Education Funding: Devon

Oliver Colvile Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

It is a pleasure and a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire) on securing this debate. I am delighted that he was my mentor when I got elected to this place, and my hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter) was also brilliantly good at looking after me and keeping me on the right track.

I enter this debate with a certain amount of trepidation, because my constituency has done rather well out of this process, but there are some issues that I want to raise. Let me set out the context. I am one of the very few Members of Parliament on the Conservative Benches who represents a totally inner-city seat outside London. I have only one rather muddy field, called the Ponderosa pony sanctuary, in my constituency, and everything else is very much inner city.

I declare an interest: I am a governor of St Andrew’s Church of England Primary School, and in the 1980s and early 1990s I worked for a woman called Angela Rumbold, who was the Member of Parliament for Mitcham and Morden and a Minister at the Department for Education. She was very much responsible, with Kenneth Baker, for introducing the local curriculum, local management of schools and things like that. My constituency has high levels of deprivation. There is an 11 to 12-year life expectancy difference between the north-east of my constituency and the south-west. I am very concerned indeed about that. We must ensure that children who are at school in a low-wage and low-skills economy have a good education and can end up going on to university and other schools.

I am delighted that Government have provided greater education choice in my constituency. I have not only three grammar schools, which I will talk about in a second, but the creative arts school, which is doing incredibly well, and a university technical college. I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for his interest and for taking the time yesterday to have a conversation with me and some people from the UTC about some of the issues they face. Plymouth does not fall within Devon county’s remit. Therefore, I feel somewhat of a fraud. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon pointed out to me earlier that my constituency has done very well out of this. Therefore, I am very grateful.

We need to ensure that children are able to read, write and add up when they leave school. I do not think we talk enough about standards. I sit on school governing bodies, and I think we should spend more time talking about how we are going to help children to achieve, rather than reviewing policy. Indeed, I occasionally feel that, when I go to school governing meetings, we end up spending more time reviewing policy than people spend reviewing west end plays. I am always slightly concerned about that.

Schools in Plymouth are likely to receive a 3.9% increase, but there is an issue. I understand why the Government’s position has changed and why they are looking at deprivation, because it is an important issue. The majority of my schools have done quite well, although there are some up in Compton that have some concerns. The grammar schools have also written to me, because they do not fit into the deprivation issue, so they do not get as good a deal as possible. I am very grateful indeed to Dan Roberts, the headteacher of Devonport High School for Boys. He said that he recognises that public services need to shoulder their fair share of the burden of public debt, but he has real concerns that the latest proposals will cause serious damage to the one type of school that our current Prime Minister believes has the potential to transform education in our country. He said that this is not all children in Plymouth but

“If you happen to be an able child attending Devonport High School for Boys we are actually receiving a reduction of 2.9%.”

Other grammar schools have said that, too.

I would be grateful if the Minister were willing to meet me and some of the grammar schools to talk about how we could ensure that they can make savings and so that he can hear the case from the grammar schools, too. I think that the Government are on the right lines in talking about deprivation, but then I would because I represent a totally inner-city seat with high levels of deprivation. However, there are some issues that most certainly need to be looked at and tweaked. I very much look forward to meeting him with my school governors from the grammar schools in the near future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

I am seeking to explain the reasoning behind why we place such emphasis on deprivation and low prior attainment—that is something that will affect the grammar schools in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport—and why we place such emphasis on helping children with English as an additional language. This is a Government driven to improve social mobility.

This is a genuine consultation. I have set out the explanation as to why we produced the formula for consultation that we did. We are listening to the responses—we will be going through and reading the written responses and we will listen to debates such as this one in the consultation process—and where we can make changes that address unfairnesses revealed through that process of course we will make changes to the approach we are taking. The decisions we are taking are driven principally by social mobility and ensuring that children from the most deprived parts of our country are properly funded at their schools to ensure that they make progress and fulfil their potential.

I acknowledge the concerns about the schools block ring fence and the level of flexibility between schools and high needs raised in the debate, given that Devon has in the past moved funding from the schools block to the high-needs block to support its high-needs pressures. We recognise that some continuing flexibility between the schools and high-needs blocks will be important in ensuring that the funding system is responsive to changes in the balance of mainstream and specialist provision.

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon for the important work he and the WESC Foundation do for children and young people with visual impairment. The reforms of high-needs funding and the additional funding we are providing this year and next year support the most vulnerable children in the country who are supported by high-needs funding.

In order to give my right hon. Friend time to respond, I will conclude. I am enormously grateful to him for raising this issue and to other hon. Friends and right hon. and hon. Members for airing their concerns and issues about funding of schools. I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends are reassured that the Government are committed to reforming school funding and delivering a fair funding system for children in Devon and throughout the country.

[Oliver Colvile]

May I thank the Minister very much for his response? Will he be willing to meet the grammar schools in my constituency? Would he like to comment on why grammar schools did not feature in the speech made by the Opposition spokesman?

[Mr Gibb]

I will be delighted to meet the grammar school headteachers from his constituency either in the constituency or at the Department. To be fair to the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane), this debate is about funding, but we as a Government want to create more good school places, whether those are more good grammar school places or more good school places in non-selective schools, helped by the independent sector and universities, and by having more faith schools. We want more good school places, and that is what drives our continuing education reforms.

I hope that hon. Members will be reassured about the Government’s commitment to reforming school funding. It is a system where funding reflects the real level of need and where every pupil has the same opportunities.