Education and Adoption Bill (Ninth sitting)

Flick Drummond Excerpts

Tuesday 14th July 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Gibb]

Well, we want to ensure that schools have the resources to enable them to tackle poor performance among children from poorer backgrounds. We want to help those children to achieve as much as, if not more than, children from leafy suburbs. It is a matter not simply of resources but of the approach to education. We have established the Education Endowment Fund, which is looking at methods and bringing evidence-based approaches into our education system so that we can see what is effective in helping children to achieve most effectively. So it is not a one-club approach. It is a multi-club approach that looks at the best ways to deliver education to help all children.

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is now up to the governing body to look into the effectiveness of the pupil premium and to report on how it is being spent? It needs to analyse what effect it has on the achievement of the children who get the pupil premium and the school as a whole.

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[Mr Gibb]

I do not disagree: that is why we are looking at the progress measure of schools in affluent as well as more deprived areas. Regional schools commissioners will be looking at all schools where there is under- performance—we are determined to tackle coasting schools wherever they occur.

[Mrs Drummond]

Does the Minister agree that we also have Ofsted? If we do not pick this up through the regional schools commissioners, Ofsted will be there to pick up on schools in more affluent areas, as it is already doing.

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend is right. There is more than one way to skin a cat, more than one club in the golf bag, more quivers in the—whatever the thing is. More arrows in the quiver.