School Funding

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 232220 relating to school funding.

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I present the petition on behalf of Mr Andrew Ramanandi, the headteacher of St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School, Blaydon, and more than 104,000 teachers, support staff, heads, parents and governors around the country who have signed it. I acknowledge the fair funding for schools campaign, which was started by Mr Ramanandi and joined by all headteachers across the borough of Gateshead. Their imaginative campaign has captured the attention of the public and many politicians, and they will be listening closely to the debate. Mr Ramanandi is in the Gallery.

Dedicated staff, who are by far the most important resource in our schools, face an uphill battle due to not only school funding, but curriculum reform, an increasing workload and the growing and often complex needs of many of our children. Time and again, we hear that morale and staff retention are low. Our educators are looking to us as politicians to help them to respond to that challenge.

I congratulate my hon. Friend and fellow Petitions Committee member on securing and introducing this important debate. In January, the Minister encouraged MPs to write to their local schools and congratulate them on their improvements in key stage 2. I did just that, but I heard back almost immediately from my local schools, which had improved their results significantly, that they were having to lose the key staff who had helped them to do that. Does she agree that that is completely counterproductive and hugely concerning for the future performance of those schools?

I agree with my hon. Friend that it runs counter to what we might expect to congratulate schools and then find that they have huge financial problems.

Does the hon. Lady acknowledge, however, that there is still a huge difference between the funding for schools in rural shire countries such as mine and that of schools in metropolitan inner-city areas?

The petitioners are keen to look at the overall situation with regards to school funding, rather than asking, “Is this one right? Is that one right?”. The question is whether we have sufficient funding to provide a good education for our children.

Before the hon. Lady moves on, can she give us an idea of the percentage increase that she thinks would now be sufficient?

I do not have a percentage figure, but it has been estimated that more than £2.8 billion would be needed to restore the situation to where it was in 2013.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

Will the hon. Lady give way?

I will make some progress, but I will take some interventions shortly.

The campaign started with a letter co-signed by headteachers of primary, secondary and special educational needs and disability schools in Gateshead, who became increasingly alarmed by the impact that a real-terms reduction in school funding was having on the children and young people in their care. The letter, which was sent to parents before Christmas, informed them that schools may no longer be able to provide the same level of service and asked them for their support in raising the schools’ concerns with the Government.

This is a speech of two parts. The first part is about the facts and figures that we regularly bandy around the Chamber and in official papers. Eventually, they get down to the school heads and governors at the kind of scale where they can see the black holes in their budgets and try to work out how they can balance their books.

Coventry has experienced the same sort of difficulties as my hon. Friend’s constituency. I did a survey and visited several schools last year, which showed that out of 103 schools, 102 were suffering from teacher shortages, demoralisation, rising class numbers or low pay. Does she agree that the Government have to do something about that?

I certainly agree with my hon. Friend.

Will the hon. Lady give way?

I will make some progress, so that the debate makes some sense.

As I said, this is a speech of two parts. The first part is about the facts and figures and the second part is about what they mean for our schools—the staff, the governors, the parents and, most of all, the pupils.

The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise those inequalities, but does she concede that this Government have tried to do something about fairer funding? In our part of the world, in Devon, there has been an increase, but we are still chronically underfunded. Every child in a Devon school gets £304 less than the national average, so we lose out on £27 million per year. Under a previous Labour Government, funding was skewed towards the inner cities and away from the shire counties.

As I have said, the debate is about having enough funding for all schools to provide the education that children deserve.

The second part of my speech is about what the figures mean for our schools. At the start of the debate, we should establish the facts about school funding. It is right that more money has been allocated to education, following pressure from hon. Members on both sides of the House who know the pressures that their local schools face. It is also right to acknowledge that the Government have offered additional funds to support increasing pension costs, which have hit schools badly.

The Minister must know, however, as I do, that those measures do not go anywhere near far enough to meet the real-terms cuts that schools face year on year. The statistics from the School Cuts campaign, which were verified by the chair of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir David Norgrove, show that 91% of schools across England have experienced real-terms cuts in per-pupil funding since 2015.

One of my primary school headteachers, who has been a teacher for 30 years and a headteacher for 15 years, tells me:

“I’ve never experienced a time when the range of needs has been so complex and the financial support so thin.”

She is the head of a school in one of the most deprived parts of my constituency and faces an overall deficit of £70,000 this year. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is not adequate to enable her to do the job that she has been doing for so long?

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend’s assessment of the situation. That is a real problem, as it is for Mr Ramanandi and schools in Gateshead.

As I was saying, the Minister must know that schools face real-terms cuts year on year. It is simply not right to say that funding per pupil, which is the measure that really matters, has gone up. The Government’s statistics show that England’s schools have 137,000 more pupils in the system. The respected Institute for Fiscal Studies acknowledges that schools have suffered an 8% real-terms reduction in spending per pupil, despite growing numbers of pupils coming through the door.

With increasing numbers of pupils, and decreasing funding in real terms, schools have had to make cuts that have resulted in 5,400 fewer teachers, 2,800 fewer teaching assistants, 1,400 fewer support staff and 1,200 fewer auxiliary staff. If funding per pupil had been maintained in value since 2015, school funding in England would be £5.1 billion higher than it is now.

Like the petitioners, school leaders across England are concerned that the Government have not kept their promise to increase school funding in cash terms this year. The Secretary of State for Education promised that

“all schools would see a modest rise in funding”.

However, 4,819 schools have not received the Education Secretary’s guaranteed cash increase, meaning that one in four primary schools and one in six secondary schools have had their funding cut in cash terms this year. Locally, 71 schools in Gateshead have suffered Government cuts to per-pupil funding since 2015, losing out on £14 million. In my constituency, the average cut is about £45,000 per primary school and £185,000 per secondary school.

Headteachers in my constituency tell me that, as funding has become tighter, schools have had to cut back on essential resources: teaching and non-teaching staff; support staff who work with vulnerable pupils; small group work; interventions with children who are not thriving; teaching resources; subject choices; classroom and extracurricular activities; repairs for buildings, including asbestos management; and renewal of equipment.