Education and Adoption Bill (Ninth sitting)

Graham P Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 14th July 2015 Public Bill Committees

No school will be identified as coasting until the end of 2016, when there will be three years of data available—for 2014, 2015 and 2016. A school will be deemed to be coasting when its performance data fall below an expected level in each of the previous three years. For secondary schools from 2016 onwards, the relevant measure will be progress 8. This is a robust metric, and it has been well received by schools and headteachers. It reflects our commitment to social justice by measuring the progress of all pupils in a range of subjects, rather than only the number of pupils falling above or below the C/D threshold. Progress 8 will be introduced from 2016, so by 2018 schools will be deemed to be coasting only if they have fallen below a level set against this strong metric for three years.

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

On a point that I raised during the evidence sessions, the Minister talks about progress 8 measurements, but will he go on the record and tell us where an assessment of parental contribution is included in the measurement of coasting schools? The issue of coasting schools in my region is largely in affluent areas and relates to the work that parents do that substitutes for the work of teachers. Will he address that point?

[Mr Gibb]

It is my view that the background of a child and the support, or lack of support, from parents should be irrelevant. The school should be helping children, regardless of their circumstances. So if a child does not have support from parents when they attend school, the expectation is that the school will make up that help. That is the purpose of the pupil premium. This is significant extra funding— £1,300 for every child in a primary school, nearly £1,000 for every child in a secondary school—because we are determined that, whatever the background or ability of a child, they should get the best education possible. That is the core social-justice objective behind all our school reforms for the past five years.

[Graham Jones]

The Minister refers to the pupil premium, so we gravitate back to deprived areas, not affluent areas. In affluent areas, some children will receive the pupil premium, but far fewer. In some cases, it will be next to none or none. I am talking about affluent areas where the pupil premium is negligible. What about schools in those areas that do not receive the pupil premium and where the work of teachers is being substituted by the efforts of parents at home? How do we make an assessment of those two pillars of a child’s education?

[Mr Gibb]

Children from more deprived backgrounds attending those schools will also be expected to achieve well. That is why we are using a progress measure so that the school will benefit from helping those children to achieve well, regardless of their starting point. The metrics will reflect the support given to those children. The new metrics, which move away from focusing on the C/D borderline, or the level 4c/3a borderline in primary schools, will give schools in affluent areas more incentive to help children who start school at a low level than the previous metrics, which have been in place for a number of years.

[Graham Jones]

It strikes me that we do not have any measure of tiger mums or tiger dads in all this. They play a crucial role in a child’s education, complementary to the education system, the school and the teachers. Where that effort is being made by tiger mums and tiger dads, how do we measure a coasting school?

[Mr Gibb]

No one should criticise parents for taking an interest in their children—we should be encouraging it throughout the population. The more children are read to by parents in their early years and throughout their childhood, the more effective readers those children will be in later life. It is a good thing for parents to support their child’s education, and we need to encourage rather than penalise that. I think that the hon. Gentleman is trying to say that schools may actually be coasting, but the metrics and the performance of that school may not reflect that fact because it is masked by the help that parents give to children at home. [Interruption.] That is a valid point, but if the metrics show that all the children at that school are—by hook or by crook—achieving the expected level or beyond by the time they leave primary or secondary school, then that is a good thing.

We are worried that pupils are not progressing to their maximum potential. If the schools to which the hon Gentleman referred are not delivering a high level of achievement for those pupils who do have support from home, then that will be revealed in the progress measures. If a child starts primary school at age four or secondary school at age 11 with a high level of attainment because they have had support from their parents and the school is not adding value beyond the help that they already had before starting at that school, that will be reflected in the progress measures, both progress 8 and the progress measure at primary school.

[Graham Jones]

The Minister draws on a point that was raised in the evidence session, which was the accelerant or social gradient that occurs in most affluent communities. He talks about measuring from the beginning to the end and seeing an improvement, and otherwise a school will be defined as coasting. However, we heard in the first evidence session that there is an accelerant in this. There is a social gradient, in which affluent kids bound onwards. Their educational improvement is not just linear but actually accelerates. Therefore, there will still be a problem in measuring the level of improvement for those children.

[Mr Gibb]

I will have to think further on what the hon. Gentleman says. I remain confident that the progress measure will reflect a lack of progress by pupils, at whatever speed and whichever point during their school career they make or fail to make the progress that they should be making, given their starting point. I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman makes about Rebecca Allen’s evidence in our first evidence session. She said that in non-affluent areas there might be a disincentive for schools to recruit high-ability teachers. She felt that those schools were unfairly penalised by the metrics that we used, and we were therefore compounding the problems that those schools faced by making it difficult for them to attract highly able teachers. The argument against her viewpoint is, of course, that you cannot have lower expectations for schools in more deprived areas than for schools in leafy suburbs. That is why we are determined to tackle coasting schools using the same metrics in more deprived areas as in affluent areas. We expect every child to receive the same quality of education as a child in a leafy suburb, regardless of their background.

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[Graham Jones]

The Minister refers to all coasting schools. However, in my experience and drawing on my past comments, I do not believe that all coasting schools will fall under this remit or fall foul of the guidelines and regulations, because they are themselves subjective. These are the Government’s regulations and the Government’s definition of what it means to be coasting. I must place it on the record that this is a subjective measure, and some schools in affluent areas where there are excellent parents will be coasting. It is to my disappointment that those schools will probably not cross the Minister’s desk.

[Mr Gibb]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point that there are some schools in affluent areas where the attainment level is so high that they will not fall within the definition of coasting. His argument is of course that those children have high attainment because of their parental and family backgrounds. However, this will be caught in due course, particularly at secondary level when the only measure to define a coasting school will be the progress measure.

[Graham Jones]

The Minister’s answer is illuminating. He says that this will eventually be caught at secondary school level. Surely that is unacceptable, and those children should also be given the best education at primary school level. Primary schools that are coasting should be caught too, because early years education is fundamental. We should not have to rely on coasting schools being caught at secondary school level. It seems to me that the Minister has highlighted a flaw in his own argument.

[Mr Gibb]

At primary school we have an attainment level as well as a progress measure. The attainment level is 85% of pupils at the school achieving the expected level in reading, writing and maths. That is a very high level of attainment, and in due course that level can be raised. We spent the previous Parliament tackling failing schools. As a result of measures that were regarded by many Opposition Members as controversial, centralising and draconian, 60% of secondary schools and a rising percentage of primary schools are now academies. More than a million pupils are now in “good” or “outstanding” schools as a consequence of that policy. In this Parliament we are continuing that remorseless tackling of failure. That is why the Bill brings in an automatic academy order in the case of a school in special measures.

We are also now turning our attention to coasting schools, which is a development of what happened in the previous Parliament. We are taking it a stage further. As a first stage we have an attainment level of 85% and a measure of progress, so that schools with lower attainment but very significant progress will not fall within the definition. If the hon. Member for Hyndburn wants to press us to have an even more rigorous definition of coasting—and I hope he will respond to the consultation measure—we are always happy to be pushed to do more faster when it comes to tackling failure and underperformance in our schools. We felt that this was a fair definition, with a very high level of attainment in the first instance.

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[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend never misses an opportunity to advocate on behalf of his constituency. He did it within days of arriving in this place and he continues to do it, arguing for fairer funding for those local authorities which, for historic reasons, have an unfair system. In fact, I am surrounded by hon. Members who continue to make this point, which has not failed to register with me and with the Secretary of State.

[Graham Jones]

The Minister rightly makes a clear distinction between primary and secondary schools. Secondary schools have larger catchment areas, are under greater scrutiny and are more likely to be identified as coasting. He draws on the issue of primary schools and I concur with his comments. I am deeply concerned that this is an issue about deprivation when, actually, it should be about schools in affluent areas. That is where coasting occurs and the Bill should be targeted at affluent areas where coasting schools exist. There are smaller schools, primary schools with small intakes in affluent areas, where the parents are doing the bulk of the work and the teachers, in some cases, are not stretching themselves and stretching the middle-class, or more wealthy, affluent pupils. I want the Minister to focus on that. He is right to say that the greatest problem of coasting may occur at primary school level in affluent areas. Let us move away from deprivation and focus on affluence, because coasting primarily occurs in affluent areas, in my experience.

[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. These are issues we have addressed and considered. A step-by-step approach is needed to tackle under- performance in our schools. We tackled failure in the last Parliament; we continue to tackle failure in this Parliament. We now have a definition of coasting for primary schools that includes attainment, but it is a very high level of attainment: 85% is a high measure of attainment in reading, writing and maths, combined with a progress measure. We think that that is the right approach for now.

Of course, we are always open to people responding to the consultation process, but our focus has been and remains on areas of deprivation. If Members are as concerned as we are—and I do not doubt that the hon. Member for Hyndburn is—about social justice and ensuring that young people from deprived areas get the best education possible, they will accept that it is necessary to focus the resources of the Department on areas of deprivation. That has been and remains our focus, but we are also open to hearing responses to the consultation process.

[Graham Jones]

My view is that we should be stretching all children—those in deprived areas as well as those in affluent areas.