School Funding

Kevin Foster Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stuart]

As I said, the issue should be uncontroversial, but because the discrepancies are so great any change will mean that money is removed from some schools and some areas. The losers will, understandably, fight and try to find an argument with which to defend what is fundamentally indefensible, because there is no rationale for it. I will go into that later in my speech.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

: I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Does he agree that one of the stark differences between rural and urban is shown in a recent Public Accounts Committee report? It identified that funding for deprived pupils can vary by £3,000 per pupil because of the existing formula.

[Graham Stuart]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

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[David Mowat]

We are doing our best for my hon. Friend’s nephew and niece.

[Kevin Foster]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[David Mowat]

Let me just answer the question. Actually, I want to make one further point to the Minister. I support free schools, and I support a number of our initiatives, including academy consolidation, studio schools, university technical colleges, free school dinners and the pupil premium. They are all good things, yet for my community in Warrington, they are all second-tier issues compared with funding. The situation is not acceptable. Some of these things are almost like a displacement activity for Ministers. What matters to my community is that the Government put a fair funding formula in place, rather than just acknowledging the problem again or saying, “We know it’s wrong, but it’s too hard to fix.” We need to get on with it.

What the Government do is produce league tables. There is a sort of covenant: the Government fund, the schools have to educate, and league tables exist to compare how they are getting on. At some point, unless funding is done fairly, league tables will break down. Maybe there should be funding-adjusted league tables. My hon. Friend the Member for Wells (James Heappey) talked about the two S’s, Southwark and Somerset. My two are Westminster and Warrington, where the same issue exists—a £2,000 discrepancy. In the correction that took place with the £390 million, oddly, Westminster got more than Warrington, for reasons that were opaque and hard to explain.

Yet there is a way forward. The F40 has set out the criteria for a new formula in a very good paper: age weighting, deprivation, special educational needs, proportion of children whose first language is not English and sparsity. As I said, if as the result of all that Warrington ended up getting £2,000 less than Tower Hamlets, I would be content, because I could explain to my headteachers the reasons why they are having to cut back and make teaching assistants and teachers redundant. At the moment, I cannot do that, and it really is not good enough.

Here is where I give the Minister some encouragement. I do not expect everything to be fixed immediately once a formula is introduced, but the direction of travel must be set. F40 suggested that it should happen over three years, although it could be longer. The direction of travel could take three, five or even 10 years to unwind. We have been talking about it for an awfully long time; it has been an issue for 20 years. However, it is not acceptable for us not even to take the first step of setting up an audit trail so that we can explain to our headteachers why schools in my constituency, such as Bridgewater and St Monica’s, are under huge pressure, partly due to centrally organised salary adjustments.

If, after the consultation—which will apparently be next year, so we will be a year into this Parliament before it ends—the Minister comes back with an approach that means it takes longer than three years to fix the problem, I will not necessarily be upset, but I want the first step to be taken, so that we do not continue to acknowledge the problem while doing nothing. We are talking about the life chances of many children.

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[Michael Tomlinson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. It is right that the formula is about beginning to close the gap. That is all I am fighting for today.

I am pleased that the Government have recognised the issue’s importance. I am also pleased to have fought the election on a manifesto that set out so clearly the need for a fairer funding formula. Similarly, I was pleased by the responses of the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister to my questions in the House. I was pleased not just because they were in answer to my questions, but because they were encouraging.

Other hon. Members have mentioned the £390 million that was granted in 2014-15 and that is now embedded in future years. I welcome that, but I see it as a down payment—a first step—rather than the finished article.

Let me turn for a moment to wider funding issues, because the motion is that

“this House has considered funding for schools”

generally. Montacute school in my constituency is, as the Minister may know, a special academy for children with severe and multiple learning difficulties and special needs. Recently, it received a very welcome £5 million to completely restructure what was a rather dilapidated building that was falling down, and I was delighted to be present at the opening of the new building. However, the funding included no additional money for the inside—the fixtures and fittings, which are the very things that are required to make a school really a school.

Local families have clubbed together as part of Monty’s fund, and they have raised £500,000 to date. However, more is required, and I urge the Minister to consider that as a particular request. I will be making a small difference by dressing up as Father Christmas and entering the great Santa fun run with members of Wimborne rotary club. I invite the Minister to join me. Where better to run and raise money for a good cause than round Badbury Rings?

[Kevin Foster]

Does my hon. Friend agree that although it is great to see such charitable work, people would be more encouraged to take part if they saw a fair funding formula in place?

[Michael Tomlinson]

My hon. Friend is right that it is all well and good raising money in small ways like this, but we are actually arguing for a fairer funding formula, so let me return to that.

Few people in the Chamber, and few outside it, have questioned the logic of, or the need for, a fairer funding formula. The inequality is clear to see, and I urge the Minister, as other Members have done, to set out a timetable. We need substantive change, and we need it to put the needs of our children first and foremost.

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[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Sir David. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) and the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) on securing this debate.

Thanks to the good education that I received, I know that 5 November is quite an ominous day to be giving a speech in Parliament, but thankfully I am not a king and it is not nearly four hundred years ago, so perhaps we will be safe today.

It was interesting to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (James Heappey) talk about aiming for mid-table mediocrity in the premier league; I think that at the moment Torquay would be happy to be in the league.

Coming on to the serious point, I am delighted that this debate has been secured so that we can talk again about the unfairness in the current funding system. That is why I am particularly delighted to see my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) here today. I know that he will be noting down every point made today, given the impact of this issue on his own constituency and his own lengthy record of campaigning about it.

I will focus on the fact that there is a need for a fairer settlement and a fairer funding system overall. It is tempting to get into Torbay versus Tower Hamlets, or Torbay versus Plymouth, but for me this issue is actually about having a fundamentally fairer system for the allocation of resources, and not a system based on history. In 10 or 20 years’ time, thanks to the massive success of the long-term economic plan for the south-west, Torbay might have become one of the most prosperous parts of the country, so the formula may change and changes made now might not help us in the future. However, I would like to see change, because this is fundamentally about fairness—allocating today’s resources to today’s priorities, and not funding according to historical council spending patterns or considerations that might have been relevant once but are now distant.

What particularly brought this situation to light was the Public Accounts Committee report on the pupil premium, which discussed the fact that the funding for deprived pupils with exactly the same needs can vary by up to £3,000 per pupil. That is a staggering difference and, as our report concluded, such variations make it much harder to bring effective strategies to bear.

[Graham Stuart]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is not just the Minister whom we are challenging today? It is delightful to see the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) representing Her Majesty’s Opposition, as today is also an opportunity for the Labour party to set out that it is committed to fairer funding and accepts that there will be the need for redistribution; it will be painful, but it is right that it should happen.

[Kevin Foster]

Yes indeed, and let us be clear that the council that would benefit the most from the F40 proposals is Barnsley. If one was looking for an example of an area that one would have thought the Opposition would be committed to wanting to do something for, it would be that one.

For me, this is not about wealthy parts of the country versus deprived parts of the country. There are parts of my constituency that are quite wealthy, but they are the older parts—the places that are less likely to have young families with children going through school. The areas in my constituency that are the most deprived and that have the most challenges are the ones that have the most young families with children going through school. I was delighted to hear my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) make the point that education is the ladder out of deprivation.

[James Cartlidge]

It is very kind of my hon. Friend to refer to my comments. He is making a very interesting point about overall prosperity. Is it not the case that the levels of deprivation in places such as Tower Hamlets and Hackney were once much higher than they are now, and actually what is happening is that inner London has become relatively far more prosperous, partly because of the housing market and partly because of the City and so on, whereas parts of our constituencies have not caught up at the same pace? That is the underlying change that justifies the demand for fairness.

[Kevin Foster]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. We need up-to-date information and an up-to-date funding formula. Let us be candid: a hundred years ago, Liverpool was a booming port that was producing a tax surplus. Now, the situation there is the other way round, because of changes in industry. It would be strange to hear arguments that we should base funding today on what the economy was like a hundred years ago. Equally, if we do not change the formula and do not move on, people can find themselves living in areas that were once deprived that still receive extra support even though they are no longer deprived.

This is about making sure that pupils are fairly funded, because even in the most prosperous parts of this country there will be families who are struggling and who need the ladder of opportunity that good, solid education provides, so that they can get the jobs and the skills, and share in the aspiration that many of us have.

[Graham Stuart]

My hon. Friend is very generous in giving way to me again. It is also important that people outside this place do not think that this issue is about stopping recognition of deprivation. The pupil premium exists precisely to meet the needs of those in deprivation, but we must ensure that there is not double-counting of deprivation and that we have a system that is fair to every child, wherever they live.

[Kevin Foster]

Absolutely. I agree with my hon. Friend that what we want is the funding following the need and not following the postcode that people happen to live in. That is why the pupil premium was introduced and it is why the PAC was right to highlight a £3,000 difference in pupil premium funding based not on need or the type of education that a school has to provide or the facilities it needs, but on the different postcodes in which pupils live. Nobody feels better off because they move from one postcode to another; nobody says, “I’m feeling hugely better off because I’ve moved a couple of hundred metres down the road and I’ve crossed a municipal boundary.” People feel better off if there is actually more money in their pocket and more income in their household. It is right that our funding formula should follow the need and not historical funding allocations.

That is not to say that schools in my area are not doing well. There are schools, such as Curledge Street academy and Ellacombe academy, that do extremely well and that have really turned around, partly due to the academies programme during the last few years. They deliver excellent results and give students the ladder of opportunity that we all want to give students. We want to send a message to them that a fairer funding scheme is on its way.

That is why the Government’s actions over the last five years are very welcome. They have made a difference. I accept that things cannot change overnight, but what we want to see is what the PAC called for, which is a timetable to resolve this issue, which we can then use to move forward.

This is not about rural versus urban, or about the north of England versus the south of England. We can see that in the diversity of constituencies that are represented in the debate today, ranging from Stockport to the south of Devon. This is about fairness, and having resources allocated on the basis of need and not on the basis of historical anomaly. That is why it is right that we have had this debate today; that is why I hope the Government will now take things forward and find a solution; and that is why I am pleased to have spoken in this debate.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) and the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) on securing the debate. As a physics teacher for more than 20 years in Glasgow, listening to the debate has been absolutely fascinating for me. Our two nations are so closely linked, but our education systems and the funding of them are poles apart. I have learned quite a lot this afternoon and scribbled lots of notes. I would like to make some comments, some from a personal perspective, on the points raised and to point to things that have been done in Scotland that may be worth considering.

Scotland has neither the funding variations that we have heard about today, nor the discrepancies. There are slight differences in some places such as in the highlands and islands, where teachers might be encouraged to work with relocation funding—it supports them in setting up a new home—but other than that there are not great discrepancies. There are differences between rural and urban schools in Scotland, but figures of £2,000 sound incredible to me, and I am amazed that the issue has not been dealt with.

It is not just that there are discrepancies in funding; I think there is a real underfunding of education, and that is one issue that has not been addressed. I have just looked this up, but the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that the average funding per pupil in England—Members can correct me if I am wrong—sits at about £6,000. The average in Scotland is £6,738. I would argue that the average probably needs to be even more in Scotland, but it is about where Governments decide to spend money. Education and closing any attainment gap are at the heart of the Scottish Government’s agenda. To combat the effects of poverty and to ensure that children have the best possible start in life, the Scottish Government have invested £329 million in early years education.

[Kevin Foster]

Does the hon. Lady think it would be worth while if a pupil premium was introduced in Scotland, similar to that in England? Through that, the money would follow the pupils with need, rather than the areas in which they live.

[Carol Monaghan]

It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman mentions that. When he was speaking, I made a note that this pupil funding is now being introduced in Scotland. The Scottish Government are looking at directing funding to where it is most needed: to pupils in deprived areas. That has already been done. Another thing that has been done in Scotland is the continuation of the education maintenance allowance to ensure that 16 to 18-year-olds from deprived backgrounds remain in education. That has been expanded to include students in further education colleges. There is a recognition in Scotland that funding must follow pupils.

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[Mr Gyimah]

My hon. Friend tempts me to pre-empt our spending review; that would not be appropriate for a junior Minister, and would not be welcomed by the Chancellor. I will not set out a timetable, but I have said that we will not only seek to build consensus and to consult widely, but support schools through the transition and encourage efficiency to get the most out of fairer funding.

As well as reforming the funding system, we will push schools to be more efficient in their spending. In this difficult financial climate, it is even more important that schools are relentless in their drive to squeeze the best value for their students out of every pound that they receive.

[Kevin Foster]

I thank the Minister for giving away again. He is being very generous with his time to the Members who are still here to listen to his remarks. I accept that he will not set out a timetable while he is on his feet today, but is he hopeful that the matter will be resolved by the end of this Parliament?

[Mr Gyimah]

What I can say on timing is that, whatever the changes, schools need enough time to adjust and plan; I have heard that from a lot of schools. That will guide us in implementing any reforms.