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20 Oct 2004 : Column 305WH—continued
Voluntary-aided Schools (North-West)
4.33 pm
Mr. George Howarth (Knowsley, North and Sefton, East) (Lab): I would like to place on record my gratitude to my hon. Friend the Minister for the funding that has been made available to Knowsley council through the building schools for the future programme. I know that he is interested and involved in that work, together with the local education authority. It is very exciting and will lead to a major improvement in our secondary schools.
I would also say, in opening, that I am going to raise an issue that is of concern in one particular school in the Sefton part of my constituency. In doing so, I am not criticising the Government's policy towards voluntary aided schools. They, in common with all other schools, are receiving increased funding. Both the Roman Catholic archdiocese and the Church of England diocese are very grateful for that funding, as are all the governors, head teachers and parents of all those schools, who recognise that significant improvements have been made.
I first came against this problem in May this year when there was a fire in the school kitchens at the Holy Family school in my constituency. I should say a few introductory words about the school, with which my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Mr. Benton) will concur. The school is excellent, despite the fact that the buildings in which the school operates leave much to be desired, and despite other difficulties that the school has had to overcome. My hon. Friend the Minister will no doubt be aware of the results that it achieves in public examinations, which are very good, but he might not be aware of the fact that the Prime Minister's wife visited the school a year or two ago and opened its sixth form centre, which is an excellent addition for which the Department for Education and Skills provided a major part of the funding. It has not all been doom and gloom, but much of the school is in a pretty bad condition.
After the fire this May, the governors, the local education authority and the Department set off on an odyssey to resolve the problem. The situation was resolved very recently, for which I am grateful. It means that although the kitchens and dining area are being rebuilt, the replacement of three temporary classrooms, which I visited recently and which, frankly, are awful, will be put off until the next financial year.
I say that the problem has been resolved, and all the ducks now seem to be lined up for the funding, but the chairman of the school's board of governors asked me to seek the Minister's assurance today that he is confident that not only will the school kitchens and dining area be rebuilt, but that the three temporary classrooms will be replaced with new buildings in the next financial year. As I said, I visited the buildings recently and found them to be generally appalling. Children are being taught very well, but in very shabby circumstances. The rooms are difficult to heat and are too hot when it is hot and too cold when is cold. The storage facilities are also inadequate. It really is high time that they were replaced.
The situation at Holy Family school led me to the general issue of how funding works for voluntarily aided schools. I am indebted to both the Catholic archdiocese
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and the Church of England diocese for the briefing that they gave me, but I in no way hold them responsible for any of my errors in relating the issues to the Chamber.
As my hon. Friend the Minister will know, the buildings in the voluntarily aided sector usually belong to the Church, and the governing body is required to contribute 10 per cent. towards capital building work costs. The remaining 90 per cent. is provided by the DFES. This raises a couple of issues, which I want to highlight. First, because of this arrangement, the governing bodies of Church schools, in agreement with the DFES, insure their property for only 10 per cent. of any damaged building that might need to be reinstated. The custom and practice at the DFES was that 90 per cent. of that funding came from what is known as emergency capital funding, which is what eventually happened at the Holy Family school.
Recently, the DFES has not provided the full 90 per cent. of the funding, but only a proportion thereof. The funding gap had to be met from the school's own development formula capital. The argument is that this puts Church schools at a disadvantage. It could be argued that schools should insure for more than 10 per cent of the cost of replacing those buildings, but that would have obvious implications for the size of the premium they would have to pay, which in turn would affect other budgets for the worse.
At a more general level, I am told that there has been a significant recent reduction in the available funding for Church schools. It gets rather complicated here but I am sure that my hon. Friend will follow me. There are three main sources of funding: targeted capital funding—TCF; local education authority co-ordinated voluntary aided programmes—LCVAP; and devolved formula capital. DFC is for smaller capital work jobs and equates to approximately £28,000 per year for a one-form entry primary school and is scaled up for larger schools.
LCVAP is co-ordinated by the local education authority for voluntary aided schools and has been significantly reduced in the past year. It is used for larger-scale building work; say, of over £50,000. The example I quoted earlier would clearly fall into that category. TCF is for major projects in excess of £500,000. There are no new TCF bids this year and, as a consequence, any essential work has to be funded either from LCVAP or DFC pots. In many cases, the money is not there and in those cases where the money is there no other building work schemes that might involve repair and refurbishment work can go ahead. That was certainly part of the problem encountered at the Holy Family school.
The Catholic archdiocese has concluded that the TCF bids for 2004–05 resulted in only one successful voluntary aided bid in the north-west. I should say that the Liverpool archdiocese covers part of Lancashire: that is why I have referred to the north-west in the debate's title. The Liverpool archdiocese had a total of seven TCF bids in five of its constituent local education authorities. These schemes included a replacement school in Skelmersdale in Lancashire. My hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Mr. Pickthall) is aware of this debate—unfortunately, he is chairing a meeting elsewhere in the building—but he has been in correspondence with the Department and is concerned about the matter.
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This followed the closure of three separate primary schools and the removal of a significant number of surplus places. It also involved the single siting of two schools in two local education authorities, Liverpool and Sefton, both of which have separate infants and junior departments at least half a mile apart. In addition, within the Knowsley area, two schools identified by the Knowsley commission report for rebuild were also turned down despite being submitted by the same LEA team that was successful with the building schools for the future bid, to which I referred earlier.
In each case, significant surplus places would have been removed. I hope that that gives my hon. Friend an inkling of the voluntary aided schools' concerns. I do not want to be overly critical because I know that the Department is doing a good job in my area, but it would be timely if he could agree at least to a review of the way that the schemes work in relation to voluntary aided schools. I am sure that a review would ease the minds of governors and head teachers and the archdiocese and the diocese.
4.44 pm
The Minister for School Standards (Mr. David Miliband) : It is nice to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr. O'Brien. I am happy to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley, North and Sefton, East (Mr. Howarth) on securing the debate. I know that this is an issue about which he feels strongly. I had the privilege of visiting Knowsley on Thursday and of being able to talk to him and to some head teachers and LEA officials about the excellent work being carried out in some schools in the area. I also had the chance on Thursday to meet representatives of Catholic dioceses from all over the country, including Merseyside, and was able to discuss some of their perspectives on the issues that my hon. Friend has raised. I realise that a visit to Knowsley by a junior Minister from the Department for Education and Skills does not rival the occasion of a visit from the Prime Minister's wife, but I was happy with the reception that I received, muted and low-key though it was.
My hon. Friends the Members for Knowsley, North and Sefton, East and for Bootle (Mr. Benton) have been doughty and determined champions of their constituencies in general, and for education in them. I much appreciate their work to highlight the good practice in their schools.
Not all voluntary aided schools are faith schools. Equally, a lot of schools that are not voluntary aided but are classified, in the jargon, as having a religious character, fit under a foundation, community or voluntary controlled banner, but that is not what this debate is about. It is about how we can do our best to help all schools through capital spending.
There is agreement that the immediate problems with the restoration of Holy Family Catholic high school after the fire damage have been resolved reasonably expediently. Funding has been earmarked from our locally administered capital programme for voluntary aided schools to replace some temporary classrooms, but, in light of the unfortunate fire at the school, that money was temporarily redirected into helping with repairs. We also provided additional help by way of a
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significant emergency grant of almost £130,000. The good news is that, through the partnership between the local education authority and the Catholic diocese, funds have already been earmarked from next year's local programme to solve the problem of the temporary classrooms. I appreciate that that resulted in some delay in the work, which is an unfortunate consequence of the fire, but we cannot do everything at once, despite the record levels of capital investment going into our schools—up to £5 billion a year from 2005–06. Difficult choices have to be made.
My hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley, North and Sefton, East legitimately raised the issue of the different labels under which capital is spent. I hope that I can explain it in a reasonably clear way—certainly one that is clearer than some of the acronyms that appear. Capital spending is distributed in three ways: for major city or town-wide capital refurbishment in the secondary sector, we have the building schools for the future programme, of which Knowsley is in the first wave; for smaller necessary projects, we have the targeted capital fund; and the third tranche of money is devolved to LEAs and schools through so-called devolved formula capital.
In Knowsley in 2005–06, the devolved formula capital was £1.2 million, which is not an insignificant sum by any stretch of the imagination, especially when one compares it to 2000–01, when it was a mere £261,000. I need hardly say that it was much lower in 1996–97. Those three types of capital spending are used to try to account for the different sort of spend that is necessary.
The voluntary aided sector is fully involved in the building schools for the future programme. Some 30 Catholic schools around the country are fully involved in the first wave of BSF, of which Knowsley is a part. The same goes for the targeted capital fund, as some of it is reserved for voluntary aided schools and for devolved formula capital, with which voluntary aided schools play their part.
The capital programme for all voluntary aided schools has increased fivefold in the past six years to more than half a billion pounds a year. That money is specifically dedicated to voluntary aided schools. Holy Family Catholic high school has received direct capital investment of more than £2 million since 1996–97—due, in part, no doubt, to my hon. Friend's doughty lobbying. It will also benefit from the BSF programme, and it is due to be rebuilt. That level of capital funding has given huge help to the sector, but it is also important to point out that there are further developments for maintaining progress. Perhaps what I have to say will deal with the point that he raised. A working group has been set up to consider issues relating to capital funding for the VA sector in particular, recognising its place in the framework of local schooling. We have already shared with the group all the information about how capital is allocated, and demonstrated the continuing funding pressures.
The arrangements for helping VA schools in the event of a fire or other loss have been in place since we reformed the capital funding arrangements for VA schools more than two years ago. Those reforms were agreed by voluntary aided sector representatives, and approved by Parliament through the regulatory reform order of 2001.
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Where there is loss or damage, whether by fire, flood or other eventuality or calamity, the arrangement is that capital grant will be available to meet 90 per cent. of the costs. The governing body must have insurance to meet the remaining 10 per cent.—the 10 per cent. relates to the percentage of the work that VA schools must contribute themselves. That is part of the bargain with the voluntary aided sector. Interestingly, at my meeting with the Catholic dioceses on Thursday, they were very committed to that 10 per cent. contribution. They see it as part of the partnership between the voluntary aid of the Church and the state in respect of capital spending.
My hon. Friend raised the issue of whether we should examine insurance arrangements. I am happy to say that we shall do so at the next available appropriate opportunity. We welcome advice on whether to hold back money for such emergencies, but, obviously, that has implications. The danger is that the money is not spent.
I am pleased with the way in which the working group has begun its work. It includes representatives from all the major stakeholders in the voluntary aided sector, including head teachers. Another benefit of the group is
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that it can advise us on the balance of the capital programme for VA schools. My instinct is to move towards as simple as possible a method of funding distribution, but we also know that local ownership of, and engagement, with the spend is critical.
We know, too, that there are significant pressures that can be tackled only by a more targeted approach. Next month, we shall announce another major round of capital allocations, to April 2008. I am sure that the working group will help to inform us with respect to that programme. The group will also be helping us to ensure that the interests of the VA sector are properly reflected in the building schools for the future programme. That includes the decision-making arrangements to take account of the ownership responsibilities of the trustees of VA schools.
In conclusion, I thank my hon. Friend for his appreciation of the Department's work and for giving me the chance to give an account of the strength of the partnership between the VA sector nationwide and in his constituency. I look forward to continued progress on that basis.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at seven minutes to Five o'clock.
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