Academies Bill [Lords]
Debate between Lord Coaker and Nick Gibb(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Gibb
May I help the hon. Gentleman by saying that schools that do wish to convert this September must have submitted their applications by 30 June, so there will be time before the beginning of the schools’ summer recess for consultation to take place? In addition, the consultation is not required to terminate by September; it can go on through the autumn until the funding agreement is signed. So there is plenty of time, both before the summer and after it, for this important consultation to take place.
Vernon Coaker
I am afraid that the Minister is just asserting things; there is no fact in what he just said. How many schools are going through this process? What are they actually doing to consult? Are they sending a letter to every parent? Are they holding parents’ meetings? Are they going out into the community? Are leaflets being sent round? Are other schools involved in this? Are other governing bodies involved? Is the local authority involved? What does what the Minister has just said mean? The reality is that none of us knows.
Mr Gibb
I am happy to do so. We shall be coming to the relevant clause later in the debate, but I have been persuaded by my hon. Friend’s arguments, and as a result of his representations, and those of other people, we intend to amend the model funding agreement to raise the number of parents on governing bodies from one to a minimum of two.
Requiring a ballot of all parents of pupils at the school would unduly politicise the process.
Vernon Coaker
I welcome the concession the Minister just made. The Committee has run very well without being churlish about such things, and there are many other aspects we agree with, but that is an important step forward.
Vernon Coaker
I will be interested to hear why the Minister thinks that the amendments are unacceptable. Before that, it is important to say that, in the previous debate, there was a massive change in Government hope and expectation for their flagship academies policy. They have retreated from claiming that hundreds of new academies will open in September to saying that hundreds or a large number of academy orders will be agreed. The Secretary of State did not outline that as part of a flagship Government policy, which was for significant numbers of new academies to open. The policy is chaos, confusion and a complete shambles. Hon. Members of all parties will find it unbelievable that we now have a Government commitment to a significant number of academy orders, with consultation to follow. Significant progress has therefore been made as we have exposed the flaws in many aspects of the Bill. However, a Minister coming to the Dispatch Box and admitting that the Government’s aims and objectives will not be realised is astonishing.
I do not want to take up too much of the Committee’s time on the amendments. I should simply be grateful if the Minister explained why he thinks that they are unacceptable.
Mr Gibb
The amendments would collectively have the effect of increasing the burden of regulation associated with the academy conversion process. They propose several sets of regulations as well as a requirement that academy orders be made by statutory instrument. Hon. Members will recognise that that would take the Government’s policy in the opposite direction from our proposals. We want to deregulate when regulatory burdens are not only stifling innovation, but costing time and therefore money to achieve compliance. We want to give schools freedoms to allow them to focus on raising standards. Adding bureaucracy to the process is the last thing that we want.
Amendments 81 and 82 would introduce regulations that prescribed the contents of applications for academy orders and the criteria that the Secretary of State applied when deciding whether to make them. We do not believe that it is appropriate to regulate the contents of applications for academy orders. The Department already provides clear guidance on its website about the conversion process and the various steps that a school needs to take. The website also includes an application pro forma, which covers all the necessary information to enable a decision to be made. The Government have made it clear that they will apply a rigorous fit and proper person test in approving any sponsors of an academy.
The Secretary of State will consider applications from schools that wish to become academies and, in each case, confirm whether he is content for the conversion proposal to proceed to the next stage. If he is, he will make an academy order. In doing that he will, of course, take account of the relevant information before him, but he expects to approve most applications from outstanding schools. Those schools will make up the first wave, and we will publish the criteria for other applicants—the next wave—on the Department’s website.
Before issuing an academy order, the Secretary of State will undertake checks to ensure that the school is in a position to become an academy. That is important because academies operate with greater autonomy than other schools and need to be in a secure position to do so. We will check whether there has been any significant change since the school’s last outstanding Ofsted rating.
Mr Gibb
The criteria will be different because the fast-tracking is confined to schools that are graded outstanding. When they have gone through the process, we will relax the criteria to enable other schools to do so. My hon. Friend will recall that the Secretary of State sent letters to all schools in the country. The criteria that I just mentioned apply to fast-tracking. There will be different criteria for the process once the first wave has gone through.
Issues that the Secretary of State will check include whether the school has a substantial budget deficit, whether there are PFI arrangements relating to the school and whether the school is already part of reorganisation proposals. Depending on the outcome of discussions, that may have a bearing on whether and when the Secretary of State can approve an outstanding school’s progression to the next stage. When an academy order is made, the Secretary of State must give a copy to the governing body, the head teacher and the local authority. If the application is rejected, the Secretary of State is required to inform the governing body, the head teacher and the local authority of his decision and the reason for it. It will therefore be transparent and clear why and when a school will be permitted to convert and when it will not.
However, the first stage of the process—the academy order stage—is just that: it permits a school to convert, but does not require it to do so. We need to be clear that, for many proposals, the greater detail and the final stage of the process will come later, when the Secretary of State decides whether to enter into a funding agreement with a proposed academy. It is only on signing the funding agreement that the conversion becomes legally binding. We therefore believe that prescription of the form and content of academy orders in secondary legislation is unnecessary and too bureaucratic.
An academy order is the means whereby a school’s conversion into an academy is enabled. The intention behind amendment 83 is that an academy order be made by statutory instrument, which would have to be laid before Parliament. Academy orders are intended to be the legal means whereby an individual school converts to academy status. They will contain key pieces of information that are pertinent to the conversion, but are highly specific to the circumstances of each school. It would not be a good use of Parliament’s time to require each order for each and every school to be tabled. The use of the negative resolution procedure would also be highly disruptive to any school, since the period of 40 days during which the order could be prayed against in this House or the other place would leave the school with no certainty about whether the conversion could go ahead.
In any event, the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) will be interested to know that the Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee issued a report on the Bill, dated 17 June. I am sure that he knows it well, given that he has been so assiduous in scrutinising the Bill and all the accompanying documents. As he predicted, it states about the provision:
“this seems to us to be reasonable. Each order affects only one school and there is provision for those affected to be provided with copies. We agree… that these Orders are not really legislative in character and we see no reason why Parliament would want to have any control over them.”
For those reasons, I urge the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment.
Vernon Coaker
It is a very good job that the Minister has persuaded me that statutory instruments of any sort—negative or affirmative—are unnecessary, otherwise he would not be able to announce academy orders in September. I intend to ask leave to withdraw the amendment, but I return to a point I made earlier. I provoked the Minister at the beginning of this debate, but in both this debate and the debate on the previous group of amendments, I note that he has not put any figure at all on the number of schools that he expects to become academies. That now seems to have gone down to almost nought, because the aspiration now is to introduce large numbers of academy orders.
Academies Bill [Lords]
Debate between Lord Coaker and Nick Gibb(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Vernon Coaker
That is exactly the point. If free schools are to be built, the money must be found somewhere, and the Government are struggling at the moment. They have raised £50 million by scrapping a few computer projects, which were described as low-capacity but would have been important to the people who would have benefited from them, but where will the money come from after that?
A week or two before the election, the Secretary of State said that funding the free schools programme would require cuts of 15% in the Building Schools for the Future programme. That is a direct quotation. It has not been corrected, and I have not heard it claimed that it was taken out of context. As I have said, that is really where the money will come from.
I am trying to be helpful to the Government and the Committee. We oppose the Bill, but we recognise that the Government will probably push it through. Even if that is the case, however, the whole point of the Committee stage is to try to improve the Bill by amending it, and to raise issues of great importance. That is why it is so disappointing that Members—on both sides of the Committee—cannot amend the Bill. I recognise that the Bill has come from the Lords, but it is astonishing that we will have spent three days debating it on the Floor of the House and not one amendment will have been allowed. I am not a political or legislative historian, but I cannot imagine that many other Bills can have spent three days on the Floor of the House without amendment. I say in all honesty to the Minister that I will not be surprised if we find sneaked into the Bill that will be coming in the autumn a couple of little measures tweaking and putting right one or two things in this Bill, because that is what usually happens when Governments rush through legislation—afterwards they think, “Oh dear, there is a problem.”
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)
The hon. Gentleman will know that there are 75 amendments and five new clauses on the amendment paper, and the Committee is perfectly entitled to pass any of them.
Vernon Coaker
The hon. Gentleman and I have debated other Bills—indeed, we have served on Bill Committees together—and on those occasions he has made one or two good points to which I have said, “That’s quite a good point, and I’ll come back to it on Report,” and then a Government amendment is introduced. That is the usual process in the House, and when it happens everyone tells this joke: “If it was such a good amendment and the Government have come back with their version of exactly the same proposal, why did you not accept it when it was moved by the Opposition?”
The situation with this Bill is totally different from how the Minister has just described it. Not all the amendments on the amendment paper are in my name—some have been tabled by his hon. Friends, and comments have been made by other Members as well—but we are totally unable to amend the Bill. Let me say to any new Members on the Government Benches who might be tempted to strike out in a spirit of independence by organising to make a change to the Bill through proposing an amendment and seeking to press it to a Division that it would not be very long before those who traditionally sit on the far end of the Treasury Bench came to see them to explain that that was probably not the best thing to do. I just say in all honesty to the Minister that I think it is deeply disappointing that we cannot amend the Bill in the way that many of us would want.
Academies Bill [Lords]
Debate between Lord Coaker and Nick Gibb(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Vernon Coaker
I will give way to the Minister first, and then to my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner). May I make one point first, Mr Hoyle?
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)
It’s your speech.
Vernon Coaker
It is my speech; I thank my hon. Friend—for he is my friend—the Minister of State. I will always give way to Members. However, I do not want to hear a point of order at 10 pm about how the Minister went on—[Interruption.] I mean the shadow Minister.
Mr Gibb
I am grateful to the shadow Minister for giving way. He was a very effective schools Minister, and, along with his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, he presided over 200 academies. Did he find that those 200 academies were not involved in their communities, and did not participate in local plans to raise standards across the board? Were they the islands unto themselves that he now claims the new academies will be?
Vernon Coaker
The point is that the whole of that system was based on local consensus. Local authorities and local communities were involved, and difficult and tough decisions were sometimes made in the face of significant opposition. The academies programme was developed on the basis of local agreement, which meant the local community telling schools that they must take part in all the partnerships.
Those were secondary schools, but, as the Minister knows, the amendment deals with the possible extension of academy status to special schools and primary schools, which would involve a massive expansion. A managed expansion is one thing, but, as both Ministers of State will probably point out, the Bill is permissive—permissive, that is, to the extent that it allows almost everything to be done by means of the funding agreement or the direct grant arrangements. Regardless of ideological differences, even Government Back Benchers draw attention to the lack of a statutory requirement for things to be done that people consider necessary, which I think is a serious weakness, particularly as a funding agreement, which is a contract, would ultimately have to be tested in the courts.
Let me say this to the Minister: in all honesty. I am not making a point about the Bill being rushed through; that was dealt with when we debated the programme motion. If I were in charge of the Bill, I would think that, notwithstanding some of the improvements made by the House of Lords—such as the provision for low-incidence special needs, which were mentioned by the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland), and the application to academies of section 4 of the Education Act 1996—when it comes to exclusions, admissions and, in particular, special schools, it is no use talking about things that people “should” do. It is no use saying, “These are important matters on which parents should be consulted. These people should be consulted, and those people should be consulted.” The Bill should lay down an absolute requirement, especially in relation to those with the most profound learning difficulties.
Vernon Coaker
I was going to make the same point, but it has been very well made by my hon. Friend, who brings her own expertise, knowledge and experience to the debate. Her valuable point is now on the record, and no doubt the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) will respond to it.
Mr Gibb
I am grateful to the shadow Minister for giving way again; he is being very generous. He mentioned the insertion in the House of Lords of part 4 of the 1996 Act, which requires an academy to accept a child with special educational needs. His party could have introduced that measure, but did not do so. It is this Bill that is making the change in the law relating to children with special needs.
Vernon Coaker
Changes in policy always improve as they go through Parliament, particularly when, as was the case in the House of Lords, amendment is possible. Now a hugely important Bill is being dealt with on the Floor of the House of Commons, but unless something remarkable happens, no amendments will be made. Members, not only Labour Members but Members on the Government Benches, may well propose equally important amendments to the Bill as it stands, but it will not be possible for them to be accepted.
We have our ideological differences and our views about what is right and what is wrong about the academies programme, but—I know I am repeating myself—although four or five important points have been made about academies and consultation, unless Members wish to make problems for themselves, it will not be possible for the Bill in its current form to be amended. The Minister mentioned one amendment that was made in the House of Lords, and other good amendments were made there but, notwithstanding what we may feel about special schools becoming academies, no amendments can be made in this place to improve the position.
The ability of special schools to become academies is not only highly problematic, but very dangerous to their status as a whole local authority resource. At present, local authority-maintained special schools play a critical role in the provision of support for pupils whose circumstances mean that attendance at a mainstream school is not appropriate. In that respect, special schools are a key feature of a genuinely inclusive education system that seeks to provide additional support on the basis of objective assessments of pupils’ needs, and of the settings in which those needs might best be met. We all accept that not all pupils can function effectively and access the most appropriate support in a mainstream setting. Maintained special schools are settings managed and administered directly by local authorities and they are in place for the benefit of all local pupils. In that respect, they demonstrate the value of a local authority-provided, commonly accessible educational resource upon which all settings can draw when necessary. The ability of local authorities to act in this way in respect of special schools means that additional support for pupils can be delivered on the basis of both a comprehensive and coherent assessment of local needs and best value for money. The Minister needs to address some of the concerns on this matter, and must explain to us how this coherence of provision will be maintained when special schools become academies.
Vernon Coaker
Let me finish the point, and then I will, of course, give way.
It is the same with the equality impact assessments. They relate to existing academies, which are all secondary schools, so there is nothing in them about primary schools. Yet this is supposed to be the evidence base for the Bill. Frankly—although I am going to say this gently to the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, as we get along—this is not good enough. For all of us to look at the evidence for or against this Bill and to analyse, discuss, debate or disagree with it, and to say what has been missed out of it or what should have been included in it, we require an evidence base—but there is no evidence in it. We are told that if conversion to academies goes ahead, the GCSE results will be 1.5% what might have been expected if the schools had not converted. What on earth has that got to do with primary schools? This is a very serious point and at some stage the Minister will have to answer it.
Vernon Coaker
The evidence came from the local people, the local authority and local schools discussing with each other the best way forward for educational provision in their area. That was our academy model, not the model that the hon. Gentleman supports, whereby local authorities are completely missed out of the equation, and there is not even a statutory right to ensure that parents are consulted. It was sometimes difficult, but we ensured that local people and local authorities were involved in those decisions.
Mr Gibb
That is an opinion, not evidence. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point about opinion, but the evidence is clearly set out in the impact assessment, headed “evidence base”. It describes the huge success of the city technology colleges and their increasingly good academic results over the years since they were established. Cannot the shadow Minister extrapolate evidence from that to special schools and primary schools? That is what policy making is all about—taking the existing evidence and applying it to other forms of schooling.
Vernon Coaker
It is not for me to extrapolate, but for the Government to demonstrate through evidence. I am no longer in government: the Minister is. He, in his new role, should present the evidence. The Secretary of State signed off the impact assessment. If he wanted to do what the Minister claims, why did he not amend it? I am sure that he read it carefully, word for word. Why did he not notice that primary schools were not mentioned, go back to his officials and say, “We haven’t mentioned primary schools in this. Do you know what? The shadow Minister will get up and say that, because it’s in the Library notes—the House of Commons Library has noticed, too.” I repeat that it is not for me to extrapolate.
Mr Gibb
The evidence base is the same one that the shadow Minister used when, as my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) said, he signed off all-through academies. Consulting local opinion is not evidence for the early years sections of all-through academies. The evidence that the hon. Gentleman looked at will have been the success of the academies movement as a whole. We have based our policy on that.
Vernon Coaker
The Minister has not set the evidence out. The impact assessments mention CTCs, but not primary schools. The Minister makes a good debating point when he says that CTCs have primary sections, and they are therefore covered. I think that if the Government could rewind the clock three, four or five weeks—whenever the assessments were prepared—the Minister would ensure that primary schools and special schools were included, particularly in the equality impact assessment.
Mr Gibb
No primary school is being forced down any channel, that is the whole essence of the proposals. We will not let academies fail, and if they are struggling intervention measures and monitoring will take place to ensure that different sponsors can take them over.
We want all schools that want academy status to be able to apply for it, and we do not intend to deny certain schools that option. Nor do we believe that a delay of two years before primary schools can apply to convert is necessary or appropriate. However, we will see whether any lessons can be learned from the primaries that convert this September. Furthermore, we encourage federations or partnership arrangements that wish to convert, as well as proposals for all-through academies.
I should also point out that when there are challenges with primaries—for example, with shared or co-located services such as children’s centres—we intend to work through them with all the relevant partners to ensure that services are maintained without interruption. That may mean that the process of conversion takes a little longer, but it is important to do things correctly.
The hon. Member for Gedling seemed to express no principle objection. He cited all-through academies, but said that things were different for stand-alone primaries owing to their size and the fact that their location communities could be at risk, but why? In another place, the Under-Secretary of State, Lord Hill of Oareford, said:
“The local primary school is very much part of the village where I live and I know that that is true throughout the country…If an outstanding local primary were to become an academy, it is not clear why it should automatically become less of a part of the local community, village or town life. It will have the same head, staff, parents and children with some additional freedoms. I am not clear why the change of status should suddenly make those people in their villages, towns and communities suddenly start to behave differently.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 6 July 2010; Vol. 720, c. 125.]
That is a very well expressed answer to the questions asked throughout the debate on the Bill on whether academies will continue to be part of the community. Of course they will. There is no evidence from the 203 academies, other than the one cited by the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), that they are any more or less involved in their communities than maintained schools. I am sure that the hon. Member for Gedling did not preside over the 203 academies with a view to them being islands unto themselves and isolated from the community.
Vernon Coaker
Of the 203 schools to which the Minister refers, how many are primary schools?
Mr Gibb
Thank you very much, Mr Evans. I will seek to do so.
There will be parent governors on the governing bodies of the schools, so they will not be divorced from them. We are trying to be permissive and to allow academies to draw up their own arrangements, and to select their own directors for the academy trusts and governors for the school. That is the approach that we want to take; we do not want to take a top-down approach to the governance of schools.
The hon. Member for Gedling mentioned the figure of 200 in the impact assessment. That is an illustrative figure to show the costs and the benefits that would arise if that number of schools were to convert annually. Given that this is permissive legislation, we cannot say that we will require x number of schools to convert annually and that the cost will therefore be y. He also asked for the number of primary schools that had expressed an interest. I can give him a figure, but with all the caveats that my fellow Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) expressed earlier. Of the 1,900 expressions of interest, 862 have been from primary schools, and 529 of the 862 have been judged by Ofsted to be outstanding.
Vernon Coaker
I thank the Minister for that information. How many primary schools does he expect to become academies in September? He has talked about expressions of interest, but how many does he expect actually to convert?
Mr Gibb
It is very hard to say at the moment. I cannot anticipate what the number will be. For every application that has been submitted, there is a named official working with the school. That process is happening right now, and I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman will have to wait until we are able to announce the figure. I think that he will be very pleased with the figure.
Vernon Coaker
But what will happen in counties such as Leicestershire, where the schools are now on holiday? How will the negotiations carry on there?
Mr Gibb
The discussions will carry on through August; not everyone is rushing away. Those schools that are determined to open as academies in September will be working throughout August to achieve that.
The hon. Gentleman raised the issue of the costs of insurance and VAT. Those will be covered by the general annual grant paid to academies. He asked about federations, a question also raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson).
Vernon Coaker
I appreciate that the Minister may not know the answer to this, but what is his estimate of the VAT cost? Is it an additional cost, as I think it might be, for the academies? Is it factored in at 17.5%, and is the increase to 20% in January taken into account?
Mr Gibb
I will happily respond to the hon. Gentleman’s questions. As he knows, having been a Minister, there is a VAT cost because academies, as independent schools, cannot reclaim it, whereas when they were maintained schools the local authority had a reclaim procedure that enabled them to reclaim it. The VAT that academies cannot reclaim at the moment will form part of their funding and does not present a cost to Government; it is simply an internal accounting issue.
There are hard federations and soft federations. A hard federation has one governing body that is shared by the number of schools within it; that governing body can of course apply to become an academy. Soft federations, which have a number of governing bodies, can also apply, regardless of whether one or two of the schools are outstanding. If there are no outstanding schools in the federation, things will take a little longer than if there were.
Primaries with a nursery school will be able to convert to an academy, notwithstanding the fact that the nursery school is within the school. In those circumstances, therefore, the nursery school will become an academy.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the early years foundation stage, which does of course apply to independent schools. Academies are independent schools and the early years foundation stage is statutory, so it will also apply to academies.
The hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) talked about her constituents being unable to get their children into their first choice of primary school. This is absolutely the issue we are debating. We want to raise standards across all schools and to invite new providers into the system, particularly in areas such as those she described, in which there is parental dissatisfaction with existing provision. That is where the focus of our efforts will be.
Mr Gibb
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that important issue on behalf of his constituents, which he has raised before in Westminster Hall debates. I am aware of it, we are concerned about it and I can assure him it will be dealt with.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall raised a number of issues. In particular, he talked about monitoring schools and asked about the Young People’s Learning Agency. I reassure him that it will have the capacity to monitor academies’ performance as the number of academies increases over the years. He also asked about buying back services from local authorities. That is very much part of the model. Just because a school opts to become an academy, it does not mean that it will sever its links with the local authority, or will not continue to use local authority services. Local authorities that provide high-quality services are more likely to be able to sell them to academies.
I listened carefully to my hon. Friend’s comments, and will continue to reflect on his arguments, but I make three points, which are best summed up by the Minister in the other place, my noble Friend Lord Hill:
“First…we believe that the number of primaries that will convert in the very first wave is likely to be very modest. Secondly, the Secretary of State has made it clear that he will keep the situation under review and learn any lessons from the first primary converters.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 6 July 2010; Vol. 720, c. 127.]
His third point was that there will be an annual report to Parliament on the progress of academies policy. Noble Lords from my hon. Friend’s party managed to persuade the Minister in the other place to put that requirement on the statute book. That report is precisely the vehicle through which to consider the impact of academies policy on primary schools.
Having made those few remarks, I very much hope that I have persuaded the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend not to press their amendments.
Vernon Coaker
I thank the Minister for his response and the information that he gave us in answer to some of our questions. The issue of VAT is interesting; I am not quite sure of the mechanism involved, but if the Department for Education reimburses schools, hopefully the Treasury will reimburse the Department. I am not quite sure which way round that goes, but I leave the issue with the Minister and will see whether he is more successful with that argument about money than the Department was in its argument about Building Schools for the Future money.
Some of the answers to questions posed by Members from across the Chamber demonstrate that the Bill has been rushed, and demonstrate problems with what the policy will mean in practice. It is interesting that in many respects—this is not so much the case for primaries as for special schools—the Minister is saying, “Trust us. This is permissive legislation; we will sort out some of the detail after we’ve legislated, hopefully in the next education and schools Bill, in the autumn.” That is not particularly appropriate. I understand why the Government want to rush through this legislation—they see it as flagship—but the Minister himself said, in answer to various questions, that issues are being worked on.
Let me give the Minister one example. If I were trying to be nasty to him, I would ask him to explain to the Committee how the ready reckoner on the DFE website works. I am sure that he understands, but nobody else knows how it works. The point is not whether he understands it, but whether anybody out there does. It is telling that large numbers of primary—and, indeed, secondary—schools trying to work out what becoming an academy would mean for them find it difficult to make the ready reckoner work. Some local authorities have been astonished to find that when they put their figures in, it seems that they would pay out more money than they receive. There is some work to be done on that, and no doubt that issue is one that will be looked at when the detail is sorted.
Mr Gibb
Is it not an indictment of 13 years of Labour Government that outstanding schools are disproportionately in areas of affluence? That is the best example of that Government’s track record that could be revealed, and the hon. Gentleman has revealed it to the Committee.
Vernon Coaker
That could be a debate that the hon. Gentleman will want to have another time. The context for this debate, though, is to consider the changed profile of schools that wish to become academies as opposed to the profile of schools that are already academies. We are debating a different situation in which those academies, through a funding agreement rather than through statutory legislation, now have to abide by various things such as admissions codes, exclusions and so on. That is the point that we are making about the genuine difference between these two sets of the schools and the need for some of the amendments that we have before us.
Vernon Coaker
That is absolutely the case, and people are concerned that schools that are already fairly exclusive in many respects may not wish to admit pupils of that type.
I shall give an example of how difficult the matter is, and I hope that the Minister will comment specifically on it. The Government’s view is that none of our suggestions needs to be on the face of the Bill. We fundamentally disagree, hence the amendments that we have tabled. We do not believe it is enough for the admissions provisions to be set out simply in the funding agreements. One of the most fundamental changes that I can find in annexe A of the draft funding agreement, on admissions—I am sure there are many others—relates to the annual procedures for determining admissions arrangements. In the current model agreement, the relevant annexe contains detailed provisions with which an academy has to comply in order to remain within the terms of the funding agreement. The proposed draft completely removes those provisions.
Somebody cynical would ask why, when the Government are seeking to reassure Members throughout the House who want a fair admissions process, the Minister or the Department has signed off a model funding agreement that removes some of the detailed provisions on admissions.
Mr Gibb
What we are trying to do across government at the moment is reduce the bureaucratic burdens faced by the public services. However, the model funding agreement still applies the law on admissions, as well as the admissions code and admissions appeal code, to all converting academies. It achieves exactly the same effect as before, and academies will be on exactly the same basis as maintained schools when it comes to admissions. We can achieve that with fewer words.
Vernon Coaker
The question to the Minister is therefore why he does not put that in the Bill.
Vernon Coaker
The model that the Minister is working to is one that will lead to a massive expansion in academies right across the country, not just 200 at secondary schools in areas of social disadvantage and educational underperformance. The new academies will be outstanding schools that are already doing well and are socially advantaged, and that have a totally different profile from existing academies. At the same time as Members throughout the Committee are raising concerns about what the impact of that will be on admissions to the new academies, the Minister weakens the model funding agreement. Those things are tucked away—they are not deliberately hidden—in model funding agreements. We need to compare funding agreements, as I will with respect to exclusions, but significant changes in provisions are included in them.
Mr Gibb
They will be subject to the same fair access protocols that have been agreed by other schools in the area. The position will be no different from the one that existed before the school became an academy.
It seems unreasonable to deny existing selective schools freedoms, or to require them to change their nature fundamentally before being granted those freedoms. For clarification, we are not allowing non-selective schools to begin selecting by ability; we are merely facilitating a change in status for existing maintained schools, including those with academic selection.
Vernon Coaker
Will the Minister comment on Lord Hill’s letter, in which he says that grammar schools will have the ability to extend selection?
Mr Gibb
I will deal with that, but I want to respond to all the points in order.
My hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady) tabled amendment 49. I pay tribute to him, not just because he is chairman of the 1922 committee, and therefore chief of the men in suits, but because of his highly principled support for grammar schools in his constituency and elsewhere in the country. I was hugely impressed by the quality of education in Trafford. I visited Wellington high school, which has GCSE results that many comprehensive schools throughout the country would envy. From memory—I visited the school a few years ago—67% of pupils gained five or more GCSEs including English and maths, and that school had experienced 40% of the most able children going elsewhere. I also visited Ashton on Mersey school, which is exemplary, as well as Trafford grammar school for girls, which impressed me.
Amendment 49 would directly apply sections 105 to 109 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 to wholly selective academies. That legislation governs the mechanisms for removing selection from maintained grammar schools either through parental ballot or by the governing body introducing proposals to remove selection. Neither the grammar school ballots legislation nor current provisions that allow governing bodies of grammar schools to introduce proposals to remove selection apply to academies. We do not believe that that means that academies have fewer protections than maintained schools when removing selection is an issue. Indeed, one could argue that the ballot mechanism gives parents a route to removing selection in maintained selective schools. I listened to my hon. Friend carefully, and although the amendment might protect selection when that is the wish of parents, we do not believe that it could necessarily frustrate statutory proposals to remove selection that the governing body of a maintained selective school made. He knows that the ballot process has a high trigger threshold, requiring a petition from at least 20% of the eligible electorate.
The Government’s arrangements for academies are a more significant protection of the ethos of any school, including selective schools. I want to go into some detail about that because it is important. Outstanding schools that convert will essentially be self-sponsoring. That means that existing governors will become the new academy trust. In the case of a foundation school with a foundation—a grammar school with an ancient foundation—that converts to academy status, the foundation will be responsible for appointing the majority of governors on the governing body of an academy, a greater proportion than currently exists in a maintained school. That will make it possible for the foundation to maintain the academy’s ethos, including its selective ethos, over an extended period.
Mr Gibb
Well, it can do, because even under the previous Government, when the hon. Gentleman presided over this, it was the case that grammar schools could expand by up to 25% without publishing statutory proposals. Under that code, and under his Administration, grammar schools were permitted to expand by up to 25%, so we are not changing the fundamentals behind the expansion of grammar schools. They still have to demonstrate that there is a fundamental need and that consultation has taken place.
Vernon Coaker
What I was asking, even if we were wrong, is how what he has just said squares with the exclusion of grammar schools in paragraph 1.22 of the admissions code.
Mr Gibb
The provision is consistent in the same way that it was consistent with the arrangement under the hon. Gentleman’s Administration, and under current law on maintained grammar schools—[Interruption.] Well, the hon. Gentleman was the Minister who presided over the introduction of these regulations, so he should know why these schools are currently allowed to expand by 25% and that that provision is still consistent with the admissions code.
Vernon Coaker
I do not have a problem with these things; if I was wrong, I was wrong. The hon. Gentleman is the Minister now. It is no good blaming me; he has responsibility for it now. All I am asking is how what he has just said corresponds to that aspect of the school admissions code.
Mr Gibb
I am very happy to write to the hon. Gentleman if he would prefer that.
The hon. Gentleman also asked about the exclusion of children with special educational needs. As he will know, the current 203 academies have a higher proportion of children with SEN and they exclude such children disproportionately less than maintained schools.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) raised the concern that freeing faith schools from the national curriculum would create a risk of their teaching creationism, but there is no risk of that because they will still be required to teach a broad and balanced curriculum. The funding agreement will continue to require academies to teach religious education. For non-faith delegated academies, that means teaching the locally agreed syllabus; for faith schools it means teaching a curriculum in accordance with the tenets of the relevant faith. That is the same requirement as applies to voluntary-aided schools.
My hon. Friend also raised the issue of schools converting to academy status. As I have just said, the same rules apply as for maintained schools that want to convert to faith schools: they have to go through the whole process of re-designation, which requires the permission of the Secretary of State.
My hon. Friend asked where provision on the 50% rule is. It is not in the funding agreement, but we would not enter into a funding agreement that included admissions arrangements that allowed faith selection of more than 50%. That is a policy position, but it has been confirmed in both Houses and I confirm again that we will not sign funding agreements with new faith schools that intend to select more than half their intake on the basis of faith.
The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) asked about co-ordinated admissions arrangements. I am happy to assure her that they will apply. She also asked about levers for enforcing the admissions code. The Young People’s Learning Agency will ensure compliance with funding agreements on behalf of the Secretary of State. If an academy breached an obligation in its funding agreement, the YPLA would seek to enforce the obligation and the Secretary of State could ultimately do so through the courts. The Secretary of State has a specific power within the funding agreement to direct the admission of an individual pupil or to direct the amendment of an academy’s admissions arrangements if they do not comply with the code.
The hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson), who is not in her place, asserted that the new academies will increase social division, but they will not. The Bill states at clause 1(6)(c) that academies must provide
“education for pupils of different abilities”,
and at clause 1(6)(d) that they must provide
“education for pupils who are wholly or mainly drawn from the area in which the school is situated.”
In response to the queries of my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Mr Hancock), the admissions code requires fair and inclusive admission arrangements and outlaws any notion of cherry-picking. Of course, the academies will be bound by the code. Academies must be part of local fair access protocols, which require them to admit their fair share of challenging pupils, some of whom are likely to have been permanently excluded from other schools.
This has been an interesting and wide-ranging debate. I have spoken for long enough and I hope that I have managed to reassure my hon. Friends in both parts of the coalition and Opposition Members. I hope that on the basis of the assurances I have given, hon. Members will feel able to withdraw their amendments.
Academies Bill [Lords]
Debate between Lord Coaker and Nick Gibb(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)
This has been an interesting debate to which many Members on both sides of the House contributed. The number of Members who wanted to speak shows clearly the importance of the Bill, and there are clear divisions of principle between Government and Opposition Members. I am happy to be called a dinosaur or labelled old-fashioned simply because I want to defend this country’s comprehensive system to ensure that there is excellence for all, that every single school has the resources that it deserves, and that we do not pit one school or one community against another.
Many hon. Members spoke of the rush to take this legislation through. Interestingly, the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) suggested that we perhaps need to look at one or two aspects, and many Government Members said that we should consider amendments to improve the Bill. On cue, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), the Chair of the Education Committee, has come into the Chamber—he too thinks that the Bill is being rushed through. However, he understands that, should the House of Commons choose to amend any clause, schedule or subsection, it would cause the Leader of the House, who is in the Chamber, great difficulty. As he, I and everybody in the House knows, there is no Report stage, and the Bill could go straight from Committee to Third Reading. That works on the presumption that there will be no amendment in Committee and that business will be finished by a certain time. We know not only that there is no Report, but that if an amendment is made in Committee, the Bill must to go back to the House of Lords, which would be a problem.
The Secretary of State’s Bill may be radical—his view is that it is a flagship Bill and a really important piece of educational reform—but he should not rush it through the House in an unprecedented way. Such procedure is usually reserved for anti-terror measures or legislation in an extreme emergency. The Bill is about the future of education. As was witnessed in numerous speeches by Members on both sides of the House, there are big issues of principle to be debated, and they deserve proper consideration. We should have the opportunity to table amendments and the Government should have the opportunity to choose whether to accept them.
My hon. Friends the Members for North West Durham (Pat Glass), for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop), for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) and for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) laid out their concerns about the rush. Indeed, the hon. Member for Southport (Dr Pugh) said that he too was concerned. The Chair of the Select Committee pointed out the difficulty with the way in which the Bill is being handled.
Several concerns were raised by hon. Members on both sides. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) talked about structures being placed above the quality of teachers. The lack of consultation and the supersession of the role of local authorities was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). The need for greater fairness for children was mentioned by my hon. Friends the Members for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) and for North West Durham. The problem of the Bill creating a two-tier education system and the way in which it will undermine social justice were mentioned by my hon. Friends the Members for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson), for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) and for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi).
Mr Gibb
This Bill has 20 clauses, to be debated in Committee over three days. That is between six and seven clauses a day. Compare that with the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill with which the hon. Gentleman was involved, where we debated 42 clauses in each day in Committee.
Vernon Coaker
The hon. Gentleman needs to explain why it will be impossible to amend the Bill, why it will have no Report stage, and—if it is not impossible to amend the Bill—whether he would welcome amendments. Some of his Back Benchers have serious concerns about the Bill, but if he accepted amendments, we would have to have a Report stage and the Bill would have to go back to the House of Lords.
My hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) mentioned the differences in the profiles of the new academies as opposed to those of existing academies. That set out for us clearly the difference between the academies programme as pursued by my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood and the previous Government in which academies were designed to tackle social disadvantage and educational underperformance in some of our poorest communities and the schools that have applied for academy status under this Government, which have lower proportions of children with special needs and are in much more socially advantaged areas.
To be fair to Government Members, we heard some good contributions, which were not all supportive of the Government. The hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) seemed to suggest that amendments were needed, but was unsure about how he could achieve them. I suggest that the Minister of State consider that point.
I thought that the speech by the hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward) was excellent. He explained why the Academies Bill is unnecessary and will in fact undermine the education system. I very much agreed with him. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East, whom I cannot see her in her place, also made some good points about special needs.
We all thought that the speech by the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) about the need to ensure that the Bill in no way disadvantages those with special needs was an important contribution and we all learnt from his comments. Other hon. Members also made important contributions.
Apart from the name, this Government’s academies policy could not be further removed from the values and goals that underpinned the introduction of academies under Labour. We believed in practical, targeted intervention to help struggling schools, not a free-market free-for-all. We believed that if a school was already judged outstanding, it was clearly succeeding within the existing framework and could only be damaged by centralised, ideologically driven policy experiments. We believed in local accountability, not unwieldy powers for a Secretary of State far removed from the realities of local circumstances. We believed in local co-operation and mutual support, not isolation, competition and division. We believed in fair funding and fair admissions, not the introduction of unfair advantages and resources to be exploited at the expense of those already most vulnerable within the education system. We believed in evidence over ideology. We believed in listening to educationalists, teachers, head teachers and other professionals who understand better than anyone what does and does not work on the ground.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Coaker and Nick Gibb(14 years, 5 months ago)
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Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)
May I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his post and wish him well in it? He shadowed me on a number of occasions, and now I am shadowing him. However, is not the excellent progress made by academies in the past 12 months the result of the involvement in their development of parents and teachers and, as the hon. Member for Southport (Dr Pugh) said, of local authorities? Is placing such power in the hands of the Secretary of State not therefore a huge step backwards and a hugely centralising measure? Why are local decision making on the development of academies, parent power and devolution being replaced by centralisation and the exclusion of parents, local authorities and teachers from that process?
Mr Gibb
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his kind words; it is nice to be on the Government side of the House, instead of on the other side. However, this is not a centralising but a decentralising measure, beyond the local authority and down to the school level. This is about trusting professionals and having faith in the autonomy of schools. Our advice to schools is that it is important for them to discuss with parents and pupils their intention to convert. Existing legislation for setting up academies does not require such consultation with parents, so even when the hon. Gentleman was the Minister for Schools, there was no requirement for academies to consult parents.