Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Thursday 10th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

I apologise for remaining standing; I was so gripped by the question, I could not tear myself away.

I commend my hon. Friend for establishing what I think he calls the Carmichael commission in his constituency to look at ways to improve growth. He is right that having a pipeline of skilled staff is essential. I am familiar with Renishaw and I shall see the company tomorrow at the MACH exhibition in Birmingham. The crucial requirement is a long-term train of apprenticeship, at graduate and sub-graduate levels.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Is the Secretary of State at all worried that the current economic picture is being driven so much by consumer spending, and why does our productivity remain so poor?

[Vince Cable]

The Office for Budget Responsibility forecast for 2014 is that business investment will rise by 8%. Given the depth of the crisis to which we have had to respond, this is a slow process, but business investment is now overtaking consumer spending as the driver of the recovery.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

The Local Government Association recently warned that there is a need to create 130,000 new places by 2017-18. It also warned that because of the Minister’s ideological insistence that these places have to be in free schools and academies, they will not be created where they are actually needed. On what evidence does he believe that community schools and local decision making are always bad?

[Mr Laws]

We do not believe that. Indeed, local community schools are expanding right across the country; the difference between the situation under this Government and under the previous Government is that they have the money to do so.

Teaching Assistants

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I am sure that the Minister will have plenty to say and that you will not need to exercise your power to suspend the sitting, Mr Howarth.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) on securing a debate—which has, so far, been very interesting—on this important subject, my hon. Friend the Member for Preston (Mark Hendrick) on his thoughtful remarks, and, as ever, my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) on his thoughtful and erudite contribution. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes (Lindsay Roy) on his interventions. The hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) and the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell), although they are not now in their place, are also assiduous in attending such debates.

Schools have always had support staff. My mother was a dinner lady, and dinner ladies and others working in schools, such as caretakers, cleaners and so on, are all part of the support structure in a school. In other words, schools are made up of more than only teachers, head teachers and pupils. It is extremely important, from the outset, that we should take the opportunity to pay tribute to the work of support staff in our schools—not only teaching assistants, but dinner ladies, caretakers, and lunchtime supervisors—because they are part of the fabric of school life and part of the process of caring for, safeguarding and educating our children. Such roles are perhaps not emphasised enough in our debates on education.

[Alex Cunningham]

My granny was also a dinner lady, and I valued her. I used to nip in to see her at lunchtime, and she would give me two old pennies for me to spend in the sweet shop, but only if I ate my school dinner. That was how she encouraged me. Dinner ladies are a tremendous encouragement to children generally, and they help with discipline. My hon. Friend will recognise why I wanted to mention that.

[Kevin Brennan]

I do indeed recognise that. In fact, I am also ancient enough to remember the pre-decimalisation era. There are certain disadvantages, however, for people whose mother is a dinner lady, particularly if they go to the same primary school: despite my picky eating ways, I was forced by embarrassment into eating my school dinner every day, whether I liked it or not. I want to make that tribute from the start, because it is important to remember that. Later, I will talk a little about support staff pay, which has been mentioned by other hon. Members.

Schools have changed immensely in the past couple of decades, particularly in relation to the provision of teaching assistants. When I taught in a comprehensive school between 1985 and the end of 1994, teaching history and economics and eventually being a head of department, there were no teaching assistants at all. Occasionally a special educational needs assistant might appear with a pupil with particular special needs, but teaching assistants were not otherwise present in schools. They would have been a great benefit, which is why there was a big expansion in the number of teaching assistants under the previous Government. They recognised that it was helpful to have support from teaching assistants available, as that would help pupils and enable teachers to get on with the job of teaching, they being the professionals in pedagogy.

Under Labour, the number of teaching assistants trebled. The number of regular, full-time-equivalent teaching assistants overall increased from 61,000 in 1997 to 194,000 in 2010, with the greatest increase in the primary sector, but there was also a 36% increase in the secondary sector, including academies. There was a large expansion, as well as a degree of debate about the effectiveness of teaching assistants and about what jobs they carried out, because they have a wide range of duties when helping out in schools.

The Government have been sending out mixed messages about teaching assistants, and that has been reflected in the debate. I hope that the Minister will, in her response, set out with more clarity the Government’s vision for the future of teaching assistants in our schools. We have already seen the Secretary of State’s failed attempt to dismantle completely the 2003 workforce agreement. That attempt was rejected by the teachers’ pay body, which did not believe that we should return to the days of teachers being expected to undertake many tasks that were not directly related to their teaching. That was the first mixed message given out by the Secretary of State.

As hon. Friends have pointed out, there have also been leaks to the press about other messages, presumably from the Secretary of State, or perhaps from some of his special advisers on the lunatic fringe—we never know the sources of such press stories for sure. One story, which appeared last year in the Daily Mail in response to the Reform report, has already been referred to:

“The Treasury and Department for Education are considering getting rid of the classroom assistants in an attempt to save some of the £4 billion a year spent on them...Think-tank Reform found that schools could improve value for money by cutting the number of teaching assistants and increasing class sizes.

Thomas Cawston, the think-tank’s research director, said: ‘We cited a swathe of evidence that questioned the value for money of teaching assistants and demonstrated that their impact on educational outcomes for pupils was negligible.’”

I apologise for quoting at length, but I will quote a little more from what was reported:

“We found that while they were supposed to help teachers, they were actually being allowed to take classes themselves. Not being prepared or qualified to do those classes, they were not doing a very good job.

The money spent on teaching assistants would be far better spent on improving the quality of teachers.”

Understandably, that story led to speculation and to concern and uncertainty in the world of education about the Government’s position on teaching assistants. The Government seem to support the idea that assistants are a waste of money. I do not know whether that message is driven from the Treasury, to put pressure on the Department, or if that is what the Secretary of State for Education and his Ministers believe. I hope that the Minister present will today clear up the matter and give us all—the country, everyone interested in this and the people working in our schools, including teaching assistants, teachers and head teachers—a clear view, rather than strange mixed messages.

My next example is not of a mixed message, in fairness to Ministers, but of a straightforward two fingers up to teaching assistants and support staff, including dinner ladies and others working in our schools. My hon. Friend the Member for Preston, who served as a Whip on the Bill concerned, has mentioned this. Within months of coming to power, the Government abolished the School Support Staff Negotiating Body.

Let me explain. That body was not a national pay review body in the way that the teachers’ one is, or other public sector workers’ bodies are. It was not charged with recommending and setting pay and conditions for staff; it was simply there to provide for the whole country a framework or guide, including descriptions of the type of work undertaken in schools by support staff, such as teaching assistants. It acted as a valuable reference point for school leaders, managers, governors, local authorities, academy chains and so on, so that they knew what the rate for the job roughly was, and what the job undertaken by support staff was—what the job descriptions were, and so on. Through the School Support Staff Negotiating Body, a huge amount of work by everyone involved went into putting together those job descriptions and providing the framework that enabled everyone to have a clear sight of the kind of work undertaken by support staff.

[Alex Cunningham]

The National Education Trust suggests that we should go a step further and introduce professional standards for teaching assistants. Does my hon. Friend have a view on that?

[Kevin Brennan]

So much damage has been done by the Government that we need to attend to that first and reconstruct something from the vandalism undertaken by Ministers immediately following the election. I said it at the time, and I will repeat it now: that was one of the most short-sighted, mean-spirited decisions undertaken by the Government when they came to power. So committed are they to a market ideology that they could not see the value or usefulness to school leaders, governors, leaders of academy chains and others of having a reference point for job descriptions and the work being undertaken, to enable a judgment to be made about a job’s value. The ludicrous but sadly real example read out by my hon. Friend the Member for Preston of a teaching assistant being employed on different terms from someone else while undertaking the same job is a good demonstration of the problem.

Let us combine that decision with the Government’s deregulation of teaching, whereby they are saying that people now need no qualifications whatever to become teachers in state schools. There are all sorts of jobs out there for which people require qualifications, including working for McDonald’s, but under the Government’s right-wing deregulation of the teaching profession, people do not need any qualifications whatever to teach in our schools.

In answer to criticism of that policy, the Government cite individual examples of people without teaching qualifications who teach in private schools. There are a few things to be said about that. One is that it is not the individual example that counts, but the impact over time of deregulating the system and allowing unqualified teachers into the classroom on the quality of teaching and on the teaching profession. Over time, as we have seen in Sweden, the results of that kind of deregulatory, right-wing approach are disastrous, with schools failing and being closed down. As for private schools, the Minister never mentions that of the 50% of private schools inspected by Ofsted because they are non-association schools, 13% were found to be inadequate in the previous Ofsted inspection report, published in December. Those are the sorts of schools she seems to be suggesting we should follow.

Taken together, those mixed messages are causing a real sense of uncertainty within our schools. We therefore want clarity from the Minister today. What is the Government’s vision for the future of teaching assistants and support staff in our schools? Are there plans to axe them, as hinted by sources in the Department for Education in that Daily Mail article last year? Will she clear up the position once and for all today, and give us a clear message on the future for teaching assistants?

Hon. Friends have talked about the debate and controversy since the publication of the Reform report last year. That report has been used by some—including, it would seem, people briefing on behalf of Ministers and the Treasury—to say that we should reduce the number of teaching assistants in our schools.

Recently we have also had a helpful report from the Education Endowment Foundation, an organisation that has received an endowment from the Government—a positive policy that we fully support. Its recent report concluded that teaching assistants can improve literacy and numeracy skills when they are deployed well. Those conclusions came from a series of controlled tests; I will not go into the details, but the foundation used a group of reports based on trials in 238 schools, giving us a major new source of independent evidence to help schools use teaching assistants to narrow the gap—the professed aim of the Government and the Opposition.

It is important to pay attention to the evidence, positive or negative, rather than simply cherry-picking it. When we look at that evidence, the conclusions are interesting. The Times Educational Supplement has recently looked at what the Education Endowment Foundation has produced, and said:

“Children struggling with reading and maths make significant progress when given as little as 30 minutes’ individual attention a week by a teaching assistant, research has revealed.

Primary school students who received two 15-minute maths sessions a week made three months more progress over the course of a year than their classmates, according to a study published today by England’s Education Endowment Foundation”.

The foundation has made a useful contribution to the debate by publishing its research.

The Education Media Centre recently made an interesting assessment of research around this issue, which shows that there are concerns about how teaching assistants are deployed in our schools. That is the key issue: we need to get away from the question whether we should have that kind of support within our schools and on to the issue of how teaching assistants are best deployed for maximum impact. The way that Reform—it has an agenda, to be honest—used the research last year, and was backed up by sources purporting to speak on behalf of Ministers, was pretty disgraceful. It was used simply as a way of saying that we need to get rid of the support that is available through having teaching assistants in our schools, rather than looking at what works when we deploy them.

In the Education Media Centre’s recent article, which can be found on its website, the following point was made:

“Therefore, schools must make interventions, delivered by properly trained TAs, part of a coherent, integrated package of learning for those falling behind…On the basis of the available evidence, it can be argued schools must fundamentally rethink how they use TAs and ensure they add value to teachers, not replace them.

We need to make sure TAs are not given primary responsibility for pupils in most need and are used in ways to allow teachers to spend more time with these pupils.

Allied to this is the need to develop what we might call an improved teaching method for TAs: a way of interacting with pupils using effective styles of questioning to promote and support independent learning.

Finally, we need to guarantee time for teachers and TAs to liaise and seriously invest in TAs’ professional development.”

The conclusion that I and most hon. Members here have drawn from the evidence is that we should get away from a debate about cutting away swathes of teaching assistants, which is what we were hearing last year, and get on to a debate about what works, as shown by the evidence. The evidence clearly shows that teaching assistants have a discrete role that needs to be supported by professional development. It would be a great benefit if the Government could indicate their support for teaching assistants by putting in place once more a proper negotiating body for support staff, so that they feel that they are valued and there is a future for them. That would also be of great assistance to schools.

The evidence shows that teaching assistants work best when they are allowed to perform their discrete role and are given the support to do so, rather than being used simply as a way of covering lessons or filling in holes. We would welcome the Minister giving us a clear message today on these questions. What do the Government think the future role is for teaching assistants? What will they do to enhance that role and give assurance to people working in those roles that they have a future? What are the Government doing to promote the best evidence on how teaching assistants are best deployed for the purpose for which they are there—in other words, to help the education of pupils?

School Funding

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for the statement and the small amount of notice we had of its contents.

There are growing pressures on education funding and demographic trends are dictating the need for more school places, with the National Audit Office reporting the need for an additional 250,000 places by next year. That has big implications for the allocation of education funding.

Ministers have shown a degree of complacency in addressing the primary school places crisis. In less than a month, parents will learn the outcome of their application for their child’s primary school place and we know that under this Government we have seen a doubling of the number of classes with more than 30 pupils and—do not worry, I will not take up 1,400 words, as the Minister did—a trebling in the number of primary schools with more than 800 pupils. The pressures are real, which is why it is so alarming that according to NAO data two thirds of all places created by the free school programme are being diverted from areas of high and severe need for primary places. In secondary schools, only 19% of places—[Interruption.] Government Members should listen to this—they should listen with their ears, rather than their mouths. In secondary schools, only 19% of places are in areas of need. That cannot be right, particularly on a day when another free school has gone into special measures.

We have to take any statements on finance from the Schools Minister with a pinch of salt, because he has form. He used to claim when in opposition that the pupil premium would be additional money in real terms for schools, but, as he admitted today in his statement, it is not additional money in real terms. What are the implications of the statement for the pupil premium and for non-local authority schools?

The idea of a national funding formula has merit, but it must be debated openly and transparently. The coalition has said that it is committed to a new national funding formula by 2015-16. Can we assume from today’s statement that this has been filed away in the drawer marked “Too difficult”, and that there will be no new comprehensive funding formula under this increasingly impotent Government?

The Minister claimed that previous Governments did nothing on this. That is nonsense. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned that a new national funding formula will have winners and losers. If Ministers are pursuing the national funding formula, they must do so in an open and transparent way and be clear about who will lose out. So can the right hon. Gentleman confirm—[Interruption.] Hon. Members are living in cloud cuckoo land if they think no one is going to lose out. Can the Minister confirm that there are no losers from this announcement because he has decided to leave the bad news for those he intends to hit with cuts, including his hon. Friends who are so voluble, until after the next general election?

If this is genuinely new money for education, it will have a Barnett formula consequential for the devolved Administrations, which I know will be of interest to all political parties in the devolved nations, including the Minister’s own party. Can he confirm that this announcement contains new money from the Treasury, and say how much the Barnett consequential of that new money will be for the devolved Administrations and how much he is taking from his existing budget? It was not clear from his statement how much is new Treasury money, and how much he is cutting from the schools budget to pay for this part of the announcement. I would be grateful if he clarified those figures.

The Minister said in his statement, “We are able to deliver this significant boost by using money from within our protected schools budget and because of additional money from the Treasury.” The House deserves to know how much will come from each source, where the money is being taken from within the protected schools budget and what the Barnett consequentials are. We learned this week that Ministers have been known to put the cart before the horse in devising policy, and only then to think how they might pay for it. Can the Minister assure us that this is fully costed and not simply another botched spending announcement from the Department for Education?

[Mr Laws]

I am grateful, I suppose, to the hon. Gentleman for his response, but all of us in the House are still none the wiser about whether the Labour party supports the proposals I am announcing today. Perhaps there could be some indication of this from the Labour Front Bench. Do I take it from all those critical comments that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) proposes to send back the money we are going to allocate to Stoke-on-Trent—potentially £4 million to his area? We are unaware from the statement whether the Labour party supports these proposals. Or is the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) genuinely embarrassed that his party failed to deal with the issue of underfunded areas year in, year out, in spite of clear evidence of unfair funding throughout the country?

To come to the points that the hon. Gentleman did make, few of which were about the contents of my statement, I do not know how he has the nerve to accuse this Government of complacency over school place planning, when the amount of money that we are putting into basic need is many multiples of the amount that the previous Government put in. How can he talk about complacency when his was a Government who ignored all the forecasts of the Office for National Statistics from 2003 onwards and were taking out 250,000 primary schools places at a time when the population was increasing? That is behind many of the problems that we face in parts of the country today where Labour was closing down places when it should have been funding them.

On the pupil premium, it is clear that we have protected, in cash terms, the settlement for every pupil, and the pupil premium is on top of that. I invite the hon. Gentleman to go to schools across the country, particularly to those in areas of high disadvantage, and try telling them that this is not extra money. It is making a massive difference in some of the most deprived schools. Furthermore, I can confirm that in 2014-15 the pupil premium will rise for primary schools from £900 to £1,300, and for secondary schools to £935. It will give schools thousands and thousands of pounds extra over a young disadvantaged person’s time in education to improve their educational outcomes, and I am very proud of that.

We have also made it clear that the right time to set out the national fair funding formula is when we have multi-year plans, so we can create a sense of certainty. We are not, as previous Governments did, simply kicking this issue into the long grass. For the first time, we are delivering the uplifts that will make a real difference in areas such as Cambridgeshire and the others that I have mentioned. If the hon. Gentleman wants to campaign on that, he is welcome to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Laws]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Once again, I praise her resilience in campaigning on this issue throughout the long period of the Labour Administration, who ignored the issue. I am pleased that it is a coalition Government who are proposing to raise the amount of funding for Poole from just over £4,000 per pupil to £4,142, which would give Poole over £2.25 million of additional funding.

[Kevin Brennan]

The civil service is meant to be independent; this is outrageous.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

I really welcome the announcement. It is a significant step towards a fairer funding formula, which children in our counties were denied by the previous Government. Labour continues politically to use the education budget for its own areas. I am keen to hear what the announcement will mean for children in Suffolk, if the Minister has that information available.

[Kevin Brennan]

Oh, I’m sure he does.

[Mr Laws]

Labour Members are making a lot of noise, which reflects their embarrassment at the fact that this was a problem for years under a Labour Government and they did nothing about it. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman does not like to hear good news, but I can give him some more good news for Suffolk, whose funding will go up by more than £9 million, from £4,241 a pupil to £4,347. [Interruption.] I am sorry that Labour Members cannot take this in a measured way or accept that we are doing the right thing to deliver fair funding.

[Mr Laws]

I am happy to confirm the figure that I mentioned a moment ago to another Gloucestershire MP, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper). South Gloucestershire, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) correctly indicates, is one of the areas that have been underfunded for a long time. Under the proposals on which we are consulting, its funding will go up from the current £3,969 per pupil to an indicative figure of £4,217. That 6.3% increase is significant and I know that parents in my hon. Friend’s constituency will welcome it, even if the Labour party does not.

[Kevin Brennan]

Oh, shut up.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The whole House heard the hon. Gentleman’s remark from a sedentary position. An apology would be appropriate.

[Kevin Brennan]

Without reservation, I apologise.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for acting honourably and trust he will now be a little quieter.

Educational Attainment (Disadvantaged Pupils)

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Damian Hinds]

Can we hold that point? I will come back to it a wee bit later.

If the difference is not the London challenge alone—I totally acknowledge the beneficial effects of many of the programmes within it—is it simply more money? Of course, whenever we mention London’s outperformance, people say, “Oh, they get more money.” Yes, London schools get more money, but when we adjust that for deprivation, we discover that the difference is not quite as big as it at first appeared. In other words, when comparing the high number of free school meals in London with those in the rest of the country, the funding premium is not quite as large, although costs are higher in London, which is why there has historically been higher funding.

If we were to say it is just about having more money, we would have to say what more money has bought. Since I started working on this subject, people have told me that class sizes in London are smaller, but they are not. Bizarrely, they are slightly bigger than in the rest of the country, except at key stage 3. There is not a higher proportion of teaching assistants. Teachers are paid more, as are people in lots of occupations and professions in London, because of London weighting, but the difference in pay for the average London teacher versus the average teacher elsewhere is less than advertised. According to the ads, someone can earn up to 25% more as a newly qualified teacher in London, but the actual difference in take-home pay is on average smaller, because London teachers are younger and further down the pay scales.

What is different? I shall come to some of the things that the hon. Member for Gateshead mentioned. First, all sorts of things about the city are different compared with other parts of the country. The employment market is different, as he rightly says, which manifests itself in different ways. There are differential rates of unemployment, and youth unemployment in London remains concerning. In addition, there is the visibility of opportunities. If someone is travelling on buses and underground trains, they will be interacting with all the adverts, the people and all the rest of it. There is the cultural capital of the city—the museums and art galleries—and the pull factor of more university places. There are more university places per head of population in London than in other cities, and most people travel only a short distance from home to go to university. Everything is nearer. That helps with school choice—children go across local authority boundaries to go to school—and it helps schools wishing to co-operate with one another.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I have read the report by the hon. Gentleman’s all-party group on social mobility. It is a fascinating, interesting and detailed piece of work, and I congratulate him on it. However, all the factors that he has mentioned have not changed in the past 15 years. London is no further away from anywhere else than it was 15 years ago. I presume he will go on to explain what he thinks has changed.

[Damian Hinds]

The shadow Minister is such a nice man. He has read “Capital Mobility”, the report by the all-party group. I did not realise he had also read the sheet of paper in front of me, which states that many of those things were also true when London was the problem child of British education, before it became the poster child. Although such factors are relevant, we cannot ascribe the difference in London performance specifically to them.

The population make-up of London is one massive change and a massive difference. London is diverse on a scale unknown in the rest of the United Kingdom—indeed, unknown in most of the rest of the world. London’s state secondary schools are now 32% white British by ethnic origin, and the statistic for kids just starting secondary school is extraordinary: 48% do not have English as their mother tongue. An even more surprising statistic is that children with English as an additional language come very close in performance by GCSEs to children who have English as their mother tongue, and in London they beat them—in GCSEs in London, children who do not speak English as their mother tongue very slightly outperform those who do. That raises difficult questions.

I do not want to pre-empt tomorrow’s Committee meeting, at which, sadly, I will not be able to join my Opposition compadres, but I know the Minister will be appearing before the Committee to talk about the performance of white working class pupils. It is true that all ethnic groups do better in London than they do outside—spectacularly so in the case of children of Pakistani origin. There is a 14% gap between the performance of pupils of Pakistani origin in London versus the rest of the country.

There are other relevant differences in London, some of which might be driven by differences and diversity in ethnicity and religion, such as larger families and older, better educated mothers. Surprisingly, it is estimated that parents in London are slightly more likely to be married than parents outside London. It is slightly odd that we can only estimate that, but that is another question altogether. There are more families with a parent at home. There is less use of formal child care, slightly lower participation in free school provision, and slightly more use of tutors. One would normally associate such things with lower educational attainment, particularly in terms of early years participation, which again raises important, difficult and challenging questions.

What is different and what might we be able to have an impact on, given that we cannot have much impact on the composition of the population? London teachers are more diverse, more likely to have been educated abroad, more likely to be full time, and, before somebody says it, a bit less likely to have qualified teacher status—given the sorts of numbers we are talking about, I do not think that that is particularly relevant.

Teachers are also a little less likely to be on upper pay scales or the advanced skill scale and more likely to be on the main pay scales. Within the London challenge, there were various recruitment initiatives, which included addressing housing problems. One of those initiatives was Teach First. Opinions vary and sometimes teachers get wound up if we bang on too much about Teach First, but Teach First teachers can have a positive, disruptive impact as they come into schools, observe existing teachers, bring ideas of their own, swap things around and so on. Some 48% of Teach First teachers are still in London, and I think there is an opportunity to spread that scheme more widely.

There was a big focus on leadership in the London challenge. It was about supporting leaders in schools and ensuring that they were paid properly. As an aside, primary schools in London are on average a lot bigger than primary schools outside, and I wonder whether that means it is possible to afford more by way of leadership. Alongside that support and remuneration was intense scrutiny and what people close to the London challenge operation would describe as verging on ruthlessness to ensure that schools were being run absolutely as well as they could be. That was all facilitated by an intense use of data and what are called families of schools, whereby someone could compare their school to others in similar circumstances, so they could see what was really possible.

London also over-indexed greatly on sponsored academies. Compared with the rest of the country, London is much more likely to have sponsored academies. That relatively small number of schools had a disproportionately larger impact on the overall performance of London as a whole, because the results tended to go from very low to very good.

Where does all that leave us? I should like to put a number of things to the Minister. I do not pretend for a moment to have all the answers, or even most of them, but some things are obvious challenges. First, on attracting the best teachers, we know that most people stay in their home region. That puts a premium on marketing intensely the teaching profession to high performers within the areas and regions where they are most needed, at school-leaver level and university graduate level.

Secondly, there has to be a big opportunity for Teach First outside London. That is happening, or starting to happen, already. There is now a focus on Bournemouth, which is welcome. We need to bear in mind why 48% of Teach First teachers were in London. One reason is that the programme started there. Another is that, of course, young people like to move to London; that cannot be changed very much. Another big factor is the network effect: knowing that other new graduates are doing the same programme in schools relatively nearby and so having social and support networks. Some co-ordinated, geographically-focused expansion of Teach First would be smart.

There are always questions in some schools about what the pupil premium can be used for. What is the Minister’s attitude to schools in heavily disadvantaged areas using it to pay teachers more, to attract the best? Alongside attracting the best teachers, there is also the matter of getting top leadership to the areas where it is needed most. In that regard, I look to the growth of initiatives such as Future Leaders. I wonder whether the incentives are enough. Can those be looked at, to ensure that they are sufficient and that they persuade people to go where they are most needed?

I turn to geographical patterns. There can sometimes be an over-supply of national education leaders in areas away from schools where their support would be most beneficial. I wonder whether it is possible to improve that situation by using technology, for example.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) on securing this debate, which has been excellent so far, and on his thoughtful and, as ever, intelligent contribution. I once again congratulate him on the report, which I have read and is worthy of reading. I have also read his blog, which is a little more partisan, but I will forgive him. One has to take such things into account. Heaven forfend that we should be partisan.

I visited Bohunt school in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency last year before the Secretary of State for Education’s visit, and it is an excellent school that has a healthy disregard for Government initiatives, including, I hasten to add, the current Government’s initiatives such as the EBacc. The school has a progressive approach to the curriculum, which I am glad the hon. Gentleman supports. Perhaps that is why it is such a good school.

I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) on his extremely thoughtful contribution. I look forward to following the proceedings of tomorrow’s Education Committee, before which the Minister will make one of his glittering appearances.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North said that Ofsted has talked about young people being lucky or unlucky, which triggered a thought, if the Chamber will indulge me, about my own background. I feel extremely lucky, because both my parents left school at 14, which was not unusual for the working class in my parents’ era. My father was an immigrant from the west of Ireland, although that part of Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom when he was born, and my mother was the daughter and sister of coal miners in the south Wales valleys. They both left school at 14, but I feel lucky because they both cared about education and thought that it was an extremely important opportunity. My father was taken out of school by his father to go on to the farm at a time when his teacher wanted him to stay on to get more education, so I feel lucky generationally.

Like many in this Chamber, I had some inspirational teachers, but I went to a school from which no one had ever been to Oxford or Cambridge. It was hoped that I might get into university, so when I did my summer job, which my father secured for me—patronage is everywhere—at Llanwern steelworks and phoned up to get my A-level results, it was much to my surprise that I had done so well. I went back to take the sandwiches from the canteen to the gang, and one of the men with whom I was working said, “You ought to go to Oxford.” That was the first time anyone had ever said that to me. I had completed my A-levels and my schooling and was working at Llanwern steelworks, and he was the first person who had ever suggested to me that going to Oxford might be possible.

I feel passionately about this subject, as do many colleagues. I welcome the commitment from Members from all parts of the House to trying to ensure that people can fulfil their potential, and that poverty of aspiration is overcome as much as the problems resulting from the economic consequences of poverty. Not that I was from a poor background, I hasten to add; my parents were fortunate enough to be in employment for pretty much all their working lives.

The subject is extremely important. In a sense, the debate is about regional disparities, rather than class or ethnicity, although those factors obviously play into it a great deal, as the hon. Member for East Hampshire said. Those disparities also play into the Select Committee’s report and its inquiry into the performance of white working-class boys. It is worth considering for a moment why white working-class boys are not doing as well as they should in our education system. Perhaps it is a misnomer to talk about white working-class boys in this context, because it is often as much about the parents’ background and their low educational attainment as it is about income. It is also about worklessness and such factors within families.

The hon. Gentleman talked about how the migrant factor plays into this issue, particularly in London. Perhaps many such families look at the school system with fresh eyes and high hopes compared with parents who had a bad experience of the school system. They might have gone through in a low set and absorbed a feeling that school was not valuable to them or that they were not valued by school. They might then have transmitted that on to their children, which would be a factor. I think we can all agree that parents’ behaviours and attitudes matter in this debate. One thing we should consider is how we best influence parents and the role that the Government can have in raising parents’ aspirations and encouraging good parenting on education. We have to consider policy on parents and not just policy within the four walls of the school.

The issue of geography, which is essentially what the debate is about, and the issue in relation to London have been raised, and I will come back to them later.

[Mr Ward]

I suspect that the hon. Gentleman will come on to this, but it is a bit like we are casting the fly into the river; we keep coming near to this thing that bites for the fly, but then it disappears again, and that thing is the quality of teaching. We have heard about aspirations, parental involvement and career advice and so on, but we know about those and we keep coming back to them. The hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) spoke about the quality of leadership and management and the Ofsted reports about certain schools in certain areas, and we keep coming back to this idea of how we get the very best teachers into the most difficult schools. How do we deal with that conundrum when someone is deciding where they want to teach or where they want to be a head teacher?

[Kevin Brennan]

I will come on to that. I was about to say that one of the key challenges is on how we motivate people to go into areas that are struggling with recruiting and retaining highly effective teachers. How do we spread out excellent teachers to ensure that they are available to schools across the country? I will come back to that later.

The previous Government had policies on this issue and made narrowing the gap a priority, as this Government have. There is evidence that the previous Government were successful in narrowing the gap. The Institute for Public Policy Research report “A Long Division” contains some helpful information that illustrates that the attainment gap between the richest and poorest students narrowed between 2003 and 2011. We have to monitor the gap closely to ensure that it does not widen once again. The report shows that schools play a part in that, as does excellent teaching. Having good and outstanding schools is an important and necessary method of ensuring that we close the gap, although it is not sufficient in itself. We need to think more broadly about policies.

Many hon. Members will be familiar with the Sutton Trust report, “The Reading Gap”, from July 2013. It showed that boys aged 15 from disadvantaged backgrounds are some two and a half years behind their counterparts from the most advantaged backgrounds. That shows the problem of the attainment gap. Similarly, a Sutton Trust report from September 2011 highlighted the point that the hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward) just made, namely the importance of high quality teaching. The executive summary of that report said:

“The effects of high-quality teaching are especially significant for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds: over a school year, these pupils gain 1.5 years’ worth of learning with very effective teachers, compared with 0.5 years with poorly performing teachers. In other words, for poor pupils the difference between a good teacher and a bad teacher is a whole year’s learning.”

That shows the significance of raising teaching standards and ensuring that they stay high.

Teacher morale matters. I said that in a recent debate in the House, although the Minister was unable to attend on that occasion. Digging down into the detail of the programme for international student assessment report and the OECD reports, they clearly show that in systems where teacher morale is high and teachers feel valued—it is not necessarily where they are the best paid—pupils perform better. The Sutton Trust has shown that it is particularly important for disadvantaged pupils that we have high performing teachers. Will the Minister commit to publishing the data collected during the 2013 teacher workload survey? I and others have asked the Secretary of State to publish that on many occasions. We need to know what happens, because teacher morale matters to pupil outcomes, particularly those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.

[Mr Ward]

In terms of the earlier discussion on the challenge in London, does the hon. Gentleman feel that there is a Hawthorne effect in London? Teaching in London is seen to be special and teachers are held in high esteem compared with many other parts of the country, where the teaching profession feels undervalued.

[Kevin Brennan]

That might well be a factor. There have been many initiatives in London and a real attempt to attract good quality graduates into the profession through a number of different routes, including Teach First, as the hon. Member for East Hampshire mentioned in his remarks. I have not seen data to show that the public regard teachers more highly in London than in other parts of the country, but that might be a factor.

Returning to the point I was making, on 13 January—I have asked this question subsequently, too—I asked the Minister

“when he intends to publish the findings of the most recent Teacher Workload Survey.”

Bear in mind that the survey was undertaken in March 2013, almost 12 months ago. The Minister’s answer was:

“Officials are currently analysing the data collected during the 2013 Teacher Workload Survey.”—[Official Report, 13 January 2014; Vol. 573, c. 360W.]

Now, when one asks a parliamentary question, one never expects an answer—certainly not from the Department for Education. The relevant word in my question was “when”, but there was no reference in the answer to when the Minister intends to publish the report—not even to “shortly”, “soon” or other civil service terms. Nor was there any reference to “in the autumn”—a term that usually extends to 31 December.

[Julian Smith]

The shadow Minister seems to be alluding to the suggestion that the report contains some sort of smoking gun that teachers are overworked or unhappy. Would it not be better to focus on what teachers need to do, which is to improve markedly, and on having a massive step change in our educational performance? Worrying about what happened last year or whether teachers are feeling a bit stressed is not the goal. We need to get our PISA rankings up, and that should be the priority.

[Kevin Brennan]

I do not know whether the report contains a smoking gun; I have no idea what it contains. It cannot contain a smoking gun, because the gun has not been fired, despite us waiting a year to hear what the survey says. If the hon. Gentleman would care to read in detail the OECD reports on the PISA rankings, he will see that they make the point that teacher morale matters, and that it is a key component of ensuring that our system produces good quality outcomes and, therefore, a component of raising our performance in the PISA tables.

[Ian Mearns]

As a member of the Select Committee on Education, I would find it useful if the Department published the findings of the teacher workload survey. It would be useful for everyone in the field to see what those findings are.

Also, instead of focusing on PISA rankings, it is much more important for us to focus on educational outcomes for children. That will have a knock-on effect on PISA rankings, but the matter is about educational outcomes for individual children.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct.

I appreciate that the civil service’s work load may be great. I understand that in the most recent survey of civil servants in the Department, many of them expressed concern about how they are being treated. However, a year is a reasonable period, after a survey has been completed, to publish it. In this day and age, the Department does not need to analyse the data; it should just publish them. Others, including the Education Committee, the hon. Member for East Hampshire, who is thorough in his research, as we have seen today, and many others in the blogosphere so loved by the Secretary of State for Education, will tell us what they conclude the survey to say. Will the Minister commit today to publish the survey, in the interest of letting us know what is happening with teachers; whether the Government are getting it right in doing what they said they wanted to do in their White Paper a few years ago, which is to give proper status to the importance of teaching; and whether the work force are well motivated by the Government’s policies? I hope that he will tell us in his conclusion when he will publish the report, with the emphasis on “when”.

The London factor was mentioned a lot in this debate. There is considerable evidence of the impact of the London challenge. I accept what the hon. Member for East Hampshire said in his remarks—that that is not the only factor we should consider regarding the performance of London’s schools, which have outperformed schools in other parts of the country and are the most improved schools in the country—but the London challenge is undoubtedly an important part of the London factor.

An Ofsted report published in 2010 found the London challenge to be a great success. The report attributed that to a number of factors:

“Clear, consistent leadership…Improvement programmes which matched strategies to the needs of individual schools…Strategic deployment of support from the London Leadership Strategy…Successful heads mentoring head teachers in target schools…Sensitive matching of partners under the leadership of LC advisers…Support, ‘without strings attached and without conflicts of interest’, from local authorities…external consultants or teaching schools aimed at raising the quality of teaching and learning…Collaboration between schools and grouping schools in families…Continuing development programmes for teachers…Teachers being committed to all London children not just those in their own school…The development of robust tracking systems to monitor children’s progress.”

Those kinds of factors are the ones we should be seeking to replicate across the country. I have a concern—I put it no more strongly than that, in this more academic forum this morning—that elements of the Government’s approach to education policy are militating against the ability to achieve the 10 key factors that were identified in the Ofsted report.

[Damian Hinds]

Just out of interest—this is not meant to be a political challenge—regarding all the things the hon. Gentleman mentioned that could be replicated, the Labour Government tried to do that in 2008 in the black country and in Manchester. I am interested in his analysis of why there was no read-across.

[Kevin Brennan]

I think there was some read-across, particularly in Manchester, where it worked better than elsewhere. I do not think the policy was given enough time. This Government were wrong to abandon that approach when they came in, in favour of a wholesale structural and cultural revolution, rather than looking at those key factors and attempting more effectively to replicate them. The system has been endangered by wholesale atomisation—the creation of this kind of Govian archipelago of schools across the country that are not well connected.

What the London challenge tells us—I sense sometimes that the Schools Minister may have some sympathy with this point—is that, while autonomy at school level is important, it should be provided within a collaborative system and a culture of collaboration, with highly qualified and well motivated professionals working together in the interests of all the children in that particular area. That was the lesson from the Ofsted report, which should be returned to and should become our mantra in trying to improve schools across the country. We should not simply rely on the idea that changing the sign at the front of the school and introducing academies and free schools will solve all our problems. It will not, and any intelligent analysis will show that.

We accept that we now have a variety of different types of schools, but let us re-introduce into the system the values of the London challenge that have been shown to be valuable in raising standards. That is not to say that everything from London is replicable across the country, due to many of the factors mentioned by the hon. Member for East Hampshire, but it is clear that they are key features of the London challenge that worked, and features of school systems in other parts of the world that show them to be a success.

I am conscious of time and I want to leave the Minister with time to respond, so I will briefly say a few more things. We have not heard much today about the importance of early years. I am not going to speak extensively about what the previous Government did on that; it has already been mentioned by other colleagues. We welcome and support—in fact, we proposed this—the extension of early years to two-year-olds. However, we need to do much more on that, and we need to have a much better offer for parents, particularly in relation to child care. We have already proposed a primary child care guarantee and extending free child care for three and four-year-olds from 15 hours to 24 hours per week. The Government ought to consider those proposals.

The pupil premium has been mentioned. Let us be clear: it was not really a premium, in the sense that it did not constitute any extra money in the system. When in opposition, the Schools Minister had said that there would be additional money—

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

indicated dissent.

[Kevin Brennan]

The Minister may challenge the figures if he likes. The premium constituted no real increase in the schools budget. I know that the Minister is an economist, so if he wants to challenge what I say, he can, but it is a fact. When is a premium not a premium? When it is a pupil premium. Nevertheless we welcome the focus on the most deprived children, and we need to talk more about how best to use what is in effect a ring-fenced part of the school budget to close the gap. There is no silver bullet for that, or for overcoming regional differences identified by the hon. Member for East Hampshire, but the factors I have mentioned are important, and teaching quality is essential. The Government are getting that wrong with their message about unqualified teachers, and we think all teachers should be willing to become qualified so that the profession can be valued, so that they are up to date with the best pedagogical methods, and so that they understand child development properly. Strengthening parents’ role is vital and we need to think about how best to do that.

We have not talked much about the social and emotional aspects of learning, but those are important for children, and especially those from deprived backgrounds. We need to give more careful consideration to approaches such as mindfulness for improving the attentiveness and emotional well-being of children in school. Those are important factors in a good education.

[Ian Mearns]

The Select Committee recently went to Peterborough and met a gaggle of primary school heads. They said that because of the state in which some youngsters were coming to school they were using pupil premium money to feed them.

[Kevin Brennan]

Children often come to school with more than just the books in their schoolbags—they come with their home issues; and sometimes, unfortunately, they come with little in their bellies. I am a former teacher and it is difficult to teach them if they are hungry, or if they are distressed or perturbed because of something that has happened at home. We need to focus on more rounded issues to do with the child in education, if we are to close the gap.

The shadow Education Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), has made a big contribution to the debate recently, which I welcome, with reference to the importance of character and resilience, and schools’ role in helping to develop those qualities in young people. Those are the bedrock of educational attainment, and will contribute to closing the gap.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Laws]

That is an important point. Some of the ways in which we now allocate funding for disadvantage go beyond the pupil premium. They include area-based methods and prior attainment, a factor that many local authorities use. It is not only through the pupil premium that we channel money into schools. However, I am serious when I say that we are keeping under review the question of whether in future we should have a different way of targeting money at disadvantage. The hon. Member for Gateshead raised the question of free school meals targeting, and whether that is sufficient. It is worth keeping other options in mind for the future beyond the current Parliament. I was interested in his comments about the Netherlands experience of targeting money towards children whose parents do not have strong educational qualifications. We should not assume that we have the perfect method for allocating disadvantage funding at the moment, and should seek constantly to build on what we do and improve it.

The performance of disadvantaged pupils has improved across the country since the coalition Government came to power in 2010, and it improved before that. The proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals who achieve the expected standard in maths at the end of primary school has risen from 66% to 74% since 2010, and the gap between those children and their peers has narrowed by 4 percentage points. The picture is similar at key stage 4. The proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals achieving at least five A* to C grade GCSEs, including English and maths, has risen from 31% in 2010 to 38% in 2013. The gap between those youngsters on free school meals and the rest of the pupil population has narrowed. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire pointed out, however, the performance of disadvantaged pupils is different throughout the United Kingdom and throughout England.

[Kevin Brennan]

Does the Minister agree that one should not be complacent about such things? In England last year, the GCSE attainment gap widened in 72 out of 152 local authority areas. In 66 areas, it was larger than it was two years previously. In England as a whole, the gap was 26.7% last year, up from 26.4% in 2011-12, which means we should not be complacent.

[Mr Laws]

We certainly should not be complacent at all. We have a huge amount of progress to make in reducing the gap. In the previous year, 2012, there was a particularly large reduction in the gap at secondary level, so I am not surprised to see some push back against that in 2013. The trend is still clearly downwards, but there is a long way to go and I would like a much more rapid pace of progress than we have had in recent years.

A number of Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire, pointed out that progress in London has been more impressive over the past decade or so, as was said in the all-party group’s report, “Capital Mobility”, which was published at the end of last year. Disadvantaged young people in London are now more than 10 percentage points more likely to achieve five A* to C grades including English and maths than those in the next highest-performing region. The gap between disadvantaged young people and their peers is narrowest in London.

We need to ask, as my hon. Friend did, what the important factors in London are. He was able to put aside some factors that do not appear to be explanatory and to identify others that are significant, such as aspiration among young people in London being higher, for which there is some evidence. There is also a different ethnic mix in London, compared with much of the rest of the country, with a greater proportion of London pupils from high-performing ethnic groups such as Chinese, Indian and Korean. There is also important and impressive performance by many ethnically Pakistani and Bangladeshi children, who perform better than white children in London, but worse than white children outside London.

As is well known, London schools are better funded, but we need to be careful about drawing easy conclusions from that. Part of the headline difference simply relates to area cost. London also has above-average unemployment and deprivation, so it might be expected to attract higher levels of funding on average. As my hon. Friend pointed out, however, London has less experienced teachers and larger, rather than smaller, class sizes, although it has more sponsored academies, which have been making impressive progress under this Government and the previous Labour Government in raising attainment and narrowing the gaps.

My hon. Friend also mentioned Teach First. It is true that around half of Teach First graduates are in London. That is a hugely disproportionate share, but it reflects the fact that the programme started in London and that, to some extent, it is easier to find young people who after university want to be located in our biggest cities. I am delighted that Teach First not only has doubled in size since 2010 to become the country’s largest graduate recruiter, but will from next year be present in every single region of the country. I hope that will ensure that we get effective teachers teaching in schools throughout the country and not only in our largest cities.

It is worth pointing out, as a number of hon. Members have, that Teach First will only ever provide a minority of teachers in this country. My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East invited us to think about what more could be done to develop the talents of the rest of the teaching work force. After all, we have around a third of a million teachers, and we need to ensure that we attend to all of them and focus not simply on the Teach First programme, important though that is.

We need to look at ways to get teachers to some of the most challenging schools and we need to allow schools to use the pupil premium in whatever ways are effective, including paying to attract better teachers to the more challenging schools. We know, however, that some people will not move around the country, for family and other reasons, and we have to be able to recruit good teachers throughout the country, in every single area and region. We cannot assume that teachers can be moved around.

In some local authorities, our schools are not doing well. For example, in England as a whole, just under 80% of schools are now good or outstanding, which is the highest figure since Ofsted began, but in 13 local authorities fewer than half of all secondary pupils are in such schools. None of those authorities is in London. They are clustered in Yorkshire and the Humber, in places such as Bradford, Doncaster, East Riding and Barnsley; and in the north-west, in places such as St Helens, Blackpool, Salford and Tameside.

In 14 local authorities, the attainment of free school meal pupils at key stage 4 is more than 10 percentage points below the national average for such pupils. In places such as Barnsley and Portsmouth, performance is appalling: only 22% and 23% respectively of children eligible for the pupil premium achieved five good GCSEs including English and maths, which is only just over half the national figure. Achievement for that group of pupils declined in 2013 in both places. In 12 local authorities, attainment at the end of key stage 4 for pupils eligible for free school meals was lower in 2013 than in 2010. That, too, is completely unacceptable.

Ofsted is addressing regional underperformance through its regional inspection arrangements, with focused inspections of local authorities and groups of schools. It is carrying out inspections not only of schools, but of school improvement functions. I welcome the chief inspector’s plans to ask challenging questions of local authorities and others about their contribution to school improvement. After each such inspection, the Department looks carefully at Ofsted’s conclusions. Where the chief inspector is unhappy with a response, we will take action as necessary.

In the case of the Isle of Wight, we issued a direction under the Education Act 1996, which required the local authority to enter into a strategic partnership with Hampshire to tackle its weakness in school improvement. We will not hesitate to intervene again where local authorities fail in their Ofsted inspections on school improvement and where they fail to improve swiftly or to rise to the challenge.

We are keen to see local authorities and sponsor groups on the front foot, taking the initiative, rather than waiting to be challenged by Ofsted or the Department. We are heartened to see initiatives breaking out in many parts of the country to lead improvement in schools, such as “By schools for schools” in Greater Manchester.

We are targeting schools and local authorities where the attainment of disadvantaged pupils is unacceptably low. I recently wrote to 214 schools—115 primary and 99 secondary—with the poorest value-added progress among disadvantaged pupils. I will shortly be writing to the schools, local authorities, dioceses and academy sponsors so that they may provide additional challenge.

A number of Members mentioned the importance in a system of autonomous schools of having more school-to-school support to ensure that we spread best practice. That is extremely important and something that the Department takes seriously. Teaching school alliances and peer support networks can be effective in raising standards. Currently, 345 teaching schools cover around 4,800 other schools. In September, the Secretary of State announced an expansion to reach a total of 600 alliances by 2016. I have seen for myself—in Redditch, for example—the importance of such arrangements and what the alliances can do for work on school improvement.

We also need more national leaders of education in those parts of the country in which they are in short supply, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire mentioned. We need a programme to support our best leaders and deputy leaders taking up posts in parts of the country in which there are large gaps and weaknesses in educational attainment. That will not necessarily suit everyone, because many people have family and other commitments to keep them in particular places. Many are willing to move, however—people with high aspirations, who might have already improved their schools and be willing to attempt it elsewhere in the country. From September 2015, the talented leaders programme announced by my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister will start by matching 100 head teachers with underperforming schools in areas that struggle to attract and develop outstanding school leaders. In these ways, we hope to spread the improvement that we have seen in areas such as London to the whole country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I have not caught up with last week’s Times Educational Supplement, but I enjoy reading it and I will look at that article. The evidence from PISA—both the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) and I agree on this—is very powerful in favour of greater autonomy for schools, but I shall look at any critique of that evidence in order to weigh it appropriately.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Given that he has previously been chastised by the UK Statistics Authority for abusing data, how confident is the Secretary of State that his claims about the improved performance of converter academies will stand up to independent scrutiny in future?

[Michael Gove]

I rely on the evidence with which I am presented by Ofsted, by league tables and by every possible measure, so I look forward to having the chance, whenever the hon. Gentleman wants to ask me again, to demonstrate how well these schools are doing. However, I note that when he came to the Dispatch Box, he did not disabuse the House of the view that it will have taken following the shadow Secretary of State’s statement to The Sunday Times—that Labour would halt the free school programme. I hope the hon. Gentleman will do so when he has the chance again.

Teaching Quality

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

We will come to that.

It is important to recognise that situation, because that is exactly what has happened in the school referred to several times in this Chamber and elsewhere by the shadow Secretary of State—the South Leeds academy. When he first raised the issue, I was genuinely concerned, because he said that unqualified teachers might have been hired with just a few GCSEs. If such people were teachers in the classroom, that would be a genuine cause for concern. He alleged that the academy could do that only because of our changes in policy. [Interruption.] No, absolutely not. The South Leeds academy does not have the power in its funding agreement to hire unqualified teachers, because its funding agreement was constructed, written and agreed before the change in policy. The South Leeds academy has advertised for trainees under a policy that has been in place since at least 1982.

I made that point in this House, and I invited the hon. Gentleman to acknowledge that he had made a mistake. I did so as graciously as I could. [Interruption.] No. I hoped that he would take the trouble to check his facts, but he did not. I have received a letter from the chief executive officer and director of Schools Partnership Trust Academies, which is responsible for the school. Of the specific case of South Leeds academy, he said: “The post advertised was for the appointment of trainees to support the teaching of mathematics. This was not made clear in the advert, which was placed in error. Once I became aware of the issue, the advert was withdrawn. A statement was placed on our website to clarify the matter.”

Moreover, I drew that matter to the attention of the shadow Secretary of State in the House. I told him that he was persisting in error, and I gave him an opportunity to retract. He chose not to do so. Will he now take the opportunity to apologise to the South Leeds academy and to the House for getting his facts wrong?

I note that he had the opportunity then to apologise.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. When a Member sits down, as the Secretary of State has just done, is that not the end of their speech?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Alas, Mr Brennan, you are not in the Chair today. [Interruption.] You can sit down, Secretary of State, because I can deal with this. Secretary of State, sit down! This is a serious debate and it would help me enormously if Members behaved within the conventions and rules of the House. Do not shout at each other. Do not try to help me out—I have a Clerk who will do that, should I need it. The Secretary of State has not concluded his speech and he should not sit down until he has.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Gove]

My point was a serious one. I have given the shadow Secretary of State and everyone on the Opposition Front Bench the opportunity to correct the record. I hope that we will hear no more of the South Leeds academy and its policy of hiring unqualified teachers, taking advantage of a policy change that we made, because I have had the opportunity, thanks to your generosity, Madam Deputy Speaker, to make it entirely clear that he was—inadvertently, I am sure—in error, notwithstanding the fact that I reminded him of the facts.

[Kevin Brennan]

On a serious point, I have attempted on several occasions to get an answer from the Secretary of State and his Ministers on what the qualifications of the teaching staff of the Al-Madinah free school were from September 2013. On each occasion, I have been told that it would be inappropriate to reveal to the public what the qualifications of the teachers were at that troubled school. If the Secretary of State is going to be transparent and open about teaching qualifications, will he promise to publish those qualifications immediately?

[Michael Gove]

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point. Absolutely; we will ensure that all the information that can be put into the public domain is put into the public domain, unless we are prevented from doing so for legal reasons. I accept the sincerity of the hon. Gentleman’s point. In return, I hope that he will reflect on the points that I have made about South Leeds academy—that it cannot hire unqualified teachers under its funding agreement, that the advert was for the hiring of trainees and that it has advertised in that way since at least 1982—and in due course, whenever it is appropriate, apologise to the school and to the House. Hopefully we can then make progress.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Gove]

The right hon. Gentleman is giving an outstanding speech and I agree with almost every word that he has said. He has given me the opportunity to place on record my admiration for the work that Sir Michael Wilshaw has led to ensure that HMIS—

[Kevin Brennan]

Who briefed it?

[Michael Gove]

I will ignore that comment.

I am grateful to Sir Michael for the work that he has done in ensuring that HMIS can play a role in school improvement. Another thing we need to do is ensure that we have more national leaders of education deployed. If the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) would like to invite me to visit his constituency to ensure that that work can advance, I would be delighted to accept.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

It has been a good debate, although bizarrely one in which we have not been graced by the presence of the Government Minister responsible for teaching. Why is the Schools Minister not here? Is it an authorised or unauthorised absence? Will he be fined, as many parents are being fined around the country, for playing truant? We know that he is deeply conflicted about whether teachers in taxpayer-funded schools should be qualified. Last time we discussed the issue, I likened him to Odo the Shape-Shifter from “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”, but now having dissolved back into his bucket he seems to have re-emerged as the Invisible Man. The truth is that we have a part-time Schools Minister who is absent because he is performing his other job in the Cabinet Office of trying to hold the coalition together. He should be here in the House, answering for his policies in the Commons—even if he does not agree with his own policies, which when we last checked appeared to be his position.

The Government once tried to convince us that they understood the importance of teaching—they even released a White Paper with that title—but everything that they have done in office has been about an ideological obsession with structures and an easy headline about numbers of academies and free schools. They have undermined and neglected the teaching profession, alienated hard-working qualified professional educators and sent the morale of the profession into the cellar.

Last year, a survey conducted by YouGov found that 55% of teachers described their morale as “low” or “very low”. That figure had risen from 42% in just eight months. Sixty-nine per cent. said their morale had declined since the 2010 general election. Only 5% thought that the Government’s impact on the education system had been positive.

It may be that, for some of the lunatic fringe that the Secretary of State has employed as special advisers, those figures are fine because in their view teachers are just Marxist troublemakers, but they could not be more wrong. When YouGov asked teachers their voting intentions at the last general election, 33% said they would vote Tory, 32% Labour, and 27% Lib Dem. Actually, teachers—I think I am the only member of either Front Bench in either House who used to be a school teacher—are a politically moderate, sometimes conservative group of swing voters. However, the Secretary of State has worked his magic on them with his advisers. That important group of middle-class swing voters now says in the latest poll on teacher voting intentions by YouGov that the support among teachers for the Conservatives is down from 33% to 16%, the support for Labour is up from 32% to 57%, and the Lib Dems—actually, if their Minister cannot be bothered to turn up, I cannot be bothered to read out the figure. Let us just say that they are now neck and neck with the Greens and behind UKIP.

Teacher morale matters. Teachers’ professional status matters. The OECD has said in its PISA reports that schools in countries with high teacher morale

“tend to achieve better results”.

Teacher morale matters, not just politically but, more importantly, for the education of our country’s children. So why does the Secretary of State not understand that, by undermining the profession with his “anyone can teach” dogma, he is undermining standards in exactly the same way as they were undermined in Sweden?

[Mr Stuart]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Kevin Brennan]

Not at the moment.

We all remember the Secretary of State’s infatuation with the Swedish model. He even wrote about it in The Independent newspaper, under the headline “Michael Gove: We need a Swedish education system”. He was saying that we needed free schools—eventually to be run for profit, presumably, as in Sweden—and unqualified, low-paid teachers. His praise for Sweden was effusive. He went on to say that

“what has worked in Sweden can work here.”

We do not hear much about Sweden from him now. I think I can say, without fear of being accused by the statistics authority of abusing the PISA statistics—unlike the Secretary of State, who was rapped on the knuckles for doing so when talking about the PISA statistics for this country—that Sweden has plummeted down the PISA tables after pursuing the very reform programme that the Secretary of State is now adopting in this country, including the use of unqualified teachers. Perhaps the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), might like to look at that evidence with his Committee. Sweden is now as invisible in the Secretary of State’s speeches and articles as the Schools Minister is in this debate on teaching.

It would be helpful if the Government were willing to tell us what qualifications the teachers have in the schools that are causing concern. I have asked him about the Al-Madinah free school in Derby. On 16 October last year, in response to a parliamentary question about the qualifications held by teachers in free schools, I was told:

“Data on each qualification held by each teacher is not collected.”—[Official Report, 16 October 2013; Vol. 568, c. 746W.]

I thought that that could not be right, so on 18 November 2013 I asked whether the Secretary of State would

“publish in anonymised form the qualifications held by each member of the teaching staff at the Al-Madinah Free School”

at the beginning of last September’s term. I was told:

“It would be inappropriate to publish any details until the Secretary of State for Education has concluded the next steps in this case.”—[Official Report, 18 November 2013; Vol. 570, c. 729W.]

On 6 January this year, when those next steps had been taken, I asked again for details of the qualifications. I was told that it would be “inappropriate” to publish any details of staff qualifications. On 14 January, I asked why it would be inappropriate, and received an answer simply repeating that it would be inappropriate to answer the question.

Lloyd George was once driving around north Wales and he stopped his car to ask a Welsh farmer for directions. He said, “Where am I?”, and the farmer replied, “You’re in your car.” That is exactly the method used by the Department for Education to answer parliamentary questions. The answers are short, accurate and tell us absolutely nothing that we did not already know. The Secretary of State said today that he was going to release that information, and I know that he will do so because he is a man of his word. I look forward to receiving that information tomorrow.

A YouGov poll has shown that 89% of parents do not want their child to attend a school whose teachers do not have professional teaching qualifications. Before the Secretary of State goes on again about unqualified teachers in the private sector, he might want to reflect on the fact that the latest Ofsted report shows that 13% of schools in the selective fee-paying sector were judged “inadequate”.

As our motion says, no school system can surpass the quality of its teachers. Before I finish, I want to turn briefly to the issue of the South Leeds academy. The Secretary of State has kindly passed to me the letter that he received yesterday, which he presumably solicited ahead of this debate. In the letter, the academy accepts that it placed the advert to which my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) has referred, but says that it was

“placed in error by a new and inexperienced clerical assistant”.

We accept that explanation. What it also says in that letter, which the Secretary of State did not highlight, is that the academy trust involved says that the School Partnership Trust Academies

“always seeks to employ teachers with qualified teaching status.”

It agrees with us, not with the Secretary of State. We should be employing teachers with qualified teacher status. He is wrong; we are right, and the SPTA agrees with us on that issue.

[Michael Gove]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Kevin Brennan]

I do not have the time unless the Secretary of State wants to eat into the time of his Minister.

[Michael Gove]

I absolutely do.

[Kevin Brennan]

The Secretary of State is eating into the time of his Minister.

[Michael Gove]

Will the hon. Gentleman now withdraw the allegation against the South Leeds academy made by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt)?

[Kevin Brennan]

Everything that my hon. Friend said was entirely accurate and has been confirmed by the letter. As I have said, we completely accept the explanation given in the letter. We accept everything that my hon. Friend has said, and the Secretary of State should accept that his support for unqualified teachers in taxpayer-funded schools is not supported by the School Partnership Trust Academies because it is wrong.

Given that the Secretary of State has given me some extra time, I will conclude my speech. As our motion says, no school system can surpass the quality of its teachers. That is why we need qualified quality professionals in our classrooms and better continuing professional development with revalidation to allow teachers to excel in their vocations. Yes, teaching is a vocation, as anyone who has watched programmes such as “Educating Yorkshire” or “Tough Young Teachers” or who has taught at any time in a school will know. That is why, despite the undermining of the teaching profession by the man who should be its greatest champion and advocate—the Education Secretary—teachers continue to put in hours long beyond their contractual obligations to help educate our children and build the future of this country. However, they cannot do that for ever without support and while being undermined, which is why we should strengthen, not weaken, their professional status, care about the time bomb of low morale, which this Secretary of State has armed, and pass this motion. Teachers and parents want a new direction and new leadership in education.

Kings Science Academy (Bradford)

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Westminster Hall

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

It is good to be here before you, Dr McCrea, and the Minister. I initiated this debate and I was lucky to secure it, so it is only fair that I should be able to say what its focus is. It is important to say that because it is not about free schools and academies in general. We have had such debates, so it is not for or against such schools, but about one particular school: Kings science academy. I am not interested in what has been done in the last year or so to improve things at the school or the achievement of pupils, the quality of teaching, the behaviour of pupils, or the leadership and management. I am passionately interested in all those things because I care about Bradford, but that is not what this debate is about.

I am interested in what seems to be the collusion between the so-called benefactor, Alan Lewis, the currently suspended principal, and the Department for Education. I am interested in the DFE’s role in allowing a rich Tory vice-chair to become even richer to the tune of millions of pounds of public money, and how it allowed an inexperienced young man to become principal of the school and to remain in control long after the DFE knew he had admitted that fraud had occurred in his school. How could that be?

I would like the Minister to prove me wrong in what I believe has occurred and the preferential, favourable treatment received by Mr Lewis by ending the speculation and making public the options, analysis and appraisals of nine alternative sites. If they were available, we could see whether there was a rigorous process in place.

I also want to see the evidence that the near £300,000 per year rent is not far in excess of what Mr Lewis could reasonably have expected to get from the partially tenanted and largely derelict site—I have given the Minister three photographs from before it was developed, and I can give more. What evidence is there that Mr Lewis has not made excessive profits from the school that now stands on that site? The Minister has the pictures before him. I believe that the school was only ever going to be built on that particular site—neither the principal nor, certainly, Alan Lewis would have been interested had it been anywhere else. Prove me wrong, please, but the DFE failed in its duty to ensure that a fair and robust options appraisal took place, and I have evidence to suggest that it did not take place.

As for the personal involvement of Mr Lewis in the running of the school, there is this big debate about “was he or wasn’t he” chair of the governors. How on earth can the DFE have mistakenly believed that a vice-chair of the Conservative party was chairman of governors at a free school for 12 months? How can the Department have been confused about that? I had a letter from Mr Lewis as recently as December 2013, signed by himself, in which he states:

“I was never chair of the governing body of the academy.”

Yet I have a copy of an e-mail to the Department, which has been amended by Mr Lewis to show him as chair of the governing body and not simply as someone involved in some way in the school.

I also have evidence that Mr Lewis was involved in the financial management of the school. In the same letter from him, however, he states that

“at no time have I ever had responsibility for the financial management of the academy.”

Yet I have a letter from the DFE in which the financial arrangements of the school have Mr Lewis not only as one of many involved, but as the person who should receive financial reports. He was the key individual who was receiving the reports, even though, to repeat his own words:

“at no time have I ever had responsibility for the financial management of the academy.”

The e-mail clearly shows, set out as an action point, that the monthly financial reports were to be given directly to him.

The truth is that Mr Lewis was personally and heavily involved in the school, right from the very beginning, but he now wants to distance himself from any involvement during a period in which he knows that fraud took place. Moreover, at the same time, negotiations were taking place about the rent for the property that he owned.

A second point, on the principal, involves the internal audit investigation team report endorsing the findings of the earlier Education Funding Agency report and of the report by the accountants, Crowe Clark Whitehill, in August 2012. Will the Minister please tell me whether the CCW report was seen by the DFE? I have to tell him that I think it was, but I want some evidence that it was and for when it was seen. The IAIT report states that the principal admitted that fabrication of invoices had taken place, so even if the DFE did not see the CCW report in August of 2012, at the very least it must have known about it from the audit team at the beginning of 2013. The DFE knew about the fraud, which had been admitted by the principal, but it took no action whatever to remove him from the school.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State said to me during a recent exchange in the main Chamber that

“Mr Lewis is receiving for the property an appropriately guaranteed market rent—less than he was receiving for it beforehand.”—[Official Report, 6 January 2014; Vol. 573, c. 16.]

One of the architects involved in preparing the free school bid has said to me that he finds that statement is a

“very difficult to believe” Statement.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree?

[Mr Ward]

We need clear evidence, because we are now receiving at best evasive responses to the questions that many of us have been asking. At worst, hiding behind the ongoing police inquiry, we have received no response whatever. To be honest, the evasiveness of some of the responses has been disrespectful to Members of this House. We need answers—all the speculation can then disappear.

We know how serious things were in the school, and that the audit reports identify not only the fraud, but all the nepotism and other financial irregularities that were taking place. I repeat that all of that was known by the DFE, but no action was taken at all. We are not talking about a young and inexperienced man, but about a dishonest and disreputable character, and yet, with all that information, the DFE was content to let the principal remain in place.

I hope that the Minister can prove me wrong, because I have a number of serious allegations about the DFE itself. If I am right, the independence of the civil service must be in doubt. Will the Minister please put to bed some of the suspicion about the DFE by helping us? The Department has failed in its public duty to expose what it knew to be malpractice and criminal activity—it held information back and covered up the situation. We cannot have the freedom extended to free schools including freedom from public accountability.

On the reporting of an admitted crime to the police, I am still not satisfied. We have asked oodles of questions, but I am still not satisfied that the DFE acted as it should have. There will always be suspicion of a cover-up until the Minister carries out a full investigation into what happened.

The first phase of the launch of the Kings school was praised by the Prime Minister and described in the press as closest to David Cameron’s vision of what a free school should be. We know the background, but when the whole scandal broke, the DFE said that it was for the school itself to decide whether the issue was a disciplinary one. How on earth can an organisation highlighted in an audit report as responsible be the organisation responsible for looking at itself and dealing with its own disciplinary issues? It beggars belief. A Government audit uncovers misconduct so serious that it needs to be passed to the police for criminal investigation, and yet the DFE feels that it is for the school itself to decide whether the issue is a disciplinary one.

When at last the Department decided that matters could not be contained within the school, it finally referred it to Action Fraud. We are asked to believe that Action Fraud botched up the recording of the fraud on 25 April. Even if we believed that to be true, we know that the DFE then did nothing about ensuring that a crime was investigated until 5 September, when it sent an exploratory e-mail to ask what was going on.

On 5 September, the DFE knew that its April report had been erroneously recorded as an information report. It was told by Action Fraud:

“If more information related to your report becomes available your report will be re-assessed to determine its viability for investigation.”

The Department knew that on 5 September, but did nothing. Why was the audit report not sent directly to the police at that time?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Laws]

I will come directly to that point in a moment. The EFA’s financial management and governance report and the Secretary of State’s warning notice have also now been published. We insisted that Kings science academy address identified failings urgently. While its internal evidence gathering continued, we confirmed the repayment sum at £76,933. We also sought confirmation that the disciplinary process was being taken forward. It is right that the relevant funding is being recovered from the academy in full, as it always will be if an academy or free school is unable to demonstrate that funding has been used for its intended purpose.

We believe that the Kings science academy, under the leadership of Mr Bowers, is making steady progress to address the weaknesses found in financial management and governance. That increased confidence is not just a result of the monitoring visits carried out by the EFA. We have evidence from KSA’s externally audited accounts for 2012-13, which were received on time, unqualified, and report the auditor’s comments on improvements in financial control and governance.

Let me turn now to the reporting of evidence to the police. The administrative error made by Action Fraud, which wrongly categorised the Department’s evidence in April as an information report rather than a crime, is deeply regrettable, as my hon. Friend made clear. Significantly, Action Fraud has apologised for the error. We do not believe that there is any fault with the way in which the report was made by the Department.

[Kevin Brennan]

Will the Minister briefly give way on that point?

[Mr Laws]

I will not give way, because I have so much to cover. I hope the hon. Gentleman will excuse me.

Before April 2013, any evidence of fraud found by the Department would have been reported to the relevant police authority. Action Fraud was established from April 2013 and since then has been the correct organisation with which to engage. The KSA situation was the first occasion on which the Department had needed to contact Action Fraud, so it made a further check with West Yorkshire police on the same day—25 April—to confirm that the report had been made in the right way. I put it to my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East that if there had been an attempt at a cover-up, it is unlikely that that check would have taken place.

In September, we made a further check with Action Fraud, which told us that the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau had assessed the case and decided not to take it forward. At the time, it seemed clear to us that the information regarding an alleged fraud had been correctly provided; it had been assessed and the case was not going to be progressed further. We know now that the case should have been passed by Action Fraud to West Yorkshire police for investigation, but the decision to investigate lies with the police, not the Department for Education.

I am sure my hon. Friend shares my wish to ensure that such a problem does not happen again. The Department’s internal audit and investigation team has now met Action Fraud and the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau to review and refine the processes for reporting fraud in future. We have tightened the procedures through which any future reports will be made. We will use Action Fraud’s online system. We will retain our own copy of the report we make and follow up within five working days if we have had no response from Action Fraud or contact the police.

As my hon. Friend knows, the police made an arrest in connection with the case on 9 January this year. Kings science academy wrote to parents on 10 January to confirm that the arrested man was Mr Raza, the principal, and that he would not be returning to the school, at least until the investigation was completed and finalised. Beyond that, it is not appropriate to comment. The parameters of the investigation are, quite rightly, for West Yorkshire police to determine. Until such time as the investigations are concluded and a determination regarding the case is reached, it would not be appropriate to release further information on that matter.

I shall now turn to the matter of Alan Lewis’s role at Kings science academy. On 27 September 2011, the academy told the Department that Mr Lewis would be chair of governors from 1 October 2011. The Department was informed on 24 October 2012 that Mr Lewis was not the chair and that Dr Asim Suleman would be chair of governors from 25 October 2012. We learned in December 2012 that there had been no chair of governors in place between October 2011 and October 2012. That was clearly a completely unsatisfactory position and totally unacceptable. Not to have a properly constituted governing body is a demonstrable failure to comply with the funding agreement. It is one of the issues identified in the EFA’s review, and one that the academy quickly addressed.

Alan Lewis’s other connection is that his company, Hartley Investment Trust Ltd, leases the site to the school, as my hon. Friend indicated. The site was secured for Kings science academy at £295,960 per annum, after an independent valuation. Due to the related party involvement, Treasury approval was sought and provided before final decisions were taken. If any hon. Members have any points to make about the police investigation, they should make them as soon as possible to the police.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his question, and for the dogged and persistent way in which he has sought to ensure that we can improve the situation at Kings science academy. I would say that Mr Lewis was responsible for commissioning a report, to which the hon. Gentleman quite rightly draws attention, that has played a part in helping to ensure that Kings science academy moved from a difficult position to a better one, but I must stress that I do not want to say anything that might prejudice an ongoing police report.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I can understand why the Secretary of State wants to protect his flagship policy, but we have had mismanagement, nepotism and fabricated invoices. Mr Lewis is not just a benefactor; he is a landlord who will receive £12 million in rent in years to come from the school, as well as a vice-chair of the Conservative party and a major Tory donor. Is that anything to do with the fact that the Secretary of State has refused to take any action whatsoever against anyone since this scandal broke?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising this issue. It is important to place on the record the fact that Mr Lewis is receiving for the property an appropriately guaranteed market rent—less than he was receiving for it beforehand. It is important to stress that, and it is also important to state that as soon as my Department was made aware of allegations of the misappropriation of public money, it contacted Action Fraud and a police investigation is now ongoing as a direct result. I should also add that my Department was in touch with the economic crime unit of West Yorkshire police to ensure that appropriate steps had been taken; it was reassured that those appropriate steps had been taken. The law must follow its course. It is entirely right for the hon. Gentleman to raise questions in Parliament, but it would be entirely wrong for me to prejudge the police investigation.

Free Schools

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Ian Mearns]

My hon. Friend makes a crucial point. The Minister could reassure hon. and right hon. Members in the room today, and members of the public outside, that local authorities should be given at least a temporary ability to intervene because of the concerns raised in three of the 174 free schools.

The alleged serious financial mismanagement at Kings science academy also extends to the school’s land lease. The Yorkshire Post revealed that a company owned by a vice-chairman of the Conservative party, Alan Lewis, is to receive some £6 million over 20 years, or £300,000 a year, to lease the land on which the academy was built. Particularly in the absence of local authority oversight of free school finances, it seems that there are what some might call beneficial deals for some at the expense of the public purse.

The plot thickens. According to the BBC, there was “a forensic investigation” earlier this year:

“The school was paid a £182,933 grant when it opened in September 2011. The EFA investigation found that £59,560 of payments were not supported by any evidence of payments being made, and £10,800 of this was supported by fabricated invoices for rent.”

More recently, it was found that an independent panel had fined the school £4,000 for failing to reinstate an excluded pupil. I am sure many colleagues on both sides of the House will agree that that is not how public money should be spent—it is not aiding the education of any child. That £4,000 is money that could, and should, have been spent on front-line education services.

That appalling level of financial mismanagement is even more concerning as it is public money. The coalition Government like to stress the importance of sound public finances, but oddly enough, their flagship education policy seems to have free rein on the use of public money.

An investigation into E-ACT—which, according to its website runs 34 academies and free schools from Dartmouth to Leeds—by the EFA revealed that a total of £393,000 was spent on “procedural irregularities,” including consultancy fees, breaking E-ACT’s own financial rules. The investigation also found that expenses indicated a culture of “prestige” venues, large drinks bills, business lunches and first-class travel, all funded by public money. “Extravagant” use was made of public funds for an annual strategy conference, at a cost of almost £16,000. Monthly lunches took place at the Reform club—I would like to go there some day, as I have never been—a private members’ club in London, with the public purse paying the bill for that excess. Boundaries between E-ACT and its trading subsidiary, E-ACT Enterprises, became “blurred.” A number of activities undertaken by the subsidiary were paid for with public funds. E-ACT, one of the largest chains of academies, was finally issued with a notice to improve by the EFA, so E-ACT lost Sir Bruce Liddington, its chief executive and former schools commissioner for England who, it is believed, was paid some £300,000 in 2010-11.

Barnfield college in Luton, part of the Barnfield Federation, which includes Barnfield Moorlands free school, has come under scrutiny for its educational practices. The concerns include grade massaging, as well as how the school treats its learners. The Barnfield Federation mantra, according to its website, is:

“One purpose. One team. One standard.”

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend rightly mentions the Barnfield Federation. Would he welcome a commitment from the Minister today that, when the Department completes its investigation into that particular scandal, it will undertake to publish the investigation immediately—rather than sitting on it for six months, as it did in the case of Kings science academy in Bradford?

[Ian Mearns]

The Minister has heard my hon. Friend’s question, and I echo that sentiment.

The Barnfield Federation has taken on some 10 schools in recent years, and I share the concerns that the federation might have overstretched itself by trying to take on too many schools too quickly. Although Barnfield college has stressed that it remains financially viable, its managerial viability is still a major cause of concern.

Advice given to those looking to set up free schools is careful to stress the importance of acquiring

“the right level of expertise to oversee the financial management of your school.”

It seems odd that the Government stress the importance of financial expertise in free schools—we have seen such failures—but have little concern about the expertise, standards or professional qualifications of the teaching staff. As I have previously mentioned, Ofsted raised concerns about both the financial and teaching provision at the Al-Madinah school, but Ofsted has not commented on the Secretary of State’s repeated assertion that free schools, and indeed all academies, do not need to have qualified teachers at all. That is apparently based on his view that what is good enough for Eton is good enough for any school. I appreciate that there is a little local difficulty in the coalition on that, but the Secretary of State and his Liberal Democrat Minister for Schools, at least, seem to be in accord, despite the apparent wider political Cleggmire.

The Government stress that expertise is necessary for the financial management of schools, yet they offer little insistence on such expertise when it comes to the governance and oversight of free schools. Many of the problems that I have outlined at the Al-Madinah school and Kings science academy, Bradford, stem from a lack of credible, organised governance and a lack of experience. The Department for Education may stress the importance of financial expertise, but if the systems of governance are poor, the financial health of a school will suffer as a direct consequence.

As free schools are autonomous, there is no way for local authorities to ensure that free schools in their jurisdiction have adequate, well rounded governance. It is imperative that that issue is addressed, urgently. The Government may write off Al-Madinah school as a one-off or as a contained incident, but the fact remains that that debacle has lifted the curtain on the fallacies and frailties of the programme. The Government simply do not have a clue about how many other free schools are in a similar situation.

The Department for Education’s website states:

“The right school can transform a child’s life and help them achieve things they may never have imagined.”

But what is the make-up of “the right school,” and what will the “wrong” school do for its students, who are ultimately children for whom we all have a duty of care?

Aside from good teachers and good facilities, I believe it is imperative that there is excellent governance, guaranteed by extensive oversight and rigorous inspection. I have called this debate because I have serious concerns about the oversight of free schools. I also have more general concerns about free schools, especially the disproportionate amount of the education budget eaten up by such schools. The unit costs of free schools bear no comparison with the vast majority of schools or schoolchildren.

One of my biggest concerns is the admissions policies adopted by many free schools that appear to be at best opaque, and at worst deliberately exclusive. A study by Race on the Agenda titled “Do free schools help to build a more equal society?” shows that only two out of 78 free schools are fully meeting their legal requirement to publish information pertaining to measurable equality objectives.

The ROTA report further states that only six free schools have published at least one equality objective, which is a poorer level of compliance than any other type of school. The question posed by the report is seemingly answered by those dismal figures. Free schools are doing very little to build a more equal society.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

We have had an interesting debate, on which I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), who told us about his 30 years as a councillor—he must have been elected to the council at the age of 14 or so. He certainly kicked off the debate extremely well. It was important that he drew to the attention of the House the ROTA report, which itself could be the subject of another debate on free schools and their approach to equality issues. We also had a good contribution from the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh), who spoke in his usual philosophical fashion. He trotted round the arguments on free schools and highlighted some important incidents of which he has been made aware.

My hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) made a powerful plea for fair treatment of and fair comment on the schools in his east Durham area, and he cited the Secretary of State on their smell of defeat. The Secretary of State is an extraordinary man in many ways, but he must have an exceptional sense of smell if, having never visited those schools, he can detect the smell of defeat about them. That says everything.

Finally, we had a contribution from the hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward), who should be congratulated on the manner in which he has attempted, in the face of great difficulties, to expose the scandals at Kings science academy in Bradford. I saw him on his local media pointing out that some of the people whom the Secretary of State had approved to run the school and to spend millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money were not only not fit to run a school, but not fit to run a bath—to use his inimitable phrase. His contribution this morning made the case absolutely clear, and I will say more about that later.

I welcome the children’s Minister, who is one of the nicest people in the Government, as is his Parliamentary Private Secretary, the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood), but we want to know where the Minister for Schools is. It would have been better had he come along today, to listen not only to my colleagues and me, but to his own Liberal Democrat colleagues on the policy for which he is responsible in the Commons at least.

I have noticed recently that in parliamentary answers—written answers as well—the children’s Minister is deployed as a kind of human shield for the Minister for Schools to answer questions about some subjects, including the free schools policy. I hope that that will not become a trend, but I guess it is understandable, given that he is being asked to defend what my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), the shadow Education Secretary, has described as a

“dangerous ideological experiment which has been allowed to run completely out of control”.

The hon. Member for Bradford East gave us a fine example of the manner in which this is out of control. He is right of course, because we have lots of schools with—despite what the hon. Member for Southport said—unqualified teachers written into them as a kind of policy, but also with unqualified leaders. Furthermore, schools are being built where there are already surplus places and with a dangerous lack of oversight and transparency, as we have heard this morning, but that is exactly what the Government planned.

It is no accident that we are hearing more examples of head teachers resigning—another one resigned yesterday, at the IES Breckland free school, following the resignation of the 27-year-old unqualified head at the Pimlico primary free school founded by Lord Nash, a Government Minister. We are hearing more examples of disastrous teaching, such as at the Al-Madinah free school, and allegations of financial fraud, at Al-Madinah and, as we have heard, at Kings science academy in Bradford. There is also an ongoing investigation into the Barnfield Federation in Luton, and we want a guarantee from the Minister that there will not be a cover-up this time—the report of the Department’s investigation should be printed immediately on completion, rather than being sat on until “Newsnight” gets a leaked copy, as happened in the case of Kings science academy.

The reason I say that this is what the Government planned is because they told us that they expected the policy to result in this kind of failure. The hand-picked adviser to the Secretary of State is Mr Dominic Cummings, who was brought into Government against the ethical objections of Andy Coulson and whom the Secretary of State has described as one of his “heroes”. Mr Cummings said in a recent 250-page memo that this kind of fraud and failure was an integral part of the free schools policy design. He said that some free schools

“will fail and have predictable disasters from disastrous teaching to financial fraud.”

There we have it: the lack of oversight is not an accident, as the hon. Member for Bradford East pointed out; it is part of the design of this ideological experiment. According to the Government, a bit of failure is fine, if there are unqualified teachers, and some financial fraud is okay: in the long run, presumably, some good schools will emerge from the carnage of the experiment. The fact that pupils’ education is disrupted along the way—as with the Al-Madinah free school, which had to close for a week—is presumably just collateral damage and a price worth paying.

The adviser to the Secretary of State has told us that we should expect failure and fraud. Clearly, he is right. At least he is being honest: all we have had from the rest of the Department is delay and obfuscation when it has been questioned about all this. Much of that is because Ministers are hopelessly conflicted about the policy. How can a Minister be both a promoter of free schools and an adjudicator on them? That is the situation now. How can the Secretary of State be both propagandist for his free schools experimental policy and overseer of that policy at the same time? He is responsible for all of these schools. He is like Dr Frankenstein: he is in love with his own creation and cannot see the dangers even when the evidence is staring him right in the face.

Just last night we heard further revelations about the Al-Madinah free school on “Channel 4 News”. Perhaps today we will finally get some action and Lord Nash might for a day be able to forget that he is a free school promoter and remember that he is a Government Minister with responsibility for the proper use of taxpayers’ money. Ofsted described that school as “dysfunctional” and rated it “inadequate” in every category, with unqualified teachers who lacked proper training. Now there are new allegations of financial irregularities over the letting of contracts. Will the Minister confirm—he may need some in-flight refuelling to answer the question—whether Department for Education Ministers or officials received from Derbyshire police correspondence relating to the funders of the Al-Madinah free school before it was opened? If so, will he commit to publishing that correspondence?

Let me turn to Kings science academy in Bradford, which opened in 2011, as the hon. Member for Bradford East pointed out, and, as he said, the patron or beneficiary of the school is Alan Lewis, who is a vice-chairman of the Conservative party. The school was built on Mr Lewis’s company land, and as we have heard, he stands to make £6 million in rent over the course of a 20-year agreement.

On 25 October, nearly six months—certainly over five months—since its completion, the Department published a redacted report from a financial investigation that it had carried out at Kings science academy only after whistleblowing from within the school. The way in which the Department redacted the report is interesting. Mr Lewis’s name was redacted, despite the fact that the financial arrangements are in the public domain. Even the name of the head teacher of the school was redacted in the version that the Department released. We have to wonder why it was necessary to redact the name of the head teacher—or principal, as he calls himself—and the name of Mr Lewis when that information is in the public domain; perhaps the Minister can explain.

The Department rushed out the report—that might explain the clumsy redaction— hours before “Newsnight”, which had already received a leaked draft copy, was due to go on air with the story. The report found a whole host of financial irregularities, including an admission by someone at the school that it had submitted fabricated invoices to claim money from the DFE as part of its set-up grant, and identified £86,000 of that grant that had not been spent by the school for the purpose for which it was intended. The report recommended that those matters should be passed on to the police for investigation. As has been pointed out, on 25 October, the Department said that the matter had been reported to the police

“who decided no further action was necessary.”

That seems odd to me. After all, invoices had been fabricated: why did that not result in proper criminal action?

The DFE’s initial version of events was that it reported the matter to Action Fraud on 25 April, and followed that up in September when it was told that the police had decided to take no further action. However, once all this became public—only because of the “Newsnight” investigation—West Yorkshire police contacted the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau to ask about the case and were told that there had been an administrative error that meant that the matter had been passed on to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau as being for information rather than as a report of a potential crime. Five days after the DFE report was made public, West Yorkshire police put out this statement:

“The Department for Education reported the matter to Action Fraud…on April 25, 2013. It was recorded as an information only case not as a crime. This was not sent to West Yorkshire Police either as information or for investigation. The National Fraud Intelligence Bureau has now assessed the report in line with nationally agreed protocols and have today sent it for investigation by West Yorkshire Police.”

That is where we are now, and we know that people are being interviewed, but the matter was not passed on properly to the police for more than five months.

The Department says that in September it contacted Action Fraud to ask for an update and was told by the police that there was nothing more to be done. Why at that stage did the Department not ask more questions? Why did it not dig and find out that there had been an administrative error? We need to understand why it did not do so.

It has now emerged that the Department for Education did not even submit the report to Action Fraud. It simply made a telephone call to the helpline. I have a copy of the Action Fraud web page for its helpline, which says:

“We provide a central point of contact for information about fraud and financially motivated internet crime. If you’ve been scammed, ripped off or conned, there is something you can do about it.”

Presumably the Secretary of State and his officials believed that they might have been scammed, ripped off or conned by the management of Kings science academy—who are all still in place, by the way—which is why they rang the Action Fraud helpline to report the matter. The website goes on to say:

“Report fraud to us and receive a police crime reference number.”

Will the Minister tell us the police crime reference number that his Department was given by Action Fraud when it dialled 0300 123 2040 to report that it believed it had been scammed, ripped off or conned by Kings science academy?

[Mr Ward]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that West Yorkshire police have no record at all of the call being received on 25 April?

[Kevin Brennan]

I am grateful that the hon. Gentleman has put that on the record, because when I rang the Action Fraud helpline last night to check, it said that calls are recorded. The Minister should be able to obtain from the Home Office a recording of the telephone call from the Secretary of State or one of his Ministers or officials to Action Fraud in April to report the crime and find out when they were given the police crime reference number. We will be interested to hear that.

The public deserve to know exactly what was said when the Department for Education reported the matter to Action Fraud, which led it to regard it as only “information”. What was said when it told the Department that the police were taking no further action, and how was it able to make that statement? How did Action Fraud obtain an update from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau without the administrative error coming to light? In the meantime, the principal is still in post at the school, and the Department says it gave the school a financial notice to improve, but that notice has never been published. Will the Minister publish it?

The Department said that the school is carrying out an internal investigation and that any disciplinary action is a matter for the school. How can the Department defend that position? In what other walk of public life would that be acceptable? It is worth remembering that none of this was in the public domain before the report was leaked. It is a murky business, and it would be better if the Government published the records of all their dealings in relation to this now, otherwise they will face the drip, drip of revelations as the details inevitably leak out.

All these problems and this example are a product of the policy design. Everyone in the Chamber wants innovative schools with appropriate autonomy to provide the best possible education for the children in their constituencies. That is a value that we all share, but it is irresponsible to design a policy with the expectation that failure is inevitable—that is what the Secretary of State and special advisers have done—and with no proper oversight of the spending of public money and the impact of the policy on the young people in the care of those schools. There are more scandals to come. As the Minister knows, his Department is currently investigating other cases. Why does he not come clean, answer the questions and admit that it is time to have proper oversight of these schools?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Timpson]

I have just explained that we can establish the success or otherwise of a school’s educational achievements by its results, as well as the fact that every free school and academy has a full Ofsted inspection within two years. That remains the case. We also believe that when a school is outstanding, accountability is clear and that should be reflected in the level of inspection.

Free schools and academies are free to spend their money as they choose. We do not bind them to purchase services such as payroll or human resources from their local authority; they can broker better-value deals elsewhere, leaving them with more money to spend on pupils. They can use their judgment and budgetary freedom to pay teachers appropriately to attract the best practitioners, even if they do not hold formal teaching qualifications.

Recently, we have had some interesting and lively debates about the importance or otherwise of having qualified teachers in schools. We can all cite the names of unqualified teachers who have made a huge contribution to children and schools. We heard an example this morning from my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (John Pugh) about his contribution over a long period.

The evidence is clear that that approach is working. Ofsted has rated almost three quarters of the 25 free schools inspected so far as good or outstanding, and that is happening under the tougher new inspection framework that Ofsted introduced. That compares well with maintained schools inspected against the same criteria in the same year, of which only 64% were rated good or outstanding.

The majority of open free schools represent entirely new provision and will not post their key stage 2 or GCSE results for some time, but every free school is an academy with the same freedoms. That is important because we already have clear evidence that academies work and out-perform local authority schools at both primary and secondary level.

The hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) referred to the success of Easington academy, which is hugely welcome. When outstanding education is provided, wherever it happens to be, it should be commended. I will, of course, pass his invitation to the Secretary of State to visit him and his constituency in the near future. As a former undergraduate of Durham university, I know what a wonderful part of the country it is, and I always recommend that people visit it.

[Kevin Brennan]

I know that the Minister wants to trumpet achievements, but I am sure he also wants to answer questions. He mentioned HR contracts and that free schools should have the freedom to do what they like about such contracts. Is he aware that Channel 4’s report last night on the Al-Madinah school said that Javid Akhtar was the governor responsible for chairing the school’s HR committee, and was also the managing director of Prestige HR Solutions, which was awarded the contract to run Al-Madinah’s HR services? Does that not illustrate absolutely what is wrong with having no proper oversight of such issues?

[Mr Timpson]

I will come to the quid pro quo of accountability against the freedom given to academies and free schools.

The hon. Gentleman made a particular point about the Al-Madinah free school. As he said, the Minister, my noble Friend Lord Nash, is currently up there talking to the school governors to decide what the next steps will be, so it would be wrong and inappropriate for me to comment specifically on the details of the case. Nevertheless, it is important that although there is clear evidence of success and achievement in free schools by virtue of the freedom provided to them, it is also right that there is tighter accountability as the balancing side of the equation.

For free schools, the need to demonstrate educational and financial rigour starts from the very moment when they submit an application to open a school. Every application is assessed against rigorous, published criteria. Free school proposers need to show how their school will drive up standards for all pupils as well as demonstrating financial resilience. The criteria also cover governance, an issue raised by a number of hon. Members. We need proposers to show that they have the capacity, skills and experience to set up and run an effective academy, as well as showing demand from parents.

Proposers are rigorously tested at interview against all those criteria, and testing continues once they are approved into pre-opening. As proposers refine their plans and are able to gauge with increasing accuracy the number of pupils that they expect to secure in their first year, we test their financial assumptions, challenging them to ensure viability. When we are not happy with the progress made, we can rightly require groups to bring in more expertise or make other changes. However, we are also not afraid to cancel or defer projects when we do not think that the new school will provide the very best for its pupils or provide good value for money for the taxpayer.

The hon. Member for Easington spoke about value for money. He may be aware that under paragraph 2.5 of the academies financial handbook, there is a requirement to complete a value-for-money statement each year explaining how the trust

“has secured value for money”.

That is both sent to the Education Funding Agency and published on the DFE website. The hon. Gentleman can find that information for himself and do with it what he wishes.

Before every free school opens, it is inspected by Ofsted against the independent school standards. Although it is impossible for Ofsted to make a judgment on the educational delivery of a school that has not yet opened, the inspectorate looks closely at all other aspects of the school’s policies and procedures covered by the standards. The quality of the premises of a free school has been mentioned. Hon. Members may be interested to know that under part 5 of the Education (Independent School Standards) (England) Regulations 2010, on premises and accommodation, there are set minimum standards for premises for free schools that are identical to those for maintained schools, so there is no differentiation in the standards required.

Ofsted’s pre-registration inspection also considers how well the school is set up to ensure the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of its pupils, as well as to secure their welfare, health and safety. The inspectors will check the school’s safeguarding policies as well as health and safety protocols, and ensure that procedures for checking the suitability of staff are appropriate. Ofsted will also make recommendations to the Secretary of State on conditions that it believes free schools should meet before opening their doors, in order to meet the independent school standards that I referred to.

The Secretary of State will not enter into a funding agreement to open any free school unless satisfied that the school will provide a good standard of education and be financially viable. No free school has opened without satisfying the Secretary of State that the school has addressed, or is on track to address, the issues raised by Ofsted. I challenge any hon. Members present to put forward any maintained school, including even recently established provision, that has been subjected to the same breadth and depth of scrutiny as we now apply to every free school before they even open their doors.