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Mr. Mike Hancock (Portsmouth, South) rose—
Mr. Clarke: I shall not give way for the moment: I want to deal with the matter in hand.
Our key priority in securing the change for 2004–05 is to work closely with local authorities and the Local Government Association to achieve an agreed position that takes the situation forward. The critical goals are: first, to get sufficient education funding increases for every LEA; secondly, to get the right balance between support through the general grant and through ring-fenced and targeted grant; thirdly, to give schools and pupils the confidence that they will receive the money that is intended for them, which is a key element in the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Lloyd); fourthly, to get the right balance between in-school and out-of-school provision—there are important out-of-school provision issues, for example in relation to special educational needs and pupil referral units; fifthly, to ensure that variations in the budget increases received by different schools within each LEA are appropriate and fair, which touches on my point about the inter-quartile range; and finally, to achieve our proposals on work force reform in line with the national agreement so that they can be sustained.
My Department will work with local education authorities to improve and clarify procedures, so that all LEAs are able to distribute their funds—notably the standards fund—to schools in a timely way.
Mr. Hancock: Can the Secretary of State offer some advice to the 12 schools in the city of Portsmouth that are facing budget-related redundancies, many of which do not have any significant balances? If they were to use devolved capital, they would lose the opportunity to use that capital in future, because there would be no opportunity to replace it. The local education authority has in fact passported the full 3.2 per cent. across to schools. What advice can he give to those schools and to teachers who are facing the sack?
Mr. Clarke: My advice to all schools and LEAs is to work together in precisely the way that I described—using LEA resources, considering the use of devolved capital and considering any existing balances—to try to solve problems of the type that the hon. Gentleman raised. It is clear from the large number of letters that we have received that in most LEAs a very positive and constructive dialogue is taking place to address the issues directly.
Mrs. Angela Browning (Tiverton and Honiton): What advice has the Secretary of State given to LEAs, for not only this year but forthcoming years, about classroom assistants? He will be aware that many classroom assistants are in post because of the statementing of children in a particular class, and there is a statutory obligation on an LEA to honour a statement that requires a classroom assistant. Can he reassure the House that he is advising LEAs that they should honour their statutory obligations as regards classroom assistants and special educational needs pupils?
Mr. Clarke: My advice to all LEAs is to obey the law, as should be the case. If the hon. Lady is asking me to do that, I am happy to do so.
Mr. Keith Simpson: The Secretary of State generously said that Norfolk county council had passported on nearly all the money, but that still leaves us a problem, and he knows it. What does he therefore say to the chairman of governors and the headmaster of Buxton primary school, who had calculated that this year they would have a surplus of £22,000, but in fact have a deficit of more than £72,000? The figures do not add up. His credibility—I say this, as a parliamentary neighbour, with some regret—has been absolutely minced locally, mainly by Labour councillors. What will he do this year, rather than planning for next year?
Mr. Clarke: I take very seriously the regret expressed by the hon. Gentleman. I am weeping for it, as he will be. I am continuing to work with Norfolk county council. The issue is not the passporting percentage that he mentions: it is the money that Norfolk local education authority has and whether it has been passed on to schools directly. I am discussing that with the chief education officer and others.
Several Opposition Members referred to the National Association of Head Teachers. Today, I received a letter from the signatories to the work load agreement asking
us to act on the situation. The letter is from the NAHT, all the other teacher unions, the non-teaching unions and the employers organisation for local government, and it is signed by Graham Lane, on behalf of those organisations. It says that the joint signatories want to emphasise
- "The need to identify possible short-term remedial measures, including:
relaxation of regulations to allow devolved capital to be transferred to revenue",
- "enabling schools to borrow from consolidated school balances",
- "allowing local authorities to 'licence' schools to set short-term budget deficits with clear exit strategies, which will heavily depend on their confidence in the level of funding for the next two years",
- "consider these options in consultation with the local authority."
- "an urgent look at the impact of the next 2 years, especially Standards Fund and PRP transfers and SSG and LIG roll out. Assurances are sought that the current difficulties will not recur in 2004/05 and 2005/06."
I cite the letter because of the various quotations that the hon. Member for Ashford gave, and to give the House an assurance, which I believe and hope that most hon. Members want to hear, that we intend to work with the teacher trade unions that are signatories to the agreement and the Local Government Association to resolve the matter constructively and deal with the problem precisely as we have been asked to do. There is a long way to go. We especially need to discuss how we get a system that ensures the achievement of our goals.
The Government, unlike the Opposition, are committed to funding schools. We could not be clearer about that, and we are determined to work together with all parts of the education system to ensure that our schools are properly funded and our children properly educated.
3 pm
Mr. Phil Willis (Harrogate and Knaresborough): We hope that the Secretary of State recovers from his mincing. The Liberal Democrats are grateful to the hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Green) for choosing the subject of the debate. It clearly affects all our constituencies.
We risk being returned to the bad old days when I was a head teacher: the Conservatives were in power and there was an annual round. It is interesting to note that, despite some valid criticism, the hon. Member for Ashford did not present an iota of an idea for a way to resolve the crisis in our schools this year. All the teachers whose letters were cited could therefore go on the redundancy list, because that, rather than dealing with the key issues, would suit Conservative Members' party political purposes.
If we leave the Chamber without sending a clear message to schools, heads, teachers and governors that there are some solutions to the problem and that the
Government are actively seeking them, we will all have failed. Our amendment called for devolved capital to be released to schools and we are grateful to the Secretary of State for picking up that point. My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock) was right when he said that many schools will have already committed their capital. That is part of a continuing process and they will not have flexibility.One in four schools have balances of almost zero. There is no solution for some in either promise that the Secretary of State made. It is therefore important to find other solutions.
Mr. Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale, West): I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not want to give the House a misleading impression. He suggested that the position occurred every year under previous Conservative Governments. I wonder whether he agrees with the findings of Mr. John Atkins, who stated in a report that was commissioned for the National Union of Teachers this year:
- "This is unprecedented since the implementation of LMS"
Mr. Willis: I do not accept that and I do not apologise. Unlike the hon. Gentleman, I was a head teacher from 1979 to 1997. From 1988 onwards, I had to cut budgets and get rid of staff every year despite increases in my pupil numbers.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff, West): In those years under the Tories, were not many redundancies hidden by the fact that teachers were put on temporary contracts year after year? When they lost their jobs, they were not counted as having been made redundant.
Mr. Willis: Exactly the same is happening today. Tens of thousands of classroom assistants will lose their jobs this year, and they are all on temporary contracts. They are expendable. We cannot simply view our schools in terms of teachers. All members of staff are valuable in providing education.
We must be honest and admit that 2003 was always going to be difficult. Changes to local government funding, the new schools formula, national insurance and employer pension contributions, radical changes to the teachers' main pay scale as well as the post-threshold scales, changes to the standards fund, which we largely welcome, and the introduction of work-load agreements all had an impact on devolved school budgets.
The changes involved three major Departments: the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the Treasury and the Department for Education and Skills. That increased the complexity. However, it now emerges that no Secretary of State, Minister or ministerial team was in overall charge of the process, despite the three large Departments coming together. No effective modelling of the outcomes for local education authorities happened apart from an attempt by the Minister for School Standards to produce four models in June last year, all of which failed miserably. The Minister subsequently took his bat home and would not produce another model.
No assessment was made of the impacts on individual school budgets, although we knew that they would be diverse because of the set-up. No assessment was made of the impact of the new funding arrangements on age-weighted pupil units. The more a formula approach is taken to distributing funds, the more huge discrepancies within as well as between authorities are likely to occur.
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