School Funding

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

I am grateful to have been called early in the debate, and I will try to be brief. In the very short time I have, I would like to focus on the overall school system and the malaise that can be taken right back to academisation and this Government’s ideological approach to academies.

Academies, which were originally designed to introduce a degree of competition and choice for parents, have become a system in which there is no more local oversight and scrutiny. It has therefore become incredibly difficult to get to the bottom of the funding problem. Eight years ago, school oversight was done by the local authority. In my authority of Bath and North East Somerset, the council’s schools management budget was just under £1.8 million. That paid for the director of schools and the school support officers for all 78 schools in the borough.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I sit on the board of a multi-academy trust in the constituency I am privileged to represent. Many of the other governors who sit on various different academy boards are also locally resident. They provide rather better oversight than many local authorities.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I too am a board member of one of my local academy trusts. The oversight provided through the local education authority, the overview and scrutiny committee in the council and the direct accountability of local councillors. was better than what the boards can do.

Bath now has 10 multi-academy trusts. That is 10 management structures, 10 chief executives on similar pay to the LEA director of education and 10 lots of support staff. Additionally, we have the new regional schools commissioner and their staff, which is another chunk of overheads.

Education funding in Bath has dropped by 8.8%, or £414 a pupil, over the past seven years. The Education Secretary said that good teachers, not management structures, create good teaching, but in our 2019 education system, where national trusts and commissioners support regional trusts and commissioners, far too little funding reaches individual schools, let alone individual teachers and students. Here in Parliament we must ask how such management structures enrich and add value to our children’s education. If money is paying for management at the expense of teachers, we should know about it.

We should have transparency about where education money goes in Bath and elsewhere. Ten years ago there was, with schools under the oversight of the local authority and councillors on the governing bodies; there were local overview and scrutiny committees and councillors were answerable to the community and parents. That is no longer the case. Local accountability has been replaced by multi-academy trusts accountable to Whitehall. Often they operate over several local authority areas, and that is a problem.

Multi-academy trusts provide excellent education, but so do local authority schools. If academies cost more to provide the same education, we should know about it. Where are the comparative figures? I have tried to find out how we can compare what happened in 2010 with what happens now, but that is difficult because we do not have local figures anymore and multi-academy trusts can keep the figures to themselves. If they cost more, we should know about it. Our children’s education matters. If the changes introduced over the past 10 years cost extra in management and overheads at the same time as per pupil funding has fallen by 8.8% in Bath, let us be open and talk about it. Let us have fair comparisons and find solutions to ensure that funding goes to the frontline and to our young people, not to the management of a fragmented system.

School Funding

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I will not, thank you.

Louth and Horncastle is an extremely rural constituency, with less than one person per hectare. Some of the wards on the coast are among the 3% most deprived communities in the country. They deserve a better funding deal and that is what the Government are trying to achieve. This is not about the Tory shires as some, although not all, Opposition Members like to paint it. It is about making funding fairer than it has been historically.

I echo the concerns of colleagues that the laudable principle of including sparsity must work on the ground. The Minister for School Standards has agreed to meet me to discuss individual schools, for which I am grateful, to ensure that the principle applies in practice. I recognise that the 12 schools in my constituency with decreases face a challenge. I do not underestimate that and look forward to discussing it with the Minister.

There has been much talk among Opposition Members regarding cuts. When I hear that the education of children in the Leader of the Opposition’s constituency is funded to the tune of more than £6,000 per student, whereas in Lincolnshire the figure is £4,379 per student, I simply do not understand how Opposition Members can claim that that is fair and not deserving of review. I say that understanding only too well the challenges in education.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I am delighted to hear my hon. Friend making such an important speech. She is highlighting the fact that schools such as the Judd and Tonbridge Grammar in Kent, which have such great reputations, are massively underfunded. This settlement will go some way towards making the situation fairer.

[Victoria Atkins]

I am extremely grateful. This is about making sure that the cake is cut just a little more fairly than it is at the moment.

I will make one final point because I am conscious of time. I also apologise to colleagues from whom I have not accepted interventions. May I thank the teachers, the governors and the staff of my 54 local schools? I look forward to meeting all of them before the general election. That is my promise and I will try to keep it. I love it when they come to the House of Commons because, if nothing else, bringing our schools into this place to show them how democracy works is how we get young people interested in our democracy.

Education, Skills and Training

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate on the Queen’s Speech and to follow the hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes). I agree with her about the importance of early-years education. She made an important point.

There was a major omission from this Queen’s Speech. Following the Government’s U-turn on forced academisation, we will have a Bill

“to lay foundations for educational excellence in all schools,”

whatever that may mean. We had the promise of legislation to support the establishment of new universities and

“to promote choice and competition across the higher education sector.”

Yes, following the Government’s failed £9,000 a year tuition fee experiment, which was never intended to have the result that all universities would charge the maximum £9,000, this Government are now going to give universities the freedom to charge even more, making a university education even more inaccessible to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady not recognise that children from disadvantaged backgrounds have a much greater opportunity to go to universities in England and Wales than in Scotland, where the fee system means that it is a subsidy for the middle classes and not for poorer students?

[Liz McInnes]

I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman, and that is certainly not what is going on in my constituency, which I will elaborate on. The number of part-time students and mature students applying to go to university has plummeted since the introduction of tuition fees.

“Educational Excellence Everywhere”: Academies

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s commitment, as a local Member of Parliament, to driving up educational standards in his constituency. He is absolutely right to say that. We know there are local authorities across the country—he mentions his own—that have never issued a warning notice or appointed an interim executive board to run a school. We could not be clearer with the regional schools commissioners. They are an excellent team who know they need to intervene swiftly when there is educational failure. We have seen that with the re-brokering of sponsorships and with the sending out of financial and educational warning notices. That absolutely will continue.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

As the governor of an excellent academy, Hillview school in Tonbridge, which has done so much to maintain the ethos of arts education, I am very proud of the Government’s work to support academies. I very much welcome the Secretary of State’s comments and ask her whether she timed them for me to be able to write to Ightham Parish Council and thank it for its very useful intervention only last week, or whether it was timed for Four Elms Parish Council, whose intervention was on Friday.

[Nicky Morgan]

I am delighted to have assisted my hon. Friend and those parish councils, if that is the case. It was important that we made the announcement. I congratulate him on being a governor of the school. On the arts, I visited the fantastic Lings primary school in Northampton—I think I have mentioned it in the House before—which has embedded Shakespeare in the curriculum from reception to year 6. That shows what inspirational headteachers, with the support of an academy trust, can do to transform education in their schools.

Student Maintenance Grants

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2016 Commons Chamber

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

Education has been a priority in Scotland for more than 300 years. The established Church in Scotland decided in the mid-16th century to set up a school in every parish to enable children to read the Bible and access its teachings. By the early 18th century, Scottish children led the world in literacy and fuelled the Scottish enlightenment.

That is important because it highlights the differences in how education is viewed across these isles. The focus in Scotland remains the student; there is not only a commitment to the young person’s education but an acknowledgement that that same young person will develop skills through their university career that make them an asset to the country.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Carol Monaghan]

No, because I have been urged to be brief.

By contrast, we see from this Tory Government an ideological attack on the most disadvantaged students. While still at school, talented pupils in England have had their education maintenance allowance scrapped, forcing some youngsters to leave before they have reached their potential. In England and Wales, fees of £9,000 a year are being imposed on students, and now grants for the poorest are to be scrapped, with the Chancellor describing them as “unaffordable”. In using such language, does the Chancellor consider those young people to be an asset?

In my previous profession as a secondary school teacher, I often came across extremely able pupils from difficult backgrounds. It was important early in their school career to plant a seed of possible career aspirations, because even with academic success getting them to university was not a certainty. A lot of work had to be done both with the young people and with their parents to encourage that progression.

[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Lady speaks with eloquence and knowledge from her great experience in secondary education and I very much welcome her contribution, but I challenge her description of the differences between Scottish and English education. In England, we have seen a greater ability of children from all backgrounds to achieve access to tertiary education. In Scotland, that is increasingly not the case. Does she not agree that one of the Scottish National party’s achievements of the past five years has been a fall, not a rise, in social mobility in tertiary education?

[Carol Monaghan]

Once again, we hear that myth here in this House. There is work to be done on the numbers of young people going directly from school to university; none of us would deny that. However, in Scotland young people have many more pathways to access university. If we look at children coming through further education colleges, we see that the number of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds is significantly higher in Scotland than in the rest of the UK.

May I return to those young people and their parents? Eventually the chat turns to logistics and how they will be able to afford higher education. We have to go into the detail. Parents are usually full of pride—often the child is the first in the family even to think about going to university. Explaining that in Scotland tuition is free makes a huge difference, but the parents still have to weigh things up. They have been expecting a new breadwinner, contributing to the household. They have been expecting their daughter or son’s Saturday job to become their full-time career. Instead, the financial burden on the family stretches on.

School Expansion

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Monday 19th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his appointment to the Sutton Trust, which is a very important organisation doing great work, but I disagree with his remarks. The education system in this country is actually doing very well for pupils of all abilities. My task over the next few years is to extend the excellent education that many of our pupils are getting. We have seen 1 million more pupils in good and outstanding schools since 2010, but I now need to focus on the next 1 million across the country and to root out those parts of the country—I will not say which local authorities—where the education is not yet good enough, and make it so.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

The parents of Tonbridge and Sevenoaks are very grateful to my right hon. Friend for her statement, and I know that I speak not only for myself but for my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon) when I say “thank you” for expanding the number of places in an excellent school. Maureen Johnson is a fantastic headteacher who will make this work on two sites; I have great confidence in her ability and that of her team. I urge the Secretary of State to remember not only the grammar school, which does such great work, but schools such as Hillview, an academy trust in my Kent constituency in which I declare an interest as a governor, which does fantastic stuff in the arts and for kids of all abilities. The wonderful thing about Tonbridge—and, indeed, Sevenoaks, as I know my right hon. Friend will agree—is the range of education available to parents and kids. That is exactly what the Secretary of State has allowed to happen today, for which I thank her.

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank my hon. Friend very much indeed. He is absolutely right to say that one of the great things in our education system now is the range of schools available, which leads to real parental choice. Parents are able to choose the right school for their children. It is right that my hon. Friend mentions Hillview, as we have some fantastic academies in Kent and elsewhere, but there is also the free school, situated alongside the expansion and satellite site.