures, the effects of tight funding, and the strategies they have to deal with that, which will be familiar to those who have listened to the debate so far—things such as reducing the curriculum; increasing class sizes; phasing out support for special needs and mental health; cutting out extracurricular activities, professional development and school trips; and increasing teacher contact time.

Unsurprisingly, the officials from the Department did not altogether recognise that picture. Interestingly, though, Government Members should be aware that they did not dispute any of the financial facts. There was no disagreement whatever that schools have to save £3 billion in the current spending round, which represents an 8% cut by 2020, or that this is the toughest challenge since the 1990s, when the previous Conservative Government were in power. The Department simply did not dispute the financial facts that more schools are in debt and that debts are growing bigger; nor could it, because it had agreed the report with the NAO.

The Department’s argument was not about the financial facts themselves, but about the effects of those facts. It suggested that if every school procured efficiently, particularly on things such as heating and insurance, used its available balances and managed its payroll effectively, disaster could be averted. The Department stands ready, as does the Secretary of State, with the advice, tools, tutorials and data to help schools to do that. It thinks that disaster can be averted—that it is, in the words of the permanent secretary, “doable”.

My view is that there are good reasons for scepticism. The DFE exercise, such as it is, has largely been a desk exercise. The Department knows little about the individual circumstances of schools, and how could it? There are just too many for central Government to gauge and understand. It is a fact that not every school can actually reduce its payroll costs—not if it is endowed with experienced and established staff, and not if it needs to take up the slack caused by the reduction, or abolition, of the educational support grant. The latter is particularly true for small schools. Not every school can reduce its procurement costs—not if it is in an old, leaky building, has already reduced them, or is tied into long-term contracts. What is doable in theory is simply not doable in practice.

The most chilling passage in the NAO report is at paragraph 2.6. I do not have time to enlarge on it, but I advise Members to read it very carefully.

School Funding Formula and Northern Schools

John Pugh Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Colleagues, we move on to our next debate, which is also about an important matter: the school funding formula, which the Government have introduced and we are all very excited about.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the school funding formula and Northern schools.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter—it is a first for me. The circumstances of the debate are strange in so far as I originally put in for a one-hour or 90-minute debate, knowing that many parliamentary colleagues were exercised about this topic. I did not win the lottery for an Adjournment debate, but a half-hour slot became available and Mr Speaker offered it to me, so I thought I would go ahead and try to condense this important subject into half an hour. However, I do apologise, Mr Streeter, because you could have had a range of eloquent speakers addressing the subject but unfortunately you will have to listen simply to me droning on. I am sure this will be the first of many such debates for the Minister, because the national funding formula will be contentious in many places, not only in the north, and I dare say he will have an opportunity to rehearse some well-tried Department for Education lines in defence of it.

The Government set themselves a laudable task: to close the north-south gap in educational attainment. I am a little sceptical about the gap because “the north” is often seen from London as an undifferentiated mass. I was brought up on BBC weather forecasts in which the presenters went into great detail about the weather on the south coast and in London, and then they would glibly say, “but in the north it will be” and use that blanket label for the entire area anywhere north of Watford. The tendency is to see the north as a homogenous culture, possibly peopled by men in flat caps with whippets and living with constant drizzle. However, I looked further into what the Government meant by the educational gap—I had to address what the evidence showed—and, if we control for factors such as income and deprivation and exclude pockets of genuine excellence, we see that outcomes for northern secondary schools are inferior to those found in London and the south-east. Primary schools show less evidence of a northern problem.

I am not sure whether the difference we see would be so stark if we excluded those areas that have benefited from schemes such as the London challenge, which has been a successful concentration of money and resources. I met recently with Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner, whom the Government charged with testing some of the assumptions underlying the project. The principal one seems to be the belief that if we have an educational problem, it is capable of an educational fix. The commission has suggested that other things could be taken into account: for example, parents in the north could be a bit pushier.

In a report for the previous Chancellor, Sir Nick Weller, who works for an academy chain, suggested unsurprisingly that the north could do better with more academy chains—and, incidentally, better teaching. Proponents of grammar schools have not been slow to suggest that what we need in the north is more grammar schools. The Minister will be aware of the study done by ResPublica in Knowsley, which suggested that grammar schools might be a panacea. However, to my certain knowledge, Knowsley has had grammar schools since 1544—I was once a pupil at Prescot grammar school.

The harsh reality is that, in order to change aspiration in the north, we need to do more than change school structures, because the reality that dawns on adolescents in the north is that opportunities are more limited compared with those they might face in the south, regardless of the education they receive. That is why so many young people gravitate to the south, particularly after their degrees; why there are more start-ups in the south; why the south is a magnet; and why the south has critical mass. Young people’s aspirations are simply less when there is less around them to aspire to—it is a chicken and egg dilemma. If we factor in limited parental optimism based on a degree of experience in the north and the limited opportunities available to those who are industrious but not especially talented, is it surprising that the optimism of childhood dwindles as schooling progresses and aspiration and attainment falls? I suggest that correcting that is beyond the scope of the school system alone; it involves regeneration of the whole community to which the child belongs.

That said, we all recognise that education plays a key part in regeneration. It is worth funding, and it is worth funding properly. I am far from believing that good funding is a sufficient condition of educational progress. Were that so, many schemes in the past would have worked far better than they have done. If we think about the money spent over the years in places such as Knowsley to provoke better educational outcomes, we would expect far superior outcomes to those we got. I do, though, note that, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research, £900 less is spent per primary school pupil in the north and at secondary schools that figure goes up to £1,300. That could go part of the way to explaining the significant difference in outcome. However, it is probably fairer to regard good funding as a necessary rather than a sufficient condition. In that respect, the Government’s revision of the school funding formula leaves a little to be desired. Indeed, its effects in some places will probably be catastrophic.

I recognise that no one will oppose a national school formula in principle because it sounds fair on paper, given that we have the effective nationalisation of school funding anyway through the dedicated schools grant. The current situation looks unfair and anomalous partly because of national decisions, but also because of the history of local decisions. We must look at that and see where that has led us.

When local education authorities were important—I do not suggest that they are not important at the moment—some bravely took decisions to sustain or increase budgets while others, less concerned about education, cut school funding to appease ratepayers and council tax payers. A feature of the new system is that that degree of discretion has simply gone, and councils charged with regeneration have lost all real leverage over the educational system. That is regretted by councils now, and clearly it will be also be regretted later on by city region cabinets and by Mayors as they get their hands on the levers of power, because they will want to prompt regeneration but they will lack some of the active levers that would enable them to do that.

I was a council leader in Sefton borough, and during tough years in the 1990s and so on we put money into school funding, sometimes at the cost of other services, because we regarded that as a high priority, and schools were therefore well funded—in fact, they were so well funded that sometimes the council dealt with its financial problems by borrowing from the schools’ balances. However, that was something we could do locally; it was a way in which we could emphasise our commitment to education in the area.

However a new formula is dealt with, it will obviously not please everyone. There will be winners and losers; but the background to the present situation is somewhat unpromising. The cost pressures on schools, such as national insurance, pension increases and school-based inflation, significantly outweigh the projected funding settlement for the sector. The Minister knows—and I think that we will all get to know—that the National Audit Office has vividly set that out. Its report will be investigated in greater detail at a hearing of the Public Accounts Committee, probably next week. To give the House a flavour of it, the NAO concludes that despite modest real-terms increases, the cost pressures on schools and increases in pupil numbers will result in a real-terms reduction of something like 8%. That is the NAO’s figure, not mine or that of a think tank or political party.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for bringing this important debate to the Chamber. It is not just the NAO’s figure. I have had letters from headteachers of schools in my constituency who say they appear to be facing an 8% cut in real terms, and that that will lead to schools either going into deficit or having to make devastating cuts, having already made many efficiency savings.

[John Pugh]

Yes; they are mandated to make further efficiency savings.

Interestingly, on page 14 of the document, the NAO states that schools

“have not experienced this level of reduction in spending power since the mid 1990s.”

It may be pure coincidence, Mr Streeter, that there was a Conservative majority Government in the mid-1990s, but I draw your attention to that. Impacts will be worse on secondary schools; the NAO said that the number spending above income has increased from 33% to 59%. Not only has the number gone up but the size of the deficits that are being handled has gone up. If we add to that the disappearance of the education services grant, the fact that—as the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) mentioned—schools are expected to find £3 billion of efficiency savings, and the cost of implementing endless Government initiatives, we have what most of us would describe as a perfect storm, and an absence of financial sustainability.

What is most interesting in the NAO report is what schools appear to be doing to respond to the looming crisis that they can see all too clearly, as the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton suggested. According to the NAO, they are, generally, increasing class sizes, adjusting teacher contact time, reducing supply cover, replacing experienced staff with less qualified temporary staff, and hiring more bureaucrats to manage the finances as heads become not school leaders but accountants. An odd feature of the situation is that schools are spending less in percentage terms on teaching staff than they were. They are shoring up balances to cope with anticipated deficits and potential redundancies. If they are really unlucky, they must also deal with increasing PFI payments, which are the endowment of a Labour Government.

None of that is conducive, most of us would agree, to educational progress. Some areas of the north are already in fairly dire straits. Cumbria is one example. The NAO report was complete before the Government’s new national funding formula went out to consultation, but it has already altered people’s take on the consequences of the new national formula. The realisation is dawning that the formula is not universally good news and that it will do little to offset a particularly bleak outlook.

We must accept that the redistribution of diminishing resources will always have a predictable outcome. In the north the consequences are severe—certainly in the mid to long term. After inner London, the north-west of England benefits least from the general distribution away from London. However, within that regional profile there are significant losers—for no obviously good reason. The worst affected include Manchester, Kirklees, Wigan, Cheshire, Liverpool and Sefton, whether or not we make allowances for floors and ceilings or the 1.5%. Those areas are key components of the northern powerhouse.

When we drill down to the consequences for particular schools, the position is even more frightening. Christ the King school in Sefton in my constituency—the school that my children went to—is scheduled to lose £426,000, or £441 per pupil. Greenbank high school is scheduled to lose £527,000, or £558 per pupil. Down the road in Sefton Central, Formby high school and Range high school are scheduled to lose similar amounts.

I find it ironic that the situation I am now lamenting as an MP is one that I sought assiduously to forfend and prevent as a council leader. Had we in Sefton not, on a cross-party basis, sought to protect the education budget over many years and given schools both enormous financial independence and active support, the shock and the comedown of the national formula would not have been so severe. Paradoxically, a great strength of Sefton has been its tight network of primary schools. A perverse consequence of that is that, under the new formula, handing children on to secondary schools with good prior attainment de facto damages the budgetary position of the secondary schools, and their ability to sustain progress. That is the particular way in which the formula is rejigged. I think the Minister will understand the point I am endeavouring to make.

I hope that the Minister is taking account of what I am saying. I want to put it in a constructive fashion and put my sentiments across in a helpful rather than a wholly negative way. However, the Department for Education is not famous for its listening skills. I speak to many people to whom the Minister and the Department also speak, and I do not hear a constant refrain about the Department being particularly good in that area. At times it has shown an active contempt for those who have brought it messages it did not want to hear, but it is not malicious—I give it credit for that. It wants to help. It offers financial health checks and warnings from school commissioners. It even makes videos to be helpful, because it is genuinely ambitious for schools and genuinely keen on across-the-board improvements in the north.

However, I can see from my analysis no obvious reason why schooling in the north would change for the better in the present circumstances. Many of the ingredients for improvement that were seen in the London challenge are missing. The London challenge had sufficient predictable funding, although unfortunately that will go under the new formula, I think, and there will be rather less funding. Another thing it had going for it was collaboration, but the school system is now more fragmented than ever, with schools that are financially and academically weaker fearing takeover. The London challenge had clear, effective leadership, but heads are now stressing over finances and personnel management rather than the main issue, and local authorities are withering away.

The demise of the local authority has acute effects. Its statutory functions are barely affordable at the moment, given the pressure on council budgets, but following the phasing out of the ESG, its other strategic functions will be dependent on funding from schools that cannot afford to meet their own costs, let alone to pay back and hire local authority services. Ironically, back-office services, which are growing in individual schools, are one area in which schools can get good money from a local authority, from collaboration through the sharing of services. We need only look at the increased problem that primary academies are having with meeting back-office costs to realise that.

I have not come here simply to present the Minister with problems to which there are no obvious solutions. The solution is to recognise that we have a problem and to engage in a debate with headteachers, who have no particular political axe to grind but are now looking at a worrying landscape. That headteachers in the north are looking at that worrying landscape should give us no confidence that any attempt, by commissioners or whomever, to raise educational standards in the north and to deal with long-standing problems will be properly and sustainably addressed. With that plea and that degree of pessimism, I will sit down.

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship as always, Mr Streeter. I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) on securing this important debate. He is right—this is one of a number of debates we will undoubtedly have as we consider the second stage of the consultation on our national funding formula. We will debate funding in Devon tomorrow, and I am looking forward to that debate as I much as I have looked forward to this one. This is part of a process of consultation on the second phase, in the same way as we consulted on the first.

The Government are committed to improving educational outcomes in the north, and reforming the funding system is essential to underpinning that ambition. Although I represent a southern constituency, I spent many years of my childhood living in Leeds and Wakefield in the 1970s, and I do not recognise some of the hon. Gentleman’s comments on the opportunities available for people in the north. The hon. Gentleman spoke of cost pressures on schools in general, and in the north in particular. Through our careful management of the economy, we have been able to protect the core schools budget in real terms, which means that schools are receiving more funding than ever before for children’s education—more than £40 billion.

We of course recognise the cost pressures facing schools, and we will therefore continue to provide advice and support to help schools use their funding in cost-effective ways and improve the way in which they buy goods and services, so that they get the best possible value for their pupils. We have published a wide range of tools and support on gov.uk, including support for schools to review their level of efficiency, to investigate expenditure levels of similar schools and to take action to improve efficiency in practice. We are also launching a schools buying strategy that will support schools to save more than £1 billion a year by 2019-20 on non-staff expenditure. It will help all schools to improve how they buy goods and services, allowing them to invest more in high-quality education for their pupils.

As well as helping schools make the best use of their resources, we urgently need to reform the unfair system that currently distributes funding across the country. The Government are committed to creating a country that works for everyone no matter where they live, whether in the north or south, in a city or the countryside. Whatever their background, ability or need, children should have access to an excellent education. We want all children to reach their full potential and to succeed in adult life. We know that the current schools and high needs funding system does not support that aspiration—it is unfair, untransparent and out of date. Similar schools and local areas receive different levels of funding with little or no justification.

For example, secondary schools in Darlington receive an additional £40 for each pupil with low prior attainment—pupils who did not reach the expected standard at primary school—but secondary schools in Richmond upon Thames receive £3,229 for such pupils, which is a difference of more than £3,000. We do not only see such differences by comparing the two ends of the country; sometimes it can be a matter of a few miles down the road. For example, a 13-year-old pupil from a deprived background for whom English is an additional language would attract £5,150 to their school if they lived in Redcar and Cleveland; next door in Stockton-on-Tees, that same pupil would attract £8,242 to their school, which is an addition of more than £3,000.

The huge differences in funding that similar areas receive to educate similar pupils are clearly not sustainable. Underfunded schools do not have access to the same opportunities to do the best for their children. It is harder for them to attract the best teachers and to afford the right support, which is why introducing fair funding was a key manifesto commitment for the Government. We need to introduce fair funding so that the same child with the same needs will attract the same funding, regardless of where they happen to live. That is the only way that parents can be sure that there is level playing field.

We launched the first stage of the consultation on reforming the schools and high needs funding systems in March 2016. That consultation set out our principles of reform and our proposals for the design of the schools and high needs funding system. I am grateful to the more than 6,000 teachers, headteachers, governors, local authority representatives and others who took the time to respond to that consultation, and I am pleased that our proposals received wide support.

In the light of that, we are now consulting on the detailed proposals for the design of the schools and high needs funding formula. We have also published illustrative allocations data, so that every school and local authority can see the impact of the proposals. The second stage of the consultation will run until 22 March, and we are keen to hear from as many schools, governors, local authorities and parents as possible. I welcome this debate as a valuable addition to that consultation.

Our proposed formula would result in more than 10,000 schools throughout the country—54% of all schools— gaining funding, with a quarter of all schools gaining more than 5.5%. Those that are due to see gains will see them quickly, with increases of up to 3% in per-pupil funding in 2018-19, and up to a further 2.5% in 2019. Our formula will target money towards pupils who face entrenched barriers to their success, particularly those who are deprived and those who live in areas of deprivation but who are not necessarily eligible for free school meals—those whose families are just about managing. We are putting more money towards supporting pupils who have fallen behind their peers, in both primary and secondary school, to ensure that they get the support that they need to catch up.

Our proposed national funding formula will see gains for schools right across the north. In the north-east, schools will see an average 1% increase, while schools in Yorkshire and the Humber will see a 1.5% average increase. I acknowledge that the outcome will be more mixed in the north-west, but schools there will also be small gainers on average under our proposals. I recognise that our proposals would result in budget reductions for schools in the constituency of the hon. Member for Southport, but I nevertheless believe that our proposed formula strikes the correct balance between the core schools budget, which every pupil attracts, and the extra funding needed to target those with additional needs.

[John Pugh]

I probably made my point quite imperfectly. Can the Minister assure me that if a secondary school—those are the worst-affected schools in this respect—is in an area in which primary schools have made good progress, and the children who are handed on to them are therefore attaining the expected level and do not enter the secondary school with poor prior attainment, that secondary school will not lose out simply because it has good feeder schools? That scenario would discourage the kind of collaboration between secondary schools and feeder primary schools that the Minister wants to see, because it would almost be in the vested interest of the secondary schools to have incompetent feeder primary schools—from a financial point of view, if not an academic one.

[Mr Gibb]

I do not accept that argument. It is important to ensure that schools—primary or secondary—are well funded for pupils who start school academically behind their peers. I do not believe that any professional I have ever met would deliberately not collaborate with another school to improve pupils’ attainment simply to attract an element of the funding formula. Of course, the biggest element of it depends on deprivation, whether measured by receipt of free school meals or by children in one of the lower IDACI—income deprivation affecting children index—bands. That is important to ensure that children from those areas are properly supported.

The hon. Gentleman managed to mention Manchester, Kirklees, Liverpool and Sefton. However, he forgot to mention areas that will receive an increase in funding under the proposed funding formula, including 1.7% in Durham and Gateshead; more than 2% in Newcastle; nearly 3% in south Tyneside; nearly 2% in Sunderland; 3.4% in Blackpool; 4.3% in Bury; 4.9% in Knowsley; and 4.3% in Leeds. Schools in northern urban areas will continue to be highly funded; even areas that will see a small reduction under the proposed national funding formula will still be some of the highest-funded in the country, including Manchester and Liverpool, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned. That is right, as those areas have higher levels of socioeconomic deprivation and children with additional needs. Matching funding to need will see schools in those areas funded higher than those elsewhere in the country. A secondary school pupil with significant additional needs could attract more than £10,000 to their school through the proposed national funding formula and the pupil premium.

While introducing these significant reforms to the funding system, we are also delivering stability. We have listened to those who have highlighted the risks of major budget changes.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

Oral Answers to Questions

John Pugh Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

Overall, f40 authorities will see significant gains through the national funding formula—some £210 million in total. I acknowledge that in Trafford there is a loss of 0.4%, but the current local formula there underfunds primary schools compared with secondary schools. Trafford gives £4,212 for each key stage 3 pupil but the figure for primaries is only £2,642. Under the proposed NFF, Trafford’s secondary schools will lose but its primaries will gain.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

The Education Policy Institute found that academy trusts are no better at raising standards than local authorities, so why does Nick Weller’s report say that expanding multi-academy trusts is

“key to driving up standards in the North”?

Is it because he is very well paid by a multi-academy trust, or is there perchance any evidence for what he suggests?

[Mr Gibb]

It is because he is experienced in running a very successful MAT. We know that sponsored academies increase standards very rapidly, certainly more swiftly than the predecessor school.

National Funding Formula: Schools/High Needs

John Pugh Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

After the statement, we will publish a lot of detail in relation to individual schools. We will take the draft final formula and apply it to individual schools’ budgets, so all Members will be able to look at all the schools in their constituency and see, notionally and illustratively, how the formula will operate. Of course, when the funding formula comes in, it will apply against the up-to-date pupil numbers and pupil data, but we want to be very clear with the House about how it will work on the ground. I encourage all Members to look at the data for their own communities. They show that although no school will get exactly the same under the new formula as it has had in the past, it will be much fairer.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

Regardless of this statement, which is by no means all bad, it is indisputable that school overheads are going up and that more and more secondary schools will go into debt. Why are we continuing to squander money on pointless pet projects and restructuring? Surely that is a huge diversion now.

[Justine Greening]

I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. We have seen year-on-year improvements in our education system. As one of my predecessors said on the “Today” programme earlier this week, it is important that we continue the reforms we have already got under way. That is precisely what we will be doing.

Education and Social Mobility

John Pugh Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I do not want to repeat the many excellent points that Members have made. If you will excuse me, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will indulge in a moment of pedantry.

The subject of the debate is “social mobility”, and that is not a one-way ticket; one can go up or down. There was a lot of social mobility during the great depression, most of it downwards, and the happiest societies are not necessarily those with the greatest levels of social mobility.

I have noticed that many people who bang on about social mobility are rather quiet on the subject of social inequality. The assumption must be that any level of social inequality is acceptable as long as there is some social mobility. I have a problem with that assumption, even if it is very comforting for those who have wealth and privilege to hang on to. It is easier to call for the wider distribution of opportunity than the wider distribution of wealth, even when there is evidence that societies without vast differences in wealth are happier. People who have read “The Spirit Level” by Richard Wilkinson will be mindful of that point.

The vast differences in wealth between individuals in modern society are growing, as we see if we examine the wage ratios between those at the top and bottom of most businesses and compare them with what they were in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. It is hard to believe that that is due to super talent. Regardless of this debate, we should all worry if hard work cannot result in a decent standard of living for the less talented in an affluent society—people are struggling in the gig economy, with no security and poor housing prospects, and some are living hand to mouth—even if there is some prospect of social mobility.

Education, however good, cannot make us all talented and cannot give us all the same life chances. I am sure the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) agrees with that. Sometimes, education is not sufficient even to improve children’s life chances. Often we need cultural changes that go beyond the child—changes in the community, parents and society. Housing, economic growth, low crime rates and local empowerment are all key determinants of mobility and social aspiration in any area. Education by itself is rarely sufficient.

That is probably why, despite the many schemes in places such as Knowsley and the many millions that are spent on education there—I think that one scheme cost £157 million—we have failed to produce improvement across the board. Yes, Knowsley is at the bottom of the league for educational achievement, but it is also second bottom for deprivation. There is a connection somewhere.

We have heard in this debate that the magic ingredient we need for Knowsley is a grammar school. Middle-class tiger parents will not cry about working-class kids, as is the case in other areas. I have heard it said that Knowsley has never had a grammar school, but that is false. It did pioneer comprehensive education, but I had the privilege of going to a grammar school in Knowsley—Prescot Grammar School. The grammar school recipe has been tried, but it did not move the dial notably.

Grammar and Faith Schools

John Pugh Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) on providing the stimulus for the debate. The House will possibly be pleased to learn that I have not a great deal to add to her forensic introductory analysis, but let me begin with some obvious admissions. There are excellent grammar schools, and no doubt we could all name some. Grammar schools, like all good schools, do a fair amount for social mobility, and it is probably not wise to dismantle a successfully functioning grammar school.

None of that, however, amounts to a defence of the grammar school system—a system that undeniably separates children at the age of 11 according to simple exam performance, which is taken as a proxy for their innate ability and potential. It is a very poor proxy, based on very poor and dated research conducted back in the 1950s. It is no sort of proxy for innate ability or potential, which is often discovered much later in a child’s career. It is also—as we heard from the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) a few moments ago—a slightly arbitrary procedure, because whether a child passes or fails depends on whether there are grammar school places in the area and whether there are sufficient places. I passed my 11-plus, but when I arrived at my grammar school, I was placed firmly in the D stream. I wonder what would have happened had there only been a three-form entry. The House would probably not be burdened with my remarks here and now, and indeed my whole future might have been quite different.

It is not socially desirable to separate children into passes and failures at the age of 11. The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) has just described emotively how bad it can be: after all, those children will have to mix with each other at some point later in life. However, it is not educationally sensible either.

My first job after I left university with a philosophy degree was teaching English at a secondary modern school. It was a good secondary modern school: it had streaming and uniforms, and much of the paraphernalia that good schools are supposed to have. After a year, it amalgamated with Bootle Grammar School—Bootle being a very deprived area—and became a comprehensive. I then became the form teacher of a mixed class, half ex-grammar school boys and half secondary modern school pupils. Six months on, it was impossible to tell who had started in the secondary modern and who had started in the grammar school, in terms of attainment, ability and attitude, and in many other respects. A year earlier, however, their destiny, their curriculum, their status, their feelings about themselves, their aspirations, their whole future—and how they were regarded—would have been markedly different.

In those days, most secondary modern school pupils in Bootle left without taking any public exams, and without aspirations; but at that stage—the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) made this point—they had jobs to go to. They could work on the docks; they could work as labourers. There were car factories around. Unskilled work was available in abundance.

I subsequently went to teach at a Catholic high school, also in Bootle. It was a former grammar school which had amalgamated with a secondary modern, St Joan of Arc, and no single pupil in its entire history had ever taken a public exam apart from the Bootle school leaving certificate, which has limited cachet nowadays. When pupils left, most of them got jobs on the docks. We know that jobs of that sort have gone, and gone for good, but there are still too many white working-class kids, boys and girls, with low aspirations and low attainment, who are likely to fail any 11-plus that is put in their way as an obstacle.

That is the problem, and the Minister knows it is the problem. It is a big economic problem for our country, and it is a big problem of ours that has been identified internationally. It is what is known as the tail. It is a huge problem, and we have had enormous difficulty in addressing it. I should like the Minister to tell me how grammar schools help to deal with it. How does plucking the brightest children out of comprehensives help? How can grammar schools solve the problem of the tail?

We have never really had a problem with making clever kids cleverer; our problem is with raising the average and closing the gap. The grammar school/secondary modern model only really worked in a world in which a basic education gave a job for life. That is no longer the case, and as far as I can see, education policy can no longer be based on nostalgia. It must be based firmly on evidence, and there is no evidence in favour of the Government’s current proposals.