Secondary Education (GCSEs)

Debate between Lord Barwell and Graham Stuart

Tuesday 26th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Gavin Barwell]

I will not take interventions, for reasons of time.

I do not want to go back to a CSE system, but we need the radical reform of our GCSEs in order to bring back a degree of academic rigour. The Education Committee Chairman made a very important point to the Secretary of the State about how raising the threshold will raise the number of people who succeed. I believe passionately, as a parent and from my experience of visiting schools, that paradoxically if we raise the threshold we will find that young people respond to it. That is the experience of schools that have switched to the IGCSE exam.

In the briefing pack for this debate, I saw some research from King’s college, London, showing the decline in maths over the past 30 years, with many 14-year-olds not understanding concepts such as algebra and ratios. I am not satisfied that my nine-year-old is stretched at his primary school, so I work with him on his maths at home, and he has already grasped those topics. I do not think that he is especially bright or clever, but I passionately believe that our young people are full of talent, and if they are pushed and stretched they will respond.

We also need to acknowledge that at 16 years old the right outcome for all our young people is not necessarily to sit a full suite of academic qualifications. For years and years this country has lacked a proper, respected vocational alternative, but if we secure such an alternative, we should not deride it as part of a two-tier system in which people doing vocational qualifications are somehow failures or second best.

Academies Bill [Lords]

Debate between Lord Barwell and Graham Stuart

Thursday 22nd July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Stuart]

I am grateful for the Minister’s compliment, which was not flattery—if I had said that it was, he would have corrected me.

One of the issues in this Bill, which the amendment seeks to draw out, is the system-wide implications of a growing number of schools—including free schools and existing schools—becoming independent and taking away money currently spent on their behalf by the local authority. Those of us of a supply-side revolution, 1980s, turning the sick man of Europe around disposition naturally think that things will regrow and they can be better directed by people closer to the front line. However, we need an explanation, because schools are not businesses and we need to understand how it will work.

I wish to chide the Minister gently, although he may not have been responsible, because the place that one would naturally look for that explanation—it may be a by-product of the last Government’s approach—is the equalities impact assessment. At the risk of upsetting my right hon. and hon. Friends, I would criticise the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker)—I will pronounce his constituency correctly—because in many ways he has been too gentle about the equalities impact assessment in the last couple of days. I think it is less adequate than he has made it out to be.

The equalities impact assessment is rather thin. It provides fair information, but it tries to put the best gloss on that information. Given that this is an important document to accompany a flagship Bill, I would not expect paragraph 22 to be repeated, in its entirety, as paragraph 24. I would not expect paragraph 23, which is quite long, to be split and repeated in its entirety as paragraphs 25 and 26. It would suggest that someone has not even bothered to read this so-called important equalities impact assessment. At the end, I was waiting for an assessment of the system-wide impact and the long-term and profound implication of having lots of free schools. But when I got there I found paragraph 31, which states:

“We believe that the Academies programme is already working towards promoting inclusion and equality to the benefit of all pupils in the programme. An adverse impact is unlikely”.

Well, thank you very much. That is not an adequate explanation of the possible system-wide impacts of this Bill.

I know that we will have a master class and a tour de force explanation from the Minister on the system-wide impact and why the Bill will work, but the impact assessment is inadequate. I meant to be gentler about this than I have been—I have a tendency to overstatement —and I apologise to the Minister. But I wish that the impact assessment had been a better document and included more recognition of the potential system-wide impacts, especially on marginal areas—if I may call them that—such as SEN.

[Gavin Barwell]

I will keep my remarks brief as I am conscious of the time and that the Committee wishes to hear the Minister’s reply. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass), who made an exceptional speech. She brings real expertise in this area to the House and I am sure that we will benefit from that in the months and years ahead. I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker). Both yesterday and today he has approached these proceedings in a much more conciliatory tone than the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) did on Second Reading. That may reflect the difference between Second Reading and Committee stage, or it may reflect the difference in their personalities, but it is certainly appreciated on this side of the Committee.

I disagreed with the hon. Gentleman on whether primary schools should be allowed to be academies and whether surplus places would be a ban on academy status. However, he is right to bring the issue of special educational needs up today. I imagine that all hon. Members have received a briefing from the Special Educational Consortium, which tells us that 21% of children have some form of SEN and that 12% of children with SEN achieve five grade A* to C passes at GCSE, compared to 57% of their peers. That shows the importance of getting this issue right—not just for the children with SEN, but because if we do not get it right there will be an impact on other children in the mainstream setting. The likely impact of this policy on children with SEN is therefore a key test. I am not sure whether the amendment addresses some of the concerns that he raised in his speech, but he is right to ask for some more detailed clarification, particularly in the light of the important amendments that came through on Report and Third Reading in the House of Lords.

It is worth briefly putting on the record the improvements that the Government have already made by ensuring that for the first time academies will have the same SEN obligations as maintained schools. I also want to mention the improvement that I referred to in an intervention that the hon. Gentleman kindly took, which is that the new model funding arrangement now provides that the Secretary of State can direct academies to comply with any obligations relating to SEN. Although the new agreement will not apply to existing academies, hopefully many of them will choose to convert to it, given that in other ways it will provide more freedoms. Over time, therefore, the new agreement might spread.

The core of the objections and concerns raised relates to what will happen if many more schools become academies and the pressures that that will put on services provided by local authorities. Yesterday, the hon. Gentleman expressed concern about the scale of the changes—he used the phrase, “opening the flood gates”—although Ministers have provided reassurances on the pace at which they think things are likely to proceed. However, many of the same issues arise over the role of local authorities in school improvement. For example, my council provides a very good school improvement service, which I hope schools will still want to buy into when they become academies.

I want to make three more quick points. First, the requirement for academies to have the same obligations as maintained schools is not in the Bill, but will be in the funding agreements, which means that parents who think that academies are not fulfilling those obligations will need to go to the Secretary of State, I presume, if they have a problem, rather than resort to the law. Not to have to resort to the legal route, but to go to the Secretary of State, might actually be an advantage to parents. However, as the hon. Member for North West Durham said, we should think about this from a parent’s perspective, so it would be helpful if the Minister could provide more guidance on how that complaints procedure would work. What does a parent do if they have a child in an academy that they think is not meeting their child’s SEN needs? What is the process for making a complaint?

My second point is one that has already been made—it is about the Opposition amendment passed on Third Reading in the Lords on protecting low incidence SEN services. The point made by the hon. Member for Gedling about the need to define exactly what those services are was spot on. It is really important that we get a clear definition, either today or on Monday, as the Bill goes through this House.

My final point concerns children receiving central SEN services. Children with high levels of need will tend to have statements, so the idea that the money follows the pupil and goes to the schools is very important. In my constituency, we have a school called Addington high, which has an excellent unit for children with autism, and most of the children there will have a statement. It is right, therefore, that the money goes to the school, but clearly, as some of my hon. Friends have said, where local authorities are providing services, much will depend on the value that schools place on those services. If they are good services and the local authority is doing a good job, it seems likely that any academy that takes over will want to purchase those services.

The hon. Member for Gedling was right to raise the issues before us, because further clarity is required in certain areas. However, I do not support the amendment, because I am not sure that it directly addresses some of his points. I very much look forward to hearing the Minister’s winding-up speech.