School Funding: East Anglia

Debate between Sandy Martin and Clive Lewis

Tuesday 3rd September 2019 Westminster Hall

[Clive Lewis]

I thank my hon. Friend for his input. We have to accept that our schools are running out of money for the same reason that our public services are underfunded: because of a damaging political choice. I will come on to that, but let me add that one of the reasons I sought the debate was that, as I understood it, every school in Norfolk was potentially going to put in a cost-overrun budget—an illegal budget—because of the funding shortfall. That is happening across the eastern region, and definitely across Norfolk.

Only last week, a local trust in Norfolk announced that it had had to cut 35% of its teaching assistants. That means the ratio of children to staff is bigger, creating myriad potential risks and increasing exponentially the lost learning time for children who need extra help in the classroom.

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the biggest problems we have with underfunding in education, certainly in Suffolk, is that there are not enough facilities and not enough staff to cope with children with special educational needs, especially attention deficit hyperactivity disorder? Some children receive no more than one hour’s education a day and are losing all their self-respect. We are storing up problems for the future in those cases.

[Clive Lewis]

I will address that in detail shortly, but there is indeed a crisis in special educational needs teaching.

Every parent and teacher knows how vital teaching assistants are to aiding our young people’s learning, yet a briefing meant only for Ministers and officials at the Department for Education, which was leaked last week, was clear that the Government still intend to slash the number of teaching assistants. The briefing stated:

“We recommend we continue to push No 10 not to include this publicly.”

Can the Minister tell us whether that is true? If it is, why do the Government not recognise the value of support staff in helping our children to learn and thrive?

Headteachers across the country have not been able to balance the books. It is no wonder they have had to make cuts: the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that if it were not for the sudden promise of new funding, school funding would have been £1.7 billion lower in real terms in 2020 than in 2015. The newly promised figure is not additional funding; it is to plug a hole that appeared due to the fact that total school spending per pupil fell by 8% in real terms in 2017-18. Even if headteachers trust the Government’s motives, that funding will go only a small way towards repairing the damage caused by years of continued cuts. In the face of such damning statistics, will the Government concede that the past nine years of austerity—a political choice by consecutive Conservative Governments—have crippled our schools?

The alleged new money for schools announced this week is something of a confession in itself. I happily acknowledge that that money—£14 billion over three years from 2020—is a significant and welcome change of direction. Finally, we can stop listening to Ministers continually claiming that schools have more funding than ever before. The centrepiece of the announcement was a one-off £2.8 billion cash injection, but I am sorry to say that that does not even come close to reversing the cuts made by the Conservatives over the course of this decade. The Institute for Fiscal Studies believes that to do that, £3.8 billion would need to be shared out among schools across the country every year.

This is where things seem to get even more controversial. Sadly, following the analysis in The Sunday Times this weekend, I am forced to question whether any schools in my constituency will receive any increase in funding at all. The supposed cash boost is nothing more than an election bribe, with the overwhelming majority to be spent on grammar schools and schools in Conservative MPs’ constituencies, helping the party target marginal seats as we build up to an almost inevitable general election in the coming weeks, months or perhaps even days.

Do the Government really believe that this is how our children’s future should be decided? Is this really the best way to educate the next generation and close the gap between rich and poor? From where I am standing, it simply plays into the same old Conservative rhetoric that sees inequality increase year on year. This is not sorting out our schools crisis; it is neutralising an electoral image problem. It is retrofitting policy to suit the polling objectives. Most of all, it is feigning concern while failing children.

Over this decade of cuts, our classrooms have been turned into the new frontline of the welfare state, with staff filling in for councils in financial collapse and for parents in precarious jobs or inadequate housing. Any serious attempt to fix our schools must be combined with money to rebuild our public services and our welfare state. I am afraid that the new Government do not seem interested in that.

To put the situation in perspective, a headteacher from my constituency recently told me that on top of the inescapable loss of teaching staff due to budget cuts, the school has had to cut back on support for students, reducing or removing core support in the form of counselling, behaviour support and mental health support. That, alongside the significant cuts to external support services such as child and adolescent mental health services, social services and special school support, has been disastrous for many vulnerable students in my constituency who have nowhere to turn for help. That, somewhat inevitably, has resulted in an increase in the number of permanent exclusions that schools have had to make, a pattern sadly replicated across the UK, leaving both students and parents desperate and with nowhere to turn.

Consider also the renewed focus of the new Government on headteachers being encouraged to use “reasonable force” on misbehaving students. Education officials caution that such a policy will

“impact disproportionately on children in need of a social worker, children with special needs and...Black Caribbean Boys”.

In other words, as summarised by The Guardian,

“it will be state-led discrimination against minority groups. Ensuring that more kids are excluded will simply feed them into pupil referral units or lead to them getting schooled by gangs.”

So much so that police and crime commissioners worry about rates of exclusion driving knife crime even higher. I would say, “Don’t worry—the Home Office has a plan: anti-knife crime advertising on fried chicken boxes,” but we will not go into that. Is this really the big society that the Government want to create? Does the Minister really believe that these devastating cuts and archaic forms of punishment will impact positively on our children?

The Prime Minister recently stated that there should be no winners or losers when it comes to our children’s futures, but I find it hard to see how the decimation of state school funding and the services it pays for helps to level the playing field between students educated in our state schools and those who can afford to be educated at elite private schools such as Eton and Harrow.

I turn to an issue of huge local importance. The funding crisis in East Anglia has had huge knock-on implications for our children with special educational needs. In Norfolk alone, there are 21,000 children with special educational needs and disabilities. Of those, 15,000 children with SEND are in mainstream schools and only 6,000 have an education health and care plan. Only 1,000 referrals for EHCPs are received by Norfolk County Council each year, and 150 children with SEND are still waiting for a special school place. Nationally, that figure is 8,500, and only 3% of children in England have SEND statements or EHCPs.

I recently met a group of parents who have been severely affected by the lack of provision for their children. I have constituents whose children, despite having EHCPs that clearly state that they cannot cope with mainstream schools, still cannot be provided with places in specialised schools. Staff cuts in mainstream schools have had a significant impact on all pupils but particularly those with SEND. The cuts have seen a reduction in specialist teaching assistants, counsellors and speech and language therapists, all of whom pupils with special educational needs and disabilities rely on for their needs to be properly met.

I also know of children who have been forced to stay at home due to lack of staff and spaces in specialised settings, meaning that they are effectively excluded through no fault of their own. There is nowhere else they can go, and the impact on their families is catastrophic: parents have to give up work and livelihoods are lost. Sometimes, even homes are lost and marriages fail.

Specialised schools provide invaluable support and education that these children are legally entitled to, but, without sufficient money from central Government—I assure the Minister that the £700 million announced for SEND children is not sufficient—they cannot get that, and there is nothing that parents or teachers can do. More parents are taking Norfolk County Council to tribunal over SEND provisions, and winning, because they are right: their children are not getting the education they have a right to as set out in legislation. Does the Minister accept that unless there is a significant increase in high-needs funding, the Government will fail to deliver on the reforms they introduced in the Children and Families Act 2014? These devastating cuts have, to quote my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), brought services for children with special educational needs and disabilities to a “dangerous tipping point”.

Last year, I met headteachers at the Educate Norfolk annual conference, and some of the statistics they gave me were staggering. Eighty-two of our schools have reported that they have cut their support staff budgets and 39 had to reduce SEN support for no reason other than funding. In real terms, that means teachers having to administer medicines to children with medical needs and perform other tasks usually carried out by support staff. Can the Minister answer how those same staff can also adequately support children with special educational needs?

It is not just about provision for SEN. Overall, changes to the benefit system have resulted in a reduction in the number of households eligible for free school meals. That, in turn, reduces the amount of pupil premium funding that a school receives. Increases in staffing costs from increased national insurance and pension contributions and pay increases, which are not fully funded by central Government beyond 2020, come out of school budgets. That will get worse, with staff having to work longer and retire later.

This is completely unsustainable. We need a better strategy, based on inclusivity—not a theoretical idea of inclusivity—that ensures that there is more SEND training for teachers and non-teaching staff, so that staff, children and parents are properly supported. Labour pledges to deliver a strategy for children with special educational needs and disabilities, putting more money into those services while working more strategically with schools and SEND providers. We want to introduce a fairer funding formula that leaves no school worse off.

The years that children spend at school should not just be time that they must get through. They should be a wonderful time of learning. We know so much more about the psychology of childhood and what makes children thrive in education. That must apply to all children so that they can leave full-time education with a real chance in life, not a chance restricted by Government cuts. Joint general-secretary of the National Education Union, Mary Bousted, said:

“Teachers know that their working lives would be more fulfilling and less conflicted if fewer of the children and young people they teach were not themselves suffering from the devastating effects of increasing child poverty caused by…deliberate policies.”

In 2015, I campaigned against the academisation of some of our Norfolk schools, which is yet another example of the mismanagement and greed of the Government, with reports of headteachers and executives being paid five-figure sums. Money is floating to the top, with schools left in deficit, and spending on buildings and learning resources is being cut. Similarly, free schools, aimed at the middle classes, and which the Government want more of, are diverting money from existing state schools and are being run like private companies.