Further Education

Sam Gyimah Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[John Redwood]

What did the hon. Lady learn from the very high levels of youth unemployment that we saw in 2009-10, when Labour left office, and why were people unable to secure apprenticeships then? [Interruption.]

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

Answer the question.

[Lucy Powell]

Give me a chance!

The right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) will remember that when Labour left office, we were in the middle of a very difficult global recession, but for the vast majority of our time in office, our record on youth attainment and educational achievement was excellent.

School Funding

Sam Gyimah Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stuart]

My hon. Friend is right and I hope and expect that we will hear from the Minister on when the House will get the detail about what the Government propose to do.

To bring to life the example I mentioned of a relatively small secondary school with 920 pupils, the £1.9 million difference between two such schools in different areas is enough to pay the total costs—salaries and pension contributions—of 40 full-time teachers. That huge funding gap cannot be justified.

The gap is not explained by pupil deprivation. People might think that the system is designed to give more to areas of concentrated deprivation, whether urban or other. In 2011, Department for Education analysis showed that a school with 43% of pupils eligible for free school meals can receive £665 less funding per pupil than a school with less than 10% eligible pupils. Therefore, a school that serves the most deprived, as opposed to one that serves a remarkably affluent population, can receive hundreds of pounds less per pupil simply because of where it is rather than the nature and character of the children concerned, let alone their needs. Given the flat cash settlement for schools since that time, those figures will not have altered significantly.

I will give another example of the disparity that can exist between authorities. A secondary school pupil in York who receives the pupil premium, which is worth £935 this year, still has less spent on his or her education than an equivalent pupil in Birmingham who is not eligible for the pupil premium. Therefore, the child of the wealthy entrepreneur or lawyer in Birmingham receives more than the child from the poorest home in York.

Colleagues have mentioned the cross-border issue. The same applies in the relationship between Nottingham and the county that surrounds it: a 13-year-old pupil in the city gets more for their education than a disadvantaged child from the county next door, even though that child receives a pupil premium. Indeed, it is worse than that: a child who is in care in a certain area of the country and receives the pupil premium plus, worth £1,900, to reflect their needs, will still receive less than the child of a wealthy lawyer in Islington. That cannot be right. It needs to be fixed in a timely way and that is what we are gathered here today to tell the Minister.

We might think that if the disparity does not reflect deprivation, perhaps it reflects underlying performance in the system such as the quality of education in the schools, with more money going to help those areas doing less well. However, that would be wrong. Some of the best performing areas, notably in London, continue to receive thousands of pounds more per child than areas that are really struggling with education outcomes. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea receives 39% more funding per pupil under the schools block grant than my own area, the East Riding of Yorkshire, which loses out badly under the current funding arrangements.

The East Riding struggles with many of the challenges identified by Ofsted Chief Inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw in rural and coastal areas of England, where it can be hard to recruit and retain high-quality teachers, and partnerships between schools can founder because of the distance between them. We could take a coastal town and ask, “Why can’t we replicate the London challenge in East Yorkshire?” but anyone who drew a circle around Withernsea in my constituency to find all the schools that might be able to provide mutual support would find that half the circle was in the sea and the other half took in a swathe of rural East Yorkshire. That does not create easy conditions in which to build the collaborative regimes that have made such a difference in London and that is a further reason why such areas need to be fairly funded.

Contrary to any lazy misconceptions that areas such as the East Riding are rural idylls, there are areas of deep deprivation. Withernsea ranked in the top 10% of most deprived areas in England on both the income and employment indices of multiple deprivation in 2010. In a devastating speech in 2013, Sir Michael Wilshaw warned that

“many of the disadvantaged children performing least well in school can be found in leafy suburbs, market towns or seaside resorts”.

The East Riding also faces the additional costs associated with needing to run small, rural schools because of its geography. There is a limit to how far we can expect children to be bused, so it needs to run small schools, which are necessarily more expensive. It therefore has higher natural costs, and greater challenges in delivering high-quality education.

On top of that, the East Riding targeted as much funding as possible at its schools. Various blocks make up the dedicated schools grant, and historically the East Riding chose to stick most of the money for special educational needs in the schools block—it was entirely free to do so. It said to schools, “Use your budget to deliver that.” There was practically nothing in the high needs block, because that money had been put into the schools block. When the dedicated schools grant came in, which was based on what had been spent at that time and how it was accounted for, the East Riding received among the lowest levels of SEN funding in the whole country. That was not because there was a lack of challenge, but because of how the accounting had been done.

Our high needs funding is now the lowest in England, so the East Riding has had to move funding over to try to compensate for that. The situation was unfair already. Then we moved to the £390 million the Government came forward with last year to help lower-funded authorities, but that was distributed on the basis of the schools block, one of the three blocks that make up the dedicated schools grant, and as my local authority had its money in the schools block and not the high needs block, it ended up receiving a very much smaller share of the cake.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing this debate to the House, and I look forward to all the contributions. He mentioned the £390 million that the Government put into schools’ funding to help make the funding formula fairer. I want to clarify that that has been done twice: it was done for 2014-15 and it is being done for 2015-16. We are taking, and have already taken, steps to make the funding formula fairer. In response to the point about timing made by my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat), that shows our intent.

[Graham Stuart]

I am grateful to the Minister. I am also grateful for the £390 million, which was a significant amount to find to help the lowest-funded authorities. A method for distribution had to be found and, under his predecessor, a decision was taken on that, which led to certain discrepancies, though overall there was certainly an improvement.

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[Mr Gyimah]

It is in the baseline.

[Graham Stuart]

Listeners might have thought that it might not appear next year, and I would not want anyone to have that misapprehension.

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[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, but there is another aspect to this, which we must be aware of. I understand that the new Bishop of Gloucester, Bishop Rachel Treweek, the first female diocesan bishop in the land, will intervene in the House of Lords to help the F40 campaign, but she will be aware that fair funding for children across her diocese in the county of Gloucestershire will mean redistribution, which will probably arouse claims of unfairness in her previous patch in Tower Hamlets. This is a balancing act in terms of what is fair for all of us, and the Minister will have to juggle with that.

In the statement on 16 July, the Minister committed himself to making schools and early education fairer and said that he would put forward proposals in due course. I know that he will do so and that he will see the manifesto commitment simply to “make schools funding fairer” come true, but today I should like him to focus on the when, the what and the how. The when, in a sense, is the easiest bit, because the autumn statement is coming and we also have the commitment from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in her letter to the Chairman of the Education Committee, my constituency neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael), which may inhibit a little what the Minister can say today.

The what will be all about the rebalancing—the winners and losers. As my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Karen Lumley) pointed out, one person’s fairness may be another person’s slight unfairness, but there is an absolute as well as a relative aim to go for. In addition to the what question, we have to look at the how, which is the process. It is easy for us to highlight the anomalies, but the Minister and his Department must find a solution, a process and a timeline.

The Library briefing paper contains a telling chart—exhibit A, which I am holding up, Mr Walker. In this flow diagram, there are simply too many elements. There is the guaranteed unit of funding, which was based on planned local authority spend some years ago, with three variables plus

“some subsequent additional funding for ministerial priorities.”

Then there is the dedicated schools grant, which was based on assessed levels of need plus locked-in historical decisions on spending, which I suggest led to the gap widening during the five years of the previous, coalition Government. Then there are four other grants, plus the local funding formula, in which there are 14 allowable factors, and local authorities can choose which values are actually used for each factor. That is too complicated, and I hope that the Minister today will confirm that whatever new process is introduced, it will be simpler, easier to understand and much fairer for everyone.

[Mr Gyimah]

My hon. Friend rightly touches on the point about the process. What I can say at the outset is that whatever the outcome of the spending review, there will be very careful consultation with everyone concerned, which means, I suspect, that this will not be our only debate here on fairer funding in terms of how we get to a resolution.

[Richard Graham]

I am grateful to the Minister for his clarification, which will help all hon. Members on both sides of the House. We all want to see simplicity in the process, a system that everyone can at least understand, funding that is fundamentally fairer and timing that will fulfil the manifesto commitment. The more light that the Minister can shed today, within the constraints of the upcoming autumn statement and the Secretary of State’s commitment to an early new year proposal, the more that will help us all to go back to our constituencies and our counties and say, “The Government are on the case. We hear what you are saying and we want to fix it as soon as possible.”

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[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Walker. May I say, for the benefit of those Conservative Members of Parliament who were not here in 2005 when I was first elected, just how difficult it was to take this issue to the then Labour Government? We had many meetings with the Labour Administration and I will never forget their intransigence on this issue. I am heartened to see the huge turnout of fellow Conservative MPs this afternoon and the passion with which many colleagues have spoken.

Thanks to your work, Mr Walker, and that of my hon. Friend for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), we saw changes in the last Parliament, from 2010 to 2015. As a result of the tremendous work that they and others did, we have received an extra £10 million per annum for Shropshire schools. I very much welcome the increases. However, the differences between our schools in Shropshire and the national average are still huge. It just goes to show what a terrible position we were in before the changes were made in 2010.

During the last general election, I made this the subject of my No. 1 pledge to my constituents, as I did in 2010. I believe in going to the electorate and putting in local manifestos what we will do over the next five years if we are elected to office: I am looking at my hon. Friend the Minister. On my election pledges, which all the people of Shrewsbury received, the No. 1 pledge this time around, as last time, was to use our Conservative majority—if we had one, and we do—to settle the issue once and for all and ensure that Shropshire children are no longer discriminated against as they have been in the past. I emphasise that we receive £4,112 per annum for our Salopian children, which contrasts with the average for the best-funded schools of £6,297. As we all know, some schools get £7,000 or £8,000 for each child per annum, which is more than double what Shropshire children get.

I alluded to my next point in my intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness. If he could come round to see some of my schools in Shropshire—I would welcome his coming to visit—he would see the leaking roofs, the poor insulation, the lack of equipment, the old books and the restrictions on certain extracurricular activities. The fact that some of the parents in my constituency have to raise money through fundraising activities, such as barbecues and all sorts of other things, to buy basic equipment that is automatically provided in other parts of the country is simply unacceptable.

Buildwas primary school is right on the border between my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan). We are both fighting for Buildwas school, which is in a very remote rural village, to continue operating, and we hope that it will be saved through an academy programme. Some of the problems that the school has experienced inevitably boil down to a lack of funding from previous Governments. I invite the Minister to come to Shropshire at his earliest convenience, because I want him to see the leaking roofs and the dilapidated state of some of my schools. When I go to Birmingham, as I do sometimes for various duties, I see the sort of equivalents it has. It is another world, and that is completely and wholly unacceptable.

[Mr Gyimah]

I would be delighted to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency at my earliest convenience, as he requested. It is worth making the distinction between the capital needs of a school and its revenue funding needs. If there are schools in his constituency that are in need of capital, he should definitely let the Department know. There was a capital round during the last Parliament, and I envisage that there will be another one during this Parliament, to help to repair the leaking roofs of schools such as those in his constituency.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I am grateful to the Minister, and I will make sure that all five Salopian MPs meet him to arrange things directly. I will end with an important point that has not yet been made. Although we are one of the worst funded areas in the country, Salopian schools get some of the best results in the country. That is a fascinating fact, which I do not think that many people have talked about, and I urge the Minister to think about it. How does Shropshire, despite the fact that it receives less than half what other schools get, manage to achieve such extraordinarily high levels of success? Obviously, we have some of the best teachers in the country, and I pay tribute to their dedication and hard work. However, I would like the Minister to examine the massive differences in attainment between different areas and to look specifically at those, such as Shropshire, which have been underfunded but which achieve tremendous results. We have something to learn from that for the benefit of future generations.

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[Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I echo other hon. Members in paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) and the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) for securing this debate. It is a pleasure to follow so many colleagues and other hon. Members making the case so clearly for a fairer funding formula.

I come from a family of teachers, I married into a family of teachers and some have said that I ran away from teaching as a profession. I am a governor at my local school, and I pay tribute to all the hard work our teachers in Dorset and Poole put in day in, day out. However, our schools are being let down by the current funding formula. My constituency can compete with those of other hon. Members, because Dorset is in the lowest 11 authorities for funding per pupil, securing just £4,239. Poole fares even worse, as the second worst funded—not a statistic I am proud of—receiving only £4,167. It is those statistics and facts that bring me here to argue on behalf of schools in my constituency.

As others have said, such statistics suggest that the current funding formula is beyond its sell-by date. More than that, it appears to have no rationale. My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) mentioned his exhibit A, and it shows that there is no historic rhyme or reason to the fact that some schools in Poole get the second-lowest funding, while other schools across the country get much more. Over the years, that has created an unfair situation, which does not serve our schools or our children in Poole and Dorset. There is not the level playing field there should be.

Other hon. Members have mentioned that the funding formula means there is a large disparity between schools across the country with similar characteristics, which are receiving very different amounts.

[Mr Gyimah]

indicated assent.

[Michael Tomlinson]

I am pleased to see the Minister nodding in agreement.

The F40 campaign group, of which I am a member, has set out an alternative formula, which I welcome. The formula would help my constituency by reducing the funding gap from £4,000 to just over £3,000. I could quote more facts and figures, as other hon. Members have done. Behind the numbers, however, are real individuals—real families, children and teachers—and those figures will make a difference in their lives and in their schools. In my constituency, the F40 proposals would see schools get an extra £240 per pupil—an increase of just under 5%, which is welcome. Schools in Poole would receive an extra £116—an increase of just under 3%, which is also welcome. However, I sound a note of caution: under the formula, schools in Poole would still be among the worst funded, although the changes would help to start narrowing the gap.

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[Carol Monaghan]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. That is what I was trying to say in my opening remarks: Scotland does not have the massive discrepancies that seem to be present in the constituencies of other Members.

[Mr Gyimah]

I thank the hon. Lady for raising two particular points about Scotland: overall funding and attainment. To put the record straight, while the UK Government protected schools funding in real terms in the previous Parliament, the Scottish Government cut funding in real terms. It is worth getting that on the record. On attainment and narrowing the gap, she will be aware of a recent independent report from the Commission on School Reform, whose members are Scottish education experts. The report raised serious questions about the Scottish Government’s ability to close the attainment gap north of the border.

[Carol Monaghan]

The Minister must have different figures from me, because across Scotland we are seeing the attainment gap reduce and pupils from more disadvantaged backgrounds being more successful in accessing higher and further education than ever before.

One of the great things this afternoon has been the positive language used about the teaching profession, which is reassuring to hear. Often teachers hear phrases like “failing schools” and “poor teaching”, and they end up being blamed for a lot of society’s problems, rather than credited for the work they do in trying to tackle the very same problems. I am reassured by what I have heard, and I suggest to all Members here today that they continue to use that positive language, because it makes such a difference to teachers.

The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness talked about flat cash and not wanting to increase the education budget. I would argue with that. Governments have difficult choices to make, and they decide where money is spent. If education is a priority and our young people are valued for the contribution they can make to the country, we should be investing properly in education.

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[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I hope my voice will last out. I congratulate the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) on securing this debate. I also thank the Backbench Business Committee for making time for the debate. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan), but I have one comment on her remarks. I am from the north-east of England and we used to look enviously over the border at the quality of education in Scotland and the outcomes for Scottish children. We do not do that any more.

The debate has been really interesting, especially the way in which Members have lined up one after another to say how far they are down the financial league tables. I noticed that Tower Hamlets was highlighted quite a few times. I remember visiting a couple of schools in Tower Hamlets with the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness and the current Chair of the Education Committee, the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael), when we were carrying out an investigation into sport in schools. We visited a couple of schools in Tower Hamlets and were struck by the huge level of problems that the teachers faced. About a third of the children were in receipt of the pupil premium, but what struck us most was that almost half of the children were the children of the working poor who did not qualify for the pupil premium, and yet in many cases their disposable income was less than that of the parents of those who did. We were told that many of the parents had two or three jobs and often did not have the time or sometimes the skills to be able to support their children in education. I do not think any of us came away thinking that the money those schools got was not needed or was wasted.

The matter has been debated many times and the coalition Government promised to address it in 2010. Like many of the things we think are easy, they are far from easy. I feel for the Minster, because this is not going to be an easy circle to square.

[Mr Gyimah]

Except with your support.

[Pat Glass]

Before the election, Labour also promised to introduce a review of school funding. We want to support the Government as they move forward with their review, but we are clear that funding has to be fair and just. It cannot simply be a recycling or shifting of existing resources within the system from those with greater needs to those with less great needs. One or two people said that children with the same levels of need must receive the same levels of funding. We support that in principle, but we want to see new money in the system.

The basic inequalities in the system go back a long way. My right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter was absolutely right when he said that its roots lie in the old standard spending assessment. I read the Hansard from the previous debate just before the election. The then shadow schools Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), said that the formula was known only to three people and

“one was dead, one had gone mad and the other one had forgotten”.—[Official Report, 10 March 2015; Vol. 594, c. 260.]

I am not sure where I fit into that, but there are advantages to being around the education system for a long time and having some degree of shared memory of all this.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I thank everyone who has spoken in this rather lengthy but none the less constructive debate, and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) and the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) on securing a debate on this important issue. I also thank the F40 for a long and vigorous campaign.

When I was given this job, I spoke to a senior civil servant in the Department for Education who said to me that someone was working on fair funding for schools when he joined the Department in 1991. The problem has been around for a very long time. It did not arise overnight and it bedevils many different types of authorities. This is not a partisan issue: Labour-held authorities have funding issues, as do Conservative-held ones. There are some underfunded inner-city authorities and there are underfunded authorities outside of cities. I thank all Members for the manner in which the debate has been conducted. It has not been party political; instead, we have focused on the issues in our constituencies.

[Neil Parish]

I understand the historical element, which my hon. Friend the Minister outlines well, but I have huge confidence that he will be the Minister who, after all these years, actually sorts this out.

[Mr Gyimah]

I thank my hon. Friend for his confidence in me. It feels rather strange to be urged to be “brave”, as Sir Humphrey would say.

To address the point made by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass), if one represents a local authority such as hers in Durham, which is the 57th best-funded local authority in the country, one has the luxury of saying, “It’s difficult, but we have to do all these things.” She does not have to take the difficult decisions. She has the luxury of having a local authority that is very adequately funded, but those Members representing local authorities that have been underfunded for more than a decade, where schools are doing quite well with limited resources, are saying that it is time to rectify the situation. It is right that we listen to them and act.

Before getting into the detail of that issue, I want to respond to the point made by the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan). The Government recognise the importance of long-term investment in education to prepare children for success in adult life. In the previous Parliament, we invested more than £190 billion in our schools—a real-terms increase every year. In this Parliament, we will continue to protect the schools budget, as we promised in our manifesto. We will also ensure that the money reaches the places where it is needed, so all children in all age groups and all locations can access excellent education. We committed in our manifesto to making schools funding fairer, so that every school can support every child in achieving their potential.

The right hon. Member for Exeter made that point extremely well when he highlighted the fact that the root cause of this issue is historical funding. At some point in history—2005, I think—we froze schools funding in aspic, and whatever an authority spent the previous year became the baseline for its funding allocation. Demographics, local authorities and schools’ needs changed, but the funding formula was not updated to reflect current need.

[Mr Bradshaw]

A question has occurred to me during this debate. Broadly speaking—I know this is a simplification—Conservative shire counties had lower education funding and lower council tax, while Labour urban authorities tended to have higher education funding and higher council tax. Given the Government’s policy of capping increases in council tax, has any work been done in the Minister’s Department on the potential impact of redistribution on council tax? It would be unfair for people living in Labour authorities, which have historically had high council tax and high education spending, suddenly to lose that money through central Government, and for people in low-spend, low-council tax Tory areas to have no increase in their council tax but suddenly to have a big increase in their schools funding.

[Mr Gyimah]

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, there has to be a referendum for a council tax increase of more than 1.99%. We are talking about how central Government deal with revenue funding for schools. We have got to the point where schools’ capital needs are based on need. If the schools in a constituency have serious problems, we have a thorough process for identifying their needs and allocating funding appropriately, but we do not have a similar process on the revenue-funding side.

It is patently unfair that Knowsley receives nearly £750 less per pupil than Wandsworth, given that more pupils in Knowsley are entitled to free school meals. It is unfair that a secondary pupil with low prior attainment would attract more than £2,000 in Birmingham but only £35 in Darlington. In four local authorities they would not attract any funding at all. That is not right. The hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) spoke very clearly about that injustice.

In the previous Parliament, we took a big step. To those who say that the Government should be brave, I say that we have been brave. In an era of austerity, we invested £400 million to help level the playing field.

[Graham Stuart]

The £390 million is in its second year, and that will be the baseline. Will the Minister consider looking at the allocation again, because only a little more than half of it went to the lowest-funded authorities? If those that should not have had it have only recently received it, their pain in losing it will be less. The £390 million could be repurposed to lift up the lowest-funded authorities together. That would remove the outliers, even before we get to the national funding formula.

[Mr Gyimah]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point. I agree with the hon. Member for North West Durham that this is a complicated area. What happened with the £390 million is that local authorities whose spending was low on the high needs block but high on the schools funding formula did not see the full benefit, because the £390 million was allocated purely on the basis of schools funding. That means that any reform in this area has to take into account the different blocks of the dedicated schools grant: schools funding, high needs and early years. Some local authorities shift money among those different budgets, so we must look at this in the round.

Let me return to the difference that the £400 million has made. Buckinghamshire received a further £80 million and Cambridgeshire received more than £23 million, or £311 for every pupil. Bury, Surrey, Shropshire, Salford and more than 60 other authorities benefited from additional funding for their schools. Money was not being shuffled into Conservative areas from other local authorities. The beneficiaries of the £400 million, which is now the baseline, are underfunded local authorities. We looked at underfunding based on characteristics; we did not pick an arbitrary number.

[Graham Stuart]

Westminster was a beneficiary, was it not? I may have got that wrong. Clearly, the money was not always going to the lowest-funded authorities. Only a little more than half went to the lowest-funded authorities. There is a real opportunity to look at this again.

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[Mr Gyimah]

As my hon. Friend knows, we are having this debate because the Government want to go further than £390 million. The changes in some hon. Members’ constituencies over the past 10 years have been significant. In Dorset, the funding schools receive does not reflect the proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals, even though that proportion has almost doubled. In Lincolnshire—this relates to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins)—the proportion has doubled, but the funding has not changed at all. In other areas, the number of children eligible for free school meals has gone down by 40%, but the authority still receives the same amount of funding. The distribution of funding today does not reflect the needs of our children, so it has to be changed.

It is widely recognised that the impact of the distribution is hugely unfair, as many hon. Members have said today. A child who goes to school in Trafford will attract £4,228, but in next-door Manchester they will attract £5,081. At the extremes, Wokingham—my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) is no longer in his place—receives £4,151 for every school pupil, while Tower Hamlets receives £7,000, or 70% more. Of course, we have to ensure that Tower Hamlets receives the funding it needs, based on the characteristics of its pupils, to enable its schools to do their job, but a discrepancy of 70% or more shows that rooting the funding formula in the historical allocation has allowed things to get out of kilter.

As I said, we have made some progress, and many schools that are doing an excellent job are benefiting. I want to draw hon. Members’ attention to York, because my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) is here. It is one of the lowest-funded authorities in the country, yet 86% of its primary pupils and 93% of its secondary pupils are in good or outstanding schools. I congratulate the teachers in York on the excellent work they are doing. However, schools in York could do even more to help us in our mission to build a world-class education system if their funding matched the schools’ and pupils’ needs.

A system in which a school can get 50% more money for providing the same education to the same pupils just by moving from Barnsley to Hackney is not fair to schools, parents or children. To be fair to taxpayers at a time of austerity, we need to ensure that we get the most out of every pound we spend on our schools. Although we have protected the schools budget overall, we will not make the most of it until it is targeted where it is needed.

[Graham Stuart]

Perhaps the Minister is about to move on to what I am going to ask him. Can he set out the principles that will be used, so that we have some idea of the parameters that will be used to determine allocation? This will be politically challenging, so it is important that the terms on which it is done carry the widest possible support across the House.

[Mr Gyimah]

I thank my hon. Friend for his third intervention so far. The good news is that there is consensus on the need for reform, and support for how we plan to get there. Devising the new system will be a big, difficult job. There is no other way of describing it. We are being encouraged to move quickly, but also to listen; the best thing to do as we set out our proposals, soon after the spending review, is consult carefully and widely with local authorities and schools. That will be our approach.

Also, I received the letter sent to the Prime Minister from over 100 Members, led by my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness.

[Julian Sturdy]

The Minister is doing an excellent job, as I knew he would, in setting out his case. On timing, many of the excellent schools in my constituency of York, which he mentioned, are having to dip deep into their reserves to get through these years. They simply will not have the time if we do not act sooner rather than later.

[Mr Gyimah]

I share and understand my hon. Friend’s need for urgency, but the first thing is to build consensus for reform. It is good that the National Association of Head Teachers supports reform; it recently said:

“The level of unfairness in school funding has been staggering”,

and that it welcomes the move towards fairer funding. That is echoed by the Association of School and College Leaders, which says that reform is

“long overdue and very welcome.”

Parents know that education should not be a postcode lottery. There is a lot of work to do, and I would like to see the Opposition join the NAHT, and all the other organisations calling for reform, in supporting our building of consensus for what would be a historic achievement for our schools and for constructing an excellent education system.

[Michael Tomlinson]

I am grateful to the Minister for his responses so far. However, if he cannot commit to a specific date, may I invite him to at least set out a timetable allowing our local education authorities to plan well in advance, which will help our schools?

[Mr Gyimah]

My hon. Friend tempts me to pre-empt our spending review; that would not be appropriate for a junior Minister, and would not be welcomed by the Chancellor. I will not set out a timetable, but I have said that we will not only seek to build consensus and to consult widely, but support schools through the transition and encourage efficiency to get the most out of fairer funding.

As well as reforming the funding system, we will push schools to be more efficient in their spending. In this difficult financial climate, it is even more important that schools are relentless in their drive to squeeze the best value for their students out of every pound that they receive.

[Kevin Foster]

I thank the Minister for giving away again. He is being very generous with his time to the Members who are still here to listen to his remarks. I accept that he will not set out a timetable while he is on his feet today, but is he hopeful that the matter will be resolved by the end of this Parliament?

[Mr Gyimah]

What I can say on timing is that, whatever the changes, schools need enough time to adjust and plan; I have heard that from a lot of schools. That will guide us in implementing any reforms.

[Graham Stuart]

2017-18?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gyimah]

I will not comment any further on timing. It is important to focus on schools’ financial management, because good management and good attainment can go hand in hand, as demonstrated by the York example. While we will push schools to be more efficient, we will also help them to spend their funds in the way that has the biggest impact on pupil attainment. We will continue to give schools greater freedoms to make the right decisions, for themselves and their pupils, on how their budgets should be spent. We will free up schools to adopt the right structures and practices to meet their specific needs, and help them to identify the areas where they can make savings. We will help schools improve their financial expertise, share best practice and work together more efficiently.

[Neil Carmichael]

This question is not about timing; it is about consulting widely, including with multi-academy trusts and academies, because they are in this together. The Minister has mostly referred to local authorities, but we have to consider all schools.

[Mr Gyimah]

The Chairman of the Education Committee is absolutely right. When looking at the funding system, we must consider all schools, be they free schools, academies or local authority maintained schools. While on this point, I noted the tests that he outlined, and how his Select Committee will review any proposals that come forward. We will bear those tests in mind as we consider what to do over the coming weeks and months. I thank him for making them and the criteria very clear.

Let me bring my remarks to a close. Fairer funding underpins our vision for a world-class education system. To really support schools, we need to make the funding system fairer for every school and every child. Our vision is of a future in which every school in the country, whatever their characteristics and wherever they are, provides excellent education, allowing every child to succeed. I am enormously grateful to colleagues who have been campaigning hard for this over several years, and thank them for their contributions to the debate. To move forward, we want a real consensus, so I would like to see the Labour party, which did not mention fair funding in its manifesto at the last election—

[Pat Glass]

That’s not true.

[Mr Gyimah]

If the hon. Lady wants to intervene, I will take the intervention. I would like to see the Labour party come forward and support the proposals, because schools in constituencies represented by MPs of both our parties need this problem addressed. We have already protected budgets for 2016-17, and have baked in the extra funding from last year. I hope to be able to update right hon. and hon. Members on our further plans shortly. In the meantime, I encourage all those who have spent years campaigning for fairer funding to continue. We are making good progress. I hope that what we have done so far and the fact that we are willing to listen show that, at last, we are not just talking, and that the Government are ready to act.

[Graham Stuart]

It has been a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. What a delight this is! It was 10 years ago when I first asked a question about F40 funding to a Labour Minister, and I got a singularly inadequate reply. It was in March 2006 when I got my first debate on this subject. I called for an urgent debate in January 2007, and secured one in May 2007. This has been going on for a long, long time. The Minister and the Government are committed to delivering fair funding for our schools; that is long overdue and very welcome.

I think colleagues would like to hear more about the principles; we will perhaps do so when the Minister comes forward early in the new year—certainly by the end of January—with proposals to be consulted on.

[Mr Gyimah]

No timings.

[Graham Stuart]

We need more on the timing, because while consulting widely and seeking consensus is credible, the Government are committed to this. It does not require consensus; it requires the implementation of the manifesto promise. Seeking consensus is entirely right, but requiring it is a different matter altogether.

Then there is the element of ambition. How far are the Government prepared to go? I think it was a Treasury official who said, years ago, “Minister, the people you make happy, you never make as happy as the people you make unhappy, unhappy.” That is the problem. When we finally get the proposals, we and our constituents will grunt and say, “About time,” but there has to be redistribution; it is unfortunate that the Opposition spokeswoman, the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass), was not prepared to say that. As it is, there has been a 7% increase in the education budget in this Parliament because of the number of pupils. Given the context, there has to be redistribution. Some people will lose, which means looking them in the eye and explaining why it is fair and right that they should do so. That takes courage, but if we are going to do it, we could do with both sides of the House joining in and accepting that principle. I welcome Labour’s support for fairer funding, but it needs to be followed by the recognition of the need for redistribution.

In my final seconds, I want to comment on the contribution of the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan), the Scottish National party spokeswoman. It seems that the free university education of middle-class children, who are predominantly the most likely to go to university, has been funded at the expense of working-class kids in further education colleges, who have had their vocational opportunities stunted as a result. I do not think that the SNP has much to teach us about that, although they do seem to have more equal funding of schools, per pupil. It seems a good principle to have pretty much level funding, except when the reasons not to are overwhelming, such as higher teaching costs in London. That does not mean, however, that we need have the gross discrepancies that we see today.

It has been a great debate, and I thank all my colleagues for being here. I look forward to the Minister coming forward with proposals as soon as possible.

Secondary School Places (London Borough of Sutton)

Sam Gyimah Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) on securing the debate. I have noted his invitation to join him for a tour of his constituency. I look forward to a formal invite, and I would very much like to visit the constituency in due course. He has brought to the House an important issue that will have a significant impact on the residents of Sutton in the coming years, and I share his confusion at the outcome of the council’s deliberations on the Rosehill site.

First, I want to take the opportunity to reiterate the Government’s commitment to one of our key priorities: ensuring that there are sufficient school places across the country. We have already shown the strength of our commitment to making sure that every child has access to a good-quality school place. We plan to invest £7 billion over the Parliament to provide new school places, including through basic need allocations to local authorities. That is £2 billion more than was allocated for school places under the previous coalition Government, and almost four times as much as was allocated from 2007 to 2011.

Ensuring that every child has access to the benefits of a good-quality education is a fundamental responsibility of all of us across the education system. As my hon. Friend knows, the statutory duty to provide school places rests with local authorities. Our financial commitment is a concrete demonstration of the level of importance that the Government attach to the provision of school places, and to our wider commitment to ensuring that every child has a good school place.

We committed in our manifesto to delivering at least 500 new free schools during this Parliament, creating 270,000 school places. Since the election in May, 18 new free school applications have already been approved, and many more are now entering the process. We continue to encourage businesses, cultural and sporting bodies, charities, community groups and parents to come forward with proposals for new schools, to add to the 304 open free schools and the more than 100 that are currently in the pipeline.

It is important that local authorities across the country see, and seek to capitalise on, the opportunity presented by the free schools programme. Such schools work alongside local authorities to create the school places we need to provide a good education for our children, and many authorities are choosing to work actively with the Government to meet that challenge.

As well as funding places, the Department keeps a close eye on the progress that local authorities are making in meeting basic need. Between 2010 and 2014, more than 445,000 new places were created through the work of local authorities and, of course, the Government’s free schools programme. Many more places have been delivered since then, and thousands more are in the pipeline. In 2013 and 2014 alone, local authorities reported adding an additional 110,000 primary and 74,000 secondary places into the system. The free schools programme is also adding significant capacity to the system; more than 153,000 new places have been created by the 304 free schools that have been established, with the promise of many more to come.

I pay tribute to all those in authorities and in schools who have helped to deliver the significant progress we have seen in recent years. The task, however, is not yet done. As the numbers I mentioned some moments ago suggest, the increase in pupils moving through the primary phase is now beginning to be felt at secondary level. My hon. Friend touched on that. Local authorities and academies must rise to that added dimension of challenge at the same time as primary numbers continue to grow, albeit less rapidly than in recent years. We should not pretend that meeting that challenge will be easy, which is why we are committed to helping both with funding and by establishing new schools directly under the free schools programme.

As a thriving global city, London has a large part to play in meeting that challenge. Some 35% of the new places delivered by 2014 were in London, and the capital will have a big part to play in meeting the challenge in the coming years. As my hon. Friend highlighted, the London Borough of Sutton has its own local context, with a wealth of strong local schools attracting pupils from beyond its borders. The popularity of those schools is a healthy sign, and I commend those who work in them.

A key strength of the current system of co-operation on school places, and one that is particularly seen across London, is that pupils can access schools beyond the border of their own local authority and find the school that is best suited to their needs. We do not want to lose that strength, nor the resilience that it helps to bring to the system. However, we need to find ways to support the boroughs that most keenly feel the impact of cross-border movement, such as the London Borough of Sutton.

The way that we provide funding for new places recognises that movement and is based on local authorities’ own assessments of the number of pupils they expect to have. That approach has helped the Government allocate Sutton council more than £110 million of funding for school places from 2011 to 2018, making it the 18th highest- funded authority for basic need in the country, and that funding has been put to work. Sutton council worked with its schools to put in place an additional 2,289 primary school places and 1,143 secondary school places between 2010 and 2014, with plans to create many more when they are needed in the coming years. That leads me to the matter in hand.

The Government are helping Sutton council to meet its places challenge directly, with the approval of the Sutton free school, which will see the borough join the many local authorities that have already benefited from the free schools programme. As my hon. Friend mentioned, the Sutton free school is scheduled to open in 2017, and is being built to provide eight forms of entry and a welcome new capacity of 1,550 places to the borough. The new school will add to the variety of options in the area and give parents even more choice in selecting the right school for their children. The school represents an exciting opportunity to broaden provision within Sutton and, with the co-operation of the council, it and other free schools can be delivered to help to meet the need for new school places. I am therefore perplexed by the current situation.

The Department for Education had meetings with officers of Sutton council about the Rosehill all-weather pitch site and was told that the council would agree for the land to be transferred to the Department for the school. I am seriously disappointed that the council has since changed its mind about the site and removed it as an option. Rosehill remains the preferred site for the Sutton free school due to its size, its access to playing fields and being in a good location for a much-needed, large, eight-form-entry secondary school. It is on metropolitan open land, but building on such land would not be a precedent in Sutton. Indeed, as my hon. Friend mentioned, there is an incinerator on metropolitan open land in Sutton at the moment.

The alternative site, the Belmont hospital site, could accommodate a smaller secondary school to help to meet the need for places from 2018 onwards. However, in its current form it is not suitable for the Sutton free school. Other free school proposers have been in talks with the council about a further, smaller secondary school in the next round of free school applications next year. Given the demand for secondary school places that is projected by the council, the ideal solution would be to take forward plans for both sites, with a proposer to be identified for a second school on the Belmont hospital site.

At this early stage, we still have the opportunity to review the options for bringing forward two much needed secondary schools in Sutton. I urge the council, in the strongest terms, to reconsider its plans to meet its basic need for secondary school places. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this important issue.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sam Gyimah Excerpts

Monday 26th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

6. What assessment she had made of the effect of the services offered by Sure Start children’s centres on the families who use those centres.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

It is crucial that we evaluate the impact of children’s centres for families. The Department for Education has funded the “Evaluation of Children’s Centres in England” research, and three interim reports were published in June 2015. I expect the full impact report to be published later this year, with a consultation to follow on how children’s centres can have the greatest impact for local communities going forward.

[Valerie Vaz]

Palfrey Sure Start in my constituency has twice been rated outstanding for doing community-based work and culturally sensitive work, not just childcare. What further steps can be taken to ensure that it can continue to support parents with this vital work?

[Mr Gyimah]

The hon. Lady is an excellent and assiduous MP. I congratulate the Sure Start centre in her constituency on the excellent work it is doing. That highlights the fact that, to look at the future of children’s centres, we must look at more innovation and other ways of delivering services that work for local communities and satisfy local demand.

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)]

In Enfield, some 12 children’s centres have been closed. Headteachers tell me that that is resulting in more and more children not being school-ready, which affects their progress throughout their whole primary school career and beyond. What does the Minister intend to do to address that problem?

[Mr Gyimah]

Labour Members continue to count buildings rather than services when they talk about children’s centres. One million families have benefited from children’s centre services. Free childcare for disadvantaged two-year-olds and for all three and four-year-olds is delivering the school-readiness that has seen record numbers of children ready for school, according to the early years foundation stage profile.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

The Minister continues to talk about the services that are offered. However, he will be aware that the charity 4Children has recently highlighted that more than 2,000 children’s centre sites have had their budgets significantly cut this financial year and that fewer centres are now able to reach fewer families. Nearly 60% report cutting front-line services, nearly 30% have significantly cut the range of services they offer, 28% are now forced to charge for services that would otherwise have been free and 20% are reducing their hours. Is the Minister proud of the Government’s legacy on Sure Start?

[Mr Gyimah]

I welcome the hon. Lady to her new post. It is great to see that many of her predecessors are still in the shadow education team. It is wonderful that the new politics is being led by the same old faces.

I am proud of our record on children’s centres. We have seen record numbers of families receiving support, but there has also been a 50% increase in the number of health visitors and we have expanded the troubled families programme. We are on the side of the families that need children’s centres most, and we are doing something about it.

[Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)]

7. What assessment she has made of the effect of the Government's proposed changes to tax credits on the number of children accessing free school meals.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

14. What assessment she has made of the effect of the Government's proposed changes to tax credits on the number of children accessing free school meals.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

Thanks to the growing economy, the number of children requiring free school meals is falling. We are currently assessing the effect of proposed changes to tax credits.

[Dr Cameron]

The proposed changes to tax credits will see 22,000 children in Scotland lose their entitlement to free school meals, although our First Minister has pledged to safeguard that entitlement. Will the Minister make a similar pledge to ensure that children from the most vulnerable backgrounds in the rest of the UK remain eligible for free school meals?

[Mr Gyimah]

The hon. Lady will be aware that, in the rest of the UK, the majority of children who are entitled to free school meals have parents who are on out-of-work benefits. We are assessing the impact of the changes to tax credits, and there is nothing to suggest that people who currently receive free school meals will not continue to do so.

[Patrick Grady]

If children become hungry or undernourished as a result of missing out on free school meals, what effect will that have on attainment levels in the classroom and the life chances of future generations? What steps will the Government take to mitigate the long-term impact of these short-sighted cuts?

[Mr Gyimah]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that eligibility for free school meals in Scotland is a matter for the Scottish Government. The Scotland Bill will give the Scottish Government power to top up or reverse tax credits, or to raise taxes, but they are noticeably silent about what they will do to ensure that such eligibility continues.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

As the Minister correctly points out, free school meals in Scotland are a matter not for him but for the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. Is it not odd to hear Members of the Scottish National party questioning the Minister about free school meals in England, when I cannot go to Edinburgh and question Ministers there about free school meals in Scotland?

[Mr Gyimah]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s question. He highlights the delivery of our manifesto commitment to English votes for English laws, to ensure that English MPs rightly have their say on issues that affect England.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that welfare changes are an essential part of reducing the deficit, and far preferable to sacking thousands of teachers and closing schools, as we have seen in countries such as Greece and Portugal?

[Mr Gyimah]

My hon. Friend makes an important point that was also highlighted by the Minister for Skills. In countries such as Greece that did not take grown-up, difficult decisions, teachers’ pay has been cut by 30% and thousands of schools have closed. This Government are taking the right decisions for the country.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

As the Minister knows, free school meals are vital to ensure that many children have access to a hot and healthy meal every day. Recent reports from Kellogg’s and the Trussell Trust highlight that thousands of children who rely on free school meals in term time will go hungry during the current half-term holiday. Does the Minister agree that free school meals are a vital tool in combating child hunger, and will he promise to protect universal infant free school meals in the spending review, so that infant children from low-income working families do not go hungry?

[Mr Gyimah]

I am glad that the hon. Lady has brought up a policy that we in this Government introduced, and I am proud of the take-up and quality of school meals for all children. In our manifesto we committed to continuing with that—we are going through the spending review, but our manifesto commitments remain.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

Assuming that a similar percentage of children across the rest of the UK will lose their entitlement to free school meals as the percentage estimated for Scotland, how much does the Minister estimate that changes to tax credits will save his Department on free school meals, and how will Scotland see its budget cut as a result?

[Mr Gyimah]

It is worth making it absolutely clear that whatever the position of tax credits for the United Kingdom, eligibility for free school meals in Scotland is a matter for the Scottish Government. I would rather that SNP Members did not try to scaremonger about what will happen in the rest of the United Kingdom, and instead made clear what they will do as a result of these changes.

[Carol Monaghan]

Straightaway we can see from the Minister’s answer that there will be budgetary impacts on Scotland from decisions on which Scottish MPs will no longer be able to vote. Can he assure us that when there will be funding implications, Scottish MPs will not be barred from voting?

[Mr Gyimah]

I am not sure that the hon. Lady listened to my answer, but she makes the point about tax credits in general. Tax credits are a matter for the United Kingdom. This House has voted on tax credits three times and each time the motion has been passed. As for the implications for free school meals, as I said, that is a matter for the Scottish Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

Good mental health and attainment are different sides of the same coin, which is why the Secretary of State appointed me as the first Education Minister with responsibility for mental health in schools. We are taking a number of steps, working with partners, to improve the mental health of young people.

[Graham Evans]

Given that mental health conditions can be life-limiting for many young people in school, how are the Government ensuring that teachers have access to appropriate materials to teach pupils about mental health in an age-appropriate way so that we can break through this stigma?

[Mr Gyimah]

I am glad my hon. Friend has asked that question. We have been working with the PSHE Association to develop age-appropriate lesson plans, as well as improving counselling and guidance, so that teachers know how to teach about mental health and deal with the range of issues they come across in young people.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

As well as offering welcome advice and support to schools, will the Government consider introducing a compulsory psychological assessment for all children entering care to complement the physical assessment already required?

[Mr Gyimah]

That is a very good suggestion. I understand from my hon. Friend the Minister for Children and Families that we already have a health assessment, but we are open-minded on all ideas about how to tackle the problem. I will happily meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss his suggestion.

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

18. What recent steps she has taken to promote safe transport on school trips.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

T2. I support all those who have called for a fairer funding formula, but I would like to develop the argument a little further. Outstanding schools in my constituency, such as Bottisham Village college, do not do well on the funding formula at present, and as a result they are all the more reliant on grants for capital expenditure. Will the Secretary of State consider whether historic underfunding ought to be one of the factors taken into account for capital expenditure grant applications?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

All local authorities receive capital funding for schools, including for school places and conditions. Cambridgeshire has been allocated almost £160 million in capital allocations between 2011 and 2018. It is important that capital funding is targeted on the school areas that need it most. Academies can also bid for the condition improvement fund. Bottisham’s application to the fund was assessed in relation to other expansion bids. Although I understand my hon. Friend’s point for capital to be considered as part of the revenue funding formula, she must realise that capital is part of what is done on a needs basis, which is different from how revenue is allocated.

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you for calling me, Mr Speaker. It is good to be here this afternoon.

Yet again today, Ministers are doing the rounds asserting that the expansion of free childcare is one of the measures that will offset the cuts in tax credits for families. As the Secretary of State knows, however, the increase to 15 hours’ free childcare will not take place until September 2017 at the earliest, well after the tax credit cuts. Given that the Department is, in its own words, “unable to understand” the costs of childcare following the Secretary of State’s review, there are now real questions to be asked about the deliverability of the scheme. Does the Secretary of State agree that families need help with childcare now, especially those who face losing vital tax credits? What help is she providing for families before 2017?

Education

Sam Gyimah Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2015 Ministerial Corrections

[Mr Gyimah]

Our plan to give 30 hours a week of free childcare to working parents of three and four-year-olds would apply to 75% of children.

[Official Report, 20 July 2015, Vol. 598, c. 1202.]

Letter of correction from Mr Gyimah:

An error has been identified in the answer given to the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan).

The correct answer should have been:

[Mr Gyimah]

Our plan to give 30 hours a week of free childcare to working parents of three and four-year-olds would apply to 75% of eligible children.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sam Gyimah Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

2. What plans the Government have to use Sure Start centres for the extension of free childcare to 30 hours a week.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

Children’s centres play a valuable role in our communities. It is right for local authorities to decide on the nature of provision on the basis of local need. If there is a viable nursery in a children’s centre, of course we will strongly encourage it to help to deliver our manifesto commitment to assist families with the cost of childcare.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

In 2010 the Prime Minister said that he backed Sure Start centres, but since then more than 800 have closed, including a number in my constituency. Why are the Government not giving local authorities the necessary resources, so that they can go on helping Sure Start centres to deliver the excellent early-years and childcare provision that we know they can deliver?

[Mr Gyimah]

I agree that Sure Start centres provide some excellent support for young families. Where we disagree is that the hon. Lady wants to go on counting buildings and we want to focus on outcomes. I hope Opposition Members will join me in welcoming the fact that more than 1 million families are benefiting from Sure Start centres. As for nursery provision, only 3% of Sure Start centres currently offer day care, but we want to ensure that when centres are viable, they can deliver.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. That was too long—far too long.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

On 22 June, the Prime Minister said:

“we will look at how we can create a much more coherent offer to support children and parents in the early years”.

Does that mean that our children’s centres will become family hubs?

[Mr Gyimah]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question on a key point. There is a lot more that we can do. Last week I announced a consultation on how we can incorporate other types of service in children’s centres, and I should very much like to discuss with my hon. Friend how family hubs might be part of that.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

In proceeding with their plans to expand the provision of free childcare in Scotland, the Scottish Government have stressed the importance of high-quality early learning to giving our children the very best start in life. Does the Minister agree that access to free childcare is vital to tackling social and educational inequalities early in life, and will he explain how the United Kingdom Government intend to support those aims through their expansion of free childcare to 30 hours a week?

[Mr Gyimah]

Obviously I agree with the hon. Lady, and that is why, the last Government having introduced 15 hours a week of free childcare for two-year-olds, we are extending free childcare provision to three and four-year-olds, raising the quality of childcare, and making it affordable for parents.

[Carol Monaghan]

The Scottish Government have announced plans to extend free childcare to 30 hours a week for all three and four-year-olds. As the Minister will know, that is more ambitious than his plans to extend provision only to families in which both parents work. Does he not recognise that by restricting free childcare in that way, the UK Government are missing an opportunity to tackle inequalities by targeting early-learning provision at more disadvantaged families?

[Mr Gyimah]

Our plan to give 30 hours a week of free childcare to working parents of three and four-year-olds would apply to 75% of children. The difference between our position and that of the Scottish Government is our belief that enabling parents to work provides them with the best route out of poverty. As well as offering free childcare, we are subsidising some of the poorest parents by means of universal credit, thus meeting 85% of their childcare costs.[Official Report, 21 July 2015, Vol. 598, c. 3MC.]

[Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

23. Given that parents will use the 30 hours for full day care, what consideration has been given to the fact that the children will now need to be fed during that time, and what additional training and funds, if any, are being provided to facilitate that?

[Mr Gyimah]

Children already sleep and eat in many day care settings—the lot is provided to them. We are conducting a funding review, which will come up with exactly how the 30 hours will be delivered to parents.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

Removal of the childcare duty from children’s centres and savage early intervention cuts of 56% have stretched children’s services to breaking point. Holiday childcare costs have risen by 25% since 2010, and almost 90% of local authorities do not have enough space to meet summer demand. Will the Minister now commit to investing in children’s centres to help solve this problem as free entitlement is expanded?

[Mr Gyimah]

I am happy to compare our record on supporting young families with that of Labour any time. Let me remind the hon. Lady of what the National Audit Office said about Labour and Sure Start: it said it was unviable, underfunded and failing to reduce inequality. Under the Conservatives, two thirds of all disadvantaged children under the age of five are benefiting from Sure Start centres.

[Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (UKIP)]

3. What estimate her Department has made of the number of free schools that will be in operation by 2020.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

17. What progress her Department is making on providing fairer funding for schools.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

It is deeply unfair that we have a schools funding formula based on historic allocation rather than on actual need of schools and pupils. That is why the manifesto confirmed extra financial support for the least well-funded authorities for 2015-16, protected the schools budget in real terms and committed to making the system fairer. I can confirm that we will be putting proposals before the House for funding reform in due course.

[Rishi Sunak]

I warmly welcome my hon. Friend’s answer and hope that he can continue to make progress for the students in my constituency. Will he comment on the recent National Audit Office report that recommended a fairer formula so that pupils receive funding that is related

“more closely to their needs, and less affected by where they live”?

[Mr Gyimah]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. It is unfair that a primary pupil eligible for free school meals in Richmond receives £472 extra funding while a similar student in another part of Yorkshire receives almost £300 more. That is why we recently announced that the schools block funding rates for 2016-17 have been baked in the extra funding that we distributed in the last financial year to make funding fairer.

[Mr Robertson]

I welcome the fact that the Government are about to introduce a national funding formula, but may I urge the Minister to do it sooner rather than later, because the longer the unfairness goes on the more difficult it will be to correct?

[Mr Gyimah]

I know the f40 group, of which my hon. Friend is a member, has been campaigning for 19 years for a fairer funding formula, so I can understand his impatience. He is right to highlight the financial pressures that schools are under, especially those in underfunded parts of the country; this is one of the reasons why we are committed to fairer funding. As I said, we have protected per pupil funding in each authority from 2015-16, meeting the commitment to protect the national schools budget.

[Paul Maynard]

The Minister will be aware that Blackpool has among the lowest educational attainment in the country. What more, besides the hugely valuable pupil premium and the extra funding for nursery schools, can the Government do to increase attainment among white working-class children in seaside resorts—currently the weakest demographic in the country?

[Mr Gyimah]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I know he has a record of successful campaigning for schools funding. He is right to mention the pupil premium, which is designed to remove the barriers to learning faced by children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The pupil premium will provide almost £5 million in additional funding for more than 4,000 disadvantaged pupils—that is all disadvantaged children, not just white children—in Blackpool North and Cleveleys, and will help them to fulfil their potential.

[Victoria Prentis]

Following on from the previous question, 3,000 disadvantaged children in my Banbury constituency also benefit from the pupil premium. What other measures has the Minister thought about to promote targeted spending, to help to increase fairness in education?

[Mr Gyimah]

I welcome my hon. Friend to her place. She may know that her father, Lord Boswell, was extremely generous in his support to me in my early political career— indeed, he helped me to meet my wife—[Interruption.] Too much information. My hon. Friend rightly mentions targeted support. Some £3.5 million has been allocated to Banbury schools specifically to help to narrow the education gap.

[Mr Speaker]

I think we are clear that the noble Lord is a great man. He is also, famously, the author of the advice: don’t let the best be the enemy of the good. You can put a monkey on a typewriter and end up with the collected works of Shakespeare, but we will all be dead by then.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

The Minister will know that the Institute for Fiscal Studies has previously raised concerns about the potential impact of a national funding formula on poorer, more disadvantaged parts of England. Although a new formula will certainly help schools in the Stockport part of my constituency, which are disadvantaged by the current arrangements, can the Minister guarantee that there will be no inadvertent impact on schools in the Tameside part of my constituency, which is a poorer borough overall?

[Mr Gyimah]

Let me be clear: our commitment is to a fairer funding formula for schools. It is not right that schools in Tower Hamlets receive 63% more funding than schools in Barnsley with the same demographic profile. We have to do something about that, but we must take our time to get it right. We will consult widely, and I hope that Opposition Front Benchers will support us in this effort.

[Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)]

Figures from the Department show that per pupil funding for St Helens will be more than £150 less than the average across England this year. In addition, our local authority is being asked to take a further £23 million from its budget in the same period. Will the Minister listen to the concerns of staff in schools in my constituency, who tell me that their ability to teach and support children is being hindered and not helped by this Government and their policies?

[Mr Gyimah]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that we have protected schools funding in real terms. If schools in his area are getting less funding, perhaps he should be speaking to the local authority, in particular the schools forums, to understand what exactly is going on.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

This is a key issue, which is one of the reasons why the Education Committee will also be conducting an inquiry on the subject, but does the Minister agree that if we reform funding, we will answer the National Audit Office’s firm criticism of the system that it does not make sense for the pupil premium in some areas?

[Mr Gyimah]

I thank the Chair of the Select Committee. The point he makes is, I believe, that some areas are receiving, in effect, double deprivation funding: they are receiving it both through the schools formula and through the pupil premium. We will look at the funding formula in the round to address all those issues.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

11. What steps her Department is taking to support the mental wellbeing of children at school.

--- Later in debate ---

[Heidi Allen (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

T3. We have spoken an awful lot today about fairer funding, and I welcome the extra £390 million that came my way, to Cambridgeshire, last year, and the fact that it will be consolidated for next year. We have talked about consultation to understand the best process for moving forward. Will the Minister or one of his representatives join me on 21 August, when I will host a meeting with key stakeholders, headteachers and Ofsted representatives in South Cambridgeshire to discuss why our schools still need more?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

I note my hon. Friend’s invitation on 21 August, which I sadly cannot accept because I will be on my summer holiday. However, I welcome the invitation and will be delighted to meet those representatives on another occasion.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

On every educational and efficiency measure, sixth-form colleges outperform all other sixth-form providers. When will the Government treat sixth-form colleges fairly in taxation terms and take steps to establish many more sixth-form colleges throughout the country?

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

T5. The latest figures on the dedicated school grant for 2015-16 show that pupils in my urban Torbay constituency receive significantly less per pupil than their counterparts in other urban areas such as Nottingham. What steps will the Secretary of State be taking to address that funding imbalance, as highlighted by the Campaign for Fairer Funding in Education, or f40?

[Mr Gyimah]

That is yet another clear example of why the school funding system needs to be reformed. Torbay receives £1,530 extra for each pupil on free school meals, while schools in other parts of the country can receive £5,000. However, as a result of last week’s announcement, Torbay will receive an additional £1.52 million and will continue to receive that funding because of the £390 million being baked into the school formula.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

So why exactly have 800 children’s centres closed since the Conservatives—and, previously, the coalition—came to power?

[Mr Gyimah]

Yet again, the Labour party decides to confuse mergers with closures. As was said earlier—before the hon. Gentleman came into the Chamber—what we should care about is the outcomes for parents, rather than simply counting buildings.

[John Cryer]

I was here!

--- Later in debate ---

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Primary schools in Brent regularly have classes of 29 children with 21 different mother tongues. How is it possible that a fairer funding formula can discount against such schools relative to others that do not labour under such difficulties?

[Mr Gyimah]

We need to consult widely to understand the issues, but what we do know is that, around the country, the funding for schools with the same characteristics are based on historical allocation, rather than on the needs of either the school or the pupil.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

T7. Too many families in Brierley Hill and Wordsley in my constituency are unable to secure places at local schools. What plans do the Government have to meet demand for places in Dudley South?

[Mr Gyimah]

Supporting local authorities to deliver sufficient places is one of this Government’s top priorities. Dudley local authority has been allocated £8.9 million of basic need funding for the period 2015-18. This will help to create the places required.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

Surely a review of provision in an area ought to include all provision in that area, so why, in their publication “Reviewing post-16 Education and Training Institutions”, are the Government not including all provision, such as schools, UTCs and so on?

[James Berry (Kingston and Surbiton) (Con)]

T8. Children in Kingston and Surbiton perform above the national average in speech and language at age five. However, the poorest children are still almost twice as likely to fall behind later in their education, despite the best efforts of their teachers. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is evidence that high-quality early education, linked to the presence of well-qualified staff in the early years, has a positive impact on speech and language development for the poorest children?

[Mr Gyimah]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and that is why we extended the free entitlement to disadvantaged two-year-olds, and we extended the pupil premium to three and four-year-olds so that toddlers are not behind when they turn up at school.

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

Apparently, the Minister has questioned the value of free school meals for young children. Has he read the excellent evaluation of the universal free school meals pilot in County Durham, and if not, shall I send him a copy?

[Mr Gyimah]

I believe the hon. Lady is referring to an article in The Mail on Sunday. May I say that the incident in question, to go back to my own school meal days, is a mere trifle? We are absolutely committed to free school meals, as she can see in our manifesto.

[Mr Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

T9. Is the Secretary of State aware that many schools in Norfolk, particularly in Norwich and King’s Lynn, are doing a huge amount to help children with special needs to be integrated into the mainstream? However, the statementing process still takes far too long. What does she propose to do about it?

School Funding

Sam Gyimah Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2015 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

World class schools are a vital part of the Government’s long-term economic plan, and are one of the key drivers of the productive economy of the future.

We are therefore committed to making school funding fairer, to maintaining the amount of money that follows children into schools and to confirming the extra £390 million fairer funding uplift from 2015-16 in budgets for 2016-17 and beyond. This will help every child, everywhere, to have the best possible chance to reach their potential.

Today we are taking the first steps towards meeting these commitments by publishing the per pupil funding rates for each local authority’s schools budget for 2016-17. This protects the per pupil funding in each authority from 2015-16, meeting the commitment to protect the national schools budget and to base-lining the £390 million extra funding.

We are also publishing the Education Funding Agency’s operational guide; to allow local authorities to start the process of consulting with their schools on how the funding should be distributed in their area.

The forthcoming spending review will set out the Government’s plans for the delivery and funding of public services for this Parliament. It will set out further detail on key delivery priorities for schools and local authorities and confirm funding levels for other grants and programmes. In light of the spending review and any consequent changes to the school finance regulations (which would of course be consulted on), the operational guide may have to be updated and local authorities may have to review the planning and modelling they have undertaken.

Final funding allocations to each authority will be made in December, in line with the latest data on their pupil numbers.

Base-lining the 2015-16 minimum funding levels in 2016-17 is an important step towards making funding fairer. However it remains the case that a school in one part of the country can receive over 50% more funding than an identical school in another part of the country.

I am therefore committed to making schools and early education funding fairer and will put forward proposals in due course.

We recognise the links between funding for early education, schools and pupils with high cost special educational needs. These are complex issues to consider, and we will consult extensively with the sector and the public on them.

[HCWS135]

Free Childcare and Nursery Providers

Sam Gyimah Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2015 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) for the opportunity to have this debate. It is timely in the light of the Government’s commitment to double the free childcare available for working families. Like him, I am a father; I have a 14-month-old who goes to nursery, so I experience the childcare market from the point of view of a parent, not just a politician sitting in Westminster making decisions about the sector.

My hon. Friend dwelt on the challenges that the nursery sector faces, but I would like to counter that: the childcare market is much broader than the nursery sector. The vast majority of places are provided by private, voluntary and independent providers. We also have childminders and school nurseries, but the bulk of the formal childcare that the Department is concerned with is provided by those three sectors. When we talk about the market and the challenges it faces, it is important to recognise how broad the market is and the different types of service offered. For example, childminders offer childcare in a domestic setting, whereas nurseries are more of an organisation and children are taken to them. Each provides slightly different challenges to and opportunities for parents.

For many families with young children, childcare is not an issue, but the issue. Many parents want to go back to work or work more hours, but find that the cost of childcare makes doing so unaffordable. The Government want to reward hard-working families by reducing their childcare bill. That said, policies are not just about the parents; we also recognise that childcare is about the child. A lot of development happens in the early years, so the quality of childcare provision is as important as making childcare available. That brings me to the key challenge we face in the sector: how do we make childcare affordable, ensure sufficient quality and ensure that it is available in the form that parents want? Every parent knows that the childcare needs of parents are not consistently the same across the board.

In responding to my hon. Friend, I will take the opportunity to make general points about our childcare policy. I am proud of our record to date. We are the first to fund 15 hours of free childcare for all three and four-year-olds as well as 40% of two-year-olds. We legislated to introduce tax-free childcare; the 1.8 million families who want to buy additional hours can get up to £2,000 off per child per year. It is important that the policy applies to children from age nought to 17, in the case of children with disabilities. Tax-free childcare can help parents not only with childcare in the early years, but with wrap-around care, whether that is breakfast or after-school clubs. We have also increased the child element of tax credits and introduced shared parental leave.

We need to do more to ensure that we are enabling families to make the choices that are best for their circumstances. In doing so, it is worth recognising, as my hon. Friend implied throughout his speech, that in many cases it is businesses that are delivering these services for parents, so we need to ensure that the funding is sustainable. That is why we have talked about implementing the funding rate for the new 15 hours in a way that is not only fair but sustainable, to ensure—crucially—that children have the best start in life, with affordable, safe and high-quality childcare.

More broadly, our businesses and economy depend on working parents, who themselves depend on access to high-quality childcare. However, what the childcare and early years survey tells us is that 22% of working parents have found it difficult or very difficult to pay for childcare; for lone working parents, the figure rises to 38%, so there is a lot more that can be done.

The conundrum is that the Government already invest £5 billion per annum to support parents with childcare. How can we be in a situation where we are spending that money yet some parents still say that they find the cost of childcare to be too high? The Childcare Bill will take further the support that parents can get, delivering on our manifesto commitment to support children at every stage of their life.

We will extend the entitlement of 570 hours for all three and four-year-olds, and I am happy to report that take-up of the existing entitlement in York is already higher than the average. With the new entitlement, working families will receive more childcare support than ever. It will guarantee them about 1,140 hours of free childcare, worth more than £5,000 a year per child.

I will make a comment about the funding rate, which was a key part of my hon. Friend’s speech. Yes, we need to look at the funding rate for the first 15 hours as well as for the second 15 hours, and I hear the complaints that nursery providers have made. However, it is worth making it very clear that the impact of the funding rate on a business is as a result of a number of factors and not just the rate itself, although it is important. For example, whether or not the local authority top-slices the funding that goes from central Government to providers determines whether providers receive more or less than the rate that central Government determine. Also, the flexibility that local authorities allow providers to deliver their 15 hours is important, because if local authorities are quite inflexible in the scope for providers to allocate the 15 hours in a way that works best for their business, that will invariably impact on the profitability of providers. Thirdly, the business model decisions that operators make impact on how far that money can go. When we consider the sustainability of this model, we need to look at all those things in the round, as well as obviously focusing on the funding rate available.

To support the market beyond the funding rate, I worked with the Department for Communities and Local Government in the last Parliament, urging local authorities to work with childcare providers and to ensure that charitable and non-profit providers benefit from the business rate relief that they are entitled to. Any nurseries that are registered charities will already benefit from rate relief. The smallest providers, including childminders, benefit from small business rate relief, although any further relief would require local authority discretionary relief.

I heard what my hon. Friend said about local authorities granting or not granting that relief. I intend to continue to work with the National Day Nurseries Association to find ways to ensure that the necessary action is taken to help reduce the cost of provision for childcare providers. I understand where he is coming from and I will take action, as he suggests.

Having said that, I counter the idea that somehow the childcare day market is not thriving; in fact, I would say that the opposite is true. The childcare day market for children aged from zero to five is vibrant and thriving. In 2013-14, it was estimated at £4.9 billion, which means it is about a third larger than it was a decade ago. The number of places in the sector has gone up by 12%, and roughly 230,000 places were created between 2009 and 2015. We recognise the challenges, but those are signs of a sector that is rising to those challenges.

To help the sector meet those challenges we are listening to its input. I have announced a review on the cost of providing childcare and it is now under way, with more than 300 responses in the first 24 hours or so. Clearly, the sector is aware of and engaging with the call for evidence. The review will report in the autumn and I encourage providers in York and throughout the country to respond.

As my hon. Friend pointed out and as I touched on earlier, the issue is not only about the funding rate, but about payment practices. I have heard that from all sorts of providers, including some of the largest ones in the sector, so we will be looking at that. The average paid to local authorities by central Government is about £4.51 per hour for three and four-year-olds; that is in excess of what he said providers in his York constituency are receiving. In fact, that rate is higher than the one in the Family and Childcare Trust survey, which showed that an average nursery is charged £4.47 per hour for children aged two and over. That is an indication of why we need to look at what is happening between the rate set by central Government and the rate received by providers. Why does it differ so much between local authorities and between types of provider? That is not to say that we do not accept the need to look at the overall rate, but we need to look at the other aspects as well.

My hon. Friend touched on the funding formula, but the funding system for three and four-year-olds includes historical inconsistencies that result in large variations in funding distribution between local authorities. There are also variations in the funding passed on by local authorities to providers. In the previous Parliament, we started to look seriously at such problems to create greater transparency for parents and providers. We now publish an annual benchmarking tool that lists every council’s funding and how much it passes on to different providers. That should help parents and providers to have informed conversations with councils, but should also hold them to account. I am confident that if we look at all such things seriously, the extended entitlement will provide an opportunity for existing providers to expand and for new providers to enter the market, giving parents choice and helping to build our economy.

The market is healthy and growing. I am sure that my hon. Friend will be interested to know that in York 4Children has developed a fantastic childcare hub with a blended childcare offer, where schools and private, voluntary and independent providers are working together to provide high-quality childcare. That is one example of innovation in the sector that can be used to boost capacity, higher quality and flexibility for parents. Generally, to be able to deliver for parents in a cost-effective way we need more of such innovation, rather than having a sector that operates in silos.

My hon. Friend talked about nursery provision. Many maintained nursery schools deliver the highest quality early education, often in disadvantaged areas where it can make the greatest difference. I fully support such schools, because they are delivering high quality. We will ensure that they, as well as private and voluntary providers, can continue to thrive.

I am also proud to say that the quality of providers continues to improve. In York, 91% of early years settings are rated as good or outstanding, compared with 80% nationally. That is an encouraging statistic. Additionally, 64% of children in York achieved a good level of development in the early years foundation stage profile, compared with 60% nationally in 2014. The Government’s childcare policy will have a direct and significant impact on the lives of children and families throughout the country. It is right that it should be subject to the most thorough scrutiny, such as that from my hon. Friend this afternoon.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

Oral Answers to Questions

Sam Gyimah Excerpts

Monday 15th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

3. What plans the Government have to support investment in school buildings.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

In the last Parliament, we protected the schools budget, gave more then £5 billion to tackle Labour’s school places crisis and spent £18 billion on school buildings—more than Labour spent in their first two terms combined. In this Parliament, we will again protect the schools budget, and we plan to invest a further £19 billion on school buildings, of which £7 billion will be spent on school places.

[Andrew Stephenson]

Colne Park high school is in desperate need of funds to improve the state of its building, but it is receiving inadequate support from the local county council. Will my hon. Friend consider meeting the school’s leadership team to help to find a way forward?

[Mr Gyimah]

I appreciate that the school will be disappointed that its application to the second phase of the Priority School Building programme was unsuccessful. The programme was highly over-subscribed, and we had to prioritise the buildings in the worst condition. However, Lancashire’s indicative allocation to maintain and improve its schools is £34 million for 2015-18, and I expect it to consider carefully the needs of all schools in its area. I will do what I can to support my hon. Friend with that.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

May I congratulate the Minister on his reappointment? I remind him that this is not just investment in buildings, but the facilities around buildings. Last Friday, I accepted a petition from 300 parents of the Krishna Avanti school and St Paul’s Catholic school about the lack of crossing facilities in Spencefield Lane. Can we look at that as part of the budget?

[Mr Gyimah]

The budget is not just for school buildings. As the right hon. Gentleman is aware, it is also for improving the facilities of school buildings. If there is a specific issue in his constituency that has not been dealt with, he can by all means write to me and I will look at it.

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

I have been campaigning with a secondary school in my constituency, King’s Oak academy, as part of its bid for the Priority School Building fund. Unfortunately, the school was unsuccessful in relation to the last tranche of that fund. Will the Minister update the House on what future opportunities there will be for schools that were unsuccessful in the last round to re-bid for this funding?

[Mr Gyimah]

I know that the Secretary of State visited the school in question and recognised its brilliant leadership. Of course, as we go through the spending review and set the budgets for this Parliament, there will be other opportunities to look at the Priority School Building programme.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

At the start of the last Parliament, the Government set out their plans for the Priority School Building programme for 537 schools. To date, 25 have been completed. Would the Minister describe his Department’s performance as failing or just coasting?

[Mr Gyimah]

I will describe the Government’s performance as getting great value for money: the build cost for a number of schools was halved during the course of the last Parliament. We will make announcements this autumn about how Priority School Building programme 2 will be rolled out.

[Craig Tracey (North Warwickshire) (Con)]

5. What steps she is taking to ensure that there are sufficient childcare places to meet demand.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

I of course recognise that we have to look at the issue of nursery places. In the past few years, 230,000 places have been created in early years nationally. However, the biggest way in which we can create nursery places is to support the early years sector. We have committed to increasing the average funding rates that providers are paid for the free entitlement so that the sector can grow substantially.

I can confirm that a cross-Government review of the cost of providing childcare is under way to inform decisions on the funding required to secure sufficient quality childcare provision at good value for money to the taxpayer and consistent with the Government’s fiscal plans. I am today launching a call for evidence to inform this review, which will report and be published in the autumn.

[Craig Tracey]

My constituents in North Warwickshire and Bedworth welcomed the commitment in the Conservative manifesto to provide 30 hours of free childcare and look forward to its delivery. What plans are being made to bring that forward?

[Mr Gyimah]

I am delighted to welcome my hon. Friend to the House. His victory in Labour’s No. 1 target seat carved the first letters in Labour’s electoral tombstone and ensured that the ridiculous “Ed stone” did not make its way into Downing Street.

As the Prime Minister announced on 1 June, we are pressing ahead with reforms to increase the childcare support that is available to hard-working families. We are bringing implementation forward to 2016. The Childcare Bill was one of the first Bills we introduced in this Parliament. I have just announced the funding review. Further to that, there will be a consultation with parents and providers so that we can implement this policy.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

I welcome the Minister to his place, and I welcome the UK Government’s decision to follow the Scottish Government’s lead in expanding free childcare to 30 hours for three and four-year-olds. How much additional funding will be made available for the planned childcare expansion?

[Mr Gyimah]

I welcome the hon. Lady to the House. The Government are making more support available for childcare than any previous Government. We set out in the general election campaign our plans to fund. We expect to make savings from tax-free childcare and from universal credit. The policy will therefore be funded to the tune of about £350 million.

[Carol Monaghan]

I thank the Minister for that answer. Will he give the figure for how much additional funding will come to Scotland as a result of the Barnett consequentials from the planned expansion of childcare in England?

[Mr Gyimah]

I understand that Scotland already provides about 25 hours of free childcare. I am happy to write to the hon. Lady to provide details of the Barnett consequentials from the expansion of this programme.

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

24. On Friday, I visited St Cuthbert’s Church of England infant school in Wells, where the head and her staff are doing a fantastic job not only in educating the children but in providing before and after-school care for them. Will the Minister share with the House his plans to give the teachers of that school the resources they need to provide that vital service for working parents?

[Mr Gyimah]

Local authorities have a duty to provide sufficient childcare and we are supporting them to deliver that. We are very supportive of breakfast clubs and after-school clubs. We are also liberalising the childminding sector to allow childminders to operate for 50% of the time off domestic premises. They should therefore be able to support schools to expand that sort of care.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I urge the Minister to talk to the National Day Nurseries Association, which is based in my Huddersfield constituency, because it is very worried. Members all around this House want there to be more affordable childcare, but the NDNA is worried about the cost implications, because the money does not add up; about the pressure on building new facilities; and about the recruitment of staff. Those are real concerns, so will he talk to the NDNA?

[Mr Gyimah]

I talk to the NDNA all the time. I am very much aware not only of its concerns but of the concerns of other players in the sector. We were the only party to commit to a review of the funding rate in the general election campaign. Today, I have announced that the review is under way. We will consult the sector and get its views not only on the exact rate, but on how to implement the 30 hours policy.

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

6. What assessment she has made of the adequacy of current arrangements for key stage 4 students to access business and work experience.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman to the House. I note that he is already making friends in the right places: the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) described his maiden speech as “socialist to the core”.

In November 2014, 2,800 children’s centres were open, and there were 674 additional sites offering children’s centre services. Obviously, the most important thing is not the number of buildings but the number of people whom we reach, and I am pleased that more than 1 million parents and children are using our centres.

[Richard Burgon]

I thank the Minister for his reply, and for his mention of socialism.

The Government have already cut half a billion pounds from the early intervention grant since 2010, and funding has been cut by 30% in real terms in Leeds. More than 700 Sure Start centres have closed. Can the Minister assure parents in my constituency that their centres will not be threatened with closure or further cuts?

[Mr Gyimah]

I assure the hon. Gentleman, first, that the funds for children’s centres have not been cut—in fact, the overall pot grew from £2.3 billion in 2012-13 to £2.4 billion in 2014-15—and, secondly, that there is a presumption against closure. Local authorities have a duty to consult when they plan to change their children’s centre provision.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

Will the Minister consider accepting the recommendation of the Centre for Social Justice that children’s centres should become “family hubs”, so that we can

“focus on… the stability and quality of family relationships”?

[Mr Gyimah]

I have met the members of the Centre for Social Justice who have advocated that change of use, or alternative provision, of children’s centres. I think that it is an interesting idea, and one that we should look at in detail.

[Jo Cox (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

25. Cuts to council funding—the abolition of a series of grants and credits by the coalition—mean that Sure Start centres in my constituency are providing more basic services than ever before. I am hearing now of children in Kirklees coming to centres on a Monday morning having not had a hot meal since the previous Friday, yet Sure Start budgets in the north of England have been cut by 39%. Does the Minister share my assessment, and that of the London School of Economics and the Centre for Analysis for Social Exclusion, that even the most dedicated of Sure Start children’s centres will not be able to withstand further cuts?

[Mr Gyimah]

As I have said previously, it is down to local authorities to consult when they plan to change their children’s centre provision. Just to be clear on the number of children’s centres, only 142 have closed and eight new centres have opened since 2010. We must move on from the lie being perpetrated. [Interruption.] In some cases children’s centres have merged. [Interruption.] When they have merged, they have not closed. [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am sure the Minister was using the term generically; he would not suggest for a moment that anybody would lie in, or to, this House.

[Mr Gyimah]

Yes, generically.

[Mr Speaker]

Indeed. Nobody is lying to this House. That is clear and we are grateful.

[Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)]

13. What plans she has to support working families by helping provide extra childcare.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

We have many plans to support hard-working families with the cost of childcare. In addition to the 30 hours of free childcare for three and four-year-olds which we are introducing in this Parliament, we have legislated for free childcare to give parents 20% off the cost of their childcare up to £10,000, and the childcare element of universal credit will be going up from 70% to 85%.

[Seema Kennedy]

Quality is vital in early-years education. Will my hon. Friend set out the steps being taken to ensure that childcare provision in my constituency is of the highest possible quality?

[Mr Gyimah]

That is an excellent question, because the debate often focuses on affordability and availability of childcare, but obviously quality is vitally important, too. We are focusing on quality by ensuring that we raise the status of the early-years workforce. That is why we are raising the standards of literacy and numeracy of the level 3 people entering the profession, and we are also raising the early-years bar through the Ofsted accountability framework so that nurseries have to perform that bit better.

[Andrew Bingham]

There was widespread welcome among High Peak residents for the 30 hours of free childcare pledge at the general election. However, I will be meeting a group of providers in the constituency on Friday who are concerned that there may not be enough funds to cover their costs. Can the Minister provide me with some reassurance which I can pass on to them that there will be enough money to meet their costs?

[Mr Gyimah]

In the last Parliament we increased the amount of money going into free entitlement by 50%, from £2 billion to £3 billion. There are issues around how the money actually gets to providers, and some local authorities top-slice the funding. Also, different local authorities have different policies in terms of whether they support maintained providers versus private and voluntary providers. I would ask my hon. Friend to encourage his providers to engage with the call for evidence I launched earlier today and to let us know exactly what problems they are experiencing.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Does the Minister regret the closure of 700 children’s centres when they could have helped fulfil the Government’s 30-hour pledge?

[Mr Gyimah]

As I said in answer to a previous question, 142 children’s centres have closed, not 700, but the most important thing is the number of families being reached, and record numbers of families are accessing children’s centres up and down the country.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

Notwithstanding what the Minister has just said, details of the Childcare Bill, which receives its Second Reading in the other place tomorrow, remain extremely thin on the ground and we still have little or no clarification of things such as funding or eligibility. Therefore, to help parents gain more clarity, will the Minister confirm that there are no provisions in the Bill to allow parents to spread the overall amount of free hours they receive over the full year, or perhaps even over 48 weeks, rather than just the 38 weeks as at present?

[Mr Gyimah]

I welcome the hon. Lady to her post. I think she is the third shadow childcare Minister I have faced in the nine months that I have been in post. She asked how the number of hours would be spread over the year. I would advise her not to pre-empt the consultation that we will carry out with parents and providers to find the most flexible way of implementing the scheme so that it works for them.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.

Parliamentary Boundary Commissions

Sam Gyimah Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2015 Written Statements

[The Minister for the Constitution (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

I am pleased to announce the completion of the triennial review of the four Parliamentary Boundary Commissions and publication of the final report. The triennial review was conducted in accordance with Government guidance for reviewing NDPBs. Stage 1 of the review considered whether there continues to be a need for the function, which the Parliamentary Boundary Commissions currently undertake, and whether the function could be more effectively delivered through a vehicle other than an NDPB. Stage 2 of the review scrutinised the current governance arrangements of the Parliamentary Boundary Commissions to ascertain whether they comply with the principles of good governance. The review concluded that there continues to be a need to provide the functions of the Parliamentary Boundary Commissions and that this should be done at arm’s length from Government, via a non-departmental public body. The review has made a number of recommendations for change and improvements in the functions, delivery and governance arrangements, which we will now pursue. I am grateful to all those who contributed to the review.

Attachments are available at http://www.parliament.uk/writtenstatements/

[HCWS508]