Academies Bill [Lords]

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Monday 19th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

That was somewhat overstated, if I may say so.

This has been an interesting and constructive debate, covering a wide range of educational issues. The Academies Bill is not simply about the nuts and bolts of the conversion process for maintained schools to become academies or for groups of teachers or parents to establish new free schools. It is about changing the deeply unsatisfactory and, for many parents, highly distressing situation where schools in an area are not of the standard and quality they want for their children.

This year in England, nearly one in five parents saw their child denied their first choice of secondary school, and in some boroughs the situation was much worse, with nearly half of parents failing to get a place for their child in their preferred school. These figures do not take account of the fact that many parents have already ruled out applying to the school they really want because they live too far away and know they would not stand a chance.

Sometimes this is discussed, particularly by Labour Members and left-leaning commentators, as if it were just a matter of middle-class angst. This is simply not the case. As the former Labour Cabinet Minister Alan Milburn said in a recent speech to the National Education Trust:

“It is sometimes argued that parents in the most disadvantaged areas are less aspirational for their children than those in better off areas. The figures on school appeals repudiate such assumptions, with a large number of parents in disadvantaged parts of the country using the appeals system to try to get their children out of poorly performing schools and into better ones.”

The problem is that there are simply not enough good schools. Some parents can work their way around the problem, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah) pointed out. The wealthy can move their children to a private school and the socially mobile can move into the catchment area of a high-performing state school—I cannot and will not say how many left-wing journalists I know who have used both methods for themselves—but for the vast majority of parents who care just as deeply about the education of their children, there is often no choice and they learn to suppress their worries and put up with what is on offer. This Bill seeks to change that.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I agree 100% with the Minister that parents in deprived communities care just as deeply about their children’s future as do those in other areas, but given that he is saying that the problem is that there are not enough good schools, would it not be better to focus his policy on making poorer schools better rather than creating an educational elite?

[Mr Gibb]

That is precisely what this Bill and this Government’s policy are all about. It is part of a comprehensive approach to driving up standards. This Government are determined to raise academic standards in all our schools, as the hon. Gentleman says. We will do it by improving the teaching of reading so that we no longer have the appalling situation whereby after seven years of primary education, one in five 11-year-olds still struggles with reading. We will do it by improving standards of behaviour in schools, which is why we are strengthening and clarifying teachers’ powers to search for and confiscate items such as mobile phones and iPods, as well as alcohol, drugs and weapons. It is why we are removing the statutory requirement for 24 hours’ notice of detentions and giving teachers protection from false accusations. It is also why we intend to restore rigour to our public examinations and qualifications and restore the national curriculum to a slimmed-down core of the knowledge and concepts we expect every child to know, built around subject disciplines and based on the experience of the best-performing education systems in the world.

Central to our drive, however, is liberating professionals to drive improvement across the system. We want all our schools to be run by professionals rather than by bureaucrats or by bureaucratic diktat. We want good schools to flourish, with the autonomy and independence that academy status brings. I am thinking of schools such as Mossbourne academy in Hackney, where half the pupils qualify for free school meals but where 86% achieve five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C including English and maths, and Harris city academy in Crystal Palace, where 82% achieve five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C including English and maths. Harris city academy was the first school to be awarded a perfect Ofsted score under the new inspection regime, and it now attracts about 2,000 applicants for its 180 annual places. Those schools are delivering what parents want for their children, and the Bill will deliver hundreds more such schools.

Opposition Members have raised concerns about the impact that the new free schools will have on neighbouring schools. Of course the Secretary of State will take those issues into account when assessing the validity of a new free school. However, Lord Adonis said in another place:

“The idea that parents should not be able to access new or additional school places in areas where the schools are not providing good quality places simply because the provision of those places will cause detriment to other schools fundamentally ignores the interests of parents and their right to have a decent quality school to send their children to. If there is not such a decent quality school and someone is prepared to do something substantive about it, they should be applauded”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 June 2010; Vol. 719, c. 1264.]

My hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) made the important point that the Bill builds on the academy legislation of the last Government. However, the new model agreement gives greater protection to children with special educational needs by mirroring all the requirements that apply to maintained schools. That was not the position in the funding agreement signed by the Secretary of State in the last Government.

My hon. Friend also raised the important issue of exclusions, which, he said, were running at twice the national average rate in existing academies. Many early academies that were established in very challenging areas and inherited very challenging pupils did need to exclude some children to bring about good behaviour and a new ethos, but as they became established, exclusion rates tended to fall. Many open academies have exclusion rates that are no higher than those in the rest of the local authority that they serve. Academies are required to participate in their local fair access protocols. The truth is that they have a higher proportion of children with SEN, and tend to exclude such children proportionately less.

Academies are subject to the same admission requirements as maintained schools. They must comply with admissions law and the admissions code, and are required by the funding agreement to be at the heart of their communities. Many Opposition Members raised the issue of social and community cohesion. Academies are required to be at the heart of their communities, sharing facilities with other schools and the wider community.

The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) asked why we were starting with outstanding schools. In fact, all schools have been invited to apply for academy status, not just outstanding schools. Outstanding schools will be fast-tracked because of their outstanding leadership, but we are continuing to tackle the worst-performing schools by converting them to sponsor-supported academies. All outstanding schools will be expected to help a weaker school to raise standards.