School Funding

Neil Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

First, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) for securing the debate. As my predecessor as Chair of the Select Committee on Education, he is extremely familiar with the subject, which he demonstrated powerfully today. He made the point that there is a potential difference of £2,000 between the best and the worst-funded schools. That is obviously unacceptable, and he made the case clearly.

One thing we have to focus on is what education is for. Surely it is to give every child a fair chance, and we are not doing that, as we can see if we acknowledge reports such as the one by Sir Michael Wilshaw, to whom my hon. Friend referred, which spoke of a long tail of underachievement, because of course it described the situation in the very places where funding is not adequate. We have a mission to ensure that all children succeed, or are at least given a chance to succeed. We effectively kick ourselves in the teeth by not providing the right kind of resources where they are most needed. That point is made even more sharp when we note that the pupil premium still cannot allow a child to receive more than a child at a neighbouring school without the pupil premium. That is an indication of just how unfair the system is.

As Chair of the Education Committee, I have been at pains to emphasise the importance of fairer funding. When the Secretary of State for Education came to our Committee, we asked her what she was going to do, and she committed to write to us with a timetable. That timetable suggests we will be hearing in the new year a set of proposals to improve the situation. That is a really important commitment, because we need a fundamental system that works not only in the immediate future but for a long period. It will not do simply to rely on a little bit of extra money here and there. I note the Minister’s pledge to give a second tranche of £390 million, but that is just a band-aid solution; it is not a structural solution, and a structural solution is what we must have.

There are some issues we need to cover. One of them is multi-academy trusts. These are big and they stray into several areas—the biggest MAT actually has a school in every region of the country—and the real problem they face is the funding imbalance between the schools within them. If we are really interested in creating a new system of structures such as MATs, we have to deal with fairer funding, because we cannot have a MAT with one school funded at a low level and another funded at a much higher level. That is unacceptable for the model the Government appear to have. When the Government think about this reform, they must think of that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) referred to the need for planning in schools, which is absolutely right. Schools have to be able to plan on the basis of knowing what their budget is not only over a year, but over a long period. That is in the interests of good teaching, good learning and good chances for our children.

Another important idea is that of teachers going to other parts of the country, as the Secretary of State mentioned yesterday in a Policy Exchange lecture. If teachers are going to go from one place to another, there is an issue of funding. The process will be made much easier if the system of funding is fairer. It is a good idea, but in practice, it raises a few questions if fairer funding is not dealt with the way that we are all suggesting.

When the Select Committee receives the proposals from the Government, we will test them based on whether they are a big improvement, a sustainable improvement, a structural improvement, and, funnily enough, an improvement that respects the key policy drivers that the Government are pursuing, because these are two issues and if they are treated separately, they will remain separate and become significant problems themselves and between each other. We must have a funding system that paves the way for the kind of education system that we are all driving for. Those are the points I wanted to make to the Minister today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gyimah]

I will not comment any further on timing. It is important to focus on schools’ financial management, because good management and good attainment can go hand in hand, as demonstrated by the York example. While we will push schools to be more efficient, we will also help them to spend their funds in the way that has the biggest impact on pupil attainment. We will continue to give schools greater freedoms to make the right decisions, for themselves and their pupils, on how their budgets should be spent. We will free up schools to adopt the right structures and practices to meet their specific needs, and help them to identify the areas where they can make savings. We will help schools improve their financial expertise, share best practice and work together more efficiently.

[Neil Carmichael]

This question is not about timing; it is about consulting widely, including with multi-academy trusts and academies, because they are in this together. The Minister has mostly referred to local authorities, but we have to consider all schools.

[Mr Gyimah]

The Chairman of the Education Committee is absolutely right. When looking at the funding system, we must consider all schools, be they free schools, academies or local authority maintained schools. While on this point, I noted the tests that he outlined, and how his Select Committee will review any proposals that come forward. We will bear those tests in mind as we consider what to do over the coming weeks and months. I thank him for making them and the criteria very clear.

Let me bring my remarks to a close. Fairer funding underpins our vision for a world-class education system. To really support schools, we need to make the funding system fairer for every school and every child. Our vision is of a future in which every school in the country, whatever their characteristics and wherever they are, provides excellent education, allowing every child to succeed. I am enormously grateful to colleagues who have been campaigning hard for this over several years, and thank them for their contributions to the debate. To move forward, we want a real consensus, so I would like to see the Labour party, which did not mention fair funding in its manifesto at the last election—