Schools White Paper

Debate between Wes Streeting and Neil Carmichael

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

This debate is actually about children and the interests of children; it is about making sure that they have opportunities to fulfil their lives. We would not be having a debate like this if local education authorities in the past had delivered opportunities to all children in a proper way—that is an absolute fact. The Labour Government under Tony Blair would have agreed with me, because they started off the academies programme and they emphasised the importance of “Education, education, education.”

[Wes Streeting]

The hon. Gentleman is right to pay tribute to the last Labour Government’s academies plan for what it did for school improvement in the most disadvantaged areas. Surely he would agree with the former Education Secretary Lord Blunkett, who said that the current Government’s approach, which is not based on evidence, risks

“discrediting the entire academy programme”.

[Neil Carmichael]

Lord Blunkett was correct when he was expressing concern about schools in Yorkshire and wondering why there was not a commission on schools there to deal with the problems that he has identified—that came up in the all-party group on Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire—so I think the hon. Gentleman makes a good point well.

We need to think about the current position in our education system. The “long tail of underachievement” report published by Ofsted back in 2012-13 makes it clear what the problem is: there are too many failing schools or coasting schools, particularly in the primary sector. They are the ones letting down young people and causing a problem. When children leave primary school without the ability to read or write, as too many children did back in 2010, they struggle and they continue to struggle in secondary school. The evidence is frightening. Analysis of the data on children who had a bad start shows that they never recover.

We need to think of an alternative way, and the academies programme has delivered success. More than 80% of academies are good or outstanding. That is why it is important to have more academies. However, the framework for academies needs to be carefully explored. It is important for us to understand what a good multi-academy trust looks like, and the Education Committee will be looking into that. That does not mean that all academies should become members of MATs, but it does mean that a good MAT will attract a lot of good schools because of the range of opportunities it provides, the emphasis on partnership, the strength of leadership and so on.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) spoke about primary schools, and that is exactly the right subject for us to talk about. We must make sure that primary schools get together, work together and form partnerships. That is why I was pleased to be present when the Association of School and College Leaders and the National Governors Association launched their report entitled “Forming or Joining a Group of Schools: staying in control of your school’s destiny”. That is about bringing schools together, hopefully through a structure that will benefit their transition from maintained to academy status if that is a direction of travel that they need to take.