HC Deb 23 March 2004 vol 419 cc211-33WH

2 pm

Mr. Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale, West) (Con)

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this important matter today. I was prompted to seek this debate by the particular plight of one local school, Woodheys primary school, in Sale in my constituency. The problems to which I want to draw attention affect many of my local schools and many more around the country. Laura Daniels, the head of Woodheys, wrote this to the Minister for School Standards: At Woodheys we decided"— she was referring to last year— to set a realistic budget. Some heads 'balanced' their budgets by allocating negligible amounts to supply 'cover' or 'training' and have had to deny staff their entitlement to professional development. We did not. Also we refused to lose support staff at that late stage (it was July before we were given final information on our under or over spends from the previous year), and decided not to use Devolved Capital for buildings as we felt that although we had been given 'permission' by the government, this was not an avenue we supported. Also perhaps, naively, I believed that the government would rectify its mistake in 04–05. We were horrified to find that this has not happened. Against our principles and under pressure, as we only had until November 30th to change our decision, we have now decided to use Devolved Capital to 'clear' our deficit. Unfortunately, with no real increase in funding, we are back to 'square one' for September 2004. I have spent hours and hours agonising over an impossible task— I am supposed to give staff more support time, release and a better work/life balance (as promised by the government) and through no fault of my own or my governors, we will have to lose all support staff, many trained in-house, in September 04.

The Department for Education and Skills replied to Laura Daniels on 16 February, seeking to transfer blame to Trafford borough council. Trafford is a Labour-controlled authority, which has for two successive years been described as "weak" by the Audit Commission, so I am not altogether averse to some blame attaching to the local authority. The Department wrote: The Regulations governing LEAs' formulae, as I have said, still give LEAs a considerable measure of freedom to determine the detail of their formulae, so if your concern lies with the operation of Trafford's school funding formula, then you will need to follow-up matters at the local level.

This Government have taken massive powers to control the funds that local education authorities pass on to schools and the criteria by which funds are distributed between schools. Surely Ministers must therefore take some responsibility for the depressing picture of job cuts and service reduction that is beginning to emerge. However, instead of taking responsibility, they are showing complacency and giving excuses. Labour's 2001 manifesto promised explicitly that there would be more classroom assistants and claimed that primary schools' problems had already been tackled. It said: We plan a radical improvement in secondary schools", then, in bold print, building on our success in primary schools.

All the problems in the primary school sector had apparently been tackled in the first Parliament of the Labour Government, so it was time to move on to secondary schools. The Chancellor, in his Budget statement last week, gave a similar impression that everything in the educational garden is rosy. He said: Having, in the last spending round, tackled under-investment in schools and in teaching staff, the primary focus of this spending round must be on excellence and improving standards for all."—[Official Report, 17 March 2004; Vol. 419, c. 334.] The picture that I have gained from my local schools is not one in which under-investment in schools and teaching staff has been tackled—far from it. Schools and parents will view the Chancellor's remarks in the light of their experience of last year's funding crisis. They saw, as we all did, that overall expenditure increased, but they also saw, owing to increased taxes, and especially employers' national insurance contributions, increased pension charges, the removal of much of the standards fund money, and changes in pay scales, that schools had less money to spend at the front line.

Last year, the National Union of Teachers commissioned Professor Alan Smithers and Pamela Robinson to research the effects of the crisis. Last October, they published their report, "The Reality of School Staffing", which showed that more than half of primary schools and nearly two thirds of secondary schools received less money than they had in the previous year, and that nearly a quarter of primary schools and a third of secondary schools had cut staffing levels. Smithers and Robinson found that schools throughout the country had lost 8,800 teaching posts, 5,500 of which were in primary schools, and 12,300 non-teaching staff.

Last year's crisis would have led to even bigger cuts had not Ministers belatedly urged the use of capital funds to stave off redundancies. Even then, schools were left with no reserves and no funding for necessary capital projects. Many schools were forced to set deficit budgets for the current year, and schools that face budget pressures this year that are the same as or worse than last year's have no reserves on which to call.

I shall illustrate the point with a letter that I received from St. Mary's Church of England primary school in my constituency. The head wrote: Last year, because of the change to the distribution of class size funding I had to lose 0.5 of a teacher. I was, because of careful budgeting the year before, able to fund 0.4 from my under spend. This year I am in a similar situation with no underspend. Such schools face the loss of teaching staff.

The Minister will say that, in some areas, jobs will go in schools because of falling rolls. A recent survey inThe Times Educational Supplement suggests that hundreds of teaching jobs will be lost this year. Primary schools are expected to bear the brunt of the losses. Professor Smithers has estimated that as many as 50,000 teaching jobs could be lost by 2010. However, we now have what Ministers have called an historic agreement on teacher work load. Even if rolls are falling, staff numbers need not decline if the Government intend to keep their promise to reduce class sizes and teacher work load and to increase the numbers of classroom assistants. Instead, we are looking at a picture of further redundancies as well as vacant posts being left unfilled.

For the teacher work load agreement to work, schools will need more staff, not fewer, but the Minister for School Standards apparently thinks that everything is fine. Asked inThe Guardian on 13 January about how the plans were taking shape, he responded: How do I think it's going? Swimmingly well, swimmingly well. The reality for schools, however, is often different, as the head of a Hale primary school told me: Finally I'd just like to add that as a relatively new Headteacher who has always aspired to this role I feel deeply let down by the workforce reform and the budget issues I am faced with on a day to day basis.

When the Prime Minister, no less, was in Manchester on 13 March, he advanced a new explanation for Labour's failures to deliver in our public services. He said that everything was wonderful—it is just that people think it is terrible. He said: There is much scratching of the head in political circles over this apparent paradox: people who feel personally optimistic in Britain; but collectively pessimistic. They say their own health care in the NHS is good; but the NHS in general is bad. Their schools are good; but education is bad. One of the most important functions of the House is to keep Ministers, and perhaps especially the Prime Minister, in touch with reality. I shall do that by giving a snapshot of the views of primary school head teachers in my constituency.

I have already described the frustration felt by Laura Daniels, the head teacher at Woodheys. I shall share with hon. Members further comments that I received from a variety of primary schools in my area. The head teacher of an Altrincham school wrote to me on 12 March. He said: Confronted with advice from the DfES on increasing the number of classroom assistants and their profile across the school, I feel saddened, disappointed and disillusioned, whilst receiving funding that could not possibly meet the challenges set out by the DfES and current legislation. Yesterday the school governors cut the hours by 40 per cent. of all classroom assistants and handed a redundancy notice to another. The working hours of one teacher were halved.

At a time when Ministers say that the work load of teachers should be reduced and staff numbers should be rising, staff numbers are actually falling, which will mean that work load will either stay at its current level or, in some schools, get worse.

The head teacher of All Saints Catholic primary school in Sale wrote to me, saying: Where vacancies have occurred, the Governors have taken clear decisions not to employ someone too expensive! Fortunately we have made good appointments, but we have actively discriminated against the elderly. The funding pressures force schools to take staffing decisions that they regard as less than ideal. The funding crisis last year, and continuing pressures this year, mean that schools, instead of recruiting the teachers they think will be the best people to join their staff, will skew appointments towards the recruitment of less experienced, cheaper members of staff. At the other end of the scale, there are schools that already have long-serving members of staff, perhaps because they are the best schools and have the best working environments for teachers. Such schools, which have been successful in retaining their work force over a long period, will have a disproportionate number of older, more experienced teachers, and will face ever greater problems because the proportion of their school budget taken up by staff costs will be greater. The issue affects different schools in different ways, but in all those different scenarios it distorts the pattern of recruitment and creates problems, even in schools that are successful in retaining staff, which Ministers say is one of their principal priorities.

Another primary school head teacher in Sale wrote to me to say that the school faced a number of difficult issues this year, and that to resolve its budget difficulties it had been decided to reduce teacher staffing by one full-time teacher from 31/8/04. He said that that does not involve redundancy as the teacher concerned is on a temporary contract". Such job losses may not feature on the official returns of numbers of redundancies, because it is sometimes a matter of staff not being replaced, vacancies not being filled or contracts not being renewed, rather than of existing staff being made formally redundant.

The head teacher says that the school will also reduce its Teaching Assistant support by the equivalent of one full-time post from 31/8/04. and its Midday Supervision Staffing by at least two staff members; this will involve redundancy procedures. He continues that the school will also reduce budget allocations to Curriculum Resources and Buildings Maintenance by 30 per cent. and 20 per cent. respectively from the 2003/4 levels.

The pressures that are being applied to the numbers and type of staff recruited and retained are being felt throughout the system, and they are affecting other areas such as service provision, curriculum resources, library materials and buildings maintenance, because schools are moving heaven and earth to try to ensure that they do not have to make staff redundant.

The head teacher of a local Roman Catholic school wrote: It is the Governors' decision not to immediately pursue a policy of redundancy, however it is clear that we cannot continue to maintain the current quality of educational provision…for another year given the current level of funding. We are clearly at breaking point with no other cuts or strategies to adopt. Those schools have already weathered a crisis in the past 12 months, the like of which many in the education world had never seen. They have been through an incredibly difficult period, believing at every stage the Government's promises that things would be better this year, that new resources would be in place, and that there would be a guaranteed funding increase to deliver them from their difficulties. However, there is nothing to help schools that plunged into deficit budgets last year and face continuing pressures this year.

The head teacher of another Sale school wrote to me: Although I will not have to make redundancies this year, I may not be replacing one teaching assistant who is leaving in September and will be using all of our reserves to make ends meet. That school is perhaps fortunate, because it still had some reserves after the difficulties of last year. A vast number of schools that had run their finances prudently and maintained some reserves to help them in difficult times were forced to spend all that money to stave off redundancies last year, and they now have nothing left to cover current and future difficulties. The head teacher of another local school, this time in Timperley, wrote: Trafford have stated that the school's budget has been well managed. Savings in the Special Purposes Fund resulted in £73,000. Governors intended that this fund be used to supplement the budget during the years of falling pupil numbers. £33,000 was used to balance the budget in 03/04. The remaining £40,000 will be used in 04/05, but will not achieve a balanced budget. Again, we see the problems that existed last year, and that the Minister assured everyone would be resolved adequately this year, continuing into the future.

The head teacher continued Even without falling rolls…we would be unable to maintain current staffing levels without additional funding. Current staffing levels cannot be maintained, let alone the increases in the support staff and classroom assistants that the Government promised and that Ministers know are essential if their promises to tackle work load difficulties and meet the work load agreement are to be fulfilled.

The head teacher continued: From September 2004 we will have large, vertically grouped classes in most age groups, with many accompanying issues for staff and parents. Again, we can see the ramifications for the quality and nature of education provision: not only the loss of valued staff but further difficulties as schools create different strategies to deal with the problems that arise.

The general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, David Hart, said: In some areas April's budgets will be like applying a sticking plaster to a gaping wound. The Chancellor has promised a direct payment to each school in 2005–06, but that will not do anything to help this year. Even if the sticking plaster is big enough for the following year, it will have done nothing to prevent redundancies and job cuts this September.

We must ask why, faced with last year's devastating problems and continuing pressures this year, the Chancellor did not promise support this year in his Budget statement but held it out as a prospect for future additional help. Heads around the country are becoming somewhat sceptical about promises of future funding, because all too often, even when the overall expenditure is increased, the costs that heads have to bear—staff costs, additional tax costs or extra bureaucratic costs—increase by more than the additional funding.

Ministers must accept that thousands of schools across the country have dire problems. The Prime Minister must understand that the paradox puzzling parents is that they pay more tax and the Government are spending more money, but the outcome in schools is teachers facing the sack. Schools do not want to hear from the Minister that everything is perfect, because they know that it is not; they want him to understand that there is a problem. They want to hear, as do I on behalf of schools in my constituency that have written to me, practical proposals to stop the loss of good, experienced teachers and classroom assistants in September.

2.22 pm
Lembit Öpik (Montgomeryshire) (LD)

I was considering participating in the debate this morning, but I have a confession for this Chamber and the country: I am ill. However, I intend to fight the illness and continue as leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats for now. Sadly, the media have not shown the slightest interest in the condition of my health, but my lines are open and I am waiting for "Newsnight" to call. Nevertheless, I put on record my gratitude for my leader, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Inverness, West (Mr. Kennedy), for passing the torch of illness to a new generation of politicians, and I shall do my best to gain political mileage from it.

Redundancies caused by primary school closures are an issue in my constituency. I realise that the Minister is not directly responsible for matters in Wales and can therefore relax, but I will ask him a general strategic question on which I hope he can give his perspective. I shall describe the specific issue in my constituency that brings me to the debate. Over the past few years, Powys county council, which oversees education in Montgomeryshire, has considered various school closures, and some schools have been closed. Most recently, five schools were considered: Llangurig, Llandinam, Llanrhaeadr, Llansilin and Llangedwyn. One could think that all schools beginning with a double `1' were chosen, but I suspect that there was more strategy to it. The bottom line is that each individual committee felt it wrong to close those schools and cause redundancies in the teaching community, for various reasons.

A fractious series of debates and arguments culminated in a debate in Powys county council in which, breathtakingly, the then chief executive sought to criticise me in front of all the councillors for seeking to lobby them in support of the schools. I respectfully point out that that is my job. Nevertheless, that shows how high emotions were. I am glad to say that all those schools have had a reprieve, except for Llangedwyn, which remains under review.

That brings me to my analysis of the redundancy difficulties caused in my constituency, which are relevant to the whole situation in England, as outlined by the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) in his excellent introductory speech. The redundancies are bad from an educational perspective, especially in primary schools in rural areas, because the schools are the heart of small communities and in some senses embody the soul of the community. If we close down the school and fire the teachers, we also close down much of the community's social focus.

Those redundancies also have a knock-on effect on the economy. The decelerator effect of taking a primary school out of a rural community can often lead to a reduction in population and a disincentive for young families to move to the area. The result is economic pressure on the shops and trading outlets in those villages, which oftentimes pay the price as well. That is a new, additional observation that I seek to raise with the Minister: redundancies caused not directly by cuts in the education budget but indirectly, by population reduction and deterioration in the economic viability of a community. I could at this stage make known my criticisms of the Government for attacking councils that have introduced large council tax increases to mitigate what they regard as extremely difficult financial circumstances brought about by Government policy. However, I shall not do that, because that is not the core issue for this debate. The hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West sought guidance from the Minister on why money has increased in real terms but genuine cuts have been made. The explanation is the ring-fencing of much of the money. It is laudable that teachers have received a better financial settlement in the majority of cases, in order to right the continuous underfunding and reduction of salaries in the teaching community under the Conservatives, but using up the increased pot of money entirely in teachers' pay settlements will not help with the infrastructure or maintain the number of teachers.

My considerations about what could be done next apply to England as well as Wales, and I shall be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about them. We must obviously consider the educational impact of redundancies caused by downsizing or closing schools. Taking a primary school out of a community clearly has a knock-on effect. I personally believe that the most effective way to teach citizenship is in small local schools, with community support, where real relationship building can take place and inculcate values by osmosis. Both cuts in the teaching work force and school closures, which lead to redundancies, should be considered in the light of the economic knock-on effects that I have described.

There is an interesting implication of my analysis. If I am correct, it should sometimes be appropriate for money that is earmarked for economic activities to be used to support a primary school in a rural area, because the economic cost of not doing so far exceeds the saving to a local authority.

Mr. Brady

The hon. Gentleman might want to reflect on the fact that the Government accept his argument when it comes to regenerating urban areas, where they are happy for additional money to be spent, but apparently reject it for rural areas.

Lembit Öpik

The hon. Gentleman makes an insightful point. Some of us have felt for some time that, despite considerable talk of rural-proofing, there are double standards in the treatment of inner-city areas and rural areas such as Montgomeryshire. No doubt he is familiar with rural circumstances himself.

I seek confirmation that the Minister takes the economic impact of school closures seriously and that, strategically at least, he would recognise that there is an economic case to be considered in decisions to downsize teaching work forces or proceed with school closures that might lead to large-scale redundancies. For my part, I shall tight, fight and fight again to save the schools in Montgomeryshire, which I love. I hope that the Government's support for the strategic considerations that I have described will be a useful indicator for the decision makers in Welsh education policy, and also a reassurance to rural areas in England.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Nicholas Winterton)

May I express the hope from the Chair that the hon. Gentleman recovers from whatever is ailing him? He tipped me off this morning that he was suffering from a disease that is new to me, called Kennedyitis. I hope that the epidemic sweeping his party is not too debilitating for him or any of his colleagues.

Lembit Öpik

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

It is sure to be bogus, but I will accept it.

Lembit Öpik

If one of the consequences of the affliction is a conversion to Liberal Democracy, you can expect that many more people in the House will contract it.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

I am sure that hon. Members have noted what the hon. Gentleman says.

2.31 pm
Mrs. Annette L. Brooke (Mid-Dorset and North Poole) (LD)

I congratulate the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) on securing this debate. It is undoubtedly an important issue and has a big impact on our communities, demoralising teaching staff and causing them extra stress when they are already in stressful situations. In my constituency, certainly, parents are now desperately worried about the reorganisation that is being discussed. The issue is incredibly important, and the focus on primary schools is another vital aspect. The population bubble is moving into secondary schools, taking more funds and making it even harder to sustain a good teaching ratio in our primary schools.

I acknowledge at the outset the difference that the Government have made to our schools—it would be remiss not to. Up to two years ago, the teachers in my constituency were beginning to see a real difference. There was a sea change. I shall refer a little to my own constituency, although I know that this is a winding-up speech, simply because one of the two local education authorities there, Poole LEA, is the lowest-funded primary school authority, so some points are relevant.

Sadly, we have to take last year's settlement as our starting point. That is clearly where things started to go badly wrong. At long last, it has been accepted as a crisis that saw hundreds of teachers made redundant across the country and many temporary contracts for both teachers and learning support assistants not renewed. One survey showed that one in five primary schools increased their class sizes as a result, which is the contrary direction to that in which we wish to go. We saw the introduction of a new funding formula, plus the significant increase in costs falling on schools. It all happened at the same time. The increased national insurance contributions and teachers' pay and pension increases were all incredibly predictable, but it would appear that civil servants failed to research accurately the impact of such changes.

I seem to recall that at first Ministers were in denial, trying to blame LEAs for not passporting funds to schools. Undoubtedly, some misdeeds were flushed out, but at the end of the day not enough money was provided. That created extreme problems for many authorities, and especially those with low funding such as those in my constituency. The debate over who was at fault was blame culture at its worst. The crisis in funding was a setback in the considerable progress made by this Government, resulting in demoralisation for many teachers and head teachers while childish squabbling went on nationally. As we have heard from other parts of the country, and I am sure that it is pretty widespread, many schools minimised the impact of last year's poor settlement by using up balances or dipping into their capital reserves.

The improved settlement this year for many LEAs was not sufficient to make up that deficit. In many authorities, the problems are compounded by falling rolls. In Poole, the key group of workers facing redundancy were learning support assistants, many more of whom went than teachers last year. In that small education authority, 46 lost their jobs, partly as a result of falling rolls and partly because of the unfair education settlement for 2003–04, which favoured some parts of the country above others.

The survey to which the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West referred was commissioned by the National Union of Teachers, and the Department for Education and Skills questioned some of its findings. One of the survey's conclusions was that head teachers and senior staff in primary schools would have to do more teaching, which is substantiated by schools in my constituency.

I quote a first-school head, who has met the Minister for School Standards several times, which I welcome, as that head teacher can explain what it is like being head of a small first school in the lowest-funded primary school authority in the country. She said: At the end of 2003 we lost a full-time teacher and 47 hours of teacher assistant time. In order to attempt to set a balanced budget we have replaced a retiring member of the school leadership team with a newly qualified teacher. This means that our leadership team will consist of only 2 others and myself to lead the teaching and learning for the school. This will put great pressure on us as we are so thinly spread. Our supply and staff-training budgets have been slashed. My SENCO relies on me, the head teacher, to give her non-contact time to carry out her role. I also give each staff member an afternoon of planning and preparation time each term, though this is not enough, of course. All these hidden stresses mean that in real terms we are a great deal worse off now than in 2002/3 and all staff are extremely tired through trying to compensate for the deficiencies in funding.

Many other schools in Poole are predicting compulsory redundancies this year because the percentage increase in funding in an already inadequate budget has just not lifted schools up to where they were before.

I have talked to various local education authorities. A councillor in Oxfordshire said: While we are not facing a huge drop in primary numbers due to housing growth, we still face severe budget problems from last year's settlement. This year's settlement has kept us stable from last year's position but has not made up all of last year's gap. The key factor in that gap was and is teacher pay reforms, which have never been properly funded. We acknowledge that the Government swiftly took action for this year, introducing the guaranteed minimum increase in funding, restoring money to the standards fund—it would have been dreadful if that had been removed—and introducing payments for the worst-affected authorities, but many authorities just missed the additional help, and Poole was one of them. As falling rolls begin to bite, the threat of redeployment or redundancy will increasingly become a fact of life for teachers in many parts of the country. The Department for Education and Skills predicts that schools will lose more than 600,000 pupils between 2001 and 2016, which on the present pupil-teacher ratio is equivalent to about 41,000 teachers.

The Times Educational Supplement survey showed that schools in most of England's 150 local authorities would shed staff this year. It is difficult to imagine that anything will reverse the demographic trends—it will take more than power cuts—so we need to look forward and consider how they can be managed.

Liberal Democrats favour the local management of schools and local decision taking, but as a consequence, the way in which redundant teachers are treated varies tremendously across the country. In some areas, there appear to be deals with unions, but in others teachers are on their own in finding jobs. I have great sympathy with the teachers, who may include my daughter, as she is likely to be affected by what happens in the next four years. It is a sensitive matter that should not be subject to dictation from the centre, but it is difficult for the teaching profession to handle the differentials.

It is important to note that the decline in school rolls does not hit all areas in the same way, even in the same authority. In Poole, the drop has been sharpest in the old council house estates. That is a result of the policy of selling council houses, which means that families remain in their houses long after their children have grown up, so new, younger families cannot move in.

Commendably, the Government want to see joined-up services and extended schools, which I am in favour of, at the heart of such communities, but that will be impossible if existing schools close, so local education authorities face a choice: if communities are to be sustained in the face of falling rolls, key schools must be kept open and schools redefined as providers of a wide range of services to the community. If we can focus on that, the outcome could be very positive.

Councils must be allowed to be creative, but that will be impossible if market forces dominate and popular schools are allowed to grow at the expense of all others. That relates rather well to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik), who is suffering greatly, and who, I hope, is not spreading his germs in this direction. He referred to the economic impact of the closures and the fact that we need to support rural primary schools. I come across such rural issues in my mixed constituency, and I have great sympathy for his points. It is interesting that they are reflected among schools on council house estates. Indeed, the issue is exactly the same.

At the moment, everyone is talking about improving the protection of vulnerable children, and schools will undoubtedly play a vital role in ensuring that every child matters. As part of an excellent scheme in Poole, pastoral support workers are appointed to cover a pyramid of schools or a specific school. Those workers are ideally placed to link up with health and social services staff to co-ordinate services to children and parents. I am sorry to say, however, that cuts to learning support funds have put the position of those workers at risk. Of course, we now have the work force reform programme, which is much spoken about. I have not seen much evidence of it in my constituency, but that is because I have not visited any of the pathfinders, which are further along the line. It is also true that schools are now tackling the 24 tasks. However, learning assistants are still losing their jobs. They are the very people who should be doing jobs such as photocopying to make life better for our teachers and to allow them to concentrate on using their skills to the utmost.

I must tell the Minister about a meeting that I attended with Poole head teachers, just as the real severity of last year's settlement was hitting them. The LEA suddenly announced that it had been given a grant of £18,000 or more to devise a work reform strategy. I do not know how those head teachers stayed sitting in the room—they were so incensed about the fact that they had to make redundancies while a grant had been given to devise a strategy. Of course, they want work reform, but it is ironic that they face the prospect of working longer hours and asking others to do so. It is important that we get the balance right. We all want teachers to be given the non-contact time that they desperately need, and we need to use the opportunity provided by falling rolls. We must ensure that things do not get worse as schools get into a downward spiral because they do not have enough money. The 32 pathfinders have been given extra resources. What additional resources will be provided across all LEAs for work force reform? How will that tie in with falling rolls in some authorities?

Many trade unions have said that falling school rolls offer opportunities. For example, parents will have greater certainty about whether their preference for their child's school place can be met. There is greater scope for the removal or replacement of poor-quality or temporary accommodation, and other surplus accommodation can be used to support community initiatives in the extended schools. There is a good opportunity to reduce class sizes, which authorities cannot often do because the Government dictate the money flows to the schools and pressurise them to eliminate surplus places. The Government cannot do anything about the falling rolls, but they can allow greater flexibility locally to find good solutions that will benefit our young people, their future and our future. Redeploying more money into early-years education is possible.

Islington councillors made the interesting comment that inflexible compulsory requirements from the Department for Education and Skills have had unhelpful and distorting effects on the ground. For example, the requirement that no school should receive less money next year than last year cuts right across coherent three-year strategies. This is an example of a uniform national requirement having perverse effects because it does not take local factors into account. I do not know the full situation, but the councillors make the important point that so much has been dictated from the centre. I understand why, and I have seen schools that have benefited from such a strong-arm approach, but it is now time to let the LEAs and the schools work out the best local solution. Will there will be any slackening off?

Councillors from Milton Keynes made a point that is not key to the debate, but I have been asked to mention it and will do so as there is time: the school population of Milton Keynes is rising, but schools are still suffering. It is worth examining this converse situation, because the councillors say that the Government funding formula does not provide for that rising school population. Almost all their grant is swallowed by passporting to schools, but it does not cover the rising demand. It seems that everyone is unhappy, but I wanted to make that point. I was interested to read that the Department is responding to the problem of the falling primary school rolls, and that there is a proposal to establish a working group with partner organisations to explore the options and opportunities available to schools and communities. I will be interested to see how that works out.

When the Government announced the percentage terms and individual grants to secondary and primary schools, it all sounded as if there was a lot of money. There is, however, a lack of trust about whether all this money really exists and what it will mean. In my part of the world, people are never very happy when percentage increases are mentioned. Cash grants to schools would, in many ways, be more helpful. The percentage of a small base does not provide enough money. Moving to the new formula was a contributory factor, but the Government always said that it would not be revised in the first few years. What plans do the Government have for monitoring and adjusting that formula? It has been said many times before that LEAs throughout the south-west are suffering under the formula because of the bizarre situation of low wages outside the public sector, in which wages are high, and very high house prices. It is therefore very difficult for teachers to move, which we want the formula to take into account. It makes no sense that one area receives more money than another area a few miles away when there is no difference in the cost of living.

All in all, there are opportunities, but the situation worries many people in the profession and parents who are concerned about their children. I hope that the Minister will give us a positive answer. We know that he cannot control falling rolls, but there is much that he could do to mitigate the effects. I agree with the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West that we do not want to hear that everything in the country is hunky dory, as it is not.

2.50 pm
Mr. Mark Hoban (Fareham) (Con)

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady), as a veteran of school funding debates, on opening the debate in such magnificent style. He highlighted two aspects of the matter: its historical background—he set out a macro-picture of the cause of the current school funding crisis; and the impact of that crisis on the quality of education, which he eloquently described, with particular reference to schools in his constituency and the decisions that they are taking about funding and teacher recruitment.

My hon. Friend was right to point out that 8,800 teaching posts and 12,300 non-teaching posts were lost last year. It is noticeable how many schools took the difficult decision last year to lose staff—both teaching assistants and teachers—and how much poorer those schools are for having done so. I know that many hon. Members can tell of similar examples from their constituencies of problems that are the consequences of redundancies in primary schools. I am grateful that there is a cordon sanitaire between us and the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik), who is suffering some ailments; he outlined the concerns of many hon. Members about the impact of falling rolls, particularly in rural areas, and described the threat that they pose to valued rural schools, which offer a great deal of amenity to their local communities—they are often their lifeblood.

The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mrs. Brooke) seemed to advocate a policy of selective power cuts on council estates to restore numbers in the schools in her constituency. I am fully aware of the problems there, for which she made a powerful case, since I visited Poole and met the excellent Conservative leader of the borough council, and the executive member for education. They have done a great deal to raise the profile of problems in Poole. As well as meeting me and my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Collins), they met the Minister for School Standards to raise their concerns.

I was delighted to have an opportunity to go to Poole, to meet the director of education and visit a couple of schools, so that I could understand at first hand the impact of relatively low LEA settlements on schools. In classrooms that I visited in my constituency in Hampshire, not that far along the coast, I saw the significant difference that a relatively small funding difference can generate in schools. Poole is suffering because it has relatively few areas of deprivation compared with the rest of the country, and does not receive the area cost adjustment that I believe the neighbouring authority of Bournemouth has. That clearly has a big impact on education.

I spoke to a head teacher who raised the same question as the hon. Lady about what happens when money from a Government initiative runs out and schools want to continue to support the employee who was recruited because of that initiative. The pastoral workers who have been recruited in Poole schools are clearly very highly valued by head teachers, who see them as a way of resolving several issues and improving learning. However, it is clearly difficult when central Government funding for that is withdrawn. How is the funding to support the post to be made up? That is particularly difficult in an LEA where there is little headroom as a consequence of the starting point of the financial settlement. The points about that were well made.

It is also clearly important to reduce the number and complexity of funding streams that schools must deal with. I was interested to talk to a group of heads in the primary school sector in Nottinghamshire recently. They applied for funding for a project and were told that they should have had a bid writer to help them prepare their bid. That would have meant diverting valuable resources from the classroom to appoint a consultant simply to secure additional funding for schools in the area.

It is appropriate to engage in this debate as we come to the end of March and the schools' financial year 2003–04. It is also timely to look forward to the next financial year. We are all clear as to the causes of last year's funding crisis. We are familiar with the means by which the Government have gone about trying to solve it for the 2004–05 financial year with the minimum per pupil guarantee of 4 per cent. and the transitional funding for some schools in some LEAs.

The letters that I have received from LEAs show that there are two important concerns about the upcoming financial year. First, there is a hangover from the 2003–04 financial year. As we have heard in the debate, many schools used their reserves to balance their books for this year and have set deficit budgets in the hope that things will get better. Those schools are now reaching a point where they wonder whether they can continue those measures in the 2004–05 financial year or whether they need to take tough decisions this year to solve their funding problem. Then there is the issue of work force reform, which has been touched on in all the speeches so far. How can we deliver the promises to classroom teachers if the funding is not there to employ support assistants to enable them to have more non-contact time?

Let me quote some of the responses that I have received from LEAs about the school funding crisis. Essex county council has delivered to its schools the 4 per cent. per pupil increase and it says that the average school should be able to meet the cost of inflationary pressures on the school budget in 2004–05. Most LEAs are in the same position. They believe that the Government's increase is sufficient to meet this year's cost pressures. Essex county council points out, however, that there are 34 schools in Essex with accumulated deficits totalling some £4 million. It believes that schools have used £18 million of their reserves to fund recurrent expenditure.

The Government, recognising this use of deficits and reserves to balance the books across all schools, primary and secondary, have given certain LEAs transitional funding. Essex has received only £9.8 million of transitional funding, which is clearly not enough to cover the reserves that have been used and the deficits that have been created in the 2003–04 financial year. Those schools that have used their reserves or have set deficit budgets will have difficult decisions to make in 2004–05.

That fact has not escaped the Essex NUT spokesman, Mr. Jerry Glazier, who said: These latest settlements just compound the problems. Clearly they are not nearly adequate to meet the financial demands on schools, especially with extra pressures faced by the workload agreements. The crisis is most certainly not over, not by a long way. It is perhaps not surprising that the Secretary of State for Education and Skills has decided not to grace the NUT conference with his presence this year, arguing that he has better things to do.

The director of education in Bromley said: Evidence from individual schools is that the guaranteed funding level may not be sufficient to maintain school resources…at the current level. As at 31 March 2003"— this shows the scale of the problem and its deterioration over the course of the last year— Bromley had 11 primary schools with a total deficit or £295,000. It is estimated that at the end of March 2004, 16 primary schools will have a total deficit of £716,000. Based on the allocation of the transitional grant to Bromley, he considers the £1.8 million that has been allocated insufficient to cover the deficits and the use of reserves. In Bedfordshire, another authority expressing concern over the future, the county education officer says: I am aware that some schools are already expressing concern over not being able to balance their budgets without making reductions…A wider issue however, is whether the Government will be able to sustain these levels of funding in future years. A major area of concern here is the pressures associated with the full implementation of the workforce reform proposals over the next two years.

I have heard of at least one school that had to make teachers redundant in order to employ learning support assistants to meet the work force reform commitments. Our schools are facing a dreadful situation.

The Minister is responsible for education in London, so he will be interested to know that the chief education officer for Barnet, in a letter to me, said: the LEA has managed to ensure that the schools' budget shares will rise by 5.8 per cent. The Government's assessment of the inflation pressures on schools is 3.4 per cent., but we believe that this is an underassessment of the costs of implementing single status and workforce reform. This leaves insufficient funds to redress the budget gap from 2003–04…Most of our schools have had to make savings in 2003–04, and many will have to make further savings in 2004–05 and 2005–06, to ensure they are able to balance their budgets in future years.

The initial impact of the Government's financial settlement, which we saw in the financial year 2003–04, will continue this year and next year. As the chief education officer goes on to say: Most of our schools' budgets consists of salaries, so it is inevitable that much of the savings will consist of staffing. That is yet a further indication that there are more redundancies to come in our primary schools.

I also received a letter from the chief education officer for the London borough of Camden, in which he states: We anticipate that the transitional Grant will enable us to reduce the level of deficits in 2004/5. Our ability to continue this…into 2005/6 will depend on our then settlement and any further transitional protection. I do not believe that the level of funding will enable schools to replace the balances used during 2003/4 and 2004/5.

The picture seems to be similar across the whole of London. The borough of Enfield, in which the Minister will take a particular interest, is making an early bid for support in the financial year 2005–06, as shown in a letter that I received. It states: We are concerned about funding in future years including the additional costs that will arise from the next stage of implementing workforce reforms, the turbulence that may arise if pay and performance grants are mainstreamed in 2005/06 and the funding of the outer London teacher pay award that has been mooted for September 2005. We are also anxious to ensure that Enfield receives transitional support funding in 2005/06. That is a clear indication, from the Minister's own authority, that problems will emerge in the future.

Lest any part of the country should feel neglected, let me turn to Portsmouth, which neighbours my local authority. Members of Portsmouth city council recently went to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to ask for more funding. The complexity of the Government's funding and the impact that it has on individual authorities comes out very clearly in the reported concerns for Portsmouth. On Thursday 18 March, Portsmouth newspaper,The News, reported that an additional gift of £891,000 given by the government last year to meet a shortfall has been taken out of this year's budget. The LEA must recover £900,000 from this year's budget, but it is a small authority with challenging schools and difficult circumstances—although it is making progress.

The impact of the shortfall can be seen in several primary schools in Portsmouth.The News reports: St. George's Beneficial C of E Primary School in Old Portsmouth lost seven assistants and Stamshaw Junior School was forced to axe two posts.

Across the whole of Portsmouth—with an LEA of 140,000 electors—some 40 learning support assistants were lost. That is a big reduction in an area that has many difficulties. Therefore, even when LEAs make great efforts—as the Portsmouth authority has—to improve behaviour in schools and to find innovative ways to tackle truancy and bad behaviour, they find that central Government do not give money to support those initiatives.

As I hope to have illustrated using those letters from LEAs, the prospects for 2004–05 are bleak in many schools, particularly those that set deficit budgets last year or used their reserves to safeguard the education of the children in their care. Although this year's spending pressures have been met from the settlement, the transitional grant is not sufficient to offset the use of reserves and deficits last year. If the transitional funding is not enough, how else will primary schools that used their reserves and set their deficit budget balance their books this year, other than by reducing their biggest cost—staff? Is there any light at the end of this tunnel?

The Chancellor announced in the Budget last week that education spending in the next spending round will rise by 4.4 per cent. in real terms. However, he failed to mention that this represents a tightening, compared with an increase in real terms of 6 per cent. in the current spending round. We are seeing a reduction in the rate of growth of spending on education across all schools in the next spending round. To put that into context, we are seeing work force reforms—many people doubt that they are adequately funded—on the basis of current spending plans, together with a combination of greater demands on schools' work forces and the need to recruit more learning support assistants. Will those demands be met from within the lower rate of increase forecast by the Chancellor for spending on schools in real terms in last week's Budget? I cannot see how primary schools will achieve that necessary reform without an improvement in spending.

My hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale, West mentioned the £55,000 for an average primary school that was promised by the Chancellor last week, and we must be clear what that promise means. Is it an extra £55,000 for the average primary school, or an increase in the standard sum that primary schools already receive, to take them up to £55,000? I heard a few comments last Friday in my constituency that led me to believe that teachers think they will receive an extra £55,000. That is what they hope for, but I suspect that the reality is that the average primary school will receive an increase up to £55,000. We must clarify that today, given the importance of funding to all schools, and especially primary schools.

There is another factor on which we have not yet touched. The cause of this spending crisis was the way in which the Government decided to reallocate money among the LEAs, a decision announced to the House in November 2002. The full effects of the funding system of floors and ceilings have yet to work their way through to LEAs. Some authorities, such as Barking, will lose up to £1 million; Bexley will lose up to £3.3 million; Kent up to £36.6 million; Enfield up to £4.5 million. Those are all figures that have been provided to me in written parliamentary answers by the Minister here today, or by the Minister for School Standards. In total, those local authorities and other LEAs are set to lose more than £166 million as the funding formula works its way through to fruition. When will it happen? We know that schools have been given a stay of execution until the other side of the general election, or the other side of the 2005–06 spending round, as Ministers prefer to put it—being a slightly cruder politician than some Ministers, I prefer to talk about the general election. However, once those spending reductions work their way through to those LEAs that are set to lose, there may well be a further round of redundancies in our primary schools.

It is clear that the funding crisis of 2003–04 will have repercussions, not just in 2004–05 but in 2005–06. It is also clear that such problems will be compounded by the introduction of work force reforms at a time when the Chancellor feels able to reduce the rate of growth of education spending. I fear that the combination of such circumstances will put many more jobs at risk in primary schools and the redundancies that we have seen over the last 12 months will merely be the start of worse to come.

3.9 pm

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills (Mr. Stephen Twigg)

We have had a good debate, and I join others in congratulating the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) on securing the debate, and on his reappearance. He is a fellow veteran of schools debates in this place over last year, and it is good to see him back—though in a different place to where he was before. A number of important points have been raised during the debate, and I shall do my utmost to respond to as many of them as I can, but give my usual undertaking that if I fail to do so in the 20 minutes left, I shall respond to hon. Members' specific points in writing.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) on his contribution and wish him better health. I congratulate his Front-Bench colleague, the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mrs. Brooke), on apparently being the only Liberal Democrat Member to be in good health at the moment.

This is a serious and important debate, and I was pleased when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education invited me to take responsibility for work with primary schools. The hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West quoted the 2001 Labour party manifesto, which said that we would seek to build on our success in primary schools. I do not regard that statement as meaning that somehow everything that needed to be done had been done. Rather, it recognised the real progress that primary schools made between 1997 and 2001, as measured most notably by the improvements in literacy and numeracy. There was a strong commitment to build on those improvements with regard to literacy and numeracy and the broader school curriculum. We therefore published last May the document entitled "Excellence and Enjoyment", which has been broadly welcomed in the primary sector, both for its reaffirmation of the core challenge of literacy and numeracy in primary schools and for its celebration of the broader school curriculum. I have no doubt that in addressing the need to build on that success, we must also recognise how crucial it is to invest in school buildings, equipment and staff. That is why this debate on redundancies in primary schools is of great relevance.

Let me say a word or two about the broader situation in Trafford. The hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West spoke, quite rightly, about his constituency and raised legitimate areas of concern. He is corresponding with my hon. Friend the Minister for School Standards about Woodheys school, but he will acknowledge that Trafford has seen a very significant improvement in staff numbers in schools since 1997. I am told that teacher numbers in Trafford increased from 1,750 in January 1997 to just over 2,000 in 2003—a 15 per cent. increase—and there has been an even bigger increase in the number of school support staff. That is the context for the events of recent years, about which the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole spoke.

There has been a real improvement since 1997. The hon. Gentleman will acknowledge that that is reflected in the very high standards that are seen in schools in Trafford, which I am sure he would want to join me in celebrating. We estimate that between 1997–98 and 2004#x2013;05, the funding per pupil in Trafford will have increased by 31 per cent. We have also seen a significant improvement in capital investment in schools in Trafford, as we have in other parts of the country. Of course, I do not suggest, and I have not suggested in previous debates, that everything is perfect or, as the hon. Lady put it, hunky-dory. We face a number of challenges. I shall do my best to address some of them and, in particular, some of the points that were made in the debate.

The hon. Member for Montgomeryshire made a thoughtful speech in which he addressed one important aspect of the debate—teachers' pay. For years, this country has failed properly to recognise and recompense teachers. Part of the cost pressure that has resulted in some of the difficulties—I emphasise that—relates to the fact that we are starting to give teachers the levels of pay that they should be receiving. As several colleagues have said, that can result in 80, 85 or even 90 per cent. of the budgets for some schools going on staffing costs. That factor has definitely come into play in the difficulties that we have had over the past year.

The hon. Gentleman made another interesting point about ring-fencing. Part of the issue last year—this operated differently in different parts of the country—was an attempt to reduce ring-fencing by saying that the standards funds for certain areas would be removed. The effect of that was very difficult to deal with in some areas. It created some of the problems that we saw. That is partly why, in the announcements to which the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole referred, the Secretary of State reversed the planned cuts to the standards funds for the coming financial year. In October, the Secretary of State set out our approach. As several colleagues have said, it will provide for a guaranteed minimum increase of 4 per cent. per pupil in every school's budget where pupil numbers stay the same. The guarantee also seeks to take account of unavoidable cost pressures on the budgets of all schools, whatever happens to their rolls. As has been said, those costs are estimated at 3.4 per cent. on average.

The dilemma that we face was well summed up by the hon. Lady, who set out the views of several different authorities. She made the perfectly legitimate point—I think that it was on behalf of Milton Keynes—that in an area in which schools typically have rising rolls, a guarantee that gives a little protection to those with falling rolls might mean that other schools do not get as big an increase as they might have done and that they might, therefore, be under additional pressure. That powerfully illustrates the difficult balance that we must strike, particularly in the general context of falling primary rolls. I shall return in a moment to some of the specific points that the hon. Lady and others made about falling rolls.

The Government have sought to ensure that every local education authority has sufficient resources, headroom and flexibility to deliver the guarantee and to support schools facing individual pressures. As I said, we have reversed the cuts to the standards funds for the coming year and the following year. The standards fund, the school standards grant and Learning and Skills Council funding for school sixth forms will all increase in line with the minimum guarantee, and we were pleased when the School Teachers Review Body agreed to a multi-year award, under which increases in teachers' pay will be in line with inflation from April this year to the end of August 2006. That will give schools and local education authorities some of the predictability that they have been denied in the past.

We expect local education authorities to do all that they can to ensure that funding reaches schools. In a sense, that gives LEAs a more local, flexible role in assessing and supporting every school's needs to ensure that resources additional to the minimum guarantee reach all the schools in their area.

Fears about redundancies are, of course, very real For those who have lost their jobs—be they teachers, teaching assistants or others working in our schools—there is clearly a human dimension, which several colleagues mentioned. The hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West referred toThe Times Educational Supplement survey of 5 March. The paper concluded: ministers have largely succeeded in avoiding a repeat of last year's funding crisis…most problems will concern schools affected by demographic changes. I do not deny that some issues follow on from last year's difficulties, but the bulk of those that we now face relate to falling rolls.

Falling rolls are a serious issue, and need to be dealt with effectively and sensitively. Primary rolls in many parts of the country are likely to fall and, indeed, to do so quite sharply in some cases. It is a challenge to us in central Government and to our colleagues in schools and local government to respond in a way that is appropriate and sensitive to the circumstances. All hon. Members will broadly agree with the principle that funding should follow pupil numbers and that local education authorities will, therefore, sometimes have to make hard decisions about a school or a local community of schools. We are properly considering the issue. Last year, there were almost 500,000 surplus places in primary schools in England—something like 12 per cent. of the total capacity. On the basis of current forecasts, primary rolls will fall by a further 4 per cent. by 2006–07.

The hon. Member for Montgomeryshire spoke about the impact on different communities of falling rolls, followed by downsizing or school closures. He was right to emphasise not only the educational dimension but the broader social and economic dimension. In the Government's first term, we introduced a presumption against closure of rural schools in England. That presumption has had quite a dramatic impact and is a positive example of rural-proofing, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned. From memory, I think that the average number of closures of rural schools in England has fallen from around 30 a year in the mid-1990s to around four or five a year now.

Lembit Öpik

I am very encouraged by that policy in England. However, I respectfully ask the Minister whether he would be willing to have a conversation with his opposite number in the Welsh Assembly to see whether there would be any benefit in at least considering a presumption against closures in rural Wales as well.

Mr. Twigg

I am happy to undertake to do that. It will be nice to lobby the Welsh Assembly, rather than have it lobbying us. I took the time to check that the presumption in question applies only in England and I understand that it does.

I should like to take up the challenge regarding the social focus of schools, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned. It is fair to say that there is a problem in rural areas, but the social focus of schools is important in some of the most disadvantaged urban areas as well. The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole rightly challenged us to be creative about the problem. There is an option to avoid school closures, although I do not think that it will always work. She talked about extended schools. When considering surplus places, we can explore the possibility of some of those schools becoming extended schools. Such schools can offer an incredible opportunity to widen the services that are available to children and young people. Of equal importance, such schools can widen the services that are available to the broader local community. All of us who have seen the principle of extended schools in action agree that they can provide a great service on family learning, which involves giving educational opportunities to older members of the family and parents. I should like to take the hon. Lady's challenge forward, because extended schools are a possible solution in some cases. However, I would not want to pretend that they are always the solution. We must consider the problem in the round.

There is another possibility. The hon. Lady referred to the "Every Child Matters" Green Paper and the legislation coming from that. Local education authorities and schools have the potential to consider using spare capacity to develop the children's trust agenda, which aims to deliver integrated education, social and health care services to children and young people.

The hon. Lady also referred to discussions that the Department is conducting with partner organisations to consider some of the options and opportunities with respect to falling rolls. I can confirm we have established a group that brings together some of the key players, including the Department for Education and Skills, local education authorities, the head teacher associations, the majority of the teacher unions—the ones that have signed up to the work force reform agreement—the Local Government Association, governors' representatives, the Association of Chief Education Officers and the faith organisations. We have brought together all the key organisations. The first meeting was last Friday. The idea is to develop a toolkit of solutions working, for example, with the Audit Commission to help local education authorities to meet the challenge of falling rolls. I also hope that the group can come up with positive and creative solutions, very much as the hon. Lady set out. I shall be happy to keep her informed of the group's developing work, because it will be critical to getting things right.

In response to some of the other points that have been raised, we have set out a minimum guarantee, which recognises that schools with falling rolls will have fixed costs for cleaning, repairs and heating, which obviously do not decline when pupil numbers decline. That is why we guaranteed such schools a per pupil funding increase in 2004–05 of more than 4 per cent. In response to the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban), I can confirm that what the Chancellor set out in his speech last week was what an average primary school could expect to receive in the coming year. The Chancellor did not make a new announcement of an additional £55,000; rather, he set out the combined payment in respect of the school standards grant—the money that we introduced to go directly to schools—and the devolved formula capital, which we had announced previously.

Mr. Brady

The picture seems to be worse than I feared. The Minister is telling schools across the country that they are not only faced with the hangover from last year's funding crisis—some schools have deficit budgets, some have spent their reserves—and the possibility of redundancies in September, but that the £55,000 referred to by the Chancellor will not bail out their next year's budget because it is a restatement of money that we already knew existed.

Mr. Twigg

That is not fair because we cannot compare where we were this time last year with where we are now. Other announcements have been made in the interim and schools and local education authorities across the country are working though the implications of those announcements in their budgets. The hon. Gentleman and his colleague set out examples of how that is being discussed. For example, it is fair to say that transitional grant money provides support to some schools that had particular difficulties in the financial year that is about to finish. That money is available for the coming year and, as the hon. Gentleman reminded us, will also be available for the following year.

Mrs. Brooke

I wonder whether the Minister will guarantee that clear information will be provided for all local education authorities and schools about cash grants to schools. If schools have read the Secretary of State's statement, as most people did, their planning will be considerably upset.

Mr. Twigg

That should not be the case because every school has received notification of their allocations for the coming year; no school should be in any doubt about the implications for the coming year. I visited schools in my constituency on Friday and there was a clear understanding that the focus of new announcements in the Budget was on the outcomes for schools of the following spending review. I hope that Opposition Members will join me in welcoming the fact that the announcement for education was made earlier than for other areas, enabling schools and LEAs to plan far further in advance than has previously been the case.

Mr. Hoban

It will be of use to hon. Members if the Minister could provide us with a copy of the letter that schools received about the £55,000 and the equivalent for secondary schools. Some head teachers will look at the budget for 2004–05 and think that they can put off making a difficult decision because they will receive an extra £55,000 in 2005–06.

Mr. Twigg

I am happy to clarify in writing for the hon. Gentleman what has been sent to schools—I will have to check whether it has been sent in the form of a letter or an e-mail.

I shall draw my remarks to a close. A number of hon. Members have referred to the work force reform agreement, which is an important part of the programme of reform in education. The agreement has been reached with all bar one of the trade unions, including the head teacher associations and the representatives of support staff. I welcome the broad support that there is for remodelling. I recognise that there are concerns about ensuring that resources are available. Some areas of work force reform require additional resources, but some will result in savings. In the schools that I visited recently, I noticed that there was a view that less supply cover might be required in schools when the work force reform comes in. Schools could invest the money saved in their own support staff. We are establishing a national remodelling team working closely with local education authorities and other partners to help schools to implement the changes in support of the agreement.

I conclusion, I again congratulate the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West on securing the debate. I absolutely reaffirm our strong commitment to primary education because children must have the best possible preparation, not only for secondary education but for their later lives. I reassure the Chamber that continued investment in primary education, teachers, support staff, buildings and equipment is critical to the future of our education service.