School Funding

Debate between Michael Tomlinson and Victoria Atkins

Thursday 5th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Michael Tomlinson]

I am pleased to see the Minister nodding in agreement.

The F40 campaign group, of which I am a member, has set out an alternative formula, which I welcome. The formula would help my constituency by reducing the funding gap from £4,000 to just over £3,000. I could quote more facts and figures, as other hon. Members have done. Behind the numbers, however, are real individuals—real families, children and teachers—and those figures will make a difference in their lives and in their schools. In my constituency, the F40 proposals would see schools get an extra £240 per pupil—an increase of just under 5%, which is welcome. Schools in Poole would receive an extra £116—an increase of just under 3%, which is also welcome. However, I sound a note of caution: under the formula, schools in Poole would still be among the worst funded, although the changes would help to start narrowing the gap.

[Victoria Atkins]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the campaign is asking not for more money from the Treasury, but simply for a reallocation, so that the money that is already being spent is spent more fairly?

[Michael Tomlinson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. It is right that the formula is about beginning to close the gap. That is all I am fighting for today.

I am pleased that the Government have recognised the issue’s importance. I am also pleased to have fought the election on a manifesto that set out so clearly the need for a fairer funding formula. Similarly, I was pleased by the responses of the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister to my questions in the House. I was pleased not just because they were in answer to my questions, but because they were encouraging.

Other hon. Members have mentioned the £390 million that was granted in 2014-15 and that is now embedded in future years. I welcome that, but I see it as a down payment—a first step—rather than the finished article.

Let me turn for a moment to wider funding issues, because the motion is that

“this House has considered funding for schools”

generally. Montacute school in my constituency is, as the Minister may know, a special academy for children with severe and multiple learning difficulties and special needs. Recently, it received a very welcome £5 million to completely restructure what was a rather dilapidated building that was falling down, and I was delighted to be present at the opening of the new building. However, the funding included no additional money for the inside—the fixtures and fittings, which are the very things that are required to make a school really a school.

Local families have clubbed together as part of Monty’s fund, and they have raised £500,000 to date. However, more is required, and I urge the Minister to consider that as a particular request. I will be making a small difference by dressing up as Father Christmas and entering the great Santa fun run with members of Wimborne rotary club. I invite the Minister to join me. Where better to run and raise money for a good cause than round Badbury Rings?