Home Page

Column 295

House of Commons

Wednesday 5 July 1995

The House met at Ten o'clock

PRAYERS

[ Madam Speaker-- in the Chair ]

Grant-Maintained Schools

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.-- [Mr. Conway.]

10.2 am

Mrs. Angela Knight (Erewash): I am grateful for this opportunity to debate the future of grant-maintained schools and to enliven this calm and quiet week. I am also grateful to my hon. Friends who have torn themselves away from speculation and their telephones to join me this morning.

With more than 1,000 grant-maintained schools across the country, some 500,000 pupils attending them, and one in five secondary schools gaining GM status, the GM sector is undoubtedly a principal player in education.

The good news is that parents have been voting with their feet and sending their children to grant-maintained schools. The bad news is that, too often, a dirty fight has ensued when a school has chosen to go grant- maintained. I do not object to a battle in which people put forward the arguments, but I object to battles in which Labour party members in particular employ a series of scare tactics and untrue statements.

There have been a great many examples of such battles--there were two in my constituency which were not particularly horrendous, but which I found very disquieting, as did the parents involved. The first example arose when a Catholic school decided to ballot for grant-maintained status, and a Labour politician went round telling the parents that GM status was against their religion. That is the sort of statement that one should not make to a Catholic.

Mr. Peter Atkinson (Hexham): I congratulate my hon. Friend on the honour that has been bestowed upon her. Did she notice that the Annunciator said that she was Dame J. Knight?

Mrs. Knight: Since I am not wearing my glasses this morning, could my hon. Friend tell me whether it is now correct?

Mr. Atkinson indicated assent .

Mrs. Knight: Thank you very much.

The second example in my constituency occurred when two schools in Long Eaton decided to ballot for grant-maintained status. There was a ferocious anti-grant-maintained campaign run by a lady who described herself as "just a concerned parent". She called her campaign SOLES: Save Our Long Eaton Schools--

Column 296

from what, I have no idea. Misinformation abounded; those who were in favour felt themselves unable to put their heads above the parapet, and the ballots were lost.

Only a few months later, that so-called concerned parent turned up as a Labour party activist, then a Labour councillor and then on the shortlist for selection as the Labour party candidate in Erewash for the next general election. What was wrong with her declaring her credentials in the first place? If she had wanted a clean fight, she could have had it. She fought a dirty campaign to sway parents. It was misleading, misinformed and wrong.

Those two examples, although minor, have been mirrored across the country. The real purpose of a school becoming self-governing is to enhance its ability to serve the people who really matter: the pupils. A school may serve its pupils by having control over all its budget, and using it in the interests of the children and the school.

As the head of Shennington primary school in Oxfordshire--a recent opt-out- -said:

"If a school does decide to become GM the reason should not be money. A school should do it for the freedom because it wants complete control".

That is quite right. Interestingly, when the head of Baverstock school--an early opt-out--was recently interviewed, he said:

"We quickly discovered by handling our own budget, which came direct from Whitehall, we could buy materials and fuel at up to half the price that the council could supply them. Today we have . . . brand-new classrooms . . . And instead of having to cut teachers we actually have more staff than the local authority would have allowed."

By having entire control of their budgets, GM schools have achieved such good results, yet too many Opposition Members have overtly and covertly campaigned against GM status.

Mr. David Jamieson (Plymouth, Devonport): Does the hon. Lady agree that some of the schools which opted out early on have been able to provide some extra staff and some extra facilities because of double funding, which was opposed by the Public Accounts Committee two years ago? Is it not true that £1 extra for a grant-maintained school is £1 less for a local education authority school?

Mrs. Knight: The hon. Gentleman and his friends have tramped that argument all over the place for many years. If it is true, why does he not go home and tell all the schools in his constituency to opt out? If he alleges that GM schools get more money, in their best interests he should tell all schools to opt out and obtain that extra money. I also urge the hon. Gentleman to look at a more general survey of teachers, which was conducted in the past few months. Three quarters of teachers in GM schools said that their class sizes had not increased, whereas the majority of teachers in LEA schools said that they had. Of those in grant-maintained schools, 90 per cent. said that in-service training was good and special needs provision had improved. An overwhelming majority did not want grant- maintained schools to be abolished. That is a very important survey, revealing interesting results.

There is great interest in GM status: it is a big issue, and grant- maintained schools deserve a secure future.I suggest three ways in which to help secure their future, which I hope that my hon. Friend the Under- Secretary of State for Schools will take on board. First, the grant- maintained schools need to know that there is no possibility of local education authority control returning. They need financial security for the future, and

Column 297

they need to plan for more than one year ahead. They need to have an assurance that their budget will no longer be fixed by the LEA's decision about its schools budget. The common funding formula addresses that point to a certain extent, but there are areas that do not have a common funding formula, as the trigger threshold has not been reached.

Mr. Patrick McLoughlin (West Derbyshire): I fully support what my hon. Friend has just said. Does she agree that one of the strange ironies of grant-maintained schools is that, although they have become grant- maintained to be free of local education authority control, their funding is, unfortunately, still in some ways controlled by local education authorities, whose interests are not in the grant-maintained sector?

Mrs. Knight: I agree entirely. What is happening with too many schools is that the global purse strings are still held by the LEA--the organisation from which the school has opted out. That is an anomaly which I should like to see addressed.

The second area that needs further consideration is more general. There are considerable differences in the amounts spent per pupil in different areas. We all accept that differences arise, but in some instances, the differences are worryingly large. One reason, of which I and my hon. Friends who represent Derbyshire constituencies are aware, is the way in which the LEA decides to allocate its money. From the latest figures I have obtained from the House of Commons Library, it is clear not only that Derbyshire allocates less than the average of its education budget to the general schools budget, but that the authority is one of the worst delegators in the country in terms of money diminishing as it filters down through the potential schools budget to the aggregate schools budget. Yet it is the aggregate schools budget that equates with the money that gets into the classroom.

Let us take three similar counties in terms of standard spending assessments: Derbyshire, Suffolk and North Yorkshire. One finds that, in terms of the aggregate school budget per pupil, Derbyshire gives £200 less than the other two counties. That means that the authority is not getting money where it is needed--in the classroom. An aspect over which authorities have no control is the area cost adjustment. As a result of the ACA, about £100 more per primary school pupil and about £200 more per secondary school pupil is aggregated into the SSAs of the 12 south- eastern counties. Although extra costs are recognised, those large sums, distributed on an all-or-nothing basis, are difficult to justify.

There is merit in ensuring that future area cost adjustments do not have those large discrepancies. I also believe that there is merit in looking at a common funding formula for all schools in the country. Those points are easy to make, but the difficulty is getting from A to B. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister, however, to look at my suggestions.

Mr. Nigel Spearing (Newham, South): On the area cost adjustment, does the hon. Lady realise that the discrepancy is as great or even greater for maintained schools in local authorities? There is a difference of several hundred pounds between the per head expenditure

Column 298

in primary and secondary schools of Newham and Tower Hamlets, both very needy east London boroughs, because of the arbitrariness of the current ACA formula. Does the hon. Lady realise that funding for nursery schools, of which the SSA does not take proper account, automatically reduces the per capita amount for locally managed schools? There are lots of things wrong with the present formula.

Mrs. Knight: To a certain extent, I agree with the hon. Gentleman. Clearly, I cannot talk about the situation in London, because Erewash is not a London constituency. However, I point out to the hon. Gentleman that the SSAs are made up of a series of hugely complicated items. That is why I would like there to be a common funding formula for all schools which would be easy to understand. I would like to ensure that the schools get more money than they do at present, and that far less money is held back as, sadly, is the case with too many LEAs.

The third way in which to secure the future of grant-maintained schools is better use of the private finance initiative. "PFI" is not a particularly sexy-sounding trio of letters, but it is an initiative that can be useful to grant-maintained schools. It means that they do not have to wait for public money to carry out the repairs or to build the extensions they need; they can do such work much earlier. We all recognise that many school buildings that were thrown up in the 1960s are in a sorry state of repair.

I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to look again at the PFI. At present, the rules are complicated and the procedures are not very clear to anyone. They have only just been circulated to governing bodies.

Ockbrook Redhill, a school in my constituency, spent considerable time and effort trying to determine whether its proposals were acceptable in principle under the PFI scheme, and on getting the nooks and crannies right. For the PFI to be a useable option, the rules need to be simple, understandable, easy to get going and quick; those are the essential ingredients for a scheme that will be an extremely important route for grant-maintained schools. I should like my hon. Friend the Minister to look at those three points, which would improve and secure the future of grant- maintained schools. The possibility of an insecure future lies elsewhere. In December, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett), the shadow Secretary of State for Education, wrote a secret letter to Labour Members. It began, "Dear Colleague", and was headed, "Urgent--GM Schools". It was the sort of message that one gets in Herge 's "Adventures of Tintin", which my children watch avidly on television. The letter continued:

"We are opposed to schools opting out and remain committed to the white paper pledge to bring such schools back . . . I thought it would be helpful for you to know that there has been no change of policy in relation to events in the last few days."

After 200 days had passed, lo and behold, there were considerable changes to the policy. What else did the hon. Member for Brightside say in December? He said:

"There is no plan to have a paper on GM schools, nor is there any intention that GM status should continue."

Let us see what happened.

A Labour party policy document turned up, warmly entitled "Diversity and Excellence--a New Partnership for Schools". It talks about grant-maintained schools on just about every page. I understand the Labour party's

Column 299

problem, because, when the Leader of the Opposition chose to send his son to a grant-maintained school, as did one or two of his colleagues, he not only pulled the rug out from underneath the shadow Secretary of State for Education and 90 per cent. of the parliamentary party, but took the floor away.

The party was left with two questions which it had to answer. The first was how to reconcile the irreconcilable in a new policy document, and the second was how to pass off the new policy as both changed and unchanged. That is probably why the Labour party has had more changes of mind on its education policy than there are steps in the hokey-cokey; I doubt whether it has finished that dance yet. So we have this document, "Diversity and Excellence--A New Partnership for Schools", which has been referred to as

"the sort of soft-sell slogan that possesses all the meaningless charm of a detergent commercial."

I wish that I had thought of that myself. In fact, the person who wrote those words was the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley), the former deputy leader of the Labour party.

In December, this document was not going to happen. Although it was not going to mention grant-maintained schools, it in fact uses the words "grant -maintained" on just about every page.

When the document is not talking about grant-maintained schools, it is talking about fairness--fair this, fair that, fair funding, fairness to parents and fair admissions. Presumably all the teachers will be instructed to mark "fair" against every entry in pupils' reports. When the word "fair" is used as extensively as it is in that document, there is more than a fair chance that it is covering up more than its fair share of rubbish. It is worth examining Labour policy a bit more closely, and for real.

Independent grant-maintained schools are not compelled to have politicians on their governing bodies, but the Labour party would force them to include two councillors. We can all imagine which two would be chosen. Secondly, grant-maintained schools receive resources directly from the Funding Agency for Schools, which is also independent. The Labour party would abolish that. In view of the amount of money now being held back from schools by local education authorities, how much would the schools get if the money for grant-maintained schools were directed no longer through the independent funding agency but through LEAs? A lot less than they do now.

The document then says:

"We will set a new national target of 90 per cent. of the school's budget to be delegated from LEAs to the schools". If that is what the Labour party believes, why does it not ring up all its Labour-controlled local education authorities now, and tell them to delegate 90 per cent. of the education money to schools tomorrow? The Labour party has not done that, and its real policy has been to hold back as much money as possible in LEAs, not to give it out to schools.

Even if 90 per cent. of the money went to schools, that would mean that a secondary school with a budget of £1.5 million would have £150,000 taken away, and a primary school with a budget of £200,000 would have £20,000 taken away. Teachers would have to be taken out of those schools. That is what the Labour policy really means when one translates it out of the fudge in which it is written.

Column 300

The Labour party would also interfere in the way in which schools are run. Independent grant-maintained schools are now allowed to apply to the Secretary of State for permission if they wish to expand, but Labour would make them apply to their LEA. That would mean that a popular school would not be allowed to expand. We should return to the same fudge that happened when popular schools were penalised in an attempt to force parents to send their children to schools to which they did not want to send them.

The language in the document is different from what we have seen before; it is a fudged language that has shimmied around one or two edges to please the Islington chatterati. None the less, the document is as great a threat to grant-maintained schools as any previous Labour proposal.

The debate is about grant-maintained schools, but I emphasise the fact that, whether schools are grant-maintained, voluntary, run by the local education authority or independent, they are equally important, equally valued and equally distinctive in their own way. I always hope one day to see the return of direct grant schools, in which I was educated as a child, which were abolished when the Labour party was in control. All types of schools are important, and in the programme of education reform, the watchword must be stability. We must continually ask what schools, teachers and parents want. Parents want high standards. They want to get the best out of their children. They want good English, good grammar and a decent grounding in maths, and they want their children to know their historical and geographical place in the world. That is easy to say but hard to produce, but we are currently achieving it.

A survey of 500 grant-maintained schools whose results were published recently in The Times Educational Supplement showed that the huge majority of schools were in no doubt about the advantages of going grant maintained. Ninety-two per cent. had appointed more staff, a similar percentage had increased spending on books and equipment, and they were achieving consistently good exam results and attendance rates. That is what parents are looking for.

Mr. Don Foster (Bath): The hon. Lady has just listed all the advantages of grant-maintained schools. Can she tell the House whether there is any hard evidence that, as a result of those advantages, standards have been levered up?

Mrs. Knight: In 1993, 41 per cent. of 15-year-olds in grant- maintained comprehensive schools achieved five or more GCSEs at grades A to C compared with 36 per cent. in LEA-controlled schools. So schools in the grant-maintained sector are producing better grades for pupils than were achieved under LEAs. [Interruption.] Whether Opposition Members like it or not, that is the case.

Ms Estelle Morris (Birmingham, Yardley): The hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) asked whether the schools had improved, given the extra funding that they gain from their grant-maintained status. It is no good giving us raw figures for examination passes. The hon. Member for Bath is right; there is no evidence that standards have improved. That is the key question, given the amount of resources that have been put into those schools.

Mrs. Knight: I appreciate that nothing will convince the hon. Lady and her hon. Friends, because of their constant hostility to grant- maintained schools. In fact, I have not heard her express any genuine interest in standards.

Column 301

Parents want their children to be taught well, and to get good grades in their examinations and a good start in the world. In practice, they are voting with their feet and sending their children to grant-maintained schools because they know that that is what they will get. There are now 1.3 million parents with children in grant- maintained schools. Those schools are popular with parents, and they are here to stay. We need to recognise that and to secure their future--and we need to abolish proposals such as those of the Labour party.

10.26 am

Mr. David Jamieson (Plymouth, Devonport): The speech by the hon. Member for Erewash (Mrs. Knight) was interesting, but packed with inaccuracies and false statements. The fundamental flaw in Conservative policy in recent years has been its concentration on the education of the few rather than of the many. Over many years in this country, we have been successful in educating very well indeed the brightest and the best, but we have failed to educate those in the next group down. We have failed to educate the mass of the people to high standards.

Grant-maintained schools were created to destroy local education authorities. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the debate has been peppered with denigration of the work of LEAs and of locally elected councils in general. The former Secretary of State for Education, the right hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Mr. Patten), lost no opportunity to attack local education authorities throughout the country.

As the Conservatives have lost more and more seats on local councils, until they have only a tiny rump of councillors left, their desperation has increased to grasp back control of schools. Essentially, grant-maintained status has nationalised schools and put them under state control.

The hon. Member for Erewash and I served on the Standing Committee on the Education Act 1993--for nearly 180 hours, I believe. At every stage, nearly every clause gave the Secretary of State for Education more and more direct powers over grant-maintained schools, so they are no longer locally accountable.

Grant-maintained schools join other failed enterprises such as city technology colleges, which were supposed to spread across the country raising standards. We have seen what has happened to many of them. One, in Birmingham, had lower standards in technology, mathematics and science than the local comprehensive school.

So much for jacking up standards. We heard in a debate the other day that just 32,000 pupils were involved in the assisted places scheme, but they received twice as much funding as children in LEA schools.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Mr. Robin Squire): I intervene briefly, as I suspect that discussion of city technology colleges at great length would be rightly ruled out of order by you, Madam Speaker. The hon. Gentleman makes his point in the shadow of last week's announcement that we have reached 100 schools which are either CTCs or technology colleges, the latter being built substantially upon the success of CTCs.

Mr. Jamieson: The Minister has not answered the question. I made the point that the 15 CTCs have had

Column 302

highly preferable funding, yet have not proved that that funding has led to improved standards in the schools. Perhaps the Minister can give evidence later that standards have increased as a result of the extra funding that CTCs have received.

I have no argument with the teachers, parents or pupils in grant-maintained schools, but the system is failing. There are three main areas where I object to grant-maintained schools. First, the early opt-outs received considerable extra funding. The hon. Member for Erewash glossed over the point I put to her in an intervention, and did not answer it. If she looks at the 9 June edition of The Times Educational Supplement , she will see the headline "MPs defied over £40m bonus for GM schools".

If the hon. Lady reads the Public Accounts Committee report published on 19 January 1994, she will see that the Committee recommended that the Department for Education progressively withdrew from existing grant- maintained schools the excess funding of central services, with a view to that funding being removed completely within two years. An all-party report made that recommendation, which is being totally ignored by the Government. They say that they may rule out the double funding by 1999.

Mr. Robin Squire indicated dissent .

Mr. Jamieson: The Minister shakes his head, as if to say that the Government will not rule out the double funding at all.

A small primary school in Tower Hamlets has found that it receives £200,000 extra funding because it is grant-maintained. My point is that every pound extra received by a grant-maintained school is a pound that is not received by a LEA school. The hon. Lady made the point that grant-maintained schools have kept their class sizes as they were, while class sizes had increased in LEA schools. I am glad that she accepts that class sizes have increased in LEA schools, but that must be because funding is being withdrawn from the LEA schools and put into grant-maintained schools.

On capital, the hon. Lady may want to refer to evidence received by the Department for Education on the capital funding of

grant-maintained schools. The figures clearly show that, two years ago, grant-maintained schools were receiving three times as much per pupil in capital spending as LEA schools. That extra funding is just a cheap political bribe. Schools and parents do not want to opt out. The hon. Lady failed to tell the House how few schools had opted out last year, or that the majority of ballots were now resulting in no votes. Some ballots in my county are producing a very substantial no vote.

My second objection to grant-maintained status was touched on by the hon. Lady, who said that grant-maintained schools had far more control over their own affairs. I have no problem with schools having internal control of the running of their day-to-day business. That is right and proper, and I have always said in the Chamber that I support the local management of schools. Such local management has given autonomy to individual schools.

A self-perpetuating coterie of governors that has formed in grant- maintained schools has the power of decision-making about the admissions policy of schools. We have discovered in parts of London and in other parts of the country that admissions policies arranged by governing bodies sometimes deny local children--who

Column 303

live in what used to be the catchment area of a school--a place in that school. The decisions are being made solely by the governors of the school. It is not right that a small unelected group is able to make that decision.

Mr. Squire: I am trying not to interrupt the hon. Gentleman's flow, but this is an opportunity to correct two of the misstatements that he is making. First, 66 per cent. of ballots on grant-maintained status this year have recorded yes votes, so one of his statements has been shot down in flames. Secondly--as he well knows--every admissions policy that is proposed by grant-maintained schools must be approved by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. It is simply not the case that grant- maintained schools can change their admission policies willy-nilly.

Mr. Jamieson: I am pleased that the Minister has confirmed my earlier point that admissions policies are in the hands of the governors, and can only be ratified by the Secretary of State for Education. Local people who have been elected to sit on councils have no say in the policy at all. The governing bodies make a decision that is rubber-stamped by the Secretary of State. In other words, we have a quasi-nationalised education admissions policy.

Mr. Spearing: These debates allow a constructive shooting match to take place. Does my hon. Friend agree that a fundamental flaw in the grant- maintained system is that schools are not seen as possessions of the community, area or town they serve, but only of the parents or potential parents of the day? Do not such schools reflect the divisive education structure that this country tried to get rid of in the middle of the last century, and reflect also the aspirations, social background and financial resources of different groups within society?

Mr. Jamieson: That is exactly my point. The school ceases to be the property of the local community, and becomes the property of an individual governing body that will serve its own interests. That is the total antithesis of the choice which the hon. Lady and so many Government Front- Bench Members talk about. What is happening in many grant-maintained schools is that the school is choosing the pupils rather than the pupils choosing the school.

I turn now to my third main objection. The hon. Lady is wrong to say that the money provided to the Funding Agency for Schools is coming out of LEA budgets. The money is moving in a circle, from the LEA to the Funding Agency for Schools--a quango in York--and back to the grant-maintained schools. As most of that money is raised locally, it should be accountable locally through the councils.

The money moving in the circle through the LEAs and the agency and back to the schools is producing another layer of bureaucracy and wasteful inefficiency into the system. The Funding Agency for Schools alone is costing £11 million to run. That £11 million is not going to schools to provide more books, teachers or services, but is providing jobs for people shuffling paper in York.

Those are my objections to grant-maintained schools. There is no upsurge of desire in this country for schools to become grant-maintained, and parents are now deciding to stay with LEAs. Later today, a report by the Education

Column 304

Select Committee will be published which raises many important issues to do with the important role of LEAs in the running of schools.

I noticed that the hon. Member for Erewash mentioned LEAs only in a derisory manner. She attacked her own LEA, even though it is running the schools and the education system for children in her constituency. If she looks at that report, she will see that Members of Parliament have recognised, on a cross-party basis, that local authorities have a powerful role to play in running schools, and that they are needed to ensure accountability and the success of our schools.

The hon. Member for Erewash failed to say what would happen should a grant- maintained school start to spiral downwards and fail. That has manifestly happened to some of them, just as it has to certain local education authority schools. In the case of such schools, the LEA steps in to provide assistance. In the most extreme circumstances, it can send in an education association--that weapon has not yet been used by the Department for Education.

What happens when things go wrong in a grant-maintained school? Who will oversee the education of those children when the governors degenerate into a squabbling mass, like those at the school in Stratford? In such circumstances, the school is referred back to the Secretary of State for Education. There is no local accountability, and no local body able to provide assistance.

This useful debate, albeit a brief one, has enabled me to set out my views on grant-maintained schools and why I oppose them. My party will continue to advocate changes to them, which are designed to deliver fair funding and proper accountability.

10.40 am

Mr. Patrick McLoughlin (West Derbyshire): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Mrs. Knight) on securing this important debate. It has exposed the fallacy that somehow the Labour party has changed its mind on grant-maintained schools.

I wish that the Labour party could be consistent. The hon. Member for City of Durham (Mr. Steinberg) served with me on the Committee considering the Education Reform Act 1988, which set up grant-maintained schools. The current shadow Home Secretary was then Opposition spokesman on education, and I was left in no doubt about his vehement opposition to grant- maintained schools.

The right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) was then the education spokesman for the Liberal party. His venom against such schools was plain for all to see, and was expressed in speeches that were officially recorded. I note that the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) is nodding his head, so I assume that that venom against grant-maintained schools is still apparent in the Liberal party. I support the concept of grant-maintained schools, because it has offered diversity of choice in state education. Those who are wealthy are able to send their children to the private school of their choice. Before the introduction of grant-maintained schools, those without such wealth had to leave that choice to the local education authority, which directed where children should be sent. There was no choice in the state system, because it lay with the LEA.

My one great pleasure is that the grant-maintained system has introduced diversity of choice to the state education system. That should be embraced and

Column 305

welcomed. The Labour party may argue that fewer schools are opting to become grant-maintained. I do not believe that the figures prove that, but should that be so, I am sure it is due to schools' uncertainty about the future.

Schools are unclear whether the Labour party will follow its leader, who has taken advantage of the grant-maintained system. I suppose he is one of those middle-class people about whom the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) used to talk so much. Certainly, if my wife was a leading barrister, I might be even be middle-class. Although the grant- maintained system has delivered essential diversity of choice, it is high time we introduced a national funding formula for education, because far too much confusion is caused by the different amounts of money held by education authorities and their various expenditure. It has taken me some time to obtain a breakdown of the relevant figures, but they are revealing. For example, according to its 1994-95 central budget, Staffordshire, which has a total pupil number of 159,000, spent £2,975,000 on management. Derbyshire, with 84,000 pupils, spent £3,787,000 on management. That is a great difference.

I recently tabled a question

"To ask the Secretary of State for Education if she will list in ascending order the difference between income and expenditure for school meal services for all counties over the last seven years."--[ Official Report , 7 June 1995; Vol. 261, c. 208. ]

I was surprised by the answer from my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Schools. It revealed that Derbyshire county council had spent £115 million on subsiding school meals, whereas Lancashire, the next closest on the table provided, had spent £94 million--a £20 million difference. Those differences become more apparent when one considers that Lincolnshire, a

Conservative-controlled council, spent just £11 million in those seven years on subsidising school meals.

I do not mind that local education authorities should be able to decide to spend that money, but that expenditure should be open to scrutiny. If an authority is spending money on subsidising school meals, it is clear that it is not available to be spent on other education services. The expenditure may be simple and straightforward, but too many of the relevant figures are hidden, and the purpose of that expenditure is not easily identified.

Next Section

  Home Page