School Teachers’ Review Body: Recommendations

Debate between Catherine McKinnell and Laura Trott

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Education if she will make a statement on whether the Government will be accepting the school teachers’ review body’s pay recommendation for 2025-26.

[The Minister for School Standards (Catherine McKinnell)]

May I start by thanking our teachers, school leaders and school staff for all they are doing right now to ensure a successful exam season for students, and indeed for all their hard work throughout the year?

Rather than scaremongering with fantasy statistics, the Government are getting on and delivering. We are already seeing positive signs that our plan for change is working. Teacher recruitment is up, with 2,000 more people in training than last year. Teacher retention is up, with thousands more teachers forecast to stay in the profession over the next three years. This Labour Government are getting on and delivering. Unlike the Opposition, who last year sat on the STRB report, hid from their responsibility and left it to Labour to sort out, this afternoon we will announce the teachers’ pay award, which will be the earliest announcement for a decade.

We understand the importance of giving schools certainty, giving them time to plan their budgets, and ensuring that they can recruit and retain the expert teachers our children need. The Secretary of State’s written ministerial statement will be coming out this afternoon—[Interruption.] It will show once again that this Labour Government—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Laura Trott]

Mr Speaker, this is absolutely outrageous. It is astonishing that we have had to summon the Government to the House today, but the Minister cannot even tell us what pay rise teachers will get and whether it is going to be funded. That does not allow us to scrutinise the matter in this House.

The Government said that they would tax private schools to fund 6,500 more teachers, but the reality is that state schools have not got any of that money. Instead, we have had broken promises on compensating schools for the jobs tax, confirmation from the Department for Education itself that there will be a shortfall in teacher pay funding, which we are not allowed to discuss here today in this urgent question, and uncertainty as to what the actual pay rise for teachers will be. That is a disgrace, and it is the opposite of what people who voted for Labour expected.

All that is in the final two weeks when headteachers up and down the country have to decide whether to make teachers redundant in time for September—in fact, sadly, many schools will already have made the difficult decision to let good teachers go. These are job losses on the Minister’s watch, due to her inability to provide schools with the clarity that they need. Do not just take my word for it. Dan Moynihan, from the Harris Federation, says that it proposes to make 40 to 45 teachers redundant. Jon Coles, the chief executive of United Learning, which runs 90 state sector academies, said that the trust has been left with £10.5 million a year of unfunded costs. He said:

“It’s no good Treasury waving their hands and saying ‘efficiency’—that would be 400 job losses. Sector wide, that would extrapolate to ruinous harm in the one well-functioning public service: tens of thousands of redundancies.”

Simon Pink, the finance director at the Elliot Foundation, which has 36 primaries, said:

“This is the toughest budget…in a generation.”

One secondary school headteacher has already had to cut two teaching assistant posts and a teacher role due to rising national insurance and anticipated wage rises.

What is the pay rise that the Government recommend for teachers? The Prime Minister’s spokesman said on 28 April:

“There’ll be no additional funding for pay.”

Yesterday, the Government started to U-turn on the winter fuel allowance. Will the Minister now fully U-turn and fund the national insurance rise and agree to fully fund the pay increases, whatever they are?

[Catherine McKinnell]

Neither I nor any Minister in this Government will take lessons from Conservative Members, who, after 14 long years in power, had still not restored real-terms spending in our schools to the level that they inherited. The brass neck of the Opposition is quite extraordinary. Conservative Members would also do well to remember the difficult decisions that this Government have had to take because of the utter mess that they left behind. The right hon. Lady was in the Treasury, creating the mess—she knows very well what happened.

Recruiting, retaining and supporting expert teachers is central to our vision for delivering high and rising standards in our schools. Despite the challenging financial context and years of missed recruitment targets under the previous Government, this Administration are prioritising education and ensuring that every child has access to a high-quality teacher. We are working at pace to ensure excellence for every child. That is why we remain committed to our manifesto pledge for 6,500 teachers and to ensuring that it responds to the demand in secondary schools, special schools and further education.

We know that high-quality teaching is the in-school factor that has the biggest positive impact on a child’s outcomes, breaking down barriers to opportunity for every child, so recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers is clearly absolutely central to our vision for delivering high and rising standards. That is why, despite the challenging financial context and years of missed recruitment targets, we are getting on and delivering on our plan for change. The right hon. Lady will have to wait, like everybody else, for the statement that she knows is coming this afternoon.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Catherine McKinnell and Laura Trott

Monday 28th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con)]

Not only has the Education Secretary introduced a Bill to this place that will destroy standards in English schools, but now she has broken her promises on national insurance contributions compensation and is leaving schools in an impossible funding situation. Every MP has heard from headteachers who are stressed beyond belief at how to manage their funding. Can the Secretary of State guarantee that worried headteachers up and down the country will not have to make teachers redundant because of her broken promises: yes or no?

[Catherine McKinnell]

The right hon. Lady has a firmer grip on anonymous briefings in the papers than on the details of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. She is more focused on petty political games in Westminster than on improving the lives of children and families up and down the country. The Bill will get qualified teachers in front of classrooms. It will teach a cutting-edge curriculum. It will drive down the costs of sending children to school. It will provide breakfast clubs for children who need them. It will stop vulnerable children falling through the cracks. It is a single most important piece of child protection legislation in a generation. The Conservatives voted against it. They can snipe from the sidelines; we will get on with delivering change.

School Accountability and Intervention

Debate between Catherine McKinnell and Laura Trott

Monday 3rd February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Schools Minister for advance sight of her statement, and I echo her words: our thoughts and prayers are with the parents of the 15-year-old boy whose life was so tragically cut short, and with the teachers and pupils at All Saints Catholic high school.

We are promised today a better and faster approach to school improvement, but what we have in front of us is a proposed system that is slower and weaker. The Secretary of State repeatedly talked about a new era today. It is a new era: one of regression, confusion and poorly thought out policy. We have had that consistently with the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill over the last few months. The Education Secretary said that the Bill did not cut pay. It did. The Government said that the Bill would not reduce school choice, yet their own impact assessment says that it does. Now we have a speech that says that academisation is a key driver of rising standards, yet the Government are taking away automatic academy orders in the Bill.

Once again with the Secretary of State, there is a gap between her rhetoric and the reality. The reality is weaker accountability, weaker standards and a slower response. The Minister, whom I respect, has been sent out in the place of the Secretary of State, who is happy to give a speech to a think-tank but not to the House, to try to sell the nonsense that the proposal will mean faster school improvement, when the Secretary of State’s own document released today shows an 18-month delay in turning around schools. Instead of immediate new management in a failing school, which is what happens at the moment, the Secretary of State proposes to get a team of Department for Education bureaucrats to come in for 18 months. Only after they make no improvements will the Education Secretary consent to actually getting a new team in place to lead the school. What will that mean? More children in failing schools for longer.

As the Minister says, we know what works to turn around failing schools. A good academy trust taking over a failing school is the best intervention we can make to turn schools around. There is no evidence whatsoever that the approach proposed today, with a delay and with a RISE team going in, will be any better. Can the Minister confirm that she has no evidence that her approach of delaying the academy order will be better? Can she point to where her proposed approach has been trialled effectively? It is unconscionable to foist a new system into place that is not evidenced and that will make things worse, not better.

The loudest criticisms of ending the automatic conversion of failing schools into academies do not even come from the Opposition, but from the Children’s Commissioner, a former schools commissioner, school leaders and even Labour MPs. A Government Back Bencher has said,

“making that process discretionary would result in a large increase in judicial reviews, pressure on councils and prolonged uncertainty, which is in nobody’s interests.”—[Official Report, 8 January 2025; Vol. 759, c. 902.]

I agree.

We have consistently seen that where the academy order is not mandatory, there are endless legal delays. Just last week, the Secretary of State revoked an academy order after the school threatened legal action. That is exactly what those who have raised concerns said would happen—it is utterly shameful. I ask the Minister: how many cohorts of children have to pass through a failing school before the Secretary of State will take action? How many children will they fail before they do something?

Academisation works—even the Government’s own impact assessment of the Bill admits that. But what is Labour’s much-anticipated grand alternative? New regional school improvement teams. What is in the place of expert academy trusts with proven leadership taking over schools? The Minister talked of 20 advisers. To put that in context, the Harris academy trust alone has over 90 expert staff focused on school improvement. Does the Minister really think that 20 people is sufficient? How does that compare with the number of people in the Department’s communications team, for example? What is happening to all the schools due to receive structural intervention from the beginning of this year? Are we replacing new management with vague advice? All this is doing is creating a weaker system and uncertainty and delay, and it is children from the most deprived areas who will suffer the most.

On Ofsted, the Government claim that parents and teachers wanted clarity. In response, we have moved from four to five ratings, multiple different categories, including one more for safeguarding, and no overall score. The new system being proposed today is complicated and pleases nobody. The Association of School and College Leaders has said that the new grading system is “bewildering”. What is the Minister’s response?

Another day, another chaotic reset attempt from this Government. It is educational vandalism, however they try to dress it up. The Children’s Commissioner said last week that the schools Bill would leave children

“spending longer in failing schools”.

Minister, she is right, isn’t she?

[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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Catherine McKinnell and Laura Trott

Monday 9th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con)]

The Secretary of State has made it clear that she would like more time spent on creative subjects, but she must ensure that does not come at the expense of an academic education. Last week’s international education stats found that English children are the best at maths in the western world. That is brilliant news and testament to the hard work of teachers and pupils. It is also down to a world-class curriculum put in place by the previous Government. Will she finally celebrate those results and instruct her curriculum review that it must not dilute academic standards and put that progress at risk?

[Catherine McKinnell]

From their shameless sense of pride, we would never know that the Conservative Government left England’s school standards getting worse. Conservative Members may be happy that half of disadvantaged pupils in state schools did not meet the requirements in reading, writing or maths at the end of primary school, but we do not think their record is anything to be proud of. Standards is the watchword for this Labour Government, and not just for some of our children but for all of them.