Baroness Morgan of Cotes
Main Page: Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Morgan of Cotes's debates with the Department for Education
(8 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
1. What steps her Department is taking to ensure that standards in schools match those of England’s best international competitors.
The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)
I want to start by saying to all pupils, teachers and parents affected by last week’s cancellation of the key stage 1 spelling test how sorry I am that this has been necessary. I entirely share their anger and frustration. I know how hard everyone has worked to prepare for the tests. Initial investigations by the Standards and Testing Agency show that its internal processes did not sufficiently keep apart sample and live test questions, and human error led to live test questions being put on its website. The STA’s interim chief executive has apologised unreservedly for the error. The key stage 2 tests planned for this term are unaffected and will continue as planned.
Our reforms of the curriculum are about ensuring that our young people can compete not only with the best in this country, but with the best in the world.
Rehman Chishti
I thank the Secretary of State for that answer, but what is being done to find out what is being done in classrooms around the world so that our students can meet the higher standards and compete with the best?
Nicky Morgan
Ministers regularly travel overseas and meet other Education Ministers to discuss our reforms and any reforms that they are introducing. In 2014 we introduced an ambitious national curriculum to match the best education systems around the world. We are reforming GCSEs, A-levels and primary school assessment to represent a new gold standard, and, as my hon. Friend said, to enable students to compete with their peers in the world’s best schools systems.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I hope that the Secretary of State gets this right, as we have made a lot of mistakes in the past by comparing our system of education with those of countries that are very unlike ours, such as Finland and parts of China. The fact is that the results from the programme for international student assessment can be very misleading, so will she be very careful about which systems she compares ours with as the best?
Nicky Morgan
We are of course very careful, and we are very mindful of the fact that we want our children to have the best possible results in the world; that is what our reforms are all about. That is why, as well as getting our GCSEs and A-levels to a gold standard that is comparable with the rest of the world, we are making sure that we focus on things such as character education and the importance of good, strong mental wellbeing.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
Does the Secretary of State agree that we really need to focus on science, technology, engineering and maths as a top priority? We will then be able to deliver a more effective and competitive workforce. The way to do that is by having strong leadership in our schools, academies and, indeed, multi-academy trusts.
Nicky Morgan
I thank the Chair of the Education Committee very much for that question; I am looking forward to appearing before his Committee later this week. He is absolutely right to talk about the importance of STEM subjects. Of course, the EBacc includes modern foreign languages. I am sure that Members on both sides of the House will have been pleased to hear the announcement last week about securing the future examinations of all modern foreign languages and lesser-taught languages, including Gujarati, biblical Hebrew and Japanese, which is very important for the future competitiveness of our country.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
But I hope that the Secretary of State agrees that the critical thing in improving standards of education is good-quality teachers. Will she listen to the schools in Slough, 13 of which have been in touch with me about the fact that secondary schools in a small town have already spent half a million pounds in the past year attempting to recruit teachers, yet, as the head teacher at an excellent grammar school in Slough has said,
“we are now appointing teachers who we would arguably not have considered 5 years ago”?
What is the Secretary of State doing to help schools get high-quality teachers in front of children so that they can learn?
Nicky Morgan
I agree that the most important thing is the quality of the teachers in our classrooms, which of course is why we have more teachers coming back into teaching. In the White Paper we mentioned that we want to set up a website to save schools the high recruitment costs so that they can reward excellent teachers at the frontline. The most important thing from the recent TES global recruitment survey is that 31% of teachers said that talk of a recruitment crisis was doing their profession down. We want to focus on the important things that make a difference, talking up the profession, not always talking it down.
Mr Alan Mak (Havant) (Con)
Standards in schools can be raised by encouraging more schools to start breakfast clubs, such as the one at Purbrook Junior School in my constituency. Will the Secretary of State join me in encouraging more schools to start breakfast clubs and homework clubs?
Nicky Morgan
My hon. Friend will be aware of the announcements in the Budget regarding the funding from the new sugar levy, which will be used in part to expand breakfast clubs in up to 1,600 schools from September 2017. Of course, the opportunities offered by the longer school day are also important in ensuring that our young people get the extracurricular activities that help them to achieve the highest possible standards.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
Much of the quality assurance in schools is driven and carried out by local authorities. That means that self-evaluation and improvement is a continuous cycle, with only the occasional visit from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of education in Scotland, or Ofsted in England, to rubber-stamp the work already done. With the move to academies, how does the Secretary of State envisage quality assurance being monitored locally, and what budget has she set aside for the increased number of inspectors required to drive improvement?
Nicky Morgan
Quality assurance will be measured in exactly the same way as it is now, by Ofsted, and, most importantly, by parents, who make the best possible choice for their children by choosing the strongest schools. It is worth noting that, in Scotland, 29% of schools in the most deprived areas are rated weak or unsatisfactory. The SNP has had nine years to raise educational standards in Scotland. What has it done about them?
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
2. What progress she has made on implementing the proposals in the education White Paper; and if she will make a statement. [R]
The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)
Our education policy, including the White Paper, is about making sure that every child gets the best possible start in life to enable them to fulfil their potential. The White Paper is called “Educational Excellence Everywhere” because for us the “Everywhere” is absolutely non-negotiable. We are making progress on commitments in the White Paper. The first stage of our consultation on the national funding formula closed last week, moving us closer to a fairer system where every school’s funding is matched to the needs of the pupil.
Diana Johnson
Kelvin Hall School is outstanding without being an academy. That is due to its excellent headteacher and staff and its inspirational campus, which was built under Building Schools for the Future. Would Ministers not be better off focusing their time, energy and money on raising standards in poor-performing schools—the original purpose of Labour’s pragmatic and targeted academy programme—not pursuing the wasteful and disruptive dogma of imposing rigid structures from Whitehall?
Nicky Morgan
I am delighted to hear about the excellent school the hon. Lady mentions. I want that excellent school not to hide its light under a bushel, but to go on to make the rest of the schools in the area as strong as possible and to work in collaboration. I am not going to be the Secretary of State who missed the opportunity to make sure we had a really good, strong school system across the country, offering the best possible education for all our pupils. I am not going to leave the job half done; we are going to finish this job.
Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
My constituency is a rapidly growing new town, and that puts pressure on primary school places. Does the Secretary of State agree that academisation can put a good or outstanding primary in a better financial position so that it can build more classrooms and increase intake to meet parent demand?
Nicky Morgan
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to talk about the opportunities offered by schools becoming academies and by fairer funding, which will mean that more money gets to the frontline, that schools are in charge of their own destinies and that they can expand to take on more pupils. We also want local authorities to work with academies to secure more places, and also to secure more free schools—for example, to deal with parental demand.
Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)
The case for academisation so far rests either on the desire of an individual school to academise or on arguments around school improvement. However, that will not be the case in future, when schools will be required to academise even if they are good or excellent, which will see them risk losing the very features that made them good or excellent. As the Secretary of State considers legislation, will she consider an academisation model that allows such schools that wish to remain in the public sector to have a form of academisation whereby they may do so?
Nicky Morgan
I was following the right hon. Gentleman’s question up until the last sentence, when he seemed to imply that, somehow, academies were not part of the public sector. He could not be more mistaken: they get their funding directly from the Department for Education, their teachers are trained in accordance with our guidance and they can follow the national curriculum. What does the right hon. Gentleman say to the headteacher who wrote to me after the Academies Show last week, saying that her colleagues were forgetting that children are the priority, change is the reality and collaboration is the strategy. How can it not be our moral responsibility to serve as many children as possible by working together? That is what we want to see.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that a good argument for academisation is to get schools out of the control of loony left councils, such as Brighton and Hove, which is seeking information in relation to the gender assignment of four-year-olds?
Nicky Morgan
The point about academies and academisation is that they are the vehicle for schools to innovate, make best use of the freedom to drive up standards and do the right thing for their children, which often does not happen under local authority control. That is what we want to see, and that is why we want schools to become academies.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
The Secretary of State has intimated that good local authorities can form multi-academy trusts. Ironically, this would give local authorities more responsibility for running schools than they have now, although the Prime Minister has suggested that local authorities having such responsibility is holding schools back. Why is such a costly upheaval necessary for outstanding schools under good local authorities? Is it not time for her to smell the coffee and shelve her plans for forced academisation?
Nicky Morgan
The hon. Gentleman perhaps knows that I am a caffeine addict, but he is missing the point, which is that good schools have much to offer the whole of the rest of the education system. What we see now in schools across the country is collaboration and partnership in clusters of schools, and that is what we want to continue right across the system. We know that actually the best people to run schools are those on the frontline—the heads, the teachers and the professionals—and that is what we want. The issue for the Labour party is that we never hear talk of the pupils, the children or the raising of standards; it is always about vested interests.
Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
Over the past 11 months, one of the issues that has come to me time and again in the constituency has been the cost of the recruitment of teachers, so I was very pleased to see the proposal in the White Paper in relation to the national website that will be set up. Will the Secretary of State tell us how this will help to improve teacher recruitment across the country?
Nicky Morgan
I thank my hon. and learned Friend very much, first, for raising this important issue, but also for spotting that only one of the eight chapters in the White Paper deals with school structures, while the rest tackle the issues that schools have been talking to us about, one of which is the high recruitment cost of teachers. We think that if we can work with the sector to provide a low-cost or no-cost website to enable schools to advertise vacancies, it will mean that more money gets to the frontline, which I think we all want to see.
Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)
4. What recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of teacher recruitment and retention.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
11. What steps her Department is taking to ensure that parents have more influence in the running of their children's schools when those schools become academies.
The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)
Many parents are governors and make a significant contribution to our schools, and we want this to continue, but that is not the only way we want parents to engage in schools. That is why our White Paper outlined our intention to place a duty on academies to engage meaningfully with parents, introduce parental satisfaction surveys, and set up a new parent portal to help parents to navigate the school system.
Stuart Andrew
I am extremely fortunate to have many parents in my constituency who are engaged in local schools. Many have approached me recently because they have been concerned by recent reports that their voice, position and influence may be diminished if all schools are turned into academies. Can my right hon. Friend assure me that that is not the case?
Nicky Morgan
I pay tribute to the many thousands of parents who already play a valuable role on school governing bodies. It is vital that schools and governing bodies listen to the views and the voices of parents, and we want academies to engage meaningfully with them. I know that that is happening, for example, in my hon. Friend’s constituency at Crawshaw Academy, where parents are invited to half-termly information evenings to comment on academy policies and to share their views with senior leaders. In a recent parent survey, 78% of respondents reported that they felt consulted and able to contribute to the academy’s development.
Wendy Morton
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the voice and the skills of parents are greatly valued in our schools? Will she further clarify how their voice and their skills will continue to play an important part in governing bodies when a school becomes an academy?
Nicky Morgan
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Involving parents in governance and really listening to the views of parents are not necessarily the same thing. That is why I want academy boards to appoint parents for their skills and experience, and to set up parent councils or other appropriate arrangements to engage parents meaningfully and to represent their views to governing bodies.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State confirm that she is rethinking her White Paper in relation to parents, and that she will reconsider whether they should be consulted over the academisation of our schools and their role as school governors?
Nicky Morgan
I do not need to rethink, because we are very clear about the important role that parents play as governors, through parental surveys and through parental engagement. The hon. Gentleman also appears, in the second part of his question, to be fighting a fight that we fought in the Education and Adoption Act 2016, which is now part of the law and which set out the clear role for parents to be involved when a school becomes an academy.
Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
Perhaps the Secretary of State can explain a little more clearly and slowly, particularly to some of her colleagues on the Conservative Back Benches, who are gently asking her to think again about this point. Parental accountability is quite an important part of school life. In what circumstances does she envisage that removing that role of governance in a school from parents will be a good thing?
Nicky Morgan
First, I do not think that the hon. Gentleman should be insulting Conservative Members, who perfectly well understand the important role of parents as governors. For the avoidance of doubt, let me speak slowly and clearly to him. We are not suggesting, and never have suggested, that parents should not be on governing bodies.
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)
I have had many parents contact me about the key stage 2 SATs that are going to be examined in the next two weeks, and I have also been contacted by the headteachers of schools. Even though this has been in place since 2014, there is some concern. After the exams, will my right hon. Friend meet me and talk over any concerns that may come up?
Nicky Morgan
I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend to discuss the matter. As the Schools Minister has said, we have raised the bar in relation to the key stage 2 tests that are happening, but the important reason for that is to make sure that our young people have the basics of the reading, writing and maths that will help them to progress in life. We know the difference in GCSE results between key stage 2 pupils at the end of primary who get to the expected level in reading, writing and maths, and those who do not. That can hold people back for life, and that is not fair.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
6. What recent assessment she has made of the adequacy and quality of provision in the children’s social work sector.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
9. If she will make it her policy that maintained schools be given the choice of whether to become academies.
The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)
Academies reject the old one-size-fits-all approach, and are more dynamic and responsive to performance and the needs of local areas. In the next six years, schools will have time to make choices and to set in place arrangements that will work for them, either as standalone academies or in multi-academy trusts, including diocesan trusts and operating in local clusters.
Stephen Timms
It will by now be clear to the Secretary of State that Conservative Members, not just Opposition Members, believe schools should have some choice in whether they become academies. Headteachers of excellent primary schools say they have more autonomy with their local authority than they would as members of a multi-academy trust. Surely enforced compulsion from Whitehall of this change cannot be the right way forward.
Nicky Morgan
Ofsted data for the latest inspection results of all schools show that 350,000 children now study in sponsored academies rated good or outstanding. Let us look at the example of an academy in the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency. Langdon Academy, a special measures school in East Ham, opened as a fast-track sponsored academy on 1 January 2014. Over a year later, it has gone from 45% of pupils getting A* to C to 57%. Those are achievements that I want all young people to have access to.
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
Conversion to academies is improving the education of children throughout the country, and it is right that we make this opportunity available to all children. However, concerns have been expressed about the impact that this policy will have on small schools, particularly in a place such as Cornwall, where we have many small schools. Has my right hon. Friend considered that one of the ways of addressing those concerns would be to allow local authorities to be involved in the running of multi-academy trusts?
Nicky Morgan
My hon. Friend will know that we published a White Paper in order to make sure that we talk to Members in all parts of the House, as well as to local authorities. Like my hon. Friend, I want all young people to have the best possible start in life. We know that academies make a difference. We also know that small schools can benefit from working together in clusters, including the 15 schools in Cornwall that converted to academies together as one group last week to provide mutual support. I look forward to continuing my conversations with my hon. Friend.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
Luton has the highest-performing schools in the eastern region of England and most of the town’s schools remain in local authority control. When will the Government undertake an objective analysis of why some schools do better than others, and accept that this has nothing to do with academy status?
Nicky Morgan
We know from the international evidence that the more autonomy those on the frontline have—heads, teachers and governors—the more they take responsibility for the results that are achieved. I want the good schools in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency to share their expertise with other schools that are not yet so good. That way we have a strong education system, which is what I as Secretary of State for Education and this Government want to be available for everyone.
Suella Fernandes (Fareham) (Con)
In Fareham, primary schools such as Hook with Warsash Church of England and St Anthony’s converted from maintained schools to academies and saw their results improve, surpassing the local authority average. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this policy represents an opportunity for Hampshire, which performs well as a local authority, to get involved and create a mass to enable more autonomy and improvement overall?
Nicky Morgan
My hon. Friend is right to say that we can see that the results in primary sponsored academies, for example, which have been open for two years have improved by an average of 10 percentage points, which is double the rate of improvement in local authority schools. She is right to say that there are many talented individuals working in Hampshire local authority and I hope they will take advantage of the new system as well.
Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)
Last week, I had the pleasure of marking the 400 years since the death of William Shakespeare, watching a live stream of “The Merchant of Venice” at Lings primary school in Northampton—a school serving a disadvantaged area with 55% of its pupils getting free school meals. The inspirational headteacher there has shown how all pupils, regardless of their backgrounds and experiences, can develop an appreciation of and a love for great literary works. We want to encourage more pupils to experience Shakespeare, as countless previous generations have before. That is why the national curriculum requires all pupils to study at least three complete Shakespeare plays while they are at school.
Victoria Atkins
We Conservative Members all welcome the Government’s decision to introduce a fairer funding formula for schools. Will my right hon. Friend assure my constituents that the particular needs of our rural and coastal schools will form part of the new formula so that children in my constituency are not disadvantaged under the current formula simply because of an accident of geography?
Nicky Morgan
The fair distribution of funding is a priority for this Government. As we have already heard, fair funding will ensure that every school is allocated funding fairly and transparently according to need. I can reassure my hon. Friend that the formula we propose includes a lump sum payment for every school, with extra sparsity funding to support our smallest and most remote schools so that every child can access an excellent education.
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
This weekend, the Conservative-led County Councils Network added its very strong opposition to the Secretary of State’s plans to force all schools to become academies, adding to that already expressed by the National Association of Head Teachers, the Association of School and College Leaders, parents, the National Governors Association, leading names in the academies programme such as the chief executive of the Harris Foundation and the Freedom and Autonomy for Schools National Association, as well as a growing number of her own Back Benchers. It is hardly a list of what she might call—or, in fact, what she just called—the vested interests. Can she therefore clarify today for those who have these very serious concerns whether she will bring forward legislation to force good and outstanding schools to become academies against their wishes?
Nicky Morgan
I have already set out very clearly our desire to make sure that every child gets the best start in life. We believe that academies, as the House has heard from other Conservative Members, are absolutely the right vehicle for innovation on curriculum, pay and freedom for headteachers. I wonder whether the hon. Lady in her vocal opposition has taken account of the writer on the Labour teachers blog, who said that
“we have people on the left describing thousands of schools, in fact a majority of secondary schools, and the hundreds of thousands of teachers who work in them, in terms that are so unjust as to be deceitful.”
Is that how the hon. Lady wants to be taken?
Mr Speaker
Order. I simply point out to the Secretary of State that she is not responsible for what is written on Labour blogs and that there is a shortage of time on topical questions. We must press on, without extraneous matters being introduced.
Lucy Powell
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
The Secretary of State may not appreciate what a huge amount of upheaval, uncertainty and, frankly, panic she has caused by her announcement. Headteachers are already facing huge challenges trying to work around her botched new SATs tests, her massively behind-schedule new GCSEs and her real-terms cuts to school budgets, and those heads need and deserve more clarity from the Secretary of State than we have heard so far. Let me remind the right hon. Lady that she already has powers to turn underperforming schools into academies and that good and outstanding schools can already choose to convert, so the only remaining power she needs to deliver her objectives is to force any good or outstanding school that does not want to become an academy to do so. Is it still her intention to ask Parliament for these new powers—yes or no?
Nicky Morgan
I have been very clear that I will not be the Secretary of State who leaves undone the job of making our school system as strong as possible for the benefit of all pupils. I hope that as she visits schools up and down the country, the hon. Lady includes visiting those that are already taking advantage of the new academy freedoms. Amanda Bennett from the Greetland primary academy in Halifax said, for example:
“As an academy we have had the freedoms to explore the specific needs of the children in our care—so our curriculum progression, pitch and expectations are able to adapt when we want them to, to respond to our changing needs. This has allowed us to be consistently in the top performing schools nationally.”
Conservative Members are all for improving opportunities and life chances for all children. Is it not interesting that we never hear the hon. Lady talk about pupils or standards, because she is so obsessed with one chapter in the White Paper?
Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)
T2. Digital skills are fundamental to the success of our knowledge economy, but evidence given to the Science and Technology Committee during its inquiry showed that only 35% of ICT teachers have a specialist qualification, and more than half lack confidence when it comes to delivering the new computing curriculum. What steps are the Government taking to train ICT teachers, and to ensure that we are equipping young people with the skills that they need not just for today’s workplace, but for a jobs market that may be unrecognisable in a decade?
Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)
T8. Charles Dickens Primary School is an outstanding foundation primary school in my constituency, which, along with the London borough of Southwark, rightly has great expectations for all Southwark students. The chair of its governors has been in touch with me to express his concern about the enforced academisation of schools. Why is the Secretary of State ignoring the concerns of staff, governors, parents and pupils? Why is she insisting on dictating a structure that offers no choice, but only the academy approach, which could damage the standard of the education that is currently provided?
Nicky Morgan
I had the pleasure of visiting Charles Dickens Primary School during the last academic year. It is an absolutely brilliant school, with an inspirational head teacher. I want that head teacher not only to help, support and inspire the young people in her school, but to spread the excellence of her school to other schools in the area that are struggling. That is what we want to see in the education system. I am surprised that Labour Members are not interested in raising standards for all children in all parts of the country.
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
On 20 April, the Comptroller and Auditor General, Sir Amyas Morse, provided an adverse opinion for the second year running on the truth and fairness of the Department for Education’s group financial statements. Sir Amyas said:
“Providing Parliament with a clear view of academy trusts’ spending is a vital part of the Department for Education’s work—yet it is failing to do this.”
How will the Secretary of State ensure that Parliament will be able to see whether extending academies is giving the taxpayer good value for money, when that clearly is not happening now?
Nicky Morgan
I utterly refute what the right hon. Lady has just said. We have a more rigorous system for the governance of individual academies when they become academies. The issue with the Department’s consolidated accounts is a technical and accounting problem caused by academies producing accounts covering the academic year to the end of August, rather than to the end of March. We have now agreed with Parliament a new methodology for the current financial year that will better reflect the situation.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
T5. Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating the excellent headteacher, staff, students and governors at Barnsole Primary School in my constituency, which has gone from “requires improvement” to “overall: outstanding”?
Nicky Morgan
I thank my hon. Friend for his question, and I should like to thank the head, Sean McKeown, his staff and the pupils of Barnsole Primary School for an outstanding Ofsted judgment. It is an amazing achievement to move from “requires improvement” to “outstanding”, and I was pleased to read a report describing the high-quality teaching that leads its pupils to make accelerated progress in reading, writing and maths. I hope that the school will now consider sharing its experience and expertise by forming a multi-academy trust.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
The vast majority of children entering the care system have experienced abuse and neglect and are particularly vulnerable in regard to their mental health needs. Will the Minister accept the concerns expressed by the NSPCC, which I share, that if the Department does not commit to counting and tracking abused and neglected children, those children will continue to be at risk of falling through the cracks and not receiving the mental health support that they need to rebuild their lives?
Jo Cox (Batley and Spen) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State accept that all the evidence shows that being an academy is intrinsically neither good nor bad for a school’s performance? With expert opinion now lined up from the County Councils Network to the Bow Group, it is surely time to revisit this flawed plan to force schools to become academies against their will.
Nicky Morgan
The hon. Lady ought to take note of Andreas Schleicher, the deputy director for education and skills at the OECD, who says:
“What our data do show is that school systems which offer a greater deal of school autonomy tend to have higher performance, but they do not say anything about trends…I view the trend towards academies as a very promising development in the UK, which used to have quite a prescriptive education system, if you look at this through international comparison”.
I think we should take note of the international evidence.
Ben Howlett (Bath) (Con)
As a school governor at the Bath Studio School, which is a member of a multi-academy trust, I must declare an interest. I have seen for myself the amazing performance that is being improved as a result of being a member of that academy chain. Will the Secretary of State join me in welcoming the continued success of academies in Bath, and does she agree that having an increasing number of good and outstanding schools will ensure that our standards match those of our international competitors?
Nicky Morgan
I had the pleasure of visiting The Bath Studio School with my hon. Friend, and it was excellent and inspiring for the young people there. Some 1.4 million more children are in schools rated good or outstanding than in 2010. We intend to push on with that.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State share the concerns of parents at Audenshaw School academy trust, which has withheld £40,000 a year of pupil premium money for the past three years? Is that not the wrong intention for that money?
Nicky Morgan
I am of course concerned to hear about that. The hon. Gentleman and I have had conversations about academies and schools in his constituency. He can write to me with further details, but, yes, the pupil premium money has to be spent on those most in need and has to get to the frontline.
Caroline Ansell (Eastbourne) (Con)
Teachers and primary headteachers in my constituency have contacted me about the additional workload that unexpected academisation could place on them. As a teacher, I share that concern. What steps is my right hon. Friend taking to ensure that time, focus, energy and morale are not lost while the White Paper is discussed and that teachers continue to do what they do best—inspire young people and children?
Nicky Morgan
We have set out that schools will have six years, from now until 2022, to become academies. However, the point is that teachers should be doing what they do best, which is teaching in the classroom. Support is available for schools that want to become academies, and the heads and governors of schools will be driving that process.