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Mr. Gardiner rose—
Mr. Trimble: No, my time is limited. I am sure that the Minister will want to intervene on every other sentence, but I ask him please to restrain his eagerness. I shall try to leave him some time, in which he can endeavour to give a more comprehensive and considered response.
Mr. Gardiner: Okay.
Mr. Trimble: As the Minister knows, we made a suggestion to him at that meeting that if he wishes to operate on the basis of entitlement, he has a perfect way of doing so: looking at the child tax credit arrangements. To claim child tax credit, parents or guardians must provide a range of information about their family status and financial position. Such information is retained and could be used as an indicator for the offer of free school meals, for example.
I drew the Minister's attention on that occasion to the different uptake of education maintenance allowance for post-GCSE pupils. We mentioned in passing during that discussion the uptake at Portadown college, and I can tell the Minister that the uptake of EMA there is 75 pupils. On that basis, looking at the school as a whole, that is equivalent to 20 per cent. of pupils in receipt of EMAs. However, the uptake of free school meals is only 3 per cent. So, there is a sevenfold difference there: the first indicator is based on entitlement, the second on application.
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Further to illustrate the problem from my constituency experience, Ballyoran primary school has 299 children, 142 of whom claim free school meals. Hart memorial school has 309 children—10 more than Ballyoran—with 72 pupils claiming free school meals. Both schools are within half a mile of each other and serve families of similar social background. Indeed, taking the figures from the most recent child poverty survey and the relevant electoral wards, Ballyoran is ranked 105th out of 555 wards, whereas Hart memorial school, in the Ballybay ward, is ranked 115th. In other words, the wards in which the schools are located are close together in the child poverty figures, but in terms of take-up of free school meals there is a wide gap.
Of course, that impacts on the proposed funding formula, under which Ballyoran school will gain by £44,000, while Hart memorial will lose more than £5,000—the result being that under this proposal each pupil at Ballyoran is worth £2,333, while pupils at Hart memorial are worth only £2,002. That is not a good example of equality. That result is a matter not just of free schools meals, but of the new banding that the Department has introduced. Does the Minister fully appreciate the effect that banding will have, particularly on the perception of the Department's policies?
Under the banding, the payment to the schools in band 1 is reduced by half, yet for those in band 2 and above the funding either remains at the current level or increases by some 50 per cent. In the Southern board area, 20 out of 39 post-primary schools are in band 2 or above, but only one of those 20 is in the controlled sector. Nine of the 19 remaining maintained schools are in band 3. As a result, 95 per cent. of the Southern board area's controlled sector schools will have their funding under TSN cut by half, but 100 per cent. of the maintained schools will either keep their existing funding or see it increase.
A shift can be seen in many terms. People have the right to ask why it appears from the figures that a child from a socially deprived background attending a controlled school is generally worth only £227, but those in the maintained school sector can be worth up to £668 in terms of TSN funding.
Can the Minister not see how it will be impossible for him to defend banding when it looks from the figures as if the new system was introduced for the purpose of creating such a shift? He cannot claim to be unaware of that impact. An equality impact statement from the Department studied that shift. In the light of the inequality it created, banding should have been dropped.
The equality impact study also spoke of local and international research that confirmed that free schools meals is a robust indicator of social disadvantage. That is an incredible statement, as we can identify poor take-up of free school meals and the term ''robust'' could not be further from the truth. Moreover, the Department has yet to address the important issue of the extent to which social disadvantage translates to educational, pastoral or behavioural need.
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One of the school principals at the meeting that I mentioned referred us to a Coopers and Lybrand report, ''Review of Formula Funding'', published in May 1997, which endeavoured to do that. The report confirms that the TSN figure should be £58 per head—certainly not more than £100—and it also lists some reasons why children from socially deprived backgrounds require extra funding. Those reasons are not educational and include teacher time spent at case conferences with social services, dealing with truancy and lateness, and paying for extra-curricula visits that would normally be paid for by parents. The report concludes that the funding should be lower.
Another important point is that the Department has, until recently, made no effort to find out what TSN funds have been spent on, although, apparently, it is now trying to achieve that. It is astonishing, however, that that money has been spent for decades without any check being made. I understand that there has yet to be any attempt to find out whether the money has had any impact on improving educational performance and whether it has an impact on educational need. There is quite legitimate doubt as to whether that is so.
If the Minister is really concerned to target educational need, he should focus more on special educational needs units, which provide a vital service to the most vulnerable, particularly those with disabilities and special learning difficulties. Recognising the necessity for more funding in that area, the Southern education and library board was generous in its funding of SEN units. One school in my area, Carrick primary, has an excellent reputation and has five units dealing with pupils with SEN. Under the current proposals, however, the school is set to lose £24,000 per annum. That will obviously have an adverse effect on the quality of education for its pupils.
The Department is trying to mainstream SEN, but how can it do that without providing adequate funding, particularly when extra money has been given to TSN under the Government's proposals? That has increased the top-slicing of the education budget from 5 to 5.5 per cent. That money could have been used to make better provision for SEN. Then, the funding for all children could have been brought up to the level previously available in the Southern board area, rather than reduced for the Southern board in particular.
There is another way that the increased TSN funding could have been better spent. I mentioned at the outset that there has been an increase in primary funding, which was necessary. Indeed, if anything, the increase should be greater to make the relationship between primary and post-primary funding in Northern Ireland the same as that in Great Britain. That could probably be done if, instead of top-slicing the budget, the entire budget went through something like the common funding formula.
What should not have happened is the reduction in post-primary school funding. Those schools can barely survive on current funding, never mind less. The Minister could have found a better way to support and
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improve our primary schools by converting money from TSN to primary, while leaving post-primary as it was.
5.42 pm
Mr. Gardiner: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for initiating the debate and for the constructive meeting that we had the other day in the Department. I will do my best to respond to the issues that he raised. He focused on four key issues: free school meals entitlement, banding, ''Targeting Social Need'' and the shift between post-primary and primary.
The consultation on the proposals for a common funding formula for the local management of schools came to an end last month. We are currently considering the way forward, so this debate is timely. Although I have not yet taken any final decisions on common funding arrangements for schools, it is neither fair nor sensible that there should be seven different ways of calculating school budgets, as the right hon. Gentleman himself said.
Under the current system there are different arrangements in each of the five education and library board areas and separate LMS schemes for voluntary grammar schools and grant-maintained integrated schools. Although the seven formulas have many common features, the difference in the factors used and values attached to them means that schools of identical size and characteristics can receive significantly different budgets simply because they happen to be in different parts of Northern Ireland. That is wrong, as the right hon. Gentleman accepts.
Under devolution that was clearly felt to be unsatisfactory and the Executive consulted in 2001 on proposals for the common funding formula. In their programme for government of 2002 to 2005, they also committed themselves to replacing those arrangements with a common funding system by April 2005. I share the view taken then and have been keen to advance work on delivering that commitment.
School funding is hugely important. Formula funding to schools in the current financial year comes to £875 million. The level of funding and how it is spent has a direct influence on the quality of education that schools can provide. Funding matters to schools, to parents and to everyone. Finance is on the agenda of almost every meeting that I have with school representatives and forms a large part of the correspondence received by the Department. We have a duty to make sure that finance is distributed equitably and to reassure schools about that.
In moving forward, I maintained a focus on the original principles of commonality espoused under devolution. They were that schools should be funded according to their relative need and in a way that helps to mitigate the effects of social disadvantage. That was the first thing set out by the Assembly. Schools should also be funded objectively and fairly. The formula should support schools in delivering the curriculum—that may seem obvious, but it is of course important. Also, the formula should be transparent and simple to operate.
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There was a further principle, namely the need for a common funding formula to support wider education policy objectives. Our headline education figures are often quoted as reasons to be proud of the Northern Ireland education system. We have a committed and dedicated teacher work force, we are investing at unparalleled levels in new school buildings and an information and communication technology network in Classroom 2000 that is the envy of many, and we outperform England at the higher levels.
We cannot ignore the fact that many pupils in our system are under-achieving, however. Nor can we ignore the fact that attainment levels among the most disadvantaged pupils are considerably lower than those among their more affluent counterparts. There remains a considerable spread between our highest and lowest achievers. That was borne out by international research published only this week. We need to narrow that gap and ensure that all children, regardless of background, have the opportunity to reach their full potential—that could have been a quotation from a leaflet that the right hon. Gentleman's party recently circulated. That is why any system for funding schools must be capable of targeting support in a way that reflects the Government's commitment, and that of the Executive before them, to targeting social need, as well as our determination to tackle low attainment.
We also know what research tells us about the importance of the early phases of education. There is a need to increase the proportion of funding directed to those early phases, particularly to primary schools. The current system provides 35 per cent. less funding to each primary school pupil than to his or her post-primary counterpart. That differential is much wider than the one in England and Wales. Although I accept that there are different needs in the two sectors, in relation to the scope of the curriculum and how it is delivered, the differential is too wide. That is why the proposals on which we consulted included a proposal to increase the weighting of primary school pupils, albeit by a small amount.
The right hon. Gentleman has concerns about the targeting social need elements of the proposal, so let me respond to those. I do not think that there is any doubt about the link between social disadvantage and educational attainment. As I said, we have evidence that shows that children from poorer backgrounds perform less well at every level than those from more affluent areas. They are also less likely to stay on at school or enter further or higher education, and are more likely in future to be unemployed or to work in low-paid jobs.
In distributing the overall school budget, it is right that we reflect the relative incidence of social need. We propose to do that by allocating an element of LMS funding based on the number of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, recognising the link between disadvantage and low educational attainment.
The right hon. Gentleman talked about the TSN factor in our proposals being 75 per cent. That is partly right, because 75 per cent. pertains to the primary schools, but the figure is 50 per cent. for post-primary under the proposals. The TSN factor is made up of two elements: a social disadvantage element and
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a low educational attainment element. Some 75 per cent. of TSN funding in primary schools and 50 per cent. in post-primary schools is directly linked to free school meals entitlement—I shall pursue the point about free school meals entitlement in a moment. The remaining 25 per cent. in primary and 50 per cent. in post-primary is distributed in line with outcomes from key stage 2 assessments.
We discussed entitlement at some length the other day. I listened carefully to the right hon. Gentleman's points then and have done so again today in Committee. I agree that it is vital that we establish the real entitlement, not the notional entitlement or that of those people who happen to have applied. I know that he recognises that it is difficult to bottom out statistics. Often, when trying to establish entitlement to free school meals, one can go only by what parents say about their circumstances. I was interested in his suggestion that we find better ways to establish the financial disadvantage of the family from which children come. I shall do more work to determine how we might incorporate that in future.
Our current method of determining social need is entitlement to free school meals, and the proposals reflect that. Research confirms that entitlement to free school meals is a robust indicator of social disadvantage among pupils.
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