School Funding (London)

Mike Kane Excerpts

Wednesday 29th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I am sure that, when a bill has to be paid, the headteacher is not looking for the reason why it is becoming more difficult for them to do that. Certainly—

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I am sorry to interrupt my hon. Friend, who is making a fantastic speech. The Minister has interrupted hon. Members a number of times. The figures that he talks about, from the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, the NUT and the National Association of Head Teachers websites, come from the figures from the Department and the National Audit Office, so the figures are as accurate as they can be from Government statistics. The Minister should stop interrupting Members who are standing up for schools in their constituency.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, but I am delighted that the Minister is intervening on us, because he needs to understand what schools are finding and experiencing. I know from my long awareness of his work that this cannot be a pleasant thing for him to be doing. He needs to understand—I am sure he does—the effect on the schools that are the most vulnerable and hang on to their improvement with all their might.

That brings me to a school that we both appreciate—Harris Academy Merton. It has had a 70% pass rate for five A to C GCSEs in the last year and will lose £298 per student. St Mark’s Academy will lose £291 per student. These schools cannot afford to lose money. They need the Government’s help, not the Government’s debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) on securing this debate and on her impassioned speech.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) said, under this Government we are seeing the largest real-term cuts for 20 years. The schools budget will not be protected in real terms and will not rise during the Parliament, and funding will be protected only in cash terms. No planning for budgets has been put in place by the Department for Education to cover the cost pressures that have been articulately pointed out by hon. Members today, such as inflation, the living wage, pension provision and the apprenticeship levy, which the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) mentioned. There has already been a sharp rise in the proportion of secondary schools in deficit, which has risen to nearly 60% in 2014-15, according to the National Audit Office. The NAO has also confirmed that there will be a real-terms reduction in funding per pupil because of a failure to increase funding in line with inflation. That, I am afraid, is a clear breach of the Conservative party’s manifesto commitment.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this is, in essence, an attack on all young people, regardless of whether they live in London or anywhere else in the country? This is an attack on the future generations of this country.

[Mike Kane]

My hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood pointed out that it would take 1% of the education budget to level up in London—about £500 million. Some £380 million was clawed back from the Department for Education for its failure to convert enough schools to multi-academy trusts. This can be done—it can be achieved—but, as with their U-turn last night to downgrade GCSE passes to grade 4, we can only hope that the Government will see the light on the key issue of the £3 billion of funding cuts that we face between now and 2020. The funding formula amounts only to redistributing a small sum of money while we face cuts across the board. Instead of moving an inadequate sum of money around, what is required is investment in all our schools, for every child.

The Library briefing states that

“inner London constituencies are expected to see the biggest fall in funding under the consultation proposals.”

There are particular pressures on London from the fair funding formula, as has been pointed out. The number of children on free school meals has declined in London, partly because of gentrification in particular areas, but also because of benefit changes, which mean that fewer children are eligible. That is having a disproportionate impact on school budgets in London.

The Secretary of State has said that no school should lose more than 1.5% of its funding as a result of changes to the funding formula. However, it has already been shown by the IFS and the NAO that, given the budget cuts, cuts to schools will be far more severe. Those are the figures on the union’s website.

[Jeremy Quin]

I come from a part of the country with £2,000 per pupil less than the London average. Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that he believes that there should be fairness in how we distribute funds between schools? That is what the NFF is about, and it is welcomed very broadly around the country.

[Mike Kane]

There should be fairness in the funding formula. There are good things in it, such as an emphasis on high needs, a deprivation index, a focus on prior attainment—why would we not welcome those things?—but we have seen many U-turns from the Department. I would bet my bottom dollar that, with the pressure that is coming from all hon. Members, we will see another one. I am worried that we will also see a U-turn on some of the good things about this funding formula.

The financial challenges of providing London school places is huge, because of the cost pressures and land values. That is why we have seen the Government U-turn on the 50% faith school cap. The Catholic Church needs to build at least 40 new schools in London and the Government have had to U-turn on their policy from 2010.

The free school programme in London is not subject to any spatial planning whatsoever. There was a school in Bermondsey that recently closed down after £3.5 million was spent in two years on educating 60 pupils. That was £60,000 per pupil. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) said, we could have sent those pupils to Eton for half the price. That is what happens when there is a free school programme that is not subject to spatial planning.

[James Berry]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mike Kane]

I will not give way, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me. I really am up against the clock.

The Education Funding Agency is paying inflated prices for land, particularly in London. Funding issues are hitting teacher recruitment, as has been articulately pointed out. Pay in real terms for teachers has fallen by 10% since 2010. The jobs market is beginning to pick up, no wonder we are failing to meet our graduate targets for teacher training, which adds to the pressures. The cost of living, as has also been pointed out, and the cost of childcare are exacerbating the problems, as is inflation. My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) has been articulate for weeks and months in the Chamber on the effect of London’s housing crisis, which means that teachers are priced out of the market.

As I have said, the Opposition would love to support elements of the funding formula. I remember the joke by Peter Kaye, who is a Bolton comedian. When his children were trying to get to sleep but could not do so because of the “wardrobe monsters”, he rang them up and said, “Don’t worry about the wardrobe monsters. It’s the burglars coming in through the roof!” This issue is not about the funding formula, a high needs index, a deprivation index or the focus on prior attainment; it is to do with cost inflation. The Minister should stop confusing the matter for his own Back Benchers and for Parliament. The national funding formula will not touch the sides of what needs to be done to avert a massive crisis in our schools.

We need change. The Minister should not bang on about the funding formula. He needs to address the cost pressures that all schools face. He needs to tell them, which he has not done so far, how they are to make the savings required. More importantly, however, he needs to tell us how he will change his mind in the weeks and months to come.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wes Streeting]

rose—

[Mike Kane]

rose—

[Mr Gibb]

I will not give way to either of the hon. Gentlemen. It was disappointing that the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) did not acknowledge that, directly as a consequence of this fairer way of allocating funding—this new funding formula—her schools are receiving £3.5 million more.

The hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), who is itching for me to give way, said that his borough of Redbridge was seeing a reduction in funding. I am afraid that that is simply not the case. Redbridge’s school funding will increase from £201,600,000 to £209,859,000, a 4.1% increase, as a direct consequence of the introduction of a national funding formula.

[Mike Kane]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Gibb]

I will not give way.

These anomalies will be ended once we have a national funding formula in place, which is why introducing fair funding was a key manifesto commitment for this Government. Fair funding will mean that the same child with the same needs will attract the same funding, regardless of where they happen to live.

We launched the first stage of our consultation on reforming the schools and high needs funding systems in March last year. We set out our principles—

[Mike Kane]

On a point of order, Mr Hanson.

[Mr David Hanson (in the Chair)]

I hope it is a point of order, Mr Kane.

[Mike Kane]

Mr Hanson, it should be noted that Members from all parties, including myself, were generous in giving way to the Minister. The Minister has not been generous in return.

[Mr David Hanson (in the Chair)]

I am afraid, Mr Kane, that that is not a point of order for the Chair. The Minister is entitled to give way or not give way according to his own preference.

Social Mobility Commission: State of the Nation Report

Mike Kane Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I join hon. and right hon. Members from all parties in the House in paying tribute to PC Keith Palmer, who gave his life to protect us, this place and all that it represents.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) and the right hon. Members for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) and for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg) on securing the debate. My hon. Friend talked about Government policy, and about the idea of picking the few who would go from the council house to the Cabinet. Today might not be a day for humour, but the tale I tell is that I grew up in a damp two-bedroom council flat in Manchester, and since I became an MP I have lived in a one-bedroom ex-council flat in Westminster, so for some people the trajectory is downhill. I am one of the few in this place who can say that.

Yesterday, while democracy was being attacked, the Labour party members in Manchester, Gorton were selecting as their candidate another council house kid. He was orphaned out of Pakistan, grew up in abject poverty and worked as a labourer. After attending night school, he became a police officer and a solicitor, and he ran his own practice. I wish Afzal Khan all the very best over the next few weeks as we approach the election.

The “State of the Nation” report by the Government’s Social Mobility Commission explained the scale of the challenge we face in improving social mobility in Britain today. It told us in no uncertain terms:

“Britain has a deep social mobility problem.”

It identified

“four fundamental barriers that are holding back a whole tranche of low- and middle-income families and communities in England: an unfair education system, a two-tier labour market, an imbalanced economy and an unaffordable housing market.”

My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) spoke eloquently about that. To say the least, the Government—and the Minister, who has been sent to defend the policies that have led us to this point—have their work cut out for them.

The “State of the Nation” report presented the Government with a number of proposals on parenting and early years, schools, post-16 education, jobs and housing, but there is no evidence so far that the Government have listened to the proposals. That is why our debate today is so important.

For instance, the report calls on Government to

“set a clear objective for early years services that by 2025 every child is school-ready at five and the child development gap has been closed”.

As a former teacher, I know that nursery teachers can predict with 95% accuracy what exam results the children in their care will attain at key stage 1, key stage 2 and key stage 3. The report also recommended that the Government provide

“high-quality childcare to low-income families.”

The Department for Education has given no indication that it will adopt these plans. In fact, its policies could do exactly the opposite. The Minister probably needs to tell us why the Government are not directing resources towards those who need them the most. The Department will spend about £1 billion a year on a policy of so-called tax-free childcare, which will be of the greatest benefit to those who have £10,000 to spend on childcare. I will give way right now to any Member in the House if they know a low-income family who have £10,000 to spend on childcare.

I hope that the Minister will also tell us what the 30 hours of free childcare will actually mean for the tens of thousands of low-income families who, under the eligibility criteria, are not actually eligible for the extra childcare. As the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam eloquently put it, this policy is in considerable trouble at the moment. After all, while I am sure the Minister is growing tired of being reminded of promises in his manifesto that are being broken, the pledge was clear: the Conservative manifesto promised that his party would

“give working parents of 3 and 4-year-olds 30 hours of free childcare”.

This is not just about quantity, but about quality, as the right hon. Gentleman mentioned.

Our maintained nurseries are under attack, with the future of many of them in doubt in the next weeks and months. Labour Members know the immense importance of early years intervention to improve the life chances of children in Britain. That is why the Labour Government opened over 3,000 Sure Start centres, and increased education spending in every year that we were in Government. This Government just need to follow that example.

There are a number of recommendations on schools in the report, and I will briefly address them. The right hon. Member for Loughborough said that education is the key driver of social mobility. She is a one nation Conservative. Disraeli said the same on the steps of Manchester town hall in 1872, so, a century and a half later, I am looking for a one nation in terms of social mobility.

First and foremost, the commission made it clear that the Department’s flagship vanity project to expand academic selection is wrong. It said:

“We recommend that the Government rethinks its plans for more grammar schools”.

I know the Minister has been told time and again to rethink these plans. He will come back to the Dispatch Box in a few minutes and say that children on free school meals in grammar schools have a better chance of getting to a Russell Group university, but it is a false statistic. The sample of children on free school meals in grammar schools is so small that it makes nonsense of the statistics. As my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden pointed out, 2.6% of children in grammar schools are on free school meals, compared with 14% of children nationally.

We have heard a great deal about the White Paper that we expect to see in the coming weeks. We want the Minister to commit to basing it not on dogma, but on evidence, and we want him to abandon the discredited policy of selection. The Chancellor has made an announcement about a lot of money for grammar schools, but it seems that there is none for school budgets. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) talked about the buckets used when it rains. I trained as a teacher in the late 1990s, and I remember going round with buckets. However, by the time Labour left office, schools had been rebuilt and roofs had been repaired, while the only thing going through the roofs were standards.

Cuts to school budgets will make it almost impossible to deliver on the many recommendations, so we need to think about the £3 billion that is currently going to be cut from school budgets across this country during the next few years. Let us not pursue the divisive policy of selection; let us fund education properly and come together on improving mobility. Government is about choice, so let us make the right choices.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Kane Excerpts

Monday 20th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. As I have said, it is important that we reflect the fact that our funding needs to follow children who have additional needs. In particular, we know there is an attainment gap for children from lower-income and more disadvantaged areas and families. We also know that many children will start both primary and secondary school already behind, so we need to give an uplift for those pupils to enable their teachers to help them to catch up. These are important parts of the formula but, as he set out, we need to look carefully at other aspects of it, and we will do so.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I have to say to the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Sir Simon Burns) that he is not seeing the wood for the trees. The Minister for School Standards recently wrote to the Chelmsford Weekly News about the uplift of 1.9%, which the Secretary of State mentioned, but there is a denial of the wider picture that £66 million is being withdrawn from funding in Essex overall. Will she explain how Chelmsford County High School for Girls, which is estimated to lose £300,000, will make its cuts?

[Justine Greening]

I think I have answered the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Sir Simon Burns), but the bottom line is that the only budget that would go up under Labour is debt interest, which would lead to fewer teachers and less investment in education, not more.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Kane Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

The formula does contain an element for growth. We also responded to the representations on mobility made by the right hon. Lady’s colleague, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms). When pupils join a school part way through the year, that will be factored in. I would have expected her to welcome both those changes to the funding formula.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) had hastily to delete a tweet this week that showed that the national debt had exploded on this Government’s watch. Therefore, the sparsity formula, which was to save rural schools everywhere, has become the paucity formula. Should the Minister not tell the House that the key issue facing schools up to 2020 is the £3 billion-worth of cuts coming down the line for every school in the country?

[Mr Gibb]

Funding is increasing to £42 billion by the end of this spending review period. We are increasing the amount allocated for sparsity from £15 million under the current formula to £27 million. The hon. Gentleman talks about debt, but, since 2010, we have had to face the problem of tackling the historic budget deficit inherited from the last Labour Government because of their poor stewardship of the public finances. Tackling that debt and that deficit has enabled us to have a strong economy with growing employment and greater opportunities for young people when they leave school.

Maintained Nursery Schools Funding

Mike Kane Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) on introducing the debate. I never fail to be impressed by the passion she brings to her speeches or by her campaigning zeal—I have campaigned with her since before I became a Member.

We know that this debate is of great importance; that is why we have had such a high turnout of Members and such a high-quality debate. I join the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Sir Simon Burns) in praising nursery staff throughout the country for their commitment. He spoke more articulately than I can about all the work that goes on.

The Minister will be aware that Members here know the importance of maintained nurseries for sure, and the role they play in our early years system. They are invaluable. In fact, they are absolutely irreplaceable. The hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) spoke about Scartho Nursery School with such passion, because he knows that that sort of provision cannot be replaced in any constituency up and down the land if it is lost.

Maintained nurseries operate overwhelmingly in disadvantaged areas and, as has been pointed out, 98% of them are rated “good” or “outstanding” by Ofsted. If 98% of them are rated so highly, why do we feel that they are suddenly being so undervalued by the Government, and why do they face this funding crisis? We are at the point now where there is no turning back.

Research by the all-party parliamentary group on nursery schools and nursery classes, which is chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), who is no longer in her place but does astonishingly good work in this area, shows that dozens of nursery schools—I think she said 67—look like they will be forced to close by July this year. That is more than one in 10 nursery schools.

Almost 60% of those nurseries say that they will be unsustainable once the Government withdraw transitional funding support at the end of this Parliament, as my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) pointed out. She talked about educational attainment across the north and referred to the debate that Jo Cox secured about Yorkshire and the Humber. However, we should remember that in London 55% of kids on free school meals get five good GCSEs. If we take the area from the Mersey estuary to the Humber estuary, that figure for kids on free school meals declines to 34%. The Government produced the Nick Weller report about educational attainment in the north, but unfortunately it is now just gathering dust on a shelf somewhere—there is no evidence that any of its recommendations have been implemented.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, and I apologise for not being able to be here for the whole debate, because of a prior engagement. However, I just feel so strongly about this issue that I want to put on the record how well Ganneys Meadow Nursery School in my constituency is doing. It is located in one of the 20% most deprived lower-level super output areas in the UK, but it received three “outstanding” judgments in its last three Ofsted reports. Nevertheless, it is really struggling financially and anything that the Minister can do to mitigate that situation would be hugely appreciated.

[Mike Kane]

My hon. Friend makes a fantastic point, as she defends the maintained nursery in her constituency. It has three “outstanding” judgments, yet it is under all that pressure. What sort of society are we living in when that is happening to professional staff, as well as to parents and their young children?

With so many nursery schools likely to rely on the transitional funding, this debate is of huge importance. In her eloquent speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) said that the order of the day at the moment is survival or closure for most of these operations. So can the Minister tell us how the transitional funding will be awarded, which nursery schools will benefit, and how will she ensure that it is used in a way that supports our nursery schools up and down the land? I ask these questions because providing transitional funding is not the same as providing certainty. My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) also pointed that out. We need long-term sustainability.

Right now, nursery schools across the country support some of our most disadvantaged communities and they are highly valued by parents, as my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) said. He was also absolutely bang on the money about the quality of training provided in these nursery schools. I remember being a PGCE—postgraduate certificate in education—student and spending two, three or four weeks at a nursery school, and I understood that those nursery teachers knew with 95% accuracy what the kids at that nursery would attain at their key stage 1 standard assessment tests and at their key stage 2 SATs, because they knew that what they could do was make the most important intervention in a child’s life.

The Minister and her colleague, the Secretary of State for Education, have said—rather frequently—that the Government are investing a record £6 billion in early years and childcare; we will see if she comes to that figure today. However, that assessment does not tell us the whole story. For instance, it does nothing to consider the impact of changes in the early years funding formula, and nor does it consider the impact of the savage cuts to local government funding that the Minister’s party has pursued for nearly seven years in government.

I will just turn to the situation in Scotland. The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) said, “Nursery education is the crème de la crème”, and I agree with her that nursery education is the best start in life. However, the Scottish National party Government are taking £150 million a year out of Glasgow City Council’s budget. How do we think that will impact on nursery schools in Scotland? And that is after Glasgow Labour had rebuilt every new school of the campus at £600 million over the last 15 years. What do we think those sorts of cuts will do for disadvantaged children in Glasgow? Let us also be absolutely clear that the SNP Government are failing to inspect nursery schools, with inspection ratios going up to years and years before the equivalent of Ofsted goes in and inspects those schools. I am afraid that the SNP Government have a record of failure in Scotland.

[Marion Fellows]

That is why they keep getting voted back in.

[Mike Kane]

That might be the case, as the hon. Lady suggests by chuntering from a sedentary position, but we now face a party that is like the Liberal Democrats of this Parliament—everybody else is to blame, except themselves. Having said that, we are to blame—all Members—for this situation, because we are not doing our research on what is actually going on north of the border.

[Marion Fellows]

Will the hon. Member take an intervention?

[Mike Kane]

No, I have no time.

[Marion Fellows]

You have done your slagging off.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Kane]

Many families are supported by nursery schools that are supported by the Government. However, the Government’s policy of tax-free childcare will do nothing for many working parents. The total benefit of tax-free childcare is £2,000, but that is only available to a family that spends £10,000 a year on childcare. It is quite a regressive tax and it does not really do much for those in the most disadvantaged communities, who rely on the maintained nursery sector.

The Government have to come up with a plan to protect some of the most valuable nursery schools in our country. The Minister has seen the passion that hon. Members across the Chamber have shown today, and we know that we get the biggest bang for our buck, educationally speaking, when it is spent on nursery education. However, I fear that unless the Minister comes up with a plan, her curriculum vitae will show that many maintained nurseries closed on her watch. I know personally that she does not want that to happen. Nevertheless, the risks are clear, and if she and the Government fail to act, a generation of children will really lose out.

School Funding

Mike Kane Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

For the first time in a generation, schools will face spending cuts to their budgets—[Interruption.] Right out of the gate, the Secretary of State is chuntering. In her authority area, that equates to a 15% cut, with £13 million coming out of her schools’ budgets by 2020. I look forward to campaigning in her constituency on this issue.

The Department expects schools to find £3 billion of savings in this Parliament to counteract cumulative cost pressures, including pay rises, the introduction of the national living wage, higher employer national insurance contributions, contributions to the teachers’ pension scheme and the apprenticeship levy, as the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (James Berry) and Labour Members said. The hon. Gentleman is happy with the national funding formula, but I have to point out that his schools will receive an overall cut of 12% in this Parliament. We are talking about an 8% real-terms reduction in funding per pupil in this Parliament.

The Department regularly compiles a list of future policy changes that will affect schools, but it has no plans to assess the financial implications for schools of these changes. We have no assurances that the policy is affordable within current spending plans without adversely affecting educational outcomes. The Government are leaving schools and multi-academy trusts to manage the consequences individually. The Department has clearly not communicated to schools the scale and pace of the savings that will be needed to meet the expected cost pressures.

The proportion of maintained secondary schools spending more than their income increased last year from 33% to 59%—[Interruption.] No matter what the right hon. Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire) says, this Government have racked up a £1.7 trillion debt on their watch and now want to pass on part of that debt to our school system. The Department expects much of the savings to come from procurement and the introduction of shared services. Changing procurement and shared services requires strong leadership, clear plans for achieving savings, effective risk management and support from stakeholders. That leadership is clearly lacking among the Government Members. The Minister himself has said that he is confident that pages of guidance on the Department’s website will provide enough support for schools—it will not.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mike Kane]

I have literally seconds left.

As the National Audit Office has suggested, school leaders who do not have support are likely to make decisions that make the teacher retention crisis worse. The NAO went on to say that the Government’s current

“approach to managing the risks to schools’ financial sustainability cannot be judged to be effective or providing value for money”.

It is important to recognise the impact that the required efficiency savings will have on staff. We expect already unsustainable workload pressures to increase as staff efficiencies eventually start to bite. Moreover, the size of the savings that schools will have to find will lead to worse educational outcomes, and the biggest impact will be felt by those in the most deprived areas and those with special needs.

We know that staff costs represent any school’s largest expenditure—74% of schools’ budgets are spent on staff—so it is not hard to see that to save money over the next few years, schools will inevitably end up cutting back on staff. That will have a knock-on effect on workload, morale, class sizes and the breadth of the curriculum that schools can offer. All this is happening at a time when we are expecting a 3% increase in the number of children entering school.

A bad situation is compounded by the national funding formula. Some Conservative Members, who really missed the point, had been expecting “jam tomorrow” from the formula, which was a manifesto commitment, but now they are waking up to the reality that the schools in their constituency will not benefit from its introduction. Hardly any area is left unscathed. In their excellent speeches, the hon. Members for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) and for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) said that the funding formula was not the point; the point was the cuts and pressures faced by schools.

I ask the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire to speak to her hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), who completely missed the point. The House will have been astonished by the slap in the face for northern teachers, who are apparently not ambitious enough for their pupils, and that is from a Government who introduced the Weller report on raising standards.

[Lucy Frazer]

If the hon. Gentleman had listened to my speech carefully, he would have understood that I was quoting the 2016 Ofsted report. Those were not my words; they were the words of Ofsted.

[Mike Kane]

It was a slap in the face, and the hon. and learned Lady’s authority in Cambridgeshire will face a 4% cut on top of all the other pressures that are going on.

The Tories are failing our children. They are overseeing the first real-terms cut in the schools budget for over two decades—indeed, since the 1970s, as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh). By their own preferred measure on standards, we have declined in the world PISA—programme for international student assessment—rankings.

In a moment the Minister will stand up and either talk about synthetic phonics, or say that 1.8 million children are in better schools. That, of course, is because Labour identified those schools in 2010 and Ofsted came back to reassess them, and because there are now more children in the system—the primary system. This dire situation for our schools will only continue to get worse as a result of the Government’s cuts and their new funding formula.

Education Funding: Devon

Mike Kane Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I congratulate the right hon. Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire) on securing the debate. He said recently in the Exmouth Journal that he would raise his concerns in Parliament, and it is good to see politicians keeping their promises—he has certainly done so today.

Under this Government, schools are facing their first real cuts in 20 years. My right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) summed it up. We have to look at the big picture, because many rural schools are affected. We had a similar debate about the Minister’s county of Sussex, which is very poorly underfunded, a few weeks ago, and Members had exactly the same concerns. Their hopes were raised by the proposed introduction of the manifesto commitment of a national fair funding formula, but up and down the land most people’s hopes are being dashed. We must put this in the context of what was announced in the Budget: £3 billion will be taken out of our education system by 2020. That is an 8% cut. In my constituency, it is an 11% cut, so no matter what we do with the fair funding formula, it will be insignificant, given the situation that schools face.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies initially predicted the real-terms cuts of 8% that I mentioned, but the Office for Budget Responsibility predicted sharply rising inflation over the course of the Parliament, so the cuts will get even worse. The right hon. Member for East Devon spoke eloquently about fairness, but nothing is fair about that. The funding formula was supposed to redistribute a sum of money to help schools where help is inadequate and to provide our children with the excellent education to which they are entitled, as pointed out by the hon. Member for North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones).

The National Audit Office has said that the Department for Education is expecting schools to find a total of £3 billion in savings over the course of the Parliament, but the Department has failed to communicate to schools how to do that, given the pressures pointed out today, such as the apprenticeship levy and rising costs and national insurance costs.

The Opposition support the principle that all schools should have a fair funding formula, but the answer is not simply to take money away from some schools and to redistribute it in different budgets across the country. The solution is to invest in education and to help every child to receive an excellent education, as pointed out by the hon. Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter). He talked about an education oasis so, with an Oasis reference and my being a Mancunian, I should ask him not to “look back in anger”. He spoke with passion about his concerns and the consequences of Government action. A whole range of both Conservative and Opposition Members are extraordinarily disappointed.

Given cost pressures, inflation and an increase in pupil numbers, schools budgets are facing real-terms cuts. There has already been a sharp rise in the number of secondary schools that are in deficit, reaching nearly 60% of the total in 2014-15, according to the National Audit Office. According to the North Devon Gazette, only three schools in Devon are set to gain extra funding under the proposed national funding formula, as announced by Secretary of State. The changes to education funding have been branded “ridiculous” and “a shambles” by Devon headteachers. The hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) rightly pointed out that the Government are simply not listening at the moment, and while they are still in consultation, we have to plead with them to start listening.

Michael Johnson, the headteacher at Chulmleigh Community College, said he had received calls from other headteachers who simply did not know what they were to do. He said:

“Early indications are that all or most Devon secondary schools will receive less through the new funding formula.

I have had other secondary school headteachers telling me today ‘I don’t know what I am going to do now’.

Nationally, this formula offers the same money for more children and we have now got increased costs that we have had imposed upon us.

With the limited information available to us at this time, we believe that most secondary schools in North Devon will not be better off and will continue to face budgetary shortfalls.

So far, this exercise looks to me like the same budget has been through a hot-wash to present it differently. It looks like a shambles to me.”

That is a headteacher in one of our schools.

Mr Glenn Smith, the principal of Honiton College, said that Devon is one of the lowest-funded education authorities in England:

“Whilst the announcement in the…2015 Autumn Spending Review of firm proposals for the introduction of a new fairer national funding formula from April 2017 was most welcome, this promise of ‘jam tomorrow’ has since been delayed by 12 months and we still await further information around the detail, timing and implementation of any such policy.

Meanwhile the legacy of an unsatisfactory funding settlement has been further worsened for schools by rising expenditure demands owing to national policy decisions beyond our control, notably those associated with staffing costs.”

Mr Smith sent a stark warning to the Department that harsh cuts in Devon might see some of the smaller schools not able to produce a balanced budget, in effect putting them into special measures, so they might therefore be lost altogether. He worried:

“Maybe, when some Devon schools start to buckle under the increasing financial pressures, the government will start to make education a priority once more.”

The right hon. Member for East Devon said that we should not be too political, although he was critical in quite a party political way of the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown Governments. Mr Smith of Honiton College, however, said:

“Tony Blair’s top three priorities for government were: Education, Education and Education—God knows how far down”

the importance and fairness of education policy have gone. Schools did extraordinarily well under that Government: schools were rebuilt and they got more money than they had had in a generation.

I was beginning my teacher training in 1997, and I spent most of the time going around with buckets to collect the rain. By the time I left education, 10 or 15 years later, after the Labour Government, if the roofs had not been rebuilt, it was only because the school had been rebuilt. The only thing going through the roof were standards and attainment, so Labour Members will not stand for any lectures about our record.

On top of that, the hon. Members for Newton Abbot and for North Devon rightly pointed to the requirements for special educational needs in Devon, where there is a particular problem. “Schools Week” has done an analysis of local authorities’ high-needs budgets, which are given a set amount by the Government depending on how many special needs pupils each council caters for. Many heads are already struggling to cope.

Devon faces a £4.5 million shortfall this year, and the council is proposing to move £55 per pupil from its schools block funding—the money for pupils in mainstream schools—to its high-needs budget. Lorraine Heath, headteacher of Uffculme School, said that the reallocation would cost her school £56,265,

“which I have not budgeted for”.

That was her reaction. She said that the only way to meet the cut would be to reduce staff numbers and to increase class sizes.

In conclusion, may I praise the Devon MPs who are holding the Government’s feet to the fire on the issue? They are standing up for their constituencies and their county. I also remind them, however, that it is their party’s Government who are doing this.

[Mr David Hanson (in the Chair)]

Before I call the Minister, I remind him that the right hon. Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire) should have a couple of minutes to speak at the end of the debate.

Soft Drinks Industry Levy: Funding for Sport in Schools

Mike Kane Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley) reminded us about the importance of outdoor recreation, so I rise to my feet very tenderly, having just participated with the MP parliamentary football team for 90 minutes over in Chelsea. We played the press lobby. It was a one-all draw, and there was no love lost between the two teams when we came off the pitch.

It is a pleasure, as ever, to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) on securing the debate. Why he is not in Government, I do not know. I thought that he did an extraordinarily good job with disability confidence in the last Parliament. I was pleased to support that with my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), in putting on one of the biggest events in the north of England, and I hope that impetus carries on even though he is no longer at the Department for Work and Pensions. The hon. Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) has already laid out the facts, and I congratulate her on her chairmanship of the all-party parliamentary group on adult and childhood obesity.

One in five children are overweight or obese before they start primary school, and the figure rises to one in three by the time they leave year 6. That puts children at serious risk of developing serious conditions such as heart and liver disease, cancer, related mental health problems—I think that the hon. Member for Macclesfield is the only Member who has mentioned mental health today—and diabetes.

Let me make an observation about health in my constituency, where I have the world-class Wythenshawe hospital, run by the University Hospital of South Manchester NHS Foundation Trust. Its outcomes are unbelievable, but I say to consultants that my constituency has one of the worst levels of public health outcomes in England and Wales, and what we are really doing is triage in the trenches. My population is ravaged by hypertension—I am looking to the doctors in the Chamber to help me out here—chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and, in particular, type 2 diabetes, which is having all sorts of impacts on NHS costs—somebody has already pointed out the £6 billion cost to the NHS.

I am starting schemes in all those three areas and, as the hon. Member for North Swindon said, using civil society as best as I can to tackle them. With the British Heart Foundation’s work on hypertension, Diabetes UK’s diabetes groups and the British Lung Foundation’s Breathe Easy campaign, we know that we can keep people out of our A&Es, which is a huge issue this week, whichever side of the political fence hon. Members are on. People can self-help and self-medicate, which is important because by the time they go to A&E or to their doctor or health professional, it is almost too late.

I concur with what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) and by the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), who chairs the Health Committee: some areas do not have such a strong civil society and they need a leg-up from Government through the hypothecation of taxes. We have seen a link between the scale of poverty and obesity in children, in particular. The Government recognise that but have taken away the targets along with the unit that looks at child poverty, which is rocketing, and not just under this Government—it was going up previously because of the economic and financial crisis.

In 2016 the Government introduced a new levy on soft drinks through the sugar tax. In England the new levy revenue will be invested in programmes to support physical activity and balanced diets in school-aged children. I want to talk for a moment from my personal experience as a primary school teacher for 10 years. My right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), who is not currently in his place, pointed out that children go to school for only 40 weeks a year. It is important for politicians to remember that, because I used to get frustrated at this place when I was a teacher in the classroom. We all think that we can change society by changing our schools, but it is only a small, if important, bit of how we change society.

I used to eat with the children before and after the Jamie Oliver meals came in. I patrolled the free school meals kids in particular, not because I was the sugar police—although, we did had very firm policies in my 500-place primary school about what they could have in those packages—but because I knew what the afternoon would be like if they had had a can of Coke, a load of chocolate and a packet of crisps. It is almost impossible to get really extraordinary teaching and learning going on with poor diets. Everybody in the Chamber has made the link between good food and good mental health in children.

There is a clear link between sugar intake and childhood obesity, as illustrated by the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition’s 2015 report on carbohydrates and health. With 30% of the sugar in children’s diets coming from sugary drinks—the point has been made that children are consuming a bathtub of these drinks annually—action is clearly needed. The levy is expected to raise more than £500 million in the first year. It is a good policy. I will come back to why I disagree with the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince) in a second, but I thought that the hon. Member for Falkirk (John Mc Nally) articulated well why it is a good policy and why we should support it. The amount raised is likely to fall over time as manufacturers remove sugar from their products and the consumption of sugary drinks falls.

I disagree with the hon. Member for Colchester because he has stated that this is a nanny state-type tax, but what we now have, particularly with school budgets, which I shall come to later, is a postcode lottery. For example, look at what Britvic is already doing to avoid the sugar tax. It is changing its behaviour and remodelling the formula so that it does not pay the tax. Surely that is a good thing. Surely that is how Governments should intervene to make the world a better place, particularly for children.

[Will Quince]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mike Kane]

I will, because I have attacked the hon. Gentleman twice now in this speech.

[Will Quince]

Not at all. I accept that point, but I think that the hon. Gentleman has reiterated what I was saying. We all accept that if the industry reacts and reformulates products, that will be a great thing. However, if it does so and takes the action we know it is taking over a shorter period of time, rather than a longer period, that will mean we have less money ultimately to spend on this programme.

[Mike Kane]

But over the longer term people will hopefully be consuming less sugar, which I think is the key objective. However, the hon. Gentleman is right; reformulation not only will reduce the tax take and therefore be a measure of the success of Government policy—we need measures relating to public policy—but will have an impact on reducing consumption, which is just as important. He also pointed out that it is important that the impact is comprehensively evaluated, so that it can be refined and adjusted continually to keep getting public health gains.

Let us move on to schools and sport, where I have a few things to say to the Minister. Doubling the PE and sport premium fund to £320 million a year from 2017 is good news and shows a commitment from the Government that this is important. The premium has shown that it can enhance the quality of PE teaching and increase pupil engagement and participation in sport. Continued investment in sport was also highlighted by school leaders as the most important factor in maintaining quality PE provision in a Youth Sport Trust survey published last year.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) on what she said about teachers. This is not just about civil society. Tens of thousands of selfless teachers give up their time after work to run such clubs—during a decade of primary school teaching, I ran the football club and the cross-country club—and all the other clubs that are part of what is expected of schools but are not in the job description. It is right that we praise the teachers up and down the land who do that.

However, as essential as all these things are, a legacy for school sport is about looking beyond primary-age provision and competitive sport initiatives. Everyone has talked about the daily mile, outdoor recreation, walking to school and our physical environment. Increasing the number of pupils of all ages who are participating in school sport—competitive or not—across all phases of education and the amount of time that they spend doing so should be fundamental to a comprehensive strategy, yet the Government have gone backwards on the issue.

Take, for example, what my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) said about the previous coalition Government’s decision to remove £162 million of funding from school sport partnerships. Those partnerships were terrific—there is no doubt about it. The Government are embarking on breaking up our estate by privatising and nationalising it, and there are a spread of school campuses across the country. What the partnerships did was link combinations of local primaries to their secondary school, which usually had the expertise, resource and field capacity to do really joined-up work and get a system going where those clusters could really begin to make a difference.

When the money went, there was a negative impact, as opportunities for young people to participate in more school sport decreased, as the Education Committee noted. As I said to the hon. Member for Colchester, that decision has created a postcode lottery relating to good provision, because we had a national system but we now have local systems in which local schools are trying to do their best to keep up good practice. It has been particularly evident in secondary schools that do not have ring-fenced budgets for sport.

We also know that, unsurprisingly, since this Government removed in 2010 the requirement for pupils to have at least two hours of sport a week, the number of pupils taking part in sport has collapsed. From personal experience, there is an over-expectation of sport in schools. A teacher who is timetabling two hours, as I used to have to do, must think about their relevance as a classroom teacher. Sometimes we in this place do not think about that. It can take 10 minutes to get the children changed and five minutes to get them to the playground or field—if the school is lucky enough to have one—or to the hall. The curriculum focuses mainly not on physical activity but on skills, and then the children need to be warmed down, get changed and go back. I saw teachers selflessly giving up their play times and breaks so that the children could get the best hour possible.

The situation will be exacerbated by school budgets, which will be cut by £3 billion between now and 2020—an 8% cut in real terms. Schools are not the panacea for the policy. Despite the fairer funding formula, they will be reducing staff in all areas of our country in the months and years to come. I have had the indication that I should leave it there.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Kane Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

It is important that all children leave our education system with something to show for their names, particularly in maths and English—ideally at a level congruent with their potential. We brought in the GCSE resit policy, because we think that students who achieved a D grade and were therefore pretty close to the better standard should have another go at doing so. However, the functional skills qualifications have been well received by employers and we want to look at how they can also play a role in enabling all our young people to show their accomplishments.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

Grammar schools represent the Prime Minister’s flagship policy for improving outcomes, but according to today’s edition of The Independent, officials in the Department have said that there is no chance of a new selective school before 2020. Will the Secretary of State tell us how many selective schools will be built during the current Parliament?

--- Later in debate ---

[Justine Greening]

At key stage 4, the attainment gap between more disadvantaged young people and those who start off from better backgrounds has been getting lower. That is, in part, because we are putting resources into the system, but we are also steadily improving the system itself. The hon. Gentleman talks about further education: one of our key aims across this Parliament is to make sure that technical education delivers the same gold-standard education as academic education delivers for those following academic routes.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

In answer to my earlier question, the Secretary of State failed to commit to building a new selective school during this Parliament. Today the Education Policy Institute has released evidence showing that the 11-plus test cannot be tutor-proofed. Does she agree that selection at 11 will favour families that can afford it and do nothing to improve the educational outcomes of the most disadvantaged pupils?

[Justine Greening]

I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. As usual, we have had criticism from the Opposition, but no alternative policies whatever—and, indeed, a continued failure to set out whether they would close existing grammars. It would be fantastic to get clarity at some stage on Labour party policy. We want more good school places for children, particularly disadvantaged children. We know that disadvantaged children on free school meals who get into grammars see their attainment gap close by the time they leave.

Draft Coasting Schools (England) Regulations 2016

Mike Kane Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2016 General Committees

[Mr Gibb]

Yes, but the hon. Gentleman is referring to the position as it was. The metrics on which schools were being held to account for many years was the proportion of their pupils who achieved five or more good GCSEs. We have changed that. From 2016, the judgment will be based on progress 8—the level of progress made by the school. That will deal with all the issues to which the hon. Gentleman refers. We want to spread the measure over three years to ensure that one particular year does not lead to a school falling into the definition. What we cannot do when providing a legal definition of coasting is go back and have different metrics from those that the schools expected at that time. That is why we have combined an attainment figure and a progress measure for the years 2014 and 2015. It is complex, but we believe that is the fairest way to hold schools to account.

We held a public consultation on our proposed coasting definition in autumn 2015, which sought views on the definition and on an illustrative version of the regulations. A range of views were expressed in the responses. Although there was some disagreement with the premise of identifying coasting schools, as the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee recognised, there was wide support, including among those who were otherwise opposed to a definition, for the use of a progress measure as the basis of a coasting definition. Many respondents felt that that was the fairest and most effective way of identifying those schools that are failing to ensure that pupils reach their full potential.

I am aware that the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee was concerned that the regulations would have a greater impact on schools than suggested in the accompanying explanatory memorandum. I reassure the Committee that that is not the case. Since the scrutiny Committee reported, we have published a statistical note with our provisional estimates of the number of schools that will meet the definition when revised 2016 results are published. That shows that about 800 schools—just under 5% of schools with eligible results—are likely to fall within the definition based on their provisional data. Some of those schools may also be below the floor standard or be judged inadequate by Ofsted. They would already be working with regional schools commissioners to improve their performance. For those schools, being identified as coasting will not necessarily lead to any additional action.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

The Minister identifies 800 schools falling within the category. Will he tell us how many of them are locally maintained schools? I have a figure of about 400, but he can come back to me later if needs be.

[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Gentleman asks a perfectly reasonable question and I will come back to him during the debate to give him those precise figures if they are available.

As I was saying, falling within the definition will be the start of a conversation. Regional school commissioners will talk to all the schools identified, whether they are academies or maintained schools—I respect the hon. Gentleman’s point—to understand the wider context and decide whether additional support would help them to improve. The RSC may decide that a school is supporting pupils well or has a sufficient plan and the capacity to improve itself, and that therefore no further support is required. Alternatively, the RSC, working with the school, may consider that additional support is needed from, for example, a national leader of education or a high-performing local school. The RSC will then work with the school to help it to put that support in place.

In some cases, the regional schools commissioner, following discussions with the school, may think that a more formal approach is required. For maintained schools, the RSC may use the Secretary of State’s power to require the school to accept support or to change the membership of its governing body. For academies, the RSC may issue the academy trust with a warning notice setting out the improvement action required.

We expect that the regional schools commissioners will use the Secretary of State’s power to direct a coasting maintained school to become an academy, or to move a coasting academy to a new trust, in only a small minority of cases, which addresses head-on the point made by the hon. Member for Hyndburn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Kane]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. This is the final stage of the legislative journey to implement the Government’s commitment to identifying coasting schools, but the idea of coasting schools came about under the last Labour Government, who saw them as schools at risk of failure. Labour identified the issue quite a few years ago, so it has been quite a journey to get to this point.

As the Minister has pointed out, the draft regulations give extended powers to the regional schools commissioners to intervene, yet today we learn that one of the Government’s key performance indicators for the commissioners is not standards, but how many schools they get converted into academies. Just this afternoon, Schools Week says:

“The government continued judging regional schools commissioners (RSCs) on how many schools they converted into academies…despite fears about a conflict of interest”.

That prompts the question whether the RSCs are independent arbiters in terms of judging whether our schools are failing, successful or coasting.

Although RSCs were introduced as a pragmatic response, we need to ensure that there is proper oversight. I think that there is a capacity issue. The Select Committee on Education says that RSCs are part of a

“complicated system of…accountability and inspection”.

That prompts the question whether they are fit for purpose. The Education Committee says that a

“fundamental reassessment of accountability and oversight for all schools will be required in the future to provide coherence”

and talks about ensuring

“that RSCs have the capacity to cope with planned expansion of their role.”

The Minister has already said that what we are discussing could affect 800 schools. We know from previous debates that the Department for Education is groaning under the weight of the MAT—multi-academy trust—initiative, whereby more schools are leaving local authority control and being directly controlled from Whitehall. That situation will be exacerbated very quickly, with 800 schools coming online.

The Select Committee says that the role of RSCs “remains unclear”, that they do not have effective relationships and that there is a “lack of transparency” and an issue about decision making. It says that without attention to those issues, they will come across as “undemocratic and opaque”.

One measure of the opacity is the report by Martin George in The Times Educational Supplement that none of the regional headteacher boards, which meet monthly to decide whether a school is coasting or doing well,

“have published minutes since June”.

So schools do not know; they are not getting the information. The Select Committee Chair, the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael), told The Times Educational Supplement:

“There’s a paucity of useful information available online about the work of headteacher boards…The Department for Education…and RSCs need to up their game and ensure up-to-date information is published to ensure there is transparency and accountability.”

The ultimate tool in the regulations is that which forces schools to academise, but the Government need to think again about whether blanket academisation is the only vehicle to support the raising of standards. There is a mountain of evidence that academisation is no silver bullet, so let us look at the evidence. The Department’s own statistical working paper says that at key stage 4, more than half—54%—of MATs are performing significantly below average for adding value, and a further 13% are estimated to be performing slightly below average.

[Michael Gove (Surrey Heath) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mike Kane]

I would be honoured to give way to the former Secretary of State.

[Michael Gove]

Will the hon. Gentleman enlighten the Committee by reminding us how many more children are in schools that are good or outstanding now, in comparison with 2010?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Kane]

I remind the right hon. Gentleman of what Tim Brighouse said about the right hon. Gentleman’s stewardship of the Department for Education, namely that

“there has to be coherence between what you say and what you do”.

There has been a decline in standards in our school system under this Government; there is no doubt about that. Currently, two thirds of multi-academy trust pupils are making less progress at key stage 4 than pupils nationally. If we look at other measures in the report, we will see that three in five schools—nearly 60%—are performing below average for improvement in the value added at key stage 4. That means three in five MATs are improving pupil progress at key stage 4 more slowly than schools with a similar starting point.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

I want to share with the hon. Gentleman my experience of being a governor of two schools in my constituency as they went through both the academisation and the MAT process. Perhaps rather than reading out what frankly sound like incorrect statistics, he should go and talk to schools. The turnaround in those schools and, indeed, the schools they have sponsored as part of the MAT initiative is astonishing, and it has been done at a time when we all could accept that the exam regime is getting tougher, not easier. I think he is factually incorrect.

[Mike Kane]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s intervention, but with 20 years of governance experience, 10 years as a practising teacher and eight years on a local education authority, I am not going to take any lectures about our commitment to education.

At key stage 2, half of MATs are performing below average for adding value, and more than a third are below average for improvement in adding value. Those statistics need to be out there. The main finding is that on all value added measures, more MATs are performing at the extremes of significantly above or significantly below average than are performing close to the average. That is true for both key stage 2 and key stage 4. Performance levels vary widely among MATs.

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

May I draw the shadow Minister’s attention to the answer to the question raised by the former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath? Some 1.4 million more children are in good or outstanding schools now than before. Does the shadow Minister’s analysis of multi-academy trusts and free schools account for a school’s performance before it was academised? In my constituency—I suspect that this situation is similar to that in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes—the schools that were taken over and academised were failing schools that are now succeeding.

[The Chair]

I will decide whether or not it is a speech.

[Mike Kane]

What we have seen is an estate that has disintegrated and been nationalised and privatised in equal measure. As I have said, we have seen standards going down, which I will come back to in a moment.

In its executive summary, the Department mentions historically underperforming schools. The fact is that three quarters of schools in its analysis are sponsored academies, but the report finds a near to zero correlation between performance and either academy type or length of time open. That is true for key stage 2, key stage 4, value added and all improvement measures.

What data are being used to define “coasting”? Will they include 2016 primary school data, which are, in everybody’s opinion, extraordinarily dodgy? That comes from the national schools commissioner, Sir David Carter, who said that those would not be used. So did Ofsted, but we are already hearing of schools having to use those data to define themselves as coasting. A primary school is coasting if it meets the 2016 part of the definition—in other words, if fewer than 85% of children achieve the expected standard at the end of primary and if the average progress made by pupils is minus 2.5 in English reading, minus 2.5 in mathematics or minus 3.5 in English writing.

However, in 2016, primary assessment reforms were undermined by errors and delays. Two papers—key stage 1 and key stage 2 spelling, punctuation and grammar tests—were leaked, which led to the key stage 1 paper being made optional and the Minister having to make a statement to the House about the leak of the key stage 2 paper. Guidance on teacher assessment for writing was not only issued unacceptably late; it was also subject to repeated correction, clarification and updates.

Pupils taking the 2016 assessments were doing so after two years of studying the new national curriculum, despite four years’ worth of curriculum content being assessed. One can only imagine the immense workload and pressure that trying to cover so much in so little time generated for teachers and pupils. I visited primary school after primary school in Wythenshawe and Sale East to see the pressure that had been placed on those teachers because of the confusion and chaos that Government policies implemented at the heart of the curriculum and its assessment.

Ofsted warned its inspectors to use extreme caution when basing judgments on the 2016 data, especially the writing data. Only 53% of pupils met the expected standard, which is significantly below the attainment element of 85%. The brand new tests this year were rushed, chaotic and confusing, and there are major concerns with the assessment of writing and reading tests. We know from schools in our constituency that the pressure on heads has been appalling. How does all of that sit with the Secretary of State’s commitment, on 19 October? She said:

“I want to be clear that no decisions on intervention will be made on the basis of the 2016 data alone.”—[Official Report, 19 October 2016; Vol. 615, c. 36WS.]

I have some questions for the Minister. I said earlier that 800 schools appear to be at risk of being declared as coasting. My data show that on 15 December nearly 400 local authority-maintained schools will be publicly labelled as coasting. Will the Minister confirm or deny that? Have the regional schools commissioners notified all of those schools, Ofsted and the local authorities involved? If the regional schools commissioners decide that the local authority should be involved, how will that be funded after the education services grant finishes in September 2017? If the regional schools commissioners decide that intervention is required, are they sufficiently equipped and funded to carry out or commission the school improvement role, and are there sufficient multi-academy trusts waiting to take over, particularly for those small primary schools? I know that that is a huge concern, particularly for rural schools in the constituencies of many Conservative Members.

I have asked the Minister a series of questions, and we are extraordinarily concerned about what happened with the 2016 assessments and how that will impact on the regulations. We also have concerns about the lack of devolved regional schools commissioners, who are accountable only to the Secretary of State and whose independence is being tainted by the fact that one of their key performance indicators is how many academies they create on their watch.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East, the shadow Minister, asked about the RSCs’ KPIs. We are reviewing the RSCs’ KPIs to ensure that they do continue to reflect the RSCs’ new role and remit appropriately. The revised set of year 2 KPIs will be published in the academy’s annual report later this year. The year 3 KPIs are being developed as we speak.

[Mike Kane]

Is the Minister therefore saying that it is inappropriate that a regional schools commissioner should have a KPI that is judged on how many schools they make into academies in an academic year?

[Mr Gibb]

No, what I am saying is that the KPIs are evolving in the same way as the role of the regional schools commissioner is evolving. As that role evolves, and as new responsibilities are given to the regional schools commissioner, so the KPIs have to be revised and amended to reflect those new responsibilities.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the split between academies and maintained schools. As far as primary schools are concerned, he is right. On the basis of the provisional data for 2016 and the previous two years, about 373 local authority primary schools will fall within the definition, along with 106 academies. In terms of secondary schools, 151 local authority maintained schools and 176 academy schools fall within the definition.

[Mr Gibb]

No, there is no quota. Coasting is not about academisation, as I have tried to say a number of times. The measure is about ensuring that schools get the support they need to improve, so that the pupils at those schools get the education they deserve in order to fulfil their potential. That is what this is about in toto. I hope the hon. Gentleman accepts that.

The split between academies and maintained schools at secondary level reflects the fact that more than 60% of all secondary schools are now academies. The sponsored academies have a history of poor performance, which is why they became sponsored academies. I am not surprised by the split of the numbers of academies and the numbers of maintained local authority schools at key stage 4 at secondary level that would fall within the definition.

The hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East asked whether we will name those schools that fall under the definition. Coasting is not about naming and shaming, and we will not publish a list of schools that fall under the definition. It is about support. The first coasting schools will be identified after the final 2016 results are published. We will not make that contact on the basis of the provisional results because they change.

[Mike Kane]

Will parents know whether their child is in a coasting school or not?

[Mr Gibb]

I will come back to that point in a moment. All of the definition of a coasting school is based on published data. If parents want to go through the definition, they will be able to identify that. In addition, once a school has been notified that it falls within the coasting definition, it will inform parents of that fact.

The hon. Gentleman asked whether the regional schools commissioners have the capacity to take on that role with coasting schools. Alongside this restructuring, the number of staff delivering the regional schools commissioner remit has grown to reflect the growing number of academies and free schools, and the expanded scope of the regional schools commissioner remit, including responsibilities for coasting schools. Because of those new responsibilities, there are approximately 350 full-time equivalent staff members across the eight regional schools commissioner-led regional teams. As their responsibilities change, there will be changes to staff numbers.

The hon. Gentleman asked whether the regional schools commissioners have the expertise to decide what action to take in a coasting school. Regional schools commissioners have a wealth of experience to draw on when making decisions. They have been appointed by the Secretary of State for their extensive knowledge of the education sector in their regions. They are supported by headteacher boards made up of local outstanding headteachers, chief executives of multi-academy trusts and local leaders.

The hon. Gentleman raised the same question that Opposition Members raised about the academies programme. Sponsored academies are improving faster than their predecessor schools, but my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath, the former Secretary of State, asked the key question in the debate: how many more children are in schools judged good and outstanding today compared with when Labour left office in 2010? He asked the hon. Gentleman that question and answer was there none. We were helpfully aided by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South, who provided the answer when he said that 1.4 million more pupils are in schools graded good or outstanding today than in 2010. I have an announcement to make, and I hope the Committee is paying attention. There are now 1.8 million more pupils in schools graded good or outstanding today than in 2010, and nearly 90% of schools are judged by Ofsted to be good or outstanding.

The hon. Gentleman asked whether there were enough sponsors. Over the past five years, we have delivered 1,726 sponsored academies and have 957 approved academy sponsors. Over the next five years, as the number of sponsored academies continues to grow, regional schools commissioners will continue to work with existing sponsors to help them expand. In addition to growing existing sponsors, there is a pool of high-performing schools that we can draw on. To reiterate the point that I have made several times during the debate, the coasting measure focuses on support. We expect regional schools commissioners to pursue an academy solution only in a small minority of cases.

The hon. Gentleman raised the issue of funding and the education services grant. In 2016-17, the Department has provided more than £50 million to fund accredited system leaders. As of 1 November, there are more than 750 teaching schools, 1,150 national leaders of education and 500 national leaders of governance, present in every region in England. New designation criteria for NLEs and teaching schools will increase that further still. We are also considering what new funding might be made available to schools to support improvement, including for coasting schools. We expect to make an announcement on that shortly.

[Mike Kane]

This might be an opportunity for the Minister. The fair funding formula was delayed for months and months. When will the consultation be announced?

[The Chair]

In the context of this debate, Minister.