Education Funding

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I am perhaps more optimistic on rural schools than the right reverend Prelate. Coming from a rural background myself, I know the importance of these schools in communities beyond the simple provision of education. As he quite rightly said, some of the greatest increases in funding will go to these schools over the next two to three years. I am therefore very confident that it will be a huge boost to them.

Early years was not the subject of this announcement. It may be addressed as part of the spending review tomorrow, but it is not in the remit of this announcement.

I hear the right reverend Prelate’s concern on these retakes, but I am afraid I respectfully disagree with him; I think it is incredibly important that they get these base qualifications so that they can progress to their career, but I accept that we need to find better ways of educating. I am particularly interested in edtech, which might bring in ways of teaching that have previously eluded those pupils.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I also welcome the Statement. We are obviously delighted that extra resources are being made available, and I accept the figures that were given. I am concerned about two areas. The first is further education—we heard my noble friend Lady Garden speak eloquently on this subject. While there are extra resources, does the Minister expect that they will increase over the next few years? I have never quite understood—perhaps the Minister could explain this to me—why, if I am a chemistry teacher in an academy or a maintained secondary school, I get considerably more pay than if I am a chemistry teacher in a further education college. Why should this be the case? Secondly, if I am in a sixth form college which is part of an academy chain, there is a VAT exemption. If I am in a stand-alone sixth form college which is not part of an academy chain, the school has to pay VAT. Can that be fair?

My niche question is on behaviour. I was fascinated, interested and delighted to hear about these behaviour hubs and will watch this space with interest. We heard the Secretary of State say, whether it was in the Statement or separately, that he would back schools which permanently excluded pupils from school for bad behaviour. I have always said that teachers have a right to teach and pupils have a right to learn. Schools have to do everything possible to try to ensure that pupils with behavioural problems are supported within the school, but if we move to a system where there is a sort of free rein to exclude pupils, we will see all sorts of difficulties. If we move to that new ethos, will the Minister make available more resources for alternative education? If that is the case, will he ensure that the use of unregistered alternative providers no longer happens? We are seeing young people excluded from school and going into unregistered providers, many of which quite frankly do not deserve to be in education at all. The young people are not even checked in and checked out; they can often roam the streets and get involved in drug and gang culture. That cannot be the case, so what extra resources will there be for alternative education in this announcement?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Lord asks important questions. First, I will try to clarify the difference between FE and the school system, particularly the academy system. FE colleges have a different legal status and a degree of independence which does not relate to the school system. The colleges themselves take the decisions on pay, and one of the anomalies which I must admit I do not really understand is that they tend to prefer to pay all teachers exactly the same rate irrespective of their skills or the particular subjects they are teaching. One of the things that I want to do with this new funding is to find a way of challenging them to be a bit more flexible. As the noble Lord says, if you teach chemistry in an academy and earn X amount, why can you not earn a similar amount in an FE college? I want to get to the bottom of that, to be honest.

Again, VAT status is a quirk of the different legal status of these entities. For example, FE colleges as independent units have the right to borrow, which does not exist in the school system; however, as almost a quid pro quo, they do not have the right to recover VAT. We have offered for sixth form colleges to convert to academisation; quite a lot of them—over half, I think—have done so. Those that have not have reasons for choosing not to, but it is an option that they can consider.

On behaviour, I have just found a note. To answer my noble friend Lord Lexden’s earlier question, the first hubs will open in September next year. In relation to exclusions, I assure the noble Lord and everyone here that we are not for a second suggesting a free-for-all on permanent exclusions. Indeed, in the new Ofsted framework, there will be much more scrutiny of exclusion policies, particularly permanent ones, by schools. So there is no suggestion that we encourage exclusion, but I believe strongly that it is an important tool in the locker of a school where very difficult children disrupt the education of others.

To be clear, an unregistered school is an illegal school. Ofsted has an ongoing programme to track these schools down; when they are located, we close them and take legal action against the proprietors where that is the appropriate course.

[Lord Storey]

I am pleased with the Minister’s answer. In terms of alternative provision, the problem with unregistered schools is that local authorities themselves send the excluded pupils to those institutions. The parents are not deciding that they should go to a particular religious type of unregistered school; local authorities are saying, “Oh, we’ve got this boy or girl, this student, who has been excluded from school. We are going to put them in alternative provision”. They then go for the cheapest option, which is often an unregistered school, with all the problems that that entails. I have asked before whether we can write to local authorities saying that this is not acceptable because they are operating illegally.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Lord is quite right. Sometimes, a local authority may use part-time provision that may be legal but, often, these morph into full-time institutions without the local authority realising. We are in constant dialogue with local authorities on this issue, reminding them that sending a child to an unregistered school on a full-time basis is not on. We are carrying out a consultation of the process of getting schools to take ownership of a pupil once they have excluded them; in other words—this is not agreed yet, but we are consulting on these ideas at the moment—they would be responsible for the ultimate educational results of the child that they had excluded, so they would have to consider the issue much more carefully. We are opening more free school PRUs and APs so that more provision is available. I accept that this is a difficult area, but we are putting a lot of emphasis on it.