Department for Education

Ruth George Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I am delighted that the amendments have not been selected, because that would mean money not being able to be spent on our schools and our colleges. That is not the way to conduct the debate over Brexit.

It is a great pleasure to open this debate on the spending of the Department for Education in my capacity as the Chair of the Education Committee. I am pleased to be here with my Committee colleagues, my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) and the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy). The DFE is one of the largest domestic spending Departments, with a wide-ranging portfolio spanning early years, children’s social care, schools, colleges, and much more besides. How the Department spends its money has a huge impact on millions of people across the nation, with consequences that will be felt for generations to come. That is why it is so important that we get education spending right.

I want to focus on the Department’s expenditure on schools and colleges. According to the House of Commons Library, most of the DFE’s spending goes on grants to schools, which in 2019-20 makes up three quarters of day-to-day spending, at about £52 billion. The Library says that this is a cash increase of 4% compared with 2018-19, which I strongly welcome. However, the Department’s planned further education budget this year is about £4.8 billion—a cash decrease of 3% compared with 2018-19. I am sure that all Members of this House have been delighted to see the issue of school and college funding feature so prominently throughout the Conservative leadership contest. I am pleased that my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) says that he is going to increase education spending by £4.6 billion.

My Committee will soon be publishing a report on this area with a view to helping the DFE to make the strongest possible case to the Treasury for the upcoming spending review.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman share my concern—I am sure he will as the Chair of the Select Committee—that school and college funding would not be so prominent on the candidates’ agendas if we were not seeing such a crisis in our schools and colleges?

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[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for letting me speak in the debate, which it has been a great pleasure to listen to. I concur with almost everything that has been said by Members on both sides of the House.

Education is in a state of crisis. In Derbyshire, I live in one of the f40 areas. Our schools have some of the lowest funding, and they are struggling. House of Commons Library research shows that the 50 schools in my constituency have lost more than £2 million over the last five years. They are having to lose teachers—in particular, teaching assistants—which is having an impact on pupils. It is also having an impact on the governors, who have to make some incredibly tough decisions, and on the school leadership, the support staff, the tutors, the parents and the children themselves.

I pay tribute to the incredible dedication and support that is given across the education sector, particularly by those who work in it and do hours over and above the call of duty, but also by the parents, who contribute; by governors, who give up their time; and often by the children themselves, who bake cakes for fundraising days, have school councils and contribute where they can.

The impact of our crisis in education is felt most sharply by our children. My hon. Friends the Members for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) and for Crewe and Nantwich (Laura Smith) spoke movingly about the impact of austerity on children in their constituencies, which I concur with. Our schools are having to deal with children who turn up hungry, who do not have school uniform, who are struggling for housing and who simply cannot do homework because they do not have the resources—for example, access to the internet—or support, or even somewhere quiet at home to do their homework. Schools are also suffering from the mental health crisis, as we have heard, and from county lines, drug pushers and knives. Increasingly, our schools are having to deal with problems that we would usually ask youth services or the police to deal with. So much more is being placed upon their shoulders, with fewer resources to do it.

I would like to concentrate my speech on the early years, which we have heard little about today but which is facing at least as much of a crisis as any other part of the education system. The hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) spoke about maintained nurseries, but there is only one of those in his constituency, and there are only three in mine. Around 3% of children are educated in maintained nurseries. Everywhere is struggling. We have seen over 10% of nursery provision close in the last two years alone. This is a crisis.

I regularly meet people who work in nurseries across my constituency, and they tell me the struggle involved in making the 30 hours’ funding stretch. It is based on costings from six years ago. Since then, they have seen rises in the minimum wage, pension provision, rent, rates and all the other costs they face, and it simply does not cover them. We had a meeting this afternoon with the Minister and nurseries from across the country, to launch a report by the all-party parliamentary group on childcare and early education, which it has been my pleasure to temporarily chair. There is incredible anger across the nursery sector that they are essentially working for nothing. They are having to employ people with the great skills, dedication and qualifications to deliver the Ofsted results for early years education that are required of them, but they cannot pay more than the minimum wage on the amount they get from the 30 hours’ funding. It is an absolute scandal. They are having to work longer hours, with more bureaucracy—monthly payments mean monthly assessments for children—and it is difficult to offer contracts.

That has an impact on the best providers. Nurseries that seek to employ qualified staff and support them, to do more for their children and to have low ratios are the ones that suffer most from a lack of funding, as well as nurseries that take children with special educational needs—many nurseries do not because they simply cannot afford to; they do not get the support they need to do that. So many of the special needs problems we are seeing in our schools, which have been very passionately spoken about by Members from across this House, could be addressed by investment in the early years—in speech and language development for children, or in support with their social issues at a very early age—before they get to school, where they have to be assessed all over again and where those special needs become even more of a problem. On behalf of the whole nursery sector, may I make a plea to the Minister to look at this across the country? The f40 group, which has been fighting just for schools, has realised that we are on the brink of a crisis in nursery education. We have seen 10% of nursery provision close. We will end up at a stage where we do not have enough nursery places for our children, and the best providers will suffer most.

The other issue that is raised so often in my constituency is further education and sixth-form provision. We have seen New Mills sixth form have to close after 21% cuts to the funding for school sixth forms. That means we have provision of just two sixth forms left in my entire constituency, out of 50 schools. Buxton Community School is left offering just 10 A-levels. Hundreds of young people simply do not have the choice to be able to do the courses they want to do or aspire to doing. They often have to travel an hour each way to access the colleges that do offer A-levels in particular, but also the vocational courses they want to do. And it costs: they get no support from 16 with the funding for that, not even a youth rate of bus travel. That means young people from deprived backgrounds, whose parents do not have the income to pay the often £1,000 a year in bus fares, cannot afford to go on to that provision. They cannot afford to have the aspirations we would want any of our children to be able to achieve. That is absolutely devastating for those young people, for their life chances and for our communities, where young people cannot achieve all that they want.

I spoke to year 9s in one of our local secondary schools last week. I spent the whole day there, and the headteacher joked that an innovative way to cover the cuts was to get the MP in to teach some of his pupils. I asked those 13 and 14-year-olds what they wanted from me and what they wanted from the Government to see what they could aspire to. Do you know what they asked for? They wanted a covered bench in the park because they get wet when it rains. That I am afraid, after a decade of austerity, is what our young people are aspiring to: they just want to stay dry. I think that is an absolute indictment of our society and of our system. Young people have had their aspirations limited by what opportunities there are for them in youth provision out of school, but also within school, in spite of the very best efforts of the fantastic teaching staff and support staff in all our schools. It is here in this House that we are failing our schools, our children, the parents who are fighting day and night for special educational needs provision for their children, and the staff that go over and above to provide it. We here need to do our part and support those schools, nurseries and colleges so that our young people have the aspirations and the achievement they deserve.

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

It is a real pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Ruth George). Far from being wet, I noticed it was 30° heat at the carnival in Tideswell on Saturday, as I paraded around with my pipe band. Far from needing shelter, I have to say it was more like a Tuscany hill town.

[Ruth George]

It does rain occasionally.

[Mike Kane]

It is true that it does rain occasionally in the Peak district.

We have had a good debate. May I congratulate right hon. and hon. Members from across the House on their contributions, and obviously the Chair of the Education Committee, the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), on his articulate opening? I also congratulate him on how well he chairs that Select Committee.

When I last spoke in this Chamber about education cuts, I was positively surprised about how many Members from the Conservative party were in open dissent, and it has been no different really tonight.

I will pick out a few contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) said that education was the greatest gift that we could pass from one generation to the next. That is true, but we have heard the bleak reality today. The Chair of the Education Committee said that funding was “bleak”—several Members used that adjective—and that there is little long-term thinking about education and its budgets compared with the Department of Health and Social Care.

The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) talked about the double whammy that some coastal towns suffer in terms of education standards and attracting the calibre of people needed to our education establishments. He said that the tank was now empty. That was the best metaphor of the evening. He went on to say that there was a crisis in children’s social care on this Government’s watch.

The debate reinforces the unity in this legislature that things must change. Members who criticised the Government on education funding did so bravely and well. As they vie for the leadership of their party and the country, the right hon. Members for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) and for South West Surrey (Mr Hunt) have pledged new funding for education. Whether they fulfil their promise—I suspect that they will not—the pledge is an implicit criticism of their Government’s neglect of education.

The hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) spoke well. He spoke for many of us when he said that his constituency surgeries were often rammed with parents who are desperate to get SEND provision for their children. Many Members will recognise that situation.

The hon. Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) spoke passionately about the schools in her constituency. She mentioned the good work that the Long Eaton School is doing, despite suffering a £385,000 cut since 2015.

The hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) spoke well and passionately about the schools on his patch, but Gloucestershire has suffered a £41.7 million cut to its funding since 2015.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth George Excerpts

Monday 24th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I would not want the hon. Member for High Peak (Ruth George) to feel socially excluded: I call Ruth George.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker,

Since 2016, more than 10% of childcare settings in High Peak have closed and a large number of others have contacted me to say that they feel they are no longer financially sustainable. What will the Secretary of State be doing to speak to the Chancellor and make sure those childcare settings can see a way forward?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

We are monitoring the whole of the system. It is important to recall that, as mentioned earlier, Ofsted has looked at this and the number of places remain pretty constant throughout, but we continue to monitor the whole of the marketplace.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth George Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

I absolutely join my hon. Friend in congratulating Mrs Willmitt on that achievement.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

The rationing of special needs funding means that Derbyshire County Council is asking schools not to apply for support until pupils are at least two years behind in educational terms, meaning that they often never get the support that they need. Will the Secretary of State look with me at how county councils are implementing this rationing, to ensure that pupils get the support that they need when they need it?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

We have launched ambitious SEND reforms, which I have spoken about at the Dispatch Box before, but I will happily meet the hon. Lady to look at the specific issue she mentions.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth George Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Anne Milton]

I am aware that Dudley College has progressed to stage two of the competition and we expect to announce the outcome shortly. As it is a competition, I obviously cannot comment on that. IOTs are a new kind of prestigious institution. It is important to note that they are not about new buildings, but collaborations between FE colleges, universities and leading employers to deliver the high-quality technical education we need.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

At a time when pupils’ emotional and mental health needs are increasing, cuts to our schools mean that teaching assistants are being lost. In Derbyshire, we are about to lose 200 early help staff. The number of school nurses is being halved and child and adolescent mental health services say that they can only see pupils where there is proof that they have attempted to commit suicide. Will the Secretary of State look at the cumulative impact of all the cuts to education and health on our pupils’ wellbeing?

[Damian Hinds]

We do recognise the additional demands relating to young people’s mental health. That is why our programme ensures a designated mental health lead in every school, a further roll-out of mental health first aid, a shortened time for CAMHS referrals and support teams operating around schools to help them with mental health needs.

Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Funding

Ruth George Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Sir Vince Cable]

I am sure that that would be sensible. The hon. Gentleman represents Hartlepool—a very different kind of community from mine in Twickenham—but his helpful intervention illustrates that the problem is felt across the board.

Why has the problem arisen? Why is there such rapid growth in demand, and why is it not being met? There are good reasons and bad reasons. One of the good reasons is that the 2014 Act extended entitlement to special educational needs provision from 18 up to 25. That was a progressive step, but nobody thought about how it would be paid for. Another big biological change is that perinatal and natal mortality has been reduced; that has been a great step in medicine, but it means that there are now many more children who are much loved by their parents but who do need extra help. We are also getting more successful early intervention and diagnosis, meaning that children with special needs are being identified but then have to be helped.

Those are the good reasons. One of the bad reasons is the decline in CAMHS that my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) referred to. Another is the pressure on schools, partly as a result of the minimum £6,000 requirement, and partly because they are having to dispense with teaching assistants—in my area, certainly, cuts are reducing schools’ capacity to handle children with behavioural problems. There is also a rapid rise in exclusions. All those things are bringing pressure to bear on the system.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

I have just received figures from my local authority, Derbyshire County Council, that show that children who have special needs but no statement or EHCP are five times as likely to be excluded as children without special needs, whereas those who have a statement or plan are more than 12 times as likely to be excluded. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that that is a shocking indictment of what we are delivering for children with special needs?

[Sir Vince Cable]

It is a shocking indictment, but it brings to the surface the dilemmas that many local authorities face when they are forced into a position of rationing. They are not allowed to describe it as rationing, because they would be admitting to a legal offence that could be held against them in a tribunal, but we all know that rationing takes place.

Rationing happens in several forms. One, which relates to the hon. Lady’s intervention, is that local authorities drag their feet with what were once called statements but are now called healthcare plans. I believe that the National Autistic Society says that 50% of parents with autistic children wait more than a year for those plans to appear. In other cases, provision is cut to well below the necessary standard: the Young Vision Alliance draws attention to the fact that one of the casualties of the recent rationing has been the issuing of aids to children with visual impairments, which is becoming a serious problem.

Another device that authorities resort to, although of course they do not present it as such, is refusing residential places. In most cases, inclusion in mainstream schools is much the best course of action, but in other cases residential schools are more appropriate. Yet, authorities refuse to agree to them, so the parents have to become carers while the children sit at home, become socially isolated and are never able to develop properly into adulthood.

The main consequence of the conflict between supply and demand is that more and more parents are having to go to tribunal. There has been a 20% growth in tribunals in each of the past few years, and 86% of parents win them, although perhaps “win” is not the right word—in some ways it is a lose-lose situation. Nevertheless, that is an extraordinary figure. It indicates that many local authorities are pushing parents to tribunal, knowing that they themselves will lose, incurring significant costs—about £34 million a year, I believe—simply as a way of holding off demand that they are legally required to meet.

My concluding section is about solutions. How do we deal with this? First, there is a broad acceptance that children should be kept, as far as possible, in mainstream and maintained schools rather than in more demanding provision elsewhere. That is true for educational reasons—inclusion is a good philosophy and has good results—but it is also more economical. The figures are striking: in mainstream and maintained schools, the cost is about £6,000 more for SEND pupils than for non-SEND pupils, while for maintained special schools the cost is about £23,000 more, and for private special schools it is about £40,000 more. In many cases, the private special schools perform a very important function and are of very high quality, which is clearly why people seek them out, but there is certainly some evidence that those schools are exploiting monopoly provision and taking advantage of local authorities. In some cases, they should be referred to the Competition and Markets Authority.

Notwithstanding that issue, the differential suggests an enormous demand for specialist provision that the maintained sector should cater for, but the trend is in the opposite direction. Last year, for the first time, the majority of special needs pupils were not catered for in mainstream maintained schools—a big backward step that reflects the pressures that I have described.

The second clearly undesirable mechanism being used is shifting the burden to other schools, which unfortunately is happening in my own borough. The council is deeply regretful, but it has had to ask the Department for permission to raid the schools budget because the special needs block is grossly insufficient. That is bad not just in itself, because schools are under financial pressure, but because it sets mainstream pupils against special needs pupils. It is quite wicked, actually—it creates resentment in an area in which we should be united in compassion.

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[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

When I was elected to Parliament in June 2017, the problems of children with special needs and the struggles that their parents face became one of the major issues in my casework almost immediately. The problems are with the system, which has been framed around funding that does not meet its needs.

In High Peak in Derbyshire, the county council will not look at applications either for graduated response for individual pupil, or GRIP, lower-level funding or for EHCPs until children are at least two years behind academically. Parents and schools who struggle as best they can to support children are punished for doing so if those children achieve and make progress. By the time they get two years behind, they are usually in year 4 or year 5, and then the process of trying to get additional funding from the county council starts. In Derbyshire, that process is taking up to two years, largely because of a lack of educational psychiatrists, who have been cut and cut again.

Schools have to put an enormous amount of time into preparing applications, often for very small amounts of funding. They have to put in £6,000-worth of funding themselves before they even start. One secondary school in my constituency says it has 125 children with special needs who should qualify. They would have to find three quarters of a million pounds from their budget to apply for additional funding for all those children. The school cannot find £7,000, let alone £750,000, after four years of school funding freezes and increases in its costs. Parents are becoming increasingly distraught, seemingly caught in a fight against schools, which are reluctant to put in applications for funding because they know that the majority are refused even after days of a school trying to put a case together as best it can.

In Derbyshire, there is a £727,000 shortfall in our high needs block funding. Our Conservative county council suggested that the funding it got for road mending, at the end of the winter, when it could least be used, would have been more helpful for the children’s services budget and education. That might be a case that the Minister could make. Ultimately, we need more funding. I pointed out earlier the number of exclusions that children with special needs are facing. This is a system that is failing them, as well as schools, teachers, and parents.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth George Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Continuing professional development is crucial to high-quality social work. The Department funds it through the assessed and supported year in employment for new social workers, and an aspiring practice leaders programme. This autumn we launched a programme for more than 1,000 people moving into supervisory roles.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State said that early help services delivered by social workers were vital. What assessment has he made of the proposals to abolish 90 social work jobs in Derbyshire—where the number of children in care has risen by 50% in the last five years—and to transfer the early help service to schools?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

In the Budget we announced a further £410 million for local authorities to invest in adults’ and children’s social care services in 2019-20. We also announced £84 million to scale up good practice from, for instance, Leeds, Hertfordshire and North Yorkshire to 20 other local authorities. We hope that places such as Derbyshire will look at those models and scale up that good practice.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth George Excerpts

Monday 12th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Yes, I am.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State share my concern and that of Members across the House that The Observer identified a £195 million overspend by councils on high needs in the last year? Will he actually respond to my request that he agreed to in the summer to meet me to discuss special educational needs and problems in Derbyshire?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

We recognise that local authorities are facing cost pressures on high needs, and I assure the hon. Lady that we are monitoring the impact of our high needs national funding formula on local authority spending decisions. We are also keeping our overall level of funding under review in the context of the next spending review.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth George Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

Eighty-six per cent. of newly opened free schools are in areas where more places are needed, and that is the case throughout the country. The other 14% are in areas where people are unhappy with the quality of provision. I should add that it is prudent for local authorities to retain some spare capacity in the system to allow for parental choice and to enable local authorities to manage shifting demand for places, to look further ahead at forecast demand, and not to strip out existing places that will be needed in the long term. If Labour had taken that approach when it was in office, it would not have cut 100,000 primary school places from our school system.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

No, no. High Peak is a beautiful part of the country, of which the hon. Lady is an articulate champion, but it is a long way from Westminster, on which the question is focused.

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[Damian Hinds]

I am pleased that my right hon. Friend has raised that important issue. As he will know, the level of exclusions has thankfully not risen to the level we saw under the previous Labour Government, but it is nevertheless a matter of concern. Let me be absolutely clear that using a permanent exclusion should be a last resort after all other things have been tried. We expect schools to have an active behaviour policy and to be held to account on that by Ofsted. As for the specific question about exclusions, they are a matter of concern and one of the reasons that we asked Edward Timpson to conduct a review. We look forward to hearing from him soon.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

Children with special needs obviously have particular difficulty in accessing support to enable them to raise their station. Following Education questions in June, I wrote to the Secretary of State in July regarding the particular problems in Derbyshire and I asked him to meet with me to discuss the problems that my constituents and many others across Derbyshire are having.

[Damian Hinds]

I am always happy to meet the hon. Lady, who rightly highlights the particular hurdles and challenges that children with special needs can have, which I absolutely recognise. That is one of the reasons that we have the highest high-needs budget on record, and there is more recognition across the entire education system of some of the methods that can be used to support such children. However, we can always do more and I will be pleased to hear from her.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth George Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

Of course I understand that, and of course I would be happy to meet my hon. Friend. Where a maintained school is judged inadequate, my Department has a legal duty to issue an academy order, and the regional schools commissioner is considering all further options available to support the school through this transition.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

Schools in High Peak tell me that the vast majority of their applications for education, health and care plans are refused, meaning that children with very serious special needs, including autism, are left struggling and teachers are left trying to cope with them in large classes. What is the Secretary of State doing to assess the number of children with special needs who receive no support and to ensure that local authorities receive sufficient provision to support them all?

[Damian Hinds]

The education, health and care plans are an important step forward from the previous system, bringing together, as they do, the education, health and care considerations. If the hon. Lady has specific cases, we will of course look at them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth George Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

This Government have launched the most ambitious reforms of special educational needs and disabilities provision in a generation, and are committed to improving outcomes for children with SEND, especially those who are deaf as well.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

I recently met secondary headteachers in my constituency who told me that they were almost at breaking point as a result of cut after cut after cut. When will the Government fund all our schools properly, for the sake of all our children?

[Damian Hinds]

Funding for our schools is at the highest level that it has ever been, and we have committed ourselves to protecting per-pupil real-terms funding for the system as a whole over the next couple of years. I recognise that there have been cost pressures on schools, and I am committed to continuing to work with them to do what we can to bear down on those costs.