Education Bill

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend puts his finger on it. I said when I took on this job that I wanted more focus on the 50% or more of young people who are not planning to go to university. Every Member owes that to those young people. Apprenticeships are part of the answer, but as I said a moment ago, they are not all of the answer. Sometimes we hear the Government talk only of kids on free school meals getting to Oxbridge, as though that were the only measure of the education system in this country. I am afraid that in my view, that shows the elitist approach to education that is coming through more and more from the Government.

Our new clause and amendments are intended to put power back in the hands of parents and fairness at the heart of the system at local and national level. First, given that the Secretary of State is taking more than 50 powers in the Bill to run almost every aspect of the schools system, we propose, in new clause 10, duties for him to ensure fair access to education.

Secondly, amendments 10 and 11 would reinstate the requirement for all local authorities to establish a local admissions forum. Those forums are an important part of ensuring parents’ involvement and local accountability. Parents have a right to be represented on them, and parents’ groups can come to the meetings and make representations on particular issues of concern. Parents in all areas should have a guarantee that they will be able to call on a local forum in their hour of need.

On that point, I say to the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), that he missed the point in Committee. It is no help to parents if the forums are optional. If there is to be a postcode lottery, with some local authorities having forums and others not, not all parents will have the right to call on those local independent bodies if they need to. Moreover, voluntary forums would not have the same powers as the current ones, such as the power to object to the schools adjudicator. An independent monitoring body in each local authority to ensure fair admissions criteria and processes should be an entitlement for all parents.

It is also more efficient to deal locally with issues involving local stakeholders, rather than to refer every contentious issue to the adjudicator. Indeed, the chief adjudicator supports the retention of admissions forums, as he told the Education Committee. He said:

“I believe…that admissions forums are good things. It commits all admissions authorities in an area…to sit around a table and talk over their problems.”

That brings me to amendment 13, which would restore the crucial ability of the schools adjudicator to seek early rectification of non-compliance with the admissions code in admissions policies, working through local authorities. The adjudicator is an important guarantor of fairness for parents. As he told the Education Committee, 92% of the complaints that he received last year came from parents. The Government have failed to make any case to support their changes beyond saying, “Trust the schools.” Well, the Opposition trust schools, but we also know that the adjudicator must frequently step in to correct non-compliance with the code. Indeed, the very fact that the adjudicator has that power focuses the minds of schools and local authorities to ensure that policies are fair in the first place. The Government are therefore undermining the office of the schools adjudicator in terms of helping parents when they need it.

We believe that the Bill weakens the adjudicator’s power, but that problem is further compounded by the potential dilution of the admissions code. Yet again with this Secretary of State and his chaotic Department, the House finds itself in the unacceptable position of being asked to legislate on matters crucial to families in this country without all the relevant information before it. I have a simple question for the Minister of State: where is the draft admissions code? Where is it? It is disgraceful that the House does not have access to that code when it is being asked to vote on the Bill.

In Committee on 29 March, the Minister told the shadow schools Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), that the admissions code

“is certainly imminent and will certainly be available before many of the future stages of the passage of this Bill”––[Official Report, Education Public Bill Committee, 29 March 2011; c. 770.]

Mr Deputy Speaker, is it acceptable that the Minister has not delivered on that promise? I put it to you that it is an affront to the House and to Parliament that the Minister has failed to honour a commitment that he gave in Committee. The code is highly relevant to today’s debate, and it should be available to hon. Members.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend puts his finger on the nub of the issue—the Minister promised in Committee on 29 March that the admissions code was imminent. We must reiterate the concerns of the schools adjudicator, because he saw the idea of simplifying the admissions code as a way of giving wriggle room to schools to use covert selection. That is a real concern for my constituents and parents in my area.

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Bill weakens the schools adjudicator and could dilute the admissions code—although we cannot assert the latter as a fact, because we have only media reports to go on. It is a disgrace that the Minister has been unable to give that information to hon. Members, who are voting on life-and-death issues for their constituents: the question for parents is whether they can get the schools that they want. I put it to hon. Members that they will be doing a huge disservice to their constituents if they vote for a weakening of the admissions system without knowing what is in the code, and the full extent of the Government’s intentions.

--- Later in debate ---

These warnings could not be clearer.

[Ian Mearns]

The Schools Minister has reiterated that the English baccalaureate will not be an accountability measure. He trumpeted that in the Select Committee on a number of occasions last week. I am terribly sorry but the response is one of complete and utter incredulity. I know what the press will say about the English baccalaureate within the context of the league tables. The headline writers will say, “Of course it will be an accountability measure. How can it be seen as anything else?”

[Andy Burnham]

We know that the measure was applied retrospectively to schools, so the Government were encouraging the media to see it as a performance-management measure. It is so unfair to schools being sent out into this highly competitive environment to have their reputations so damaged, and to have not one but two hands tied behind their backs. The Government have knocked the stuffing out of some schools that have worked so hard to improve in recent years, and it is totally unacceptable.

Experts’ warnings about the admissions clauses could not be clearer. Children’s life chances are at stake here. The Government have failed to convince the experts that we can gamble with those life chances by weakening the admissions system. I intend therefore to press amendment 13 to a vote this evening. In the face of this free-for-all in education, it is vital that the rights of parents and children are protected, and that the House does not sleepwalk today into a return to selection in our schools.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman is entitled to his views on how current regulation should be changed. That, after all, was what the Badman report and our Select Committee report were all about.

What I am discussing today—I do not want to take up much more time—is the current law, which is clear, although it is not properly represented by many local authorities. I will not go through all the legal aspects, but I will mention the 2007 guidelines on elective home education for local authorities, which were produced by the Department for Children, Schools and Families in 2007. It is still available on the departmental website, subject only to the need for an update to take into account changes in the rules governing children missing from education. The report stated:

“Local authorities have no statutory duties in relation to monitoring the quality of home education on a routine basis.”

If there is no evidence that education by home educators is inferior to that provided by the state, what is the role of the state? Apparently it is to stick its nose into families that have often been let down by the same instruments of the state and impertinently to try to impose exactly the same kind of regimented approach to education that failed for those children. That is why the parents made the massive sacrifice of taking their children out of school in the first place.

We must defend freedom and a principle that is perhaps even more important than that, which is that the law, as it stands, must be enforced. If the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) wishes to campaign to get it changed and is successful in convincing this place, what he wants will then become the law. Local authorities must honour and observe the law as it stands and not overstate it because they happen to agree with the hon. Gentleman. They cannot make the law up as they go along because they do not like the current settlement. The current settlement is clear: local authorities have no statutory duties in relation to monitoring the quality of home education.

I have already dealt with Tameside, so let me touch quickly on Barnsley. Its elective home education information leaflet says that

“the law allows parents to educate their children at home instead of sending them to school, if they fulfil certain conditions.”

That is subtly done. I am not sure whether it is strictly inaccurate, but it is suggestive enough to make it sound as though the council decides whether those conditions are fulfilled. It goes on to make it clear that that is precisely its conclusion:

“Barnsley MBC will need to be satisfied”—

in other words, the council will need to be satisfied—

“that a child is receiving suitable education at home, and the Assessor”—

these people are even called assessors; who do they think they are?—

“will ask to meet with the family in order to talk to the parents and to look at examples of work and learning.”

That is beyond the law. I want the Minister to confirm that he will make sure that local authorities no longer produce misinformation like that and use it in order to abuse their power over families.

Sheffield provides another example. Parents there are told:

“You must show that the opportunities being provided are helping your child to learn and that development is taking place appropriate to their age, ability and aptitude.”

It is fair enough for parents to have a duty to provide suitable education and meet those requirements, but local authorities have no right to interpose themselves and decide that that is not happening. If they have reason to believe that suitable education is not being provided, they have a duty to challenge, but only in that event. They do not have the right routinely to monitor and interfere.

Sheffield city council continues:

“The Children Service Authority (CSA) is responsible for ensuring that the arrangements provide a suitable education for your child.”

That is not true.

“When you have given the CSA a plan stating your ideas an appropriately qualified”—

unlike you—

“Senior Inclusion Officer (SIO) will arrange an initial home visit and make a preliminary assessment”—

in your home—

“of the education provision the child is receiving.”

It is disgraceful.

South Gloucestershire council is advertising for someone who will provide

“information, support and challenge to parents…The service is responsible for assessing the suitability of the education provided to children educated at home”.

The Lancashire local authority, in one of the most egregious examples, states:

“Lancashire Officers will take the lead on this because they have the responsibility to ensure the safety of all children as well as to monitor the quality of education received by children educated at home.”

That is a nice one, neatly conflating the issues of safety and home education. No one has yet arrived at my house during the summer holidays just to check up on the safety of my children, who are, after all, spending months at home with me. Who knows what my wife and I might get up to, or what the younger or older sister might do? Who knows what visiting relatives might do? What we need are visitors from the local authority, just to make sure. I do not want people such as the director of children’s services in my local authority to lose a moment’s sleep because they feel that they are not pursuing every possibility of intervention to cover their own backsides and telling me how I should run things in my own home. That is precisely what the local authority suggests should be done in the case of home-educating parents, who deserve its intervention no more than the rest of us. The document continues:

“Thus, when a practitioner or professional becomes aware that a child is being educated at home, they should use local information sharing arrangements to help the Lancashire Authority to fulfil both its duty to be confident”—

so it has a duty to be confident now—

“of the well-being of the child and its duty to assure the quality of the education provided.”

That, too, is not true.

As far as I can tell from one evening spent looking at their websites, council after council is entirely misrepresenting the legal position, and I hope that the Minister will put that right.

[Ian Mearns]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Stuart]

I am aware that I have been speaking for too long already, but I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Ian Mearns]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman. For a short time I thought that I was in the back of a bus in Helsinki.

There is a problem with what the hon. Gentleman is saying. If a child becomes unwell or is injured at the hands of parents or other relatives, the focus of attention is often not on the family but on the director of children’s services in the local borough. Will the hon. Gentleman reflect on that? Will he also reflect on the rights of the child who, despite the wishes of their own parents, may or may not receive a good level of education at the hands of those parents? I know that the hon. Gentleman inhabits a middle-class, or possibly upper-middle-class, ideal in which his own children will be extremely well catered for, but that is not always the case. As policy makers, we must provide for the rights of every child in the country, no matter what their circumstances.

[Mr Stuart]

I have a great deal of respect for the hon. Gentleman, who is a distinguished member of the Select Committee and who brings years of experience of education to it, so I hesitate to say what I am about to say. However, he is suggesting, as a Labour Member of Parliament, that working-class families involved in home education should be treated with more suspicion than those in better-off areas, that they are not to be trusted with the education of their children, and that inspectors and assessors and all those other people with acronyms should be wandering into their homes, because of—my God—what they might do to their children.

I have given a great deal of thought to these issues. There are many armchair theorists—I met many of them when we were debating the Badman review—who have not looked at the data and the research, who have not tried to meet home-educating families to discuss their problems and who have not met local authority officers, who deal with difficult cases such as home-educating households where children are abused and are not given an education. There are real difficulties and challenges, but we cannot deal with them from an armchair. If the hon. Gentleman follows that advice, I hope that he will come round to my point of view that the current law is appropriate but should be enforced, and that we cannot allow local authorities to continue to abuse their position and bully parents.

I congratulate the Minister on having listened. He listened carefully to families and to representations from Members both during the passage of the Children, Schools and Families Act 2010 and since then. He listened to representations on the 20-day rule, of which I myself was in favour until I listened to the arguments and was able to follow the evidence and look at the links to the consultation and the response, which I either did not know about or had forgotten.

There is a strong message here. We must listen to these families, and we must support and respect them. We must have challenge that is appropriate, but we must not allow those in power to abuse that power and overstep the mark.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stella Creasy]

I am always aware of what we might call the cleansing effect of shadow Ministers on the Departments of State when it comes to revealing information, statistics, Green Papers and, we hope, the admissions code. I hope Ministers will continue to listen to the pleas from the Opposition. We need the admissions code in order to understand what will happen. I fear that at this stage the irrigation will not be as successful as it could be.

I agree with the Green Paper when it refers to the difficulties that many parents experience in accessing support for children with special educational needs. It says that the system is inherently frustrating and confrontational. However, setting the Green Paper against the proposals in the Bill, we can see where some of the challenges may lie. We know that we are dealing with a group of young people who desperately need support to remain in education, and we know that that makes a massive difference to their life chances in the future. Between half and three quarters of children between the ages of four and 18 who are excluded from school have significant literacy and numeracy difficulties. It is incredibly likely that those problems will be compounded when they are excluded, so ensuring that exclusion is the last option and that those children are supported into appropriate provision is vital to turning that situation around.

The Minister has suggested that schools might intervene earlier, but one of our deep concerns is that the Bill’s proposals will create disincentives for schools to do so. The amendment has been tabled to encourage Ministers to take a proactive approach to dealing with the consequences of this legislation for that group of pupils and perhaps put on the record how they will do so.

I have already mentioned my concerns about how the proposals might link with the Green Paper, which mentions early intervention and partnerships a great deal. Members who were on the Bill Committee will be aware of my concern that other clauses in the Bill that unhook the relationships between local authorities and schools will make it much harder for those partnerships to be put together and for schools to build the kind of relationships that they need to be able to support young people.

The amendment also tries to draw on some of the work that is needed for understanding how the policy might affect school budgets. Although I hope that it would be an unintended consequence of the proposals, we should consider what might happen if schools are found to have been misusing those powers. The Minister finds it hard to contemplate any misuse of those powers, but were that to happen, it would obviously cause problems.

Ministers were at pains in Committee to say that schools would suffer a financial adjustment if schools adjudicators found that an exclusion had been conducted wrongly—those of us in the Opposition who like to call a spade a spade would call that a fine. The amendment would encourage the Government to monitor that. As a member of the Public Accounts Committee, I am deeply concerned that there might be severe consequences both for schools in the administration of the financial adjustments, or fines, and for us and the public purse, in trying to compare what happens to those young people. The amendment would enable us to track that.

We know the different costs of provision. For example, it costs an additional £15,000 to send a child to a pupil referral unit or short-stay school, and an additional £50,000 to send them to a specialist residential unit. There are huge consequences for the public purse of failing to deal earlier with children who have emotional and behavioural difficulties and allowing a situation to get to the stage where schools exclude them and they go to pupil referral units or for specialist provision. Ensuring that the use of those powers and their financial consequences are monitored would be extremely beneficial to all concerned in trying to understand whether the policies have provided value for money.

The Government also need to address the real concern about the removal of the relationship between schools and local authorities, which have traditionally monitored what happens to those young people. I hope that the Minister, when he responds, will address how we will ensure that those children go on to alternative provision. In Committee, he was very clear that every young person who was excluded would of course remain in some form of provision, but we have no monitoring process to ensure that that will happen. We have no way of knowing that those kinds of provision will be made, especially when the relationships between the local authorities and schools is broken. A child who behaves so badly that they are excluded from school clearly has difficulties that need to be supported.

The Minister claimed that the Bill will create a stronger incentive to intervene early to support children with behavioural difficulties, but again we are left with no information about how those processes might take place. We have no comfort of knowing what will happen next for those children who behave badly, will need that support and perhaps should be excluded from a school.

[Ian Mearns]

I am very taken with what my hon. Friend is saying and wonder how the Minister will give the reassurances she is seeking given that the Bill eradicates the duty on schools to co-operate on a local basis and look after their youngsters with behavioural problems. The current duty to co-operate means that there is at least a safety net for youngsters, but that will vanish under these proposals.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Graham Stuart]

It is a pleasure to speak again in the debate, and to follow the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), who is a fellow member of the Education Committee. He made a powerful speech, but he rather overstated the case. References to the wholesale kicking away of all the ladders of opportunity do not befit the hon. Gentleman, who is knowledgeable and who also tends to speak in a reasonable and balanced fashion. Similarly, attacking postcode lotteries is always an easy way of resisting any form of localisation aimed at ensuring that need is met appropriately in a rural area.

As one who represents a rural constituency and rural further education colleges, I am aware of the need for a more appropriate use of limited funds. I will not go into the details—I am sure that Ministers will do that—but we know that the last Labour Government made it clear that, if they were re-elected, they would look again at the EMA and seek to make savings. If savings are to be made, what better way of making them than to put the funds into the hands of those on the front line who have the closest interest in, and the best understanding of, provision for young people? The hon. Gentleman should not overstate his case, let alone suggest that Government Members, particularly Ministers, have any motivation other than to try to improve ladders of opportunity. It is possible to believe that measures are not going in the right direction without suggesting that they are all calamitous or driven by the wrong motives.

Although I did not table amendment 27, its wording is exactly the same as an amendment that I tabled in Committee. It emphasises the need to ensure that the transition to the new all-age careers service is handled properly, and that in the intervening period we do not indeed see a postcode lottery with some areas not receiving appropriate care.

[Ian Mearns]

That is already happening.

[Mr Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman has a point, which is why it is important for us to be reassured about the interim period. It is worth saying—I wish that the hon. Member for Scunthorpe had been able to say it—that the Government’s vision of a higher quality of careers advice than we have seen in the past is a good one, but, like the hon. Gentleman, I want more reassurance about exactly what will be delivered.

It is all very well to paint a picture of a fantastic service that will be genuinely independent and give people a better overview of all their options—not just the academic options delivered by institutions in their own interests—but we need to see what incentives are provided for the actors in the system to ensure that they deliver that. We do not want someone to tick the box by simply shoving a young person in front of a website, with the result that that young person never receives the information that they need about local provision. I will not rehearse all the arguments, but I have heard evidence about further education colleges being barred from going into schools to advise young people.

There is a clash between institutional interests and what I want to see, which is a truly independent service with highly trained staff who have an extensive knowledge of all the local options—I know that that is also the vision of the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning. It is difficult to imagine that anyone, however clever and hard-working, has an encyclopaedic knowledge of those options, but we need staff with as much knowledge as possible who can give advice as well as, perhaps, signposting young people in the direction of online resources. Such a combination could bring real change, ensuring that young people follow pathways that lead to satisfaction, personal development and economic success. I know that the Minister entirely agrees with that.

I am pleased to note from Government amendment 36 that Ministers listen. I said in Committee that the Secretary of State’s right to withdraw the apprenticeship offer was not appropriate given the new circumstances, and that if employers were prepared to take young people on, the last thing that we should do is introduce a provision allowing someone in the Government to prevent them from doing so. I am delighted that the Minister listened to that, as he said that he would, and has already returned with a Government amendment.

If the Government continue to be firm in purpose and clear in vision, but prepared to listen where the argument is sufficiently strong, we will further improve both the Bill and, most importantly, the education of young people in this country.

[Lisa Nandy]

First, I associate myself wholeheartedly with the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) and the amendments standing in our names. One of their key aims is to preserve the conditionality principle that was such an important aspect of the EMA, and I ask Ministers to give a commitment on that. The beauty of EMA was that students had to attend and attain in order to get it. In effect, the state said to the student: “If you work hard and try hard, we will back you regardless of your background. We think you deserve the same opportunities as your peers.”

That was very important. Before entering Parliament, I worked with children and young people for seven or eight years, and I was always struck by their strong sense of the importance of fairness. If young people are going to buy into whichever scheme replaces the EMA, it is essential that they see that it is fair. The aspect of the EMA that I have just highlighted was one of the main reasons why young people thought that it was fair, because those who were working hard and trying hard were assured by their Government that they would get it and be supported.

Following the chaos and insecurity caused by the shambolic way in which the cancellation of the EMA was announced, I was very pleased that Ministers listened and made some commitments in relation to students who have already started their courses. I was also deeply disappointed that the scheme for existing students was altered so that the maximum payment that they receive was reduced. Young people in my constituency rely on the EMA not as an extra or a perk, but as an essential part of their household income.

One of the reasons why my hon. Friend and I are seeking to ensure that there are clear national eligibility criteria for the EMA is that students in our constituencies rely on knowing that they will get the EMA in order to make the decision to go to college in the first place. Those students absolutely need to know whether they will qualify. The key issue in respect of the concern that has already been expressed about the possibility of a postcode lottery and about discretion appearing to be the direction of travel is that under those circumstances such students simply will not be able to make an informed choice on whether to go to college.

[Ian Mearns]

It is also a concern that the decision to abolish the EMA in the first place was based on flawed evidence from a survey that was conducted in school sixth forms but not in further education colleges. That fact in itself shows that Ministers got the whole message wrong. In 2009-10, 567,000 youngsters received the EMA at the higher level—£30 a week—yet Ministers have decided to do away with it, based on evidence from youngsters in sixth forms but not in FE colleges. In my area of Gateshead, 67% of youngsters attending the local college were entitled to the EMA at the higher level.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. May I just point out that we are running close to time and interventions should therefore be brief, so as to give as many Members as possible the chance to speak?

Post-16 Education Funding

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I can confirm that because, thanks to the brilliant work carried out by the Business Secretary and the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, we have an exciting new approach to providing support and advice for those in careers. In addition, thanks to the changes that we have made to accountability measures, through such things as the English baccalaureate and the Wolf review, we will ensure that students who in the past were not able to progress on to college and on to worthwhile jobs at last have the chance to succeed.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

Under the current system, EMA payments are related to attendance and the completion of coursework, which in itself helps to raise attainment. What steps is the Secretary of State taking in the new scheme to include that provision? How will he ensure that enough money goes to colleges in the poorest areas under the new funding mechanism?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Gentleman makes two very good points. He mentioned, as I did, that one of the benefits that EMA brought was a linkage between attendance and the completion of coursework, and, thence, attainment. There will be flexibility for college principals to design their own schemes in order to reward not only attendance and the completion of coursework, but exceptional achievement, if they believe it is right to do so. The way in which we are weighting the allocation of funds to colleges is intended to ensure that the very poorest receive the most. The process of consultation over the next eight weeks, in which I hope the hon. Gentleman will participate, is intended to ensure that we accurately and fairly reflect the needs of the most disadvantaged.

Education Maintenance Allowance

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

Without doubt, the removal of education maintenance allowance will have an enormous impact on the young people of my region of the north-east, including those in my constituency in Gateshead. It is irrefutable that since its introduction, EMA has changed the landscape of young people’s aspirations in Gateshead. Staying on became an option for many, when it had not been before. Now it is being abolished—an action that will come as no surprise to my constituents, as it is entirely consistent with every other action by the coalition since it was elected in May 2010. It is now in the process of redirecting resources and wealth from the least advantaged to the most advantaged, and of crushing and removing opportunity for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in our society, including in my community.

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ian Mearns]

I will not.

I am proud of my local authority’s role in improving the educational outcomes of young people in my borough and of the fact that it was an EMA pilot authority, prior to which it had invested in bursary awards for poorer students.

I asked all the local colleges in Newcastle and Gateshead about the impact of this proposal and its effect on them and their students. This is the response I received from Gateshead college:

“Our statistics show that 60% of our learners receive EMA”,

but among 16 to 18-year-olds it was 70% of students, with

“80% of those in receipt receiving the full payment”,

one 10th receiving two-thirds payments, and one 10th receiving a one-third payment. All those young people will be delighted to know that they are regarded by some in this Chamber as waste in the system, and by others as “dead-weight”.

The college principal told me:

“I believe that the Department of Education has made the wrong decision and that disadvantaged young people in Gateshead will suffer as a result of this decision and Ministers’ ambitions to raise the participation rate to 18 will fail.”

He continued:

“EMA is predominantly taken up by those with low achievement levels at school, those from ethnic minorities and those from single parent families and those whose families are just plainly and simply poor.”

He saw EMA as

“a vital tool for increasing social mobility… I believe that stopping EMA will result in many of these young people, from disadvantaged backgrounds, not continuing their education after 16.”

Many of these young people will simply not have the money to travel on public transport, never mind buy books—or even to eat. There is also a significant danger that many students will, on losing their EMA, be forced to drop out of college after their first year. What a potential waste when they have done a year of study!

The views I cite are not those of just one college in the north-east, as many colleges take the same view. Many Members will have received the briefing from the Association of Colleges, which represents colleges across the UK. The briefing clearly states:

“The vast majority of colleges and their governors…across the UK, oppose the abolition of EMA...94% of colleges believe that the abolition of EMA will affect students’ ability to travel to and from college.”

The Association of Colleges also estimates that up to 300,000 young people will lose their EMA part way through their two-year studies. EMA has provided a real incentive to increasing levels of attainment because payment has been tied to levels of attendance and completion of course work.

Let us be honest: none of this is a surprise to Ministers, who know that it is the young people from the most disadvantaged backgrounds who will suffer most. They know that many will not be able to start or continue education beyond 16; they know that there will be a rate of attrition—collateral damage—from their policy. Ministers know this, but I am afraid to say that they appear not to care about it. If one were completely cynical, one could be forgiven for thinking that this is precisely what those Ministers want to do. For them, further and higher education is not for the disadvantaged, not for the poor, or for those whose parents or carers are on modest incomes.

I noticed with interest that the Secretary of State earlier offered to visit the local college in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry). Will he make the same offer to me in Gateshead, or to my colleagues in Newcastle, Middlesbrough, Sunderland or Darlington—or would it be too inconvenient for him to travel? The coalition Government talk about building a stronger and more vibrant economy, but I am sorry to say that it looks as if they are going to wreck it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davey]

I can certainly give my hon. Friend that assurance, not just because we are putting in £1.34 billion but because we are developing new services. I hope that I will be able to make more information on that available to the House in due course. In our policy paper last year, we talked about several pilots, which will go ahead.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

17. When he expects the independent advisory panel to meet to consider applications to the regional growth fund.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Mark Prisk)]

I refer the House to the answer that I gave to an earlier, similar question.

[Ian Mearns]

I would like to press the Minister a little further on tourism. The tourism and hospitality industry employs 20,000 people in Gateshead and Newcastle alone, and we collaborate on an awful lot of work. The industry is therefore important for the entire regional economy. However, with the demise of the regional development agency and cessation of our successful “Passionate people, passionate places” advertising campaign, we have a vacuum. You have already agreed this morning to meet the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith). Will you meet me and other interested Members from the Tyneside area to discuss the future of tourism in our region?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman that I have not agreed to meet anybody, but perhaps the Minister has. We will soon hear.

Schools White Paper

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

That is a striking piece of personal testimony, and my hon. Friend and his father stand as powerful witnesses of the importance of recognising that we should not shy away from expecting children from all backgrounds to be stretched and tested by being introduced to the best that has been thought and written. Those high aspirations are embodied in this White Paper but, sadly, they were undermined by the response of the right hon. Member for Leigh.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

Despite the answers the Secretary of State has given today, there is still great concern that some schools could lose out as a result of the consolidation of the standards funds granted to schools into the direct school grant, and the formula distribution of that. Can he give an absolute guarantee that that will not be the case?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Gentleman was a lead member for children’s services in Gateshead, which has a fantastic local authority, and he knows that local authorities sometimes have to make difficult decisions. I believe they will make the right decisions. We are providing them with more money for schools. I hope they use it wisely, and I am sure they will.

Funding and Schools Reform

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I am looking through my notes—I do not want to cite the wrong figure. There is evidence that 18,500 young people stayed on at school who would not have done so without that financial support. That means 18,500 young people with the hope of a better life because of the EMA. Why do the Government want to abolish it? I am lost for words.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

If Government Members are looking for evidence, a collection of college principals in north-east England wrote to me asking me to point out to the Government at every stage the real dangers that they perceive to youngsters going into further education from the abolition of the EMA. That applies across the board in the north-east.

[Andy Burnham]

There is evidence, so we will write to the hon. Lady with it. There is supposedly a successor scheme, but, if the Government are to replace the EMA, will she and others on the Government Benches ensure that it is with something that gives young people some hope? If the proposal is simply to cut support to the poorest, she will set back the cause of opportunity for all in this country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I appreciate that we are running on a somewhat reduced timetable, but I want to spend a little time metaphorically to reach across the Floor, if I may, and express some sympathy for the fact that Labour was the party that Opposition Members joined. [Interruption.] Most Labour Members may not have been on the Front-Bench team or even in this House during the previous Labour Government, but this is the party they joined and they looked to it to be progressive and ambitious for every child in this country. I am sure they still do, but when they look back on the 13 years of Labour Government, they will see our decline in the international league tables and a widening gap on social mobility, not to mention the 900,000 young people not in education, employment or training. They must be disappointed. The real disappointment, however, is that when faced with a bold and truly ambitious programme such as the one put forward by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, those on the Labour Front Bench have nothing positive to say.

[Ian Mearns]

rose—

[Damian Hinds]

I would love to give way, but given the tight timetable, I am strongly advised not to—I apologise.

Far from being the ideological gamble suggested by the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) in the Opposition motion, I believe that our programme of change is measured, responsible and genuinely based on evidence. One refreshing aspect of the new Government is that whenever discussion of education policy arises, it always starts with the international evidence and considers where in the world something is done best—whether it be in Norway, Sweden, parts of the United States, or Singapore. Further confirmation of the coalition Government’s evidence-based approach is that they have not proceeded in an ideological way, as they have continued a number of programmes put forward by the previous Government. They are even continuing with some policy elements that have not yet started or are only just beginning, such as increasing the participation age to 18 or the extension of free entitlement in early years. That, if nothing else, provides absolute evidence that our approach to education is not about salami slicing, cheese paring or any other kind of food cutting-up that could be described.

There are good and great things happening in any period, and some occurred under the last Labour Government. I am thinking of the academy programme, in particular, which was the baby of the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair. The former Chairman of the education Select Committee, the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) said that he understood the approach towards the first wave of schools in the academy programme under the last Government, but it was always Tony Blair’s ambition that, eventually, to use his own words, “every school” could be an academy.

The new coalition programme is about focusing on the elements that can make the most difference, prioritising the areas, the people and the children that most need help at the most pivotal times in their lives, and then trusting professionals to get on and do the job. When it comes to spending money where it can make the most difference, I believe in people, not palaces. Of course the school environment makes a difference, but what makes an even bigger difference is the person standing at the front of the class—the person who can inspire and lead those young people, helping them to learn. That is why I welcome the extension of Teach First, the introduction of Teach Now and new initiatives such as Troops to Teachers.

It is often said that no one forgets a good teacher, but I have met many people who have forgotten a good smart board. In the Building Schools for the Future programme, the £1,625 spent per pupil on IT would have been much better spent in investing in our human resources and our people.

As to focusing on the people who need help most, there is the pupil premium, supplemented by the education endowment fund. Although it is right to debate how that formula works and how the transition to the pupil premium will work, I would love to hear any Labour Member challenge the principle of the pupil premium and say that it is the wrong way to go about funding education. There should be an amount per pupil and then a supplement—[Interruption.] I am talking about the structure. The supplement will go to those who need it most. It puts the money where it is most needed and it will incentivise schools to take on the most needy pupils rather than have the top-skimming about which people rightly complain.

I have virtually no time left so I shall conclude by saying that focus on the most formative times is important. That is why I particularly welcome the extension of the early-years free allowance and the extension to the neediest children at age two. Every piece of academic evidence that I have ever seen says that it is most important to focus on the very earliest years to help with children’s futures. That will affect their ability to read and their behaviour and discipline, which affects all those around them.

We thus have diversity and choice in respect of school types and we have progressivity in respect of the pupil premium and other measures. We also have an evidence-based, financially responsible approach that will allow more schools to prosper, more teachers to flourish and more children to become everything they possibly can be.

Academies Bill [Lords]

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Monday 26th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Percy]

The hon. Gentleman makes the point that I was going to make about amendment 8, which limits consultation on the ballot to the parents at the school at the time, taking no account of the wider community or communities. One of the biggest problems that I have with the suggestion of a ballot for parents is this: given that orders can take up to a year to go through, who do we ballot? Do we ballot year 11 parents? Do we ballot year 6 parents from feeder schools? Do we ballot people who might be thinking of having a child at some point? The impossibility of drawing a correct boundary around those to be balloted is the weakness of the ballot process.

Having served as a local councillor who has been through the Building Schools for the Future process, I would like to ask Labour Members who propose ballots this question: where were our ballots on the proposal to merge schools? Where were our ballots on the proposal to close schools? Where were our ballots on the proposal to move ahead with academies, put forward by the previous Government? Such ballots did not exist, and the Government were right not to call for them. Proper consultation with the governing bodies, involving consultation with parents and schools, was the best course of action.

The same applies to health services. In my area, a number of health services have been lost. Trusts have become foundation trusts, and their governance arrangements have changed, but we had no ballots on those proposals either.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman makes a cogent argument for the retention and strengthening of the strategic role of the local authority in education provision, which seems to run against the logic of establishing academies across the piece.

[Andrew Percy]

The hon. Gentleman will probably be disappointed, as I was about to move on to that point. Labour Members have said a great deal about the role of the local authority, and of parents in relation to it, in control of schools. In the area I represented as a councillor, when parents were up in arms about proposals to close our primary schools, the local education authority was in no position to fight such proposals or to act as a guardian for our local schools, because there is no genuine control by the local authority over education. The surplus places legislation and the Ofsted framework come down from central Government. It is a fallacy that parents are continuously engaged with their LEA about the structure of education in their area. The theory might look and sound good, but the reality is different.

The Bill gives parents a choice—I limit my comments here to maintained schools that become academy schools—to vote with their feet. The hon. Member for Southport (Dr Pugh) wants parents to vote in some form, and I suggest that providing a range of different education facilities in an area enables parents to decide not with a tick in a box but with their feet.

My concerns about new clause 1 echo many of those put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson). We might end up with the strange situation in which 10% of parents are continually unhappy with the governance arrangements and go back for a second, third or fourth bite at the cherry. That is the problem with a 10% threshold, or a 30%, 40% or 49.9% threshold—

[Ian Mearns]

Or 55%.

[Andrew Percy]

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman has come round to the idea of having a 55% rule in certain circumstances.

With the ballots proposal, the risk is that we end up with vexatious and frivolous requests for ballots.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vernon Coaker]

There are two points. I shall come back to the local point in the moment, but all the way through these discussions—the hon. Gentleman, to his credit, has been in the Chamber for many hours of the debate on the Bill—I have pointed out significant and substantial differences between the academies programme pursued under the last Government and the academies programme and model proposed by the Bill. Our model concentrated on areas of educational underperformance and social disadvantage. That was the key driver for the use of the academy model. The Bill turns that on its head and says we will allow schools that are doing well under the current system to become academies, with all the worries and concerns that have arisen.

I know that the hon. Gentleman has been involved in this area and has worked hard in his constituency on the issue of school reorganisation. However, in virtually every circumstance in which academies have been agreed—that includes the 200 that were agreed and the number that were to go forward in September with secondary school reorganisation attached to educational transformation—the local authorities were key partners in those decisions. Some of those decisions were difficult. We have not tabled the amendments to say that any of this is easy, that there is a panacea or that someone can wave a magic wand to bring about school reorganisation in way that is never controversial or painful. We are saying that under our model, local authorities and local partners were specifically included. There were still difficulties, and sometimes tough decisions had to be made, but local authorities and local decision makers were involved. The way that the Bill is drafted specifically excludes those people from being involved other than in the way that a wish list of good practice would say that they should be involved.

[Ian Mearns]

Does my hon. Friend accept that under the previous Government’s academy proposals, the local consultation that took place was subject to an adjudicator’s ruling in the last instance if that was necessary?

[Vernon Coaker]

I was going to make that point: schools adjudicators have been involved almost as a final route of appeal. I know from my experience as a Minister—if the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) becomes a Minister he will find this out—that even when one thinks a decision is right, it can be completely thrown out of the window because the schools adjudicator prevents something from going ahead. That happened to me a couple of times in relation to the closure of a school.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)]

rose—

[Ian Mearns]

rose—

[Mr Gibb]

I give way to my hon. Friend first and then to the hon. Gentleman.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

Of course, and it is up to the school to decide. I was going to come on to the guidance later. It is published on the departmental website and it sets out precisely what guidance the governing bodies should adhere to. It states:

“It will be for the Governing Body of the school to determine who should be consulted, although schools should consider involving local bodies or groups who have strong links with the school.”

It sets out various elements such as: information on the school’s website, a letter to all parents explaining the proposal, a meeting for parents, a newsletter for parents and asking for views from parents to be sent in writing to the school.

[Ian Mearns]

My hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) pursued this issue earlier, when he spoke about the ability of schools in the list to go ahead and become academies in September. If the Bill is passed—we assume it will be, given the parliamentary numbers—orders will be made and consultation will have to take place before the funding agreement is in force. If schools are to become academies in September—assuming this idea has not been completely abandoned—it means that the consultation will happen all through August. Is my understanding correct?

[Mr Gibb]

It is possible for an academy order to be issued in September, while the details of the funding agreement are still being negotiated. These things are very complicated, and it might take several weeks after the academy order is issued before the funding agreement is signed, so the consultation process can continue after the academy order has been issued.

Academies Bill [Lords]

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Dan Rogerson]

I am talking about the funding formula. As we have been talking about different parts of the country benefiting in different ways, I thought it important to get on the record that my students were disadvantaged by that formula.

The amendment is useful in that it has prompted a discussion on these issues, but there are problems with it. I note in passing the phrase in proposed subsection (1A)(c):

“any other persons deemed appropriate.”

In yesterday’s debate, the Opposition argued that it was not sufficient to deem people appropriate and that the list should have been much longer, and included staff, for example, so a little inconsistency is apparent.

Putting that point aside, the problem with the amendment is that it is a little vague. Essentially, it relates to situations in which anyone in the local community might think that their school needs a bit more investment for a project, but no level of investment is specified. I can see how the amendment could kick in when a school has been identified by Ofsted and everyone else as needing drastic investment, but it talks about

“whether there are outstanding requirements for capital investment”.

Presumably, the consultation would leave it up to those who responded to a request to define what they deem to be “outstanding requirements”, so the amendment would effectively mean that if anyone said, “We want a bit more in our existing school for this”, no money would be provided. The amendment is intended to toughen up the criteria governing such requests, and I am tempted by that, but it is flawed because, in practice, it would act as a block.

I am sympathetic to some of the issues that have been raised, and I hope that the Minister will respond to them and clarify how local people may be reassured that the Government’s proposed capital programme will meet as many demands for improvements to existing schools as possible.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

I want to support the amendment and I am concerned about the implications of the Bill on the review of expenditure on capital programmes into the future. In my borough, five Building Schools for the Future secondary school projects have been cancelled very recently. The first one that I want to talk about is the proposed amalgamation between two schools, Ryton and Hookergate, which are on the western fringe of the borough and in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson). That proposed merger was the result of prolonged negotiations regarding those two schools, and the cancellation is a matter of grave concern.

Hookergate—a school that has long served the communities of Chopwell, Rowlands Gill, High Spen and Greenside, as well as many smaller, isolated rural settlements—is sadly subject to a declining pupil population, and it was set to be amalgamated with a school a few miles to the north, in the town of Ryton, on a site that the local authority was negotiating for with several landowners in the area.

Ryton school serves a very broad catchment area, including Ryton and Crawcrook. It also serves communities on the western fringe of Blaydon such as Stella, and the areas of Clara Vale, Stargate and Emmaville. Indeed, the formal part of the consultation on the local authority’s proposal for amalgamation was due to start the day after the Secretary of State made the announcement in the House cancelling the programme.

Another school affected by the cuts proposal is Whickham comprehensive, a large, successful school with some 1,500 pupils in the town of Whickham. It serves surrounding villages such as Marley Hill, Byermoor and Sunniside. It is very popular, but it is in grave need of renewal, as it is in a 1960s CLASP-style building, CLASP being the consortium of local authorities special programme. It is also bursting at the seams, having suffered a fire in one of its blocks several years ago.

St Thomas More Catholic comprehensive school is very popular and successful, with high levels of academic achievement, despite the poor and cramped conditions on its site. The Joseph Swan school, named after the inventor of the incandescent light bulb, who lived in Low Fell in Gateshead, is a successful school serving the community of central Gateshead and Low Fell, where there are three Liberal Democrat councillors. It was to have its dining block and humanities area rebuilt, on the back of the highly successful rebuild of the school’s main body through the traditional capital programme of the late 1990s.

Government Members have criticised us for not investing enough in schools during the 13-year tenure of the Labour Government. In my borough, we had the five schools that I mentioned left to do, but Lord Lawson of Beamish school was rebuilt using the private finance initiative; Kingsmeadow comprehensive was completely rebuilt using PFI; and the Heworth Grange and Thomas Hepburn schools are at the on-site stage. I have to declare an interest: I am still nominally the chair of governors of Thomas Hepburn school. The steelwork is now being erected so that the school can be rebuilt. Numerous primary schools were rebuilt or refurbished through combinations of old-style capital spend and PFI.

The £80 million that was due to come to us as part of Building Schools for the Future included the opportunity to adapt four schools to ensure that they were able to offer inclusive education for children with special needs, where it was the choice of parents to include youngsters with SEN in mainstream schooling. That was part of the transformational aspect of BSF to which my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) referred. That additional SEN money that BSF talked to us about recognised the SEN review in our borough, and our ability to deliver; we could generate, according to the ready reckoner, approximately £10 million to invest in special schools, thereby completing our secondary school investment programme.

In Gateshead, we have built the angel of the north, a millennium bridge, and the Sage Gateshead concert hall and music complex, at which many Members from across the House have attended conferences. We have completed many capital projects, but what I am most proud of is the improvements in education for the children of our borough, and I hate the prospect of that improvement coming to a halt.

When the Secretary of State announced the axing of BSF, and when hon. Friends and I first raised the issue, Government Members accused us of feigning anger and outrage. After 27 years as a local councillor in Gateshead, and after a decade as the lead member on education serving the Gateshead community, I can reassure all Members of the House that I am not feigning anything. In particular, there is no pretence in my profound sadness that the much-needed continued investment in schools in my borough has been snatched away from the children who we all seek to serve.

I welcome the undertaking given by the Deputy Prime Minister yesterday to meet the borough’s MPs and discuss this issue. I hope that at that meeting he will reassure us that the Building Schools for the Future programme for Gateshead has a future and has not been sacrificed on the ideological altar of investment in academy school buildings or new free schools for other, more favoured parts of the country.

In that vein, I was struck by the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, on the BBC last week that he would use his influence to lobby on behalf of places such as Liverpool, Sheffield and Newcastle—all places where the Liberal Democrats have had a significant foothold in local government representation. I hope that the Government will demonstrate transparency and that such decisions on school funding are made on the basis of fair criteria rather than behind-the-scenes deals.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Mearns]

I have experience over the years as a local authority representative and also a school governor, and I have come across all too many children whose parents do not even know that they do not have aspirations for their child. Particularly in deprived communities, many parents, and consequently their children, accept the lot they are given. They have a stoicism, and also a lack of understanding about how the systems work and how they could make things better. Because of that, they do not have the fortitude or understanding to pursue improvement for their own child, and in such a scenario who will look after the child’s interests in respect of these independent academies?

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Carmichael]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. SEN is an emerging story—we all know that. The hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass), with her vast and important experience, made those points as well. That complicates the situation on statementing.

It is not just a question of parents getting a statement, but of what happens when they do. That is just as problematic. I have seen in my postbag cases where a statement has been provided but its consequences are not deliverable for the child. We must remember that provision through local authorities is not as perfect as it ought to be.

We need to consider what happens in academies—that is what the amendment is all about. We already have governors in schools, and they are very important. Governance performs a valuable function in ensuring that schools perform properly, reach appropriate targets and deliver the high-quality education that we need. In the schools of which I have been a governor, we have had a governor specially responsible for special educational needs.

[Ian Mearns]

It is a legal requirement.

[Neil Carmichael]

Yes, and such accountability is necessary and good, and we will find it in academies. Of course, we have to ensure that not only is there a legal requirement for such governors, but that they do their job and ensure that SEN provision is properly maintained, promoted and delivered in their academy or school. I suggest to my hon. Friend the Minister that we need to consider that as the Bill takes its form.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Carmichael]

I am not sure whether it was a speech, but the point is interesting and we should look into it. Of course, the Minister has already promised a Green Paper on the wider issue of SEN, so we should discuss that matter. I thank the hon. Gentleman for a point well made, but I believe that thus far, academies are delivering proper provision.

This matter has already been discussed in the House of Lords, and Baroness Wilkins, in an effective performance, produced two changes to the Bill. One is that the Secretary of State can intervene if special educational needs are not properly provided for. That is a sensible step and a provision that is broadly welcomed.

[Ian Mearns]

A cumbersome aspect of that is that the Secretary of State’s office could be inundated with individual cases of parents who feel that the special educational needs provision for their child has not been tackled effectively.

[Neil Carmichael]

That is also an interesting point, for which I thank the hon. Gentleman.

The Bill is essentially a good measure. It provides for more academies, and we support that because we believe that good leadership, good management, flexibility and less intrusion from local authorities will deliver a higher standard of education. Of course, that must include provision for special educational needs.

We have been promised a Green Paper on special educational needs. The time to discuss the subject is when that is published. A constant theme of the past two or three hours has been the lack of satisfactory provision for special educational needs throughout the country. There are pockets where it is not good enough and delivery that needs to be improved. As long as that is the case, we cannot be satisfied, and we must therefore endeavour to improve the overall provision for special educational needs.

--- Later in debate ---

The hon. Member for North West Durham talked about the hard-end drift—perhaps it will be called the “Glass drift”—and said that even when money goes in, it somehow drifts away. That must be because of the pressures within the system: the way human beings work—those who do the jobs that she did in the past, parents and people in schools—leads to money not going where people want it to go. It is therefore not enough for Ministers to wish the right outcomes—all hon. Members wish the right outcomes. Rather, they must show that they understand the engineering of the system sufficiently to deliver them. We are dealing with the most vulnerable of our children, and we cannot have an already bad situation made worse inadvertently by Ministers in a hurry who do not have sufficient explanations. I am sure that that is not the case, but I would hate to think it was. We should not be blinded by the desire to appear to be acting if we are doing the wrong thing.

[Ian Mearns]

Having worked in the system and taken a number of cases to education appeals panels, I have often seen a situation in which council officers think they are doing the right thing by the system by refusing parents what they want, because they believe that other provision is nearly as good but less costly. Does the Chair of Education Committee accept that if parents want provision that costs tens of thousands of pounds a year, allowing that provision incurs an opportunity cost to the system and other children within it?

[Mr Stuart]

There is always an opportunity cost and people always have to make judgment calls. We need to know who makes those calls, what the pressures on them and their incentives are, and their accountability. It all comes down to that, and understanding what the accountability mechanisms will be if there is a much-increased number of free academies.

Academies Bill [Lords]

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Buckland]

Very well. I have been led astray by the hon. Lady’s film persona on many occasions, and in a very positive way, but I accept what you say, Mr Chope, and I shall return to the amendment.

I do not share the concern that, when it comes to children and young people in special education, the Bill will result in a “them and us” situation. In fact, to accept the amendment would be to create just such situation. If both Houses pass the Bill and we allow schools the opportunity to go down this exciting avenue, we must as a matter of principle allow all types of school to enjoy that potential opportunity, and it would be wholly wrong and discriminatory to exclude special schools from that process.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

For a number of years, I was the chair of the board of governors in a special school that dealt with the educational needs of children who were then classified as having moderate learning difficulties. The classifications were of the time. As the chair, I had to go through a process whereby the local authority decided that it would be more appropriate to close the school, because the range of provision for the children was inappropriate for the time in which we were living. If each special school in an area becomes an academy and independent of local authority concern, is there not a danger that special school arrangements and special educational arrangements will be maintained in aspic for ever?

[Mr Buckland]

That is unfair. I acknowledge and bow to the hon. Gentleman’s experience, but he underestimates where we are with special education. I am sure that he will agree that head teachers and staff in special schools always look at ways of improving their provision, and reinvent and adapt it to the new children who enter their schools year on year. I find special schools in the modern era very receptive to change. They want to understand and learn from their experiences, and they want to learn about new diagnoses, which is an area of constant change. In autism, for example, the huge increase in the number of diagnoses means that there is an increased demand for special education, so I do not share the hon. Gentleman’s pessimism or his vision of special schools wanting to remain in a golden age and refusing to move with the times.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Barwell]

My hon. Friend makes the point far more eloquently than I can. At some point in the future, the shadow Education Minister might have the honour of being the Minister again, or even the Secretary of State, who will sign off the applications for academy status. However, the amendment would tell primary schools or federations of primary schools that they were not even allowed to make the case for academy status, and that is completely the wrong approach.

[Ian Mearns]

The hon. Gentleman refers to schools working in partnership on school improvement programmes, and clause 15 refers to city technology colleges becoming part of the family of academies that the legislation will look after, but I am afraid that the city technology college in my constituency has always been fiercely independent and has never wanted to work in partnership with any other school or with the local education authority. I do not see how the circle will be squared, because that is the evidence from our experience.

[Gavin Barwell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but my experience in my part of the world is very different. In Croydon we had one of the original city technology colleges, which has converted to an academy, as most CTCs have, and the academy partners have continued to work closely with the local authority and community.

My next point is about the evidence base. In an intervention on the hon. Member for Gedling, I referred to the evidence in relation to the Oasis Academy Shirley Park, an all-through academy that he and the former Secretary of State approved in my constituency. The evidence from the first year is that at primary and secondary levels the academy has made a profound difference not just to pupil attainment, parental satisfaction and the local community’s confidence in the school, but most importantly to the pupils’ perception of the school that they attend, which surely ought to be the key judge of any school.

The Opposition also argued that the policy is a leap in the dark, and that, whereas the previous policy was managed and a number of schools became academies each year, we are opening the floodgates and do not know how many schools might become such institutions. Having listened to the debate, however, it is clear that the Secretary of State will retain control of approving academy applications, and the explanatory notes to the Bill give a rough forecast of the numbers that we might expect.

My final point is about the admissions policy. The hon. Gentleman suggested that, given how primary schools are rooted in their community and some secondary schools are not, there was a danger that the admissions criteria might change and the local link could break down. As I understand the arrangements, however, such schools will continue to be covered by the admissions code. Indeed, in my area we have written into academy funding agreements the importance of a clear local link in relation to selection. In all parts of the country, we want good schools serving their local communities so that local parents have what they want, which in my experience is a good local school.

None of the concerns about size, evidence base, opening the floodgates or admissions bears any scrutiny, and there is a very important point of principle. Primary schools or federations of primary schools should have the chance to make to the Secretary of State the case for being given academy status, so that we see at primary level the same improvement, particularly in deprived parts of the country, of which there are a number in my constituency, that we have seen at secondary level.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

Any Government face such challenges, but the Government whom the hon. Lady supported for 13 years were not that effective in dealing with them. Under the previous Government, a considerable number of schools were in special measures for a long period, and the results in some schools were very poor. This is going to be a challenge for this Government, as it was for the previous Government. It will also be a challenge for the organisation that monitors the quangos—the Young People’s Learning Agency.

[Ian Mearns]

The way in which the legislation has been framed seems to have built in a mechanism under which that scrutiny will not need to be carried out in the first instance, because only outstanding schools will be allowed to go forward. The whole point of the previous Government’s academies programme was to lift standards in schools that were performing below the level that we all want for our children. This Government’s programme is for outstanding schools only—[Hon. Members: “No, it’s not.”] Well, that is certainly the way the legislation seems to be framed.

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friends have just made the point from a sedentary position that that is not the case. It is not only outstanding schools that are being invited to acquire academy status; it is all schools. We are also continuing to address the problems at the other end of the scale, to ensure that schools that are in special measures and that are struggling can acquire academy status and have a sponsor that can raise standards in those schools. Those projects, and that approach to policy, will continue.

I am surprised at the opposition to these proposals, given that they build on the legislation of the previous Government. They do not represent a major departure from the previous approach. The Bill has only 20 clauses, and the reason for that is that it builds on the legislation introduced by the previous Government.

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[Vernon Coaker]

I was not aware of that letter. It would have been even more helpful if the hon. Gentleman had told us what it said, but I will have a look at it. Certainly, the ready reckoner and the whole question of funding for primary schools is still an issue.

I take the point about primary schools being an important part of the community, whether they are small, rural or urban. The more important point that many hon. Members made concerned the capacity of those schools operating on their own to deal with academy status, particularly in regard to some of the support that they receive from local authorities on insurance, legal costs and sometimes when emergencies occur. If we are not careful, the Government will undermine the local authority’s capacity to deal with such matters, while not giving individual primary schools, even if they become academies, the capacity to deal with them either. That is a real issue for us all.

To be fair, the Minister tried to address most of the points made, except that relating to the inadequacy of the equalities impact assessment and the impact assessment on the Bill, which makes no reference to any evidence for what the Government are doing. My hon. Friends and I have raised serious concerns about the rush to academy status for primary schools, but in the interests of dealing with some of the important issues that remain to be debated in the limited time available, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Ian Mearns]

I beg to move amendment 19, page 1, line 22, at end insert—

(za) the school has regard to the regulations relating to schools admissions made under section 84 of the Schools Standards and Framework Act 1998;

(zb) the school has regard to the regulations relating to the exclusion of pupils made under section 52 of the Education Act 2002;’.

[The First Deputy Chairman]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 23, page 2, line 8, at end insert—

(e) the school must comply with the provisions of the Code for School Admissions issued from time to time by the Secretary of State.’.

Amendment 24, page 2, line 8, at end insert—

(e) the school must comply with fair access protocols issued from time to time by the Secretary of State.’.

Amendment 27, page 2, line 8, at end insert—

(e) the school complies with provisions on pupil exclusions and behaviour partnerships as set out in EA 2002, EIA 2006 and ASCLA 2009.’.

Amendment 42, page 2, line 8, at end insert—

(e) the admissions arrangements of the school make no provision for selection on the basis of religion or belief.’.

Amendment 11, page 2, line 21, at end insert—

‘(9A) Academy arrangements must also include terms imposed for the purpose of securing that the school complies with any code for school admissions issued under section 84 of SSFA.’.

Amendment 43, page 2, line 23, at end insert—

‘(11) Subsection (12) applies if the school is a voluntary controlled school which is designated by order under section 69(3) of SSFA 1998 as a school having a particular religious character.

(12) The Academy agreement must include terms imposed for the purpose of securing that no greater percentage of pupils are selected on the basis of religion or belief after, as compared with before, the conversion date.’.

Amendment 14, in clause 6, page 4, line 21, leave out subsections (3) and (4).

Amendment 49, in clause 6, page 4, line 24, at end insert—

‘(3A) If the school is a selective school, sections 105 to 109 of SSFA 1998 shall continue to apply in respect of the retention of selective admission arrangements at the school.’.

Amendment 44, in clause 6, page 4, line 37, at end insert—

‘( ) Subsections (7) and (8) apply only if the governing body has made a request to maintain such religious character.

( ) Subsections (7) and (8) do not apply if the school is not designated by order under section 69(3) of SSFA 1998 as a school having a particular religious character and, on conversion to an Academy, such a school may not then be designated or treated as designated by order under section 69(3) of SSFA 1998 as a school having a particular religious character.’.

Amendment 12, in clause 6, page 5, line 4, at end add—

‘(10) After the conversion date the school must comply with any code for school admissions issued under section 84 of SSFA which applied to the school on the conversion date.’.

Amendment 13, in schedule 2, page 18, line 26, at end insert—

‘9A In section 84(1) of SSFA (code for school admissions) after paragraph (b) insert—

“(bza) Academies,”.’.

[Ian Mearns]

I do not intend to detain the Committee for long as we are only three amendments into a 30-odd amendment marathon.

I am not a fan of the legislation as it takes a set of proposals that were meant for one set of schools and transfers those, lock, stock and barrel, to schools in a wholly different category. It takes resources that were meant to improve the educational outcome for children in schools that are underperforming and transfers them in a targeted way to schools that are, in the first instance, already regarded as outstanding. It will also take resources that the local authority currently receives to be targeted at school improvement and gives those resources to schools that are already outstanding, in a “devil take the hindmost” fashion.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful case were it not for the fact that the Government have made it clear that they want all schools to have the opportunity to become academies and have that freedom. Also, the pupil premium, which is an important part of the policy platform, will ensure that the poorest in our society have an extra resource, which, for the first time, will follow them, rather than some political fix. Surely he should recognise that in his remarks.

[Ian Mearns]

I thank the Select Committee Chair for his comments, but I did emphasise the words “in the first instance” with regard to the outstanding schools in these proposals. The pupil premium will be part of legislation in the autumn, and it remains to be seen how those proposals will pan out.

[Glenda Jackson]

I tabled questions asking which children in my constituency would benefit from the pupil premium and which would not, and the Department did not know.

[Ian Mearns]

I thank my hon. Friend for that information. It helps us to pad out the argument about how we feel about the Bill.

Government Members have regularly alluded to and broadly welcomed what they see as a return to grant-maintained schools by another name, now known as son of grant-maintained schools or academies. If the policy were to go down that road, its fairness, equity and accountability would have to be severely questioned. Unlike local authorities, the governing body of an academy will not undergo the rigours of the local democratic system. That is, it will not have to stand for election and stand or fall on its record and/or its programme.

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[Mr Gibb]

The ready reckoner is used to give an indication to prospective academies of what their funding might be. It is not to be used by local authorities to calculate the claw-back, because they are different figures. Academies are funded through two different routes, so the figures would not match.

[Ian Mearns]

Nevertheless, local authorities are uncertain about the financial implications and their capacity to improve schools in the future. Indeed, education cannot be delivered in isolation from the wider range of local public services used by children and young people—or by the local community. Within education, if the role of local authorities as commissioners was recognised and strengthened, the children’s services budget could be more efficiently used by delivering a wider range of services through schools.

It is important to ensure that all children have fair access to a place in a local school, and that academies operate a fair admissions procedure. Similarly, it is imperative that all schools operate a fair exclusions policy. I was pleased that the Secretary of State gave a reassurance on Second Reading when he said that academies

“have to abide by the admissions code and subscribe to fair access protocols, so that those hard-to-place children are placed appropriately.”—[Official Report, 19 July 2010; Vol. 514, c. 31.]

However, I would like to see an inclusion in the Bill that all academies must comply with admissions law and codes and fair access protocols, as well as regulations relating to pupil exclusions. That would ensure that they were on the same footing as other schools, requiring a change to primary legislation to amend and making them truly equal partners. I therefore ask the Committee to accept amendment No. 19 in my name because it would achieve exactly that.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

I tabled amendments 42, 43 and 44, which deal with one aspect of admissions to academies of a religious nature. I understand the benefits that can flow from such schools. Indeed, I used to be a governor of a Church of England school in the ward I represented and it was a very interesting experience. However, I am concerned that the Bill may inadvertently lead to an increase in the proportion of religious places. It risks permanently entrenching religious segregation in our education system through irreversible changes that could permit wide discrimination in admissions and employment.

By “freeing” religious academies from the national curriculum without sufficient safeguards, the Bill also risks exposing children to extreme religious views, including creationism. Members will know that I have spent some time arguing for the scientific line on such issues. My concern is widely shared. A new ICM poll commissioned by the British Humanist Association found that 72% of the public are concerned that the Academies Bill could lead to taxpayers’ money being used to promote religion. A third of the public said that they were “very concerned” about that. The poll also found that two thirds of people think that religious academies should be required to teach pupils about other beliefs, including non-religious ones.

I seek assurances from the Minister on these issues and I have tabled three amendments to flush out their thinking in this area. Amendment 42 would prevent any form of religious discrimination in admissions policies. Many state-funded “faith schools” use privileges to have highly selective admissions criteria, giving preference to the children of parents with particular beliefs. The Government have so far made it clear that they intend to allow these schools to retain their admissions policies, and I have great concerns in that area. It can cause segregation along religious and socio-economic lines. Professor Ted Cantle, author of a report into community cohesion in Blackburn, describes religious schools as

“automatically a source of division”

in the town, which is not something we would wish to see. In other areas, faith schools, which are their own admissions authorities—as these academies will be—are 10 times more likely to be highly unrepresentative of their surrounding area than faith schools where the local authority is the admission authority. Separating children by religion, class and ethnicity is totally antithetical to the aims of social cohesion, and amendment 42 would ensure that no academy pupil is discriminated against on religious grounds.

That is an ideal to which I hope we all aspire. However, if amendment 42 cannot be accepted by the Government, I hope that amendment 43 can at least provide greater assurance. It would ensure that, at the very least, existing faith schools cannot discriminate more when they achieve academy status. During discussions in the other place, the Government confirmed that maintained faith schools will be able to discriminate in admissions. I hope they will change their mind on that. They said that a 50% quota would be imposed to ensure that 50% of admissions would not be religiously selective, and that was repeated on Second Reading. However, that provision is not in the Bill, the model funding agreement or any other official guidance or information. We need to know what would happen there. If amendment 42 cannot be accepted, I hope that amendment 43 will be, to ensure that things can get no worse than they currently are.

Finally, I turn to amendment 44, which deals with two issues, one of which I take to be a drafting error on which I seek reassurance, and the other is the desire to provide choice for current religious schools. I shall take the second part of the amendment first. The amendment would ensure symmetry. Currently a state-funded religious school becomes a religious academy, but there is nothing to confirm that a non-faith school becomes a non-faith academy. I therefore seek the guarantee, which I think the Secretary of State intended, that that is what would happen—that their nature simply would not change.

The first part of the amendment deals with schools that are religious schools now. Currently, a state-maintained school with a religious character is forced to become an academy with that religious character, but surely religious schools should at least have the option not to do that if they do not wish to. That would be popular with the local community: a recent poll found that 64% of people agreed that the Government should not be funding faith schools of any kind—but that is a debate for another time. However, some faith schools are only nominally of a religious character—that character being a residue of former connections. When taking on academy status with the possibility of growth, these schools may wish to free themselves of the restrictive status of being of a religious character which has ceased to be relevant to them. The amendment would allow them the choice, rather than compel them.

I hope my amendments will be considered carefully by the Government, and I hope that Ministers will comment on them. I intend them as probing amendments and will not press them to a vote, but I hope that the Government will take them seriously and accept a number of them.

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[Mr Gibb]

I am very happy to write to the hon. Gentleman if he would prefer that.

The hon. Gentleman also asked about the exclusion of children with special educational needs. As he will know, the current 203 academies have a higher proportion of children with SEN and they exclude such children disproportionately less than maintained schools.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) raised the concern that freeing faith schools from the national curriculum would create a risk of their teaching creationism, but there is no risk of that because they will still be required to teach a broad and balanced curriculum. The funding agreement will continue to require academies to teach religious education. For non-faith delegated academies, that means teaching the locally agreed syllabus; for faith schools it means teaching a curriculum in accordance with the tenets of the relevant faith. That is the same requirement as applies to voluntary-aided schools.

My hon. Friend also raised the issue of schools converting to academy status. As I have just said, the same rules apply as for maintained schools that want to convert to faith schools: they have to go through the whole process of re-designation, which requires the permission of the Secretary of State.

My hon. Friend asked where provision on the 50% rule is. It is not in the funding agreement, but we would not enter into a funding agreement that included admissions arrangements that allowed faith selection of more than 50%. That is a policy position, but it has been confirmed in both Houses and I confirm again that we will not sign funding agreements with new faith schools that intend to select more than half their intake on the basis of faith.

The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) asked about co-ordinated admissions arrangements. I am happy to assure her that they will apply. She also asked about levers for enforcing the admissions code. The Young People’s Learning Agency will ensure compliance with funding agreements on behalf of the Secretary of State. If an academy breached an obligation in its funding agreement, the YPLA would seek to enforce the obligation and the Secretary of State could ultimately do so through the courts. The Secretary of State has a specific power within the funding agreement to direct the admission of an individual pupil or to direct the amendment of an academy’s admissions arrangements if they do not comply with the code.

The hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson), who is not in her place, asserted that the new academies will increase social division, but they will not. The Bill states at clause 1(6)(c) that academies must provide

“education for pupils of different abilities”,

and at clause 1(6)(d) that they must provide

“education for pupils who are wholly or mainly drawn from the area in which the school is situated.”

In response to the queries of my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Mr Hancock), the admissions code requires fair and inclusive admission arrangements and outlaws any notion of cherry-picking. Of course, the academies will be bound by the code. Academies must be part of local fair access protocols, which require them to admit their fair share of challenging pupils, some of whom are likely to have been permanently excluded from other schools.

This has been an interesting and wide-ranging debate. I have spoken for long enough and I hope that I have managed to reassure my hon. Friends in both parts of the coalition and Opposition Members. I hope that on the basis of the assurances I have given, hon. Members will feel able to withdraw their amendments.

[Ian Mearns]

With your leave, Ms Primarolo, I am happy to withdraw the amendment and to defer to the amendments that are put at the appropriate time later. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Mr Iain Wright]

I beg to move amendment 20, page 1, line 22, at end insert—

(za) if the school is an additional school, the school meets a proven need for additional capacity in the area in which the school is situated;’.

Academies Bill [Lords]

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Monday 19th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[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—

--- Later in debate ---

[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.