Queen's Speech

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I join others in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Hill, on his appointment. His really is one of the best jobs in Government, and as long as he can withstand the surfeit of good advice from former education Ministers who are in this House he will do very well. I am sure that he will enjoy it. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hall, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford on their maiden speeches. It was a delight to listen to them and I also look forward to their further contributions.

New Governments are always inevitably about change; that is what the electorate has asked for and invited, but inevitably there is some continuity as well. I very much welcome the fact that, from what we have already heard from the coalition Government, many of the most successful initiatives of the past Labour Government—Teach First, schools supporting other schools, Sure Start, early years, federation and clusters—will still find a home under this Government. I also welcome one or two policy announcements that I have heard. In particular, on technical schools—or colleges or academies, as they seem to change their name as the policy develops—I congratulate the noble Lord on the work that he has done with our former friend on this. They are a change for good and I would certainly offer my personal support from these Benches in any way, as he knows that I have done so far. I am delighted that they, too, have found a home. I also welcome the review of the accountability framework, which is long overdue. I suspect that only a Government new in office could do that, not one who were part way through.

I want to concentrate today on the main themes of the education part of the Queen's Speech: academies, free schools and teacher control of the curriculum. Unusually, we have another opportunity on Monday to discuss the first Bill, so I shall not go into detail now. Rather, I shall look at some of the underlying principles that have been seized and which shape the education part of the Queen's Speech debate. At the start of their term in office, I suppose that every Government will have to decide what are going to be their levers of reform. In what will they place their trust to bring about the changes they want to see, and which they have promised the electorate?

This coalition Government have made two key errors—quite serious and fundamental errors—in those early decisions. From the Queen’s Speech and the speeches that we have heard so far, we can see that they, like many other Governments, have seized on two things to guide their reforms. First, there is structural change, changing the legal status of schools and their governance and, secondly, embracing independence—in this case, freedom from local councils or a nationally prescribed curriculum. We have now had more than five decades of continuous change in education. We should be able to look at the evidence of what works and build on that, rather than having this pendulum which swings from one set of policy ideas to another.

There is no evidence at all that structural change leads to successful education reform, yet politicians always go into structural change as a first and last refuge. You can list the types of secondary schools that we have had from 1945 onwards, from secondary moderns and grammars to communities and academies. Some of them have appeared more than once; they fade and come back. Despite what the Minister said, there is no evidence that academies are successful schools, but they are not a failure, because it is not the status or structure of a school that will determine its success.

There are many good academies and I pay tribute to them. I, too, pay tribute to Mossbourne Academy, which is mentioned more than any other school in both Houses of Parliament, yet I also look at the rest of the London schools. Most of the 100 secondary schools in London that receive from Ofsted the category of outstanding schools are not academies but local community schools. In Tower Hamlets, of the 15 secondary schools in the most deprived borough in our country, five are categorised by Ofsted as outstanding. Let us pay tribute to them. Not one is an academy; they are all community schools. I welcome and praise academies where they are successful, but there are failing academies. There are academies in special measures. In the south of England, there is an academy which has just been returned to local authority control because it is not successful. Changing the legal status of a school will not transform the opportunities for its pupils and the young people there.

The same is true of independence. The Government are confused about who runs schools. As Margaret Eaton, the Conservative LGA chair, has said, “Councils don’t run schools”—they run themselves. Many of the freedoms that are now going to be offered to the new swathe of academies are mirages or illusions of freedoms. Many are already on offer for all schools, no matter what their status. One reason that they tend not to take and embrace those freedoms is a fear more of Ofsted than of the local authority.

It is time that we did indeed build on the evidence of what works, and every bit of evidence—none more than some research that came out of the University of Bristol in the past few months—shows that the key to individual success is the quality of teaching and of leadership within the school. The research from Bristol shows that the difference in performance between the top 25 per cent of teachers and the poorest 25 per cent can amount to 0.5 per cent of a difference at GCSE. That is why there are good and poor academies, good and poor local authority schools, good and poor church schools; it is because they are not all blessed with excellent school leaders and teachers.

When a new Government come in, they choose the levers that they will depend on to lead their reform over the following years—the flag-bearers of what they want to do. I am disappointed that this Government have chosen structural change and illusory freedom. They should have chosen to say, “The quality of teaching is what will make the difference and our policies will serve that end”. The quality of teaching makes the most difference to the children from poor backgrounds and disadvantaged areas. I look forward, over the coming months, to hearing more about government policies that will help with that. So far, I am afraid that I am a little sad that this Government have almost reinvented the wheel, by seeking one more change in governance and in school status, with some more academies in the hope that that will bring about the reform that we all need. We should learn from research and from the evidence of what works. That does not lead us to more academies, with local authorities being squeezed out of the provision of education.