Infant Class Sizes

Debate between Ben Gummer and Kevin Brennan

Wednesday 3rd September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

We have had an interesting and well-informed debate with contributions from hon. Members on both sides of the House, including my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), who is no longer in her place, but who spoke passionately about the waste of resources when her constituency desperately needed school places.

We also heard from the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), who said he worked at the coal face in Swindon for many years and claimed to be above party politics—before launching into his highly partisan comments. My hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) said that my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) and I were glad to see the previous Secretary of State go. May I correct him? We were disappointed that he left, because the polls were showing the impact he was having on voters—not just teachers, but parents. Had he carried on, we would have been heading for a landslide. Nevertheless, we now have the continuity Secretary of State.

We heard from the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), who also is not in her place, and from my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton), who, like the hon. Member for North Swindon, served for 10 years as a local councillor, as did I—it is obviously a common apprenticeship for this House. We also heard from the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), who said it was easy to bandy about statistics, and then immediately did so himself, copiously. We then heard, as usual, a common-sense contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman), who said we were looking not for uniformity, but for equality of opportunity. She was exactly right, as she was about how resources should follow need—a point, in fact, that touches precisely on the nature of this debate.

I am sorry that, even after that preamble, the Secretary of State has not been able to return from her live web chat, after opening the debate, to be here for the wind-ups. I am sorry about that, Mr Speaker, and if I refer to her in her absence, it is not through choice.

It is always a bit of a lottery seeing who will turn up to education debates these days, because the Department for Education has become so dysfunctional after four years of being run by a right-wing ideologue and his crazed advisers that we have not one, but two Schools Ministers. One is the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), whom I am sincerely delighted to welcome back to his place on the Front Bench today. Despite our disagreements, we have always got on very well on a personal level, and I am glad that he was resuscitated by the Prime Minister, in the recent botched reshuffle, to placate the right wing of the Conservative parliamentary party. It is his job, we are told by the Prime Minister, to preserve the legacy of his former boss, who has now been forced into a vow of silence as the Chief Whip.

The other Schools Minister—the yellow variety—who seems to have become an invisible man these days in debates on schools in the Chamber, is obviously—

[Ben Gummer]

He is working hard.

[Kevin Brennan]

I am sure he is working hard—in his other job, in the Cabinet Office, dreaming up more fantasy Lib Dem manifesto pledges at the taxpayer’s expense. Indeed, it appears—just to be topical for a moment—that the coalition Government have now introduced compulsory setting, in that the two Schools Ministers are not allowed to be in the same room at the same time. That perhaps explains why the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws) is not here with us this afternoon.

However, it would be useful if the Minister in this debate would clarify in his winding-up speech—[Interruption] —after he has finished reading the Parliamentary Private Secretary’s telephone—the whole shambolic issue around setting, which we have heard about today. We have not really had clarity today; we have just had chaos, in what is, after all, the first major policy announcement by the Secretary of State. It would be good if this House were told exactly what is going on, rather than our having to try to find out from Twitter. Despite the Secretary of State’s earlier remarks about not relying on Twitter for such information, we have to, unless we get it in the Chamber, which is where we should first hear of such things.

The first duty of any Education Minister is to ensure a sufficiency of good school places where they are needed. The figures that have been unearthed in recent weeks and which have been highlighted in today’s debate show that the Government have failed in that basic duty. We all remember the pledge, which has been mentioned in the debate, in the 2010 Conservative manifesto, when the Prime Minister promised

“small schools with smaller class sizes”

and said,

“the more we can get class sizes down, the better”.

That pledge has turned out to be as worthless as a Lib Dem pledge on tuition fees, because we have seen a 200% increase in the number of infants in larger class sizes over 30 since 2010, and the pressure on places is growing.

Co-operatives in Education

Debate between Ben Gummer and Kevin Brennan

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Brennan]

I strongly agree. I should like to talk more later about knowledge and understanding of co-operative schools. I should say at the outset that the Labour Front Bench is strongly supportive of the movement and of the rapid development and spread of co-operative schools that has happened in recent years, since legislation was amended to make it a little easier to form them. There is still work to be done, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley pointed out. There is a good quotation on the Schools Co-operative Society website:

“Essentially they are just what schools should be and what people thought they really were about already!”

That is a good way to put it. There is nothing about co-operative schools that would not be familiar to people, as far as values or ideas of what a good school should be are concerned. Yet, as we know, there is sometimes misunderstanding about co-operatives and co-operative schools.

Values in education are one reason why Labour supports the movement. It is time that we had more of a debate about those. There is much debate about structures and the idea that opening a free school or an academy will solve everyone’s problems. However, we all know that what really counts is good teaching, great leadership and the values underpinning a school and education system. It is interesting that the process that has been going on, which is a quiet revolution in the system—and people talked about a revolution in the debate—has received hardly any media coverage. Yes, the Government have a flagship policy for free schools, but there are far more co-operative schools than free schools. No one would think that from reading the papers and following the news. Certainly, a lot more Department for Education staff are devoted to free schools than to co-operatives. There are more than 100, are there not? I did not realise there were that many left in the Department. It is an awful lot of staff, but very little in the way of resources is devoted to helping co-operative schools to develop.

I welcome the remarks of the Secretary of State about the co-operative movement and co-operative schools in general, which the hon. Member for Wycombe quoted. No one would ever accuse him of not talking a good game, but in relation to actual delivery and policy, it would be good to see more resources within the Department being devoted to co-operative schools, since the Secretary of State has made it so clear that he is powerfully in favour of their development. That is important because it provides a bulwark against what some people fear—that the current upheaval in the structure of the schools system could lead to the idea that the Secretary of State has entertained from time to time: a system of taxpayer-funded, profit-making schools. That idea was tried in Sweden under its free school system, but it has not worked out too well.

The Swedish system was a model. The Secretary of State was infatuated with Swedish models, but he does not talk about them much any more. Sweden had profit-making free schools, but what happened was perhaps predictable. There are two ways to make a profit: increase revenue or cut costs. Of course, there are limited opportunities for taxpayer-funded schools to increase revenue. In Sweden, once hedge funds and the like invested in the schools, it led to the cutting of costs.

Since there is no requirement for qualified teachers, an obvious way to cut costs is to employ people who do not have to be paid qualified teacher rates. As a result, some of the schools went bust, with consequences for the education of the children, and also with the consequence ultimately that the legislation was overturned and a requirement was reintroduced for qualified teachers in the schools. There were no real educational or co-operative values underpinning the schools, which left them as the prey of hedge fund managers and the like. [Interruption.] If there are co-operative schools—would the hon. Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) like to intervene?

[Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)]

No.

[Kevin Brennan]

The hon. Gentleman does not want to intervene. He is chuntering away from a sedentary position, but he is not prepared to share his views with us.

If there is a co-operative schools system underpinned by the values described so eloquently by the hon. Member for Wycombe at the start of the debate, we overcome such problems. The schools can have autonomy. They can be run by local people according to a set of values that do not put profit before the education of local children and the views of local people.

I have had the opportunity to visit co-operative schools around the country. I mentioned earlier the visits that I made to Upper Shirley high school in Southampton and the Tiverton co-operative learning development trust in Devon. I talked to the teachers and the leaders in those co-operative schools and I put the hard questions to them. It is not enough simply to have a structure and values in place. It has to be absolutely the case that everybody involved in the school is focused on raising standards and making sure that every child matters and that every child is given an opportunity to fulfil their potential.

I have no doubt that from time to time some co-operative schools will go off the rails, as do other schools, but it is surely right that a model based on co-operative principles, whereby everybody knows the values that they should be working to, stands a better chance of success than one that is based on ultimately making a profit. That is a road down which I understand the Secretary of State is interested in travelling.