Schools White Paper
Debate between Wes Streeting and Baroness Morgan of Cotes(8 years, 7 months ago)
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Nicky Morgan
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
As I say, we have over £500 million available in this Parliament to build capacity, including recruiting excellent sponsors and encouraging the development of strong multi-academy trusts. As ever, however, the back-of-a-fag-packet calculation that the hon. Member for Manchester Central seems so fond of, and that was put out by the Labour party press office, uses grossly inaccurate costings—in one case, for example, erroneously calculating that the average cost of academisation will be £66,000. In fact, costs per academy have fallen from over £250,000 in 2010-11 to £32,000 today. The cost per academy will continue to fall significantly in the years ahead as we move towards full academisation.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
The Secretary of State talks about the £500 million available in this Parliament. Will she give an undertaking to publish in great detail the Department’s costings to reassure us that this is indeed a fully funded policy and that all the costs have been fully taken into account? I am afraid to say that her figures seem a bit pie in the sky.
Nicky Morgan
I assure the hon. Gentleman that my figures are absolutely not pie in the sky. We publish a huge amount of information and if he wants to write to me about how much it will cost to academise all the schools in his constituency, I will be happy to respond.
Further Education
Debate between Wes Streeting and Baroness Morgan of Cotes(9 years ago)
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Nicky Morgan
I am not going to take any interventions for a while. I am going to make some more arguments and then Labour Members can come back and try to justify their track record in government, which is woeful.
Our analysis, backed by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, shows that the boost in the number of pupils getting good GCSE grades in England since 2010 is estimated to add around £1.3 billion to the country’s economy. Pupils who achieve five or more good GCSEs including England and maths as their highest qualification will each add on average around £100,000 more to the economy over their lifetimes than someone with below level 2 or no qualifications.
Had the Opposition chosen this business for the week after next, we could have had an informed debate about the post-16 settlement for the next four years, but they did not choose that. They chose to have an opportunistic, scaremongering debate today.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Wes Streeting and Baroness Morgan of Cotes(9 years ago)
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Nicky Morgan
My hon. Friend, who chairs the Committee, is absolutely right that any solution must be for the long term. I can assure him that, were there to be any changes, there would be an extensive consultation, in which I hope members of the Committee as well as members of the public, including schools, teachers and parents across the country, would be involved.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
Redbridge, like many other parts of London, faces an acute shortage of places in primary and secondary provision over the course of this Parliament. Will the Secretary of State or a relevant Minister agree to meet me and representatives from the local authority to discuss this? Will she consider allowing local authorities such as Redbridge with a good track record of local authority maintained schools not only to expand existing local authority schools but to build new ones?
Nicky Morgan
I or one of the Ministers will be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman. I remind him that in the previous Parliament we put in an extra £5 billion into the system to build new places, and we have committed another £7 billion for new places across the system. Of course, his own party took out funding for 200,000 places at a time of growing pupil numbers.
Education and Adoption Bill
Debate between Wes Streeting and Baroness Morgan of Cotes(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Nicky Morgan
The right hon. Lady is welcome to write to me about those specific cases. If those young people were not given the right to appeal, they certainly should have been. However, it is important to be on the side of teachers and those in charge of schools who make decisions about exclusions. It is also important to make sure that there is the right education provision for those young people who, for whatever reason, cannot be in mainstream schooling. We are seeing that provision as a result of innovations in our school system.
Nicky Morgan
No, I will make some progress.
I turn now to regional schools commissioners. As the number of academies grows we must ensure decisions are taken by those with a real understanding of what works locally, which is why we have devolved decision making on academies to a regional level. Eight regional schools commissioners were appointed last year to oversee academies across the country. The education measures in the Bill will be enacted by those commissioners, supported by the advice of the outstanding headteachers who have been elected to regional boards. Regional schools commissioners will be acting on my behalf and I will be accountable to Parliament for the decisions they make. The headteachers on those boards are all experts in their areas, with years of experience across the school sector, backed by other schools in their area. As headteachers of strong schools, they know what it takes to make a school effective.
Nicky Morgan
I am delighted to hear that the hon. Gentleman and other Opposition Members are in favour of academies, in which case they should go into the Lobby tonight to support the Bill, which makes it clear that we will not tolerate failure in schools across this country and will take swift action, regardless of whether they are academies or maintained schools. The Opposition’s amendment is muddle-headed because they have tried to find a reason to oppose the Bill, but they cannot. The hon. Gentleman and Opposition Members do not understand what is needed to tackle failure and have found a spurious reason to table an amendment. If they support academies, they should join us in the Lobby tonight.
Nicky Morgan
No. I am going to turn to failing schools.
No one in this House can argue that we do not have a duty to transform failing schools. For those schools, urgent action is required, and the Bill introduces tough new measures to turn around failing schools from day one. In the past, such transformation could be delayed or even blocked altogether by pressure groups or unions with ideological objections to transferring power from town halls to outstanding heads and teachers.
The Bill makes it clear that an academy order will be issued for all schools judged inadequate by Ofsted, enabling them to become sponsored academies. The Bill sweeps away bureaucracy and loopholes that currently mean it takes, on average, more than a year from the day that a school is judged inadequate to the day that it opens as a sponsored academy.
For some schools, it can take even longer. The Warren comprehensive school in Barking and Dagenham had never been judged better than satisfactory by Ofsted. In February 2013, Ofsted said the school required special measures once again. It took eight months for the governing body to vote against becoming an academy. The then Secretary of State decided to pursue academy conversion, which the governing body and local authority challenged through the courts. The school eventually opened as a sponsored academy, 19 months after Ofsted deemed that it was failing to give pupils an acceptable standard of education. While adults bickered and delayed, the young people in that school had to spend almost two academic years in a learning environment that was failing them. That cannot be right.
Wes Streeting
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way, and for that example. Does she therefore believe that her predecessor was wrong to listen to the parents, governors and local authority in the case of Snaresbrook primary school, which serves pupils in my constituency? It was deemed inadequate and was going to be converted into an academy, but after listening to the evidence put forward by parents, pupils and the local authority, it is now in the local authority family. Was the previous Secretary of State wrong to do that?
Nicky Morgan
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and welcome him to the House, as I have not heard him speak here before. I cannot comment on the individual circumstances, but my predecessor did not have the option to make an academy order. We will not tolerate the failure of schools. There will be conversion because the academy process, by bringing in a strong sponsor, makes the difference in turning around schools, many of which have languished under local authority control, failing for months on end.
As I was saying, what happened at the Warren school cannot be right. By issuing an academy order straight away, we will ensure that a long-term solution is in place as soon as possible. To further tackle unnecessary delays and ensure swift progress to academy status, the Bill introduces a new duty on governing bodies and local authorities to actively progress the conversion of failing schools into academies. That will send a clear and unambiguous message to all parts of the system that any unnecessary delay is unacceptable when it comes to improving the life chances of our children.