Schools White Paper

Lord Watts Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who I know takes a keen interest in the educational attainment of poorer children. In addition to implementing the pupil premium, we are going to focus relentlessly on schools where attainment is low and progress is poor. I know that some schools will often take in children who have been poorly educated at primary level, but still make fantastic progress with them. I do not want those schools to be stigmatised and I do not want schools to be seen as failing, but where they are underperforming, we need to hold them to clear standards and provide additional financial support to help them achieve them. I am perfectly happy to say that this builds on an initiative that the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) and Lord Adonis helped to introduce. I take no pride in authorship: this was a good idea, and I am delighted to extend it.

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

May I tell the Secretary of State that the decision of St Aelred’s school in my constituency to go for academy status was made under the last Labour Government, not his Government? He has some responsibility, however, for blocking many of the rebuilding projects that were intended to take place. Will he take credit for that and offer to provide the much-needed resources? If we are to have a world-class education system, we need the schools to go with it.

[Michael Gove]

I look forward to visiting the hon. Gentleman’s constituency to congratulate St Aelred’s on moving towards academy status. Of course, it was our Government and our legislation that allowed the school to make that transition to academy status with the speed, grace and support that the superb officials in the Department for Education accord to all schools that want to enjoy greater autonomy.