Secondary School Standards: East Cleveland

Anne Milton Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2019 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills (Anne Milton)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you this morning, Sir Henry.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke) on securing this debate. I was struck by the account of his visit to Freebrough Academy, and he mentioned Laurence Jackson School. He also mentioned bullying, which is a worry and often goes hand in hand with poor discipline and poor educational outcomes in a school that is generally not succeeding in its primary responsibility, which is to get its children to a state where they can learn with sufficient discipline in the class. My hon. Friend broadened the debate to encompass the wider inequalities of which the north-east is a victim. He is right about the moral imperative—demography should not have an impact on young people’s destiny. I say frequently that it should never matter where people are born, who their parents are, who they live with or who they know; everyone should have a chance to get on in life.

We want to—we have to—change the fortunes of those living in my hon. Friend’s region. As he said, confidence is critical, and in focusing on educational outcomes it can be a difficult balance to recognise where they are poor while also building the confidence of the area. I am sure that he will have danced around that difficult issue: it is right to call out a school when it is performing badly, but the impact of doing so on the wider community can be devastating. He emphasised the poor Ofsted report, and the problem with that is that the school then might not attract the pupils it needs, despite the successful efforts of new leadership teams. School reputations are won and lost with devastating effects, while turnaround can be slow and difficult to achieve.

My hon. Friend mentioned the visit of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education, who is proud of what he is starting in the north-east. As my hon. Friend said, Opportunity North East is an investment programme of £24 million over three years, which will deliver a widely shared ambition across the north-east to achieve rapid—“rapid” is important—and sustainable improvement in outcomes for young people. The ONE programme is overseen by Lord Agnew. He will focus on five clear cross-cutting challenges: raising attainment and outcomes for pupils at the end of secondary and post-16 education; recruiting and retaining great teachers for north-east schools, because another problem with a school getting a poor Ofsted report is that the teachers go elsewhere; increasing progression of pupils to university, including top institutions; and supporting young people to secure great jobs.

My hon. Friend asked if the report would be made public. I am afraid that I do not have the answer to that, but I strongly suggest that he meets Lord Agnew, because he will be impressed with his approach to such issues—Lord Agnew is a man in a hurry, and will not rest until he sees things turn around.

A key priority for the ONE programme, which I do not think my hon. Friend mentioned, is to unlock the potential of secondary schools in the region. Through the ONE Vision programme, a key part of Opportunity North East, 30 secondary schools across 11 local authorities will be partnered with high-performing school leaders and given bespoke support to raise standards. The ambition is to support those 30 schools to move towards at least an Ofsted “good” rating to improve outcomes, and to help schools sustain that improvement—sustainability matters.

The ONE Vision programme will benefit up to 25,000 young people and help them to learn the skills and knowledge to unlock their potential. I am pleased to report a total of 12 ONE Vision schools in the Tees valley, with five in Middlesbrough, and Redcar and Cleveland. Both Freebrough Academy and Laurence Jackson receive ONE Vision support. Schools have already begun to receive an analysis of need across governance, finance, teaching and learning, and leadership —leadership is so important in schools.

Officials have consulted extensively with Redcar and Cleveland Council and Middlesbrough Football Club on their programmes to help local children from those communities thrive in their transition from primary to secondary education because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland rightly pointed out, there is a stark difference—let us hope that does not result in more people wanting to be footballers, because not all of them can be. We intend to commission activities to test robustly the impact of the most promising approaches to improving that transition. My hon. Friend is probably aware of a number of other regional programmes, but I will not go into detail. Again, I thank him for his contribution to the debate and for raising so well the issues that affect his constituents.

I remember standing in this Chamber, probably eight years ago, as a Minister with responsibility for public health. We had a debate on health inequalities in the north-east, and I cited some of the figures that demonstrate the appalling health inequalities in the north-east, but I was slated in the press for doing so. I think that the quote was something like, “Public Health Minister says that everyone in the north-east smokes too much, has too much sex,” and whatever. That is a difficult tension: first, we have to recognise the problem, to face up to it and to tell the truth; but at the same time, secondly, we have to put confidence into the community, and the support it needs to change the outcomes for young people.

I also have ministerial responsibility for further education, and FE colleges do a fantastic job. Those young people who have not done well at school—for whatever reason, whether disorganised and chaotic backgrounds, a lack of discipline in the schools or any of a variety of reasons—have low aspiration and often minimal social capital. FE colleges pick those kids up and give them their second, third, fourth or fifth chance. I am pleased about that with the apprenticeship programme in particular, but a similar move has been made by many more employers, who no longer focus on qualifications but on young people’s skills. They might not have done well at school, but that is not to say that they do not have real skills that, when developed in the workplace, can mean a good career and a successful future. I hope that all such programmes will have an impact.

As I said, I urge my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland to meet my colleague Lord Agnew, the man in a hurry—as he rightly should be. The figures are not new, and I urge my hon. Friend to look at the correlation between poor health outcomes and educational attainment. I think that he will see that close correlation, which does not stop at what qualifications people get and the job they get; it leads into later life. We need to do a great deal, but the Secretary of State is fully behind ensuring that we make a difference to my hon. Friend’s constituents. I thank him for raising this important matter.

Question put and agreed to.