- [Dawn Butler in the Chair]
- 4:30 pm
- I beg to move,That this House has considered the Dedicated Schools Grant.It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I thank the f40 group for its assistance with this issue, as well as all those in attendance, including the Minister, whose presence is greatly appreciated. I bring this debate forward on behalf of the headteachers, teaching staff, support staff and young people across Gloucestershire and the other local authorities that are among the lowest-funded councils by the Department for Education across England.In its 2024 manifesto, Labour pledged to“transform our education system so that young people get the opportunities they deserve.”There is a clear alignment between that and the Liberal Democrats’ commitment to increase per pupil funding above the rate of inflation every year. Our goal is to support all pupils and expand educational provision, not to shift resources away from more disadvantaged counties like Gloucestershire. Schools in my constituency are faced with increased pressure right now, owing to the inequitable dedicated schools grant, combined with the rising cost of special educational needs provision.Consecutive Governments have failed our children. With short-term mindsets, they have not adequately resourced education through which our children could otherwise go on to boost every workplace across the country. Those Governments left our children to emerge into a country where every public service is crumbling, but in which they need a university degree to become a police officer. Brexit took away their access to Erasmus and left a bitterly divided society, which is still struggling to readjust following the covid-19 pandemic.When Sir Kevan Collins recommended a £13.5 billion covid catch-up fund for our children, Boris Johnson’s Government fielded only one tenth of that figure, after thoughtlessly spending billions on botched contracts for personal protective equipment. Our children continue to suffer the consequences of that decision through a mental health crisis; an explosion in demand for special educational needs and disabilities provision; and almost a million young adults not in work, education or training. I entered politics because I believe in fairness. Whatever else we do in this place, I believe there are two routes through which we can improve the future of our country—political, including electoral reform; and education, education, education.Within every child lies the potential for greatness—the potential to solve tomorrow what seems impossible today. Our children represent our hope for the future. They are yet unburdened by the decades of dogma, societal pressure and institutional inequity that weigh upon us, and dilute our own potential. In every aspect of our lives, we must strive to prepare the ground ahead of them, and leave them a better country and a better world than was passed to us.Our teachers recognise that more clearly than any of us. They dedicate their careers to the fulfilment of our children’s potential, because there is no more rewarding pursuit than to help others to develop. No salary compares to being thanked in the street by those you have helped, and watching with pride as they go above and beyond what they imagined they could. Labour’s 2024 manifesto described teaching as a “hard-earned and hard-learned skill” and pledged to work to “raise its status.” I commend both the observation and the commitment, but we are continuing to fail our teachers too.
- Does my hon. Friend agree that teachers and teaching assistants in schools were the first line of defence against cuts to public services from the last Conservative Government, and that, when the Department for Education is asking schools to make efficiencies alongside the extra funding they have received, that means that some TAs will lose their jobs? Last week, in my constituency of Esher and Walton, I walked into a school on a visit and the headteacher had just had to let two TAs go because his school is facing a deficit of £200,000.
- I wholeheartedly agree, and will come to that point shortly. I hope my hon. Friend will pass on my empathy to her headteacher.Our teachers are no longer simply expected to educate our children according to the curriculum. Governments and society continue to expect more and more of our already overburdened teachers. Increasingly, four-year-olds are being introduced to school non-verbal, unable to use cutlery, and sometimes wearing nappies—but those are just the headlines. Discipline, time management, self and social awareness, self and mutual respect, moral courage, honesty, work ethic, public service and charity are soft skills and attributes that should be introduced in the home and honed within society as well as at school. This Government, with honest intentions towards our children’s healthcare, now have teachers cleaning their pupils’ teeth—just one additional straw upon the camel’s back. It is no wonder that teaching assistant posts are vacated or lie empty when people can earn more working in the local supermarket.I understand that fixing the education system will be complex and expensive, and that action must also take place beyond the scope of the Department for Education, but something that can be addressed now is a more equitable allocation of funding. This would go a long way to remedying the situation for many schools in Gloucestershire and elsewhere. The dedicated schools grant is the mechanism through which the Department funds local authorities, which in turn allocate their resources to the schools within their jurisdiction.
- One school in my constituency has a £100,000 bill due to the national insurance hike, which is resulting in redundancies. Does my hon. Friend agree that the national insurance hike is exacerbating the inequity that many schools face in our local communities?
- I entirely agree. I have long spoken out against the short-sightedness of the national insurance hike, and I will come back to the short-termism that I think it important this Government escape.The dedicated schools grant is allocated according to the national funding formula, which is outdated and puts schools such as mine in Gloucestershire under increased pressure. Mainstream schools in the lowest-funded local authority receive £5,000 less per pupil per year than they do in the highest-funded authority.
- In Oxfordshire, we receive an area cost adjustment of just 2%—that is to take into account the difference in the cost of living in different parts of the country. In London boroughs, that adjustment reaches 18%. It simply does not match the cost of living in Oxfordshire, where house prices are comparable to those in London. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that this lack of funding is impacting the education of our children?
- As somebody who was—let us be generous—barely educated in Oxfordshire himself, I am very much aware of the issue.My mainstream schools in Gloucestershire fall into the bottom 20% of DSG funding, earning £1,000 less per pupil than schools in the top 20. This means that Cleeve school, for example, with its 1,851 pupils, faces an approximate annual deficit of over £1.8 million compared with a similarly sized school in Middlesbrough.
- I agree with all the points that my hon. Friend has made so far. This morning, I spoke to the headmaster of the Thomas Hardye school in Dorchester in my constituency. His previous job was at a London borough school in Croydon, where on average he received £10,000 per pupil; in West Dorset, that figure is £5,000. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government’s funding formula for schools does not take into account the added costs of rurality and providing services in places like West Dorset and, no doubt, his own constituency?
- With such gravity, my hon. Friend says it better than I could ever hope to. The inequity is there for all to see, and it is interesting that one of his teachers has experienced both ends of that scale.My four-year-old daughter and her friends will begin their primary school education in Gloucestershire in September. I want them to have, as the Labour manifesto put it, the opportunities they deserve. To me, that means the same opportunities as every other child—but by the time they finish their GCSEs under this inequitable system, the dedicated schools grant will have invested between £10,000 and £50,000 less in our children than in those elsewhere in the country.The Government might point to an upward trend in the dedicated schools grant in Gloucestershire since 2021, but on the current trajectory, it will take 15 years to achieve equity. By then, my daughter and her friends will have long since left school. Unless the Government act now, their potential will have been diluted by the dedicated schools grant as is. By the time we achieve equity, according to trends based on the Government’s own statistics, the vast majority of those teaching today will have retired. My headteachers have told me that, for most schools, approximately 85% of their funding is ringfenced for staffing costs, but that rises to over 90% in some particularly desperate cases.The level of teaching experience in our schools is diminishing because our headteachers are having to make their most experienced and highly paid teachers redundant, so that they can recruit less experienced teachers on lower wages just to balance the books.
- In West Sussex, the deficit on our DSG grant is £130 million, and that will potentially double by next year. Despite that, SEND provision, which is the main driver of that deficit, is deficient across the district. So many schools approach me on this subject. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to not only find a way to wipe out the deficit but remove the fundamental cause, which is the ballooning cost of SEND provision?
- My hon. Friend makes eloquent points. Clearly, the SEND crisis is exacerbating the situation to a significant degree. What we look for from the Government is a long-term strategic plan to deal with this, rather than just pushing it down the line.Since 2014, mainstream schools have been required to contribute the initial £6,000 of additional costs for SEND pupils from their own core budget. Owing to the inequity in the DSG, it is easy to see why that has a greater impact on those schools in lower-funded authorities. Resources have become so stretched many teaching assistants are available only to support pupils with the greatest SEND requirements. Underfunded primary and senior schools are taking drastic actions to balance the books. One primary school head I spoke with spends his holidays in school, completing the tasks of a caretaker he can no longer afford to employ. Across Gloucestershire there is nothing left to cut. Headteachers are overwhelmed and cannot afford to meet the cost of any pay rise that may arise from the Government’s negotiations with teaching unions. The impact of an unfunded pay rise, I have been told, would be ruinous.I recognise that this Government inherited from the Conservative party an utterly broken country. That was a hospital pass but, almost a year down the line, my teachers remain on the frontline of a genuine crisis, to which they have been given no real answers. They do not have time for more politics as usual. They do not have another 15 years for this system to reach equity, nor do they need more short-termism. They need their Government to step up now with long-term solutions that do not simply pass the challenges down the line.To support teachers and enable them to plan for the future, rather than simply stave off financial collapse, I ask the Government to review the national funding formula, and target funding to achieve near-term equity. Thank you, Ms Butler, for chairing this debate; I look forward to the contributions of others and the Minister’s response.
- 4:43 pm
- It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Butler. Let me start with a simple fact: Devon is one of the worst-funded education authorities in the country. For 2024-25, Devon receives just £5,484 per pupil—about £200 less than the national average and about £1,500 less per pupil than in inner London. I have experienced the difference through the eyes of the teachers I have talked to in Devon who have taught in both inner London and rural Devon, and who described to me the difference the funding makes. For an average Devon primary school, it equates to losing the budget for one whole teacher.Devon is an f40 authority—one of the 40 lowest-funded areas in England. The national funding formula was supposed to level the playing field, but it has left schools in areas like east and mid Devon struggling. Nowhere is the crisis more obvious than in special educational needs. Devon’s high needs block allocation for 2025-26 is £125 million, but the anticipated cost of supporting SEND children is £172 million. Up to now that funding gap has been filled by the so-called safety valve, but I understand that we might not have that safety-valve relief from 2026. If we compare Devon’s high needs allocation per pupil to that of a council such as Camden, we see a real disparity, as we do with Westminster, which receives £2,610 per pupil against Devon’s £1,245 per pupil. Devon is being asked to deliver special educational needs provision on half the budget.Let me share the story of one affected family. Kathryn Radley lives in Uplyme in the area I represent, and her daughter Sophia is autistic. At one point Sophia was offered just six hours a week of online education, and her family had to borrow money to keep that minimal support going when the council did not fund it. The education, health and care plan that was issued for her was unworkable, did not name a school and was not supported by any deliverable provision. Sophia, who did not misbehave or disrupt her class, and who simply needed specialist support, was left isolated at home with anxiety, and with no place in the system.
- 4:48 pm
- It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I congratulate the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Cameron Thomas) on securing this important debate.For far too long, the state of rural and semi-rural schools has been forgotten, particularly in my part of Northumberland, where Northumberland county council, which is still run by the Conservatives, treats my part of the county with what I can only describe as tender contempt. The previous Government thought so little of my constituency that eight and a half years ago they built a school that is already deemed structurally unsafe. Students have had to be transported to another part of the north-east to continue their education. That is the context in which I situate my remarks.Generations of rural students have been left behind. I thank the hon. Member for Tewkesbury for his circumspectness in his comments about the awful circumstances that the Government inherited. It is not possible to start any discussion of any policy without recognising that we received a generational hospital pass, as I think he put it.Having grown up in a rural area, I know that there are foundational characteristics. I confess to not knowing too much about Gloucestershire, having not had the chance to go there much beyond, I think, one family funeral when I was about 10, but I am sure it is lovely. From what I can tell, Northumberland has a lot that is similar, including large distances to travel and restricted access to opportunities and services. I went back to my old high school recently to discuss some of the access to work schemes that staff there try to provide and some of the opportunities for younger people to get employment skills. The teachers are working every hour they get, but they are hamstrung by the lack of local bus routes and appropriate public transport, and the lack of employers with the capacity to take on apprentices or students who are in need of work experience.
- I remind Members that if they want to speak in the debate, they should please stand. We have calculated that Members will have about five minutes per speech.