Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Kane Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Yesterday, we announced that local authorities will receive an additional £250 million of high needs funding over two years, plus £100 million of capital funding to make more places available. That will take our total spend per annum on high needs funding to over £6 billion.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

That answer shows that the Minister has his head in the sand. In addition to what is happening in Lancashire, new research for the Local Government Association shows that by 2020-21 there will be a potential £1.6 billion gap in funding for special educational needs and disabilities nationally. Given that there is no new money, according to what the Secretary of State said on the television at the weekend, when will the Government ensure that children with SEND are able to access the education they deserve?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

This is new money—£250 million plus £100 million for capital spending—from the underspend in the Department. The additional funding will help local authorities and schools with the increasing costs of provision for some of our most vulnerable children and young people. I think it is a shame that the Opposition are scaremongering in this way with the most vulnerable families in our society.

Free Schools and Academies in England

Mike Kane Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2018 Westminster Hall

[Greg Hands]

Again, I am not familiar with the particular local circumstances of the hon. Gentleman’s area. I would say that of course there will be examples of schools in difficulties, across all categories of school, but the statistics for this are absolutely clear: free schools and academies are significantly more likely to be succeeding than other schools. That is what the evidence clearly shows. But I agree that any school facing difficulties will need careful attention from relevant local or national authorities.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a passionate defence of the schools in his constituency, which is the first thing a constituency MP does, but there is no evidence anywhere to show that academisation means that schools are performing better.

[Greg Hands]

I disagree. I have already read out quite a bit of evidence from the statistics behind the academies outperforming the rest of the sector: 65% of those inspected saw their grades improve from inadequate to either good or outstanding, having been transformed into academies. Multi-academy trusts enable our best performing schools to help struggling schools improve all the time. The evidence speaks for itself in the statistics I read out earlier and in the Government’s overall improvement in school standards.

Returning to my point about where we need to improve, one size does not fit all for education. Schools cannot simply be transposed from one part of the country to another or rolled out in a cookie-cutter approach simply because they have worked in one format. There has to be room for local organic growth. I will put on the record my frustration with the Education and Skills Funding Agency, which must do better at working with schools to anticipate and resolve problems in site delivery. The Fulham Boys School, which has been waiting to move to its new site for some time now, has been particularly affected. The ESFA should, in this regard, harness local knowledge and relationships rather than necessarily relying on centralised procurement processes.

Schools need certainty to plan for their futures. I thank the current Secretary of State for meeting me and the school last summer—I know we have another school coming up—and trying to drive through the move to the new site in Heckfield Place in my constituency. I will quote again from the school’s headmaster, whose blog post title overdoes it the other way. It is entitled, “Why the free school movement will fail”, which I think is far too pessimistic. The title does not really match the content. He writes:

“My view, shaped over the last 4 years, is that bureaucrats’ delivery of Free school policy is directly frustrating government’s aspirations for it… Secondly, Free schools like FBS are constantly being frustrated and hampered by slow moving bureaucracy, red tape and ‘process’.”

I will add into the mix here that one of the most extraordinary meetings I ever had in Government, when I was a Minister, was taking the Fulham Boys School in to meet some of the ESFA officials. One official—admittedly, he was an outside contractor—said to the Fulham Boys School, which is also a Church of England school, “You are a faith school, so you must have belief that your school will open.” He could not offer specific reassurances on the site or when the contractors doing the site would be ready. He simply said to them that, as a faith school, they needed to believe. I do not know how religious you are, Mr Davies, but I would say that even the most evangelical of people would want to see something slightly more concrete than that on the table.

Unfortunately, progress has come to a grinding halt under Labour in Hammersmith and Fulham. The borough has failed to provide additional school places that are needed, particularly for the bulge in secondary school numbers that is coming up. Ironically, despite all these new schools, the borough now has the lowest figure for first-choice secondary school placements in England—it is absolutely rock bottom of that league table. Hammersmith and Fulham simply does not have enough places at quality schools that parents want their children to go to.

The council itself predicts that by 2027 there will be a deficit of 327 places for students between years 7 and 11, not including sixth form. That is 327 students without a place by the year 2027. Kensington and Chelsea also has a problem, as the figure there is projected to stand at 195 students by 2023-24. There is also something there that needs fixing. Creating additional secondary school places is a challenge in a constituency such as mine, especially finding sites in the two boroughs I represent, where land is incredibly expensive. We need to recognise some of the difficulty in doing that. It is easier said than done.

Nevertheless, the popularity of these schools at secondary level is evidenced by how over-subscribed they are. West London Free School receives nearly 10 applications for every year 7 place. At Lady Margaret School, which is a conversion to an academy, it is nearly seven applicants per place. These schools continually top parents’ lists of first preferences, and all of them outperform others in their area. It is, of course, great news that the Department for Education expects around another 1,000 maintained schools to become academies over the next two years, and that 110 new schools opening by 2020 will be free schools. There was also news in September that 53 new free schools and one university technical college will be creating up to 40,000 new school places.

That is the picture locally: excellence, popularity of these schools, and continuing drive from parents to create more of them. We have a deficit of school places and parents are demanding these kinds of innovative schools, but they are concerned—I will put my cards on the table—at what they are hearing from the Labour party about its plans. I was amazed at the speech by the shadow Secretary of State for Education at the Labour party conference. I doubt that you personally had the misfortune to be there, Mr Davies, because I know you are a sensible man, but she said—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

As ever, Mr Davies, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands) on securing this important debate. It is a debate without many Members; the House sat very late last night with the Brexit deliberations. I understand that the right hon. Gentleman went to Dr Challoner’s Grammar School. Its motto is “Ad Astra Per Aspera”, which means, “We look to the stars through difficulties”. That might be good advice for the current Government, as they navigate or steer the ship through the Brexit waters. However, other Labour Members will agree that, as things currently stand, the Government are steering using celestial navigation on a cloudy night. Anyway, there are not too many Members here in Westminster Hall today, because so many were in the House last night.

The reality of the current school system is that it is broken, and that it has been fragmented beyond repair. The right hon. Gentleman talked about the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), who threw the system up, broke it and then saw how it would coalesce together. The right hon. Gentleman said that he wanted to see us go up in the PISA standings—the programme for international student assessment standings—in terms of standards. We know that has not happened; because of the reforms, that just has not worked at all. Also, the system is in parts unfair and unaccountable, as has been said, and in most places it is not being led by the needs of local communities.

I did a simple Google search on academies and schools today, just to see what would come up. Day in and day out, we see some of the problems that the system is faced with today. Amanda Spielman, the chief inspector of Ofsted, has said that it is a “halfway-house” and “inadequate”, and that it does not have enough capacity. There are not enough teachers and leadership in the system, and schools are being left in limbo for far too long, which is a point I will come on to in just a moment. In fact, one school has been left in limbo—without a sponsor—for seven years. That was the result of the first part of my Google search.

[Greg Hands]

May I take it from what the shadow Minister is saying that he endorses his boss’s proposal, which is immediately to end the Tories’ academy and free school programme? Can he confirm that today?

[Mike Kane]

I will come on to say what our programme is. We will see new schools and new academies, but we will bring them in where they are accountable to local people, where proper spatial planning is done, and where numbers are consistent with the school places being brought forward. At the moment there is no accountability; I will explain that later in my speech.

[Greg Hands]

In the hon. Gentleman’s policy, the future of those free schools and academies will be accountable to local people. How will that differ from existing county schools?

[Mike Kane]

Currently, we have a system that is unaccountable. The hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) had to raise issues of pedagogical knowledge and how a school teaches, directly with the Minister. We cannot run 22,000 schools in England and Wales from Whitehall; nobody expects that. So the system will be local and accountable when Labour comes to power. That is what parents want. We have seen parents being cut out of academies and coming off governing bodies across our land; we want parents driving the policies of our local schools with local elected authorities.

Secondly, if someone does a simple Google search, they will find that the Department for Education itself has recently named and shamed 88 academies and trusts for failing to publish their financial returns.

The third thing that came out of my Google search today is that currently the academies—I emphasise that this has just been reported today—have a £6.1 billion deficit within the system. What is going on with the accountability and financing of this programme?

Finally, I will say one more thing on this issue. The Conservatives have hugely lauded individual schools and some headteachers who have followed the programme in this instance. Now, however, one of the Tories’ lauded headteachers in Birmingham—I will not name them here today—has been banned from teaching indefinitely because of poor standards in the school they run.

So, the system is broken and fragmented. When there are 124 failing schools left stranded outside the system, waiting to be transferred to another chain or sponsor, something is wrong; my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) talked about this issue very articulately. Indeed, there are authorities that are willing to participate but they have been cut out of the system, including authorities with some great expertise—not just Labour authorities, but Conservative-controlled authorities, too. That does not chime with what lots of Conservative councillors say should be the policy up and down the country.

The right hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham talked about faith. What would happen if it was not for the Church of England, which is a broker to so many thousands of schools, especially in rural areas? It is a different situation for those of us who represent cities. We have no trouble in cities in finding academy sponsors, but in rural and suburban areas schools have trouble in that respect.

[Alex Cunningham]

As I have said, we have struggled to find a partner for one school in the borough. I extend to my hon. Friend my invitation to the Minister to come to Stockton, because that is an authority where academies and the local authority work very closely together, which can only be to pupils’ benefit.

[Mike Kane]

If my hon. Friend is inviting me to Stockton, I would be delighted to come to the north-east. The reality is that most academies worth their salt co-operate with their local or sub-regional authorities, because they want to co-operate. In the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, parents chose not to send their children to some schools in London because of some of the horrendous things that were going on. It was not market competition that changed that; it was co-operation through the London Challenge. The Labour Government put money into failing schools, bringing the best pedagogy and the best teachers together through a co-operative system, and raising standards so that 50% of all children in London who are on the pupil premium now get at least five good GCSEs. That is what we did in London. If a line is drawn through the north of England from the Humber estuary to the Mersey estuary, through my constituency and those of my hon. Friends the Members for Ellesmere Port and Neston and for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), it shows that number drops to about 34%. We know what works: it was being rolled out across the country in 2010, and then austerity put an end to it.

I was making a point about the Church of England. The right hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham talked about whether we have faith—the substance of things hoped for over the evidence of things seen. That is certainly Government education policy as it currently stands. I am not of the view that academies are bad, that free schools are bad or that we need to sweep a broom through the entire system: Labour’s reform proposals will not mean a single school closing, and will not mean any schools that are currently in the pipeline being cancelled. However, for far too long, parents and local communities have been shut out of decisions affecting the schools in their area. The Minister needs to give power back to communities, so that our schools are run by the people who know them best—parents, teachers and those local communities.

[Greg Hands]

The hon. Gentleman has given himself an opportunity to clarify his policy proposals. It sounds like the schools will carry on, but they will no longer be free schools; they will be wholly under local authority control. Can he confirm that—yes or no?

[Mike Kane]

No, they will not be wholly under local authority control. Local and sub-regional authorities will have a say in our schools. They already have a say on spatial planning—that is, where places are needed. Local authorities work best where they co-operate with schools, and that will happen again. Local authorities, though, should be given the power to take on schools when no other sponsor can be found. What is the ideological obsession with not allowing that to happen? As I have said, there are currently 124 unbrokered schools, containing 700,000 children. Giving that power to local authorities would ensure that no school is left without the support of a sponsor to deliver school improvement services and provide it with a network of schools. How many schools are currently awaiting a sponsor, and of those, what is the longest time a school has had to wait to get a new sponsor in place?

As my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston said, as did I when I intervened on the right hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham, the Education Policy Institute—whose executive chairman was formerly a Minister in the coalition Government—has confirmed yet again that there is

“little difference in the performance of schools in academy chains and local authorities.”

There is no evidence of that difference. The evidence that the right hon. Gentleman cited was that there are more pupils in our school system. That is what the Government have been getting away with when trying to explain that standards have gone up—standards in schools that have not been inspected by Ofsted for over a decade. We also know that Ofsted’s only data measures affluence and deprivation, rather than the quality of teaching and learning. What matters is that schools are able to connect with a group of schools that have high performance, which is what the London Challenge did. As there is no evidence that converting a school to an academy will improve outcomes for pupils, will the Minister commit to ending the policy of automatic conversions for schools that receive Ofsted ratings of “inadequate”? It does not happen the other way around.

It is not just sponsorship that is a challenge for our academies and schools. When 91% of schools are facing real-terms cuts to their budgets, we cannot allow to go unchallenged a system that permits the education of children to become a vehicle for private profit, and that allows the rewarding of huge executive salaries—an £850,000 payoff in one case, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston said—and has resulted in mounting scandals and evidence of financial mismanagement. As I stated at the beginning of my speech, one Google search produced that evidence. There has been scandal on top of scandal, and yet the response from those on the Government Benches has been to do nothing. If the Minister is serious about financial transparency about spending in academies and free schools, will he agree to ban any related party transaction where a profit is being made, regardless of the kind of school involved in that agreement? Furthermore, when will the Minister take much-needed and called-for action and open an independent investigation into the regulation of academies?

Alongside concerns about academy chains siphoning off funding for the school system, there are also concerns about the actual number of academy schools that are in financial deficit. Currently, the Department for Education data looks at the financial status of overall academy trusts, rather than individual schools within those trusts. That means that if an individual school is in deficit but the trust to which it belongs is in surplus, the individual school is also deemed to be in surplus, in effect masking the real number of schools in deficit. Will the Minister provide clarity on the actual number of academy schools that are in financial deficit? If the Minister does not have that figure, will he outline what steps he is taking to ensure that the Department has a true understanding of the financial stability of all schools? Will he also outline what the implication of that lack of financial clarity in academy schools is for the implementation of the national funding formula?

We have academies without sponsors, academies siphoning off funding, and academies in financial deficit. Surely, there cannot be any further problems with our academy and free school system. Unfortunately, there are: we are in the unbelievable situation that in some areas of the country, this Government are allowing the over-supply of school places while in others there is an under-supply. The 1 million school places much lauded by the right hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham are, I am afraid, more smoke and mirrors from this Government. Recent Local Government Association analysis of Government figures shows that by 2023-24, 71 English councils—52%—may not be able to meet the need for 134,000 secondary school places.

[Greg Hands]

Surely, by that token, the hon. Gentleman will condemn Hammersmith and Fulham Council because it is absolutely bottom of that table when it comes to the projected deficit of secondary school places.

[Mike Kane]

Councils should have good spatial planning about their school places. I do not have the evidence about that. The right hon. Gentleman comes from—which local authority?

[Greg Hands]

Kensington and Chelsea.

[Mike Kane]

We in the Opposition will have no lectures about how Kensington and Chelsea Council has comported itself over the past year or two. Two major incidents happened in this country last year: one was the Grenfell Tower fire, and the other was the Manchester Arena bomb at the Ariana Grande concert. Look at how those two authorities responded to those two major tragic incidents: one was condemned, one was praised.

Councils are facing an emergency in secondary school places, with the number of pupils growing at a faster rate than places are becoming available, yet those best placed to solve this crisis—the councils themselves—have been shut out of the system, with no powers to open schools, even though they are having to deal with the fall-out. That has resulted in the perverse situation of academies and free schools opening in areas with little or no demand for places. I remember the school that opened in Bermondsey, costing £2 million, even though the council begged it not to build a school there. It attracted 60 pupils over two years before it shut. We could have sent those children to Eton for half the price.

The reality is that our current school system is broken. It has been fragmented beyond repair. In parts, it is unfair and unaccountable and not being led by the needs of local people. In the debate, we have exposed a system that allows schools to be left in limbo without support, that lacks financial transparency and accountability, and that does not respond to or reflect the needs of local communities in most places. While those on the Government Benches appear to have no plan in place to address the challenges, Labour has a clear vision with a national education service at its heart. It would create a future system where all schools have a vested interest in the local community and not private corporations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Gibb]

Indeed. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands) on securing the debate and on his passion and commitment to ensuring that pupils in his constituency fulfil their potential through high-quality schools and education. Thirteen academies and free schools have opened in Chelsea and Fulham since 2010, and I congratulate the teachers, headteachers and all the staff who have dedicated their time to ensuring their success. That includes those who have been involved in establishing Fulham Boys School, of which my right hon. Friend is a patron.

My right hon. Friend talked about a number of free schools. He mentioned Kensington Aldridge Academy, where the excellent headteacher, David Benson, has pushed up academic standards and stewarded it and its pupils through the tragedy of Grenfell Tower. That included a year in temporary accommodation for some pupils and a successful return. My right hon. Friend also mentioned West London Free School, where the headteacher, Clare Wagner, is doing an excellent job with very high academic standards. Watching this debate is Mark Lehain, who established Bedford Free School and was one of the first pioneering headteachers. It has been a hugely successful programme and my right hon. Friend is right to point out its successes.

The hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) needs to be a bit more rigorous in his research than simply clicking through Google. For example, school academies’ accumulated surpluses amount to something like £4 billion. Excluding fixed assets and pension liabilities, the sector’s net assets have increased by £0.2 billion, from £2.6 billion in 2016 to £2.8 billion in 2017. He also referred to accountability. The whole essence of the free schools and academies programme is based on evidence from the OECD that shows that high- performing education systems around the world have two things in common: professional autonomy, combined with very strong accountability. The accountability system for our academies is stronger than it has ever been.

The hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East also raised specific issues about related party transactions, and I want to address that. We have changed those arrangements so that from April next year those transactions will be transparent and receive more oversight. Academy trusts will be required to declare all related party transactions to the Education and Skills Funding Agency in advance and seek its approval for those that exceed £20,000 either individually or cumulatively. He has said in other debates in the Commons that there have been more than 100 closures of free schools. Again, I am afraid that his facts are wrong. As of 1 November this year, 13 free schools have closed since the beginning of the programme. In addition, seven new university technical colleges and 21 studio schools have closed. In total, that amounts to 41 free schools, UTCs and studio schools closing since the programme began, not the number he cites.

[Mike Kane]

Does the Minister not include the collapse of, say, the Wakefield City Academies Trust, which had 23 schools? That is another trust that collapsed.

[Nick Gibb]

Those schools have not closed; they have been re-brokered very successfully to others. The essence of the free schools and academies programme is that we do not allow schools to languish in special measures year after year, which in essence is what was happening when those schools were under local authority control. We take very swift action where schools underperform, and we will not change the law that requires schools to become academies once they go into special measures, because that is how we get improvement. I will come on to some of the examples of how that works in due course.

Every child in this country, regardless of where they live or their background, should have the opportunity to benefit from the very best education. Free schools and academies have shown that professional autonomy in the hands of able headteachers and teachers can deliver a world-class education. For example, Dixons Trinity Academy, a free school in Bradford, achieved extraordinary results in 2017. Its first set of GCSEs placed it among the top schools in England for the progress achieved by its pupils. Strikingly, the progress score for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds was higher than that for the whole school, including more affluent peers. That school and many others show that socioeconomic background should not and need not be a barrier to academic success.

Leading multi-academy trusts, often led by inspirational headteachers, demonstrate that excellence need not be restricted to isolated schools. Thanks to a forensic approach to curriculum design and the implementation of evidence-based approaches to managing behaviour, the Inspiration Trust in Norfolk and the Harris Federation in London—two of the best performing multi-academy trusts—have conclusively demonstrated that all pupils can achieve whether they live in coastal Norfolk or inner-city London.

Improving Education Standards

Mike Kane Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

In the past fortnight, we have seen the most unstable period of government since the Maastricht rebellion of the early 1990s. Unlike that debacle, however, this Government cannot rely on their own MPs, or even Unionist MPs, to make up the numbers. Indeed, many of the Minister’s colleagues have aired open mutiny directly to the Prime Minister in this Chamber; it is a piteous sight. So I was surprised to hear the Leader of the House announce last Thursday that there would be a general debate on improving education standards today. Thursday is normally reserved for Back-Bench business, but the Government do not want to hear any Back-Bench business at present.

This is an astonishing act of hubris: the Government have chosen to debate a subject for which they have shown nothing to show but failure over the past eight years. The right hon. Gentleman’s colleague the Secretary of State for Education must know that the Government have failed in their duty to improve educational standards, because in July the Secretary of State conceded that too many teachers were overwhelmed by excessive workload and then pledged to do more to support teachers and said he was trying to squeeze more funding out of No. 11. What did teachers get in last month’s Budget? The primary way of improving standards is to improve the quality of our teaching workforce and the relationship they have with their pupils, but there was no increase in school funding last month. Instead, budgets are set to fall again in the year ahead, and teachers did not see a proper pay rise. In fact, the majority of teachers will face another real-terms pay cut this year.

[Nick Gibb]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was paying attention to the Budget, but £400 million of extra capital was given to schools to spend this year, and another £508 million was given to schools to fund the pay award over two years.

[Mike Kane]

The majority of teachers will face a real-terms pay cut. I will come on to the £400 million in just a moment.

In the Chancellor’s words, all that the teachers got was a few “little extras”. The Secretary of State was said to have winced when asked about the Chancellor’s choice of words, which is not exactly the endorsement that one would expect from a Cabinet colleague. However, the Chancellor then doubled down by saying that the £400 million for “little extras” could buy

“a couple of whiteboards, or some laptop computers or something”.

It is no wonder that the Secretary of State cringed.

I am sure that the Minister will remember his colleague, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), now the Environment Secretary, saying that the measure of this Government’s success would be how the country would perform in the PISA rankings. That is what the Government predicated their agenda on. However, the PISA rankings that followed showed that the UK had failed to make any substantial improvements. In fact, we slipped back down the rankings. That shows the Government’s failure to improve standards on their own terms.

[Nick Gibb]

The children who were tested in those PISA rankings spent most of their education in schools under the last Labour Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Kane]

They certainly did, and much of the improvement came from 2010 when we identified resources for coasting schools before we left government. The Minister, who has no formal pedagogic training, has based today’s debate on the back of a ConservativeHome article from a couple of weeks ago. He does not want experts to advise him. He has resisted the experts. He does not want to hear from our world-class universities and teaching institutions, which our competitors in the PISA rankings use to improve their education.

The Minister tells us that success and attainment in the primary school curriculum have gone up, but let us deconstruct that. All the international evidence produced over the past 30 years shows that interventions in the curriculum—and the Minister has had a few—and testing produce disruption to teaching and learning whereby results initially start low, rapidly improve as teachers and students learn what they need to do in order to do well in the tests, then tail off and plateau as this artificial improvement stops. This is known as teaching to the test. He can produce the statistics, but even Ofqual has recognised this problem as the “sawtooth effect”. That is what happens when we change the curriculum.

The Minister talked about the primary test. It is one of the numerous directed tests placed on schools, and it is adding administrative burdens. He is trying to run 22,000 schools from Great Smith Street. Why? Artificially inflated test results say nothing about the real quality of teaching, learning and standards achieved. We are narrowing the curriculum to cramming for tests in maths and English. In examining terms, we are measuring the construct of test-taking rather than the real knowledge of maths and English, let alone all the other worthwhile school subjects such as music and drama that have been pulled out of the curriculum because of the narrowing of the focus of the curriculum in this country. This is happening because somebody without any pedagogical knowledge feels fit to direct schools in what they teach. Primary schools already teach multiplication, and we do not need more money to be wasted on testing it. We need more money to be spent on teaching it.

Let us address the Government’s academies expansion and their free school programme. The Minister cited no evidence that any of their reforms have genuinely improved standards in schools or outcomes for pupils. In fact, more than 100 free schools that opened only in the last couple of years have now closed, wasting hundreds of millions of pounds in this failed programme.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

I am enjoying the hon. Gentleman’s speech very much. Why does he think that, according to the Progress 8 measure, free schools are now our top-performing type of school?

[Mike Kane]

The hon. Gentleman cannot have been listening to my answer about the disruption to the curriculum by new testing procedures. I have academic evidence from our major universities showing how the Minister came to that resolve and showing that he is wrong.

[Neil O’Brien]

I gently ask the hon. Gentleman at least to acknowledge that free schools are now, according to the Progress 8 measure, the highest-performing type of school in this country.

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[Mike Kane]

There is no evidence whatsoever for that. We know that 100 free schools have opened and shut in the past few years. We had one free school in Bermondsey that cost £1 million over two years and attracted 60 pupils. The local authority begged for it not to be opened, but it cost £60,000 per pupil while it lasted. We could have sent those pupils to Eton for half the price, although let me say to my hon. Friends that I am not advocating sending anybody there at the moment. We have 100 schools, unbrokered, containing 700,000 children. The Government cannot get anywhere near enough sponsors for the academies. They have only the Church of England in the rural areas and the Co-op, the Churches and the faith schools. The Education Policy Institute has stated that

“large structural reforms, through the expansion of the academies programme and the introduction of free schools, have so far resulted in…no impact on overall attainment.”

That is a damning measure, after eight years of this Government.

An economical attitude to evidence is apparent from the Government’s claim that 1.9 million children are in schools that are rated good or outstanding. Many of those schools have not been Ofsteded for more than 10 years, and the claim does not take into account the fact that we now have more pupils in the system. This is a discredited statistic. The UK Statistics Authority and the independent Education Policy Institute have raised serious concerns about it. The claim does not account for increases in the school population, or for the number of pupils who are in schools that have not been inspected since before 2010. In other words, it does not give the full picture. Today, the Minister has a chance to correct the record. Are his colleagues, the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister, right to say that their policies have led to 1.9 million more children being educated in schools rated good or outstanding, or is the UK Statistics Authority right to say that they need to put that figure into context? I would be happy to give way to the Minister on this point.

[Nick Gibb]

I said in my speech that, in 2010, 66% of pupils were attending schools that were then graded good or outstanding. Today, 84% of pupils are attending schools that are graded good or outstanding. If we multiply that out, we get the 1.9 million figure that the hon. Gentleman has cited.

[Mike Kane]

There we have it. That at least provides some context, but it is not what the UK Statistics Authority, the Institute for Fiscal Studies or the Education Policy Institute have said. These are made-up figures from a Government who have run out of ideas for education.

The true hindrance to improving standards is austerity. After all, every area of education—from early years, where we have seen 1,000 Sure Start programmes cut, to schools to further and higher education—has seen massive cuts since the Conservative party came to power. Our analysis of figures produced by the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that school budgets are £1.7 billion lower in real terms than they were five years ago.

[Neil O’Brien]

The hon. Gentleman continues to refer to early years cuts, which I find extraordinary, given that spending on early years will rise to a record £6 billion by 2020 and given that we have introduced new things such as the 30 hours’ free childcare offer, tax-free childcare and the offer of free childcare for disadvantaged two-year-olds.

[Mike Kane]

There is a huge threat to maintained nursery schools, which we hear enough about from Government Members. The Government cut 1,000 Sure Start centres. The sure-fire way to achieve social mobility in our country is to make the best provision available for the youngest people in our society. We do not have that anymore; those Sure Start centres were cut. I will come to the impact of that on social mobility in a second.

Our analysis of the IFS figures shows a £1.7 billion cut in real terms. Government Members know it in their schools, too, because they talk to headteachers just as we do in our constituencies. To unpack that, these cuts, along with the impact of the public sector pay freeze and then the cap, have created a crisis in teacher recruitment and retention, which was not once referred to by the Minister today. The Government have subsequently missed the teacher recruitment and retention target for five successive years, and in the past two years, more teachers have left than have joined the profession.

[Nick Gibb]

rose—

[Mike Kane]

For the third or fourth time, and following his speech, which went on for about 26 minutes, I give way to Minister.

[Nick Gibb]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who has been extremely generous to me and my hon. Friends. I shall try to make this the last intervention. He might have missed the statistics that came out this morning, which showed that this year we recruited 8% more people, or over 2,000 more, into teacher training than we did in the previous year.

[Mike Kane]

Last year, we saw the number of teachers decline by 5,000. The Minister might come up with a statistic today, but teacher numbers are going down. Since 2011, a third of all teachers have left. I spoke to Teach First just the other day in a meeting. The current rate is one in, one out. Does the Minister bear no responsibility for the reforms, the pressures and the lack of pay rises that are the reason why so many great graduates and brilliant people are no longer training the future of our country but are leaving the profession? Does he bear no responsibility at all? Five thousand have left in one year.

Despite the noble effort of staff and teachers, schools are unable to deliver the high-quality education that children deserve because they simply do not have the funding to make ends meet, for either themselves or their schools. The Government’s own analysis has shown that teachers were around £4,000 worse off in 2016, compared with 2010, as a direct result of their policies on pay. Furthermore, the IFS has found that the promised pay rise will see the majority of teachers facing another real-terms pay cut.

Earlier this year, I was shocked to read a BBC article that reported that children were filling their pockets with food from school canteens because they were hungry. This is Tory Britain, 2018. These were children with greying skin. They were malnourished and afflicted with hunger. As a teacher, I know that schools cannot teach children properly if they are hungry in the classroom. That is happening in our country—one that now has 4.5 million children in poverty. That did not happen in a vacuum. Poverty is the grim and logical conclusion to austerity. Its effects are palpable, and its consequences can be irrevocable. If the Government truly want to see standards in education rise, they must do the logical thing and truly end austerity once and for all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O'Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

One thing we can do to improve standards in schools is to stamp out bullying. I wish to start by talking about an incident in Huddersfield involving a young Syrian refugee, Jamal, and the appalling bullying that he has suffered. Members from all parties will have been appalled by what they have seen. I was particularly appalled because it happened literally two minutes’ walk from where I grew up. I encourage the Minister, in her winding-up speech, to talk a little about that incident and about what the Government are doing to stamp out bullying. I shall come back to the point about order in schools, which is really important. When I saw the video, I was reminded of too much of the disorder that I saw in schools when I was growing up there. It is the same kids and the same problem, and it is important for the agenda of improving standards in education. The one positive thing that I can report is that since the news of this appalling incident went online, people have raised more than £100,000 for the family in a crowdfunding campaign. Some other goods things have happened, such as the Huddersfield Town goalkeeper inviting Jamal to a match. A lot of people are coming together to demonstrate that people in this country are not idiots and are actually kind to refugees and welcome them here.

Much of my speech will be about some of the things that we could change or do differently in education, and I shall start with some positive things. I wish to pay tribute to some important people in the Labour party who have driven the agenda in respect of improving school standards. I pay particular tribute to Andrew Adonis, whose magnificent book on reforming England’s education is an absolute must-read. I was reminded of that book the other day when I read a piece by an education academic slating an unnamed school in, I think, London. This school, it is rumoured online, is Mossbourne Academy, which was used by Andrew Adonis as an example par excellence of what Labour’s academies agenda had achieved. The school, Hackney Downs, had been a failure factory—a disaster area—for working-class kids for generations and it was turned into one of the highest performing schools in the country. This cowardly academic attack on the school, which is not named so the school cannot respond, is full of cod-Marxist jargon. It slates a school that has clearly turned around the lives of thousands and thousands of working-class kids and given them many more opportunities than they would otherwise have had. It was just an appalling piece for Cambridge University to have published.

Let me turn to some of the positives in the education reform agenda. The proportion of pupils in good or outstanding schools, which has already been mentioned, has increased from 66% to 86% since 2010. Good things such as the national fair funding formula have been introduced. In my Leicestershire constituency that is particularly welcome as, historically, it has been very underfunded. Total school funding is going up twice as fast as the national average over the next two years—the first two years of the formula—which is very welcome.

[Mike Kane]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Neil O'Brien]

Of course, I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, as he was so generous in giving way to me.

[Mike Kane]

I was really kind to the hon. Gentleman the other day when he had forgotten his pass and I let him through one of the doors, but I do not think that he was so kind to me in the debate just now. On that point, will he explain why Leicestershire County Council and schools across the board there are suffering £8.9 million of cuts—that is £104 per pupil since 2015?

[Neil O'Brien]

I will always be grateful to the hon. Gentleman for opening doors for me. He did ask who I worked for, and I was pleased to say, “The people of Harborough, Oadby and Wigston.” When MPs start to look younger, perhaps it is a sign that one is becoming more mature and statesmanlike. As I said, school funding is going up in Leicestershire, and going up twice as fast as the national average, which is hugely welcome.

The early years agenda has not been neglected. We will have spent a record £6 billion by 2020, covering: the 30 hours free offer, which will be very helpful to many people, the tax-free childcare and, particularly, that extra free childcare for disadvantaged two-year-olds.

In addition to those headline reforms, there have been many other less visible, but hugely important improvements in our schools. One of them has already been mentioned. I believe that it was an important and positive reform when the Government ended the right of appeal against exclusion because that helped to protect teachers and helps those pupils who want to get on and learn from disruption and violence. I have every sympathy with Labour Members who say that we must improve pupil referral units. I started my contribution by talking about bullying and order in our schools. However, I hope that the Government will not backslide and do anything to weaken schools’ ability to maintain order.

I had a lot of sympathy with some of the comments of the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) and of my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy). We must improve provision for those who could be in a pipeline towards prison. I have visited prisons and worked with the homeless. It is absolutely true that some of these people’s careers begin with school exclusion. However, this must not come at the expense of increasing disorder for those who want to learn. Young people do have agency and need to behave responsibly. I am afraid that I do not agree with the idea of a zero exclusions policy, or taking away schools’ freedom to exclude altogether.

Another important reform that is perhaps less visible—

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O'Brien]

I always look for points of agreement, but the hon. Gentleman is free to shout, “You were caught out”, from a sedentary position. Let me reach over the heads of the chuntering Opposition Front Benchers to say I agree with the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle that we must have a good look at all proposals for different types of schools, where they are to be located, where the need is greatest and so on. However, I caution the hon. Lady against the attentions of Her Majesty’s Treasury, where I used to work, because there is always the temptation to say, “We don’t need any new schools. Experimentation is expensive, so let’s just push more people into low-performing schools and keep schools going that are not working.” She will not be surprised to learn that I do not entirely agree with her point on this.

One of the most important changes in our school system is the growth of multi-academy trusts. Some people talk about them as chains, as if schools are supermarkets or part of the market economy, but I think of them as families of schools. I am grateful and glad that Robert Smyth Academy—a school in my constituency that had some problems because of the move from three tiers to two—is now part of a brilliantly high-performing multi-academy trust and has a new, amazing and incredibly dynamic headteacher. I am confident, because of the experience of replicating success, that that school will also be a success.

We have always had miracle schools, super-heads and flashes of inspiration in the school system, but one of the new and exciting things about multi-academy trusts is that those successes are now being replicated at scale. I hope that the Government will push a sort of industrial policy for schools. Let us get behind high-performing multi-academy trusts, think about their geographic distribution around the country and help the best chains to expand in areas of the north and midlands, which are lagging behind in school outcomes.

Of course, this debate goes beyond schools. FE and sixth-form colleges have already been mentioned. If it is acceptable to the House, while we have the education cognoscenti here, I would love to pay tribute to Dr Kevin Conway, who sadly died too young—[Interruption.] I am so sorry.

[Mike Kane]

The hon. Gentleman is making a strong and honourable point about a really good thinker in education. I hope this intervention will give him time to regroup and get back to his speech.

[Neil O'Brien]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman; he held the door open for me earlier this week, and has done so again verbally today.

Kevin Conway was a guy who turned around Greenhead College—the college I attended—in Huddersfield, which had been rather underperforming. He was a great and totally uncompromising individual who achieved amazing things in my sixth-form college and transformed the lives of generations of people who grew up in Huddersfield.

Anti-bullying Week

Mike Kane Excerpts

Thursday 15th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey, on quite a momentous day in Parliament. If I may tease the Minister gently, let me say that it is great to see at least one Minister left in place. When I came in today, I saw on social media the headline “May resigns”, but then I realised that it was about Paul May, chief executive of Patisserie Valerie—so the Minister can rest easy for a few more minutes.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), who is passionate about the subject and is a great representative for his university town. This is a timely debate; as the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) said, online bullying is a horrible thing. Holding public office in Parliament, which she spoke about, is a real gift.

There are two types of power: power over people and power with people. Power over people is the worst form of coercion that can be exercised by anyone, especially when it comes from elected officials. It has all the elements of bullying: it is aggressive, belittling and coercive. I am sure that the Minister agrees—as you do, Mr Bailey—that in this place we have to do more to root it out, because people should be treated with respect and dignity in the workplace.

To give an example, we display Parliament’s new anti-bullying policy in my constituency office in Manchester. It occasionally forms part of our team meeting, so that we can make sure that we treat one another and our constituents with respect and dignity, and that they treat us in the same way. We will neither kowtow to people who bully us, nor bully them. Poor behaviours should be pointed out. Many staff in this place have suffered horrendously over the past few years, and I look forward to the day when we take a more collegiate approach. It is not just about how we stop bullying, but about how we deal with it when it happens. How this mother of Parliaments cleans up its own act will be key.

The theme of this year’s Anti-bullying Week is “Choose Respect”. It is centred around the fact that bullying is a behaviour choice, and that children and young people can set a positive example by opting to respect each other at school, in their homes and communities and online. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) for coming forward and sharing his own personal experience of bullying—seven years of being punched in the face, kicked down the stairs and mentally tortured so badly that he had three breakdowns. It was not until he was assaulted so badly that the police were called that he felt able, as a vulnerable teenager, to speak up.

As my hon. Friend’s personal story so eloquently portrays, bullying can be devastating for the victim. It permeates every minute of every single day, even when the victim is not in the presence of those who are causing them harm. Bullying is intensified when it happens in a school environment, because in any given school day there will be times when no teacher or staff member is present to spot it and stop it. Nor is it confined to physical space, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge points out: an estimated 5.43 million young people in the UK have experienced cyber-bullying, with 1.26 million subjected daily to extreme cyber-bullying.

The Department for Education’s guidance for schools, headteachers, staff and governing bodies on preventing and tackling bullying states:

“Every school must have measures in place to prevent all forms of bullying.”

However, does the Minister really think that schools can invest in strategies to prevent bullying, when across the country—including in the Prime Minister’s constituency—they are having to write to parents to ask for resources? As a result of cuts, they have fewer adults in the classroom to provide essential teaching support. Larger class sizes mean that children do not get as much attention as they used to.

I suspect that the Government do not have a statistical database, but statistics suggest that more than 16,000 young people are absent from school because of bullying. Bullying has a huge impact on young people’s self-esteem, and 30% of young people have gone on to self-harm as a result. Perhaps most devastatingly of all, 10% of young people have attempted to commit suicide as a result of bullying. The impacts of bullying continue to ripple out long after young people have escaped their tormentors; those who have been bullied are more than twice as likely to have difficulty in keeping a job or in committing to saving.

The sad reality is that some children who need mental health support as a result of bullying will leave school and move into adulthood without ever getting it, because our mental health services are also in a funding crisis. Looked-after children are reported to experience bullying at a much higher rate than their peers. Almost every single looked- after child has already endured some form of trauma, and at least 45% enter care with a diagnosable mental health condition. As the Government are now presiding over the largest number of children in care since the 1980s—in March 2017 it reached 72,670—can the Minister explain what the Department for Education is doing to provide specialist support for them when they are subjected to bullying?

Children with disabilities or special educational needs also experience bullying at a higher rate than others, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge pointed out. The long-held view, which dates right back to the Education Act 1981 and is supported by Ofsted, is that well-resourced mainstream schools are best placed to improve the learning and social environment for disabled and non-disabled learners alike. Children with special educational needs are increasingly being pushed out of mainstream schools; recent figures suggest that 19,000 children were off-rolled between years 10 and 11, and the Government do not know where 10,000 of them went on to. In this day and age, when we are much more aware of child sexual exploitation and child criminal exploitation, those figures are very worrying indeed.

In 2016, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child examined the Government’s compliance with the UN convention on the rights of the child and found that they were failing in 150 areas across the board. What has the Minister done to address that since the committee’s report?

It is estimated that one child in every single class experiences severe bullying. I know that the Minister agrees that that is one child too many. Speaking as a former primary school teacher, I know that children will have woken up this morning feeling sick at the thought of going to school because of the fear of the damage that their bullies will wreak on them throughout the day. Some will never have made it to school at all, while others will have spent the whole day anxious and unable to concentrate in class.

We go into teaching because we believe in the value of education and in its power to create social mobility and ambition for all. I hope that the Minister will share with us how he intends to ensure that no child has to experience bullying, and that all children can reap the full benefits that a good education can provide. I hope that he will share in the theme of Anti-bullying Week by choosing to respect our schools and teachers and giving them the resource and support that they need to beat the bullies.

Education Funding

Mike Kane Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

How many?

[Damian Hinds]

1.9 million, Mike.

But it is not only about overall attainment, it is also about narrowing the gap and evening the odds between the rich and the poor. Here we have seen substantial improvements since the Labour party left office, with the attainment gap having narrowed by 10% or more at both primary and secondary age and disadvantaged 18-year-olds going on to university at a record rate. This decade, we will have created 1 million new school places—the biggest expansion for at least two generations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

Labour Members are shouting because they do not like to hear the truth—it is embarrassing to them.

We looked at reading statistics and we looked at mathematics. The coalition Government that came in in 2010 not only managed to begin to reduce the deficit but drove up standards through the admirable work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove). When he was Secretary of State for four years, he managed to begin to drive up standards in schools. He reorganised a lot of the qualifications. On that note, I am delighted about the introduction of the new T-levels, showing innovation and a new approach. We introduced free schools, which have been very successful.

[Mike Kane]

How many have?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

There have been more than 400, and each of them has been—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman scoffs, but each of them has been extremely successful and is driving up standards in its locality.

I was particularly surprised to hear that the shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), is actually campaigning to try to preserve the free school in his borough because it is a beacon of excellence. This is the kind of hypocrisy—“Do as I say, not as I do”—that we have learned to expect from Labour. It is an absolute scandal that someone like the right hon. Gentleman should be against free schools but actually support one in his own constituency. That school is an excellent initiative. He is being a very good constituency MP, and I am delighted to see that he is supporting a free school in his constituency.

The facts of the matter are very clear. What the coalition Government and the current Conservative Government have managed to do is to bring some degree of order to the public finances while driving standards higher in education. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has suggested that we have 1.9 million more pupils in outstanding schools. [Interruption.] These are facts. I know that Labour Members do not want to hear those facts. We have also heard—[Interruption.] I am surprised that I am eliciting a running commentary from the shadow Secretary of State. It is absolutely extraordinary. She does not like hearing the truth, does she? [Interruption.] She really does not like it, so she will not let me continue my speech.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

Will my hon. Friend enlighten the House about the fact that all these plans would make no sense if the economy was wrecked once again, as the Labour party is too often wont to do?

[Mike Kane]

One hit wonder!

[James Cartlidge]

It may be a one hit wonder, but it is sung very well by my hon. Friend. As I always say, we also have a strong employment record. When children come out of school, college or university, they have to get jobs. We want them to thrive, and that means having a strong economy to drive such funding.

The higher spending I have mentioned, which we look forward to receiving in Suffolk when we have changed the formula, is not there for the sake of it. There is a tendency in this debate to talk about spending as an end in itself, but what matters is the outcomes that the funding delivers. I have to say, when we have the statistic that there are 1.9 million more children in schools ranked good or outstanding since 2010, we should be proud of that. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) says it is because of the higher school population, but the school population has not gone up by 1.9 million in that time. It is because—surprise, surprise—more schools are rated good or outstanding.

Let us take the example of Suffolk. In December 2013, 72% of schools in Suffolk were ranked good or outstanding; this March, it was almost 90%. We are also seeing real improvement in progress 8 and attainment 8, and all those things show that we are adding value, meaning that our pupils are getting about and making more of themselves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

We have heard today of the impact of Tory austerity on education and of funding being slashed across every area of the Department, with early years, schools and further and higher education all being hit. Education urgently needs new investment right across the board. The Government must finally begin reversing their devastating cuts if they are to implement the Prime Minister’s promise that austerity is over.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Education Secretary have both stated in the House that every school in England will see a cash-terms increase in their funding, yet that flies in the face of what we have heard in the Chamber today and the reality of what parents and teachers are telling us is happening on the ground. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has stated that that is simply not accurate, and the UK Statistics Authority has rebuked the Education Secretary for that inaccuracy. There has been a concerted effort by the Secretary of State and the Minister for School Standards to fudge the figures and deflect attention away from the funding cuts that they have presided over.

To add insult to injury, there was then the one-off £400 million for the Chancellor’s “little extras”—an insult to the teachers, schools and children who have faced year after year of Tory cuts. But we did get one thing today: we got a calculator for every school from the Secretary of State. The whole House should rejoice with me at that.

The fact is that across the whole country, including in the Prime Minister’s own constituency, schools are having to write home to parents to ask for money to buy basic resources. They do not need money for little extras; they need money for the essentials. According to the IFS data, school budgets are £1.7 billion lower in real terms than they were five years ago, which means that 91% of schools are still facing real-terms budget cuts per pupil.

The Minister will again no doubt try to deflect the House’s attention away from the reality of the impact of his Government’s cuts to school funding, but Members in this House—even including Members on the Government Benches—know all too well the impact on the ground already, because headteachers and parents are telling us about it almost daily. An early indication is that the shortfall for 2019-20 will be £3.8 billion. To use the Budget to give potholes more money than schools is a sorry reflection of this Government’s priorities.

Sadly it is clear that austerity is not over for our schools. We are now in the unprecedented situation of unions taking the step of simultaneously consulting their respective members on what action to take next. It beggars belief that the Government have ignored the School Teachers’ Review Body recommendation of a 3.5% increase for all pay and allowance across the board —the first time that that has happened in the body’s 28-year history. To make matters worse, the Government expect schools to meet the costs of the first 1% of the pay award from existing budgets, which have already been cut to the bone.

The picture is no better in early years. Sure Start funding has been cut by two thirds, and more than 1,000 centres have gone since 2010. The Government must honour the commitment to their flagship policy of 30 hours of free childcare with more money from the Treasury. It was recently revealed that most providers are having to increase the fees they charge parents as a consequence of Government’s underfunding, with 85% of local authorities facing even more cuts to their 30-hours funding.

While we have been debating this afternoon, the impacts have got worse. The Secretary of State has slipped out, through a written statement, the announcement that he is sending a commissioner into Northamptonshire County Council, where the children’s services have been found inadequate by Ofsted. He may well take off his glasses and wonder what I am talking about, but this has happened this afternoon. Ofsted has warned that vulnerable children are not being

“effectively assessed, supported or protected.”

As my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Jo Platt) said, austerity is not over for our children. Will the Minister commit to coming back to the House to make an oral statement about this, and urge his colleagues finally to tackle the funding crisis facing children’s services across our country?

TES is reporting, as we speak, that children in residential care are waiting for more than three months for a school place. Labour’s national education service will guarantee the needed investment to deliver 30 hours of high-quality education to all two to four-year-olds.

In further education, the theme continues: austerity is not over in our sixth forms and colleges. Further education has suffered the most vicious of all Tory cuts to education, with budgets slashed by £3 billion in real terms since 2010. This is one quarter of all further education funding. Nothing has been done even to begin reversing this. If the Chancellor really means austerity is ending, he must end the base funding rate system and reinvest in sixth forms and colleges.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman says that nothing has been done. Will he at least welcome the 25% increase in funding that comes with the new T-levels? Does he welcome the new T-levels?

[Mike Kane]

They will not come in until 2022, and the Conservatives have already cut billions from the higher education service.

As a direct consequence of the Government scrapping maintenance grants, our poorest students graduate with the highest debts. No one should be put off university due to a lack of money because of a fear of debt. Labour believes that education should be free. We will restore that principle and reintroduce maintenance grants for the most in need.

It is my great honour to thank everybody who has participated in the debate today.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mike Kane]

I will not give way now because I want to get through the vote of thanks.

Normally I would thank people on my side of the House—I thank you all; well done, the lot of you—but what I really want to do is to thank some Conservative Members, such as the Secretary of State himself. He fails to stand up and say “little extras” to anyone. Just to let him know: the cuts in Hampshire are £16.8 million, Damian. [Interruption.]

May I concur with the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) about how well schools and schoolteachers have done to commemorate the armistice brilliantly this weekend and over the past few months? However, I also tell him that the cuts to his local authority are £14.2 million since 2015.

I now come to the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng)—this is my favourite bit—who makes the same speech every time. Honestly, there is a sparsity of facts, and he does need to mix it up once or twice.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

The reason why I make the same speech every time is that the hon. Gentleman finds it very difficult to appreciate the force of the argument, which he never addresses.

[Mike Kane]

Following a speech that lacked so many facts, I will give the hon. Gentleman one: Surrey, which covers his constituency, has faced £14.2 million of cuts since 2015.

My good friend the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) was a great left winger on the parliamentary football team as we beat the military veterans today, but he was no left winger in this Chamber. He needs to mix it up as well, because there was a sparsity of facts. Suffolk is suffering from £7.8 million of cuts.

The hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) actually spoke quite eloquently and has a good grasp of schools and what is needed in his constituency, but Devon is facing £16.3 million of cuts.

[Kevin Foster]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mike Kane]

No. I have given way quite enough.

I say to the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) that east Sussex has experienced £7.7 million of cuts. We missed the hon. Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) at the football today, but he cannot blame the situation on the Greater Manchester spatial strategy or the Mayor of Greater Manchester—this is down to the fact that Bolton has faced cuts of £10.4 million since 2015.

I will wind up. I speak as a former primary schoolteacher. We go into teaching because we believe in the value of education and its power to create social mobility and ambition for all. That is why Labour has worked with parents, teachers and professionals across the land to introduce a national education service, and it is why that national education service does not promise “little extras”. This is about our children’s future—the future of the country—and little extras simply will not do.

Holiday Hunger Schemes

Mike Kane Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

It is a genuine pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, as it was to serve under your leadership as a young councillor on Manchester City Council. I suspect the love-in will cease there as we approach Manchester derby day on Sunday, given that we support different colours of the city. We will just have to try to get along as best as we can over the next few days.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) on her excellent speech and on securing this timely debate. I will be critical of some Members in a moment, but it was really interesting to hear the passion with which all Members spoke about this issue in their constituencies. I will know my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) for ever more as the sandwich lady, and the hon. Members for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) and for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) know exactly what is going on in their constituencies with respect to hunger. Before I came to the Chamber, my parliamentary assistant sent me my monthly digital bulletin to sign off. In it was an appeal for more food for food banks, which are running desperately low as we approach Christmas. That is a worry for many of us in our constituencies.

Hon. Members will be aware that I am not my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck), who should be answering the debate—she cannot be here, for which she apologises. I pay tribute to her and my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) for their work on the All-party Parliamentary Group on hunger. They do not just walk the walk on this issue—they talk the talk. They set up a charity to tackle it after touring constituencies up and down our land.

Let me return to my Scottish colleagues for a second. After you, Mr Stringer, bid for the Olympic games for Manchester and secured the Commonwealth games, I became a huge friend of Glasgow’s. As a director of Manchester velodrome, I supported Glasgow through its bids to build a velodrome and to host the Commonwealth games. However, having changed hue last May, Glasgow City Council is still being forced to implement millions upon millions of pounds of cuts—£53 million of cuts to services in the constituencies of the hon. Members for Glasgow Central and for Glasgow South West—by the Scottish Government. Last year, it cut more than £5 million from education budgets. We begin to see that it is not just central Government who are to blame for this issue—there are other Governments up and down our land who have not walked the walk or talked the talk. I am sorry to have to raise that, but it is the case, and there is sometimes very little scrutiny in this place of what goes on north of the border.

[Alison Thewliss]

Does the hon. Gentleman not appreciate that the Scottish Government have a fixed budget, a lot of which comes from this place? Austerity comes from Westminster and is only passed on up the road to the Scottish Government and then to Glasgow City Council.

[Mike Kane]

I did not realise that we had any Liberal Democrats in the room. That is the old cry of, “This is the problem and they are to blame for it,” without the Scottish National party’s taking any responsibility, despite its control over lots of levers of power, which is important.

As has been pointed out, more than 3 million children were at risk of hunger during the school holidays this summer because they were not getting their term-time free school meals. That is shameful. At the heart of the debate is the impact of the Government’s eight years of unrelenting and indiscriminate austerity. Universal credit is failing in many of our constituencies, and the urgent question on it the other day was really interesting. There should be preferential options for the poor when we make public policy in our country, and universal credit should have a preferential option for those who are in the poverty of having mental health problems. Its impact on those people causes much stress and tips them over the edge.

More than 4 million children are growing up in poverty. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North made an absolutely fantastic point on inequality, which I see in my constituency and other Members see in theirs. In some schools, 40% of children are not school-ready—they do not know about reciprocity or play or how to hold cutlery or pens, which my hon. Friend mentioned—but in others in my constituency, that figure is up to 80%, and growing, because of the austerity of the last few years.

More than 1 million people now go to food banks, and the situation is predicted to get worse. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says that the number of children living in poverty is likely to soar to a record 5.2 million over the next five years. Government Members should hang their heads in shame that families in that situation cannot afford to feed their children in the school holidays.

It is interesting how, in our city, Mr Stringer, schools compete over which of our two great teams runs their holiday club. Schools generally choose the team that provides the most free school meals, because that is what some of our schools desperately need. The football clubs are having to look at this in their summer holiday provision in our cities.

[Ruth Smeeth]

My hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful speech. There are opportunities in places with Football League clubs. It is wonderful that, in my city, Port Vale and Stoke City came together to deliver something. My hon. Friend may even get Manchester United and Manchester City to do the same.

[Mike Kane]

We will certainly look at that. I think that Mr Stringer and I would say that we are excellently served by the community schemes of both great football clubs in our city, as my hon. Friend is in hers.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead and my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields set up Feeding Britain, a charity focused on demonstrating how hunger and its underlying causes can be addressed. The United Nations estimates that more than 8 million people in the UK are food-insecure. At the moment, the Government have no way of measuring that and understanding the scale of the problem. The Food Insecurity Bill, promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields, is awaiting its Second Reading. It has a simple ask of the Government, calling on them to provide for official statistics on food insecurity. That is supported by more than 20 national organisations and, so far, more than 150 MPs from across the House. The APPG on hunger, and the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee have also advocated the measurement of hunger. Will the Minister commit today to supporting the Bill on Second Reading?

The Bill makes a cost-neutral proposal to bring the living costs and food Survey into the 21st century and to enable the Government to fully understand the challenge of food insecurity, which puts more than 3 million children at risk of going hungry in the school holidays. A Bill promoted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead that sought to enact the recommendations of the APPG’s report on countering hunger among children during school holidays sadly did not progress on Second Reading earlier this year.

However, the Minister stated that the Government would provide funding for research and pilots on holiday provision over the summer. Feeding Britain and the APPG provided information to the Department to help inform that research and pilots. Have we had the promised announcement on the outcomes of that research and the national roll-out?

[Ruth Smeeth]

About four hours ago.

[Mike Kane]

We had it about four hours in advance of the debate. That is not good enough by any stretch of the imagination, Minister. I am sorry to sound like a schoolteacher, but that is how it is.

When all is said and done, we can launch as many pilots as we want, but the fact is that we live in a society where parents cannot feed their children in the school holidays. Will the Minister commit to ending the sticking-plaster approach and talking to his Cabinet colleagues about a genuine end to austerity and the introduction of a real living wage of £10 an hour, to ensure that every family has enough to make ends meet and that no child will have to go hungry?

School Funding

Mike Kane Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) on securing this timely debate a few days before the Budget. She has stood up for schools in Hertfordshire, which have faced and are facing a £33-million cut since 2015. She is right to defend the schools in her constituency. While reading out the parliamentary Labour party brief, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) pointed out, she also alluded to the disingenuousness of the statistics that have come from the Department. That was also alluded to by the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran).

The Department is fast becoming the ministry for dodgy stats. We have heard that we have the third highest spend in the OECD, which was knocked back because it included private school fees and other items. We have heard that there is more new money for our schools, which was knocked back by the Office for National Statistics. We have also heard that 1.9 million children are in good or outstanding schools. I am desperate to see whether the Minister repeats that, because it was pulled up by the UK Statistics Authority. The Minister must have forgotten to tell the Prime Minister that though, because she repeated the stat in Prime Minister’s questions. We have heard that the Government will fully fund the pay rise—another dodgy stat for teachers up and down our country.

[Lilian Greenwood]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government’s disingenuous attempts to override the statistics are failing, because parents, pupils and teachers know precisely what is happening? That is why I welcomed children and parents from SOS East Midlands to Parliament a fortnight ago. They know that 82 out of 84 schools in Nottingham city face cuts, including every single school in my constituency, they know that their children’s schools are losing an average of £296 per pupil, and they say that that is not good enough. It has to be addressed in the forthcoming Budget.

[Mike Kane]

My hon. Friend articulates the point for Nottingham city brilliantly, as my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) did for York, where 32 schools are facing cuts.

The hon. Member for St Albans also talked about special educational needs and disability—SEND—which is vital. Last year alone, 20,000 children were off-rolled because of it. She talked about a school in her constituency, the Links Academy, which takes in many off-rolled children, but we lost 20,000 to the system. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) highlighted that problem with regard to mental health too—we do not know where 10,000 of those children are in the system. In an age when we have criminal child exploitation going through the roof and the running of county lines, the school system does not know where 10,000 children are.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has stated that the stats that we have heard used are simply not accurate, and the UK Statistics Authority has rebuked the Education Secretary for his inaccuracy. The figures quoted by Education Ministers attempting to defend their pitiful record on state school funding included money spent by parents on private school fees. There has been a concerted effort by the Secretary of State and the Minister to fudge the figures and deflect attention away from the cuts to school funding that they have presided over.

Let us assess the facts. Some £2.8 billion has been cut from school budgets since 2015, and we will find out in a couple of weeks that that will be a lot more. That means that 91% of schools are facing real-terms budget cuts per pupil. For the average primary school, that will be a loss of about £50,000 a year. For the average secondary school, it will be a loss of about £178,000 a year. But those figures are based on last year’s data. When can we expect the Department to release the schools block funding data for 2018-19? With the inclusion of those figures, it is likely that the outlook for our schools will be even bleaker.

Perhaps the Minister will try to deflect the House’s attention away from the reality of the impact of his Government’s cuts to school funding again, but hon. Members already know the impact on the ground all too well, as headteachers and parents are telling us about it. It is right that we are well represented by the hon. Members from West Sussex, the hon. Members for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and for Chichester (Gillian Keegan). The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham said that schools are x millions of pounds down in that borough in his constituency. I have the statistic: they are £8.9 million down based on last year’s data. It will be interesting to see what next year’s data will be when the Minister releases the block funding grants. The Minister’s own schools are threatening a four-day week because of the funding cuts.

We know that the £1.3 billion of additional funding announced by the Secretary of State is nowhere near enough to reverse the £2.8 billion that has been cut since 2015. We also know that none of the money announced so far is actually new money for education. While I, of course, support the principle that all schools should receive fair funding, the answer is not to take money away from existing schools and redistribute it. A fair approach would be to apply the lessons of the best-performing areas in the country to schools everywhere. A fair approach would look objectively at the level of funding required to deliver in the best-performing schools, particularly in areas of high deprivation, as my hon. Friend the Member for York Central pointed out, and use that as the basis for a formula to be applied across the whole country.

The F40 group, which includes my constituency of Trafford, has told us that school funding requires an injection of £2 billion to meet the needs of all schools, and that an early indication is that the shortfall for 2019-20 will be £3.8 billion. Schools need to see plans for the funding formula beyond 2020. They need a three to four-year rolling budget settlement so that they can plan for the future with confidence, and any settlement should take into account inflation, the cost of living increases and the wage and national insurance increases that have been pointed out by several hon. Members.

When will the Secretary of State and the Minister remove their heads from the sand and begin to truly hear the voices of schools, teachers, parents and Back Benchers from across the country? If that does not happen soon, our children’s education in St Albans, Harrow, Plymouth, York and West Sussex will continue to lose out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Gibb]

I am sure that that is the case.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) on securing this important debate. It is always interesting to follow a Labour spokesman talking about school funding. It was the Labour Government who left the coalition Government with a record public sector deficit of £150 billion, which is equal to 10% of GDP—on the brink of collapse—an economy in recession and high unemployment. We have reduced that deficit to under 3%, we have the lowest level of unemployment since the 1970s and we have halved youth unemployment to record low levels. The hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) should be more careful when he talks about public finances.

This debate is timely, given the looming Budget next week. I am sure that everybody has listened carefully to my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans and other hon. Members who have spoken. We are determined to create an education system that offers opportunity to everyone, no matter what their circumstances or where they live. That is why we have delivered on our promise to reform the unfair, opaque and outdated school funding system by introducing the national funding formula for schools, which previous Governments had shied away from doing, including the previous Labour Government.

The introduction of the national funding formula means that this year, for the first time, funding was distributed to local authorities based on the individual needs and characteristics of every school in the country. This historic reform is the biggest improvement to school funding for a decade and it is directing resources to where they are needed most.

This Government want to ensure that all children receive a world-class education, and we have made significant progress. More schools than ever before are rated good or outstanding; 86% of schools are now rated good or outstanding, compared with—

[Mike Kane]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nick Gibb]

I will not give way.

That figure compares with 66%, which is what we inherited from the previous Government. The attainment gap is beginning to close and we have launched 12 opportunity areas to drive improvement in parts of the country that we know can do better. Children’s reading ability is also improving. We have risen from joint tenth in the reading ability of nine-year-olds to joint eighth in PIRLS, the progress in international reading literacy study.

However, we have made those achievements against a backdrop of inheriting an unfair method of distributing funding, which has hindered and not helped progress. Across the country, schools with similar pupil characteristics used to receive markedly different levels of funding for no good reason, meaning that the right resources did not reach the schools that needed them most. That is why it is so important that we have delivered on our promise to reform the unfair school and high-needs funding systems and introduced a national funding formula.

Schools are already benefiting from the gains delivered by the national funding formula. The formula has allocated an increase for every pupil in every school this year, with increases of up to 3% for underfunded schools. Next year, those schools that have been historically underfunded will attract increases of up to 6% more per pupil compared with 2017-18, as we continue to address historic injustices.

The constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans will attract gains of 2.5% per pupil under the formula next year compared with 2017-18, which is an extra £3.1 million for schools in St Albans when rising pupil numbers are taken into account. Of course, how that money is allocated will depend on the local authority. Special needs funding in Hertfordshire will rise by £4.4 million this year, rising to some £107.9 million.

I listened very carefully to the hon. Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas), and of course I would be delighted to accompany him on a visit to schools in his constituency and to meet headteachers.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) has attended many of these debates on school funding, as he pointed out, and made calls for a fairer funding system. He has been successful in that respect; he should acknowledge his own success in putting the case for schools in West Sussex, because they have seen an increase in the funding allocated to them. How it is allocated on a school-by-school basis will depend on West Sussex, but the funding that it has received for schools in my hon. Friend’s constituency for 2019-20 has risen by 5.5% compared with 2017-18.

My hon. Friend and constituency neighbour the Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan) was right to point to improving standards in her constituency and she was also right to refer to special needs funding, which I will come to. Under the national funding formula, the amounts allocated to schools in her constituency will rise by 3.4% in 2019-20 compared with 2017-18.

I was interested to hear about the “Politics and Pastries” roundtable that the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) held. I would love to have been there; nevertheless, I would be delighted to meet headteachers from his constituency at some point very soon. Pupils in Plymouth will be funded on the same basis as in the rest of the country, despite what he said, under the national funding formula. That is the whole purpose of the national funding formula: based on the same needs, those pupils will receive the same amount. The hon. Gentleman referred to the gains cap, which ensures that changes in funding can be smoothed over the years under the national funding formula. Approximately 75% of schools that gain under the national funding formula—those that were historically underfunded—will be fully on their national funding formula figure by 2019-20.

The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) raised the issue of York’s position in the national league tables of school funding, but I should point out to her that the amount allocated to schools in her constituency will rise by 5.4% in 2019-20, compared with the baseline of 2017-18. We have made a significant—

[Mike Kane]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nick Gibb]

No, I will not give way, because I am running out of time.

[Mike Kane]

rose—

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

Order. The Minister is not giving way.

Cost of School Uniforms

Mike Kane Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Frank Field]

What I might do, if you are tolerant, Ms McDonagh, is take a few interventions from the shadow Minister so he can make a few points.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Frank Field]

What a surprise!

[Mike Kane]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way. I attended his constituency fundraiser in 2010, and I am reminded of the event because—

[Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)]

Order. This is my error, and I apologise, but I understand that you cannot make a speech.

[Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)]

I would like to do anything I can to facilitate the right hon. Gentleman, but the guidance I have been handed states that during a half-hour debate, neither speeches nor interventions from Opposition Front Benchers are permitted, as is the rule in the House. I apologise.

[Mike Kane]

Can I speak from the Back Benches?

[Frank Field]

I hope my hon. Friend will be able to intervene in the debate from the Back Benches.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for my quick shuffle to the Back Benches. The previous occupant of the shadow Minister’s seat was my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds). I remember attending his constituency event in 2010 at St Anselm’s, with the former Member for Stalybridge and Hyde, who was the guest speaker. I point out to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), in his current state of exile, that St Anselm was exiled twice by William II and Henry I, so I suspect that whatever happens in his political career in the weeks, months and years ahead, he will be a champion for people in poverty.

The debate is really about eight years of austerity and Government policy. Universal credit is failing and driving people into debt, hunger and even destitution. Over 4 million children are growing up in poverty and a million people are forced to go to food banks. The Government should be hanging their heads in shame that families cannot afford to buy school uniforms for their children. A number of hon. Members have pointed out that we have a system in which children are sent home from school because their parents cannot afford to meet the dress codes.

I think my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead will agree that we need to know what the Minister is doing to ensure that children do not lose time in school because their parents cannot afford to meet unrealistic school uniform demands. When will the Minister ensure that the Government pledge to make school uniform guidance legally binding, and what are the Minister and the Government doing to address the ever-increasing challenge faced by parents to pay for the basics to enable their children to attend and participate in school? As my right hon. Friend rightly said, people are putting off buying food because they have to buy uniforms.

Finally, will the Minister pledge to end, once and for all, the perverse situation in which poverty acts as a barrier to children attending school because of uniforms?

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Kane Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend on that; of course, he has a new and particular interest in and concern about the future of the next generation, and I congratulate him on that. It is very important that we are creating a million new school places this decade—that is the biggest expansion in school capacity for at least two generations. It is vital that we do that in good and outstanding schools, where possible.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

Last time at Education questions, I highlighted the damning evidence from Ofsted’s own figures that showed that it rated schools by deprivation, rather than by the quality of teaching and learning. On Friday, we learned from the Public Accounts Committee that Ofsted does not listen sufficiently to parents and has failed to provide accurate information to Parliament. Does the Secretary of State now agree that Ofsted is not fit for purpose and that it is time for root and branch reform?

[Damian Hinds]

I do not agree with that. Ofsted does a very worthwhile and high-quality job, which is reflected in the fact that, for parents, Ofsted reports are the second most significant piece of information about schools, after only location. People trust the judgments that they get from Ofsted, and it is the only body that is in a position to make an overall judgment on the quality and breadth of education, alongside the results.

Department for Education

Mike Kane Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I want to apologise to you straight away, Mr Deputy Speaker. I prepared diligently for this debate, but I had not realised the importance of estimates day debates to the House. I woke up today to headlines in all the newspapers talking about Kane for England, “Go Kane” and Kane for Harry, England and St George. It was not until the shadow Secretary of State turned up in her England top that the penny dropped. However, I am sure that the one thing that the Minister and I would agree on is that we wish our team all the best for tonight. Straight out of the gate, the Chair of the Education Committee, the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), got the tone right for the debate. He also came up with the best soundbite of the day when he talked about funding “textbooks, not tanks”. I shall carry on with the alliteration and say that textbooks, not Tories, are the best thing for our education system.

There is a great deal to discuss in the Department’s spending review, but as colleagues have had to be brief, I will follow suit. I will start with schools, where the Department does the majority of its spending. In particular, I would like to focus on a claim that the Minister made over the weekend that is particularly relevant to this debate. He took to Twitter to say that

“claims that schools would lose money next year are inaccurate. School funding is protected in real terms per pupil—contrary to some inaccurate and misleading claims”.

I for one am glad that the Minister has decided he has a problem with inaccurate and misleading claims. With that in mind, does he believe that every school is going to get more money in the coming financial year? After all, it was the Secretary of State who said that under the current spending plans,

“each school will see at least a small cash increase.”—[Official Report, 29 January 2018; Vol. 635, c. 536.]

Unfortunately for his Department, this has been queried by the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies and the UK Statistics Authority. So I ask the Minister to offer us some clarification and to state clearly whether schools will lose money or whether they will see a cash increase.

[Nick Gibb]

I should just like to point out that in the hon. Gentleman’s own constituency, his local authority has been funded to enable schools in Wythenshawe and Sale East to be funded with an increase of 2.3% once the national funding formula is implemented.

[Mike Kane]

I was so looking forward to that! The Prime Minister came to my constituency a few weeks ago to visit a school in Brooklands, in Trafford. That seat had never turned Labour in the history of municipal authority, but it did so that night and Labour took Trafford, because Trafford is losing £3.3 million in spending power for its schools.

Under the Department’s spending plans, schools will see cuts to their budgets for the third year in a row. I know that the Minister will be tempted to rehearse his prepared rebuttal and tell us how the Government have protected per-pupil spending in real terms, despite the fact that £2.7 billion in real terms has been cut since 2015. Those were the first schools cuts in a generation. Despite all the shallow talk of protecting budgets and extra funding, the future of our schools is not safe under the Tories.

While we are talking about the Department’s spending plans for next year, I know that there is one issue that teachers and school leavers across the country need an answer on, and that is pay. The Government’s own research has shown that their pay policy has left teachers nearly £4,000 worse off in real terms since they came into office. It is hardly a surprise that the Government are overseeing a crisis in the recruitment and retention of the teachers that our children and country need. Will the Minister admit that his pay policies have played a role in driving teachers out of the profession? If not, will he tell us why they are leaving the classroom in record numbers? For every teacher coming in, one is leaving the profession.

Teachers and other public sector staff have been repeatedly promised that the public sector pay cap has come to an end, but schools have been given no certainty about any pay rise or how it will be funded. So, will the Minister tell the House when the School Teachers’ Review Body will be publishing its annual report? Surely the Minister agrees that, without enough money to pay for higher wages, anything he utters from the Dispatch Box about an end to the pay cap is absolutely meaningless to the thousands of hard-working teachers who have not seen a real pay rise in years.

Before I end my speech, I want to discuss our student finance system. The Department’s estimates show that spending on the payment of student loans will be over £21 billion this year. They also show that the Department will be considering over £3 billion of interest payments on student debt as revenue. My hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd), the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has already shown that the Government’s use of an unreliable inflation measure for these debts costs students around £16,000, and they will now discover that that is being done to line the Treasury’s coffers. Will the Minister tell us how that £3.2 billion is going to be spent? Will he tell us whether the fact that his Department has a vested financial interest in keeping interest rates high means that it will not be acting to address the fact that students are paying more than 6% in interest before they are even able to repay their debts?

It is traditional for the Opposition spokesman to thank Opposition Members for their speeches, but not today. I want to thank all the Government Members for their speeches—[Hon. Members: “Ahh.”] Isn’t that nice of me? The hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Craig Tracey) made a fine speech, but he failed to mention that North Warwickshire Borough Council is losing £12.5 million from its schools budget. We had the most supportive unsupportive speech that I have ever heard in this House from the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg). He is right to say that Manchester teachers are the some of the best in the world—I was one of them—but Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council is losing £5.9 million over the funding period. What a fine speech it was from the hon. Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin). I believe that Horsham is in West Sussex, where primary schools are losing £8.9 million over this Parliament. I have already had it out with the hon. Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) about Derbyshire, which is facing an £11.5 million cut. Who else do we have? The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton)—

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mike Kane]

I have very little time left. Stoke-on-Trent is having £2.8 million taken away from its budgets. The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), which is in East Sussex, will see £6.4 million of funding removed.

It is eight years since the former Chancellor delivered the first austerity budget. After eight years of cuts and the usual platitudes, can Government Members really say it is working for them and their schools in their constituencies? As we approach the summer recess, I call on them to contemplate what austerity has done to our country and to the schools in their communities. I ask them to think deeply about whether they can continue in all conscience to support their Ministers in this great decimation of our education system.