School and College Funding: The Midlands

Mark Pritchard Excerpts

Tuesday 9th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Gullis]

I am sure that the hon. Member would never want to mislead this Chamber, and I accept that there was probably a mistake there. I think that I was perfectly clear when I said that, with the money that I earn, I would be embarrassed if I was unable to put food on my children’s table, day in, day out. I think that that was perfectly clear and the transcript will show it. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will reflect on his words. If I were to see my words misconstrued in any way, I would have to contact Mr Speaker’s office to get remediation, because it would be wrong to politically twist what was said abundantly clearly. Hansard will pick up my words. I would be embarrassed, personally, if I was unable to put food on the table, based on the salary that I earn. That would be taking a meal out of the mouth of a child in my constituency of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, who rightfully would deserve that meal. That is why I would be embarrassed: it would mean that those who need it most would not get the level of help that they truly deserve.

My mother was on a council estate in London, and she got off it thanks to grammar school—something that the hon. Member for Coventry South herself will know well about, having been such a beneficiary of that world-class education, which I hope to bring to Stoke-on-Trent. My father, who failed his O-levels, went back to being a cleaner at his school during the day and did night school in the evening. He went all the way through to becoming a council worker while doing night school for his A-levels, and then he went to the Open University and became the first ever in my family to get a degree.

My grandfather spent 93 hours a week driving lorries, my grandmother worked in hotels, my other grandmother was a teaching assistant, and my other grandfather, sadly, passed away when my mother was 17 years old. That is exactly why I am proud of my legacy—of what my family have done to give me every advantage that I have had in life. I am aware of the privilege that I have had, and I want to ensure that the pupils I am proud to represent in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke get everything that they deserve.

I want Stoke-on-Trent to be great. It is a small but mighty city, and levelling up will be achieved only by getting the education in our sector right. That is why I am so damning of the “Not Education Union” spending its time convincing teachers to walk on picket lines rather than being in classrooms and helping pupils to recover from the pandemic. We have accepted that the gravest mistake was that pupils were not in the classroom during the pandemic. Face-to-face learning is so critical, and the quality of provision was a postcode lottery for some pupils—whether they were given virtual lessons immediately or months down the line. That was no fault of the hard-working teachers. Sadly, it was the fault of Ministers who decided not to let pupils and teachers into the classroom together. I hope that we will never again see a day when face-to-face teaching is brought into disrepute.

I hope that Kevin Courtney and Mary Bousted can put their bias and political game-playing to one side. They are living out their socialist utopian fantasy that they are so desperate for—

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order. May I remind the hon. Gentleman that the scope of this debate is quite narrow? I am sure that he would like to pursue what he is discussing, but I am afraid that today is not the time. We need to stay within the scope of the motion. I am sure that he wants to get back to funding for his midlands constituency.

[Jonathan Gullis]

Thank you very much, Mr Pritchard; yes, I am happy to go back to the funding that has been so important to our local area. We are lucky that the schools in Stoke-on-Trent are quite new, so we are not in the desperate situation that, I accept, other areas are in. I believe that £1.8 billion of additional funding is now going into improving the school estate, which is important to improving our local areas. In Stoke-on-Trent, I want that funding to look at the challenge of the day, which is workload.

Money is going into schools. We now know that there has been an increase, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies itself has said, of above 8% in real terms. We know that that is keeping pace with a 13% rise in pupil numbers. Stoke-on-Trent has seen a 6.8% increase. The money is in the system. Now I want to see that money go where it is needed most. Schools obviously got support through the energy bill relief scheme; up to potentially 40% per month in the case of some schools was the saving from the cap on energy costs, which was a huge intervention. The total figure was about £500 million, if I remember correctly.

I want the money now to be used to think about workload. How can we drive down workload to free up teacher time—to ensure that teachers are spending more time in the classroom and more time doing interventions, rather than getting caught up in unnecessary, bureaucratic meetings? This is where I challenge the Minister to go to the DFE, print off every single piece of guidance issued and have a challenge to halve it. I asked the Department to do that when I was there. People laughed and said that it would fill up my office. It is a concern if schools have to deal with that level of guidance. That means that they cannot spend their time or money focusing on what really matters, which is why we need to ensure that we get the guidance halved.

Of course, there is also the issue of behaviour. Investing in behaviour hubs and behaviour specialisms is massively important to improving outcomes, because it is what is driving teachers out of the classroom and preventing people from coming into the profession. Sadly, they hear too often from Opposition Members how bad teaching is, how terrible teaching is. Talk about a negative advert for the teaching profession—talk about an advert to say why people should not go into teaching! When you are telling everyone how bad it is, do not be shocked that no one wants to go into it. What we need to do is to invest in behaviour hubs, so that we can ensure that young people have good law and order in their classroom, the teacher feels safe and secure and, ultimately, every single pupil has a right to learn, rather than one pupil having a right to disrupt and disregard the ambitions of everyone else.

Thank you, Mr Pritchard, for my time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Perkins]

rose—

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order. I apologise to the shadow Minister. I know he was replying to the intervention by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), but I called him to order because the intervention was outside the scope of the debate. It is incumbent on all Members to reflect on their contributions. They should be in the context of the motion drawn up by the mover who applied to the Speaker for the debate. The debate is about funding for schools and colleges in the midlands. I encourage everybody to focus on that out of respect to the shadow Minister.

[Mr Perkins]

I understand your point entirely, Mr Pritchard, and I will of course stick to your strictures.

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South also spoke about Coventry College being in a position where it can no longer offer apprenticeships. That is so powerful and so damaging. We recognise the incredible importance of apprenticeships. We also recognise that in many areas there are huge difficulties in accessing apprenticeships, particularly for small businesses. Oftenm it is the colleges that are best at getting those small businesses—the non-levy payers—in to do apprenticeships. [Interruption.] I am sure I am not the only Member with a post-election cold, so please excuse me. My hon. Friend’s point on Coventry College ceasing to provide apprenticeships was incredibly powerful.

Moving on to the contribution of the hon. Member for Stafford (Theo Clarke), I was delighted to hear about the new facilities at Stafford College. The hon. Lady is absolutely right that new facilities make a huge difference, so it is good to hear about the progress being made on new capital spending at that college. I thought the comment she attributed to the Secretary of State for Education—that nothing demonstrates the Government’s commitment to young people like the amount they spend on capital equipment for colleges—was incredibly powerful. For precisely that reason, it is appalling that we have had a massive reduction in capital equipment spend on both our schools and our colleges under this Government. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) referred to the IFS report in November 2021, according to which funding for students aged 16-18 saw the biggest fall of any sector, and the increases only reversed a fraction of the cuts we have had. The hon. Member for Stafford is absolutely right; I will join her in holding this Government to account on their capital spending and use that to demonstrate the extent to which they have let a generation of young people down.

The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North gave a memorable speech. It was, frankly, most misleading of him to suggest that schools are being generously funded. Schoolteachers in his area will have listened to his contribution aghast at his argument that there has been generous funding under this Government. It is one thing for the Government to say it was an economic decision to introduce austerity and that they had to do it; it is quite another to actually suggest that all these schoolteachers are going on strike and leaving the profession at a time that the sector is being generously funded.

The hon. Gentleman asked about additional funding for schoolteachers. Removing the tax perk on private schools would actually fund an extra 6,500 schoolteachers. Look at the record of the last Labour Government: the reality is that we did not see losses in the sector on the scale we have seen under this Government. There has been a massive reduction in the number of teaching assistants and pressure is increasing on schoolteachers. All that has an impact. Look at the massive expansion in social problems in our schools—again, that creates pressure on schools. The idea that this is simply about providing a little bit more money and then schoolteachers’ lives will be better is just missing the point entirely.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Perkins]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman was able to set the record straight on that.

There can be no doubt that 13 years of Tory Government have left England’s school and college buildings crumbling, left many teachers and their support staff demoralised and left our schools robbed of the funding needed to support the opportunities that all our children deserve. I see that in the facilities every time I attend a school in my constituency. One of the very first things I recall from when I came to this place as a new MP in 2010 is the chaotic announcement from the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) about the cancellation of the Building Schools for the Future projects.

Every single month at Education questions, it seems that there is another Conservative MP coming to their feet to reflect on how appalling the school building is in one of their schools, and saying, “If only the Minister could take the time to address that,” without recognising that it is the entire system of capital funding, not the individual case, that is a failure under this Government. There is a stark difference between the facilities that children have at Outwood Academy Newbold and Springwell Community College in my constituency, with brand-new buildings secured under the last Labour Government, and the 13 years without a single new secondary school building in my constituency, which have meant schools such as Brookfield Community School and Parkside Community School soldiering on in inadequate facilities despite the best efforts of their staff.

It is not just school buildings that have been left to rot. The Conservatives also cut off the fledgling Building Colleges for the Future programme on their arrival in government. Both statistically and anecdotally, the failure under this Government is there for all to see. The attainment gap between disadvantaged secondary school pupils and their better-off peers has widened to its largest level in years. Under the Conservatives, teacher vacancies have risen by 246%, with the Government missing their teacher recruitment target again this year, recruiting just 59% of their target for secondary schools.

In late 2021, research published by the headteachers’ union, the National Association of Head Teachers, found that schools across the west midlands have been forced to cut staff or activities because of a lack of funding. One in three schools said that they had made cuts to balance their budget, while 38% expected to make cuts in the following year. Last November, similarly, a Unison report revealed that councils across the east midlands faced a collective funding gap of £181 million in the next financial year, forcing them to cut essential services including early education. The extent to which schools have felt totally unsupported with the increase in energy prices is just one example.

Inasmuch as there has been any recovery in funding in recent years, it does not begin to address the shortfall over which the Government presided in the previous 11 years, and it comes in the context of huge cost of living crisis pressures, which mean that it has been swallowed up. Only last week, the Sutton Trust found that essential school staff and activities are being cut as a result of funding pressures inflicted by central Government. Such measures can only have a detrimental effect on our children’s futures. The IFS analysis to which the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North referred showed that schools in England still face a significant budget squeeze.

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to sit to finish the remainder of his speech, he may do so, because his cold is severe. It is entirely up to him.

--- Later in debate ---

[Zarah Sultana]

I will keep it brief. I thank you, Mr Pritchard, for chairing this debate, and colleagues who took part. I began my speech by saying that I hope the teachers who came down from the midlands would find hope, and I appreciate the tone of the Minister’s remarks, which provided a contrast to some of the other contributions we have heard. The Minister listed several funding arrangements, and the Government boast that real-terms education funding will match 2010 levels by 2025, but I do not think that 13 years of decline and wasted potential is much of a boast. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) said, our schools are struggling and teachers have felt abandoned by the Government. At the heart of this, our young people’s potential and opportunities are being stifled.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome), who is a tireless champion of her constituents. She highlighted the unsustainable situation around teacher retention and investing in SEN for the most vulnerable in our constituencies.

I hope that the Minister will hear the calls of teachers and parents; acknowledge what has happened over the past 13 years, where underfunding in real terms has affected educators and children alike, selling them short; and commit not just to investing in our education, but to putting learning and teachers at the heart of everything the Government do. Hopefully, when a Labour Government come into power, that will be our aim too.

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Before we conclude, I am sure that hon. Members will join me in wishing the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) a speedy recovery. It was a great performance—bless you.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered school and college funding in the Midlands.