Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Gibb and Lord Field of Birkenhead

Monday 25th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

Of course I will write to my hon. Friend as he asks, but I have to say that we are spending record amounts of money on schools, some £42.4 billion this year. There has never been a sum as high spent on schools in our history, and it will rise again next year to £43.5 billion, and we announced an increase in school funding last July to the tune of £1.3 billion. That was the result of successful negotiations with the Treasury.

[Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

21. All Birkenhead schools, like schools throughout the country, suffer real cuts in their budgets. Will the Minister meet me to seek ways by which we automatically enrol all poor children for free school dinners, and, as importantly, the Government’s initiative, the school premium?

[Nick Gibb]

The right hon. Gentleman makes some interesting points and I will take advice on his suggestions, but I must say that we have guaranteed the pupil premium to the end of this Parliament: it is over £1,300 for every pupil eligible for free school meals attending a primary school, and nearly £1,000 for every disadvantaged child attending a secondary school.

Education Funding: Wirral

Debate between Nick Gibb and Lord Field of Birkenhead

Tuesday 31st October 2017 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) on securing the debate and on her excellent speech.

I am delighted to be able to address this issue at a time when the Government have recently announced the outcome of our consultation on the national funding formula—an historic and necessary reform that will, for the first time, distribute funding on the individual needs and characteristics of every school in the country. This Government believe that all children should have an education that unlocks their potential and allows them to go as far as their talents and hard work will take them.

We are making significant progress. More schools than ever before are rated good or outstanding by Ofsted, and 1.8 million more children are in good or outstanding schools today compared with 2010, including 90% of schools in the Wirral. The attainment gap between poorer children and their wealthier peers is closing; it has not closed totally. We have launched 12 opportunity areas to drive improvements in parts of the country that we know need to and can do better.

Those improvements have been made against a backdrop of an unfair and arbitrary funding system. Similar schools across the country get markedly different levels of funding for no good reason and resources are not reaching the schools that need it most. The funding system has acted as a barrier to improvement, when we need it to be a support. That is why we are delivering on our promise to reform the unfair, opaque and outdated school and high needs funding system, and introducing a national funding formula.

[Frank Field]

A prime way in which the Government have tried to direct resources to the poorest pupils, sometimes to schools in the poorest areas, has been through the pupil premium. As I said in my intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle), the data from housing benefit will be lost as universal credit is being rolled out. I ask the Minister to take away the idea, and talk with the Department for Work and Pensions, so that the data that is in universal credit will be made available on housing circumstances to councils, so that they can automatically offer registration for the school premium and free school dinners.

[Nick Gibb]

The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point. All these issues are being considered as we move to universal credit, to ensure that children who need to be funded through the pupil premium continue to be funded.

[Frank Field]

Will the Minister take the issue away and, when he has consulted his colleagues in the other Department, write to me please?

[Nick Gibb]

I am happy to write to the right hon. Gentleman, but these issues are being considered as we speak.

Given the significance of this reform, it was vital that we took into account as many views as possible, and the consultation process generated over 26,000 individual responses and responses from representative organisations, and we considered all of those views. The existing system is out of date. It is based on data and decisions from over a decade ago. Funding for each area has been determined by simply rolling forward the previous years’ allocation, adjusting only for changes in the total number of pupils in each area and ignoring all the other changes.