School Funding

Laurence Robertson Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. When I was first elected to the House almost 22 years ago, the problem in Gloucestershire was that we were underfunded due to something called the area cost adjustment. It has taken a long time to start to correct that, as this Government have done. We lost out not just to inner-city areas, which received a lot more money per pupil, but to other rural areas that got much more than Gloucestershire did.

I was very pleased that this Government agreed to set up the national funding formula. That was good news, but we need to start to see the fairness of the formula coming through a bit more quickly. If we continue at a very slow pace—let us say that it takes 20 years for there to be an equalisation of funding per pupil—three or four generations of pupils will lose out. I say to the Minister, “Well done so far, but perhaps we need it to happen a little bit quicker than it is happening at the moment.”

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we have the wrong Minister responding to this debate? That is in no way a personal criticism of him—quite the opposite. I believe that he and his colleagues in the Department for Education are listening, but they can allocate only the funding they are provided by the Treasury. Is it not the Chancellor who should be answering our requests for more funding for our constituencies? Should not our key request to the Minister be to ask him to take back to the Chancellor our calls for more funding for our constituencies?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Robertson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and am absolutely delighted that the schools Minister is here to listen. He and his colleagues have an open-door policy: they are always prepared to meet hon. Members and listen to their concerns. I take the point that the Education Secretary and his Ministers can divide the cake only in certain ways, and it is their decision. Perhaps we need to grow the cake, which is the point my hon. Friend correctly makes.

I want to turn to higher needs funding. I welcome the fact that, again, the Department listened to many of us who said that higher needs requires more spending. Several colleagues did that, and more money was forthcoming, which is very welcome. Although I welcome recognition of the problem, even after receiving more money, Conservative-controlled Gloucestershire will have a shortfall in higher needs funding this year, and it will increase next year. We need to see more money going into that.

I have two absolutely excellent special schools in my constituency—Alderman Knight and Milestones—and I recognise that mainstream schools are also struggling with this particular issue. My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) made the point that when we were at school many years ago, class sizes were bigger and there was no such thing as a teaching assistant—that was also the case when I was the chairman of governors at a primary school. However, I accept and recognise that there are now greater and more complex higher needs, and more pupils with them, than there were in those days. I fully accept that we need to do more in that respect.

I met about 40 or 50 school governors on Saturday morning, along with my hon. Friends the Members for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) and for Gloucester (Richard Graham) and the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew). It was a very good debate, but one teacher said that a teacher at her school had been assaulted by a pupil. I have seen that happen in other schools, and one of the problems is that there are not enough staff in schools. I asked them, “If you had a load more money, what would you spend it on?” The answer was more staff and perhaps better facilities in schools.

I recognise that the Government have given more money for capital spending, but also that there are problems in schools. Fairly recently, I had a school that was actually dangerous—there was asbestos in it and the windows were very dangerous and almost literally falling out. The Government came forward with emergency money for that. It is an issue that we have to recognise.

I started by saying that when I came to this place, there were different reasons for concerns about school funding. Although we are getting absolutely excellent education in our schools—the ones I visit are amazing in the work they are doing, and my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) is right to point out that outcomes matter at the end of the day—I have never known the concern about school funding to be as strong as it is now. That is not in any way to deny what the Government have done, or to deny the progress that has been made; it is recognising that there is a real problem.