School Accountability and Intervention
Debate between Catherine McKinnell and Caroline Nokes(1 month ago)
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The Minister for School Standards (Catherine McKinnell)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement on this Government’s plans to reform school accountability.
Before I begin, I want to say that I am devastated to hear that a boy has died after a stabbing at a school in Sheffield. My heart goes out to his family, friends and the entire school community at this very distressing time. We are in contact with the school and the council to offer support, and investigations are under way. Nothing is more important than the safety of our children.
This Government are clear about the need to secure the very best education for our young people, and we are determined that our schools are reformed to deliver that ambition to enable every child to achieve and thrive. That reform begins at the very start of a child’s journey, with an early years system that sets up our children for the best start in life. That means brilliant schools, with excellent, qualified staff, driving high and rising standards in all parts of our country. It reflects our determination to ensure that we break, in the generations ahead, the unfair link between background and opportunity.
Like so many in this House, I know the value of a brilliant school because I went to one in the west end of Newcastle, in the north-east. My school set high standards for all its pupils. It nurtured my talents and love of learning, and it propelled me forward to university and a career in law. So I know full well that the system can work and that a good school can be an incredible force for good. My school set high standards and expected us all to aim high. High standards and high expectations are this Government’s vision for every child and every school in our country. We will set no ceiling on what children can achieve.
We must recognise that Members from all parts of the House, including David Blunkett and Michael Gove, have driven forward great educational reform. Reform has also been driven by the dedication and determination of teachers across the country. I benefited from the first statutory national curriculum, introduced by Lord Baker in 1988. The arrival of Ofsted and the common inspection framework brought far greater rigour to school inspections. Numeracy hour and literacy hour brought a clear focus to the impact and importance of high-quality teaching, in and of itself. Performance tables brought new transparency for parents, and SATs showed children’s attainment across key stages for the first time.
The sponsored academy programme, started by Labour and expanded by the Conservatives, has been instrumental in raising standards in many schools. Multi-academy trusts brought diversity, innovation and a drive for improvement to our schools. The focus on evidence and pragmatism was embodied in the Education Endowment Foundation. There was a switch to phonics in the wake of the Rose review, and a focus on a curriculum rich in knowledge. All of those reforms brought changes to our system, transforming the life chances of millions of children.
We understand, better than any previous generation, what works to drive up standards for children. We know, more clearly than ever before, that a great education for every child is not an impossible promise, but one that Governments can and must deliver. We are determined, more fiercely than ever before, to use that understanding and knowledge to take our schools forward. However, in the past decade, the ambition for excellence which had powered Governments from the left and the right, and the appetite for reforms that delivered better life chances for our children, have faded, and the system has drifted.
Conservative Members may not like hearing that, so let me remind them about this Government’s inheritance in July, which tells a less happy story: a third of children are finishing primary school without the reading, writing and maths skills they need; children with special educational needs are struggling to get the right support, after spending years in a system that is not serving them; the attainment gap, between those from well-off backgrounds and those who are less privileged, is shamefully wide; young people in London are 70% more likely to enter university compared with their peers in the north-east, where I went to school; and hundreds of thousands of children are in schools that are stuck, receiving poor Ofsted judgments year on year.
This Government are impatient for our children’s success. They get only one childhood, so we will not rest from ensuring that they get the best education they can and we will not tolerate our children being let down. We will not sit back and await changes in schools from governance changes alone. This Labour Government will stop at nothing to improve schools and children’s life chances. We can and must build on the legacy of reform, reignite the ambition for excellence and drive the change our children need, to push once more for high and rising standards in every school, and to break down the barriers to opportunity for every child.
A key part of that change must be a reformed and improved approach to both inspection and accountability that champions good practice, encourages collaboration in schools and, crucially, shines a light on all areas of strength and weakness. Today, the Department for Education and Ofsted are together setting out plans for a new era of accountability, and a renewed ambition for every child and every school. Schools that are stuck but have the capacity to improve must be supported and pushed to do so. We will get our new RISE—regional improvement for standards and excellence—teams, whose members are expert school leaders, in early. We will use them to facilitate faster improvement, using knowledge, experience and the reports of reformed, high-quality inspections to turn schools around. We will work to chart a path to progress, and intervene in way that is effective, bespoke and proportionate, making a difference as early as possible. Today, we are announcing over £20 million for the new RISE teams over the next 15 months. Our first 20 advisers are already in place. They will work with schools across the country to drive improvement and share best practice, because when one school fails, we have all failed the children of that school.
This new era of accountability will come with a new era of inspection. Single headline grades pushed our system on and brought proper scrutiny to our schools, but the time for change has come. They had become high stakes for schools but inadequate to drive the change that our children need—too blunt, too rough and too vague, leaving too many schools without a proper diagnosis and not clear on how to improve. We need a more diagnostic approach that is targeted and focused, raising the bar on what we expect from schools, with the ingredients of a great education each given their own grade, new report cards identifying excellence and shining a light on performance, clarity for parents, and challenge backed by support for schools.
Those diagnostics will drive our approach to improvement. The worst performing schools, whether local authority maintained or academies, will be moved to a strong trust. We will never flinch from bringing in new leadership when children’s life chances demand it, but in this new era of accountability we want schools to support each other. We will foster a self-improving system, where all seek to raise their standards. A proposed new top grade of “exemplary” will signal educational practice that is simply too good for schools to keep to themselves. When a school is awarded “exemplary” in any area, what it is doing should be shared across the country so that others can learn from the very best. Our quest for high and rising standards is universal. We want good schools to become great, and great schools to become even better, sharing their excellence along the way.
Reformed accountability will underpin everything else that we do in education, whether that is delivering better special educational needs and disabilities provision in mainstream schools, or getting to the bottom of the attendance crisis. Inclusion and attendance will both be part of raising standards across our schools.
The changes that we are making to accountability will draw on the wisdom of the entire sector. Today, the Department and Ofsted launch 12-week consultations, seeking the views of those who know the school system best—teachers, school leaders and parents—on the principles needed for inspection, support and intervention. Ofsted has already drawn on the findings of its Big Listen initiative to inform its approach to future inspections, but further action is needed. Ofsted’s consultation will seek the views of parents, carers, professionals and learners on how Ofsted conducts inspections and the way it reports them. The consultation includes proposals for new inspection methodology, alongside the proposed inspection framework, toolkits and report cards, to change how inspections look and feel for schools. Consultation and parental involvement are essential. Neither the Government nor Ofsted can drive up standards for children alone. We have excellent schools and trusts across our country, which have come about thanks to the hard work of school leaders, teachers and others, and reforms passed in this House. They have raised standards down the decades.
The Government believe that the best way to celebrate success is to multiply it, because where someone is born, their family, their city and their parents’ income should not determine their access to the life-changing power of a good education. The measures for school accountability that I have outlined will support and challenge every school to do better for its pupils, share its successes, and bring high and rising standards to every corner of the country, so that every child can go to a good local school, and look forward to a bright future. I commend this statement to the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Catherine McKinnell
Perhaps the right hon. Lady would recognise the legacy that her Government left behind: schools crumbling, standards falling, a lose-lose-lose special educational needs and disabilities system, and a generation missing from England’s schools. It is no wonder that a shadow Minister admitted that they should hang their heads in shame over their record.
In little over 100 days, this Labour Government have moved education back to the centre of national life, with breakfast clubs in primaries, savings for families on uniform costs, nurseries for families, schools being rebuilt across the country, better pay for teachers, school report cards, the development of a broader and richer curriculum, and a child poverty taskforce to clean up the Tories’ mess.
Labour is delivering a new era for school standards, overhauling school inspection and accountability, and driving high and rising standards for every child in every school. We will create a one-stop-shop for parents with our new digital school profiles, and we will challenge the 600 stuck schools that have received consecutive “poor” Ofsted judgments. That is the new front in the fight against low expectations, and our RISE teams will spearhead the stronger, faster system, prioritising those schools.
On top of those measures, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will improve standards by getting excellent qualified teachers in every classroom to teach a cutting-edge curriculum so that parents know their child will get an excellent core offer. As part of our plan for change, we are giving every child the best start in life. That is the difference that a Labour Government will make.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the Chair of the Education Committee.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for her statement, and I associate myself with her remarks about the tragic incident in Sheffield.
The consultations that the Minister has announced are being launched in the context of considerable pressures in our education system, particularly the crisis in the SEND system, which has far-reaching consequences for every part of the sector, and the serious problems in the recruitment and retention of teachers. The Education Committee has heard from stakeholders that accountability pressures can encourage exclusionary practices to maintain academic performance. School leaders regularly raise concerns that the lack of resources to meet the needs of children with SEND makes it hard for them to meet the needs of every child. How does the Department plan to safeguard children with SEND to ensure that accountability pressures on schools do not lead to exclusionary practices but instead promote inclusive approaches that support the needs of students with SEND?
Catherine McKinnell
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to focus on that issue. Improving the SEND system is clearly a focal point for delivering on our opportunity mission to break the link between background and opportunity. We have made a clear commitment to inclusive mainstream education. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill includes measures to give local authorities more levers on admissions, and Ofsted has made it clear that inclusion will be a key feature of inspection—not instead of high and rising standards, but as well as. She will know that we are keeping this matter under review. Our reform plans are in progress, and we will make further announcements on them in due course.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. The hon. Lady will know that she has well exceeded the allotted two minutes.
Catherine McKinnell
Following the end of headline judgments in September, Ofsted undertook the big listen, and listened very carefully to feedback on the way it conducts inspections while also reviewing the format for reporting on those inspections. I note the hon. Lady’s comments in that regard. In the new system that has been designed, that work has paved the way for the roll-out of school report cards. Subject to consultations—both the Government and Ofsted are very open to the views of the profession—they will be rolled out in September.
Alongside a reformed Ofsted, we are creating the RISE teams, comprised of leaders with a proven track record of improving school standards. Those teams will draw on bespoke improvement plans for stuck schools, with significant investment. The previous Government made £6,000 available for stuck schools; under this Government, it will be more like £100,000 per school to drive that improvement.
The hon. Lady’s comments in relation to SEND are well made. As I said to the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), that is something that Ofsted will be judging, looking specifically at inclusion as well as—not instead of—high and rising attainment standards in schools. The reformed accountability and improvement systems very much build on the work of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which will: require teachers to have, or work towards, qualified teacher status; ensure that all schools teach a cutting-edge national curriculum, following the curriculum and assessment review; and restore teaching as an attractive profession through a floor, but no ceiling, for pay and conditions.
All those reforms combined will drive high and rising standards and break down the barriers to opportunity for every child.
Catherine McKinnell
As part of its proposed reforms, Ofsted will be looking at the leadership of schools, including their governance, because good leadership is clearly the route map to children’s success within them. We are legislating for all schools to have a duty to co-operate with local authorities on place planning and admissions to ensure we have a whole schools system that works together. We encourage collaboration by outstanding, excellent, exemplary schools—trusts in particular—that can share their expertise across the board: a collaborative schools system that serves the community and, where possible, ensures that every child has access to a good local school within their community.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
In my experience, parents have a pretty good instinct for what is a good school, and the great generator of progress has been the academy programme, with headteachers responding to what parents want. We should be giving them more freedom, not less. Is there not a danger that if we create highly complex Ofsted reports with league tables across 40 different areas, we will replace headteachers concentrating on what parents want with a tick-box culture focused on appeasing the man in Whitehall? The solution is not endless auditing but delivering what parents want.
Catherine McKinnell
I thank my hon. Friend for his service, which is hugely important. We often do not recognise enough the work that governors undertake and the important role they play in our school system. We thank all school governors for their service and encourage more people to sign up.
In response to my hon. Friend’s initial comment, he may be interested to know that between January 2022 and December 2024, 40% of schools in a category of concern took over a year to convert to sponsored academies. That is too long. We need to intervene more quickly, which is why we will use the opportunity of a more diagnostic Ofsted report card to identify where improvements need to happen so that we can get in there with RISE teams much earlier—as soon as a school has failed its inspection—and no longer focus solely on structural intervention, as he said, but on however school improvement can be best undertaken.
Endometriosis Education in Schools
Debate between Catherine McKinnell and Caroline Nokes(9 months, 1 week ago)
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Catherine McKinnell
The right hon. Gentleman once again demonstrates how incredibly knowledgeable he is about this issue, and how much that knowledge is lacking among the wider public and in this place. We are grateful to him.
It is so essential that young people are taught about their bodies in school, and that they learn about not just relationships and sex, but health and wellbeing. That must include what is and is not normal throughout puberty, the menstrual cycle and hormones, to set young girls and young people up to live healthy lives, both mentally and physically.
Caroline Nokes
The hon. Lady makes an important point about what is and what is not normal. When the Women and Equalities Committee did some work on women’s reproductive health, we got the message from various witnesses that they simply had no comprehension that their periods were not normal, because the message that they got from medics the whole time was, “You just have to get on with it.”
Catherine McKinnell
The right hon. Lady makes an important point—her Committee has done so much important work in this area—and it points to the importance of our education system in combating misunderstandings and providing people with the knowledge that they need to be armed with in order to manage what they and those around them will experience through life.
Sex education has been compulsory in English schools since 2017 and initially covered broad elements of sexual and reproductive health. After many years of campaigning, it was revised in 2020, and since then both boys and girls in state schools have been taught about periods and menstrual wellbeing. Of course, as with the rest of relationships, sex and health education, resources need to be tailored to the relevant age group. They need to be sensitive to a young person’s maturity and their needs.
The Government website states:
“Educating all pupils and students about periods is crucial to tackling the stigma which surrounds it.”
Labour very much agrees, and the next Labour Government will ensure that the curriculum taught in all state-funded schools reflects the issues and diversities of our society and ensures that all young people leave school ready for life.
We have already pledged to deliver, in government, an expert-led curriculum and assessment review, which will learn from international best practice and research across all areas, from history to health, to make sure that our curriculum is as strong and relevant as it can be. I look forward to hearing more from Members in this place and from stakeholders when the review gets started, to ensure that we pick up on the issues that have been identified in the debate today.
Part of that will require having enough teachers in the classroom to improve children’s outcomes and ensure that the curriculum can be delivered to every child as intended. Over the past few years, we have seen dire statistics on teacher recruitment, especially in secondary schools. That is why we have made tackling the recruitment and retention crisis a real focus and announced fully funded plans to deliver 6,500 more teachers to fill the gaps across the profession.
However, I recognise that education will only go so far. This is very much a health issue too, and one on which far too many women are being failed. Nearly as many women in the UK have endometriosis as have diabetes, yet it is unseen in everyday life. Women are waiting far too long for treatment; gynaecology waiting lists have seen the biggest increase of all specialisms in the NHS since the pandemic. As the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell painfully set out, that leaves those experiencing endometriosis with years of unrelieved pain in the bowel or bladder, poor mental health, fertility problems—the list goes on.
I was glad to see the women’s health strategy published in 2022, but it must go further. We must address the NHS backlogs, bring waiting lists down and set out a plan to properly address the workplace challenges in the NHS. For those living with endometriosis who are impacted by poor mental health, Labour has committed to establish a mental health hub in every community. We will deliver mental health support in every secondary school and ensure that young people who are experiencing symptoms relating to such conditions, as well as all those struggling with their mental health, can access that support.
For too long, women’s health has been an afterthought. I am glad that debates like these are being held so that there is an opportunity to discuss these issues in Parliament. I reiterate my gratitude to the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell for bringing forward the debate and for all his contributions on this subject. I also thank all the other hon. Members who have attended for their contributions. We have to get the education right. We have to ensure that young people have the information they need to live a healthy life. I look forward to hearing from the Minister what steps the Government will take to improve our education in this important area.
Marriage Week
Debate between Catherine McKinnell and Caroline Nokes(8 years, 1 month ago)
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Caroline Nokes
I very much thank my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) for that comment. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate on his 21 years of marriage to Janet, but I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green has recently also celebrated his wedding anniversary. Although he has only been married for two years, he has actually been with his husband for a quarter of a century. That is something that we can all be very impressed by and I extend my congratulations to them.
Of course, Marriage Week provides us with a very good opportunity to celebrate the commitment and connectedness that a stable relationship brings to a family. The Government view the role of families as fundamental in shaping individuals, and in having an overwhelmingly positive effect on wider society. We know that growing up in families where parents are collaborative and communicative gives children the skills they need to develop into happy and successful adults, and the vital institution of marriage is a strong symbol of wider society’s desire to celebrate commitment between partners.
The institution of marriage can indeed be the basis of a successful family life and many people make this very important commitment every year. As we have heard, marriage can lay the foundations for parenthood, and is emblematic of the love and security that parents need to give their children.
A stable family that provides a nurturing environment for children is something that the Government will continue to champion and encourage. That is why we are focused on helping families and children, to enhance the educational and employment opportunities available to the young, and to reinforce the benefits that parental collaboration undoubtedly has.
Catherine McKinnell
Since 2015, Marriage Care in Tyneside has provided counselling services to 54 couples and 48 couples have received relationship education, undoubtedly helping those couples to form healthier marriages and stronger family units. Does the Minister agree that the Department for Work and Pensions should continue to fund face-to-face marriage and relationship counselling services?
Caroline Nokes
I thank the hon. Lady for that comment, and I have written the name of her constituency on my speech so I remember to mention specifically the point she has made about Newcastle upon Tyne.
The importance of marriage is reflected in the Government’s introduction of the marriage tax allowance. Furthermore, our commitment to supporting different types of family means that we have extended that tax allowance to include civil partnerships and, of course, same-sex marriages, which were introduced in 2014 and have been taking place since.
Caroline Nokes
I thank my hon. Friend for that comment and I will shortly make some very specific points about marriage that I know will make everybody very happy.
Over 48,000 couples have participated in counselling and more than 17,000 practitioners have been trained to help families in difficulty in the last four years, during which we have invested more than £30 million in services offering support to couples, to reduce parental conflict. In total, 160,000 people have been given access to support, to reduce that conflict. Alongside that, our ongoing child maintenance reforms are delivering a new programme designed to increase collaboration and reduce conflict between separated parents.
Our current programme was designed without the benefit of the latest evidence about the importance of good inter-parental relationships, while a focus on national commissioning of services makes it hard to establish effective referral mechanisms from local services. This means that, in some areas, take-up remains low, despite the prevalence of relationship distress. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) made an important intervention earlier and we will soon announce plans to procure new services to help disadvantaged parents, and others, to address parental conflict.
Caroline Nokes
I am really sorry, but I am now left with only three and a half minutes and I still have quite a lot that I would like to say.
The importance of both parents to children’s future outcomes is well known to all of us. Only around half of children in separated families see their non-resident parent every fortnight or more. Through both our programme to reduce parental conflict and our child maintenance reforms, we are specifically supporting fathers, as my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate mentioned, in both intact and separated families, to form more collaborative co-parenting relationships and hence improve their children’s outcomes. We know that some fathers feel that they are not recognised by public services as having responsibilities for their children and we want to explore how to give them the same chance to engage in their children’s lives as mothers.
Of course, we are aware that different organisations offer classes specifically aimed at preparing a couple for marriage, and those classes can offer very real benefits to people in those circumstances. We want to support programmes that have the biggest impact possible, which is why our new programme will offer support to all family types.
I acknowledge the great work of the community of organisations that advise my Department on family and parental conflict issues. I recognise the great breadth and depth of experience they have in this area. In seeking to draw on their valuable experience, on 23 January I met members of the Relationships Alliance—Relate, Marriage Care, OnePlusOne and Tavistock Relationships. We enjoyed a really productive and informative discussion about the challenges involved in addressing parental conflict, including in the most disadvantaged families, and the new national development of this important work.
The Relationships Alliance is an important organisation that plays a key role in promoting the many benefits of healthy adult relationships, and our objectives are very closely aligned. Members of the alliance have been long-standing partners of the Department, both in their capacity as subject matter experts, and as contract-holders for our current and past delivery programmes. They have given their time and expertise to policy development, and I thank them for that support. In particular, they have supported our efforts to create a new programme targeted at reducing parental conflict. We will continue to engage with the Relationships Alliance, and a wide range of stakeholders, in the future.
The Green Paper that we will bring forward shortly is a listening exercise as much as a tool to express our policy intentions. It will provide an excellent opportunity to hear from stakeholders to garner their views and expertise, and I look forward to exploring the outcomes in more depth. Disadvantaged children are a priority for Government support, and as such will also be a priority for our parental conflict contracts.
In conclusion, let me assure hon. Members that this Government are clear on the importance of the family and of marriage, in all the different forms that it can take, and we are continuing to work to drive up outcomes for children by increasing collaboration between parents, which we know is so crucially important.
I reiterate my thanks to all Members who have expressed their views and their particular enthusiasm and support for marriage. I welcome that, I acknowledge that and I reassure them that the Department intends to continue to work very hard to ensure that marriage gets the support it needs to continue being a strong bedrock for the families and the children for whom we want to secure the best possible outcomes in the future.
Question put and agreed to.