Oral Answers to Questions
Dan Carden Excerpts(3 months ago)
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Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Education (Gillian Keegan)
There is nothing more important than ensuring that everyone in our country, regardless of need, gets the very best education possible. That is why our special educational needs and alternative provision improvement plan will ensure that all children get the support they need to reach their potential. We have opened 108 special free schools, including 15 since September, and launched a £70 million change programme to test and refine our systemic reforms, benefiting every region in England. Earlier this month I announced an extension to our short breaks programme. We have a plan and we are delivering on it.
Gillian Keegan
Our plan to introduce national consistency and standards will be published in 2025. We will deliver it through local partnerships and inclusion, digitise records, and make it much more transparent so that parents can see what is happening. In terms of mainstream support, we will improve early language support, we are working with integrated care boards to improve support for neurodiversity in schools, and 100,000 teachers have received autism training. There is additional special educational needs co-ordinator training as well as vital early language support.
Dan Carden
My office operates a regular advice surgery for parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities, in conjunction with the University of Liverpool law clinic, to which I pay tribute. There are simply not enough places in mainstream schools or special schools. Children with SEND from the most deprived areas are less likely to be identified compared with similar children from more affluent areas. What are the Government doing to ensure that children in constituencies such as mine are identified early and can get the help they require?
Gillian Keegan
The hon. Gentleman makes a vital point. Early identification is absolutely key in providing support and ensuring that it impacts the child as early as possible. I am very happy to understand more about places. Local authorities have made lots of bids, and that is why many more special educational needs schools have been, or are being, built—I announced 15 recently. Although I do not know whether his local area bid into them, we have many schemes to ensure that local authorities have financing to improve the number of places in mainstream schools and special educational needs schools.
Safety of School Buildings
Dan Carden Excerpts(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
I fear I will upset the Chair of the Liaison Committee, the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), because I will use my speech to blame the Government. The Secretary of State must be the only scouser I have ever met who thinks Liverpool is left better after the last 13 years of Conservative government. It has been evident to my constituents for many years that our public services are crumbling under the Tory Government. Never has that phrase has rarely been so literal as it has become in the last few days.
Just days before schools were set to reopen after the summer holidays, our education system was thrown into chaos by the crisis of unsafe concrete in our public buildings. More than 100 schools have already been forced to close due to the risk of collapse. The Prime Minister himself suggested that more than 1,000 could be affected. This scandal goes to the heart of the incompetence and short termism that has characterised the last 13 years.
The emerging timeline of events is truly staggering: upon taking office in 2010, the Tory-Liberal Democrat Government scrapped Labour’s school rebuilding programme, which the then Education Secretary called a waste of money. Department for Education officials said that 300 to 400 schools needed to be rebuilt every single year because of degrading concrete, but the Government said they would only pay for 100. In 2018, the Department was informed of the sudden collapse of a roof on a school in Kent. Since summer 2021, its own risk register recognised a critical and very likely risk that building collapse could cause death or injury. Officials in the Department again asked for funding for school rebuilds to be doubled. Instead, the then Chancellor, now Prime Minister, recklessly cut school funding in half. Now our schools, the bedrock of our society, are literally potentially collapsing around us and the Tory Government have the audacity to expect gratitude.
Today, Labour will force a binding vote to reveal what the Prime Minister knew about the risks posed by reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete before slashing the school rebuilding programme. Conservative MPs have a choice: stand with those of us on the Labour Benches and let parents know the truth, or stand with the Government and cover up what was known and the scale of the crisis.
The crumbling concrete in schools, hospitals and courts is a fitting metaphor for Tory rule and the years of neglect of public services across the country. After 13 years of a Conservative-led Government, Britain is falling apart. Our NHS is on the verge of collapse, our railways are in chaos, raw sewage is being pumped into our rivers, and housing is unaffordable and insecure. My constituents say, election after election, that enough is enough. I hope the rest of the country will follow suit shortly. We need nothing short of a national renewal, and Labour stands ready to take office and begin the difficult task of rebuilding Britain for the better.
Oral Answers to Questions
Dan Carden Excerpts(2 years, 1 month ago)
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Michelle Donelan
Once again, this shows the Opposition’s obsession with targets and numbers. We want an education system that delivers for the individual, whether that means going into further education, an apprenticeship or university. We want to ensure that every young person knows that whichever option they pick, it is a high-quality option.
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Will Quince)
We have been conducting a thorough review of the special educational needs and disabilities system, including looking at the specialist support for children and young people to help them to fulfil their potential. By the end of this month we will be publishing our findings and consulting on proposals to strengthen that system.
Dan Carden
In conjunction with the University of Liverpool law clinic, I am able to put on a weekly advice surgery for parents with children with special educational needs, and that service itself is over-subscribed. There is a real postcode lottery in provision, and we have seen demand for SEND statements and education, health and care plans soar by 480% over the past five years. Can the Minister say, particularly in terms of the shortage in the workforce and in resources, and the postcode lottery, what is the Government’s plan?
Will Quince
We know that covid-19 has impacted particularly heavily on therapy services and other support services for children and young people with SEND. I know that a number have adjusted their delivery models. We issued new guidance in September, but I am working closely with my counterpart at the Department of Health and Social Care to try to address this issue. I encourage the hon. Gentleman to look at the SEND review, because in my view the postcode lottery and the inconsistency has to end, and with the SEND review it will.
Oral Answers to Questions
Dan Carden Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Nadhim Zahawi
I thank my hon. Friend, who has been a great advocate of early intervention. She is absolutely right. On top of the £1.4 billion programme for troubled families, the Government are looking at reducing parental conflict. We know that many children in need have suffered from domestic abuse. The landmark Bill that we are bringing forward bears witness to our hard work across government to deliver this. However, she is absolutely right to say that early intervention is important and the Government take that very seriously.
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Nadhim Zahawi)
The rates that we provide to childcare providers were based on the review of childcare costs, which was described as “thorough and wide-ranging” by the National Audit Office. We have recently commissioned new research to further understand providers’ care costs.
Dan Carden
Last week, the National Day Nurseries Association found that nurseries faced an annual deficit of £2,000 per child on the 30 hours of childcare policy. That means that nurseries are struggling financially; a skills shortage as workers quit the sector; and fewer nurseries for parents to send their children to, or more nurseries with under-qualified staff. When will the Minister conduct an honest review of the chaos that he has caused across the sector?
Nadhim Zahawi
Thirty hours is a success story. The summer numbers are 340,000 children aged three and four benefiting from 30 hours a week free childcare. For those parents taking advantage of that, that is a £5,000 saving a year. We are conducting a review to look at the economics of the model, as we have done in the past, when we raised the hourly rate from £4.65 to £5. It is a huge success story, and clearly the hon. Gentleman is running scared.
Oral Answers to Questions
Dan Carden Excerpts(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Nadhim Zahawi)
By 2019-20, we will be spending an extra £1 billion annually on higher funding rates to deliver 30 hours of free childcare. The rates are based on our review of childcare costs, which was described as both thorough and wide-ranging by the National Audit Office. We have commissioned new research to understand providers’ current costs.
Nadhim Zahawi
We are spending record amounts on childcare—£6 billion in total. If we look at parents who got their 30 hours of childcare for three and four-year-olds, we see that 377,000 codes have been issued for the summer term. The system is working.
Dan Carden
Evidence to the Treasury Committee shows that the Government’s scheme is making childcare cheaper only for those already using it and failing to bring parents into work. How have Ministers created a system that pushes child carers into poverty and out of business, and prices out the poorest families in most need, like those in north Liverpool?
Nadhim Zahawi
Mr Speaker, you will not be surprised that I disagree with those words. A lone parent has to earn just over £6,500 and a couple just over £13,000 to be eligible for the 30-hours three and four-year-old offer. The Secretary of State spoke about the two-year-old 15 hour disadvantage offer and that same 15 hours for three and four-year-olds as well. The evidence is clear that the money is being targeted at those who are in most need.
Education Funding (South Liverpool)
Dan Carden Excerpts(6 years, 6 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered education funding in south Liverpool.
I am grateful to have obtained this debate about education funding in south Liverpool. I intend to discuss a situation in my part of the Liverpool City Council area and in Halewood, which is in the Garston and Halewood constituency but falls within the Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council area. Some of my Liverpool and Knowsley colleagues will talk a little about the experience of schools in their bits of south Liverpool, and I welcome the fact that they are here to do so.
In February, I began receiving correspondence from headteachers in my constituency about the dire financial situation they face. I sought to get a broader picture by contacting headteachers to see whether the complaints I was receiving were representative of all or most schools, and it soon became clear to me that the budgetary crunch of which those headteachers complained was a widespread concern for headteachers across my constituency. I have been seeking a meeting with Education Ministers to discuss this since the beginning of March, and I am grateful to say that I was finally granted my half-hour meeting with the Minister earlier today—well over seven months later. It took his Department 10 weeks even to reply to my request for a meeting, which I think is rather too long for an MP to have to wait to see a Minister about an urgent problem, although I am glad to see that he has decided to respond to this debate himself. I welcome him to his place.
Following the Conservative election victory in 2015, the then Chancellor decided to cut the schools budget as part of the never-ending policy of austerity and public expenditure cuts, which he was left with as a result of his failure to meet the Lib Dem-Tory coalition Government’s deficit reduction targets, and he duly did so. Despite assurances that core school budgets would be protected, figures showed a planned 8% real-terms reduction in per-pupil spending between 2015 and 2020, and the National Audit Office found that school budgets have been cut by more than £2.7 billion since then. The cost pressures that schools face in addition to those cuts were and are considerable. They include the removal of the education support grant, the introduction of the apprenticeship levy, increases to employer national insurance and pension contributions, the requirement to fund pay awards to staff without additional funds, and the prospect of having to pay for shared services and support services, which local authorities previously provided for free.
Cuts to local authority funding have hit particularly disadvantaged areas such as south Liverpool hard when it comes to shared services and support services for schools, because they have been much larger than those in more affluent parts of the country. Furthermore, the number of pupils who need such services is much higher in areas such as mine. Between 2010 and 2020, Liverpool City Council will have had to face a 68% cut to its available resource, and it still has to find a further £90 million from its already denuded budget over the current spending review period. That is a considerable challenge. Meanwhile, Knowsley’s budget will be slashed by 56% between 2010 and 2020, and it has to find a further £17 million in cuts over the current spending review period. That means that both authorities have been forced either to cut back completely or to charge schools for services and support that used to be provided for free. Unsurprisingly, schools have generally not budgeted for those charges in advance.
On top of those challenges, which were already causing headteachers to worry, there are the Government’s changes to the national funding formula. Although they have the stated aim of making funding fairer—I am sure the Minister will explain how they do that when he gets his chance to speak—they seem to disadvantage the vast majority of schools in my constituency.
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. As she is outlining, this is a funding attack on schools not just in south Liverpool, but across our city and beyond. The education unions have calculated that, after the last revision of the funding formula and the extra money announced before recess, my constituency alone will lose £4 million, or £300 per pupil, by 2020. I hope she will push the Minister for a response to that.
Maria Eagle
I will indeed—and I think my hon. Friend has himself just pushed the Minister for a response. I am sure the Minister will want to make some points in reply and set out his understanding of the impact of the national funding formula, which seems not to advantage schools in our area as much as I would like.
Liverpool City Council told me that, according to its calculations, the Garston and Halewood constituency will lose £390 per pupil—a cut of more than £4.5 million between 2015 and 2020—which is not dissimilar to what my hon. Friend said is happening in his area. That is the equivalent of a cut of 125 teaching jobs. The local authority told me that across Liverpool as a whole the loss is £487 per pupil, or a 9% cut overall, and a cut of almost £28.5 million between 2015 and 2020, equivalent to 778 teaching jobs.
The Minister may well say that the revisions that were made to the national funding formula in July and September, with the finding of savings from his Department and the raiding of various capital budgets for £1.3 billion, will make a difference to that, but many of the schools in my constituency have reported to me that they have or are planning to cut teaching and support staff posts. One headteacher of a local primary school, which the Minister’s letter tells me will see an increase of 0.9%, told me that
“the current staffing levels are unsustainable due to the differentials between school income and school expenditure on staff… The Governors are currently planning a staffing review to identify how we can reduce staffing costs by making teachers and teaching assistants redundant. We need to lose three teachers by 2019 if we are to manage our school budget without going into deficit. This will mean we will not have a qualified teacher in each class, which by law we must have. We are looking ahead at troubled times in schools.”
That is not the only school to have told me it is planning staffing reductions. One school, which has already seen a significant cut in teaching and support staff and a narrowing of the breadth of its curriculum as a result, is now contemplating further reductions to the curriculum, to pastoral staffing and to the length of the school day and the school week.
Some of my schools have been hit particularly hard, according to Liverpool City Council figures. Springwood Heath Primary School in Allerton is a unique school. It is a mainstream primary with enhanced provision places, which integrates children with significant physical and medical needs into its community. The city council projects that it will lose more than £719 per pupil—a 14% cut. Although that may be ameliorated by the changes to the national funding formula, which the Minister will no doubt tell us about later, it is already losing teachers and support staff, and to lose support staff at Springwood Heath is to put at risk the ability of some pupils to continue to attend because they depend on those support staff, who enable them to attend that mainstream school. That would be a particular concern to me. It might be said, “Well, so you lose a few support staff,” but if those staff are ensuring that severely disabled children can attend a mainstream school, that is more than simply losing support staff; it is losing a richness and quality of education that no other school offers. If the Minister comes to Liverpool, which I invite him to do, I hope he visits Springwood Heath Primary School. Then he could tell me whether in his experience there is another school like it. I am not sure that there is.
Nick Gibb
I will not give way because there is a very short amount of time left, but I will come to the hon. Lady’s comments shortly.
It cannot be right that local authorities with similar needs and characteristics receive very different levels of funding from central Government. Across the country, schools teaching children with the same needs get markedly different amounts of money for no good reason. At the heart of the problem is the fact that the data used to allocate funding to local authorities are over a decade out of date, leading to manifest unfairness in how funding is distributed. This year, Nottingham, for example, will receive £555 more per pupil than Halton, despite having equal proportions of pupils eligible for free school meals.
Funding for each area has been determined by simply rolling forward the previous year’s allocation, adjusting only for changes in the total number of pupils in each area and ignoring everything else. The proportion of secondary pupils eligible for free school meals in London, for example, fell from 22.4% in 2007 to 17% in 2017, compared with a decline nationally from 13.1% to 12.9%, but the funding system has paid no attention to that significant shift. That is not a rational, fair or efficient system for distributing money to our schools.
That is why the Government are reforming the existing system with the introduction of a national funding formula for schools and high needs. Informed by the consultation that we undertook, with 26,000 responses, we will introduce a national funding formula from April 2018, ending the current unfair postcode lottery system. For the first time, the funding system will deliver resources on a consistent and transparent basis, right across the country, reflecting local needs.
Last month, we published full details of both the school and high-needs national funding formulae and the impact they will have for every local authority. We have also published notional school-level allocations showing what each school would attract through the formula. It means that everyone can see what the national funding formula will mean for them and understand why. It is notional because we are taking the national funding formula as though it had been fully implemented in this financial year, 2017 to 2018, so that people and schools can see what the effects of that formula would be on their schools with those particular pupils this year. It is a very effective way of describing what will happen under the formula. The actual funding will depend on the actual pupils at that school next year, and we will make announcements nearer the time in the usual way.
To provide stability for schools through the transition to the national funding formula, for the next two years local authorities will continue to set their own local formulae in consultation with local schools and the schools forum. That element of flexibility will allow them to respond to changes as they come through and take account of local issues.
As well as a fairer distribution of funding, the total quantum available is also important. We want schools to have the resources they need to deliver a world-class education for their pupils. We understand that, just like other public services, schools are facing cost pressures. In recognition of those facts, the Secretary of State announced in July an additional £1.3 billion for schools and high needs across 2018-19 and 2019-20, in addition to the funding confirmed at the 2015 spending review.
The additional funding will be distributed across the next two years as we implement the national funding formula. Core funding for schools and high needs will rise from nearly £41 billion this financial year—itself a record high in school funding—to £42.4 billion in 2018-19 and to £43.5 billion in 2019-20. Overall, that means that the total schools budget will increase by over 6% between this year and 2019-20. That will mean that funding per pupil for schools and high needs will now be maintained in real terms for the remaining two years of the spending review.
The additional funding that we have announced means that we can provide a cash increase in respect of every school and every local authority area from April 2018. In the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood’s constituency, once the new formula is implemented in full, there will be an extra £1.3 million for block funding—an increase of 2.4%. Belle Vale Community Primary School will not face a cut in funding; it will have a 3% increase. Enterprise South Liverpool Academy will not face a cut in spending; it will have a 5.2% increase of £179,000. Gateacre School will not face a cut; it will have a 3.5% increase. Halewood Academy will not face a cut; it will have an 8.2% increase. Middlefield Community Primary School will have a 1.2% increase. St Francis Xavier’s College will have a 1% increase and Yew Tree Community Primary School will have a 5% increase in funding. None of the schools that I have not mentioned in the hon. Lady’s constituency will lose money; they will all gain about 1% or more.
The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) said that there will be cuts of £390 per pupil. In fact, in his constituency there will be a £1.1 million increase in funding, equal to 1.6%.
Nick Gibb
I will not give way, because we are very short of time now. As I said, across the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood’s constituency there will be a £3 million increase in funding. The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) talked about cuts to funding in his schools. Croxteth Community Primary School will gain a 0.9% increase; Monksdown Primary, a 0.9% increase; St Edward’s College, a 1% increase; and St John Bosco Arts College—I enjoyed visiting that school—a 0.9% increase.
I can confirm that deprivation, mobility and low prior attainment are very significant factors in the funding formula. That is something that the Secretary of State was determined to have in the formula that we consulted on. Funding will increase by £0.6 million in schools in the constituency of the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman)—some 1.2% according to the national funding formula.
The extra £1.3 billion that we are investing means we will be able to go over and above our manifesto commitment that no school should lose funding as a result of the introduction of the national funding formula. Now, every school will attract at least 0.5% more per pupil in 2018-19 and 1% more in 2019-20. That change will have a particularly positive impact in Garston and Halewood: 23 of the 32 schools will gain through the formula as a result of the decision to raise the funding floor. I trust that the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood will welcome those changes when she has a chance to consider them more reflectively.
Following the strong representations that we received during the consultation, the formula will also provide all secondary schools with minimum per-pupil funding of £4,800 in 2019-20 and all primary schools with £3,500. In 2018-19, as a step towards those minimum funding levels, secondary schools will attract at least £4,600 and primary schools will attract £3,300. That new minimum level will recognise the challenges of the very lowest funded schools, including 14 schools across Liverpool. The changes delivered by the national funding formula will mean both Liverpool and Knowsley will be among the 10 highest-funded local authorities per pupil outside London.
We are particularly focused on supporting children who face the greatest barriers to success. That is why we are also committed to reforming the funding for children and young people with high and special needs. We are finally moving towards a more rational basis for distributing funding for children and young people with high needs, taking into account an up-to-date assessment of the level of need in each area.
The additional investment we are putting in means that every local authority will see a minimum increase in high needs funding of 0.5% in 2018-19 and 1% in 2019-20, but for south Liverpool, a fair allocation of resources means an even more significant increase in funding. Once our formula is implemented in full, Liverpool will see an increase of 17.1%, compared with their planned high needs spending in 2017-18, with Knowsley gaining 4.5%.
Moving towards this full formula allocation, local authorities will receive up to 3% per head gains a year for the next two years. As important as the fair allocation of funding is how that funding is used in practice. We are committed to helping schools improve outcomes for pupils and to promote social mobility by ensuring that they get the best value from all their resources.
In conclusion, I thank the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood and other Members from the Liverpool area for taking part in this important debate. The Government will continue to support England’s schools by providing more funding than ever before, by making sure that that funding is distributed fairly and to where it is needed most and by helping schools to achieve more with that funding. That will help schools to sustain and improve the rapid progress our children and young people are making under this Government.
Introducing fair funding is an historic and necessary reform—one that previous Governments have avoided for too long. Thanks to the commitment of this Government to addressing issues of unfairness in our society, for the first time we have a clear and transparent system that matches funding to children’s needs and the needs of the schools that they attend. It will help all schools to deliver the high-quality education that their pupils deserve and it will ensure that all pupils are able to fulfil their potential.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered education funding in south Liverpool.
Oral Answers to Questions
Dan Carden Excerpts(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)
7. What assessment she has made of the effect of the Government's policy on 30 hours of free childcare on the financial viability of childcare settings.
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
20. What assessment she has made of the effect of the Government's policy on 30 hours of free childcare on the financial viability of childcare settings.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Robert Goodwill)
The provision of 30 hours of free childcare is already working across the country. A recently published independent evaluation of the early roll-out programme shows that more than 80% of providers are willing and able to offer the extended hours. The Department will be investing an additional £1 billion per year by 2019-20 into the free entitlement, including more than £300 million per year to increase the national average funding rates paid to local authorities.
Mr Goodwill
As I have pointed out, we carried out a pilot to show that this could work. We also got a review of childcare costs done that was described as “thorough” and “wide-ranging” by the National Audit Office. We have increased the minimum funding rate to £4.30 per hour, which means that £4.41 is paid for three and four-year-olds in Ipswich and £5.20 for two-year-olds.
Dan Carden
In Liverpool, Walton, 36% of children are growing up in poverty, and unemployment is twice the national average. Did Ministers give any thought to how this policy would only further entrench the development gap between those most disadvantaged children still just getting the 15 hours a week and those with parents in secure employment getting the 30 hours a week?
Mr Goodwill
The most-disadvantaged children get 15 hours at age two, and we have the early-years pupil premium to help with those children as well. We are closing the attainment gap. The hon. Gentleman talks about worklessness. This funding for working parents means more people getting into work and taking the jobs that this successful economy is creating.