Infant Class Sizes

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt]

My hon. Friend is exactly right; it is a disgrace. I say to his constituents and to parents in his constituency, as I do across the country, that they should vote Labour to make sure that spending is prioritised in areas where it is needed.

We know from the National Audit Office that two thirds of all the places created by the free school programme have been created outside of areas classified as having high or severe primary school need. We also know from the Public Accounts Committee that a quarter of free schools opened by September 2012 had 20% fewer pupils than planned. Most recently of all, the Institute of Education has found that free schools do not even fulfil their supposed purpose of spreading opportunity to the poorest pupils, particularly when it comes to primary schools.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

We are talking about NAO reports and I sit on the Public Accounts Committee and hope to contribute to this debate some of the points that we have raised. Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that the NAO found that the number of primary places fell by almost 207,000—5%—between 2003-04 and 2009-10? I believe that was a time when there was a Labour Government.

[Tristram Hunt]

I could repeat the facts about the Labour party’s building programme in office. Between 1997 and 2007, Labour built more than 1,100 new schools, the vast majority being primary schools. I am very happy to stand by our record in office of raising standards and providing places.

--- Later in debate ---

[Toby Perkins]

The hon. Gentleman talks about a divisive education system, but I have never seen a more divided education system than the one that has been set up by this Government. We have seen an incredibly divided, fragmented system. We have seen schools that do not want to be academies forced into it because they cannot afford to be anything else but academies. The Opposition made it absolutely clear that we support parents getting involved in their schools, but the ideological approach of setting up free schools in a place that already has adequate supply and at the same time seeing infant class sizes at the disgraceful level that has been discussed in this debate is an utterly divisive way to approach education policy.

National Audit Office reports demonstrate that fully two thirds of all of new places created by the free schools programme have been created outside the areas with the most need. Extraordinarily, that has left some local authorities in a position where they want to build a new school to manage a primary places crisis, only to be told that the Department for Education will allow a new school to be built only if it is a free school and only to find out that nobody wants to build a free school in that area. That approach is utterly against the best interests of our children.

Free schools were supposed to fill gaps in the market, but they are in fact doing the opposite and are stacked up in places where there is already sufficient demand. We have seen the consequence of that approach in my constituency. Across Derbyshire, the number of infant school pupils who are in classes with more than 30 children has increased by 117% since this Government came to office. A freedom of information request to the Department for Education exposed the full scale of the class-size growth scandal. How pitiful the Prime Minister’s promise to cut class sizes now looks.

In Chesterfield, schools are grappling with class sizes that were absolutely unimaginable under a Labour Government. Hollingwood primary school has one class of 36; Hasland Hall infant school a class of 39; Abercrombie primary school a class of 44; and Walton Holymoorside, just over the border in North East Derbyshire—it is the school to which my own children went—a class of 36. For anyone who remembers the huge class sizes that we had under the last Tory Government—the one that actually won a general election—those figures will come as no surprise.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

The hon. Gentleman is a very nice bloke. I am sure he is an excellent MP for his area and a great parent, but does he think that his children’s education was bad because they were in slightly larger classes? If so, what did he do about it?

[Toby Perkins]

That is a very interesting way of putting it. The education provided by my children’s school was very good. The hon. Gentleman seems to be making the case that class sizes do not have a lot to do with the quality of education. If that is the case, then he will obviously be saying to the voters in Daventry, “Vote Conservative to get higher class sizes.” Evidence suggests that class sizes are an important factor. Anecdotal evidence from teachers points to the fact that they find it a lot more difficult to perform their role in huge classes. Obviously, he is making an alternative case, and he will have to take that to his electorate and see what they think about it.

As I was saying a moment ago, anyone who remembers the huge class sizes under the last Tory Government will not be surprised by these facts. The speech by the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) complaining about the private finance initiative took my breath away. The reality is that in 1997, the Labour Government inherited a state education system that had been chronically underfunded. The quality of the school estate was disgraceful. Over 10 years, the Labour Government had to pay off the deficit that had been left behind by the previous Conservative Government. At the same time that we were radically trying to improve our health service and education system, we were also reducing the deficit that had been left. It is absolutely outrageous for the Tories then to say, “It’s a shame you didn’t pay for it all out of Government funds. You tried to bring in the private sector to support some of the building of the schools and you shouldn’t have done that.”

Tory Governments always end the same way—divisions over Europe leading to paralysis, waiting times in the NHS reaching critical levels, hollowed out local government unable to serve the needs of their local communities, and six-year-old children being educated in classes of 44. We can change the faces but they are all still Tories.

The choice for the British public at the next general election is clear. They can back the ConDems, get an ideological commitment to expensive free schools, a refusal to retain laws that keep class sizes down, weakened local authorities, demoralised teachers, a fragmented system that betrays our children and the threat of ever more children crammed into large class sizes. Alternatively, they can choose a Labour future where we transform standards with a qualified teacher in every classroom, a commitment to every child, new schools where they are needed most and real action on class sizes. Why wait until next May to give parents that choice? No one wanted this Government, not even most of those who are in it. Our children deserve better, so let us have a general election.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

I am quite pleased that the Secretary of State is doing her job in articulating our excellent policies on education to the public of the United Kingdom. I hope that the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) informed the Secretary of State of his comments, as my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) informed the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) about raising her non-appearance previously.

I apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker, because I inadvertently did not catch your eye in the right order. I was not looking at you and did not bounce up at the appropriate time.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Do not worry about it—obviously your chat was more important than catching my eye.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I can’t answer that, can I?

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton). There have been a number of interesting contributions by Opposition Members, as well as a reasonable amount of confusion. I left midway through the speech by the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander). I was agreeing with a lot of what she said until she got to the bit where she decided that free schools were a poisonous idea in the British education system. After this debate, and given what the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), said, I would be fascinated to know what exactly the Opposition’s policy is on free schools.

My constituency is fairly well-off and has a very low unemployment rate—the long-term economic plan is working very nicely in Daventry, and I think most of my constituents want to make sure that it is a Conservative Government who keep that going after the general election —but it does have areas of rural deprivation and there are other needs. A group of parents got together because they want to form a free school for children of all ages with special educational needs. There is a need for such a school in my constituency and, indeed, the general area of my part of west Northamptonshire. I wonder whether the Opposition’s policy is to tell those parents and children who need special provision, “No; because you happen to live in what we perceive to be one of the better parts of the country, you can’t have that educational need.” That is a very dicey approach to policy.

It is a shame we have not taken a step back during this debate and considered educational needs across the country, because they are so varied in every location. I know that my constituency is remarkably different from many others.

I have the privilege of sitting on the Public Accounts Committee and I will make a few points with regard to that in a moment when I talk about class sizes. The Chairman of the Committee is a feisty Member of Parliament and represents Dagenham and Redbridge—[Interruption.] Sorry, she is Barking, isn’t she?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I don’t think she is.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

God, I hope Hansard does not pick that comment up.

The right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) is an excellent Committee Chairman: she is feisty and interrogates her witnesses very well. Occasionally we go on away-days related to the subjects we are considering. We looked at school places in 2013 and visited the right hon. Lady’s constituency to see the pressures that migration and immigration have brought to our country. We visited the Gascoigne primary school on the Gascoigne estate. I can honestly say that I was both shocked at the size of this second biggest primary school in the whole country and amazed by the quality of teaching being delivered by the teachers. Even though numerous languages were spoken at the school—I believe there were 70 of them at that particular time, but I might be wrong—and that one class had had a turnover of nearly 80% during the previous school year, a fantastic education was still happening. Although class sizes are very important—I guess this is the point I was trying to make to the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins)—so is quality teaching, and I saw some excellent examples of it on that particular day.

The pressures faced by that particular school and catchment area in Barking are so different from those in my constituency that I do not think it is possible honestly to say that a one-size-fits-all education policy will work for the two areas. More flexibility and more different types of schools—the more choice we give people—means we can provide a better education for the kids who go to school in Barking and in Daventry. Having exactly the same system is not the best thing.

School places is a very political subject. Members of the Public Accounts Committee get to read the odd National Audit Office report, which are excellent and provide us with lots of statistics, one of which I mentioned when I intervened on the shadow Secretary of State. It is true that the previous Government cut 200,000 primary school places in the middle of a baby boom, at a time when immigration and migration were soaring. The stat was from the report “Capital funding for new school places”, dated March 2013. The exact statistic was that

“the number of primary places fell by almost 207,000 (5 per cent) between 2003/04 and 2009/10.”

We are chucking statistics around, as we can in this debate—it is really easy to do in education—but they sometimes do not tell the whole story.

With a growing population, there will always be pressure on school places. The hon. Member for Leeds North East mentioned the baby boom that we have just had. To deal with that will require intense planning and investment in our education system in a very short period, and it would test any Government to match school places with population in those circumstances. To be quite honest, if we look behind the scenes at where this Government have already delivered some school places, we can see that although they could do better—every Government could do better—it is not doing as badly as he made out.

I am pleased that this Government are giving councils £5 billion to spend on new school places during this Parliament, which is double the amount allocated by the previous Government over a similar period. Some 260,000 new school places have been created under this Government. The majority, although not all, of them are where there is a shortage of places now. The population is growing in Daventry, as it is in urban centres: not all such places will be created in the places of highest need, because there is an equal need across the whole country.

I am very lucky to have a university technical college in my constituency. It gives a different type of education to secondary pupils, and it is doing remarkably well. It is in addition to the provision that already exists, but it is needed. We can see from the increase in the birth rate now that we will need such secondary places in the years to come. That sensible investment in education infrastructure is much needed by my constituents, but I understand that other Members will want to ensure that equal provision is made for theirs.

I do like free schools, because they add something to the mix. When the Opposition have a sensible debate on free schools, I hope in future that they will not just cast their eye over them and think, “It’s a Conservative idea, therefore it’s a bad one.” If we look at where the idea was spawned and where communities have been helped in America and Sweden, we can see that the schools—they are not what we would call free schools but the set-up is similar—have delivered an amazing level of education to pupils in areas of the greatest need. Free schools could be a part, if just a part, of the solution to some of the issues raised by Opposition Members.

Seven out of 10 free school places in this country have been created in areas of most need.

[Tristram Hunt]

Another dodgy stat.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

It is not a dodgy stat, actually. As 78% of statistics are made up on the spot, some of them will be vaguely rogue, but that one is true.

The Government are spending £18 billion on school buildings during this Parliament, which is more than double the amount that Labour spent in its first two Parliaments. A lot of good stuff is going on in our education system.

I want to return briefly to the Public Accounts Committee’s report on “Capital funding for new school places” from back in March 2013. If we took a tiny part of the politics out of this issue and looked just at our headline findings, we would see, first, that there was a reasonable level of agreement between both sides of the House, and secondly, an understanding that we needed a bespoke solution for pretty much every part of the country, because educational needs are very different in every part of the country. One of our conclusions was:

“The Department was slow to respond to the rising demand for school places.”

That was a fair criticism. However, we understood the reasons. We took evidence from the permanent secretary. As the hon. Member for Leeds North East said, if one looks at how the birth rate accelerated in 2011-12, one can see that it is very difficult to predict. I was quite impressed by the structure and processes that the Department has in the background. It grabs the statistics from the Office for National Statistics and then looks at birth rates and migration trails to work out where the resources would be best placed in the education system. I did not even know that that happened before we took that evidence.

The Department has improved the way in which it targets money to areas of need, but there are still gaps in the understanding of the full costs of delivering new places. The Department was getting there two years ago. If one looks at the Treasury minutes and the outcomes of what we found, the Department has improved even further. There is therefore good news as well as bad.

It would be nice to hear Opposition Front Benchers say that they understand that there are different needs in different parts of the country and that a one-size-fits-all education policy with the same provision all over the place simply will not work to the benefit of all our children.