Education and Adoption Bill

Lord Harris of Peckham Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Peckham (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure that everyone here wants to give every child in this country an outstanding education. Way back in 1988, when my noble friend Lord Baker asked me to start a CTC in an inner city, I thought about it hard. I realise now that it was one of the best decisions of my life to carry on and open the school. It took two years—not only to find the site but to get the local authority to sell the site, to get the parents to agree and to get the governors to agree—which was far too long.

What was the school like that they wanted to keep? It had a 9% pass rate. A school that was built for 1,200 students had only 400. Some 60 students a year were expelled. On average, teachers lasted less than six months. The discipline was awful. So we started from a new sheet of paper. We got a new principal in and a new board of governors. We bought all the school uniform, which 25 years ago was not really respected. But in four years this school changed and went from the 9% pass rate—which was different from GCSEs today—to 54%. It was the most improved school in the country. Five years later it went to 92% and for the second time was the most improved school in the country. This can happen. This can change the lives of many, many children. Today the school that had only 50 people apply for places has between 3,500 and 4,000 applicants for 180 places. We have 1,500 students in the school. In the past three years we have averaged nearly 90% five A to C results and it is one of the most popular schools in the country. So we know it can happen.

The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, helped with academy growth. Between 2002 and 2015 we opened 36 academies. Most of them were in special measures or inadequate. Now, of the secondary schools that we have had for more than two years, 12 are outstanding, four are good and five are yet to get Ofsted reports. It is a pretty good result. It is not down to me; it is down to our teachers and principals, motivating the children to do well, not only in work but in sport. All our schools take sport very seriously.

One of the schools we took over—in Battersea, just down the road—had a pass rate of 37% when we took it over last September. In one year we changed that to 67%—a 30% increase in just one year; these are the same students who the year before got only 37%—and 60% of that school we got to university. That is a fantastic result. One thing I would like the Minister to take note of is that when we did our report on the school in March 2014, it said it had £1.5 million in reserves. When we took over the school six months later, it had only £525,000. Where did that £1 million go? When we asked the question, we were told we did not need to know the answer. That is something that the Minister should take on board, and any academy that takes over from a secondary school should put two governors on the board immediately.

I will talk about a few of our other schools. Three years ago the local authority in Greenwich said, “We don’t want to run the school”. Before it became an academy, the council let us run it. In those three years —two years as an academy and one when we were running it for the local authority—it has gone from a 23% pass rate to a 70% pass rate, and within 18 months was outstanding. South Norwood had a pass rate of 20%. Over the past five years it has averaged 65%. The school is outstanding. This year we got four students from our Crystal Palace school to Oxford and Cambridge. Again, it is changing the lives of the children. In all our academies, 80% of our students get to university. It is down to the hard work of the principals, teachers and support staff and the chief executive Sir Dan Moynihan, motivating the children to do well—which is so important.

Three years ago we started primary schools because we had children come in year 7, aged 11, who could not read and write. It was awful. We took one to two years to get them up to a normal standard. So we decided to open primary schools. We have 17 primary schools now, which include six free schools. Three years ago, 10 of them were in special measures. We now have four outstanding primary schools, six good and seven still to be inspected. We have never had less than “good” after two years for any academy that we have taken over. With our good staff and good management, we hope that we keep that record up.

As for primary schools, we have a school called Coleraine in Tottenham, which had been in special measures for 10 years. Can noble Lords imagine a local authority leaving a school in special measures for 10 years? In 18 months, we changed that school and it became outstanding—from being in special measures for 10 years to outstanding in 18 months. The pass rate there moved up from the low 40s to 83%. In July this year, it was the most improved primary school in the country. What a fantastic achievement for a place like Tottenham.

Then there is Roke Primary School. The parents were so much against this school that they closed one of our shops one day and came out and protested at the Secretary of State’s office in London. What happened to that school? It was in special measures, but in just under one year and one term it became outstanding, with an improvement from 64% last year to 94%. It is a fantastic achievement. Academies with the right management, of which we have quite a few in this country, can change the lives of many pupils. That is what we are all out to do. It is not about who runs the schools or who does the work but about making sure that we give all our children the best education possible. That is what many academy chains in this country are doing: they are improving the standard of education of the people in this country. I know you get figures from the past which say that an academy has not improved. That may be because they had an inspection within six months of taking over the school. That is too early. I am very pleased that the Government are now giving us three years to put a school right. That is very important.

Finally, I would like to mention our school at Westminster, Harris Westminster, which has joined up with Westminster School. We got the building last July and had to open it in September. We opened it in September with 142 students. The school is mostly for very bright children who come from poor families—44% of the children have to be on free meals. I am very proud to say that in the first year we expect to get at least 60% of those children to a Russell university and over 95% to university. In this year’s intake, we had 1,100 applicants for 250 places and we took in just short of 300 students. This is changing lives and putting these children, who come from poor families, into a school where we want to get them into Oxford, Cambridge or one of the other top universities. It will change their lives and I recommend noble Lords in this House go over and see this school. It is a fantastic school that is doing a fantastic job.

I am very pleased to say that the Minister, my noble friend Lord Nash, has given us permission to run a training school for teachers. We all know we are short of teachers in this country, but we are training teachers on our top two floors over there. We are currently training 92 teachers this year, and over the next three years we will extend that to more than 500 teachers, who we will be teaching to work in all schools—not only academies but state schools, grammar schools and schools all over the country. We look forward to producing many great teachers and principals for the future.