Education and Adoption Bill

Debate between Tristram Hunt and Louise Haigh

Wednesday 16th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh]

The Minister made the same point in Committee when I was raising these issues then. This is not an issue of Conservative party membership; this is an issue of transparency and serious conflicts of interest that have been raised by the cross-party Education Committee. It is not a cheap party political jibe, but one that has been seriously raised about parliamentary accountability and transparency, something Conservative Members are supposedly in favour of.

The Harris chain is particularly relevant, because it has sometimes been chosen as a sponsor by the Department against the wishes of staff, parents, and communities who have preferred other high-performing local options. That brings me to the Minister’s colleague, Lord Nash, who is another Conservative donor. He sits not only in the other place, but in the Department as Minister for Academies, where he is involved in choosing sponsors despite having been involved in specific academy chains. Frankly, there have been suspicions of political favouritism and intervention in these choices, and there are too few safeguards against them.

The vast majority of academy trusts are staffed by people working hard to address educational underperformance, but it is appropriate to ask, as the Education Committee did, what processes the Minister has in place to guard against certain trusts being given preferential treatment if, as we expect, the Government refuse to allow independent scrutiny. Indeed, the Clarke report, following the so-called Trojan horse affair, made a number of very significant recommendations which it appears the Government have yet to implement fully. Recommendation 7 stated that the Department for Education should consider urgently how best to capture local concerns driving the conversion process and review the brokerage system through which schools are matched with academy sponsors to ensure that the process is transparent and understood by all parties. The Government have previously claimed that all the recommendations have been implemented, but perhaps the Minister could comment on how the Bill fulfils them. What we are hearing from education professionals is that in some cases school leaders will go to the Department with recommendations for a preferred sponsor for their school, only to be overruled by the Department.

That brings me to new clause 4, which is intended to put the voices of parents and the local community at the centre of any decision to choose the identity of an academy sponsor. Apart from questions about the principle and pace of the academy programme, there will be questions about the identity, values and track record of particular academy sponsors for particular schools. Labour Members simply do not understand what the Government have to fear from the voices of parents, teachers, governors and support staff. We consult those groups constantly, and we value their input extremely highly. Indeed, the head of the National Association of Head Teachers argued, very wisely, in a blog ahead of today’s debate, that

“removing the right to consultation and engagement with local communities, in my experience, tends to alienate and promote opposition where previously the local community was neutral.”

[Tristram Hunt]

As we know, the academic evidence shows that when there is parental support for and buy-in to a school, the results of that school are often better. What we are seeing from the Government, however—whether we are talking about the Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill, the Trade Union Bill or this Bill—is a sustained Tory assault on democracy and free speech, on the very anniversary of Magna Carta. I have to say that it fills me with dread.

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Communication and consultation can only be positive, and significantly improve the process of schools’ conversion to academy status.

There is another perfectly legitimate reason why parents have a right to be involved in the decision. As we have heard, there is a stark variation between the performances of academy chains. Parents, teachers, local authorities and the school community could be handing a school over to a chain that might perform markedly worse than the existing maintained school.

In a report that is as detailed and comprehensive as any could be found, the much-respected Sutton Trust demonstrated that sponsored academies are twice as likely to be below the floor standards as other mainstream schools. Half the chains examined by the trust did less well than the mainstream school average. Indeed, in 2014, 44% of the academies in the analysis group covered in the report were below the Government’s new “coasting level”.

Our education system must be a collaborative effort between parents, pupils and schools, and Labour Members believe that it is the right of parents to have a substantial say in how their children are educated. The Conservative Education Act 1996 set out in law the general principle that

“pupils are to be educated in accordance with the wishes of their parents”.

That has been a principle in law since school attendance became compulsory more than a century ago.

It is strange that the Government’s talk of localism and involving service users in decisions does not apply to schools. After the election, the Chancellor of the Exchequer remarked in a speech on devolution that “the old model” of running things from London

“made people feel remote from the decisions that affect their lives. It’s not good for our prosperity or for our democracy.”

He will find some agreement among Members on both sides of the House on that general point, but perhaps the Education Secretary failed to get the memo, as she removed the right of parents and the local school community to have a say in the future of their schools. I ask once again, why are the Government so afraid of the voices of parents and the school communities?

My new clause would go a small way towards repairing the democratic deficit that is opening up as a result of a Bill that puts too much power in the hands of the Secretary of State, and far too little in the hands of our school communities.