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Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the Chair of the Education Committee.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
I rise to address the House on the Department for Education’s main estimate for 2025-26. I thank the Liaison Committee and the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this debate this afternoon; it is an important opportunity to scrutinise the Government’s spending plans, which must deliver for every child, young person and family. Education is the bedrock of opportunity, social mobility and economic growth.
The Government inherited a situation in which almost every aspect of the Department for Education’s areas of responsibility faced severe challenges, from the financial pressures on early years providers to the erosion of school budgets and teacher pay, the crisis in the special educational needs and disabilities system, underfunding of further education and skills and a total reset needed in children’s social care.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend is giving a really important speech on a subject that is very dear to my heart, as everyone in the House knows. Will she add to her list the huge issues that we inherited with school buildings? As a former teacher—I have mentioned that a few times—I know that the learning environment is really important. We inherited a real issue with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, for example, but there have also been other issues, such as those faced by Sir Frederick Gibberd college in my constituency.
Helen Hayes
My hon. Friend makes an important point about the state of the school estate.
The final area of challenge is that many universities face a risk of insolvency. At the heart of all the Department’s responsibilities are individual children and young people who need and are entitled to the best possible start in life, secure foundations, a great education and every opportunity to grow into active citizens with successful careers and a good quality of life. The challenges in our education and social care systems can be seen in the outcomes for children and young people, with rising numbers of children not meeting the early learning goals when they start school, growing disadvantage gaps at all stages of education, very poor outcomes for care-experienced young people, rising levels of school absence and far too many children with special educational needs and disabilities not receiving the support that they need to thrive in education.
I will speak to the estimates across five key spending areas—SEND, children’s social care, early years, skills, and higher education—drawing on the Education Committee’s ongoing inquiries to ensure that these funds meet the urgent needs of our communities. On special educational needs and disabilities, the main estimate reflects the Government’s recognition of the challenges, with an immediate increase in high needs revenue funding of more than £1 billion. Capital spending for high needs provision sees a 138% uplift, from £310 million to £740 million, to create new school places.
During the inquiry, my Committee has heard powerful testimony from families and educators about the crisis in the SEND system, with witnesses calling for significant and far-reaching reform to ensure that funds translate into effective delivery for children. The Institute for Fiscal Studies warns that rising SEND costs could absorb much of the mainstream school budget uplift, and that capital investment, while significant, may not meet growing demand. The forthcoming schools White Paper promised this autumn must set out bold reforms, with resources made available to ensure that they can be implemented successfully. Our inquiry report will set out recommendations to the Government for reform of the SEND system, and I hope that the Government will make time to take full account of our work. I urge the Minister to confirm a timescale for those reforms, informed by our Committee’s evidence.
Our children’s social care inquiry has exposed acute funding pressures, with local authorities forced to prioritise crisis interventions over preventive support due to a £1.2 billion cut in early intervention spending since 2012. The spending review introduces a £555 million transformation fund over three years, including £75 million in 2025-26 and £270 million for a new children’s social care prevention grant. That is a vital step towards effective reform.
The additional £560 million for children’s homes and foster care placements is also welcome. However, the independent review of children’s social care estimated a need for an additional £2.6 billion of funding over four years. My Committee’s work underscores the urgency of investing in early intervention to reduce the number of children being taken into care and to improve outcomes.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I am really grateful for the work of the Education Committee, which is excellently chaired by my hon. Friend. Does she agree that cutting the value of grants to families from the adoption and special guardianship support fund will put more pressure on children’s social care and leave children without the vital support they need?
Helen Hayes
I thank my hon. Friend for her important work in this area. I agree that the cuts made to the adoption and special guardianship support fund have caused great alarm across the adoption, special guardianship and kinship care community. It is important that in reviewing that funding, the Government look at how effective support for adoptive families can be provided across both health and education, and look to give families confidence that the support they rely on and that is needed can be delivered. We know that in the past, adoptive families have not always been able to access the support they need, so I agree with my hon. Friend that this is an urgent and important consideration.
I call on the Government today to provide a clearer analysis of the funding that is needed for children’s social care, as well as plans to bridge the gap between the funding that has been announced to date and the £2.6 billion prescribed by the independent review, so that preventive services that keep families together can be prioritised.
Turning to early years education, the expansion to 30 hours of funded childcare for under-fives from September 2025 is transformative. The main estimate allocates £8.48 billion to the early years block—nearly double the 2023-24 spend—with an additional £1.8 billion in 2025-26. However, the IFS highlights that higher than expected take-up could increase costs by £1 billion annually, and the sector faces a shortfall of 70,000 places and 35,000 staff. The £370 million for 3,000 new nurseries in primary schools is a very positive step, but the Committee has heard concerns about delivery timelines and workforce shortages. Given the rising costs to providers, including minimum wage and national insurance increases, I urge the Minister to clarify how the Department will ensure sufficient capacity and support providers to deliver this ambitious expansion on time. It is also important that the Government give careful consideration to improving quality and consistency in the early years, and to how best to ensure that high-quality early years education maximises the unique opportunity in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life to stop the impacts of disadvantage being embedded for a lifetime.
On skills and further education, the 12.7% increase in the apprenticeships budget to just over £3 billion, alongside £1.2 billion annually by 2028-29 and £625 million for construction skills, signals the Government’s commitment to equipping young people for a changing economy. In our inquiry, however, my Committee heard concerns about the defunding of level 7 apprenticeships, with witnesses including the British Chambers of Commerce warning that it could limit higher-level opportunities and deter participation. The absence of detail on the lifelong learning entitlement in the spending review is also of concern. The forthcoming post-16 skills and education White Paper must provide a unified and comprehensive vision for skills funding for young people and adults. I urge the Government to reconsider their decision on level 7 and to set out how additional funding will be allocated to maximise impact.
Finally, higher education faces significant challenges, with a 13% real-terms cut to direct teaching funding via the strategic priorities grant, which is now more than 80% lower than 2010-11 levels. My Committee has heard evidence of universities closing courses, reducing repairs and maintenance, and facing financial instability. The Office for Students’ 2025 report warns of declining performance, with recovery reliant on optimistic recruitment forecasts. While the modern industrial strategy promises better targeted funding, our universities—which are anchor institutions supporting thousands of jobs in every town and city that has a university—need urgent support. I therefore repeat the sector’s call for a transformation fund to stabilise universities and enable them to deliver the reforms that are necessary to ensure that they meet future skills needs and continue to contribute to economic growth through research and development and the role they play in building international collaboration.
The Education Committee will continue to scrutinise the work of the Department for Education carefully and hold the Government to account, ensuring that these funds deliver for every child and every learner. I urge Ministers to act swiftly on the promised White Papers, engage with our inquiries, and translate investment into meaningful change. Education is our most powerful lever to bring about a fairer, stronger country; let us ensure that it delivers.
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
This debate is a very important opportunity to discuss the upcoming cuts in the Department for Education. We know from the estimates document that overall resource departmental expenditure limits are coming down. We are told that that is largely a technical change as a result of changes to the student loan book, but I have to say that these are rather large numbers to come from such technical changes.
From the comprehensive spending review document, we know that like other Departments, the Department for Education has agreed to 5% in savings and efficiencies. What that document does not explain, however, is 5% of what. Presumably, it is not 5% of the entirety of the DFE’s budget, because the DFE is different from many other Departments in that so much of its spend goes directly to schools, colleges and early years settings providing for children. According to the estimates, the DFE’s admin spend is actually increasing. Part of that, of course—in line with so many other private and public sector organisations across the country—is the extra costs imposed by the increase in national insurance contributions, so what are those efficiencies? I hope the Minister will be able to tell us today.
So many things have already been cut, including the discretionary spend that helps children to achieve their best, with everything from Latin to computer science and the cadets programme. I do not think there are many more things that can be taken out, but perhaps the Minister can tell us. In particular, I would like her to reassure us that the primary physical education and sport premium is safe. Will she please do that in winding up?
Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
In the past few days, a headteacher in my constituency has told me that their school’s funding is going down significantly in real terms this year. They say that they are now looking at a crisis, with potential staff cuts coming. On top of that, I have heard local providers of early years education saying that they are being even more punitively hit, because private sector providers receive no support with national insurance. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, for a Labour Government who came in promising to do so much for education, our children are actually seeing very little?
Damian Hinds
My right hon. Friend makes powerful points, including about the additional unfunded cost pressures for nursery providers—of course, that argument also extends to regular state-funded schools. The one thing I might quibble with is his statement that this Labour Government came in promising to do so much for education. Actually, the Labour manifesto was rather light on commitments on education. The biggest ones were, first of all, the commitment to roll out mental health support teams to cover all schools in the country. On closer examination, that commitment turns out to be not just similar to, but identical to, the policy of the previous Government, which was to roll out mental health support teams to cover all schools in the country.
The second high-profile commitment was about breakfast clubs. The maths on breakfast clubs are something of a mystery to me, because I have heard Ministers repeatedly say that having a breakfast club is going to save parents £450 a year, but they are reimbursing schools £150 a year. Where is the rest of that money supposed to come from? It is also true that some schools—including some in my constituency—already have a breakfast club that is charged at a reasonable rate, so they will lose revenue from their existing breakfast club. Before anyone says, “You have to think about whether it should be charged for or not,” it is worth remembering that the breakfast club provision that already exists is typically reimbursable for families on universal credit at a rate of up to 85%, to the extent that it is childcare that is enabling parents to go to work.
Then, of course, there is the famous—or infamous—commitment to 6,500 additional teachers. Colleagues might remember that that commitment was going to be paid for by the receipts on VAT from private schools. The Government now say that VAT from private schools is going to pay for housing, not for teachers. It is not clear that that policy is going to raise much revenue to spend on anything, given that the most recent figures show a fall in the number of children at independent schools. Those are the Government’s own figures. [Interruption.] I beg your pardon?
Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)
A rise in the number of independent schools.
Damian Hinds
The most recent figures—the Government’s own figures—show a fall of 11,000 in the number of children at independent schools.
Of course, the number of teachers in the state sector is not going up in this country; it is coming down. The Government have tried to have this every possible way. There is a line in their manifesto that is very clear—it comes up more than once. It says that Labour is going to recruit
“6,500 new expert teachers in key subjects”.
When asked repeatedly what key subjects they had in mind, they refused to say. Eventually they said that these teachers will be recruited—I think am I quoting this correctly, but if not absolutely accurately then pretty close—from schools and colleges across the country. Then some numbers came out showing that the number of teachers in primary schools had gone down. Funnily enough, the target was then redefined so that it did not include primary school teachers; it would include only secondary school teachers.
That brings us back to this question: if it is only secondary schools, where teachers have specialist subjects, what are the key subjects that will count towards this number? If the Government just meant any subject, the word “key” would not be there. What do they mean by expert teachers? If they mean simply teachers with qualified teacher status—[Interruption.] I think the Minister might be readying herself to intervene.
Damian Hinds
No? If the Government simply mean teachers with qualified teacher status, then I gently remind the Minister of something we covered in Bill Committee, which some colleagues might recall. The number of teachers today who do not have qualified teacher status is 3.1%, which does not sound all that high. What do colleagues suppose it was in May 2010, the previous time that there was a change of Government? The answer is 3.2%. So the number of teachers without qualified teacher status has hardly changed, and to the extent that it has, it has slightly gone down.
We know that other RDEL—revenue spending, effectively—is going up, but it has to cover an awful lot. There is £1 billion-plus in national insurance contribution costs. We know from reports from teachers and headteachers in the sector press that shortfalls in the range of 10% to 35% are being reported. School suppliers are also facing higher national insurance contributions, which will also have a knock-on effect on the cost of other services into those schools. Schools are also picking up the cost of breakfast clubs, and there is an extension in free school meals eligibility and so on. Overall, if we look at the detail in the estimates and the spending review, all these increases are front-loaded—that is to say, for 2024-25 the increase is 6.8%, but that then comes down to 5.2% the following year, and then 3.4%, then 2.1%, and then 1.6%.
The main point I put to the Minister—constructively and co-operatively—is that things are changing significantly in schools because of demographic change. We have reached a point where I do not believe it is legitimate to use the measure of real-terms per pupil funding as the yardstick for whether effective school resourcing is increasing or decreasing. That is because the number of pupils will fall. We know already from TES, which used to be called The Times Educational Supplement, that surplus secondary places have increased by some 50% in just two years. Labour MPs may well argue—and I kind of hope they do—that when there is a smaller number of children there will obviously be less funding, and there is some logic to that argument, but in a sense it does not matter what arguments they make in this Chamber, because back in their constituencies, if they talk to headteachers, they will hear something different.
When pupil numbers are rising, if real-terms per pupil funding is held constant, that is a net increase in resourcing to the school. When numbers are falling, and even if real-terms per pupil funding is increased by a few per cent, that feels very much like a cut. Let us think about it in the following practical terms. If a primary school class of 27 goes up to 29, that is an increase in revenue to the school of something like £10,000, £11,000 or £12,000, but the vast majority of costs do not change. It works the same way in reverse. If a class moves from 29 pupils to 27, the school loses £10,000 to £12,000, but there are still the same costs, and the teacher is still being paid the same and so on.
In an urban setting, some whole schools may close—some already have. That is a painful process to go through, and no MP wants to represent an area where schools close, but at least that way the numbers can be made to work over a wider area, and some of those schools can convert to nursery schools, I hope, or to special schools. A big secondary school might reduce, say, from an eight-form entry to a six-form entry and manage the numbers that way. For a rural primary school, neither of those things is an option. There are major indivisibilities. Right now, 92% of DFE funding for schools is driven by pupil numbers, and I just do not think that will work over the years ahead. What will Ministers do to reform funding so that it is fair and effective at a time of falling overall pupil numbers?
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I am going to start with an immediate four-minute time limit.
Daniel Francis (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak in this estimates day debate. I will first declare my usual interest, as my wife is employed as a special educational needs co-ordinator in our local authority in the London borough of Bexley.
I will start with three points about the impact on my constituency. First, I welcome the condition improvement funding, which will see investment in Fairford academy in Barnehurst, Peareswood primary school in Slade Green and Townley grammar school in Bexleyheath.
Two specific Department for Education-led issues impact on my Conservative-controlled local authority in the London borough of Bexley. I was pleased to see in its recent representation that my council welcomes the “fix the market” pillar in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. It had the highest overspend of any local authority in London for children’s social care in the previous financial year. My local authority welcomes that move in the Bill, because it wants the market for children’s service placements to be not-for-profit, as seen in Scotland and Wales. Will the Minister comment on departmental funding for social care settings and how the measures being brought forward in the Bill can help local authorities?
My main point is that I support what my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) said about SEN funding. My local authority signed a safety valve agreement with the previous Government because of the rate of our dedicated schools grant. In its recent submission to the Chancellor, the council said that although it is grateful for the current funding, the statutory override for the deficit ends on 31 March 2026, while the DSG is not planned to come out of deficit until 2028-29 at present. That safety valve agreement, which my local authority signed, continues to be overspent, which continues to put significant pressure on the council. It believes that the statutory override needs to be extended by up to three years.
Despite having agreed that with the previous Government, the council’s position is that the statutory override is, at best, only a temporary solution to a more fundamental and long-term challenge for SEN funding. I know the Minister will be bringing forward proposals in this area after the summer break, but some comments later today and some assurances about SEN funding going forward would be deeply welcomed by my local authority and by me.
Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)
I welcome the investment for our teachers, school buildings, free school meals and SEND support, but I remain concerned about SEND provision in Somerset. I know from personal experience and from listening to constituents just how much of a difference giving SEND children the support they need can make. Teachers go above and beyond to give children in their classes the education they deserve, but we have a SEND system in crisis. It feels like we have gone backwards from when I was at school, which is, I am sorry to say, thanks to the cuts made under the previous Conservative Government over many years. As in so many other areas of life, parents in Yeovil are often left with a losing draw in a postcode lottery, waiting months to get the support their children deserve.
There are two really effective ways that the Department can invest its budget to improve the outcome for SEND children at school. The backlog for education, health and care plans is too high in Somerset, and it is of course right that Somerset council receives more money to urgently support EHCP provision, but not every SEND child needs an EHCP for support. Instead, we urgently need universal screening for neurodiverse conditions at primary schools. That would be a fantastic way of empowering teachers to identify the individual needs of children in their classes and to adapt their teaching.
Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)
I speak to lots of special educational needs co-ordinators in many schools in and around my constituency, and they always tell me that the earlier the diagnosis, the better, and the more a child can be put on a path towards effective learning. Does my hon. Friend regret, as I do, the loss of Sure Start centres, which were one of the very best ways of identifying those learning conditions as early as possible?
Adam Dance
I totally agree. It is sorry to see that so many of those centres have gone, and we need to invest more.
The earlier that children’s needs are identified and supported, the more likely they are to succeed. Researchers, for instance at University College London, have already developed a screener that goes far beyond the current phonics screening, and it is really cost-effective. I hope that the Government’s schools White Paper, which is due in the autumn, will set out a plan for rolling out such screeners across schools.
Once children’s needs have been identified at school, we need to ensure that our teachers are fully equipped to help. That is why we urgently need better internal teacher training and continuous professional development for teachers and other education professionals, including teaching assistants and senior staff. We must also ensure that SENCOs are represented on senior leadership teams, and are given dedicated time to do their work properly. I hope that the Minister or the Secretary of State will update us on the progress made on teacher training, and tell us when we can expect those teachers to be rolled out.
There can be no better investment in the future of our country than investment in education and young people. Ensuring that everyone has a good-quality education and career always provides a return, as I know from my personal background of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia. I left school having had support, but I was severely bullied, to a point where I was sprayed with deodorant and set alight when I got off the school bus, so I know how vital such support is. Without the support that I was given at school, I would not be here today: I would either be in prison or I would have taken my own life. This is so important—so please, let us get on with universal screening and teacher training for neurodiverse conditions.
Tim Roca (Macclesfield) (Lab)
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance) for sharing that traumatic experience with us, and to the bravery that it must have taken. I also pay tribute to teachers in my constituency. I met secondary heads just before Christmas, and will meet all our primary school heads together in the coming month.
I am proud that there is so much to welcome in this estimate. I particularly welcome the capital investment in schools across the country, which I think presents a dual opportunity—not just an opportunity to rebuild the crumbling schools that were left to us by our Tory predecessors, but an opportunity to invest to make them greener, so that increased energy efficiency can save money and reduce school bills. I welcome the extra £1 billion to reform and enhance special educational needs and disabilities provision, and I look forward to more announcements about SEND—I share some of the concerns mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis). I welcome the investment in further education and apprenticeships, and the breakfast club funding. I congratulate the Ministers, because this means that children will stop going to school hungry and will be given the best chance to learn regardless of their background. The clubs are being brilliantly piloted by Pott Shrigley church school in my constituency and Disley primary school, where I went myself.
I particularly welcome the funding that has been allocated in the spending review to expand eligibility for free school meals, which means that an extra 1,200 children in Macclesfield will receive free lunches. Each one will mean a life changed and a trajectory altered, breaking down barriers to opportunity and success. However, what the estimate does not contain is a significant real-terms increase for Cheshire East schools. Head teachers in my constituency still tell me that things are tough because of an historical funding formula that leaves Cheshire East as one of the lowest-funded authorities in the country. It receives the 13th lowest share of DSG per mainstream pupil—five grand less than the highest share, and £2,200 less than the highest non-London authority. The high needs block is worse: we rank 12th out of 151 local authorities, receiving two and a half grand less per pupil than the 151st.
This is entirely explained by the school funding formula, and it is an important formula. Schools in metropolitan areas are more expensive to run. Of course schools should receive additional investment based on deprivation, language needs or rurality, but when the basic grant funding does not keep pace with basic costs, things become very tough. Macclesfield is not quite rural enough and not quite deprived enough, without the “English as an additional language” numbers required, which makes life very difficult for head teachers who are trying to balance the books—particularly after 14 years of making cut after cut.
The funding formula works only if there is a significant increase in the basic entitlement, so that all schools, whether in Cheshire East or elsewhere, have a budget that is sufficient to make ends meet. I say that because I have difficult conversations with teachers in my constituency, some of whom are spending as much as 88% of their budgets on fixed staff costs because they are having to retain—and want to retain—hard-working, talented teachers who, in the long run, are more expensive. I recently saw an example of that at Rainow, an excellent primary school in my constituency, which has full classes but is finding it difficult to make the numbers work.
I am grateful for my recent meeting with the Minister to discuss these issues with her, and I welcome the work that the Department is doing in tackling them. Change does not come overnight, and changing a funding formula as historic as this cannot be done overnight, but I hope that everyone who supports fairness and agrees that deprived areas should receive more funds will also agree that every school deserves to receive the basic funding that will enable all our children to be taught, and will ensure that they are not at schools that are finding things tough. I will make no apologies for continuing to fight, on behalf of all my constituents, for fairer funding for all schools.
Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)
The Government have set themselves an ambitious and welcome growth mission, with targets including an 80% employment rate and support for 65,000 additional learners a year by 2028-29. However, some of the decisions made of late somewhat undermine those objectives. Along with Liberal Democrat colleagues, I recently wrote to the Government expressing grave concern about the cuts in the adult skills fund, and the impact that they will have on the Government’s economic growth plans. In her response, the Minister for Skills assured us that adult education was very much a priority.
The Government’s recent announcements about skills funding in the spending review are most welcome, but there is a troubling contradiction in committing to supporting 65,000 additional learners a year while simultaneously cutting the adult skills fund. The Government have invested £625 million to train 60,000 skilled construction workers, recognising that targeted skills investment drives economic growth; that logic should surely apply across all sectors facing skills shortages.
We have no clarity on any improvements in post-18 adult education funding. Mark Robertson, the principal of Cambridge Regional College, which serves my constituency, has said that the cuts in the adult skills fund will mean a £1 million drop in funding for his college, which is unable to meet demand for programmes including healthcare courses, employability training and adult English and maths skills courses because of the lack of available funding. He has warned that the position will be considerably worsened for 2025-26, because the college’s adult skills funding will fall by about 20%. He has said:
“It seems a little counterproductive that, given the drive to reduce immigration to the UK of social care workers by 2028 and the need to train and retrain people employed in areas such as digital skills and retrofit techniques, these priorities are not aligned with a fully joined up policy regarding adult skills funding to enable the need for trained and skilled workers to be met.”
The disconnect between growth ambitions and the funding reality also extends to our universities, which face huge financial pressures and, in some cases, a growing risk of insolvency. Data released recently suggests that up to 72% of higher education providers could be in deficit by 2025-26 without mitigating action. The causes of this situation are well documented, so I will not go into them, but a combination of factors makes it inevitable that more institutions will be forced to make difficult decisions on staffing across all jobs in the sector, and the economic consequences will extend beyond the campus.
As we know, universities are often the largest employers in their area, and the knock-on economic benefits of students living in the area are substantial. On the doorstep of my constituency is Cambridge University, but we also have Anglia Ruskin University, which delivered over 5,000 degree apprenticeships between 2018 and 2023, as many Members will recognise. I urge the Government to look closely at further education and higher education funding, and to lay out their plans in more detail.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. I want to try to get everybody in, so we will have an immediate three-minute time limit.
Mrs Sureena Brackenridge (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
I start by paying tribute to all those who work with our children and young people, be it in our nurseries, schools, colleges or universities. As the Member for Wolverhampton North East, a member of the Education Committee and a former deputy headteacher, I want to speak frankly about the urgent need for education spending to be tailored to local need, because that need is undeniable in constituencies like mine.
Maintaining the system as it stands is not an option. We must build an ambitious education system that actively identifies challenges and intervenes early on, and it is not enough to focus only on academic outcomes. Our education system must also equip young people with the skills, confidence and resilience that they need to be prepared for the grit of life and the world of work.
Around 40% of children in Wolverhampton and Willenhall grow up in poverty, and there has been a stark increase in the last decade. These realities hit education hard. In 2024, just 46% of disadvantaged pupils in England met the expected standards at key stage 2, compared with 67% of their peers. At GCSE, the gap is stark: fewer than one in four students on free school meals in Wolverhampton achieve a strong pass in both English and maths.
Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)
Does the hon. Member agree that it is important that we have a broad exploratory curriculum at GCSE level, and that the recent decision to close off certain subjects for year 9 students at Tiverton high school in my constituency reflects a trend towards a narrowing of academic opportunity, which is rather regrettable?
Mrs Brackenridge
Although I cannot speak to the hon. Member’s local issues, I welcome the curriculum and assessment review, which will certainly look to change the one-size-fits-all model.
I welcome several commitments in this year’s main estimates, particularly the announcement that households receiving universal credit will be eligible for free school meals from September 2026. Over 500,000 children will benefit, and 100,000 will be lifted out of poverty. For a constituency like mine, that could be life-changing, provided that the roll-out is well funded and properly delivered.
I also welcome the £2.3 billion uplift in core schools funding for 2025-26, but this money must flow to where it is needed most. It cannot simply reinforce the status quo, and it must be targeted if it is to level the playing field for disadvantaged children. Of that money, £1 billion is earmarked for high needs and special educational needs and disabilities provision, with local authorities set to receive 7% to 10% more per head.
Funding increases are helpful, but they must be matched with delivery reforms and accountability. I want to highlight the £370 million investment in school-based nurseries and early education. In constituencies like mine, too many children are starting school already too far behind.
Finally, I want to stress the importance of skills and further education. With a high proportion of local parents working in insecure or low-paid roles, we must ensure that the £1.2 billion annual further education and skills investment helps people to retrain, upskill and access better opportunities.
These estimates contain important and necessary commitments, but the measure of their success will be how effectively they address inequality, and whether funding truly follows need. I urge the Government to ensure that every element of this year’s education spending reaches the children, the families and the communities who are most in need.
Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)
The future of our country is being shaped every day in our classrooms, yet we are failing too many children, too many families and too many schools in places like West Dorset because the Government funding formula relies too heavily on deprivation as a metric, and fails to recognise the very real challenges that rural schools face with transport, staffing, access to specialist services, and the additional pressures of isolation.
I recently spoke to the headteacher of Thomas Hardye school in Dorchester, who had previously worked at a school in London. He told me that schools in London receive about £10,000 per pupil. In West Dorset, he has to manage with close to £5,000 per pupil, yet the challenges of delivering education in rural areas are not fewer. In many cases, they are far greater.
Dorset studio school in my constituency serves students from all over Dorset, and 52% of its pupils have special educational needs and disabilities—more than three times the national average. Some 11% have education, health and care plans. These children struggle in mainstream settings, and they need specialist support, skilled teachers and facilities that meet their needs, yet Dorset studio school operates in an outdated building without the most basic facilities. There is neither a hall nor a canteen, and there are no proper changing areas or specialist classrooms. Many pupils with EHCPs cannot access the one-to-one support that they require because of cramped, inadequate spaces, and children with physical disabilities cannot easily move around buildings. In February 2023, funding for the rebuild was finally secured, but delays—including a general election, revised costings and administrative hold-ups—mean that the money has still not been released. Contractors remain on hold, while the staff, parents and pupils remain in limbo. I urge the Government to release the funding, because every day that goes by is another day when these children are not getting the education they deserve.
Many families in West Dorset rely on the adoption and special guardianship support fund, which has been a lifeline for some of the most vulnerable children. These are children who have faced trauma, loss and instability, and who need specialist therapeutic support to heal and thrive, but even this fund has faced cuts and uncertainty. In recent months, adoptive parents, special guardians and kinship carers have feared that the fund would be scrapped, and it was only after sustained pressure that its continuation was confirmed. However, the fair access limit for therapy has been cut from £5,000 to £3,000, and funding for specialist assessments has been withdrawn entirely. Families who rely on consistent long-term care are now faced with an impossible choice, as multi-year funding is not available. We must prevent further cuts, and commit to supporting vulnerable children and their families properly.
Education spending is not just a budget. It is an investment in the next generation, in our country’s future, and in every child’s right to reach their full potential.
Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)
As a former teacher, school governor and university lecturer, and as chair of the all-party parliamentary groups on schools, learning and assessment, on classics and on social mobility, may I say how proud I am to stand here as a Labour MP elected on a manifesto commitment to break down barriers to opportunity for all young people?
Bracknell Forest is an incredible place in which to grow up. We have only good and outstanding schools and a fantastic local FE college—Bracknell and Wokingham college—and leafy Berkshire is of course a very lovely corner of the world. However, it would be wrong to suggest that young people in my constituency do not face real challenges. The Sutton Trust has identified that Bracknell has below average social mobility. We have a below average number of 18-year-olds going on to higher education, and the figure is half the rate of Wokingham next door. We are one of the councils in the safety valve programme, and we are facing sustained issues in offering the vital SEND education that is so badly needed.
That is why I am so proud that this Government are working to address these educational inequalities, including giving hard-working teachers in my constituency above inflation pay rises for a second year in a row; addressing school support staff funding through re-establishing the school support staff negotiating body; extending free school meals, with over 3,000 students set to be eligible in Bracknell Forest; and the funding to support Uplands school to open a new school-based nursery. What a difference from the Tory party, which would prefer to fund a tax cut for private schools, and the Reform leader, the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), who believes SEND students are being massively over-diagnosed.
The SEND crisis demands real action to address it, which is why I particularly welcome the £1 billion extra for SEND in last year’s Budget, including £2.2 million more for Bracknell Forest council to expand provision. I have seen the effect of expanding provision, and I was very proud to open the new special resource provision at Sandhurst school just the other week. However, we need a full range of provision, with mainstream support as well as new special schools, and the Minister will know that I have been lobbying her hard to deliver the proposed special school for autism in Buckler’s Park in my patch. Shamefully, the previous Government promised that school, but without a penny to pay for it. I would like to take this opportunity to once again lobby my hon. Friend to deliver that much-needed service.
James MacCleary (Lewes) (LD)
I declare an interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on early education and childcare.
Early years providers are facing an escalating financial crisis. The Government’s latest tax increases will add an average of £40,000 a year to staffing costs for early years providers. Hopscotch nurseries—a group operating across Sussex, including in Seaford in my constituency—estimates that increases to employment costs will add £140,000 to its wage bill, and this comes at a time when 84% of nurseries nationwide report that they cannot find suitable staff. Staffing accounts for nearly three quarters of their running costs, and these financial pressures mean nurseries face closure or fee hikes that families cannot afford.
On recent visits to nurseries in my local community, I have heard from practitioners working with young children every day that, although the Government’s aim to expand funded childcare is laudable, there are simply not enough qualified staff available to deliver it. Not enough applicants, a lack of qualifications, low salaries and a high turnover have led to many nurseries operating at well below capacity. One nursery in Newhaven in my constituency recently told me that it takes only half the number of children it could take. This is not because of a lack of demand—far from it—but because of a lack of qualified staff to care for children safely.
An Early Years Alliance poll of 1,000 nurseries in March found that two in five nurseries are set to reduce the number of Government-funded places for three and four-year-olds to cover rising costs, including the increases to the minimum wage and employer’s national insurance. This is the direct opposite of the Government’s stated desire to expand provision of funded hours in early years.
As a parent of young children myself, I share the frustration at rising childcare fees, with childcare in the UK among the most expensive in the world. Private and voluntary nursery providers, which deliver the majority of early years education, are particularly vulnerable. Without urgent intervention, we risk a mass closure of facilities that are integral not just to child development, but to our local economies and communities. A survey this month by the Early Education and Childcare Coalition showed that nearly 20% of nurseries are operating at a loss.
I urge Ministers to reconsider exempting early years providers from their national insurance increases to prevent nurseries from being pushed into closure. We cannot afford to lose more essential childcare places. This is also a question of opportunity and fairness. Investment in early childhood education has been repeatedly proven to significantly narrow achievement gaps, benefiting disadvantaged children. I support the Government’s aim to expand funded childcare and the provision of free school meals, but without adequate funding for providers, there is a real danger the Government could end up putting nurseries out of business and increase the strain on school budgets breaking even. I implore Ministers to find ways to support our nurseries, including an exemption from the Government’s national insurance hike, to deliver education and support to our children in a way that is financially sustainable for both parents and providers.
Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)
I very much welcome the Government’s investment in education, as demonstrated through the estimates that have come out today. In particular, I want to touch briefly on the increased investment in SEND and high-needs provision to the tune of £1 billion—something I am sure Members are aware is very close to my heart. However, I would like to sound a note of caution and echo some of the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), and I thank her for her work on the Select Committee on this matter.
Investment alone will not solve the SEND crisis. It is the biggest issue facing schools. It is one of the biggest issues facing councils. Dare I say it, it is one of the biggest issues facing local healthcare authorities—not to get ahead of the next estimates debate. Money alone will not solve it. We need institutional root and branch reform of how the SEND system works. I have said it before and I will say it again: if we fix the SEND system, we fix the education system for every single child. What we need is investment in early years provision.
Every time I visit a primary school, I am confronted by headteachers who say that the level of high-needs SEND provision in key stage 1 has skyrocketed in recent years. We can discuss the reasons behind that. The covid pandemic proved the value of early years intervention in that, by and large, it did not take place for four to five years and we have seen the impact that that has had on young people coming through. So, we need early and quick intervention and investment in early years services. I take umbrage with Members, unfortunately on both sides of the House, who have spoken about over-diagnosis of conditions such as ADHD and autism. We need quick and accurate diagnosis and a treatment pathway to conditions that are on the rise primarily because of historical under-diagnosis. Finding out who the children are who struggle with those conditions and putting in early interventions as quickly as possible, such as speech and language therapy, will save us money in the long run. If we are able to identify children who are in need of additional support in early years, that will save an awful lot of money overall. It will save money in education, health and local authorities.
I very much support the Government’s direction of travel in trying to get as many children in mainstream as possible. I firmly believe that early exposure to children who are different from yourself can only be better for society, by and large. However, I would like to press the Minister for a timescale on when the SEND White Paper will come out. I would welcome her assurances that parents, carers and young people themselves will be meaningfully involved in it. I would also welcome her thoughts on how we ensure all schools share an equal load when it comes to SEND provision.
Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)
I want to talk about the real-life impacts of the decisions in the education estimates, and specifically, due to the short amount of time, on school funding.
There is a village in my constituency called Buckland Monachorum for whom school funding is a particularly pertinent issue. It is in the middle of campaigning, because the local trust responsible for the school is having to restructure from September. That is entirely because of the cuts schools are facing and the knock-on impacts from the Budget that we have heard about. The restructuring is causing huge consternation among parents. There are complaints, a campaign—as I said—and a huge amount of stress, as they face a different future to the one they were expecting.
The Learning Academy Partnership trust, which is responsible for the school, has shared figures with me that highlight the reality of the funding changes that it is facing. It also has one of the schools that falls foul of the f40 inconsistencies we have heard about. It is worth saying briefly that secondary schools in Devon can see as much as £1 million less in funding than equivalent schools in a city such as Manchester. An hon. Gentleman said earlier that city schools need more money. I hear that, but rural deprivation is a key reality, too, and we need to do more to address it.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
I am extremely grateful to be cheekily coming in at this point, but the East Riding of Yorkshire is the lowest-funded authority in the country for SEN. I hope we might hear from the Minister about how the distribution, as well as the quantum, can be made fairer. Unfair distribution exacerbates the strain in the system.
Rebecca Smith
I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. I agree that, and there are issues right across the country.
The trust in my constituency is facing financial pressures: teacher pay awards, unfunded beyond 1.7%, mean a 4% increase, costing £359,330; support staff pay awards, unfunded beyond 0.9%, mean a 3.2% increase, costing £295,000; and teacher pension increases, support staff pensions and the national insurance increases have a total cost of £349,000, with £76,000 unfunded due to pupil-based funding. That is a problem right across Devon. We are concerned because it means ultimately that those local village schools will have to take a direct hit, which is something that neither the parents nor the teachers, nor the trusts that are responsible, want to see.
A big part of this issue is about the reduction in the general annual grant—a real-terms reduction of £200,000 in 2025-26, plus 0.5% redirected by Devon local authority to special educational needs. This will have a massive impact on the most vulnerable children right across the community; ultimately, it will not enable them to get the education they require.
Briefly, I want to ask the Minister about the future of schools in places like Dartmoor in Devon, and especially the schools that fall foul of the f40 formula issues. What can the Minister do to reassure the parents, teachers, other staff and children, most importantly, whom I represent, who will ultimately pay the price for these cuts, intentional or not? What reassurances can she offer in response to their pleas and my pleas for children and young people in South West Devon to have the funding they need for the future they deserve? What reassurances can she provide to me that that will take place?
Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)
In Portsmouth North, we know that education does not just open doors, but transforms lives. I welcome this Government’s commitment to rebuilding the foundations of the education system.
Before entering this House, I was a teacher, and I have seen at first hand the power that education has to transform individual lives and whole communities, and how Government policy can impact it negatively or positively. In Portsmouth, sadly, that power has often been held back by under-investment, postcode inequality and a lack of opportunity for those outside the traditional academic path.
I am proud that more than 6,500 children in Portsmouth will benefit from Labour’s expansion of free school meals and that teacher pay is rising—by 5.5% last year and 4% this year—recognising the dedication of staff across our schools. Combined with rising attendance and the return of 3 million more school days, that shows that Labour’s plan is working.
It makes me cross when those on the Opposition Benches talk about trade union baron pay rises, when it is actually our teachers, doctors and armed forces who got those long-awaited pay rises, which were denied by the previous Government. It is time those on the Opposition Benches were honest about that. [Interruption.]
Amanda Martin
Children with educational needs in Portsmouth still face long waits and a shortage of school places; families are waiting, and schools are stretched. Can the Minister set out how the Department is working with local authorities to expand high-quality provision in areas such as Portsmouth, and whether the spending review includes targeted capital or revenue support for this area?
If education is to drive growth, skills reform must be front and centre, and I am glad that is part of Labour’s priority. Colleges are central to this. Students and staff at Portsmouth college are eager to do more, but need the right investment. Ambition is vital, because the role of education is not just social, but economic. The spending review must be understood as part of the wider industrial strategy that Labour is delivering. Skills reform, youth hubs and the creation of Skills England are vital tools to align training with the future of our jobs, and the Department must ensure that schools, colleges and businesses are integrated into this strategy.
We also need to get serious about apprenticeships—not just for school leavers, but for older learners and those changing careers. We need to talk about access, because apprenticeships must work for everybody. I have heard from constituents in their 20s and 30s and beyond who want to reskill, but cannot afford the drop in income. Although it may seem radical, I wonder whether the Minister would consider a means-tested apprenticeship loan system similar to student finance with an automated repayment tied into income above the living wage. That kind of support could transform access for working parents, carers and those who want to change their career.
As a Government Member and a member of the Education Committee, I am proud of the Government’s work. The spending review lays solid foundations, but there is a long way to go. Portsmouth North is a place of talent, determination and potential. Labour’s plan is already delivering change, but if we truly want an economy built on skills and a society built on fairness, we must keep pushing forward.
Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)
As we know, not all local education authorities are created equal. For those like South Gloucestershire, where schools are among the lowest funded in the country, the average rise quoted will not make up for years of underfunding. As I recently raised in this House, it is reported that two thirds of South Gloucestershire schools will be in the red next year, which is having a massive impact on children and young people in my constituency.
I shall set out some of the pressures that are making that situation worse and ask the Minister how the spending review will help to tackle them. The first is the underfunding of staff costs. The Government are not fully funding the 4% pay-rise for teachers and are expecting schools to find a quarter of the amount from efficiencies within their budgets. Coupled with the underfunded national insurance reimbursement, this is placing a massive pressure on budgets. Can the Minister explain what these efficiencies would look like. I can tell her what things already look like in our schools before these cuts. In my local schools, clubs, trips and activities have been axed. Qualified teaching assistants have been replaced by cheaper apprentices. Class sizes have been breached and staff shared across year groups, or even across several schools. Each school will be asked to cough up tens of thousands of pounds that they simply do not have, and this will disproportionately hit small rural schools where the staff budget makes up a high proportion of the total.
SEND pose challenges nationwide, but areas such as South Gloucestershire where school funding is lowest and where schools have struggled with a huge high-needs deficit, are hit particularly hard. The spending review says in relation to SEND that the Government will
“set out further details on supporting local authorities as we transition to a reformed system as part of the upcoming local government funding reform consultation.”
There is, however, no reference to the legacy safety valve agreements. The two-year extension of the statutory override is a temporary relief and does not solve the underlying problem. Schools and local authorities need to be able to plan ahead, so what assurances can the Minister give authorities such as South Gloucestershire whose safety valve agreements are coming to an end, and when will those authorities have certainty about the future funding arrangements?
Helen Maguire (Epsom and Ewell) (LD)
Councils are being asked to deliver SEND services without sufficient funding, to which my hon. Friend has alluded, and that creates a postcode lottery for families, with children waiting months to receive support. Does she agree that we urgently need SEND funding reform, including removing the £6,000 school contribution to end the postcode lottery, so that we can deliver the support that children need?
Claire Young
I agree with what my hon. Friend says. Schools are disincentivised from taking action on special educational needs if they know that they have to fund the first £6,000.
Finally, I highlight the pressure of free school meals and breakfast clubs. Although the extension of that provision is of course welcome, the funding does not recognise that schools are already having to subsidise school meals due to rising costs, and those subsidies will now increase. Schools in my area tell me that they declined to join the breakfast club pilot due to the lack of funding. One school I spoke to was expecting 67p per child for non-pupil premium children and 88p for pupil premium children. That non-pupil premium price represents less than 15% of the break-even cost for their current breakfast club. Yet again, these schools would have to subsidise at the expense of other activities.
Behind the headline numbers are schools in crisis, especially in constituencies such as mine where they have been routinely underfunded for years. I hope the Minister can provide reassurance for my constituents that the headline figures will translate into fair funding for South Gloucestershire.
Sarah Smith (Hyndburn) (Lab)
Nothing is more important than ensuring that every child in every part of our country has the opportunity to thrive. That is why breaking down the barriers to opportunity is such a key part of this Government’s plan for change We are determined to undo the failure of the previous Government and to see that every school has the necessary resources to offer the education that all our children deserve.
I welcome the estimates. In Hyndburn, the commitment to additional funded early years education will be transformational for family budgets, saving families up to £7,500 a year, and helping mothers such as me to balance careers with family life. Crucially, this will also enable us to achieve the key target of 75% of children achieving a good level of development when they start school, which will equate to over 500,000 more children being school ready across the country.
Furthermore, the £6.7 billion capital investment into our school buildings will support the rebuilding of several schools in Hyndburn, including Hyndburn academy in Rishton and Haslingden high school. It will also help us to tackle the removal of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete in Knuzden St Oswald’s primary school and to make other repairs and improvements to a number of other schools across the constituency.
Thanks to this Government’s commitment to increasing access to free school meals, up to 6,590 children in Hyndburn will benefit. This Government understand that children who are well fed are better able to concentrate in the classroom and better able to learn. I know how much it will mean to families across my constituency to be able to save up to £500 a year because of this change. This is a Labour policy, based on Labour values, and it demonstrates the shared commitment of the Chancellor, the Minister and the Secretary of State to ensure that we deliver on our promises to the next generation.
Having worked hard to tackle educational disadvantage for many years, I also know the importance of the regional improvement in standards and excellence teams and the £150,000 being made available to them so that families and communities will no longer be let down year after year without the interventions needed to tackle failing schools where the standards just are not good enough. On the skills agenda, Accrington and Rossendale college has already received £1.5 million of capital. The £1.2 billion commitment for the skills agenda is crucial, and I will be ensuring that young people in Hyndburn benefit directly from it.
There is so much more to talk about, whether it is mental health support, reforming the apprenticeship levy and apprenticeships, reviewing the curriculum and the current approach to assessment or making progress on hiring an additional 6,500 teachers. There is still lots to do—
Liz Jarvis (Eastleigh) (LD)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on behalf of my constituents, including the hundreds of families who feel they are being let down by a system that simply is not working. Over the past year, I have heard heartbreaking stories from constituents whose children have been left waiting years for EHCP assessments and the specialist support they desperately need. Hampshire’s SEN service received over 3,800 EHCP requests in the last academic year alone.
My constituent Chrissy’s daughter has struggled severely with reading, writing and confidence. When Chrissy asked for a dyslexia assessment, her daughter’s primary school was unable to provide one, and the family cannot afford private testing. Her daughter has missed days of school due to the sheer fear of going in, becoming physically sick as a result. Natasha, another constituent, told me that she is at her wits’ end trying to secure the right support for her son. He has an EHCP but is still without an autism diagnosis and a specialist placement after over two years of delays and miscommunication. What reassurance can the Minister give my constituents that their children will get the support they need to reach their full potential?
I have also been contacted by constituents who have expressed concern about the cuts to the adoption and special guardianship support fund, which has been a lifeline for some of the most vulnerable children in our society. Will the Government consider reversing the cuts to help give all children and young people the best possible future?
I welcome the Government’s decision to expand eligibility for free school meals to all children in households receiving universal credit. It is a long-overdue step in the right direction. To make the policy work in practice, the Government must introduce auto-enrolment and ensure that the expansion in eligibility is fully funded and properly implemented.
I have heard from the headteacher at Chandler’s Ford infant school in my constituency that the funding provided to schools has not kept pace with the actual cost of meals. The cost of delivering meals now exceeds Government funding by £1.11 per meal, which has forced the school to find another £31,468 out of its budget for the financial year. Eastleigh college receives £2.66 per student, but meals are costing the college closer to £5. Have the Government considered the impact on other areas of school budgets, as schools and colleges try to keep up with the increased cost of free school meals, and what provisions are being made to cover the shortfalls?
After years of neglect under the Conservatives, our education system is failing to deliver the outcomes that children deserve, and teachers and parents are having to pick up the pieces. We urgently need a system that works with families, not against them.
Cameron Thomas (Tewkesbury) (LD)
Parents with SEND children across Tewkesbury represent one of the demographics who most consistently contact me. I regularly hold surgeries with desperate parents who feel that they have nowhere left to turn. I have spoken with parents whose children have missed years of education and whose ability to work has been diluted by the need to care for and teach their children outside the school environment. Many others have spent years awaiting diagnoses and years more acquiring an EHCP, viewing an EHCP as a kind of silver bullet, only to get their children enrolled in a school that simply does not have the additional resources to support them.
Cameron Thomas
I am afraid I will not.
This is a growing, nationwide crisis being experienced by schools and families, and it has secondary effects on the Department for Work and Pensions and the Treasury. Responsibility for SEND provision currently falls to local authorities, but councils across the country are struggling to balance their resources between looking after their people and maintaining their infrastructure. I do not accept that those councils are all at fault—that simply cannot be. In fact, I empathise with those councils that observed this month’s spending review with their heads in their hands.
Last month, I held a Westminster Hall debate where I pointed out that Gloucestershire is among the lowest-funded councils for education in England. I am delighted that the Minister for School Standards announced a review of the national funding formula for 2026-27, and I very much hope that Gloucestershire will be firmly in the Government’s mind when it takes place. I ask the Government to acknowledge that they must address the growing demand for SEND provision and not leave it to local authorities or kick it down the road until 2030.
I ask that the Government investigate and address the root causes of this growing problem and implement systems and processes in the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Education and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Until they do, local authorities will continue to buckle under demand, our teachers will continue to break and our constituents across the country will continue to suffer.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)
Order. I am sorry to have had to be a little brutal, but we managed to get everybody in. We are, however, 10 minutes over time, so if Front Benchers exercised a little discretion, that would be helpful. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
I congratulate the Chair of the Education Committee, the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), on securing this important debate on the Department’s estimate. Given the constraints you just mentioned, Mr Deputy Speaker, and how the Department’s remit is huge, I want to touch on a couple of areas: day-to-day school budgets and funding to support some of our most vulnerable children. I also hope that the Minister might answer some questions on the recent free school meal announcement.
It is fair to say that since the Labour Government swept to victory a year ago there has been a huge amount of rhetoric about the opportunity mission and putting children at the heart of policymaking, but the reality on the ground feels a little different. Despite what the Government would have us believe, school budgets across the country are at best frozen and at worst falling into deficit. Years of Conservative mismanagement and underfunding from 2015 onwards—[Interruption.] Conservative Members chunter, but the figures are there. We all know that from 2015 onwards, their mismanagement—[Interruption.]
Munira Wilson
The Conservatives’ decisions cast a long shadow over our schools and colleges. Although the Government trumpeted £4.7 billion for schools in the spending review, they failed to mention that school budgets will see an increase in real terms of only 0.4% over the spending review period. When I speak to school leaders, as I do regularly, they still express the same level of despair as I heard during the last Parliament, when the Conservatives barely mentioned children or schools.
School leaders are tearing their hair out trying to balance the books while shouldering the double blow of an underfunded rise in employers’ national insurance and underfunded teacher pay rises. One school in my constituency has shared its budget figures with me in detail to show what is really happening. It has about a quarter of a million pounds of salary pressures as a result of the NI and pay rises, yet only an additional £30,000 to fund that hole. The result is that the most vulnerable children will suffer, with learning support assistance and inclusion staff most likely to go to protect teaching staff, who are obviously essential. Although prudence in previous years means that reserves can be drawn on and future capital projects cancelled to keep the lights on this year, the school is looking down the barrel of redundancies in 2026-27. Having seen figures from other schools’ budgets, I know that its situation is not unique.
Following the spending review, the IFS said that schools would need to make efficiencies to the tune of £300 million to £400 million to afford the underfunded teacher pay rises and NI increases. When schools are facing ever-increasing pressures—special educational needs demand, student attendance challenges, behavioural issues and much more—it is ridiculous for the Government to ask them to find efficiencies.
I know that school staff are already straining every sinew to find every penny possible, down to banning things like colour photocopying. It was frankly insulting, therefore, when the written ministerial statement came out just before the May recess, which lectured them on taking responsibility
“to ensure that their funding is spent as efficiently as possible”,—[Official Report, 22 May 2025; Vol. 767, c. 48WS.]
as if they do not already do that. Those so-called efficiencies are actually cuts, whether to staff, extracurricular activities, school trips or mental health support. To quote one headteacher from my constituency:
“every year you think you’re going to go into bankruptcy”.
I am not sure that was what the Government meant by their opportunity mission. After the Minister accused me last month of imagining these problems, I hope she will confirm to the House how she expects schools to cough up the extra money for the teacher pay deal and national insurance. If not, will she go into bat with the Treasury for more?
I want to touch briefly on an issue that a number of my hon. Friends have spoken about: the cuts in grants to the adoption and special guardianship support fund, which are measures that will hurt our most vulnerable children. We know that the fund provides therapy for children who, in many cases, have been through deep trauma and who, without significant therapeutic intervention, will struggle to have a fulfilling childhood and life ahead of them. After the fund expired, Ministers were dragged to this place to confirm that it would continue, but they then snuck out announcements over the Easter recess of 40% cuts to the grants.
I know that the Minister will come back and say that, at £50 million, the size of the pot remains the same, but that is simply not the point. If £3,000—that is what the grants have been cut to—cannot fund the therapy a child needs, it might as well be zero. Just speak to the professionals and the unsung heroes who have stepped up as adopters and kinship carers, who are dealing with the consequences of the trauma every day. They feel deeply let down by this Government.
We are not dealing with massive figures here. Indeed, when we look at the billions in the departmental estimates, we are talking about small packages that will make a huge amount of difference, and not just to individual children but to the taxpayer in future, with money saved further down the track. It is not only immoral; it is short-sighted. Halving the Department’s spend on consultancy and advertising would allow Ministers to reinstate grants to previous levels by boosting the fund from £50 million to £75 million. As we debate these estimates, I once again call on the Minister to reverse those cuts. Also, now that the spending review is complete, I call on her to announce the ASGSF settlement for 2026-27 very soon, and by October at the latest, so that families and service providers can plan.
I want to touch briefly on the welcome recent announcement to expand free school meals—a policy for which the Liberal Democrats have been calling and campaigning for many years, and for which we have campaigned alongside many others to ensure it was adopted. Even though it is a welcome announcement, there are a number of questions that need to be addressed. How many children are estimated to be losing out on free school meals as a result of the end of transitional protections? There has been some suggestion from some quarters that children currently in receipt of free school meals will now lose access to pupil premium funding, as well as home-to-school transport. Will the Minister clarify on the record to this House what the position is? We are also still in the dark as to where exactly the money for the free school meal expansion is coming from.
In conclusion, while spinners in the Department for Education have made a good fist of ensuring that the headlines proclaimed that the Department was a victor in the spending review battle, there are still a number of crucial issues hidden beneath the top line. Our schools and our most vulnerable young people have been left struggling. The devil is in the detail. I therefore hope that the Minister can persuade us otherwise and convince us that she really believes in extending opportunity to every child and young person in this country.
Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)
Before the election, Labour said that increasing VAT would pay for more teachers. Even in December, the Chancellor said that
“every single penny of that money will go into our state schools”.
More recently, however, the Prime Minister has claimed that this will instead pay for investment in social housing. He said
“my government made the tough but fair decision to apply VAT to private schools… because of that choice, we have announced the largest investment in affordable housing in a generation.”
These statements from the Chancellor and the Prime Minister cannot both be true. They cannot spend every penny on state schools and also spend money on housing, so my first question to Ministers is this: who is not telling the truth? Is it the Prime Minister or the Chancellor? Logically, both statements cannot be true.
Either way, we are not getting the extra teachers. In fact, statistics just came out showing that there are not more teachers, but fewer. There are 400 fewer overall, including 2,900 fewer in primary. Teacher numbers went up 27,000 under the last Government. Now they are down 400 under this Government. It was at that point, when those statistics came out showing that things were going in the wrong direction, that Ministers suddenly and for the first time started saying that the loss of staff in primary schools would no longer count. Primary school teachers no longer count for this Government. They had never said this before until the statistics showed that teacher numbers were falling.
This pathetic attempt to move the goalposts is so corrosive of trust in politics. It is a bit like when the Chancellor said that she was making her unfunded pledge to reverse the disastrous cut to the winter fuel payment because things were going so well with the economy. Everyone knows that is not true. It was so brazen. Let me quote what the Office for Budget Responsibility has said:
“Since the October forecast, developments in outturn data and indicators of business, consumer and market sentiment have, on balance, been negative for the economic outlook”,
and
“borrowing is projected to be £13.1 billion higher in 2029”.
But this Government seem to think that they can say black is white and people will believe them.
In that same brazen spirit, the Secretary of State responded to the statistics showing that there were fewer teachers in our schools by saying in a chirpy tweet:
“We’re getting more teachers into our classrooms.”
Ministers now say that primary schools do not count because pupil numbers are falling, but pupil numbers in primary are now predicted to be higher than when they made that promise. On the same basis, we could equally exclude all the many areas where numbers of pupils are falling in secondary and, indeed, places where numbers in primary are still going up, as in Leicestershire. It is brilliant: if we just ignore all the teachers that are getting the sack, of course teacher numbers are going up.
Peter Swallow
In the spirit of saying things that are not true and making brazen statements, I wonder whether the hon. Member can get on to the bit of his speech where he pretends that the Conservative Government invested more in our schools.
Neil O’Brien
I am glad that the hon. Member has prompted me—he must have a copy of my speech. In the last Parliament, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, real-terms spending per pupil went up by 11%. I thank him for allowing me to make that point.
So why are so many teachers getting the sack? It is partly because that is not the only broken promise. Labour also promised that it would fully compensate schools for the cost of the national insurance increase. The Minister sighs as I say this, and schools around the country will sigh too, because Labour broke that promise. According to the Confederation of Schools Trusts and the Association of School and College Leaders, schools have been left up to 35% short in some cases. With all the broken promises that we have already mentioned, let me check in on another promise. Perhaps the Minister will tell us the answer. The Prime Minister promised two weeks of work experience for all pupils and the Labour manifesto promised £85 million to pay for it. In May the Government told schools to get on and deliver extra work experience. When exactly will schools receive that £85 million?
Schools are not the only bit of the Department for Education where the Government have broken promises. The Secretary of State’s website still says, in a chirpy way:
“Graduates, you will pay less under a Labour government.”
But Labour has increased fees, not reduced them. The spending review was strangely silent on the subject of tuition fees. I assume that silence can only imply that tuition fees are set to rise in every year of this Parliament. Let me say what that will mean. It will mean that, in 2027, fees will go above £10,000 a year for the first time. It will mean that the total amount borrowed per student taking out the full amount will increase from £59,000 now to £66,000 outside London, and from £69,000 to £77,000 in London. So much for paying less! Ironically, the gain to universities from that broken promise and from that fee hike has been entirely wiped out by yet another broken promise: the decision to increase national insurance, another thing that Labour promised not to do.
That broken promise has also hit nurseries. The Early Years Alliance has said that it is “disappointed” and “frustrated” by the spending review, and the Early Education and Childcare Coalition says that the spending review
“reiterates many promises already made”
and that
“many nurseries and other providers are…running at losses and at brink of closure”.
Meanwhile, the Institute for Fiscal Studies notes that the funding in the spending review for early years
“may not be enough to meet additional unexpected demand”.
So what does this all look like when we come down from the billions to look at it from the frontline? Sir Jon Coles is the leader of the largest school trust in the country and also a distinguished former senior official in DFE. What does he make of these estimates and this SR? He says that
“education will—for the first time in a spending review—get less growth than the average across all spending departments… The last time we had such a poor three-year cash settlement was the period 2014-2018, when average cash increases were about 1.8 per cent. But then, inflation averaged 1.5 per cent… it slightly sticks in the throat that HMT are trying to present it as good news… The claim that this is a ‘£2 billion increase in real terms’ is a version of spin I can’t remember seeing before. It relies on treating the financial year before last (pre-election) as the first year of the current spending review period.”
In fact, he says that when all that is stripped away,
“to all intents and purposes, this is a flat real-terms settlement for three years. If, as Schools Week are reporting, the £760 million ‘SEND transformation fund’ is coming out of the core schools budget, then that represents a significant real terms funding cut in school funding.”
Perhaps the Minister will tell us whether that is correct and it is coming out of core schools spending.
That brings me on to the great suppressed premises in these estimates, which is that DFE assumes that it will save substantial amounts on special needs compared with the trend implied by previous years. The hon. Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance) talked about the cuts to special needs spending. In fact, since 2016, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, spending has increased by £4 billion in real terms—a 60% increase. If that has felt like a cut to the hon. Member, he will not like what is being brewed up by the Treasury now.
The SEND plan will be out this autumn—coincidentally around the time of what looks like an increasingly difficult Budget. So far, DFE Ministers have floated two ideas for the SEND review. The first is to restrict EHCPs only to special schools. That would be a huge change. There are 271,000 children with EHCPs in non-special state schools and a further 37,800 in non-special independent schools, so 60% of the total are not in special schools. Anna Bird, chair of the Disabled Children’s Partnership—a coalition of 120 charities—has said:
“The idea of scrapping Education, Health and Care Plans will terrify families.”
Secondly, on top of that, we learned from a Minister of State in the Department of Health and Social Care that the Government also plan to push a lot more children from special schools into the mainstream.
There are two big questions about this plan. To say the least, there is a clear tension between these two money-saving ideas. If the Government take away EHCPs in mainstream schools, parents will be a lot less confident when the council presses them to put their child into a mainstream school rather than a special one. Given that the Government have U-turned on the winter fuel payment and now say that the coming welfare vote will, in fact, be a confidence vote in the Prime Minister, it will be interesting to see what eventually issues forth from the DFE. We know from these estimates and the SR that, as Sir Jon Cole says, unless the Government deliver these large, planned savings in special needs, the settlement for schools will become increasingly difficult.
This Government have broken a staggering number of promises incredibly quickly. Ministers seem to believe that they can just say that black is white and that they never meant any of the things they so clearly promised. This debate is about the money side of things, of course, but in terms of reform, things are also going backwards with the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which will lower standards and smash up 30 years of cross-party reform to appease the trade unions. Tony Blair once talked about “education, education, education.” What we are now getting is broken promises, broken promises, broken promises.
The Minister for School Standards (Catherine McKinnell)
Every child deserves the opportunity to achieve and thrive in education. That is why this Government have—as Labour Governments always do—prioritised education, with the Department’s budget for day-to-day cash spending increasing by almost £6 billion compared with the last financial year. Within that, we have increased the overall core schools budget by £3.7 billion in 2025-26 compared with last year. This real-terms increase in funding per pupil helps underpin our ambition of achieving high and rising standards for all children in all our schools. This investment of £3.7 billion in 2025-26 includes both the £2.3 billion announced at the October Budget, and the £1.4 billion in additional funding being provided to support schools with staff pay awards and with the increases to employer national insurance contributions from April 2025.
The majority of school funding is allocated through the schools national funding formula. In 2025-26, £5.1 billion of the schools NFF has been allocated through deprivation factors, and £8.6 billion will be allocated for additional needs overall—that is, over £1 in every £6 of total core funding through the formula being directed towards the schools facing the most challenging cohorts. The spending review builds on this investment in schools. Across the spending review period, core schools funding—including SEND investment, which I know is a big issue for many Members who have spoken —will increase from £65.3 billion in 2025-26 to £69.5 billion by 2028-29.
I turn to the SEND system, which many Members have spoken passionately about. It is, and has been for too long, on its knees. This Government are determined to face up to the facts: too many families and children are simply not receiving the quality of SEND services and provision that they should expect; they are having to fight for those services; and they are having to wait too long before those services are made available. It is this Government’s ambition for all children and young people with SEND to receive the right support at the right time, so that they can succeed in their education and in moving into adult life. To help us achieve that, we have invested £1 billion more in funding for high needs in 2025-26 than in 2024-25.
We are also providing £740 million of high-needs capital funding in 2025-26, so that local authorities can adapt schools to be more accessible and can build new places, including in specialist facilities within mainstream schools. More than 1.7 million children and young people in England have special educational needs, and the vast majority of those are educated in mainstream settings. We are committed to improving inclusivity, to bringing a new focus on expertise in mainstream settings, and to an inclusive curriculum, so that the vast majority of children can be well supported in mainstream settings, with specialist settings catering to those with the most complex needs.
Jen Craft
I would like the Minister to clarify that the additional support and ambition that she is talking about is to improve the SEN side. For Members who are not aware, the statutory bit is the SEND side, and there will obviously be improvements in that; but if we improve the SEN side, which is the bit that children do not need an EHCP for, parents will not need to go through that adversarial legal battle, and there will be fewer reasons for people to have to go through what can at times be a truly horrific system.
Catherine McKinnell
My hon. Friend makes a really important point, and I was about to respond to a question that she raised in her very good contribution to this debate. We will set out the details of our approach to SEND reform in a schools White Paper, which we intend to publish in the autumn.
We recognise that we need to support mainstream schools in providing much greater inclusion for children with SEND. We need to commence a phased transition process, which will include working with local authorities to manage their SEND system, including deficits. There will also be an extension to the dedicated schools grant statutory override until the end of 2027-28—an issue that many Members have raised on behalf of their local authorities. We will provide more details by the end of the year, including a plan for supporting local authorities with both historical and accruing deficits.
I turn to teacher training. I was very sorry to hear about the experience of the hon. Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance). He is incredibly brave, and it is important that he has shared that. To respond to his question, high-quality teaching is central to ensuring that all pupils are given the best possible opportunities to achieve. To support all teachers, the Department is implementing a range of teacher training reforms that will ensure that teachers have the skills to help all pupils to succeed.
We are determined to make sure that every family is a stable, loving home, and that no child grows up in poverty, lacks food or warmth or is denied success due to their background. We are determined to turn things around, tackle child poverty and spread growth and opportunity to every family in every corner of the country. The Labour Government have announced that we are extending free school meals to all children from households in receipt of universal credit from September 2026. That will lift 100,000 children across England out of poverty and put £500 back in families’ pockets. We are supporting parents through that decisive action, which will improve lives—and that is before the child poverty strategy comes out later this year. Providing over half a million children from disadvantaged backgrounds with a free, nutritious lunch time meal, every school day, will also lead to higher attainment, improved behaviour and better outcomes, which means that children will get the best possible education and chance to succeed in work and life.
We will provide more detail in due course, but decisions such as expanding free school meals do not happen by accident, nor are they simply the outcome of hard work by campaigners outside this place. They are decisions about who we put first in our national life, and who has the first call on our country’s resources. Our Government put children first. Expanding free school meal eligibility is a choice made by this Government, who are determined to secure a brighter tomorrow for our children and ensure excellence everywhere, for all our young people. This Government know that delivering the most equal society—something that we Government Members are determined to make real—is a choice, not something achieved by chance.
On the points hon. Members raised about children’s social care, we are putting children first. This Government are committed to delivering children’s social care reform, to break the cycle of late intervention, and to help more children and families thrive and stay safely together. For 2025-26, the Department has allocated £380 million to deliver children’s social care reform, including £44 million of new investment to support children in kinship and foster care, as announced at the autumn Budget.
Because this Government are determined to ensure that all children have the best start in life, by 2028 we aim for 75% of children to reach a good level of development by the end of reception, which means that approximately 45,000 more children each year will start school ready to learn, thrive and succeed. That is ambitious. No progress has been made on this measure in many years. We are creating 6,000 nursery places in schools across the country through the first wave of 300 school-based nurseries; that is backed by £37 million.
Munira Wilson
The Minister talked about the Government making choices to prioritise children, and about keeping families together. How will the cuts to grants for therapies for some of the most vulnerable, traumatised children in our society help families stay together? Those children manifest the most challenging behaviours, which result in adoption placement breakdown, and that means worse outcomes for those families. How is that putting children first?
Catherine McKinnell
The changes that we have made to the fair access limits will ensure that more children have access to the fund, because year-on-year demands have increased. When we brought forward the legislation, which was the biggest overhaul in children’s social care in a generation, the opposition parties voted against it. We are determined to improve the life chances of children, to broaden access, and to ensure support for those that need it, despite our tough fiscal inheritance.
To return to childcare, at the spending review, we announced almost £370 million of further funding to create tens of thousands of places in new and expanded school-based nurseries. Despite the tough decisions we made to get our public finances back on track, we are continuing to invest in early years, and are supporting the delivery of entitlements. We will create a reception-year experience that sets children up for success, and are working with sector leaders to drive high-quality reception practice. We are increasing access to evidence-based programmes teaching early literacy and numeracy skills. We are delivering the largest ever uplift of 45% in the early years pupil premium to better support disadvantaged children at the earliest point in their school lives.
Unfortunately, having taken a couple of interventions, I have gone over my time. To summarise, we have inherited a challenging set of circumstances, but we are determined to change the life chances of children in this country. My final words are of appreciation for everyone working in our education system to support our children and young people. Our shared goal has to be providing the highest-quality outcomes for every child. The Government are investing in education, and we remain committed to renewing the entire system to make our ambitions a reality. We are putting our promises into action, and we are determined to change the lives of children across the country.
Helen Hayes
I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed to the debate. The education and children’s social care system across the country has been well represented, and we have heard contributions about the challenges in SEND, further education, schools, rural areas and early years. Right hon. and hon. Members have welcomed the expansion of free school meals and the introduction of free breakfast clubs.
I thank the Minister for her response, and join her in paying tribute to all the professionals who work so hard every single day to improve the lives of children and young people across the country. I urge her to work very closely with parents as she brings forward SEND reforms, because at the heart of successful reform of the SEND system is the rebuilding of parents’ trust and confidence. The Education Committee will be robust in its continued scrutiny of the Government.
I say gently to the Conservatives that the problems that they are attacking the Government for not solving within a year are the legacy of their 14 years in power. We are talking about trust and confidence in the SEND system; we would build trust and confidence in this place if there was slightly more honest reflection, humility and thoughtfulness on that point.
I again thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this important debate, and I look forward to further scrutinising the work of the Government.
Question deferred until tomorrow at Seven o’clock (Standing Order No. 54(2)).