Services for Young People

Debate between Tessa Munt and Pat Glass

Thursday 22nd March 2012 Westminster Hall

[Pat Glass]

Sorry, Mr Betts. I am discussing services for young people, and EMA and its abolition are as much a part of that as services through youth centres or careers services.

There is clear evidence that the pupil premium, for all its good intentions, recycles money from schools with concentrations of the poorest children and young people and siphons off resources to richer parts of the country with fewer poor children. That is because the pupil premium has largely replaced additional education needs funding, which, although it was called different things in different local authorities, was needs-based funding for schools to support their least able and most vulnerable pupils. The AEN formula in each local authority was made up of different factors, but was legally required to include a deprivation factor. Some local authorities used the index of multiple deprivation while others used free school meals, but the basis of AEN funding was a needs-based deprivation factor.

AEN also had an accumulator effect. Schools with fewer than 15% of children on free school meals got nothing in most local authorities, on the basis that that was the norm and that need could and should be met from existing school funding. Schools with between 15% and 24% had a basic level of AEN funding, but then the level escalated massively between 25% and 35% in acknowledgment of the need for additional resources to deal with more complex issues in driving improvement. Any school where more than 35% of children received free school meals was given a huge step in funding, in recognition that those schools were dealing with complex issues needing additional capacity.

The pupil premium gives a basic amount per pupil, drawing money from schools and areas with the highest concentration of free school meals and of poorer children and giving it to wealthier areas with fewer free school meals. If anybody wants evidence of what is happening in their local authority and whether they are winners or losers when it comes to the pupil premium, I can give them a breakdown, courtesy of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), who has researched the matter in detail.

[Tessa Munt]

Would the hon. Lady like to comment on the fact that a large number of schools are rural and very small? For example, I have a school in my constituency with 68 children. Surely, in that situation, if two families are not so well off, the school will quickly come to its 15% threshold. The pupil premium is directed precisely at those individual children suffering from deprivation, as opposed to thinking that it was fine to mash them in with everybody else if there were fewer than 15%. It only takes nine or 10 children—a few families with multiple children—for such a school to have a significant number of young people with difficulties, without being over the 15% threshold where something would step in under the old system.

[Pat Glass]

As an education funding geek, I have an answer for that. There was an element for small schools. For small rural schools, most local authorities had an element of funding for vulnerable and poor children that was separate from AEN funding. Those schools were already catered for by other parts of the funding formula.

Domestic Heating Oil

Debate between Tessa Munt and Pat Glass

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Pat Glass]

Absolutely. Indeed, another constituent, Mrs Green, told me:

“The cost of heating oil is now nearly 100% higher than just two months ago yet oil prices have increased by just 10%. How can this be justified?”

The answer is that it simply cannot be justified. Indeed, when I and other Members started to ask questions about this issue, I was contacted by a number of people working in the heating oil industry who told me that their employers were telling them to refuse to accept orders of less than 1,000 litres. That meant that members of the public were being refused deliveries unless they were prepared to pay £800, plus the cost of delivery, and let us remember that this was just before Christmas.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. Does she agree that that also applies in rural Somerset? We even have oil co-operatives in rural Somerset, members of which were running out of heating fuel as the winter months came on and the weather got bad, yet they were being charged the same excessively high prices when they were taking the trouble to drive on snowy roads to collect the oil, in containers that they had to purchase for £6 or £7 a piece. Therefore, even people who were not paying delivery charges were paying the equivalent sum, which did not include delivery.

[Pat Glass]

Absolutely.