Grammar School Funding

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I add to the congratulations given to my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) on bringing this important issue forward at this time, when there a great deal of interest in the role of and proposals for grammar schools.

I am fortunate to have grammar schools in my constituency, and they remain extremely popular. One measure of that popularity is the distances from which parents apply to them because of the high quality of education pupils receive there. Like other Members who have spoken, I should declare an interest, as I am going to give some examples from the grammar school in Rugby where my own daughter is a pupil.

As with other grammar schools, a feature of grammar schools in Rugby is that their sixth forms are very large. They provide post-16 education for many feeder schools across the town, and those who start their secondary education in one of our—very good quality—comprehensive schools very much aspire to have the opportunity to move to a grammar school sixth form, so sixth-form funding is particularly important.

We had a previous debate about funding for education in this Parliament, and the cross-party F40 campaign—a very effective campaign organised in this place by my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker)—has drawn attention to the differences in education funding per head. The Government have, appropriately, provided an extra £390 million for the 69 worst-funded authorities, of which Warwickshire is one. That is a welcome attempt to address the problem, but it is not a cure, as substantial differences remain in per-pupil funding.

To give a local example, the average student is allocated £917 less funding in Warwickshire than the self-same student would be allocated in Birmingham, a difference of 21%. There is no dispute today that the impact of deprivation needs to be addressed and that additional resources should be targeted at it. However, that should not affect the majority of schools nor those schools with larger proportions of brighter children or children who do not attract additional funding. In Warwickshire, a student with no characteristics attracting additional funding is allocated just £3,569 of funding—£381 less than the DFE’s minimum funding level of £3,950 for a key stage 3 student.

[Neil Carmichael]

Does my hon. Friend agree that his points effectively prove the need for floor funding, so that funding is fair and decent for all forms of education, including grammar schools and other good schools, and that that is the way forward, certainly when we bear in mind additional funding from the pupil premium and other such funding streams?

[Mark Pawsey]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. In this debate, we are calling for a fairer funding formula for schools across the board. I am concerned that pupils in Warwickshire are receiving less than the DFE’s own minimum.

I turn now to the effect on sixth forms. They are at an additional disadvantage as a consequence of the good intention to equalise post-16 funding between sixth forms and further education colleges. That decision did not allow for the fact that schools provide supervised study, teach additional elective subjects and provide sport and other enrichment programmes, so there is more teaching time in schools than at further education colleges, where students often have a proportion of free time. In some instances, that has led to a loss of £1,000 per student.

This has had a particularly adverse effect on Rugby high school. If it had been an 11-to-16 school and its numbers had remained the same each year, its funding would have been static at £2,042,000. Unfortunately, the changes in post-16 funding have resulted in a 15% reduction in the school’s sixth-form funding—the equivalent of the salaries of 6.7 teachers paid at point 6 on the main professional scale. Schools such as Rugby high school, whose academic sixth forms are large in relation to the remainder of the school, have been particularly affected, although, of course, the issue also affects high-performing comprehensives.

The result is that Rugby high school receives less funding for post-16 students than for students aged 11 to 16. The figure is £4,080 for students post-16 and £4,350 for students aged 11 to 16, so there is £270 less per pupil when students transfer from GCSE courses to A-level courses, despite general agreement that the curriculum becomes more expensive to deliver as students pass through secondary school. We are perhaps getting to a situation where funding for 11 to 16-year-olds is having to subsidise sixth-form students because of a lack of sixth-form funding. That £4,080 represents just 45% of the £9,000 a top university would charge in tuition fees when students move on from sixth form. That massive difference cannot possibly be the best way to ensure that those studying for A-levels and preparing for entry into university get a top-quality education.

The funding issue has meant that schools such as Rugby high school have had to be very creative in balancing their books. The school has a particular problem because it is the only secondary school in Rugby without a sports hall and cannot provide sport. In addition, it has had to increase class sizes, reduce teaching time and, most significantly, drop some subjects. Particularly vulnerable subjects, which may disappear from the curriculum altogether in coming years, include modern foreign languages, music and Latin.

The solution to the problem is twofold. First, we need to speed the move towards a national formula that will provide agreed national minimum funding per pupil at each key stage. Secondly, we particularly call for an end to the anomaly of post-16 students being funded at a lower level than pupils aged 11 to 16.

I have a great interest in supporting the excellent education provided by grammar schools and good comprehensives, and I very much look forward to the Minister’s response to the points that have been raised.