Infant Class Sizes

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I will make some progress. In fact, the proportion of primary school pupils in very large classes has fallen under this Government. How has that been possible? How have we managed to keep class sizes down despite the huge rise in the number of pupils requiring a place? It is because we have added almost 4,500 infant classes since 2010, which means that there are more infant classes today than at any time in the past decade. The motion notes that

“the Government relaxed the rules on infant class sizes”.

That is true. We have made it easier for parents with twins and multiple births, the children of members of our armed forces, and looked after children, to get a place in their chosen school.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Give us a break.

[Nicky Morgan]

The hon. Gentleman says, “Give us a break.” If he does not think that helping vulnerable children in that way is important—

[Kevin Brennan]

It’s a smokescreen—

[Nicky Morgan]

Well, we hear it all now. What is best for these children is a stable start to their school life. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will take the opportunity to tell us which of those categories of people he would like to take a school place away from first. When he does so, perhaps he could explain it to some of the 83% of parents and others who supported this change when we asked them their view.

The motion mentions the Conservative party’s manifesto pledge to

“create smaller schools with smaller class sizes”

and we are delivering on that. Despite everything, the average number of pupils in an infant class is 27.4, which, as the shadow Secretary of State will know, is considerably less than the specified limit. But here is the difference: we chose to trust head teachers and local authorities to make good, sensible decisions that are best for them, their pupils and their schools. If he wants me to apologise for doing that, he will be waiting a long time.

Then, the shadow Secretary of State makes his boldest claim, the one he has been making a lot lately, on television, in the media, wherever he can—the claim that pupils are regularly being taught in classes of 70 or more. Like many right hon. and hon. Members, I have just returned from a short break, and I took with me a little light reading. Here it is—available in all good, and not so good, bookshops. Before I looked at it, I checked out some reviews—this one, for example:

“It’s profound stuff from Hunt, whose book Ten Cities That Made An Empire has a number of inaccuracies, including calling Viscount Powerscourt ‘Powerhouse’, and getting the wrong date for the Corn Laws.”

As a result, I have learned to be wary of the hon. Gentleman’s claims, and apparently rightly so, because the claim that children are routinely being taught in classes of 70 or more is simply wrong. The evidence actually shows that these pupils are taking part in activities such as swimming or arts and crafts while being supervised by adults. It is hardly unexpected to find this in a normal primary school on a Thursday during the year when the census is taken. It is not, however, how they would normally be taught in a classroom. He apparently has as good a grasp of school census figures as he does of 19th century history.

--- Later in debate ---

[Heidi Alexander]

I acknowledge that money has been spent; I am just not sure that it is keeping up with the scale of demand for extra places. I believe that there are fundamental questions to be answered about how the Government allocate resources, and how they plan to ensure that future generations can gain access to the education that they deserve.

[Kevin Brennan]

Has my hon. Friend noticed that Ministers never quote the true figures for spending on schools during the period in question? During that period, the last Government recognised that more places would be needed. They provided extra core capital funding of £400 million a year from 2007-08 to 2010-11, and an annual safety valve which included, in the latter years, the allocation of an extra £266 million. Ministers never quote those figures, because this is a smokescreen.

[Heidi Alexander]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. All that I know is that there is a significant problem in my constituency and other parts of London, which the Government urgently and desperately need to address.

We know that the economy in London outperforms that in the rest of the country, and we know that more and more people want to live here. In the next decade, the population is expected to increase by the size of Liverpool and Leeds combined. Just as we need to build homes to accommodate that growth, we need schools to educate our young people. In Lewisham, we are lucky to have outstanding primary schools. Yes, more work needs to be done at secondary level, but our head teachers do inspiring and incredible work. Naheeda Maharasingham at Rathfern primary school, Michael Roach at John Ball primary school and Dame Vicki Patterson at the Brindishe schools federation are some of the most impressive individuals I have met when it comes to the delivery of our public services. I believe that the Government should be helping those impressive individuals to do their job by ensuring that there is adequate funding for school expansions.

The education system does not need money to be siphoned off to areas where there is questionable demand for extra school capacity, and it does not need the uncertainty of children being offered places at free schools that do not even have sites from which to operate. The education system just needs the Government to recognise their responsibilities, and to ensure that scarce public funds go where they are needed most. Parents in Lewisham think that that is a reasonable expectation to have of a Government, and so do I.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chloe Smith]

The right hon. Lady has been out on the airwaves repeatedly this week, suggesting that Norfolk, in the form of Norwich, and Suffolk, in the form of Ipswich, ought to be some kind of dumping ground for the rest of the country. I do not think that is a respectful or constructive attitude to my constituency or that of my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich.

That is what Labour appears to think of Norwich and Norfolk. It also appears to think—

[Kevin Brennan]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Chloe Smith]

Of course; I would be delighted. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could tell us what he thinks of Norfolk.

[Kevin Brennan]

I think Norfolk is delightful. Can the hon. Lady confirm, for the record, that she told my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) that she was going to mention her views in the course of the debate, to give her the opportunity, if she so wished, to come to the Chamber and to put her side of the case? That is the normal courtesy?

[Chloe Smith]

My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich and I have discussed the matter with the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles. Perhaps Labour Front-Bench Members would like to accord colleagues the same courtesy in the endless visits they will now be making around the country, as they always do. I distinctly remember making a point of order in this place five years ago, when a member of the then Labour Government failed to accord me the due courtesy of telling me that they were going to visit my constituency.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I intervened to give the hon. Lady an opportunity to clarify for the House whether she had informed my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles that she planned to refer to her comments. It was not clear from the hon. Lady’s remarks whether she had. Could you confirm that it is normal practice for hon. Members who wish to refer to other hon. Members in that way to observe the usual courtesies?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

It is up to the hon. Lady whether she wishes to answer, but it is normal courtesy to let an hon. Member know if you are going to mention them or their constituency.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fabian Hamilton]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Of course I cannot explain that in detail, because I was not party to the decisions made at the time. What I can explain is that at that time there were falling rolls and a number of surplus places in the city of Leeds, and many of us argued with our own Government that in order to have true parental choice there must be surplus places and that inevitably the birth rate would go up.

I remember well Fir Tree primary school in my constituency. The local authority was controlled by the Conservatives and Lib Dems—it was a foretaste of the coalition that we have in government today, but in Leeds city council—and it decided to close that school. I was one of the many people who said, “Don’t close it, because it’s likely that we will have a rising birth rate”, which is exactly what has happened, and that debate is very current in that part of my constituency today.

I do not think that the issue of overcrowding in some of our schools is particularly related to the insistence on smaller class sizes; rather, it is related to the dogmatic insistence on the establishment of free schools, as many right hon. and hon. Members have already mentioned.

I hope that I will not upset my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State by saying this, but personally I am not opposed to free schools in principle. However, I am totally opposed to the funding for those schools being top-sliced from the budgets for local authority schools. That is appalling. Local authorities should plan school places; that should not be removed from local authorities. I have never understood the antipathy of those on the Government Benches to the idea of allowing local authorities the democratic accountability that they bring when they plan school places. It seems appalling that we have almost a free-for-all in the allocation of places.

Mill Field primary school is in the very deprived Chapeltown, Chapel Allerton part of Leeds North East. Its head teacher, Stephen Watkins, one of the most experienced primary heads in west Yorkshire, tells me that the rule on class size limits at key stage 1 is now “widely ignored”, mainly because local authorities cannot open new schools in response to local demand. He says that the decisions of independent review panels will often be to admit pupils in spite of the class size ceiling being a maximum of 30 pupils. The result is not only larger class sizes but a lot of primary schools that are now so large that they have many hundreds of children on their rolls.

According to the Office for National Statistics, more babies were born in 2011-12 than at any time since 1972, which means demand for primary school places is set to soar and put even more pressure on the system in 2015 and 2016. But what is the Government’s response? It is the creation of more free schools—schools that have little or no public scrutiny of their operations, at the expense of areas of high need, as highlighted by many Members. It is all very well to say that 500,000 new primary school places have been created under this Government, but what use are they if all of them, or at least very many, are in the wrong places? As always with the coalition, choice is greater for those who already have it but denied to those in greatest need.

It is interesting to look back at some of the statements made by the Prime Minister when he was Leader of the Opposition. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) has already quoted this one, but I will quote it again to remind Members of what he said to the Yorkshire Post, of all newspapers, on 18 April 2008:

“A Conservative Government will give many more children access to the kind of education that is currently only available to the well-off: safe class rooms, talented and specialist teachers, access to the best curriculum and exams, and smaller schools with smaller class sizes with teachers who know the children’s names.”

He went on to say:

“The more we can get class sizes down, the better.”

So what went wrong? We now have more than five times as many primary schools with over 800 pupils in England than we had in 2010. According to the Office for National Statistics, three times more infants—93,665—are now taught in classes of over 30 pupils than in 2010. As a Leeds MP and former chair of the city’s education committee, it troubles me, as well as every parent in the city, that the number of infants in classes of over 30 pupils increased from 568 in January 2010 to 2,346 in January 2014—an increase of 313%. That is a poor testament to this Government’s oft-boasted commitment to our children’s education and a complete contradiction of the Prime Minister’s promise made in 2008, and many times since.

Sadly, it is not the Prime Minister or his Government who will suffer as a result of these broken promises but the thousands of young children whose educational opportunities will be reduced as a result of this failure—often those in the most deprived parts of our country who never had much opportunity to start with. The Secretary of State should hang her head in shame at the way in which these children have been let down by a Government who promised so much and have delivered so little.

[Kevin Brennan]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) mentioned the Secretary of State. Apparently, while our debate is going on, the Secretary of State is participating in a live video webchat with The Times Educational Supplement rather than attending the debate that she opened and listening to the remarks that my hon. Friend has just made. Is that within the courtesies of the House?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Mr Brennan, you know very well that that is definitely not a point of order. You know as well as I do that as long as there is a Minister on the Front Bench, that suffices for the debate taking place. We all want to get the speeches in, and I want to hear you later as well—in which case, let us get under way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

We have had an interesting and well-informed debate with contributions from hon. Members on both sides of the House, including my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), who is no longer in her place, but who spoke passionately about the waste of resources when her constituency desperately needed school places.

We also heard from the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), who said he worked at the coal face in Swindon for many years and claimed to be above party politics—before launching into his highly partisan comments. My hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) said that my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) and I were glad to see the previous Secretary of State go. May I correct him? We were disappointed that he left, because the polls were showing the impact he was having on voters—not just teachers, but parents. Had he carried on, we would have been heading for a landslide. Nevertheless, we now have the continuity Secretary of State.

We heard from the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), who also is not in her place, and from my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton), who, like the hon. Member for North Swindon, served for 10 years as a local councillor, as did I—it is obviously a common apprenticeship for this House. We also heard from the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), who said it was easy to bandy about statistics, and then immediately did so himself, copiously. We then heard, as usual, a common-sense contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman), who said we were looking not for uniformity, but for equality of opportunity. She was exactly right, as she was about how resources should follow need—a point, in fact, that touches precisely on the nature of this debate.

I am sorry that, even after that preamble, the Secretary of State has not been able to return from her live web chat, after opening the debate, to be here for the wind-ups. I am sorry about that, Mr Speaker, and if I refer to her in her absence, it is not through choice.

It is always a bit of a lottery seeing who will turn up to education debates these days, because the Department for Education has become so dysfunctional after four years of being run by a right-wing ideologue and his crazed advisers that we have not one, but two Schools Ministers. One is the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), whom I am sincerely delighted to welcome back to his place on the Front Bench today. Despite our disagreements, we have always got on very well on a personal level, and I am glad that he was resuscitated by the Prime Minister, in the recent botched reshuffle, to placate the right wing of the Conservative parliamentary party. It is his job, we are told by the Prime Minister, to preserve the legacy of his former boss, who has now been forced into a vow of silence as the Chief Whip.

The other Schools Minister—the yellow variety—who seems to have become an invisible man these days in debates on schools in the Chamber, is obviously—

[Ben Gummer]

He is working hard.

[Kevin Brennan]

I am sure he is working hard—in his other job, in the Cabinet Office, dreaming up more fantasy Lib Dem manifesto pledges at the taxpayer’s expense. Indeed, it appears—just to be topical for a moment—that the coalition Government have now introduced compulsory setting, in that the two Schools Ministers are not allowed to be in the same room at the same time. That perhaps explains why the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws) is not here with us this afternoon.

However, it would be useful if the Minister in this debate would clarify in his winding-up speech—[Interruption] —after he has finished reading the Parliamentary Private Secretary’s telephone—the whole shambolic issue around setting, which we have heard about today. We have not really had clarity today; we have just had chaos, in what is, after all, the first major policy announcement by the Secretary of State. It would be good if this House were told exactly what is going on, rather than our having to try to find out from Twitter. Despite the Secretary of State’s earlier remarks about not relying on Twitter for such information, we have to, unless we get it in the Chamber, which is where we should first hear of such things.

The first duty of any Education Minister is to ensure a sufficiency of good school places where they are needed. The figures that have been unearthed in recent weeks and which have been highlighted in today’s debate show that the Government have failed in that basic duty. We all remember the pledge, which has been mentioned in the debate, in the 2010 Conservative manifesto, when the Prime Minister promised

“small schools with smaller class sizes”

and said,

“the more we can get class sizes down, the better”.

That pledge has turned out to be as worthless as a Lib Dem pledge on tuition fees, because we have seen a 200% increase in the number of infants in larger class sizes over 30 since 2010, and the pressure on places is growing.

[Toby Perkins]

I am prompted to rise to my feet by my hon. Friend’s mention of the Liberal Democrats. I wonder whether he would like to reflect on the fact that we have had a debate on schools with not a single contribution from a Liberal Democrat Member. Is it not remarkable, when we think of what the Liberal Democrats once were, that we can get through an entire debate on education without a single Liberal Democrat thinking it worth actually turning up and speaking?

[Kevin Brennan]

I apologise for provoking my hon. Friend, but as I think I explained earlier, this is all part of the Secretary of State’s new policy on setting, in that the Lib Dems are set in a different group for this subject and are not allowed to participate in our discussions.

That pledge by the Prime Minister turned out to be worthless, so one would think, under the circumstances, that every sinew of ministerial effort at the Department for Education would be straining at the task of tackling this issue—that no distraction from the cause of meeting the challenge would be allowed and that scarce resources would be prioritised for the issue, with money spent on creating school places where there is a real need. But no, because according to the National Audit Office, two thirds of the places created in the Government’s pet free schools project have been created outside areas classed as having high or severe primary school need. The Government try to claim that the programme is tackling the shortage of places, but the very essence of the programme—a built-in design feature of the policy—is that the distribution of free schools is essentially random. The Department has received no applications to open primary free schools in half of all districts with high or severe forecast need for school places—not one. In fact, overall, only 38% of approved free schools are primary schools, while over 40% of them are secondary. Given that secondary schools are typically double the size of primary schools, despite the growth of “titan” ones under this Government, far more secondary school places are being created than primary school ones, which is where the greater need exists. As we have seen from the debate, there is an acute need. In other words, this Government’s insistence on ideology over pragmatism in opening new schools is producing the wrong kind of schools—secondary—in the wrong places. That is the very definition of policy failure.

Indeed, the National Audit Office found that 42 schools had opened in districts with no forecast need, with estimated capital costs of at least £241 million out of a projected total of £951 million for mainstream schools. That is not an accident. The Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton used to care passionately about class sizes. He told “Daily Politics” back in 2009 that it was important to get class sizes down,

“particularly at primary school level. This is really dramatic, how big our class sizes are compared with other countries.”

That is what he said in 2009, when there were 31,000 infant children in class sizes over 30; by January this year, that had risen to 93,000, which really is dramatic. Before the general election, the Minister told BBC London:

“A child can wander around corridors of a school anonymously because the teacher will not know the name and face of every child in the school. Smaller schools are much more intimate and it’s difficult for a child to be anonymous.”

Those are fine words, but the number of titan primary schools is soaring, with nearly five times the number of primary schools with over 800 pupils than in 2010. So much for intimate smaller schools as promised by the Minister.

What about this Minister’s views on trying to alleviate growing numbers by targeting the resources to areas where there is a shortage rather than a surplus of places? Here is what he said to “Attain Magazine” in spring 2010 about areas with surplus places:

“If it has surplus places beyond a certain figure, 10%, they will at the moment resist any new school coming in because they’ve got to fill these places first. But we’re saying that’s irrelevant”.

That was his attitude. “Irrelevant”—there we have it; it is not an accident. Instead of directing resources to where there is a shortage of places, more places are created where there is surplus of more than 10%. Why? Because right-wing ideology demands a market solution—creating an over-supply to drive out existing schools, rather than operate supportive and collaborative systems such as the highly successful London Challenge approach under Labour, which raised standards for all, and allow investment in new places to happen where those places are needed.

That is the ideology that lies at the root of the places crisis that we are seeing today, and the attempts to blame the last Labour Government are a smokescreen. The number of pupils in primary schools was falling between 2005 and 2010—it fell by 107,000—and the projections of increased numbers from the Office for National Statistics did not come until 2008-10. The last Government recognised that while overall numbers were falling at the time, in some areas, particularly in larger local authorities, more places would be needed. They provided core capital funding of £400 million a year from 2007-08 to 2010-11 to cover local growth in demand for places. Of course, the current Government never acknowledge that in their attempt to create a smokescreen about their role in the places crisis.

In addition, there was an annual “safety-valve” whereby local authorities, if they felt they needed it, could apply for additional funding to address exceptional growth. Until 2009, very few did, but in 2010-11, an extra £266 million was allocated to 36 authorities to provide primary places for September 2010 and 2011.

[Mr Gibb]

rose—

[Kevin Brennan]

I will let the Minister answer in his winding-up speech; I do not want to eat into his time.

That additional funding is never mentioned by Ministers seeking to deflect blame for their failure. In fact, in the last two years of the Labour Government, schools capital budgets were £4.08 billion and £4.44 billion; in the first two years of this Government, they were £3.62 billion and £3.1 billion—storing up huge issues for the future, with the main maintenance and repair budget also slashed. These cuts in capital make it all the more of a dereliction to direct funds away from areas in which places are needed. We will restore coherence to the system, and ensure that precious resources are spent where those places are needed. We will also end the ludicrous system whereby Ministers approve new schools and, in particular, new free schools, which is the Government’s current policy.

Members, including the Secretary of State, mentioned Falcons Sikh free school in Leicester. It was due to open at the weekend, but at the last second the Under-Secretary, Lord Nash, ditched it, leaving 70 pupils and their parents high and dry and uncertain about the future. How could circumstances arise in which, the weekend before a school was due to open, a Minister had to intervene to ensure that it did not do so? Where were the checks along the way? Why was the process allowed to reach that stage without the problem being picked up earlier? We need answers to those questions, because Falcons was exactly the sort of school that is supposed to be providing the places that we say are needed in our system.

What a shambolic and wasteful way to run a school system! We will restore local accountability through independent directors of school standards. We will stop the waste, and build for the future.