Educational Attainment (Disadvantaged Pupils)

Debate between David Ward and Kevin Brennan

Tuesday 25th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) on securing this debate, which has been excellent so far, and on his thoughtful and, as ever, intelligent contribution. I once again congratulate him on the report, which I have read and is worthy of reading. I have also read his blog, which is a little more partisan, but I will forgive him. One has to take such things into account. Heaven forfend that we should be partisan.

I visited Bohunt school in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency last year before the Secretary of State for Education’s visit, and it is an excellent school that has a healthy disregard for Government initiatives, including, I hasten to add, the current Government’s initiatives such as the EBacc. The school has a progressive approach to the curriculum, which I am glad the hon. Gentleman supports. Perhaps that is why it is such a good school.

I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) on his extremely thoughtful contribution. I look forward to following the proceedings of tomorrow’s Education Committee, before which the Minister will make one of his glittering appearances.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North said that Ofsted has talked about young people being lucky or unlucky, which triggered a thought, if the Chamber will indulge me, about my own background. I feel extremely lucky, because both my parents left school at 14, which was not unusual for the working class in my parents’ era. My father was an immigrant from the west of Ireland, although that part of Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom when he was born, and my mother was the daughter and sister of coal miners in the south Wales valleys. They both left school at 14, but I feel lucky because they both cared about education and thought that it was an extremely important opportunity. My father was taken out of school by his father to go on to the farm at a time when his teacher wanted him to stay on to get more education, so I feel lucky generationally.

Like many in this Chamber, I had some inspirational teachers, but I went to a school from which no one had ever been to Oxford or Cambridge. It was hoped that I might get into university, so when I did my summer job, which my father secured for me—patronage is everywhere—at Llanwern steelworks and phoned up to get my A-level results, it was much to my surprise that I had done so well. I went back to take the sandwiches from the canteen to the gang, and one of the men with whom I was working said, “You ought to go to Oxford.” That was the first time anyone had ever said that to me. I had completed my A-levels and my schooling and was working at Llanwern steelworks, and he was the first person who had ever suggested to me that going to Oxford might be possible.

I feel passionately about this subject, as do many colleagues. I welcome the commitment from Members from all parts of the House to trying to ensure that people can fulfil their potential, and that poverty of aspiration is overcome as much as the problems resulting from the economic consequences of poverty. Not that I was from a poor background, I hasten to add; my parents were fortunate enough to be in employment for pretty much all their working lives.

The subject is extremely important. In a sense, the debate is about regional disparities, rather than class or ethnicity, although those factors obviously play into it a great deal, as the hon. Member for East Hampshire said. Those disparities also play into the Select Committee’s report and its inquiry into the performance of white working-class boys. It is worth considering for a moment why white working-class boys are not doing as well as they should in our education system. Perhaps it is a misnomer to talk about white working-class boys in this context, because it is often as much about the parents’ background and their low educational attainment as it is about income. It is also about worklessness and such factors within families.

The hon. Gentleman talked about how the migrant factor plays into this issue, particularly in London. Perhaps many such families look at the school system with fresh eyes and high hopes compared with parents who had a bad experience of the school system. They might have gone through in a low set and absorbed a feeling that school was not valuable to them or that they were not valued by school. They might then have transmitted that on to their children, which would be a factor. I think we can all agree that parents’ behaviours and attitudes matter in this debate. One thing we should consider is how we best influence parents and the role that the Government can have in raising parents’ aspirations and encouraging good parenting on education. We have to consider policy on parents and not just policy within the four walls of the school.

The issue of geography, which is essentially what the debate is about, and the issue in relation to London have been raised, and I will come back to them later.

[Mr Ward]

I suspect that the hon. Gentleman will come on to this, but it is a bit like we are casting the fly into the river; we keep coming near to this thing that bites for the fly, but then it disappears again, and that thing is the quality of teaching. We have heard about aspirations, parental involvement and career advice and so on, but we know about those and we keep coming back to them. The hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) spoke about the quality of leadership and management and the Ofsted reports about certain schools in certain areas, and we keep coming back to this idea of how we get the very best teachers into the most difficult schools. How do we deal with that conundrum when someone is deciding where they want to teach or where they want to be a head teacher?

[Kevin Brennan]

I will come on to that. I was about to say that one of the key challenges is on how we motivate people to go into areas that are struggling with recruiting and retaining highly effective teachers. How do we spread out excellent teachers to ensure that they are available to schools across the country? I will come back to that later.

The previous Government had policies on this issue and made narrowing the gap a priority, as this Government have. There is evidence that the previous Government were successful in narrowing the gap. The Institute for Public Policy Research report “A Long Division” contains some helpful information that illustrates that the attainment gap between the richest and poorest students narrowed between 2003 and 2011. We have to monitor the gap closely to ensure that it does not widen once again. The report shows that schools play a part in that, as does excellent teaching. Having good and outstanding schools is an important and necessary method of ensuring that we close the gap, although it is not sufficient in itself. We need to think more broadly about policies.

Many hon. Members will be familiar with the Sutton Trust report, “The Reading Gap”, from July 2013. It showed that boys aged 15 from disadvantaged backgrounds are some two and a half years behind their counterparts from the most advantaged backgrounds. That shows the problem of the attainment gap. Similarly, a Sutton Trust report from September 2011 highlighted the point that the hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward) just made, namely the importance of high quality teaching. The executive summary of that report said:

“The effects of high-quality teaching are especially significant for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds: over a school year, these pupils gain 1.5 years’ worth of learning with very effective teachers, compared with 0.5 years with poorly performing teachers. In other words, for poor pupils the difference between a good teacher and a bad teacher is a whole year’s learning.”

That shows the significance of raising teaching standards and ensuring that they stay high.

Teacher morale matters. I said that in a recent debate in the House, although the Minister was unable to attend on that occasion. Digging down into the detail of the programme for international student assessment report and the OECD reports, they clearly show that in systems where teacher morale is high and teachers feel valued—it is not necessarily where they are the best paid—pupils perform better. The Sutton Trust has shown that it is particularly important for disadvantaged pupils that we have high performing teachers. Will the Minister commit to publishing the data collected during the 2013 teacher workload survey? I and others have asked the Secretary of State to publish that on many occasions. We need to know what happens, because teacher morale matters to pupil outcomes, particularly those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Ward]

In terms of the earlier discussion on the challenge in London, does the hon. Gentleman feel that there is a Hawthorne effect in London? Teaching in London is seen to be special and teachers are held in high esteem compared with many other parts of the country, where the teaching profession feels undervalued.

[Kevin Brennan]

That might well be a factor. There have been many initiatives in London and a real attempt to attract good quality graduates into the profession through a number of different routes, including Teach First, as the hon. Member for East Hampshire mentioned in his remarks. I have not seen data to show that the public regard teachers more highly in London than in other parts of the country, but that might be a factor.

Returning to the point I was making, on 13 January—I have asked this question subsequently, too—I asked the Minister

“when he intends to publish the findings of the most recent Teacher Workload Survey.”

Bear in mind that the survey was undertaken in March 2013, almost 12 months ago. The Minister’s answer was:

“Officials are currently analysing the data collected during the 2013 Teacher Workload Survey.”—[Official Report, 13 January 2014; Vol. 573, c. 360W.]

Now, when one asks a parliamentary question, one never expects an answer—certainly not from the Department for Education. The relevant word in my question was “when”, but there was no reference in the answer to when the Minister intends to publish the report—not even to “shortly”, “soon” or other civil service terms. Nor was there any reference to “in the autumn”—a term that usually extends to 31 December.

Kings Science Academy (Bradford)

Debate between David Ward and Kevin Brennan

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Westminster Hall

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

It is good to be here before you, Dr McCrea, and the Minister. I initiated this debate and I was lucky to secure it, so it is only fair that I should be able to say what its focus is. It is important to say that because it is not about free schools and academies in general. We have had such debates, so it is not for or against such schools, but about one particular school: Kings science academy. I am not interested in what has been done in the last year or so to improve things at the school or the achievement of pupils, the quality of teaching, the behaviour of pupils, or the leadership and management. I am passionately interested in all those things because I care about Bradford, but that is not what this debate is about.

I am interested in what seems to be the collusion between the so-called benefactor, Alan Lewis, the currently suspended principal, and the Department for Education. I am interested in the DFE’s role in allowing a rich Tory vice-chair to become even richer to the tune of millions of pounds of public money, and how it allowed an inexperienced young man to become principal of the school and to remain in control long after the DFE knew he had admitted that fraud had occurred in his school. How could that be?

I would like the Minister to prove me wrong in what I believe has occurred and the preferential, favourable treatment received by Mr Lewis by ending the speculation and making public the options, analysis and appraisals of nine alternative sites. If they were available, we could see whether there was a rigorous process in place.

I also want to see the evidence that the near £300,000 per year rent is not far in excess of what Mr Lewis could reasonably have expected to get from the partially tenanted and largely derelict site—I have given the Minister three photographs from before it was developed, and I can give more. What evidence is there that Mr Lewis has not made excessive profits from the school that now stands on that site? The Minister has the pictures before him. I believe that the school was only ever going to be built on that particular site—neither the principal nor, certainly, Alan Lewis would have been interested had it been anywhere else. Prove me wrong, please, but the DFE failed in its duty to ensure that a fair and robust options appraisal took place, and I have evidence to suggest that it did not take place.

As for the personal involvement of Mr Lewis in the running of the school, there is this big debate about “was he or wasn’t he” chair of the governors. How on earth can the DFE have mistakenly believed that a vice-chair of the Conservative party was chairman of governors at a free school for 12 months? How can the Department have been confused about that? I had a letter from Mr Lewis as recently as December 2013, signed by himself, in which he states:

“I was never chair of the governing body of the academy.”

Yet I have a copy of an e-mail to the Department, which has been amended by Mr Lewis to show him as chair of the governing body and not simply as someone involved in some way in the school.

I also have evidence that Mr Lewis was involved in the financial management of the school. In the same letter from him, however, he states that

“at no time have I ever had responsibility for the financial management of the academy.”

Yet I have a letter from the DFE in which the financial arrangements of the school have Mr Lewis not only as one of many involved, but as the person who should receive financial reports. He was the key individual who was receiving the reports, even though, to repeat his own words:

“at no time have I ever had responsibility for the financial management of the academy.”

The e-mail clearly shows, set out as an action point, that the monthly financial reports were to be given directly to him.

The truth is that Mr Lewis was personally and heavily involved in the school, right from the very beginning, but he now wants to distance himself from any involvement during a period in which he knows that fraud took place. Moreover, at the same time, negotiations were taking place about the rent for the property that he owned.

A second point, on the principal, involves the internal audit investigation team report endorsing the findings of the earlier Education Funding Agency report and of the report by the accountants, Crowe Clark Whitehill, in August 2012. Will the Minister please tell me whether the CCW report was seen by the DFE? I have to tell him that I think it was, but I want some evidence that it was and for when it was seen. The IAIT report states that the principal admitted that fabrication of invoices had taken place, so even if the DFE did not see the CCW report in August of 2012, at the very least it must have known about it from the audit team at the beginning of 2013. The DFE knew about the fraud, which had been admitted by the principal, but it took no action whatever to remove him from the school.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State said to me during a recent exchange in the main Chamber that

“Mr Lewis is receiving for the property an appropriately guaranteed market rent—less than he was receiving for it beforehand.”—[Official Report, 6 January 2014; Vol. 573, c. 16.]

One of the architects involved in preparing the free school bid has said to me that he finds that statement is a

“very difficult to believe” Statement.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree?

[Mr Ward]

We need clear evidence, because we are now receiving at best evasive responses to the questions that many of us have been asking. At worst, hiding behind the ongoing police inquiry, we have received no response whatever. To be honest, the evasiveness of some of the responses has been disrespectful to Members of this House. We need answers—all the speculation can then disappear.

We know how serious things were in the school, and that the audit reports identify not only the fraud, but all the nepotism and other financial irregularities that were taking place. I repeat that all of that was known by the DFE, but no action was taken at all. We are not talking about a young and inexperienced man, but about a dishonest and disreputable character, and yet, with all that information, the DFE was content to let the principal remain in place.

I hope that the Minister can prove me wrong, because I have a number of serious allegations about the DFE itself. If I am right, the independence of the civil service must be in doubt. Will the Minister please put to bed some of the suspicion about the DFE by helping us? The Department has failed in its public duty to expose what it knew to be malpractice and criminal activity—it held information back and covered up the situation. We cannot have the freedom extended to free schools including freedom from public accountability.

On the reporting of an admitted crime to the police, I am still not satisfied. We have asked oodles of questions, but I am still not satisfied that the DFE acted as it should have. There will always be suspicion of a cover-up until the Minister carries out a full investigation into what happened.

The first phase of the launch of the Kings school was praised by the Prime Minister and described in the press as closest to David Cameron’s vision of what a free school should be. We know the background, but when the whole scandal broke, the DFE said that it was for the school itself to decide whether the issue was a disciplinary one. How on earth can an organisation highlighted in an audit report as responsible be the organisation responsible for looking at itself and dealing with its own disciplinary issues? It beggars belief. A Government audit uncovers misconduct so serious that it needs to be passed to the police for criminal investigation, and yet the DFE feels that it is for the school itself to decide whether the issue is a disciplinary one.

When at last the Department decided that matters could not be contained within the school, it finally referred it to Action Fraud. We are asked to believe that Action Fraud botched up the recording of the fraud on 25 April. Even if we believed that to be true, we know that the DFE then did nothing about ensuring that a crime was investigated until 5 September, when it sent an exploratory e-mail to ask what was going on.

On 5 September, the DFE knew that its April report had been erroneously recorded as an information report. It was told by Action Fraud:

“If more information related to your report becomes available your report will be re-assessed to determine its viability for investigation.”

The Department knew that on 5 September, but did nothing. Why was the audit report not sent directly to the police at that time?

Free Schools

Debate between David Ward and Kevin Brennan

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

We have had an interesting debate, on which I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), who told us about his 30 years as a councillor—he must have been elected to the council at the age of 14 or so. He certainly kicked off the debate extremely well. It was important that he drew to the attention of the House the ROTA report, which itself could be the subject of another debate on free schools and their approach to equality issues. We also had a good contribution from the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh), who spoke in his usual philosophical fashion. He trotted round the arguments on free schools and highlighted some important incidents of which he has been made aware.

My hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) made a powerful plea for fair treatment of and fair comment on the schools in his east Durham area, and he cited the Secretary of State on their smell of defeat. The Secretary of State is an extraordinary man in many ways, but he must have an exceptional sense of smell if, having never visited those schools, he can detect the smell of defeat about them. That says everything.

Finally, we had a contribution from the hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward), who should be congratulated on the manner in which he has attempted, in the face of great difficulties, to expose the scandals at Kings science academy in Bradford. I saw him on his local media pointing out that some of the people whom the Secretary of State had approved to run the school and to spend millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money were not only not fit to run a school, but not fit to run a bath—to use his inimitable phrase. His contribution this morning made the case absolutely clear, and I will say more about that later.

I welcome the children’s Minister, who is one of the nicest people in the Government, as is his Parliamentary Private Secretary, the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood), but we want to know where the Minister for Schools is. It would have been better had he come along today, to listen not only to my colleagues and me, but to his own Liberal Democrat colleagues on the policy for which he is responsible in the Commons at least.

I have noticed recently that in parliamentary answers—written answers as well—the children’s Minister is deployed as a kind of human shield for the Minister for Schools to answer questions about some subjects, including the free schools policy. I hope that that will not become a trend, but I guess it is understandable, given that he is being asked to defend what my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), the shadow Education Secretary, has described as a

“dangerous ideological experiment which has been allowed to run completely out of control”.

The hon. Member for Bradford East gave us a fine example of the manner in which this is out of control. He is right of course, because we have lots of schools with—despite what the hon. Member for Southport said—unqualified teachers written into them as a kind of policy, but also with unqualified leaders. Furthermore, schools are being built where there are already surplus places and with a dangerous lack of oversight and transparency, as we have heard this morning, but that is exactly what the Government planned.

It is no accident that we are hearing more examples of head teachers resigning—another one resigned yesterday, at the IES Breckland free school, following the resignation of the 27-year-old unqualified head at the Pimlico primary free school founded by Lord Nash, a Government Minister. We are hearing more examples of disastrous teaching, such as at the Al-Madinah free school, and allegations of financial fraud, at Al-Madinah and, as we have heard, at Kings science academy in Bradford. There is also an ongoing investigation into the Barnfield Federation in Luton, and we want a guarantee from the Minister that there will not be a cover-up this time—the report of the Department’s investigation should be printed immediately on completion, rather than being sat on until “Newsnight” gets a leaked copy, as happened in the case of Kings science academy.

The reason I say that this is what the Government planned is because they told us that they expected the policy to result in this kind of failure. The hand-picked adviser to the Secretary of State is Mr Dominic Cummings, who was brought into Government against the ethical objections of Andy Coulson and whom the Secretary of State has described as one of his “heroes”. Mr Cummings said in a recent 250-page memo that this kind of fraud and failure was an integral part of the free schools policy design. He said that some free schools

“will fail and have predictable disasters from disastrous teaching to financial fraud.”

There we have it: the lack of oversight is not an accident, as the hon. Member for Bradford East pointed out; it is part of the design of this ideological experiment. According to the Government, a bit of failure is fine, if there are unqualified teachers, and some financial fraud is okay: in the long run, presumably, some good schools will emerge from the carnage of the experiment. The fact that pupils’ education is disrupted along the way—as with the Al-Madinah free school, which had to close for a week—is presumably just collateral damage and a price worth paying.

The adviser to the Secretary of State has told us that we should expect failure and fraud. Clearly, he is right. At least he is being honest: all we have had from the rest of the Department is delay and obfuscation when it has been questioned about all this. Much of that is because Ministers are hopelessly conflicted about the policy. How can a Minister be both a promoter of free schools and an adjudicator on them? That is the situation now. How can the Secretary of State be both propagandist for his free schools experimental policy and overseer of that policy at the same time? He is responsible for all of these schools. He is like Dr Frankenstein: he is in love with his own creation and cannot see the dangers even when the evidence is staring him right in the face.

Just last night we heard further revelations about the Al-Madinah free school on “Channel 4 News”. Perhaps today we will finally get some action and Lord Nash might for a day be able to forget that he is a free school promoter and remember that he is a Government Minister with responsibility for the proper use of taxpayers’ money. Ofsted described that school as “dysfunctional” and rated it “inadequate” in every category, with unqualified teachers who lacked proper training. Now there are new allegations of financial irregularities over the letting of contracts. Will the Minister confirm—he may need some in-flight refuelling to answer the question—whether Department for Education Ministers or officials received from Derbyshire police correspondence relating to the funders of the Al-Madinah free school before it was opened? If so, will he commit to publishing that correspondence?

Let me turn to Kings science academy in Bradford, which opened in 2011, as the hon. Member for Bradford East pointed out, and, as he said, the patron or beneficiary of the school is Alan Lewis, who is a vice-chairman of the Conservative party. The school was built on Mr Lewis’s company land, and as we have heard, he stands to make £6 million in rent over the course of a 20-year agreement.

On 25 October, nearly six months—certainly over five months—since its completion, the Department published a redacted report from a financial investigation that it had carried out at Kings science academy only after whistleblowing from within the school. The way in which the Department redacted the report is interesting. Mr Lewis’s name was redacted, despite the fact that the financial arrangements are in the public domain. Even the name of the head teacher of the school was redacted in the version that the Department released. We have to wonder why it was necessary to redact the name of the head teacher—or principal, as he calls himself—and the name of Mr Lewis when that information is in the public domain; perhaps the Minister can explain.

The Department rushed out the report—that might explain the clumsy redaction— hours before “Newsnight”, which had already received a leaked draft copy, was due to go on air with the story. The report found a whole host of financial irregularities, including an admission by someone at the school that it had submitted fabricated invoices to claim money from the DFE as part of its set-up grant, and identified £86,000 of that grant that had not been spent by the school for the purpose for which it was intended. The report recommended that those matters should be passed on to the police for investigation. As has been pointed out, on 25 October, the Department said that the matter had been reported to the police

“who decided no further action was necessary.”

That seems odd to me. After all, invoices had been fabricated: why did that not result in proper criminal action?

The DFE’s initial version of events was that it reported the matter to Action Fraud on 25 April, and followed that up in September when it was told that the police had decided to take no further action. However, once all this became public—only because of the “Newsnight” investigation—West Yorkshire police contacted the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau to ask about the case and were told that there had been an administrative error that meant that the matter had been passed on to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau as being for information rather than as a report of a potential crime. Five days after the DFE report was made public, West Yorkshire police put out this statement:

“The Department for Education reported the matter to Action Fraud…on April 25, 2013. It was recorded as an information only case not as a crime. This was not sent to West Yorkshire Police either as information or for investigation. The National Fraud Intelligence Bureau has now assessed the report in line with nationally agreed protocols and have today sent it for investigation by West Yorkshire Police.”

That is where we are now, and we know that people are being interviewed, but the matter was not passed on properly to the police for more than five months.

The Department says that in September it contacted Action Fraud to ask for an update and was told by the police that there was nothing more to be done. Why at that stage did the Department not ask more questions? Why did it not dig and find out that there had been an administrative error? We need to understand why it did not do so.

It has now emerged that the Department for Education did not even submit the report to Action Fraud. It simply made a telephone call to the helpline. I have a copy of the Action Fraud web page for its helpline, which says:

“We provide a central point of contact for information about fraud and financially motivated internet crime. If you’ve been scammed, ripped off or conned, there is something you can do about it.”

Presumably the Secretary of State and his officials believed that they might have been scammed, ripped off or conned by the management of Kings science academy—who are all still in place, by the way—which is why they rang the Action Fraud helpline to report the matter. The website goes on to say:

“Report fraud to us and receive a police crime reference number.”

Will the Minister tell us the police crime reference number that his Department was given by Action Fraud when it dialled 0300 123 2040 to report that it believed it had been scammed, ripped off or conned by Kings science academy?

[Mr Ward]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that West Yorkshire police have no record at all of the call being received on 25 April?

[Kevin Brennan]

I am grateful that the hon. Gentleman has put that on the record, because when I rang the Action Fraud helpline last night to check, it said that calls are recorded. The Minister should be able to obtain from the Home Office a recording of the telephone call from the Secretary of State or one of his Ministers or officials to Action Fraud in April to report the crime and find out when they were given the police crime reference number. We will be interested to hear that.

The public deserve to know exactly what was said when the Department for Education reported the matter to Action Fraud, which led it to regard it as only “information”. What was said when it told the Department that the police were taking no further action, and how was it able to make that statement? How did Action Fraud obtain an update from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau without the administrative error coming to light? In the meantime, the principal is still in post at the school, and the Department says it gave the school a financial notice to improve, but that notice has never been published. Will the Minister publish it?

The Department said that the school is carrying out an internal investigation and that any disciplinary action is a matter for the school. How can the Department defend that position? In what other walk of public life would that be acceptable? It is worth remembering that none of this was in the public domain before the report was leaked. It is a murky business, and it would be better if the Government published the records of all their dealings in relation to this now, otherwise they will face the drip, drip of revelations as the details inevitably leak out.

All these problems and this example are a product of the policy design. Everyone in the Chamber wants innovative schools with appropriate autonomy to provide the best possible education for the children in their constituencies. That is a value that we all share, but it is irresponsible to design a policy with the expectation that failure is inevitable—that is what the Secretary of State and special advisers have done—and with no proper oversight of the spending of public money and the impact of the policy on the young people in the care of those schools. There are more scandals to come. As the Minister knows, his Department is currently investigating other cases. Why does he not come clean, answer the questions and admit that it is time to have proper oversight of these schools?