Education Policies (Warrington North)

Nick Gibb Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) on securing the debate. I know that she has been a tremendous champion of education, not only in Warrington but nationally, having served for many years on the Select Committee on Education. As she kindly said, for some of those years we served on the Committee together. I always enjoyed working with her on the various reports that the Committee produced and I have listened very carefully to her comments today.

In Warrington, the attainment of children and young people across each key stage is consistently above, or well above, the national average. For example, the proportion of 16-year-olds in Warrington achieving five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C was 10% higher than the national level or the level in similar local authority areas.

[Helen Jones]

I am sorry to interrupt the Minister before he gets into his stride—he is very generous in giving way. However, does he accept that those figures mask huge disparities within the borough and that, although schools in deprived areas have taken tremendous strides, there is still a disparity between the more affluent areas and the poorer areas?

[Mr Gibb]

Yes—I was coming on to that point. I was not citing those figures as a reason not to take action; I merely wanted to point out what has been achieved in Warrington already.

In 2009, the proportion of 11-year-olds in Warrington achieving expected levels of attainment in both English and maths was 77%, compared to 72% in all schools in England. However, as the hon. Lady intimated, within Warrington, as in many other areas of the country, performance varies significantly from school to school. There are excellent schools in Warrington, as there are many excellent schools nationally, but it is also the case that too many schools are still struggling or coasting. The results at national level and the large gaps in performance between different groups of pupils are why we believe urgent reform is needed.

It is the Government’s ambition to raise academic standards in all this country’s schools to ensure a high-quality education for all children, particularly those from poorer backgrounds. The Government’s key objective is to close that attainment gap between those from the wealthiest backgrounds and those from the poorest backgrounds. We therefore share the hon. Lady’s aim that she set out in her remarks. Education is key to social mobility—indeed, in my opinion it is the only route to social mobility. That is why we announced yesterday our focus on ensuring that every child has mastered the basic skill of decoding and reading words by the end of the second year of primary school, through a light-touch screening check.

That is why we also sought to put onto the statute book the Academies Act 2010, to enable us to expand the academies programme, with 144 new academies having opened since the start of the academic year. That Act for the first time enables primary and special schools to become academies and to enjoy the greater freedoms that academy status brings.

[David Mowat]

I am interested in what the Minister is saying about social mobility. Does he recognise that in the past decade, we as a nation have slipped from fourth to 14th in science teaching and from eighth to 24th in mathematics teaching? The impact of that will have been felt in Warrington. Those statistics are a damning indictment of our ability to be socially mobile. Science, technology, engineering and maths, more than anything else, will provide jobs and skills for the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I know that he has been campaigning in Warrington for his schools, and I congratulate him on his work, as I congratulate the hon. Lady on hers. On his point, that is why we are considering the national curriculum with the intention of restoring it to its intended purpose of providing a minimum core entitlement built around subject discipline. It is also why we are enabling parents, teachers and other education providers to set up free schools, so parents have a real choice for their children.

Good school buildings, though, are part of that package. School buildings need continuing investment, but it is vital that future spending represents the best possible value for money. Building Schools for the Future was an important programme of the previous Administration, which aimed to rebuild or refurbish every one of our 3,500 secondary schools by 2023. That was a bold and impressive ambition, but unfortunately the programme has failed spectacularly to live up to the hype. During five years of the programme, just 263 schools have benefited. The number of schools completely rebuilt under the programme is even smaller: just 136. That is a very small number for such a grand ambition.

Where BSF has delivered, it has been at exorbitant cost. As has been pointed out, rebuilding a school under BSF has turned out to be three times more expensive than constructing a commercial building and twice as expensive as building a school in Ireland, while the BSF budget has grown from £45 billion to £55 billion and the time scale has increased from 10 years to a projected 18. Some of the reasons for the additional cost and delay are understandable, but the fact remains that BSF had become a vast and confusing morass of process and cost by the time it was ended, and it represented extremely poor value for money. Some £60 million of the £250 million spent on BSF was frittered away on consultants and advisory costs before a brick had even been laid.

[David Mowat]

The Minister might be aware that the average cost of bidding for a BSF project was about £1 million, which is approximately the cost of a new primary school. Does that not say all that there is to be said about the waste implicit in the programme? Everybody wants more and better schools. Two schools in my constituency, Sir Thomas Boteler and Penketh high schools, desperately need refurbishment, but that must be done cost-effectively, not while frittering away money as BSF did.

[Mr Gibb]

That is where we want the money to go: not on consultants, but on refurbishment and bricks.

Nobody comes into politics to cut funding, least of all a new Government who have inherited a school system that we are worried lets down too many of its pupils. However, we are faced with a £156 billion budget deficit, and it is our responsibility—difficult and painful though it might be—to tackle that problem. Although we have announced the end of the BSF programme, that does not mean the end of capital spending on schools.

The hon. Lady will be aware that my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) has organised a meeting with my noble Friend Lord Hill at the Department for Education to make the case for Warrington schools. Also present will be the leader of the council and the head teachers of several schools that have been affected. I know that she is to attend that meeting as well, to represent the schools in her constituency.

In determining which projects would go ahead and which would cease, the Government developed a single set of criteria and applied it nationally. The three types of school project allowed to continue were: those projects that were part of their area’s initial BSF schemes and had reached financial close; the so-called sample projects that were part of their area’s initial BSF schemes, where financial close had not been reached but a preferred bidder had been appointed at close of dialogue; and some planned school projects in addition to a local authority’s initial scheme.

As the hon. Lady will know, Warrington formally entered the BSF programme in February 2010. As Warrington did not have any sample schemes or an outline business case approved before 1 January 2010, the Warrington scheme was stopped. I recognise that those areas close to the cut-off point for BSF, including the hon. Lady’s constituency, might find that extremely frustrating and upsetting, and I am acutely aware that stopping the BSF programmes for schools in her constituency has, understandably, caused dismay among students, teachers and parents. However, it is important to remember that the end of BSF does not mean the end of capital spending on schools. Money will still be spent on school buildings, but it is imperative, as my hon. Friend pointed out, that that money is spent on school infrastructure and buildings, not on the process, especially if we are to meet increasing demand for school places over the coming years as the birth rate rises.

To correct the hon. Lady, cash per pupil is per-pupil cash. Funding for schools will be maintained at the same amount of cash per pupil, so schools’ expanding pupil population will not affect it. On top of that, the pupil premium will come from outside the schools budget, meaning that over four years, spending on schools will rise in real terms.

[Helen Jones]

Will the Minister confirm that the pupil premium is included in the 0.1% increase and is not extra money? That is what the figures say that I have seen.

[Mr Gibb]

Yes. The £2.5 billion is what enables us to deliver real-terms increases across the schools budget.

We appointed a review to consider how capital spending will be allocated in future. The hon. Lady discussed the Green Book allocation process; we will be considering the new basis on which scarce resources will be allocated. We appointed Sebastian James to conduct a root-and-branch review of all capital investment in schools, sixth-form colleges and other services for which the Department is responsible. The review is due to report back at the end of December. It will consider how best to meet parental demand, make design and procurement cost-effective and efficient, and overhaul the allocation and targeting of capital. That will give us the means to ensure that future decisions on capital spending are based on actual need and that all schools provide an environment that supports high-quality education.

Given the fact that the review is still in progress, I am sure that the hon. Lady and my hon. Friend will understand that I cannot make any specific commitments today on how much money will be allocated or exactly when. However, I assure them that the Department will continue to make capital allocations on the basis of need, in particular on dilapidation and deprivation, and that the end of BSF does not therefore mean the end of school building.

[David Mowat]

Does the Minister agree that this week’s announcement by Councillor Woodyatt, who has been mentioned extensively in this debate, of a new primary school in Warrington North, Oakwood avenue, is an example of the fact that capital spending is continuing? Not everything has been stopped by the hiatus in BSF.

[Mr Gibb]

Again, my hon. Friend makes a worthwhile intervention, for which I am grateful. Capital spending is being conducted, and several hundred schools are continuing work under the BSF programme.

The hon. Lady spoke about the education maintenance allowance. I acknowledge that evidence from the pilots shows that the EMA was successful, in its early days, in encouraging young people to stay in education. The decision to end the scheme will be disappointing to many young people, but I do not believe that anyone will have to drop out of education as a consequence. Already, 96% of 16-year-olds and 94% of 17-year-olds participate in education, employment or training. Attitudes to staying in education post-16 have changed. We are committed to going further still and attaining full participation by all young people up to the age of 18 by 2015.

However, a payment designed as an incentive to stay on is no longer the right way to ensure that those facing real financial barriers to continuing their education get the support that they need. We must reconsider the most effective way to support the most vulnerable young people to stay on in education. There is evidence that the EMA has helped a small number of young people stay on, but the same evidence suggests that the scheme has a significant dead-weight cost. Pilot evidence throughout the scheme and more recent research from the National Foundation for Educational Research found that almost 90% of young people receiving the EMA believe that they still would have participated in their courses if they had not received it.

The EMA is a hugely expensive programme, costing more than £560 million a year, £36 million of which is administration. Of course we do not want any young person to drop out of education due to financial difficulty, but we cannot justify continuing to fund a programme so expensive and poorly targeted. Currently, a discretionary learner support fund gives £25 million a year to schools, colleges and training providers to enable payments to be made to young people to help them meet the cost of their education. Colleges value the fund and are happy to play Lady Bountiful, as the hon. Lady said, by handing out the money to the young people whom they consider to be most in need. They can also respond to changes in students’ household income during the year. After the EMA is abolished, the fund will be increased significantly over the spending review period. The detail of future arrangements is still being considered.