Jim Cunningham
Main Page: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)Department Debates - View all Jim Cunningham's debates with the Department for Education
(8 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lucy Powell
My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point, which I will come on to make myself shortly.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the proposal could lead to more school closures in the public sector? More importantly, we might face difficulties recruiting teachers. The £1.9 billion could have been better spent on public services rather than on an ideological argument.
Lucy Powell
My hon. Friend echoes the concerns raised by the NAHT union in a memo it sent this morning to all MPs.
The Tory obsession with school structures has completely missed the point. Just as there are some excellent academies, there are some excellent community schools. There are also some poor academies and some poor community schools. No type of school has a monopoly on excellence. We need to build an education system that provides an excellent education for all children, rather than pitting one type of school against another. Nearly a month has passed since the Chancellor made the announcement, but we have yet to hear any answers to the question “Why?” When schools that want to become academies can already do so, as my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) has said, and when schools that the Government deem to be failing or coasting can already be put into an academy chain, why force all others? This is not about school improvement, nor is it about autonomy and freedoms. The multi-academy trust model is in its infancy, and real questions are emerging about accountability, probity, capacity and, for some, standards.