Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Luff Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

Under Labour, a minority—[Interruption.] Hold on! Under Labour, a minority of those starting apprenticeships were women, and now a majority of those starting apprenticeships are women. I thought that the hon. Lady would welcome that. Specifically on engineering, not only is the apprentice of the year, Jenny Westworth, a brilliant engineer, but we have a scheme with Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems and others to promote women in engineering. This is something that I feel passionately about and we will do yet more.

[Peter Luff (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

This week, I met two hugely impressive female engineering apprentices from the company MBDA, which achieves a 50% intake of female engineering apprentices. That shows that it can be done. Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the best ways of achieving that is for businesses to engage with schools as part of an effective design and technology curriculum?

[Matthew Hancock]

I agree entirely. That demonstrates the effort that is being made. Indeed, the Secretary of State met the female engineers my hon. Friend talked about. The number of apprentices in engineering and manufacturing has gone up by more than half in the past two and a half years. [Interruption.] The “Oohs” and “Aahs” of Labour Members only reflect their disappointment at being such failures themselves.

Design and Technology Curriculum

Peter Luff Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[Peter Luff (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to debate the draft design and technology curriculum and to hear the Minister’s response.

I shall sum up the issues that are worrying people in three themes, which an academic suggested to me. The first is that there is a narrowing of focus. The draft programme of study for design and technology returns to a 1950s DIY curriculum with an emphasis on basic craft and household maintenance skills. It places at risk the creative, challenging learning in design, engineering and technology that is part of the present design and technology curriculum.

Secondly, there is a lack of rigour and challenge. The published draft programme of study for design and technology lacks academic or technical rigour, challenge or ambition. It is completely out of step with the needs of our advanced industrial economy and sophisticated labour market. It will undermine routes into further and higher education for talented students by failing to provide the skills and knowledge that they need to progress, or to inspire students to pursue careers in the creative industries, design, engineering, manufacturing and technology. Thirdly, there is a reduction in value, status and popularity. The draft proposals will further reinforce the perception that applied subjects are less valuable, which in turn will lead to academically gifted young people being discouraged from choosing technical and creative subjects at GCSE.

So, what the Minister decides on the design and technology curriculum will be every bit as significant for our country’s competitiveness as what the Chancellor announces in his Budget speech in an hour or so, so I hope the Minister’s voice lasts during her response. I am sure she understands the importance of getting it right, and I am sure the Department’s current consultation is genuine and could lead to meaningful change. I hope she will regard my speech as a constructive submission to that consultation. I apologise for any unintentional plagiarism in my remarks. I have been deluged with advice, for which I am grateful, and I will endeavour to attribute all my quotations and points.

I am here today primarily because of a constituent, Sue Wood-Griffiths, a lecturer at the university of Worcester, who recently came to see me in my constituency surgery to express her concerns. A phrase in the e-mail that Sue sent me yesterday sums everything up nicely:

“We should acknowledge that we are educating children today for a world that they will live in in the future and not the one we used to live in.”

That is why I was so encouraged to read the Minister’s speech from Monday, when she said,

“we will fall hopelessly behind in the global race if we do not equip successive generations with contemporary skills.”

My constituent, the Minister and I are in profound agreement.

I am also here because of my deep concern about the serious shortage of engineering skills. I now advise Northern Defence Industries, a defence and aerospace supply chain organisation, and I am a non-executive director of a small advanced manufacturing business. I am learning directly about the challenges that employers are facing. I conclude that the two greatest avoidable threats to our prosperity and security are, first, the deficit, which I am sure will feature largely in the Chancellor’s Budget speech, and secondly, science, technology, engineering and maths—STEM—skill shortages. That is what makes our debate so important. I want to see people studying to become skilled engineers so that they can maintain and sustain the F-35, which will shortly be based at RAF Marham in the Minister’s constituency. STEM skills are important to our security.

Engineering UK estimates that we have to double the education system’s output of engineers. That means increasing engineering graduates from 20,000 to 40,000 each year, and the same is true of apprentices. If new technologies make new demands—and the history of the human race suggests that is exactly what will happen—we will need many more engineering graduates and apprentices.

As I am sure the Minister knows, the low participation rate of women in engineering is a particular scandal, and I believe the design and technology curriculum can help to address that. I suggested a package of solutions in a ten-minute rule Bill last month. My first objective in that Bill was to give schools, from at least key stage 2, a duty to provide pupils with a meaningful experience of modern science, engineering and technology. I believe that objective can be met through a well structured design and technology curriculum in which the business community participates enthusiastically.

As the Minister will be aware, academics and teachers are expressing great concern about the draft design and technology curriculum. That is no plea of simple self-interest from producer groups. Industry, which is the end user of the skills provided to our children at school, is also very worried. James Dyson’s brilliant Times article of 11 February, “Grilling tomatoes won’t train new engineers,” explains that clearly and praises the changes made in the computing and maths curriculums, but it expresses deep concern about the design and technology curriculum. Yesterday, he told me:

“We need more engineers but the E from STEM is missing in our schools. Design & Technology should rank alongside maths and the sciences in importance—helping future engineers understand their practical applications.”

I talked to Steve Holliday, chief executive of the National Grid Company, about all that on Monday. Steve has a profound understanding of, and involvement in, skills issues. He, too, is deeply worried about what the draft curriculum could do to the future flow of engineers and technicians. He has just sent me this remark:

“D+T is today beginning to bring to life science and provide inspiration to tomorrow’s engineers who are so critical to our future.”

I strongly agree with Steve.

“Design and technology” is perhaps an unhelpful phrase that can mislead those outside teaching. In design and technology pupils design, test, make and evaluate innovative, functional products and systems with clear users and purposes in mind. They use a wide range of tools, equipment, materials and processes, including leading-edge, industry-standard computer-aided design and manufacturing, such as laser cutters and 3D printers. They also integrate electronics and computer programming into their designing and making, and they produce intelligent products. In fact, there is real scope for getting local small and medium-sized enterprises to run their businesses from those well equipped school workshops. They could take advantage of modern equipment used to teach design and technology that is used only for a few hours each school day. That would bring into schools welcome direct business engagement and experience of what technology can do. I know of at least one school where that is already happening, but the Government are right to propose changes to the current curriculum.

Education for Engineering, E4E, says in its excellent recent report that

“the subject is in need of reform to bring it in line with current Design thinking and modern technologies”.

The report proposes

“a new model for the D&T that realigns the subject with the original progressive vision proposed when it was introduced in 1989 while making it relevant for the 21st century.”

The report has this to say about the subject:

“D&T is one of the very few opportunities for pupils to partake in a technical, practical education. It plays an important role in providing young people with a hands-on, creative experience and develops a practical identity and a capability for innovation. The subject provides opportunity for collaboration, team working and communication—skills that are essential for future employment.”

Women have those skills in abundance. The report emphasises that design and technology

“is the closest subject to engineering in the National Curriculum.

D&T is not a vocational subject. It is a general academic subject, and has its own fundamental body of knowledge, principles and concepts which are not provided elsewhere in the curriculum.”

Design and technology is now leading-edge stuff that has changed beyond recognition in the years since I was at school, but the draft curriculum does not reflect that.

In a letter to The Times, Sir John Parker, president of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said:

“The original D&T curriculum brought in by Kenneth Baker 20 years ago was more progressive than what we have now.”

Although I worry about curriculum overload, it is right to include food technology in the design and technology curriculum because it suits many of the concepts that should be included, but it is surprising to see cooking given absolute primacy:

“The National Curriculum for design and technology aims to ensure that all pupils: understand food and nutrition and have opportunities to learn to cook.”

The draft curriculum lists the subsidiary objectives of the curriculum with these introductory words, and I note the word “also”:

“It also aims to ensure that, working in fields such as materials (including textiles), horticulture, electricals and electronics, construction, and mechanics”.

The list then begins with a series of rather mundane objectives compared with what we ought to expect from the curriculum.

Dr Paul Thompson, rector of the Royal College of Art, wrote to me:

“We need our young designers to be focused on problem solving, market analysis, proof of concept, user interface and user experience, materials technology, visual literacy and aesthetics, sustainability, commerciality, and so much more. I really cannot see how home economics fits with this discipline at this particular level.”

Dr Marion Rutland of the university of Roehampton made a strong case to me for including food technology, but not cooking, in the curriculum. She differentiates between the two key issues underpinning the teaching of food in schools:

“One is the perceived importance of pupils learning to cook as a ‘life skill’ and the second is the potential contribution of food technology in design and technology to include academic rigour and contribute to the pupils’ overall learning. Ofsted has noted a lack of clarity regarding the nature of food technology and a need for a more intellectually challenging curriculum with more in-depth nutritional knowledge and greater scientific understanding and technical rigour.”

She went on to suggest that cooking may be more suited to the personal, social, health and economic education curriculum or to cooking clubs.

My principal concern, though, is that the whole draft curriculum is written in a way that retreats from the combination of rigour and inspiration that the Department is rightly seeking in other areas of study. The curriculum should be encouraging creativity in its students, offering them choice on how to approach problems and giving them as much autonomy as possible in their approach.

Students need to experience the reality of STEM in the modern world to understand it, and they need real project work and real industry partners to bring all that to life and to make design and technology fun, relevant and stimulating. Instead, the draft curriculum prepares its students for a low-technology past, not for a high-technology present and future.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend and neighbour on his excellent speech. He mentioned earlier that he was approached by a constituent who happens to work in my constituency at the university of Worcester. I have been approached by a constituent who is a senior lecturer at Birmingham City university, and she strongly supports my hon. Friend’s point. She said that there is concern that the current draft of the curriculum appears to hark back to the past by trying to create a “make do and mend” culture. If we are looking for phrases from the past that ought to be relevant to our design and technology curriculum, perhaps we should be looking to “the white heat of the technological revolution,” rather than “make do and mend.” Does he agree?

[Peter Luff]

I am glad to hear Harold Wilson’s words spoken on this side of the House for a change. I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. The phrase “make do and mend” will feature later in my speech. His constituent makes a powerful point that goes to the heart of the issue that we need to address. I pay tribute to the university of Worcester for teaching design and technology so well to design and technology students and teachers.

Speaking to a conference at the Royal Academy of Engineering a couple of weeks ago, Dick Olver, chairman of both BAE Systems and E4E, contrasted the experience of the computing and design and technology curriculums. He said that with design and technology

“we seem to have a problem. Again, the Royal Academy of Engineering, along with the Design and Technology Association and the Design Council, provided advice to the Department for Education on new programmes of study for the subject.

This time however, it seems our recommendations have been completely ignored. Instead of introducing children to new design techniques such as biomimicry, we now have a focus on cookery. Instead of developing skills in Computer Aided Design we have the introduction of horticulture. Instead of electronics and control we have an emphasis on basic mechanical maintenance tasks. In short, something has gone very wrong.”

The introduction to the subject content of the draft curriculum begins depressingly:

“In Key Stages 1 to 3 pupils should be taught progressively more demanding practical knowledge, skills and crafts”.

Contrast that with the well-crafted phrases in the purpose of study for the computing curriculum which, ironically, comes immediately before D and T in the consultation document:

“A high-quality computing education equips pupils to understand and change the world through computational thinking. It develops and requires logical thinking and precision. It combines creativity with rigour: pupils apply underlying principles to understand real-world systems, and to create purposeful and usable artefacts. More broadly, it provides a lens through which to understand both natural and artificial systems, and has substantial links with the teaching of mathematics, science, and design and technology.”

My request to the Minister is a simple one. Will she please devise a D and T curriculum that follows the excellent example of the computer curriculum, and perhaps look at what her opposite numbers are doing in the widely praised Scottish curriculum for excellence?

I welcome the Minister’s emphasis on the need to avoid excess prescription in the curriculum, and to allow schools to be as free as possible in what and how they teach, but the words in the draft curriculum will direct what teachers do. The Design and Technology Association says:

“The core knowledge in the D and T proposals will not encourage teachers to develop exciting and stimulating lessons. It marks a radical and regressive departure from current practice. The language of the draft is utilitarian and uninspiring”.

It refers to “common” practical skills, “common” materials, “common” ingredients, “common” tools and techniques, “straightforward” recipes, “straightforward” skills, “simple” techniques and “everyday” products. DATA says:

“It will not inspire teachers to use their professionalism and expertise to motivate and engage pupils.”

Why does this matter so much? As I said, the UK has a desperate shortage of engineers and technicians. I loved abstract maths and physics, but there was no D and T at my grammar school and metalwork and woodwork were for the less academically able. I did well in maths and physics, but I never really understand what I could do with them, and that is probably why I am not an engineer today. A good D and T curriculum helps students to appreciate the uses of maths and physics and will inspire many young people—especially girls, I suspect—to pursue careers in science, technology and engineering. Some students might not have thought of that because they thought that sciences were not for them, but D and T made science relevant.

Worryingly, DATA also says:

“The draft proposals will further reinforce the perception that applied subjects are less valuable, which in turn will lead to academically gifted young people being discouraged from choosing technical and creative subjects such as D and T. We need our very brightest young people to be creative and able to focus their talent on real-world challenges. Design and innovation are widely identified as drivers of economic growth and the basis of Britain’s long-term competitive advantage. If subjects like D and T are marginalised, where will this innovation come from?”

The irony is that the UK has been leading the world in its understanding of the issue, and our competitors are catching up. An academic wrote to me:

“Research into D and T education over the last 20 years has been world-leading. Other countries look to ours for the lead in how to teach Design and Technology. The works of Richard Kimbell, David Barlex, Kay Stables, Marion Rutland, Eddie Norman, David Spendlove, Frank Banks which build upon earlier higher education research by Ken Baynes, Bruce Archer and Phil Roberts leads the world in this area.”

He continued:

“Their research has led to what is modern D and T, and while there is of course a place for practical work and skills, this should not be the main focus of any argument for the defence of the subject.”

Can sustainable growth ever return if we are rejecting the knowledge economy in favour of simply training up young people for manual jobs? The draft curriculum suggests that the intended direction is to equip operatives for middle-sector manual jobs, or empowering people to be able to make do and mend. Where then will the next generation of designers and engineers come from? Another insidious influence that affects the brightest students, both boys and girls, is that both sexes are often turned away from STEM careers due to a totally mistaken belief that they offer only technician-level activity: oily rags and machine shops. We need more technology in schools, not less, to show the exciting reality of modern science, engineering and technology. In the days when technical drawing, woodwork, metalwork, electronics and engineering were taught and respected in schools, Britain produced some of the most successful inventors, designers and engineers on the planet.

A modern D and T curriculum would be concerned with learning about today’s world of design and technology, and its economic and social value. It would use real projects that are relevant to students to show how maths, science technology, design and engineering work together; it would use modern methods and project management tools to manage deadlines and resources; it would teach safety and precision; it would teach how to develop and refine products to meet real needs; and it would straddle materials, components, systems, electronics, data and services to create high-quality outcomes. It would do that using a range of technologies, including food and textiles, but not to the exclusion of all those other technologies of the future that it should encompass.

As the Minister reminded us in her speech on Monday, the Prime Minister rightly says that we are in a global race, and he did not mean a pancake race. To win that race, we need to foster our creativity and innovation. To extend the metaphor, our young people must learn not just how to cook pancakes, but to search constantly for better pancake ingredients, recipes and design, and to build better stoves to cook them on.

Keeping the “e” in STEM silent, to use James Dyson’s brilliant phrase, means that the draft curriculum will stifle innovation and deter talented young people from careers in technology and engineering. With the same vision that underpins the computing curriculum, our young people could ensure that our country wins that global race. At the Queen Elizabeth prize for engineering award ceremony on Monday, one speaker said that engineers are the poets of the practical world. My plea to the Minister is to help them to keep on writing that poetry.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Elizabeth Truss)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff) for raising this important subject. His speech was funny and well researched. I particularly liked the reference to the “white heat of technology”. I think that was the first time I have heard a Conservative quote Harold Wilson, and perhaps the first time I have heard Harold Wilson quoted in this House, which is interesting. I agree with much of what my hon. Friend said. Design and technology is an extremely important subject, which builds on this country’s long history of leading the world in design, innovation, engineering, manufacturing and architecture. The chain of British world-class achievements stretches from the giants of the industrial revolution, such as Watt and Brunel, to household names of modern high-tech design, such as Sir Jonathan Ive and Sir James Dyson.

Design and technology has a vital role to play in inspiring young people. Unlike my hon. Friend, I did design and technology at school and very much enjoyed it. It taught me a lot and has been helpful in my later life. It bridges theoretical and practical education, encourages the application of mathematics and science to engineer solutions to real practical problems, and delivers vital practical skills. My hon. Friend captured some of the tensions in the subject—its domestic, industrial and commercial application—but we need to address all those issues because it is important that our young people can do things in their own homes as well as apply them more widely. In counties such as Norfolk, the catering and horticultural industries are high-tech and require young people with specific skills in those areas.

We have retained design and technology’s place in the compulsory national curriculum. We have funded the Design and Technology Association to deliver high-quality continuing professional development to teachers with a focus on computer-aided design, manufacturing, electronics and communications technology. However, we have made changes in the new national curriculum, and there has been a broad welcome for the strengthened place of food and cooking in particular. One issue with the previous curriculum was that it tried to shoehorn food and cooking into a design process. It has its place in industry, but also has a place in teaching young people about where food comes from, nutrition and the ability to cook. We want more young people to be able to do that. The Department of Health is very interested in how we address Britain’s obesity problem. There has been a warm welcome for what we have done with food and cooking.

We have sought in our draft curriculum to broaden what schools may teach and to give them more freedom to inspire young people, which is why subjects such as horticulture are included but are optional. If schools have leading horticultural centres nearby, they may want to develop that subject. The approach in our national curriculum is to focus on what schools do rather than how they do it. We expect teachers and head teachers to develop their curriculum and professional development much more, so that they can inspire young people.

I was pleased that my hon. Friend mentioned developments in the maths, computing and physics curriculum. I agree that it is important to note the need for many more engineers and so on in this country. We need the subject to be inspiring for girls and boys. Such subjects depend on maths, physics and computing, and we have received strong support for our reform of those curricula. I welcome my hon. Friend’s help in pushing the agenda for getting more 16 to 18-year-olds doing maths, and the Secretary of State’s long-term goal is for all students to be doing that within 10 years.

Design and technology is important, but it is part of a broader range of subjects that will encourage young people to go into particular industries. There is a strong case for saying that subjects such as mathematics and physics also need to be able to point to their practical application. For example, we have included a greater financial element to mathematics so that young people understand its practical application and can apply it to their domestic circumstances as well as to any future work. It is tricky to ensure that the subject of design and technology is both aspirational and rigorous, and that students are able to apply it to their domestic, commercial and industrial lives, but that is the task we must fulfil.

It is not appropriate for a subject such as cookery to be in personal, social, health and economic education. Instead it should be part of design and technology. However, it was not a deliberate act on our part to give food and cooking a position of primacy in the curriculum. Indeed, improvements could certainly be made to the curriculum, and I take on board my hon. Friend’s suggestions. I recently had a meeting with representatives from the Design and Technology Association, who said that they will come back with further suggestions on how we might improve the language and make the subject as aspirational and as rigorous as possible while not losing the breadth and the flexibility that we are trying to give teachers.

Teachers could continue to teach the existing material under our proposed new curriculum. I agree that we need to make it clear that the subject is both rigorous and important. We want young people to study it and be inspired by it. I am very happy to take forward this discussion with my hon. Friend and other hon. Members over the coming months to ensure that the final curriculum is absolutely right and is supported by leading chefs, such as John Vincent and Henry Dimbleby from the LEON restaurant chain, who are involved in our school food programme. It must also be supported by our leading engineers, such as Sir James Dyson. I want to get to a point where we have something that is widely supported by industry and by people who want to see an improvement in the abilities of students in food and nutrition, and where it is understood by schools that the subject is very important.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the issue and bringing it to my attention. It is a matter that we have already been working on, particularly in relation to how we link it better to the other curricula that are being developed. He has kindly made some positive comments about the computing curriculum, and a few of the issues he mentioned in relation to design techniques, such as computer-aided design, cross over both subjects. It is important to understand how those subjects are linked, so that we can see, for example, which part of technology is in design and technology and which part is in the new computing curriculum. The whole point of the new computing curriculum is that it is much more related to programming and to understanding how computers work, so that more young people will be inspired to enter our important IT sector.

[Peter Luff]

Before the Minister finishes, and in order to help her save her voice for a second or two, may I say how encouraged I am by her response? Her remarks take us very much in the right direction of travel, and I look forward to engaging with her on this process, as she has so kindly suggested.

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments and for handing me a glass of water. I am afraid that I have a rather croaky throat today. We want to get the curriculum right, and we are very involved in a consultation; I have made that very clear to the Design and Technology Association.

I will not hide the fact that in this particular curriculum, we are trying to do a lot of different things; we are trying to prepare students for life so that they are capable citizens who can carry out practical work in their own homes. We also recognise the importance to industry of having people who are inspired from an early age. I hope that the flexibilities within the curriculum will enable local schools to work more closely with industry to make the subjects as relevant as possible and to give students as much practical experience as possible early in their school career, so that rather than becoming politicians, more of them will be inspired to become engineers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Luff Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Elizabeth Truss)]

Child care ratios will be flexible only where providers are of high quality and hiring high-quality staff. This proposal is designed to drive up quality in the child care sector, is supported by Sir Michael Wilshaw of Ofsted and Andreas Schleicher of the OECD, and is best practice in most European countries. Ratios for two-year-olds are higher in virtually every other country in Europe, including Scotland and Ireland. I advise the hon. Lady to look at what goes on abroad and see high-quality child care with well-paid staff.

[Peter Luff (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

We all want young people to be able to cook, but the design and technology curriculum on which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is consulting at present is very important to the whole future of British industry and the British economy, so does he not think that giving primacy to cooking in that curriculum might be over-egging the pudding?

[Michael Gove]

In design and technology, we absolutely need to listen to those sections of our economy that will generate prosperity for the future and that want people to be well trained. However, cooking is not just important, but critical as a life skill and as a means of ensuring that Britain remains a wonderful and attractive place for visitors and our own citizens. I pay tribute to Henry Dimbleby and John Vincent for the fantastic work they have done on the school food plan.

Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Luff Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

I know that the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) discussed that matter in the Department on Monday. I met Rolls-Royce yesterday. I understand that its decisions have to be made primarily in response to changes in key international defence programmes. If the hon. Gentleman is referring to the potential decisions about Ansty, he will know that any run-down there is expected to take several years and that no final decision has been taken.

[Peter Luff (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

The biggest threat to British defence companies is the shortage of engineering skills. That threatens our prosperity, their success and our security. I therefore invite my right hon. Friend to look as sympathetically as possible at the ten-minute rule Bill that I will introduce next week, which aims to inspire more young people, especially girls, to take up the exciting opportunity of pursuing a technological or engineering career.

[Michael Fallon]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He will know that the number of engineering apprenticeships and applications to study engineering are already increasing. The skills needs of the sector will be a key focus for the defence growth partnership.

Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Luff Excerpts

Thursday 8th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

That is a very constructive suggestion. To put it in a wider context, there are already something in the order of 1 million green economy jobs, which is about 8% of our economy. The construction sector is potentially an important and big component of that, and I would be happy to talk to and work with the hon. Gentleman to encourage it.

[Peter Luff (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

12. What steps his Department is taking to encourage young people to take up careers in engineering; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Skills (Matthew Hancock)]

This Government celebrate engineering. World-class engineering is vital for Britain’s future, and world-class engineering needs world-class engineers, so we are supporting engineering in schools, apprenticeships and universities to inspire the engineers of the future.

[Peter Luff]

That is a pretty positive answer. However, as defence equipment Minister, I saw time and again that the single greatest problem facing British engineering businesses is a shortage of skills. I therefore commend to my hon. Friend a report from the Engineering Employers Federation, “Skills for Growth”, which makes recommendations to ensure that young people have a better understanding of the opportunities in engineering through careers advice and stronger links between businesses and schools.

[Matthew Hancock]

Yes, I have seen that report, and the Government have taken action. Some 25,000 science, technology, engineering and maths ambassadors are going into schools to inspire pupils, and there are some signs of success. Over the past three years, twice as many pupils have taken triple science, and the proportion of STEM courses in university is no longer falling as it was under Labour, but rising.

School Funding (Worcestershire)

Peter Luff Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Peter Luff (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

I rise to take part in the debate with the consent of my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), and my first duty is to congratulate her on securing it and expressing her case so clearly and compellingly. I associate myself with everything she has said and that my hon. Friends have said in interventions.

I rise primarily because the schools in the Evesham pyramid in my constituency would be most seriously affected were the policy to proceed unamended. The schools in the Evesham pyramid would lose about £1.3 million, and that, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire made so very clear, is against the backdrop of a very unfair funding formula. They cannot afford to lose that amount of money. No school could, but certainly not schools that are in a badly funded authority to begin with. I say in parenthesis that even the minimum funding guarantee, with a maximum reduction of 1.5% per pupil, threatens the viability of some smaller schools. A cumulative two or three years at 1.5%, against a very low base, is threatening for many schools.

There are a number of reasons why in Evesham the situation is particularly serious. There are more smaller schools perhaps, and also a middle school arrangement, which is not always understood by officials at the Department for Education. I understand why—middle schools are not very prevalent these days—but they are an important part of the education landscape in Worcestershire, and certainly in Evesham, and their particular needs must be taken account of in funding arrangements.

We have talked about small village schools, but I must emphasise that it is smaller schools that are affected, not just village schools. There are two high schools in Evesham, which would both lose money under this arrangement. One—the smaller of the two—would lose £250,000. It cannot afford to lose £250,000. So, it is not only the small village schools that are affected, but, surprisingly, some significantly larger schools.

I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that perhaps the Government were wrong to attempt this welcome reform—I entirely agree with the reform itself, because it is absolutely right in principle—before they had digested the underlying problem in relation to having a fairer funding formula at national level. Change in distribution in a badly funded county is fraught with danger, and I fear that it will be difficult to find any arrangement that prevents some significant loss for some schools unless we first have the fairer funding that the county so desperately needs.

However, I am confident that a solution can be found that mitigates the effect. I am encouraged by the attitude that the Government have taken so far, and I have reassured head teachers and governors in my constituency that I believe that the Government’s heart is in changing this policy and ensuring that it does not have the devastating impact that it would have if it proceeded unamended.

I am grateful to the extent that there is a minimum funding guarantee, for example, for a third year, but a higher lump sum does no good in Worcestershire—we cannot afford it and do not have the money to fund a higher lump sum. However, a variable lump sum, certainly between sectors, could lie at the heart of a solution that I believe would reduce the devastating impact of this policy and give smaller schools some hope of survival in the face of what would otherwise be a very arbitrary and unfair policy.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

Thank you very much, Mr Weir, for calling me to speak.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) on securing this debate on an issue that is extremely important for her constituency and that is obviously also important throughout the country. Once again, she is proving to be a most effective champion of her constituency interests.

My hon. Friend warned me before the debate started that the MPs from Worcestershire have a tendency to hunt in packs and her pack is behind her today, if I may say so, in the form of my hon. Friends the Members for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff), for Redditch (Karen Lumley), for Worcester (Mr Walker) and for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier), who have all backed up the points that she made in a very effective way. We have other Members from Gloucestershire and Devon, who are clearly also taking an interest in this debate.

As the Minister for Schools, I am very well aware of the strength of feeling in Worcestershire schools and in schools in some other parts of the country. There is concern about some of the changes that we are seeking to make to the school funding system, and my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire has set out some of those concerns very clearly today. I have received a number of representations from other hon. Friends, and from concerned local head teachers and governors throughout Worcestershire.

Therefore, I am grateful for this opportunity to address some of those concerns and to offer a reassurance that, as we move to a fairer funding system, we will do so very carefully and at a pace that enables proper consideration, consultation and sensitivity about the issues that are being rightly raised today by local MPs.

Our aim is for every child to succeed in school, regardless of their background. That is why the Government, despite having to make difficult decisions elsewhere in public spending, have made school spending a priority and protected school funding over the course of the spending review period, as my hon. Friends will be aware.

We have also introduced, as my hon. Friend mentioned, the pupil premium which, by the end of the Parliament, will have targeted an additional £2.5 billion to disadvantaged pupils. My hon. Friend mentioned that sometimes the take-up of the pupil premium is a concern in rural areas. She might be interested to know that the Department will publish in a few weeks’ time some interesting national figures showing the take-up of the pupil premium and free school meals in different parts of the country, and highlighting the challenge there is in some of the more rural areas to ensure that take-up is as high as it should be.

The Government need to work with local councils, schools and MPs to ensure that in some of the areas where there is a low take-up we address that, to ensure not only that youngsters get the free school meals to which they are entitled but that the extra funding we are making available gets through to the schools that need it.

We also need a system to support the investment that we are putting in through the pupil premium and to ensure that pupils are not disadvantaged as a result of a school funding system that, as my hon. Friends have indicated, does not distribute funding fairly. Sadly, under the previous Government, when there was a much bigger opportunity to increase education spending, the opportunity was missed to bring in a more rational formula. The current system for funding schools is in need of reform. It is based on an assessment of need that dates back to at least 2005-06, and that has not kept pace with changing demographics and the needs of pupils across the country. It is very complicated, meaning that head teachers, governors and parents are often unable to understand how their school budgets have been calculated and why.

That outdated funding system has meant that Worcestershire, as hon. Friends have already mentioned, is one of the relatively lowest funded authorities in England, ranking at 147 out of the 152 authorities. It is not right that schools with very similar circumstances can receive, without good cause, vastly different levels of funding for no clearly identifiable reason. Data taken from the 2010-11 section 251 returns, which set out local authority budgets, show that funding between similar secondary schools can vary by up to £1,800 per pupil, which is an enormous amount and clearly not fair.

It is also not right that the system is so complex that school leaders are often unable to understand how their budgets have been calculated. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education made a statement on 26 March 2012 announcing the Government’s clear intention to introduce a new national funding formula during the next spending review period. I appreciate that hon. Friends would like that to be as soon as possible, but there are obviously a lot of constraints that I will discuss in a moment on the introduction. However, the commitment is clear and is something I feel strongly about, as does the Secretary of State.

A new national funding formula would distribute money fairly across the country, targeting need properly and getting rid of some of the anomalies that make the current system so opaque. However, dismantling a system that is so entrenched and complicated is far from easy. It is important that we introduce full-scale reform at a pace that schools can manage. The last thing that we want, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire said, is to cause destabilising changes to school budgets that cause anxiety in schools and among parents and distract schools from delivering high educational standards for their pupils.

That is why we are trying to move gradually towards introducing a new funding system, at a pace that gives us sufficient time to agree the construction of a new formula and to allow schools enough time to adjust to changes in their funding arrangements. Making the local system simpler and more transparent will mean that, when we do come to address the national system, there is far less complexity for us to untangle.

The first step we are taking is to ensure that within local areas pupils begin to attract similar levels of funding regardless of where they go to school. At present, local authorities can use up to 37 factors and countless sub-factors when distributing money to schools. I understand that in the past there has been a tradition of funding schools based on the facilities that they offer, the pay scales of their teachers, the size of their buildings and, even in some cases, the number of trees and ditches on their estate.

Our view is that the majority of money that we spend on education should be based on the pupil, not on the school characteristics. If a pupil chooses to go to a particular school then the funding is available to fulfil that choice, and it is not locked in to the school down the road because it happens to have more expensive teachers or a swimming pool to maintain. Rather than giving money to schools based on their size or other circumstances, local authorities will now have to distribute the majority of funds based on pupil numbers and characteristics. That is very much in keeping with the aims of a funding system that is pupil led and that is fair and transparent.

The new arrangements will mean that funding will be distributed differently, and there will be some shifts between school budgets as we move towards a more consistent way of funding schools. Our aim is to start to iron out inconsistencies and unfairness, which pupils in schools are currently experiencing, to create a fairer system. We remain committed to ensuring that good, small schools are able to thrive under the new arrangements.

We know that small schools often play a vital role in communities, not least in rural areas, and it is not our intention that any good school should be forced to close as a result of these reforms. That is a commitment that my hon. Friend asked for in her speech, and I hope that she will take that as a commitment from the Government. There is no secret agenda to close small, successful schools. I hope that she and her hon. Friends will take that message back to their constituencies.

We are allowing local authorities to allocate a lump sum of up to £200,000 in their formula. The intention of the lump sum is to cover the fixed cost of a small school—for example, a head teacher, a caretaker and some administrative support—and no more. It is not intended to protect the historic grants that were given to some schools and not others to pay for things such as floor space, specialist teachers and so forth.

We have heard a number of concerns—we heard them from my hon. Friend today—about the requirement to have a single lump sum for primary, middle and secondary schools. Although I recognise that the curriculum costs are different in each phase, I reiterate the point that the lump sum is not intended to pay for the curriculum costs. The lump sum should pay for fixed costs, and the per-pupil funding should pay for the curriculum costs. We will, however, review those arrangements, and I will explain more about that review shortly.

The reforms will require local authorities and school forums to break out of historic approaches and to think radically about the way in which money is distributed to schools in their areas. I realise that it is the implementation of the new simplified arrangements that is causing anxiety among schools in Worcestershire, and that there are particular concerns about the impact the changes will have on small and middle schools in rural areas such as Evesham, Pershore and Upton.

Officials in the Department have been in contact with staff at Worcestershire county council to understand why the concerns have arisen and to offer advice. I understand that Worcestershire county council has already agreed to the new funding formula—it did so on 18 October —but it has done so for one year only. I am informed that Worcestershire county council will review its local formula in light of the issues raised during its recent consultation, and in line with any changes made by the Department for 2014-15.

As I said, our main priority is stability and certainty for schools, which is why these reforms will be implemented carefully and with great consideration, as my hon. Friends have requested. The Secretary of State already announced in June that schools will continue to have planning certainty through the minimum funding guarantee, which means that, in most cases, no school will lose more than 1.5% of its budget per pupil in 2013-14 and 2014-15.

In addition to that and in response to concerns raised by my hon. Friend, her colleagues and other hon. Friends, the Department has confirmed within the past few days that a minimum funding guarantee will continue to operate beyond 2014-15. We cannot confirm the exact value of that guarantee as it covers the next spending review period; we need to know our budget for that period and to have Treasury approval before giving any such guarantees. None the less, we are absolutely committed to protecting school budgets from unmanageable falls, and I hope that that will also be an assurance for my hon. Friend.

[Peter Luff]

Is that an extension for one year or for longer than one year?

[Mr Laws]

At the moment, we have made it clear that we will continue it beyond the period of 2014-15. Although we are not in a position to make an announcement yet, given that we are seeking to move to a national funding formula, it is highly likely that we will need some form of protection for a considerable period. I will be happy to update my hon. Friend when we are in a position to say more.