Birmingham Schools

Pat Glass Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his points. He is absolutely right that we want every school to be teaching their pupils a broad and balanced curriculum and not only to respect things such as democracy, but to have mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs. We are a much stronger country because of everybody who has come here and the freedoms, protections and opportunities we have offered—as he will know, being like me an MP for a constituency in Leicestershire, in which lies that fabulously rich city of Leicester.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will know, as I do, that one of the tools that the previous trustees used was isolation. They prohibited any relationship with neighbouring schools or any school that did not share their warped philosophy. The Education Select Committee report published this week on academies and free schools identified that 47% of converter academies—schools that have converted to academy status since 2010—were stand-alone academies, which worried us enormously. We felt that Ofsted had a role and that no school should receive an outstanding judgment unless there were positive signs of co-operation with other schools. Does she agree that that would be one structural way of trying to prevent what happened in Birmingham from happening again?

[Nicky Morgan]

I shall certainly look at this week’s Education Select Committee report in detail. One thing explored in previous evidence sessions—I gave evidence to that inquiry—was the growth of collaboration, which we are seeing up and down the country, regardless of the type of school. When I visit schools up and down the country, whether they be converter stand-alone academies, part of a chain or still working within the local authority, and talk to heads and teachers, I see evidence of how much collaboration there has been and how much strength heads and teachers are drawing from working with other schools—locally, but thanks to modern technology, also in other parts of the country and even other parts of the world.