Mr Graham Brady (Altrincham & Sale West, Conservative)

I beg to move amendment No. 267, in clause 39, page 25, line 8, at end insert—

'( ) provide for information to be collected by the Secretary of State including the annual per capita revenue budget of each maintained school and specific elements of school funding relating to curriculum changes or other initiatives of the Secretary of State.'.

I join the Minister in welcoming you back to the Chair, Mr. Griffiths. I am sure that you are as delighted to be with us as we are to have you as Chairman.

The amendment, like the previous Government amendment, is largely technical and is intended purely to remedy an oversight in the Bill as drafted.

The Government want to impose new requirements on local education authorities and schools seeking to take powers relating to a school's budget and to how LEAs choose to distribute the funds available to them among schools within their area. I hope that the Minister agrees that the proposal would improve the climate of knowledge and information available to parents and schools and inform Ministers of the reality of school funding. The amendment would allow a new power providing for information to be collected by the Secretary of State, including the annual per capita revenue budget of each maintained school, and specific elements of school funding relating to curriculum changes or other initiatives of the Secretary of State.

The Minister, who is a bright and able man, will already have sniffed out the motivation behind the amendment. He will have realised that there is considerable anxiety among hon. Members and in schools about the discrepancy between Ministers'

intentions to do good and to assist schools in their endeavours—as a generous man, I am prepared to accept their positive intentions—and what actually happens. There are two clear examples. First, there is the position of numerous former grant-maintained schools, which, as the Minister will know, were given a pledge when their grant maintained status was taken away in the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 that their funding would be protected and that the Government's intention was to level up the funding of other schools. That has not happened in practice and, however much Ministers tell me that education and schools expenditure has increased during the past four years, numerous schools in the country—indeed, in my constituency—currently have a smaller annual revenue budget than they had in 1997. As the Minister will understand, that is causing various difficulties.

Whenever I have raised those concerns with Ministers, sometimes through written questions, I have frequently been amazed at the lack of information that Ministers appear to have on the subject. One recent example that may be in the Minister's mind concerns schools with sixth forms after the new sixth form curriculum was introduced. Ministers rightly accepted that making such widespread changes to the curriculum would result in costs to schools, including for public examinations, and have staffing, resource and teaching material implications. They made available some money in the first and second years of implementation to cover the changed burden of cost that would fall upon them. However, as the Minister will know, if only from anecdotal evidence, the reality in much of the country is that the additional funds, earmarked by Ministers and said to be available for a specific purpose, were not passed on to schools. I suspect that the Minister has some sympathy with the bones of my point, given that the purpose of clause 39 is to deal with instances in which local education authorities do not deal properly with the schools that they fund.

By way of illustration, I will read the response that I received to a written question that I tabled in October. I asked the

''Secretary of State for Education and Skills what estimate she has made of the number of schools with sixth forms which have received no funding from their local education authority for the new sixth form curriculum in each of the last two years.''

The response, which came from the Under-Secretary, said:

''No such estimate is available. Decisions on distribution were a matter for each local authority in the light of local priorities.''—[Official Report, 15 October 2001; Vol. 372, c. 992W.]

There is simply no point in announcing that a sum of money is available to schools for a specific purpose if that money can be spent in any way whatsoever. It is dangerous if Ministers introduce important and far-sweeping changes, perhaps to the curriculum as in that example, but no funding is provided to schools for implementation. It is a serious problem that has affected the ability of schools to implement the curriculum changes and had a serious affect on wider budget planning and staffing situations for other year groups in maintained schools.

The Minister should at least be sympathetic to the amendment's objective. I hope that he will accept that it would make provision for his Department to be informed of the budgets for schools.

The amendment is not prescriptive: it would not oblige LEAs, schools forums or schools to disburse funds in a particular way. It would remedy a situation in which Ministers are apparently ignorant of what happens to schools' funding. I am sure that the Minister—an assiduous man—will assure me that he intends to do something about the black hole in the Government's knowledge of schools throughout the country, specifically the former grant maintained schools and changes in the sixth form curriculum. I hope that the Government will obtain that information and treat it as important in informing any decisions that might be taken under the wider powers provided by the clause.

See this speech in context