Tristram Hunt
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(9 years, 8 months ago)
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Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House notes that the number of infants taught in classes of over 30 has risen by 200 per cent since 2010, to over 93,000 children; also notes that the Government relaxed the rules on infant class sizes; further notes that the Conservative Party manifesto in 2010 pledged to create small schools with smaller class sizes; believes that the Government’s decision to prioritise capital spending in areas without shortages of places through the free school programme has led to chronic pressures on primary school places and has created classes of more than 70 pupils; and believes that capital spending for school places should be prioritised to areas with the greatest pressures on places.
I should like to open the debate with a quote from a great work of fiction—not “North and South”, which I will come to later, but the Conservative party’s 2010 election manifesto:
“A Conservative government will give many more children access to the kind of education that is currently only available to the well-off…smaller schools with smaller class sizes with teachers who know the children’s names”—
a point underlined by the Prime Minister himself, who said that
“the more we can get class sizes down the better”.
That, we were told, was a task absolutely crucial to raising school standards. As the once, twice, three times a Tory schools spokesman, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), the boiled cabbage himself, said back in 2009:
“The other thing”—
on standards—
“is getting class sizes down. Particularly at primary school level. It is really dramatic how big our classes still are compared with other countries”.
More than that, he said that smaller schools were important too
“so that no child can wander around corridors of a school anonymously”.
I know that this Government do not take their manifesto commitments particularly seriously—trebling tuition fees, cutting Sure Start, cutting the education maintenance allowance, top-down reorganisation of the NHS. However, make no mistake: the abject failure of the Conservative party when it comes to infant class sizes is right up there with the most brazen of its broken promises.
Mr Jackson
I thank the hon. Gentleman. I am not sure the Lord Snooty act is working that well. Would he like to take the opportunity to apologise for the 200,000 primary school places that the Government of the party he represented took out of the capacity in the middle of the largest baby boom since the second world war? It inflicted grave difficulties on local education authorities, including my own in Peterborough.
Tristram Hunt
For the record, between 1997 and 2007 the Labour party built more than 1,100 new schools, the vast majority being primary schools, and there are now nearly 200 fewer primary schools than in 2010. The record speaks for itself, and the people of Peterborough will hold the hon. Gentleman to account for his votes.
The figures are truly shocking. The number of primary schools with more than 800 pupils has rocketed by 381%, so we can forget about the smaller schools with no anonymous pupils and we can forget about knowing every child’s name. More and more so-called titan primary schools are struggling to educate their pupils, with assemblies in shift patterns, multiple lunch hours and expanding class sizes. Head teachers and teachers are doing their best in the most difficult circumstances. The number of infants taught in classes bigger than 30 has soared to 93,655, a staggering 200% rise since 2010.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that all academic work on education shows that the first few years in education are vital to a child’s future performance? What would he say to parents in Warrington, where 840 more children are now in over-sized classes, an increase of over 1,300% under this Government?
Tristram Hunt
My hon. Friend is exactly right about the academic evidence, and I will come to that shortly. To those of her constituents facing ballooning infant class sizes, I say that we know the reason. It is a misallocation of funding away from basic need funding towards a range of priorities that do not support keeping class sizes low.
Some 14,000 kids are cramped into cattle classes of more than 40, nearly 6,000 are stuffed into classes that are plus 50 and, although it is barely believable, last year this country educated 446 children in classrooms containing more than 70 pupils. Is it any wonder that a Netmums survey published last week showed that nearly one in five parents think that schools are squeezing too many children into classes?
Unlike the parties in the Government, the Labour party believes in smaller class sizes because of the academic evidence referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones). In small classes, research shows, there is more individual interaction between teachers and pupils, more teacher support for learning per pupil, more attentiveness to the teacher and therefore less disruptive behaviour from pupils, and teachers spend more time teaching rather than managing pupils.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend and his team on securing this debate. It is incredibly important that parents across the country know that their child’s experience is not an isolated one and how serious the situation has become. When I read the list of schools with extra-large classes, I was surprised to find my own daughter’s school on it. This is happening in schools across the country, and parents are not aware of how terrible the situation has become.
Tristram Hunt
My hon. Friend is exactly right. It is the case in Chesterfield, in Warrington, in Peterborough and right across England. Constituents will want to know what decisions were made and what spending priorities were determined to allow the situation to get out of control.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the criterion for building a new school should be need? If there is a need for a school in an area, that is where a school should be built. It should not be built where there is no need.
Tristram Hunt
My hon. Friend is exactly right. As I shall explain, it is the misallocation of funding—building more places where there are surplus places—that is producing this crisis in English schools.
The class size and pupil-adult ratio project undertaken by the Institute of Education has shown a strong relationship between small classes and greater achievement. The researchers identified a clear effect in literacy and numeracy attainment, even after adjusting for other, possibly confounding factors. Pupils entering schools with low literacy levels progressed the most in small classes.
Tristram Hunt
I am delighted to give way to the hon. Lady, who is ready to explain to her constituents why class sizes are ballooning in her constituency while money is being misallocated to the free school programme.
Angie Bray
I think that people in my constituency and right across the country are only too aware that immigration was allowed to run out of control by the previous Government. It puts enormous strain on infrastructure of all sorts across the country, and clearly schools are not immune. One reason class sizes are going up is the chaotic immigration policy exercised by the previous Government.
Tristram Hunt
We all look forward to the Government achieving their target on migration—something, I think, that will be very far away.
Why have the Government allowed class sizes to increase and to damage the education of children in English schools? Because they have spent the money that should be used to keep class sizes down on their discredited free schools programme—the programme that has brought us the Al-Madinah free school, the scandal of the Kings science academy and terrible results at IES Breckland.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
Hundreds of parents in my constituency went through picket lines organised by radical teachers against the free school in Bedford. They wanted to give their children a better education. Were they wrong to aspire to a better education for their children? Is Labour policy against what they want?
Tristram Hunt
Parents in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency rightly want the best for their children. I cannot help thinking that they will not necessarily achieve that given that the number of children in primary class sizes of more than 30 has increased by 134% in his constituency. I cannot imagine that that will increase the attainment and the results that his constituents are looking for.
On 10 May, The Observer reported that the previous Secretary of State had raided £400 million from the basic need fund used to keep class sizes down to pay for the free schools programme. The paper reported that
“Gove had secretly taken the money from the Basic Need fund…in the face of stiff opposition from the Lib Dem schools minister David Laws.”—
clearly not that stiff an opposition.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
I am sure that the Liberal Democrats in Stockport will be proud of the record that the number of children in large class sizes has increased by 202%. What does my hon. Friend say to my constituents in Tameside, where more than 1,600 young people are now being taught in large class sizes, an increase of 2,567% since 2010, which is an utter disgrace?
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.
Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, pointing out the consequences on the ground of this misallocation on funds. On that point, does my hon. Friend agree that my constituents in Blackpool, where the number of infants in large classes has risen by 300% since 2010, are now suffering a double whammy, not just from that but from the extra pressure of transients that seaside and coastal towns have? That can be seen in all of these figures—Portsmouth up 250%, Medway 415%, Plymouth 600%. Are not this Tory Government and their coalition allies failing seaside and coastal towns in this respect?
Tristram Hunt
My hon. Friend is exactly right. The challenge facing seaside towns is often particularly acute in the case of educational disadvantage, so it is absolutely right that we focus on smaller class sizes. It is absolutely right that young people coming into class with lower literacy levels have a good working environment in which to succeed, particularly in the early years.
Labour will tell every parent who is angry that their infant is being educated in classes of well over 30 that the fault lies with the Government’s ideological determination to pour money into the free schools programme. By September last year, the Government had spent £241 million on free schools in areas with no shortage of school places. The Hawthorne’s free school in Bootle was built in an area with no shortage of school places and now faces falling rolls, yet despite being judged inadequate it has received nearly £850,000 in extra “start-up” cash from the Government. Money is spent on adding extra places in areas with a surplus of places, while it is withdrawn from areas of need.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman’s spin just will not wash with the electorate in Leicestershire. The last Government allowed net immigration to rise to an eye-watering 3.5 million while reducing the number of school places available and, during their time in office, Leicestershire’s schools received the lowest funding per pupil in the whole country.
Tristram Hunt
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. More work is needed to raise standards in Leicestershire, and one element that worries me is the growing attainment gap under this Government between children who are on free school meals and those who are not. If we strip out London from the data showing the achievement of children on free school meals, we see that this Government’s record is absolutely lamentable.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
Is my hon. Friend aware of the evidence given to the Education Committee showing that the Government are throwing money at free schools where there is no basic need, such as the one in Bedford that is less than half full, yet the number of primary school places needed is growing and class sizes are also growing enormously?
Tristram Hunt
My hon. Friend speaks with great wisdom. I did not know that the Bedford school was only half full—
Tristram Hunt
Less than half full, while there are over-sized primary classes. The constituents of Bedford will hold their MP to account for voting for policies that increase class sizes in those schools while misallocating funds. Politics is about choices and priorities, and the Government have chosen the wrong priority.
Mr Sheerman
Before my hon. Friend moves on, will he put a question to Conservative Members: what is the evidence that larger classes benefit students? I have not seen any such research, but I have consistently deplored the fact that the all-party agreement that smaller classes were better for a child has been broken by this Government.
Tristram Hunt
My hon. Friend is exactly right: it is so disappointing to see this Government break the political consensus that Labour worked so hard to achieve in 1997.
Labour is committed to ending the free schools programme and refocusing spending on areas where it is needed most. Our message to parents is absolutely clear: Labour would make a choice, and schools enduring crippling infant class sizes would be our priority. We want to see great teachers, committed parents and innovative educationists opening new schools under our parent-led academy programme, pioneered by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), but those schools will have to be targeted on areas with a need for new places.
We had all hoped for a change of direction from the new Education Secretary, so I read with great interest her interview in The Sunday Telegraph, in which she explained how
“we have seen the first same-sex marriages take place, which is great.”
Indeed it is, but why did she seek to prevent it from happening by voting against the policy? If she really thought it was great, she would have supported the policy.
In the interview, the Education Secretary also revealed that her favourite work was Elizabeth Gaskell’s marvellous “North and South”—a tale of how a conciliatory, practical, confident woman steps in to save the reputation of an aggressive, right-wing, Gradgrind-like ideologue. Mr Thornton was a man
“who would enjoy battling with every adverse thing he could meet with—enemies, winds, or circumstances”,
and he quickly finds himself in an epic struggle with the trade unions. I can see the Education Secretary’s attraction to it. But alas, our modern Margaret Hale is on autopilot, determined to repeat the mistakes that got Mr Thornton his unenviable reputation. Nowhere in that interview was a commitment to ending the chaos of the free school programme, introducing new policies to improve the professional development of teachers, rebuilding the atomised school system, stopping the downgrading of apprenticeships, closing the attainment gap, or offering affordable child care.
Now, this afternoon, news has broken of the Education Secretary’s plan to introduce compulsory setting in all schools. Will she confirm that she will rule out compulsory streaming? What does she make of the Education Endowment Foundation’s research into the impact of streaming on children from deprived backgrounds? What evidence has she used to inform her plans—which specific academic findings? What assessment has she had on the impact of her plans—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I am sure that that point is very interesting, Mr Hunt, and that we would all like to know the answer, but it is not the subject of the debate. As far as I am aware, the proposal is not on infant classes. While I am on my feet, let me say that infant classes probably behave better than most Government Members at the moment. Perhaps we can stop the cat-calling—Mr Heaton-Harris, please do not look so disappointed—and concentrate on the debate on the motion before us.
Tristram Hunt
Unlike so many Government Members, I always obey the rulings of the Chair and would seek no dishonour to it at any point, so I will immediately move on, Madam Deputy Speaker.
The Government’s failure on infant class sizes contains many different components—administrative incompetence, financial mismanagement, ideological pigheadedness, and a refusal to re-examine the evidence—yet it also speaks to two markedly different visions for the future of this country’s education.
Tristram Hunt
Labour Members want to see a world-class and highly qualified teacher in every classroom, studio and workshop. The evidence says that that is the most effective way to boost our children’s attainment. We want to right the wrongs of the Butler Act and offer young people excellence and opportunity in vocational education. That is what our economy needs most in terms of skills and competitiveness. We want to provide young people with a rich and rewarding educational experience that, alongside the academic and vocational basics, also nurtures their character, resilience and well-being. That is what our children need to thrive and survive in a world that is being transformed by digital technology.
In contrast, the future that our new autopilot Education Secretary offers is much the same as the recent past. She makes absolutely no pretence at being here to do anything other than implement her predecessor’s vision. That means growing class sizes, more failing free schools, more unqualified teachers, a rising attainment gap, no local oversight or accountability, fewer opportunities for the forgotten 50%, and no strategy for delivering excellence and opportunity in vocational education. It means ignoring basic need and continuing an ideologically motivated allocation of capital funding.
Tristram Hunt
The bottom line is this: the Prime Minister has broken his party’s manifesto promise of smaller class sizes. He has chosen free schools over basic need, and ideology over reducing infant class sizes. Fortunately, though, in eight months’ time the country also has a political choice. Let me assure Government Members, as my colleagues will be doing over the coming months, that we will be telling parents exactly where the Government parties stand on infant class sizes. We will be telling them that five more years of this agenda will mean 450,000 infants taught in class sizes of more than 30 by 2020. We will be telling them that only one party is committed to refocusing spending on areas where it is needed most, that only one party is determined to deliver an education system that works for all pupils and that does not prioritise spending on one school type over another, and that only one party believes in a one nation education system. That party sits on the Labour Benches and I commend the motion to the House.
Chloe Smith
Quite right, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Parts of Norwich North have a rising birth rate, and therefore, as a local MP, I have already been active on this problem on my constituents’ behalf for some time, and have been working with schools, parents and the local authority to look into what needs to be done. I welcomed, therefore, the increase in funding for school places—£33 million for Norfolk school places in particular. Dare I say it, that is a better figure than for our neighbouring county, Suffolk, and for Cambridgeshire. But of course I welcome that increased funding for Norfolk because it is in keeping with what this Government have done to put right the inequalities in funding that Labour left behind.
Labour did not do well in Norfolk. It did not help schools there to beat the bulge. As we have heard many times today, Labour is the party that cut 200,000 primary school places in the middle of a baby boom. That had an impact on Norfolk. Labour is the party that failed to adjust the funding formula in a way that would be fair to rural counties and would have been fairer to my constituency. We, in government, have done those things and I congratulate those on the Front Bench on doing so.
As I said, I have worked with infant and junior schools in the north city area of my constituency over several years on the issue of planning sensibly for the local bulge in births. I welcome the fact that councils now have a three-year allocation of funding for the first time. I welcome the foresight that comes with that type of decision. It allows Norfolk county council, like any other education authority, to plan ahead and to ensure that every child has a school place. I urge my local authority to continue doing that planning. Only this week I contacted the local authority to highlight the fact that the latest information that I have received from Norfolk county council shows that 17 of the 25 infant, junior or primary schools listed in my constituency are forecast to exceed their current capacity.
We could turn that sentence several ways around. We could talk about “forecast to exceed their current capacity” or we could talk about the schools needing to provide more places for local children. The Government have put the funding in place for that to happen and I welcome that greatly. I think it stands in stark contrast to the attitude of those Labour Members who lost sight of what their own Government did, cutting 200,000 primary school places in the middle of a baby boom while letting immigration soar. It stands in great contrast to the actions of that party in failing to give Norfolk a fair funding formula. I also think, for what it is worth, that it stands in great contrast to what some Members, notably the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), seem to think of Norfolk, and I suspect that my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) agrees with me. We were dumbfounded to hear the right hon. Lady, who is not in her place—perhaps she is in another television studio, saying the same thing right now, actually—
Chloe Smith
The right hon. Lady has been out on the airwaves repeatedly this week, suggesting that Norfolk, in the form of Norwich, and Suffolk, in the form of Ipswich, ought to be some kind of dumping ground for the rest of the country. I do not think that is a respectful or constructive attitude to my constituency or that of my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich.
That is what Labour appears to think of Norwich and Norfolk. It also appears to think—
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.
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.