Watch as Crawley's parliamentary candidates faced a question about School funding from St Wilfrid's student Ayaan Vahora ahead of the General Election 2024.
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00:00Until a couple of years ago, schools in West Sussex were the fourth worst funded in the country. I believe that things have improved and that we are now in the sixth worst funded local authority. Are students in West Sussex really worth less than other young people?
00:14So that's a really good point. I think a lot of this stems from what I said earlier about the question on Sussex being a school that's quite affluent and doesn't quite need the support that other areas need.
00:25So Peter, very early on, mentioned about the coalition that we've moved out to a part time job. That's quite right, we were. One thing that we can take credit for in the coalition is that we brought in the pupil premium to make sure that money went to pupils that needed it.
00:43So we want to take that further and we want to make sure we increase the funding for pupils with inflation every year. Not only with the students but also the teachers.
00:59Now, if you can't retain the teachers that have been doing the job for a couple of years, trouble happens. I'm not a teacher, there's teachers here. But I would imagine teachers do the job they do because it's an impassioned job.
01:14So if a teacher can't do the job any more than they love because they're not getting paid enough, that's a problem. If you have a high turnover of teachers, that's going to be a major issue. So another thing we want to do is make sure that trainees are paid while they're training.
01:31So that they can actually invest the time that they need to be able to do this profession without having to make sure that's the case. That's always the case. And yeah, that's what I've got on school funding.
01:47Okay, thank you very much indeed. Zak, so you've been representing the party for the last 14 years that has little or no solicitations funding. Why? Is it going to change?
02:01It will change. When we took over the government, and I'm very grateful, they admitted that they were part of our government in the first five years and they did work with us as a party. So the funding formula at that time wasn't fair for the schools in South East from the previous Labour government.
02:24Since we took over, even working with our coalition government at that time, we brought these people premium funding rates, which have been increased to £1,480 for primary schools and £1,050 for secondary schools.
02:42And also this year, the people premium is £2.9 billion, which would be 10.2% of that money is being spent on the private areas. I'm not saying there is enough money. We always need, because children are our future generation, we need to make sure there is enough money available for them. These schools are in the state where we like to be. That's why just recently...
03:06Just to be clear, in terms of West Sussex and therefore Crawley schools for young people, we would receive from the government £105,000 per student, whereas schools in London would receive £9,000 per student. And we talk about the private areas, and that's what we're talking about. It's nearly double. We'd love to have that.
03:28I'm sure we would love to have as much as money we can have for our schools, but I think, comparison in London, we need to bridge that gap a bit down, but I think people living, teachers like you living in London, they have high costs over there. The school running costs are a bit higher over there compared to us. But it doesn't mean that we should get nearly half of the money that they should get.
03:50That's one of my pledges and my premise, if I'm elected on 4th July, that I'm going to fight to get more money for our schools. And also while we are on schools, I'm going to mention Labour's 40% tax VAT on private schools. You are not a private school, but why it's important.
04:10As a county councillor, I'm part of a committee called the Health, Social Care and Scrutiny Committee. One thing I learned at West Sussex, even with nearly over 900 special education needs, kids will look after all they have. And on average, each kid costs to West Sussex around £4,000 a week, which compared to normal kids' funding is huge.
04:36So in private schools, there are around 100,000 special education needs kids at the moment. What I'm worrying, Labour's 20% fee on private schools, we're going to push a number of those people out of those private schools and into our already underfunded and overcrowded schools.
04:54So it's again, it's very important that we make sure that all of you are aware of the policies which the other parties and my party or anyone is supporting. So that's one of the points on that 20%. And as I said, this year, the £35 million is being invested on the first programme, which will be on 2700 primary schools in disadvantaged areas.
05:22That's not enough money. And the other thing is teachers. We need to make sure teachers' days are compatible, their pensions are rewarding for them, because it's not a 9 to 5 job. I've been to a school, my kids go to a school, it's a lot before mine starts and sometimes it goes a lot later than even 9pm.
05:44So we need to make sure our teachers are fully paid, fairly paid and their pensions are protected and thus if I'm elected as an MP, I'll argue for that, I'll fight for that.
05:58All the opinion polls suggest that Labour will be in government on Friday. Are things going to improve for schools, particularly schools in West Sussex?
06:08I don't believe the opinion polls, to be honest. The only time we need to work while the polls are in is when they finish counting up the results. On school funding, my wife actually works for a teachers' union, so we need to be quite careful about what I say about it.
06:22There's something at the base of the premise. We are towards the bottom in terms of West Sussex schools. The nature of the legal table though is that someone will always be towards the bottom. The question isn't whether or not rents are in other areas, it's have we got enough funding and should we get more funding. And the Labour Party is proposing to try and increase funding going into schools.
06:42I'll tackle a particular issue in a minute which is dealing with the broader issue of funding. Money is really tight right now. Some of you might have heard a story about when Labour left office, we let them know and said there's no money left. The Tories really like bringing this out and saying look how bad things were. What they don't tell you is at that point in time we had a debt of £1 trillion, we now have a debt of £2.7 trillion. So if you didn't have any money before, how have they managed to lose even more money over a period since, I do not know, given the cuts to schools and other things.
07:10We are planning on bringing on a composing baton for private schools and I'm glad you mentioned that because it's certainly intensive. There's a question about this which is if you look at all the money in the system and you say what are going to be our priorities for using this money. At the moment private schools are very rare in that they are a luxury good that we don't charge a baton. Everything else gets back charged on them, even this school gets back charged on it at the start, you claim back at the end of the year but up front it's child fax.
07:36Why is it that we're saying that private schools fall into this special category where they don't currently get charged any back? Why should that not be a priority for public money? I don't think it should be, I think that many should be brought where it makes the biggest difference.
07:50All the evidence shows that where you've got people on the lowest household incomes, the money makes the most amount of difference and where you have people on the highest household incomes, it actually makes almost no difference. If you look at what happens with kids in terms of their families' household incomes, the biggest jump in our system, if you take a family from the lowest decile of household income into the second lowest, they see a 15% improvement in their results.
08:16If you move them from the second highest decile to the top decile, they see a 0% improvement in their results. So why is it that as a system at the moment that they're defending, we're saying that we should be prioritising even more money for people who've got the most amount of money in our system and the most amount of advantage? We don't think that makes a lot of sense.
08:34So let's put that tax in like everything else has and use that money to invest in our schools to make sure we have the specialist training and teachers that we need to make sure every kid has a chance to succeed in life. In terms of crawling, we are in a particular situation here in that we are in a wealthy area but we are the poorest part of that wealthy area and we're supposed to get funding called the Edge of London funding to make up for this and I don't know how it works in West Sussex but it never quite seems to me that we get a full allocation of that going to our schools.
09:02We need more recognition of the fact that actually we're not the poorest part of West Sussex. Personally I would like to see Crawley Borough Council become the only council covering this area. I think then we'll actually get the level of representation we deserve. We can make decisions for ourselves, while the parents rely upon tutors to make those decisions for us. I think it would be a fair way to go if that happens.
09:26But I would just point out that at the moment only one of us on this panel was a county councillor. Zachary finally pointed out he was a county councillor. He's the county councillor for this bit of Crawley. He's in charge of fighting this bit of town to make sure people get their funding. So my question would be what have you done to make sure we get our full allocation of the Edge of London funding so that schools like St Malfoy's have the opportunity to deploy their money to the best use for local kids.
09:52And on the issue of SEND, I completely accept there's an issue of SEND. That's one of the reasons why I talked to make sure that we provided a venue as a council for an additional special needs school in Three Bridges. It's on Hayes and Cowden. And at the moment local county councillors are fighting to try and get a new school set up in Landon Green. We've got a location, the funding's already there. Why the county council haven't taken the decision yet I do not know. And we're pushing as hard as possible for that.
10:14I'll answer that. Let me answer the question here please. Let me answer that. One thing Peter mentioned about polls and he mentioned figures and he shared one poll, a five years old poll on one of his literature. I'm sure Peter will have some there.
10:40He said that you pay back on some of the services as a school. What they are proposing and what they are making clear, in private schools it's not school who are going to pay. It's going to be the children and their parents. They're going to pay that 40% increased fee on them. While over here, it's the whatever way it's working, it's the government who is funding all of the money which is being spent by school over here.
11:06So, it's not equal to compare. Second thing Peter asked a very good question, what I have done as a county councillor. Just down the road, we have Holy Trinity School which Peter Sandeep and Crowley went over there. Last month, they got a £3.5 million funding from the local education authority and from different funding streams to increase their facilities over there. That's what I've been doing for three years, working with schools wherever I can to get them some money.
11:34I have been working with schools where you see some of those schools have those children boards outside to tell parents not to park over there, watch these kids. That's what I have been doing and that's what I'm going to do when I go in the Parliament, get involved in other schools in Crowley wherever I can.
11:54You're literally arguing at the moment against taking money from schools that would come to this school and sell it wherever it is.
12:14There's a big amount of bursary from those private schools. We have a large number of private schools in Leicester City. Not every person is rich who sends their kids to private schools. So, not everybody is going to be afforded. If we just take 4,000 one week for one kid and even if one in ten kids come out of those private schools, it's going to be more cost to the government.
12:38So it's just a political gimmick saying that 20% is not fair, it's not going to work, it's more money we're going to, as a government, as a nation, you and me are going to pay in taxes and end up trying to fix that system.
12:54Is 20% of the cost of educating a child in private school equal or greater to the cost of educating a child in state school?
13:1020%, that's GAT that we're talking about.
13:30We're talking about less than two pupils per class and you're not having to build new schools for them, you're not having to create new teachers for them.
13:56It's extraordinary that we are actually arguing about a cost here. You are not a priority, that's why education is being put down. So they're arguing over how much should be going to you to educate you and your fellow pupils in the school and probably other schools across the country.
14:20You are our future. You are going to be our future doctors, teachers, engineers, plumbers, electricians, whatever. You are going to be the people probably going to look after me in a care home sooner or later. That is vital. You would think education would be top or one of the highest priorities, but it's not, is it?
14:42Because we're arguing about how much money you should be getting. £5,000 per pupil. Clearly not enough I would imagine, but that is wrong. Education is a right and that's something you deserve to be given and to be funded for you to get a decent education so you can go out into the working world and the adult world fully prepared for the future ahead of you.
15:08Now what we would like to do is actually increase investments into education by £8 billion, if you like this bit. £2 billion of that should go to a well-needed, well-deserved pay increase for teachers, because lots of teachers actually leave and leave education, which is not a good thing.
15:32I can remember a statistic for every one teacher joining the profession to leave it. Now I've been a teacher myself and I was a teacher for the last 10 years from 2010 to 2020 and I saw a lot of cuts going on which were really, really affecting the students that I was teaching and affecting the staff.
15:58The workload that teachers have to deal with nowadays is incredible. That's why a lot of them leave. It's a very difficult job. Long hours, a lot of work to do. So they do need a pay increase and they need a rethink about actually how much work and how they can actually make that a better situation for all teachers.
16:18We also want to put in £2.5 billion for school buildings. You may have heard the stories not too long ago about rack and ceilings and walls and so on crumbling. We want to try and stop that and upgrade those schools.
16:34Free school meals for our children. Make sure that you have breakfast club meals in the morning when you come up to school. £3 billion for sixth form education. £12 billion for further education. Restore education and maintenance allowance for all 16 and older. Invest £5 billion in special needs.
16:55Abolish tuition fees. Some of you are probably going to go on to university. You're going to have a huge debt hanging around your neck, possibly for a long time. Let's get rid of that. You shouldn't be going out after you've left university with a £50,000 debt. That's wrong. Why? You are going to be doing some really good jobs helping the economy. Why have you got a debt hanging around you when you leave university?
17:21It's an absolute nonsense. You'll like this one. Abolish short-stay. Get rid of off-stay. It's an absolute nonsense.
17:31That's a great point to end on there Ian.