Academies Bill [Lords]

David Lammy Excerpts

Monday 19th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)]

I shall try to be brief, as we keep being reminded that time is of the essence. I believe in quality, not length, when it comes to debate.

I understand the points made by Opposition Members, but I think we should recognise that we are discussing yet another reform of the education system because there is a problem. There is a two-tier system. Our schools have gone down the ranks in terms of international comparison, and the poorest in our society have borne the brunt. We have the biggest gap between private and state education anywhere in the world. As has already been pointed out today, only 45 of the 80,000 children receiving free school meals have gone to Oxbridge. That worries Members on this side of the House as well as Opposition Members. Another problem is that those who have money can buy into a good state school, and those who are ideologically opposed to private schools can spend the equivalent of private school fees by moving into the catchment area of a state school, often a faith school.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady said that our schools were performing less well on the OECD list. Does she accept that, using the same comparison earlier, the Secretary of State did not acknowledge that since the break-up of the Soviet Union a number of states have entered the system, and that the Soviet Union had a fairly good education system?

[Charlotte Leslie]

The right hon. Gentleman has made an interesting point, which I will take on board.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my London colleague, the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell), who has some very strong schools in his constituency. I am also pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), who made an excellent speech.

I hope that Members on both sides of the House agree that the street in which someone was born should not determine their educational achievement. Success is always at the heart of educational discussion in the House and, for most communities, success has five ingredients. One is of course education. The second is employment, as a result, I hope, of that education. The third is a culture of aspiration. The fourth is parenting, and, for those without parents or who have problematic parents, there will be youth workers in loco parentis and others in the voluntary sector in the community coming alongside. The fifth is community. I hope that, when we think about the role of local education authorities in the debate tonight, we will acknowledge that all those ingredients can come together to make a difference. This is not just about the schools but about the youth services provided alongside the school that the local authority is in charge of delivering. It is not just about the status or structure of a school, or whether it is an academy or not, but about how we reach into communities, lift aspiration and ensure that all young people can achieve their dreams.

Against that backdrop, the fact that just 14% of the young people in my constituency were getting five good GCSEs when we came to power in 1997 can only be described as despairing, decaying and, to some extent, the road to doom. That meant that 86% were getting fewer than that. We were sending more young people to prison than to university, and that was replicated in some of the most deprived constituencies in the country. We should reflect deeply on that when we talk about the importance of education to life outcomes.

The nature of our debates on education over the years reveals a preoccupation with structure. For my party, following the Butler Act in 1944, much of that preoccupation consisted of our deep hostility to grammar schools and our desire for a comprehensive system in which all young people would be of equal worth, and would have comprehensive access to quality education across the country. Some Conservative Members—perhaps because of their proximity to independent schools—seem to suggest that the state system should be freed and given the ability to innovate, to replicate the arrangements in the independent sector. References have been made to the changes that we have made in governing bodies, as well as to grant-maintained status and direct control. That is all about structure.

The great achievement of the Labour Government over the past 13 years was—yes, of course—to make some changes to the structure and to introduce academies, but particularly to have an eye on quality and standards, and to get into the classroom, and to be alongside teachers and head teachers in driving up quality. One Conservative Member disparaged classroom assistants, but they serve to provide two or three adults in a classroom to help to drive up those standards. Excellence in schools was about developing pedagogy, particularly to drive up standards for those who had been consistently left behind. Over the years, we have debated the challenges that exist for white, disaffected communities and, as the hon. Member for Croydon Central pointed out, for black boys, in order to drive those standards up. We were engaged in those schools, and the figure of 14% in my constituency that I mentioned earlier is today 66%. That is what we have achieved. It means that when I served as the Minister for Higher Education, I served in a constituency where we had seen not just a small rise in young people going to university, but one of almost 100% in constituents going to university, and in young people making their way to apprenticeships.

That is hugely important, as these are the very same families who, as we think back to the 1980s, had parents or older brothers and sisters streamed off to do the CSE exam—one in which they could not achieve their best in the way others doing GCE O-levels could. That left its mark—one that we have often attempted to correct with our emphasis on basic skills, numeracy, literacy, unionlearn, and the community response to education as well. It is not just about structure; it is absolutely about standards.

Standards were at the heart of our drive on academies, concentrating our efforts. There were 188 of them, many of them failing schools in the most deprived areas, and we were giving them a fresh start, renewing them with new buildings. Yes, we gave the new leadership of those schools the freedom to innovate. It was, I think, the emphasis on standards that saw the advances made. Academies were, of course, largely based in inner-city areas. A large proportion of them—27%—served black and ethnic minority communities. There was real innovation in the system.

My concern is the hostility from the Government side to local education authorities. I ask why they are so hostile to our means of pooling resources, bringing them alongside schools, giving them specialist advice, helping them organise admissions and so forth. Local education authorities were set up in 1902 by the Conservatives, and they have served us well. The Bill that we are voting on tonight will pave the way the break-up of local authorities over time.

What will we now say to the schools left behind as schools scramble to get academy status? Let us not pretend that this is not about money. The Department for Education website shows that this is about money because it helps schools model how much more of it they would make. And why primary schools? What evidence is there that primary schools, particularly single-form entry primary schools, are even equipped to take on this extra load?

On that basis, we challenge this new system, which will disperse the efforts and advances made by academies, and we question much that has been said. I am very concerned about the equality impact assessment of the new scheme. We are already seeing in the academies that girls are not making advances, that ethnic minorities are not—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order.