Oral Answers to Questions

Laura Smith Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. It is important that we allow opportunities to be widely available to children and to young people, regardless of their special needs. Bursaries are available for particular children, and that funding can be used for transport. I would be very happy to meet him so that we can take this issue forward together.

[Laura Smith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)]

A quarter of people in my constituency are now reported to be living in in-work poverty, so is it no wonder that I know of desperate families unable to pay for their children’s school uniforms. Will the Minister consider introducing a statutory duty for schools to prioritise cost considerations and value for money for parents when deciding uniform policy and a ban on compulsory branding if this means families incurring additional costs?

[Nick Gibb]

The Department’s current guidance on school uniform does place an extra emphasis on the need for schools to give the highest priority to cost consideration. No school uniform should be so expensive as to leave pupils or their families feeling unable to apply for or to attend a school of their choice due to the cost of the school uniform. If the hon. Lady has examples of schools that are not abiding by that guidance, I would be very grateful if she let me know.

Department for Education

Laura Smith Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Laura Smith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)]

I will try to be the swot here today, Madam Deputy Speaker, and it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley).

I regularly meet headteachers, governors, teachers, teaching assistants, families and pupils, and without exception there are huge levels of concern regarding many different aspects of our education system. As a former teacher and the mother of two young children, I wholeheartedly share their worries. One headteacher said to me recently, “Laura, the difference between the year 7 children I now have and those who are leaving this year is huge. The range of needs that they have is dramatically different but, Laura, we have to remember this is now a generation that has known nothing but austerity.” This comment really struck me: there are children now who have never known anything but cuts and starved public services and the damage that this political choice has made.

Let me be clear about what that looks like in towns such as mine. It means children who are not being fed adequately. It means kids moving house countless times and living in properties that are completely unfit. It means children who see the insecurity of their parents regularly being out of work or in low-income jobs. It means not enough food in their bellies, coming to school with no underwear on, rolling loo roll in their knickers to deal with their periods. They see and experience mental health problems and the reality of no money to pay the bills. And these are not scare stories; this is reality—a shameful reality that needs to change.

There are so many different aspects of school funding that I could focus my remarks on today. However, a recent survey that I sent to local schools in Crewe and Nantwich concurred that top of the list of urgent problems that need addressing is special educational needs provision. I know as one of the vice-chairs of the parliamentary f40 group that this is something we appear to agree on across the House; indeed, a huge number of f40 MPs have recently written to the Chancellor asking for an urgent injection of £1.4 billion to be put into the system to deal with the high needs crisis across the country. The stark truth is that even though there is a statutory obligation, schools and councils are struggling to make this a reality.

This is where we seem to go around in a continual circle: schools report the difficulties they face; local authorities report the difficulties they face; and the Government respond by saying that there is more money than ever before. Meanwhile, we all know that there is a significant problem with children not receiving the education they are entitled to receive, and the evidence points overwhelmingly to the fact that there simply is not enough money in the system to meet children’s needs. It is not just about how the Department for Education divides up its money and the new funding formula; it is also about the fact that the Treasury has not recognised the required amount to make it fair.

This ultimately results in headteachers making difficult decisions that can bring them into conflict with parents. Some schools compromise on the kind of support they provide while others have no choice but to encourage parents to educate their children at home instead, and none of this is what they want to be doing. Shockingly, I now know that there are schools in my constituency that have not taken children with education, health and care plans into their schools because they do not have the teaching capacity, the resources or the money to be able to meet their needs. I also know that there are more children being excluded or off-rolled than ever before.

How is it happening that children with needs are starting to be cleansed from our mainstream schools? I have spoken to countless parents who are unable to get their child’s needs met in mainstream; they are also unable to, or do not wish to, enrol their children in special needs schools. This then can result in parents withdrawing their child from school and trying to meet their needs themselves in their own home. I do not have time to go into detail about the problems that arise from that, but this is simply not the path that parents should be left with.

A report by the think-tank IPPR North revealed that the north had been worst affected, with cuts of 22% per pupil, and research has found that Government spending on support for children and young people with the most complex special educational needs and disabilities has failed to keep pace with rising demand, resulting in a reduction in funds available per pupil. The report also found that the cuts to education and local government budgets had led to a dramatic reduction in support for children with less complex needs and had increased demand for more intensive support.

Many I speak to in the profession have explained that this affects not just those with, or in the process of trying to get, an EHCP; they now have what would be considered more children with moderate needs in their classroom who are also not having their educational needs met. The fact is that everyone seems to be being let down by our education system: pupils, families and the staff working in our schools. We know that cuts to budgets have meant that support in schools and local authorities has been drastically reduced, leaving the most vulnerable students without the full support and care that they need. Parents and carers will not forgive a Government who do not believe that a fully funded and resourced education system is a priority.

Heartbreakingly, the picture facing schools supporting children with special educational needs is bleak. School budgets are at breaking point, and there have been severe cuts to health and social care provision. Schools and local authorities are left struggling to meet the needs of pupils. Without sufficient funding and a more coherent approach, the SEN code of practice is nothing more than an empty promise from Government to parents and children. The fact is that most children with SEN do not have any additional funding afforded to them. That means that the financial burden of additional support penalises those mainstream schools that are the most inclusive. That is unsustainable. Schools are seriously struggling to fund SEN support in the face of crippling budget pressures that force them to cut critical support staff. We urgently need the Government to recognise the scale of the problem and to secure an immediate increase in funding from the Treasury.

Quite simply, it is make or break time for our school funding. It is absolutely essential that schools have the support of specialist services to meet children’s needs, and the Government must provide more funding for health and social care services as well as for education. This is why the comment from my headteacher—that her children have known nothing but austerity—is so pertinent. The whole system is starved. I urge the Chancellor to meet the asks that the f40 group made to him recently and to provide the funds needed so that all children, wherever they live and whatever their needs, receive the education that they deserve. Do not tell me that there is not enough money in this country. Maybe those who have been gorging on the cake for so long should now consider sharing it as a matter of absolute urgency.

Education Funding

Laura Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2019 Westminster Hall

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

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson) on securing the debate; I agreed with much of what he said.

In the spring term, I conducted a survey of headteachers in my constituency to ask about funding pressures in their schools, and the majority were very pessimistic about their prospects over the coming three years. They spoke of having to cut support for vulnerable learners, of the impact of having to make support staff redundant, of having to cut classes—for example, music and swimming lessons—or having to ask parents to pay for lessons, and of the impact that that is having on staff morale. What is worse is that it is the schools serving the most disadvantaged and deprived intakes that are suffering some of the greatest funding pressures, in part for the reasons that the hon. Gentleman rightly raised. The local newspaper, the Messenger, reported that four of the five worst affected schools in Trafford, in terms of losing funding, are in my constituency. Those include Broadoak School and Lostock College, which serve particularly disadvantaged intakes and have suffered a real-terms loss in funding of almost £1,000 per pupil since 2015.

The situation is exacerbated by the fact that Trafford—I know this is true for other colleagues—is one of the f40 authorities, which have particularly suffered under the new national funding formula. Although previous Secretaries of State for Education have made efforts to address the inequities that existed, it cannot be right that schools in my constituency in Old Trafford, which serve very similar demographics to those in Salford or Manchester just across the road, should be so poorly funded. That is not to decry the very real need for funding of schools in those boroughs. We must address the fact that the funding formula is still not delivering for poorer and more disadvantaged communities in overall wealthier authorities, or for some of the schools that the hon. Gentleman spoke about.

[Laura Smith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend obviously shares my concern about reports that vulnerable children are being denied access to education because schools are not being given adequate resources. Does she agree that the recent demonstrations—the protests by young people and parents—highlight the enormous strength of feeling about this issue?

[Kate Green]

The feeling is shared by teachers, students, parents, governors and, indeed, the wider community; my hon. Friend is absolutely right.

My final point in the very short time I have left is that the situation in my borough is even further exacerbated by our selective secondary system. The House is well aware that I am deeply opposed to it, but this is not a debate about the merits or demerits of a selective education approach. However, it cannot be right that the additional funding that the Secretary of State announced last year for grammar schools to expand has in no way benefited the poorest and most disadvantaged children in my constituency. Indeed, the funding that has been secured for Trafford has gone not to schools in my constituency, but to the constituency next door. All the evidence I have seen shows that grammar schools educate a lower proportion of children with special educational needs or children on free school meals—children who need the very best education if they are to achieve their full potential. I strongly urge the Minister to look again at whether putting funding into the grammar system is the best way of improving the life chances of our poorest and most high-need kids.

School Funding

Laura Smith Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Laura Smith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship in this incredibly important debate, Sir David. I am proud that nearly two years on since local parents, children, support staff, teachers, headteachers, Fair Funding For All Schools, the Labour party and I protested in Nantwich town centre and marched in our thousands on the streets of Sandbach, my constituency is still demanding answers to the crisis the Government and 10 years of austerity have inflicted on our education system. We still come in the top 10 constituencies in the country for responding to this petition, and I thank every single person who took the time to do so.

Since being elected, I have spoken many times about the funding crisis that has gripped our schools. I speak as an ex-teacher, an educational campaigner, a parent and now as a Member of Parliament and as vice-chair of the f40 group, which represents the worst-funded authorities in the country. Today I speak on behalf of all of those brave professionals who continue to stick their head above the parapet and speak honestly about life in schools. In Crewe and Nantwich, they constantly hear the misleading claim that this Government are providing more money for schools than ever before, but they know full well that they have faced real-terms cuts on a massive scale. After all, 100% of schools in my constituency have experienced such cuts. They do an amazing job at trying to deliver the best experience they can for the children and families that attend, but it is becoming an impossible task.

I regularly meet head teachers in my area, both as a collective and as individuals. Without exception, they relay the same message: they cannot shave any more meat off the bones of their budgets. They are demoralised and devastated, and they feel let down, because teachers believe that every child matters—that is a fundamental idea that should unite everybody in this place whenever we discuss education. It is the belief that every child matters that inspired me to go into teaching.

I want to focus specifically on the issue of SEND provision. It is not only the first topic mentioned by the majority of headteachers, but shows that somewhere along the line this Government lost the belief that every child matters. The f40 campaign states that the funding currently available is not enough to deliver education for the modern world. All SEND in schools has increased dramatically in recent years, including the low levels of SEN. Schools are dealing with those higher levels, an increase in pupil numbers and the increase in the cost of running a school, while their budgets have been slashed in real terms.

[Mrs Hodgson]

On the issue of SEND, I want to mention the importance of teaching assistants. UNISON, which is represented in the Gallery by its regional director in the north-east, recognises their importance. My daughter is a newly qualified teacher in her first year of teaching and has said that she has a number of children in her class with special educational needs, yet she has only one teaching assistant for a few hours. Does my hon. Friend recognise how detrimental this is to those children?

[Laura Smith]

I am very pleased to hear that my hon. Friend’s daughter is going into the profession. I cannot speak highly enough of the talents of the teaching assistants and support staff who work in schools. They are desperately needed, and we do not want to see anybody losing teaching assistants.

Just this morning, a headteacher who knew that we were having this debate got in touch with me, saying:

“At my school, budget cuts along with having to fund the first £6k for SEN pupils has forced us into a deficit budget (the first ever) and consequently into a whole school restructure situation which has left us unable to fund any general classroom support. I have had to make redundancies which has curtailed our ability to provide the broad and varied curriculum that OFSTED are now demanding. We are only able to offer teaching assistant support to pupils with EHCP’s. I have also had to cut allowances to dedicated and hardworking teachers (who have always gone the extra mile for pupils at my school) leaving them undervalued and demotivated after years of exemplary service which has kept our school one of the most consistent and respected schools in our town.”

The head continued:

“I am only asking for enough money to effectively run a school in the 21st century that supports the needs of ALL pupils not just SEN and deprived children. After all shouldn’t education offer fairness of opportunity to all?”

Minister, I am sick of empty words. I am sick of the fact that so many of my friends in the profession feel crushed. I am sick of those dedicated professionals reporting to me that their mental health is suffering and that they may leave the profession they love. I am sick of the lousy pay that they are expected to work for, while the work piles on. Most of all, I am sick of the Government’s abject disregard for the education of the many children in this country who do not attend a fee- paying school. As a parent, I am sick of the fact that those who care for and nurture my children are so demoralised. I am furious that future generations are being let down so catastrophically. Test results and attainment are a small part of what makes a successful school.

[Sir David Crausby (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Sir Christopher Chope in the Chair]

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

As I said in an intervention on the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist), it is about time we had the six-hour debate that this House has been promised. Indeed, 43 Members supported that and I know a lot more who could not sign but wanted that debate, as can be seen in the number of people wanting to speak today. We have only a few minutes, which is nowhere near enough.

We accept that more money has gone in, but if more people are invited to the party, rations have to be spread ever thinner. Many schools are spreading those rations beyond belief. I particularly want to raise a concern that a headteacher told me, which has not been raised yet. She felt guilty about almost heaving a sigh of relief when a very senior member of staff left, because that meant she could take on a more inexperienced junior member of staff and therefore have a bit more give in her budget. I was teacher a long time ago, but I can remember being a probationary teacher, as they were called in those days. We need experienced teachers to lead from the front, to drive schools forward. We cannot expect our schools to constantly rely on a churn of young inexperienced teachers who need to learn on the job, but also make sure they have plenty of time for lesson preparation.

Teachers cannot pay their bills with long holidays, as I used to say to people.

[Laura Smith]

I find myself agreeing with the hon. Lady, probably because we have both been teachers. She is exactly right with regard to—the point has gone from my brain. Sorry!

[Mrs Main]

I was right, and that is all that matters. Every Member will be told the same by other schools. In high-value areas such as mine, we cannot pay bills with holidays. Teachers have to pay bills with their salaries. They are struggling to get on the housing ladder in areas as expensive as St Albans, where the average house price is £600,000. Recruiting members of staff is difficult; retaining members of staff is very difficult, as they find their pounds go a lot further elsewhere.

[Mrs Main]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right; there is nothing more demoralising. Teaching is a tough job; anyone who has never tried it should go in front of a classroom and try. I taught in Feltham at an inner London school.

[Laura Smith]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mrs Main]

No, if she does not mind, because Members on the hon. Lady’s side are waiting to speak. We need those experienced teachers and we must ensure that teachers are not overwhelmed so quickly that they fancy quitting the profession.

I am also worried that we will end up cutting the curriculum to the bone. Gone are the times when there would be the luxury of a peripatetic music teacher coming to schools. There simply is no latitude in schools to pay for anything other than the bare necessities. The statutory obligations on a school have to be paid for first. It also worries me that sometimes there is a reluctance to statement pupils; if a pupil is statemented, that pupil is rightly required to have additional assistance. However, a school might drag its feet in that scenario because it does not wish to be obliged to provide the extra funding.

I went to a public meeting in my constituency. It is not easy to have rocks thrown at us, but sometimes we need a rock to wake us up. It is hard to admit that schools are struggling. Schools have always been struggling; anyone who has worked in a school will say that the roof has always leaked and the windows are always awful. But there comes a point when things have to be tackled—they cannot be put off any longer. As many Members have said, robbing Peter to pay Paul is not the answer. Taking away from one set of schools to give to another set of schools that are very deserving is not the answer.

An hon. Member earlier talked earlier about the results meaning that we must be doing something right. My schools have excellent results, but that does not mean they do not need the resources. At some point, those results will start to crumble. The curriculum has shrunk down to the core topics, so perhaps those results are already sliding. When I was at school, I was passionate about art. Many young people are not academic but value those topics as much as anything; they inspire young people to go into school, and those teachers may inspire them and know how to deal with the complex needs of some youngsters who have been turned off by education.

We cannot just look at results. Value adding to a pupil means that pupil may have benefited far more from being taught in a good school than another pupil who is academically high achieving. I simply cannot accept that by looking at a set of results we can judge how well our schools are doing. We must ensure that every pupil is making the best of whatever they have to offer.

I accept that more money has gone into the system. We can all talk about how much extra there is, but Sian Kilpatrick of Bernards Heath Primary School told me that she had to write to parents to explain why she had to ask them for money: because a lot of things that used to be paid for are no longer paid for. This is the banquet I am referring to: outdoor visit risk assessments, legal and human resources advice, general maintenance costs and staff insurance. When parents send their children to school to get educated they do not expect that a teacher will have to divert money from teaching their pupils to pruning back overgrown trees in the playground that a risk assessment has identified as a problem to the pupils.

It is high time we had the six-hour debate. I do not think that views in here will change, but looking at what has been expected to be done with the money that schools have had is the only way to see whether there is enough money. If there is not, we may have to find some more.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) was spot on about so many things in her speech. She spoke from her experience as a teacher and no doubt someone who keeps in close contact with her schools.

In east Bristol, school funding has reduced by 7%, which is about £359 per pupil. Some people have spoken in headline terms about overall spending rising, but that is meaningless. It is the per-pupil spending that matters, and it has gone down by 7%. When the increase in school expenditure—which I am told is around 8%—is factored in, that is a real-time cut of 15% in per-pupil funding. It is pointless to have the debate unless we accept that situation.

Colleagues have spoken about schools having to reduce staff numbers to accommodate that. At one point, teaching assistants were in most classes. They provide such a valuable addition to the classroom, giving extra attention to the pupils who need it. Those might be pupils with SEND, but they might also be pupils who are just shy or for some reason lag behind and need that extra attention, perhaps even just on one particular day. Funding cuts have also meant that things such as reading recovery classes and forest schools have had to be cut. My sister was a TA and a forest school leader; the budget for that school was axed and it could no longer afford her. Kids absolutely thrive on such outdoor experiences.

On what was said about senior teachers, I had a meeting with governors from a number of infant and primary schools in my constituency on Friday, and they made the point that good schools manage to keep their teachers—teachers want to stay there because they love being there—but that means there is a higher wage bill. That puts the school in an invidious situation.

[Laura Smith]

My hon. Friend raises the point I forgot when I intervened on the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main). I remember how much respect I had for the teachers who mentored me when I first entered the profession, and how I was able to develop my teaching practice as a result. I agree with both my hon. Friend and the hon. Lady that that is now going, which is a tragedy.

[Kerry McCarthy]

We absolutely want a balance of newer and more experienced teachers in schools. However, it has been raised with me that schools have to pay the apprenticeship levy, which is about £10,000 per school, but they do not want to take on apprentices. That money could be spent on a teaching assistant. Schools do not need apprentices. That is a very quick way in which the Minister could help schools.

In the limited time I have left, I want to focus on SEND. Since 2010, Bristol City Council has lost more than 40% of the funding it gets from the Government, and funds for early intervention have stopped being ring-fenced. That means the council’s high-needs budget has been in deficit for some time, and it has had to raid the mainstream education budget to compensate. Over the past few years, the number of SEND pupils in Bristol has risen three times faster than SEND funding. Obviously, that has an impact. It means children with SEND are often diagnosed later, and that they miss out on early intervention during their first years at school. Early intervention is crucial for ensuring that a child thrives and often prevents problems from developing into something more serious. Services such as CAMHS and speech and language therapy, which have supported schools, have also been cut. That is leading to a crisis. If we do not have early intervention and cannot support children at an early stage, they will develop far more serious problems as they become older.

I am involved in a project called Feeding Bristol, which aims to eradicate food poverty in the city. There is also a very good school food project, which looks particularly at holiday hunger, breakfast clubs and so on. It is not just a case of getting food to children. We can get donated food for breakfast clubs and holiday hunger schemes from excellent projects such as FareShare, but schools need to be able to afford the staff. That little bit of extra money that schools cannot come up with makes the difference—it means children do not have to start the school day hungry or go through the long school holidays hungry. This is about so much more than just providing education. We need to look at the whole picture. If we are to produce well-rounded, physically and mentally healthy children, which is what we should be doing, we need to be able to support them outside school as well as in school.

--- Later in debate ---

[Laura Smith]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nick Gibb]

I will not give way just now.

The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) should be aware that, in her constituency, funding has risen from £45.9 million in 2017-18 to £50.6 million in 2019-20. That is an increase of 10.3% overall and of 9.5% on a per-pupil basis. The hon. Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor)—

Education Funding: Cheshire

Laura Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Ms McVey]

My hon. Friend is correct in what she says and in the work that she has done. I am glad that I have entered the House again, enabling me to unite with my friends and push these important points.

[Laura Smith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Ms McVey]

If the hon. Lady does not mind, I will continue a little bit further, because I do not have much time. This is only a 30-minute debate, and I know the Minister has to respond, so I want to raise a couple of key points about Cheshire West and Chester. However, I know that the hon. Lady has done a lot in this area, and has a lot of knowledge about it.

The key challenge in Cheshire West and Chester is that it is funded below the average of all local authorities, due to the emphasis in the national funding formula on funding areas of deprivation and areas with higher living costs. Under that formula, Cheshire West and Chester is funded at the minimal level of funding for all local authorities for early years provision, meaning provision for three and four-year-olds. In 2018-19 and 2019-20, Cheshire West and Chester has received the minimum 0.5% increase in school core funding, but in the same period, local government officers’ payment bills have increased by 5.6% and teachers’ pay costs have increased above the anticipated public sector pay cap. Spending is outstripping the funding that is going into that area, and as a result, Cheshire’s primary schools are now 44% less funded than London’s primary schools and its secondary schools are 49% less funded than in London.

My key questions to the Minister are as follows. Will he commit to look again at rural funding and address the discrepancy? Does he accept that the increase in costs is outstripping the increase in funding? Will he provide support when local authorities have to use independent schools to meet specific needs? Will he support Cheshire in creating additional special educational needs places, and provide capital investment to enable that to happen? Will he also look at the apprenticeship levy and whether it needs to be applied to schools, and if that is the case, make sure that the levy can be used in a wider context—maybe training, rather than just apprenticeships? Will he ensure that in the forthcoming spending review, he applies for more funds for the Cheshire area, now that he understands the discrepancies in funding in that area?

As I said, although we appreciate the money that has come in, when we look at how that money is filtering through, we see that there are still needs. Additionally, given the increase in housing and development in the Cheshire area that we all know about, considerably more pupils will be wanting to go to school. There are more children with needs in that area, including complex needs, and more demands are being placed on the local authorities of Cheshire East and Cheshire West and Chester. I appreciate that the Minister might not be able to give a full response to those questions today, but will he agree to a subsequent meeting, so that we can all work together to make sure that our area gets the right funding for its children?

--- Later in debate ---

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

And the rest!

[Laura Smith]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nick Gibb]

I will not give way, because of time, but I was about to say that Opposition Members have also brought the issues to the Department’s attention. I pay tribute to them, too, and to other hon. Friends who are not present at the debate.

This Government are determined to create a world-class education system that allows every child to achieve their potential, regardless of who they are or where they live. As well as improving standards and supporting teachers, we are investing money in our schools and helping them to make the most out of every pound they receive. We are also delivering on our promise to make funding fairer. The introduction of the national funding formula, the biggest reform of the school funding system for a decade, means that we are now directing money where it is most needed, based on schools’ and pupils’ needs and characteristics.

I want to start by emphasising the significant progress we are already making towards creating a world-class education system, thanks in part to our reforms: the attainment gap between rich and poor is shrinking; the proportion of pupils in good or outstanding schools has increased from 66% in 2010 to 84% now; and our primary school children have achieved their highest ever score on international reading tests. We have also launched 12 opportunity areas to drive improvement in parts of the country that we know can do better.

Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy

Laura Smith Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

As I have said, we are taking a number of measures to tackle areas that have suffered particular historical challenges in recruiting teachers, including rural and coastal areas and areas of deprivation. The evidence suggests that within those areas different schools face different challenges, so it is often a school-level challenge, but we do have measures in place to direct funding particularly to areas of challenge, and we are rolling out this strategy to areas, including the north-east, Manchester and Bristol, that we know face particular social mobility challenges.

[Laura Smith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)]

Is it not the case that to reduce workload in any significant way we simply need more teachers and more support staff in schools, so does the Minister agree that until the Treasury commits to a long-term plan that includes a significant real-terms increase in the education budget, the most he can hope for is to make marginal improvements?

[Nick Gibb]

Teaching remains an attractive profession. There are 450,000 teachers in the profession. Last year, we recruited 34,500 teachers, which is over 2,000 more than the year before, and that year we recruited more teachers than the year before that. We accepted the recommendation of the STRB of a 3.5% pay rise for teachers on the main pay scale. We added an extra £1.3 billion of school funding, which we announced in the summer of 2017. The Chancellor announced an extra £400 million in his Budget for small capital projects. We have announced an extra £250 million recently for special needs funding. And we have issued a pay grant to fund the pay increases over and above the 1% that schools will already have budgeted.

College Funding

Laura Smith Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Laura Smith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker, and to take part in this incredibly important debate on further education funding. It is obvious that the matter is of great importance to my constituency, as we were one of the top 10 constituencies in terms of responses to the petition.

In my constituency we are lucky to have two sixth- form colleges in Nantwich—Brine Leas and Malbank—and we are extremely lucky to have the college I attended in Crewe. The college has changed dramatically since I was there. Not only has it changed its name to Cheshire College South and West, but the building underwent an incredible transformation during the last Labour Government and we are now proud to have a modern facility with fantastic resources, unlike the creaky 1960s tower block I enrolled at.

Cheshire College South and West provides a variety of courses, boasts its very own award-winning student-run restaurant called “Academy”, and has a hair salon, a theatre and an incredible fitness centre. The college sits in a residential area of Crewe, which is a post-industrial town that suffers from high levels of poverty, with people trapped in work that simply does not pay. The college provides opportunities to many local schoolchildren and to the community in general, offering space for community groups, meeting rooms for businesses and experiences that people otherwise simply would not have.

It sounds too good to be true. There always is a “but” with these things, and the big “but” is exactly the reason we are here today: Cheshire College South and West faces huge funding challenges. I am here to highlight that and to make the Minister aware of how devastating it would be to my community to lose that excellent education provision. Sadly, we are already seeing the university I attended, Manchester Metropolitan, withdraw its university campus from Crewe; that is a huge blow. We cannot allow FE opportunities to shrink for my constituents as well.

A key point that really illustrates the funding pressures in FE is that in real terms, funding for 16 to 18-year-olds is back to its 1990 level. To put that into context, I was five years old in that year, Margaret Thatcher resigned and Nelson Mandela was released from prison. How can it be that 29 years later funding has gone so far backwards? I have been informed that while costs continue to increase, our college will face considerable funding pressures next year, causing a potential negative impact of more than £1 million. The college will undoubtedly make cuts, and we all know that cuts come in the form of jobs. That will be devastating not only for those who are dedicated to teaching, but for the opportunities available to our future generations, not to mention the impact on our local economy.

It is important also to make it clear that pay is a major issue both for staff and for the colleges for which they work. Two thirds of college leaders cite an inability to match pay expectations as a major barrier to recruiting skilled staff.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her powerful argument. The picture she has painted is very similar to the situation faced by Barnsley College. I recently met with staff there, who highlighted that the college is really struggling to recruit in core subjects. To make matters worse, students often come to the college below the standard that they should be at when they leave school.

[Laura Smith]

The situation that my hon. Friend and I are talking about is reflected in all constituencies, and that is why we are here today. The University and College Union has made it clear that funding reductions have meant that many colleges have had to make difficult decisions about what to fund. For students, those restrictions have meant fewer hours for teaching and support and a more limited range of study choices. For staff, pay has fallen in value by 25% in real terms since 2009. In cash terms, that means a £2,484 pay cut for those at the bottom end of the scale, rising to more than £9,000 for experienced lecturers and even more for those higher up the scale. For colleges that have failed to implement the recommended pay rises, the fall has been even greater. Since 2010, some 24,000 teachers have left the further education sector. That is around a third of the total teaching workforce.

Why is this happening? The Conservatives have ruthlessly cut funding for FE colleges and reduced entitlements for adult learners. That has led to diminishing numbers of courses and students, and has plunged the FE sector into crisis. The Labour party recognises that FE is an essential part of our education system that plays an important role in young adult education and lifelong learning. I firmly believe that after nearly 10 years of neglect, only the Labour party will correct the historic neglect of the FE sector by supplying the investment that teachers deserve. After all, it was the Tories who scrapped education maintenance allowance, which supported disadvantaged young people to stay in college—something that was so important to students in constituencies such as mine.

However, while this Conservative Government remain in charge of policy, I appeal to the Minister once again. I have already written and asked questions on this matter. First, what recent assessment has she made of the adequacy of Government funding for further education colleges in England? Secondly, what assessment has her Department made of the level of pay inequality between schools, universities and colleges in the education sector? Thirdly, what assessment has she made of the recent letter from Her Majesty’s chief inspector to the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), which raised concerns about significant under-investment in the further education sector? I sincerely hope that the Minister can provide answers to those questions at the end of the debate.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Thank you, colleagues, for your immaculate timekeeping.

Children’s Social Care

Laura Smith Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Laura Smith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford). I am not usually here on a Thursday, but I must say that the Chamber is very good tempered—it’s lovely.

I am going to speak briefly on the issue of social care provision in England and, specifically, how families with disabled children in my constituency face huge battles, fighting for their children to receive the care that they should be entitled to.

Many disabled children and their families rely on support from social care, such as short breaks, personal care and adaptations to their homes. However, most disabled children receive no regular support from outside their own close family and friends. The shift in the balance of services provided by children’s social care has impacted adversely on services for disabled children and their families. There has been a reduction in the number of disabled children who receive social care, despite an increase in the past 10 years in the number of disabled children in the UK by more than one third, to about 1.1 million, and their needs becoming ever more complex.

We all know that 10 years of austerity has resulted in services for disabled children coming under increasing threat due to cuts to local government funding. In fact, the Disabled Children’s Partnership has identified an annual funding gap of £434 million. As the gap has grown wider, two thirds of families have, unsurprisingly, reported a decline in the services available for their loved ones. Every week my team and I talk to families who are under enormous emotional, physical and mental pressure due to the complete failure of the system to offer their children the resources needed to enable them to live their lives with dignity.

On behalf of all of those constituents I will explain exactly what they have conveyed to me, and I hope that the Minister will respond adequately at the end of the debate. First, people are struggling to access the services. The necessary interventions that these children should be entitled to simply are not there, or the wait is too long to access them. Many parents speak of their immense frustration, as they know that investment could prevent the escalation of future problems. By the time something is done, it is often too late.

Secondly, many existing services do not meet expectations. A survey by the Disability Children’s Partnership shows that two thirds of family members have experienced a decline in the quality of services in recent years. Training and development of professionals, staff shortages, increased demand and poor pay can all impact on the quality of the service that people receive. When I was teaching, a referral could take months and the support was often only available for a short amount of time and subject to availability.

Thirdly, families cannot access those services easily. I have worked with a number of families who are exhausted because of the system. They are run down and on the brink due to the constant battle they face just to get what should be a human right. I have lost count of the number of people who have said to me, “The thing is, Laura, what about those who simply can’t fight or who don’t know how to? What happens to them?”

Finally, services do not always work together or communicate well with each other. Fragmented systems that do not join up properly to work in the best interest of the child are more often than not exasperated by chronic underfunding and undervalued and underpaid staff. Families often speak of how their social worker changes and they go back to square one.

What does all of that result in? The quality of life of, and opportunities available to, disabled children and their families is unacceptable compared with those without disabilities. Why is that? Our Government will not provide the funding required because that is the political choice that they have made. Not only is investing in the services available to these children the right thing to do from a human rights point of view; there is also a strong argument in favour of the economic value of doing so. Support can mean that costly long-term residential care is not required and that potential cost to the NHS is reduced. Support can help not only the child, but the parents and carers as well, as there is more opportunity for parents to work if they know that their child is being cared for adequately.

I must make it clear that there are many in my constituency who are working with children with disabilities and are doing an absolutely remarkable job. Often they are doing so through a registered charity, and are unpaid or even working at their own expense. People should not have to rely on the good will of others to receive care that should be a fundamental human right. This Government are relying on the general public to pick up the pieces of their starved system.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to draw your attention to the Cheshire Buddies and the Broad Street Project, two remarkable charities in my constituency of Crewe and Nantwich. I was lucky to spend time with them both over the Christmas period. Both go above and beyond to provide care and develop skills that these children desperately need. These organisations are largely staffed by volunteers. One thing that was made absolutely clear was that most of the children attending these charities receive no regular support from outside their own close family and friends and it is sheer fluke that a handful of good people are driving charities such as Cheshire Buddies and the Broad Street Project, so that these children at least receive some help, but that is simply not good enough.

If you do not mind, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will give you a typical example of what these people do: a child unable to walk with a number of disabilities started attending sessions run by Jane and her team at the Broad Street Project. They were told that the child would not walk. Jane being the determined woman that she is decided, as she has done with so many children, that she was not going to give up on this child. Against the odds, Jane taught this child to walk and to develop a number of other skills that will now remain with her for life. Without that intervention, that child could have spent her entire life in a wheelchair just because the support was not there to teach her how to walk. How many children do not get that opportunity because they do not come across people like Jane?

Before I conclude, I will touch on the issue of respite care for families—something that is probably top of the list for most of the families that I speak to. Everybody needs a break sometimes and nobody more so than someone who is caring for a loved one with complex needs. Briefly, I will mention Stephanie and her team at Cheshire Buddies whose scheme supports more than 95 local disabled children, 17 sibling carers, 27 disabled adults and more than 50 parent carers. The children have a range of needs, including learning disabilities, Down’s syndrome, cerebral palsy, autism and a range of chromosomal conditions. Many of those children come from low-income families and families with a history of special educational needs. Cheshire Buddies runs holiday clubs and day trips to give families that much-needed break. It manages to exist thanks to volunteer support. Without those volunteers, many of these families would be completely isolated.

I pay tribute to Mick Roberts who sadly passed away on 28 December and who will be missed by our community. He was a proud railwayman, a Labour councillor and someone who dedicated so much time and effort to the Seahorse Swimming Club charity in Crewe that helps and supports disabled children and adults to enjoy swimming.

These charities and many others in my constituency are constantly battling for essential funding. They are always in a process of bidding and fundraising and are always worried that their funds will disappear. What then happens to all of those people who rely so much on them? Families who have visited me in my surgery are often desperate. They do not know where else to turn. All that they are doing is fighting for their child—exactly what any one of us would do. They are experts in their children’s conditions—even if they do not realise it—and they are exhausted and mentally drained. One parent said to me recently, “I am a warrior, but I just want to be a mum. What happens if something happens to me?”

I urge the Government to put in place an interim funding arrangement to stabilise the crisis in early intervention services and to prevent more children and families reaching breaking point. They must address, as a matter of urgency, the £3 billion shortfall in children’s social care funding and put children at the heart of the forthcoming spending review.

Education Funding

Laura Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Laura Smith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran). Every child matters—that fundamental idea should unite everybody in this place whenever we discuss education. I start with that point because the belief that every child matters inspired me to go into teaching. My sense of purpose came from supporting each and every child to reach their full potential. I came into politics because I want to help to build a better world than the one we live in today, and I know millions of others share that dream. But the people who will lead that future are in our classrooms today, and if we fail to invest in them, that vision for the future will be little more than a dream. If we want to make it a reality, we have to be prepared to take a long, hard, critical look at the way the Government have directed and, some might say, designed our education system.

I say that because the IFS figures do not tell the full story. Working in classrooms, I have seen at first hand how Government policy strips resources from schools in other ways, too, with one such resource being teachers’ time. As a teacher, I always recognised the value of balancing knowledge with understanding. The real value of teaching is in equipping children with the ability to problem-solve—to make use of what you have taught them and to apply it to new situations—but it is much cheaper to simply test a child’s ability to retain information. The crude use of league tables, combined with the growth of the commercialised testing regime, has helped to make the curriculum far more content-based and less concerned with problem solving, a tendency helped along by snapshot inspections by Ofsted. When we also consider that this shift has happened at a time when schools have seen their budgets shrink in real terms, it is no surprise that the curriculum available to our children has also diminished, both in scope and quality. The result is that we end up with stressed out, overworked, underpaid teachers under more and more pressure to teach for the test.

As a teacher, I also recognised the value of co-operation between schools to improve provision across a local area. That could come in the form of sharing best practice or solutions for particular local problems, but it might also come in the form of pooling resources to achieve the same aim. The academisation of our education system has made that particularly difficult, as the schools in our constituencies now act, in many ways, as businesses in direct competition with each other. In addition, the direct payment of SEND funding to academies and free schools has resulted in the loss of the economies of scale provided by a central fund in a local authority area. I could talk for much longer about the consequences of academisation, but the point I wish to make in this debate is that it has contributed to the financial pressures in our schools, and we should not ignore that fact. So when we talk about school budgets being £1.7 billion lower in real terms than they were five years ago, the truth is actually much worse.

I truly loved my time as a teacher. Many of the children I taught will never know how much of an impact they made on me, but I hope that in the relatively brief time that I spent with them, I had a lasting impact on their development. As time went on and one colleague after another left the profession, I saw the schools that I worked in change—not just physically, but in every sense of the word. As workloads and class sizes grew and grew, morale plummeted. We lost some fantastic people—the kind of people we really want in our children’s schools, and not just teachers but teaching assistants and support staff too. The trend has only got worse since I left the profession. For the second year running, there are more teachers leaving the profession than joining it. Our children deserve to be taught by qualified, happy teachers who are paid properly. Teachers, teaching assistants and support staff are all thousands of pounds worse off in real terms compared with 2010 wages.

By the time I left the classroom, I had seen teaching change. Book scrutinies, lesson observations, data input, results, progress, benchmarking, always being Ofsted-ready—all of that took over every single teaching day. I felt that in the middle of this cycle were a load of kids whose confidence was shaken. The need to achieve and succeed outweighed their development as a whole person. If I was seen to spend five minutes talking to one child, even if it meant that that one child finally grasped fractions, I would fail a lesson observation. Little children were telling me that they were “stressed” and that they were “not good enough”. Parents were saying that their children would cry about homework for hours at the weekend. There is something seriously wrong when seven-year-old children feel like that. Primary school is supposed to be the most carefree time of a person’s life.

My own son was born on 29 August—he is the youngest in his class—and he recently told me that he was the worst in his class at writing and that he will never be smart. As a parent, it makes me feel so angry and so sad that my beautiful little boy, who improves every day, has to put up with a school report that just says he is working towards where he should be. He is working his socks off every day. What does that teach him?

Department for Education

Laura Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Thelma Walker (Colne Valley) (Lab)]

I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman). As a co-sponsor of this debate with the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), I believe that it is important that this House has the opportunity to scrutinise fully the Department for Education’s spending. I hope that Members will come to the same conclusion as me—that much more needs to be spent on schools and our young people’s education.

“I hope that we all agree that the aim is to provide the right education for every child. For some children, that will be an education that is firmly based in learning practical and vocational skills. For others, it will be an education based on academic excellence.” —[Official Report, 2 June 1997; Vol. 295, c. 60-61.]

Those are not my words, but the words of the Prime Minister in her maiden speech. I would like to use the next few minutes to examine the Prime Minister’s words to see how they fit with the Department for Education’s policies and spending plans today.

First, let us look at

“the right education for every child.”

I agree with the Prime Minister’s words that every child deserves the right education, regardless of their background, postcode or the support needed.

[Laura Smith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)]

Since the introduction of the new code of practice, there has been a significant increase in the number of pupils eligible to access special educational needs funding, but no proportionate increase in funding from central Government. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government need to examine pressures on SEN budgets as part of their spending review, to help struggling local authorities such as Cheshire East Council, which is already anticipating a £2 million overspend this year alone?