Department for Education

Debate between Lord Beamish and Nick Gibb

Monday 1st July 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), the Chair of the Education Committee, for the way that he opened this debate on education estimates, for his kind comments about my work on literacy, and for his praise for my right hon. Friend the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills. He is right to emphasise, as he so often does, the importance of education as preparation for the world of work.

To address one or two points raised by the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane), he should know that there are 40,000 more teaching assistants today than there were in 2010 and there are 10,000 more teachers. He mentioned Cheltenham; there is no more assiduous champion for school funding and schools in Cheltenham than my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk). That is one reason why £49.9 million has been spent on schools in Cheltenham in this financial year, which is a 5.3% increase on 2017-18.

There were good speeches from the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and the hon. Members for Crewe and Nantwich (Laura Smith), for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) and for High Peak (Ruth George). My hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) demonstrated her passion for education with her whistle-stop tour of schools in her constituency, including Cotmanhay Junior School, which I enjoyed visiting with her recently—I feel so sorry for the headteacher who had the appalling double whammy of having the Schools Minister and an Ofsted inspector there on the same day. My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) was equally passionate about the schools in his constituency, not just because his wife is a high-level teaching assistant.

The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) raised the important issue of mental health, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham. Mental health is a priority for this Government, who are working closely with Universities UK on embedding the #stepchange programme, which calls on higher education to adopt mental health as a strategic priority. The university mental health charter, announced in June last year, is backed by the Government and led by the sector, and it will drive up standards in promoting student and staff mental health and wellbeing. The charter will reward institutions that deliver improved student mental health outcomes.

The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston also raised the tragic issue of young suicide. Following a conference in spring last year on understanding suicide in the student population, Universities UK worked with a range of experts to develop guidance on measures to help to prevent suicide. The Government have also published the first cross-Government suicide prevention plan for wider society. The plan, led by the Department of Health and Social Care, sets out actions for local government, the NHS, the criminal justice system and the universities sector.

The Government are determined to create a world-class education system that offers opportunity to everyone, no matter what their circumstances or where they live. That is why we are investing in our education system to make sure that schools, colleges and universities have the resources that they need to make this happen. In 2019, the Department for Education resource budget is around £68.5 billion, which we are debating today. Of that, £54 billion is for estimate lines relating to early years and schools, £14 billion is for estimate lines relating primarily to post-16 and skills, and £0.4 billion is for social care, mobility and disadvantage.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow also raised the issue of the long-term plan for funding education. Given the strategic national importance of education, I share that view. At the spending review, we will be considering our funding of education in the round and looking to set out a multi-year plan. This will look at the right level of funding as well as how we can use that funding.

Since 2010, we have been reforming our education system to ensure that every child, regardless of background, is able to achieve their full potential, and to close the attainment gap between the most and least disadvantaged, which is also a priority for my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) and my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham. Thanks in part to those reforms, the proportion of pupils in good and outstanding schools has increased from 66% in 2010 to 85% in 2018. In primary schools, our more rigorous curriculum, on a par with the highest performing in the world, has been taught since September 2014, and the proportion of primary school pupils reaching the expected standard in the maths test rose from 70% in 2016, when the new curriculum was first tested, to 76% in 2018, and in reading it rose from 66% to 75%. Moreover, this country has risen from joint 10th to joint eighth in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study—PIRLS—survey of the reading ability of nine and 10-year-olds.

In secondary schools, our more rigorous academic curriculum and qualifications support social mobility by ensuring disadvantaged children have the same opportunities for a knowledge-rich curriculum and the same career and life opportunities as their peers. The attainment gap in primary schools between the most disadvantaged pupils and their peers, measured by the disadvantage gap index, has narrowed by 13.2% since 2011.

Our vision is for a school-led system that recognises headteachers as being best placed to run their schools and to drive improvement based on what they know works best. The reforms of the last nine years show that autonomy and freedom allow the best heads and teachers to make the right decisions for their pupils to enable them to reach their full potential. Over half a million pupils now study in good or outstanding academies, which typically replaced underperforming local authority maintained schools. There are more than 2,000 sponsored academies—schools taken out of local authority control because of performance concerns—and seven out of 10 are good or outstanding, despite their having replaced the most underperforming schools. Some 50% of pupils are now taught in academies.

To support these improvements, we have prioritised and protected education spending while having to take difficult public spending decisions in other areas. We have been able to do that because of our balanced approach to the public finances and our stewardship of the economy, which has reduced the annual deficit from an unsustainable 10% of GDP in 2010—some £150 billion a year—to 2% in 2018. The economic stability that has provided has resulted in employment rising to record levels and unemployment being at its lowest level since the 1970s. This has given young people leaving school more opportunities to have jobs and start their careers.

This balanced approach allows us to invest in public services and education. Core funding for schools and high needs has risen from almost £41 billion in 2017-18 to £43.5 billion this year. That includes the extra £1.3 billion for schools and high needs that we announced in 2017 and invested across 2018-19 and 2019-20 over and above plans set out in 2015.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I am not sure what colour the sky is in the Minister’s world, but it is certainly not the same colour as it is for many teachers I speak to in my constituency. He has obviously visited many Conservative constituencies at the behest of his colleagues. Can I challenge him to come to Durham to speak to the local authority and SEN teachers, who are under huge pressure because of the policies he is pursuing?

[Nick Gibb]

I am aware of the pressures that schools are under, and I am very happy to come to Durham. I went to university there and would be happy to make a nostalgic trip back. I meet two or three times a week with groups of headteachers brought here by Government Members as well as Opposition Members to discuss these issues. I am fully aware of the pressures that schools are under as a result of the increased costs they face from national insurance and other issues. We take these issues seriously and will take forward a well-configured spending review as we enter the next spending review period.

We are committed to directing this school funding where it is needed most. This is why, since April last year, we have started to distribute funding to schools through the new national funding formula. The formula is a fairer way to distribute school funding because each area’s allocation takes into account the individual needs and characteristics of its schools and pupils, not accidents of geography or history—not, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow put it, on the basis of a postcode lottery.

Schools are already benefiting from the gains delivered by the national funding formula, which provides every local authority with more money for every pupil in every school, while allocating the biggest increases to the schools that have been most underfunded. This year, the most historically underfunded schools will attract increases of up to 6% compared with 2017-18. My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) raised concerns about the historical unfairness of funding in West Sussex, of which, of course, I am well aware. As he will know, the new national funding formula has sought to address that unfairness. That is why it was introduced, why schools in his constituency are attracting 5.5% more per-pupil funding in 2019 than they did in 2017-18, and why West Sussex as a whole has received a £33.5 million increase since that period.