Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

T9. The decision to scrap grammar schools was once described as “a real tragedy for this country…they are a very important part of the mix in our educational system…and they should be supported”.I completely agree with the Prime Minister and I am glad that the Secretary of State is also so supportive, saying that he wants to “spread the DNA” of grammar schools across the education system and give them a special status to retain academic selection in the upcoming Schools Bill, but it is not right that children in Teesside and Stoke-on-Trent do not the same opportunities as a child in Kent or Stratford-upon-Avon, so will the Government support my right hon. Friend—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Mr Gullis, I told you to be short, but you obviously cannot. Secretary of State.

Foster Carers

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Thursday 21st April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship in Westminster Hall once again, Mr Robertson. I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) on securing this important debate and sharing her personal experience. As Members from across the House have said, it is truly inspiring.

My partner and I hope one day, when our children are slightly older, to offer a home and an opportunity to young people. For eight and a half years before entering this place, I worked as a head of year, dealing with behavioural and pastoral issues in the secondary education sector, and I had direct contact with some of the fantastic foster carers of the children I was proud to look after. It was an enlightening and warming story. Looking at how to spend money from the budget to invest in those young people and give them exciting opportunities outside the school gates, as well as pushing their learning and educational outcomes, was something that I thoroughly enjoyed.

I want to focus on the great work that is being done in the constituency I am proud to serve, Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, and across the wider city of Stoke-on-Trent. Since 2019, Stoke-on-Trent City Council has made it very clear that children and young people need to be its No. 1 priority. A complete overhaul is needed, as the challenge in 2019 was, quite frankly, immense. Children’s services in Stoke-on-Trent have never been rated good or outstanding. An Ofsted inspection in early 2019 showed that the situation was dire—that is the only word I can use to describe the quality of services available to more than 1,000 of the most vulnerable young children in our city, who required us to look after them. Children’s services received the worst possible rating of inadequate from Ofsted, and inspectors uncovered multiple failings, which left youngsters at risk of harm.

Since May 2019, Councillor Dave Evans, who was appointed to the children and young people portfolio, has been working with Councillor Abi Brown, the leader of Stoke-on-Trent City Council, and has made big strides to improve fostering services across the Potteries. Ably assisted by team manager Kate Bailey and recruitment officer Marie Plant, Councillor Evans and his team have radically changed the council’s approach. The council has been pushing hard to get as many organisations signed up to the fostering friendly scheme, the Fostering Network’s programme to encourage employers to support fostering and, in particular, foster carers. Stoke City Football Club, Bet365, Staffordshire police, Stoke-on-Trent City Council and health groups are all now signed up to the scheme. That effort is part of the team’s new approach to running family services.

To be recognised as a fostering friendly employer, the council has had to demonstrate support for employees, make the workplace friendlier for foster carers to benefit the children in their care, and also make it easier for people to consider fostering. In 2020, the council launched a new fostering friendly policy for all its employees, setting out benefits for any staff member who decides to come forward to become a foster carer. They include flexible working arrangements and paid time off for those going through the foster care approval process. Councillor Evans and his team are urging organisations and businesses across Stoke-on-Trent to become fostering friendly, as part of the push to become recognised as the first fostering friendly city in the United Kingdom.

Part of the new approach that Stoke-on-Trent City Council is taking is making fostering more visible and spreading the word. Social workers now go to events across the city such as Stoke-on-Trent Pride and the Better World Festival, and they hold coffee shop drop-in sessions. I am pleased to say that the new approach that the council has taken is paying off. Recruitment of foster carers is up, with 33 recruited last year compared to 30 the year before, and the council is now the fifth biggest recruiter of social workers in the country.

As well as getting more organisations signed up to the fostering friendly scheme and boosting recruitment, Councillor Evans and the team have worked to improve retention of foster carers, which is important as there are more than 1,000 cared-for children in the city of Stoke-on-Trent. Fosterers have been given a stronger voice, with increased representation on the corporate parenting panel to give them a say on key decisions across children’s services in the city. All of this progress has been reflected in Ofsted’s latest monitoring report

Even the Stoke Sentinel has had to be positive about the turnaround. As Councillor Evans has said, the clearest sign of improvement is that Ofsted has found that children in Stoke-on-Trent are now safe—Ofsted had previously found that they were not. Of course, there is still a long way to go. As I said earlier, the council has never been ranked as good or outstanding for children’s services, but that is the goal, and I am 100% confident that thanks to the new approach adopted by Councillor Evans and his team, when Ofsted carries out its next full inspection this autumn, that goal will be achieved.

Before I close I want to give the fostering team a shout-out for running the Potters ‘Arf marathon last year, and again this year. This is something I know my hon. Friend the Minister will be proud to hear. Having seen and walked the hills of Stoke-on-Trent, I will not be anywhere near that race, apart from standing on the sidelines and cheering with a cheesy oatcake in my hand. I warmly congratulate all those taking part to raise awareness and money for good causes, and I look forward to cheering the team on.

Schools White Paper

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

That is exactly what this White Paper will do and it is why the issue of teaching is so important to our plan. I will certainly have a look at the children’s university the right hon. Lady mentions. Anyone who wants to join us on this journey is most welcome, and we want everyone to come along because, if we deliver for every child, we will have done something great for the future of our country.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

I warmly congratulate my right hon. Friend on his White Paper and thank him for the fact that Stoke-on-Trent is now an education investment area priority, which comes with additional investment for our local area. I also thank him for the fact that the levelling-up premium to recruit and retain some of the best teachers across the country has been adopted from the Onward and New Schools Network report that I did on levelling up education. Most importantly, we want some of the best multi-academy trusts, which for too long have been clustered in the south, to come up to Stoke-on-Trent. How does this White Paper enable that to happen?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My hon. Friend has always been a great champion for his schools and speaks with real experience as an accomplished teacher in his own right. He is right that we need our best, highest-performing multi-academy trusts to lift their ambitions. This White Paper will deliver that, including additional funding of £80 million to get that momentum going again. We are about to announce our 10,000th academy and we have 22,000 schools in England. I am ambitious for every part of the country, and we will deliver that ambition in Stoke-on-Trent as well as in other parts of the country.

Physical Education

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, yet again, in Westminster Hall, Mr Hosie. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson) for securing this important debate. I thought his speech, and that of the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater), was fantastic in outlining the absolute reasons why physical education needs to be taken much more seriously, particularly in primary school curriculums.

Mr Hosie, the irony is not lost on me; I am quite aware of the overly large circumference of my waist at this moment in time, and that for me to be talking about physical health, I should be leading by example. However, PE is absolutely essential to tackling issues such as childhood obesity, which are, sadly, all too prevalent in the great city of Stoke-on-Trent, and in Kidsgrove and Talke, which I am also proud to represent. There are a number of different factors for that obesity, but one definite challenge is that, all too often, in the advancement of students’ literacy and numeracy—which are absolutely critical in improving the life outcomes of pupils in my area—the physical education side has suffered.

I am the first in my family to be the beneficiary of a private school education, something I am very proud of. My parents worked very hard and made many sacrifices to give me the head start in life that they felt they had not had through their education. People always ask me, “What is the major difference between a pupil from a state school and a private school?” I was a teacher in a state school for eight and a half years before I entered this place. The answer is simple. Even though private schools produce fantastic academic results, they heavily invest time, the money from parents—yes, I understand that is an advantage—and energy into giving children a rounded education, not just through debating, LAMDA and drama, but physical education.

I remember that Wednesdays from one o’clock meant games for the entire year group. A variety of football, hockey, rugby, netball and many other sports would be available to us for two to three hours. That meant we were getting high-quality physical education from fantastic teachers, such as Mr McCollin, whom I still dread and fear to this day. When I went back to see him 12 months ago, I still looked down and called him sir, because of the fear he brought when it came to being disciplined. Perhaps Mr Speaker should have a word with him, to get me to behave in the Chamber.

Ultimately, it was teachers such as him who inspired me to play rugby, a sport I had never played before I was 11. I was delighted to end up with a very successful career, even being paid to play rugby union while I was at university. It is about that type of support network. As the hon. Member for Batley and Spen said, it is about teamwork, the learning and camaraderie with colleagues, the resilience from taking a knock and getting back up, and accepting defeat, even when it feels undeserved. Those are the things that are inspiring, and why we need to do a much better job, ensuring that children in state schools are getting access to that.

Stoke-on-Trent in 2019-20 featured among the top local authorities for high levels of childhood obesity; 27.7% of children were either overweight or obese. In Kidsgrove and Talke, 27% of children in year 6 were obese and 19% overweight. Those are scary statistics that have a huge impact. As someone who has been open recently about my mental health struggles, I understand the impact a poor diet and lack of exercise can have on mental health. It is no shock to me that high levels of obesity are leading to long waiting lists with Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. Adults in the city of Stoke-on-Trent have issues with asthma, heart conditions, with a clear link to the lack of physical activity at the earliest stages. We talk about the first 1,001 days of a child’s life being the most critical for imparting knowledge and nurturing their growth, but there is a physical aspect as well.

Kidsgrove sports centre was closed in 2017. Thanks to the Government’s town deal funding and Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council, it has been refurbished and will reopen in July 2022, bringing swimming back to the town, with its record high levels of obesity and overweight children. There will be a gym, which will be run by the Kidsgrove sports centre community group, so that every pound that is spent in it stays in that community centre, for the benefit of that local community.

Alongside that, we have invested in a pump track at Newchapel Rec, which has kids on their BMXs, scooters, roller blades and a variety of other wheely machinery. It is getting them out and about. When I drive past, I see the benefit of that with tens, if not hundreds, of children on a daily basis enjoying that facility. For the mere sum of £100,000, that town deal has already delivered over and above what was invested in that area. Clough Hall bowls club is nearby and there is a FIFA-standard 3G astroturf pitch at King’s Church of England school, supplied through the town deal funding. That will not only be used by kids during the day. We opened it up by doing a deal with the school, so that the community can use it in the evening and at weekends. This is a sports village complex that we are trying to bring to local areas, so that there is no excuse why anyone cannot access good, high-quality physical education.

The last thing I want to say is that we have some great people in our city doing fantastic work. We have companies such as Bee Active which was established in 2013 by brothers Ben and Bobby Mills. It offers an innovative approach to physical education, Ofsted-registered schools and holiday sports clubs. It has extended services beyond children’s PE, to include gentle exercise for older people, birthday parties, celebrations, special events and community sessions, to name a few.

Bee Active even has a great app that parents can use to do activities with their kids at home, record them and have them marked and assessed on how well they are doing. The company came to the office, and let me just say there is a lot of work to do on my part—I am sure my daughter and son will be much better. Bee Active has become Staffordshire and Cheshire’s leading provider of sports and physical activity, supporting 75 primary and secondary schools to deliver PE. However, there is one challenge in its way: the PE and sport premium. Because the money is not secured for the long term and there is almost an annual bidding process, there is insecurity as to whether the fund will even exist and, therefore, whether the business can carry on. Ben from Bee Active wants me to ask whether we can have a long-term settlement for the fund to ensure that companies such as his can continue to operate.

[Edward Timpson]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend’s last comment about the premium, which I was privileged to help set up in my time at the Department for Education. I am delighted that it is still going, but long-term funding makes a significant difference to schools’ ability to bed in some of the practical improvements that they need in the way that they teach PE. Do we not also need confirmation from the Government in relation to school games organisers by 7 April, so that they can continue their excellent work on interschool and intraschool competitions, which have been so successful over the last 10 years?

[Jonathan Gullis]

I could not agree more. This is so important. Again, the benefit of private schools is that they have interschool cups, so we should have interschool competitions. The highlight of my week was knowing that I could get out of maths halfway through the lesson in order to go and play against another local school in a rugby match, or against another house when we were doing our school cup games. It is so important for breeding confidence and motivation in young people within our education sphere, so long-term funding needs to be approved. We cannot have year-on-year uncertainty with primary schools and the providers that are doing such great work externally.

My final point is that we need an extended school day. I bang on and on about this, and I know I will embarrass the Parliamentary Private Secretary for the Department for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (David Johnston), who is sat behind the Minister. He was an advocate for physical education when he was on the Education Committee, and they sucked him into the Department—probably to shut him up. Now that he is in the Department, he can tell it loud and clear that we need an extended school day. Not only does it keep kids off the streets and make the most vulnerable kids feel safe in their school building because it is a place that they know, surrounded by adults whom they trust. It also means that, regardless of whether there needs to be catch-up, the whole school can enjoy good-quality physical education if there is a challenge with fitting it within normal curriculum time.

The extended school day is happening already in the private school sector, and it is unfair that it is not happening in the state school sector. It is unfair on parents, who are having to leave work two or three hours earlier than they should, and who are having lower incomes than they deserve, in order to go and pick up their loved ones or look after them. The stats do not lie: all too often in major cities, knife crime involving young people peaks at the end of the school day, between 3 pm and 5 pm, as I have seen in some studies. We need to grab hold of the situation and announce this fantastic thing. I know it costs money, and I am fully aware that those in Treasury will be rolling their eyes at me yet again because I am asking for more funds, but this is something that, in the long term, we will see money come back in because we have confident and healthy young people who do not need to access health services in the way that they are doing now, and who feel much more confident and have aspiration to go and achieve.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Monday 14th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michelle Donelan]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. Too many young people are pushed on to courses that they are not ready for at the moment, which is why we are capping the cost of foundation years to enable more people to use this as an access route. We are also introducing the lifelong loan entitlement, which will make higher education and higher technical education much more flexible.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

21. What steps his Department is taking to help ensure political impartiality in schools.

[The Minister for School Standards (Mr Robin Walker)]

The Government are committed to ensuring that children and young people receive a balanced education. The Department has recently published new political impartiality in schools guidance, which will help support teachers in tackling sensitive issues in the classroom in a politically impartial way.

[Jonathan Gullis]

A minority of woke-warrior teachers think it is acceptable to push extremist nonsense on to pupils, such as white privilege, and try to cancel important historical figures, such as Sir Winston Churchill. However, these teachers are also aided and abetted by some trade unions, such as the Not Education Union. The failed and disgraced NEU demanded that the welfare state was reformed before approving of pupils going back to school with its ridiculous 100-point plan, and its president blames NATO instead of Vladimir Putin for the illegal and immoral invasion of Ukraine. Will my hon. Friend outline how we will hold politically motivated trade unions to account and prevent them from using teachers as a gateway to push their far-left agenda?

[Mr Walker]

I have to say that my hon. Friend always speaks out bravely from his own personal experience as a teacher, and I see that he has done so in his Telegraph article today. Pupils must form their own political views, and schools should not indoctrinate or encourage children to pin their colours to any particular political mast. The new guidance will help schools to make good decisions about working with external agencies and ensure that any engagement does not breach their legal duties.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Robin Walker]

I would be happy to take up the issues the hon. Member raises with Ofqual, which I am due to meet later this week. It is important to reiterate that some of the challenges we have seen with TAGs are among the many reasons we think it is right that exams should go ahead. We need to move back to a proper, independently assessed system. I want to make sure that schools and colleges that have been asked to collect evidence of their students’ performance, covering the breadth of content usually seen in exams and assessments, recognise that, once they have that evidence, they are not obliged to collect any more. It is important that we have the fallback of TAGs, of course, but we do not necessarily want schools to be going out of their way to do extra work in this space.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

Stoke-on-Trent was delighted to become an education investment area and is seeking a new 16-to-19 specialist school, but I am still waiting for wave 15 of the free school programme to be announced so that I can bid for the long overdue free school in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke. We need to improve academic outcomes and destinations. When is that coming?

[Mr Walker]

My hon. Friend always champions his area passionately and I recognise the strong bid he has put in. Of course the education investment areas provide that opportunity to have extra free school provision.

Government’s Education Catch-up and Mental Health Recovery Programmes

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Forty children are excluded every school day and, sadly, they are not ending up in quality alternative provision. There is a postcode lottery, despite the wonderful efforts of many teachers in AP. There needs to be a dramatic change. I would like kids to stay in the school but have support training centres in the school. As Michael Wilshaw, the former head of Ofsted, said to our Committee, there should be many more of them so that kids are not just dumped out into the streets and left, often, to their own devices or to poor-quality provision.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend knows that he and I have a slight difference of opinion when it comes to the idea of exclusion. However, I always want to be careful about one thing: that we talk about what the school could do. Does he agree that there always needs to be a firm conversation about what more parents can do to support the teachers to ensure that their children do not end up being excluded?

[Robert Halfon]

Yes, 100%. I like the message coming out of the Department for Education that this is not just about schools and skills, but families, schools and skills. Families are central to this and we should do everything possible to strengthen them. I welcome the hundreds of millions of pounds that the Government are putting into early intervention, particularly to build family hubs around the country.

Let us look at the horrific statistics on mental health: 17.4% of children aged six to 16 had a probable mental health disorder in 2021, up from 11.6% in 2017. Overall, child mental health referrals are up by 60%, so the Government must rocket-boost their proposals to put a mental health professional in every school, not just in 25% of them. We should also ensure—this perhaps relates to some of the question from my hon. Friend—that interventions to support mental health are not seen as crutches, but designed to prevent more serious escalation.

I have mentioned before in this House my visit to Newham Collegiate Sixth Form Centre, which is an extraordinary school. Staff there do not like the words mental health; they talk about mental health resilience. Throughout school life, pupils are taught the tools and tactics that they need to deal with the challenges that life throws at them. Private study periods have desks set up in an exam style to help pupils to familiarise themselves with the setting to reduce their anxiety, and in school assemblies, pupils learn from sport celebrities about the techniques that they use to deal with high-pressure situations. We need to talk about this in terms of mental health resilience.

We should also tackle the wrecking ball that social media has been to young people’s mental health. The Prince’s Trust found that

“social media use in childhood is associated with worse wellbeing”,

and 78% of Barnardo’s practitioners reported that children between the ages of 10 and 15 have accessed unsuitable or harmful content. The platforms provided by companies such as TikTok, in my view—I am not a luddite; I love technology—are a Trojan horse for damaging children’s lives, not just with their huge amount of sexualised content, but through the damage that they are doing because of the images that children see. There should be a 2% levy on these social media companies, which would create a funding pot of around £100 million that the Government could distribute to schools to provide mental health support and digital skills training to young people to build the resilience and online safety skills that they need.

I note my heartfelt thanks to all the teachers and support staff in my Harlow constituency and around the country for their heroic efforts throughout the pandemic to keep our children learning. There has been welcome investment in education recovery and some great work is happening, but there is much more to do. The Government must deal with the problem of ghost children to prevent the creation of the “Oliver Twist” generation that will potentially be forgotten forever. The Education Secretary has a real grip of his Department, and I admire many of the things that he is doing, but he has to make sure that the catch-up recovery reaches the most disadvantaged pupils and works efficiently. Given the scale of the mental health challenges facing our young people, action has to be taken now to prevent this becoming an epidemic.

Finally, I say to the Minister that there are great initiatives coming out of the Department. The home education register, which we supported in our Committee and is recommended our report, is very welcome. Sometimes, however, the education system resembles a whole lot of clothes pegs without a washing line. We need the washing line—the narrative, the strategy, the Government’s plans for education. This problem can be solved. The NHS has a long-term plan and a secure funding settlement; the Ministry of Defence has a strategic review and an additional £20 billion. I urge the Minister to ensure that education has a long-term plan and a secure funding settlement, so we can have that washing line. While many of the clothes pegs are great initiatives, we need a proper washing line to link them all together.

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[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

It is an absolute pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), whom I hold in high regard as a parliamentarian. I thoroughly enjoyed our exchanges when I sat here chuntering away and she was on the Opposition Front Bench.

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) for securing the debate. He is a long-term, passionate advocate, I enjoyed working under him as he chaired the Education Committee and I continue to hear from him.

Let us be frank: the Government have done an awful lot. Not only have they thrown £5 billion at education recovery—including £1.5 billion for tutoring; £950 million direct to schools this academic year and the previous one for evidence-based interventions; £1 billion to extend the recovery premium to the end of 2024; and £400 million for training and professional development—but there was the excellent holiday activity fund, which began in the great constituency of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke under the leadership of Carol Shanahan, the co-owner of Port Vale football club and the co-chair of the Hubb Foundation with Adam Yates, a former professional footballer. During the pandemic they not only delivered 300,000 meals to families across the city of Stoke-on-Trent but led the way in offering more than 100 different opportunities for the holiday activity programme, not by building shiny new buildings but by using existing schools and their staff and relationships with the people they knew, young and old, bringing them into the building and providing one hot meal every single day. It was a fantastic scheme and Carol and her team deserve all the plaudits they get.

I was delighted to see that the “Levelling Up” White Paper builds on the idea of levelling up and catching up in education. The city of Stoke-on-Trent is now an education investment area, bringing us a new high-quality 16-to-19 free school. I will of course campaign for that to end up in the constituency of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke. I will not stop there, though: if we are to help catch-up, we need to unlock free schools for 11 to 16-year-olds. I have been working and having conversations with Star Academies and Michaela Community School, which is led by the fantastic Katharine Birbalsingh, who I hope will bring a free school bid for the constituency in wave 15. It is about having high standards, high expectations and a knowledge-rich curriculum and shaking the apple tree in the great city of Stoke-on-Trent so that we no longer accept mediocrity when it comes to educational outcomes and destinations for our young people but send a clear message that we can do this, we expect and we want more for the young people we are proud to serve with.

Let me just correct the record: my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher), who is no longer in his place, said that I might feel some illness about the idea of forest schools, but I can confirm that my daughter’s nursery in Weston has a forest school and I am proud that she can access that. I have seen the benefits of forest schools at first hand at Burnwood Community School in Chell.

I wanted to leave some time for some key things. I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill on the Ofsted inspection of multi-academy trusts, which had the backing of not only Government Members but Members from both the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats. I was very grateful for their support. Even though the Government have sadly rejected that Bill, they have left open the window to more discussions. I will embarrass the Government by reminding them that the Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (David Johnston), was a sponsor of that Bill, so he knows all about it and will, I am sure, lobby internally to make sure those changes are made.

We need to see more brokerage deals with the good multi-academy trusts to make sure that they can enter the city of Stoke-on-Trent and other areas, because if we are to help with catching up, we need to bring the very best into our city. Currently, too many single-academy trusts are not doing their bit.

As the House will have heard from me from a sedentary position, I absolutely adore the idea of extending the school day until 5 pm or 6 pm—for as long as necessary. Schools are buildings that young people know and where they feel safe. The extended school day would provide the opportunity to build and harbour relationships with parents, who could come into the building and perhaps benefit from educational classes or opportunities through the family hub model that the Government are pushing and for which the city of Stoke-on-Trent is bidding. Hopefully, we will get one hub per constituency—hint, hint, Minister. We want to see that idea going forward. Although some people argue that the extended school day should just be for the curriculum, I believe it should also be used for enrichment. The youth guarantee offer in the “Levelling Up” White Paper indicates that that is the direction of travel.

Finally, we have selective education by religion, by postcode and by house price; it is about time we unlocked selective education by bringing back grammar schools so that parents have opportunity and competition in their local area. I will shortly be leading a campaign to unlock that potential for our great country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robin Walker]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, but we have a strong plan for recovery in schools and a strong plan for attendance, which is vital. There has been unavoidable absence as a result of covid, but we must crack down on avoidable absence, which is a reason for one of my visits to the north-east last week.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

We in Stoke-on-Trent are proud to be the home of Staffordshire University, but sadly it seems that cancel culture has arrived on our doorstep after the wokerati made formal complaints about criminology professor James Treadwell for tweeting that transgender women should not be allowed in women’s prisons, citing research that found that half of women in prison have experienced emotional, physical or sexual abuse. Does my right hon. Friend share my despair over this tiny extreme minority, who wish to silence anyone whose opinion they disagree with, and will she join me in lending support to Professor Treadwell?

Education: Return in January

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement and thank teachers, lecturers and support staff across Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke for their heroic efforts in getting kids tested on the first day back as well as for promoting getting the vaccine and I join them in those calls. I wait by the phone to be called into the classroom on either a Thursday or a Friday sometime soon.

I am delighted to hear my right hon. Friend’s reassurance about exams. Can we hear from the Secretary of State one more time that there is no plan B for the summer, just plan A, so that teachers, parents and pupils have the confidence that exams will go ahead as normal, and that we will get back to the exam structure to which everyone is so desperate to return?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I can absolutely give my hon. Friend that assurance.

School Openings: January 2022

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I am reassured to hear the determination of my hon. Friend to keep schools open, but does he agree that the disgraceful campaign of intimidation waged by National Education Union managers to close down schools earlier this year wreaked huge chaos across schools that will take many years to overcome, including the one in six school-age children who now have mental health problems; the chaos caused to the examination system; the academic catch-up; and the problems from a lack of physical exercise? Will he welcome the measures being proposed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), the Chair of the Select Committee, and will he agree that, given the extraordinarily heroic efforts of our headteachers and teachers through difficult circumstances, ultimately the decision on safety and keeping schools open should be left to individual heads?

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

Bousted should resign.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We do not need any extra comments, Mr Gullis. You were hoping to catch my eye and I was thinking about coming to you next, but you obviously do not want me to.

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[Alex Burghart]

I know my hon. Friend understands these issues extremely well. We very much want to keep schools open. We think schools are the best place for children in the midst of a pandemic, particularly vulnerable children who are in care or on the edge of care. We are determined that social work contact should continue, so that we can ensure those children will be protected.

[Jonathan Gullis]

I take this opportunity to thank teachers, lecturers, support staff and other educationalists across Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke for their fantastic efforts. I spent eight and a half wonderful years working as a secondary school teacher in London and Birmingham, and it is absolutely essential that schools are kept open. I do not want to hear from the Minister that we are going to do everything we can; I want to hear simply that they will stay open. More than ever, secondary school teachers want assurances that exam plans for summer 2022 will go ahead as normal. The Labour party is stuck in the vice grip of the National Union of Teachers, so we need to ensure that we do not listen to them but to teachers who know that exams are always the best way forward.

[Alex Burghart]

It is always a pleasure to answer questions from my hon. Friend, who is an extraordinarily passionate advocate for children and education. He will have heard what I said. We want schools to stay open. We want exams to go ahead. We are working to that end.

Multi-academy Trusts: Ofsted

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Ofsted inspection of multi-academy trusts.

There is much excitement, as we are expecting to hear the Division bell. I will speak slowly at the beginning of my speech, and say that it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again in a Westminster Hall debate, Mr Robertson. I am grateful to the Minister and welcome him to his new role. I spent time with him on the campaign trail, as well as working with him when he was in the Northern Ireland Office. I am delighted to see the new Parliamentary Private Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (David Johnston), with whom I served on the Education Committee for over a year and a half. He brings a lot of experience to the Department of Education. I also welcome the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle)—I thoroughly enjoy exchanging a few heckles with him across the Floor of the House, but I also know the passion he has in this area and I am pleased to see him in the Chamber.

[Mr Laurence Robertson (in the Chair)]

Order. The sitting is suspended, as previously advised.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Laurence Robertson (in the Chair)]

The debate can now run to 5.56 pm.

[Jonathan Gullis]

Thank you, Mr Robertson, for calling me to speak again, and I thank everyone else in Westminster Hall for coming back swiftly after the Divisions. I will not repeat all the love-ins that I gave before the Divisions; instead, I will go straight on to saying why we are having this very important debate.

When the people of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke lent me their votes in 2019, it was because they wanted change after 70 years of Labour neglect. A Conservative-led council, Conservative MPs and a Conservative Government are finally levelling up our fantastic city and unleashing the boundless opportunity that it has to offer, while Labour Members are still trying to find Stoke-on-Trent on their Ordnance Survey maps.

As a former teacher, I believe that the most important way to continue levelling up our city is to transform education across Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke. It is unacceptable that children from Stoke-on-Trent simply cannot access the same standard of education that is on offer elsewhere in the country. Where we are today, in Westminster, there are eight secondary schools rated outstanding, with a further 16 outstanding schools in Camden, Kensington and Chelsea, and Southwood. By contrast, there is only one outstanding secondary school in Stoke-on-Trent, with another outstanding school shared between the neighbouring local authorities of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire Moorlands and Stafford.

Such examples show why I firmly believe that if levelling up means anything, it means that each and every child, no matter where they live in our United Kingdom, has the chance to attend the best schools, where they can receive the education they need to attend first-class universities or gain skills via an apprenticeship or vocational training. As a former teacher who taught in academies for eight years, I think that academies are one of the keys to spreading educational opportunity around the country. Multi-academy trusts back great teachers and, most importantly, they enable our children to reach their potential.

As the “Lost Learning” report that I co-authored earlier this year with Onward and the New Schools Network year argued, we should

“much more aggressively use multi-academy trusts as the engine of school improvement, by…holding them to account for their ability to turnaround underperforming schools”.

Since 2010, the Conservative Government have invested in multi-academy trusts, and throughout my teaching career I saw at first hand how that investment acted as a vehicle for school improvement by advancing the education that our children receive.

That has been reflected in the Ofsted rating of schools. Between 2010 and 2020, the proportion of schools that Ofsted rated as good or outstanding rose from 66% to 86%, while 2018 figures showed that at converter academies open for one year, 65% of pupils reached the expected standards in reading, writing and maths—that figure rises to 71% in converter academies open for seven years or more.

Coupled with the drive for academisation, the free school agenda has been at the heart of the Government’s impressive record on education since 2010. At free schools, 10% more disadvantaged pupils achieve a pass between grades 5 and 9 in their English and maths GCSEs than their peers at other types of state school.

I firmly believe that free schools and academies are key to our mission to level up around the country, and therefore it is only right that pupils in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke should benefit from a free school opening up in the community. I look forward to the Minister announcing that wave 15 is finally coming down the track, so that we can bid for a disruptor free school. I have very much enjoyed talking to Star Academies and to Michaela Community School, which has the fantastic Katharine Birbalsingh, to see if she will endeavour to come to Stoke-on-Trent and shake the apple tree.

On top of their role in driving up school standards, multi-academy trusts are vital in turning around failing schools. To take a local example, the inspirational Learning Academies Trust has transformed the fortunes of two schools in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke. Norton-le-Moors Primary Academy became part of the Learning Academies Trust in 2015, following an Ofsted inspection that rated it as inadequate. After the takeover, it received its first good grade from Ofsted in 2017, and in 2019, 13% of pupils, which is higher than the national average, were achieving beyond the expected standards for reading, writing and maths. I will give a big shout-out to Jack, who was a runner-up in my Christmas card competition. It was a pleasure to visit him with Councillor Dave Evans and award him the prize of the card, as well as Port Vale football match tickets—Stoke’s first team, of course, unlike that team further south, Stoke City.

We also have Whitfield Valley Primary Academy in Fegg Hayes, which joined the Inspirational Learning Academies Trust in 2016. It is now not only rated good by Ofsted but has achieved an above-average progress score in maths, as well as above-average scores in reading and writing.

To look at another example, the Shaw Education Trust recently took over Kidsgrove Primary and Secondary Schools, following inadequate Ofsted ratings under the former multi-academy trust, the University of Chester Academies Trust. That shameful trust has been slammed by Ofsted for failing in its school improvement strategies and below-average standards in some of its schools. In May 2018, it received a formal warning from the Education and Skills Funding Agency to get its finances in order, after racking up a £3 million deficit. The trust confirmed that it was considering cutting 24 support staff and 19 teaching roles across its schools.

Since then, thanks to the Shaw Education Trust, Kidsgrove Primary and Secondary have partnered in launching a new digital strategy, allowing pupils to be taught with up-to-date technology. That follows my “Silicon Stoke” agenda, a new prospectus setting out the ambition for a digital transformation of the city of Stoke-on-Trent, enabling it to become a smart city, attracting new national and international businesses, and being at the heart of the UK video games sector.

“Silicon Stoke” ensures that Stoke-on-Trent takes up opportunities through digital connectivity, and the Shaw Education Trust has ensured that our primary and secondary students at Kidsgrove and Talke are kept up to speed with the new digital age through the digital strategy. Since July this year, all classrooms in Kidsgrove Primary, for example, have been equipped with the latest Promethean boards for teacher and pupil use, and since September, there has been a measure for all students across both schools to receive an iPad, to support school and home learning.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for giving way. I thank him for referencing the Shaw Education Trust, which also has schools in my constituency, such as the Orme Academy. Does he agree that one of the benefits of multi-academy trusts is that they can spread best practice from one area to another, and thus raise standards for everybody across my borough and his city?

[Jonathan Gullis]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and neighbour, with whom I share Kidsgrove, Talke and Newchapel, since they are within the Newcastle-under-Lyme borough. As we have just heard, the Shaw Education Trust has spread good practice and is sharing expertise, not just across that borough but also within the Stoke-on-Trent City Council area. In fact, the current city director of Stoke-on-Trent City Council, Jon Rouse, was formerly the head of the Shaw Education Trust. I am sure that he is keen to ensure that he declares that he has no interest any more in that trust, having become city director. Ultimately, we could see what he was doing in the Greater Manchester area and how Shaw Education Trust has gone on to do many great things.

My hon. Friend has been a doughty champion for all the schools in his community. Not a day has gone by recently without me seeing a photo of him in a school in his constituency. I know he was recently at Silverdale in the Knutton area, visiting some of the fantastic schools there, alongside local county councillor Derrick Huckfield, who is also doing a fantastic job in that area.

Multi-academy trusts have proven, across Stoke-on-Trent, north Kidsgrove and Talke, that they can level up education by driving up standards and giving our children the education that they deserve. We are committed to driving up school standards across the city. The new education challenge board, approved by the Secretary of State and the Minister for School Standards, is chaired by Sir Mark Grundy, a highly respected educational leader. It will bring together city council leaders, the Department for Education, local academies, Ofsted and the regional schools commissioner. Working collaboratively, the new education challenge board will provide oversight of educational performance across Stoke-on-Trent, helping to turn schools around through first-class teaching and leadership, by drawing on the expertise of the trusts already succeeding within the city.

Unfortunately, not all the trusts are performing in the same way. That matters, because 42% of schools are now academies, and 84% of those academies are part of multi-academy trusts. Since they have control over such a significant number of our schools, families must have confidence in trusts, regardless of where they are in the country. Parents and teachers work incredibly hard to provide children with the best education they can, while listening to various scandals of multi-academy trusts abusing their budgets with excessive spending.

To pick just a few examples, 40 chains have spent more than £1 million on executive expenses, paying thousands for first-class travel. The Aspirations Academy Trust, based near Heathrow airport, has spent nearly £90,000 for its America-based co-founders to fly across the Atlantic; the Paradigm Trust in London has covered the cost of broadband at its boss’s French holiday home; and the Academy Transformation Trust in Sutton Coldfield has even paid to lease a new XJ Premium Luxury V6 Jaguar for a chief executive earning £180,000 a year.

I want to make it clear that I am a huge supporter of academisation, and I believe that we should be going full throttle to turn all schools into academies. Through my experience as a teacher, I have seen at first hand how brilliantly they can turn failing schools around, but we must restore the faith of parents, teachers and, most importantly, the pupils, and we must ensure that trusts are working on behalf of students and not, insultingly, taking advantage of the big budgets to which they have access. It is absolutely right that we move from the local education authority model, but we do not want to create less accountable and transparent LEAs by not having multi-academy trusts properly inspected.

That is the heart of the issue. With no formal procedure in place for inspecting the boards of trustees of multi-academy trusts, how can parents and teachers know that their trusts are performing with the best interests of the school and students at heart? If Ofsted were able to consider the achievement of pupils across schools covered by a multi-academy trust, the success of a multi-academy trust in reversing educational underperformance, and the quality of leadership, financial management and governance of a multi-academy trust, we could ensure that multi-academy trusts played a full role and, crucially, allow those that are doing truly excellent work to be recognised.

[Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

I commend my hon. Friend on securing the debate. I wonder whether he will touch briefly on the issue of the regional schools commissioners. As he has rightly outlined, there is concern that multi-academy trusts lack transparency in their governance structures and are difficult to hold to account, but there is also concern about how we as Members of Parliament can access the commissioners, interact with them and help to raise concerns through the system. Will he draw that to the attention of the Minister and give his own thoughts on that particular challenge?

[Jonathan Gullis]

I am very lucky to have had a really healthy working relationship with the west midlands regional schools commissioner, who is a former headteacher at the Mill Hill Primary Academy in Stoke-on-Trent North. However, I have serious concerns, and the purpose and role of regional schools commissioners is an issue that was raised in the Education Committee. When those posts were originally set up, it was absolutely the right thing to do, both to have accountability and so that parents, Members of Parliament and teachers in the schools could raise any concerns. In my opinion, regional schools commissioners should be brokering deals, such as new deals for multi-academy trusts to come into a local area, holding to account boards of trustees that they think are underperforming, and feeding that information back to the Department for Education.

At this moment in time, I do not think that regional schools commissioners are utilised well enough, and there has to be a discussion at some stage about whether they are the right model to bring this change about in the long term, and whether they could be given more powers. Hopefully, we will ensure that regional schools commissioners are not just civil servants, whom I am sure are very noble and worthy people, but that they have spent years in the classroom at all levels of governance and management and can bring their experience with them. That is when a regional schools commissioner can really work. At the moment, they are simply not fit for purpose. I know that the Education Committee raised this issue, and I am sure the Minister will look at it.

We have had a great 10 years of Govian and Gibbian reforms. We will now have the Zahawi-Walker reforms over the next 10 years, and I am sure there will be a White Paper in which we will start to see the next 10 years of mission for education. I hope the role of regional schools commissioner can be explored by the Minister, and I look forward to hearing his thoughts on that. If he cannot tell us today, I am sure he can write to us to let us know how he sees that going forward.

Teachers are accountable for the education they provide to pupils, with Ofsted inspecting schools, including individual academies, and children’s social services. To restore faith between teachers and trusts, multi-academy trusts and their leadership teams must be accountable in the same way as teachers. Ofsted’s chair, Dame Christine Ryan, has agreed with the need to inspect schools’ governing bodies, noting in the Education Committee meeting in September this year:

“I always felt it was absolutely essential to carry out inspection activities on the governing area and its interactions with the schools that it owned.”

Hospital trusts are subject to inspection by the Care Quality Commission, so why can Ofsted not inspect multi-academy trusts in the same way?

We have been moving in the right direction. In 2018, Ofsted trialled inspecting individual academies under the same multi-academy trust before visiting the trust’s head office to evaluate its effectiveness. Although that certainly highlighted the requirement to inspect multi-academy trusts, inspections remain focused on individual schools, meaning that wider issues at the heart of the trusts that run them can go undetected. Inspections that cover only individual schools are the crux of the multi-academy trusts’ accountability problem. Education Committee meetings with Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman in June 2021 were revealing, as she said:

“We still operate what in some respects is historic inspection legislation that constrains us to look at the level of the individual school”.

That clearly limits our ability to hold those responsible to account. The chief inspector noted in November 2020 that

“accountability needs to be able to look at the multiple levels in the system to ask the right questions at the right level”.

To ensure that multi-academy trusts truly use their power for the benefit of our schools, accountability must reflect the top-heavy leadership style of many trusts, and thus hold those responsible to account.

Ultimately, multi-academy trusts can, and do, turn schools around, just as the Inspirational Learning Academies Trust has done across schools in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke. By holding trusts to account through regular inspection—they do not fear being held to account because they are proud of their work—we can ensure that schools, staff and students alike are performing to their full potential. The inspection of multi-academy trusts will allow us to recognise those that perform well, and incentivise the best multi-academy trusts with generous funding to take on struggling schools. By keeping trusts responsible for their performance, we can seek to harness their power, especially in parts of the country where school outcomes are weak. With my personal experience in the teaching profession, I believe that multi-academy trusts are the proven route to ensuring that every child, no matter where they live, can attend a school where they will reach their potential, and open doors to the career routes they wish to pursue.

When I was elected, I promised to level up communities like Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, and providing a quality education for every child is vital to doing this. Multi-academy trusts have had a crucial role in the great improvements in school standards in the last decade; it is our responsibility to identify the best of them and use their power to prove to every child, up and down our United Kingdom, that they are not forgotten and opportunity sits right on their doorstep.

This debate comes off the back of my introduction of a ten-minute rule Bill, for which I was delighted to receive cross-party support from members of the Labour party and from the Liberal Democrats. It shows the strength of feeling on this issue. I was lucky enough to secure the signature of my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage before he was promoted to become Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Department for Education. He knows how great this is, and I am sure that he will use his position within the Department for Education to lobby the Minister. Ultimately, I think this shows the strength of feeling that this is the right way to have fairness, accountability, transparency and to ensure that multi-academy trusts are a positive driver for improving education outcomes across England.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the very first time, Mr Robertson, unlike the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), who seems to be a regular in your sessions. I am also very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate, and for the persistence with which he is championing this cause. It is extraordinary; he had so much time in which to speak in this debate, and yet he did so at such a ferocious pace. For the benefit of our friends in Hansard, I will speak more slowly so that they can rest their weary quills for the next few minutes.

There are 7,680 schools in this country that are now part of multi-academy trusts. Even if each of those schools had just 500 pupils, that would mean several thousand young people whose futures are in the hands of multi-academy trusts. Regardless of ideology, that should give us pause for thought. Due to the reforms of recent years, multi-academy trusts now have a level of influence over the school system that few could have predicted, even when the first trusts emerged. In fact, most other authorities with responsibilities for young people are subject to extremely stringent inspection regimes—even if they are responsible for far fewer children than many multi-academy trusts. That is why we must do all we can to ensure that, whatever regulatory framework we develop for MATs, it reflects the level of influence that these trusts now exert.

For too long, education policy has been dominated by discussion of school structures. I noticed that in his speech, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North fell into the same trap, if he does not mind my saying so. As someone who has helped set up two academies, I know their strengths—that they can be a phenomenal tool for delivering improvement—but also their limitations. To suggest that they would have the same impact in every situation stretches the single tool that academisation presents as an opportunity for the education system. Other tools are available to Ministers, principals of schools, school leaders, MATs and local education authorities, and we need to use all the different tools that are at our disposal, not disproportionately favour one for reasons that are simply ideological.

For too long, education policy has been dominated by discussions about school structures—that was, after all, the key plank of the reforms implemented by the Conservative-led coalition after the 2010 general election. Obsessions over school structures have held our schools back, because they have hidden new and emerging challenges in our school system such as the complete failure to root out sexual harassment in our education system. Though it has been found by Ofsted to be routine in all schools, there have been particularly high-profile cases of poor practice in “outstanding” schools that are part of well-established trusts. That is not an argument against trusts or against collaboration, but it is a clear example of how focusing on structures can obscure the real issues that are existing, emerging and developing within our school system. Our focus should not be on radical changes in school structures: it should be on what delivers improvement in the 2020s and beyond, not in a bygone era.

To his credit, I believe that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North is focusing on this issue with a sincere desire to drive improvement, going forward. The Labour party and I are very grateful for that, which is why we have offered what I hope the hon. Gentleman will perceive as constructive support since he introduced his ten-minute rule Bill and beyond. He has drawn national attention to the proliferation of multi-academy trusts under this Government, and has pushed for a specific loophole around inspections to be closed.

As has been noted, Ofsted has carried out summary inspections on multi-academy trusts since 2019. Recent updates to the guidance on those inspections should help to broaden their remit and increase their volume. However, Ofsted itself has highlighted the need to go further: its chief inspector, Amanda Spielman, has highlighted the “peculiarity” of not inspecting MATs on their governance, efficiency and use of resources. Appearing before the Select Committee on Education, she also referred to a suite of

“historic inspection legislation that constrains us to look at the level of the individual school”.

We in the Labour party completely agree that inspections of multi-academy trusts should take place. We also agree that those inspections should include a proper assessment of leadership, governance and safeguarding arrangements, so we look forward to hearing the Minister’s response today.

As a former chair of governors involved in setting up two turnaround academies, I know how important leadership is to the success of schools. What is more, we never feared being held to account. Inspections are important: in fact, we relished the chance to show what we could do and learn how to perform better. I was there at 7.30 in the morning as chair of governors, alongside the principal, to await the team of inspectors. We welcomed them to our school and we saw their inspection as a tool for improvement, even though we all felt the heat—the anticipation—and did so with great nerves, because we wanted to show off what was great about our school.

When I got the reports in from those inspections, I found them to contain incredibly helpful insights into the performance of schools, which often reinforced the direction of travel within a school and highlighted those things that we did not quite notice. Even on school inspections, classroom visits and walkarounds, it is very hard for people who are not trained educationists to see with their own eyes precisely what is happening in every corner of a school, rather than just going on the data that is presented to them by that school. Inspections are a really important part of improvement, whatever the organisation. So, I have no doubt that genuinely forward-looking MATs will take the same approach to a more rigorous form of inspection for their own organisations than the current regime offers—a form of inspection that champions innovation and gives the insight and analysis of performance to help MATs improve in practice, just as a good inspection should seek to improve individual schools as well.

Adopting a new form of inspection to challenge and support MAT leaders is one thing, but driving up performance and leaders will take far more than a new inspection regime, especially given how badly both they and pupils have been let down during the pandemic. According to research conducted by Teacher Tapp, only 2.5% of school leaders felt supported by the Department for Education throughout the pandemic. Think about that for one second: 97.5% of teachers—over 400,000—trying to respond to a once in a lifetime disruption to education without anyone backing them up. The sense of isolation they felt was profound.

Changes to inspection regimes will go so far, but will not remedy the worst failures of this Conservative Government. What is worse, the Department’s muddled and inconsistent advice was often actively harming our school leaders’ ability to respond. One teacher said of the guidance that she received:

“I physically look at it and I can’t even bring myself to open it right now, because you just get saturated with it”.

Threatened with legal action if they closed—only to be forced to close the very next day—schools and trust leaders have lacked proper leadership throughout the pandemic. They are now lacking properly resourced catch-up support and tough action to clamp down on anti-vaxxers outside school gates.

[Jonathan Gullis]

I want to put it on the record that I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman regarding the disgraceful action of anti-vaxxers standing outside schools filming young people coming in and out of that school, as well as parents. It is absolutely abhorrent and there is absolutely no place for it. This Government have to come down hard on those people.

School, for some of the most vulnerable people in our communities, is the safest place for them. As a former head of year, I used to have a lot of children who hung around after school—despite the fact they told me it was the worst place to be—because it was where they felt safest. The fact that we have these disgusting individuals targeting young people is abhorrent. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will also call for action. I want to make sure this is on the record for the Minister: we have to go in hard; we have to make our young people and teachers feel safe.

[Peter Kyle]

This is something that I have been deeply concerned about since the start of the autumn term in September. On 19 July in the Chamber, when I raised concerns about the vaccine roll-out among children aged 12-plus and argued that it should be rolled out over the summer months, so as to use the mass vaccination existing infrastructure, so that schools could be protected come autumn and stabilised, but also so that they did not become targets for anti-vax protests, the then Vaccines Minister, the right hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), told me that children were protected by a “wall of vaccinated adults” and therefore it was not a priority. He was wrong. Now he is Secretary of State for Education and we are picking up the pieces.

The principal of a school told me recently that he feels his job is no longer primarily that of leading an institution for schooling, but of running a logistics centre: twice-weekly testing in school, organising the logistics behind a vaccine roll-out in school, dealing with local outbreaks, and dealing with the need to control the flow of students. He said the first, second, third and often fourth items on the agenda of his daily senior management team meetings were about logistical challenges, not teaching and learning. That is the price of not seeing this coming down the road. It was predicted and predictable and was not dealt with.

The Labour party has tried to be constructive about this. Last month the Leader of the Opposition proposed a solution—to update the legislation around public spaces protection orders. They are unwieldy at the moment and could take several weeks to implement. However we believe that, with a very simple amendment to the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003, the process could be streamlined so that an order could be brought into force in just one hour, with one phone conference between a school principal, the local authority and the local police force. They could bring into the order the powers to keep anti-vax protesters away from school gates for the duration of the vaccine roll-out programme. We offered that suggestion, but sadly the Government have not responded. The Secretary of State for Education said in response to my oral question just two weeks ago that he was in conversation with the Home Secretary, and that all powers would be implemented. Again, nothing happened. I cannot see that that conversation actually took place in a meaningful way.

However, there is another opportunity, and it is great that I have been given the opportunity to put it on the record. Tomorrow, in the House of Lords, Lord Coaker will table an amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill that would amend the 2003 Act to give schools the powers that I have just described to instigate exclusion zones for anti-vax protesters within one hour, and they could do so pre-emptively; if one school is facing disruptive anti-vax protests in which children are being bullied, harassed and intimidated, in all likelihood the same will emerge down the road when the protest moves to another school, so schools need those powers to prevent that protest from happening. The Government have an opportunity to give them those powers. We would get this through in a heartbeat. The Labour Opposition in the House of Lords stand ready to table that amendment tomorrow.

I will have my say on another issue, because I feel as strongly as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North, and we have another 25 minutes of debate, so I am sure I can get this on the record before I sum up the debate. In my constituency, anti-vax protesters have gone on to a school bus to tell children that they will become infertile if they take the vaccine. Outside schools in my constituency, there have been so many harassing, bullying and intimidatory protesters that schoolchildren have had to detour out into the busy main road in order to go through the driveway into the school. A child was grabbed by the collar and told that he could endanger the lives of his teachers and his parents.

I bring those experiences and my anger about that kind of behaviour because, let us be clear, these people are not just anti-vax. Six months ago, they were anti-face masks. A year or two ago, they were anti-covid altogether, believing it was all fake news. If they were alive 350 years ago, they would have been calling for Galileo to be burned at the stake for saying the earth revolves around the sun. We went through the scientific revolution, we went through the Enlightenment, in this country so that we could not base policy on superstition. We did so by bringing the best of scientific understanding to the heart of Government. Let us not allow these people to determine how public health unfolds in this country. I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention and for giving me the opportunity to put that on the record. I feel very strongly about it.

People leading schools and teaching in classrooms through the pandemic lack resources for catch-up support and tough action to clamp down on anti-vaxxers outside school gates. In contrast to the Government, the Labour party is on the side of pupils, teachers and leaders. Our goal is a well-functioning school system, backed with resources, direction and inspection, that prepares students for the world of work and the world of tomorrow that they will encounter. Under the new leadership of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), we have updated our positions on key issues in schools policy to meet the new challenges that schools and trusts face. The Government have not. We innovate; I am afraid that the Government stagnate.

What is the Minister’s assessment of the strength of the current inspection regime for MATs? What plans does he have to expand Ofsted’s inspection powers with regard to MATs, and does he intend to support any greater powers with the required resources? What other steps is he taking to support schools that wish to exit their trust if that is in the best interests of pupils? Will he commit to a new era of strong leadership from the Department for Education? This is a fantastic opportunity, as we hopefully see the finish line of the pandemic in sight, and with a new ministerial team, to commit to new, strong leadership—one that trust leaders, school leaders, teachers and students can at last trust, replacing the years of drift and decline.

As I made clear at the start, ensuring robust standards for all MATs is crucial. It would matter if they educated just one child; it certainly matters when they educate so many thousands. A young child has only one shot at their education; the state must do all it can to make that shot a success.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Gullis]

I am delighted to hear about the schools White Paper—the Zahawi-Walker legacy document —that will be launched next year. I will absolutely be pushing for my ten-minute rule Bill to play a key part in that. I am obviously happy to always try to be flexible and fair, but I think—we heard it from the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle)—that this is something that brings everyone, across the House, together. We want the very best for our young people and therefore want the very best education to be accessed.

I could not agree more with the hon. Member for Hove; none of the multi-academy trusts I have spoken to fear this idea, because they believe firmly in what they do. I think the overwhelming majority of multi-academy trusts do their best, work hard, spend their money correctly and invest in the schools within their trusts, and I think they have no problem with it. The only ones that will be worried about are those that do not want to face the scrutiny. That gives the DFE the power to get rid of them—disband these ones—and broker new deals with good existing multi-academy trusts to then come in and take over.

I like to be a bit punchy every now and again, and the hon. Member for Hove is fantastic when he gets going about the Government’s record, so I could not help but remind myself of a few facts. At the end of the day, when the Conservative party came to power in 2010, about a year before I entered the teaching profession, the legacy left by the Labour party was that the Confederation of British Industry stated that employers had lost confidence in Britain’s exams, the Wolf Review found some courses

“fail to promote progression into either stable, paid employment or higher level education”,

and some 350,000 young people had been let down by courses that had little or no labour market value. In 2008, the Sutton Trust found that only 40 pupils out of the 80,000 eligible for free school meals went on to Oxbridge, and in May 2010, the Office for Fair Access said that by the mid-2000s the most advantaged 20% were

“seven times more likely than the most disadvantaged 40% to attend the most selective institutions.”

We only have to look at Labour-run Wales where education standards are falling down the league tables. It is an abomination and Mr Drakeford should be ashamed of himself. He should be held to account for his dismal record in failing to deliver for the people of Wales.

[Peter Kyle]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s words, and his challenge and scrutiny of Labour’s record. I make the simple point to him that when Labour came to power in 1997, just over 40% of students were getting five GCSEs including maths and English. By the time we finished in power, it was almost 80%. On a range of different measures, outcomes were more than doubled. If he criticises the legacy that Labour left, can he picture what we inherited last time his party left office?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Laurence Robertson (in the Chair)]

Order. We are actually on a wind-up speech about multi-academy trusts. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North has 30 seconds to respond to the intervention, but he must then wind up.

[Jonathan Gullis]

Apologies, Mr Robertson. The hon. Gentleman asked me to picture 1997 and put my head back in that time; I was seven years old when Tony Blair came to power, so it is hard for me to fathom and picture that. Obviously, I had to suffer through the Labour doldrums in that education system, but I am grateful that I had a fantastic school and an inspirational teacher there, who was, by the way, a Labour councillor in Tamworth and who is a role model for me.

Finally, on the subject of the “not education union”, Dr Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney need to resign with immediate effect. They are an abomination to the profession. I will come up to their offices, pack their stuff and send it to their houses. The National Education Union is a disgrace.

Going back to the most important point in the debate, Ofsted want there to be inspections of multi-academy trusts and there is cross-party consensus on that. As we have heard from Members, multi-academy trusts that are really well run are not afraid of this. I hope in the White Paper, the Zahawi-Walker legacy document, we will see some fantastic innovation to turbocharge these schools and multi-academy trusts, and ensure that kids in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke are no longer forgotten and left behind.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the Ofsted inspection of multi-academy trusts.