Grammar School Funding

Nick Gibb Excerpts

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Westminster Hall

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

The issue of competence relates to a budget deficit left to the current Government by the Government whom the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) supported and served in. That is the basis behind everything that we are discussing this morning.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) on securing this important debate, and other hon. Members on their thoughtful and principled speeches, on which I will continue to reflect. Creating a world-class education system that enables parents to send their children to good or outstanding schools is central to the Government’s plan for education. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) said, the Government’s education reforms have massively improved the life chances of millions of children in this country, and they will continue to do that. Grammar schools, with their focus on the highest standards of teaching, play an important role in delivering on that goal. There is no ambiguity about the Government’s views on grammar schools.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey), my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford and other hon. Friends referred to unfairnesses in the funding system. That is inherent in the way local authorities historically have been funded for their school budgets. In 2014, we announced the introduction of minimum funding levels, which will allocate, as has been pointed out, an additional £390 million to the least fairly funded local authorities for 2015-16. That includes Warwickshire, which received £15.4 million, and North Yorkshire, which received £9.8 million. That increase in funding represents a huge step towards removing that historical unfairness in the schools funding system. The Government have made more progress in that area than any recent Government. That puts us in a much better position to implement a national funding formula when the time is right.

As my hon. Friends will know, faced with the historically high budget deficit when we came into office in 2010, the Government needed to identify savings from across Whitehall and the public sector. Despite that, we have consistently prioritised funding for schools, ensuring that spending has been maintained in real terms. The schools budget for five to 16-year-olds has been protected since 2011, in addition to which the pupil premium to support disadvantaged pupils is worth some £2.5 billion this year. Those commitments have been possible only because the Government have found savings elsewhere, including other parts of the education budget, but I understand the concerns that the burden of those savings in education has fallen disproportionately on grammar schools or successful comprehensive schools with large academic sixth forms.

Two concerns have been particularly prominent in today’s debate. First, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) pointed out, grammar schools are more likely to have large sixth forms, which may have seen reductions to funding as we have reformed the 16-to-19 funding formulas. Secondly, grammar schools are less likely to be eligible for funding made available on the basis of low prior attainment and deprivation, as the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) and other hon. Members pointed out.

As the hon. Member for Cardiff West pointed out, funding for grammar schools is allocated in precisely the same way as funding for all other schools, whether academies, local authority maintained schools or non-selective schools, but I recognise that some features of the funding system will have resulted in grammar schools receiving less funding than many non-grammar schools in similar areas.

I will deal with those concerns in a moment, but I should first like to pay tribute to the exceptional results achieved over the last five years by some of the schools mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough in his opening remarks. Since 2010, 100% of students attending Caistor grammar school have achieved at least five GCSEs at grades A* to C, including English and maths, and in 2014, 96.8% of students received 10 A* to C grades. Also at Caistor grammar school, 76.4% of A-levels were at grades A* to B, and at Queen Elizabeth’s high school, 61.5% of A-level grades were A* to B. Those schools are achieving remarkable high-quality, high-standard academic education results.

My hon. Friends are right that grammar schools are less likely to be eligible for funding made available on the basis of, for example, low prior attainment or deprivation. Local authorities set their own funding formulas to decide how to distribute funding for pupils aged five to 16. Low prior attainment is a common factor used in those local formulas. Given that grammar schools select their intake on the basis of ability, they are by definition unlikely to have pupils who have attained poorly in the past, so they are unlikely to qualify for that element of the local funding formulas. The purpose of low prior attainment funding is to ensure that as many young people as possible leave school with the right knowledge and skills to be able to succeed in adult life and in modern Britain. For a strong economy and society, it is important that we continue to target funding towards pupils who are not on track to do that.

Equally, grammar schools are less likely than other schools to have large numbers of pupils from poorer backgrounds, including pupils eligible for free school meals. Local authorities have to use a deprivation factor in their local formulas, meaning that schools with higher numbers of such pupils will receive additional funding. The evidence is clear that economic disadvantage remains strongly associated with poor academic performance.

My hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) will be aware that all grammar schools can adopt a pupil premium admissions priority for children eligible for free school meals, provided that they meet the entry criteria. Currently, of the 164 grammar schools, 32 have done so and 65 are consulting on adopting that priority in their admissions criteria from September 2016. The Government have encouraged greater collaboration between grammar schools and local primaries specifically to identify those disadvantaged children with potential at key stage 4, and to encourage them to take the 11-plus and apply to enter a grammar school.

Closing the attainment gap between those from poorer and wealthier backgrounds has been the central objective underlying all the education reforms in our plan for education, but of course the pupil premium is in addition to the main dedicated schools grant, which means that no schools are losing out as a result of the pupil premium, regardless of their pupil demographic.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough pointed out, grammar schools tend to have a greater proportion of their students in the sixth form than other 11-to-18 secondary schools. That means that any reduction in funding for pupils aged 16 to 19 will have a greater impact.

My hon. Friends are right that we have ended the disparity between school sixth forms and colleges. By August 2015, schools and colleges will be funded at the same level for similar programmes. However, there has been some mitigation—transition funding so that schools do not suffer abrupt changes to their funding straight away. We fund all 16-to-19 providers for study programmes of 600 hours per year for full-time students. That is sufficient for a study programme of three A-levels plus one AS-level, and up to 150 hours of enrichment activities, over a two-year study programme. There should be no need to cut those extra-curricular activities, which are such an important part of a rounded school education. In addition, as has been mentioned, we have, in 2013-14, increased the rate for larger programmes of study. For students who are studying four A-levels, the school will receive an extra £400 per pupil, and for those who are studying five A-levels, the school will receive an extra £800.

Tackling a £150 billion budget deficit has had to be a priority for a Government with a clear long-term economic plan to return our economy to one of strong growth and increasing employment and opportunity. Despite that, the schools budget has been protected in real terms, but I acknowledge that difficult decisions have had to be taken and I accept that some of those decisions have impacted on funding.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Order. I thank all hon. Members who took part in that interesting and important debate. I ask all those not staying for the next debate to leave quickly and quietly.