HC Deb 30 January 1990 vol 166 cc146-7
4. Mr. Allen

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what assistance by Government is given to pupils per head (a)at schools in Nottinghamshire and (b) at the Nottingham city technology college.

The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Mrs. Angela Rumbold)

This year Nottinghamshire received almost £150 million of block grant. CTCs receive recurrent grant equivalent to expenditure by local education authorities on schools in comparable areas.

Mr. Allen

I should like to extend to the Minister another chance to apologise to the parents and children of Nottinghamshire for spending three times more on one school, the CTC, than on all the other schools in Nottinghamshire. While she is at it, will she offer an explanation for the appalling disciplinary record of the CTC in Nottinghamshire and of those elsewhere?

Mrs. Rumbold

Far from apologising, I should be congratulating the parents in Nottingham on their ability to send their children to a good school that has been provided in part by industry. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said, we have every confidence that those schools will be highly successful.

I must explain to the hon. Gentleman that he is talking about capital grant. I have already explained perfectly clearly that CTCs, in common with other schools, receive recurrent block grant, which is equitable to expenditure on schools within the maintained sector.

Mr. Andrew Mitchell

Instead of knocking Nottingham's magnificent new CTC, which is widely welcomed by local people, why does not the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) admit that, in the past 10 years of Conservative Government, Government education expenditure per pupil has gone up by no less than 71 per cent. in real terms? That expenditure has increased from under £1,000 per pupil to more than £1,700 per pupil.

Mrs. Rumbold

My hon. Friend is right. The Government's record of education expenditure per pupil is extremely good. He is also right to say that the people of Nottingham should be grateful. I second that, as the establishment of the CTC is in spite of the disgraceful behaviour of Nottinghamshire county council, which tried to do everything that it possibly could to prevent its establishment.