Academies Bill [Lords]

Andrew Percy Excerpts

Monday 19th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

On the subject of the consultation, we had an interesting answer on the question of schools becoming academies. We were told that there would be consultation. The fact is that the Bill that was published a few weeks ago contained no obligation for any consultation at all. It was only as a result of intervention in the other place that a provision was added to say that there should be consultation, but what obligation does that provision place on schools and governing bodies? It says that they need only consult whomever they think appropriate, and that they can consult before they decide to become an academy or after they have done the deed. The idea that that represents consultation is complete and utter nonsense.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

Listening to the right hon. Gentleman has certainly taken me back to my previous job as a class 1 teacher. On the issue of consultation, is he honestly suggesting that governing bodies, which are made up of schoolteachers, head teachers, parents and interested people from the community, are going to push ahead without going out and talking to parents and other interested parties? If he is saying that, it is a fairly despicable way to describe governing bodies.

[Ed Balls]

I am afraid that the reason why the Secretary of State and his Front-Bench team have added in an obligation to consult is, presumably, that they disagree with the hon. Gentleman. If they were going to consult anyway, there would be no need to build the provision into the Bill. It is there because they know some head teachers and chairs of governors would consult nobody at all, which would be undemocratic and unfair. The reality is that under our academies policy—look, let me turn to the details of the Bill. [Interruption.] Government Members should note that I am at least talking about the Bill, unlike the Secretary of State who did not talk about it at all, and did not mention any clause, any provision or any of the completely undemocratic ways in which our schools system is being railroaded and undermined.

I turn to deal with the detail of the Bill. This Bill does not build on or expand on our academy scheme at all. It is a total and utter perversion of it. Our academies were in the poorest communities and were turning around underperforming schools. As I exposed earlier, the right hon. Gentleman’s policy is about outstanding schools supporting only other outstanding schools—schools that are disproportionately in higher income areas with fewer children with disabilities or special educational needs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Stuart]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention and I share some of those concerns. I hope that, in this coming week, those on the Government Front Bench will be able to allay those concerns. Last week I visited an academy, called the Ashcroft technology academy. It has a centre it calls the ARC, which specialises in looking after children on the autistic spectrum, and an AWA—an academy within an academy—for children otherwise at risk of exclusion. By using those innovations, the academy has done a tremendous job of looking after those with special educational needs as well as intervening to ensure that there is not a higher than average number of exclusions from the school. Academies can be part of the answer and the innovation that they allow can improve the situation in the average school today.

[Andrew Percy]

I thank my next-door neighbour but one for giving way. On that point, does he agree that academies must not be allowed to use exclusions as a way of driving up standards? Does he also agree that what we heard from the shadow Secretary of State failed to recognise that the people in academies are teachers—professionals, and people in a caring profession who went into it for the right reasons? They care about children, and they are the same as teachers in any other state school.

[Mr Stuart]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention and the last thing I would want to do is to disrespect those in the teaching profession. On the other hand, however, in any change in Government, it is enormously important to examine the incentives created for those on the front line. If those incentives incentivise the wrong behaviour, we can expect more of that behaviour.

It is true that academies have twice the rate of permanent exclusions of the average school. A question for those on the Front Bench to answer—perhaps the Schools Minister will do that when he winds up—concerns what steps can be taken to ensure that that rate of exclusions does not continue. What if that rate accelerates under the incentives for the schools in the academy system that have been made free? What powers will remain with the Secretary of State and with local authorities to ensure that that does not happen? We need to understand the incentives in the system. Not every teacher will be the best teacher and not every head will always be driven by the highest possible motives. It is necessary to build a system that is robust, even when it is staffed by people who are not of the highest possible calibre.

Such issues are why I am concerned by the speed at which the legislation is going through Parliament. It would be a great shame if something so potentially beneficial were damaged or discredited by over-hasty execution. The Bill delivers a Conservative manifesto commitment on a policy that has been clear for years, but none the less parliamentary scrutiny is necessary and beneficial for any policy. It should not be rushed and when it is, as the last Administration found, the errors usually rebound on the Government who put it through. I ask Ministers to think carefully about implementation this September—whether we are talking about hundreds or, perhaps, as few as 50 schools. Is it worth the candle to put the Bill through so swiftly? I shall leave Ministers to think about that.

I felt that the Secretary of State was quite right to move swiftly to halt the scandalous waste involved in the Building Schools for the Future programme, notwithstanding the fact that my Committee will take evidence from both the shadow Secretary of State and the Secretary of State next week. I am clear in my opinion on this subject, although I shall of course listen to the evidence and weigh it carefully along with my Committee colleagues.

The embarrassments caused were of the programme’s making, not the Secretary of State’s. His swift action took courage and will result in more building improvements to more schools in more need. Every day of delay cost money and cheated children and he did the right thing. I am not so sure about the speed of this measure, however, and that is why I ask him to reflect on that, but I am absolutely sure that history will judge his move on Building Schools for the Future as both brave and right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pat Glass]

That is the problem—we simply do not know. We have not got the detail. I do not know what the pupil premium will bring. I was talking to a head teacher today who told me, “On the face of it, the premium looks attractive. However, I suspect that when I get it, I will actually lose the standards fund and lose additional educational needs funding. I may end up with less, not more funding for my vulnerable children.” That is the problem. The devil is in the detail and we do not have the detail. The Bill is being rushed through, without giving us the opportunity to look at those matters.

I am concerned that academies will be reluctant to admit vulnerable children because, through no fault of their own, they do not perform as well as their peers. The likelihood of vulnerable children gaining admission, particularly to outstanding schools, will therefore be reduced. I could see nothing in the Bill—I have looked at it carefully—about making the admission of vulnerable children a must. I know only too well that telling head teachers and governors that they should admit is very different from telling them that they must do so. I would like further reassurances that academies’ admissions policies will ensure that children with special educational needs are not disadvantaged.

I am concerned about the accountability framework, particularly for children with SEN. There is no clarity in the Bill on where a parent goes for redress if an academy fails to deliver on SEN, whether the child is statemented or not. Currently, parents can go to the local authority if a school fails to deliver, and ultimately to the SEN tribunal. If a school fails to deliver, a parent has redress through judicial review, but there is no clarity on whether such redress will be available under the Bill, so parents simply will not know where to go if an academy fails to deliver.

It is unclear who will monitor the progress of SEN children in academies. If we have learned anything in the past 10 or 15 years, it is that when the spotlight is put on the performance of vulnerable children, they improve. We have seen that with looked-after children. If there is no clarity on who is monitoring the performance of SEN children, they will simply be lost in the system.

Before my voice packs up altogether, I shall move on to exclusions. I have worked in a number of local authorities, in each of which I have analysed permanent and fixed-term exclusions. The pattern is the same. In my experience, 75% of children who are excluded on a fixed-term or permanent basis have special educational needs. Of those, my analysis shows that 100% have either behavioural difficulties linked to autistic spectrum disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

TreeHouse, a charity that works with children with autism, has found that SEN children are nine times more likely to be excluded from school, and the situation is more acute in academies. If we massively increase the number of academies, we will increase the problem.

[Andrew Percy]

The hon. Lady makes a powerful point, with which I have some sympathy, but she must also accept that the Bill gives schools the ability to tailor their curriculum much more. She will know that part of the problem of dealing with some of our more difficult children is that the curriculum is too restrictive for them. The Bill will give schools more freedom, so it has some positive aspects.

[Pat Glass]

I entirely agree that part of the exclusion problem is the formalisation of the curriculum, which in many cases happens far too early. However, my experience of academies does not give me hope. I do not expect that vast numbers of academies will amend the curriculum to meet the needs of SEN children. Which children are failing? The gap between those who achieve the most and those at the bottom is greatest at outstanding or high-achieving schools. Although I welcome freedom in the curriculum, I have no hope that it will be used for SEN children.

The proposals in the Bill are not well thought out and they are likely to affect adversely the education and life chances of children with SEN. They will make the already difficult lives of children and parents harder, and they will become part of the problem, not part of the solution. I ask simply that we take the time to look at the Bill in relation to the most vulnerable children in our society. If we take that time, the chances are that we will make the Bill that much better for that many more children.

--- Later in debate ---

[Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

The House has been blessed this afternoon that so many contributions have emanated from people who have such experience in matters of education, so it is my choice to lower the tone somewhat drastically.

I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Government’s proposals are ideologically based. This seems to me to be a harking back to almost two decades ago, when the given text for the Conservative Government was essentially “privatising the world”. We have already seen their first incursion into attempting to privatise the NHS and it is clear to me that what is being proposed in this Bill is the first step in, essentially, privatising education. If it does not privatise education in the overt monetary sense, it will certainly revert back to the bad old days of the 11-plus, of a grammar school system and of secondary schools that were much lower than bog-standard. It seems to me that that is what the Government are working for.

For example, my constituency is served by two local authorities—Brent and Camden. Both are looking at a serious shortfall for available school places not only in secondary schools but in junior schools for a variety of reasons, not least the increase in population. Both were savagely disappointed because their schools were taken out of the Building Schools for the Future programme. No one on the Government Benches has been able to give me or any of the head teachers, governors, parents and pupils in Brent and Camden a reason why their schools have been excised—we have been given no economic reasons and certainly no educational reasons.

These local authorities in my constituency are blessed with a multiracial, multi-ethnic society, and it is absurd for the Government to believe that the kind of freedom that they argue will automatically be brought about by the expansion of the academies programme will help some of the most disadvantaged of our children in some of the most disadvantaged areas.

I thought that we had already established in this country that if we truly wish to ensure that disadvantaged areas and disadvantaged children receive the benefits that we expect for our own children—all of us in this Chamber would not accept for our children what it seems to me that the Government intend to impose on other people’s children—we must learn the basic lesson that a school alone cannot do it alone, however much money we pour into it, however much we expand it and however much the teachers wish to work there. That is a point that no one has raised, which is also reflected in a sense in the NHS: there are certainly very deprived areas that teachers do not wish to work in. How will we persuade them to go into there? By giving them more money? Apparently not, because this Government are saying that there is absolutely no money anywhere. The same is true as far as the NHS is concerned—there are certain deprived areas in which GPs do not wish to work.

We cannot simply say to one organ of society that it has to be the sole repository of transforming those areas of our society that we wish to see transformed. We already heard a most thoughtful, highly detailed contribution, clearly coming from many years of experience, about the difficulties experienced in some schools by some children with special educational needs. I have seen this for myself within my schools.

Not infrequently, the issues that create behaviour in an individual child in a school have nothing to do with the curriculum, the teachers or the physical environment in which a child finds itself. That child might have to live in seriously substandard housing in very overcrowded conditions. If we are saying that we genuinely want to ensure that every child in our society should have the best of educations, we must look much more widely at the external influences that in many instances could make it virtually impossible for children to learn, and that is not exclusively to do with the issue of special educational needs.

I am deeply cynical—I frankly and freely admit it—about what the Government are proposing for education. My constituency was Hampstead and Highgate; now, through boundary changes, it is Hampstead and Kilburn, and I can remember distinctly what every single state school in my constituency was like in 1992. Every spare moment that every teacher, every governor, every parent and, not infrequently, the pupils had was engaged in trying to raise money. They were attempting to raise funds to buy basics such as paper, pencils and books for the school library. Not in every school, but in the majority of schools in my constituency at that time the plaster was kept on the walls by the artwork of the pupils and miles and miles of Sellotape affixed by the teachers. Books were unknown as a teaching tool—pupils were lucky if they had a copy of the chapter they were looking at that day. If a computer was found in one of my schools, that was headline news—it was the equivalent of finding the educational holy grail.

Now, the situation in every one of my schools has been transformed beyond recognition. They have been physically improved, the quality of teaching has improved, visitors are tripping over whiteboards and children have computers that they can take home with them. Educational standards were always high because when I was first elected and for many years after that, the local authority was a Labour-controlled local authority and, despite the savage underfunding of year after year of Conservative Government, it always prioritised education. The standards were always high and the schools have always been oversubscribed, but if we go down the road advocated by this Conservative Government, I can see—as others have said tonight—not only a deterioration of educational standards but a serious breakdown in social cohesion.

There is not a single school in my constituency at a junior level where there are fewer than 49 to 53 different languages spoken. I can distinctly remember when I was first elected going with groups of my colleagues, mostly from London I admit, to argue frantically for section 11 money still to be there to assist in the teaching of English as a second language. There are enormous benefits for all our children in what we see in our schools. I recently visited a junior school in my constituency in which, because of the influx of people from the European Union and other parts of the world, the children are now learning Portuguese and Somali. When I was that age, I did not even know that those languages existed. There are huge benefits from that, but the divisive process that the Government are committed to reintroducing will savagely attack all that has been achieved not only on an educational level but in the social cohesion that I, as a London MP, believe is one of the blessings of living in this great capital city. The Government’s approach will move us back to the terrible days of the 11-plus, of grammar schools and of children being discounted utterly at the age of 11 if they did not pass the 11-plus.

[Andrew Percy]

The hon. Lady said that she knew nothing about education, or very little, and, certainly, some of the points she has made are interesting, to be polite. I have read the Bill from start to finish and I have not seen anything in it about expanding selection. Can she tell me where it says anything about that?

--- Later in debate ---

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward). No doubt we shall be seeing him later.

I want to make a rather basic intervention. Amidst all the language of funding models, burdens of bureaucracy, accountability and pupil premiums, I thought that it would be germane to raise the question of what children might learn under these new school reforms. We are being invited to extend the academy model in one form or another on the specific rationale that those schools raise educational attainment, in particular through a rapidly improving results framework, with almost double the number of A* to C grades at GCSE. At the beginning of the Secretary of State’s speech, we heard the litany of schools that are doing so well, and in The Daily Telegraph on Friday, the Department for Education repeated the mantra that academies were outstanding. But what are they outstanding at? How have the results improved so markedly?

Although much of the success can be attributed to strong leadership, inspiring teaching, improved facilities and the new ethos of learning that my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) outlined so well, in some cases improved results are the product of directing students into less demanding examination options that in the end improve no one’s life chances. We are being asked to implement an educational model whose validity is open to question. Indeed, there should have been an element of scepticism about the academies when they were not subject to freedom of information legislation. With a degree of ease, some academies were able to disguise some of the data behind their results surge.

[Andrew Percy]

It was not necessarily only academies that went down that route: all kinds of schools throughout the country forced children on to GNVQs and equivalent qualifications to force up their results. It was not unique to academies.

[Mr Hunt]

As the hon. Gentleman will hear later, the statistics are rather sharp on the difference between academies and the rest of the maintained sector. Moreover, the academies were unwilling to divulge the difference between academic qualifications and academic equivalent qualifications in vocational subjects.

Let us be clear that we are not debating the relative merits of academic versus vocational education. The equivalent qualifications sold as vocational are, in fact, rarely so. Many academy pupils are directed towards what might be described as semi-vocational or semi-academic subjects that do not provide the rigorous technical training that might lead to an apprenticeship but are simply weaker versions of GCSEs, such as BTEC science or OCR national certificates in information and communications technology.

[Mr Hunt]

Clearly, the hon. Lady has not discovered the new politics. This is not about party political point scoring. [Interruption.] As I said at the beginning of my speech, this is about what children learn in our schools, and Government Members would do well to remember that amid their guffawing. Although a BTEC can officially be worth two GCSEs, or an OCR national certificate worth four GCSEs, that equation is not necessarily accepted by further or higher education colleges or other academic institutions, so often the pupil is short-changed even as grade results are inflated.

[Andrew Percy]

I could not agree with the hon. Gentleman more on that point, but it is important that he understand that, very often, local authorities that controlled schools were forcing them down that route. That will not be allowed to happen if the Bill is passed.

[Mr Hunt]

Academies are going down that road to raise their league table offering.

[Andrew Percy]

rose—

[Mr Hunt]

If the hon. Gentleman will wait a moment, the statistics that might quiet him will come.

Returning to the academies offer, the important point is that pupils have true options. First, they should have the choice to pursue academic subjects, even if that is to the detriment of the school’s results. After all, whose interests are the schools serving, apart from their pupils? Secondly, pupils should not be misled into thinking that undertaking equivalent qualifications will give them the same standing as GCSEs in history, modern languages, geography or the hard sciences; they will not.

The facts are stark. A series of parliamentary questions has shown that academies succeed disproportionately in equivalent qualifications and that academic subjects are in steeper decline in academies than in maintained schools. Just 17% of pupils in academies take geography GCSE, compared with 27% in the maintained sector, and 21% of pupils in academies take history GCSE, compared with 31% in the maintained sector. Whereas only 26% of academy pupils take a modern language, some 44% of maintained pupils do so. A similar story could be told for English literature, where one learns the rudiments of grammar, and for physics, chemistry and biology.