Education and Adoption Bill

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to speak on this important Bill. I congratulate all those on both sides of the House who have made their maiden speech today, and done so very well.

I have an interest in the debate as a primary school governor, at Grove primary school in Chadwell Heath, and as a councillor—an unpaid councillor, I should emphasise, given recent media reports—in the London borough of Redbridge, so I have several different perspectives on the Bill.

I want to respond first to a comment made by the hon. Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes), in her enthusiastic speech, on the record of the last Labour Government. The Conservatives really need to decide whether they are the heirs to Blair, championing the school reforms that they are happy to laud in the misguided hope that we will feel uncomfortable or embarrassed by the fact that during our 13 years in government we made an enormous difference or whether they want to talk down the record of the Labour Government. They really cannot have it both ways.

As one who went to school under the last Labour Government and saw the improvements that were made, I am proud of the fact that we transformed the fabric of our schools through Building Schools for the Future. The secondary school I attended is now unrecognisable. It is an academy and its results have improved enormously. I am proud of the programmes the Labour Government introduced, such as the sponsored academies programme, which has delivered investment and greater freedoms and autonomy for our schools, excellence in cities and the London Challenge, tackling poor school performance, increasing educational achievement and tackling the inequality and educational disadvantage that hold back too many people, in particular those from the most disadvantaged families. I am also proud of initiatives started when we were in government, such as fast-track teaching and the major recruitment campaigns such as “Those who can, teach”, as well as the introduction of routes such as Teach First. Not only did we improve the quality and quantity of people entering the teaching profession, but we raised the standards and status of the profession.

That stands in stark contrast to the record of the five years of the coalition Government in terms of low morale and teachers leaving the profession in droves because of dissatisfaction caused by the Government’s reforms and the extent to which Ministers, for political gain, are happy to beat up on the teaching profession in the hope of bumping up a few points in the opinion polls. The present Government should show some humility about the record they inherit from the coalition. Ministers should come to the Dispatch Box with more answers about how to address the problems than we heard last Thursday, when my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) raised these issues in her Adjournment debate.

This is the first education Bill that we have had from a Conservative Government since the 1990s, and it says an awful lot about this Conservative Government and their aspirations and breadth of ambition for our schools that the Bill is so thin and so ill-defined. If the Secretary of State for Education, when she was at the Dispatch Box earlier, had not been so busy providing a running commentary on the Labour leadership contest—perhaps she is launching her own gambit for the Conservative leadership contest that we will see in the next couple of years—maybe she would have had time to provide a little more definition to a Bill whose Second Reading she expects us to troop into the Lobby and vote for this evening.

Not only does the Bill think small, but it continues the mistakes of the previous Government. There is a misguided focus on one part of the system, local authority maintained schools, and one solution, academisation. I have no doubt that for some schools conversion to an academy and bringing in new leadership and new funding is the right way to turn around people’s life chances through improvement in the quality of provision at the school, but as so many Opposition Members have said this afternoon, that is just one route towards improvement. I challenged the Secretary of State earlier with a case study from my own borough, where Snaresbrook primary school was deemed by Ofsted to be failing. Action was already being taken by the local authority in partnership with the governors, the parents and the pupils, and as a result of those efforts the school was already on the path to improvement, with renewed leadership and a re-energised and refocused governing body. To have forced academisation at that stage, as the Bill would require, would have disrupted progress.

The Secretary of State’s predecessor was right to listen to local people, parents and the Conservative-led local authority at the time and conclude that it was right for the school to continue as part of the local authority family because it had a clear sense of how it would move forward. I am pleased to report that Snaresbrook primary school has made considerable improvements within the local authority family.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

I have listened with care to the eloquent representations that are being made, but is it not dangerous, whichever side of the argument one is on, to paint one era as being rosy and another era as being grim? Under Labour, it is a fact that standards slipped. In the PISA league standards we went from 8th to 28th in maths and from 7th to 25th in reading. Although I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman’s school bucked that trend, it is correct to say that these are—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman should resume his seat. Interventions must be short. He cannot make a speech, only a quick intervention in order to allow the person who is speaking to respond. If he wanted to make a speech, he would have been better off putting his name down. That is good advice. I am sure he has finished speaking. Is that correct?

[Alex Chalk]

Yes, Mr Deputy Speaker.

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful for the intervention, because the hon. Gentleman makes precisely the point that I am trying to make and reflects the narrow-minded ideologically driven view that the only route to improvement is academisation. That is exactly what the Bill presents us with. What we had before was the flexibility to look at the particular circumstances of a school and decide whether it was right that it should be converted to an academy or remain part of the local authority family, or whether other means for improvement should be considered. The Bill would remove the flexibility that the previous Secretary of State exercised in the case of the local primary school in my borough and would compel it to become an academy, which may or may not be the right way forward. If the hon. Gentleman is on the Bill Committee, perhaps I can gain his support for amendment along those lines.

Other hon. Members have referred to the oversight and inspection of academy chains. Following on from the intervention, it is right that there are some fantastic academy chains which are providing great service to the schools within their family—chains such as Ark and the Harris federation, which are in the business of education for the right reasons. They want to tackle educational inequality and improve life chances and educational outcomes, and those chains do a fantastic job. But I still cannot fathom why Ministers are not listening to the concerns that have been raised by the Sutton Trust and Sir Michael Wilshaw, and even some of the evidence produced by the Department itself, which is that we are doing some schools no service at all by trapping them in academy chains that are failing them. Why do we not open them up to the rigour of inspection? Why do we set academy chains apart and not require them to achieve the same high standards and undergo the same inspections as others do?

This is the contradiction in the Government’s approach. They present Labour Members as taking a narrow-minded ideologically driven dogmatic approach, but it is actually the Government that are taking that approach. It is they who are making an assumption that academy chains can do no wrong, whereas we acknowledge that there is good and bad right across the mixed economy of education. We can accept that. Why cannot the Government do so, and why are they not addressing that question in the Bill?

Contrary to what the Government have said, academies do not always outperform local authority-maintained schools on educational improvement. Of course anyone who wants to skew the statistics in a certain way can draw the conclusion that they want, but the Government should look at the research produced by the National Foundation for Educational Research and others, which compares schools like for like. If we compare similarly performing schools, like for like, and examine them within the context of local authority-maintained schools or academy chain schools, there is not much difference between the two. If there is to be a more evidence-based approach to the debate, Members need to examine the evidence rather than simply parroting propaganda produced in a remarkably poor fashion by the Whips of the governing party.

Finally, I want to mention the definition of “coasting”. The hon. Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes) gave the House what she thought was a very good definition of the term, and in some cases I might even agree with her. I know that she is being billed as a rising star in her party, but with the greatest respect, she is not yet the Education Secretary. We have not heard a definition of coasting schools from either the Secretary of State or Ministers, even though their Bill is now before the House of Commons for its Second Reading and the concept of coasting schools is at its centre. Perhaps the hon. Lady should be on the Government Front Bench, because she is providing the answers that her Ministers are not. For now, however, we have absolutely no idea what coasting schools are, how they will be judged and measured, and how the Secretary of State will intervene to improve them apart from through forced academisation, which I have already said might not be the best way forward. Why on earth those on the Treasury Bench expect us to troop into the Lobby with them to support the Second Reading of such a half-baked Bill I do not know. They need to be a bit more reasonable in their expectations.

The Bill also says absolutely nothing about the people on the fringes of education. For example, there are 17,000 pupils in pupil referral units, only 1.4% of whom will get five good GCSEs. Where do they figure in the Bill? How are their needs going to be addressed? And of course, the Bill is simply looking at the problems that exist now, rather than at the education system of the future. For the Conservatives’ first education Bill since they entered Government to have such a narrow focus shows a real lack of imagination. In this century, this country will have to work and compete very hard on the global stage for the jobs of the future. That will require all our young people to go through an excellent, world-class education system that thinks hard about pedagogy and about the manner and the environment in which we teach in a rapidly changing world. There is absolutely nothing about that context in the Bill. It is a narrow, ill-defined Bill that is unworthy of a Second Reading. I might have been in the House only a short time, but I know a half-baked Bill when I see one. It is time for our coasting Ministers to provide better definitions before turning up with such a Bill.