Academies Bill [Lords]

Monday 19th July 2010 Commons Chamber

Second Reading

15:35

[The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Today’s Second Reading marks the first legislative step towards the fulfilment of our manifesto commitment to improve England’s education system. It grants greater autonomy to individual schools, it gives more freedom to teachers and it injects a new level of dynamism into a programme that has been proven to raise standards for all children and for the disadvantaged most of all.

The need for action to transform our state education system has never been more urgent. In the past 10 years, we have seen a decline in the performance of our country’s education in comparison with our competitors. We were, 10 years ago, fourth in the world for the quality of our science education; we are now 14th. We were, 10 years ago, seventh in the world for the quality of our children’s literacy; we are now 17th. And we were, 10 years ago, eighth in the world for the quality of our children’s mathematics; we are now 24th. At the same time as we have fallen behind other nations, we have seen a stubborn gap persist between the educational attainment of the wealthiest and the opportunities available to the poorest.

Pioneering work by Leon Feinstein for the Institute of Education has proven that educational disadvantage starts even before children go to school and that children of low cognitive ability from wealthy homes overtake children of greater cognitive ability from poorer homes even before they arrive at school. As they go through school, the gap widens. Schools, instead of being engines of social mobility and guarantors of equality, are only perpetuating the divide between the wealthy and the poorest. At key stage 1, some 71% of pupils who are eligible for free school meals are reading at the expected level, compared with 87% of pupils who are not eligible for free school meals. At the end of key stage 2, the gap has grown wider. By the end of primary school, just 53% of pupils who are eligible for free school meals reach level 4—the expected level in English—compared with 76% of pupils who are not eligible for free school meals.

As students go through secondary school, the gap becomes even wider. By the time they are taking their GCSEs, just 27% of pupils who are eligible for free school meals get five A to C grades, including English and maths. That is exactly half the figure for those students who are not eligible for free school meals. When it comes to A-levels and university entry, the gap is wider still. In the last year for which we have figures, of the 81,000 who had been eligible for free school meals, just 45 made it to Oxbridge by the time they turned 19, whereas one top London school gets an average of 82 Oxbridge admissions a year. We cannot go on with such a drastic waste of talent, which is why we need to legislate now to ensure that opportunity becomes more equal in our society.

As well as the legislation that we are bringing forward today, the coalition Government are bringing forward a series of changes to transform our educational system. We are hoping to transform teaching for the better by doubling the number of graduates on the Teach First scheme, which has already been proven to raise attainment, particularly in the poorest areas. The expansion of Teach First was backed by every party in the House of Commons at the time of the last general election, but it is the coalition Government who have found the money to ensure that the very best graduates are in the schools that need them most. We will be bringing forward proposals to improve the continuous professional development of all teachers to ensure that the current crop of teachers—here I agree with the shadow Education Secretary that they are among the best ever—can benefit from the best evidence available on how to raise attainment.

When it comes to attracting great teachers, we know that we need to take action on discipline, because the biggest single disincentive for talented people going into the classroom is the standard of behaviour that they encounter. As a result, the Minister of State, Department for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), has outlined proposals to change the rules in order to give teachers greater confidence on the use of force, greater confidence when they exercise search powers and greater protection when false or vexatious claims are made against them.

As well as changing the rules on discipline, we are conducting a thoroughgoing reform of special educational needs. The Bill makes it clear that in future there will be protection for all pupils who have statements when they apply for academy schools, so that they are treated on an even keel. We shall have a comprehensive review, led by the Minister of State, Department for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), to ensure that the heartache suffered by so many children who cannot get the school they need for their special needs is addressed.

We shall also be taking steps to ensure that our children are reading fluently earlier in primary school, and we shall be transforming our curriculum and our examinations so that they rank with the world’s best—less prescription in the curriculum, more rigour in our examinations.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman was speaking expressly about the curriculum that those schools will pursue. Many of us are worried about two areas where the schools may effectively opt out of things we believe are important to everybody. The first is religious education. Schools might advocate a set of religious prescriptions that were inimical to the broad understanding of most people’s expectations about British society. The second is sex and relationship education. We believe that it is important that every child should have an opportunity to understand their self-worth, so that they can make better decisions affecting their future.

[Michael Gove]

I respect the hon. Gentleman for his commitment to both those issues. As part of our curriculum review later this year, we shall address both religious education and sex and relationship education. I agree that it is important that when sex and relationship education is reformed—as it will be—we go for the maximum consensus across the House, and that we do so in a way that ensures that as many schools as possible buy into our belief that we should have a 21st-century curriculum that reflects a modern understanding of sex and relationships.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

I welcome the Second Reading of the Bill. It has gained a huge amount of support in Bournemouth. Despite what the unions say, many teachers and schools are looking forward to the extra powers they are likely to gain from the Bill.

My right hon. Friend mentioned the curriculum. As he knows, I am a huge supporter of the international baccalaureate, and if, as I hope, the Bill becomes law, could he say what scope it will allow schools to drop A-levels and take on the international baccalaureate?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is a great advertisement for the way in which the international baccalaureate develops a rounded individual, with all the characteristics needed to succeed in life. It is a pity that the commitment of the previous Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to have a school offering the international baccalaureate in every neighbourhood was one that the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) decided to abandon. I assure my hon. Friend that academies can offer the international baccalaureate and, to be fair to the shadow Education Secretary, some academies that opened on his watch, including Havelock academy in Grimsby, offer the middle years programme of the international baccalaureate. One of the things we want to see is a greater degree of curriculum flexibility, so that teachers, not bureaucrats, can decide what is in the best interest of their pupils.

[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

You can decide.

[Michael Gove]

I am going to hand power back to teachers. There are some teachers, Vernon, like yourself, that I should be a little less reluctant to hand power back to.

The Bill trusts teachers. It marks a big step forward from what happened under the last Government. The last piece of education legislation that Labour tried to bring forward sought to prescribe in excessive detail exactly what should happen in every school, but all the evidence suggests that a greater degree of autonomy and freedom yields results for all pupils. Even before academies, a group of schools—the city technology colleges—was established by my right hon. Friend Lord Baker of Dorking. All of them were comprehensive schools in working-class, challenged or disadvantaged areas. All of them were established independent of local authority control. They are now achieving fantastic results. On average, their GCSE performance involves more than 82% of students getting five good GCSEs, including English and maths, which is at least half as good again as the average level of all schools in the country.

We know that CTCs have been successful. They have been in existence for more than 20 years and are a proven model of how autonomy can work. It was their persuasive work and the evidence of school improvement they generated that prompted Tony Blair, when he was Prime Minister, to go for the academies programme. He believed that the autonomy CTCs benefited from should be extended much more widely.

[Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)]

Is the Secretary of State aware that Dixons CTC, one of the first in the country, has hardly any European students at all, yet the new Bradford academy, which is less than a mile away, is overrun with new arrivals from eastern Europe? How does he explain that?

[Michael Gove]

My understanding is that the Bradford Dixons CTC operates a banded entry system, which is one of the truest and fairest methods of comprehensive entry, but I recognise that demographic change in Bradford and elsewhere is posing challenges for all schools. One of the things I believe is that the success of many CTCs shows that children, including those with special educational needs and those who have English as an additional language, can flourish. I hope that other schools in Bradford will contemplate—as several of them are—taking on some of the freedoms in the Bill to address the very real deprivation that exists in that city and that my hon. Friend has done so much to address, both as a councillor and as a Member of Parliament.

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

The Secretary of State makes a compelling case about why schools should get away from the control of local education authorities, such as the dead hand that we have in Essex. In the era of the big society, should not the number of elected parents on an academy’s governing body at least match the number of elected parents on a secondary school’s governing body?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend mentions the big society. I was asked earlier today on Radio 5 Live, “What is the big society?” and an image of him came to my mind. In many respects, he sums up the big society. He is not only an exemplary legislator, but a dedicated citizen activist who has always put Colchester first and last. I believe that he will be able—I know this from our informal conversations—to use the legislation to ensure that schools in his part of the world can acquire academy status, with an equal number of parent governors and other governors, thus providing him with the sort of model that, I am sure, he will press other hon. Members across the House to emulate.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

Before the right hon. Gentleman completely rewrites the front pages of every newspaper in Colchester tomorrow, may I return him to CTCs? Can he tell us how many CTCs teach creationism as an integral part of the curriculum? Does he feel that the number is too many, too few or just about right?

[Michael Gove]

The number is zero, which is just about right. It has often been alleged that, for example, Gateshead Emmanuel CTC teaches creationism as part of the science curriculum. Having visited that school, I know that it does not. I can tell anyone who is a critic of CTCs or academies that the cure for such cynicism is to visit them. It used to be said that the cure for anyone who admired the House of Lords too much was to visit it. Having visited the House of Lords during its deliberations on the Bill, I am full of admiration for the way in which it was debated there and for the many Liberal Democrat colleagues who helped to improve it. To anyone who wants to see how our schools can be improved, I recommend visiting academies such as Mossbourne community academy in Hackney, with 84% of children getting five good GCSEs; Burlington Danes academy in Hammersmith, where a school that was in special measures now has more than half its children getting five good GCSEs; Manchester academy, where Kathy August, on behalf of the United Learning Trust, has taken a school in which only 6% of students got five good GCSEs to a point where 35% do so now—all great successes, which I am sure the hon. Gentleman will want to applaud.

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I do indeed applaud all those successes. Surely the difference between the CTCs and academies that Labour introduced and the right hon. Gentleman’s proposal is that the CTCs and academies deliberately focused on areas of disadvantage, but his proposal is to give first priority to outstanding schools, which are disproportionately in areas of affluence and advantage.

[Michael Gove]

First, outstanding schools can be found in any area, including areas of disadvantage. Secondly, if most of our outstanding schools are in areas of advantage, is it not a telling indictment of 13 years of Labour rule that all the best schools are in the richest areas? The hon. Gentleman lost his seat just five years ago; if only he had stayed in the Department for Education, perhaps the situation would not have been so bad. We will ensure that every school that acquires academy freedom takes an underperforming school under its wing to ensure that all schools improve as a result.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

I believe that I am the only Member of Parliament who is the parent of a child at an academy, and I am a great believer in what academies have been able to do, but I want to reinforce the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg). Precisely because academies have invested resources in the most disadvantaged areas—the school that my child attends is the 16th most deprived in the country—they have been able to exercise a relative improvement. Surely spreading those resources and the advantages of academy status to highly privileged schools will do the reverse of what the Secretary of State intends and widen the gap in educational achievement.

[Michael Gove]

I take the hon. Lady’s point, but she is making the case that only resources drive improvement. Resources are critical, but so is autonomy, and the record of the CTCs shows that it was their autonomy that drove improvement. We Government Members all know that it is the ethos and quality of a school, and in particular the capacity of a head teacher to lead, that make all the difference.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman allow me to correct two things that he said? The first relates to Burlington Danes, which has traditionally been a very good school. It got into special measures, and became an academy, but did not improve. It has now improved with a new, second, head. Will he accept that often it is not being an academy that makes the difference, but having a good head teacher and a good ethos in the school?

I come to the second point on which I hope the right hon. Gentleman will allow me to correct him. We have two outstanding schools with a very deprived intake in my constituency. Both have decided not to become academies. Privately, the schools’ governors have said to me that they believe that special educational needs children and non-teaching staff would be discriminated against if the schools became academies, because they have seen that happen in other academies. So will the Secretary of State not be quite so arrogant in pushing academies on every level?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. From now on, interventions need to get a bit shorter. The debate is very heavily subscribed, and interventions should be brief.

[Michael Gove]

On the second point made by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter), the Bill is permissive. If head teachers do not wish to go down the academy route, that is a matter for them. I trust head teachers, unlike the previous Government who told head teachers what was right for them. We believe in professional autonomy. On the first point, I agree. I agree that the current head teacher at Burlington Danes, Ms Sally Coates, is fantastic; that is why she supports the legislation, and why she appeared with me in public to say that more schools should embrace the academy status that allowed her to do so much for the disadvantaged children whom the hon. Gentleman represents, and who are our first care.

[Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Michael Gove]

In just one second, if I may; first I want to make a point that follows on from that made by the hon. Members for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) and for Westminster North (Ms Buck), which was that by extending academy freedoms we do not help the most disadvantaged. That was not the view of Tony Blair in 2005, when he introduced the education White Paper. He made it clear then that he wanted every school to have academy freedoms so that they could drive up standards for all. In that sense, we are merely fulfilling the case that was made in 2005. I am happy to call myself a born-again Blairite, but all I see as I look at the Opposition Benches are groups of Peters denying—I hesitate to say the messiah—the previous Prime Minister three times. Now that the cock has crowed, I am happy to give way to the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson).

[Glenda Jackson]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State. He called the Bill permissive. What it most markedly does not permit is any kind of consultation with parents, governors, teachers and schools other than the one pursuing academy status. That is the antithesis of localism, which I understood was the bedrock of the Conservative party’s proposals.

[Michael Gove]

I have great respect for the hon. Lady, but the Bill includes specific provision for consultation. Hitherto, academies had to consult only local authorities, but there is provision for wider consultation in the legislation. More than that, because the Bill is permissive, it is for schools and heads to decide whether to make the change. I know that there are a number of schools in the hon. Lady’s constituency that are very interested in doing so.

[Mr Edward Timpson (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

When my right hon. Friend was deciding on the ambit of the Bill, did he take note of the recommendation of the Children, Schools and Family Committee, as it was then, in its report on the national curriculum that the freedoms enjoyed by academies should be available to all schools?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend was a distinguished member of that Committee, and it is precisely because the Committee made such a good case that I have been so influenced by it. The case was also made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws), who argued that if academy freedoms were so good, why should all schools not have them? If there is a coalition of the Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil and the former Member for Sedgefield, who am I to stand in its way?

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I think we all accept that the Secretary of State is a humble man, but will he tell us whom he consulted on his proposals and, more importantly, how many schools have applied to make the change under his proposals?

[Michael Gove]

I consulted head teachers, teachers, and parents, and I also took the trouble to consult the electorate at the general election; the proposal was in our manifesto, and received a great deal of support. Following the general election, I was fortunate enough to find out that the proposal received support from not just my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil, but my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg) and my many other hon. Friends on the Liberal Democrat Benches.

[Malcolm Wicks (Croydon North) (Lab)]

rose—

[Michael Gove]

I am happy to give way, but then I must try to make progress.

[Malcolm Wicks]

Does the Secretary of State feel that there will be any need for locally elected education authorities in the future? If so, what will their roles be?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his question. If I may quote, I believe:

“The best local authorities already increasingly see their primary role as championing parents and pupils rather than being a direct provider of education. We need to see every local authority moving from provider to commissioner, so that the system acquires a local dynamism responsive to the needs of their communities and open to change and new forms of school provision. This will liberate local authorities from too often feeling the need to defend the status quo, so that instead they become the champions of innovation and diversity, and the partner of local parents in driving continuous improvement.”

That was Tony Blair in October 2005—once again, an unimprovable argument.

[Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)]

But that speech led directly to the Education and Inspections Act 2006, in which local authorities were given the responsibility for commissioning places. The legislation before us entirely removes the local authority’s role in such commissioning, so the idea that the right hon. Gentleman is the heir to Tony Blair is complete and utter tosh.

[Michael Gove]

I would never claim to be the heir to Blair; I know that the right hon. Gentleman yearns to fill that role. I was one of the many thousands watching the Labour leadership hustings on “Newsnight”, when he said that Tony Blair was the finest Prime Minister the Labour party ever had. I dropped my cocoa in excitement at the right hon. Gentleman’s conversion to the cause of Blairism. It is somewhat at variance with what is recorded in Alastair Campbell’s diaries, Peter Mandelson’s memoirs and various other documents that have thudded on to my desk over the past few weeks, but I am very happy to see him join the conventicle.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman quoted the former Prime Minister’s words and cited the role of local authorities as champions of parents and pupils. Who will champion the parents of pupils who are excluded from academies?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady will know that academies are governed by the same admissions rules as all local authority schools. They have to abide by the admissions code and subscribe to fair access protocols, so that those hard-to-place children are placed appropriately. I grant the hon. Lady that some academies, when they have made the journey from failing school to academy status, have experienced an increase in the number of exclusions, but that normally settles down after a short period, as it does in most schools with a good new head teacher who is extending discipline and control. Then we find that once academies have become settled, the number of exclusions falls, and that is certainly the case with city technology colleges. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) wished to make a point, and I am delighted to give way.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State consider the greatest missed opportunity of the previous Conservative Government to be the failure to make all schools grant maintained? Therefore, philosophically, does he believe that such freedoms should gradually spread out so that, in the end, the head teachers of all state schools have the same freedoms as the head teachers of independent schools?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and I want a greater degree of freedom for all head teachers. If we compare our proposals with the ’90s and the world of grant-maintained schools, however, one big difference is that we do not envisage schools existing in a parallel universe, but collaborating with other schools. One of the great gains of the past 15 years has been the culture of collaboration that has taken root between head teachers and throughout state schools. It is wholly worth while, I wish to build on it and I make no apology for saying that it happened over the course of the past 15 years, because any fair-minded person would wish to acknowledge it and see it develop.

[Ed Balls]

When the head teacher of Woodberry Down community primary school in Hackney, an outstanding school in a federation with two other primary schools, approached the Department for Education to ask whether the school might access academy freedoms, the Department said it could do so only if it broke up the federation, because outstanding schools would be able to federate only with other outstanding schools rather than underperforming schools. On what basis will such collaboration help less good schools to become better? Is that not just excellence supporting excellence, or has the right hon. Gentleman had to change that policy?

[Michael Gove]

No, it is my belief that all outstanding schools should be there to support other schools. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for drawing that issue to my attention. Actually, we have made it clear that groups of schools in which one school is outstanding and the others are not can apply. Woodberry Down may well be a school that we would like to see enjoy academy status and hope will work with other schools, but it may not be among the very first schools to enjoy academy status. If he would like Woodberry Down’s application accelerated so that it can become an academy in September, I hope he will join me in the Lobby this evening.

[Ed Balls]

I have found in the past few weeks that the right hon. Gentleman is never, ever able to answer a straight question in the House. I will try again. An outstanding school was told that it could federate only with other outstanding schools if it wanted academy status. Is that his policy, yes or no?

[Michael Gove]

It is certainly not our policy, and I am sorry that the headmaster of Woodberry Down has been told that. I shall write to him later or call him, or perhaps he, I and the right hon. Gentleman can have a cup of tea together, to ensure that that excellent school can become an academy by September if it wishes.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I set the right hon. Gentleman straight on one point? Yes, the former Children, Schools and Families Committee did recommend that all schools should have the same curriculum freedoms as academies, but it was never necessary to expand academy status to outstanding schools in order to do that. It was always under the control of central Government and the Department, not local authorities.

[Michael Gove]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s point, but as a believer in freedom I believe not just that schools should have the chance to have greater freedom over the curriculum but that they should have other freedoms as well. I remember the former Member for South Dorset, who is now Lord Knight of Weymouth, making the point in debate here that academies also have freedoms on pay and conditions, and they need those freedoms to generate the improvement that has been such an attractive characteristic of the academies movement. I agree that the Department can disapply the national curriculum when specific schools apply, but I should like to see a wider range of freedoms.

[Mr Don Foster (Bath) (LD)]

May I say how much I welcome many of the freedoms that the Secretary of State proposes, not least freedom for teachers and freeing up the curriculum?

On consultation with local education authorities, the Secretary of State will be aware that in my constituency Oldfield girls school wants to become an academy but the local authority’s reorganisation plan to reduce surplus places envisages it as a co-educational school. Can he assure me that he will not approve academy status if the school remains a single-sex school?

[Michael Gove]

I take my hon. Friend’s point, which follows that made by the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls). Some 1,800 schools have applied for academy status, and if we were to run through the pros and cons of each my speech would be of interminable length. However, we have discussed that specific school before and I know that my right hon. Friend—sorry, I mean my hon. Friend; that will come later—is seeking in a fair-minded way to see whether that school can become co-educational and enjoy greater autonomy. I am sure we can find a way through.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is slightly ironic to hear Opposition Members make accusations of inadequate consultation on the Bill, given that the previous Secretary of State simply dispatched to my constituency his henchman Mr Badman, who decided to close one of the comprehensive schools there? The consultation was simply on whether to close it or merge it with another one, and it was stated that the new academy must open in September. Does he agree that this Government are trying to deal with the problems that have resulted from a very crude consultation and a very tight deadline?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and the fact that the electors of Gloucester, even though they had a superb Labour MP last time round, chose to elect him, an even better Conservative one, shows what they thought of how the last Government dealt with education.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Michael Gove]

I must try to make progress, because many Members wish to speak in the debate, so for the moment I shall not take any more interventions.

I stress that although we are following the path set down by successful schools in this country, we are also following the one set down by successful jurisdictions elsewhere in the world. In America, which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is due to visit in just a few days’ time, President Obama is pressing ahead with school reforms exactly analogous to those with which we are pressing ahead here. He is making reforms to ensure that there are better teachers in every classroom and that more schools enjoy greater autonomy. The charter schools in the USA, such as the Knowledge is Power programme schools, with which I know the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) is familiar, have done a fantastic job, free from local bureaucratic control, of transforming the life chances of young people. Children who would not have expected to graduate from high school are now going on to elite colleges because of the quality of the education that they enjoy. Charter schools in Boston have succeeded in cutting by half the achievement gap between black and white children.

In Chicago, as Caroline Hoxby and Jonah Rockoff have pointed out, charter schools have achieved even more dramatic gains for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The striking thing about Hoxby and Rockoff’s research is that in Chicago the children are drawn overwhelmingly from poorer homes. Whether one goes to Sweden, Finland, Singapore or Alberta—Alberta is the highest-performing English-speaking jurisdiction in education—education reform is guided by greater devolution to the front line, greater control for professionals and a relentless focus on higher standards.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Michael Gove]

Not at this stage.

The Opposition have tabled a reasoned amendment. My problem with it is that it is not reasoned and nor does it amend matters in our schools for the better. It is simply a list of unjustified assertions. It states that the Bill provides the legal framework for new parent-promoted schools. That is not true; that was created in 2002. It states that our proposals for academy status are funded by cuts in the Building Schools for the Future programme. That is not true; they are funded using money that was in the harnessing technology grant, and we are making the Building Schools for the Future programme more efficient.

The Opposition argue that our proposals are based on reforms in other countries with falling standards and rising inequality. That is not true; they are based on reforms in countries such as President Barack Obama’s America and in Singapore, Canada and Finland, where standards are rising and equity is greater. The Opposition claim that there are no measures to drive up standards, improve discipline or deliver greater equality. At the beginning of my speech, I pointed out what we are doing about teaching and discipline, and, thanks to the impassioned advocacy of my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil and the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central, we will shortly introduce proposals for a pupil premium.

[Mr Ellwood]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. My right hon. Friend has listed a whole series of aspects of the amendment that show it contains many untruths. Would it be in order for the Opposition to be given the opportunity to walk away, rewrite it and come back with an amendment that might be worthy of the House?

[Mr Speaker]

First, that is an utterly specious point of order. Secondly, it is a waste of time.

[Michael Gove]

It is, of course, a point of debate, and I look forward to hearing the shadow Secretary of State shortly.

The reasoned amendment argues that we are not building on the success of the academies programme, but the Bill fulfils it. It makes it easier for failing schools to be placed in the hands of great sponsors to turn them round, for good schools to take faltering schools under their wing and for all children from disadvantaged backgrounds to benefit from academy status.

I refer those who argue that we are failing children with special educational needs to the remarks of Lord Adonis in the upper House when the Bill was making progress there. He said:

“On the contrary, in crucial areas of special educational needs, particularly EBD”—

emotional and behavioural difficulties—

“the dynamic innovation…that academies can bring could lead to significant improvements…in ways that enhance the overall quality of the state education system.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 23 June 2010; Vol. 719, c. 1399.]

The expansion of the academies programme will drive that improvement in state education. I know that some Opposition Members say, “Pause, gie canny, slow down, hesitate”, but that is the argument of the conservative throughout the ages when confronted with the radicalism that says we need to do better for our children. We cannot afford to wait. We cannot afford Labour’s failed approach any more, with teachers directed from the centre, regulations stifling innovation and our country falling behind other nations. We need reform and we need it now. We need the Bill.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I have selected the reasoned amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition.

16:09

[Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Academies Bill [Lords] because it creates the legal framework for the expensive free market schools reforms which will be funded by scrapping existing school building programmes; its approach is based on reforms in other countries which have seen falling standards and rising inequality; it contains no measures to drive up standards, improve discipline or deliver greater equality in schools; it fails to build on the success of the previous Government’s Academies programme and instead focuses additional support and resources on those schools that are already succeeding at the expense of the majority of schools; it deprives schools with the biggest behaviour and special educational needs challenges of local authority support for special needs provision, the funding for which will go to those with the fewest such challenges; it permits selective schools to convert to Academy status, which risks the unplanned expansion of selective education; it removes any proper requirement to consult local authorities or the community before the creation of an Academy and centralises power in the hands of the Secretary of State over the future of thousands of schools without adequate provision for local accountability.

The Secretary of State and I have seen a great deal of each other across the Dispatch Box in recent weeks. I said to him two weeks ago that the cancellation of the Building Schools for the Future programme was a black day for our country’s schools. Since then, he has had a torrid fortnight. He has gone from under fire to embattled to beleaguered in only 15 days.

The Secretary of State may think that the recess is in sight, but the backlash that his statement kicked off two weeks ago has only just begun, and the rushed and flawed provisions in the Bill will make things much worse for our schools and our children in the coming months. Having had to apologise twice for his announcement two weeks ago and his rushed and botched decision, even his senior Back Benchers are asking why he is so contemptuously trying to railroad his academies and free schools policy through the House in only four days. The reason is that the right hon. Gentleman, who can never answer a question, is also afraid of scrutiny.

Let me tell the House what is really going on. Today and over the next week, the Opposition will show that the Bill will create unfair and two-tier education in this country. There will be gross unfairness in funding, standards will not rise but fall, and fairness and social cohesion will be undermined. The Bill will mean that funding is diverted to the strongest schools to convert to academy status, and to fund hundreds of new free-market schools, and that the role for the local authority in planning places, allocating capital or guaranteeing fairness or social cohesion is entirely removed. The weakest schools, children from the poorest communities, and children with a special need and those with a disability, will be left to pick up the pieces with old buildings, fewer teachers and larger class sizes. The fact is that the Bill will rip apart the community-based comprehensive education system that we have built in the past 60 years, which has delivered record rising standards in the last decade.

To rush the Bill through in this way is a complete abuse of Parliament. The Secretary of State should be ashamed of himself. We will challenge this coalition—Conservatives and Liberal Democrats—to support our amendment and put a halt to this deeply ideological, free-market experiment before it is all too late.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

rose—

[Ed Balls]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could repeat the comments he made on television yesterday.

[Mr Stuart]

The right hon. Gentleman is seeking to be a leader, but he seeks leadership in the luddite tendency. He has always opposed reform: he opposed it from the Back Benches when he first came into Parliament, and he continues to oppose reform that will raise standards.

To return to the subject of Building Schools for the Future, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was absolutely right to intervene. He took a brave decision to intervene on a programme that is wasteful and that does not lead to results in our schools. We will now have a system that prioritises need, not political fixes, and that ensures that the money goes on school buildings—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Let me just say to the hon. Gentleman that even though he is the elected Chair of the Select Committee on Education, he must be economical in his interventions.

[Ed Balls]

The former Chair of the Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families and I did not always see eye to eye, but he always had respect on both sides of the House for his independence. The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) got some respect yesterday for saying that the Bill was being railroaded through Parliament, but he loses it for that ridiculous, partisan and stooge-like performance. Maybe he should call some witnesses and hear some evidence before he decides to write his Select Committee’s report—unless it is being written for him by Conservative Front Benchers. His credibility is very substantially undermined.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The shadow Secretary of State may be getting excited, but I ask him whether he might withdraw that remark, which brought into question the independence of a Select Committee.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Frankly, that is not a point of order, but a point of debate. I have known the hon. Gentleman for a number of years, and I know that he will not want to become an unduly sensitive flower. That would be unwise.

[Ed Balls]

I have been asked to give evidence to the hon. Gentleman’s Committee in a week’s time, as has the Secretary of State. My point is that the hon. Gentleman should probably hear the evidence before he jumps to conclusions. That is the proper way to act as a Select Committee Chair, rather than jumping up and making not an intervention but a speech of the most partisan and specious nature.

Let me begin with capital spending. The Liberal Democrats deputy leader, the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), put it very well to the BBC when he said:

“It would be a nonsense to take money that could be used for improving existing schools to create new schools where, on the ground, the will of the local community is for the existing schools to continue”.

That is precisely what the Bill will do. The fact is that the dismay across the country at the decision to cancel more than 700 promised new schools, disappoint more than 2 million children and parents, and put at risk thousands of construction jobs, has turned to anger at the growing realisation that those schools are being cancelled to pay for the free-market schools policy that is set out in the Bill.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman said that this measure is a brake on progress. In my constituency, children going into one of the schools—it has an inspirational head teacher—at age 11 have a reading age of 8. After 13 years of Labour Government, what is progressive about that?

[Ed Balls]

We have 720 schools where children from primary school were looking forward to going into brand-new schools. Their hopes have now been dashed by the Conservatives to pay for their free-market schools policy—[Hon. Members: “Answer the question.”] Unlike the Secretary of State, I have the courage to answer the question, and the fact is that in 1997 70% of children reached the required level in English and maths at age 11, and that rose to 80% under the last Government. We improved standards because we invested in schools and teachers. It is the cuts by the Government that will set back the improvement in standards.

Government Members know that the reason the new schools have been cancelled is not to reduce the deficit. It is not because of the nonsensical claims about bureaucracy. Those claims are as flimsy as the Prime Minister’s promise to protect the front line. The cuts in the school building programme are to pay for the new free schools policy. We know that, because in opposition the Conservatives said:

“we propose that capital funding for new academies should come through a new fund, established by reallocating the money available within the building schools for the future programme.”

To be fair to them, they promised it in opposition and they are delivering it in government, so that 700 schools around the country are now feeling the reality of a Conservative-Liberal Administration, and do not like it very much.

[Bill Esterson]

The Secretary of State talked at length about various freedoms. One of the freedoms that concerns me is the freedom of schools to exclude children with special educational needs and looked-after children, among other categories of children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the lack of protection for children from such backgrounds is a worrying aspect of the legislation?

[Ed Balls]

I visited Sandwell last week, a borough where several schools were told that their new school buildings were going ahead—in version 1 of the Secretary of State’s list—but were told in list 2 or 3 that he had made a mistake and all their new buildings were being cancelled. As part of that discussion, I met the head teacher of a special school whose promised new investment has been taken away. We discussed the fact that the new academies policy will take out of the funding agreement the obligation on academies to focus on stopping exclusions of children with special needs. So I have exactly the same concern as my hon. Friend.

The head teachers in Sandwell were pleased that I visited. They were also pleased that the Secretary of State has agreed to visit Sandwell to apologise for his dreadful mistake. However, they think that it is odd that he wants to visit on 5 August. Visiting schools in August is not usually the done thing, as the Secretary of State will find out. I am sure the reason is that his diary is full. Perhaps he should share the load. I know that the Prime Minister is today in Liverpool announcing his big society. Perhaps the Secretary of State should urge the Prime Minister to apologise to the 25 schools in Liverpool and the many thousands of children who have seen their new school taken away from them by the free-market schools policy in this Bill.

Perhaps while the Prime Minister is there, he could also apologise to the leader of the Liberal Democrat group on Liverpool council, who had some interesting things to say about the Secretary of State. Former council leader Councillor Warren Bradley said:

“it would be absolute folly if we were to ignore the impact of such a ridiculous decision by Michael Gove, whether or not we are in coalition. Not only would it show how shallow we are, either in control or opposition, we would be letting this and future generations of young people down.”

He goes on:

“It’s ridiculous. The plans for BSF were so far advanced and it’s unforgivable that other funding options are not in place.”

[Mr Sam Gyimah (East Surrey) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ed Balls]

In just a second. I am going to finish reading this quote. The hon. Gentleman might enjoy it.

“I think the national party have got to wake up and listen to the people on the ground that are hearing the complaints from core voters. Being in coalition should be a two-way street. There are times when Clegg has got to say to Cameron, ‘No more’. I think BSF is the straw that has broken the camel’s back. You do not fill a hole at the expense of the young people of this country.”

Wise words indeed, from a Liberal Democrat. I would be happy to take an intervention from the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) on this point.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

The right hon. Gentleman might like to know that, when I spoke to Councillor Bradley, he said that he was very happy to meet the Secretary of State. When I spoke to the Secretary of State, he said that he was very happy to meet all our colleagues in all the metropolitan boroughs concerned with the educational plans for the future.

[Ed Balls]

The hon. Gentleman has obviously done a good job of whipping some colleagues, but it is a pity that he did not speak to the Liberal Democrat Education Association, which has condemned the very Bill that he is being asked to vote for today. We must wait and see whether the hon. Gentleman signs the association’s petition—I do not know whether he is thinking about leadership elections to come.

My point is that visits to metropolitan areas and apologies are not enough. That is not what people want. Parents, teachers and children do not want the Secretary of State to say sorry; they want him to change his mind, to throw out this Bill and to let them build the new schools that they were promised. The people I spoke to today also said to me, “Can’t you get an answer from the Secretary of State?” I wrote to him two weeks ago to ask whether the money was being diverted away from Building Schools for the Future to fund the proposals in this Bill, but I have had no reply so far. I am going to ask him the question again, because a lot of taxpayers’ money rides on the answer. During the weekend before he announced the cancellation of Building Schools for the Future, did he at any point receive written or oral advice from departmental officials or from Partnerships for Schools urging him not to publish a list of schools until after he had consulted local authorities to ensure that his criteria were sound and that his facts were right? I would be very happy to take an intervention from him. Would he like to answer the question? No.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We do not have forced interventions.

[Ed Balls]

After two weeks of waiting for an answer, my expectations were not very high.

Let me try another question. Is it not the case that the Secretary of State was also advised of the risk of legal challenges from private contractors, and did he not personally decide to ignore that advice? He can set the record straight now, or we can keep on asking these questions. People want to know the answers. This is about the cack-handed way in which he did this, and about whether there will be legal challenges from the authorities and contractors who will have been left out of pocket by hundreds of millions of pounds as a result of his decision.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Will my right hon. Friend also comment on the potential for challenges from some of the tens of thousands of workers who will be affected by this decision? They do not know whether they are going to be made redundant, or what their terms and conditions will be. Surely there is a legal imperative for them to be consulted properly, but that consultation will take place while most of them are on their summer holidays.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The debate is starting to broaden somewhat. I know that the right hon. Gentleman will want to focus his reply in a way that relates to the Bill.

[Ed Balls]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

On the subject of the consultation, we had an interesting answer on the question of schools becoming academies. We were told that there would be consultation. The fact is that the Bill that was published a few weeks ago contained no obligation for any consultation at all. It was only as a result of intervention in the other place that a provision was added to say that there should be consultation, but what obligation does that provision place on schools and governing bodies? It says that they need only consult whomever they think appropriate, and that they can consult before they decide to become an academy or after they have done the deed. The idea that that represents consultation is complete and utter nonsense.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

Listening to the right hon. Gentleman has certainly taken me back to my previous job as a class 1 teacher. On the issue of consultation, is he honestly suggesting that governing bodies, which are made up of schoolteachers, head teachers, parents and interested people from the community, are going to push ahead without going out and talking to parents and other interested parties? If he is saying that, it is a fairly despicable way to describe governing bodies.

[Ed Balls]

I am afraid that the reason why the Secretary of State and his Front-Bench team have added in an obligation to consult is, presumably, that they disagree with the hon. Gentleman. If they were going to consult anyway, there would be no need to build the provision into the Bill. It is there because they know some head teachers and chairs of governors would consult nobody at all, which would be undemocratic and unfair. The reality is that under our academies policy—look, let me turn to the details of the Bill. [Interruption.] Government Members should note that I am at least talking about the Bill, unlike the Secretary of State who did not talk about it at all, and did not mention any clause, any provision or any of the completely undemocratic ways in which our schools system is being railroaded and undermined.

I turn to deal with the detail of the Bill. This Bill does not build on or expand on our academy scheme at all. It is a total and utter perversion of it. Our academies were in the poorest communities and were turning around underperforming schools. As I exposed earlier, the right hon. Gentleman’s policy is about outstanding schools supporting only other outstanding schools—schools that are disproportionately in higher income areas with fewer children with disabilities or special educational needs.

[Ms Louise Bagshawe (Corby) (Con)]

rose—

[Ed Balls]

I will give way in a few moments.

Those schools are not only going to get extra funding, they will take their share of extra funding for special needs, even though they have, disproportionately, fewer children with special needs. It will be other children with special needs in other schools in the area who will lose out as a result of this policy.

[Ms Bagshawe]

rose—

[Ed Balls]

If the hon. Lady would like to defend that policy—[Interruption.] She can sit down for a second. [Interruption.] I am helping her out. If she can defend this policy, she might even make it to the Front Bench. It would be very good if she could explain it, because the Secretary of State made no attempt to do so.

[Ms Bagshawe]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. What would be his reply to the group of parents in my Corby constituency with children on the autistic spectrum who have written asking for my advice on how to apply for a free school? How would he reply to the National Autistic Society, which has broadly welcomed the Academies Bill, because of how it will raise standards for children with special needs?

[Ed Balls]

I would say that they should be very fearful indeed. The reality is that we are on a fast track to treat as second class the majority of children with special educational needs, who will find their funding cut and their opportunities reduced by this legislation. They should be very careful.

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

Would you say that the shadow Secretary of State is going back 20 years and coming back with the same arguments and fears that the Labour party put out about grant-maintained schools, when there was absolutely nothing wrong with them? They did a very good job for schools, raised standards and raised attainment for many pupils. They did a really good job, but, like then, you are just coming back and trying to bully people into saying that the Bill will not work and should not go ahead.

[Mr Speaker]

May I gently say that I am not coming back to bully anyone? I have never done that before and I would not do it in future. I know that Members will not want to use the word “you” again.

[Ed Balls]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right that we have been here before. We have had freedoms and resources given to higher-performing schools in more affluent areas, and we all know what resulted from it. The academies policy that we introduced was the exact opposite of that, but our policy is being undermined.

The reality is that this Bill gives extra resources to higher-performing schools in more affluent areas while at the same time removing any obligation for consultation with parents, local authorities or external sponsors. Indeed, the requirement for a sponsor is removed entirely under this legislation. We have talked about consultation, but the fact is that the only consultation any school need have about how it proceeds and how it teaches its curriculum is with the Secretary of State. The role of the local authority is entirely removed. This is the biggest centralisation in education policy in the post-war period.

Although the Bill makes clear that the academies will be accountable to the Secretary of State, it is interesting to note that the model funding agreement circulated by the Government contains no requirement for teachers to have qualified-teacher status. It also contains no requirement for co-operation in regard to behaviour and exclusion: schools can go their own way and exclude at will. There will be no independent appeals panels for excluded children, which will hit children with special needs disproportionately. There is no requirement for a named member of staff to be responsible for children in care. There is no requirement for careers education. There is no requirement for academies to observe nutritional standards, or to provide sex and relationship education. We will address all those issues in our amendments, and I urge Members to vote for them so that we can put the Bill on to the straight and narrow.

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

The shadow Secretary of State talks of people from the poorest communities. While there are clearly differences between those on the two front Benches, it might be generous of him to acknowledge that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is motivated by the best of intentions: he wants to give opportunities to those people from poorer communities. Is it not appalling to look back on 13 years of Labour government and see that, in one year, only 45 of 80,000 pupils receiving free school meals made it to Oxford university?

[Ed Balls]

I do not doubt the good intentions of the Secretary of State when it comes to some schools and some children, but Labour Members are motivated by the need to do the best for all children rather than just some. That is the deep dividing line between the two sides of the House, and it brings me to what the Bill is really all about.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Ed Balls]

I will not give way for the moment.

The Secretary of State wants us to believe that the Bill is about changing existing schools into academies, but Lord Hill, writing to colleagues in the other place, confirmed that it was being used as enabling legislation for the free-market schools policy. The reason why local authorities must be cleared out of the way is to enable additional school places to be created in a completely free-market way, with only the check of the Secretary of State and no role whatever for the local authority. As we have made clear in the House before, substantial questions about that policy are being completely ignored. The Secretary of State has ignored them so far today, and we have been given a very limited amount of time in which to scrutinise them in a Committee of the whole House.

First, it is clear that there is no new money to cover the capital or current costs of free schools. The creation of additional places will be funded by cuts in budgets and the removal of teachers from existing schools. I was asked about the impact of the new free schools. Having examined the case for a new parent-promoted school in Kirklees, Professor David Woods said that it would

“have a negative impact on other schools in the area in the form of surplus places and an adverse effect on revenue and capital budgets”.

The fact is that the cost of the new free schools will be covered by cuts in existing schools. We have seen what has happened to the Building Schools for the Future programme. That is why we will table amendments to stop Building Schools for the Future money being siphoned off to pay for new free-market schools against the wishes of local communities—and given that that is exactly the policy of the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), I hope that he will join us in the Lobby to vote for it.

[Mr Leigh]

If the right hon. Gentleman’s point is that the policy is divisive, would he welcome a move to give all schools academy status?

[Ed Balls]

I was happy with the expansion of academies under our system, which involved agreement with local authorities. As we know from what has happened in Sweden, the removal of local authorities and the granting of a complete free-for-all is likely to be deeply divisive, both socially and in a wider sense. I believe that it will lead to huge unfairness and a complete lack of social cohesion. Individual groups of parents will go it alone for a range of reasons, and there will be absolutely no check on the system, because, apart from a back-stop reserve power for the Secretary of State, nobody has any obligation at all to ask why that is being done and what the impact will be on other schools. That represents an unbelievable centralisation of education policy.

The Secretary of State has proved that he cannot even announce a list, so the idea that he will be able to police social cohesion in 3,500 secondary schools is a complete and utter joke.

[Mr Slaughter]

Does my right hon. Friend think that it is a coincidence that the week after the cancellation of the capital funding under Building Schools for the Future for all schools for secondary-age children in my constituency, including three special schools, a private company put around a flyer to parents in Shepherd’s Bush saying that it will soon be opening a new primary school in their area? There is no new primary school; there is only the idea of attracting children from existing schools and then applying to the Government for the money that goes to those schools in order to set up a new free school.

[Ed Balls]

Exactly, and that is why my hon. Friend and I both fear that this will turn out to be a deeply divisive reform which will lead to a two-tier education system. Indeed, the clauses in the Bill are structured in such a way as to allow the Secretary of State to give funding arrangements to private companies taking over the running of schools—and we should have the opportunity to scrutinise such aspects of the Bill. We will see exactly what they saw in Sweden: private companies travelling around the country touting to parents by saying, “If you want to set up a school, we’ll do it for you—and we’ll make a profit out of it.” I think that will be deeply, deeply divisive.

[Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)]

Is the right hon. Gentleman really saying that he and his party believe that it is not parents who know best how their children should be educated, but local authorities and people in Whitehall, because that is what he has just said in reply to the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter)? Will the right hon. Gentleman acknowledge that parents should be the people who have the greatest say in their children’s education?

[Ed Balls]

There is no obligation on the governing body even to consult parents in deciding to opt for the new academy status. Of course the voice of parents is important, as are the choices for parents. What I am worried about—and we will table an amendment to prevent this—is profit-making companies taking over the entire management of schools and touting themselves for business. That amounts to completely ripping up the last 60 years of free state education. Secondly, on this point, if a group of parents wants to go it alone, there must be somebody whose job it is to say, “Will this contribute to, or undermine, social cohesion?” [Interruption.] Well, in that case, if parents know best, I predict this will lead to a huge rise in social division, not social cohesion, and I am very concerned about that.

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

My right hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. The reason why the Secretary of State is trying to sweep away any local democratic accountability for education—a move that, incidentally, is deplored by many Conservative leaders of local authorities—is precisely that he needs to get local government out of the way in order, perhaps, to introduce these quasi-private, free-market school arrangements.

[Ed Balls]

Exactly, and that is why I am fearful. The money is not there and there is no evidence that the Government’s proposals will contribute to raising standards. My fear is that we will see, as Sweden did, a rise in social segregation, with children in high-income areas doing better and children in lower-income areas doing worse. That would be deeply socially divisive, and that is not the only social division we may see as a result.

[Dr John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

If Members really believe that parents know best, is it not our duty to include the need for a parent vote as a precondition of any move to academy status and thereby give parents the choice as well, as happened under the old grant-maintained legislation?

[Ed Balls]

That is a very interesting suggestion, and if an amendment to that effect is tabled, we will look at it. I am all in favour of parent power. What the Secretary of State is doing, however, is cutting parents out of the equation entirely; he is leaving it entirely to the head teacher, the chair of governors and himself. There is no parent voice at all in this Bill. That is why I am very fearful, and that is why I believe that this Bill is the biggest threat to our comprehensive state education system in the post-war period.

We will table amendments to ensure that local authorities maintain their role in education as guarantors of fairness and of the public interest—as set out in the very Education and Inspections Act 2006 that the Secretary of State likes to quote from.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

On 5 July, I asked the Secretary of State where his much-touted expressions of interest had come from—chairs of governors, head teachers or full governing bodies. The answer I received was that that information is not included in the form that is sent out to schools. In other words, these expressions of interest could have come from the caretaker’s cat. We do not know exactly who they have come from in order to arrive at the figure of the 1,800 schools that, apparently, have expressed an interest in academy status.

[Ed Balls]

I am afraid that I can give no guidance or enlightenment to my hon. Friend on that. We read in The Times this morning that only 50 schools will be going for academy status, rather than the thousands we were told about a few weeks ago. If my hon. Friend is thinking of putting down a question to the Secretary of State, he should not hold his breath. In my experience, answers are not very forthcoming.

It is clear that, whether we are talking about funding, fairness, standards, accountability, the role of local authorities, social cohesion, the role of free schools, existing schools becoming academies or the incentives for collaboration, there are massive questions, none of which were addressed—as always—in the Secretary of State’s speech, but which must now be scrutinised in Committee in just two or three days on the Floor of the House. It would not surprise me at all if we end up with statements on Wednesday, Thursday and the following Monday in order further to constrict that time.

I have to say to the hon. Member for Southport (Dr Pugh) that I cannot believe that the Liberal Democrats are allowing themselves to be led through the Lobby to support this Bill. They face a very important choice. Interestingly, the Secretary of State’s deputy, the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), is not availing herself of the opportunity to sum up this Bill tonight. She is leaving it to the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), presumably because, having described this policy as a complete shambles, she does not fancy having to defend it on the Floor of the House. The right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws) described this policy as “dotty”, and in their own manifesto the Liberal Democrats said:

“we will ensure a level playing field for admissions and funding and replace Academies with our own model of ‘Sponsor-Managed Schools’. These schools will be commissioned by and accountable to local authorities and not Whitehall”.

So their manifesto actually said—

[Chris Leslie]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. I am quite sure I just heard the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) explain from a sedentary position to her hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb) that she did not say that this was a shameless policy. Is my right hon. Friend prepared to give way to the hon. Lady if she wants to clarify her position on this point?

[Ed Balls]

I will put the hon. Lady out of her misery—I will just quote what she said:

“unless you give local authorities that power to plan and unless you actually make sure that there is money available...it’s just a gimmick”.

That is exactly what we have before us—just a gimmick, the very gimmick that she warned of. The right hon. Member for Yeovil said,

“strategic oversight of all state funded schools should be returned to Local Government.”

That is precisely the opposite of what this Bill does.

As for Building Schools for the Future, the deputy to the Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Brent Central, clearly wishes the world to know that she is very upset with the Secretary of State’s policy. Although she is not quite prepared to do that on the record, she arranged for friends to tell the newspapers that she is “privately seething”. The giants of the Liberal party will count her among their number for her bravery. The hon. Lady has a choice. She cannot sit on the fence any longer. Either she votes for the coalition or she stands up for the schools of Brent—that is her choice tonight.

Is not the truth about this whole business that during the past few weeks, the Secretary of State’s credibility has been completely shot to pieces? Even his own Back Benchers are now questioning his decision to rush this legislation on to the statute book and to cancel hundreds of new schools. The right hon. Gentleman is on a slippery slope. The Tory party’s shining intellectual, its greatest hope, has in the last fortnight been completely found out.

[Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ed Balls]

No, I will not.

The eloquence that brought such prizes as a journalist has been reduced to a shambles, and this morning allegations were made of a giant BBC conspiracy. The Secretary of State should not be attacking the BBC; he should be listening to the anger of the thousands of parents, teachers and pupils around the country who have lost their chance of a new school. The fact is that when faced with the tough job of actually running a Department, he has in the past fortnight been totally exposed. When forced to make decisions, he is just not up to the job. He can make fancy speeches, but he cannot make policy. He can write good jokes, but he has exposed himself in the past fortnight as having terrible judgment.

The battle lines are now drawn for this Bill, which is the biggest threat to state education in 60 years. This is not just a question of policy; it is a question of values. Labour Members believe that every school should be able to succeed, not just some; we believe that every parent should have a chance of a good school, not just some; and we believe that every child matters, not just every other child. That is the shared moral purpose that drives those on the Labour Benches and it is why we will be voting for our reasoned amendment this evening. That is why the Liberal Democrats should join us in the Lobby. We should vote against this deeply divisive shambles of a Bill.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Before I call the next speaker, may I remind everybody that Mr Speaker has set a 10-minute limit on all speeches? I call Mr Graham Stuart.

16:46

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

I would like to be able to say that it is a pleasure to follow the shadow Secretary of State, but that contribution was a bid for the leadership of not only the luddite tendency, but the mean-spirited tendency. I would have thought that, whatever their views about the policies that this Bill represents, anyone in this House would recognise that everyone in this House seeks the best for all our children. To suggest that the Secretary of State would not do so is low, even for the shadow Secretary of State.

Cuts in public spending and posts were made inevitable by the disastrous financial stewardship of the Labour party, which took a golden legacy and then blew it. Labour made promises on school buildings, on teacher training and on so many other areas that, it turned out, it simply could not fund. It now lies with the coalition Government to clean up the mess that the shadow Secretary of State played such a major part in creating.

So the new Government have to find ways to improve public services and enhance, rather than reduce, the life chances of our children without spending additional money. The two coalition partners are united in believing that one of the best ways of doing that is by giving greater autonomy to local communities and those on the front line of public services. This Bill will take academy freedoms and make them potentially available to all schools for the first time; primary and special schools, as well as secondary schools, will be able to become independent state schools, free at the point of use, but with control over their curriculum, their teaching hours—at least, in theory—and their special educational needs provision and the like.

That is a good thing and it is why I support this Bill, despite the fact that, generally speaking, I am a structural change sceptic. Reorganisations are too frequent, too expensive and too convenient for politicians who wish to make their mark. This policy, like all education policies, should be measured by whether it will result in better teachers, better led. The key determinant of a good education is the quality of the teaching work force. I hope that this Bill, the expansion of Teach First and the introduction of a pupil premium for children from lower-income families will, along with other measures, improve the quality, motivation and retention of high-calibre people in education. If it does that, it will have succeeded.

The Bill builds on the previous Government’s academies programme, which itself grew from Lord Baker’s innovations back in the 1980s. It takes those programmes forward and is not, therefore, radically new. The changes that this Bill will bring about are not minor, however. They may not be radically new in concept, but they are potentially radical in effect. If hundreds of schools leave local authority control each year—starting in September—the implications for our education system overall will be profound. The powers in the Bill are essentially permissive, as Ministers emphasise. That does mean, though, that different local authorities will be affected in different ways.

Countries behind the former iron curtain that moved from centrally controlled economies to free-market systems did not always find the transition easy or pleasant. When the centre collapses, some services and skills are scattered and even destroyed and they take time to grow again. Even when crying freedom, it is best to think deeply, consider carefully and do everything possible to minimise the potential downsides of change.

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that despite the welcome amendments in the other place, there is great uncertainty about the provision of special educational needs education, particularly for children with complex needs, with funding split between the academies and the local authorities? I am concerned that we might end up with the worst of all worlds for some of our most vulnerable and needy children.

[Mr Stuart]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention and I share some of those concerns. I hope that, in this coming week, those on the Government Front Bench will be able to allay those concerns. Last week I visited an academy, called the Ashcroft technology academy. It has a centre it calls the ARC, which specialises in looking after children on the autistic spectrum, and an AWA—an academy within an academy—for children otherwise at risk of exclusion. By using those innovations, the academy has done a tremendous job of looking after those with special educational needs as well as intervening to ensure that there is not a higher than average number of exclusions from the school. Academies can be part of the answer and the innovation that they allow can improve the situation in the average school today.

[Andrew Percy]

I thank my next-door neighbour but one for giving way. On that point, does he agree that academies must not be allowed to use exclusions as a way of driving up standards? Does he also agree that what we heard from the shadow Secretary of State failed to recognise that the people in academies are teachers—professionals, and people in a caring profession who went into it for the right reasons? They care about children, and they are the same as teachers in any other state school.

[Mr Stuart]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention and the last thing I would want to do is to disrespect those in the teaching profession. On the other hand, however, in any change in Government, it is enormously important to examine the incentives created for those on the front line. If those incentives incentivise the wrong behaviour, we can expect more of that behaviour.

It is true that academies have twice the rate of permanent exclusions of the average school. A question for those on the Front Bench to answer—perhaps the Schools Minister will do that when he winds up—concerns what steps can be taken to ensure that that rate of exclusions does not continue. What if that rate accelerates under the incentives for the schools in the academy system that have been made free? What powers will remain with the Secretary of State and with local authorities to ensure that that does not happen? We need to understand the incentives in the system. Not every teacher will be the best teacher and not every head will always be driven by the highest possible motives. It is necessary to build a system that is robust, even when it is staffed by people who are not of the highest possible calibre.

Such issues are why I am concerned by the speed at which the legislation is going through Parliament. It would be a great shame if something so potentially beneficial were damaged or discredited by over-hasty execution. The Bill delivers a Conservative manifesto commitment on a policy that has been clear for years, but none the less parliamentary scrutiny is necessary and beneficial for any policy. It should not be rushed and when it is, as the last Administration found, the errors usually rebound on the Government who put it through. I ask Ministers to think carefully about implementation this September—whether we are talking about hundreds or, perhaps, as few as 50 schools. Is it worth the candle to put the Bill through so swiftly? I shall leave Ministers to think about that.

I felt that the Secretary of State was quite right to move swiftly to halt the scandalous waste involved in the Building Schools for the Future programme, notwithstanding the fact that my Committee will take evidence from both the shadow Secretary of State and the Secretary of State next week. I am clear in my opinion on this subject, although I shall of course listen to the evidence and weigh it carefully along with my Committee colleagues.

The embarrassments caused were of the programme’s making, not the Secretary of State’s. His swift action took courage and will result in more building improvements to more schools in more need. Every day of delay cost money and cheated children and he did the right thing. I am not so sure about the speed of this measure, however, and that is why I ask him to reflect on that, but I am absolutely sure that history will judge his move on Building Schools for the Future as both brave and right.

[Ed Balls]

Is the Chair of the Select Committee fully confident in saying that the Secretary of State has acted properly? Is he fully confident that the Secretary of State has in no way ignored advice and acted in a disorderly manner, therefore opening the way for potential legal challenges regarding the way in which he has treated local authorities and private companies? Is the hon. Gentleman sure that it is wise to reach his conclusion before he has heard the evidence?

[Mr Stuart]

I thank the shadow Secretary of State for that intervention. Obviously, we will be taking evidence next week not only from him but from the head of Partnerships for Schools and from the Secretary of State, so we will get more detail. In principle, I am absolutely clear that the Secretary of State did the right thing. The shadow Secretary of State could show a little more humility in the House given the mess that was left by Building Schools for the Future. He mentions the 700 schools, but he never mentions the dozens of schools that, on his schedule, should have been built by the time he left power, but were not.

[Ed Balls]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Stuart]

I do not have time. I must press on, because I will not get any extra time if I do.

[Glenda Jackson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Stuart]

I have no time; it is strictly limited.

If the Bill is to be on the statute book in a week’s time, the House will have to improve its normal powers of scrutiny and the effectiveness with which it improves Bills, and the Government will likewise have to show that they are listening as well as leading. Communities and parents need to feel that academy freedoms are something that they choose and not something that can be imposed on them. The Government’s concession in clause 5 at least makes governing bodies consult those whom they deem appropriate, but it is blunted by the fact that they do not have to do so prior to applying to the Secretary of State and because they can do so even after they have been issued with an academy order. Those consulted in such circumstances would have good grounds for feeling that they were participating in a charade. I ask those on the Government Front Bench to consider that.

That clumsy approach risks building opposition to academies and could be a gift to the luddite tendency within the teaching unions, whose members are gathered outside as we speak, and resurgent on the Opposition Benches. Building confidence in the Government’s approach requires sure-footedness and careful consideration of everything they do. I ask the Government to reconsider the measures on the timing of consultation. I fear that they have been drafted in that way not because Ministers think it right in principle but because schools that seek to gain academy status this September would otherwise not be able to do so.

Let me conclude by posing a few more questions to those on the Front Bench. Lord Hill said that the Bill would lead to “greater partnerships between schools.” Will that be a requirement or an expectation? It is important to reassure the House that we will not see schools closing in and only looking after themselves, and we would like to know precisely how the proposal will be implemented. Lord Hill also talked about “fair and open admissions”. What plans do the Government have for the admissions code and the adjudicator? Have Front Benchers considered the impact of the changes on rural areas and the provision of transport in such areas? I should be interested to hear from them on that.

I have already touched on special educational needs; how will the parents of children with SEN make sure that their voices are heard? I have talked about good examples in academies, but it could be that other schools do not think about that issue sufficiently. I should particularly like to hear from Ministers regarding children with SEN who may be suffering from permanent exclusion. What monitoring will there be and who will have access to it? I support the Bill and I hope that the Government will give further consideration to the points I have made.

16:59

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I suppose that one could describe this as the education, education, education moment for the new Government. They have not called it that, but this is their flagship piece of legislation. The dramatic difference is that in 1997 the new Labour Administration went straight for a policy that would help the most underprivileged children in our society. The academy programme that emerged later was targeted at the children in most need, at the poorest towns and cities and at schools that were underperforming badly.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the proof of the pudding is in the eating? In Hackney, six new city academies have been built or are being built, and 84% of pupils have gained five A to Cs in the one that has so far had results. Surely, that proves that the previous Government’s policy was a good one.

[Mr Sheerman]

I am trying to be even-handed, but I take my hon. Friend’s point. Over 13 years, the Labour Government built more new schools and more new colleges and renewed more educational facilities than any Government in the history of our country. That building programme is indisputable, whatever one thinks about BSF and whether if Labour had been returned, we would have had to tamp it down or ease it in over a much longer period. However, we can discuss that at another time.

The difference between what we did in 1997 and what is proposed in the Bill did not come out in the speech made by the Secretary of State. Why go for outstanding schools? What is the magic of the outstanding school? The right hon. Gentleman referred to the work of the Children, Schools and Families Committee, saying that we wanted to free things up. Yes, we produced three strong reports that recommended giving schools more control over the curriculum, taking away some of the testing and assessment and reducing the six levels of school accountability. We said all those things, but we did so in the spirit of their being particularly important for all schools, not just the outstanding ones.

I believe that the new Administration, like the previous one, want to do the best for every child in our country. We only have one chance for education and both sides of the House—all three parties—want at heart to identify the talent and potential of our children and push them as far as they can go. It is important that we start from that basis, because when we look, as I have done, having spent nearly 10 years as Chair of the Select Committee, over the past 20 or 30 years—a period that the Committee used to call “From Baker to Balls” or “From Butler to Balls”—we can see that there are many more continuities in education policy than we might think if we heard only rousing speeches from Front-Bench speakers on either side.

There is a great danger in the Bill. Every Government need to be able to deliver their policies, and I have never known a policy be delivered by a demoralised work force. One of the secrets of our success over the last 13 years was that gradually, with difficulty, we got the teachers on side, partly by paying them better than ever before, rewarding them and respecting them more. That was the secret of our success and I hope the new Government will continue it.

Another tremendous partnership is needed to deliver policy—with the people who work in local government. It is easy to say that they have only back-office functions or unnecessary core functions, and that somebody else could do things better. Over the years, I have visited schools and local authorities around the country and I found that the one thing most school leaders and most people in schools want is a good, supportive local authority that knows the system, supports schools, knows what the difficulties are and tries to do everything it can to make the education system a success across the piece. I am worried that the Bill will be atomising—there will be a direct relationship between a big central Department and schools, with no intermediary. The people who were the intermediaries—local government—have high skills and it would be sad if the Government wasted them.

[Charlotte Leslie]

The hon. Gentleman has put in a lot of work on education and has great expertise. On the point about demoralising the work force, in my work on education, where I may have more expertise, I have seen great demoralisation of head teachers and deputy heads because of the amount of bureaucracy they feel they have to do. The head teacher of Avonmouth primary school, where I am a governor, says that the burden of bureaucracy has become unbearable. Dealing with bureaucracy may be one of the main incentives for people to seek academy freedoms. Some of the work force have been demoralised by excessive bureaucracy and they may seek to alleviate it.

[Mr Sheerman]

I am afraid that I must disagree with the hon. Lady. I go into many schools, and one head will say, “I can’t do my job; I can’t cope; I can’t do anything, because of the amount of bureaucracy, red tape and all that,” yet in an almost exactly similar school, with a good leadership, the head will say, “Bureaucracy, red tape. We skip over that. We run the school for the children. And that all comes later, and we deal with it.” I am always suspicious, because I guarantee that the House will spend time over the next years introducing all sort of things—health and safety, child protection and child safety measures, and so on—and that we will end up with more bureaucracy in schools. We will gladly do both things at the same time.

[Dr Pugh]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Sheerman]

May I continue for the moment?

I worry about the speed at which the Bill is being considered and the fact that the debates in Committee will be constrained to three days. That makes the Bill look like a bit of panicky measure. A couple of interventions rather upset me. An hon. Gentleman—an old friend of mine—asked whether the policy was similar to that on grant-maintained status, as did another Back Bencher. I hope that the policy is not a reversion to that. If that is all that it is—a return to the old grant-maintained situation—I really believe that it is a backward step.

Let us put all this into perspective. Sometimes, even among colleagues in the Tea Room, I ask, “How many secondary schools do you think there are in England?” and they often get it wildly wrong. There are 3,500, and there are about 20,000 primary schools. Many people do not know that. How many academies did we aim for? Two hundred, rising to 400—between 5% and 6% of secondary schools have academy status. It was a pilot, which makes me wonder why it caused so much passion, even among Labour Members. Indeed, the shadow Secretary of State was very passionately against academies at one stage in his career, early in the days when I was Chairman of the Select Committee. Academies were an interesting and successful pilot. They have not been given enough time. On the freedoms that we gave academies, yes, schools should be able to have that status on licence if they meet the standard.

I want to pursue another point. I, too, believe that the most worrying part of the Bill is the bit about free schools. I can understand the argument for academies, and I know why the Government are doing this—I can understand all that—but the question of free schools worries me indeed, not because of the suggestion that, somehow, the private sector will insidiously come in and run our schools. The Labour Government used the private sector all the time in education. Of course, we have to do so, and it is a healthy relationship: the private sector is a very good partner. It delivers all sorts of things. We called it into a number of local authorities to sort things out when they failed. So let us view the private sector as part of the solution and the answer, rather than thinking that it will come in through the back door.

I am worried about a different feature of free schools. When Tony Blair was very keen on faith schools, those of us who looked at them were concerned about the way in which they were delivered too easily to people who just said, “I want a faith school,” because they happened to have a certain brand of religion or to be a certain kind of Muslim or Christian. Without great care, that way leads to a deal of disunity and the break-up of social cohesion in our towns and cities. I would hate free schools to lead to that break-up. Baroness Sharp put it very well in the other place when she said that every area has a community of schools and that, if the legislation breaks up that community, we will put ourselves in great danger of harming the unity of our communities.

Consultation with schools, pupils and parents is very important, but it is still very weak under the Bill. The more I look at the Bill, the more concerned I am. We take so much notice of the governors of a school at one moment in time, but the school will go on for another 50 or 100 years. The school that I went to is, I think, still going after 500 years. The fact is that asking the question of one small set of school governors today will bind in a whole community, and the school at the centre of the community. The community should have something to say about the future of education in that community.

All the work that I have done in education has led me to believe that we have to give schools a decent chance of teaching a representative bunch of kids from the community—not all the poorest, not all the richest, but a good blend. Sometimes one has to be brave in how one selects; sometimes one has to be very brave. People should read the Sutton Trust report on how to handle school admissions. The Committee that I chaired did some very good work on admissions, and the schools admissions scene has been transformed in the direction that we recommended. There will always be schools that are better than others, and envy about not being able to get into those better schools. The Sutton Trust is right: the only way to sort that out is to have a fair system of banding, and when there is high demand for school places, there should be admission by ballot.

17:11

[Mr Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), the former Select Committee Chairman, who rightly gave full credit to Members on both sides of the House for our commitment to furthering the interests of all children and ensuring the best in education. He raised concerns about the free schools policy, of which I am a strong advocate. I join my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in having visited a KIPP—knowledge is power programme—academy in a very deprived neighbourhood in Washington DC, where I saw tremendous educational outcomes. It was one of the most exciting schools that I have ever visited. I want that kind of provision and flexibility opened up in this country, so that people have access to decent state schools, particularly people in communities that are too often deprived of any such schools. That is one of the most exciting parts of the Bill.

I am delighted to support the widening of the academies programme. Again, I have form on that issue, on which I am entirely consistent. Perhaps it is a great vice of mine, in politics, to be consistent. The former Secretary of State criticised the involvement of the private sector, but he, as the former Select Committee Chairman pointed out, presided over the involvement of the private sector in school provision and in local education authority provision. I am entirely relaxed about the involvement of the private sector, where it is appropriate.

More fundamentally than that, I have always taken the view that good, well-led schools benefit most if they have the maximum freedom and liberty to flourish, without excessive bureaucratic intervention. One of the main reasons why I take that view is that I represent a constituency that has possibly the best state schools in the country, and nearly all the secondary schools were grant-maintained prior to the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. I sat on the Committee that considered that Bill, and strongly opposed the Government’s efforts to remove grant-maintained status.

There was a bit of banter earlier about the qualities of grant-maintained schools. My experience locally was that they very much worked together. They took great pride in co-operating and built exactly the community of schooling and education to which Members on both sides of the House referred, but they did so because they wanted to, and because they saw that as part of what would bring greater success to their school, and better educational outcomes for the whole community. I have always supported that. Now I find that the enthusiasm in my constituency, in secondary schools in particular, for the possibility of academy status is precisely because so many of them have a positive experience of grant-maintained status and would very much like to see returned at least the freedoms that they enjoyed under it.

Having sat through the proceedings of the School Standards and Framework Bill and served on its Standing Committee and those of other education Bills in previous Parliaments, I was pleased when the previous Government eventually saw the error of their ways. Having removed some freedoms from grant-maintained schools and moved on to foundation schools, which were more restrictive, they wanted to build on the academies model precisely because they started to understand that greater freedom, fewer restrictions and less bureaucracy for those schools would be the way for them to continue to raise standards.

The notion that one can create independent state-funded schools is very radical, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State rightly chided the Opposition for being conservative in their response to the Bill. We are being radical: we are pushing forward measures that will not only free schools to become more successful, but start to break down the barriers—some have referred to it as apartheid in the education system—between the state and independent sectors. I would certainly welcome more independent schools choosing to enter the state sector as academies.

[Glenda Jackson]

Is it really a radical policy? Surely the Government are proposing to take us back to the bad old days of grammar schools and secondary schools. That will be the next step, because the new academies will have their own admissions policies, and they will enforce them through an entrance examination. Do we really want to go back to that?

[Mr Brady]

If only the hon. Lady were right. I am sure she knows that I would very much like to go back to exactly that system, because we have it in my constituency, and that, I suspect, is why the schools in Trafford are better than those in her constituency. However, that is probably a debate for another day.

Today, we have the questions of consistency and of real belief in what was proposed by the previous Government and is now proposed by this Government. I was the shadow Schools Minister at the time of the legislation that became the Education Act 2002, and at that point I was pleased that we, the then Opposition, looked at the Government’s proposals in an entirely open-minded way, saw the benefits of the academies model being offered and welcomed it. In our critique and scrutiny of the then Government, we urged them to go further, to have the courage of their convictions and to ensure that more schools could benefit from the freedoms on offer. In that regard, the removal of the requirement for a sponsor is an important step forward.

[Dr Pugh]

The hon. Gentleman is making an interesting contribution, but he used the expression “educational apartheid”. Under his analysis, and the legislation before us, there will still be an educational apartheid: there will be schools with freedoms, and schools with lesser freedoms or no freedom at all.

[Mr Brady]

I should like more and more schools to attain the outstanding status that will allow them to move more rapidly on to academy status, but a policy of greater freedom for schools that can exercise it well, in the interests of their pupils, is clearly beneficial.

At the time of the 2002 Act, we urged the Government to go further, to accelerate their programme and to have the courage of their convictions. As I look at the reasoned amendment, I really wish that the current Opposition had taken a similarly generous approach and been prepared to accept not only that there is enormous common ground in the proposals before us, but that we had reached the point at which the previous Labour Government and the Conservative party had recognised the real value in giving greater freedom and flexibility to schools and more autonomy to good head teachers.

The previous Government were moving forward slowly but we want to move forward more quickly, and I really wish they would join us in that. Instead, in the discussions relating to the Bill, including by the shadow Secretary of State today, the Labour party has moved towards seeing the whole purpose of the academies programme that it pursued as being about funding. It sees the importance of academies as being the insertion of a sponsor, an outside partner, preferably investing a very large sum in sponsorship to help fund the school. Fundamentally, however, we see the central point of academies as being the freedom that they provide. We understand the importance of allowing good heads, governing bodies and teachers to get on with their jobs and teach.

I started by advising Members to be entirely consistent and I will finish entirely consistently. Having spent the Committee and Report stages of what became the 2002 Act criticising the previous Government for being too timid in their approach to academies and to giving good schools more freedom, I encourage my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to demonstrate with vigour the courage of our convictions and see this as just the beginning of what should be a truly radical, powerful revolution that will lead to much better state education in this country.

17:21

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

Coming from my background, having worked for 25 years in education and particularly in special educational needs, I am used to making decisions about children and young people based upon what works for them and what is in their best interests, not upon ideology or my own philosophical beliefs. I am therefore concerned about the speed with which the Bill is being rushed through the House and the impact that that will have on children with special educational needs. I ask the Secretary of State, although he has left the Chamber, to think carefully about that matter.

Having examined the Bill in some detail, I do not believe that there has been any detailed analysis of its impact on vulnerable children, particularly those with special educational needs. I am particularly concerned about two things, based on what we know about the small number of academies that currently exist. First, we know that that group of children has not had a good deal in admissions, accountability and exclusion. I am concerned that if we increase the number of academies massively without considering in detail the impact that it will have on that vulnerable group of children, we will simply make the problem much greater.

We know that the educational achievement of vulnerable children—those with SEN, those living in care and those living in poverty—is lower than the average in the school population. Local authority managers of services such as admissions at least try to ensure that those children are not systematically disadvantaged when it comes to admission to good schools. By taking admissions out of the hands of local authorities and handing them over to academies to administer on their own behalf, we run the risk of taking any pretence of fairness out of the system and systematically disadvantaging the already disadvantaged.

Currently, local authorities have no power to name an academy on a statement of special educational needs, even when a parent particularly wants it and the local authority that has assessed the needs of the child in question believes that the academy can meet that child’s needs. I have come across that a number of times as an assistant director, when I have looked carefully at a child’s assessment and believed that an academy can meet their needs, and when the parent particularly wants their child to go to that academy, but the academy simply refuses to consider the point.

[Bill Esterson]

Does my hon. Friend agree that another problem with the Bill is that the framework does not require academies to have special educational needs co-ordinators who are qualified, with appropriate training? That is another weakness of the SEN provisions.

[Pat Glass]

My hon. Friend is right. When will we realise that children with special educational needs need specialists? That is why they are special—they require specialists. It is foolish to say that anyone in a school whom the head teacher chooses to act as an unqualified support assistant can take the part of an SEN co-ordinator.

Currently, cases where an academy decides that it does not want to take a child or cannot meet the child’s needs go to an adjudicator. That takes valuable time and seems designed to put off all but the most determined parents. Parents of children with SEN already have difficult lives and we seem to be putting up additional, systematic barriers to prevent them from securing a place at a local academy that they believe can meet their child’s needs. I fear that that will lead to selective admissions through the back door in the new breed of academies and will make the situation that much worse for so many more children.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

The hon. Lady is making a persuasive case and I share some of her concerns. If my memory of the equalities impact assessment is correct, existing academies take rather more statemented children and those with school support and school support plus—I think that I am getting my terminology wrong—than the average school. On the evidence so far, it does not look as if academies fail to take on their fair share of children with special needs.

[Pat Glass]

The picture varies throughout the country. Some schools in some parts of the country take a larger percentage of children with special educational needs, but some schools in other parts of the country—I think that it is particularly true in London—do not. It is another postcode lottery. It depends on how good the system is across the piece.

[Mr Stuart]

Does the hon. Lady think that the pupil premium model might be useful in ensuring that children from the poorest families have additional resources to go with them, which in some ways makes them more attractive to schools? Does she agree that a system that provides incentives for schools to attract and look after the most vulnerable is better than one of bureaucratic diktat and fiat that forces children on schools that are reluctant to have them? Could not the former prove more productive in the end?

[Pat Glass]

That is the problem—we simply do not know. We have not got the detail. I do not know what the pupil premium will bring. I was talking to a head teacher today who told me, “On the face of it, the premium looks attractive. However, I suspect that when I get it, I will actually lose the standards fund and lose additional educational needs funding. I may end up with less, not more funding for my vulnerable children.” That is the problem. The devil is in the detail and we do not have the detail. The Bill is being rushed through, without giving us the opportunity to look at those matters.

I am concerned that academies will be reluctant to admit vulnerable children because, through no fault of their own, they do not perform as well as their peers. The likelihood of vulnerable children gaining admission, particularly to outstanding schools, will therefore be reduced. I could see nothing in the Bill—I have looked at it carefully—about making the admission of vulnerable children a must. I know only too well that telling head teachers and governors that they should admit is very different from telling them that they must do so. I would like further reassurances that academies’ admissions policies will ensure that children with special educational needs are not disadvantaged.

I am concerned about the accountability framework, particularly for children with SEN. There is no clarity in the Bill on where a parent goes for redress if an academy fails to deliver on SEN, whether the child is statemented or not. Currently, parents can go to the local authority if a school fails to deliver, and ultimately to the SEN tribunal. If a school fails to deliver, a parent has redress through judicial review, but there is no clarity on whether such redress will be available under the Bill, so parents simply will not know where to go if an academy fails to deliver.

It is unclear who will monitor the progress of SEN children in academies. If we have learned anything in the past 10 or 15 years, it is that when the spotlight is put on the performance of vulnerable children, they improve. We have seen that with looked-after children. If there is no clarity on who is monitoring the performance of SEN children, they will simply be lost in the system.

Before my voice packs up altogether, I shall move on to exclusions. I have worked in a number of local authorities, in each of which I have analysed permanent and fixed-term exclusions. The pattern is the same. In my experience, 75% of children who are excluded on a fixed-term or permanent basis have special educational needs. Of those, my analysis shows that 100% have either behavioural difficulties linked to autistic spectrum disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

TreeHouse, a charity that works with children with autism, has found that SEN children are nine times more likely to be excluded from school, and the situation is more acute in academies. If we massively increase the number of academies, we will increase the problem.

[Andrew Percy]

The hon. Lady makes a powerful point, with which I have some sympathy, but she must also accept that the Bill gives schools the ability to tailor their curriculum much more. She will know that part of the problem of dealing with some of our more difficult children is that the curriculum is too restrictive for them. The Bill will give schools more freedom, so it has some positive aspects.

[Pat Glass]

I entirely agree that part of the exclusion problem is the formalisation of the curriculum, which in many cases happens far too early. However, my experience of academies does not give me hope. I do not expect that vast numbers of academies will amend the curriculum to meet the needs of SEN children. Which children are failing? The gap between those who achieve the most and those at the bottom is greatest at outstanding or high-achieving schools. Although I welcome freedom in the curriculum, I have no hope that it will be used for SEN children.

The proposals in the Bill are not well thought out and they are likely to affect adversely the education and life chances of children with SEN. They will make the already difficult lives of children and parents harder, and they will become part of the problem, not part of the solution. I ask simply that we take the time to look at the Bill in relation to the most vulnerable children in our society. If we take that time, the chances are that we will make the Bill that much better for that many more children.

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

May I refer the hon. Lady to clause 1(7), which strengthens the position of children with special educational needs compared with what it was when the previous Government were in power? Under the Bill, academies are on the same footing as maintained schools.

[Pat Glass]

They are on the same footing in terms of funding, but we have no guarantees about what that funding means. That is what I meant by the problem with the detail. The Bill talks about funding without going into the details and saying what it means. What is the pupil premium and does it affect additional educational needs funding? Who will be responsible for non-statemented pupils? All those details are simply not in the Bill.

17:28

[Dr John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

Nobody in the Chamber has ever argued that good government benefits by legislating in a hurry—nobody sane at any rate—and nobody in education has ever believed that the best time to consult schools and parents is during the school holidays, so the puzzle is this: why is the Secretary of State making us stay in and, with some haste, pass this legislation, when pressing matters such as reviews of discipline, special needs and so on need to be undertaken? Why this sudden and seemingly unjustified imposition, when there appear, on the face of it, to be more pressing things to do?

The Secretary of State is, I believe, extraordinarily well intentioned, dedicated, polite and considerate, and he is keener to convince than to coerce, but on this issue he seems to be possessed by a messianic enthusiasm characteristic of Tony Blair—in fact, he admitted as much in the debate—who, let it be said, never let practical problems cloud pleasing prospects. I find it perfectly understandable that the new Secretary of State, not content with simply running his Department well, wants to make his mark. The way that is customarily done is by introducing legislation—legislating for change. The easiest thing that a Schools Minister can do is change the governance of schools. It is what Education Ministers most commonly do—although not necessarily what they do best—so we have had comprehensives, direct grant schools, city technology colleges, grant-maintained schools, specialist schools and academies. There are many variations.

Ministers argue at every twist and turn that each latest new governance proposal will eradicate bad schools, bad teaching and poor pupil performance. If only it were that easy. Addiction to academies is simply the latest manifestation of this tendency. The Blair/Adonis academies demonstrated the well-known truth that if a school has a fresh start, plenty of money, new staff and a lovely building, it will produce at least a temporary fillip in results. What those academies did not demonstrate —as hon. Members must know—is that academy governance and its freedoms made any difference whatever.

I recommend that Members study carefully the National Audit Office report on academies. It showed conclusively that academies in deprived areas produced no better results than the previous excellence in cities programme, and at much greater cost. I really do instruct Members to get hold of that report, read it carefully and see that what made the difference was the funding, not the governance. Tellingly too, that report leaves out the effect on neighbouring schools. It does not even take that into consideration as a problem.

The Bill suggests that simply calling schools academies without the dosh will work some special magic. I am personally intrigued by this relabelling exercise. There may be a day when simply calling an institution a “school” might be some sort of insult or an indication of failure. I do not know whether other hon. Members have read Evelyn Waugh’s “Decline and Fall” but in it the hapless Paul Pennyfeather seeks a teaching job through an agency having been expelled from Oxford. He is told by the man at the agency:

“We class schools…into…Leading School, First-rate School, Good School and School. Frankly…School is pretty bad”.

Interestingly enough, Waugh’s unfortunate character Paul Pennyfeather was expelled from Oxford for indecency, having been de-bagged by drunken members of what Waugh calls the Bollinger Club. There is a slight resonance in that.

There is no particularly persuasive evidence that a plethora of independent academies produces better outcomes than a network of schools organised by a good local authority. Studies of parallel arrangements in Sweden and the USA have been similarly inconclusive. They are not the ringing endorsement that the Secretary of State described, and those who are well informed know that only too well.

[Vernon Coaker]

Does the hon. Gentleman find it interesting that in the debates that have taken place so far on the Academies Bill there has been little reference to the evidence pointing to the opposite conclusion to that arrived at by Government on free schools or charter schools? Even more remarkably, there has been little reference to the equality impact assessment published alongside this Bill, which demonstrates some serious concerns about achievements in academies with respect to special needs pupils, girls and ethnic minorities. I am not against academies, but I would have thought that those conclusions would suggest to a Government who were not acting with such haste that they should proceed with some caution.

[Dr Pugh]

The shadow Minister has the advantage of me. I do know that there are a number of studies of charter schools in the United States, and that some are for and some against. The meta-analysis is inconclusive. It does not show that charter schools necessarily produce the wholesale educational improvement that the Secretary of State mentioned in his contribution.

There is no evidence that schools with all their current freedoms—and the ordinary council school has much more freedom than it ever used to have—feel oppressed rather than supported by local authorities. However, as has been said several times today, there is ample evidence that they are sick to death of the bureaucratic overload imposed by the Department and Ministers. It is downright shoddy and unfair to suggest that schools can be released from the bullying and bossiness of central Government only if they break their relationship with the local authority. It is dishonest to suggest that academy status is about addressing underperformance, when it is those who overperform who are to be fast-tracked and those in the leafy suburbs who are most likely to apply.

[Ian Mearns]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, in regard to the other part of the coalition, the cat is out of the bag, in that some Conservative Members regard academy status as grant-maintained status reinvented, and as a sort of promised land towards which they have been working? Part of the underlying problem is that, with money for services such as special educational needs, and school improvements in particular, being dragged back from local education authorities, schools that are already regarded as outstanding and excellent will be taking from local authorities money that would otherwise be used to improve other schools, which there will no longer be the capacity to do.

[Dr Pugh]

To a certain extent, it seems to be a case of “to those that have, shall be given”. It is also highly unlikely that parents in the most deprived areas, where attainment is low, will have the skills, the capacity or the conviction to set up their own schools. Free schools will probably be created elsewhere, in areas that are already stocked with quite decent and reasonable schools.

Even if we can force ourselves to ignore the slim evidence and the implausibility of some of the arguments, we should not blind ourselves to the risks involved. Those risks have been mentioned here and in the other place. They include the risk of a two-tier education system—the word “apartheid” has been used—and the risk of knock-on consequences for other schools. A number of Members have also mentioned the risks to special educational needs and support services. I also invite Members to inspect the Bill’s treatment of charity law, which could create the risk of profiteering skewing schooling at some time in the future. There is also a risk of diminished public accountability for a public resource, and an enormous risk in the current circumstances, with the £150 billion deficit, that we might lose economies of scale and consequently spend more money to less effect. Furthermore, we might have to bear the huge capital cost of providing extra buildings while underusing the present buildings in an anarchic, unplanned education market.

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

My hon. Friend seems to be constructing an argument that freedom is a bad thing. He has described a number of risks, and yes, there are risks, but surely life involves risk. Does he not agree that the word “liberal” is derived from “liberty”? I find it confusing and surprising that he is making such a strong case against liberty.

[Dr Pugh]

I have never thought that liberalism had anything to do with precipitate, foolish and unresearched activity. I am not in any way suggesting that that is what we have here, but I am saying that there are valid reasons for an essentially rational liberal to make fair and cautious points about where we might be going with this, and to want to be assured that what we are doing will have the consequences that we expect.

There are risks involved, many of which have been voiced in the other place as well as here. To be fair, Ministers have tried to forestall those risks, privately and publicly, and to placate people with their mellifluous tones. I welcome that and I accept it; it is a good thing, as it encourages rational discourse. But, however convinced or unconvinced we might be, what negates all those assurances and soothing words, and what gives the game away and convinces me that this is a semblance, and a rational coating perhaps disguising an unbending ideology—although I hope not—and a visceral dislike of local authorities, is not the words that Ministers have used but the haste with which they have moved.

[Annette Brooke]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that, although the Bill now has an amendment on consultation, the desired aim to turn some schools into academies by September seems totally consistent with those words and with what might happen in real life?

[Dr Pugh]

Having worked in schools for a large part of my life, and knowing the degree of organisation required during the summer recess to prepare for the new term, I find it distinctly improbable that any such schools will be ready to run on a completely different footing in September. The Minister clearly disagrees, and I defer to his knowledge of how things might go. I have to rely on my own experience in these circumstances, however. I have to emphasise that there is a big difference between legislation for a pet project, which we have seen many times in this House, particularly in the Blair years, and mature and considered legislation, and it revolves around whether it is properly handled in this place.

[Bill Esterson]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that schools in his constituency and mine have made inquiries about academy status and that one head teacher in his constituency commented that the whole process was a shambles? Does not that underline his point about the haste with which this legislation is being carried out?

[Dr Pugh]

It is not yet a shambles, but I welcomed the intervention from the Chairman of the Select Committee, suggesting that there is a proper and appropriate way to proceed with an important piece of legislation like this. I do not think that we have yet hit on that way here. What is the best I can say of this legislation? It does not remind me of the new politics; it reminds me—though Opposition Members might not want to hear this—of new Labour. That should give us cause for concern in this corner of the House.

17:46

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

We have heard excellent speeches from both sides of the House, but I rise with feelings of real unease about the proposals in this Bill. My unease is real as my constituents’ children will be denied the promise, via Building Schools for the Future funding, of a new secondary school in the town of Guisborough. This school is already the largest on Teesside and, under BSF, it would have partnered a state-of-the-art special needs school on the same campus, serving the whole of East Cleveland. My unease is also real because the Bill contains provisions to allow new, highly dubious and experimental schools to flourish, while schools like the Laurence Jackson, which has given decades of service to our local community, are being actively undermined by the Con-Dem coalition.

I also feel anger as these new academies will be allowed to flourish in a deliberate attempt to marginalise old, long-established local education authorities. Indeed, the new academies will also flourish at the real expense of the equally long-established and highly regarded diocesan school structure, which gave the Church of England and the Roman Catholic community a direct input into education.

I am particularly concerned about the Bill’s implications for the further growth of faith schools—in the context of the recent history of academies, this really means fundamentalist Christian groups—and their ability to deploy significant funds to endow academies. In my constituency, we already have the King’s academy, based in the Middlesbrough estate of Coulby Newham. That school was the brainchild of the Vardy Foundation, which I would describe as an evangelist group. To its credit, the foundation adheres to the national curriculum at the King’s academy—and in other schools it controls—although it has in the past hit local authority headlines for things such as allegedly banning Harry Potter books from the school library. The King’s academy is popular with parents—partly, I believe, because it still organises its classes around the national curriculum. However, this Bill removes that condition. Although I do not believe that the Vardy Foundation will change its stance, the ability to do so is entrenched by this Bill.

Put simply, this deregulation of public education will significantly increase the power and influence of any fringe movement. Worse still, these changes may turn out to be irreversible, entrenching views held by only a small minority and allowing them to be propagated.

[Steve Baker]

Speaking as a committed Christian, I am most surprised to hear the hon. Gentleman talking in these terms about minorities. If Conservative Members spoke in these terms about different minorities, I am sure he would be quick to condemn us. Although I am a committed Christian, I spent yesterday evening in the mosque. I was happy to be there with those gentlemen; I get on terribly well with them. I ask the hon. Gentleman to use more moderate language in his description of Christians. I think Christians in this country have had enough; they deserve to be treated with the same sort of respect that the hon. Gentleman would expect for any minority.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

Speaking as a Christian myself—a Roman Catholic Christian—I take the hon. Gentleman’s words into account. However, I am not making any allegations about minorities; I am talking about checks and balances for all minorities with respect to other minorities.

Put simply, the deregulation of public education will significantly increase the power and influence of any fringe movement. Worse still, as I said, these changes may turn out to be irreversible, entrenching views held by only a small minority, allowing them to be propagated to young and impressionable children under the veil of accepted educational practice. Such potential developments fill me with great fear. I can see the perverse realisation of young children, some of primary age, being taught or indoctrinated with views that border on the near fanatical—and possibly in totally unsuitable premises. There are also curriculum-related concerns about such matters as the teaching of creationism, and the total absence of any compulsion to ensure that elements of personal, social or health education are taught. I believe that some clauses will serve as a Trojan horse in that regard.

Earlier, I referred to maintained schools that are managed by their respective dioceses. I should say that I am a product of Roman Catholic primary, secondary and sixth-form education. Those schools worked in harmony with the local education authority, not against it or separately from it. The same applies to self-governing further education and sixth-form colleges. The National Governors Association, the National Grammar Schools Association, the Catholic board of education and many major charities are now urging the coalition to slow down their consultation for precisely that reason. Indeed, the Liberal Democrat Education Association opposes the Bill.

None of those organisations asked for the Bill, and I suspect that, with good reason, they will be wary and fearful of what may result from it. It could lead to the creation of religious academies which, unlike maintained faith schools, would lack the moderating and sensible constraints and influence of local communities. Such academies would be separate from society, big or otherwise. Unamended and without clarification, the Bill would allow academies run by religious groups to devise and use their own curriculums, to the exclusion of arguments and facts that might question the minority beliefs of those groups. Some provisions might well allow academies to discriminate against children in their admissions policies on the basis of their perception of parental beliefs.

As I said earlier, mainstream faith schools will be fearful of some of the ideas contained in the Bill. Some of its provisions could ride roughshod over them. Clause 5(8) would force a state-maintained school with a religious character—a faith school—automatically to become an independent school with that religious character. It would permanently remove any possibility that state-funded religious schools could choose to become inclusive academies. Such draconian and one-sided powers would remove any element of choice and freedom from the existing school governing body, and thus run counter to the parts of the Bill that refer to increasing the autonomy of schools.

The dialectic between appearance and reality seems to be a recurring theme in the coalition Government. When it comes to consultation, they give the appearance of thoughtful, reticent appreciation of the opinions of all who will potentially be involved, while in reality—in contravention of the procedure for potentially controversial legislation—the Bill was introduced in the House of Lords and then rushed through, and is likely to be given even less time in this place. Indeed, the Secretary of State’s insistence that its passage must be completed before the summer recess may mean only four days of scrutiny.

Will the coalition trot out the same old mantras? Will they say that this is necessary because of the deficit, or that it is the new politics of radical reform? That is more than likely. The “words of appearance” will give birth to a reality of fringe interests. Representatives of such interests, often with deep pockets, will muscle in on the people’s education system, presumably at the expense of the pay, terms and conditions of workers in that system.

Professional school support staff play a vital role in every school, although they are often part-time and low-paid. As a result of the Bill, school support staff as well as teachers would be directly employed by the new academies. That would take staff outside nationally agreed and recognised pay and conditions, leaving them much more vulnerable to cuts, poor working conditions and, fundamentally, uncertainty. Support staff would not be covered by the new School Support Staff Negotiating Body, which has been developed over several years to deliver long-awaited fairness and consistent, decent equal pay for classroom support work that has increased in terms of both scope and demand.

[Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman believe that the content of the Bill differs significantly from legislation produced and speeches made by the former Prime Minister, the former Member for Sedgefield?

[Tom Blenkinsop]

The point is that we do not know. Because of the pace at which we are dealing with the Bill, we do not know what some elements of it actually mean. We have no definitive evidence. Members on both sides of the House have gone into some detail, but have not provided enough specificity for us to discuss it.

Many support staff, unlike teachers, are not paid during the school holidays. The SSSNB was given cross-party support in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, and has a broad range of school, local authority, religious and employee representation. The Bill would effectively transfer workers to the private sector, unilaterally, without due consultation or consideration. It has the potential to undermine the previous consensual approach of all parties to the creation of the SSSNB. That is certainly not an indication of the “new politics”.

However, despite my obvious criticism—and if we are to take the coalition Government at their word—we can agree that there may be merits in widening the educational family beyond the tried and tested mainstream of the LEA. In the past, academies have had a variety of sponsors. Some, to which I have referred, have had a particular religious conviction. Some have been part of higher education—for instance, Teesside university, which is committed to becoming a partner in the sponsorship of Freeborough college, in the East Cleveland part of my constituency. The NHS is also involved, but most sponsors have come from commercial business, although given the coalition’s recent pace and predilection, the NHS may join the long list of private enterprises. Commercial business sponsors range from Lord Harris, of carpet warehouse fame, to companies such as the United Learning Trust, which has links with major public schools, and firms such as Vodafone, Barclays and Honda (UK).

If representatives of one side of society and commerce can be partners in schools, what about those on the other side? I should be fascinated to hear the Minister’s reaction to a new concept that I want to float. I simply suggest that the Trades Union Congress, or individual TUC unions, be encouraged to set up a trade union school or schools. We might also ask representatives of the co-operative movement—an organisation that was dedicated to mutualism, harmony and fairness centuries before Cameron’s “big society” road to Damascus—whether they would be interested in being part of a wider educational family.

The trade unions have a long history of propagation of adult education through institutions such as Ruskin college in Oxford. The TUC still has its own education department, and individual trade unions, with TUC encouragement and help from local learning and skills councils, have developed successful and widespread union learning campuses in workplaces where they have recognition agreements. The co-operative movement is historically associated with early socialist Sunday schools designed to give children a broader view of the world than could be obtained through Victorian churches, and even today it helps to sponsor educational development in parts of the developing world where it sources food for consumers.

The country, and even the coalition Government, can live with co-operative forms of enterprise. The Government could even float the concept as a way of managing former central or local state provision. If a state can ensure our children’s education with car dealers, carpet salesmen and other wider commerce, why should it not do the same with the democratically elected expression of working people, the trade union movement?

I look forward to the Minister’s response to the points that I have made.

17:57

[Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)]

I shall try to be brief, as we keep being reminded that time is of the essence. I believe in quality, not length, when it comes to debate.

I understand the points made by Opposition Members, but I think we should recognise that we are discussing yet another reform of the education system because there is a problem. There is a two-tier system. Our schools have gone down the ranks in terms of international comparison, and the poorest in our society have borne the brunt. We have the biggest gap between private and state education anywhere in the world. As has already been pointed out today, only 45 of the 80,000 children receiving free school meals have gone to Oxbridge. That worries Members on this side of the House as well as Opposition Members. Another problem is that those who have money can buy into a good state school, and those who are ideologically opposed to private schools can spend the equivalent of private school fees by moving into the catchment area of a state school, often a faith school.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady said that our schools were performing less well on the OECD list. Does she accept that, using the same comparison earlier, the Secretary of State did not acknowledge that since the break-up of the Soviet Union a number of states have entered the system, and that the Soviet Union had a fairly good education system?

[Charlotte Leslie]

The right hon. Gentleman has made an interesting point, which I will take on board.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

The Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, but my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was talking about comparisons between 1999 and today. I just wanted to put that on the record.

[Charlotte Leslie]

My hon. Friend makes a point that I was not going to make for the sake of making progress in my comments, but I thank him very much for that clarification.

Some clarification is required in respect of the Bill as well. There is not some kind of compulsion whereby politicians are driving schools to claim these freedoms. The Bill simply seeks to lift the lid on the ambition, desire and passion that already exists, such as in outstanding schools whose head teachers have said to me, “Isn’t it amazing that if I was at a bad school I’d be able to get the freedoms I want to run my school, but we are just doing too well to have them?” The Bill removes that perverse incentive, and it enables parents and—to mention a group that we have not discussed enough in our debate—teachers to act: it enables parents and ideologically driven teachers who want to help the most vulnerable in our society by starting small schools, along the lines of the American charter schools, in those communities that most need them.

Many of the people who express an interest about this subject to me are those very teachers. They are the kinds of teachers who may be involved in Teach First and the Future Leaders programme. They are people who desperately want to improve the lot of those children who are on free school meals in the most deprived parts of our communities. It deserves a little more recognition in this debate that the Bill aims to lift the lid on passion, belief and desire that already exist to improve education. It is not about compulsion; that is not what we on these Benches are all about.

I understand the concern felt on the Opposition Benches that it is the good schools that will benefit from academy status. I would share those concerns if very substantial amounts of capital investment were to be going into those very good schools, but that is not the case. The good news is that there can be improvement without enormous injections of taxpayers’ money; after 13 years, that obviously comes as very good news to all Members. That improvement will allow good head teachers who lead outstanding schools to have the freedom to innovate, and also to offer their innovations to struggling schools. One aspect of the Bill that I particularly welcome is that it will not only encourage but require good schools that take on academy status to link up, not with outstanding schools as the shadow Secretary of State rather oddly implied, but with the weakest schools that most need that help. That point needs reiterating.

Another aspect of the Bill that should be highlighted is the fact that, for the first time, academy proprietors and sponsors will be subject to freedom of information legislation. Freedom of information has, of course, made the past year and a bit extremely rocky for this House, but, all in all, I think it is an extremely good thing and I am extremely pleased that that kind of public accountability will apply to academies and free schools so that we have a proper test of whether they are actually doing what we want and expect them to do.

I was around in the corridors of this House—although not as a Member, and nor, alas, in the corridors of power—when the Education and Inspections Act 2006 was making its progress as a Bill, and I remember that when the concept of trust schools was first floated there was a huge amount of sincere panic on the Labour Benches that that would open the floodgates and that it would be the end of the educational world and we would all be going to hell in a handcart because local authorities would not be able to control schools as they had previously. Now, four years on, has the world ended? No. Four years on, has trust status enabled Orchard school in my constituency to link up as a trust with the Bridge learning campus, which is driving very good improvements? Yes it has. Therefore, I say to Opposition Members that there was a lot of panic about the 2006 Act, and I also suspect that a lot of what is being said now is conjecture and expressions of fear about the liberation of forces that are not Government forces. I hope that alleviates some of the concerns among those on the Opposition Benches.

It is important not to see this Bill in isolation. We cannot solve everything through structural reform alone. It is certainly part of the equation, but we need to remember that there are far more measures in the coalition manifesto that tackle standards issues—and standards issues in respect of struggling, weak schools. If we were to see this Bill alone as the sole coalition offering on education, some of the concerns expressed by Opposition Members might carry more weight, but it does not stand alone. We also have reforms for improving discipline in struggling schools, which is one of the things that makes teaching in such schools so very difficult. Also, the pupil premium will send money directly to those children who most need it; of course there is work to be done on that, but that is what this House exists to do.

One development that I find particularly concerning, and scandalous, is that over the past 10 years pupil referral units have become repositories for children with special educational needs at the same time as special schools have been closed. I know no one wanted that to come about, but the House must address that tendency, and I hope the added responsibility for new academies to take care of children with SEN will improve the situation. I also hope that some of the measures we will be taking forward will look at pupil referral units alongside other society and voluntary organisations that can perform that function better.

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady says the coalition is very concerned to remove disadvantage within our education system. If that is the case, why is it that under these proposals the first schools to become academies will be those that are already deemed to be outstanding?

[Charlotte Leslie]

As I have said, if this involved a huge capital investment going to those outstanding schools, I would not be standing here defending the Bill; instead, I would be pretty horrified. The point is, however, that schools that are outstanding have proved their worth; they know what they are doing and they are doing it well. It is a very easy and simple step to say to those head teachers who are doing well that, with measures of accountability, they should carry on and share their best practice. We would like such freedoms to be extended to all schools, but that has to be done within an accountable structure.

[Bill Esterson]

Does the hon. Lady agree that outstanding schools need help less than schools in lower categories? If she does, does she think it is right that it is outstanding schools that are getting the help, not the schools below those categories?

[Charlotte Leslie]

I will repeat what I said before—and also just note that it is interesting and very pleasing that the hon. Gentleman uses the word “help” in that that suggests that he agrees with Government Members that granting freedom to schools is in fact helpful. However, I repeat the point that this is not loading resources that could go to a school that is struggling onto a school that is not struggling. This is lifting the lid on ability, ambition, desire and aspiration that already exists, and enabling that to come out and flow into those schools that most need it. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, however.

I shall now conclude, as the House always hears enough of talking. A key point comes out of the idea that we can have improvement only through capital investment and rebranding. I have heard concerns that there will be an enormous amount of expenditure on rebranding those outstanding schools that become academies, but we are not going to do a rebranding exercise and then expect that alone to be the change and do nothing else. There will be no massive investment in a rebranding that does not actually effect change.

All in all, I welcome the Bill. It is real action—it is not money spent merely on rebranding—and it liberates the knowledge of professionals and also the desire of professionals to improve children’s lives and opportunities that I believe has been stifled for far too long.

18:08

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie), who made a constructive and reflective speech.

The starting point when thinking about the Second Reading of this Bill is to consider what are the keys to success for schools reform. We must consider the impact of reform on the following: the quality of leadership in our schools; the standards of teaching and learning in our schools; and the achievement gaps that we know still scar our system both within schools and between schools.

I want to set out six areas of concern. The first of them echoes a concern raised by the Select Committee Chair, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), who described himself as a “structural change sceptic”. I agree with him: it is wrong that structures are so often put first. We on the Labour Benches sometimes did that when we were in government, and I think this Bill repeats the error. I think the key to success in education is the quality of the people involved—the quality of the head teacher and of the rest of the leadership team in a school, the quality of parental engagement, and, of course, the quality of the learning of the young people themselves.

The example of Mossbourne community academy in Hackney is rightly often cited. It is a wonderful, brilliant school and a great advertisement for academies. One of the main reasons for its success is its principal, Michael Wilshaw, who was previously at St Bonaventure’s, a Roman Catholic school in Newham, where he achieved a similarly remarkable transformation. I make that point to emphasise that, first and foremost, it is about the individuals and the personal skills that they bring, rather than the structures.

In Labour’s academy programme—as others, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), have said—our starting point was schools that serve some of the most deprived communities in our country. I had the privilege to serve as Minister for Schools for three years in Tony Blair’s second term, and one of the things I was responsible for was the London challenge, which addressed disadvantage and the failure of schools in some parts of our capital city. Academies were absolutely central to strategy that we pursued in London. However, it was about not just academies but strengthening school leadership, Teach First—the hon. Member for Bristol North West referred to that—and effective networks between schools sharing professional best practice.

In most cases the academies have so far been very positive, and for a number of reasons: their freedom to innovate, the positive involvement of their sponsors, and their focus on good leadership in our schools. I do not accept the argument of the hon. Member for Southport (Dr Pugh) that it was just about the funding, although that was certainly a factor. There is a big difference between autonomy for schools, which I absolutely support, and isolation of individual schools. We need to achieve a combination of autonomy and partnership between different schools if we are to produce a high-quality system, and that is not just about structures.

My second concern, freedom, was eloquently discussed by my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman). If these freedoms do work—by and large, they do—why do we not apply them to all schools? I have not heard a convincing argument from the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats as to why this legislation applies first and foremost to schools that are already outstanding, rather than seeking to apply some of these freedoms to all schools.

[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Gentleman will of course remember that the Secretary of State wrote to all schools inviting them to apply for academy status.

[Stephen Twigg]

Indeed he did, but my understanding is that there will be a fast track for schools that are already outstanding. In responding to me earlier, the Secretary of State rightly said—I will return to this point—that there are many outstanding schools in deprived communities, but we know that on average, most outstanding schools have lower levels of children with free school meals and of children with special educational needs. I therefore want the Government to consider whether it is right to give this fast-track prioritisation to outstanding schools.

The provision in the Bill dealing with schools in special measures leads me to worry about the schools in the middle. If we have academies that are aimed at the outstanding schools, and academies—the Labour academies and those that fit into the second category in the Bill—aimed at schools in the most challenging circumstances, what about the schools in neither of those categories? We need to consider that issue in more detail in Committee.

My third concern, which has already been set out by other Members, is the speed—the haste—with which this proposal is being taken forward. In the excellent debates on the Bill in the other place, Lord Turnbull, who chairs Dulwich college, an academy sponsor in Kent, made a strong case for that view, and I hope the House will bear with me if I quote him:

“The granting of academy status should be seen not just as a reward for past achievement but as an opportunity for future improvement. Candidates should not be invited to write a ‘Yes please, me too’ letter, of which we have had a thousand already; they should be required to reflect on how they can turn these freedoms to advantage. They should think about their governance structures rather than simply carrying on with existing boards that were created in a different regime. The opportunity to bring in new sponsors with new ideas must not be skipped…An aspiring academy…needs to think through afresh its ethos, the curriculum that it offers, its policies on a huge range of issues…A school cannot do a thorough job of preparing its prospectus in that time, let alone get it approved by the department and the as yet non-existent regulator. We should not be encouraging schools to skimp on this important work.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 7 June 2010; Vol. 719, c. 537.]

I echo those words of Lord Turnbull, and I want to illustrate the point further with three examples from my own constituency. Schools feel that they are being rushed into a decision without all the information being available to them, and this links to the earlier decision to end the Building Schools for the Future programme. De La Salle is a Catholic boys’ school in Croxteth, in a very deprived part of my constituency. It is an outstanding school, according to Ofsted, and was due to become an academy under BSF, so its BSF money is currently under review. It wants to know whether it is going to get its investment.

Just next door to that school is St John Bosco, a Catholic girls’ school that was a sample school under BSF. It, too, is an outstanding school in a deprived community. Its head, whom I saw on Saturday, is wondering whether she should apply for academy status in order to get the money the school was going to get under BSF.

A third example, Holly Lodge school, in West Derby—a good, well-respected school with an outstanding curriculum —has lost its BSF funding. Its chair and head of governors do not want it to be an academy, but they are nervous that their school may end up at a disadvantage as these proposals go forward.

All this says to me that the Government should have taken a more considered approach to this legislation. There is a real danger of harm being done, and I am not at all clear—hopefully, the Minister can enlighten me in his closing remarks—how the Secretary of State intends to prioritise schools that are going to become academies. The role that sponsors and partners have played in supporting existing academy schools and trust schools has been absolutely crucial, but if many hundreds of schools become academies straight away, I cannot see how those effective partnerships can be put in place. Therefore, those academies will not be as effective as the existing ones have been.

My fourth concern is fairness—fairness in admissions, funding and exclusions. Autonomy, which I support, must not mean academies avoiding their responsibilities on key issues such as the local behaviour partnerships and how they treat children with special educational needs.

That brings me to my fifth, penultimate concern: the treatment of children with special educational needs and disabilities. My hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) made the case on this issue very strongly. We know that many SEN children are being failed now—not only by academies but by other schools. In Liverpool, many parents of children with autism have come to see me in the two and a half months since I have been their MP to talk about how they feel the system is failing them. Some special schools becoming academies could be a very positive thing for the education of SEN children, but we need to ensure that the mainstream schools are also meeting the needs of all those children.

My final concern is one that other Members have referred to: the role of local government and the balance between the local and the centre. When I was the Minister for Schools, I had to make decisions affecting academies on quite detailed issues. I often felt rather uncomfortable that I, a Minister in London, was making decisions about schools across the country on limited information—and that was when there were fewer than 200 academies. I am concerned that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood said, this Bill could massively centralise power over schools in the hands of the Secretary of State. We need to look at a renewed role for local government in education, but without turning the clock back to the days of local authorities running schools; I do not think anyone is arguing for that.

In the other place, Lord Baker made the case for local authorities taking a lead role on special educational needs. That is important. Local authorities can have a strategic role, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood said, in commissioning places. The local behaviour partnerships that are due to come in this year should go ahead, and local authorities have a key strategic role to play in that regard.

Over-hasty legislation is rarely good legislation. This Bill potentially takes the excellent academies programme in the wrong direction. More freedom is a positive thing, but it should be for all schools—unless there are good reasons not to give it—rather than just for the outstanding schools first. There is a real danger, as I said, for schools in the middle, and for those reasons I am certainly not persuaded that the Bill meets the tests I set out at the beginning of my speech.

18:20

[Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to speak in a debate in which so many excellent contributions have been made. A number of hon. Members, in particular, my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Dr Pugh), have raised the issue of timing. The new coalition Government are beginning a legislative programme and are seeking to set out their stall and signal to those who may well have to take contingent decisions on the legislation exactly what opportunities may be available to them. So I understand why the Government were keen to press ahead with this approach, which was part of the coalition agreement, and to make it absolutely clear how it might be developed by means of a Bill.

The fact that we are considering this Bill on the Floor of the House in seven or eight days is unusual. However, I hope that many of the hon. Members who are in the Chamber will be with us throughout our deliberations and that we will have the opportunity to probe on certain issues and end up reassuring the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) that the Bill can achieve its aims. Perhaps we will also be able to convince my hon. Friend the Member for Southport on the points that he raised with his customary humour and good will.

This Bill began its journey in the other place, and I pay tribute to my noble Friends the Baronesses Walmsley, Garden, Sharp and Williams, and to other Lords and Baronesses, for the time that they spent on the Bill. The Government did make changes to it during its progress through the other place, and others have succeeded in advancing slightly different views that have also been incorporated in the Bill. That makes it a stronger Bill and the process has clarified some of the issues that we are coming to consider. However, as other hon. Members have pointed out, some matters still need to be resolved to the satisfaction of Members of this House. It is right that the elected House has its chance to do that and, although the timetable is challenging, our considering this Bill on the Floor of the House in this way will provide us with that opportunity.

Interestingly, the concept of academies originated from the parties on this side of the House; it came, in particular, from the Conservative side of the coalition, rather than from the Labour party, which now finds itself in opposition. Tellingly, as has been said by some hon. Members, Labour still had work to do to convince its Members that there was a role for academies in the education system. Clearly, as Labour Members have pointed out, my party’s policy going into the election was to revisit the academies issue; we came up with “sponsor-managed schools” as a different approach.

Much to my regret and, doubtless, to that of many Labour Members, they are not facing a Liberal Democrat Government across the Chamber, but a coalition Government. It is important that these issues are debated in that coalition and that we have the opportunity to come up with an approach that—we hope—represents some points raised by both manifestos. The Secretary of State has pressed forward with, and has been a great advocate of, the approach in this Bill. I hope that my Liberal Democrat colleagues will have the opportunity to put forward our concerns so that we can develop a Bill that reassures everyone.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman will recall that his party’s manifesto contained a pledge to invest more money in education, but does he agree that he is now accepting a 25% cut? Furthermore, is it not the case that the money that is being supplied is being directed to the middle-class areas and is no longer being targeted at those most in need? How can he reconcile those things with his principles?

[Dan Rogerson]

As has been mentioned, the key proposal that the Liberal Democrats made during the election was for a pupil premium to target money at disadvantaged pupils and those with particular needs—that is in the coalition agreement and will be delivered. As the hon. Gentleman says, there are cuts to be made to public services but, at the risk of tiring the House, we have repeatedly set out why that has to happen. We are where we are, and I am proud that the coalition is still pressing ahead with the pupil premium and will consider taking money for it from outside the education budget to help particularly disadvantaged pupils.

I wish to raise a few issues, some of which have been touched on by other hon. Members. My information suggests that issues relating to special educational needs have concerned some organisations; they are worried about how another generation of academies on this model would be able to deliver support. The hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass), who is no longer in her place, made an excellent, reasoned and thoughtful contribution. I might have disagreed with some of her conclusions, but she made a great contribution to the debate and I hope that the Minister will reflect on those concerns in his wind-up.

Some Labour Members have discussed pay and conditions for those working in schools, and that issue concerns me too. In the past, there was a small number of academies and so, just as there was choice for parents, those working in the field of education could choose whether or not to work in the academy set-up. If more and more schools are going to go down the academy route, we have to revisit the issue of exactly what the terms and conditions are and how they are negotiated to ensure that, as the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) said, what has been gained is built upon, rather than lost.

[Vernon Coaker]

The normal way in which somebody pursues concerns is by tabling amendments, and sometimes they are passed. Given the programme motion and the way this Bill is set up, has the hon. Gentleman considered what would happen if he were successful in having his concerns allayed by way of amendments being passed? As there is no Report stage for this Bill, it would appear that that would cause a great deal of problems for his own Whips and those of the coalition Government.

[Dan Rogerson]

The Minister is an experienced Member of this House and he will have encountered issues on which there have been disagreements between both Houses and things have had to be resolved quickly. Draftspeople have been able to put things together quickly on such occasions and I am sure that if a matter had to be revisited, it could be. It may be that the Minister is able to reassure hon. Members on certain issues without the need for amendments—we will see as our debate progresses and the Bill goes into Committee.

Some hon. Members have raised the concern that the Bill will force everybody down the academy route, but if that were the case, I would not be able to support it. I have talked to those involved in education in my constituency, and I have found that some are prepared to explore this approach. The Secretary of State has said that many hundreds of schools have expressed an interest in this. Some of them may well explore it and choose not to go down the academy route, but others will choose to do so. I am keen to ensure that the Bill makes that choice available, and not only to those professionals. As all good schools do, they will be talking to the communities that they represent and educate, and with which they work, to ensure that if they move in this direction, they carry people with them.

I am also given confidence by the fact that many local authorities do good work in supporting the existing schools. If there is indeed a level playing field and this Bill is not pushing people in a particular direction—I do not believe that that is the Secretary of State’s intention—many schools will choose to stay in the current set-up, but they will have the option available to them. Therefore, I can see nothing in the Bill that will lead to the horror stories that some Labour Members have set out by saying that this is a one-way direction of travel and that all schools will take this approach. Hon. Members will have different views and their discussions with the schools in their constituencies will lead them to different conclusions as to whether all the schools in those constituencies will seek to take advantage of these opportunities straight away. I hope that by extending the possibility of academy status to schools that have pushed on towards “outstanding” status, we will provide them with an opportunity. This is certainly not compulsory, and I would not be party to such an approach.

[Geraint Davies]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that if all schools became academies, there would not be enough money available? If they did, how would that be different from, for example, the comprehensive system in Wales?

[Dan Rogerson]

I was seeking to point out that an option would be available for schools to choose. The hon. Gentleman may be saying that people would go down this route only for the money, but I do not think that that is the case. I have looked at the amount of money that some local authorities hold back, so I can say that this proposal would not be hugely beneficial in terms of the services also received for that money. Circumstances differ across the country and schools will take the decision based on their own local circumstances, but I do not think that schools are financially compelled to take this route.

The other concerns that I want to raise—I believe that they were raised in the other place—are to do with standards and the role that Ofsted plays in the education system. Schools—admittedly those that are outstanding, but that does not necessarily mean that all schools achieve that status—would stay there for ever if it were based on the quality of the teaching and leadership. I want to hear a little more from the Minister about how the monitoring of progress and attainment will continue for schools that go down this route.

Although some hon. Members are concerned about how the flexibility in the curriculum might be interpreted, the Bill involves a positive step. In the coalition agreement, both parties had no problem in signing up to the aspiration to free schools from restrictive curricula. I hope that that will allow schools to develop a curriculum that is appropriate to their pupils and to the local circumstances in which they find themselves.

I find myself moving on to the subject of free schools, which is not integral to the academy issue that we have principally been discussing. However, provisions for free schools are in the Bill and the subject will need further scrutiny. I suspect that we will consider those issues in the Committee of the whole House, and I see that hon. Members will want to discuss that. It is an important new aspiration that the Secretary of State has set out, which is also in the coalition agreement. Fundamentally, I hope, whatever options are available, to see a level playing field, and recognition that although these solutions might be appropriate in some parts of the country, in others they will not.

The concept of free schools has perhaps been discussed in the context of some of the larger urban areas, where parents aspire to have a different model of school available to them. In a rural area, such as mine, there might be a different view. However, if there is a move to close a small village school, a group of people who are active in that village might want to consider ways in which they could resurrect the school and do so efficiently and effectively.

To sum up, I hope that over the next few days we will have the opportunity to look in detail at the issues set out in the Bill and that we can answer some of the fears that hon. Members have raised.

18:32

[Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

The House has been blessed this afternoon that so many contributions have emanated from people who have such experience in matters of education, so it is my choice to lower the tone somewhat drastically.

I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Government’s proposals are ideologically based. This seems to me to be a harking back to almost two decades ago, when the given text for the Conservative Government was essentially “privatising the world”. We have already seen their first incursion into attempting to privatise the NHS and it is clear to me that what is being proposed in this Bill is the first step in, essentially, privatising education. If it does not privatise education in the overt monetary sense, it will certainly revert back to the bad old days of the 11-plus, of a grammar school system and of secondary schools that were much lower than bog-standard. It seems to me that that is what the Government are working for.

For example, my constituency is served by two local authorities—Brent and Camden. Both are looking at a serious shortfall for available school places not only in secondary schools but in junior schools for a variety of reasons, not least the increase in population. Both were savagely disappointed because their schools were taken out of the Building Schools for the Future programme. No one on the Government Benches has been able to give me or any of the head teachers, governors, parents and pupils in Brent and Camden a reason why their schools have been excised—we have been given no economic reasons and certainly no educational reasons.

These local authorities in my constituency are blessed with a multiracial, multi-ethnic society, and it is absurd for the Government to believe that the kind of freedom that they argue will automatically be brought about by the expansion of the academies programme will help some of the most disadvantaged of our children in some of the most disadvantaged areas.

I thought that we had already established in this country that if we truly wish to ensure that disadvantaged areas and disadvantaged children receive the benefits that we expect for our own children—all of us in this Chamber would not accept for our children what it seems to me that the Government intend to impose on other people’s children—we must learn the basic lesson that a school alone cannot do it alone, however much money we pour into it, however much we expand it and however much the teachers wish to work there. That is a point that no one has raised, which is also reflected in a sense in the NHS: there are certainly very deprived areas that teachers do not wish to work in. How will we persuade them to go into there? By giving them more money? Apparently not, because this Government are saying that there is absolutely no money anywhere. The same is true as far as the NHS is concerned—there are certain deprived areas in which GPs do not wish to work.

We cannot simply say to one organ of society that it has to be the sole repository of transforming those areas of our society that we wish to see transformed. We already heard a most thoughtful, highly detailed contribution, clearly coming from many years of experience, about the difficulties experienced in some schools by some children with special educational needs. I have seen this for myself within my schools.

Not infrequently, the issues that create behaviour in an individual child in a school have nothing to do with the curriculum, the teachers or the physical environment in which a child finds itself. That child might have to live in seriously substandard housing in very overcrowded conditions. If we are saying that we genuinely want to ensure that every child in our society should have the best of educations, we must look much more widely at the external influences that in many instances could make it virtually impossible for children to learn, and that is not exclusively to do with the issue of special educational needs.

I am deeply cynical—I frankly and freely admit it—about what the Government are proposing for education. My constituency was Hampstead and Highgate; now, through boundary changes, it is Hampstead and Kilburn, and I can remember distinctly what every single state school in my constituency was like in 1992. Every spare moment that every teacher, every governor, every parent and, not infrequently, the pupils had was engaged in trying to raise money. They were attempting to raise funds to buy basics such as paper, pencils and books for the school library. Not in every school, but in the majority of schools in my constituency at that time the plaster was kept on the walls by the artwork of the pupils and miles and miles of Sellotape affixed by the teachers. Books were unknown as a teaching tool—pupils were lucky if they had a copy of the chapter they were looking at that day. If a computer was found in one of my schools, that was headline news—it was the equivalent of finding the educational holy grail.

Now, the situation in every one of my schools has been transformed beyond recognition. They have been physically improved, the quality of teaching has improved, visitors are tripping over whiteboards and children have computers that they can take home with them. Educational standards were always high because when I was first elected and for many years after that, the local authority was a Labour-controlled local authority and, despite the savage underfunding of year after year of Conservative Government, it always prioritised education. The standards were always high and the schools have always been oversubscribed, but if we go down the road advocated by this Conservative Government, I can see—as others have said tonight—not only a deterioration of educational standards but a serious breakdown in social cohesion.

There is not a single school in my constituency at a junior level where there are fewer than 49 to 53 different languages spoken. I can distinctly remember when I was first elected going with groups of my colleagues, mostly from London I admit, to argue frantically for section 11 money still to be there to assist in the teaching of English as a second language. There are enormous benefits for all our children in what we see in our schools. I recently visited a junior school in my constituency in which, because of the influx of people from the European Union and other parts of the world, the children are now learning Portuguese and Somali. When I was that age, I did not even know that those languages existed. There are huge benefits from that, but the divisive process that the Government are committed to reintroducing will savagely attack all that has been achieved not only on an educational level but in the social cohesion that I, as a London MP, believe is one of the blessings of living in this great capital city. The Government’s approach will move us back to the terrible days of the 11-plus, of grammar schools and of children being discounted utterly at the age of 11 if they did not pass the 11-plus.

[Andrew Percy]

The hon. Lady said that she knew nothing about education, or very little, and, certainly, some of the points she has made are interesting, to be polite. I have read the Bill from start to finish and I have not seen anything in it about expanding selection. Can she tell me where it says anything about that?

[Glenda Jackson]

I cannot afford the hon. Gentleman the same compliment that he afforded me regarding politeness. It is a pity that he could not listen to me with the attention that I have afforded to his colleagues during the debate, because I did not say that I knew nothing about education. I have completely forgotten the point that he was trying to make, but that is probably just as well. If he really wants me to go back into why I am so suspicious of what the Bill is doing, I shall do so. It is first because of the speed with which the Government are driving the Bill through the House and, secondly, because of the complete lack of consultation on the fundamental and major changes inherent in it. There is an illogicality in that regard, because we have heard much from the Government about their absolute commitment to localism and about enabling local people to make local decisions about what affects their local communities. That is the absolute bedrock of his party’s commitment.

[Mr Sheerman]

How does my hon. Friend square all this with the Prime Minister’s speech yesterday, in which he bragged about his commitment to the big society and inclusion?

[Glenda Jackson]

I must be entirely honest with my hon. Friend: I tend to avoid speeches by the Prime Minister. If you have heard one, you have heard them all. The Government are constantly arguing that localism is all and that local people must make the decisions about housing, the erection of wind farms, jobs and everything else, but on this central and essential issue—the education of all our children—that local dimension is, apparently, thrown out of the window. There is to be no consultation with the people who really matter.

[Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)]

The hon. Lady made that point to the Minister in his introductory remarks and he said that it was up to the headmaster of any school that wishes for academy status to consult the community about it. That is exactly what is happening in one school in my constituency, which was taken into an academy as introduced by Labour Members. It is consulting widely and of its own volition—and very successfully.

[Glenda Jackson]

With respect to the hon. Gentleman, if I heard the Secretary of State correctly, and if I remember the changes being made by the Bill, it says not that they must, but that they should engage with poorly achieving schools. It is much too broadly drafted for there to be any real input at all—for a high-achieving school to make the widest possible contribution to its local community. I am not saying that high-achieving schools are not doing that already—certainly, academies in some areas do—but what the Government propose will set up a barrier that will be driven, as we all know because we are all human beings who see it all the time, by parents. Schools will be in the position of selecting not pupils but parents, and those parents will be selecting them.

The idea that there is an equivalency in education between the voices of parents simply is not true. A colleague of the hon. Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) raised an issue that we all know about—people who have enough money to buy themselves into the catchment area of a school they wish their children to attend. In many instances, that practice excludes the children of people who were born and raised in the area and whose parents and grandparents were born and raised there. That happens a great deal in my constituency.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I am sorry but the hon. Lady’s time is up.

18:45

[Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)]

I cannot see how, when the House is, understandably, trying to rebuild its reputation for various reasons, it will help its good name to rush through such important legislation without full consultation. I cannot believe that that will add to the general view of the House as a place that is worthy to give the deliberation that the Bill deserves.

The Bill is not an emergency measure, but it is leading to what could be a nasty accident. I believe and support the coalition agreement, which says:

“We will give parents, teachers, charities and local communities the chance to set up new schools, as part of our plans to allow new providers to enter the state school system in response to parental demand.”

But that does not add to the state school system. Whatever the intention is, the outcome will be a fragmentation and a weakening of the state school system.

It has also been said recently that

“more choice for parents is a quintessentially liberal approach. This is an area where the state needs to back off.”

However, as we have heard before in the House, liberty without equality is a name of noble sound but squalid meaning. There is a difference between freedom and a free-for-all. In a free-for-all, invariably, the least articulate, the least organised, the least well represented, the least well-off and the least well educated tend to lose out.

It is important always, in whatever we do, to begin with the end in mind. What are we trying to do with our education system? We want, first, to raise the overall attainment of the young people who go through the system and, secondly, to narrow the gap in attainment in our system. The first issue is one of productivity and getting the most that we can out of the system, whereas the second is very much a political issue about narrowing the gap and seeing the importance, not just to young people but to the nation as a whole, of doing so.

There have been some extremely good contributions from knowledgeable people on both sides of the debate, so there is a danger of my trying to teach people to suck eggs, but let me put the issue in practical terms. There is a difference between things that are simple and things that are easy. To achieve well, a school needs a great head teacher, a great management team and great teachers. Then there are other things that help but that are less crucial, such as adequate resources. What resources are adequate will differ from school to school depending on the community that the school serves. Some schools will need more—hence the pupil premium.

A school’s buildings are quite important but not as crucial as some people think. One of my schools, Carlton Bolling college, where I am a governor—one of the schools for which the BSF proposals have been frozen—became an outstanding school not because of its buildings but despite them. It became the first secondary school in Bradford to gain an outstanding Ofsted categorisation because of the things that I have mentioned—a great head teacher, a great management team and great teachers. Schools also need excellent support services such as occupational therapy, educational psychology and speech therapy.

The governing body is less important than many governors believe. A terrific governing body with a poor head teacher will not mean that the school is successful in terms of achievement. A really good head teacher can get by with a governing body that is not so good—just don’t tell them.

[Geraint Davies]

At the end of last week, I was at a school that serves a challenged area in Swansea West. It was clear that the school’s relationship with parents, who often do not have a background of high achievement over generations, in building self-esteem for children is a key part of breaking out of intergenerational poverty. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that one key issue is targeting resources on schools that serve challenged areas, rather than just having a free-for-all where middle-class parents grab what little is left of the cake from the Conservative Government?

[Mr Ward]

Hence the pupil premium. Parental involvement —my next point—is very important too.

There is nothing to stop a school having all the things that I mentioned. It does not have to be a faith school, a maintained school, an academy, a grant-maintained school or a foundation school. A point not previously raised, although I think the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) touched on it, is that everything that I have mentioned will produce a school with high achievement, but not necessarily a school with high attainment. There is a difference between the two.

As I said, it is simple to determine what makes a successful school, but it is not always easy. Apart from parental involvement, everything that I have talked about relates to school level variables—the school and what it can actually deliver—but pupil level variables determine attainment in the school. We seem to have common agreement about the need for a pupil premium to support schools serving deprived communities, but why not give it a chance in those schools? Is it not premature to look at the structure yet again, before we have seen what the additional funding can do to raise attainment in those schools?

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that there are poor schools in good areas and good schools in poor areas? It is much more than the relationship that he has talked about.

[Mr Ward]

Without doubt there are exceptions to the rule, and we need to learn best practice wherever it resides, but powerful opposing forces work against all schools being in the educational utopia that is described by the ingredients for high achievement. Bradford has 200 schools—special, primary and secondary. We shall not get 200 great head teachers; it will not happen.

Another force working against that utopia is how schools are judged. In most cases, they are judged on attainment, and although we often pay lip service to contextual value added, that is not how schools are actually evaluated. Because of the system, schools are in competition. They do not like being in competition, but they are in competition over who is recruited to which school.

How can we bring about change in struggling schools? Only with very great difficulty. Some of the measures are impatient, but it requires hard slog in struggling schools to put in place the ingredients required to turn them around. How much simpler to set up a new school with all the ingredients in place, including the great new head teacher. But where will the great new head teachers come from? They will come from other schools, where they may have been needed because those schools served deprived communities. If a teacher gets the same pay—or even, in these new schools, more pay—why on earth would they go in every morning to work in a school serving a deprived community for less money? Teachers’ conditions of service need to change if we are to make the most of the pupil premium, so I welcome that flexibility.

More important than anything else in terms of attainment, resources and how a school is judged, is the intake of the school. Why do people want academies? There must be a reason. It is because they think they will get something new. If it is simply about flexibility in the national curriculum, why not give it to all schools? If it is about flexibility in teachers’ conditions of service, why not give that to all schools? People want academies—whether or not they admit it—because by one means or another they want to change the intake of the school. If everything was made available for every school, for what reason would they want to set up an academy?

[Mr Turner]

May I suggest that one other reason might be to get away from the control of the local council? That is why people want academies.

[Mr Ward]

On local authorities controlling schools, I do not know where the hon. Gentleman has been for the last 20 years. It does not happen now. Money is passported straight to schools. If he has an issue with support services, he should get his councillors to sort it out. The local authority should be providing quality services to schools.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

Has the hon. Gentleman come across no circumstances where the local authority has acted as a barrier to innovation in a local school?

[Mr Ward]

I am reliably informed by my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) that it happens quite frequently in Essex county council.

Pointing out where there are failings or errors in the system is not to condemn the system but to improve it. One of the reasons I find the measure so difficult to accept is that it ignores the crucial role of the local authority in co-ordination. I have seen no mention of the Every Child Matters agenda in the Bill. The role of the local authority is crucial in places planning, ensuring that admissions are fair and supporting, challenging and monitoring schools. If we put those things in place we shall be on our way to improving our schools.

The final thing that I am worried about has more to do with free schools: within a year, the British National party will have a group of parents applying to set up a school.

18:58

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward). No doubt we shall be seeing him later.

I want to make a rather basic intervention. Amidst all the language of funding models, burdens of bureaucracy, accountability and pupil premiums, I thought that it would be germane to raise the question of what children might learn under these new school reforms. We are being invited to extend the academy model in one form or another on the specific rationale that those schools raise educational attainment, in particular through a rapidly improving results framework, with almost double the number of A* to C grades at GCSE. At the beginning of the Secretary of State’s speech, we heard the litany of schools that are doing so well, and in The Daily Telegraph on Friday, the Department for Education repeated the mantra that academies were outstanding. But what are they outstanding at? How have the results improved so markedly?

Although much of the success can be attributed to strong leadership, inspiring teaching, improved facilities and the new ethos of learning that my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) outlined so well, in some cases improved results are the product of directing students into less demanding examination options that in the end improve no one’s life chances. We are being asked to implement an educational model whose validity is open to question. Indeed, there should have been an element of scepticism about the academies when they were not subject to freedom of information legislation. With a degree of ease, some academies were able to disguise some of the data behind their results surge.

[Andrew Percy]

It was not necessarily only academies that went down that route: all kinds of schools throughout the country forced children on to GNVQs and equivalent qualifications to force up their results. It was not unique to academies.

[Mr Hunt]

As the hon. Gentleman will hear later, the statistics are rather sharp on the difference between academies and the rest of the maintained sector. Moreover, the academies were unwilling to divulge the difference between academic qualifications and academic equivalent qualifications in vocational subjects.

Let us be clear that we are not debating the relative merits of academic versus vocational education. The equivalent qualifications sold as vocational are, in fact, rarely so. Many academy pupils are directed towards what might be described as semi-vocational or semi-academic subjects that do not provide the rigorous technical training that might lead to an apprenticeship but are simply weaker versions of GCSEs, such as BTEC science or OCR national certificates in information and communications technology.

[Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)]

Did not the Labour Government put in place the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency, with its dogma of equivalence that made those subjects equivalent in the first place and give head teachers the incentives to treat those qualifications equally?

[Mr Hunt]

Clearly, the hon. Lady has not discovered the new politics. This is not about party political point scoring. [Interruption.] As I said at the beginning of my speech, this is about what children learn in our schools, and Government Members would do well to remember that amid their guffawing. Although a BTEC can officially be worth two GCSEs, or an OCR national certificate worth four GCSEs, that equation is not necessarily accepted by further or higher education colleges or other academic institutions, so often the pupil is short-changed even as grade results are inflated.

[Andrew Percy]

I could not agree with the hon. Gentleman more on that point, but it is important that he understand that, very often, local authorities that controlled schools were forcing them down that route. That will not be allowed to happen if the Bill is passed.

[Mr Hunt]

Academies are going down that road to raise their league table offering.

[Andrew Percy]

rose—

[Mr Hunt]

If the hon. Gentleman will wait a moment, the statistics that might quiet him will come.

Returning to the academies offer, the important point is that pupils have true options. First, they should have the choice to pursue academic subjects, even if that is to the detriment of the school’s results. After all, whose interests are the schools serving, apart from their pupils? Secondly, pupils should not be misled into thinking that undertaking equivalent qualifications will give them the same standing as GCSEs in history, modern languages, geography or the hard sciences; they will not.

The facts are stark. A series of parliamentary questions has shown that academies succeed disproportionately in equivalent qualifications and that academic subjects are in steeper decline in academies than in maintained schools. Just 17% of pupils in academies take geography GCSE, compared with 27% in the maintained sector, and 21% of pupils in academies take history GCSE, compared with 31% in the maintained sector. Whereas only 26% of academy pupils take a modern language, some 44% of maintained pupils do so. A similar story could be told for English literature, where one learns the rudiments of grammar, and for physics, chemistry and biology.

[Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a good point about the importance of studying academic subjects in our schools. However, in the figures that he quotes, were academies compared with other equivalent schools, with similar catchment areas, or with the whole maintained sector?

[Mr Hunt]

That is a very good question. It has taken me so long to get the information out of the Department for Education that it relates only to the whole maintained sector. Our next stage is to pursue those questions locally. Of course, as the hon. Gentleman indicates, the data are influenced by the fact that, given the achievement gap in English schools, poorer students are disproportionately entered for equivalent qualifications at GCSE level. Academies, which have served lower-income cohorts to date, have mirrored that scenario, but that is surely the challenge that academies should take up.

We do not want the soft bigotry of low expectations, with academy league tables benefiting at the expense of pupil learning. That two-tier education fails to give some of our poorest communities the education that they deserve. Sadly, certain academies have accentuated that trend. As independent schools, they are exempt from the curriculum and, to date, have not had to reveal the details of their results beyond the basic percentage of their pupils who pass five-plus GCSEs or the equivalent.

I refuse to accept that that trend of teaching is inevitable. In my constituency, the Mitchell business and enterprise college on the Bentilee estate—for which my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) did so much good work in his time as a Minister and where youth unemployment is high and household income low—continues to offer rigorous academic subjects to all its pupils, not least because that is what business wants. Genuine vocational training requires a solid academic foundation up to the age of 16—a view espoused by employers in vocational areas of work. So it is of great value that amendments passed in the other place now ensure that academies are subject to freedom of information legislation, but there seems little change in the Bill to ensure that as many academies as possible deliver the broad curriculum that provides a stimulating learning environment. In many cases, freedom for academies has produced a narrowing of the curriculum options.

[Ben Gummer]

I am fascinated by the hon. Gentleman’s destruction of the policy supported by Labour Members for so many years. Given his firm disapproval of the independence of academies, I am interested to know whether he would recommend that the school that he attended should submit itself to the authority of the local authority, as he clearly wishes to pursue that line for other schools?

[Mr Hunt]

To be honest, I did not quite follow the hon. Gentleman’s line. The point that was pursued by Labour Members when we were in government is that standards in teaching and academic qualifications matter, and if academies produce league table inflation at the cost of the education of their pupils, that is to no one’s benefit. The worry is that, with greater freedoms, there is a narrowing of curriculum options, which is what the statistics have proved.

I have no ideological opposition to academies. In many situations, they are refreshing, innovative and provide the aspirational step change in low-income communities that can transform the life chances of many young people. I am proud of the Labour Government’s achievements in that regard, but we need greater transparency. What we need in the Bill is an understanding that there can be no more equivalence at the cost of academic rigour, as that is to the cost of the educational life chances of our young people. That is what we are dealing with. We want a tailoring of the curriculum in many cases, so that teachers have control, and can teach to the needs of young people and pursue vocational and academic topics, but we need clarity, accountability and transparency about these issues.

This is about more than league tables and data sets; it is about studying and learning skills and—dare I say it?—enjoyment. Too many schools and academies are denying that to some of the most disadvantaged communities in the country by not allowing the full academic curriculum. We must not make economic deprivation a licence for intellectual deprivation.

19:09

[Gordon Henderson (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Con)]

I am in a somewhat difficult position. I support the general thrust of the Academies Bill, but when I came to this debate I had a couple of specific concerns that would have prevented me from giving the Government unqualified support. However, I am delighted to say that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State reassured me on at least one of those concerns when he confirmed that schools in a federation can apply for academy status even if one of the schools has been judged outstanding and the other has not. His confirmation will be welcomed by the Westlands school in my constituency, which is in exactly that position.

I still have a second concern, which relates to the financing of academies. I oppose most parts of the Opposition amendment that we are debating, but there is one that rings alarm bells in my mind, and that is the suggestion that the academies programme will

“be funded by scrapping existing school building programmes”.

I hope that Ministers can reassure me that that is not the case. That reassurance is important to children and parents on the Isle of Sheppey, which already has an academy, but only in name.

That academy was set up as part of Kent county council’s reorganisation of education on the island; last year, there was a change from a three-tier to a two-tier system. There was considerable opposition to that change. However, opponents, of whom I was one, were mollified somewhat by the promise of a £55-million academy. Our academy opened last September, but without one single new brick being laid. Instead, it opened in the ramshackle buildings that previously belonged to Minster college and Cheyne middle school, which are two miles apart. Those buildings are simply not fit for purpose. Last year, the heating trunking in Minster college collapsed and fell between two rows of desks, injuring a number of children. If that trunking had fallen a foot further either way, we could have had a major tragedy on our hands. That cannot be allowed to happen again.

Our academy is now the only secondary school on Sheppey. With almost 2,500 pupils, it is one of the largest schools in the whole country, and without new buildings the academy will not succeed. The Isle of Sheppey academy is part of the review that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is undertaking. I very much fear that the country’s dire financial position will mean that we will not receive the funding needed, and that the reorganisation of education on the island will be botched, leading to another generation of children being educationally disadvantaged, as the last generation was. I know that the Secretary of State is aware of the unique circumstances facing Sheppey, and I know that he is sympathetic, but I very much hope he can reassure me that the funds intended for its new buildings will not be diverted to help to fund the new academies programme.

19:13

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

The Academies Bill raises many issues, but I want to focus my comments on three key questions: will the Bill help pupils and schools with the greatest needs, will it improve outcomes in education, and does it represent the best use of taxpayers’ money?

The Government say that their Bill is a continuation or fulfilment of the previous Government’s approach, but there is a fundamental and crucial difference that many hon. Members have cited. Labour’s academy policy gave extra help and support to struggling schools in deprived areas, and sought to break the link between social and economic disadvantage and low achievement and aspiration, which still damage the lives of too many children, including in my constituency. However, this Government are offering academy status to schools that are already rated outstanding.

The Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics recently analysed the 1,560 schools that have expressed an interest in becoming academies. It found that those schools had very different characteristics from the 203 existing academies. Pupils in the schools that have expressed an interest in becoming academies are less likely to be eligible for free school meals, to have special educational needs, or to come from an ethnic minority, and are more likely to get five good GCSEs. For example, around 30% of pupils in academies are eligible for free school meals, compared with only 9% of pupils in schools that have expressed an interest in becoming an academy and are rated outstanding. Just under 28% of pupils in academies have special educational needs but do not have a statement, compared with around 14% of pupils in schools that have expressed an interest and are rated outstanding. That evidence led the Centre for Economic Performance to conclude that

“the new coalition government’s policy on Academy Schools is not, like the previous government’s policy, targeted on schools with more disadvantaged pupils. The serious worry that follows is that this will exacerbate already existing educational inequalities.”

On the radio this morning, the Secretary of State said that every new academy will help a school that is struggling, but the Government’s own impact assessment of the Bill estimates that only a third of new academies are likely to help weaker schools. It also estimates that the cost of providing help to a struggling school will be around £50,000 for each new academy. First, £50,000 is very little money to help a genuinely challenged school. Secondly, it is not clear whether the Government will provide that extra money to help struggling schools, or whether the new academies will have to find the money from their own budgets.

Many schools offer help and support to other schools in their area, but I question whether new academies will voluntarily give their own money to help a struggling school, especially when we are likely to face cuts of 10% to 20% in the education budget. I hope that the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), in his concluding comments, will say whether every new academy will be required to help a struggling school, as the Secretary of State implied. If so, will the Government provide the extra funding that the help will genuinely cost?

Government Members will, I am sure, argue that the pupil premium will play a key role in helping children in disadvantaged areas. I welcome the pupil premium, and I will support it—if it provides resources over and above the extra money that schools already get for deprivation under the existing funding formula, if it focuses on genuinely disadvantaged children, and, crucially, if it is funded without cutting help and support from other programmes that help vulnerable groups. But as yet we have no details about how the pupil premium will work—which pupils it will benefit, how much will be provided, or where the funds will come from.

The final point that I want to make about whether the Bill will support schools that need help most relates to those schools that are neither outstanding nor in special measures, but in the middle—a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg). There are a substantial number of schools in that category, many of which still need to improve, but the Bill offers them nothing. Labour’s national challenge programme supports a range of schools and challenges them to improve or face intervention, including the possibility of being converted into an academy or a national challenge trust school.

A number of schools in my constituency became national challenge trust schools on 1 June this year, and as part of the process they were promised additional funding—for example to employ extra teachers to provide more one-to-one tuition, to support existing teachers in getting new skills, and to work with parents such as those with English as a second language. However, the schools in my constituency have still not received the money they were promised. As a result, at least one of the schools, Babington college, had to cancel its plans to appoint extra teachers in time for the new term in September. I ask the Minister: will national challenge trust schools such as Babington in my constituency get the extra resources that they have been promised, and if so, when?

Let me move on to the second, and arguably most important, issue that I want to address.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady think it is fair that in her constituency in Leicester, education is valued at £600 a year more per pupil than in my constituency, despite the fact that I have areas of severe deprivation in mine? Surely she will welcome the pupil premium, as it will rectify the problem.

[Liz Kendall]

I want all children to have the funding that is appropriate to their needs. In my constituency, we have very challenging areas, and we want and need support. I want it for the hon. Gentleman’s constituents, too.

On the radio this morning, the Secretary of State said that the Bill will

“transform the educational achievements of pupils in this country.”

However, the impact assessment states:

“While there will still be benefits to new academies…these benefits are likely to be much lower given that they”—

the new schools—

“will have less scope for improvement than existing Academies, and will receive less start-up funding.”

The Bill also removes the requirement for new academies to have a sponsor or a partner, which we know from the contributions of other Members has been a key factor in improving standards in existing academies and trust schools.

There are also very real concerns that the Bill could have a negative impact on educational outcomes for specific groups of children. My hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) highlighted concerns about children with special educational needs, and the Government’s equalities impact assessment sets out clear evidence that such children in existing academies are not improving as quickly as those in other schools and may end up doing worse in some situations.

There are also concerns that children with special educational needs in schools that do not become academies could be affected by the Bill. Like existing academies, new academies will receive all their per-pupil funding and their share of funding for local authority-provided services, such as SEN provision, and that could create a shortfall in funding for the remaining local authority-maintained schools, which are more likely to need special educational needs services. I very much welcome the Government’s review of special educational needs, but the Bill is likely to have been passed before the review has reported, so I ask the Minister to consider the legislation’s impact on other schools and groups of children.

I turn to the evidence on free schools, because some Members have said that the Bill paves the way for them. There has been a huge debate about what the evidence shows, particularly the evidence from Sweden, and the highly respected Institute of Education, which the Secretary of State cited in his speech, recently assessed the data from that country. It found that more free schools were established in urban, affluent and gentrified areas, that the biggest beneficiaries were children from already highly educated families, and that the impact on less well educated and migrant families was “close to zero”. Even where Swedish free schools appear to have had a moderately positive impact on the academic performance of better-off children at 15 to 16 years old, the IOE finds that those advantages do not persist by the time children take their high school exit tests aged 18 or 19. They are also no more likely to participate in higher education than those who are schooled in areas without free schools.

We need to consider all sorts of other issues, such as community cohesion, which my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) cited. That is a key issue in a constituency as diverse as mine, but I must move on to my third and final question, about whether the Bill represents the best use of taxpayers’ money.

The impact assessment states that the cost of implementation will be £462 million over four years, and the Government say that much of that money is not additional funding, because they will simply transfer to new academy schools the money that would have gone to local authorities. However, there will be additional start-up costs of £68 million as well as the money that new academies will spend if they support weaker schools.

I agree that we need to achieve the best value for taxpayers’ money. I therefore hope that the Minister will explain in his closing statement how spending additional money on schools that have more advantaged pupils and are already doing well, and on a policy that is of questionable benefit in terms of improving educational outcomes and could lead to worse outcomes for children with the greatest needs, provides value for taxpayers’ money.

I also ask why Liberal Democrat MPs support a Bill that experts predict will exacerbate inequalities, worsen local accountability and usher in a free market in education. Those Members are risking a great deal, on issues that I know they hold dear, for very little proof of what they will gain in return. For those reasons, I shall oppose the Bill.

19:24

[Mr Sam Gyimah (East Surrey) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) for her thoughtful remarks, but she has already fallen into the trap that Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister and Labour party leader, identified on 24 October 2005, when he said:

“the system will finally be opened up to real parent power… Parts of the left will say we are privatising public services and giving too much to the middle class… both criticisms are wrong and simply a version of the old ‘levelling down’ mentality that kept us in opposition for so long.”

Having listened to the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), I am afraid to say that he demonstrated the sort of leadership that he would offer Opposition Members if they voted him in as leader of their party. He would take them to the left and be totally off the pace on the important debates and issues in this country.

It was particularly mean-spirited of the right hon. Gentleman to cast doubt on our motives for reforming the education system. He said that Labour wanted the best for all but we wanted a two-tier system. Unfortunately, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) reminded us, we already have a two-tier system, which people access either by paying for it or by moving to the right area. If we look at all educational attainment, we find that after 13 years of Labour promising education, education, education, that two-tier system is entrenched. What is terrible is that, once someone gets into it, there is no way of getting out, and that is why we want to create a system that opens up opportunity for all.

The Opposition say that, because we will fast-track some schools that have done very well, that will unfortunately be at the expense of other schools. First, however, every school will be able to apply to become an academy. Secondly, those that do apply will have to include in their application how they will help schools doing less well than themselves. So it is totally specious to keep harping on about the idea that, because some schools are going to be fast-tracked, we care only about those schools.

The right hon. Gentleman also said that the Bill is deeply divisive and undermines social cohesion. Now I do not know about other Members, but I do not think that uniformity is the same as social cohesion. I do not know whether he wants schools that are uniformly bad or uniformly good, but I know what Government Members are striving for. No one can say that the current system delivers the educational attainment that our country needs, and, although the right hon. Gentleman talked about the Bill being deeply divisive, he did not address the fact that schools will not be able to change their admissions procedures once they become academies. So there is no chance of a school applying to become an academy and then, further down the line, introducing selection. He glossed over that point so that he could go over the old dividing lines as he sees them.

The right hon. Gentleman spent a lot of time on capital spending and Building Schools for the Future. He has been going on about it for two weeks, and, like the attack dog that he is, he kept on going on about it today. However, the choice that we face is not about whether we need shiny buildings for people to learn in, but about whether the education that we provide for kids is good enough for them in terms of attainment, so that they have confidence in their future. That is what the Opposition has been lacking.

The issue is about good teaching, discipline, educational attainment and, above all, confidence. The skills that we give kids must provide them with a chance, a hope, so that when they leave school, they know that they will be able to pursue the path that they choose. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) said that the issue is not about databases or datasets, and I agree. It is about having the right ethos and educational standards and allowing the professionals to determine them.

My hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) and the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) said that we should veer away from changing structures because the issue is about enabling individuals to flourish. However, individuals operate within a structure, and the enterprising head teachers who want to control budgets, decide how they pay their teachers, determine their curriculum and engage with their students differently cannot do so under the current structure. That is why we need a fundamental change in our structures. A parent today who really wants to change something in their school has no chance of doing so by writing to the local authority. Under the new structure they will have a better chance, because they can exercise quasi-commercial pressure on the school, and that is a good thing.

We also need leadership, and for teachers to know that the buck stops with them, not with the county council or with Government policy, to deliver the right education for the students in their school. If they fail to do that somewhere further down the line, they will find that parents vote with their feet. That is right to encourage higher attainment and standards to be driven through our education system, and to arrest the decline that the Secretary of State identified.

Having said all that, I will be the first to acknowledge that the proposed system is not perfect. It is not prescriptive, and there is no getting away from the fact that for it to work, we need to ensure that a lot of the vested interests work with us, whether those are local authorities, civil servants, unions or teachers. A number of teachers liked the grant-maintained system but then found it abolished in 1998 after a new Government came in, so they are nervous. We need to do everything we can to give them confidence that the freedoms that we seek to give them this time are real, and will allow teachers, head teachers and parents who have a vision to implement that vision and ensure that we have higher educational attainment. That is what education should be about—not shiny new buildings, not some argument that we are going to punish the poor, but ensuring that we get better attainment. That is what I got from my education, and what I think we all got, and it is what we have to drive through our system.

19:31

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to add my voice to this important debate about the future of our education system. Good education, available to all, is the foundation stone of our society, which is why it arouses such passion in all parts of the House, as we have heard in all today’s speeches.

The Bill is intended to change the education system as we know it, and has been presented in a manner that has deliberately prevented wide debate, discussion and consultation. Rather than leading to greater social justice, it will deliver only social segregation. For those reasons, I oppose it.

The first problem is the way in which the debate has come before the House. I am a new Member and still learning the ways and methods of the House, but it was with alarm and shock that I found that the only other legislation that had been passed through the House with such speed and lack of debate was anti-terror legislation, which is understandable, and the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, which is hardly an example that we should all seek to follow. I have to ask whether that is what the so-called new politics is all about—employing such speed and lack of debate to bring about legislation that will fundamentally alter the way in which education, that most enabling of public services, is delivered. The Bill should be given proper scrutiny and there should be a proper opportunity for widespread consultation with the general public, parents and stakeholders.

I suggest that the reason why the Bill has come before us in this way is that the coalition Government know that it will not stand up to scrutiny, which is why they will not allow it. They know that they have used the previous Labour Government’s academies programme as a way to sell their version of academies, which are something entirely different—so different that they should not be called the same thing. The Labour academies programme was about social justice, whereas the Bill is about the free market.

The focus of our programme was to target areas of disadvantage and inequality, to seek to ensure that all pupils, regardless of their socio-economic background, had access to high-quality education. The Bill has no such focus, as shown by the fact that under the current policy, schools that are considered outstanding by Ofsted are to be pre-approved. Grammar schools will also be allowed to become academies, something expressly prevented by the Labour Government. That can lead only to social segregation, not social justice.

The Government would have us all believe that they are progressives now, and that the Liberal Democrat partners in the coalition have an influence in government that is bringing a progressive dimension to their collective policies. I ask the Lib Dems to examine the Bill, recognise that it allows for an expansion of selection and ask themselves what on earth is progressive about that.

It is perverse also that a school that is already deemed outstanding will get a chance to become better. Surely that move by the Secretary of State, more than anything else, gives away his true motive for the Bill. If it were about driving up standards and improving the quality of education that our children receive, he would have made express mention of those matters in the Bill and would not have pre-approved already outstanding schools.

[Gavin Barwell]

The hon. Lady is repeating the line that the shadow Secretary of State started with, which is that the Bill is a perversion of Labour’s academy policy. However, the then Prime Minister Tony Blair said on 24 October 2005:

“We want every school to be able quickly and easily to become a self-governing independent…school.”

How is that inconsistent with the Bill?

[Shabana Mahmood]

Tony Blair is no longer the leader of my party, and I was elected in May 2010. Although I agree with much of what he did when he was Prime Minister and leader of our great party, I do not agree with all of what he said and did. That was not the point that I was making, however, which was about the Bill and the fact that it focuses on pre-approving outstanding schools. That gives away what it is all about—creating a two-tier system.

[Gavin Barwell]

rose—

[Shabana Mahmood]

I wish to make some progress.

In any case, the fact that so many schools are currently outstanding shows that excellence is alive and well in the maintained system and that there is no need to move towards the free schools model.

One of the freedoms that the Bill promises new academies and free schools is freedom from local authority control. I have to ask where is the evidence that a system that is entirely independent, with schools free to do as they please, is more effective than what we have at the moment. Under Labour, academies were successful because disadvantaged schools were given the opportunity for a fresh start and a clear focus, with a dedicated commitment to making them better. In many ways they were more Government-controlled, rather than being free.

Furthermore, I thought that the new politics was all about engaging with the public and including them in the decisions that are made, especially at local level. Well, many people see education as one of their major public services, and they would expect to be able to monitor, control and hold to account that service through their elected local authority. To break that link through the apparatus of the state is profoundly undemocratic and should be rejected.

New academies and free schools are also promised freedom from the national curriculum. I agree entirely with the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws), who stated on “Newsnight” on 10 March this year that that was one of the “dottiest” aspects of Tory education policy. If only such frankness about it were to be found now on his party’s Benches. On the same programme, the present Secretary of State said about the national curriculum:

“I think it is important that we have a piece of infrastructure in the public realm which people can admire and which they can use as a benchmark but which we can depart from where appropriate”.

That shows a fundamental misunderstanding. The national curriculum determines what our children learn to equip them—each and every one, bar none—to make their way in the world, especially the world of work. It is about passing on knowledge from one generation to another, which is an important part of the make-up of our society. To allow some schools to opt out and determine what our kids learn according to the whims of a particular head teacher or governing body is, indeed, dotty.

[Mr Gyimah]

That happens already—it is what happens in private schools, and people pay for them. What is wrong with allowing teachers to decide what is best for the kids in their school, and why cannot people in the state sector have that?

[Shabana Mahmood]

Because it is important for the state sector to set out the way in which we believe our children should be taught. There should be a minimum standard and a minimum curriculum so that children all get the same level and type of education, no matter what background they are from or what their social class is. That must not have an impact on what they learn at school.

I am also deeply concerned that the duty to consult on the part of those wishing to set up an academy or a free school is extremely weak. There was not one at all to begin with, but the one that has been inserted since the debate in the House of Lords is still too flexible and therefore weak. There must be a full and meaningful consultation on the initial application with parents, teachers, children, other staff, the local authority and others. Schools are the heart of local communities. The inadequate provisions for consultation will sever that link and must be tightened up.

I conclude by drawing the attention of the House to a recent Ipsos MORI poll, which showed that 95% of people wanted a good local school under the control of the local authority. There is no need to spend millions of pounds on creating an entirely new structure when a good regime for schools exists and has delivered rising standards year on year, especially where that new structure will lead to greater social segregation.

What makes a difference to standards is the quality of teaching in a school. I was lucky enough to have some fantastic teachers, and I am convinced that whatever educational successes I have enjoyed were down to their hard work and encouragement. Changing a school’s structural status does not mean that someone has waved a magic wand and that teaching and learning will automatically improve. Instead, as a result of the Bill, we will move to a two-tier system, and systemic unfairness will be built into our education provision. We will all be worse off for it.

19:40

[Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) mentioned speed and several other hon. Members have referred to impatience. Yes, we are impatient because we have had 13 years of failed education policies, which have not delivered for the poorest in our society. Education spending per pupil doubled from 1997 to 2009, yet the trajectory of improvement in GCSE results has not changed since the mid-1990s. According to the international league tables of the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment—PISA—we still have a massive difference between the top and bottom achievers.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady accept that one of the reasons why so many Labour Members feel strongly about the speed with which the Bill is going through is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) said, that schools are the heart of communities and, unless they are consulted, the heart will be ripped out of them and children will be let down in the process?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I care about pupils in the schools and whether they achieve what they need to and should achieve. They have been let down by 13 years of failed policies. I shall outline exactly why they have been let down, why teachers are not empowered to teach in the way they see fit and why the teaching profession has been denigrated.

[Shabana Mahmood]

Does the hon. Lady accept that there is a difference between having a policy, wanting to get it on the statute book as quickly as possible and feeling passionately about it—I have no doubt that she feels passionately about it—and bypassing proper scrutiny in a Bill Committee and giving people outside and in the House time to scrutinise it fully and ascertain its impact?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thought that what is happening today and later this week was scrutiny—though not very much, looking at the Opposition Benches.

Whatever some Labour Members have said, the Bill is a continuation of one of the previous Labour Government’s successful policies, which allowed a few schools to become academies. We have therefore seen such a policy work. However, the vast majority of the money that the previous Government spent was not spent wisely. The money for academies was the small proportion that was spent wisely, but we experienced a huge increase in centralisation and bureaucracy under the previous Government. A vast array of quangos was set up—for example, the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency; Ofqual; the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency; Partnerships for Schools, and Every Child Matters. A whole series of strategies and interventions took place.

[Shabana Mahmood]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Elizabeth Truss]

No, I want to continue with my point, and I have already given way to the hon. Lady.

Every strategy dictated to teachers what they should do. That took away decision making from the teaching profession and teachers’ ability to lead the class in the way they saw fit. The curriculum became increasingly prescriptive, with bodies such as the QCDA and Ofqual devising examinations that were more modulised and standardised. Instead of encouraging every child to learn and develop a love of a subject and educating each child’s mind, teachers were encouraged to teach to the test. Labour Members proclaim results as improvements, but much of that was to do with the fact that, as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) said, teachers were rewarded on results.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that Labour Members have gone—[Hon. Members: “They’ve gone.”] Indeed, they have gone—there are but five left. Does my hon. Friend agree that they have gone from being anti-Tory in 1997 to a Blairite conversion, which they now disdain, to all talking Balls?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. However, the Opposition seem confused. One Labour Member has argued for more academic qualifications while others have said that the qualifications that the Labour Government introduced were fantastic. They cannot agree. They have not come up with a consistent approach to our proposed legislation. The principle of autonomy has been heavily road tested and proved successful in the small minority of schools in which it has been implemented. The previous Government should have set up more academies, but instead, they competed in all the centralising tendencies, on which the previous Education Secretary was particularly keen.

The teaching unions have also been involved in centralising the system. In 2003, there were agreements between the teaching unions and the Government about how teachers operate in the classroom, how their lessons are covered, and what preparation and assessment work they do. There are such practices in no other job. There has been a vast increase in teaching assistants and cover supervisors. That is not to say that I am against those people, but decisions should be up to head teachers and not governed by a weight of paperwork from Whitehall.

There was glimmer of light—several hon. Members on these Benches have referred to the former Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair—with the academies programme. Yet the academies were a trickle rather than a flood. We had only 200 schools out of a total of 3,000 that could have become academies. In 2007, when the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) took over as Secretary of State for Education, rather than openly oppose the academies programme, he made it increasingly difficult for schools to become academies and restricted the arrangements for, for example, the curriculum. Those arrangements were made much tighter.

[Mr Ward]

As I tried to say in my speech, if the freedoms—staffing, curriculum, release from all the paperwork and so on—are so useful, why do we not extend them to every maintained school? Why is structure important? The main improvements that took place through the national challenge did not require a change in structure. An individual interim executive board in a school that is in special measures turns a school round without a change in structure. Why are hon. Members so obsessed with structure?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I think the answer is that there are so many national regulations. I am concerned about that rather than local authorities, which have often been put under pressure by the national Government. For example, I referred to the 2003 terms and conditions agreement between the teaching unions and the Government. Schools need the ability to make decisions, to have agreements between teachers and head teachers and to make their own work force arrangements. I would like more schools to take up the opportunity offered—it is the way forward. I think that it empowers teachers, who often enjoy their jobs more. I have visited several academies, and teachers’ excitement, engagement and motivation are visible.

The opportunity provided by the fact that we will have more schools than the 200-odd we have at the moment will attract more people into the profession. Interestingly, someone asked whether the teaching unions could become involved in academies. Rather than being a roadblock to reform, it would be helpful if the teaching unions supported academies. That would bring huge benefits to teachers. We would probably see better rewards for teachers in the long term, and we would certainly see more professional autonomy for them and a greater respect and esteem for the profession, which would be helpful for the unions in the long term.

I urge Ministers not to heed the calls to slow down—I am sure that they will not—because we have waited long enough for academy schools that serve not just a few people. I applaud existing academies, but the children in our country who do not go to them have waited long enough for a good education. The Opposition are complacent about our education. We are not succeeding; we are failing internationally. There is a huge gap between the attainment of top students and low-achieving students. The Conservatives’ motivation is to close that gap, and I urge the Government to carry on.

19:51

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss). She certainly enlivened the debate, but I could not disagree with her more. I should like to put on record my opposition both to the Bill and to the speed with which it is being rushed through the House, which we have discussed.

The Bill aims to break up the local authority family, leaving schools free to go it alone in competition with one another. As many of my hon. Friends have said, the Bill is entirely different from the academies legislation that Labour introduced. Some of us had reservations about those measures, but some of us were strongly supportive of them. The Bill contains no requirement for schools to consult their local authority before they choose to convert to academy status. For that reason, I share the view of the many teachers, governors and parents from my constituency who have lobbied me and who believe that the absence of that requirement will lead to chaos.

For that as much as anything else, the Bill warrants further consideration by the House. I remind Government Members that the Bill is about children out in the real world, in places such as Wigan, and the opportunities that they will be given or denied as a result. The Bill deserves more scrutiny than the Government are prepared to give it. I am angry on behalf of those children that that is being denied.

[Mr Gyimah]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Lisa Nandy]

I think we have heard enough from the hon. Gentleman.

We heard a great deal from those on the Treasury Bench about the supposed benefits of the Bill, but the question the Government ought to ask themselves is not, “What are the benefits?” but, “Who will lose out as a result of this legislation?” I can answer that last question, but only in part because of the lack of scrutiny that they are prepared to give the Bill. I can tell the Government and the House that primarily, children in schools that are not academies will lose out. The pool of funding that local authorities have to meet central costs will be reduced. That is not in doubt, but we do not yet know how many schools will convert to academy status, and therefore how dramatic that shortfall in funding will be.

We heard very powerfully from my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) about the impact of the Bill on children with special educational needs. I cannot believe that Members of this House are prepared to walk through the Division Lobby to vote for this Bill knowing the impact that it will have on some of the most vulnerable children in this society. Government Members fail to understand that freedom for one group of children can represent a loss of freedom for others. I have not heard that recognised by Government Members, and I would like to.

[Gavin Barwell]

Is the hon. Lady aware that academies receive none of the council funding for SEN administration, assessment or co-ordination?

[Lisa Nandy]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his remarks, but they do not change at all the point I was making or that many of my hon. Friends have made.

The principle behind the Bill is what most concerns me. It takes no account of the impact on other schools. Competition cannot be the right approach when it creates winners and losers among children. I am not prepared to see children in Wigan lose out as a result of the Bill. My question to those who are prepared to support the measure is this: which children would they like to lose out as a result? Ministers say that academies will be required to work with another school, but how will that help the latter compensate for the loss of funding that the Bill represents? Funding is not the only thing that enables schools to succeed—on that I think we all agree—but it is important and it can be a lifeline.

A range of critics have lined up to agree with me and other hon. Members. They have pointed out that for all the schools that are enabled to do well by the Bill, and that will have more money and greater independence, life will be made more difficult for other schools. Children in schools that are not rated outstanding tend to be the most disadvantaged. That is clear from the statistics provided to me by the Department for Education just a few weeks ago, which show that children in outstanding primary and secondary schools are significantly less likely than children in schools with other ratings to be in receipt of free school meals.

My concern is for the children in my constituency who have lost their child trust funds in the past few weeks. They will now not come into contact with children from less deprived backgrounds, because Sure Start eligibility is to be tightened. They could lose the chance to go to university under forthcoming proposals, and they are now asked to fend for themselves in a competitive system in which they will have very little chance of breaking through. Surely that deserves more scrutiny from the House and outside.

If, as we have heard, the point is to hand power back to schools, why not ask those who make schools what they are? Unison points out that there has been no consultation with those affected—whether parents, teachers, children or the wider community. If the aim is to trust professionals on the front line, where is the consultation with them? Our outstanding school in Wigan—Rose Bridge high school—has agreed to consult parents and staff as a condition of any decision it might make, because Rose Bridge is a responsible school that cares about the wider school community and children throughout the borough, and that understands that the public service ethos of working together for the benefit of all children is what underpins the strength of our education system.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

The hon. Lady makes a powerful case. None the less, in the past 13 years, we have seen the gap between rich and poor, and the lead that independent schools have over state schools, widen. Labour policies failed in 13 years in government. I know she will be a very thoughtful and good member of my Committee, but what positive prescriptions can we use to make up for the failures of the past 13 years?

[Lisa Nandy]

I do not in any sense accept the hon. Gentleman’s point, distinguished though he is as the newly elected Chair of the Education Committee. I certainly do not hope to upset him at this juncture, having just been elected to that Committee. I worked for the past five years with some of the most disadvantaged children in this country at the Children’s Society, and I can tell him that the Bill will not help at all; it will hinder. I do not accept his characterisation of how the education system has worked for those children in the past 13 years. I hope he is satisfied with that, because I have given my word to my constituents that I will raise their concerns in the House, because they cannot get a hearing directly with the Minister.

It is therefore important for those schools that might opt for academy status to understand what they and the children they represent might lose. I have looked closely at the proposals—such as they are—and it is clear that the Education Secretary is replacing democratic local control with direct control of new academies. That is not devolution of power, but centralisation, and we have heard what that could mean for local schools.

The role of the New Schools Network has been touched on only very briefly so far in the debate. The NSN has been given the contract to advise schools on becoming academies. I have asked a number of questions of the Education Secretary about the NSN, and it merits further attention. It was established in December 2009 and appears to be run by former advisers to him. It was recently awarded a £500,000 contract, but I cannot get clarity on how that came to be awarded. It is incredibly important that we understand how that happened and the role of the NSN, because that goes to the heart of whether people can have confidence in the system that he proposes and the underlying motives behind it.

I also wish to sound another note of caution for schools that may be considering opting for academy status. The Department has offered £25,000 to schools for start-up costs, but acknowledges that they will be more than that, and that schools are expected to contribute. As a school governor, I am aware that those costs can be enormous. The NUT says that it knows of schools that converted to trust status and had to spend more than £75,000 to do so. It is no wonder that in the many briefings that I was sent before this debate so many concerns were expressed by such a diverse range of groups. It is also why this Bill merits further consideration in this House and outside before it becomes law.

I do not believe, on the basis of what has been produced so far, that the measures in the Bill will do anything other than create greater social segregation, in which those who can afford to may do better, but will do so under the state system with subsidy from the state. I am appalled by that prospect and I have given my word to the parents, staff, governors and children in Wigan that I will oppose it all the way.

20:01

[Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)]

The main issue before us in the Bill is whether we should have more independent state schools. I wish to consider the international evidence, the national evidence and a local example from my constituency.

Internationally, the charter schools in New York have narrowed the rich-poor achievement gap by 86% in maths and 66% in English, thus addressing the point made by the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) about who would benefit from these reforms. In particular, the Harlem children’s zone charters have completely closed the black-white achievement gap at both elementary and middle school level. My constituency in south London has a very diverse population and I am very conscious of how many black boys have been let down by our education system in the past. I accept that the proposals are not a panacea and that there are counter-examples, but the evidence from New York is very encouraging.

At national level, a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers found that the average annual increase in GCSE five A*-C passes was twice as quick in academies as in equivalent schools in the maintained sector.

In my constituency, I have the example of Ashburton school. The previous Labour administration of Croydon council rebuilt the school, but that had failed to solve the problem of low performance. I give credit to the previous Government for providing the funding to rebuild the school. The Conservative administration that took over the council in 2006 decided to close the school and replace it with a new academy. My Labour opponent at the general election opposed that decision, calling Ashburton “a good community school”, despite the facts that fewer than 13% of pupils achieved five A*-C passes including English and maths, that hardly any local parents chose to send their children to the school and that the behaviour of the children on their way to and from school was a massive issue in the local community.

The new Oasis academy, Shirley Park, opened in September. Under the inspirational leadership of its head, Glen Denham, there is already a marked difference in the attitudes of the local community towards pupils at the school. Last year, 94 parents chose that school as their first preference, but this year it was 142. We wait to see this summer what the GCSE results will show, but the most powerful case for the school is made by talking to the pupils. I guess all Members visit schools in their constituencies, and one of the most positive signs is when the head teacher allows you to go around the school with pupils and no staff present. I heard from the pupils themselves what they think of the school. They told me clearly that, under the previous regime, there were no boundaries, that discipline was incredibly poor and that it was impossible to learn. Now they have clear boundaries, supportive teachers and the school has been transformed.

Selsdon high school in my constituency is to become an academy in September. It was caught up in the Building Schools for the Future announcement, because it was due to get funding for a rebuild, but it is one of those schools that Ministers are now considering. I shall not say any more because I have spoken to the Minister and he is aware of the issues at stake.

Why do academies make a difference? The presumption by some hon. Members is that the issue is money, but the principle is solely that academies should get their share of what the council is spending on central services. In actual fact, two main factors drive improvement. In relation to the academies set up by the previous Government, in which underperforming schools were taken over, what made the difference was the change in perception of that school in the local community, the chance for a fresh start and the bringing in of new management. However, head teachers in my constituency tell me that freedoms are also part of it, not so much freedom from the council—the only freedom from the council is having the chance to spend money that it now spends on the school’s behalf—but freedom from central Government control on pay and conditions, curriculum, term dates and lesson length.

I have given examples of what my local council is doing, but sadly not all councils are as progressive as the Conservative administration in Croydon. One crucial element of the Bill, therefore, is the removal of the monopoly on setting up new schools from local authorities. In our country, thousands of parents are told every year that the inn is full—that the schools they want to send their children to do not have any places, and they must either send them to a school they do not want to send them to or educate them at home. That is unacceptable.

The shadow Secretary of State quoted Professor David Wood’s findings about a potential new school in Kirklees. Professor Wood said that a new school would

“have a negative impact on other schools in the area in the form of surplus places”.

I find it incredible that the shadow Secretary of State does not seem to understand that unless the system has some surplus places, there is no choice for parents. It is inevitable that some parents will have to send their children to a school that they do not want to send them to.

Labour Members seem to think that the Government are talking about giving these freedoms only to outstanding schools. In fact, the Bill is about allowing all schools to apply for academy status. Outstanding schools will not require a sponsor, so they can be fast-tracked, but all schools will have that freedom. Will the Minister give some idea of the timescale for other schools? In my area, Coloma convent, Archbishop Tenison’s and Wolsey infant school are all outstanding and have expressed an interest. Other schools, such as Shirley high and St Mary’s, are not rated outstanding, but have also expressed interest.

[Mr Gibb]

I may be able to help my hon. Friend by saying that the fast-track process is to enable schools to be ready to open as academies from this September, but other schools can open beyond that in November, January, April or September next year. The fast track is just about this September.

[Gavin Barwell]

That is a helpful clarification and answers some of the points that have been made by Labour Members suggesting a bias in favour of outstanding schools.

The shadow Secretary of State tried to give the impression that the entire system of state education was being ripped up. If he really believed that, it is strange that we have not seen more Labour Members in the Chamber during this debate. He tried to claim that the Bill was a perversion of the Labour party’s approach to academies. In an earlier intervention, I cited remarks by Tony Blair on 24 October 2005, when he said:

“We want every school to be able quickly and easily to become a self-governing independent…school”.

What the Government are doing may be a departure from what the previous Secretary of State was doing, but it certainly is not a departure from what the Labour Government under Tony Blair were planning to do. Indeed, the Government are fulfilling the promise that he made.

The shadow Secretary of State’s main objection was that the proposals would create a two-tier system, but some of my hon. Friends have already made the point that that is what we have at the moment. Some schools are academies and some are not. If parents have the money to move into the catchment area of a good school, their children will get a good education. If parents are locked into a particular area by lack of money, they have to put up with the school in that area. There is huge so-called social segregation in our schools. One school has just 4.2% of families on income-related benefits, but at the other end of the spectrum there are schools with nearly 70% of families on income-related benefits.

The shadow Secretary of State claimed that the Bill would widen the gap—that somehow allowing outstanding, good and satisfactory schools to get better is a bad thing. That is the classic Labour argument of trying to hold the good down in order to narrow the gap. Surely what we should do is try to get everybody to improve. The Secretary of State confirmed that these schools will partner with a good school, and that is an important element. I would not want a free-for-all. I want to see schools collaborating and working together. Even when it comes to outstanding or good schools, there are too many parents who do not have confidence in those schools and choose to move out of the area or to the independent sector, and we want those schools to improve. We want parents to have confidence in their local schools, but they can have concerns even about some of the schools that we class as good or outstanding. The Government’s policy on the pupil premium should give schools an incentive to take pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.

My final point in response to Labour Members is that they seem to lack confidence in the teachers and parents of children from deprived areas. In my experience, the vast majority of teachers are motivated by the desire to help the least well-off kids. Rather than hearing a lot of publicity about parents setting up these new free schools, I hope that we will see teacher groups going into some of my most deprived communities and using this legislation to drive up standards in those areas.

[Ben Gummer]

On free schools, is it not the case that Sweden has a couple of thousand people in the independent sector, while here the figure for children in the independent sector is a rather shameful 7%? Surely a good result of the free school policy would be to bring that number down and bring more people back into the state sector.

[Gavin Barwell]

I agree with my hon. Friend.

I should like to address a couple of questions to the Minister. First, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), who has now left the Chamber, made some good points about the importance of academic qualifications, although they were rather at odds with the record of the Labour Government. I understand that the Government have now accepted an amendment in the Lords to ensure that academies are counted as public bodies under freedom of information legislation. I believe that there is an issue in relation to the impact on local councils. May we have more clarity on what areas of council spending will not be devolved down to academies?

The Secretary of State spoke earlier about the role of local authorities. My own council often finds itself defending schools that are not performing particularly well. I would much rather that local authorities were the champion of parents in their area and stood up for higher standards, rather than making the case for schools that were underperforming.

On consultation, we do not want a bureaucratic arrangement that is going to slow the process down. Like my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), I am keen to see progress made quickly. However, it is important to have consultation, and not just with parents in the school in question. When we try to change things in schools, we often find that the existing parents might have one view, while parents in the community around the school who are unhappy with the school might have a completely different one.

The Bill places before us this fundamental question: what is the best way to raise standards in our schools? I particularly admired the comments of the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), the former Chairman of the Select Committee. In complete contrast to the shadow Secretary of State’s political speech, he recognised that Members on both sides of the House have a passion for driving up education standards, and that we simply disagree about the best way to do it. That is a reasonable disagreement that should be aired and debated in the Chamber, and we should not imply that some people simply do not care about the issue.

The fundamental question is what is the best way to raise school standards. The previous Government believed that the best way was by driving standards from the top down. Indeed, in the debate in the other place, Opposition Members were clear that the improvements made by academies were the result of their getting all the Government attention. They almost suggested that it was the Department for Education that was responsible for those improvements.

Our belief is that the best way to drive up standards is to allow a choice of schools. There should be some surplus places to allow people to choose, and we must give schools freedom so that they can differentiate and offer parents different things. Different children might well benefit from different styles of education. We should empower parents in that way and give them that choice. That bottom-up approach is the way to drive up standards, not the top-down approach of the previous Government. It is with great pleasure that I speak in favour of the Bill, which I believe will make a profound difference to parents and children across our country.

20:13

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my London colleague, the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell), who has some very strong schools in his constituency. I am also pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), who made an excellent speech.

I hope that Members on both sides of the House agree that the street in which someone was born should not determine their educational achievement. Success is always at the heart of educational discussion in the House and, for most communities, success has five ingredients. One is of course education. The second is employment, as a result, I hope, of that education. The third is a culture of aspiration. The fourth is parenting, and, for those without parents or who have problematic parents, there will be youth workers in loco parentis and others in the voluntary sector in the community coming alongside. The fifth is community. I hope that, when we think about the role of local education authorities in the debate tonight, we will acknowledge that all those ingredients can come together to make a difference. This is not just about the schools but about the youth services provided alongside the school that the local authority is in charge of delivering. It is not just about the status or structure of a school, or whether it is an academy or not, but about how we reach into communities, lift aspiration and ensure that all young people can achieve their dreams.

Against that backdrop, the fact that just 14% of the young people in my constituency were getting five good GCSEs when we came to power in 1997 can only be described as despairing, decaying and, to some extent, the road to doom. That meant that 86% were getting fewer than that. We were sending more young people to prison than to university, and that was replicated in some of the most deprived constituencies in the country. We should reflect deeply on that when we talk about the importance of education to life outcomes.

The nature of our debates on education over the years reveals a preoccupation with structure. For my party, following the Butler Act in 1944, much of that preoccupation consisted of our deep hostility to grammar schools and our desire for a comprehensive system in which all young people would be of equal worth, and would have comprehensive access to quality education across the country. Some Conservative Members—perhaps because of their proximity to independent schools—seem to suggest that the state system should be freed and given the ability to innovate, to replicate the arrangements in the independent sector. References have been made to the changes that we have made in governing bodies, as well as to grant-maintained status and direct control. That is all about structure.

The great achievement of the Labour Government over the past 13 years was—yes, of course—to make some changes to the structure and to introduce academies, but particularly to have an eye on quality and standards, and to get into the classroom, and to be alongside teachers and head teachers in driving up quality. One Conservative Member disparaged classroom assistants, but they serve to provide two or three adults in a classroom to help to drive up those standards. Excellence in schools was about developing pedagogy, particularly to drive up standards for those who had been consistently left behind. Over the years, we have debated the challenges that exist for white, disaffected communities and, as the hon. Member for Croydon Central pointed out, for black boys, in order to drive those standards up. We were engaged in those schools, and the figure of 14% in my constituency that I mentioned earlier is today 66%. That is what we have achieved. It means that when I served as the Minister for Higher Education, I served in a constituency where we had seen not just a small rise in young people going to university, but one of almost 100% in constituents going to university, and in young people making their way to apprenticeships.

That is hugely important, as these are the very same families who, as we think back to the 1980s, had parents or older brothers and sisters streamed off to do the CSE exam—one in which they could not achieve their best in the way others doing GCE O-levels could. That left its mark—one that we have often attempted to correct with our emphasis on basic skills, numeracy, literacy, unionlearn, and the community response to education as well. It is not just about structure; it is absolutely about standards.

Standards were at the heart of our drive on academies, concentrating our efforts. There were 188 of them, many of them failing schools in the most deprived areas, and we were giving them a fresh start, renewing them with new buildings. Yes, we gave the new leadership of those schools the freedom to innovate. It was, I think, the emphasis on standards that saw the advances made. Academies were, of course, largely based in inner-city areas. A large proportion of them—27%—served black and ethnic minority communities. There was real innovation in the system.

My concern is the hostility from the Government side to local education authorities. I ask why they are so hostile to our means of pooling resources, bringing them alongside schools, giving them specialist advice, helping them organise admissions and so forth. Local education authorities were set up in 1902 by the Conservatives, and they have served us well. The Bill that we are voting on tonight will pave the way the break-up of local authorities over time.

What will we now say to the schools left behind as schools scramble to get academy status? Let us not pretend that this is not about money. The Department for Education website shows that this is about money because it helps schools model how much more of it they would make. And why primary schools? What evidence is there that primary schools, particularly single-form entry primary schools, are even equipped to take on this extra load?

On that basis, we challenge this new system, which will disperse the efforts and advances made by academies, and we question much that has been said. I am very concerned about the equality impact assessment of the new scheme. We are already seeing in the academies that girls are not making advances, that ethnic minorities are not—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order.

20:23

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

It is fair to say that we all agree on the need to drive up standards in our schools because education is a vital public good in its own right, because it is critical for Britain to compete in the global economy, and because it is the key to social mobility—the linchpin of a fair society.

This Bill is unusual in that it builds on innovation in schools policy that dates back 25 years at least—from the ground-breaking city technology colleges introduced under the Conservative Administration through to Tony Blair’s academy reforms. It would be remiss not to pay tribute to the contributions made from all sides of the House to our starting point today.

On the Government side, however, we are restless to go further because the drive for higher standards hit a roadblock under the last Government, which left 40% of primary school pupils falling short of basic standards in reading, writing, maths and science; half the children on free school meals leaving primary school without basic English and maths; and half of all pupils unable to achieve five good GCSEs.

No one can reasonably suggest that no progress has been made in recent years, but neither can anyone seriously claim to be satisfied when between 2000 and 2006—the Education Secretary has already made the point, but it is worth repeating—15-year-olds in this country fell down the OECD international rankings: from eighth to 24th in maths, from seventh to 17th in reading, and with a similar decline in science.

This Bill seeks to resuscitate the drive for excellence in our schools. It is based on certain core convictions, such as the belief that pluralism and competition are a powerful motor to drive up standards. In 2009, as already mentioned, academies saw GCSE results increase at double the national average rate. We also have a belief in innovation—yes, trial and error—because we think it must overcome the dogma that demands that no school may thrive unless all schools always progress at precisely the same speed, which is a recipe for stagnation in standards of teaching. Ofsted’s last annual report illustrates the point: of 30 academies, 17—more than half—were outstanding or good, while only five were inadequate. We want to boost standards in the five, not hold back the 17.

This Bill delivers on these principles by giving schools the freedom to innovate: freedom to set staff pay, to reward high performers and to attract the best talent; freedom to tailor the curriculum and the length of the school day to the teaching needs of children, not Whitehall targets; and the freedom to attract sponsors who, as the National Audit Office found last year, can bring high-quality expertise and experience and build partnerships between schools and business. As the Sutton Trust report in 2008 highlighted, the freedom given to academies has

“led to instances of visionary leadership”.

The Bill addresses, head on, legitimate concerns about the impact on children most in need. The pupil premium for disadvantaged children will ensure that we invest most where it is needed most. I recognise other legitimate concerns that have been raised—for example, about the standards of maths and English in some academies, given their level and degree of specialisation. We must ensure that all children get to grips with basic numeracy and literacy—the gateway to any further learning.

We must also ensure that the implementation arrangements learn the lessons from the cost overruns previously associated with the building of some of the previous academies. So, too, we must build on the positive findings by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Sutton Trust—that flexible collaboration between academies, local authorities, schools and universities helps to drive performance. Such collaboration, along with the pupil premium, should address another concern—that academies might lead to a two-tier system of education.

I also draw attention to existing anomalies in relation to funding for our schools. I hope the Secretary of State will review the schools funding formula to make it more transparent and I hope we can all agree across the Chamber to ensure that it reflects an objective assessment of real need. The Education Secretary will know from the “Hidden Surrey” report that Surrey—yes, leafy Surrey—has seven wards with double the national average level of child poverty. It was neglected by the last Government’s arbitrary deprivation indices. That is just one example of the politicisation of local funding. There are many more in other parts of the country, and I hope that Ministers will address them.

Clause 5, and the arrangements that accompany the Bill, deal with a further issue, that of accountability. No school can become an academy without consultation and a resolution by the governors. The idea that parasitic sponsors can sideline all the parents and all the teachers is an over-peddled myth. The truth is that the real risk to our schools and the real threat to our children come not from putting parents, teachers and community groups in charge of our children’s schooling, but from the overweening, over-regulating, overbearing intrusions of an increasingly arbitrary and arrogant state bureaucracy built up by the last Government.

In their March report, Policy Exchange and the New Schools Network convincingly argued the case for less state interference, highlighting in particular the warping effect of Ofsted’s non-educational priorities. Nothing better illustrates the perverse political correctness in the higher echelons of the current educational bureaucracy than the suggestion by the outgoing chair of Ofsted that every school needs a useless teacher, so that children can learn how to tolerate incompetence and “play” authority. Nothing better illustrates the arrogance of state authority than the rules that forced a school in Dulwich to report Oliver and Gillian Schonrock to social services because they wanted their children to cycle a one-mile route to school—a route that they deem safe, and a routine that they believe will instil a much stronger sense of personal responsibility in their children.

This nonsense has gone on for far too long. We must free our children, teachers and parents from the suffocating straitjacket of state control. The Bill is just the first legislative step in the right direction. I hope that modernisers in all parties in the House will come together to clear away the vested interests blocking change, take this once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver the reform agenda that stalled under the last Government, and secure the reforms that can drive educational excellence and benefit all our schools throughout the country.

20:31

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

When I was selected as the parliamentary candidate for my constituency, the editor of the Manchester Evening News described me as a dyed-in-the-wool socialist. He was being complimentary, and I took it as a compliment. That is my starting point.

I believe in education that is free for everyone. I do not believe in selection criteria. I do not believe in a system that says, “You can come in, but someone else can’t.” I do not believe in a system that says, “If you have a certain level of education or qualification, such as particular skills in maths or English, you can come to our school, but otherwise—sorry, we don’t want you.” I believe that all schools should take kids of all abilities, because that is the only way to bring about real levelling and equality in society.

People here sometimes talk of the golden age of grammar schools, and reminisce about how brilliant those schools were. Let me give an example of someone who would have been completely lost if the grammar school system had been all that we had. In Watford, where I grew up, we had some very good comprehensive schools thanks to a Labour Government. Only one grammar school was left. If selection criteria had been applied, I would have been shunted off to one of the old-fashioned sink schools where no one had a chance to go to university, and pupils were expected to leave school at 15 or 16 and work as a shop assistant or in a factory. There were no real expectations of them. That did not happen to me, however. I went to a comprehensive school, I took my A-levels, went to university and qualified as a barrister. I can honestly say that if we had not had comprehensive schools I would have been thrown on the scrapheap, notwithstanding all those golden reminiscences about grammar schools.

Let us get real. Why should we have selection at all? Given that all these schools are state schools, paid for by the taxpayers—you, me and everyone else—why should they be able to act in such a way? People should be able to send their children to schools that are as near as possible to their homes, with good equipment, good teachers and good resources, and they should all be good schools. Members may think that that is utopia, but it may be something we can work towards. Many schools have improved since Labour came to office in 1997. The Labour Government put real money into helping schools. They enabled existing schools to be refurbished and new schools to be built, and provided schools with classroom assistants and extra teachers.

A Conservative Member said that our record of educational achievement had worsened. That is not true. According to all the statistics throughout the country, more people now leave school with five GCSEs, and higher grades than in 1997. That is a record of which a former Labour Government can be proud, and I find it annoying when Members seem to forget the real educational advances that were made under that Government.

When my party introduced academies, I was one of those who was not very happy about it, as I preferred all schools to be looked after by the state and the local education authority. I was convinced by that move, however, when it became clear that the less well-performing schools were going to have the chance to get some extra funding so they could improve their educational level. For that reason alone, I was willing to support that academies measure. I want to make it clear, however, that my Labour Government spent a lot of money on education.

This Academies Bill is ideologically driven. The best-performing schools will not even have to bother to do anything; they can just go through the process and get academy status. We are told that we do not have enough money to build schools. Schools in my constituency that were going to be refurbished and rebuilt have had those plans cancelled because, they are told, there is no money for them, even though those cancellations will cost my council about £9 million, yet most of the schools that will become academies will have to go through a process that will cost them money.

We are trying to save money in that way, yet at the same time we are saying, “No, it’s fine if you want to become exclusive schools and exclude people because you want to maintain your so-called high standards; we are not interested in that.” Therefore, those schools have the freedom to do that. That is not fair, and I think all Members on both sides of the House should be concerned about this elitist attitude—the attitude that says, “We must have these excellent schools which only a few excellent people can attend.”

Let me give an example to explain why we need mixed-ability schools. A junior school in Kilburn was considered to be not so well performing, but then a lot of middle-class professional people started sending their children to that school, and years down the road it was found that the performance of the school had gone up. That is what happens such when parents become involved in ordinary schools—in what might be considered sink schools or less well-performing schools. When parents from different backgrounds are involved in schools, standards rise even though there are mixed-ability children.

The issue of standards is what this debate should always be about. We all talk about wanting to look after our children, yet all we hear about is exclusivity; all we hear is, “We want better schools to get better.” There is no mention in the Bill that there should perhaps be some kind of admissions criteria that allow, let us say, 50% of children in these schools to come from ordinary schools—those that are not performing so well. The Bill does not say that, and everybody knows that when we have a selective system the brightest children get taken on and that cycle continues.

[Paul Uppal (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a passionate speech, as did the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), who spoke very personally, and the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy). There are no doubts about the passion and the validity of the emotion in their speeches. It is important that I make the point that I myself went to a state school. I did allude to that. When I was in primary school, I was in a remedial class because the assumption was that I could not speak English, but the important point I want to make is—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman must ask a question. His intervention is not a chance to make a speech.

[Paul Uppal]

Thank you for your guidance, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I will do so. I want to make a point about the selection issue, which the hon. Lady raised. Why do we go on about selection? Selection in this modern day, when our children are competing with graduates from India and China, is linked to the importance of the pursuit of excellence and aspiration. That is absolutely crucial if we are to succeed, and—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. I call Yasmin Qureshi.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. The hon. Gentleman says that I was talking about selection. If the teachers are teaching well and the pupils are responding well, children of all abilities can be taught in one school. There will obviously be some children who do very well academically, while others may not do quite so well. However, children who are perhaps academically poor initially will have a chance to catch up. Because they are in a good school with children of mixed abilities, they will have a chance to get better.

[Bill Esterson]

There is a lot of evidence to show that areas that still have selection actually have poorer standards and results than those with a completely comprehensive system. I wonder whether that makes the point that my hon. Friend is trying to make.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I thank my hon. Friend for that helpful intervention. Yes, that is what I am saying, and I have seen it across the country.

Perhaps such a view is unfashionable in this day and age, when everything is about selection and performance, but we are forgetting the ordinary children from ordinary families. Do they not have the right to be with “the very bright child” in a school that provides excellent educational facilities? Why cannot the poor child from Farnworth or from the Newbury estate in my constituency go to a school attended by children from Chorley New road, a posh part of the constituency? We need everybody to be together. Children from less well-off backgrounds, whose home lives might make it difficult for them to perform well academically, need to be in schools where they can get help and where everyone’s standards are raised. I know that this is an old-fashioned way of thinking—or perhaps it is not, but it is not the conventional thinking now. I find it surprising that everybody is sleepwalking into and justifying this system of selection.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady understand that the coalition Government are not proposing to expand selection, as the Bill makes clear? I have three excellent selective schools in my constituency—the hon. Lady is now not listening to me. Does she propose that these schools be disbanded and all the fantastic opportunities that are there for those children be lost?

[Yasmin Qureshi]

Clause 6(4) of the Bill states:

“For this purpose a school is a ‘selective school’ if its admission arrangements make provision for selection of pupils by ability, and…its admission arrangements are permitted to do so by section 100 of SSFA 1998”.

What is that? It is selection.

[Julian Smith]

If the hon. Lady looks at the clause in more detail, she will see that there is no chance of expanding selection. The point is that there are some good selective schools, which are being allowed to continue, but the Government are not expanding selection.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

The Bill enables the very good school to fast-track into becoming an academy, and it does not say that there has to be proper consultation with the local authority or with the people in the community who use the school. If it is not a question of the very good schools wanting to become more selective, why would they want to go for an academy system? We are told that the Government are not putting any further money into the academies—

[Mr Raab]

I wonder whether the hon. Lady has had an opportunity to read clause 5, which makes clear the consultation provisions that she is, I think, hoping for.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

The Bill does not say, however, that 50% of the children coming into such a school must consist of children of all abilities. We will still have academies and schools selecting according to ability, and my point is that we should not.

It might be a controversial idea and an unpalatable one to many people in the House, but it is not that strange: why should children from all backgrounds not go to the same school? Why can we not have mixed-ability classes? The record across the country shows that schools containing children with a mix of ability and with different social backgrounds do better, and that schools that are not performing so well start to do better in these circumstances because everyone is working for things together. Instead everybody wants to create these “excellent” schools, which have “pushy parents”—I am sure that my saying that will be held against me—who obviously want the best for their children. That is fine and I understand that they want the best for their children, but why does everybody forget about the other—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. I call Robert Buckland.

20:45

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

I yield to nobody in my admiration for the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) and for the passion with which she makes her argument. I think her argument, if it was based on an analysis of the Bill, was that clause 6 should be removed and that no existing schools that select according to ability should be allowed to become academies. She made a passionate speech, but it was based on the fundamental misconception that the Bill is, in some way, all about enshrining selection as the way forward and selection on ability as the lodestar for academies. That is wrong and it is a fundamental misreading of clause 6, which refers to “pre-existing” selective schools being allowed to apply to become academies. Therefore, with the greatest respect to the hon. Lady, I say that she misses the point.

I welcome the Bill in general. I particularly welcome the amendments accepted by the Government in the other place and those resulting from debate there, especially the ones relating to the provision for children and young people who have special educational needs. I should declare my interest as a parent of a child with SEN. The amendments in the other place were the result of considered debate and of contributions by Members in that place from all parties and none. The amendments were an important part of the process by which the Bill has matured as a result of debate, so it would be wrong to say that the Bill comes to the Floor of this House without having had any thought, consideration or detailed debate, or indeed any consideration by the Government. I am glad to say that they have listened to the quality of that debate and taken appropriate action.

That has been particularly important in respect of clause 1, because I was concerned by the original provision that was drafted on special needs, which described how children with varying needs would be catered for. That has now gone and the current provisions incorporate part 4 of the 1996 Act, which fully satisfies those of us who were concerned about a lack of parity in the funding for children with SEN at maintained schools and those at academies. That important amendment solves that problem.

The other good news was the amendment made to clause 2 to incorporate subsections (5) and (6), which make it obligatory for local authorities to set aside an amount of money to spend on services for academy pupils with “low incidence” SEN. In other words, the provisions create a class of expenditure in the non-schools education budget for low incidence SEN. That is very important when considering the provision of resources and places. I am thinking, for example, of units for children and young people with a range of particular needs.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

On resources and the payment of salaries in supporting SEN students, how is the coalition proposing that we deal with the supply and salaries of tutors of, and special needs advisers on, language therapy, when primary care trusts are being proposed for closure?

[Mr Buckland]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. My belief is that the pooling of resources will still occur in LEAs, and it is my belief that commissioning GPs will want to take a similar approach when it comes to the local provision of speech and language therapies. That subject is very close to my heart—I know that it is close to the hon. Gentleman’s, too—and I shall be watching very carefully to ensure that we do not throw the baby out with the bath water when it comes to the important provision and support that speech and language therapists provide to children with special educational needs.

The nub of it is that as a result of the amendments, many of the concerns held by those of us who are interested in the provision for special educational needs have been allayed. However, one or two matters remain to be addressed, particularly the ongoing duty on local authorities to provide a statement of special educational needs, wherever a child goes to school and whatever type of school they go to, and to adhere to the requirements of that statement. Sometimes, unfortunately, problems arise. All Members will have had parents come to them with such problems—I certainly have, both in my capacity as a Member of this House and as a school governor in a former life.

As I have said, a problem can arise when a school does not, for whatever reason, follow the requirements of a statement of special educational needs. We all know that there is a statutory requirement to do so, but how do we enforce that requirement? What will happen in an academy? Will the local authority require the academy to live up to the provision set out in the statement? Questions on those important details still need to be answered.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman clearly has a great passion for this subject. Will he outline for the benefit of the House who he thinks should be responsible for ensuring that statements are adhered to?

[Mr Buckland]

First and foremost, I think that the governing body must always have that responsibility. We already have examples of previous practice in foundation schools, which were the creation of the previous Labour Government in the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. The hon. Gentleman will probably agree that there have been a number of cases where governing bodies, for whatever reason, have not had the wherewithal to respond to a parental complaint about a lack of provision. It has been very difficult for parents to know precisely where to go to get that help. The answer must be clear, and I am confident that in the course of the debate in Committee we can address that issue.

What about children who do not have full statements but who are perhaps under the provisions of school action or school action plus? Their position is somewhat more difficult because they do not enjoy the advantage of statutory protection or statutory force when it comes to the implementation of their school plan. When a school is breaching the SEN code of practice in relation to those children, where will those parents go for redress? The governing body, as I said in response to the intervention made by the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) a moment ago, would be the first port of call but, again, I would welcome some clarity on that point. The basis of accountability comes in the form of the contract that will exist between academies and the LEA, but, as I have said, that point needs some clarification.

Further clarity is required should there be a dispute over the admission of a child with SEN or a child on school action or school action plus. The new model funding agreement for admissions to academies is clear and I welcome it, but I would go further and suggest that we will need some more detail on the time frame within which admission disputes between parents and schools should be resolved.

[Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

If more and more schools are to be encouraged to opt out of local education authority control, would it be his preference that in due course they should eventually gain control of their own admissions procedures?

[Mr Buckland]

As I have said, I think that the principle of selection has not been part of the argument when it comes to academies. It is not about selection, and that is why I made my earlier observations about the hon. Member for Bolton South East. This is all about excellence, and the Bill strikes the right balance on admissions and the criteria for admissions procedures.

[Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

I know that the hon. Gentleman is very interested in this subject and that it is very close to his heart. Is he not at all worried that the greater degree of autonomy that academies will exercise will inevitably make it much easier for selection, whether overt or covert, to take place? That might well have a detrimental effect on the education of precisely the children he is worried about.

[Mr Buckland]

No, I am not worried, because I see nothing in the Bill to give me cause for suspicion or concern about selection by the back or front door. I reject the Labour party’s suggestion that this is some sort of ideological drive by the Government. It is not about ideology. I am probably one of the least ideological members of my party and I would not stand here and support some ideological fancy. This is all about excellence and driving up standards. It is all about trusting schools, teachers and professionals to get on with the job that we rightly pay them to do so well.

[Bill Esterson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Buckland]

I will not take any more interventions as my time is fast running out. Let me make some brief points about the governance of foundation schools. The Bill is rightly silent as to the form and style of governing bodies for academies, but I would welcome some discussion of the nature of school governance in modern schools. It is a demanding task for volunteer governors to undertake. Many of them work very hard to monitor the work of the schools that they are involved with and to scrutinise the work of head teachers and the senior leadership team, but I wonder whether the current model of governing bodies and periodic committee meetings works as well as it could. Perhaps we should consider having a more strategic structure with a small number of governors working on a day-to-day basis with the head teacher and SLT, and a much wider pool of talent being involved in a range of tasks within the school. That could involve as many members of the community as possible, whether they are parents or interested local persons. There is work to be done on the quality and nature of school governance in relation to academy, maintained and other schools.

In supporting the Bill and commending its Second Reading, I hope that I have in some way contributed to a very sensitive and important area of this debate—the needs of the children who do not enjoy the advantages that others enjoy and who deserve, as the Prime Minister said in response to a question that I asked him two weeks ago, all the love and support we can give.

20:58

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) talked about the children who do not enjoy the advantages that others enjoy, but surely the legislation that the Government propose does precisely the opposite of what he claims. Surely, the future of our children and their education is too important to be the subject of rushed, poorly considered and flawed legislation, but that is what is on offer from the Tory-Lib Dem coalition. It is clear from the comments of hon. Members, including those of the hon. Gentleman about the so-called consultation process, that there are fundamental flaws. What is consultative about a governing body being able to make a decision without talking to parents or the wider community? How is that proper consultation, democracy or anything other than the kind of top-down approach that Members on the Government Benches have criticised the previous Government for?

The Bill is being rushed, and rushed legislation has led to many mistakes in the past. In this case, any mistakes will be paid for by the many vulnerable children in this country whose life chances I fear will suffer. The Bill helps outstanding schools, which, by definition, are already doing well and are in the least need of extra support. The Bill diverts the Labour Government’s academies scheme from improving the weakest schools to helping the strongest at the expense of the majority of other schools—expense for the many to the benefit of the few. Hardly progressive politics.

It is almost unprecedented to rush through such major public service reform, with just a few weeks between publication of the Bill and its passage into the statute book. Such methods are commonly used only to pass emergency terrorism legislation. Parliament will have no real chance to scrutinise the detail of the proposals.

[Stephen Pound]

In the short time my hon. Friend has been in the House he has won a reputation for having a forensic mind. In keeping with the point he has just made, may I draw his attention to clause 10(1)? It contains an utterly extraordinary statement, but I am sure my hon. Friend can enlighten the House as to its true meaning:

“Before entering into Academy arrangements with the Secretary of State in relation to an additional school, a person must consult such persons as the person thinks appropriate.”

That strikes me as meaning having a chat with the caretaker at best and chaos at worst. What does my hon. Friend think?

[Bill Esterson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. As always, he hits the nail bang on the head. I interpreted those words as providing the opportunity to have a conversation with oneself, which would certainly fit the Bill. We are talking about inadequate legislation and my hon. Friend has identified one of the best examples of that lack of adequacy.

It is a pity that the hon. Member for Southport (Dr Pugh) has left the Chamber, because the head teacher of Churchtown primary school in Southport said that the consultation was a shambles. He, like head teachers from Sefton, recently attended some of the consultation meetings held by the Government. The feedback was that there was no information, no one was able to answer their questions and there was no opportunity to find out what the whole academy and free school programme was about. It does not inspire confidence when head teachers make such observations.

Parents’ groups and private companies will be able to open new schools with funding from the taxpayer, even where there are already sufficient places. They will take pupils from existing schools, where funding will be cut and education will suffer for the majority left behind. New buildings will be created for many free schools by using the money saved by cancelling new buildings for existing schools. In Sefton Central that means Chesterfield high school and Crosby high school, which is a special school due to be co-located with Chesterfield high school. It was an opportunity to integrate the pupils of a special school with pupils at a mainstream school and was welcomed and supported by parents, teachers and pupils. That opportunity has been taken away.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend mentioned that two schools were to be co-located to produce a better educational facility for the pupils of both schools. There is a similar situation in several areas in my constituency. Local authorities may have been relying on a capital receipt from the sale of one site but that site could now be made available for a free school, so does my hon. Friend share my concern that that would throw into doubt the entire reorganisation of education in my constituency, and perhaps in his?

[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. In Sefton, we could have the same problem. Money that would have been available to the authority for capital projects for other schools and for educational purposes will now not be available. One of the major weaknesses of the Bill is that a bribe is being offered to the schools that go first. A bribe to outstanding schools that need that opportunity least will mean less money left behind, both capital and revenue funding, for schools that do not have the opportunity because they are not outstanding.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Bill Esterson]

I have already given way twice.

Over £1 million has been committed in Sefton in progressing its Building Schools for the Future projects and £161 million nationally—money that cannot now be recovered, so that is hardly the way to cut the deficit. Free schools will be funded in other ways. With cuts in the area-based grant, the Nurture Base in Sefton will close, although it provides 10 places for children aged between four and seven, so that they can receive the support that children with behavioural difficulties need to return to mainstream school. That is part of a £2.5 million cut in Sefton that will allow outstanding schools to become academies. There is no provision in the legislation for behavioural support of the kind available in Sefton, so that is now being cut.

Another way in which the academies and free schools are being funded is from the primary capital programme, which is under review and clearly headed for a cut.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Bill Esterson]

No, I am not giving way.

Aintree Davenhill primary school has had its first phase built, but the second phase has been halted. Many of the children at that school face the prospect of continuing their education in second world war sheds, freezing in the winter and baking hot in the summer. The school faces uncertainty at best and continued appalling conditions at worst. Why? To pay for the political dogma of the governing parties.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Bill Esterson]

No, I am not giving way.

I was concerned to hear that the review of previously agreed projects extends to the previous Government’s academy programme. In the Medway towns, three academies were approved by the former Secretary of State, with the support of the former School Standards Minister and his predecessors. They had to make up for the failings of Tory-run Medway council, where the children’s services department had failed to address the long-term problems of underperforming schools, largely caused by the 11-plus and the selective system there, which contributes in no small measure to the fact that the secondary modern schools have high numbers of children with special educational needs that are not resourced properly.

Three academies are being built: Strood academy opened last September, and the Chatham and Gillingham academies open this September. In all three, the buildings are not fit for purpose. Strood and Chatham academies will open on two sites each, as they each replace two previous schools. All three academies serve deprived areas that need significant financial support. If their funding is withdrawn in favour of outstanding schools, as in the Government’s proposal, it will be one of the best examples—or worst examples, depending on someone’s viewpoint—of how the Bill will sacrifice those who are most in need of help in favour of those who need it least. I am glad that the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) is now in the Chamber to hear about the disgraceful way that the Government are failing his constituents.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Bill Esterson]

I will not get any more time if I give way, so I am not going to.

Meanwhile, as Barnet Tory council made savage cuts to schools and the rest of the public sector, its members voted for a £20,000 a year increase in the allowances for Tory cabinet members. They declared that poverty was an emotive word and that all people needed was aspiration. Barnet is the “easyCouncil”—the no-frills council—except when it comes to its Tory cabinet members.

[Rehman Chishti]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Bill Esterson]

No, I am not giving way.

By cutting the Building Schools for the Future and the primary capital programmes and the area-based grants, the Tories are saying, “If you come from a deprived area or from a struggling school, we’re not going to support you. We will only support those schools that need it least.” Jack Stopforth of Liverpool chamber commerce commented:

“It’s all very well to talk about short-term savings for the public purse, but the long-term implications for the education base of our children and the future skills base and the effect on the private sector supply chain is profound.”

When people in that sort of position make such comments, it is time that Government Members considered the damage that the legislation will do. They should reconsider it.

21:10

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

I have had the privilege and pleasure of sitting here for a good number of hours listening to the arguments of Members on both sides of the Chamber. One speech in particular struck home—that of the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy); I am sorry that he has left the Chamber. He made a moving, passionate speech about education in his constituency. I wrote down a particular line; I think he said that when Labour came to government, 13% or 16% of his constituents went to university, and a higher number went to prison, which I thought was a telling tale.

[Stephen Pound]

On a point of information, the reason my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) is not in his place is that today is his birthday, and his presence was required elsewhere.

[Stephen Lloyd]

I thank the hon. Gentleman; I appreciate that information. In that case, I am particularly glad that I complimented the right hon. Member for Tottenham on his speech, which I thought was strong.

I should also like to compliment the Labour party. Any fair-minded person would accept that in the past 13 years, considerable investment went into education, and there were improvements to schools in my constituency, for which I am grateful. That, in a sense, is the positive side to what happened over the past 13 years under the Labour party. I am disappointed that a lot of what I have heard today from Labour Members is indignation about the coalition Government’s plans for academies. To be perfectly frank, at the election, it was clear from the Conservative manifesto what the plan was. Given the coalition Government’s position, there cannot be any surprise at the idea that they will deliver what they promised, so I am a little puzzled.

[Paul Farrelly]

Before the hon. Gentleman gets to the substance of his speech, I point out that I voted against plenty of Labour programme motions in the past two Parliaments when I thought that Bills needed more consideration. Funnily enough, I always found the No Lobby heaving with Liberal Democrats. Does he agree that any Liberal Democrats who tonight vote for the programme motion have, in very short order, given up on the basic principles of proper scrutiny, and have in effect become mere nodding dogs on the Tory bandwagon?

[Stephen Lloyd]

No, I do not agree at all. In a sense, the hon. Gentleman’s intervention backs up my point about what I see as the flipside of the Labour party. On the one hand, it brought about a lot of good things in education when it was in government. On the flipside, there also came a lot of nonsensical things. It was an absolute disgrace that six months before the general election, the former Secretary of State went around promising that billions of pounds, or certainly a multimillion-pound sum, would be spent on schools, when he knew that the money was not in the kitty.

I particularly want to talk about the coalition Government’s commitment to a pupil premium. Last week, I had the privilege of attending a year 6 production at Shinewater school in my constituency. It serves an area with a large number of disadvantaged families and students. Despite that, the school has tremendous esprit de corps. I believe that it has been told that it has got an “outstanding” from Ofsted. The school is a perfect example of what will happen with the pupil premium, to which I know that the Secretary of State is committed. It will result in further tens of thousands of pounds being invested in schools such as Shinewater. That is the sort of money that will make the difference for people and youngsters in my constituency—the difference that the right hon. Member for Tottenham described so powerfully when talking about his constituency.

I received a commitment from the Secretary of State for Education three weeks or so ago. He said that he was absolutely committed to putting £2.3 billion or £2.5 billion into the pupil premium. I look forward to the coalition Government and the Secretary of State delivering on that promise; I am confident that he will. I am very aware that education is the silver bullet. Education is the route out of poverty, and that is why so many of us feel so passionately about the matter.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Stephen Lloyd]

No, I shall not. I have almost finished.

The pupil premium is directly targeted at those disadvantaged students who need it most, and I am absolutely delighted that the coalition Government are committed to delivering it. I look forward to reading that commitment when I see the detail of the Bill, and I am absolutely confident that, for the youngsters from Shinewater school and for others from similarly disadvantaged backgrounds in my constituency, the pupil premium will make a considerable difference and give them a real opportunity. I look forward to seeing the detail of the Bill.

21:15

[Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

As a Welsh Member, I beg the House’s indulgence in contributing to this debate. I have three children, and they, like all children in Wales, will be insulated from some of the more malign effects of this Bill by virtue of our rather more progressive coalition.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

We’ll move to Wales.

[Owen Smith]

That might be a good idea.

I wanted to speak tonight because the Bill is such an important piece of legislation. It is one of the real key, signature pieces of legislation from this rather less progressive coalition Government at Westminster, and I feel that all Members, wherever they hail from, should address these issues.

It has been interesting to watch Government Members throughout today’s debate, because on the faces of some there has been surprise at the volume of opposition from Labour Members and at the passion that we have brought to the debate. That is because we feel that there are fundamental issues at hand, including not just the way in which the Bill is being railroaded through with unseemly haste, but its content, and I shall address two levels of that concern.

First, we are concerned about the legislation’s immediate and practical impact. Our abiding concern is about the type of autonomy, the free-for-all, for academy schools, which will be cut free—“liberated”, I gather, is the phrase du jour from Government Members.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

Having been the chairman of the board of governors at a grant-maintained primary school in the 1990s, I feel all the same arguments coming back from the Labour party. Is it not the case that the boot is on the other foot—that Labour Members’ opposition to the Bill is deeply ideological, as it was to grant-maintained schools and to the autonomy and power of parents? Essentially, the Labour party has never trusted, and does not today trust, people with the education of their own children.

[Owen Smith]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and completely agree. This is a very familiar and, indeed, old debate, because from Government Members we have heard the warmed-up arguments of Thatcherism: effectively, the privatisation by stealth of our schools and education, and, coming up later in the year no doubt, a wholesale attack on welfare. The debate is familiar and ideological, and the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: my opposition is ideological, too, because I sincerely believe that we need local authorities—the state, in its benign form—to offer some control over our schools, so that we have equitable provision as opposed to the free-for-all that Government Members clearly think would be of benefit.

[Paul Farrelly]

On my hon. Friend’s point about politics and practicalities, is it his understanding that, in Wales as well as in England, the Liberal Democrats’ policy is to support local education authorities, not to contribute to their dismantling and demise?

[Owen Smith]

There is a deep irony in that. On the contortions that the Liberal Democrats are having to perform between Wales and Westminster, I understand that they are actively considering what they would do in the unlikely event of their winning greater power in Wales—as in, thinking about whether they could afford to be in coalition in London with the Tories and in Wales with the Labour party. Seemingly, their opportunism knows no bounds.

However, as I said, we have two levels of deep concern. The first is immediate and practical, including the question of whether that greater degree of autonomy—that laissez-faire attitude to education as well as to economics—will result in a worse outcome for all our children, with few children being cared for as fully as they should be. The hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) eloquently raised some of his concerns about special educational needs, and I, too, have a child with such needs, so I am very worried about this legislation and whether free academies, free from local control, will be able to provide that care adequately.

[Stephen Pound]

On the subject of the excellent contribution of the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland), does my hon. Friend recall the hon. Gentleman saying that he felt a great citizens’ army of governors would sweep in to support the system? School governors are wholly unpaid and perform that duty in their own time, and I speak as the husband of the chair of governors at Cardinal Wiseman high school, who is out five nights a week—usually of her own choice. Does he agree that as for practicalities, what we have is no more than the warm words that led to the cold classrooms of the last Conservative Administration?

[Owen Smith]

I cannot but agree, wholeheartedly.

I have already touched on our second, perhaps more profound concern, which is about the longer-term philosophical underpinnings of the Bill. We see similarities between what is being proposed in respect of education and in the health White Paper, and what we will no doubt see in respect of the welfare reforms later this year. In dread phrases throughout the Bill and that White Paper, there are hints of what is proposed. There is a clear indication that the proposal for the concept of free schools is warmed-over privatisation.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

Is my hon. Friend aware that the free academy idea came from Sweden, where it has been found to lead to inequality and the dumbing down of children’s qualifications? That was said by the Swedish equivalent of the head of Ofsted two months ago.

[Owen Smith]

Absolutely, and one point that I will come to is that the evidence on the free schools system in Sweden and the charter schools in the US has been presented extremely partially. That evidence is not as uncontested, and the findings are not as clear, as has been suggested. I shall give examples in a moment that show serious problems emerging.

Privatisation is not set out in the Bill, and the Government are not bringing it in through straightforward measures, but it is writ large through every clause and the intention is very clear. Liberty from the dead hand of bureaucracy, which is how the Bill is being presented, is merely a catchphrase, nothing more, designed to shield the Government’s true ideological concerns.

I shall move briefly, if I may, to Sweden—[Interruption.] Well, I will not move to Sweden—I am actually staying in Wales, it is a lovely place—but I shall discuss it briefly. There have been relatively few studies in Sweden and the US of how the free schools and charter schools have worked, but most of them have been rehashed assiduously by the outriders of the Tory party in the think-tanks as part of their cheerleading for the free schools system. In truth, the results of those studies are far less clear than they present them as being. For example, one study that coalition Members have cited is by Böhlmark and Lindahl, but they stated that the studies conducted in Sweden had shown that free schools had increased social segregation. In fact, they stated that division had occurred in almost every area of the country where the system was observed. More importantly, Sweden has not soared up the PISA rankings for the international benchmarking of education. If anything, it has faltered and fallen back as the free schools system has been introduced.

I turn briefly to the US where, again, the evidence is nowhere near as clear as has been claimed. The case of the charter schools not is as straightforward as the Secretary of State, who I see has re-entered the Chamber, has said. He cited in his speech the Rockoff and Hoxby report—almost the only wholly positive report that I can find on charter schools. Even it raises some serious questions. Its conclusion states:

“All three studies find that students who enroll in charter schools experience a drop in achievement relative to similar students in public schools. This drop in achievement is restricted to the first few years of the charter schools’ existence”.

However, it is appreciable. That underlines that we are considering an experiment, which is not being widely consulted upon. We should be wary of experimenting with our children’s future.

I shall conclude with a quote from another US academic, Diane Ravitch, an educationalist who has been an adviser to successive US Presidents, including George W. Bush. She initially believed that charter schools were a good idea, but changed her mind after seeing them in action. She now says that

“public education itself is at risk. On the current course…we will see thousands of public schools turned over to private entrepreneurs… an explosion of privatization…Some articles extol unproven ideas and lack any fairness or balance.”

She goes on to say that there is

“a lot of research showing that charter schools don’t do any better… than regular public schools.”

Opposition Members should look hard at the evidence and not simply listen to Front Benchers. They should be worried about such wholesale experimentation being visited on our children with unseemly haste. The Bill is a dangerous measure, which may have a seriously detrimental impact on the education of all our children. I shall not support it tonight.

21:26

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I have spent a large portion of my time as a special educational needs barrister representing local authorities throughout the country. I also represented, with great interest, the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) in his previous incarnation as Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families.

I want to speak on behalf of the people of Northumberland, which is one of the most rural parts of the country. It has the biggest catchment area in England—Haydon Bridge high school has a catchment area roughly the size of the area inside the M25. The school looks on the proposals with interest, but needs some reassurances that matters that affect rural schools, particularly transport, will be addressed.

Northumberland broadly welcomes the Bill. I met all four head teachers in the local area on Friday and discussed the proposals with them. They required assurances, some of which were tackled today. I am sure that more will be addressed later this evening and during the rest of the week. I also note that, in the debate in the House of Lords, which went on for seven days, considerable analysis and change took place as part of the Bill’s development. It has not been set in stone, without any change—it has developed.

The Bill follows on from Lord Baker’s work in the Education Reform Act 1988, through the Learning and Skills Act 2000 and the 2005 White Paper under the Labour Government. To address much of the problem with today’s debate, we must go back to Tony Blair’s words in 2005. I have sat here for some five hours, listening to the debate, which has been fascinating, and I remind hon. Members of Tony Blair’s comments:

“We need to make it easier for every school to acquire the drive and essential freedoms of Academies…We want every school to be able quickly and easily to become a self-governing independent state school… All schools”—

I emphasise “all”—

“will be able to have Academy style freedoms…No one will be able to veto parents starting new schools or new providers coming in, simply on the basis that there are local surplus places. The role of the LEA will change fundamentally.”

The position in 2005, subject to some slight delay in the past few years, has now moved on. In 2010, we are effectively taking forward the developments that started in the 1980s.

[Mr Buckland]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the debate and discussion in the other place yielded fruit in the form of important provisions for children with special educational needs, particularly the guarantee that the funding formula will be no different for children in maintained schools from that for children in academies?

[Guy Opperman]

I accept my hon. Friend’s point that the SEN argument developed as time moved on from the starkness of the conversation that took place in the House of Lords on 7 June, 23 June and 26 June. The development in the Bill’s special educational needs provisions will improve the situation in academies in respect of children’s individual capabilities.

Without question, the Bill takes things forward. There is great scope and need for this change, and I urge the House to consider it favourably.

21:31

[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

This has been an interesting debate to which many Members on both sides of the House contributed. The number of Members who wanted to speak shows clearly the importance of the Bill, and there are clear divisions of principle between Government and Opposition Members. I am happy to be called a dinosaur or labelled old-fashioned simply because I want to defend this country’s comprehensive system to ensure that there is excellence for all, that every single school has the resources that it deserves, and that we do not pit one school or one community against another.

Many hon. Members spoke of the rush to take this legislation through. Interestingly, the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) suggested that we perhaps need to look at one or two aspects, and many Government Members said that we should consider amendments to improve the Bill. On cue, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), the Chair of the Education Committee, has come into the Chamber—he too thinks that the Bill is being rushed through. However, he understands that, should the House of Commons choose to amend any clause, schedule or subsection, it would cause the Leader of the House, who is in the Chamber, great difficulty. As he, I and everybody in the House knows, there is no Report stage, and the Bill could go straight from Committee to Third Reading. That works on the presumption that there will be no amendment in Committee and that business will be finished by a certain time. We know not only that there is no Report, but that if an amendment is made in Committee, the Bill must to go back to the House of Lords, which would be a problem.

The Secretary of State’s Bill may be radical—his view is that it is a flagship Bill and a really important piece of educational reform—but he should not rush it through the House in an unprecedented way. Such procedure is usually reserved for anti-terror measures or legislation in an extreme emergency. The Bill is about the future of education. As was witnessed in numerous speeches by Members on both sides of the House, there are big issues of principle to be debated, and they deserve proper consideration. We should have the opportunity to table amendments and the Government should have the opportunity to choose whether to accept them.

My hon. Friends the Members for North West Durham (Pat Glass), for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop), for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) and for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) laid out their concerns about the rush. Indeed, the hon. Member for Southport (Dr Pugh) said that he too was concerned. The Chair of the Select Committee pointed out the difficulty with the way in which the Bill is being handled.

Several concerns were raised by hon. Members on both sides. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) talked about structures being placed above the quality of teachers. The lack of consultation and the supersession of the role of local authorities was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). The need for greater fairness for children was mentioned by my hon. Friends the Members for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) and for North West Durham. The problem of the Bill creating a two-tier education system and the way in which it will undermine social justice were mentioned by my hon. Friends the Members for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson), for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) and for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi).

[Mr Gibb]

This Bill has 20 clauses, to be debated in Committee over three days. That is between six and seven clauses a day. Compare that with the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill with which the hon. Gentleman was involved, where we debated 42 clauses in each day in Committee.

[Vernon Coaker]

The hon. Gentleman needs to explain why it will be impossible to amend the Bill, why it will have no Report stage, and—if it is not impossible to amend the Bill—whether he would welcome amendments. Some of his Back Benchers have serious concerns about the Bill, but if he accepted amendments, we would have to have a Report stage and the Bill would have to go back to the House of Lords.

My hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) mentioned the differences in the profiles of the new academies as opposed to those of existing academies. That set out for us clearly the difference between the academies programme as pursued by my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood and the previous Government in which academies were designed to tackle social disadvantage and educational underperformance in some of our poorest communities and the schools that have applied for academy status under this Government, which have lower proportions of children with special needs and are in much more socially advantaged areas.

To be fair to Government Members, we heard some good contributions, which were not all supportive of the Government. The hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) seemed to suggest that amendments were needed, but was unsure about how he could achieve them. I suggest that the Minister of State consider that point.

I thought that the speech by the hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward) was excellent. He explained why the Academies Bill is unnecessary and will in fact undermine the education system. I very much agreed with him. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East, whom I cannot see her in her place, also made some good points about special needs.

We all thought that the speech by the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) about the need to ensure that the Bill in no way disadvantages those with special needs was an important contribution and we all learnt from his comments. Other hon. Members also made important contributions.

Apart from the name, this Government’s academies policy could not be further removed from the values and goals that underpinned the introduction of academies under Labour. We believed in practical, targeted intervention to help struggling schools, not a free-market free-for-all. We believed that if a school was already judged outstanding, it was clearly succeeding within the existing framework and could only be damaged by centralised, ideologically driven policy experiments. We believed in local accountability, not unwieldy powers for a Secretary of State far removed from the realities of local circumstances. We believed in local co-operation and mutual support, not isolation, competition and division. We believed in fair funding and fair admissions, not the introduction of unfair advantages and resources to be exploited at the expense of those already most vulnerable within the education system. We believed in evidence over ideology. We believed in listening to educationalists, teachers, head teachers and other professionals who understand better than anyone what does and does not work on the ground.

[Bob Russell]

I recognise the powerful case that the hon. Gentleman makes, but does he accept that in a constituency such as mine this Bill could be the great escape from Conservative-controlled Essex county council?

[Vernon Coaker]

I wish the hon. Gentleman luck with Essex county council. He and I have worked long and hard to try to free Colchester from various people on the council. But I will not go there, Mr Speaker. I have been to Colchester three times. Perhaps the new Schools Minister will now take up that task with great relish.

It should be obvious that when a Government do not listen, when they do not bother to consult and when they rush through legislation grounded not in evidence or experience but in ideology, they will get things badly wrong. In this instance, that will result in the undermining of our education system in a way that could damage the educational prospects of a generation. Whatever their motive, a coalition Government who have declared an interest in helping those who are disadvantaged in the education system are championing a model of schooling from other countries about which serious questions are now being asked.

According to recent studies, charter schools and free schools in the US and Sweden have led to a deterioration in overall standards, to a greater differentiation in attainment between the haves and the have-nots and to a decrease in racial and socio-economic integration. Just last month, the Swedish Education Minister warned the UK against adopting the free school model, stating:

“We have actually seen a fall in the quality of Swedish schools since the free schools were introduced…The free schools are generally attended by children of better educated and wealthy families, making things even more difficult for children attending ordinary schools in poor areas.”

Stanford university published the first national assessment of charter schools in America and found that 37% delivered learning results that were significantly worse than those that the students would have realised had they remained in traditional public schools, and that nearly half the results were no different. That evidence was ignored by this Government.

It is ironic that a party that professeses to champion localism will now fatally undermine the ability of our most local layer of democratically elected government— the local authority—to plan for and support fair and excellent schooling in its area. “What could be more democratic than giving power to parents?”, ask the Government, but in the context of the Bill, that claim is deeply disingenuous. Parents are not mentioned in it once. Around the country, parents are rightly up in arms that governing bodies may seek to convert their children’s schools into academies without so much as speaking to them. In a MORI poll this year, 95% of parents and the general public opposed external organisations such as private companies and charities running schools, and 96% opposed the creation of so-called free schools. Parents know what is best for their children.

Sadly, the Liberal Democrats have yet again demonstrated their elastic convictions when it comes to notions of fairness and justice, redefining them at every turn to accommodate their desire to be at the top table.

[Stephen Lloyd]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Vernon Coaker]

No, I do not have much time.

In June 2010, the Liberal Democrat Education Association said:

“Liberal Democrat Party members call upon their MPs and Peers to vote against the Academies Bill. The present Bill did not form part of the published coalition agreement. The Bill is wasteful of resources at a time when public expenditure is under extreme pressure, and does not meet the coalition’s aim for a fairer society.”

We shall see how many Liberal Democrat MPs and Peers follow that advice tonight.

It was not so long ago that the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), now a Minister in the Government, described the free schools policy as a “shambles”. I should like to remind her that she also said:

“Unless you give local authorities that power to plan, it is just a gimmick. Giving schools a fancy title—be it ‘free school’ or ‘academy’—and allowing disparate groups of parents, charities or other organisations to run or ‘sponsor’ them will not magically transform them.”

I wonder what has transformed her attitude and opinion.

The Bill will visit huge injustice upon those children and young people who most need our help, and it will cause confusion, worry and division for children and parents everywhere. By elevating market mores above the core principles of co-operation, accountability, democracy and equality, it will turn our education system into a dismal experiment in educational Darwinism. It will be the survival of the fittest and the demise of the rest. The consequences could be calamitous for tens of thousands of children and take decades to reverse.

Education—[Interruption.] Conservative Members should calm down; they will like the next bit even better. Education is a public good, not a private commodity. The common good is served not when parents and children engage with schools as consumers pursuing relative advantage, but when they act as citizens and partners who understand their crucial role as co-creators of learning and educational success. For these reasons, we strongly oppose this Bill and we urge all right-thinking hon. Members to do the same.

21:46

[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.

[Bill Esterson]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Gibb]

I will not, because there is very little time left.

The hon. Member for Huddersfield also raised the issue of free schools and faith schools, as did the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop). Although existing faith schools will retain their faith designation on conversion to academies, new faith schools will be able to select only 50% of their intake on the basis of faith.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady) for his support for the Bill, largely because many of the policies in it were built on his work as shadow schools Minister in days of yore. He has visited a KIPP—Knowledge Is Power programme—school in Washington DC, which he described as “one of the most exciting schools I have ever visited.” He said, “I want these schools in this country”—as do we all.

The hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) is concerned about children with special educational needs in academies, but academies take a significantly higher proportion of children with SEN, and the evidence suggests they are less likely to exclude. I refer her to clause 1(7) of the Bill, which strengthens the position of children with SEN and imposes on new academies all the obligations on admissions and exclusions that apply to maintained schools.

The hon. Member for Southport (Dr Pugh) raised some concerns about the Bill and I would remind him that charter schools in New York have dramatically closed the gap between the poorest and those from neighbouring wealthy boroughs—by 86% in maths and 66% in English. A third of academies in this country with GCSE results in 2008 and 2009 have achieved a 15% increase in results compared with the results of their predecessor schools.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) is passionate about education, and she made an excellent and thoughtful speech highlighting the enormous and widening attainment gap in this country. She is right to welcome the expectation that outstanding schools opting for academy status will help weaker schools.

My hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) brings to the House all her experience of, and passion for, education. She pointed out how millions of children have been let down by 13 years of failed education policies. She also pointed to millions of pounds being wasted and consumed by quangos, strategies and initiatives that dictated a prescriptive approach to teaching that demoralised the profession and forced teachers to teach to the test and to fit the system. She is right to say that the new freedoms, and our plans to sweep away many of the bureaucratic burdens that are piled on to teachers and schools, will help to rejuvenate the teaching profession. This is a Government who trust the professionalism of teachers. She is also right to point out that there are extensive concerns about standards.

We are not prepared to continue with the system we inherited. We are a Government in a hurry. Head teachers are in a hurry. Every year and every month that passes by is a month or a year of a child’s education. It is a disgrace that, in 2008, of the 80,000 young people qualifying for free school meals just 45 got into Oxbridge. It is wrong that 42% of those qualifying for free school meals failed to achieve a single GCSE above a grade D. It is unacceptable that just one quarter of GCSE students achieve five or more GCSEs, including in English, maths, science and a foreign language. The coalition agreement says:

“We will promote the reform of schools in order to ensure that new providers can enter the state school system in response to parental demand”.

This Bill delivers on that agreement.

Despite some of the rhetoric from Opposition Members today, support for the Bill’s proposals goes wider than the coalition partners in this Government. There is, in fact, a broad progressive consensus that includes my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Government Benches and that extends to the liberal wing of the Labour party. In 2005 Tony Blair said:

“We need to make it easier for every school to acquire the drive and essential freedoms of academies…We want every school to be able quickly and easily to become a self-governing independent state school…All schools will be able to have academy style freedoms.”

This Bill delivers on the former Prime Minister’s aspiration. The coalition even extends to the Democratic party in the United States.

The Bill will deliver more excellent schools in the most deprived parts of our country. So far, more than 1,900 schools have expressed an interest in academy status. The Government are determined to raise standards and the Bill is part of that strategy. I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

21:59

Division 29

Ayes: 234

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Labour: 231
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 1
Independent: 1
Alliance: 1

Noes: 333

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Conservative: 282
Liberal Democrat: 46
Democratic Unionist Party: 3

Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 62(2)), That the Bill be now read a Second time.

22:13

Division 30

Ayes: 326

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Conservative: 282
Liberal Democrat: 43

Noes: 236

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Labour: 229
Democratic Unionist Party: 3
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 1
Liberal Democrat: 1
Independent: 1
Alliance: 1

Bill read a Second time.

ACADEMIES BILL [LORDS] (PROGRAMME)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),

That the following provisions shall apply to the Academies Bill [Lords]:

Committal

1. The Bill shall be committed to a Committee of the whole House.

Proceedings

2. Proceedings in Committee, any proceedings on consideration and proceedings on Third Reading shall be completed in three days.

3. Proceedings in Committee shall be taken on each of those days as shown in the first column of the following Table and in the order so shown.

4. Proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the times specified in the second column of the Table.

TABLE

Proceedings	Time for conclusion of proceedings
First day
Clauses 1, 6, 9 and 10, new Clauses relating to Clauses 1, 6, 9 or 10, new Schedules relating to Clauses 1, 6, 9 or 10.	Three hours after the moment of interruption.
Second day
Clauses 2, 7, 8 and 11 to 13, Schedule 1, Clause 14, Schedule 2, Clause 15, new Clauses relating to Clauses 2, 7 or 8 or any of Clauses 11 to 15 or Schedule 1 or 2, new Schedules relating to Clauses 2, 7 or 8 or any of Clauses 11 to 15 or Schedule 1 or 2.	One hour after the moment of interruption.
Third day
Clauses 3 to 5, Clauses 16 to 20, new Clauses relating to any of Clauses 3 to 5 or 16 to 20, new Schedules relating to any of Clauses 3 to 5 or 16 to 20, remaining proceedings on the Bill.	One hour before the moment of interruption.

5. Any proceedings on consideration and proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on the third day.

Programming Committee

6. Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings in Committee, any proceedings on consideration or proceedings on Third Reading.

Other proceedings

7. Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of any message from the Lords) may be programmed. —(Mr Vara.)

22:27

Division 31

Ayes: 322

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Conservative: 280
Liberal Democrat: 41

Noes: 238

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Labour: 230
Democratic Unionist Party: 3
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 1
Liberal Democrat: 1
Conservative: 1
Independent: 1
Alliance: 1

Academies Bill [Lords] (Money)

Queen’s recommendation signified.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),

That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Academies Bill [Lords], it is expedient to authorise—

(1) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of—

(a) any expenditure incurred under or by virtue of the Act by the Secretary of State, and

(b) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under or by virtue of any other Act out of money so provided, and

(2) the payment of sums into the Consolidated Fund.— (Mr Vara.)

Question agreed to.