Draft Coasting Schools (England) Regulations 2016

Chris Philp Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2016 General Committees

[Mike Kane]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s intervention, but with 20 years of governance experience, 10 years as a practising teacher and eight years on a local education authority, I am not going to take any lectures about our commitment to education.

At key stage 2, half of MATs are performing below average for adding value, and more than a third are below average for improvement in adding value. Those statistics need to be out there. The main finding is that on all value added measures, more MATs are performing at the extremes of significantly above or significantly below average than are performing close to the average. That is true for both key stage 2 and key stage 4. Performance levels vary widely among MATs.

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

May I draw the shadow Minister’s attention to the answer to the question raised by the former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath? Some 1.4 million more children are in good or outstanding schools now than before. Does the shadow Minister’s analysis of multi-academy trusts and free schools account for a school’s performance before it was academised? In my constituency—I suspect that this situation is similar to that in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes—the schools that were taken over and academised were failing schools that are now succeeding.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

Speech!