Free Schools and Academies in England

Justin Madders Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2018 Westminster Hall

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I thank the right hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands) for securing the debate and for giving us an insight into how schools are improving in his constituency. I think he will find that our experience in Ellesmere Port and Neston is a little bit more mixed. Of course, every area is slightly different, but one thing he said that I was very interested to hear was about staff turnover in a particular school. That is a real challenge in trying to drive up standards, and I would certainly like to hear more, perhaps after the debate, about what was done in that school to keep staff numbers so stable, because there is no doubt that the best schools are those that can recruit and retain the most impressive staff.

I must declare an interest: my wife is the cabinet member for children and young people at Cheshire West and Chester Council, and two of my children attend a local school in my constituency.

Cheshire West and Chester Council has an impressive record in education, with more than 90% of its schools rated good or outstanding and a plan for every school in the borough to reach that standard. If that council were a multi-academy trust, Ministers would be singing its praises and finding ways to bring struggling schools from across the area under its leadership. Instead, because it is a local authority, the push has been in the opposite direction, with pressure put on governing bodies to convert schools to academies. That is a perfect example of why Government policy is not always about rewarding what works best or bringing people together to improve. This policy is about an ideological drive towards academies and free schools, and I think that, contrary to what the right hon. Gentleman said, it is an experiment that is failing.

The flaws in the Government’s drive towards academisation at all costs are clear to see in my constituency, following the serious decline of one academy over a number of years, to the extent that an entire cohort of young people have in effect been failed by the system. That is not to say that there was not some excellent teaching at the school or that we are not incredibly proud of the skills and talents of our young people, but when inspection after inspection raised serious concerns, something needed to be done. If it had been a local authority school, there is no doubt that that would have been enough for the Government to declare that the leadership of the school had failed and the school would need to be converted into an academy. Instead, after years of indecision, the remedy prescribed is more of the same.

A decision has been made to re-broker the schools within the trust to new sponsors, and although we are all hoping for the best from the new sponsors, parents are understandably anxious to ensure that the same situation does not arise. I know that the new sponsors are making real efforts to engage with parents. However, the process took far too long, and all the time the council was willing and able to step in and help, had it been asked. I would therefore like the Minister to explain, if he can, what the rationale is for preventing high-achieving local authorities such as Cheshire West and Chester from bringing academies back under their control. Is there a sound evidence base for the policy, and does it have the support of headteachers and teachers, or is it in reality an ideological decision?

My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) referred to this, but when I consider that there are more than 100 failing academies, looking for new sponsors, that are responsible for 70,000 children, I have to conclude that ideology is hampering those children’s opportunity to get a good education, because there does not appear to be a plan B. We have heard a lot about there being no plan Bs in other areas recently, and it appears that there is no plan B for failing academies either.

Even if my local school were an isolated case, that would be reason enough to revisit the Government’s approach, but a Schools Week investigation found that at least 91 multi-academy trusts had closed or were in the process of being wound up since 2014. The Government hand out grants of between £70,000 and £150,000 for new academy sponsors to set up a trust, and cover running costs until the first school opens. If each of the 91 closed trusts received just the lowest possible grant, which of course may not have been the case—it may have been more—the Government will have paid at least £6.1 million to set them up. Then there are the debts that the Department has to write off when a trust collapses—£3 million in the case of University of Chester Academies Trust, a deficit in the region of £8 million at the Schools Company Trust, £500,000 in the case of Lilac Sky Schools Academy Trust and £300,000 owed by the Collective Spirit Community Trust.

In a time of real-terms cuts to local schools budgets, how can the Government justify spending at least £10 million, possibly a lot more, on failing multi-academy trusts? Then there is money coming out at the other end, with reports of an academy head receiving an £850,000 pay-off. That simply would not be allowed anywhere else in the public sector, so why is it allowed in this case?

It is simply not a level playing field at the moment. A local school tells me that it is desperate to expand, but does not have the opportunity to bid for capital funding to achieve that aim. How can it build on its success when it is unable to build? I am sure that if it reopened as a free school, there would be no problem in getting the cash, but why does it need to reinvent the wheel? Why are existing schools that have put the effort in, have made great improvements and are already an established part of the community discriminated against because they are not part of the latest fad from Government? How about a capital funding policy that rewards improvement and looks at where existing provision can be augmented?

Has all the money spent on academies been well spent? Let us take the words of David Laws:

“What we know is the most successful part of the academisation programme was the early part of it…Those early academies had absolutely everything thrown at them. They were academised school by school, with huge ministerial intervention. The new governors were almost hand-picked. They often brought in the best headteachers to replace failing management teams. They had new buildings. Sponsors had to put in extra cash.”

In an echo of the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) on the Front Bench, David Laws went on to say:

“Our research shows that much of the programme since then has had little impact on standards.”

Another issue that arises from the programme of mass academisation that we have seen in recent years is that the local authority has become the admissions authority in name only. Of course, the net result of that is that some schools end up being over-subscribed, which exacerbates the chaos that we are already getting because an academy-led system means that we get an increasingly lopsided and unstrategic approach, with more and more children being taught out of area because of the way in which schools can set their own admissions policies now.

That has also, I think, led to a rise in the number of children being home-schooled. That figure has risen by more than 40% in the past three years, according to figures obtained by the BBC. That is not about a broken admissions system; it is about schools perhaps suggesting that a particular child could be home-schooled to avoid an exclusion or that the school environment might not be the best place for the child if they have special educational needs. Yes, some parents are just exercising parental choice in home-schooling their children, but surely the rise in the number of academies and the rise in the number of home-schooled children at least needs to be examined to see whether that is something more than a coincidence.

Who is monitoring and evaluating the explosion in home-schooling? Has there been a 40% increase in resources to facilitate such monitoring? Are we confident that the legislation and guidance in this area are as up to date as they need to be? Are we comfortable that so many children are now being educated in that way? Is it a great example of parental choice, or have parents been forced down that route because the school that their children were in, or the system, led them to that place? What efforts are being made to enable children being home-schooled to return to school? What scrutiny is taking place of schools or areas that have higher than average levels of home-schooling? Is any analysis done of variations?

Those are not easy questions to answer, but they should be asked. I fear that because we have a fragmented system, once a child starts to be home-educated, they become someone else’s responsibility. That is the wrong approach. We owe it to all children to ensure that they get the very best education, no matter where they are.

I would like the current landscape in education to be altered so that there is accountability, transparency and a level playing field. At the moment, I suggest, we have none of those things.