National Funding Formula: Social Mobility — [Mr Charles Walker in the Chair]

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 3:16 pm on 22 May 2018.

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Photo of Nick Gibb Nick Gibb Minister of State (Education) 3:16, 22 May 2018

I congratulate Wera Hobhouse on securing this debate. I will start by saying that standards are rising significantly in our schools: 1.9 million more pupils are in schools now rated good or outstanding compared with 2010. Children are reading better thanks to our reforms and we secured the highest ever scores in the PIRLS—the progress in international reading literacy study—of nine-year-olds’ reading ability when that was published last year. The proportion of young people taking at least two science subjects at GCSE has risen from 63% to 91%. Nine out of 10 young people now take at least two science subjects at GCSE.

The attainment gap between those from disadvantaged and advantaged backgrounds has closed by 10% both at primary and secondary level. We are spending record amounts of money on our schools: £42.4 billion this year, rising to £43.5 billion from next year. We are spending £2.5 billion on the pupil premium: £13 billion since 2010. None of that could have been afforded had we not made careful decisions about public spending across Whitehall when we came into office in 2010, tackling a historic budget deficit of £150 billion, equal to 10% of our GDP. The country was on the verge of bankruptcy owing to the banking crisis of 2008-09 and because of decisions taken by the previous Government. We brought that down to about 2% of GDP. We have the highest level of employment in our history and the lowest level of unemployment for 40 years, and that has enabled us to maintain spending in real terms per pupil in our schools.

Of course, there have been cost pressures, particularly in the three years leading up to last year: higher national insurance contributions, which help to deal with the deficit, and higher employer’s pension contributions to the teachers’ pension scheme are costs that schools have had to absorb. We are helping schools with our school resource management advice on how they can manage those costs.