Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2021-11-02
Topic: Education
Nadhim Zahawi (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that question, but respectfully he is completely wrong. It is not the same level of funding as 2010. Let me try to explain it to him and his constituents. The £1,500 per pupil extra by 2024 is £1,500 more than in 2019-20. That is a significant investment in the future of this great country To reflect that, we will allocate—as I was saying on recovery—£2 billion extra to support young people who are struggling to catch up on missed learning, following the existing investment in tutoring and training for great teachers. That is in addition to the 6 million tutoring courses and 500,000 training opportunities we have already made, which takes overall investment specifically dedicated to pupils’ recovery to almost £5 billion. That includes an additional £1 billion of catch-up funding that goes direct to schools so that they can best decide how to support education recovery for those of their pupils who most need it. Teaching unions wanted that additional flexibility—I thank them for that—and I listened to them and made representations to my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. As they told me, this funding might pay for specialist small groups, or hiring staff to lead extra-curricular activities outside the school day. In that way, an average secondary school could receive about £70,000 a year in additional cash. That is money that can make a real difference to young lives. Evidence shows that the pandemic has had a significant impact on older pupils who have the least time left in education. We will be investing £800 million in extending the time they spend in colleges It is no secret that the most important person in any classroom is the one standing at the front of it, which is why this settlement enables us to raise teachers’ starting salaries to £30,000. We promised that in our manifesto and we are delivering on that promise. That is in addition to a salary boost of up to £3,000 tax free to teach maths, physics, chemistry and computing, which we have already announced, to increase the number of teachers in subjects that are facing the greatest shortfall. It will also build on our groundbreaking teacher recruitment and retention reforms. We want our brightest and best graduates to be queueing up to be teachers. We now have far more compelling reasons for them to do so As a former families Minister, I care passionately about giving children a great start in life. That means giving families every support. I have seen for myself on many occasions the incredible effect that our investment can make on helping struggling families. Around 300,000 of our most vulnerable families will be supported with an extra £200 million boost to the Government’s flagship supporting families programme, which supports families through complex issues that could lead to family break- down. That is an approximately 40% real-terms uplift in funding for the programme, taking total planned investment across the next three years to nearly £700 million. As I said, we are being driven by three things: skills, schools and families.