Department for Education

Ruth George Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I am delighted that the amendments have not been selected, because that would mean money not being able to be spent on our schools and our colleges. That is not the way to conduct the debate over Brexit.

It is a great pleasure to open this debate on the spending of the Department for Education in my capacity as the Chair of the Education Committee. I am pleased to be here with my Committee colleagues, my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) and the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy). The DFE is one of the largest domestic spending Departments, with a wide-ranging portfolio spanning early years, children’s social care, schools, colleges, and much more besides. How the Department spends its money has a huge impact on millions of people across the nation, with consequences that will be felt for generations to come. That is why it is so important that we get education spending right.

I want to focus on the Department’s expenditure on schools and colleges. According to the House of Commons Library, most of the DFE’s spending goes on grants to schools, which in 2019-20 makes up three quarters of day-to-day spending, at about £52 billion. The Library says that this is a cash increase of 4% compared with 2018-19, which I strongly welcome. However, the Department’s planned further education budget this year is about £4.8 billion—a cash decrease of 3% compared with 2018-19. I am sure that all Members of this House have been delighted to see the issue of school and college funding feature so prominently throughout the Conservative leadership contest. I am pleased that my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) says that he is going to increase education spending by £4.6 billion.

My Committee will soon be publishing a report on this area with a view to helping the DFE to make the strongest possible case to the Treasury for the upcoming spending review.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman share my concern—I am sure he will as the Chair of the Select Committee—that school and college funding would not be so prominent on the candidates’ agendas if we were not seeing such a crisis in our schools and colleges?

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for letting me speak in the debate, which it has been a great pleasure to listen to. I concur with almost everything that has been said by Members on both sides of the House.

Education is in a state of crisis. In Derbyshire, I live in one of the f40 areas. Our schools have some of the lowest funding, and they are struggling. House of Commons Library research shows that the 50 schools in my constituency have lost more than £2 million over the last five years. They are having to lose teachers—in particular, teaching assistants—which is having an impact on pupils. It is also having an impact on the governors, who have to make some incredibly tough decisions, and on the school leadership, the support staff, the tutors, the parents and the children themselves.

I pay tribute to the incredible dedication and support that is given across the education sector, particularly by those who work in it and do hours over and above the call of duty, but also by the parents, who contribute; by governors, who give up their time; and often by the children themselves, who bake cakes for fundraising days, have school councils and contribute where they can.

The impact of our crisis in education is felt most sharply by our children. My hon. Friends the Members for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) and for Crewe and Nantwich (Laura Smith) spoke movingly about the impact of austerity on children in their constituencies, which I concur with. Our schools are having to deal with children who turn up hungry, who do not have school uniform, who are struggling for housing and who simply cannot do homework because they do not have the resources—for example, access to the internet—or support, or even somewhere quiet at home to do their homework. Schools are also suffering from the mental health crisis, as we have heard, and from county lines, drug pushers and knives. Increasingly, our schools are having to deal with problems that we would usually ask youth services or the police to deal with. So much more is being placed upon their shoulders, with fewer resources to do it.

I would like to concentrate my speech on the early years, which we have heard little about today but which is facing at least as much of a crisis as any other part of the education system. The hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) spoke about maintained nurseries, but there is only one of those in his constituency, and there are only three in mine. Around 3% of children are educated in maintained nurseries. Everywhere is struggling. We have seen over 10% of nursery provision close in the last two years alone. This is a crisis.

I regularly meet people who work in nurseries across my constituency, and they tell me the struggle involved in making the 30 hours’ funding stretch. It is based on costings from six years ago. Since then, they have seen rises in the minimum wage, pension provision, rent, rates and all the other costs they face, and it simply does not cover them. We had a meeting this afternoon with the Minister and nurseries from across the country, to launch a report by the all-party parliamentary group on childcare and early education, which it has been my pleasure to temporarily chair. There is incredible anger across the nursery sector that they are essentially working for nothing. They are having to employ people with the great skills, dedication and qualifications to deliver the Ofsted results for early years education that are required of them, but they cannot pay more than the minimum wage on the amount they get from the 30 hours’ funding. It is an absolute scandal. They are having to work longer hours, with more bureaucracy—monthly payments mean monthly assessments for children—and it is difficult to offer contracts.

That has an impact on the best providers. Nurseries that seek to employ qualified staff and support them, to do more for their children and to have low ratios are the ones that suffer most from a lack of funding, as well as nurseries that take children with special educational needs—many nurseries do not because they simply cannot afford to; they do not get the support they need to do that. So many of the special needs problems we are seeing in our schools, which have been very passionately spoken about by Members from across this House, could be addressed by investment in the early years—in speech and language development for children, or in support with their social issues at a very early age—before they get to school, where they have to be assessed all over again and where those special needs become even more of a problem. On behalf of the whole nursery sector, may I make a plea to the Minister to look at this across the country? The f40 group, which has been fighting just for schools, has realised that we are on the brink of a crisis in nursery education. We have seen 10% of nursery provision close. We will end up at a stage where we do not have enough nursery places for our children, and the best providers will suffer most.

The other issue that is raised so often in my constituency is further education and sixth-form provision. We have seen New Mills sixth form have to close after 21% cuts to the funding for school sixth forms. That means we have provision of just two sixth forms left in my entire constituency, out of 50 schools. Buxton Community School is left offering just 10 A-levels. Hundreds of young people simply do not have the choice to be able to do the courses they want to do or aspire to doing. They often have to travel an hour each way to access the colleges that do offer A-levels in particular, but also the vocational courses they want to do. And it costs: they get no support from 16 with the funding for that, not even a youth rate of bus travel. That means young people from deprived backgrounds, whose parents do not have the income to pay the often £1,000 a year in bus fares, cannot afford to go on to that provision. They cannot afford to have the aspirations we would want any of our children to be able to achieve. That is absolutely devastating for those young people, for their life chances and for our communities, where young people cannot achieve all that they want.

I spoke to year 9s in one of our local secondary schools last week. I spent the whole day there, and the headteacher joked that an innovative way to cover the cuts was to get the MP in to teach some of his pupils. I asked those 13 and 14-year-olds what they wanted from me and what they wanted from the Government to see what they could aspire to. Do you know what they asked for? They wanted a covered bench in the park because they get wet when it rains. That I am afraid, after a decade of austerity, is what our young people are aspiring to: they just want to stay dry. I think that is an absolute indictment of our society and of our system. Young people have had their aspirations limited by what opportunities there are for them in youth provision out of school, but also within school, in spite of the very best efforts of the fantastic teaching staff and support staff in all our schools. It is here in this House that we are failing our schools, our children, the parents who are fighting day and night for special educational needs provision for their children, and the staff that go over and above to provide it. We here need to do our part and support those schools, nurseries and colleges so that our young people have the aspirations and the achievement they deserve.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Ruth George). Far from being wet, I noticed it was 30° heat at the carnival in Tideswell on Saturday, as I paraded around with my pipe band. Far from needing shelter, I have to say it was more like a Tuscany hill town.

[Ruth George]

It does rain occasionally.

[Mike Kane]

It is true that it does rain occasionally in the Peak district.

We have had a good debate. May I congratulate right hon. and hon. Members from across the House on their contributions, and obviously the Chair of the Education Committee, the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), on his articulate opening? I also congratulate him on how well he chairs that Select Committee.

When I last spoke in this Chamber about education cuts, I was positively surprised about how many Members from the Conservative party were in open dissent, and it has been no different really tonight.

I will pick out a few contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) said that education was the greatest gift that we could pass from one generation to the next. That is true, but we have heard the bleak reality today. The Chair of the Education Committee said that funding was “bleak”—several Members used that adjective—and that there is little long-term thinking about education and its budgets compared with the Department of Health and Social Care.

The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) talked about the double whammy that some coastal towns suffer in terms of education standards and attracting the calibre of people needed to our education establishments. He said that the tank was now empty. That was the best metaphor of the evening. He went on to say that there was a crisis in children’s social care on this Government’s watch.

The debate reinforces the unity in this legislature that things must change. Members who criticised the Government on education funding did so bravely and well. As they vie for the leadership of their party and the country, the right hon. Members for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) and for South West Surrey (Mr Hunt) have pledged new funding for education. Whether they fulfil their promise—I suspect that they will not—the pledge is an implicit criticism of their Government’s neglect of education.

The hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) spoke well. He spoke for many of us when he said that his constituency surgeries were often rammed with parents who are desperate to get SEND provision for their children. Many Members will recognise that situation.

The hon. Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) spoke passionately about the schools in her constituency. She mentioned the good work that the Long Eaton School is doing, despite suffering a £385,000 cut since 2015.

The hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) spoke well and passionately about the schools on his patch, but Gloucestershire has suffered a £41.7 million cut to its funding since 2015.