BME Communities (Educational Attainment)

Debate between Hywel Williams and Nick Gibb

Tuesday 26th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gibb]

I accept that that is always a risk, but our philosophy is to trust the professionals to make the decisions, and not have decisions always taken in Whitehall that direct head teachers, who are experienced professionals, on how to spend their budgets. The funding of £201 million is in the dedicated schools grant to address such issues.

This country performs poorly in helping young people to overcome their socio-economic backgrounds. The OECD recently reported that just 24% of disadvantaged students are able to overcome their backgrounds and achieve as well as their peers academically. That is compared with 76% in Shanghai, 72% in Hong Kong and 46% in Finland, which puts the UK 39th out of 65 OECD countries in terms of what it calls the “educational resilience” of children from poorer backgrounds.

In this country, however, there are many schools where pupils of all backgrounds succeed. In Challney high school for boys and community college in Luton, for example, 29% of pupils are in receipt of free school meals, and 61% are of Pakistani origin and 11% of Bangladeshi origin. It saw 77% of its students achieve five good GCSEs, including English and maths. The national attainment figure is 58.2%. In Valentines high school in Redbridge, 19% of pupils are in receipt of free school meals, and 24% are of Pakistani origin and 10% of Bangladeshi origin. It saw 76% of its students achieve five good GCSEs, including English and maths. The question we must ask is this: if such schools are able to achieve those results and that standard of education for their pupils, why not all schools?

As the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington pointed out, black children sometimes have a culture of low expectation. When Sir Michael Wilshaw was head at St Bonaventure’s and at Mossbourne community academy, however, he transformed the educational achievement of the youngsters with a combination of high expectations and strong limits and boundaries on behaviour. The hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch cited Mossbourne community academy and its very high academic achievement. It saw 84% of pupils achieve five or more GCSEs at A* to C and nine pupils offered places at Oxbridge last year, despite high levels of deprivation in that part of Hackney and a very high proportion of pupils with English as an additional language.

The hon. Lady pointed to City academy, and the high academic achievement of pupils who had low attainment prior to coming to the school. She said that good heads and good rigour are key, and I certainly agree. She also pointed to the exemplar behaviour policy at the Petchey academy in Hackney, which brings me to school attendance and how regular attendance is key to raising academic standards.

Absence rates for some BME groups are higher than the national average. The absence rate of children of Pakistani origin is 6.7%, but the national average is 5.8%. Nationally, over 54 million school days were lost in 2010-11 due to absence. A pupil missing about nine—

[Hywel Williams (in the Chair)]

Order.