| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
3 Mar 2009 : Column 214WH—continued
11.28 am
Mr. Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam) (LD): I shall make a note of that for future reference, Mr. Amess.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) on securing this important and timely debate. Today is a significant day in the lives of many parents and children who are waiting for the letter to drop through their letterbox or the e-mail to hit their inbox, telling them whether their child has got the school of their preference. Many of us can appreciate the anxiety that parents feel at any stage in their children’s journey through education when they find that their child does not have a school place. It causes huge stress, anxiety and disruption to the whole family. I draw on personal experience, as I am waiting for one such letter to arrive today. I hope not to be cast into the limbo described by my hon. Friend and faced by many of our constituents with children of primary school age. Nevertheless, we know that those problems are at large in our high school system.
I have three key points to make. They are all unapologetically Sutton points, but they speak to the wider points made by my hon. Friend. The first is that Sutton experienced London’s third largest increase in births between 2005-06 and 2006-07. At just 2 per cent., Sutton has one of the lowest levels of surplus capacity in its primary schools, with surplus places in the upper years of schools rather than the lower years, and with no surplus places in reception classes. The past projections of birth rate figures supplied by the Greater London authority were critical to its application to the Department for its basic need capital funding. Because it used and relied on those figures, as required by the Department, the Department gave the London borough of Sutton an extremely low allocation that will be insufficient to enable the local authority to respond to the much changed circumstances of which we are now aware.
My hon. Friend was right to describe the situation as a crisis. The prospect of one’s child having no school place causes anxiety and stress, and the resulting loss of education and all that comes with it has a huge impact on the child. Past GLA projections showed that Sutton would have had sufficient primary school places for the next 15 years. However, the data that were available in March 2008, on which Sutton based its primary capital bid to the Department, showed only a modest increase in the birth rate that would have led to a short-term, one-year peak in 2011-12, during which there would have been 70 children without places in reception classes. I think it is unacceptable for even one child to be placed in that unwelcome and unacceptable situation, so 70 is
far too many; none the less, that was the basis of the bid. Since then, however, things have changed beyond all recognition.
The key to understanding what is happening is how the transfer rate, or retention rate as my hon. Friend described it—the ratio of the number of children going into reception classes in Sutton schools to the number of births in the borough five years previously—has changed. The changes in the number of children who go to school outside Sutton and the number of children from outside Sutton who are coming into Sutton’s schools have had an impact on that rate. My hon. Friend has mentioned that families are moving far less now and are making different choices about private education—there is clear evidence of that in my constituency. That change, too, has an impact on the transfer, or retention, rate.
Last September, for the first time in many years, every reception place in my borough was filled, so things have clearly changed. That change has been driven by the transfer rate rising from an average of 86.3 per cent., over the past five years, to 90 per cent. now. It has also been driven by the 8.6 per cent. increase in the birth rate between 2005-06 and 2006-07. With birth rates on the increase in Kingston, Merton and Croydon, and to some extent in Surrey, there are fewer opportunities for children to go to schools outside the borough of Sutton than there once might have been. As my hon. Friend has said, the pressures arising from the credit crunch mean that fewer families are moving home and that many are reconsidering whether independent education is an option.
The bottom line is that many hundreds of children will be in limbo in the next few years, without the offer of a primary school place. Whether the transfer rate remains at 90 per cent. or falls back to 85 per cent., according to the figures that my local education authority officers have worked out, there will be a shortfall of between 147 and 271 places by 2011-12, rising to between 209 and 337 in 2012-13. The deficit in places is huge and growing and a variety of approaches will be needed to close the gap. I hope that the Minister will respond to my hon. Friend’s questions on how those options will be paid for.
Using spare capacity is part of the solution. Analysis so far has identified just two schools in the borough with available rooms that are not used directly for educational purposes, which could be released for classrooms. That would cost £1 million. Another option is to add accommodation to schools. It might be possible to add as much as one form of entry at about seven primary schools, which would cost £9.4 million. Taken together, those options of using spare capacity and adding accommodation would still provide only 209 places. If the worst were to happen, although the figures do not suggest that it will, and there were higher demand—for 337 additional places—more schools would have to be expanded and a new, two-form entry school would have to be built.
The cost of dealing with the problem therefore ranges between £10.4 million and £22.2 million. Some of that money is needed now, not in a few years’ time, so the formal bid processes cannot be followed. If they are followed, the necessary school places will not be available for children when they need them in 18 months’ time. That is why we need the Minister to give us answers
today, or at least as soon as possible, about how the Department will respond to the extraordinary need that is emerging, so that resources can be released as a matter of urgency and so that planning and work can be done with as little disruption as possible to the education of the children already in those schools. That is why my local authority needs to know now whether it will be able to secure £4.8 million to upgrade two schools and to provide two one-form entry expansions in existing schools.
I hope that the Minister will respond to my hon. Friend’s many significant and detailed questions, and I request that she meet me, my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) and the officers from Sutton borough who have been dealing with these problems and grappling with what needs to be done to provide a decent education for children in my borough. I hope that she will meet us to discuss in detail what can be done and when, because we can be certain that if something is not done, we will have hundreds of children not going to school in the London borough of Sutton—in Worcester Park, Cheam and Belmont. Instead, they will be standing outside the school gates, looking in, unable to join their friends or to get the education that they deserve. I have outlined the need and made my plea. I hope that the Minister will meet that need.
11.37 am
Sarah Teather (Brent, East) (LD): I have a few brief points to make about the situation in Brent. First, however, let me congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) on securing the debate, which is very timely, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow) has said. This issue has been bothering many MPs and councillors, as well as the many parents who face huge difficulties as they look for school places for their children for September.
The situation in Brent is challenging. Between 2006 and 2007, its schools faced a 9 per cent. increase in the number of applications for reception class places. Reception class numbers fluctuated between 3,000 pupils in 2006 and 3,265 in 2007, and the council had immense difficulty in meeting that need. It applied to the Government for emergency funding, which was refused, and it did its best to meet the need by installing temporary buildings and making use of bulge classes in a similar way to the council described by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton. However, those solutions are not permanent, and can be used only for a couple of years. In addition, large numbers of children have still been left without a permanent school place. Some Government funding was provided for temporary buildings for two forms of entry at the relatively new ARK academy, and one new form of entry was provided by rebuilding Wembley primary school, but that was done locally, using money from the council, and not through any extra Government funding.
Even with those additions, the council needs three more forms of entry on a permanent basis. It hopes to use some of the early years element of the primary capital programme to provide extra capacity by expanding one primary school. However, as I mentioned in my intervention, the problem with that funding scheme is that it is strongly focused on underperforming schools, on improving performance and on providing buildings
for underperforming schools, rather than on dealing with capacity problems. Many old primary schools in Brent are in urgent and desperate need of modernisation. We have had cases of roofs falling in, and of the council not having extra funding immediately available to tackle that problem, so there is an urgent need to modernise some buildings. In addition, we are facing a dramatic increase in the number of children applying to primary schools in Brent. As with Building Schools for the Future for secondary schools, that funding scheme is not focused on tackling capacity needs.
As I have mentioned, 44 children in Brent are without a school place. Not all of them have been waiting since the start of term, as we have a highly transient population and people move in and out of the borough during the school year, but there are often long waits for children to get a place when they move into the borough. Currently, 16 children are without a reception class place, and the situation does not improve for secondary schools, as 74 children are waiting for a secondary school place. Brent urgently needs extra capital investment in schools, and it simply cannot wait.
My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton said parents did not want huts and temporary classrooms, but even temporary classrooms would be a step forward for Brent in the immediate future, with a promise of long-term funding so that they can rebuild the primary schools that are needed. I implore the Minister to look at the situation in Brent and other London boroughs. We cannot have a situation in which so many children lack school places as the level of deprivation in Brent makes the environment challenging enough, so I hope that the Minister will make that a priority.
11.41 am
Mr. Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con): I apologise for being a little late in arriving for the debate, Mr. Amess. No disrespect was intended to you in the Chair or to the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey), who has, as other Members have said, rightly introduced an important debate that goes to the heart of thinking throughout the capital. It is an acute problem, as is well known, in his royal borough. The royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea has almost exactly the same problem, but it applies across much of London.
The hyper-mobility and diversity of the capital’s population has become ever more prominent, although perhaps that has always been the case. The Minister represents part of the busy city of Portsmouth, and her Parliamentary Private Secretary, the hon. Member for South Swindon (Anne Snelgrove), represents Swindon—both towns in which I suspect there has been much demographic change in the relatively limited time in which they have been Members of Parliament. The demographic change I have seen in central London and across the capital has gathered enormous pace over the past decade, and that is one of the key facts in the debate, as the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton rightly said in his opening comments. The predictive forecasting model, on which we have all relied, has to a large extent broken down. Demand for school places depends not only on the birth rate, but on migration, and aspects of the birth rate are linked to migration. In
certain communities, particularly Muslim communities, there is a tradition of a much higher birth rate, which has had a significant impact on the issue.
The hon. Gentleman was right to point out that private education is most prevalent in London, which means that the articulate middle class voices that would normally be upstanding in addressing the issue have been quieter than would otherwise be the case, but perhaps that will begin to change, given the economic downturn and stagnant property market. Many parents with young children who might have considered moving out to the country once their children were beyond primary school age or once a second or third child had been born will not be able to do so for some time.
All those factors play an important role in a problem that is quickly catching up with us. It is easy for Opposition Members to criticise the Government for their predictive figures. Without such a high level of mobility, it would be easier to know what the birth rates are in any vicinity, so the number of primary school places that will be needed in four or five years’ time could be predicted. I am not simply saying that the Department is at fault in this issue, because there are new concerns about the effect that the level of mobility and diversity in our population is having on the provision of school places, particularly in the capital. I reiterate the hope expressed by the three previous speakers that the Government will give considerable thought to that problem.
I hope that you will allow me to say a little bit about local issues in my constituency, Mr. Amess, because the issue has come to the fore in the past few weeks. Indeed, I was contemplating asking for a Westminster Hall debate on a similar issue. I was contacted three weeks ago by Farah Baig of Marylebone Mums, who wished to highlight the group’s concern about the provision of state education at primary school level. In her letter to me, she stated that, unfortunately, very little credit was given to the fact that people were long-standing residents of Marylebone and that it was not uncommon for people new to the area to be offered a place before someone who had been a resident for 20 years. On seeking clarification from Westminster city council’s school admissions team, she was advised that that was correct procedure and that, despite being state-funded, it was proper for faith schools in particular to have selection criteria.
The problem in my constituency is that choice is limited, and is often confined to faith-based schools. A significant proportion of parents take their children out of the state sector, and I fear that they often represent that articulate voice that could make a real difference. By the time they have decided to send their children to fee-paying schools from a young age, there is little incentive for them to make the difference that they otherwise might. Westminster has some fantastic local state schools at primary school level, but I am afraid that they are exclusively faith—based schools, either Church of England or Roman Catholic. However, their results are in the very top grade, even at the national level.
Part of the problem is the assumption that those who live in my city-centre constituency are wealthy enough to send their children to private schools if they do not qualify for one of those excellent state faith-based schools. Indeed, Carl Upsall, a leading member of the Marylebone Association, told me:
“Either you pay for private schools or you fall at the feet of the church.”
I suspect that that sentiment applies to many parts of London and beyond the capital’s borders. With the worsening economic situation, people are increasingly keen to see a good state school in their area. I hope that that means that some of those parents might have more of an incentive to make the state system work for them in future, but inevitably that will take time. When it comes to the education of any child of school age, time is one thing that parents do not have on their side. They want a good school now, not the promise of excellence four or five years down the line, by which time their child’s education may have been detrimentally affected.
Parents are increasingly turning to home schooling because of their concerns about the provision of primary and secondary education in central London. That issue was raised with me only last week by two constituents, and I hope to raise it in a future Westminster Hall debate. Two concerned mothers, Mrs. Helen White and Mrs. Tina Robbins, both decided to educate their children at home, because they were worried about the quality of education in the state sector, particularly with regard to the restrictive curriculum and the culture of levelling down, rather than encouraging excellence. We have an obsessive approach to equality in the educational establishment, and there is an increasing view, perhaps understandably, given the furore over the baby P case and others, that educating children at home is an issue not only for education departments, but for social services. There is more of a disincentive to go down the route of home education, yet some of our most dedicated parents are deciding to educate their children in that way, which in many ways should be welcomed in relation to choice and diversity. The only downside is that it is often a reflection of parents’ despair about the quality of education offered by the state.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD): Would the hon. Gentleman like to caveat that comment by accepting that, although children can be educated at home excellently, there are concerns about whether that is monitored in the way it should be, as some children are not getting a good education at home at all?
Mr. Field: That is a legitimate issue for people on both sides of the argument. The issue has to focus on educational needs, rather than just on social and equality needs. An issue that was, funnily enough, raised by the two parents to whom I spoke the other day is that, rather than simply excluding difficult children, it is in fact quite convenient for a local education authority to say to parents, “Why don’t you, notionally, home-educate them?” I accept that an increasing number of children in that category probably get a less than adequate education at home. None the less, I support the idea of diversity and choice. One only wishes that it were a positive choice, rather than one made for negative reasons.
In my constituency, there have been calls to revisit the debate on building new primary, secondary and nursery schools south of the Marylebone road to cater for the large number of young families who have moved into that area. Indeed, it is a strategy of Westminster city council to encourage more families not only to live, but to stay in the centre of the city. I think that all London Members feel that parts of their constituency would
definitely benefit from a residential population that was active in the local community and engaged with it. Whether it is Kingston town centre or bits of my constituency, such as Soho or Covent Garden, allowing parts of our constituencies to exist simply for the commercial sector has a detrimental knock-on effect for the community at large.
Many parents in my constituency are keen to have a non-denominational secondary school and nursery. There is a particular concern about provision for boys. As someone who has a 14-month-old son, I have an eye and firm ear to these matters. I welcome the work that the Government have done and I have met the erstwhile schools Minister, Lord Adonis, to discuss the refreshed Pimlico academy. It is early days, but one hopes that the academy will prove to be a great success in the months and years ahead.
Finally, I shall mention the work of the education department at Westminster city council. The excellent local councillor and cabinet member Sarah Richardson has told me that there is no reason to build a new secondary school, because parents have wide access to a great choice of 10 schools, which provide education irrespective of faith in the city of Westminster as a whole. That does not just relate to my constituency, but that of my Labour neighbour, the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck). Just north of my constituency, the brand new King Solomon academy will eventually cater for children from nursery through to sixth form. It is fair to say that many of our local authorities are wise to these facts and are working hard. However, given that the issues of hyper-mobility and hyper-diversity have become profound ones in our capital city, local authorities need some assistance from central Government.
Thank you, Mr. Amess, for allowing me to speak at such length on this subject. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments on what is an important matter now, and will, I fear, be an important matter for all London Members of Parliament in the years ahead.
11.52 am
Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con): I would like to start by apologising for being late. I was detained on a shadow ministerial engagement looking at Waterloo station and whether Network Rail can bring the platforms back into usage earlier than it has currently suggested it will. I suspect that matter might strike a chord with other hon. Members in this room.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) on calling this debate. I share his surprise that others are not here, if they were forewarned. I am afraid that I only heard about the debate last night, but this issue is undoubtedly cross-London and cross-party. The matter was first raised seriously in my constituency surgeries in June last year and, indeed, at a number of open meetings that I held in the autumn. We have had a consistent problem.
The issue has had a major impact on Wimbledon, which was recognised by London Councils. It said:
“Merton has a particularly bad problem both in the number of children...and in the projected shortfall in capital funding.”
| Next Section | Index | Home Page |