Academies Bill [Lords]

David Ward Excerpts

Monday 19th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am going to hand power back to teachers. There are some teachers, Vernon, like yourself, that I should be a little less reluctant to hand power back to.

The Bill trusts teachers. It marks a big step forward from what happened under the last Government. The last piece of education legislation that Labour tried to bring forward sought to prescribe in excessive detail exactly what should happen in every school, but all the evidence suggests that a greater degree of autonomy and freedom yields results for all pupils. Even before academies, a group of schools—the city technology colleges—was established by my right hon. Friend Lord Baker of Dorking. All of them were comprehensive schools in working-class, challenged or disadvantaged areas. All of them were established independent of local authority control. They are now achieving fantastic results. On average, their GCSE performance involves more than 82% of students getting five good GCSEs, including English and maths, which is at least half as good again as the average level of all schools in the country.

We know that CTCs have been successful. They have been in existence for more than 20 years and are a proven model of how autonomy can work. It was their persuasive work and the evidence of school improvement they generated that prompted Tony Blair, when he was Prime Minister, to go for the academies programme. He believed that the autonomy CTCs benefited from should be extended much more widely.

[Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)]

Is the Secretary of State aware that Dixons CTC, one of the first in the country, has hardly any European students at all, yet the new Bradford academy, which is less than a mile away, is overrun with new arrivals from eastern Europe? How does he explain that?

[Michael Gove]

My understanding is that the Bradford Dixons CTC operates a banded entry system, which is one of the truest and fairest methods of comprehensive entry, but I recognise that demographic change in Bradford and elsewhere is posing challenges for all schools. One of the things I believe is that the success of many CTCs shows that children, including those with special educational needs and those who have English as an additional language, can flourish. I hope that other schools in Bradford will contemplate—as several of them are—taking on some of the freedoms in the Bill to address the very real deprivation that exists in that city and that my hon. Friend has done so much to address, both as a councillor and as a Member of Parliament.

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[Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)]

I cannot see how, when the House is, understandably, trying to rebuild its reputation for various reasons, it will help its good name to rush through such important legislation without full consultation. I cannot believe that that will add to the general view of the House as a place that is worthy to give the deliberation that the Bill deserves.

The Bill is not an emergency measure, but it is leading to what could be a nasty accident. I believe and support the coalition agreement, which says:

“We will give parents, teachers, charities and local communities the chance to set up new schools, as part of our plans to allow new providers to enter the state school system in response to parental demand.”

But that does not add to the state school system. Whatever the intention is, the outcome will be a fragmentation and a weakening of the state school system.

It has also been said recently that

“more choice for parents is a quintessentially liberal approach. This is an area where the state needs to back off.”

However, as we have heard before in the House, liberty without equality is a name of noble sound but squalid meaning. There is a difference between freedom and a free-for-all. In a free-for-all, invariably, the least articulate, the least organised, the least well represented, the least well-off and the least well educated tend to lose out.

It is important always, in whatever we do, to begin with the end in mind. What are we trying to do with our education system? We want, first, to raise the overall attainment of the young people who go through the system and, secondly, to narrow the gap in attainment in our system. The first issue is one of productivity and getting the most that we can out of the system, whereas the second is very much a political issue about narrowing the gap and seeing the importance, not just to young people but to the nation as a whole, of doing so.

There have been some extremely good contributions from knowledgeable people on both sides of the debate, so there is a danger of my trying to teach people to suck eggs, but let me put the issue in practical terms. There is a difference between things that are simple and things that are easy. To achieve well, a school needs a great head teacher, a great management team and great teachers. Then there are other things that help but that are less crucial, such as adequate resources. What resources are adequate will differ from school to school depending on the community that the school serves. Some schools will need more—hence the pupil premium.

A school’s buildings are quite important but not as crucial as some people think. One of my schools, Carlton Bolling college, where I am a governor—one of the schools for which the BSF proposals have been frozen—became an outstanding school not because of its buildings but despite them. It became the first secondary school in Bradford to gain an outstanding Ofsted categorisation because of the things that I have mentioned—a great head teacher, a great management team and great teachers. Schools also need excellent support services such as occupational therapy, educational psychology and speech therapy.

The governing body is less important than many governors believe. A terrific governing body with a poor head teacher will not mean that the school is successful in terms of achievement. A really good head teacher can get by with a governing body that is not so good—just don’t tell them.

[Geraint Davies]

At the end of last week, I was at a school that serves a challenged area in Swansea West. It was clear that the school’s relationship with parents, who often do not have a background of high achievement over generations, in building self-esteem for children is a key part of breaking out of intergenerational poverty. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that one key issue is targeting resources on schools that serve challenged areas, rather than just having a free-for-all where middle-class parents grab what little is left of the cake from the Conservative Government?

[Mr Ward]

Hence the pupil premium. Parental involvement —my next point—is very important too.

There is nothing to stop a school having all the things that I mentioned. It does not have to be a faith school, a maintained school, an academy, a grant-maintained school or a foundation school. A point not previously raised, although I think the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) touched on it, is that everything that I have mentioned will produce a school with high achievement, but not necessarily a school with high attainment. There is a difference between the two.

As I said, it is simple to determine what makes a successful school, but it is not always easy. Apart from parental involvement, everything that I have talked about relates to school level variables—the school and what it can actually deliver—but pupil level variables determine attainment in the school. We seem to have common agreement about the need for a pupil premium to support schools serving deprived communities, but why not give it a chance in those schools? Is it not premature to look at the structure yet again, before we have seen what the additional funding can do to raise attainment in those schools?

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that there are poor schools in good areas and good schools in poor areas? It is much more than the relationship that he has talked about.

[Mr Ward]

Without doubt there are exceptions to the rule, and we need to learn best practice wherever it resides, but powerful opposing forces work against all schools being in the educational utopia that is described by the ingredients for high achievement. Bradford has 200 schools—special, primary and secondary. We shall not get 200 great head teachers; it will not happen.

Another force working against that utopia is how schools are judged. In most cases, they are judged on attainment, and although we often pay lip service to contextual value added, that is not how schools are actually evaluated. Because of the system, schools are in competition. They do not like being in competition, but they are in competition over who is recruited to which school.

How can we bring about change in struggling schools? Only with very great difficulty. Some of the measures are impatient, but it requires hard slog in struggling schools to put in place the ingredients required to turn them around. How much simpler to set up a new school with all the ingredients in place, including the great new head teacher. But where will the great new head teachers come from? They will come from other schools, where they may have been needed because those schools served deprived communities. If a teacher gets the same pay—or even, in these new schools, more pay—why on earth would they go in every morning to work in a school serving a deprived community for less money? Teachers’ conditions of service need to change if we are to make the most of the pupil premium, so I welcome that flexibility.

More important than anything else in terms of attainment, resources and how a school is judged, is the intake of the school. Why do people want academies? There must be a reason. It is because they think they will get something new. If it is simply about flexibility in the national curriculum, why not give it to all schools? If it is about flexibility in teachers’ conditions of service, why not give that to all schools? People want academies—whether or not they admit it—because by one means or another they want to change the intake of the school. If everything was made available for every school, for what reason would they want to set up an academy?

[Mr Turner]

May I suggest that one other reason might be to get away from the control of the local council? That is why people want academies.

[Mr Ward]

On local authorities controlling schools, I do not know where the hon. Gentleman has been for the last 20 years. It does not happen now. Money is passported straight to schools. If he has an issue with support services, he should get his councillors to sort it out. The local authority should be providing quality services to schools.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

Has the hon. Gentleman come across no circumstances where the local authority has acted as a barrier to innovation in a local school?

[Mr Ward]

I am reliably informed by my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) that it happens quite frequently in Essex county council.

Pointing out where there are failings or errors in the system is not to condemn the system but to improve it. One of the reasons I find the measure so difficult to accept is that it ignores the crucial role of the local authority in co-ordination. I have seen no mention of the Every Child Matters agenda in the Bill. The role of the local authority is crucial in places planning, ensuring that admissions are fair and supporting, challenging and monitoring schools. If we put those things in place we shall be on our way to improving our schools.

The final thing that I am worried about has more to do with free schools: within a year, the British National party will have a group of parents applying to set up a school.

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[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. However, the Opposition seem confused. One Labour Member has argued for more academic qualifications while others have said that the qualifications that the Labour Government introduced were fantastic. They cannot agree. They have not come up with a consistent approach to our proposed legislation. The principle of autonomy has been heavily road tested and proved successful in the small minority of schools in which it has been implemented. The previous Government should have set up more academies, but instead, they competed in all the centralising tendencies, on which the previous Education Secretary was particularly keen.

The teaching unions have also been involved in centralising the system. In 2003, there were agreements between the teaching unions and the Government about how teachers operate in the classroom, how their lessons are covered, and what preparation and assessment work they do. There are such practices in no other job. There has been a vast increase in teaching assistants and cover supervisors. That is not to say that I am against those people, but decisions should be up to head teachers and not governed by a weight of paperwork from Whitehall.

There was glimmer of light—several hon. Members on these Benches have referred to the former Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair—with the academies programme. Yet the academies were a trickle rather than a flood. We had only 200 schools out of a total of 3,000 that could have become academies. In 2007, when the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) took over as Secretary of State for Education, rather than openly oppose the academies programme, he made it increasingly difficult for schools to become academies and restricted the arrangements for, for example, the curriculum. Those arrangements were made much tighter.

[Mr Ward]

As I tried to say in my speech, if the freedoms—staffing, curriculum, release from all the paperwork and so on—are so useful, why do we not extend them to every maintained school? Why is structure important? The main improvements that took place through the national challenge did not require a change in structure. An individual interim executive board in a school that is in special measures turns a school round without a change in structure. Why are hon. Members so obsessed with structure?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I think the answer is that there are so many national regulations. I am concerned about that rather than local authorities, which have often been put under pressure by the national Government. For example, I referred to the 2003 terms and conditions agreement between the teaching unions and the Government. Schools need the ability to make decisions, to have agreements between teachers and head teachers and to make their own work force arrangements. I would like more schools to take up the opportunity offered—it is the way forward. I think that it empowers teachers, who often enjoy their jobs more. I have visited several academies, and teachers’ excitement, engagement and motivation are visible.

The opportunity provided by the fact that we will have more schools than the 200-odd we have at the moment will attract more people into the profession. Interestingly, someone asked whether the teaching unions could become involved in academies. Rather than being a roadblock to reform, it would be helpful if the teaching unions supported academies. That would bring huge benefits to teachers. We would probably see better rewards for teachers in the long term, and we would certainly see more professional autonomy for them and a greater respect and esteem for the profession, which would be helpful for the unions in the long term.

I urge Ministers not to heed the calls to slow down—I am sure that they will not—because we have waited long enough for academy schools that serve not just a few people. I applaud existing academies, but the children in our country who do not go to them have waited long enough for a good education. The Opposition are complacent about our education. We are not succeeding; we are failing internationally. There is a huge gap between the attainment of top students and low-achieving students. The Conservatives’ motivation is to close that gap, and I urge the Government to carry on.