Schools White Paper

Kate Green Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. This has to finish by 5.15 pm, so please help each other by being short and sweet with questions as well as answers.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

It is good that the Secretary of State has clearly been listening to the concerns of the profession, of parents and of young people since he came into post, but I am afraid that his announcements today are underpowered because of the funding pressures that will continue in the system. Schools continue to face covid costs and they continue to face rising salary costs, which are not being fully funded by the Department. These include the increased starting salary for new teachers, which is still on the horizon and not yet delivered. Schools also face rising energy costs and all the other pressures that organisations are facing. In particular, the Secretary of State will know that there is particular funding pressure in relation to pupils with SEND. What is he doing to ensure that schools have the funds they need to rise to the ambitions he has set out today?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The hon. Lady is right to say that there are many pressures on schools at the moment. The funding we secured at the spending review was £7 billion, with much of it—£4 billion—frontloaded to this year and next year. Energy costs are rising—they are 1.4% of the schools budget. A big part of the budget is obviously wages. We are keeping an eye on what is happening to energy costs in schools. On SEND, we have put in an additional £1 billion, so the total budget now stands at £9.1 billion, plus an additional £2.6 billion to ensure that we deliver the specialist provision that we need in the system, because there has been a lack of confidence among parents as to whether their child will get the right provision. Today’s White Paper supports mainstream schools to all be great SEND schools as well.