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Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
Good morning, Mr Gray. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.
What a shame that the Minister for Schools cannot be with us. I am glad that the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson) is here—it is good to see him—but it is a shame that the Minister for Schools could not attend, because this is clearly his area of responsibility.
Why would a relatively new Member of Parliament from a place like Gateshead be interested in the oversight of free schools? We do not have a free school in Gateshead. I have been interested in the concept of free schools since I read an article in The Sunday Times, on 4 October 2009—before I was elected—in which the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), who was then shadow Secretary of State, said that Tory
“policies are aimed at the Gateshead mum…a no-nonsense working class woman passionate about her kids. Passionate enough to set up a massive comprehensive with 2,500 feral children on a depressed sink estate?”
Having represented Gateshead since 2010, and having been a member of the council there since 1983—with 30 years of elected public service under my belt in Gateshead—I was interested in those comments and wondered whether that was the Gateshead that Michael Gove really knew or was really thinking about—but back to the main item.
The oversight of free schools, which are a new type of school under this Government, will not have escaped the attention of hon. and right hon. Members in the past few weeks and months. Indeed, free schools were described by Channel 4 only last night as the Government’s “flagship” education policy. Although the quality of education that our young people receive is the most important factor in any discussion about education policy, we cannot disregard the cost implications for the public purse, particularly in the case of an ideologically driven policy.
Before mentioning oversight, it is important to give some context to this debate. In that regard, we should consider resources, including the funding allocations up to the next financial year. The Government have allocated a staggering £1.7 billion of capital funding to free schools, which equates to a third of the total budget for creating new school places in England as a whole over the spending review period. We should bear in mind the fact that, at the beginning of the autumn term, there were 174 free schools, compared with about 24,000 non-free schools. The words “disproportionate” and “partial” do not seem adequate to describe this investment in so few schools. However, I am more concerned that all this money is being ploughed into free schools, which are an as yet unproven, ideologically driven model of education, with serious implications for our young people.
The inspection and oversight of free schools, or rather the lack of it, has exposed the worrying shortfalls of this Government’s free schools policy.
David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on obtaining this debate. Just to clarify, does he believe that local authorities should have oversight or should a separate body be set up to oversee the free schools?
Ian Mearns
That question needs to be decided. At the moment, local authorities do not have oversight and it is clear—I will come on to this—that the other organisations given the duty of oversight do not yet have the resources to do it effectively.
It is particularly worrying that the Government, in the shape of the Education Funding Agency and Ofsted, seem to find out about failures of governance only when whistleblowers inside the schools feel it necessary to act. Free schools have a great deal of freedom in how to constitute and run their own governing bodies, and there is little evidence that either the EFA or Ofsted is able to identify and act on emerging problems.
In spite of Her Majesty’s chief inspector’s criticism of local authorities for not picking up problems in academies, one basic tenet of the free school movement is that they are totally detached from the local authority. Schools such as the Al-Madinah free school in Derby, Kings science school in Bradford, and Barnfield Federation in Luton—we are not entirely sure how many others there might be, and it seems that the Department for Education and Ofsted are not sure either—show that the wheels are well and truly coming off the free-school wagon and that free schools are vulnerable to a catalogue of problems.
Chief among those problems is the lack of good governance. That failure of governance is compounded by weaknesses in inspection and oversight of free schools. The three schools that I mentioned are examples of that. I should like to make it clear that, when we talk about schools, we are talking about children who, as the Secretary of State reminds us, get only one chance at a good education.
Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman has secured this debate. In the past few weeks the tone used in respect of free schools has changed. I welcome the new approach by the Opposition Front Bench. However, I plead with the hon. Gentleman not to accept that all free schools have poor governance and poor arrangements in place. For example, in my constituency, Etz Chaim school has high standards, good governance and good people running it. I ask the hon. Gentleman not to characterise all schools and categorise them as he has done.
Ian Mearns
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point. He has given a good example— an anecdote—of a school in his vicinity, but there are 174 such schools and as yet the mechanisms do not exist to ensure that every free school is of the high quality that he mentioned.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that qualified staff, proper standards for school buildings and school meals, and adherence to a national curriculum are ways of guaranteeing that every child in a free school can have a good education? Without those four starter points, there is a danger that we cannot guarantee the standard of education in free schools. That is the problem. The hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) mentions a school where he thinks things are going well, but without those guarantees and proper inspection there will be ever more disasters such as those my hon. Friend mentions.
Ian Mearns
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who makes a telling point. We are talking about educating children at a cost to the public purse. When the public purse is involved, we should expect minimum standard requirements in education. My hon. Friend makes the point well.
We are talking about the standards of education that these children receive. All too often, school policy is discussed as if it is somehow divorced from the fact that the ultimate victims of school failure are the children themselves. Let us not forget that even though these are free schools it is still public money that is paying for them.
The Al-Madinah school was branded “dysfunctional and inadequate” by Ofsted and “a national embarrassment” by Muslim leaders. Its own head teacher, Andrew Cutts-McKay, dismayed at poor governance and lack of foresight, turned whistleblower to expose the worrying slide in standards. Ofsted lamented the “limited knowledge and experience” of the governing body and the fact that teachers lacked proper skills to deliver a quality education. It condemned the school’s governance in no uncertain terms, stating:
“Accounting systems are not in place to ensure public money is properly spent and governors have failed to ensure an acceptable standard of education is provided by the school.”
Kings science school in Bradford has been accused of “serious financial mismanagement” and possibly fraud. Indeed, as with the Al-Madinah school, it was a member of the Kings science school staff—the finance director—who blew the whistle on the management of the school.
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does he share my concern that it took a full year after the whistleblower first raised these concerns for the Department for Education to publish that report into the alleged failings? Is that not just another example of the lack of transparency that has surrounded the free schools project from the beginning?
Ian Mearns
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point.
Although the Department for Education, Ofsted or any other inspectorate should be absolutely sure of its facts before going public, the time delay is worrying. The worrying precedent is that in those cases we have had to rely on whistleblowers—had they not been stripped of powers in relation to free schools, local authority officers would be uncovering failures. The EFA and Ofsted obviously do not have the required infrastructure, and are therefore not currently up to the job.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. He makes a crucial point on the role of local authorities. Does he agree that one of the big problems in our school system is that local authorities are responsible for the education of all children but have absolutely no power to intervene in very serious cases such as those that he describes?
Ian Mearns
My hon. Friend makes a crucial point. The Minister could reassure hon. and right hon. Members in the room today, and members of the public outside, that local authorities should be given at least a temporary ability to intervene because of the concerns raised in three of the 174 free schools.
The alleged serious financial mismanagement at Kings science academy also extends to the school’s land lease. The Yorkshire Post revealed that a company owned by a vice-chairman of the Conservative party, Alan Lewis, is to receive some £6 million over 20 years, or £300,000 a year, to lease the land on which the academy was built. Particularly in the absence of local authority oversight of free school finances, it seems that there are what some might call beneficial deals for some at the expense of the public purse.
The plot thickens. According to the BBC, there was “a forensic investigation” earlier this year:
“The school was paid a £182,933 grant when it opened in September 2011. The EFA investigation found that £59,560 of payments were not supported by any evidence of payments being made, and £10,800 of this was supported by fabricated invoices for rent.”
More recently, it was found that an independent panel had fined the school £4,000 for failing to reinstate an excluded pupil. I am sure many colleagues on both sides of the House will agree that that is not how public money should be spent—it is not aiding the education of any child. That £4,000 is money that could, and should, have been spent on front-line education services.
That appalling level of financial mismanagement is even more concerning as it is public money. The coalition Government like to stress the importance of sound public finances, but oddly enough, their flagship education policy seems to have free rein on the use of public money.
An investigation into E-ACT—which, according to its website runs 34 academies and free schools from Dartmouth to Leeds—by the EFA revealed that a total of £393,000 was spent on “procedural irregularities,” including consultancy fees, breaking E-ACT’s own financial rules. The investigation also found that expenses indicated a culture of “prestige” venues, large drinks bills, business lunches and first-class travel, all funded by public money. “Extravagant” use was made of public funds for an annual strategy conference, at a cost of almost £16,000. Monthly lunches took place at the Reform club—I would like to go there some day, as I have never been—a private members’ club in London, with the public purse paying the bill for that excess. Boundaries between E-ACT and its trading subsidiary, E-ACT Enterprises, became “blurred.” A number of activities undertaken by the subsidiary were paid for with public funds. E-ACT, one of the largest chains of academies, was finally issued with a notice to improve by the EFA, so E-ACT lost Sir Bruce Liddington, its chief executive and former schools commissioner for England who, it is believed, was paid some £300,000 in 2010-11.
Barnfield college in Luton, part of the Barnfield Federation, which includes Barnfield Moorlands free school, has come under scrutiny for its educational practices. The concerns include grade massaging, as well as how the school treats its learners. The Barnfield Federation mantra, according to its website, is:
“One purpose. One team. One standard.”
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
My hon. Friend rightly mentions the Barnfield Federation. Would he welcome a commitment from the Minister today that, when the Department completes its investigation into that particular scandal, it will undertake to publish the investigation immediately—rather than sitting on it for six months, as it did in the case of Kings science academy in Bradford?
Ian Mearns
The Minister has heard my hon. Friend’s question, and I echo that sentiment.
The Barnfield Federation has taken on some 10 schools in recent years, and I share the concerns that the federation might have overstretched itself by trying to take on too many schools too quickly. Although Barnfield college has stressed that it remains financially viable, its managerial viability is still a major cause of concern.
Advice given to those looking to set up free schools is careful to stress the importance of acquiring
“the right level of expertise to oversee the financial management of your school.”
It seems odd that the Government stress the importance of financial expertise in free schools—we have seen such failures—but have little concern about the expertise, standards or professional qualifications of the teaching staff. As I have previously mentioned, Ofsted raised concerns about both the financial and teaching provision at the Al-Madinah school, but Ofsted has not commented on the Secretary of State’s repeated assertion that free schools, and indeed all academies, do not need to have qualified teachers at all. That is apparently based on his view that what is good enough for Eton is good enough for any school. I appreciate that there is a little local difficulty in the coalition on that, but the Secretary of State and his Liberal Democrat Minister for Schools, at least, seem to be in accord, despite the apparent wider political Cleggmire.
The Government stress that expertise is necessary for the financial management of schools, yet they offer little insistence on such expertise when it comes to the governance and oversight of free schools. Many of the problems that I have outlined at the Al-Madinah school and Kings science academy, Bradford, stem from a lack of credible, organised governance and a lack of experience. The Department for Education may stress the importance of financial expertise, but if the systems of governance are poor, the financial health of a school will suffer as a direct consequence.
As free schools are autonomous, there is no way for local authorities to ensure that free schools in their jurisdiction have adequate, well rounded governance. It is imperative that that issue is addressed, urgently. The Government may write off Al-Madinah school as a one-off or as a contained incident, but the fact remains that that debacle has lifted the curtain on the fallacies and frailties of the programme. The Government simply do not have a clue about how many other free schools are in a similar situation.
The Department for Education’s website states:
“The right school can transform a child’s life and help them achieve things they may never have imagined.”
But what is the make-up of “the right school,” and what will the “wrong” school do for its students, who are ultimately children for whom we all have a duty of care?
Aside from good teachers and good facilities, I believe it is imperative that there is excellent governance, guaranteed by extensive oversight and rigorous inspection. I have called this debate because I have serious concerns about the oversight of free schools. I also have more general concerns about free schools, especially the disproportionate amount of the education budget eaten up by such schools. The unit costs of free schools bear no comparison with the vast majority of schools or schoolchildren.
One of my biggest concerns is the admissions policies adopted by many free schools that appear to be at best opaque, and at worst deliberately exclusive. A study by Race on the Agenda titled “Do free schools help to build a more equal society?” shows that only two out of 78 free schools are fully meeting their legal requirement to publish information pertaining to measurable equality objectives.
The ROTA report further states that only six free schools have published at least one equality objective, which is a poorer level of compliance than any other type of school. The question posed by the report is seemingly answered by those dismal figures. Free schools are doing very little to build a more equal society.
Lisa Nandy
My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. What lies behind this is the fact that schools are not islands: what happens in one school has an impact on children in other schools and across the wider community. Does he agree that the free-for-all that free schools have become is bad for children—not just in the failing schools he talked about, but in other schools?
Ian Mearns
It is clear that free schools have an impact on other schools in their areas. Where those other schools hoped to have a comprehensive intake, the free schools will have a skewing effect. Indeed, they might also undermine the financial viability of other schools by taking pupils away from them. This is about not just whether free schools have a positive impact on the children who go to them, but whether they have a significant negative impact and a destabilising effect on other schools nearby.
Nia Griffith
Does my hon. Friend find it odd that some free schools have been set up in areas with surplus places, but not in areas with a need for more places? That is another worrying feature.
Ian Mearns
My hon. Friend makes a crucial point. Some free schools have not been established in areas where additional places are required or where a significant number of schools are failing and need to improve—to get a kick up the backside, as it were—but in areas where neither of those criteria has been met. There is really no educational rationale for the existence of those schools; this is an ideologically driven policy.
Bill Esterson
My hon. Friend said money is taken from other schools in the locality to set up free schools. Does he agree, however, that the £1 billion overspend on the free schools and academies programme has a much wider impact on the education of children, because it takes away huge resources across the country? That is an extremely worrying consequence of the programme.
Ian Mearns
My hon. Friend makes a crucial point. Every pound spent on one item cannot be spent on another—that is simple economic opportunity cost. If we as a country indulge ourselves in establishing a relatively small number of these schools, the opportunity cost is that the money cannot be spent on the educational opportunities of millions of other children.
If you will indulge me, Mr Gray, I would like to look at other elements of free school admissions policy. Recent research suggests that the majority of the first wave of free schools did not take their fair share of disadvantaged pupils. The vast majority took lower numbers of children on free school meals, compared with local borough and national averages. That not only underlines the idea held by some that free schools are the preserve of a privileged few—set up by the few to serve the few and not the many—but exposes how schools can use the dilution of admissions policy that the Secretary of State has overseen.
I know the importance of good governance and the impact it can have on the direction of schools. There must be robust, independent oversight of schools if they are to flourish and if we are to be sure that the children in them are getting a good-quality education and that public money is being spent in the best way. I can speak from experience, having been a school governor for more than 30 years, as well as the chair at a once underperforming school in my community. I am sure that many of my hon. Friends are, or have been, governors in schools in their communities, and they will be well aware of the role’s importance.
We cannot afford to let the scandals in free schools damage and undermine the reputation of school governors or governance. More importantly, we cannot let poor oversight of free schools distract us from ensuring that all children receive a high-quality education from properly qualified teachers. All parents and pupils need to be able to trust their school, and, as institutions that spend public money, free schools are no exception.
In “Academies and free schools programmes: Framework for assessing value for money”, an eight-page document published on 8 November, the Department says that value for money is based on the consideration of three key elements:
“Economy: minimising the cost of the inputs needed to deliver a service; Efficiency: maximising the service output delivered with those inputs; and Effectiveness: maximising the impact of the service on outcomes for those who use it.”
Referring to outcomes, it talks about assessing
“how educational outcomes are improving and the consequential economic and social outcomes that occur over the longer term.”
I am pleased that educational outcomes are at least mentioned, but the document raises a number of questions, which I would like the Minister to answer, if he can, when he sums up. What has been the total cost so far of free schools—including capital costs, revenue costs and the hundreds of thousands of pounds given to the New School Network? What measures are in place to measure outcomes in value-for-money terms? How many free schools are under scrutiny for financial or educational reasons, and how many have received warning letters? The final question, which has a very clear answer, is: can we afford the financial and educational cost of this ideologically driven policy? I am not sure that the answer is yes.
John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) on a good presentation of a fairly solid case. I want to make a few remarks and then to bring a particularly graphic case to the Minister’s attention.
I am unenthusiastic about school structure changes in general, but I do not have the same hang-ups about free schools as I do about academies. Academies seem to involve alienating an asset without the consent of the community or the parental body. However, it is fair to acknowledge that free schools also have critics—the hon. Gentleman is obviously among them—and Ministers normally have answers to some of the criticisms they raise.
The big issue that the hon. Gentleman raised, which I will dwell on ultimately, is governance, but there are other criticisms. There is the effect on school places—the fact that there can be over-supply when a free school is created in an area with surplus places. However, I think the ministerial team take that into account, or they say they do, when they give schools the go-ahead.
There is the fact that a lot of free schools are denominational, but, hey, a lot of state schools are also denominational, and we have a quid pro quo in connection with that. There is the claim that free schools involve selection via the back door, but it is not over-selection. The hon. Gentleman also put the case that the funding is somehow rigged, but I am fairly confident that the Minister will have a good answer on that score as well.
There is the fundamental point that free schools can sometimes end up not teaching the shared values or the world view of the funder or the Government. That can be an issue—we think of the Al-Madinah school, where the issue was values, or creationist schools, where the issue is the world view. I am more concerned about free schools that do not teach the shared values of our society. I am not so much concerned with the content of what individual schools teach, where that is at variance from the norm, as long as the teaching itself is proper teaching and not simply indoctrination.
I have to be relatively relaxed about non-qualified teacher status, because I did 30 years’ teaching, and I was not trained to teach at any point. I got into a secondary modern school, and I taught for two years. When I had survived for two years, I got a nice letter from the Department of Education and Science telling me that I was a qualified teacher. During my teaching career, I taught five different subjects, and only in the last 10 years was the subject I taught the same as the subject of my degree. I have to say that my teaching career was not dotted with failure throughout.
Dr Offord
The hon. Gentleman illustrates that people do not have to have a teaching degree to make a valuable contribution to education. Indeed, the head teacher of the shadow education spokesman, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) did not have any teaching qualifications, and I do not think that did him any harm either.
John Pugh
I must correct the hon. Gentleman; I have a master’s in education and a diploma somewhere, but they have no relevance to my teaching capacities. I never found that they were terribly instructive.
On the positive side, the argument for free schools is that they are set up by parental demand. That partly explains the good results. The biggest factor correlating with educational success is parental support. Enthusiastic parents produce enthusiastic kids, who get good results. We should not be surprised if free schools achieve marginal educational improvements. The key selling point for the Government has always been that free schools are innovative and diverse, in a way that state schools seem not to be expected to be.
I wonder whether, twenty years on, a free school will have settled down to a clear recipe that it understands, and will be producing clear results that it understands. Even if that does not happen, why should not the innovation and flexibility that free schools are given be on the menu for all schools? If they are good things, they should be given to schools regardless of their structure or character—to LEA schools as well as free schools.
The LEA’s role is extraordinarily helpful, and has been mentioned by the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson). It does not spend most of its time interfering with schools and telling them exactly how and what to teach; we can safely allow the Secretary of State and Ofsted to do that. By and large, its job is to advise, support and co-ordinate, and to step in when difficulties arise. That brings me to my main point.
By serendipity—it is a fine thing—I was contacted a few days ago, not knowing that the hon. Member for Gateshead would suggest this debate in such a timely way, by someone who had a problem with a free school. I shall not name the school, except to say that it is not in my constituency; it is a lot nearer to where we are today than to my constituency. However, the problem that is described tells us something about what is wrong with governance in free schools, and about what may be going wrong with the experiment. It results from some straightforward playground bullying, and parents getting involved, as they often do, in defence of their child—both the bully and the one being bullied. The issue spiralled alarmingly, because after a while parents became aggressive towards one another.
My e-mail came from a mother, who sent her child to a free school because she believed that such a school was a wholly good idea—she had no problem with that—and because she had had difficulty getting her child into other schools in the area:
“It was reported to us that at the Parents Forum Meeting…parents not present when the assault took place were openly discussing the incident”—
between two parents and two children—
“whilst the representatives of the school sat and said nothing. The Parents Forum Meeting then descended into chaos. A small number of aggressive parents hijacked the meeting and began shouting and yelling…Eventually the Chairman asked one of the most aggressive and disruptive parents to leave”
but that parent refused. The e-mail says:
“The Chairman, Head Teacher and Deputy Head, were speechless in their shock”
and did nothing to try to change events. Parents
“apparently left the meeting in distress, whilst others felt for their safety. The meeting was…abandoned. The Chairman has also since told me that the only reason he was chairing the meeting…was because no one else would do it, that he’d had to cancel a dental appointment to be able to attend and that after what happened he really wished he’d gone to the dentist.”
Subsequently, the parent who contacted me spoke to the deputy head.
“He had no words. He was completely speechless and could not give me any guidance or assurance that the school had the matter under control.”
My correspondent tells me
“We feel that this situation should never have been allowed to get to this point and believe it has, simply because some parents have been allowed to feel for far too long, that they are in charge and that the school answers to them. This I feel is partly because Free Schools appear to request parental involvement in the way the school is guided, and the schools appear not to be adequately equipped to deal with situations when they become difficult, and have”—
this is a key point—
“no higher level of management to turn to for support, other than perhaps their own boards of trustees who, in this case, appear not to be professionally experienced in the education sector.”
The e-mail continues:
“I am unsure whether or not the school were aware of their legal footing, but I do know that a number of parents, including myself, sent them links and documents to various websites including the Department of Education guidelines with regards to bullying outside of school, and how to manage anti social parents behaviour. They seemed uninterested in this and told me that they had consulted a lawyer and there was nothing more they could do with regards the aggressive and intimidating behaviour of parents.
What struck me as most concerning was that the management of the school appeared to have no idea as to their legal rights, or what they could or could not do to address the situation. The Head Teacher appeared to need to consult the Chairman of the school trust for guidance and in turn the chairman had to seek independent legal advice on what action he could tell the Head Teacher to take.”
The writer—someone who chose to send her child to a free school—concludes:
“We feel that our children have become part of a wider social experiment; new schools are clearly needed but why largely rely on people with little or no experience of running schools to set them up and manage them? We now believe this is a dangerous experiment...Free schools are a tempting option when so many state schools are either over subscribed or failing to offer a decent level of education. It is apparent that no guidance is being given by the State, nor is anyone monitoring what is going on”.
Nia Griffith
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the whole point of local authority intervention was that it could so often help the inexperienced head teacher or governing body, and pre-empt that type of situation? His correspondent has pinpointed the complete lack of anyone to turn to when things get difficult.
Mr James Gray (in the Chair)
Order. “Erskine May” makes it plain that hon. Members should not use extensive quotations from documents in speeches, so perhaps the hon. Gentleman would summarise the e-mail rather than reading it out.
John Pugh
Certainly, Mr Gray. The parent contacted the New Schools Network and the Department for Education à propos the children’s circumstances—the lack of play space, and so on. She got no advice that was of any use to her, and what she says complements and adds to the points of the previous correspondent. I apologise, Mr Gray, for reading out that e-mail so fully, but it is important to say that those are not my sentiments, but those of someone who had a child at a free school, but who had to withdraw them.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
The hon. Gentleman gave a litany of complaints, and it sounded like an extreme instance. How extreme does he think it was? Does he think it may have been replicated elsewhere?
John Pugh
I simply do not know, but I agree with the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) that if there are extreme cases it is not obvious how they are to be dealt with. It is obvious that there is not the institutional back-up to assist with difficulties whether they are extreme or not.
There is a solution. It would be possible to set up a local body to advise and support such schools to set standards and possibly provide some democratic accountability: we could call it an LEA.
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) on securing an important and timely debate.
I want to respond to some criticisms by the Secretary of State for Education of the schools in my area. I believe that they are an attempt to garner support for a free school in an adjacent area. I am not by nature boastful, but I want to begin by boasting about the achievements of schools in my constituency. We have seen year on year improvements, which have continued in 2013 with the academy at Shotton Hall, the Seaham school of technology and Easington academy achieving record results. Dene community school, which continues to improve year-on-year, also saw record-breaking results, and St Bede’s Catholic comprehensive school achieved its best-ever results, with more students exceeding the Government’s benchmark of making three and four levels of progress in both English and Maths from year 7.
We would all agree that the achievements of east Durham’s schools constitute something of a success story and are testament to the ambition and hard work of the teaching staff and students and to the drive of head teachers in my constituency. The success of east Durham’s schools ought to be cause for celebration and Ministers ought to congratulate them on their efforts. Sadly, that has not been the case. For some unexplained reason, the Secretary of State for Education launched an inexcusable and unfounded attack on east Durham’s schools earlier this year, saying:
“When you go into those schools, you can smell the sense of defeatism.”
He added that the schools had a “lack of ambition”. He was quick to condemn the schools, but he will not visit them, despite having been invited.
The Minister for Schools does not share the Secretary of State’s unduly pessimistic view of the schools in my constituency. Following Easington academy’s latest results, the Minister wrote a letter of congratulation, in which—I will read out the highlights only—he identified that the school stood out in two ways:
“First, you were ranked number one in your table. Second, over 10 per cent more of your pupils achieved five good GCSEs including English and Maths than is typical of a school with your intake. This is a fantastic achievement that you should be very proud of.”
He continued:
“You are also one of the 56 top performing secondary schools in England on this measure.”
That is praise indeed.
I pay tribute to the hard work of the students, teachers, parents and the head teacher of the Seaham school of technology, which has had some fantastic results in the face of real challenges, given the condition of the school building. Those results have come in spite of the fact that the much-needed new building, which had been promised by the previous Labour Government, was withdrawn by this Government to divert, I believe, funds towards the Secretary of State’s pet free schools project.
I want to compare the capital and revenue funding of schools in my area with that of free schools. The Durham free school, which at the last count employed nine members of staff but had only 30 pupils, is one such school. According to the Secretary of State, it represents excellent value for money. According my calculations, however, that is a ratio of nearly three students to every teacher. How does that represent excellent value for money?
Ian Mearns
I understand my hon. Friend’s chagrin at the criticism levelled at schools in and around his constituency, but I wonder whether it may have something to do with the fact that one of the Secretary of State’s special advisers, Dominic Cummings, was connected through a family member to the establishment of the Durham free school.
Grahame M. Morris
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who makes an interesting and serious point. If the Secretary of State seeks to promote a political ideology in the form of a free school with political backing and in so doing is undermining the education opportunities and funding for pupils in my area, quite frankly, it is an outrage.
How much better would the results have been at the Seaham school of technology, which has more than 640 pupils, if it had enjoyed the fantastic ratio of one teacher for every three students or if it had at least received the much-needed new building that it had been promised? The Secretary of State’s free school pet project is motivated neither by achieving better results, nor by the desire to obtain better value for money. Such schools are free only at the expense of the success of existing local authority schools. I therefore do not understand how they can be considered to be cost-effective.
The truth is that the free schools project is ideologically motivated and free schools are being driven to succeed, with teachers and students everywhere else being made to pay for it. Free schools have been unaffected by budget cuts and receive a disproportionate share of capital and revenue funding, as pointed out by several hon. Members, at the expense of local schools, despite the fact that they educate only a tiny proportion of all pupils.
The Secretary of State has turned down several invitations to visit east Durham, but it would be instructive if he came and listened to students and teachers at schools in my constituency. They would ask him for just a little of what he is spending on free schools to improve students’ learning experiences and life chances. Through the Minister, I urge the Secretary of State to wake up to the facts. Free schools mean less oversight, less democracy and poorer value for money. They are failing the taxpayer, teachers, parents and, most importantly, children. If the Secretary of State does want to come down to earth from his ivory tower, there is no better spot for him to land than in east Durham.
Finally, I ask the Minister to pass on one more invitation to the Secretary of State to come and see how things are being done, to witness the state of the building at the Seaham school of technology, to speak to the pupils, teachers and head teachers and to change the habit of a lifetime by listening to those doing the hard work. A person is never too old or too clever to learn—even a Secretary of State for Education.
Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) on securing this important debate, which has identified the need for a pause for thought on the due diligence processes that apply prior to the opening of free schools. I will talk about the case that I know best, the Kings science academy, which is relevant to today’s debate because The Daily Telegraph hailed it in September 2011 as coming closest to the Prime Minister’s vision of what a free school should be.
Many would agree—I certainly do—with greater freedoms for our publicly funded schools around the curriculum, staffing, opening hours, holidays and so on. Those would be generally acceptable to many people across the political divide; many of us are up for it. However, what else would the Minister deem acceptable in the name of freedom? How far can schools go?
At the Kings science academy, a principal with no experience even as a deputy, let alone a head teacher, was appointed without an interview. Is that acceptable to the Minister? Prior to the new build, £460,000 was invested in temporary accommodation at an old school of which the principal’s father was a trustee. Is that acceptable? Insurance was paid on the school—a temporary provision—to an insurance company set up by a trust of which the principal’s father was a trustee. Is that acceptable? The principal himself was shown to be a director of that insurance company, although he claimed that that was a mistake. Is that acceptable?
A benefactor—more correctly referred to by the hon. Member for Gateshead as a beneficiary—called Alan Lewis, who happens to be a vice-chairman of the Conservative party, provided a site containing warehouses that were largely derelict and empty, but then received £10 million-worth of public money to build the new school. We have now heard that he will receive £6 million over a 20-year period, after which the building reverts back to his sole ownership. That same person, at the time of the negotiations on the lease payments on the new building, was chair of the governing body. Is that acceptable to the Minister?
An accountants’ report in the summer of 2012—the accountants brought in were those of, guess who, Alan Lewis—identified widespread financial irregularities dating back as long ago as the period before the school’s opening, but the Education Funding Agency did not send in the external assurance team until a scheduled visit took place in December 2012. It waited for a scheduled visit! Is that acceptable to the Minister?
Bill Esterson
The hon. Gentleman is describing a disgraceful and worsening litany of what has happened at the school in his constituency. Is there a way of providing oversight that would avoid all those terrible things that he is describing?
Mr Ward
My great concern is that the oversight is not wanted, because were it in place, it would ask the awkward questions that people do not want to answer. We do not see what we do not look for.
An internal audit investigation team at the beginning of 2013 concurred with the accountants’ report—by now six months old—and identified fraudulent claims for Department for Education funding; the appointment, without interview, of the principal’s mother, father and sister as school staff; payments to the principal of pension contributions due to the Teachers’ Pensions agency, claimed from the DFE; and much more. Yet the principal was not suspended. Is that acceptable to the Minister?
Thanks to John Roberts at the Yorkshire Post, we know that the DFE is blaming an administrative error for the failure of the police to investigate, when only a week before the Department had claimed that the police had decided not to investigate. Is that acceptable? When told by the police that they did not have enough information to proceed with an investigation, the DFE failed to send them the full and damning audit report. Is that acceptable? We were told that the police did not get the audit report, because they did not ask for it. The audit report, available in May 2013, was not published until 25 October, just before the broadcasting of a critical “Newsnight” investigation into the school. Is that acceptable?
When the DFE was questioned about what action it intended to take following the publication of the report, the Department replied that—wait for it—the school had launched its own investigation and that any disciplinary action was a matter for the school. Is that acceptable? In answering that particular question, will the Minister bear in mind that the principal’s brother is on the disciplinary committee?
My questions are not rhetorical; they require answers. Are those things acceptable? Is that the level we have fallen to in terms of accountability? Finally, if all those things are acceptable in the name of freedom, will the Minister tell me just how corrupt a free school has to be to be unacceptable?
How many more schools are like the one I have been talking about? Are we talking about the tip of an iceberg? Earlier, the hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) talked about a wonderful school with great governance arrangements, but, in truth, how do we know? We know clearly from the Kings science academy that when matters were wrong and wrongdoing was taking place day in, day out, they did not come to public attention. We simply do not know the answer to the question of how many more such schools there are, but it makes you think, doesn’t it?
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
We have had an interesting debate, on which I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), who told us about his 30 years as a councillor—he must have been elected to the council at the age of 14 or so. He certainly kicked off the debate extremely well. It was important that he drew to the attention of the House the ROTA report, which itself could be the subject of another debate on free schools and their approach to equality issues. We also had a good contribution from the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh), who spoke in his usual philosophical fashion. He trotted round the arguments on free schools and highlighted some important incidents of which he has been made aware.
My hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) made a powerful plea for fair treatment of and fair comment on the schools in his east Durham area, and he cited the Secretary of State on their smell of defeat. The Secretary of State is an extraordinary man in many ways, but he must have an exceptional sense of smell if, having never visited those schools, he can detect the smell of defeat about them. That says everything.
Finally, we had a contribution from the hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward), who should be congratulated on the manner in which he has attempted, in the face of great difficulties, to expose the scandals at Kings science academy in Bradford. I saw him on his local media pointing out that some of the people whom the Secretary of State had approved to run the school and to spend millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money were not only not fit to run a school, but not fit to run a bath—to use his inimitable phrase. His contribution this morning made the case absolutely clear, and I will say more about that later.
I welcome the children’s Minister, who is one of the nicest people in the Government, as is his Parliamentary Private Secretary, the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood), but we want to know where the Minister for Schools is. It would have been better had he come along today, to listen not only to my colleagues and me, but to his own Liberal Democrat colleagues on the policy for which he is responsible in the Commons at least.
I have noticed recently that in parliamentary answers—written answers as well—the children’s Minister is deployed as a kind of human shield for the Minister for Schools to answer questions about some subjects, including the free schools policy. I hope that that will not become a trend, but I guess it is understandable, given that he is being asked to defend what my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), the shadow Education Secretary, has described as a
“dangerous ideological experiment which has been allowed to run completely out of control”.
The hon. Member for Bradford East gave us a fine example of the manner in which this is out of control. He is right of course, because we have lots of schools with—despite what the hon. Member for Southport said—unqualified teachers written into them as a kind of policy, but also with unqualified leaders. Furthermore, schools are being built where there are already surplus places and with a dangerous lack of oversight and transparency, as we have heard this morning, but that is exactly what the Government planned.
It is no accident that we are hearing more examples of head teachers resigning—another one resigned yesterday, at the IES Breckland free school, following the resignation of the 27-year-old unqualified head at the Pimlico primary free school founded by Lord Nash, a Government Minister. We are hearing more examples of disastrous teaching, such as at the Al-Madinah free school, and allegations of financial fraud, at Al-Madinah and, as we have heard, at Kings science academy in Bradford. There is also an ongoing investigation into the Barnfield Federation in Luton, and we want a guarantee from the Minister that there will not be a cover-up this time—the report of the Department’s investigation should be printed immediately on completion, rather than being sat on until “Newsnight” gets a leaked copy, as happened in the case of Kings science academy.
The reason I say that this is what the Government planned is because they told us that they expected the policy to result in this kind of failure. The hand-picked adviser to the Secretary of State is Mr Dominic Cummings, who was brought into Government against the ethical objections of Andy Coulson and whom the Secretary of State has described as one of his “heroes”. Mr Cummings said in a recent 250-page memo that this kind of fraud and failure was an integral part of the free schools policy design. He said that some free schools
“will fail and have predictable disasters from disastrous teaching to financial fraud.”
There we have it: the lack of oversight is not an accident, as the hon. Member for Bradford East pointed out; it is part of the design of this ideological experiment. According to the Government, a bit of failure is fine, if there are unqualified teachers, and some financial fraud is okay: in the long run, presumably, some good schools will emerge from the carnage of the experiment. The fact that pupils’ education is disrupted along the way—as with the Al-Madinah free school, which had to close for a week—is presumably just collateral damage and a price worth paying.
The adviser to the Secretary of State has told us that we should expect failure and fraud. Clearly, he is right. At least he is being honest: all we have had from the rest of the Department is delay and obfuscation when it has been questioned about all this. Much of that is because Ministers are hopelessly conflicted about the policy. How can a Minister be both a promoter of free schools and an adjudicator on them? That is the situation now. How can the Secretary of State be both propagandist for his free schools experimental policy and overseer of that policy at the same time? He is responsible for all of these schools. He is like Dr Frankenstein: he is in love with his own creation and cannot see the dangers even when the evidence is staring him right in the face.
Just last night we heard further revelations about the Al-Madinah free school on “Channel 4 News”. Perhaps today we will finally get some action and Lord Nash might for a day be able to forget that he is a free school promoter and remember that he is a Government Minister with responsibility for the proper use of taxpayers’ money. Ofsted described that school as “dysfunctional” and rated it “inadequate” in every category, with unqualified teachers who lacked proper training. Now there are new allegations of financial irregularities over the letting of contracts. Will the Minister confirm—he may need some in-flight refuelling to answer the question—whether Department for Education Ministers or officials received from Derbyshire police correspondence relating to the funders of the Al-Madinah free school before it was opened? If so, will he commit to publishing that correspondence?
Let me turn to Kings science academy in Bradford, which opened in 2011, as the hon. Member for Bradford East pointed out, and, as he said, the patron or beneficiary of the school is Alan Lewis, who is a vice-chairman of the Conservative party. The school was built on Mr Lewis’s company land, and as we have heard, he stands to make £6 million in rent over the course of a 20-year agreement.
On 25 October, nearly six months—certainly over five months—since its completion, the Department published a redacted report from a financial investigation that it had carried out at Kings science academy only after whistleblowing from within the school. The way in which the Department redacted the report is interesting. Mr Lewis’s name was redacted, despite the fact that the financial arrangements are in the public domain. Even the name of the head teacher of the school was redacted in the version that the Department released. We have to wonder why it was necessary to redact the name of the head teacher—or principal, as he calls himself—and the name of Mr Lewis when that information is in the public domain; perhaps the Minister can explain.
The Department rushed out the report—that might explain the clumsy redaction— hours before “Newsnight”, which had already received a leaked draft copy, was due to go on air with the story. The report found a whole host of financial irregularities, including an admission by someone at the school that it had submitted fabricated invoices to claim money from the DFE as part of its set-up grant, and identified £86,000 of that grant that had not been spent by the school for the purpose for which it was intended. The report recommended that those matters should be passed on to the police for investigation. As has been pointed out, on 25 October, the Department said that the matter had been reported to the police
“who decided no further action was necessary.”
That seems odd to me. After all, invoices had been fabricated: why did that not result in proper criminal action?
The DFE’s initial version of events was that it reported the matter to Action Fraud on 25 April, and followed that up in September when it was told that the police had decided to take no further action. However, once all this became public—only because of the “Newsnight” investigation—West Yorkshire police contacted the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau to ask about the case and were told that there had been an administrative error that meant that the matter had been passed on to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau as being for information rather than as a report of a potential crime. Five days after the DFE report was made public, West Yorkshire police put out this statement:
“The Department for Education reported the matter to Action Fraud…on April 25, 2013. It was recorded as an information only case not as a crime. This was not sent to West Yorkshire Police either as information or for investigation. The National Fraud Intelligence Bureau has now assessed the report in line with nationally agreed protocols and have today sent it for investigation by West Yorkshire Police.”
That is where we are now, and we know that people are being interviewed, but the matter was not passed on properly to the police for more than five months.
The Department says that in September it contacted Action Fraud to ask for an update and was told by the police that there was nothing more to be done. Why at that stage did the Department not ask more questions? Why did it not dig and find out that there had been an administrative error? We need to understand why it did not do so.
It has now emerged that the Department for Education did not even submit the report to Action Fraud. It simply made a telephone call to the helpline. I have a copy of the Action Fraud web page for its helpline, which says:
“We provide a central point of contact for information about fraud and financially motivated internet crime. If you’ve been scammed, ripped off or conned, there is something you can do about it.”
Presumably the Secretary of State and his officials believed that they might have been scammed, ripped off or conned by the management of Kings science academy—who are all still in place, by the way—which is why they rang the Action Fraud helpline to report the matter. The website goes on to say:
“Report fraud to us and receive a police crime reference number.”
Will the Minister tell us the police crime reference number that his Department was given by Action Fraud when it dialled 0300 123 2040 to report that it believed it had been scammed, ripped off or conned by Kings science academy?
Kevin Brennan
I am grateful that the hon. Gentleman has put that on the record, because when I rang the Action Fraud helpline last night to check, it said that calls are recorded. The Minister should be able to obtain from the Home Office a recording of the telephone call from the Secretary of State or one of his Ministers or officials to Action Fraud in April to report the crime and find out when they were given the police crime reference number. We will be interested to hear that.
The public deserve to know exactly what was said when the Department for Education reported the matter to Action Fraud, which led it to regard it as only “information”. What was said when it told the Department that the police were taking no further action, and how was it able to make that statement? How did Action Fraud obtain an update from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau without the administrative error coming to light? In the meantime, the principal is still in post at the school, and the Department says it gave the school a financial notice to improve, but that notice has never been published. Will the Minister publish it?
The Department said that the school is carrying out an internal investigation and that any disciplinary action is a matter for the school. How can the Department defend that position? In what other walk of public life would that be acceptable? It is worth remembering that none of this was in the public domain before the report was leaked. It is a murky business, and it would be better if the Government published the records of all their dealings in relation to this now, otherwise they will face the drip, drip of revelations as the details inevitably leak out.
All these problems and this example are a product of the policy design. Everyone in the Chamber wants innovative schools with appropriate autonomy to provide the best possible education for the children in their constituencies. That is a value that we all share, but it is irresponsible to design a policy with the expectation that failure is inevitable—that is what the Secretary of State and special advisers have done—and with no proper oversight of the spending of public money and the impact of the policy on the young people in the care of those schools. There are more scandals to come. As the Minister knows, his Department is currently investigating other cases. Why does he not come clean, answer the questions and admit that it is time to have proper oversight of these schools?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)
It is a pleasure, Mr Gray, to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) on securing this welcome debate. He has made a long and distinguished contribution to education, both in the House as a member of the Select Committee on Education—I look forward to seeing him tomorrow when we discuss progress on child protection—and in his constituency as a governor of three schools. He is not a man to boast about his achievements, so it falls to me to note that he is a governor of Thomas Hepburn community academy, one of the most recent academy conversions. In 2007, he received a governor of the year award from my Department, so he is well versed and experienced in these matters.
I am sure the hon. Gentleman agrees, as an academy governor, that poor educational performance is always unacceptable, as is poor management of a school, and that the primary duty of every governing body is to ensure that its school improves. In that spirit, I hope he also agrees that the Government’s reforms have gone further to ensure that schools and their governing bodies are properly held to account and that all state-funded education providers—free schools and other academies—are more tightly regulated than they have ever been.
That tightening of the accountability framework has been achieved while freeing up head teachers, academy principals and governing bodies from unnecessary prescription and bureaucracy, and enabling the innovation that the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) rightly championed. That freedom to innovate and to respond to the particular needs of pupils enables them to raise standards. Hon. Members throughout the House share the aim of raising the standard of education for all children so that they have every opportunity to reach their full potential.
Nia Griffith
Will the Minister explain why allowing free schools complete freedom over the curriculum is the best way forward given that a Conservative Government, with cross-party consensus, agreed that there should be a national curriculum to ensure that all children had at least that broad base of education that was agreed across the board for everyone?
Mr Timpson
As the hon. Lady is aware, we have recently streamlined and revised the curriculum to concentrate on core aspects of education, which is right. We also believe that head teachers and teachers in schools are best placed to ensure that children receive the learning they require to bring about the best possible education attainment. That is borne out by the achievements, which I will come to, of free schools and academies in outperforming local authority-maintained schools in being outstanding or good with outstanding features. That is the outcome we want, and it must always be the driver for intervention.
Mr Timpson
I will give way, but I have a lot to get through and the hon. Lady should be aware that I may not get through it as a consequence of giving way.
Nia Griffith
Can the Minister explain how he will ensure that the curriculum provided by head teachers is up to standard and that we will not have the sort of catastrophes that we are seeing on the financial side? How will that be inspected?
Mr Timpson
I have just explained that we can establish the success or otherwise of a school’s educational achievements by its results, as well as the fact that every free school and academy has a full Ofsted inspection within two years. That remains the case. We also believe that when a school is outstanding, accountability is clear and that should be reflected in the level of inspection.
Free schools and academies are free to spend their money as they choose. We do not bind them to purchase services such as payroll or human resources from their local authority; they can broker better-value deals elsewhere, leaving them with more money to spend on pupils. They can use their judgment and budgetary freedom to pay teachers appropriately to attract the best practitioners, even if they do not hold formal teaching qualifications.
Recently, we have had some interesting and lively debates about the importance or otherwise of having qualified teachers in schools. We can all cite the names of unqualified teachers who have made a huge contribution to children and schools. We heard an example this morning from my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (John Pugh) about his contribution over a long period.
The evidence is clear that that approach is working. Ofsted has rated almost three quarters of the 25 free schools inspected so far as good or outstanding, and that is happening under the tougher new inspection framework that Ofsted introduced. That compares well with maintained schools inspected against the same criteria in the same year, of which only 64% were rated good or outstanding.
The majority of open free schools represent entirely new provision and will not post their key stage 2 or GCSE results for some time, but every free school is an academy with the same freedoms. That is important because we already have clear evidence that academies work and out-perform local authority schools at both primary and secondary level.
The hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) referred to the success of Easington academy, which is hugely welcome. When outstanding education is provided, wherever it happens to be, it should be commended. I will, of course, pass his invitation to the Secretary of State to visit him and his constituency in the near future. As a former undergraduate of Durham university, I know what a wonderful part of the country it is, and I always recommend that people visit it.
Kevin Brennan
I know that the Minister wants to trumpet achievements, but I am sure he also wants to answer questions. He mentioned HR contracts and that free schools should have the freedom to do what they like about such contracts. Is he aware that Channel 4’s report last night on the Al-Madinah school said that Javid Akhtar was the governor responsible for chairing the school’s HR committee, and was also the managing director of Prestige HR Solutions, which was awarded the contract to run Al-Madinah’s HR services? Does that not illustrate absolutely what is wrong with having no proper oversight of such issues?
Mr Timpson
I will come to the quid pro quo of accountability against the freedom given to academies and free schools.
The hon. Gentleman made a particular point about the Al-Madinah free school. As he said, the Minister, my noble Friend Lord Nash, is currently up there talking to the school governors to decide what the next steps will be, so it would be wrong and inappropriate for me to comment specifically on the details of the case. Nevertheless, it is important that although there is clear evidence of success and achievement in free schools by virtue of the freedom provided to them, it is also right that there is tighter accountability as the balancing side of the equation.
For free schools, the need to demonstrate educational and financial rigour starts from the very moment when they submit an application to open a school. Every application is assessed against rigorous, published criteria. Free school proposers need to show how their school will drive up standards for all pupils as well as demonstrating financial resilience. The criteria also cover governance, an issue raised by a number of hon. Members. We need proposers to show that they have the capacity, skills and experience to set up and run an effective academy, as well as showing demand from parents.
Proposers are rigorously tested at interview against all those criteria, and testing continues once they are approved into pre-opening. As proposers refine their plans and are able to gauge with increasing accuracy the number of pupils that they expect to secure in their first year, we test their financial assumptions, challenging them to ensure viability. When we are not happy with the progress made, we can rightly require groups to bring in more expertise or make other changes. However, we are also not afraid to cancel or defer projects when we do not think that the new school will provide the very best for its pupils or provide good value for money for the taxpayer.
The hon. Member for Easington spoke about value for money. He may be aware that under paragraph 2.5 of the academies financial handbook, there is a requirement to complete a value-for-money statement each year explaining how the trust
“has secured value for money”.
That is both sent to the Education Funding Agency and published on the DFE website. The hon. Gentleman can find that information for himself and do with it what he wishes.
Before every free school opens, it is inspected by Ofsted against the independent school standards. Although it is impossible for Ofsted to make a judgment on the educational delivery of a school that has not yet opened, the inspectorate looks closely at all other aspects of the school’s policies and procedures covered by the standards. The quality of the premises of a free school has been mentioned. Hon. Members may be interested to know that under part 5 of the Education (Independent School Standards) (England) Regulations 2010, on premises and accommodation, there are set minimum standards for premises for free schools that are identical to those for maintained schools, so there is no differentiation in the standards required.
Ofsted’s pre-registration inspection also considers how well the school is set up to ensure the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of its pupils, as well as to secure their welfare, health and safety. The inspectors will check the school’s safeguarding policies as well as health and safety protocols, and ensure that procedures for checking the suitability of staff are appropriate. Ofsted will also make recommendations to the Secretary of State on conditions that it believes free schools should meet before opening their doors, in order to meet the independent school standards that I referred to.
The Secretary of State will not enter into a funding agreement to open any free school unless satisfied that the school will provide a good standard of education and be financially viable. No free school has opened without satisfying the Secretary of State that the school has addressed, or is on track to address, the issues raised by Ofsted. I challenge any hon. Members present to put forward any maintained school, including even recently established provision, that has been subjected to the same breadth and depth of scrutiny as we now apply to every free school before they even open their doors.
Grahame M. Morris
The Minister is being generous in giving way, and he has responded to the points that have been raised. He quoted the relevant paragraph that relates to scrutiny of whether a free school offers value for money, but does he believe that a school with 31 pupils and six staff offers value for money for the public purse?
Mr Timpson
Every school is free to decide the right ratio of pupils and staff, whether it is a special school or a particular type of school. If the result is that those children are achieving high-quality standards of education, that is a good outcome.
The hon. Member for Cardiff West, with his usual “Morecambe and Wise” approach to such debates, asked some serious and specific questions, particularly about correspondence in the Al-Madinah case. He asked whether there had been any correspondence from the police on Al-Madinah before it opened. I am not aware that there has been any correspondence, but I will make further inquiries and endeavour to write to him in the usual way. He also asked about the Barnfield Federation in Luton and the publication of investigation reports. We have a commitment to publish investigation reports, but we have to publish them at the right time. In the case of Kings science academy, for example, that was when the disciplinary action was complete. It is worth remembering, of course, that Barnfield is not only a free school, but a multi-academy trust. Nevertheless, the commitment remains, and it will be done with due diligence and in a timely fashion.
In terms of where the oversight continues with free schools, we do not back away once a free school opens. First, and most importantly, every free school is inspected by Ofsted under the same section 5 inspection criteria applied to every maintained school and academy. We know that there is no sharper tool available to us in securing proper scrutiny of schools than Ofsted, so it is essential that every free school is inspected.
Inspections typically take place in the school’s second year of opening. Before their Ofsted inspection, free schools will receive at least two visits by the Department’s education advisers, who are individuals with a proven track record of delivering school improvement. Those visits, which take place in the school’s first and fourth terms, allow us to ensure that the schools are delivering a high standard of education.
In the overwhelming majority of cases, free schools and academies succeed and standards rise, but the Department is not short of options should they fail. When there is sustained poor academic performance at an academy, Ministers can issue a warning notice to the relevant trust, demanding urgent action to bring about substantial improvements.
A question was asked about the number of warning notices sent by the Secretary of State. One warning notice has been sent to Kings on finance—it is the only one—and there are no notices to improve on education. Ultimately, failure to improve can lead to termination according to the provision set out in each trust’s funding agreement.
Bill Esterson
Is the Minister aware of a survey of free school parents in London who want local authority involvement in the oversight of free schools? Are those parents right or wrong?
Mr Timpson
It is welcome that parents are involving themselves in the setting up and running of free schools. In terms of oversight of those free schools, there seems to be confusion on the Opposition Benches about what exactly the involvement of the local authority should be. On the one hand, the shadow Secretary of State for Education wants to put rocket boosters under free schools, and on the other, the Leader of the Opposition seems to want to go in the opposite direction. Some clarity on exactly where they stand on the issue would be helpful.
We can all agree that driving up the quality of standards of education for our children has to be a key priority. The Government believe—and have been backed up by parents who have come forward, despite sometimes difficult opposition, to help set up many free schools; many more are in the pipeline—that free schools provide better choice, better value, strong accountability, and ultimately better standards, which has already been borne out by what we have seen in the past three years.
We know that that great reformer of education, Lord Adonis, got it right when he said that free schools are a
“powerful engine of equality and social mobility”.
We hope and trust that many more children will benefit from such opportunities in the years ahead. We would welcome any parents who want to come forward, particularly in Gateshead and the north-east, where, sadly, we still have no free schools to speak of. If they have a strong desire to do that, we will consider their cases very carefully.
Mr James Gray (in the Chair)
Order. I would be grateful if hon. Members who have taken part in the debate would move swiftly from the Chamber, so that we can progress immediately to the next debate, which is on the important subject of UK relations with Gibraltar and Spain.