Free Schools and Academies

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a social mobility commissioner, but I am of course speaking in a personal capacity. My focus in that role is promoting the importance of common standards and the family to social mobility, and I do that because there are others on the commission far more equipped to examine education policy, as there are here in the Chamber today. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Evans of Bowes Park, not just on her compelling introduction to this debate but on the wealth of experience in this policy area that she brings to the topic.

My main reason for promoting the role of the family, though, is that credit for what I have achieved as an adult must go to my parents for the attitude and standards they instilled in me. Sadly, it was not my schooling at a comprehensive in the late 1970s and early 1980s. My school was shiny and new with lots of facilities, but it lacked discipline, ambition and school uniform. We were considered modern, but I recall that when I collected my CSE exam results, the back of the slip said that the average grade for the area was 5. I am not sure what the equivalent of grade 5 CSE is in today’s GCSE, but a grade 1 CSE, the highest level, was an O-level grade C equivalent.

I tend to think that I got on in life despite my education, not because of it, but that does not mean that I do not believe in the importance of quality education. Indeed, it has been inspiring so far this afternoon to listen to some noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and my noble friend Lord Harris. A quality education would have made my life much easier, I believe, but my experience has reinforced to me the importance of standards. It does not matter how academically able a child is, or whether they are better suited to technical or vocational learning; they will not succeed unless the adults responsible for them, whether at home or in school, set standards and uphold them. That is what I have seen when I have visited many academy schools.

For the last 14 or 15 years, I have visited a different school in Nottinghamshire at least once a year as part of the charity Speakers for Schools. What has struck me since I started doing this is that, I think without exception, every school in Nottinghamshire that has bid for me to speak to their students has been an academy or a failing school which another academy has taken over, and the same head whose original school where I have spoken has asked me to attend. All these academies are different, but the teachers I have met and their commitment to standards has been consistent.

Out of curiosity, last year I applied online, like anyone can, to visit Katharine Birbalsingh’s Michaela school—I am surprised that I am the first Member of your Lordships’ House speaking today to mention it. Oh my God, I was completely blown away. Every single person I encountered, from the security guard on the gate—who is necessary because of the threats Katharine has been subject to—to every teacher and all their happy and healthy children I met, was impressive. When you go and visit, and see it with your own eyes, it is not surprising why that school is so successful—that very much chimes with what the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, said.

I want every child in this country to get the opportunity to learn like that. That the Secretary of State for Education cannot bring herself to congratulate Michaela is bad enough, but the fact that Bridget Phillipson, Keir Starmer and this Government want to dismantle the structure which makes such a school possible, and all the schools that I have had the pleasure to visit in recent years, is, to my mind, nothing short of criminal. That the Government are doing so while at the same time saying that growth is their top priority and setting out ambitions for the UK to be at the forefront of AI and all other forms of new technology makes absolutely no sense.

Take it from someone with direct experience of the upheaval in our education system in the 1970s: the Government may believe that dismantling the current education structure will increase equality and opportunity, but what they risk is lowering standards for everyone. I urge them to think again.